Ep.93 Empowering Your Prime: Building a Pain-Free Life with Strategic Fitness

Are you navigating the complexities of staying fit after 50, but some aches and pains are standing in your way? Discover the secrets to maintaining physical wellness with Megan Dahlman, an exercise science expert with a passion for empowering women in their prime. Our enlightening conversation goes beyond the typical fitness advice, revealing why listening to your body and understanding its mechanics are crucial for an active, pain-free life. Megan's expertise shines as she explains the importance of not just enduring discomfort but addressing its root causes, ensuring your pickleball serve or yoga pose doesn't come with an unwelcome side of back or hip pain.

Unlock the building blocks of bodyweight strength training and learn how daily movement is your ally in keeping joints happy and muscles strong. Megan and I unpack the principles of starting with what your body can handle, then gradually ramping up to more challenging routines, always with an emphasis on technique to safeguard against injuries. We dive into modified exercises tailored to your fitness level, illustrating how a focus on form, such as maintaining a neutral spine, isn't only about looking good—it's about feeling good, too.

Finally, Megan endorses the underrated yet potent strategy of the cat nap for stress relief and productivity. We share insights into how small posture tweaks can lead to significant pain relief, drawing parallels to perfecting a golf swing. So tune in, find inspiration, and join us on a journey to a more balanced, energetic life after 50.

You can find Megan Dahlman's fitness programs and her podcast, Self Care Simplified at:
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Transcript

Michele Folan: 0:08

Health, wellness, fitness relationships and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. I'm your host, Michele Folan, and this is Asking for a Friend. Have you ever been excited about starting a new workout routine maybe play pickleball or try a yoga pose and said, nah, that's gonna hurt. We all have those aches and pains that occasionally hold us back from doing all the stuff. But does it have to be that way? Can we modify and start slowly to gain momentum?

Michele Folan: 0:50

In her 17 years of training professionally, Megan Dahlman has become the sought after trainer for women over 40 who want to feel their physical best for years to come. With a degree in exercise science and a certified strength and conditioning specialist, she has an uncanny ability for taking complicated aspects about your body and making them simple, doable and actually sustainable. Through her top 1% podcast, self-cared, simplified and online training programs and courses, she genuinely cares about every woman she interacts with and coaches with a unique attention to detail, grace and patience. Ask any of her clients and they'll say that Megan isn't just an outstanding trainer, but she's a phenomenal coach that truly cares. Her mission is to help every woman, no matter their age, feel strong, pain-free and confident in all aspects of her body. Welcome to asking for a friend, Megan Dalman.

Megan Dahlman: 1:57

Thank you so much for having me, Michelle. What an intro Wow.

Michele Folan: 2:01

Well, I wanted to make sure people knew exactly who we had on the show today. And I wasn't kidding when I said, oh, the yoga pose or the play pickleball, whatever. Because I know there have been times when I myself have not done something or refrained from doing a certain physical activity because I thought it was going to hurt. Hence why I thought it would be great to have you on today.

Megan Dahlman: 2:29

Yeah, it's a pretty common thing, and I feel like our bodies just tend to get in the way of us living a life that we really want to enjoy and, unfortunately, when we let it go on for so long like that, we start to change our life. We kind of just stop that piece of us that wanted to be active and was active and we just kind of change who we are and we no longer pursue activities, and then that kind of becomes more of a spiral, downward spiral too, and so I think, just doing everything we can to be active in all the ways we want to be for as long as we possibly can and if there's anything hindering us from being able to do that, let's address it head on, let's take care of it.

Michele Folan: 3:17

Yeah, and you know we're all getting the message that women in midlife we need to have more muscle, which means weight-bearing exercise, and with that can come obviously some aches and pains. But it's hard to get started if you're already achy and have that muscle that gives you a fit or the low back pain, and that was something that you mentioned before we started recording. You talked a lot about back and hip pain. Is that typically what most women come to you for help with?

Megan Dahlman: 3:50

That's so pervasive. About 540 million adults right now are suffering from some form of low back pain, and sciatica, in particular, is a hip pain. That is pretty common and 40% of adults will have sciatica at some point in their life, and these stats tend to be leaning towards women in midlife and beyond. And the thing with back and hip pain in particular is that it impacts the way your body feels, how it moves with anything. If you have a wrist issue, you can still probably still play pickleball or still go for your walks, still go swimming, still go hiking, and it just kind of comes along for the ride. But the back and the hip pain that is your core and everything you do, all of your movements that you do with every limb on your body, they intersect through that section on your body, through your back, through your hips, through your spine and pelvis, and so when that is not functioning ideally, it impacts how you live your days.

