Is It Okay to Lift Less? When Your Body Needs Recovery

Nikkiey: Like this belief that fitness has to be hard and intense to count. That if I'm not sweating or I'm not sore, I'm not doing it enough. But now I know better. Fitness isn't about how hard you push. It's about how aligned you are with what your body needs.

Hey, you guys, what's up? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. On this podcast, we talk about mindset and methodologies and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and most importantly, feel insanely confident.

I am your host, Nikkiey Stott. And welcome, my friends, to episode number 251. How about that last episode, though? 250 with Dr. Stacy Sims. Wow. Did I have a blast recording that with her. I felt like I was talking to a big sister, and I felt like I was talking to somebody who's on the same ship together, steering it through the rough waters of the fitness industry.

And we're just trying to get that message out there of how important strength training is, even during menopause, and protein, all the things that we talked about. I had goosebumps all throughout that episode while I was talking to her. Everything just felt so aligned. If you didn't listen to the episode, I would highly recommend that you go back and listen to it.

Anyway, today, you guys, this episode isn't about macros or lifting or pushing hard and doing intense workouts. It's about evolution, and it still pertains to fitness. But it's about the seasons. It's about tuning in and realizing that the way that you've always trained or always worked out doesn't always need to be the way that you continue to train.

Because lately, you guys, and this is coming from a very real, raw, honest place, I want to be transparent with you guys, and maybe at points even vulnerable during this episode, but you guys know that I love to just be real. I'm in a season of change. And if I'm being completely real with you guys, I'm not lifting like I used to. I am not currently chasing PRs. I'm not currently training four or five days a week like I once did. And dude, at first, the shift made me feel so off.

I was like, wait, is something wrong with me? Am I being lazy? Am I letting go of my identity? As you guys know, I went on a darkness retreat. I'm hoping to film that episode either tomorrow or next week, and it'll come out either next week or the following week. I've had so many questions about it, and I love that you guys leaned in with me on that experience. But coming out of that experience, I realized a lot of things. I also realized that my body is asking for something different right now.

And I'm learning to honor that. So today, you guys, I want to share that evolution with you, because I know that I'm not alone in this. I know that there are women listening who are probably feeling the pull too. And maybe you just need someone to say, hey, it's okay to pivot. It's okay to honor your body and listen to it right now and give it something a little bit different during the season that you may be feeling like you need to lean into. And it's okay. Okay. So let's rewind.

There was a long, long, long season. As you guys know, if you've been following me for a really long time, I've been in the fitness industry for over 10 years. I've been really in it for the last seven, eight years. I've done bodybuilding competitions. When I first started, I tried diets and all the different things that were out there, when I was confused and overwhelmed on what I should actually follow and what I actually should do and what is right for my body. There was a long season of lifting heavy, hitting the gym four, five, six, seven times a week, at some points doing cardio, then strength training, then cardio again, tracking every single macro to the T.

That was my thing. You guys know that if you've been here for a while, and it served me so freaking well. It has helped me really tune in and hammer in discipline. The reason why I'm so disciplined today is because I've put myself in those situations where I made time to go and work out. Sometimes I didn't have the time, but I made the time, and I let go of every single excuse that ever got in the way, especially with tracking macros and being out with friends and choosing to maybe say no to a drink.

Because I wanted to eat my calories. It has taught me so much discipline. The discipline to step on stage and prep for, sometimes it felt like I was prepping for 12 months. Really, it was eight months. And getting to the home stretch before stepping on stage is so much more intense. I've gotten so much discipline from that long season. It's built my body. I've completely transformed my body composition. It's built my confidence.

It's given me the structure that I needed when I was building WarriorBabe and showing up for thousands of women. And guys, I still love lifting. I still 1,000, 5,000, 10,000% believe in the power of strength training. It's been the backbone of everything that I have taught and embodied. But I also believe in listening. And my body right now, she's whispering. She's starting to say, dude, you're more sore than usual.

You're more inflamed. You're more tired. Even when I was checking all of the boxes. I'm getting eight and a half hours of sleep. I am drinking my water. I'm eating. Even though I don't track my macros as diligently as I used to anymore, you guys, I've earned that right, because I have weighed and measured and done that for 10-plus years. I've seen what it looks like on a scale. And so my mind is just ingrained: oh, this is 40 grams of oatmeal.

Or this is 150 grams of egg whites. Or this is X, Y and Z grams or ounces of whatever food. I can look at it and just gauge. I can tell you off the bat some of the macros that are in foods. So I've earned that right to not track my macros anymore, and I can still just look at it. And so I was checking all those boxes, right? I was eating. I'm eating enough. I'm eating enough protein. But I'm more tired. Mentally, I didn't feel the same drive to crush my workouts like I used to.

