What is a holistic approach to your health & fitness and why is it important?

You may have heard this coined term before but what exactly does it mean to follow and adopt a holistic approach to your health?

To adopt and live a holistic approach to your health is something that looks completely different to each individual. After all, we are all incredibly diverse strong women who have our own personalities, our own strengths and our own little quirks.

These highlights of our personality are things that we need to embrace and not ignore. We need to remember that we are more than muscle groups.

And with our health & fitness goals, this is no different.

We have been sharpening our sword, counting our reps, educating our women on what we believe is crucial to keep moving forward towards their health & fitness goals (and life).

4 Pillars of Performance:

Things we consider with our ladies holistic approach (and so should you):

Training

Ensure you have set an optimal foundation for future strength gains.

Assess all major compound movements (squat, bench, deadlift, overhead press) for technical breakdowns. What limiting factors can you see and what needs to be done to ensure these are either solved or respected.

Why are your goals, but really why, are they important. Does your training and programming reflect this? There is no one size fits all, each and every single person will need to have different considerations to ensure consistency is achieved. After all, what use is a killer program if it’s simply not well executed.

Programming must incorporate appropriate progressive overloading strategies. This means that we must be looking to increase how much we are lifting over a long term game. This doesn’t mean, wack more weight on the barbell and add 2.5kg every session. How can you manipulate sets, reps, load and exercise variation to achieve this (this stuff makes our Coaches excited!).

Ensure you have a mobility and activation protocol in place. If you don’t, this is a must!

Nutrition

First and foremost we like to understand what our ladies have been doing in the past. Was it an approach to their food that allowed them to be nourished, physically & mentally? It is important for us to know if our ladies understand how to nourish themselves for health. The basics. Adequate hydration. Adequate protein. Adequate vegetables. Adequate carbohydrates.

From here we ask the question together, is the lack of structure a skill set issue or something else. What role/s may food be playing and what do we need to do from here?

Rest and Recovery

More work does not necessarily mean better results. Train hard, recover harder. Our results are revealed by our recovery strategies.

Ensure you schedule in rest days and respect how important they are for muscle repair and mind replenishment.

Ensure you have a training program that incorporates de-load weeks. A week to drop your load in training and let your body have a rest.

Ensure you stretch, foam roll and trigger point release your muscles. We ask our body to lift heavy things up and down from week to week. In order to continually progress forward, we must ensure that built up tightness is released.

Mindset

Our body is controlled by the space upstairs. Our mind is the power source for everything we do. It controls our actions, our feelings, our responses and ultimately our results. If this is the case, are you really flexing this muscle too?

What strategies do you have in place that allow you to connect with this space? What thoughts, feelings and actions are moving you forward and what things are holding you back?

Just like any skill set, this too needs work. And more often than not, needs more work than any tight muscle or technical breakdown.

We encourage all our women to check in regularly. A mindful practice can look and feel quite different from women to women. One might journal, one might prefer to share and talk, one might find solace and clarity in a meditation practice. Whatever it might be, mindfulness is not something to ignore. Mindfulness is essential.

How are your 4 pillars tracking?

What can we focus on to continue to move you forward?

We have a powerful document that allows us to break further into these pillars to help you further.
You only have to ask x

(Hint: the email button is below)