This is an EPIC episode where I chat to my favourite Canadian, Kristen Ingraham Morgan.

Passionate coach, owner of LN CrossFit in Lincoln, previous Food Ninja client, founder of the Strong Girls Squad and wearer of many fitness-related hats.

We cover her journey to better balance, and therefore better health, the dangers of ‘popular’ nutrition programmes in the fitness industry, and why ethical coaching, with the person’s whole health as the main consideration, should be the ONLY choice.

We also find out how a conversation with one of her members made Kristen go full Liam Neesom and set up the Strong Girl Squad, to help the next generation of girls to define and create their own version of healthy.

You can find out more about the Strong Girl Squad here, and you can follow LN CrossFit here.

Finally, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review – I’ll be ya best friend 😉

Transcript

[00:00] Hayley Food Ninja: Hello. You are listening to the Rude Health Podcast with me, Hayley Food Ninja, where I aim to bring you all the latest tools, tips and strategies to help you create your own version of Healthy without a Kale smoothie in sight. Enjoy the episode.

Hello, and welcome to the next episode of the Rude Health Podcast. With Me Hayley food ninja. I'm just going to get straight into this one because this is going to be an absolutely fucking awesome episode, even if I do say so myself, because I have got one of my favourite people to talk to because she always has something super interesting to say. Oh, God.

[00:44] Kristen: No pressure.

[00:47] Hayley Food Ninja: Today's guest is Kristen Ingram Morgan, who is the owner of CrossFit LN in Lincoln. She is an ex client of mine and the founder is that the founder of the Strong Girls Club, which we're going to talk about later.

[01:04] Kristen: Strong girl squad.

[01:05] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah. Strong girl squad. And actually the person responsible, or part responsible for getting me into CrossFit, because you were actually running the induction that I did 1011 years ago. Was it?

[01:21] Kristen: 10-11 years ago?

[01:23] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah. Yeah. So Kristen is part responsible for this.

[01:29] Kristen: I'll take it, on credit.

[01:32] Hayley Food Ninja: Thank you so much for agreeing to do this.

[01:34] Kristen: My pleasure, my pleasure.

[01:36] Hayley Food Ninja: We've got loads of really cool stuff to talk about, but yeah, I guess just to let everyone know, that's kind of how we know each other is ten years ago, I started CrossFit at CrossFit Nottingham. And you were a coach at the time, weren't you?

[01:51] Kristen: Brand new baby coach. That was my first job in CrossFit. And when I met you, I'd probably only been coaching about six months.

[01:58] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah. Oh, my God, it's such a long time ago, isn't it? And then, obviously, I moved abroad, all that kind of stuff. But we still followed each other on social media and then about is it two years ago now?

[02:15] Kristen: I want to say it was two years ago in July. Pretty sure I started in July because my birthday is in July and I wanted a year to sort myself out.

[02:26] Hayley Food Ninja: That's right, yeah. So in July, you contacted me and wanted some help, didn't you? Which I thought, how amazing, because you were really instrumental in me starting my CrossFit journey and helped me a lot. And obviously I started my career because of my CrossFit journey. And now it was really cool that I was able to help someone who was really instrumental in that. So I was really happy about that.

[02:54] Kristen: It was a good full circle moment, and I knew that I said in July 2020. So it was like in the height of the pandemic. I kind of had three months off well, four months off, like almost everybody in the fitness industry who owned a bricks and mortar location, we were all shut. I had some time to kind of stop all the craziness that I was doing in terms of, like, running the gym and kind of have a moment of reflection about my own health and wellbeing and sort of came to the very rude awakening that I wasn't in a good place, that my stress levels and my habits had really genuinely gotten out of control. And at the time and I know that you probably did this a lot, but at the time you were posting a lot of content about the Holistic way of improving health and fitness. So your content wasn't like macros. It wasn't all about restriction or dieting or it just had a very different message to all the other Fit pros that I follow, and I follow a lot. I was like, I feel as though this is a job for Haley. And I think that's probably what I even said in that first message that I sent you, was like, I feel like this is a job for you. What do you think? And you were so enthusiastic with your replies, yes, let's do this. So, yeah, it was a full circle moment and a match made in heaven.

[04:26] Hayley Food Ninja: It was. It's really interesting because obviously you had an awareness that it wasn't as simple as I've put a bit of weight on, but even so, I remember you included that in your message. I think I need to lose maybe a couple of kilos or whatever. And I always find that really interesting because even though you have a lot more self awareness than most people in terms of like, holy shit, I have no idea what's happened here, but still there was like and I also need to lose a few kilos because we sort of associate that with, oh, I'm feeling shit. It must be these two, three or four kilos that I've put on, which is super interesting, isn't it?

[05:11] Kristen: Yeah, yeah, it was. I mean, maybe the weight was like the trigger. Like the thing that is, you know, in your face every day going, girl, you don't look your best, you're not performing your best. You need to do something about it. Oh, and while you're at it, why don't you fix all this other shit that's wrong with you? But it quickly, very quickly in our relationship became apparent that the weight was the least of my problems. And I think I knew that. Some part of me obviously knew that. But those problems were so massive and they were so ingrained that I had no idea how to start fixing that. You can't change a tire on a car that's traveling at 120 miles an hour.

