S03E09 - Walk with Me - Talking about CrossFit and Grown-Up Ladies with Yvette Luna Ostermann

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Women and weight training. Is there a risk of gaining too much muscle? What other things can consistent training give but strength and fitness? Is scaling just cheating or does it actually make sense? Let's find out!

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I took my microphone out for a walk and talk about strength training and CrossFit for us grownups, especially for the ladies in their 50s. With me walks Yvette Luna Ostermann, the owner of CrossFit F2 in Munich, Germany.

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She has a diverse sporting background and a bit over 10 years ago she and her husband founded their own CrossFit box. And for CrossFit very clearly is what I like to say, don't do nothing, do something and scale it back.

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First I wanted to know how Yvette started doing CrossFit.

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I was in Amsterdam and a friend of mine posted something on Facebook and I saw it. This is going back 2009 and I sent him a message and said, what is this? He was in a competition. He said it's CrossFit.

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So as soon as I got back to the States where I was living, I looked up the nearest CrossFit and went to CrossFit and my husband then with my boyfriend, we joined immediately. So that was 2009.

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Why was that?

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I've always been physical and active and sports. And this was something that was completely new to me. And it filled everything that I liked because I love gymnastics. I love weightlifting and I love cardio.

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So which has you know everything in CrossFit. So it was immediate. And then we did CrossFit. We live in Florida, by the way. We lived there for two years and then we moved here to Munich.

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Right. Yeah. And then we were here a year. We were going to CrossFit Munich. And one day we walked out of CrossFit Munich and I wasn't working. I'd been here for a year already.

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And I looked at my husband, my boyfriend at the time, I said, let's open a CrossFit.

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Box. Yes, a box.

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And we had already tried to plan what I was going to do here because of my lack of German.

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And really not knowing what I wanted to do and the fact that I love CrossFit.

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It just it felt right. It felt right to do that because at the time I think there was only three boxes in Munich. We would have been the fourth.

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Yeah. And we looked at the map where the three were and went out far away from them out west where there was no boxes. Yeah, that makes sense.

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What kind of a background did you have? You said you're sporty and active, but what other things did you do before?

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Well, I ran track in high school and I just always worked out. I've always liked to be active.

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It's just I mean, I lived in California and then from California I went to Florida, which everything is, you know, outdoorsy in California and Florida too.

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And I always just had friends who did nothing. I never really did anything competitive, but I just like to be physical.

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And I always like to weight train, which is a big part of my life still. I think weight training is so important.

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Yeah, we'll get to that a bit later. So now you have been doing CrossFit for decades basically. You can call that even though neither of us is old.

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So what has it given to you after all this time? What is the what have you cut out of it?

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I it's just part of my life. It's like you wake up, you have a cup of coffee, you eat breakfast, you CrossFit.

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You know, it's just it's a routine. It's it's part of my life. It's I couldn't imagine not doing it.

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And I cannot imagine not being it such a big part of our lives. I mean, we we own the box. Our community is because of CrossFit.

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I mean, if I didn't have CrossFit, I wouldn't have a community that we have right now, which is really good. It took a while to get it.

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But we have a good community. So it's just it's just it's life for us.

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That's a topic of growing or growing growing up. I like to call it growing up rather than growing older.

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So for women, there's certain changes like menopausal things. How does it change? Our training change and yes, training does change when you grow up.

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I mean, your mind doesn't change, but your body does.

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You know, of course, I go in there and I want to do the same things I was doing when I first started CrossFit, which I can't do anymore.

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I can't you know, my miles are take a little longer, but you just adjust.

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You adjust to it and and you have to really listen to your body at this age.

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I mean, when you're younger, you can be sore and not be able to walk because you're so sore.

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But now it's like you're not just sore, your back hurts or your knee will hurt or your shoulder will hurt, you know.

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So you really I believe at this age, you really have to pay attention to what your body is telling you.

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It's really important. Yeah, I have noticed myself that it's it takes like two days to recover.

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Yes, but you earlier took like half a day.

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Well, and also I think supplements is really important, too, at this age.

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I mean, you have to take your fish oils and your multivitamin and, you know, whatever you lack,

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because I mean, it's important to know what you're deficient in to vitamin wise, which it's an easy test.

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You take a blood test, you know, and it's good to know that you got your child like my second baby.

