ATHE_Transcript_Ep 454_Kathy Smith
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Welcome. And thanks so much for joining me. This is ask the health expert here. I put the power of health in your hands and give you access to the top. People in health and wellness. In each episode, I share safe ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut detox and lots more. So if you wanna get healthy and get off the dieting for life Merry go round, I'll give you strategies that will help you look and feel better.
Fast.
Hey, it's JJ with a legend, an icon. In our industry today, I have Kathy Smith with me at New York times, best selling author and host of the podcast on healthy art of living. And Kathy I've known her now. I dunno, 10 years. She has been. A role [00:01:00] model for me my entire time in the fitness industry. And I mean, my gosh, she was the person who really put all of this and all of us on the map, way back when she has sold over 20 million exercise DVDs, she is in the video hall of fame and over 500 million in Kathy Smith products.
And she's still going and it's amazing. I've actually gone to. A yoga class with her, unless you are really good at yoga. I would not tell you to do that. We were with another friend and I finally just kind of decided I was gonna lie down on the mat and laugh, cuz it was just crazy. And I've been hiking with her a bunch.
She is absolutely. The vision of fitness and health and like just incredible. So I wanted to bring her on today. We're gonna be talking about a bunch of different stuff that we really have never dressed before. Things that you can put into your day to help you be a lot fitter faster and not have some of the You know, issues that could [00:02:00] start to happen as you age from osteoporosis to breaking things happen to you.
So it is gonna be awesome, Awesome information and we also have some incredible show notes for you that you can get at jjvirgin.com/KathySmith. And Kathy is spelled K a T H Y. So Kathy Smith. Grab those, you will want them. I promise you. And before I dive in, I want to bring you a little word about one of my favorites.
Kathy Smith: All right, Kathy Smith. Welcome
JJ Virgin: to
the show. I'm super glad to have you here
Kathy Smith: today. And I'm excited to be
JJ Virgin: here. I know. I think we, like we had this scheduled before and then I've been waiting and waiting. It's been a while. I'm glad that we got this dialed in. Cuz you have got. [00:03:00] Amazing information that we really haven't
talked about on this show.
And I was reading over the questions going, this is super cool because here's what I see. And I, I do this myself so full disclosures. We get kind of hooked into our usual workout routine. We get in a rut and you know, Hey, on the positive we're working out, but what's the problem with getting into a rut and just kind of doing one, one certain thing all the time.
Kathy Smith: Well, the fact is exercise is impacts almost every system in your body. So it impacts your coordination, your balance, your connective tissues, respiratory heart joints. I could go on and on brain. You talk about it on the show. We've talked about it before, but what happens is that we have this little thing.
Aging and as we age and stop it, Kathy,

Well, and the, and the key is here where you sometimes think aging is like old, but remember aging starts [00:04:00] around 30 it's imperceptible at first, but things start to. Shift in your body. And so what happens is that, for instance, let's take one little one little part of this.
You have muscle fibers, you have slow Twitch, fast Twitch, and something called very fast Twitch, which are your type 2B fibers as you age. The first thing to go are these very. Fast Twitch muscle fibers. Now, what does that mean? These are the muscle fibers that are your explosive muscle fibers.
They're the ones that for propulsion and they're the ones that as you start to lose type two, you don't have the kick anymore. So the thing is going out for your walk. Getting on a treadmill, even going for your normal run doesn't necessarily help maintain type two. What you need to maintain type two is you need something.
As I said before, something explosive. So jumping on a box, let's say, or if you're gonna run doing intervals and doing [00:05:00] bursts so that you maintain those muscle fibers. And as we go through the talk today, I'm gonna show you in every part of your body there. Things that are starting to slow down. They're starting to atrophy, they're starting to, you're starting to lose muscle tone, but if we're only working those muscles, which I call, 'em the vanity muscles, which I love, but if you're working your, you know, your shoulders and your biceps and you get your abs in there, that's great.
Uh, Maybe is, it's not maybe not gonna help you with some of the things we're gonna talk about today about balance and posture and sexual function and things like that.
JJ Virgin: Well, I love that you brought up burst training, so that's fabulous. So now everybody has another reason to do birth style, high intensity interval training.
I think one of the things that is just not talked about very much, that is gonna be one of the biggest challenges for boomers is osteoporosis. And, you know, it's [00:06:00] one of those things that we should be looking at way sooner and talking about way earlier. And, you know, it's like, I think what people get their first bone density test at 50.
And you kind of get diagnosed with it. You, you don't ever wanna get diagnosed with this. Right. So you wanna prevent it before it starts, right? Yes.
