3 Exercise Swaps That Are Not “Too Easy”

Modifying or swapping anything used to make my skin crawl. It threatened my ego and I thought it *meant something about me.*

As someone who never felt “fit” (because I didn’t “look like a bikini competitor lmao), I always had something to prove in my training. Many of my clients begin with me with a similar outlook.

You actually don’t get much return from your training if you’re doing things your body isn’t ready for. This can happen on a more acute level (sleep, stress, injury, illness) or a more chronic level (lack of fundamentals: motor control, mobility, flexibility, strength, skill) but your ego will tell you: NO GUTS NO GLORY

long term, it’s not going to work like that.

When I say “fitness needs to meet you where you’re at”- your logical brain remembers the cool shit you were doing years ago but your physical body is like “nah, bitch- we ain’t ready.”

the war rages on between you and your body.

Knowing when and how to swap, as well as how to navigate any mental drama that comes up while doing so, is a hard-to-capture yet very necessary experience to navigate if you plan to do this whole fitness thing for a really long time.

We need more ways for people to enter into fitness, and then more options to get them to stay. If you’re here, you’re probably in it for the long haul and have been doing this shit for years just like me. Things are going to pop up: life, work, business, moving, depression, anxiety, kids, marriage, divorce, loss, stress, vacations- and if you can’t find ways to make fitness move WITH you, you’re always going to feel like you’re losing.

The ideal client for The Barbell Collective are busy women who prioritize their fitness and have for years. You likely have or still do count macros, but you’re feeling a bit crazy about it all- nothing is “working” despite you eating cleaner and cleaner, less and less- and your fitness feel more like another obligation than an escape from life’s chaos. TBC allows you to experience well-rounded fitness (turning everything into cardio is *not* strength training) without body obsession. I will not help you intentionally loose weight, but you will feel liberated AF.