[06:00] Hayley Food Ninja: That's exactly what you're doing. Well, you were literally traveling at 120 miles an hour.

[06:06] Kristen: Yeah. And we're trying to take the car apart while we're doing 120 on the Audubon. Yeah, it was special, special time.

[06:14] Hayley Food Ninja: It was. And I think the thing that I really liked I remember that you put it in a Facebook group, was the analogy of trying to paint a house, which I thought was like a really smart way of putting it. And I think like I said, you had a lot more self awareness than most people. But I think the reason a lot of people say come to me and say I need to lose a bit of weight is they kind of know that's not the issue, but they don't really know how to verbalize it. So the weight is an easy kind of health correlation, isn't it? Whereas if you want to explain about the house painting analogy because I was like, oh my God, everyone needs to read this because it's probably how and.

[07:01] Kristen: This was a couple of months into our working together and I was already starting to see the difference and the benefit of your process versus other health programs or coaches or plans that I've been on. And so the analogy was, imagine you're trying to paint the inside of your house, okay? So you have all of your paints and your rollers and your drop clothes or whatever, but the house is full of junk, like floor to ceiling, room to room full of junk that you've just accumulated over the years. And it's stuff that you know you should probably deal with, but it's just easier to put in a room, forget about it for a while, but you're trying to paint this house. So what you start doing is you start trying to paint around the junk and you're moving piles of junk and you're piling it precariously on one side of the room while you're painting the other side of the room that doesn't really work. And then inevitably, a pile of junk falls over and it tips a paint can all over the place and you end up making a bigger mess and you start to feel like you're just never going to get the house painted. And the analogy that I was trying to make is painting the house, getting the house painted is you achieving your health goals, whether that is weight loss, body composition, health markers, whatever. The junk is all of the accumulated bad habits and traumas and issues and whatever that you accumulate over the years that stop you from getting towards your goals. Oh, and the other thing is, once you're like, you're halfway through trying to do this and there's piles of junk and paint everywhere, you go online and you look for help and you find articles that are like, how to paint a house full of junk, like how to pile all your shit really precariously so that you can paint around it, it will work. And that's like not every other but many other fitness programs or health programs or diet programs or whatever, we'll just ignore the junk and just tell you how to work around it. Which, I mean, it's one way to do it, but as the analogy proves, like, really hard to paint a house full of junk, your program or the work that we were doing together to me was the equivalent of you turning up at the house and going okay, well why don't we tidy up first and then rolling up your sleeves and helping me tidy up. Right. Because I had a lot of junk to sort through before. I had a lot of bad habits. I had some perilously dangerous stress levels, sleep habits, phone addictions and others that were going to make it very, very difficult for me to make the changes I needed to make in order to paint the house, in order to get to where I wanted to be. But up to that point nobody had recognized that or offered to help. So yeah, and I stand by that analogy and you'll be pleased to hear I use not only that analogy but that structure and that type of coaching in the coaching that I'm doing with my members. So yeah, I can't prevent a hustle junk.

[10:15] Hayley Food Ninja: You can't, you can't. And I actually think especially in this day and age with everything that we've all been through in the past couple of years and you know. Things like you mentioned. Like the phone always being on. Running the business. All of that kind of stuff. I actually feel like it's irresponsible not to coach in that way and I have no idea why I'm in a minority doing that because one of the things that we looked at was you'd previously done a more kind of generic sort of nutrition program that's quite well known where we're not going to name it. That left you in terms of your relationship with food and stuff in a really like horrific place. Right?

[11:03] Kristen: Really bad place. Yeah, yeah. I was on the all singing. All dancing and I say all singing. All dancing because it was touted widely in the industry and social media. The program that was just essentially based on strict adherence to daily macro counts which I mean. It worked in terms of what I thought I was trying to achieve. Which is I got a six pack but I also got a raging eating disorder and I'm not the only one. And to my great shame I encouraged other people to try this program because I was so happy with the results without any and this was years ago when you know better, you do better. And I take full responsibility for the fact that I followed this program and I encouraged others to do so. But it was, you know, what precision nutrition referred to as a level two program in a level one brain. Like I wasn't ready for that level of restriction or strictness and it did exactly what all restrictive diet plans do, which is it caused binging disorder. I'm a textbook case of that.

[12:20] Hayley Food Ninja: That kind of exactly what you said there. It looks like it works because it only concentrates on one facet of health, which is your physical health in terms of like you looked great. I saw photos of you when you've done that. And I was like, wow, she's, like, in shape. Right, but prioritizing your physical health over all of the other shit, mental, emotional, social health, because you can't be fucking sociable on one of those plans. That is not healthy now.

[12:53] Kristen: And I wouldn't even haley, I would not even give it the credit of saying that it prioritized my physical health because it prioritized my physical aesthetic. Yeah. It was about looking a certain way, not performing a certain way, not feeling a certain way. So I wouldn't even go as far as to give programs like that the credit of saying that I was healthier, because I'm not convinced that I was. And others, other people I know, again, friends of mine, members. And for this, to my eternal shame, they followed this program and became even sicker than I was and had very serious physical ramifications. And it was never picked up by the coaches or the people who were delivering this content. Again, I'm an adult. I take responsibility for what I've done. But I definitely didn't understand the potential damage that something that a really restrictive, aesthetically driven diet program can provide. I didn't know. I wish I did. Well, and I know now I'm so keen on steering people away from it, or at least warning them. At least warning them, saying, if you're going to go out and seek a program like this, you have to understand that one of the potential very real side effects is a binge eating disorder.

