I’m JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned four time New York Times bestselling author. Yes, I’m a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe, but I’m driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions.

Digging for answers and sharing the information that I uncover with as many people as I can. And that’s why I created the Well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we’ll talk about what’s working in the world of wellness.

From personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health, so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. All right. So today we’re going to talk about the fact that women are not small men.

You probably heard Dr. Stacey Sims talk about this. This is really fun. What happened here? So Tony Horton and I’m sure you know who Tony Horton is. He is the creator of the biggest exercise program in America, P90X. So Tony Horton connected up with Dr. Mindy Pelz who wrote Fast Like a Girl.

Turns out Mindy Pelz had completely rearranged his workout to work for women and they got together and it was almond butter and dark chocolate they put together a program for women so we are going to be unpacking that today we’re going to be unpacking like what’s the difference between how women should work out How men should work out.

How can you take those ideas and put it into what you’re doing right now? Why variety matters? Why challenging yourself matters? We’re going to unpack all of that with Tony. I’ve got him in the house. And it’s really funny. I’m not going to tell you, but his name had just come up in conversation.

So you’ll hear why his name came up in conversation when I intro him and tell him about that. But let me tell you a little bit about. Tony, he is a world class motivational speaker and the author of top selling books, Bring It, Crush It, and The Big Picture. He’s been on loads of TV programs as a fitness and lifestyle expert, and he has a huge celebrity clientele that he’s worked with over the years.

Tom Petty, Usher, Bruce Rinsing Allison McGeaney Octavia Spencer. On and on, Stevie Nicks, Billy Idol, the list goes on. And of course, the creator of P90X. And so it’s been very fun to have this conversation, to hear the unpacking that, what P90X is, what he’s learned over the years.

What, how he’s changed his mind over the years, being in fitness 35 years plus. So I will be right back with Tony Horton to talk about what we need to think about as women, perimenopause, postmenopausal, how we need to work out differently and how to apply this to your program so that you can get the best results.

I’ll be right back with Tony Horton. Stay with me.

Tony Horton, welcome to Beyond 40. JJ, pleasure to be

here. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, it’s super fun to have you here because literally I was out to dinner. It’s A couple weeks ago, and your name came up, and I was with all your pals, so I was out to dinner with Mark Sisson and his wife, and Shalit Johnson and her hubby.

Yes, and we were like, the only person missing here is Tony Horton.

Ah, God, if you’re all, if you were only in Malibu, I could have just driven up the street and hung out, but you guys were all the way in Florida,

I know you got to move to Florida with the rest of us. For

that crew, for you three and family, I would have flown out for that.

I know, and then periodically we get together with our buddies over at MindBodyGreen too. So we’ve got quite a wellness contingency now in, in Florida. There you go. Thanks for, yeah. Thanks for helping the folks of Florida. That’s beautiful. All right. We are, this is going to be an interesting conversation today for the guy that created P90X, the like hardest workout out there.

We’re going to talk about women and fitness hormones and cycling. I love having guys talk about periods. It’s super fun.

Yeah, I like to talk about your first bleed of the month. That’s my number one topic. Yeah. Not awkward at all. By the way, this whole process, everything we’re going to be talking about was an education for me.

I was in the dark until I met Dr. Mindy Pelz, and then I woke up to a lot of things.

We’ve had Dr. Mindy on the show. We love Dr. Mindy. We’re big fans there. I think that’s a dynamic partnership you’ve got there. But I also love the fact that, first of all, we’ve been in fitness.

I’ve been doing this for 40 years. Do I have you beat, or are you in the same? You had me beat.

You had me beat. I think it’s 35. I’m on 35 now. Okay.

Like, when I first got in, there was no talk about hormones and exercise. You look at, right? So much stuff. There’s still so much to learn.

And I don’t know about you, but I feel like there’s I know less now than ever. There’s still way more out there to learn. The more we go in, the more research there is. It’s going to be fun. It’s fun to unpack it. I love that you’re still in there learning. But here you are, you’ve been in fitness now for a long time.

Decades and decades.

Why did you decide to tackle this crazy subject of women, hormones, and exercise?

Pure serendipity, really. Kismet, whatever you want to call it. I do these masterminds much, not really podcasts, but I had these mastermind sessions and somebody said, hey, I’ve just finished reading Fast Like a Girl, Dr.

Mindy’s book, and I’m going to try to get her. Somebody on my team said, I’d love to get her on a call with you because she’s got an interesting story about when she went through P90X. And we just started chatting about the book and, And a lot of the research that she’s been doing, and maybe she’s spoken about this on your show as well, is that when she did P90X, she realized the schedule was not well made for gals.

You know what I mean? And so we used to, when I, back in the day, I was always saying, hey, if you’re a gal, whether you’re pre metapausal, perimetapausal, post metapausal, go by how you feel like back off on chest and back and do lighter reps or stop halfway through, or maybe substitute that with maybe a yoga or a stretch routine.

We didn’t really have any kind of a mindfulness component back in those days. And a lot of women would meander the way through it and try to recover the best that they could. And their P90X became P120X, that was just the way that a lot of them got through it. And, look, One size does not fit all.