Michele Folan: 5:02

It really dramatically impacts the way you experience life, and so if someone's having those issues, they're likely not going to run out and get a gym membership right. They're going to be more hesitant to jump into some kind of a fitness routine. And that's really, I think, where you come in. How will you begin to assess a new client when they say all right, Megan, I really want to do this, but I've had this nagging pain that runs down my leg. I'll see you on the next video. Proceed with them.

Megan Dahlman: 5:36

Well, yeah, we start with whatever it is. That is a dysfunction. I think we get really good as women at being superheroes and pushing pain to the side and just pushing through it and living with it, and I would bet that a whole handful of women listening right now would say, yeah, I've got back and hit pain, but I just live with it. It is what it is, and so we don't think that it's something that needs to be addressed. But the issue really rears its ugly head. When you keep pushing through it long enough and you want to make progress in your fitness, you want to improve your overall fitness, there will come a point where that dysfunction will limit you and you will probably start to create compensation patterns where you start to use your body parts differently than the way they were designed to use, and so that little nagging back and hip issue is now a plantar fasciitis issue, it's now a shoulder issue, it's now all of these adjacent issues, and so we have to go to the source of where's the problem stemming from and, instead of continuing to sweep it under the rug or push through it, let's address that first, because it's probably not as hard or as time consuming to address as you think it might be. We have this idea of I'm going to have to go do all the doctor's appointments, go see all the specialists and go deal with all of the things. It's like maybe. But what if we just started working on some really high quality core exercises to begin with, some good hip mobility work to begin with as well, and see how things go from there?

Megan Dahlman: 7:22

And I have found for most women, a lot of general back and hip pain stems from a weak, dysfunctional core, a core that's not supporting the spine very well, a core that's making the pelvis really floppy.

Megan Dahlman: 7:37

If we can strengthen your core, bring a little bit more stability around that midsection and then loosen up the hips, often when your hip socket and all the muscles around your hip joint are really tight, it makes your lumbar spine have to overwork. And so having this combination of adding in some good functional core training, improving the mobility of your hips nine times out of 10, we can dramatically reduce back and hip pain and keep it gone for good for the majority of women. So it's like let's try it, let's start there and see if we experience any improvement, and then chances are we will, and you're going to realize like wow, I actually have hope for my body again. I don't have to keep pushing through this pain. I can resolve it in a really simple way and progress into other things too, and I no longer have to say no to experiencing life. It's exciting Like it just gets me excited to talk about it.

Michele Folan: 8:39

Oh yeah, no, and I can tell Megan is smiling as she's speaking, so I know you're super passionate about this and I think when we're in midlife, we may automatically make that assumption that we have osteoarthritis, but that's not always the case, correct?

Megan Dahlman: 8:58

It's not always the case. Pain can come from a number of areas and osteoarthritis is a very common one. Believe it or not, you can have osteoarthritis and not have pain. They don't go hand in hand 100% of the time. Paintings is very common in aging bodies.

Megan Dahlman: 9:16

It's actually quite uncommon to not have some form of osteoarthritis, and I feel like a lot of women will get a bone scan and then get the diagnosis that they have lumbar spine osteoarthritis or some of that arthritis in their lumbar spine. And then they panic and they freak out. They're like, oh my goodness, I need to do a bunch of things and it's like wait a second. It's a good indication that, yes, we could probably improve your core strength and make sure that those spinal segments are a lot more stable. But do you have pain? You might not actually have pain and that's okay. So osteoarthritis does not mean you will have pain and all pain does not mean arthritis. So I find it's helpful to kind of understand that.

Megan Dahlman: 10:01

But when you do have arthritis in a joint, the health of the joint really comes down to four things. If you take your knee joint, for example, I find that the knee is really easy to visualize. The knee joint. You have two main bones that are coming together, those points that they come and kind of connect. You've got the bone, like the density of the actual bones themselves. That makes up a healthy joint.