[14:21] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah, I remember that. You were absolutely over the moon when I said to you about, hey, if you want to eat a whole punt of grapes, you were literally worried about eating grapes, weren't you?

[14:35] Kristen: I was terrified of grapes, yes. Hi. My name is Kristen. And I was afraid of grapes because on any, you know, if you're counting macros, if you're counting grams of carbohydrate, grapes are full of fruit sugar, right? So 400 grams of green grapes that is weighing on your numbers for the day. And I'm the kind of person I love grapes so much. Oh, my God, if I open the punt, I'm going to eat the whole thing. And I remember that back and forth when I think we were actually on a call, I was like because I was like, I really want these grapes and all that. And you were just like, you gave me this face. Eat the grapes. I was like, oh, I don't know any of that. And looking back at it now, it is so ridiculous how warped my sense of food is. And you know what's crazy? Now I can open a pundit of grapes and not eat them all.

[15:43] Hayley Food Ninja: Who knew that was going to happen?

[15:46] Kristen: Who knew that when you remove the sense of restriction, you no longer feel as though you have to gobble everything up the minute you get the opportunity? Yeah, punted grace lasts me two sittings now.

[16:01] Hayley Food Ninja: It's ridiculous. And I think the other thing, before we just sort of finally wrap up about what your journey was like, the other thing that is super important with a lot of these programs and things is making sure if you want to follow a program like that, you are in a state to do so. Because when you came to me like, you're like, oh, okay, we'll get on the nutrition thing as well. And I'm like, I'm not putting you in a calorie deficit. And we are not having a conversation about food because four months before we actually four months said anything about food because you were so stressed. And being stressed obviously is not great for the body. But then to put somebody in a calorie deficit, which is a physical stressor on the body, to add to that load is so irresponsible. It's so irresponsible. And I just think of all the people who have got quite a high level of stress, because that's a lot of people at the moment, and they're just going to coaches and coaches like, you can get a result, just cut the deficit more and stuff like that. And I'm like, that is probably one of the most irresponsible things as a coach that you can do. But yeah, that was fun, wasn't it? She's like, we haven't even spoken about food four months.

[17:24] Kristen: And if I remember correctly, I wasn't complaining. I was like, Why don't we have a new food? Because as soon as we got into you getting me to start tracking things like my sleep, which was garbage, absolute garbage. And I remember when I first started with you, I was taking not overdoses, but like, more than the recommended dose of sleeping tablets every night to get to sleep, which of course then just meant I was sedated, not sleeping. My sleep scores, do you remember they were absolute trash for weeks and weeks.

[17:59] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah.

[18:02] Kristen: I was nowhere near being able to take on another stressor of any description, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. And it took four months to get me to a place where we could talk about food. Right?

[18:17] Hayley Food Ninja: If you said that to someone else, they'll be like, what the fuck? When you came to me, you were very clear about, like, I'm investing in myself for a year. I'm going to be 14 years time. I want to be in a really good state. And that was literally like music to my ears. Because A, I'm like, this is someone to get my teeth into, which I love when I'm coaching. But also here's someone who has a very realistic view of if you've been chronically stressed and not treating yourself very well for quite a long time, you're not going to sort that shit out in twelve weeks. Like, what the fuck? So it's really hard for people to hear that because, again, in our industry, it's all about six weeks shreds and drop a dress size in a week. And all that absolutely works, which, you know, as you said, it can work, but what state does it leave you in?

[19:14] Kristen: I remember you saying that stuck with me, which was, you can do an eight week trend and you will get a result. But what happens on eight weeks plus one day? What happens at nine weeks? Ten weeks? And you repeated this over and over to me, and it's something that definitely resonates, which is, I'm not in the business of leaving people worse off than how I found them. And when you try and rush for results or when you are myopic or short sighted in what it is you're trying to help your clients achieve, you're fine because eight weeks you're gone.

[19:51] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah. I'm like, yeah, I was from you. That's all I give a shit about. They're going on the grant. See you later.

[19:58] Kristen: Bye. Yeah, exactly. But what happens at nine weeks, ten weeks, three months? Is that person worse or better off than when you found them? And while again, adults do have to take responsibility for their own choices, I completely accept that my clients are not mine forever. I help them as long as I can and then we part company. But if you know that what you're doing is likely to cause damage, then you have to behave responsibly with that knowledge.

[20:30] Hayley Food Ninja: And you think, yet here we are in an industry that has one idea of what healthy is and thinks everyone should subscribe to that. And I do believe it's literally full of people who either, A, don't have the skills and knowledge to realize that they're doing damage, or B, just don't give a shit.

[20:53] Kristen: Yeah. But there has to be a revolution. There has to be a group of us. And I believe that there are actually an enormous number of responsible fitness practitioners, because I know a lot of them and I work with them. We're just the ones. And we were saying about this before we started recording this podcast, which is we're not the ones who are super good at social media.

[21:16] Hayley Food Ninja: No.

