Tony Boutagy (00:00):

I don't have a specific program for a female because you are perimenopause and estrogen is changing. I just need to know what you're experiencing and then I will write your program. And it should always be tailor-made to the person in front of me should be symptom individual based, but not gender-based. And this is great news because the principles to improve strength and muscle mass and bone density and VO two, they're independent of your gender sex and they're just based on good programming principles of progression, of overload, of variation and fatigue management. So you just don't do too much too soon and get an injury. They're time proven and effective for everyone.

Michelle MacDonald (00:53):

Welcome to Stronger by Design. This is where we sit down with real experts to uncover how women can optimize their physiology and age with more strength, clarity, and intention than any generation before us. Sounds pretty good, right? Today I'm joined by Dr. Tony Boutagy, one of Australia's most respected strength and conditioning educators. He spent decades helping adults, including me understand their own movement patterns, balance, mobility and work capacity. He teaches people how to train with precision age with capability and take ownership of their bodies in a way the fitness industry rarely talks about. If you've ever wondered how to assess your own movement, how to know when you're ready to progress load or how to build a body that holds up over time, this conversation is going to give you a level of practical insight most women never get access to. So let's dive in. Welcome to the show, Tony. Glad to have you here.

Tony Boutagy (01:50):

Great to be here. Michelle,

Michelle MacDonald (01:52):

I'm going to just dive in because I know the listeners are eager to learn and I haven't had an expert on the show yet that offers what you can. So let's start in with self-assessment and movement literacy. I know this is super important for you to talk about it a fair bit for women listening at home, what are the simplest movement checks that they can run to understand where they're standing? Right? So mobility, standing, what are some of your favorite at-home tests?

Tony Boutagy (02:20):

The movement assessments have to always be done to do something with the program. And if we take a step back and say, well, why bother even assessing? We're doing this to make sure we've got balance between limbs or balance between the front and back of limbs, the balance between prime movers and stabilizers. And the reason why the coach care about this is if we have I balance and then we add load and there's a movement pattern that we're not quite happy with. You don't see a problem in a few weeks. You see it in a few months or years, and you get this little insidious rub at the knee or the hip or the back. It's a bit cranky and you go, alright, I just push through that and then suddenly it's a tendinopathy and then they take months to get rid of, which means good coaches are really interested in understanding how well do both left and right ankle move or your hip stabilizes or your trunk in holding the rib to the pelvis, which means we have a whole battery of assessments that you can have just a few, which we'll discuss today or you could have quite a bit.

(03:26):

But the whole point about testing is that you do something to the program. I've seen a number of coaches who have this battery of tests, they do the test and then you look at the program, it's the same program they would've given it anyway. So the assessment is there to change something or to add something to your workout. I love that.

Michelle MacDonald (03:44):

I

Tony Boutagy (03:44):

Usually start at the ankle.

Michelle MacDonald (03:46):

Sorry. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. I was going to take you there. Tell me about the test.

Tony Boutagy (03:50):

Yeah, right. So we would typically start at the ankle and if I were to shut my eyes and see a hundred people, I could tell you eight out of 10 times there's going to be the same kinds of issues. And that's just because there's a lot of high heels wearing, we sit in chairs for long periods of time or you've got breasts and it pulls you forward. So I could shut my eyes and get it right 99% of the time because these problems keep showing up. We start at the ankle because of shoes, supportive shoes, high heels, often the achilles tendon and the calf muscles of which there's three heads, they're often short and in particular it's the deep one called the soleus. This becomes a big problem if you're trying to do squat patterns. If you have a left to right imbalance, you'll see a shift that's a problem for higher up the chain, the knee, the hip, the spine take the consequences at the ankle joint.

(04:49):

We have a cranky back. We often dunno what it's from. We just think it's weak core. Often it comes from an ankle difference in flexibility when you're moving. So that's one. Number two, if both are tight, you can't let the knee travel when you're doing a squat pattern, which means the force has to go somewhere, it again tends to go aggressively through the low back. You could have this cranky low back that you think, oh, it's again weak core, but it comes back from lack of ankle mobility. And the simplest way to assess this is to film yourself side on this is where filming is really useful to have a look how you move. We often film because we want to post it, but rarely are we actually filming it to look at how different limbs are moving together. And if you film yourself side on and put the feet together in bare feet, so big toe and heeler touching and squat down as deep as you can, that will reveal your ankle mobility and filming from the side. You'll be able to see whether left and right are moving together equally and often you'll see a twist and then we know that that's going to be the problem to the opposite side that you rotate because one side's not moving,

Michelle MacDonald (06:03):

Why would you have the feet together?

Tony Boutagy (06:06):

This really biases the ankle joint. If you go wider and turn your feet out as you would do a squat, we must remember this is an assessment, it's not a strength exercise. So when the feet go together, it biases the ankle joint and it's considerably harder to do. And that's what we want the assessment to do. It's not for training. It's there to find a problem that we can go and solve with a specific stretch or a specific exercise. There's also the knee to wall test, but I tend to use that a little less because it's really easy to get wrong. And that is you're bring your foot very close to a wall and you lunge forward and allow that knee to go forward and you swap legs and you see the difference between the legs or whether the knee can get forward of the toes. It's fine. It's okay assessment, but if I just had three seconds to do a quick assessment to grab the ankle complex feet together, deep squat.