You’ve got a lot of type A former athletes who maybe had 10, 15 pounds to lose that used to be former softball players or gymnasts. And they would, they would figure it out. But the average gal that was like in her 40s with three kids and a busy schedule, it was more of a harder journey for them.

So what Mindy did was she saw the schedule the way it was based on her research. She just said, I’m not going to do back here. I’m going to put yoga there. Because it’s day, between day 10 and day 15, then I’m going to pump it up. I’m going to put on my chest and back and shoulders and arms and plyo sessions in this five day period of time.

And then as I come out of heavy testosterone hormonal flow then I would, calm things down. Not where I had it in the schedule, but where she felt worked best for her. And she came away feeling good, lost the weight, got strong, unscathed. And then started sharing that with kind of her friends and fans.

Hey, if you’re doing P90X.

For those that don’t know, I just realized we’re talking about P90X and there may be some, I doubt it, but you never know. There might be some people listening who are like, what is P90X? Yeah. There’s about five of them out there. Yeah. So let’s share those origins of what is P90X.

Ah, P90X. P90X took me out of my apartment after 21 and a half years.

So that I could have a life, I, I was trained in Billy Idol, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Annie Lennox, Octavia Spencer, half a fleet with Mac, Stephen Stills. I was keeping up rock and roll alive and going pretty good for there for a while. And that was a pretty good gig.

Plus I was doing a lot of on camera. I was a young actor and I had little parts in TV shows and movies and commercials and whatnot. And these two things were happening separately, but what was, one be knows to me that at one point I was going to meet a guy by the name of Karl Deichler. Who would work out with me and he liked my sense of humor and I was silly and I, I had tons of variety.

We’re martial arts one day and yoga in the next and weightlifting and then just, hit training and ta. He goes, dude, you’re not just stuck in the yoga mode. You’re not just stuck in the weightlifting mode. You’re not stuck in the cardio mode. And this kept him and a lot of my clients because, you’re training celebrity types and their management has got, eyeball on you.

So I was just trying to keep everybody interested. I’m trying to keep people from getting bored, injured and plateau. And it seemed to work based on that basic thing. And one day, Carl and I shot a couple of programs that did okay. And then he said, Hey, what’s the next thing? And I said, let’s, I said let’s chill out a little bit.

And he said, no, let’s crank it up.

I went, okay.

So he gave me about six months and I did a lot more research. I added some Kempo martial arts to it, which wasn’t in the original Power 90. And so we created this thing with the hope that we’d sell a couple hundred thousand and break even. And, we sold several million of it.

And it’s just a, it’s 12 workouts, all H1 different from the next, with modifications and power, we call it powering down now on PowerSync 60, but we just gave the hard version, we gave the in between version, and we gave the simple version, so as the viewer, they could see the three different versions.

And, it was up to them at that point to interpret what it is that they felt like they needed based on what they were watching. And and still today, I’m, I met a secret service agent, this guy Jim who said extended his career by 12 years and he was the guy right next to, Bill Clinton, George Bush, uh, Joe Biden.

He was the guy. And he had these, all these presidents doing bits of P90X, which is crazy. And I still to this day, Oh, Tony, I’ve done it 50 times. I’ve done it 30 times. It’s nuts that people just keep on doing this program. So if you don’t know what P90X is, it’s, it was, some people say it’s the number one fitness program ever.

Let’s go with that. And what does P90X stand for?

Power 90 Extreme. So there was a program before called Power 90. And so it was a three month program. And there was different schedules based on the week and or the month. And then we just took that and we turned it up to 11. And and we called it P90X.

And so instead of calling it Power 90 extreme. P90X rolled off the tongue a little bit easier. And we created this fake thing. Arnold always gives hey Arnold, what do you think about muscle confusion? It’s stupid. There’s no such thing as muscle. That’s my Arnold. Thank you. And what muscle confusion was a made up term to explain the fact that you’re going to be doing something different every day.

So Monday through Saturday, most people took Sunday off. You were doing a different workout. Some of them were resistance, some of them were hypertrophy, some of them were yoga, some of them were stretching, and then you would do that for three weeks and then you had a recovery week in week four, which was just some of those routines more mellow, and then the second month would kick in and then we’d turn up the volume, and then the third month would kick in and we’d turn up the volume.

And, Kathy McDonald, just a random woman that I met along the way, I lost 125 pounds doing a program that she customized for herself, much like Mindy did. And she’s kept it off ever since. And, this is whatever, 15 years later, Jeremy Yost, we used to go on QVC with me, because his story was 180 pound weight loss.

He lost what I weigh now, plus. And I’ve been to 63 military bases around the world. You see all these here, these there, these represent all the military bases from Kosovo to South Korea to Japan, up and down the California coast, east coast of the entire military. I met Colonel Stephen Shepro, who actually retired as a two star general when he was in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He made a huge tent, put up a giant screen and made everybody, people were doing P90X 24 7. People from Turkey were doing it, people from everywhere, it was a giant base. And then he went to camp not Pendleton, but camp, um, what’s the base outside of DC where they fly in Marine One and everything else?