Megan Dahlman: 10:29

You also have the cartilage that lays over the ends of the bones and that's like this nice squishy piece of a shock absorber and a friction reducer. And then you also have jelly in your joint and that's called synovial fluid. You've got that too and that improves the lubrication of your joint. And then you also have all of what are called the soft tissues, so your tendons and your ligaments and the muscles that surround the joint. So osteoarthritis it really only impacts the bone and the cartilage. So you still have two other things that make up a healthy joint. So what we can do if you have arthritis in a joint, unfortunately we can't reverse it, but we can improve the jelly and we can improve the soft tissues, the muscles and the tendons and the ligaments. So let's do everything we can to do that.

Michele Folan: 11:25

When you say you can improve the jelly or the synovial fluid, because I actually used to sell a product that was an injectable for the knee and it mimicked the synovial fluid, so I kind of know a little bit to be dangerous. Right, is there something we can do that is not pharmaceutical to help?

Megan Dahlman: 11:43

Yep, oh, I did not know that, honestly. So what's interesting is, inflammation damages the lubrication of that synovial fluid. So when your body is chronically inflamed and unfortunately this is where we're all coming like full circle, as our body produces less estrogen as we age, estrogen is a natural anti-inflammatory. So as aging women, we will most likely have a little bit of extra inflammation throughout our body and that can settle into joints too. It's a common area and that damages some of that, the molecules that are lubricating. We might lose some of that with inflammation.

Megan Dahlman: 12:33

So what we can do is eat in an anti-inflammatory way, move our body to help reduce inflammation, manage our stress so that inflammation is reduced, making sure that we're sleeping well All the things that we know are really wonderful for reducing inflammation can in turn create really healthy jelly in our joints. And then for the joint itself, when you don't move that joint, when you just kind of stay stationary with the joint, the jelly and I keep calling it jelly, it's synovial fluid it kind of seeps out of the joint space, okay, it kind of like kind of starts to drift and once you move the joint it's almost acts like a vacuum and sucks it back into the joint space. Oh, that's interesting.

Megan Dahlman: 13:26

So, keeping it. Yes, so this is why a lot of women will be like when I'm sitting for a long time, my hips feel really stiff. When I first stand up, it just feels so stiff. As soon as I get moving again, things feel better. It almost feels like you're lubricated again. And that's exactly what's going on.

Megan Dahlman: 13:44

As you move that joint it sucks some of that jelly back into the joint space and now it's all lubricated. So it's another great, just incentive to stay moving as much as possible, especially if you have arthritis in that joint. Because now you know, I don't have as much cartilage here, I don't have as healthy a bone tissue here, so I'm really relying on the jelly and the muscles and tissues themselves. So if I can stay moving, that will keep that lubricating fluid in the joint as much as I can. And then strength training that will provide a lot more of that exoskeleton around the joint itself. So in kind of act like the cartilage that's no longer there. So there's so many things we can do. If you have osteoarthritis, this is not like a death sentence for your joint.

Michele Folan: 14:35

Okay, thank you for that explanation, because I've never heard it quite defined in that way, and that is super interesting. You talked about lifting weights and doing resistance type exercises. If someone wants to get started with weights, how do you recommend they start? Like, how many reps, how many sets, how many days should take a break between? What's your philosophy on that?

Megan Dahlman: 15:04

Yeah, and actually I'll back it up a little bit more and just say I don't recommend starting with weights. To be honest, especially if you're going from nothing or maybe you are just a walker or a swimmer or a hiker or you ride a bike If you're not already doing some form of full body like resistance training, let's not jump straight into something where you're having to try to figure out equipment. It can be very distracting and take your attention off of the quality of your movements and so let's spend a few months just working on body weight only strength training movements, so things like basic body weight only squats, and things for your posture and core exercises that are primarily body weight only, and there are so many like thousands of exercises we can do that teach you how to control and move and balance and stabilize your body before I ever hand you a piece of equipment. So I find that that is really important, especially for women that might have a wrist that is a little bit on the weaker side that's really common or might have a hip that has some arthritis or might have that osteoporosis in their spine. Like it's really, really important to start with learning mechanics of movements and learning that really well, providing a little bit of stability there and then progressing to the point Now we can add a little bit more load to it. So I think it's helpful to remember that moving and pushing your own body weight is still strength training. Think about how much your body weighs. If I already hand you a dumbbell, that was the same weight as your body. That's a lot, that's a big load. And so you moving and pushing and pulling and just controlling your body is still providing resistance for your muscles to have to work and get stronger. So don't feel like it's not good enough, because I get this question a lot Like I feel like I should be doing weights. It's like, yeah, maybe we can get to that point, but let's lay a really good foundation of good body control, really good mechanics, first before we get to that point.