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Your second baby, slightly older than usual. Yes.

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Yes. And why do you think that is?

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Well, we had tried to have a baby for years and we gave up.

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And then I was about to turn 50 and I know the cutoff for IVF is 50.

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Like a lot of places will not will not take your case.

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So I told my husband, we need to do it now or never.

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So we found a really amazing, amazing clinic in Madrid, Spain that took us because we went to get basically interviewed and took us.

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It was 50 when I got pregnant and 51 when I had her.

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And the every doctor that I talked to, even my GYN was amazed how easy my pregnancy was, how good it was.

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And it's all and I believe 100 percent it's because of CrossFit that I was able to have such an easy pregnancy and a healthy baby

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and a recovery, which was most important, the recovery after having a baby at 51.

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So it didn't only like support your fitness, but it's also supported your prepared for my body for that. Yeah.

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Let's talk a bit about the weight lifting and weight training.

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And especially for women. Yes.

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The thing is that often women are sort of afraid that their muscles grow and they become like hunks.

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And that's not very ladylike. Yeah, I get that a lot.

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I mean, I've gotten those so much, you know, women walk in, they're like, oh, no, I don't want to look like a man.

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And then I have to explain, well, unless you have testosterone like a man, you can't.

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So, I mean, to me, women training at our age, my age is so important because we are going through menopause.

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We don't produce estrogen. Our bone density starts to go muscle loss.

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And with weight training, you keep the bone density.

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You keep the muscle, you know, which is also important for when you get older and you want to be independent.

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You know, when you want to grow old and be independent, if you don't weight train, you can't be.

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If you weight train, you can be independent. That's my goal, really, you know, to be independent when I am older.

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My daughter is my second daughter is. Young still. Yeah, right.

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So it's basically like use it or lose it. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

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That's about weight training. So what about especially if we talk about CrossFit, how does it benefit for chronic ladies?

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I think the reason why CrossFit does work is because it can be scaled.

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Everything that we do is scaled to your level of fitness.

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You know, I mean, not everybody that walks in can do or not every girl can or woman can do pull ups or dips or push ups.

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So everything is scaled to your fitness level.

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You know, for example, if you can't do pull ups, you do, you know, ring rows.

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So same thing with with the weights. Everything is scalable. For the women.

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So let's say that you're a woman over 45, around 50, and you want to start with CrossFit.

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What are the important things that you should pay attention to?

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So what we have at our box is we have an on-ramp program, which you start with us.

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And it's two weeks of learning how to scale for your level.

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You know, because we don't just tell the people on the floor day one and they have no idea what the weights.

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Yeah. And then what to do. So on the on-ramp, which my husband's in charge of, you're taught how to how to scale everything.

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For example, there might be somebody who even comes in with a shoulder injury who can't do a strict press with a bar.

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So we teach them that with the dumbbell. So each side works independently.

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You know, so that's why I think if you are going to weight train 45 and 50, that you should either hire a trainer,

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a professional trainer, or you should CrossFit at a box that teaches you the fundamentals before you start.

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Yeah. But when I did CrossFit, I was sort of surprised how easy the moving the weights is after you learn the right technique.

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Yes, so important.

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And how enjoyable it can be.

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And we, our box, we're really, we're really strict about that.

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We're very, people will come in, they're like, no, I've been I've been doing sports for 20 years.

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I know this stuff. And we were like, okay, well, then show us this.

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Yeah. And they say, how do you do that?

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I'm like, those are the movements you do here.

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So it is important that you take the on-ramp first so that you learn and you know,

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and you also learn what you're capable of in CrossFit to begin with.

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And I also noticed that when now I did some CrossFit moves with weights, with barbell.

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So I noticed that maybe I don't remember exactly anymore. The muscle memory is somewhat there, but it's not totally there.

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It takes a while. What we do too on day one is after you're taught the basics, air squat, push-up and ring rows,

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we do a workout, including some, if it's nice weather, there's running included.

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If it's ugly out or cold, you do the bike. So you do the workout and you have your time.

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And then the last day of on-ramp, you do the same exact workout.

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And to this day, we have had every single person improve their time in just 14 days.

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Yeah, so it is it is because it is just your body adapting that quick.

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It's three times a week, the on-ramp Monday was in Friday.