I'm in that season right now. And instead of enduring, which has been my word, or bulldozing through it with "I can do this, I just have to do this" — or, it's not that I have to, it's more like I can power through it, I can muscle up, I can endure it, I can push with more caffeine or I can just push harder type of energy — instead of doing that, I'm slowing down enough to listen. So that was the rewind. Let me bring you up to now, the current season, where I have pulled back from intense lifting, where I've said yes to other things that I thought I would never crave.

I made a promise to myself when I was in the cave at the darkness retreat, which I did for three days and four nights. The whispers were way louder in there, because in the silence, that's all there is. You're with your thoughts. And I could feel how I hadn't dropped into my body before. I could feel that my body was so tense in areas. Even though I get massages almost every week, I'm still tense.

I have knots in my back, all of that from the long season I was in. But I'm craving things I never thought that I would crave, like doing more yoga, doing more mobility work. When I talked to Dr. Stacy Sims, she said, dude, I do mobility work almost more than I do strength training. I warm up with so much more mobility work. And when I heard her say that, I was like, okay, this is confirmation. Because when I recorded with her, this was post darkness retreat, and I already knew. It was more confirmation I needed to hear. So I'm craving more of this now. More walking, more stillness.

And I've started feeling this deep desire just to move gently, to move with more intention, to create space in my workouts, not just muscle up, push through, effort, effort, power through it. And you know what's so freaking wild about all that? My body actually loves it. And going from the thoughts I was thinking — I'm going to talk about this in a second.

Actually, I'm going to save that for later. But to think, damn, my identity, this is who I am. I have to push hard. I have to go work out. I felt so off with this initial decision. I was owning it and I was leaning into it, but it felt a little off at the beginning. I'm not going to lie. But now my body loves it. My mind feels calmer. My joints feel better. They're not prime time yet, but they're feeling better.

My energy is more even now. I'm not up and down, up and down all throughout the day. I'm finding strength in slowing down, which is crazy to me and amazing at the same time.

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I appreciate you so much for taking the time to support this show. And I'm not sharing this, you guys, to say that everyone needs to quit lifting. Please do not get that message from this podcast. No way am I saying that at all. Lifting will always be a part of my life. It is just a season I am in right now, to honor my body and to slow down, and to be, as I said to myself in the cave, more gentle with my body. Dude, you've got to be more gentle with your body. So I am not saying that you need to quit lifting.

If you are on this journey and you're loving lifting, dude, keep going. I'm just sharing and being personal with you guys about where I'm at in my life right now. Or maybe you're hearing this and you feel a little inkling and you resonate with me on it, but you're like, I've got goals, right? Keep in mind, I've done 10 years of this. So maybe it's just something like, I need to incorporate more mobility work. I need to incorporate more stretching. If you're someone that doesn't stretch, then actually do that.

If this is resonating with you, what I'm saying is, at the same time, you're allowed to evolve. You're allowed to shift. You're allowed to be in different seasons and not make yourself wrong for it. The truth is that I felt guilty at first. When I was initially trying to accept this season, I had these thoughts: Am I losing my edge? What will people think? I'm slipping.

I'm not going to show up how I normally do on social media. Will my body regress? That's been the heaviest one. Oh, my body might change a little bit. Will my body change? Man, am I going to lose everything I've put in the effort for over the last 10 years? Is that going to be lost? But those thoughts, dude, they're just my ego. They're all conditioning. This belief that fitness has to be hard and intense to count. That if I'm not sweating or I'm not sore, I'm not doing it enough.

But now I know better. Fitness isn't about how hard you push. It's about how aligned you are with what your body needs. And to those of you guys that are in the gym right now doing strength training and going after your goals, dude, I celebrate you guys and applaud you guys. I want to empower you guys to keep crushing it and going for it, because that's how you're going to get the results that you want, by incorporating strength training. Right. At the beginning of my journey, I knew that strength training was so aligned with me and my body, because my body was like, oh, this is amazing.

This feels so good. I had a mind-to-muscle connection so easily, and the moves just came so naturally to me. That's when you know that it's aligned with your body and what it wants and what it needs. And I have lost a little bit of that lately. So right now my body is asking for recovery, and it's asking for a deeper connection. It's asking for movement that supports my nervous system and my hormones and doesn't deplete them.

This season is teaching me a lot. It's teaching me to listen more. It's teaching me to soften. Guys, one of the biggest compliments — oh, it's going to make me tear up — one of the biggest compliments that I got today was from a really good friend of mine. They said, I love that you're leaning more into your feminine side of things. For those of you guys that know me, I'm very much masculine energy. Very much grit and leadership and get things done and power through. And what I'm going to share with you guys in the darkness retreat episode is that the somatic healer told me, you have an animalistic body.