Megan Dahlman: 17:32

And I was watching I was on Instagram this morning and I saw another pretty popular influencer in the menopause space and she was talking about the importance of doing impact exercises and doing something like a jump or a squat jump, and I agree 100%, but I'm looking closely in. Her mechanics were so terrible with the jump, no, no, and I was like your knees are completely out of alignment. We don't have hip stability there and I know that that takes a trained eye to see that and that's fine. But the point is that she should not have been jumping yet. And, yes, that's a great thing to eventually do is the impact work. But we need to make sure that you're spending a good amount of time establishing excellent technique and mechanics, knowing how to squat and control a descent and then that upward movement, making sure we can keep your knees really well aligned, because if we try to progress and go to something that's significantly more challenging now, we have bad knee alignment and knee joint that didn't have arthritis before is now going to start, and I could see her knees. I'm like I bet you're going to get some arthritis in that knee joint.

Megan Dahlman: 18:54

So all of that to say it's really important to start with a long term vision in mind of, yes, I want to be lifting weights and strength training eventually, but what can I do now to set me up for success so that I'm doing this for as long as possible? So, when it comes to the consistency and the amount, I recommend getting in the habit of doing some type of movement intentionally every day. Move your body every day. That's going to help with the health of your joints. It's going to help with your overall mobility.

Megan Dahlman: 19:33

I think the worst mentality to get in is I work out twice a week so I'm just going to get in, check those boxes and then be completely sedentary the rest of the time. Yeah, we can easily do that and I can be. I'm guilty of that some days too. A lot of desk times sometimes. But just looking at a regular week and saying what can I do every single day this week to just get myself moving and start there, just be someone that moves somehow every single day. And then, if that evolves into okay now, two of those movement opportunities over the course of the week, if I can start to turn two of those into something that looks more like strength training using just my body weight, for now, totally fine.

Megan Dahlman: 20:21

Ultimately, as that evolves, we want to get to the place where your strength training about two to three days a week is sufficient for muscle growth and around the repetition range of six to 12 repetitions. Anything beyond 12 repetitions, like if you get to 12 and you think I could have kept going all day. We have this tiny little dumbbell and we're like I could just like fling this around and I get to 12, I probably could have done 50. That's not stimulating your muscles enough to promote growth. So we want to have an exercise that's challenging enough that right around that 12 rep mark you feel like you're pushing it pretty hard. But that doesn't mean you start there. That's where we eventually evolve too.

Michele Folan: 21:12

Yeah, and I think that's important. I know you want to prevent injury and really pay attention to your form as you're doing it. I know everybody gets tired of me telling my stories, but I diagnosed with osteoporosis and I did go to a physical therapist and I was doing some presses over my head and she wanted to make sure that I wasn't arching my spine as I was doing it. She wanted me to have a neutral spine and show me how to do that if I was going to stand, but then also, as I was sitting, how to do that. And it's just, I watch, Megan. I watch you do these exercises and you're super fit, but you are so good at showing the modified version of some very simple things like lunges and planks and that sort of thing that makes this so not intimidating.

Michele Folan: 22:07

So I would just recommend that everybody check out Megan's Instagram, because she just is so detail oriented and how you go about it. So kudos on that one. Well, thank you.

Megan Dahlman: 22:22

And I, because I really, really care that that things are done really well for your sake. There's no like I was just saying, there's no point of rushing ahead and doing the big things that we feel are the big things that will move the needle when the mechanics of the movement are not done properly. You should never train bad form or bad technique. That will become a movement pattern that gets imprinted into the way your body moves and that becomes now your new normal. And that's where we get a lot of those unnecessary arthritis issues and joints is because the wear and tear on a joint over many years is because we've had bad alignment, the way the joint was not supposed to move, and we don't have proper support around the joint.