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And then so the first Monday you do the workout and then the last Friday of the second week, you do it again.

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It used to be three weeks. Over the years, we squeezed it down.

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And in those three weeks, those improvements were two minutes sometimes.

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People would improve their time by two minutes, three minutes, because it was more than just 14 days.

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And I think that's really when people notice that if you're consistent, which is the most important thing,

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if you're consistent with something, you improve.

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What about people like I used to be?

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You know, I have started to train for running, but I never liked to run.

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And that was the most unpleasant thing for me.

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We have people that don't like to run. We have people that can run because of some injury.

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So we scale instead of running, you then you roll a low impact.

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You can either row on the rower or you do the bike.

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Some even jump on the treadmill inside.

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So, yeah, everything is, I mean, everything, like I said, is scalable to your fitness level.

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The good to no corner.

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So talking about scaling once again, but this time let's dig a bit deeper and take a more granular look.

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For me, it has taken quite a while to get rid of the whole idea that scaling would somehow be cheating.

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You know the situation, be it in a CrossFit box, a group fitness class or an online program.

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The moment someone, maybe you, swaps out the weight for something lighter or replaces a movement with a simpler version,

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you can hear this little voice saying, that's not doing the real thing, that's cheating.

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But of course it's not.

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From the exercise science perspective, scaling isn't a compromise.

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It's often the most intelligent thing you can do.

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At its core, scaling is about matching the dose, the amount of exercise to the individual.

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Same goal, different prescription.

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And that principle, that training must fit the person, not the other way around,

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is one of the foundational pillars of exercise science.

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The American College of Sports Medicine, which is essentially the gold standard body for exercise guidance worldwide,

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is very clear on this.

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Resistance training should always be applied in the context of the individual's goals, current capacity and training history.

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Not a one size fits all number on a whiteboard.

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So, when a coach looks at two people doing the same workout and suggests different loads, different movements or different rep counts,

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they are not lowering the bar for one person.

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They are making sure both people are training at the right relative intensity for where they are right now.

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And then.

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The goal of any well-designed workout isn't to complete a specific set of reps.

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The goal is to hit a stimulus and cause adaptation.

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Work hard enough, but not so hard it would break form or recovery.

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The workout is the vehicle, the stimulus is the destination.

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And the whole point of scaling is to make sure you arrive at that destination, even if the route looks a little different from the person next to you.

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If your weight is so heavy that your technique falls apart after the second rep, you are not doing a strength workout anymore.

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You are doing a struggle session. The stimulus is gone.

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The risk goes up. And the adaptation you were actually after. Nowhere to be found.

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Scaling the load down, finding the weight where you can move well, work hard and still have one or two good reps left in the tank.

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That's not giving up. That's precision.

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Your body's capacity to train varies from day to day.

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Sleep, stress, nutrition, even the time of day. All of it affects how you perform and recover.

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Then we are talking about autoregulation, the foundation of scaling.

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So when you walk into the gym on a rough Tuesday having slept five hours and feeling like you have eaten sand,

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should you really be hitting the same numbers as you did on a well-rested Friday?

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The answer is no. And autoregulation, also known as scaling, is how you honor that reality.

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There are a couple of concepts that help to put this into practice.

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One is called the RPE scale, Rate of Perceived Excession.

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And the other, the close cousin, RIR, reps in reserve.

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Basically, instead of chasing a number, you target a relative intensity.

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How hard is this? How many more reps do I have left before I can't do another?

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This approach lets you train at the right intensity for today's body,

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not some theoretical average on who you are on your best days.

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When applied to movement, scaling gets particularly interesting for anyone who's working on building new skills,

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coming back after time off, or managing an old injury.

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When you simplify a movement, say, doing a ring row instead of a pull-up,

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or a goblet squat instead of a barbell back squat, you are not doing a lesser version of the exercise.

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You are following a completely sound principle from motor learning.

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Get the mechanics right first, build consistency, then add intensity.

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That progression, mechanics, consistency, intensity, is one of the core coaching frameworks in functional fitness.

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And it holds up under scrutiny.

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You cannot reliably improve at a complex movement by grinding through it with bad form under load.

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What you can do is build the foundations, gradually layer in complexity,

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and arrive at the full version with a body that's already ready for it.