You're basically cut off from your mind to your body. And I was like, oh, damn, that hit hard. I really feel that. But that was one of the best compliments I got: I'm softer. My energy seems different in person. I'm more feminine, and I'm really letting that show right now. That's a season I feel like I need to lean into a little bit more, to really see that side of things and understand that part of me. And this is all from the darkness retreat, you guys. You can learn how to do this by doing the work on a daily basis, which is what I've been doing with my energy coach since October.

You guys have heard her on the podcast before. But when you put yourself in an experience like three days and four nights of darkness, you're in it and you have to figure shit out. You learn these aspects of yourself a little bit faster. This season is teaching me a lot, man. Like I said, it's teaching me to listen more, teaching me to soften, and teaching me to trust that I can still be strong, even if my workouts look different. And I'm still strength training. I'm just not in there four days a week.

It's more like two, maybe three. And then I'm doing two, three days of yoga. But it's the slow kind. The class I'm in is surrender yin, and that one's about seven different movements over the course of an hour. We're doing shoulder stretches and chest stretches and hip stretches and holding those movements for about five minutes.

You're in it, and you just have to learn how to soften into it with your body a little bit more. And then the other one is called [class name unclear], if I'm saying that right, and that one's your basic slow yoga. You're just flowing through the movements. And man, I've felt so present by just tuning in to my breath and being with my body during those experiences. It's really cool. And like I said, I'm still incorporating strength training. I can still be strong, even though my workouts look different right now.

And it's showing me that my worth isn't tied to a training split, that my identity isn't based on how many times I train each week, that health isn't one-dimensional. I'm still nourishing my body. I'm still moving. I'm still taking care of myself. It just looks different, and that's okay. This is a new level of my fitness journey. It's not a step back. That's why I'm learning how to change the narrative for myself. It's not a pause. It's literally an evolution.

So if you guys are listening to this and you're in this weird in-between space — and there are probably a lot of you guys listening to this podcast to seek information on how to eat right and how to train and how to do all those things, and trust me, I'm going to still bring that type of energy to all of these episodes moving forward. I just wanted to bring this one in here because I'm a real, raw, honest person with you guys. I just say it straight how it is. But maybe some of you guys are in that weird in-between space.

Maybe some of you guys are vets listening to this episode who have been doing this for as long as I have, and you're feeling the same way. Maybe there were some words I said today that really resonated, and your body is craving change, but your mind is trying to guilt you out of it, because that is so real. Here's what I want you to know. You are not lazy. You're tired. You're not weak. You're changing. You are not quitting. You're pivoting. And guess what? That pivot might be the very thing that brings you closer to your next level of strength in all the areas: mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually.

You are allowed to evolve. So if you are in that weird in-between space, my friend, let this be your permission slip to honor the season of life that you are in with your fitness journey. Learn how to honor it. Okay. I hope that you guys met me where I'm at. It's kind of the flip. I'm being open and vulnerable. This was a vulnerable one for me because, again, my identity is so tied to fitness. Everyone knows Nikkiey Stott as fitness and working out and strength training and eating macros and tracking macros.

And dude, yeah, that was a long season of my life, and it served me so well. Like I said, I've gained so much from it. The skill sets, the understanding, the knowledge, the education. You could talk to me about this all day long. I could just spitball about it for hours. But this is a season I hope I can share with you guys, and that you guys meet me where I'm at. Maybe a year from now, if you're feeling like this, you'll say, dude, Nikkiey went through this season too.

And I'm not alone. I'm going to honor this season that I'm in too. Right. I hope this episode landed for you guys. Because yes, on The WarriorBabe Show we talk about building strong bodies, but it's not just about building strong bodies. It's about building strong women who know how to listen, who know how to adapt, who know how to keep showing up for themselves with self-awareness and with grace.

I need your help. I want this podcast to reach more people so that they can listen to these episodes and maybe have one light bulb moment go off, or resonate with something that helps change their life. And you guys can be a part of that with me. I'm one person. You guys are so many. So what I ask is, what resonated with you during this episode? Screenshot it, put it on your Instagram story, put it on social media and share what resonated with you. Then maybe tag a friend or share it with a friend. Even just putting it on your story, I would thank you guys so much for doing that. Because I want to normalize fitness looking different as we continue to grow, knowing that you don't have to hit the iron and make your body so tired after 10 years of doing something. You can learn how to evolve.

Okay. All right, my friends. That's the only ask I've got for you guys today. Please do that. I would love you guys and appreciate you guys so much if you did. Until next time, keep moving, keep evolving, keep growing. And most of all, just keep listening to yourself. All right. Love y'all. See you next episode. Peace out.

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