Megan Dahlman: 23:17

So if we slow things down and we understand how to engage properly, how to adjust and just tweak your spine and lift your rib cage and tuck your rib cage and tilt your pelvis and all these tiny little things really do matter. And not to overwhelm anybody, you know to be like, oh, my goodness, I can't do any of it, but hopefully I'm able to show it. In a way it's like wow, okay, just adding that tiny tuck with my tail, I really feel it. Now I can really feel it working and I just had a coaching call with a bunch of ladies in my Jumpstart 30 program and a lot of them were like these exercises are so simple and really doable, but it feels really challenging.

Megan Dahlman: 24:00

Why is this so challenging? Not from like an intensity standpoint, but I had to explain. It's like you might have always done bridges all throughout your life or whatever that extra you know, a squat or whatever and what we have done is we have zoomed in, slowed it down, made you really pay attention to all the fine movements of it and, wow, we're finally tapping into muscle fibers that have been dormant for years. We're tapping into ranges of motion that have never known how to operate and we're using and controlling your body in a way that never knew how to function and that's always going to be really feels really challenging, and so it's such a great like eye opener to realize how my body is capable of so much more.

Michele Folan: 24:51

As you were talking, I was like God. The analogy here is my golf swing, because it's yes, you know, because it does feel so unnatural and I have to think the whole time when I'm doing it. And that's exactly what you're retraining people's brains, yes, but for their own good.

Megan Dahlman: 25:14

That's exactly it, and our bodies move based on how our brains tell them to move. It's the combination of our nerves that talk to the muscles, that tell it to go a certain way, and you can retrain it. You can absolutely retrain it if things aren't moving properly, just like developing a golf swing. That is the most awkward position and I will tell you, I dabble with golf sometimes, but as someone who knows how to squat and be athletic and like power things I am, it does not serve me well with golf.

Michele Folan: 25:49

We need to retrain your brain, Megan.

Megan Dahlman: 25:51

I know.

Michele Folan: 25:52

I know it's so funny. Yeah, well, I suck at it. So I'm you, know I, but I should go together. Oh, I know right, we would be the right pace for each other. It'd be perfect. I know We'd be like it behind for sure. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about posture and improper ergonomics, because a lot of us are sitting a great part of our day and it may not be working. It could be because we're scrolling through Instagram or whatever we're doing. How much are you seeing with your coaching that a lot of this is attributing to people's back issues?

Megan Dahlman: 26:35

Huge. It mostly stems from that. The majority of pain, especially in your back or hips or really anywhere on your body, is kind of the result of what I call the PSF framework. So posture strength, flexibility. In any area on your body that's not working properly, chances are it either lacks good posture or alignment, it lacks adequate strength and it lacks adequate flexibility or mobility. If the posture piece is not on par back to golf, if it's not where it should be, we will have a breakdown somewhere eventually, and the majority of people feel like posture starts with the shoulders. You know, pull your shoulders back like sit up straight, pull your shoulders back.

Megan Dahlman: 27:23

But really I want you to rethink your posture as starting at the pelvis. It begins with your pelvis and good posture is a level pelvis. A lot of us lean to the side, cross our legs, stand with one hip cocked out. Especially if you spent years raising children, you probably had a baby on your hip for a long time. That was a movement pattern we adopted and we probably still have 30 years later.

Megan Dahlman: 27:52

So think about your posture beginning from your pelvis. This is where a lot of women will develop SI, joint pain issues or that sciatica they have like a cock-eyed pelvis. So just starting to get your pelvis level so it's not tipping right or left and also not tipping forward or back. A lot of people with really tight hip flexors they'll have like a really arched low back. It's because those tight hip flexors on the front are really pulling the front of their pelvis down and tipping their pelvis forward, so it makes that excessive, that lordosis at your low back.

Megan Dahlman: 28:32

So getting your pelvis level can immediately eliminate a lot of pain you probably feel in your lumbar spine. So posture really starts with pelvis and then we go up from there. Then it's really easy to think about stacking the spine right above that. But think of also your rib cage. When you squeeze your shoulders back really hard, often what happens is your rib cage flares up and open and it really arches you at your low back. That is really bad posture and there's nothing that aggravates me more than seeing fitness influencers on Instagram, especially like young gals that want to look like they have a really large chest and a really large booty and they arch, you know you're picturing it now, right, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Megan Dahlman: 29:20

The arching like the, their chest is flared open and their, their hiny is out and it's like a back pain waiting to happen. So once you have a level pelvis, I want you to think about stacking your rib cage right above that. So often it requires us tucking our lowest ribs down, so it's almost like they're connected to our hip bones. Now we have a trunk that is well stacked, now we have, like this canister that is in great alignment, so we can finally engage your core muscles the way they're meant to engage. It is so difficult to get your core to fire properly when your rib cage is all flared out like that and your low back is arched, and then the opposite. It's really hard to get your core to engage properly when you're all slumped under the other way. So just by adjusting those few things the pelvis and the rib cage can make a huge difference on how your entire trunk functions. And you might find that, oh my goodness, all day long I'm sitting like leaned off to the side or I have my legs crossed and, wow, this is probably the source of that SI joint pain I'm feeling or that sciatica that I'm feeling.