There were four tennis courts, so he tore them all down and he made 400 people at once do P90X there. So it was just one of these things that became. Part of the lexicon. I’m apparently the only person, civilian, that’s taught workouts at the Pentagon.

You know what’s very cool is, I remember hearing about this piece of it, and then we’re going to actually talk about some things that can apply to you, but we’re going through a little history break.

We’re going into Tony’s history. We’re going back. Yeah, there will be some applicable things coming next. What you did interesting here is during that time when P90X launched, everything else out there was like, oh, you can get this in six minutes. Oh, this will be easy. And what you did instead was you said, no, actually, right?

This is going to be hard. You’re going to work hard. And I remember hearing, oh, that’s not going to work. I think it worked. And it was also, it wasn’t going to

sell. They knew it was going to work, but why would the average American? Bust their butt six days a week and eat vegetables and stuff all the time.

And the thing was a lot of people who had, who had a general sense of common sense, they would flip channels and go that’s BS and that’s BS and that’s BS. And then stop and look at this thing and go, damn, that has got to work. Do I have the cojones to do it? And we sold as many or more to women than we did men.

And and it was, you train hard, I train hard, Mark Sisson trains hard, Shalene trains hard, all the people that I trained, all those rockers, these were not people who liked, except for Bruce, who was the one that liked to train hard, but I turned Tom Petty into, from a human noodle, to one of the most striated vascular cats you ever saw.

And he had the best tour of his life. He went out there and took a 60 city tour and crushed it because he had the lung capacity, because he had the strength, because his, exercise it’s norepinephrine, neurotropic factor, cannabinoids, these things that are waiting inside of your skull for you to move.

And Tom moved, less cigarettes, more movement. And his voice was great. His stamina was great. And so then the phone rang off the hook, then Iliadl called.

And here’s the thing, When you, we are never better than when we’re challenged. And when you learn that you can work out and do hard things, you learn that you can do hard things in life, right?

One leads to the other. Fitness and eating rights are the foundation to becoming the bad ass that you can be, if you want to be that person.

There you go. That’s quotable. So the other thing besides bringing out this thing of don’t be afraid of hard work. The other thing that you brought into this, because in, since we’ve been in fitness a long time, there was always the warring factions.

There were the gym people, there was the aerobic class people, there were the yoga people who are really war, it’s almost like the vegans and the carnivores now, where the yoga people and the weight room people and all the warring, and instead you brought it all in. Now let’s talk about variety because I think it is underrated In the world of fitness and it’s like you look at exercise and go, here’s an exercise prescription, but exercise could be yoga.

It could be Tai Chi. It could be walking. It could be, HIIT training. It could be any of these. It could be

Peloton. It could be, it could be. Martial arts, it could be boxing training, and the thing is a lot of trainers specialize. I think that’s the case still today.

There are yoga instructors and there are martial arts instructors and boxing instructors and bodybuilders and then segments of society will be drawn to one of those. And hopefully they’ll stick with it because they enjoy just the yoga. They enjoy going to the Peloton class. And I just said, but there’s always going to be, not always, but there’s always burnout and there’s always injury and there’s always the plateau effect, which is what we’re trying to avoid.

And if you’re working on your weaknesses, which is why P90X was created, which is the reason why I created Power4 and PowerSync60 is you’re going to do some things that you’re familiar with and things that you like and things that you’re pretty good at. And we’re going to allow you to do that the best you can do it.

But we’re also going to add this other stuff where you’re going to stink. You know what I mean? And what that does is it gives you this learning curve that doesn’t exist with the stuff that you already know how to do. So the learning curve, which is activating more muscles, ligaments, tendons, right?

A little bit of brain power. You’re working on balance. You’re working on speed. You’re working on range of motion. You’re working on, things that you don’t work on if you’re just doing the stuff that you’re doing. And so your body’s just going to respond to that. And there’s a less likelihood that you’re not going to get hurt because you’re not repeating the same stuff over and over again, expecting to see.

Some kind of fabulous result. And some people want to get bigger and some people want to get smaller. Some people want to gain weight, some people want to lose weight. Some people want to be more flexible and some don’t want to be less flexible. But, so that, that was the point. And all those rockers and movie stars and TV stars were guinea pigs.

And it was mostly, back in those days, I just added the variety because I could tell, because I was just doing cardio and weights and cardio and weights. Like most people still do, cardio and weights, and you could see that they weren’t getting the results that they wanted, you could see them start to get bored, and then there’d be those shoulder injuries that I would like, okay, let’s take a couple days off, or put ice on it, or here’s some balm, so I just realized if I just added more stuff, everybody I trained had a heavy bag, everybody I trained had to learn yoga, everybody I trained You know was doing certain body parts on certain days and we were mixing it up and changing it up after three weeks all the time.

And so they got out of their rut, you know what I mean? And almost all of them, except for a couple, who I couldn’t help, because they just, they would show up in their boxers with a lamb shank in their hand and go,

I know, there’s only so much you can do. I remember doing a diet recall with a gal and she goes I’ll just show you my refrigerator.

All she had in her refrigerator was champagne. I’m like, huh.

That’s very festive. She’s a very festive.