Kathy Smith: And it's interesting because I have so many friends who are. Just turning 50 in the early fifties. And I just had so many calls in the last six months. Oh my gosh, I got my DEXA scan.
I got my results. I have osteopenia, which is the step before osteoporosis. What should I be doing? And what was interesting? I was actually had a girlfriend in town for Sundance. I live up in park city. So we have the Sundance film festival. She was here. I was listening to her, talk to her doctor and her doctor said, well, here are some things you can do.
You can exercise eat more calcium giving her kind of the [00:07:00] top line stuff, but it was interesting with the exercise. Once again, not all exercise is created equal when it comes to bone density. And what we're finding is to maintain bone density. You need. To jar those bones. And, and, and when I say jar them, you have to have some impact or what they call GForce.
And what they find is not that your audience is gonna understand this, but you need 4.2 GS or greater to impact your bone. And what does that mean? That's the equivalent of, oh, if you're on a, a box, a 15 inch box, Jumping off that box and boom, that that's, that that would give you that 4.2 GForce or if you're gonna run a 10 minute mile.
So running a 10 minute mile would also help with that, with that GForce but again, walking, doesn't do it swimming. Doesn't do it cycling. Doesn't do it if you want. So
JJ Virgin: especially like, that's like [00:08:00] anti bone density, if anything, I mean that, you know, you've got really, you don't have the big jarring force in swimming.
So it's I love that you're bringing this up because what I remember hearing doctors telling my clients was that they had osteopenia. They should go walking. I'm like, no, you need to like . Yeah.
Kathy Smith: that ain't gonna cut it, honey. Well, yeah, no. Think about it just the same way. The same principle holds true for bones.
As we talk about for muscles to build a muscle, you need to overload it, you need to stress it. And that stressing breaks down a little bit and that, and that rebuilding makes it stronger. Well, the same thing you with bones, your, attachment, your muscles are attached to the bones, you know, through tendons and ligaments, but you need to stress that bone.
To make it stronger. So that's the way I want to think about it and, and with everything what's also exciting about this. I have to tell you, JJ, is that you don't need a lot of everything, [00:09:00] so you don't need, I mean, they, they find like 30 seconds a day of something that's high impact. On your, it will help your bones.
So once again, we've gotten away from, oh, I need to work out for an hour or everything we talk about today doesn't mean like, oh, I have to add another, you know, 45 minutes to my routine. No, just when you're doing your routine, get the jump rope out and go, boom, boom, boom. And do two minutes of jump roping.
JJ Virgin: Yep. Simple stuff, fast, easy, but you gotta have some little bit of impact there and load your spine. So let's talk. Oh, let's bring up belly fat so, you know, I always look at belly fat and say, let's we gotta change. We gotta change. What's at the end of your fork, but what else can you do? Because I also see that some of it is just posture.
Yeah. And I'm watching now too. And am I missing something, Kathy? It's almost like people are. Having worse posture. I, I maybe there's this big emphasis now to have more of a booty, so their posture's even [00:10:00] worse. I don't know, like what's the deal with having a good core and being able to not let it all hang out
Kathy Smith: well, and I know you talk about this all the time, but we, we have the fat and we have that subcutaneous fat.
We have, you know, the visceral fat, which is the more deadly fat, it surrounds your organ. So. We're gonna deal with that fat and that fat is everything you preach every day, which is mainly happens in the kitchen. It happens with your diet. It happens with, you know, not creating inflammation in your body.
So scoot that away for a second, even though that's hugely important, then, then you have the muscles and the muscles that we have that are part of our core, which are the abdominals,
JJ Virgin: the. Obliques
Kathy Smith: the transverse abdominis, all these muscles, the muscles in your back. This is these muscles create that posture you're talking about.
Now, [00:11:00] one thing that I think is an interesting visual, if you think about. Your back, you have a spine and the spine that that's the muscle that that's the only, I'm sorry, that's the only structure between your rib cage and your pelvis. You have, you know, those vertebrae in the front of your body. You don't have anything except your muscles.
You don't have a femur. You don't have a bone. You don't have. Anything keeping you upright. So think about it. If you don't have a strong core, if you don't work those muscles of your abs. What happens is everything starts to contract and it starts gravity takes over. And it kind of smooshes. If you just think about everything starts smushing down and everything inside gets smushed a little bit, but that's where you start seeing where these bulge, you start to droop
forward and people lose their muscle tone and the belly just starts to hang out. now on men, it, you know, you think about it like that beer belly with the [00:12:00] extra fat on women, especially after they have their baby. And if they haven't learned how to engage those muscles, especially the muscles of the lower abdominals, then they're, they're kind of destined to this poor posture.