Michelle MacDonald (07:00):

Gotcha. Okay. So the test then for gals listening at home, I know they're going to go do this right after this interview is get your feet together, toes, heels touching and just try to squat down and see how far you can get without, now let me get this straight without one of the legs. One of the tibia is twisting more than the other

Tony Boutagy (07:21):

Or the heels want to lift up or you just can't go anywhere. You start squatting down and a few inches later you stop because the only way you can go deeper is by lifting the heel and then the test stops because you've reached end range.

Michelle MacDonald (07:34):

And then for women that have that wider pelvis that wouldn't affect the assessment versus a male who has slimmer hips,

Tony Boutagy (07:41):

It's still biasing the ankle and that's the beauty of it. We wouldn't train that movement pattern because of that reason, but we just use it as an assessment because if you can squat past horizontal and your knee travels forward beautifully and is the evenness on left and right, you don't need to do specific ankle mobility work. You can spend your precious time elsewhere. We only go after things that are going to create a problem when we add load later on.

Michelle MacDonald (08:11):

So interesting. And then how deep should a normal person, a person who doesn't have ankle mobility issues be expected to go? And this of course is barring any kind of a hip or low back issue. This is body weight, right?

Tony Boutagy (08:26):

We should be able to break horizontal break horizontal

Michelle MacDonald (08:28):

Break horizontal is

Tony Boutagy (08:29):

A thigh horizontal to go. Yeah,

Michelle MacDonald (08:31):

Alright, I should do a post and see who tried this test and see how everyone could do. That's

Tony Boutagy (08:38):

Interesting. Achiever should be able to squat all the way down.

Michelle MacDonald (08:42):

All the way down. Okay, great. And then you said mobility, and I am going to tease this out a little bit because I just had a gal, one of my clients write to me today. She was doing a hack squad and as she was going, which are notoriously challenging to do, just challenging for the quadriceps, and she was shifting forward into the toes and she said, is it an ankle mobility issue? And I said, well, it could be, but I know she's one of my lifters. I know that she's notoriously, she has weak mobility in the sense that she loses strength in those end range end range movement patterns. And the hack squat, there's nowhere to go. You can't shift your hips back, you're locked in. And she also has very thin, very underdeveloped quadriceps, especially around the knee joint. And so I said, well, it could be that, but let's try shifting your feet forward and maybe put a band on it so we're not having a lot of load at the bottom, but we're getting more load at the top and just build up her strength in her quadriceps at that end range movement pattern.

(09:39):

So I'd like to talk to you a little bit about that. I'm a yoga teacher in my background and I would see such a discrepancy between someone's passive flexibility. So I'd see gals in my class who were very passively flexible in passive movements versus my husband who he can barely touch his toes and yet when we talk about mobility, so being able to maintain strength throughout a full range of motion with a load of bar on your bag, the gals would be unable to do it, but there my husband is dropping all the way down biting his kneecaps in a sense. So could you talk a little bit about that too because I do think women are often over assessed for flexibility issues, but they're not inflexible but they lack strength and I think even they have poor movement patterns, so certain muscles aren't firing properly, other muscles are trying to compensate and in those end range movements, especially with load, you can't do that.

Tony Boutagy (10:41):

What makes this conversation challenging for everyone is that terms of change a little bit and previously flexibility talked about how far a muscle could stretch either passively or us taking it there with a partner and mobility was the range of motion permitted by any joint and they were related by different, one had to do with joint structures and ligaments and tendons and the actual architecture of a joint. And most people know that with their hip they go into a deep squat and their femur hits the lip of the acetabulum and they get front hip pain. Well, that's a mobility issue because that is structural, it's not hamstring related, but in time there's been a shift towards blending a few of these together and creating new terms where mobility refers to strength, flexibility or strength at all ranges of motion as long as we know what we're discussing, the actual terms really don't mean anything, but it can be confusing because one could be saying one and meaning something else.

(11:41):

The issue that we're seeing, you've hit the nail on the head, Michelle, is that as strength training has been embraced more widely by women around the world, we see a transition from those who've done a lot of mobility, flexibility based training such as yoga and now there's a bar on their back or dumbbells in their hands and they realize they've got the range to do their body weight or half their body weight, whatever that is when they're doing a yoga pose. But you add external load and then they will struggle when the muscle is at its most length and position. This is part of the needs analysis when you're doing a questionnaire for a client, what is your training history and your program will look entirely different if you've said, I've been doing Ironman triathlon. Okay, well we know what those postures are and therefore what you're going to need based on what you haven't been doing. And for yoga, if that's been your history, and we all have clients who do this, we know straight away it's strength at that end range. They've got the range, they just don't have that strength when the acmy and when the muscles are as far away as possible. So we love full range split squat squats, one and a quarter methods when that muscle has to work harder when it's lengthened, slow eccentrics pauses under tension. There's a lot of methods we throw at those who've come across from yoga into strength training.

Michelle MacDonald (13:03):

I love that you said that. I was just going to ask you what do you see as the biggest blind spots in midlife women's movement patterns? And I guess here I'm going to talk more about people you've heard about fitness, you're seeing all your favorite doctors say you got to build muscle. Muscle is the organ of longevity, you've got to get strong. And so now they're joining the gym and not to do cardio but to get strong. Where do you see the biggest blind spots, Tony, in their movement patterns that they should be aware of?