[21:17] Kristen: We're super good at responsible ethical coaching. Right? We're not the dancing monkeys on TikTok. And so maybe people don't hear or see as much of us as would be beneficial, but it's because we're too busy helping people instead of making online content. And that's not a big there are some incredible ethical practitioners who make fantastic content. I'm not saying everybody with a big social media presence in the Charlottes at all, but I know that I'm a lot better at coaching people than I am at making reels. Yeah.

[21:48] Hayley Food Ninja: I'm like, I don't really want to do all the things. And I think the other thing as well is our message just is not as exciting. It's like, hey, I can 100% sort you out for life. Which I think is an exciting message, right? You'll never have to spend any money on anyone like me ever again after you've worked with me. That, to me, is exciting shit. But when you say, okay, well, you might need to work with me for sort of nine to 18 months, we're going to work on some of these things. I'm going to sort of poke around in your brain. It's going to be a bit uncomfortable. They're like, but they're doing a six week shred over there if I'm just going to go do that, right?

[22:30] Kristen: Like, okay, yeah.

[22:32] Hayley Food Ninja: And I say this to people all.

[22:33] Kristen: The time, like, healthy eating, if you like. So balanced nutrition is really hard to sell.

[22:38] Hayley Food Ninja: Yes. Boring.

[22:41] Kristen: You can't commodify meat, veg, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar. That's hard to fit into a social media well, it's not hard to fit that into a social media post, but like, it's not super sexy. Consistency. Consistency is the least sexy thing on the planet. I mean, to you and I, it's incredibly sexy. Right? Like, people who are able to just stick to a plan and pretty much do the same good habits every day. Oh my God, I'm getting a warm, tingly feeling. But that's a really tough sell to the kind of culture that is always looking for the next thing and the next thing, what's next, what's next, what do we do next? What's the next thing? Well, the next thing is the same as the old thing.

[23:23] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah, because I recently obviously started working with CrossFitters again, which I love to work with CrossFit people, but I know previously when I was doing that, one of the things that I used to have to fight against is as CrossFit as I'm including myself in this because I'm exactly like it as well. They want what's the newest supplement? Or super complicated training method? And I'm like, are you eating protein and drinking water? That simple stuff. Like, what is the, like, most complicated diet, for example? I mean, like, what's the most common? How can you make eating protein as complicated as possible? It's like, really hard to sell to those personality types. And like I said, I'm including myself in that. But hey, we're just going to keep beating down these basics until you fucking do them because there's no point doing anything else.

[24:27] Kristen: I think CrossFitters are a really interesting group of people because on the one hand, you have a group of really motivated, like, over motivated human beings, right, who turn up to the gym four, five, six times a week, who have proven that they're coachable because they're turning up to a coached fitness program and who are willing to try new things, right? Which puts us, you know, automatically that separates them from the general population. However, you're right, they also have personality traits of wildly impatient, like, want to be awesome at everything yesterday and being a little bit magpie. Like, what's next, what's next, what's next? What are you doing next with you've got handstand push ups? OK, well now you're going to do weighted handstand push ups or whatever. Okay? So I think. And I think this is true of any fitness community now. Whether that is a gym. A physical gym like the one that I run. Or the one that you attend. Or whether it is your ninjas on your dojo who are all over the country. Whether it is a running club. Whether it is some of these Facebook pages that you see. Where people subscribe to the same Facebook page and they're doing the same exercises. Whatever. In any fitness community. If the people at the top so the ones who are running the community are the ones who are leading the community. If we stick to the message. If we stick to the message. Right. If we don't let ourselves get distracted by the new sexy thing on Instagram. Or what the guy over the road is doing. Or what the new thing is written about in the Daily Mail or the Guardian or The Lancet. Whatever. If we stick to the message. Which is be consistent. Turn up. Do the work. Be consistent. Drink water. Like if we can do that and we have the ability to kind of rein in this community and by and large keep them on track. And I think that's where a lot of my mental, not a lot of my mental energy, a measurable percent of my mental energy every week, every day goes to saying things like, great job, you turned out, you smashed the workout. This is like your second or third time training this week. That's amazing. You're going to see the results. We're doing a twelve week strength cycle at the moment. Every single day I have to remind people not to put too much weight on the bar. Like it's going to get heavier, I promise. But for today, this is what we're doing and here's why. And then explaining to them why over and over, repeating the explanation of why consistency works, why it's more important than intensity, or why it's more it's better to do a good thing every day for 90 days than 17 good things for three days. So. Yeah. You're right. Coaching CrossFitters is interesting. Coaching any community is interesting. But it is the responsibility of the people at the top to stay the course. Which can be really hard when you're in an industry that can be super cutthroat and where there's always a new thing that's going to give you the edge over your competition and you're like. No gang. I know what I'm doing. Let's just say the course.

[27:53] Hayley Food Ninja: It's so hard, isn't it? Obviously I've been talking about people sort of creating their own version of being healthy and what that looks like for them. And that's something I'm really passionate about because obviously you created your version of healthy by the time we'd finished your version of healthy was paying more attention to your recovery and balance and once we started on the food, you didn't actually need to pay any attention to it because you already knew what you were doing. So it wasn't that, it was other bit. The reason that you got such an amazing result is because you were kind of already using that ethos in your gym in the way that you coached. So rather than before we asked a press record, who we're talking about the analogy of like a box jump. Rather than saying oh, you do CrossFit. Unless you can do a 24 inch box jump, you're not healthy. You again look at all your members as individuals and try and help them decide what's their version of healthy. It doesn't have to ever be a box jump. So I think the reason that you got such a great result in what we did is your eosos of how you coach very much matches up to what I do, isn't it?