So one of the things I just do, even when I'm sitting. Like, I'm sitting down right now. Leaning forward ever so slightly getting your weight. I mean, we talk about having your weight on your sit bones, which, you know, you know, put your hands underneath your butt and find those two little bones sitting on top of those, but more for, but sitting forward of those.
So I'm actually on. The top of my hamstring, what happens if people usually do the opposite, they lean back and they round their backs and they kind of, they sit on the back of their tailbone. So that simple thing of sitting upright and maintaining the natural curve in your lower back and your lumbar region can really help you work on those abdominals all day long.
So it's going to the gym's great [00:13:00] dropping down, giving me a plank, giving me a hundred You know, crunches or whatever, but the key to having good posture, good abdominals is when we're sitting here right now, I'm getting an abdominal workout because I'm sitting up right. I'm engaged in my core area.
So that's, that's really important. And I don't know if you wanna get into this, but one other area, especially for women, is to think, to start to go more internally and this internal, it, it all starts with. Pelvic floor and some of those internal muscles that we engage with kegelling, I don't know. Before I go into this, do you wanna get into this or do you want,
JJ Virgin: yeah, I think we're in it.
And that thinking about the way of course I'm sitting slumping on my chairs, you said that I was like, okay, stop it. But. It made me realize I was like, I gotta get my big exercise ball out of the garage and put it here. Cause there's no slumping on an exercise ball. Yeah. [00:14:00] You fall off. Right. So that's another good one that you can use is your exercise ball.
So no let's talk kegels and pelvic floor. You started in there. We can't leave em hanging.
Kathy Smith: You know, you know, why is because it, you know, we can talk about it as it relates to the abdominals. One of the things and it is huge when it comes to aging is first of all sexual function, this idea of incontinence, and nobody really wants to think about it that much, but once women have
babies. And if they've had them, you know, through a vaginal delivery, everything down there gets a little loosened up. And so if you think about, if you think about your pelvic floor, like a hammock and the front of the hammock is your pubic bone, the back is your tailbone. You have these attachments along the side, but the center of that, of that hammock basically starts.
Weaken and it gets compromised. And then what happens is that when you're jumping up and down for your G force, you know, [00:15:00] exercises, you get a little leakage you get a little urine leakage, or if you're having sex, you're finding with your partner that you can't really connect quite the same way, because it's a little looser and.
We talked about kegels and every woman has heard about 'em through the years. But what I've found is that a lot of people don't do 'em because they don't get results. And part of the reason they don't get results is they're not doing them properly. So just like we talked about with aging and with fast Twitch, slow Twitch fibers.
Inside, you know, you know, down in your pelvic floor and internally you have fast and slow twitch fibers. So when you kegel, and if anybody in the audience doesn't know about kegelling, I mean, you think about I always imagine an elevator and imagine. The, I mean, we talk about this. Let me back up, we talk about typically, if you wanna find this area, if you're sitting on a toilet, I don't necessarily recommend this, but if you're urinating stop [00:16:00] the flow of urination for a second and that's a kegel. But as we go through this, you can start to think about inside your vaginal wall, like an elevator, and you're you, you squeezed first floor second.
Third floor right now, you can go to the penthouse and then you can release 'em one at a time that is a slow movement. It's sort of like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, release 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. But then at one point you wanna flutter and you wanna go, boom. Boom, boom, squeeze, squeeze release, squeeze release, doing. And so you're getting both the fast Twitch and the slow Twitch.
And if you do kegels where your hips are, kind of propped up on a pillow, you take the pressure off the hammock area there, and you can get a little bit more intensity. So there are some tips there.
JJ Virgin: All righty. That was super good. And hopefully you're I guess you could do that while you're driving. I was like, hopefully not
Kathy Smith: stop lights, [00:17:00] stop lights,
JJ Virgin: stop lights. That's why God created stoplights for now. You won't get in trouble for texting. Just there you go. You know, never the, the, the police will never know.
What about balance? And I bring this one up because I literally, I remember when I first moved back to California and I was living in Palm Springs and I had this client who was 75, who wanted to work out with me because she wanted to make sure she could continue to wear her stilettos and not fall. That is, and I was like, that is awesome.
but you know, we don't talk a lot about balance and it's a biggie. So what about balance? How do we, how do we keep that as we age or get better with it?
Kathy Smith: Balance starts with the feet. So I'm going to, so it's funny that your your client said about stilettos. I, I definitely recommend stilettos for those evenings when you wanna look sexy, but in [00:18:00] general, for good balance, you wanna have good feet and An exercise, which I, I think, you know, this JJ, but my daughter, Kate is a track athlete and she went to the Olympics in Rio two years ago.