Tony Boutagy (13:34):

Yeah, it is definitely in muscle balance. We tend to do things that we've either seen on social media, so you should lift heavy shit and you should be doing squats and deadlifts or it's for bone and you should do squats and deadlifts and if you have not come from a lifting background, then that is a fast track way to damaging your spine or your knees because form is everything. Every coach knows this. You would never put a bar on a back or lift it from the ground in session one. You might not even do it in the first session in six months. We have ways of teaching to get our clients who are new to the gym to prepare the muscles, the tendons, ligaments and bones to handle those kinds of movement patterns under load. They're extremely complex and that's where we would typically start with body weight or on machines. I use a lot of machines personally because they're no-brainers and I can really teach a pattern and add load, which means a client can understand this is the level of effort required to produce a response safely and then we can move to single leg versions. We can balance the left to the right because as you've said, what do we see as blind spots? Everyone has left to right imbalances

Michelle MacDonald (14:54):

And they get worse than we get older usually

Tony Boutagy (14:56):

If

Michelle MacDonald (14:56):

We're not paying attention to it. Yeah,

Tony Boutagy (15:00):

Time will just exacerbate things that were minor differences. In your twenties, they become big differences in your fifties and sixties, which means we need single limb or unilateral training and they should be within two or so reps of each other. If your left legs the weak one and it can do 10 reps, the right might be able to do 12 but not 15 because then when you add a bar or you're lifting from the ground and a deadlift, you will see a shift and there are so many trainers who will miss that and if trainers miss it, you are going to miss it as well. And then suddenly you wake up with a cranky back the next day and go, I don't know, I was doing the same thing I always do. And it was that rotation going on.

Michelle MacDonald (15:38):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I see that a lot actually. And it's why we really encourage our clients. You got to take the videos and if they're in an unfriendly gym, I'll say, go get that little magnet and get a black case phone so it disappears and stick it on the back of a rack. But if you can't look at your movement patterns, we're flying blind here and that can really, when we're adding weight, like as you said, exactly, Tony, you're exacerbating and risking compensatory patterns that are ingraining these tissue imbalances that can end up leading to injury and wear and tear. How does someone know when they've lost movement variability? Do you think

Tony Boutagy (16:26):

It's typically a breakdown of range of motion or a aberrant movement pattern as you're approaching task failure? And this will lead us back to me finishing your original question as what else do we look for? Well, we looked at the ankle, but then we typically look at the hip and side core in assessment and then we look at the shoulder. They're the three big areas where there's most room or the low hanging fruit for an assessment and then adding a special exercise. We've looked at ankle mobility. That's a huge one, but it's not for everyone. Some people have very extensible achilles tendons, but most people don't. And then at the hip joint, we want to look at how well the pelvic muscles control your hip action. Typically when you're hip hinging or squatting, I like again a barefoot to take out the stability of a shoe, but a single leg hip hinge like a Romanian deadlift or a single leg squat, just maybe squatting down to a bench bench behind you and film it from the front and watch how the foot controls the rest of your body.

(17:30):

That's the first contact in the ground. And then watch what the pelvis does. Does it rotate? Does it shift? And that tells us either the foot needs special exercises, which is really common because most women never want big calves, so they never train anything under the knee. So I see that being a major blind spot, but then at the hip, the deep hip rotators that are holding the femur in place, so watch for that lateral hip shift or the rotation. And then the final area as we move up the trunk is what's happening to the shoulder blades and the arm because of breast tissue. Most females shoulder blades will sit up and forward, which then position the humerus, the arm to sit forward in the socket and this is so easily filmed and observed from the side to even somebody completely untrained, watch yourself do a lap pull down and if you see the humerus slide up and forward as you're creating a downward movement that tells us that the scapula and arm stabilizers are not good enough versus the prime mover, which is the lats or the pecs depending on what movement pattern we're doing.

(18:40):

And that's why we do the assessment. It's just a simple palms forward pull down or a single leg squat, single leg hip hinge, and that foot together squat. That's four patterns that will take you five minutes and then either inform whether you need special exercises for rotator cuff, scapula stabilizers, deep hip rotators in the feet.

Michelle MacDonald (19:01):

Love that. I'm going to ask you a question then, and we talked about this a little bit off camera. When should somebody progress their lift or how much of their training sessions should they be investing towards lifting weight versus working on mobility and good movement patterns?

Tony Boutagy (19:24):

Let's answer this with of course, it depends on what your primary goal is, what your training history has been and what you really want to get out of every training session. And everyone is different. Some have just as stiff as iron bar and that would mean that we would need to devote more time to specific mobility exercises. And you'll do that at the beginning of the training session. And when you've got that new enhanced range of motion, then we add load to that new range of motion and that tells the brain that's your new range of motion because there's so many brain to muscle connections that are going on in an exercise session. So it makes most sense to do it at the beginning. How much should you do? Depends how responsive you are. If you get a few inches in range of motion, excellent.