[29:05] Kristen: Oh yeah, we knew that we were very similar, I think from the off. It was so interesting as our coaching relationship progressed to see the ways in which we were similar in many ways I wish so much that we had recordings of some of our weekly calls.

[29:22] Hayley Food Ninja: Because thank God that was all podcast.

[29:28] Kristen: Fully nuts in this gym here and again we talk about my gym in my community. My gym is a reflection of my beliefs that's it right and every fitness community is ultimately a reflection of the beliefs of the person at the top. And so yeah, my beliefs are that everyone is different. I know that's obvious. But everyone is profoundly different and people come in much the same way I did. Came to you and said. Well. I think I want to lose weight. When what they're really saying is I don't feel quite right with myself and I know that something has to change but the only vocabulary I have to express that is I think I want to lose weight. And so, you know, when you get and then we get people moving regularly, well, that can unlock a whole new set of feelings and expectations and someone's like, God, I have way more energy than I've ever had before. They haven't lost an ounce but they're sleeping better and their mood is slightly enhanced. They start developing performance goals. People start saying I'd really love to be able to lift X or I'd love to be able to do a pull up or whatever. And so yes, over the course of a coaching relationship, people's wants or their goals start to shift. Definitely some people come in here saying I want to lose weight and that is their goal and I am 100% down with that because I know they've landed in the office of somebody who is going to do everything in their power to do that with them safely, effectively and ethically. But yeah, treating people. As individuals. It sounds so obvious. It really does, I think, require a level of empathy and experience that well, the empathy, I think you're either born with or not. You can train it. The experience comes from just like having done this for eleven years now and having seen every kind of person under the sun come through my door and realizing that every single one of them is valid, like whatever it is thereafter, their wants and needs are valid. If somebody comes to me and says, well, like, I came to you, if somebody comes to me and says, I want a six pack, I'm not like, yeah, sorry, we don't do that in here. If that's what somebody wants, I am going to do my level best to help them get it. But you can believe that we're going to unpack some other shit along the way, right? Yeah, we are.

[31:54] Hayley Food Ninja: In much the same way that kind of happened with you is when somebody comes to you with that goal, you're like, I never say to people, I want to be a size ten. I'm like, okay, right, let's get started. Because, you know, if you do things properly, the minute they start experiencing the other benefits, they're like, actually don't really give a shit about that. What about this other thing that I've started to feel better? And 100% clients that I have always changed their goals midway through. They never end up with what they came for, but they end up with something better.

[32:28] Kristen: Something better, yes. And as a coach, you just have to be willing to just kind of keep them roughly between the lines. Right. Okay, let's keep training. Let's keep hydrating. How are your stress levels? Little things, like when people get sick, people get physically sick, encouraging them to rest. Yeah. You know, none of this, like, sweat through a cold nonsense. Like, dude, you're poorly, go to bed.

[32:53] Hayley Food Ninja: Maintenance, calories. Please do not be in a calorie deficit when you're sick.

[32:58] Kristen: Right. Just simple stuff like that, where you can just keep people on a path towards every day being slightly better than the day before, or every day being moving them slightly towards their goals, I should say. Yeah. Inevitably their goals are going to pivot or change or grow. Yes. But it's about having the knowledge and the empathy and the patience to do that with them. And this is why, Haley, you and I are never going to be wealthy. What we do is very labor intensive, and we do it because we love it and we feel strongly about it. I'm kind of okay with that. Right?

[33:35] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah, I'm okay with that.

[33:36] Kristen: I drive a shitty car, but I have a clean conscience.

[33:39] Hayley Food Ninja: Exactly. I'm not going to be anytime soon posting my stripe statement online, which is what a lot of those type of coaches do, which is like, hey, look at my stripe statement. I've got 165 clients subscriptions. I'm like, wow, you must be doing a really good job. Like dealing with 165 clients a month. They're obviously getting a shitload of your time every week.

[34:07] Kristen: I don't even know I don't even know what to say to that. But again, do you know what I'm like? Okay, and then move on. Because if I start getting worried about that kind if I start thinking, oh, why aren't I posting my strife statement? Are people going to think I'm unsuccessful? You start going down that rabbit hole, and suddenly you've really lost yourself in terms of your message, your program, the benefit, you know, you can deliver to your clients. And I think in many ways, I say to so many of my clients, like Instagram, instagram is not your friend, my darling. Like, Instagram isn't there to make you feel good about yourself. It's there to make you feel just badly enough about yourself that you're willing to spend money on whatever it is Instagram is advertising to you. And so that's a lesson that Fit Pros should take on board as well. Comparison is the thief of joy. And if you're on there judging your affect in your business and your plan and your programming based on somebody else's stripe statement, you're already losing. You're already losing a lot.