I was like, that’s not fruit. That’s not counting. Yeah. You can’t help everybody. They have to, the thing with fitness is they actually have to do,

they want, got to want it. And they got, and my, the other thing too, that I did, JJ was be the tortoise, not the hare.

Keep your expectations down. Keep them down. Show up. 80 percent of life is showing up. I think Woody Allen said that, but we don’t want to give him too much credit for anything. But the other 20%, my opinion is how do you feel while you’re doing what you’re doing? Can you push a little bit harder? Do you need to back off?

I was never a drill sergeant. I was never yelling two more, three more. You can do it. I was always asking everybody questions about what was their state of mind? What was their form? If I saw form go bad, We’re done with this. We’re moving on to the next thing, or your workout’s over, even though there’s more stuff to do.

Just paying attention, just being observant to what they were doing so that they, so in the long term, and I was always given three and four months when I had a, when I had a rocker getting ready for a tour, or if I had a I had Sean Connery got, getting ready, him ready for Medicine Man way back in the day.

He’s I’m not used to take, I feel like I’m taking it easy. I go, I got you for four months, trust me, it’s going to get harder. Don’t worry. Right now, your range of motion sucks. You don’t have any stamina. So what, I’m not going to beat you up because you’re not really ready,

so here you are doing all of that. And now I was like, looking at this going, okay, Tony, so now you’ve decided to tackle Women’s cycles and exercising around their cycles. Are you a crazy man?

Oh, I know. Why did I think of such a, I just, I had that experience of a lot of gals who never got, never finished P90X.

And a lot of women that it just seemed like they, they were getting too sore in all the wrong places, too much in the joints and not enough in the muscles. And and, the thing is I can tell you to back off. I can tell you to take a break here. Our big thing was, Hey, if you can’t do this, hit the pause button and just, get some water, towel off, come back in.

If you can, if you feel like after that you can’t, but again, I’m not in the room with people. I feel hell with you, Tony, I’m going to keep going to the end. And so a lot of people got burnt out. Because they weren’t really listening to what I was doing. Their ego their ego got in the way and their ego destroyed the journey and that’s just too bad.

That still happens today. And lucky me, I had this conversation with Dr. Mindy Pell. She was on my mastermind, on my in my mastermind session. And I don’t know who she was. She wrote a couple of books and she seems pretty smart and some of my team said you should talk to this girl.

And then by the end of our conversation, our masterminds are about an hour, she said, We were talking about hormones and how she did P90X and why she did it differently and how she got the results she got and she didn’t get burnt out and she felt like she lost more weight and gained more muscle because she rearranged the schedule that I designed.

We had a get lean schedule. We had to get buff schedule. We had the standard schedule. We gave some that a little bit of variation, but she completely changed everything around. And she said, I don’t know. My wish would be to do a program. With you, based on my research for all these women that have been frustrated for so long and are not getting the results that they want.

Nine months later, we were shooting it. It was just like, oh my god. It was such a wake up call for me. Now, getting into the weeds about pre, post, pairing Oh, I’m going to ask you every cycle question right now. Let’s talk luteal. I just said, okay, Mindy, here are the routines. Here’s how I’m going to power down, power up.

So we added this power down, power up thing, like this very distinguished, this is going to be harder, this is going to be easier. What stage of your cycle are you in? Is it day 10 to 15? You need to be over here. If it’s day 20 to 30, you need to be doing that. And she was on the set for me explaining to me, with cue cards, here’s what you want to say now.

You know what I mean? And so we worked together and we created this 11, 11 workout routine. We had two test groups. We had 90 in one and a hundred plus in the other. And I’m talking women in their seventies, whose husbands are like, why do you keep doing this stuff? You’re 70 years old. You’re going to age the way you age.

You haven’t had a period in decades. And why do you bother? A, because a lot of these women were Dr. Mindy Pell’s fans, probably a lot of the same fans that you have. And I spoke to a woman with tears in her eye on a Zoom call who was hoping to lose five, lost 17 pounds, never felt better. She’s just had tons of energy.

She wasn’t, didn’t feel broken anywhere in the process. And, and then I said, what does your husband say? He’s still a curmudgeon. I know I couldn’t change his personality, but he was proud of her, and And a lot of stories like that, a lot of stories like that, based on, what to do on certain days, based on your hormonal fluctuations.

And a lot of women are completely clueless still. Men are especially clueless. And on top of that, I can’t tell you how much of an education it was for these women’s partners. Hey buddy, I’m struggling here because of The science behind what Dr. Mindy Pell’s in the program that Tony created.

And so a lot of husbands like, Oh, I just thought you were being cranky. No, dude, careful wake the F up because this is important to understand this stuff, to understand what your gal’s going through. And the fact that she’s putting in the time and energy and effort into something, maybe for the first time that’s working, then, you should be, it should be full support system.

I love this. So I’m going to, When I was in graduate school, literally there was zero about hormones. The very first book I found on it was exercise endocrinology was like, a decade after I graduated, I was like, wow, finally. But I will say, two people have helped me a lot here, Elisa Vitti, who actually was one who coined the term cycle syncing, and then states, Simms, Dr.