And the reason why I'm bringing that up is because she does this exercise and she sent it to me and she got it from a physical therapist because she always is having foot issues. And one of the things with running with balance with walking with standing is to have proper placement of your weight on, on your feet.
And so if you think of your feet as a tripod, you have your pinky toe, you have your big toe and you have your heel. So now imagine this exercise. And if you, if you're barefoot, you can do it while I'm talking. But it is so crazy hard, but it's so good for you. Take your right foot, all four toes, all five toes are on the ground, the big toe and the four, the four other toes.
Now keeping the four toes down, lift your big toe up, which is not that hard. I'm doing it right [00:19:00] now. Here's the tricky part. Now put your big toe down and lift the other four toes off the ground. And so you do that. So it's big toe comes up four toes down. Big toe goes down four toes up and you go side to side and you start working all of those small intrinsic muscles, those balanced muscles.
That once again, we forget about when we're just using the vanity muscles. These are muscles that we need in our ankle and we need for this. We need for support, we move up the body so that, so that's one little trick starting with your feet. The other thing is. Understanding that there is a static balance, which we tend to do in yoga classes.
You get into your tree pose or you get into your, I have
JJ Virgin: been to yoga class with you, honey. It is I'll never do I remember? I think you were posing on a toe. I think that, that I looked over and you were like up [00:20:00] on one toe and you had like everything else up in the air. And I'm like, I, I gotta get outta
Kathy Smith: here.
I know I got that. Look from you like, honey, what are you doing? So you have that type of balance, which is great, but really the balance we need in life is, is more of a is more of an active form. So what I encourage people to do is. Let's just say you're jumping side to side two feet right. Left, right.
You know, right. Left. Right. Stick it. When I say stick it, nail it on your right leg. Right. Left light left. Nail it on your left leg, but try to do some things where in dance, we used to do this where it was. Fall and recover. Meaning you start to lean, you start to tip a little bit. You fall, you recover. One of the things that we're finding is that especially with falls is that balance is important, but learning how to recover as you start to fall is probably more important.
[00:21:00] Let's be perfectly honest, everybody. In life is going to fall. At some time I was on the ski ski slope yesterday. I fell. Part of it is though, how do we learn how to fall and, and recover and fall properly? And that's one of the things that is, you know, they're really starting to. To teach classes now, which is this fall it's fall prevention, but more so fall training.
And it seems crazy, but I know in gymnastics, we used to do it in dance. We used to do it where it's a drop and roll might be, but the one thing you don't wanna do is get so stiff in your body that when you. Take that inevitable fall one day, you're gonna step off a curb one day, you know, you're gonna be running in the, in, on the trail and you're gonna catch a tree you know, a root of a tree or something.
You wanna make sure that you're not just so stiff that it's like boom, falling and breaking a hip. So part of it is just training for the inevitable,
JJ Virgin: you know, I you've just brought [00:22:00] up. So many things that you just never think about. And the problem is you don't think about 'em until they're an issue, and they're easy enough just to incorporate into your daily routine.
So it's just fantastic. Now I wanna bring that up because I, what I'd love to know is what's one thing you do every day, Kathy, in your daily routine, one thing that you feel like just, you know, you gotta do it. It makes a big, massive difference in your life.
Kathy Smith: I do something called. An energization exercise.
And part of this is turning on going up my body, starting at my feet and it, you know, takes me two to three minutes, but I do it in the morning. I can be making tea, starting the teapot or whatever, but the idea is activation activation is a key that people don't understand. I used to go through when, and, and when I would teach, I would say, okay you know, Let's do a lunge.
People would do a lunge. They couldn't feel it in their butt at all. They [00:23:00] only felt it right by their knee, right by their, in their quadricep. But in a, you know, almost like hurting, they were too far forward. They couldn't activate their butt muscle. So part of the thing about activation is you gotta learn because remember you have the muscle, but the muscle is innovative with a nerve.
If you can't get the nerve to fire and say, I want the glued on. So what I do is I go up, okay. Let tell you what I do. I go, and it's just a ten second on ten second, you know? Well, it can be five it's, five seconds up, five seconds down total of 10 seconds. So right foot left foot. And I, and I isolate right.
Calf left calf. And when I say right calf, I'm going. You just the right calf, squeeze, squeeze tight and tight and tighten almost to spasm and release, then the left bite, but not incorporating your glued or anything else. You go up to the, you know, the, the quad, the glute, the abs, the chest, you go all the way up the body and what this does.