(20:10):

Now go and do your work sets and train that new range of motion, but don't add so much load that you can't get into that range of motion With your example with the hack squat is if the range of motion is a problem at the bottom and you add so much weight, you don't even touch that range, you're going to stick to where you're strongest. You're never going to solve that problem. And this is often an ego check for many people, well, I can lift more, right? But you can't lift it through the full range of motion and that's what we're really wanting for. Joint health is loading through the range of motion that you can do safely.

Michelle MacDonald (20:47):

I think, and I don't know what you'll say to this, but I know you trained with a lot of great athletes I think too for people just getting started with lifting in midlife, getting used to staying where things seem impossible. So say you're at the bottom of that head squat and you're start to push back up and your body wants to compensate, shifting the weight forward into the toes because it's hard to drive through the heels. It is so hard to drive through the heels at the bottom position. And I'm not saying that you should drive through the heels, the tripod foot, but when we shift into the toes, the cue is drive that heel down because they've lost that connection and it's getting used to just grinding it out in that position. It feels hard, it feels impossible that you can push yourself up without shifting fortune to the toes, but you can't. It might take three seconds to clear parallel, but you stay there and you grind through it and over time you'll develop strength in that bottom range position. So I don't know if you see that, but I feel like I do see that as that shift to getting comfortable with that discomfort.

Tony Boutagy (21:53):

Absolutely. And if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, but the fact is that there are ranges of motion that we are really uncomfortable going into and it's just imperative that we temper the load to make sure that you can get into that range and do so without, in this case, the knees collapsing or the arch collapsing in the feet or form changing and no longer being pushing through all of the foot. You are now on the toes now that tells me we've reached failure because your form has had to

Michelle MacDonald (22:23):

Change, your form has gone. Exactly. Thanks for bringing that up.

(22:27):

That's RP 10 right there. I love that. Let's talk about balance and stability. This is a big thing for me and joint integrity. If a gal is, I just actually had a client that is recovering from hip surgery, but she's got a lot of left side right side issues, but when I'm looking at our moving, I said, Susan, can you go and do an assisted hip airplane for me and do a body weight RDL with a reach and just film it and show it to me? And of course I wasn't surprised, as you said, the big toes coming off the floor, one side's different than the other. The lifted leg on the RDL is kind of dangling there and I'm seeing a lot of issues there with the core muscles actually and just how the glutes connect to the obliques, the back muscles. It's not just about the hip, it's this total body connection to be able to maintain tension move dynamically. So I said, let's work on your balance. Let's work on your balance because you're recovering. We are not really moving a lot of weight right now, so it's a perfect time to dial in to your balance and moving well. Could you talk a little bit about what two or three unilateral tests that you love or balanced tests, Tony, that you love, that give a clear picture of what's going on with a person's balance, maybe their joint control?

Tony Boutagy (23:49):

Yeah, yeah. And let me just reiterate that point you are right on, is that strength training typically requires total body joint control, stiffness, bracing, where whatever your gripping in the upper body is kept where it should in the shoulder socket and the ribs lock into the pelvis, which means we don't get movement unwanted, even micro movement because that inflames a lot of people. And then the hip, knee and ankle do their job, whatever that job is, whether it's a squat pattern or a hip hinge pattern. And we will often reveal, as you've just said, weakness through ribs to pelvis and you can see that change. And if therefore we can have patterns that can assess from hand to toe that whole body stiffness working together to create stability, then we know either we need to add that or that's great, let's move on and do something else.

(24:46):

And I really like a pushup position plank where one arm would go on the opposite elbow or the shoulder and that will assess with now three bases of support, not for your ability to lock ribs to pelvis, pelvis to toes. And if you pass that, then you can do one hand and then opposing leg, which is the assessment that I do. And we're looking for where the pelvis sits and what happens to the shoulder and also whether the whole body just rotates. And if I can't balance my cup of tea because I'm always drinking tea at work, if that tips off, then we know we need whole body stability training. So that would be one. I also flipping that upside down and putting yourself into a hip bridge position, bent knees, hips up in the air and just straighten one knee, nothing else moves, just one leg straightens. Both thighs are still in the same position and you're in that tabletop plank position reverse

Michelle MacDonald (25:45):

Plan, and it's a tripod that straightened leg is in the air. Gotcha. I'm going to go try this, this is it. As soon as see

Tony Boutagy (25:51):

The pelvis move,

(25:52):

Then we know we've need pelvic core stability and it's typically lateral core stability or core strength, whatever phrase we want to use these days. But those two assessments excel at looking at rib to pelvis, pelvis down to the foot, but the pushup position easily the best, easily the best. And as you've said, I really like a airplane, a single leg airplane because that interrogates foot to knee, knee to hip hip into the trunk. And yes, of course you can do it supported and they can hold a barbell and move themselves around, but unsupported to hip hinge over to horizontal and then open up the hip into the airplane position and then back it will reveal everything. Just I would call it a level two or level three exercise I was

Michelle MacDonald (26:38):

Doesn't require quite a bit. I was say, because sometimes I'm like, gosh, you've raised your family, you've held down a career, you've never had to do a lot of athletic movements, and now you walk into the gym and you're asked to do a hip airplane or honestly even a body weight RDL to reach requires a mind body connection, sequencing, firing patterns that you and I might take for granted, but it's like Greek, it's like your brain's talking to your body and it's speaking Greek. So can we talk about that a little bit? How could we break that down and maybe do you have a couple of favorite easier sort of beginner exercises where people could get started and get that win?