Stacey Simms, who’s been doing amazing work around women hormones. And I’m just so thrilled to see you two team up like what a dream team and bring this out to have women understand that, you are not like, as Stacey Simms says, you’re not small men. And that we have to do things differently. Now, we are not in that period of periods where we’re cycle syncing.

Now you’ve got women, and I think the most challenging time of all, and I’m sure you’re like going, oh gosh, is that time from when you get into perimenopause, where now things are all over the board.

Yeah, you’re not one, you’re not the other.

Yeah, it’s way, way easier. You get into post menopausal, it’s so much easier because now everything is stable.

It’s like the sea is calm. When you’re going through perimenopause I now live here, as in Florida, and I’ll go out to paddleboard, and I’ll look at my canal, looks like the sea’s calm, and I go out and paddleboard, and I get out in the bay, and it’s like, what happened?

That’s perimenopause. Out there, the It’s like crazy waves and then all of a sudden it will go calm. You’re like, Oh, okay. And then the waves hit again. So what, how do you have a woman navigate that specific time period where there’s not the, Oh, it’s day 10. It’s like that all’s thrown out the window.

Like I even have in front of me, this is a printed copy of all the instructions that women get pre post Perry. There, there’s four different phases. There’s the power phase. There’s a manifestation phase. There’s the nurture phase. And so if you’re perimetopausal, then you have a very specific start and finish days based on, I wish Dr.

Mindy was sitting here next to me. Mindy, where are you? Call Dr. Mindy. But three different phases, three different calendars. And the other thing too, that we, that I created, which was part of it is and look, even if, whether you’re preparing your post, there’s a lot going on in our lives.

There’s a lot of stress in our lives. There’s poor sleep, lack of hydration, maybe you’re not getting the new, the vitamins and minerals and nutrients that you need to be able to fuel your body. So my job was to create. On some of these workouts, there are four different people behind me, minimum three, sometimes four.

And between Dr. Minnie and I, we would say, Hey, you’re perimetopausal. You’re going to, you’re going to follow Ashley here. Ashley’s your girl. She’s in your shoe. She knows what to do. She’s the one to look at. And by the way, we’re going to actually, because she’s hired for the gig, she’s going to get to, she’s going to do this whole workout, but maybe you’re not.

So if what she’s doing isn’t quite right. Yeah, check out Sarah, because Sarah is doing a super modified version based on how much, you know how you feel, you know how much energy you have, you know whether you’re, because you are all over the place in general, so you might do, on a Tuesday one week, you might be following Ashley, on the next week you might be following Sarah, and maybe if, based on all the other things that are happening in your life, whatever you just, you flew from the East Coast to the West Coast, I don’t know, there’s all kinds of different issues that are creating a certain amount of stress, then you’re going to use one of these stop options, and so a stop option That was what I tried to tell people to do in P90X, but half the time they wouldn’t because their egos were in the way, like I said earlier.

Listen to these variables right now based on what I’m saying to you. Do you need to stop here, or can you keep going based on A, B, and C? And people would have to make a decision. And so a lot of the two, two test groups, a lot of the women, especially the perimetopausal women are like, yeah, sometimes all the way through, I got through both stop options.

I felt great. But the fact that you gave me this option to stop. And of course I would say, Hey, fast forward to the cool down. I don’t want you to, I don’t want you to miss out on that. I want you to bring your heart rate down properly, not just, walk off and take a break or just, skip it.

And then sometimes they would stop at the first stop option. Sometimes they would stop at the second stop option. And with all those different choices. They were able to, to get where they wanted to go. Cause the idea here is you’re doing this routine. And how do you feel afterward, the hour afterward?

How do you feel the rest of the day? How, what was your sleep like? And how do you feel the following day? And those are simple questions you need to ask yourself every time you work out, no matter where you are, no matter what where your home hormones are. And you can ask those simple questions of yourself and say, but when the P90X days, People would naturally go, Oh my God, I’m exhausted.

I’m wasted. I can’t even walk. I can’t even sit on the toilet. And then here’s this chest and back routine I got to do the next day. And with this, with the powering down with the powering up and with the stop options, Women are like, I’m ready to go. And it kept happening day after day. This is a five day a week program.

It’s not three, it’s not four, it’s not six either. It gives you a couple of days off, but we also talk about active recovery. Hey, if you want to do the mindfulness practice today, great day to do it. Even though it’s a day off. If you want to go for a walk, we suggest that if you want to do my 10 minute morning yoga routine, which is to get the kinks out instead of, three cups of coffee, maybe a better option.

And there’s also a diet component. We get very clear about, what causes inflammation and what doesn’t. If you’re taking, you can be following this thing to a T, and if you’re eating inflammatory foods, then you’re fighting, fighting the process. Again, I’m not sitting down with people breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and snacks in between and seeing what they’re eating but hopefully they’re making better food choices.

And the ones that did, who followed the top options in the powering down when they needed it. And 8better got all the way through this program without a glitch, which was fun to see.

I love that you’re looking at it like high level here. We’ve got hormones, but we also have stress, of course, stress hormones.

We also have things like how hard did you work out the day before and did you adequately recover? And I think the big picture is. Listen to your body. Just because that workout says to do XYZ, you don’t, and what I always say is, I’ve never regretted going to the gym. And usually when you get into it, you get into it, but you listen, you go, okay I’m only going to do 30 minutes today.