[35:10] Hayley Food Ninja: Absolutely. I think whenever I see because I am still susceptible to that kind of thing sometimes. Because it's really hard. Or I've certainly found that over the past eight and a half years of running my business. It's really hard to keep putting that message out there because sometimes people just don't want to listen. And it never gets as much reaction as. Hey. I can help you look sexy for Christmas in just three weeks. And you do sometimes get a little bit demoralized by that. But I always have, like, four words that I say to myself when I start to look at that kind of stuff and think, you know, why aren't I getting that reaction? And it is low volume, high impact. Like, that's all I care about. I don't care if I've only got three onetoone coach, because you know how I do my one to one coaching. It's very intense, and I can't really deal with an awful lot of people at times.

[36:05] Kristen: She's all up in your grill, folks.

[36:10] Hayley Food Ninja: But the impact and being able to chat with people who were my clients five years ago, who was still messaging me, going, hey, everything is still amazing, that is way to that list.

[36:25] Kristen: We ended our client relationship, like, a year ago this month. It was October last year. And I've never felt better. I've never felt better. And there are days when I look at the things that I do now as a matter of course, that would have been inconceivable two years ago. Absolutely inconceivable. Yeah.

[36:45] Hayley Food Ninja: Amazing. Amazing. The other thing I wanted to ask you about is you very specifically target a certain type of person that you love, not that you exclude anyone else, but you love to have a certain type of person in your gym, don't you? And I think this is amazing. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

[37:04] Kristen: Yeah, well, I kind of consider our target to be like the antitarget, because traditionally, if you Google CrossFit, let's say you are likely to come across lots and lots of images of extremely shredded men and women, like men and women with enormous muscles and very low body fat, wearing teeny wingy shorts and lifting gargantuan weights. And that definitely is a part of CrossFit's brand which is helping elite athletes become a little more elite. I would say that we are sort of the antithesis of that only because there are way more normal people in the world who want to get a little bit fitter than there are elite athletes. So we're trying to make our offer as broad and inclusive as possible. I want people of every size, shape, level of ability and really that's where CrossFit started. CrossFit's message was about making its offer as broad and inclusive as possible because functional fitness is for everyone. Not just it's for everyone, but it's essential to everyone. We need the same kinds of movement patterns, all of us, in order to be healthy. And so we need to get as many different kinds of people into the gym as possible because our mission is to serve the community. Our mission is to get as many people as fitter as we can. Our target market, if you like, is, and this is written on our wall, any member of our community who feels as though their needs are not met in traditional or commercial gym environments, that's who I want. And currently that number includes about 200 people of all ages. Our youngest member is five in our CrossFit kids class, our oldest member is 68 or nine who is a grandma who's had a hip replacement. We have rugby players, we have soldiers, we have airmen and women, we have nurses, doctors, teachers, stay at home mums. We have people whose body fat percentage currently is above 50%. We have people whose body fat percentage is currently less than 6%. And we train them all together in an environment that is encouraging and welcoming and supportive, because I believe that health should not be reserved for the already healthy. Fitness is not the preserve of the already athletic. And I feel really passionate about that as somebody who wasn't fit and wasn't healthy and was overweight and was conditioned to believe that I was not sporty as a young person simply because I never found anything in PE that interested me. I feel it's a strong responsibility to go out into the community and find those people and bring them here, the ones who want to get fitter and healthier and make that possible for them.

[40:16] Hayley Food Ninja: Which I think is amazing because unfortunately, unsurprisingly, I think with there's so much kind of like lip service being paid to inclusivity and all that kind of stuff. But within the fitness industry, there are still people who have bad experiences going into gyms because of the way they look or where they are right now, which is horrifying.

[40:44] Kristen: Look at the number of videos on TikTok YouTube reels of people who just go to gyms and video other people, which is so offensive to me on so many levels. But those are the ones that get posted, those are the ones that go viral. The number of people that I've spoken to in here who have had bad experiences in commercial gyms, it's outrageous. And it doesn't have to be, okay. Someone videos you and makes a laughingstock of you on TikTok. It could just be somebody being rude, somebody being dismissive of the work that you're doing or the weights that you're lifting or the space that you're taking up. Yeah. It's grim, I know. No, I don't know. I suspect it affects women slightly more than men. Men still have terrible experiences in gyms. Men who don't fit what is traditionally classically masculine or athletic don't like going into gyms. Women have the added element of sexual harassment, which does happen.

[41:52] Hayley Food Ninja: Absolutely.

[41:52] Kristen: People being and we know that we've had members experienced that. And so, yeah, commercial gyms, traditional gyms are not inclusive. They're not made for everybody and not everybody feels welcome in them. And so we're here to try and provide some additional services that can help the ones who don't feel comfortable there.

[42:17] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah. And in fact, those are the people who need the most help because they're not getting the experience of being in a gym. They're probably not exposed to an awful lot of fitness stuff because they don't feel that content resonates with them and therefore they don't have the knowledge and the skills that they need to even just get started.

[42:37] Kristen: There's a lot of barriers to entry and when the two most accessible accessible when the two most readily available entry points are Fit pros on Instagram, a commercial gym that excludes the needs of a lot of the population. And in this day and age, where we know more than ever that health outcomes are based on your base level of health and fitness, as in, if you get COVID, you being a fit, well and healthy person is going to mean that your outcomes far, far outweigh those of somebody who is not fit, well and healthy. We have to do more than ever to make fitness and health more accessible, actually accessible, yes.