Tony Boutagy (27:22):

Yeah, the best way to think of it is this, is that the assessment should reflect your training history and ability level. And what I would give you and Hattie for an assessment, I only have three levels, so we call that level three because I've have no imagination. It's just level one, two, and three. Now three is where people are well-trained, but there still might be weak links and blind spots based on training. And you take a well champion physique competitor. Well, we know we do thousands of repetitions in hip extension, which isn't remotely the same as hip flexion. This means that our assessments have to reflect the ability level of the person in front of us, but for somebody new to the gym and wants to get stronger, we're not interested in those kinds of metrics. We're not going to do anything different to the program.

(28:09):

What is the original program for the first year? Well, it's to have perfect movement patterns, and therefore the assessment should reflect your ability to do a squat pattern and a hip hinge pattern where you use your hip and not your spine, because most will bow forward and it will be a little bit of hip and a little bit of spine. And if we don't pick that up and we add a bar to it because the best exercise is a, I dunno, a deadlift, then all you'll do is create a cranky spine and we want to have assessments that reflect the training goal for your next year. And then after that we've got different assessments that will reflect you being an intermediate lifter now focusing on other things you can already squat and deadlift. Great. We go after aspects such as prime mover, destabilizer, always looking at left to right, and then when you're really advanced, then we look at strength ratios because that's where we see big differences between push and pull or squat and hip hinge or hip thrust and hip flexion and so forth.

Michelle MacDonald (29:13):

Well, so you would still use the tall plank with the shoulder tap as a beginner movement pattern. And then so say they're wobbling and their hips are twisting and they can't stabilize or one side's wild and the other side's kind of looking good, then what would the next thing be for this gal? Because I think that's probably going to be typical for a lot of the gals listening, like they're going to go and try it and they're going to see, well, my hips are really twisting, I'm all over the place. What could they do to build that up? Maybe an easy favorite. Is that fair to ask you that it's

Tony Boutagy (29:43):

A reason? Yeah, it is. And there's a reason why I chose that assessment and not a classic plank. And that is because almost every female that I see has actually pretty good anterior core, and that's just because they've done setups and they've done planks. And for many women, at least in my life, especially in summer, they've created an abdominal brace whenever their abs have been out because they want to keep it sucked in. And so they've had a lifetime abdominal brace walking around. That's just how posture is. And I get it, if I was just walking around with my top off, I would have a lifetime abdominal brace as well. And that means if I gave somebody a plank, they would pass it and I'd think, okay, well there's nothing going on between ribs to pelvis, let's just move on. It's the lateral core that is usually the issue.

(30:29):

And that's why the pushup plank with one hand on the elbow with the three base of support will reveal whether there's a rotary core or lateral core deficit. And that's where we go after side plank pal off presses. And within that, there's a whole school of variations depending on your ability level that will solve that specific problem. Again, we only ever do an assessment if you're going to do something about it, they will reveal a blind spot in your physical development that will come back to bite you in the butt if we don't address it now.

Michelle MacDonald (31:07):

Yes, especially as we get older. And then so I'm sure that you're using a lot of ipsilateral or contralateral movement patterns to address that slowly over time as you're seeing, okay, they've got that good base, that awareness. Now let's do a half kneeling shoulder press, for example.

Tony Boutagy (31:29):

For most women, I would divide the training session into about three different goals, and one goal would be, let's just get you stronger in the range of motion that you currently possess in all the major movement patterns. We want all of them. We want quad and hamstring and glute and low back and chest and all of it. And we pick an exercise that is a no brainer, cannot get it wrong, which means that we can add load to whatever range we're using and teach effort. We can work very close to failure without risk of injury. So that's one aspect. Then we've got the special exercises where we go after problem areas, which could be Achilles tendon as we've mentioned. It could be the shoulder stabilizers. And we have very deliberate special exercises that target cereus anterior or the gripping muscles. If you've got a history of poor bone density in the wrist, we go after those with targeted movement patterns. And then finally we've got all the exercises to prevent injury and mobility where we want it. Now sometimes people aren't a candidate for that, they already have that, but that's the lines of thinking, I'm thinking what a program should be and we throw the line share at whatever the current goal is in terms of time.

Michelle MacDonald (32:49):

And then also of course, as a programmer, you've got to think of the time that they have available. And the thing with the midlife, the midlife athlete entering athletics, she's holding on the for, like I said earlier, she's got the career, she's taking care of her elderly parents, she's got kids in college, the marriage, the career, I mean it's all these things happening and these big goals where she suddenly notices, oh my God, I'm not in shape. I got to get in shape, but I only have X amount of time. So it gets hard to prioritize. Boy, we got to make sure we're driving some kind of adaptation, but then we also don't want to risk injury, so we got to rotate that in. But I think it takes a very masterful programmer to train that midlife woman, a female really well and actually see the needle really moving in a six month block.