Megan Dahlman: 30:42

And I have a little story my mom last year had a bunionectomy. So she had a bunion surgery. She came home she had this huge boot. She had to have her leg propped up for like a week and I was checking on her every day making sure that she was okay, and I could just see, because the one leg was propped up, her hips were tilted. I said, mom, if we're not careful here, you're going to develop a back problem and a hip problem at the same time that we're dealing with this foot. So let's prop both legs up. So now your legs, now your hips, can be level. And she told me a few weeks later. She said thank you so much, because I was starting to feel my back hurt. And so it's all those little things that we might be doing throughout the day and we don't realize that we're all shifted and tilted and off kilter a little bit. So just start with the pelvis and that will really help.

Michele Folan: 31:38

Okay, the whole time you were speaking, I like uncrossed my ankles and I know better. I know better, right? I've been through more ergonomics trainings with all the companies I've worked with about how to sit properly at a desk. But what I noticed, Megan, when I felt my ribs stacked and more over my pelvis, it engaged my core, which is a good thing to feel, right. So I love that. And the other thing that I wanted to mention I had a very good friend go to the emergency room last week with an SI joint issue, excruciating pain, and if it's something and I know she sits a lot because she does work I can tell you. After we finish here, I'm going to call her and tell her. I know she'll be going to do some physical therapy, but I think that's something to really hone in on. For anyone having back pain is just something as simple as really watching the way you're sitting every day yeah, absolutely. And then tech neck how we've got our heads down when we're on our phones.

Megan Dahlman: 32:49

Yeah, the tech neck, and what happens is that it's impacting our neck but then our entire upper trunk starts to round over to and shoulders roll forward, the upper neck gets hunched over and you've probably seen women and older men that develop that hump it's called the Dowager's hump, like kind of at the base of the neck, and a lot of that is just from this rounded forward position and I have a feeling now that we're in this like tech world, we're going to be seeing more and more of those humps in the years, you know, 20, 30 years from now.

Megan Dahlman: 33:26

But it's completely preventable and, yes, we need to get off our phone every so often but also be proactive about counteracting the those effects.

Megan Dahlman: 33:39

So, understanding that when you're always in this rounded forward position, your, your muscles and even your fascia start to shape into that position. So it's almost like putting Play-Doh, like in a mold, like it starts to take on the shape of that position and so trying to unwind it with just like one little stretch a day might not do the trick. So it might take a lot of strengthening the muscles on the backside, because they've gotten really long and loose and forward. So strengthening those muscles back there, all the muscles around your shoulder blades, strengthening your core and making sure that your shoulders aren't up to your ears. And I find just periodically throughout the day, just take your shoulders and do them in like circles that go forward, then roll your shoulders backwards. This can just bring some awareness to your upper back and remind you like okay, let's not be surrounded forward. So I found that the technique is the most effective thing for reversing, that is, really strengthening the muscles along the backside to kind of help pull you back.

Michele Folan: 34:56

Okay, that's easy enough. I think, yeah, I want to talk a little bit about mobility, because as we get older, our balance tends to be off or can be. And then the mobility piece just making sure that we can get up out of the chair and off the floor and all those things when you're working with clients, how do you help them work on that?

Megan Dahlman: 35:22

aspect of things. We start with what they can do, especially with the mobility piece. Often all hear women say I can't get down on the floor, so I just can't do anything. It's like, well, not so what can you do now and what can we do to move you in that direction? So if getting down on the floor or sitting in a chair is really challenging, getting up out of a chair might be really challenging too.