And it's, it's part of it. Also just a. [00:24:00] Oh, an Eastern discipline that I, that I use Eastern philosophy, and this is just bringing Chi or energy throughout your body. And it's just my wake up. I wake up like that, but I notice that it turns everything on makes me and just makes me more, more aware of how I'm standing, sitting and everything else throughout the day.
So that's my one little trick.
JJ Virgin: All right. Of, of many that you've shared today. And I know that you've also got a fun little quiz for everybody. We always do great gifts and you have got these, this, and I mean, you definitely have endless energy. I'll never forget. I've now had the chance to go on a couple different hikes with you and Man I was getting a good night's sleep before.
So tell us about this endless energy quiz that everyone can grab at JJvirgin.com/kathySmith. That's Kathy with a K. K a T H Y. What are they gonna find out there?
Kathy Smith: Well, a common complaint as we get older is I don't have energy. And part of it is determining what's zapping your energy. So that's what the [00:25:00] quiz is about.
And it, you know, it could fall in the category of a lot about what you teach, which is about blood sugar and cortisol and insulin levels. And it could be about sleep and not getting a good night's sleep. It could be about having just like we're talking about poor posture throughout the day can be zapping your energy.
So as you go through and you take the quiz, the great, great thing is. Once you finish the quiz, depending on the result, you get an exercise plan, a free exercise plan for some of the things that you've checked off on the quiz.
JJ Virgin: All right. Awesome. So you can grab that quiz at jjvirgin.com/KathySmith and Kathy as always.
It's awesome. What we gotta do. Is we've gotta get in the same place at the same time and do like Facebook live, do some videos for everybody cuz you know, I think we're all sitting here trying to move around while you were describing it. We gotta do some videos. So hopefully sometime in the next couple months we actually, I hope so.[00:26:00]
Kathy Smith: Oh, it's always a pleasure.
JJ Virgin: Yes. It's time, my friend. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here with us today. Thanks. Big kiss. Super appreciate you. Bye.
This is the time where I answer a listeners question and this one popped up. I've been talking a lot about fitness, you know, it's really, my roots have been fitness. Then I got obsessed with nutrition, but the bottom line is you can't. Away a poor diet, but when you put a good diet and great exercise together, the the results are exponential.
So I was doing a Facebook live the other day and Leslie popped on and says, okay, okay. Okay. I'm a couch potato, where do I start? A question. I love, I always love the questions that are about how can I do this, not why I can't do it. Okay. Always look for the solutions. And so the first place I have people start and we'll put in the show notes, my fast fitness program.
Because I always start you with just [00:27:00] starting to, to move more and just be aware. That's why I love things like Fitbits used to be pedometers, but you know, anything you can do to track because what you measure you can monitor and improve. So first thing is just making sure that you are moving more.
You're actually taking the stairs parking farther away and the single easiest way to make sure that you do. Is get a dog cause when you have a dog, you gotta walk a dog and you will move more besides they're just so awesome. But after that, the next thing I like to put into place is high intensity interval training.
Kathy is gonna be talking or just talked about that today. So high intensity interval training, I call it bursting to blast fat. It's so critical because it helps your body handle stress better. It helps your body burn fat better. It raises growth hormone. And it helps you feel better, have a better mood to boost your endorphins.
So I, to teach you how to do that in my fast fitness program. And we'll also do a link to either one of my blogs or a [00:28:00] video on how to burst, because it's very simple and it only takes a couple minutes a day, a couple times a week. So if you're sitting here listening, going, yeah, I'd love to exercise, but I don't have time.
I've got you covered here because literally it only takes a couple minutes and you can make a major impact. So that's where I like you to start and then add in resistance training and some core and flexibility work. So I have you kind of step into it because what you're gonna find is you start to exercise is you feel so much better that you can get more done in a day.
And. Plus your mood is better and you just get a little bit hooked on it, which is where I want you to be. All right. I'm hooked on the fabulous little comments that you guys post on iTunes and the whole team reads them. We love them, makes us all feel so good. We know we're out there doing something good for the world.
And I just wanna thank boy 11 from Canada. Who said amazing five stars, JJ's information will be life changing for you. I really appreciate that. Cuz I [00:29:00] know that when other people see these testimonials, they're more likely to tune in. So not only are you making all of us feel good, you're doing something good out there in the world, helping us help a billion people.
Take personal responsibility for their health and feel better. And one of the big things that I've always wanted to do is make information super easy and accessible so that you have no reason for not jumping on board. So there you go. If you're compelled to leave a review, we thank you in advance. All you need to do is pop on over to iTunes and I will see you next week.
Bye.