Tony Boutagy (33:42):

Right. Agreed. And there's so many considerations, especially around tendon health. And that third component where I said it's injury prevention, it's often around tendon resilience. And when we see the issues which present for a midlife woman is classic gluteal tendinopathy by far and away more than anything else, followed by the rotator cuff tendons and then achilles and patella, depending on what kind of activities they're doing. But we see these a lot. And then with pickleball and golf and tennis, we see the elbow as well, but let's just dump it all in the tendon basket. And that's where we know tendons just love slow loading and isometric loadings that is contraction without movement. And we add that to the program as a preventative medicine. And that's why programs for women, they're not complex, but you do need to understand the three different things that you're after to get the most out of every 30 minutes, 40 minutes, hour depending what you're doing. But often women who are busy, it's one or two sets and we just get in, we target that area, we move on very quickly. And it is an absolutely phone free other than your program time because that's the time waster where you think, oh, I need to check on my kid, so I'll just get, and then five minutes has passed and you haven't done your set, so we're very clear that your

Michelle MacDonald (35:10):

Time or answering your slack messages like me your time.

Tony Boutagy (35:13):

Right, right, right.

Michelle MacDonald (35:17):

Okay, I love this. So then the next question is Tony. And again, I know my athletes, they have a knife in their teeth, they see my transformations and they identify themselves with that and they want that, right? So I rarely have to tell them to push harder. In fact, let's pull it back a little bit because or we need to, okay, we've gone as far as we can. For me personally, I like to give them the barbell work. I'll let them progress to a certain point and then I'll say, okay, let's strip it back and go back to pause work, right? Because we've got to address these tendencies CS for progressive loading. What is your tell that you've got to dial it back, right? What compensations are you looking for when you've got somebody in front of you that shows strength is out running their mechanics and you've got to make a pivot?

Tony Boutagy (36:13):

Usually the step before that is under the construct of fatigue management. And what coaches are doing is prescribing the exercise and looking at your recoverability, your adaptability, and that is highly individual. If I give you your program and then we repeat that program two days later, can you do the same weight or a little bit more? And if the answer is no, then we either need longer between sessions or perhaps we're doing too much or training too hard. To your point in that session and the idea of when do you know to dial it back is how long does it take you to recover? Because most of the perspectives around do you train to failure, do you hold it a rep or so back has to do with fatigue management because if you go to failure, your recovery is lengthened. If you stop two shorts of two reps short of failure, you still get the same hypertrophy benefit and strength benefit, but you don't have the protracted recovery.

(37:16):

And that's usually how I answer most questions. And that is everything else in your session that you're doing after your first exercise impaired because you went too heavy in the first exercise or is that whole volume and intensity such that you can't train properly again two days later because that's what we're wanting to accumulate session after session. That's high quality, not just turning up and grinding it out. You have to be doing the same or a little bit more. And if that's not and it's going backwards, then we know you're doing too much. In that first session or in the first few exercises,

Michelle MacDonald (37:52):

Do you ever see inconsistency as actually being a larger contributor to recovery and doms? And could you separate doms from recovery as well, Tony?

Tony Boutagy (38:04):

Oh yeah, absolutely. Consistency is everything in the exercise world, and that's why the perfect program doesn't exist because the perfect program is for you that you can repeat over and over and over and over. And for other people might look at that and say, well, that's pretty easy, or that's just very basic, but it can be done when you've had no sleep and it can be done when you're fighting with your ex and it can be done when you're having a bad day at work, you just turn up and get the work done. And this is where the art of coaching comes in to know, well, what's your lifestyle? What is going on for you that I can give you?

Michelle MacDonald (38:37):

What's your allostatic load? Yeah, it's a big one.

Tony Boutagy (38:41):

What can I give you that we all can all write programs that are very tough and the client might like it, but if they're not going to repeat it two days later and two days after that, it's not the best program. And taking in those considerations is of paramount importance to get the most out of a client over many months. And I think most of us, because of social media and seeing what other people are doing or reading recommendations, the programs are just far too challenging for one's lifestyle.

Michelle MacDonald (39:08):

Love that. So again, people listening like consistency is king yet again. And so making sure that the program that you're doing, it's challenging, but making sure when you look at your lifestyle, and of course we don't want to keep the bar low, you do want to adopt the lifestyle shift, right? If you're starting this midstream, you're starting at midlife, you do want to shift your lifestyle, make room for the training, but you also have to acknowledge the reality of your life and the pressures and the demands on your life. Make sure that what you and your trainer are putting together or you and your AI are putting together. You can repeat it, you can assess your movement patterns. You can progress in terms of load, but always making sure that you're not out running your mechanics and you're not out running your ability to recover. I love that. Can we talk about work capacity? Have you seen a shift in your clients as people get older? I know you've got a lot of clients that have been training with you for a long time. I'm not sure if you have anyone that you've been treating with over a long time that have gone from, and women I'm talking about here that have gone from their thirties into that perimenopausal or menopausal phase. Have you noticed a change in work capacity?

Tony Boutagy (40:22):

The majority of the females that I work with and over my career, I would've done well over 50,000 programs, one-on-one with women. The benefit of being a lifetime coach is that I've worked with the same women in their thirties who are now in their sixties, and one is about to turn 70, which means we go through divorces, we go through remarriages, we go through menopause, and you get the blessing of being able to write programs for all those stages of life. I mean, we've seen all these kids being born and then grown up and then having kids of their own. It's a wonderful privilege to be a 30 plus year coach of the same people. And work capacity is something that I identified early on based on the recovery between sets literature and the fatigue literature. And that is if you do 15 reps of a squat, how long does it take for you to do another set of squats without the huffing and puffing and the lactate and all of that burning going on to do the same load?