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That's a long game, and a long game is exactly what we are playing here.

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So let me bring this all together with a simple framework.

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Quite an elegant one, if I may say so.

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Good scaling works through four questions.

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First question, what is the stimulus today?

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Is it strength, power, aerobic capacity, skill development?

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Second question, what's the movement version that lets you express that stimulus safely and with solid technique?

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Third question, what's the load, reps, or time that puts you at the right effort level for that goal?

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And fourth question, how does this progress over time?

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Because the whole system only works if there's a plan to gradually increase the challenge as you get stronger, fitter, and more skilled.

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Answer those four questions, and you've got yourself a prescription.

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A personal, evidence-based training plan that happens to look like scaling.

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So the next time you are in a session and the coach says, "Hey, let's scale that for you today," you will definitely hear it differently.

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It's not a consolation prize. It's not a sign that you are behind.

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It's a sign that someone is paying attention and that the workout is being built around you, not the other way around.

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That's intelligent training.

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The good-to-know corner.

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Then let's talk a little bit about your training philosophy.

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So you already mentioned that you have everything scaled and basically, yeah, the podcast name is "Scaled to Fit," and this is a perfect match in that sense.

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Not all the boxes do that, so where does your philosophy come from?

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It comes from CrossFit mythology.

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It's where we practice what they preach, what we preach.

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We think it's important, and the reason that we think it's important is because when we travel, we visit boxes.

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We go to other boxes, and we see sometimes the people's form and how awful it looks and how scary.

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And with all that, if you're moving weight around and your form is not good, what happens?

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You break yourself eventually, right?

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You get injured.

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And then you talk bad about CrossFit, and you don't want to ever do CrossFit again, and then you lose members.

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So we always try to avoid that by teaching people how to move correctly.

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So my philosophy is learning how to keep the form right.

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Its form is function.

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It goes in line together.

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You can't move weight incorrectly for a long time and not get injured.

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It also goes with, we do kipping pull-ups.

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You know what that is?

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The kipping pull-ups.

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You basically take extra speed for that.

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Yes, but with that, you also have to have the strength to do the pull-ups.

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I have members come to me, and they'll, "Oh, you guys teach me how to kip."

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And my first question is always, "How many strict pull-ups can you do?"

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Oh, I can't do one.

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I said, "Okay, when you have three to five strict pull-ups, come back to me."

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Yeah.

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Because with that, if you're doing the kipping and you don't have the strength, what happens?

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You get injured.

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Your shoulders will get blown out.

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So that's, to me and to my husband, we've always practiced that, and we teach all our coaches that.

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Then you already mentioned that training is like a part of your life, it's part of your daily routine,

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which is very important when it comes to all kinds of things that you want to do continuously.

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But if you take that routine part away, what would you say is the founding motivation there?

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I would say is to stay healthy, to be independent in the future.

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That, for me, is very important to stay healthy.

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I mean, it's not just training.

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I mean, it's not just that you go and train.

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You also have to be aware of your diet, which is also very important.

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Training is like 50 percent, and diet is like 50.

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Or maybe even like training is 40 and diet is 60.

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You know, what you put in your body is really important too.

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OK, so two recommendations from you.

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First, how to keep motivated like anybody else.

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How to stay motivated?

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Stay motivated or stay do OK, if it's a habit, then you stay, keep on doing it.

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But how to stay doing it?

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To stay motivated is to, well, what I would recommend is how they feel.

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How do you feel after doing it?

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You know, how do you feel when you're not training?

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I know the difference, you know?

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So that to me, I always try to motivate people with that.

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Unless you're sick, I mean, stay home if you're sick, but come in if you're feeling bad.

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Like you're depressed or happy, not happy, you know, all that.

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You work out, you instantly feel better.

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You know, I mean, I can't name a time that I didn't have,

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that I didn't work out and didn't feel better unless I was, you know, physically getting sick.

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But to me, it's motivating people was like, you will feel better.

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You feel better, you know?

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And if you work, let's say, oh, well, I get off of work and I don't have time, I have to go home.

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Yes, you have time because you either can do it before work, you know, or you can do it at your lunch break.

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Yeah.

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Or you could put your gym bag on in your car, put your gym bag in your car and go straight to work out and then go home.