Megan Dahlman: 35:49

What we can do is start with the fundamental movement. That, that is, is a squat. So you could almost just bring a bar stool or a bar stool height chair, set it behind you and just practice building the strength to squat onto that and then stand back up, squat onto it and stand back up and start to develop not just the flexibility but the strength through that range of motion. And that's truly what mobility is. Mobility is those two things together not just being flexible but also having the strength to go through that range of motion. So then gradually, over time, you start to lower the height of that chair and pretty soon you have the strength to get down on a low couch and back up again. Maybe a low couch that has a low seat, so your knees are higher than your hips when you're sitting, and that is a really good challenge and you're starting to develop that mobility. Going down on the floor, take some staggering with your feet, so practicing more of a staggered style squat this wouldn't be like a full lunge. It's kind of moving in that direction where you have one foot forward, one foot back and you kind of squat in that style and slowly, slowly, we're starting to get lower and lower, but we start from above, we start at the top. Develop your confidence in those ranges of motion, because that's what so much of it is Like. I no longer have the confidence to do these types of activities, and so what we need to do is almost retrain the confidence into you again and show you that your body can still get this back. We can still get it back.

Megan Dahlman: 37:31

Same with balance. Balance is one of those things. If you stop using it, you lose it, but it can be trained again. Because it's nerves. It can take a little longer than your strength. You'll probably be getting all the way down on the floor and back up again faster, like in a shorter amount of time frame, than being someone who can balance on one leg really, really well, and I find that it's helpful to think of balance as not just standing on one foot while you brush your teeth at night.

Megan Dahlman: 38:02

Most of the time when you need balance the most is actually in a moving type of a position situation. So dynamic balance. Don't just work on your balance by just standing on one foot. Stand on one foot and move with it. So take your other foot and tap it forward. Take that foot, tap it out to the side, tap it behind you. Try doing little mini squats on what. Try hinging forward like, try moving while you're standing on that foot. That's going to transfer to the balance you actually need in real life, far more than just being really good at standing on one foot.

Michele Folan: 38:41

Yeah. So I've seen the brushing the teeth thing that you did and you did. You were moving your foot in different ways around and I was like, oh, that's a twist on that that I really like, so I will try that tonight. Yeah, give it a try. I would love for you to tell the listeners how you work with clients and where they would find you to see your services.

Megan Dahlman: 39:07

So I work with clients all over the world and that's the beauty of the internet these days. So all of my courses and programs are all online and I've created them in a way that they feel really personal and they have so much coaching involved and it almost feels like you're working with me one on one. So I tried to make that as like baked into the programs as much as possible. So I've got two main programs. My Jumpstart 30 program really just helps you get the ball rolling. If you're not doing any like, if all you're doing right now is walking or maybe nothing You're like I need to start working on my mobility and my balance and my strength.

Megan Dahlman: 39:51

This is the right place to start. It's Jumpstart 30 program is the perfect place to begin. And then if you have that pain, if you're dealing with that SI joint issue or sciatica or lumbar spine or just really like such a weak core that you know that your dysfunction could really use some attention my back and hip fix program is a great place to start. So all of those are found on my website, the vigeofit. com, and I'll make sure you have the links for that, Michele. And then, of course, come check me out on Instagram too. I'm there constantly, and then my podcast as well self care simplified so lots of places to learn.

Michele Folan: 40:31

Trust me, I do follow you and I have been for a while and I've picked up some wonderful tips. I do have one last question for you. Okay, For Megan Dahlman. What is one of your own pillars of self care?

Megan Dahlman: 40:48

This is an excellent question and, as someone who's like constantly immersed in like fitness and nutrition and those things, start to be, you know, just boxes you check every day and just like they just happen automatically. And so the piece of my self care that I have to ensure that it's there is the stress management piece and the sleep. But every single day I try to incorporate at least three different things during the day that help like reduce my stress. So, the biggest thing, if you were to ask my husband what is the thing that Megan does every day I take a nap. Oh, I take a nap every afternoon. I'm a napper, I love naps. I love naps so much and I'm a power napper. I can do a little cat nap every. I can do a 10 or 15 minute nap and it just like resets my day and that if I have a day without a nap I feel like everything is hitting the fan. But if I could just get a nap I can handle so much more.

Michele Folan: 41:51

I love it. That is so perfect. Yeah, okay, everyone, we're going to end here and everyone can go take a nap. Go take a nap, Megan. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

Megan Dahlman: 42:04

Thank you for having me, Michele, this was fun.

Michele Folan: 42:10

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