(41:22):

Same reps. If you are untrained, you might need four or five minutes, and even then that might not be enough recovery. But in my work with endurance athletes, they do a set two failure at 15 reps, and then 20, 30 seconds later they're saying, let's go again. I'm like, no, no, no, you got to rest. And they go watch this. And they do the same thing, exactly the same load. The endurance work capacity because of how they can get rid of metabolites and recover quickly from a cardiovascular and metabolic perspective is astonishing. So that led me to use principles that I would use with endurance athletes, with the gym goers to raise work capacity, which means we can do more work per session with no deterioration in performance. And some of the most incredible work outputs that I see with my females are in their sixties because they keep a high robust cardio respiratory fitness.

(42:21):

And for those women who don't, they prefer golf and yoga, that's great. I have to give them all respiratory sets and less work per training session. But just to put that in numbers, if I'm doing three sets, I might be able to do 14 to 16 exercises with somebody who's fit with the way it's constantly going up versus eight to 10 for somebody who isn't cardio spiritually fit. So where I can influence a client to raise their cardio respiratory fitness, I do, and I throw a lot of different methods at it to raise it up on all the other days that we're not doing resistance training.

Michelle MacDonald (43:02):

I love that. I was just, it's my favorite thing right now to get my clients to do some cardiovascular fitness training on, even in a lean build, especially as they get older, I refer to improving metabolic flexibility and mitochondrial efficiency to get them to, I think the pendulum has swung too far with bastardizing cardiovascular fitness, and we're losing sense

Tony Boutagy (43:30):

Of we're in a world where people want simple messages, and that is muscle and bone and strength and power is so important for midlife women. We all agree, but the data is clear and unequivocal that having a high VO two max or high endurance capacity is the strongest predictor of all cause mortality in cardiovascular disease. There's five huge studies that unequivocally show this, and this is why a coach says, right, we love strength and power and we love muscle mass and we love bone, and we also love cardiovascular fitness as well. And then comes the art of being able to weave that into the weak to give you all the stimulus that you need to age well, but not tie you and fatigue you. And that's quite an art because you'll often see sprinting is the best thing for women, but you're going to need three days recovery

Michelle MacDonald (44:25):

And don't rip your hamstering,

Tony Boutagy (44:27):

Right? And maybe that's not the best thing because there's other ways to improve all of those things as well that don't tax you as much. And we've got a whole host of different interval protocols that pull the levers to improve VO two max and mitochondrial capacity, but don't fatigue you for your weight session the next day. And I think this is the problem that we were discussing off camera is that many of the recommendations given to women are given by experts, not in coaching experts in other fields, but they'll say, oh, I read a study of how good sprinting is. We agree, but they did nothing else in the week. And the coach has to realize, well, we're doing total body here and we've got legs there. What are we going to do on Tuesday, Thursday? Well, we're not going to sprint because you're not going to be able to recover before the next day.

Michelle MacDonald (45:14):

Which brings me to my final questions, which is, and I know you've been interviewing a ton of great professionals, and I think we've got so much overlap in that we're passionate about bringing evidence-based science backed. And when I say evidence-based, I mean what we're seeing in the trenches, right? So we've got the research, right, backing what we're seeing, but we've also got what we're actually seeing in front of us with real people. And you've got way more, you've got two more decades on me. I've only been in this since 2012. You've been doing it since, well, I think I was born already, but what are some red flags? What is one thing that you think women really have to hear about the fitness influencer space, especially probably around experts, but as you said, they're not necessarily experts in the field that they're now occupying. What's one red flag that you would really like to passionately talk about?

Tony Boutagy (46:15):

The red flag, even though it's one thing, it comes under two banners. And the first is there may well be experts, PhDs, MDs who have expertise in a field, but it's not exercise and coaching. And that can be really difficult to tease out because you might be a hydration expert or a thermo regulatory expert, and then you start saying, women should do X, Y, and Z because they're women. And those who work in the field, either in coaching or study, those aspects would say, well, hang on, that's actually not good advice. You are an expert in one field, but it doesn't transfer into another. And often the public dunno, oh, they're a PhD, then they must know what they're talking about. And that's where it can be really tricky. Leading to that point is most of the confusion that women have around, well, what should I do and should I eat before I train or not?

(47:11):

Or should I have carbohydrate or not? Or you fill in the blank. There will always be a female specific recommendation. The first question that I would ask myself is, well, what do the experts who actually study this feel about that? And after interviewing some of the best minds in the world, but also having coaching for three decades, we individualize the program for the person in front of me, but it's never based on gender. So I don't have a male specific program because you're a dude and I don't have a specific program for a female because you are perimenopause and estrogen is changing. I just need to know what you're experiencing. And then I will write your program. And it should always be tailor made to the person in front of me should be symptom individual based, but not gender based. And this is great news because the principles to improve strength and muscle mass and bone density and VO two, they're independent of your gender sex and they're just based on good programming principles of progression, of overload, of variation and fatigue management. So you just don't do too much too soon and then get an injury. They're time proven and effective for everyone.