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Yeah. You know, so I mean, I always tell my girls when they when they're, you know, when they are training.

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How do you feel? I ask them, how do you feel? Oh, I feel great.

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You know, and it's like, how's your clothes fitting? Is it fitting better?

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You know, oh, yeah, yeah, perfect.

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And to me, I don't believe I should ever own a scale.

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I think those things are just should all get thrown away because when girls weigh themselves before CrossFit,

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they can be, let's say, I don't know, 130 pounds. What is that? 60 kilos.

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But then you start training and your muscle gets denser.

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The weight goes up. You're like, I'm gaining weight. No, you're not gaining weight. You're gaining muscle.

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Yeah. You know, so that's like I always ask, how's your clothes fitting?

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That's important, you know, not the scale. Yeah, exactly.

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Yeah, I noticed myself also that the that kind of thing that drives me,

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drove me to walk and now doing something more is also that that I feel better after after that walk.

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And also, if I don't do it, I feel like somehow anxious or restless. Yes.

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It helps balance everything that's going on with women hormone wise.

Speaker: 00:24:26

Yes, because when I did go through the menopause, I was feeling a little different

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and I was still working out, but I didn't feel better. So I went to my doctor and she recommended I do hormones,

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which was the worst choice ever. I tried it for two weeks and did not feel like myself at all.

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So I stopped that immediately and just went and changed my training a little bit

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to a little bit less cardio and a little bit more weight training,

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which used to be the other way around, you know, because of my age, I've read that at this age,

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the cardio shouldn't be like when you were 20, 30, even though your body doesn't let you do it that fast anymore.

Speaker: 00:25:12

And the weight training is more important at this at this stage of my life. Right.

Speaker: 00:25:17

And the other the second advice you mentioned about the food and it's important what you eat.

Speaker: 00:25:23

What is your what is your philosophy on on eating the stuff you put in your mouth?

Speaker: 00:25:28

If it has more than three ingredients on the package or even two, don't eat it.

Speaker: 00:25:38

It should have I mean, to me, I always when I shop, I shop on the outside.

Speaker: 00:25:44

You know, every store will have their food and vegetables, their meat, their dairy, you know, their cheeses.

Speaker: 00:25:51

And in the middle is always the processed foods.

Speaker: 00:25:54

Yeah. So even in the States and here, too, a lot of the stores, they do that.

Speaker: 00:25:58

They they have all the fresh produce, all the fresh meats, you know, on the outside.

Speaker: 00:26:04

And then inside is the stuff that you limit yourself on.

Speaker: 00:26:08

So I think it's important that if you want to see results when you're training and feel better,

Speaker: 00:26:15

you really have to pay attention to your I don't even like to call it a diet because I don't want to say to be on a diet.

Speaker: 00:26:20

It's just watch what you eat, you know, up your protein a little bit, you know, more vegetables.

Speaker: 00:26:26

And I believe you need carbs. This whole non no carb. Yeah. I can never live like that.

Speaker: 00:26:31

Yeah. Carbs is the brain. You need it. And there's, you know, like we all know, there's simple carbs and there's complex carbs.

Speaker: 00:26:36

And you want to be eating more complex and simple. Yeah. Like less sugar.

Speaker: 00:26:44

Yes. So it's really important. I mean, I love to cook. I love to bake.

Speaker: 00:26:47

I bake a lot now because of my little one, because I like to control the sugar, you know.

Speaker: 00:26:53

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can put stuff that substitutes for sugar.

Speaker: 00:26:57

I mean, it still has this natural sugar and you like dates and she thinks it's wonderful.

Speaker: 00:27:04

Weekly challenge. If you haven't already done so, go and check out your nearest gym or box, book a trial class and get a proper feel for the place.

Speaker: 00:27:14

It might make you feel better than ever before. And remember what I like to say. Don't do nothing. Do something and scale it back.

Speaker: 00:27:24

Welcome to scale to fit fit in your fifties. And I am Marko Lindgren. Thank you so much for tuning in today.

Speaker: 00:27:32

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need to hear it.

Speaker: 00:27:37

All sounds are made by me, except the jingle that was made by Gemini. Send us your feedback via email to feedback@scaledto.fit or leave a rating at podchaser.com.

Speaker: 00:27:48

Check show notes at scaledto.fit. All the links are there.