Just don’t feel like I quite have the energy. I love the stop options. That’s fantastic. I don’t know why no one ever thought of

that before.

I don’t, you’re like, it’s so obvious.

What’s that been our whole life? Like you you can’t go to a gym and there’s a yoga class or there’s I’m going to walk out at the halfway point.

You could, but how many people do when they feel like they’re toast, and that’s it. And that also gets people in the room. Yes. I’m going to stop. Most of the stop options were 15 or 20 minutes in. There’s not a single workout that was more than 50 minutes, and they would go okay, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna, I’m in the room, Tony said I’ll have to, put my gear on first, the gear’s on, I’m gonna go in there, and at the 15 minute mark, they feel alive, they feel refreshed, the dopamine, serotonin, all the good stuff is already starting to move through their head after the first five minutes, and then they’re just in a better head space, and so they sometimes, Go to the next stop option and go all the way to the end.

Well,

do you remember So you must remember this because you’re like 35 years in Back when I was in graduate school The whole thing was if you couldn’t work out for at least 30 minutes Don’t bother because you wouldn’t get into the fat burning zone. I was like, all oh my god I mean It was in the NASM, it was in the NASM book when you were getting your, getting certification.

Can we apologize to everybody for this ridiculousness?

Yes, JJ and I apologize.

We are so sorry for our entire field. You think about and go 15 minutes is better than no minutes. 30 minutes is going to be, so the great thing is get in and get going. And if after 15 minutes you don’t feel refreshed, hey, you gave it your shot.

Go meditate or something.

Yeah. 15, 15 always kicks the crap out of zero. When my wife and I were in Europe, we ate Europe, all of Europe. We ate of all of Italy. We ate all of France. We ate all of London. We ate a bunch of food at the Stonehenge. We ate a lot of food and, but we were walking everywhere and we got our workouts in not as consistently.

And we both came, I came home eight pounds later. She came home six pounds later. And all we did was walk around, because we were just, look at that, let’s go over there let’s, should we take a cab? No, let’s walk to the next restaurant, a half a mile. And that’s it just wasn’t strenuous, I didn’t feel all that tired.

I’m walking, maybe, maybe a sore toe, but other than that, it was amazing. But most of the time, we’re doing exactly what you and I are doing right now. We’re sitting on our butt and we’re at work and and we don’t even do the basics. And and this is a version of that.

Hey, look, don’t kill yourself. Get your first 15 minutes in, see how you feel, keep going or don’t.

What recommendations you have on the post menopausal side? Is there anything that you shifted differently there?

For post menopausal gals, there’s a, you would start on the day one calendar.

If you’re perimetopausal or you’re pre menopausal. A lot of it has to do with your first bleed and how many, seven days after your bleed and when you would start. But since there is no bleed, you just, a lot of people are, gals are following the moon cycle. I can read it to your ears.

If you’re not having a cycle and you’d like to sync your cycle to the moon, you will simply calculate how many days today is from your last, from the last new moon. And that will be your first day. For example, if today is day seven, after the last new moon, you will start with the seven day workout today.

You’ll start with day seven of the workout today. And this is all based on Mindy’s science. A lot of women who were post metapausal and followed the moon cycle, it was perfect for them. They just thought that worked well. So

I’m just going to do a big shout out for everybody who is in the Harry Stage, wait till you get over the hump, because it’s awesome.

It’s I think probably for a lot of women when they hit into post menopause, they can probably work out more like a man does.

Yeah.

Things are a lot just, it’s just so much smoother sailing. If you’re in pair, I know you have a guide that we’re going to be providing to everybody.

The women’s guide to syncing fitness to your hormone cycle. So yeah, we’re going to give that up. That will be in the show notes. So we have that for everybody here. The program that you two put together is called Power Sync 60. Power Sync 60.

So 60 days synchronize syncing your hormonal fluctuations to a program that is customized based

on where you are in your fabulous and we’ll put.

So I’m gonna put [email protected] slash Power Sync 60, which will have a link to that. I’ll link to Dr. Mindy’s. I think we might have done two podcasts, but I know we did one podcast around fast like a girl and then we’ll put this to the guide as well. I still have a couple that would

be that’d be great and then folks who I mean some people are You know They really like to get into the weeds like I want to know the science behind this and other people like just Tell me what to do on certain days and i’ll do it because I trust you too, that’s me like yeah, you’re really good shape and you seem like you have a lot of energy You sleep really well and you’re happy a lot.

Yeah, i’m gonna follow you, and that’s You That’s how I live a little bit.

Okay, you ready? You ready for some questions? Some other couple, a couple plus, 40 plus brilliance? How old are you? 65. 65. All right, so here we go. Gonna be 66 soon. I’m gonna be, I’m about to be 60 wonderful. Okay.

Can I borrow that? Yeah.

Yeah.

When you’re

70 wonderful, you can. I like to say I was born 13 years after World War II. So just give you a sense of how, but you know what? Here’s the crazy thing. Whether male, female, I have a lot of friends that have, who’ve joined me almost every day here at the, male and female.