Michelle MacDonald (48:27):

I love that. So just to reiterate back for people listening, the big red flag, it is kind of twofold that you are seeing right now, is that there are experts not in the field of exercise science coaching that are speaking in this space. And of course for the public, there's that risk of transferring their expertise in their field over to what they're talking about, but it doesn't apply. And so that's a red flag right there. And it doesn't necessarily mean that, that somebody's not speaking something that's substantiated by science, but it doesn't automatically mean that. And if they're saying something that is at odds, probably with people that are actual experts in that field, that should make you pause because it's very unlikely that they found something magical that experts in the field.

Tony Boutagy (49:21):

We do it all day every day.

Michelle MacDonald (49:23):

Lemme give

Tony Boutagy (49:23):

You just a quick example and then I know we've got to wrap up. But when we look at the sprinting literature, sprinting is being recommended to women of midlife to be the best mode of exercise for them, for their cardiovascular fitness for mitochondria.

Michelle MacDonald (49:37):

I missed that bulletin, is that what's being said right now? Oh my God.

Tony Boutagy (49:41):

Oh, right, right. Yeah. Sprint training, and it's perfect for perimenopause and post menopause. It improves insulin sensitivity, it improves fast twitch muscle fibers, you name it. And studies do show this, but the studies do this in isolation. So when they quote the study, it's a study that used just that mode of training and nothing else. And then we look at studies called concurrent literature that add that style of training with weight training in a week. And one study that's just come out from Melbourne has done that. They've used sprint training, short interval training and long interval training, and everyone did the same weights program. And at the end of eight weeks, those doing the sprinting didn't improve indices of weight training because they didn't dissipate the fatigue. Those who did the other types of cardio, did they improved. And this is such an important message. If you're not a coach, you would've missed that subtlety is that that's all they did in the study, but in the real world, our clients just aren't sprinting or just doing cardio. That's just one component of a multi-component program. And we have to manage fatigue. And if that's something all of our listeners take away from this is that you cannot take an isolated study and just apply it to everyone, and this will work for you because it's menopausal. That's not good enough.

(51:01):

It is no

Michelle MacDonald (51:02):

How to. It becomes a bit dangerous too, right? Because of course, the coach in me that sees bodies, I'm thinking probably at a true sprint pattern, especially if it's like a run, for example, talk about, and especially with women, I mean the Q angle from hip to knee, poor movement patterns, that anti rotational issue. And then you start sprinting at an older age, and that's a recipe for disaster, let alone a pulled hamstring, but also wear and tear on the joints. And you can progress a person, but you need to have a system to do that. And that's expertise, that's analyzing their gait, their movement patterns, their tendon stiffness, and being able to progress them intelligently, not just a blanket catchy statement. Thanks so much for bringing that out. And it's not just sprinting, it's going to be a whole bunch of things. So I think people listening, the take home is listen to Tony, you've got courses out too, right? So do you want to speak a little bit about that? Because I think your courses are invaluable,

Tony Boutagy (52:06):

Right? Thank you. I have realized, as somebody who loves reading, as you can see, I think there's a gap between what coaches are doing and what textbooks are teaching or the snippets on social media. And therefore, I've designed long form courses to cover the aspects that coaches really need to know. If you're writing programs for strength and muscle mass, whether you're designing programs for fat loss or as we were talking about, how do you prepare the body with assessments and special exercises if you're new to exercise, and that's a program on assessments and a program on fat loss and a program on anatomy and program design. And I've actually also got a course on training the midlife woman as well,

Michelle MacDonald (52:53):

Cutting through the noise. I love that. And where can people find you, Tony?

Tony Boutagy (52:58):

I'm on Instagram. My name Tony Boutagy, and my website is TonyBoutagy.com.

Michelle MacDonald (53:03):

And your podcast, don't forget to mention your podcast.

Tony Boutagy (53:06):

Oh, that's right. As well.

Michelle MacDonald (53:07):

We are on a podcast. So guys, if you liked this and you want to hear more, but from Tony, you can go find him.

Tony Boutagy (53:13):

Yeah, it's called Stronger with Time, and it's where I interview. And Michelle, you've been on it. I want to interview the Greatest Minds either doing the coaching, who actually work with real people or scientists who study the specific area of interest. And most of my guests are world experts in the topic they're talking about. So it's been for selfish reasons, a fantastic endeavor to do.

Michelle MacDonald (53:40):

Tony, thank you so much for being a guest on my podcast. I am so honored to have you here. It was a pleasure to have you also as a coach, you're a phenomenal human, a true expert. You really give clarity in this space for athletes and in particular for women in midlife. It's great to see you picking up the battle cry and getting that truth out there with the rest of us. And for those of you listening, if today's conversation really landed, if it stirred something in you, you're ready for real structure, role coaching. There's a lot available for you, Tony. You've got tons of great educational content. We have one-on-one coaching at the Wonder Woman. You can go check us out there. And a beautiful retreat. This is actually going to land this before the holidays, and we have a retreat in March. So if you want to get started, you can join us there in Tulum at Amman Sala. Thank you for listening, Tony. So great to have you. Take care everybody. See you on the next episode.