[43:25] Hayley Food Ninja: Rather than a lot of the lip service that you see. Which, before I restarted CrossFit again, I was going to a commercial gym here in Bournemouth, quite a big chain. And they've started putting posters up in the gym with people who look slightly different and talking over the canoe every so often there's like, we're an all inclusive gym. And if you're this or like any body shape or body size, and yet there was no one in the gym like that when I went there. So I feel like a good thing to put on your posters, isn't it? But you actually have to fucking do something about it as well.

[44:09] Kristen: I mean, part of me wants to be like, you know what, it's a start. Their understanding, or there is at least some understanding, that the traditional gym setting is scary, intimidating, off putting, non inclusive. It takes time.

[44:25] Hayley Food Ninja: It takes time for that message to come through.

[44:27] Kristen: The proof will be in six months'time or a year's time. Does that gym have more members of all ages, shapes, sizes and levels of ability? If the answer is yes, great. It means they took a step in the right direction towards attracting new people. If the answer is no, it means that message isn't getting out or it isn't being supported once those different body people turn up at your gym, and that's when it's like, okay, so posters are enough. Now. You need to make sure that your Pts are trained up to train different bodies, that your facilities are going to make that OK for people. Even simple things like, we have sort of looking for unisex changing facilities and shower facilities. I mean, that was kind of out of necessity, but we were sort of informed later that that actually makes us slightly more attractive to members of the trans community who aren't necessarily going to feel comfortable using gender facilities, probably because of bad experiences that they've had in them. We have a trans flag in the gym, we have trans members, and we want people, the trans community, to feel safe here. And so, yeah, going out into that community and saying to you, what would help? What would be better for you being.

[45:41] Hayley Food Ninja: Proactive about it rather than reactively, just sticking a flag up.

[45:46] Kristen: Yeah, that's just one example of ways in which you can then follow through with your message of inclusivity. And it doesn't have to be a lot. We have a member here who has cerebral palsy and he's brilliant. Like, he's been training with us a couple of years and we don't advertise that we will train members who identify as disabled. But he came in and he was like, his mom trained here and was like, do you think Austin could join? And I was like, well, let's find out what he can do. And he's been training with us on and off for like three years now. And so when people come in to a class and they see Austin grinding away, doing a modified version of the workout, that's like, oh, so disabled people are welcome here? I'm like, yeah, sure.

[46:30] Hayley Food Ninja: Literally anyone who wants to join in, just encourage them.

[46:34] Kristen: If you're crazy enough to want to come into a dark warehouse and lift weights in the winter, because it's going to be winter soon and wintercrust that, you know, is like a whole new level. If you're crazy enough to want to do that, you're one of us, we'll figure it out.

[46:55] Hayley Food Ninja: That's amazing to hear, and obviously I knew you were doing all of that, but it's just super important. And I think one of the reasons I love your new project that we're going to talk about now is obviously, again, you've gone with that ethos for your gym of letting people decide what is their version of healthy and helping them create that. And your new project, I think, is super important because you are now trying to influence the younger generation to say, hey, guess what? Kardashians aren't actually the only version of what healthy might look like. There are some other ways to actually decide whether you look, feel and perform, kind of in terms of heading towards optimal health. So can you tell us a little bit about your new project? Yes.

[47:46] Kristen: So this year, we accidentally started a revolution.

[47:53] Hayley Food Ninja: You have to say I know.

[47:56] Kristen: Like the third one. We started a project called the Strong Girl Squad, and it started with a member coming to me and she was a teacher. She came to me after class and said, coach, can I get your advice on something? She had two girls in her year ten form who so year ten is like, 1415, who wanted to start exercising. I'm like, Great, I'm into it. They weren't really inspired by what was in their PE lessons, so they wanted to do something else. So they do what you do when you live in a small town in Lincolnshire. They went and joined the local leisure center. So they went and joined a commercial gym, because that's what you can do when you're 14. And they had a terrible experience where they were harassed by male members to the point where police, police had to get involved. One of the girls was cornered one of the girls was cornered by a man who wouldn't let her move until she gave him her number.

[48:55] Hayley Food Ninja: Wow.

[48:56] Kristen: Yeah. Annie, my member, is telling me this and I'm getting angrier and angrier and I'm just like, this is appalling. And she said, So what I want the girls are still they're not being put off, but they are too afraid to go back to the gym. Can you recommend any, like, online trainers or Instagram trainers or YouTube channels that they could follow in the safety of their own homes was the word that was terrible. And, like, Haley, you know me well enough to know the red mist came down. I was spitting spinal fluid. I was so angry. And so do you know when you get so angry that you get calm?

[49:37] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah.