And I just said, hey man, eat this, don’t eat that anymore. Train like this, don’t train like that anymore. And you can see they’re getting younger, like they’re in so many ways. There’s just, their skin is improving, their energy is improving, their sleep’s improving, their sex drive’s improving. And it requires knowing a lot of stuff and doing it all the time.

Like people say, Tony, how often do I, all the time, like breathing and eating and going to work and paying bills. This is a thing that you have to do. All the time, or you’re gonna, if you do it sporadically, you’re gonna end up with exercise bipolar disorder. You’re gonna feel good and feel bad.

Oh, that’s funny.

That is very funny. Yeah it’s if you knew there was something that would make you feel great, that you would basically, de age, And think straight, have great energy. Why wouldn’t you do it all the time? Because everything else feels

really good and it tastes really good. It doesn’t require any effort.

And that’s what everybody else is doing. So I’m going to go jump on that train, but they look down at themselves and they see Oh, the escalators out. And I got two suitcases climbing up. That set of stairs is like Mount Everest, so it depends, you have to, I’m. I’m text training three people right now.

Two of them are in entertainment. Another one is a big real estate guy. Every day we just text. I go, did you have the alcohol or not? Did you move or not? And then I get to, I get the report back. One guy’s in Mexico. He loves tequila. Day six, no tequila. He goes, everybody else is drunk and having fun, but I feel amazing.

It’s so it’s all choice, it’s all choice.

It is a choice. I, growing up, I have a mom who just passed at 93 and a dad who had a horrific long slow death from cancer at 70. And I watched the two of them and the way they lived their life. My mom, super active, ate healthy, was doing all of her own.

housework, living up and down flights of stairs up until 93, totally independent dad, hypertension, ate garbage, didn’t work out. It was like, I watched that whole thing and I went, Oh, aging well is a choice. I think I’ll choose. What mom did,

and what you choose takes more effort, more discipline, more willpower, more effort.

You got to surround yourself with the right kind of people. You got to make completely different choices. But the cool thing is you are the source. You’re not using some temporary fix. It’s the source outside of you, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, fat, sugar, salt, and chemicals in the food. You’re making different choices.

Different outcome, better life.

And once you are used to the choice, you’re no longer making the choice. It’s just habitual. So it becomes super easy. It’s not even a thought process. Yeah.

The transformation is a bit of a bitch, right? That first month or six weeks. But after a while, if you’re consistent in those early days, it’s oh this is who I am now.

This is easy now. Just one win at a time. There’s all these things that you can do. That’s the great thing about exercise. Exercise is just not about the weight loss. It’s about who you can be going forward after you get yourself in a decent amount of shape. And the food is just your medicine Or your disease causing mistakes, it’s really one of those two.

Okay. Are you ready for these questions? Okay. I’m ready now. Okay. Now you’re ready. You’re really ready. Okay. What is one urban legend out there in the health and wellness space about getting older that you want to bust?

Whoa, boy, I got 10 in my head. Urban legend, meaning if everybody dies at the same rate, the same issues, the same diseases, the same problems, the same lack of motion, the terrible balance where they fall and hit the curb and go to the ICU, and then two weeks later, they’re in the ground.

I hope I’m answering this right. I think People who think that weight training and cardio is enough so that even though they’re doing something, they’re scheduling something, there’s effort involved. Not enough. Not enough. You got to get out of the weights and the cardio routine and you got to start working on your speed, your balance, and your range of motion.

Because ROM, and moving quickly, there was this thing in the New York Times, most people in this country after the age of 30 will never run fast ever again.

I know! Isn’t that crazy? They’ll never sprint again. They’ll never sprint again. Never at 30 plus, never sprint again. So I’m glad you brought up the speed and power, because it’s the biggest thing we lose.

Yeah. And the balance as well. I have two slack lines when I go skiing. I, I ski on one leg as much as I can. I work on balance all the time because that’s what usually goes south. And then people, people are working out, but they’re, as they get older and older, they’re not working on flexibility.

They’re not doing yoga. They’re not doing Pilates. They’re not working on all this ROM stuff. And it’s that range of motion gets shorter and shorter. So they’re in the shower and they turn and reach for the shampoo and they blow out their neck, just because they don’t have that either.

One of the things is, and that’s part of the variety, that’s part of the, that’s part of all the stuff that we need to do. And a lot of times that feels overwhelming I’m doing these two things really well, why, I gotta add this, and this? Yeah. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do.

If you want to avoid a lot of the, a lot of the, a lot of the issues that people run into if they don’t do those things. And it’s easy, you buy a slackline, or you go to a yoga class where you’re in tree pose, or warrior three, or whatever it is. It’s easy. If you want to preserve your youth then you have to keep, as you get older, because the clock’s going to continue to move in that direction, then you got to be curious, and you got to be open minded, and you got to be okay with not being good at these new things.

And that’s, to me, when I wasn’t good at something, I’m out. And now I’m doing animal flow now. Not good at it. I’m in crab, I’m in beast, I’m in frogger, I’m in frown, like a little kid spinning around. Not good at it yet, but I love that I stink because I can, the more I do, the better I get.

