Hello, my name is Marianne Kane, and welcome to the Equipped with Strength podcast. This has come about simply through understanding the journey of other people in the fitness world. And lots of things that I've noticed over the years, I've been a personal trainer, an online fitness coach, online fitness "personality" or whatever you want to call it for a decade now. In fact, I started in beginning of 2010. 

I have noticed just how much and even the fitness world itself actually perpetuates this problem of enabling and encouraging this belief that people feel that they're broken, that they're dysfunctional, that they need to get fixed, or be improved. And that this is what fitness goals are carrying the meaning of a fitness goal is carrying with it a promise of fixing these problems, and basically making you happier, more contented when you get to the destination. It's it's not at all, like the journey is important or that you already come equipped with what you need, just to take that next step. 

What ends up happening is we focus so much on the 10th step, and when we can't get there, it becomes so discouraging. And we get stuck in the cycle of failure and feeling like you're not enough, and you can never do enough. Because even when you reach goals, there's always another one, there's always going to be an exercise that everybody seems to be working on that it's the cool thing to do. Or the latest trend in women's bodies. It's no longer skinniness, it's strength. It's no longer strength and looking strong is actually just being comfortable no matter what you look like. And I think that this progress is good. Obviously, it was progress. But at the same time, it can very easily. Especially when there's still messages of you know, all your dysfunctional, you have to fix every single thing that's wrong with you before something, then I think we can easily get trapped again.  

And so I would want that this podcast - it is only a podcast - I wanted to do a very small thing, a small part to play in building what I envisioned being a people and particularly women of power and agency, autonomy, specifically pointing and driving your own ship through these goals and this world of fitness. But more than that, I want the journey to have to be valued more than the results and the outcome so that we can be more a peace and contented as we go through the journey, right? This cliche that the journey is the destination, there's just no end to this journey. It just keeps on going.

And so I want this podcast to bring topics and conversations, and busting a few myths in the fitness world so that more people listening, more women listening can start believing, rather than you're broken and dysfunctional and you need some way to be improved to say and believe that you come equipped, and you come equipped with strength. And that strength can not it's quiet. It doesn't have to be showy. It doesn't have to be what we all imagined that to look like that it's something you want to boast about, or impress people with. It's not always that, it doesn't always show up that way.  

Sometimes it's just showing up for a workout when you feel at your worst. And sometimes it's just getting up the next day when the night before you want to. You know you were just hoping things would just end or your life is so overwhelming. But you make a little bit of progress, or you show up anyway. You don't want to do something. You have 1,000,001 things to do. You're paralyzed by analysis. You're paralyzed by distractions.

But strength can mean so many different things and oftentimes it comes down to this agency about your goals, your values, and perhaps even your call your calling. And I know that that may even be a buzzword that people say a lot these days, there are people, myself included, that feel prompted toward a bigger mission, almost like there's just something that drives you, you can't ignore it anymore. Yet, so many of us are hiding and held back, I know that I would put myself in that camp, I've hidden a lot of this, I've hidden my voice.

And that's doing this podcast is actually pretty scary, because I've held back so much in the last few years. And I just want to break free of that, that hiding, and that staying quiet.  I feel like there needs to be more encouragement. And just more humanity or something like that. It just has to be okay to be where you're at right now. And part of the goal of this is just to make you feel better about not being the person you thought you might be at this point in your life. Or that you, you know, even if you fallen off, you have been derailed in your fitness, like you might regret you might carry a load of pain over the fact that you're not that person anymore. But that there's maybe something newer and maybe a bit better that's just around the corner. No we need to focus on is that next step. And that next step is the thing you come equipped for. And each step along the way, you've been equipped to take that next one. And sometimes the hardest thing is focusing on just that one step.

So part of this series and part of this podcast is inviting other guests on, who carry expertise in fitness, the physical fitness training science, and we talk to people like Josh Hillis, who deals with like more of the psychology of emotional eating. Travis Pollen, who's an expert on rehabilitation sciences, and specifically in injury. There's a lot of myths out there about bad exercises, anything that anything that basically encourages black and white thinking, I want to hopefully even out the extremes, so that you can make a better and more informed decision and feel, again, feeling better about where you're at, so that you're not feeling afraid to move forward. Certainly, that's one of the most horrible feelings is being unsure of what's best. And most of the time, there's nothing is best. And often, just doing something is better than doing nothing.  

So I'm hoping that some of that will arm you with some kind of reassurance. But in addition to those kind of, I guess, myth busting episodes, there's going to be more of a discussion and journey in people coming in who have stories, and some episodes will just be me, it'll just be me talking about something that I feel is maybe relevant or helpful in moving things forward.  

As of now, the episodes will be once a month, I feel I don't want to say I'm going to try to apply what I tell my clients and when I tell people and who sign up for my membership, Equipped with Strength, which is called. So along those theme, this theme of do what you can. That your effort, even if it's imperfect, or doesn't feel like it would be enough. If it's going to keep you consistent and keep you showing up in Ops, without that stress, and that that feeling of pressure. Especially if you're the type of person that pressure actually makes things worse, then, once a month for me is going to be realistic. And over time, hopefully, I'll be able to do maybe once a week. And that's what I'm that's my goal. That's my little future goal.  

But right now, as we start this, you may actually be listening to this and we're months down the line and I am not doing one week, but this is how I started. And this is my thought right now. And if as this podcast and this sort of little journey of ours together along this path actually will evolve and I expect that. So I'm excited to see where it goes.

I'm a rookie at this podcasting. So it's going to be a little bit of a learning curve for me. I appreciate you tuning in and I hope You will stick with the episodes, even if they maybe don't feel or signed, as put together and professional as maybe other ones are.  There's a lot of information out there, just like getting it right with regards to fitness, getting it right in regards to even business. So there's a lot out there to how to do your podcast "properly", that can add a whole lot of pressure that might make somebody like me not get started in the first place. Because I can't get everything right. There is no right. There's no rules. There's just people who have done it before you say, this is how I did it, this might work better for you. But at the same time, I can't let that stop me. And you can't let the perfection. perfectionism stop you. Because it's not all or nothing I can do as still can do good and, and provide value and inspire you and encourage you and reassure you. Because even if it's not 100% everything.

I think sometimes that is a massive pitfall that we all fall into in every area is that well, if I can't get it, all right, if I can't meet my standard, which is often too high, then there's not going to be any benefit. We forget that 20% effort can sometimes yield way better results than we maybe expect. But how do we ever know if we don't try?

So this experiment, I guess, this little podcast? Hopefully, we will.  Hopefully, in fact, not hopefully, definitely, it will get much better. So I'm excited to chat to you again, you'll see a few episodes already up hopefully this point. And and we'll go from there. So if you want to be, I guess informed or notified of whenever there's going to be a new podcast episode I you can sign up for that and the RSS feed and also sign up on myomyfitness.com for episode release emails, I guess, notifications for when you episodes come out so you don't miss anything.  

That's really just my intro, I hope you will tune in again. And I look forward to this little journey. And I'll chat to you soon. Bye.  

What am I going to do with this wall behind me? Give me some ideas for sprucing it up a bit. It just is so meh. It's so boring. And these little flowers. This was my my wonderful plan for the backdrop but they look so lonely. It's like it needs something more. I was thinking of a giant picture of the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland, which is where I'm from. So thinking that might be nice just to have in the background make me feel like I'm at home. Or I could just do random Harry Potter scene or I totally went down the rabbit hole of looking at backdrops on Amazon. And if you do that, and you want to see send me an idea of what to put behind me as just not looking very pretty right now. So I will look forward to hearing your suggestions.