And and I don’t judge it. I was like, Oh, I’m not good at this yet. Cool. Let’s see how this goes. I

love that. I’ve made a new rule. You know how they always say, be this, don’t be the smartest person in the room. I’m like, what I want to be is, I don’t want to be the youngest or the fittest.

I want to go into that room, right? I’ll go into a yoga class with all the yogis, and they’re half my age, or I go into a HIIT class with them. That’s what I go after, where I’m like going, okay, I’m gonna suck at this, but it pushes me, so yes. Yeah,

Be enthusiastic about being bad. You know what I mean?

Failing, failing is another word for failing is awesome. Oh, and you’re not really technically failing because if you’re paying attention, you’re learning. And if you’re learning, you’re growing and transforming. And so it’s an, it’s a great, it’s part of your story. It’s part of your journey.

It’s I love, oh man, I used to be so terrible at this for so long and I kept working on it and now I’m pretty good. And I notice all the changes that are happening to me physically, mentally, and emotionally as a result of getting outside of my comfort zone.

Good one. Okay, one, one final one. All right.

What is a ritual or a habit that you’ve incorporated into your life since turning we’re well beyond 40, so 40 plus?

I, I’ve made a, I’ve made a, Very severe, massive shift in my diet. I’m all, I feel like inflammation. Yeah, inflammation comes from overtraining and hurting yourself and your whatever.

But inflammation also comes from just what you put in your mouth. So I’m pure vegan. Don’t tell Marxist in that cause he’ll just hate it. You know what I mean? But I don’t have any more knee pain. I don’t have any more shoulder pain. I sleep like a baby. I’m strong as I’ve ever been. No wheat, no soy, no corn, no dairy no crackers, no chips, no cookies, no popcorn, no pretzels, no alcohol.

I haven’t alcohol. I haven’t had alcohol in 25 years. I eat as clean as I can. I, and I notice that. Inflammation is not gone, but I used to get synvisc and PRP in my knees about every year every 15 months, just because I ski hard and I do a lot of plyometrics and my knees would always ache.

I started eating more vegetables and cut out the chicken and the fish in this, and I don’t need the injections anymore.

To be clear you cut out gluten and dairy, like you cut it. It’s hard to know with those ones, which one did it. I don’t have a celiac, but I, I just.

I’m not a gluten fan, as gluten to me, and who knows, is it the gluten or the glyphosates? Which one is it? We know gluten creates leaky gut, so and I, which I

had, didn’t know it. That’s partly why I ended up with Ramsey Hunt syndrome, because I was stressed out of my mind, and I was eating whole foods, just the wrong ones.

So for me,

there you go. I feel like as we age, we don’t have the margin of error that we had in our twenties.

That is so well said girlfriend. That’s exactly when you’re in your twenties, whatever. Yeah. You don’t want to have a marathon the next day. And then, you’d party that night.

Not at 65, I’m just thrilled my hair still grows out this color. It’s some kind of a miracle. The beard has died, but don’t tell anybody.

I won’t say a word. Hey, and look at all the hair you’ve got. You’ve got lots of hair, and it’s black. I wish my hair wasn’t having to be colored, but I, my parents had,

had mostly brown hair in, in their 70s and 80s.

I don’t

know. Thank them. I don’t know the pandemic. My son’s accident took my hair to gray. And then the pandemic, I discovered what color it really was. I was like I didn’t need to know that.

Yeah. But whatever you’re doing looks great. Do what you got to do. So you feel good when you’re looking in the mirror and when, you, it’s all about building confidence.

It’s starting though, look, there it is, jj.

But you know what? Here’s the thing that’s so unfair with men versus women is why is a little salt and pepper like my husband has salt and pepper hair and it is so sexy. Salt and pepper on me? Not sexy. So there you go. That’s one I can’t explain. But you can still be fit, healthy and happy regardless.

Yes, exactly. So this has been awesome. It’s super fun to catch up with you. I’m going to remind everybody that it is, I’m putting all the show notes, your guide, Mindy’s interview, all at jjvirgin. com forward slash CycleSync60. And I am looking forward to when you come show up and hang out with all of us and.

Knowing that you’re all there is an incentive. It’ll be fun. We’ll just, whatever, we’ll work out together, we’ll go out and eat some vegetables together, whatever it takes.

Yeah, you we’ll have the protein and you can have all the vegetables. By the way, in Jackson

Hole, when there’s elk medallions on the menu.

Yeah, have them. I’m not telling. Alright, maybe we could all meet there then, that’d be fun. Yeah,

we could go skiing and snowboarding together, for sure. Thank you, JJ. Thank you, great connecting. You’re the bomb. It’s always a pleasure to see you and chat with you.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and are built to last. Check me out on Instagram, Facebook, and my website, jjvirgin. com, and make sure to follow my podcast at subscribetojj. com so you don’t miss a single episode.

And hey, if you’re loving what you hear, don’t forget to leave a review. Your reviews make a big difference in helping me reach more incredible women just like you to spread the word about aging powerfully after 40. Thanks for tuning in. And I’ll catch you on the next episode.

Hey, JJ here. And just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information that’s designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional at wellbeyond40. com. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes.

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