[49:38] Kristen: I did one of these where I was like, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to load my car full of barbells and I'm going to come to your gym and I'm going to teach those girls how to lift weights, and any of their friends who want to do it can do it too, and I'm going to do it for free. And she's like, really? Yeah. I went full. I have a very specific set of skills. And we organized this day where myself and two other female coaches literally filled my car full of weights and barbells. My back bumper was sitting about that far off the tarmac, and we drove to this school, and Annie had helped us coordinate from her end, and we delivered two weightlifting workshops, introduction to Deadlifting, which is the simplest and most fundamental weightlifting movement there is. And we had the best day. And they were terrified when they came in. And then by the end of it, they were like, highfiving, and they're asking us to put more weight on the bar. And the teachers who were helping facilitate were like, did you see the look on Megan's face? She was so I'm never seen her that excited or I've never seen Esme participate in a PE lesson before. Like, there was just this huge buzz. And so we were like, I think maybe we've hit on something here. And the more and so we were like, okay. We get the impression that girls are not taught how to weight lift. We know this is true by the time girls are 1415, by the time kids are 14 or 15, boys are very likely to have been taken into the weight room at a gym. Their brother will take them or their dad or their football coach or the bunch of them will just get together and go, and they will have a mess around on the weights, whereas girls won't, and they won't be offered that opportunity. And so by the time they get to adulthood, 18, 1920, and they're going out and joining gyms, the weight room is entirely the boys preserve. You don't catch women in the weight room. Also, women have always traditionally been steered towards cardio. Cardio is how girls exercise, right? You get on a treadmill, you get on a Cross trainer, you do Zumba. And I'm nothing against any of those programs, but we really aren't shown any of the practical here's how to lift weights or given any of the information about the benefit of strength, conditioning and resistance training, namely that it will help regulate your hormones, it helps maintain your bone density. It is brilliant for girls to get involved in, but we don't get shown how. And so we started the Strong Girl Squad, where we go out to schools and we teach this lifting workshop and we sign posts girls towards their nearest CrossFit gym or gym, where we think they might be interested in training 1415 year olds. We also run holiday clubs here at Ellen CrossFit here in Lincoln. So we have been working with the local council to secure some funding for holiday clubs. And it's an extension of the free school meals program.

[52:54] Hayley Food Ninja: Wow.

[52:54] Kristen: So the girls that are coming in to these holiday clubs, by and large, this club is free. And we teach them how to lift, and we feed them a healthy meal, like an actually healthy meal, balanced meal. And then we sit there and eat with them, and we're, like, absolutely scranting away. Because eating is good, right?

[53:15] Hayley Food Ninja: Yes.

[53:15] Kristen: And we're filling them full of healthy snacks, and then we do, like, activities with them. And it's the best thing ever, the most fun. And so this project has just kind of it grew out of that one conversation with one member. And we've now set up a CIC, a community interest company. We're out seeking funding. We're delivering workshops all over the county. And I almost cannot overstate the impact that I have watched it have on some girls who maybe don't look like crosscountry runners, who aren't inspired by the PE curriculum, and who therefore think that exercise and sport is not for them. And we are trying to show them that not only PE. Isn't sports, PE is a very thin wedge of the available physical activity on the planet. And so giving them that message of girls, there are so many other things that you could try. Here's one of them. See what you think. It's been a measurable. I mean, the impact it's had on me has been immeasurable. But, yeah, it is an extension of that idea that fitness and wellness and health is everyone's birthright. And in our modern society, some communities girls, the LGBTQ community, people who are overweight or who don't feel confident for any reason in their skin, some communities need a little extra help to get to a place where they can access their fitness and wellness. And we are delighted to be a group of coaches, female coaches, who are trying to reach girls at the age where they sometimes disengage from physical activity forever. So, yeah, the Strong Girl Squad taking over the taking over the planet girl, I'm telling you now, it's so good.

[55:11] Hayley Food Ninja: I can't even imagine that. I love it when sometimes, if it's appropriate, encourage my clients to maybe start CrossFit. And I've got a client at the moment, Francine. She's a lovely lady, and she actually goes to ately's CrossFit. Because when I read darling yes. When I read that interface where do you live, Francis?

[55:34] Kristen: Derby.

[55:34] Hayley Food Ninja: I was like because she was kind of like, I like that you do CrossFit Haiti. I've seen that you do. Like, could I do it? And I'm like, absolutely. Like you could do it. Maybe I will.

[55:44] Kristen: Maybe.

[55:45] Hayley Food Ninja: I said, Where do you live? She went derby. I went, Hold on a moment.

[55:52] Kristen: This is a mutual friend of ours, absolutely friendly, again, from CrossFit Audio, who is one of my best friends and owns a fantastic CrossFit gym in Dairy crossroaded deviant crossed.

[56:03] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah. So Francine went along. Sorry. The point of me saying this was like, I get excited. I mean, I get excited to talk to my clients anyway. I'm like what they've been doing, but I get excited. But I know she's being to CrossFit and she's like and I can pick up this way. And I get so excited because I can see that. I mean, she's like, similar age to me, right? So she's never done anything like that before.

[56:26] Kristen: The what, like 32?

[56:28] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah, 32. But I can imagine that feeling must be magnified when you're doing it with, like, a young girl who's never, like, deaf, fresh and new and you've just introduced them to something which is probably going to make their whole life so much better. It must be super exciting.

[56:51] Kristen: It's bonkers. And if it was one girl at a time, it would be exciting. But, like, I'm going to Laos on Thursday to teach. Six sessions bounced to bounce back to back to back with like, 25 girls each. Like, 150 girls are learning how to deadlift on Thursday, right? Yeah. And it is because they come in so afraid and so intimidated and quiet, but by the end of the session, they're all begging me to put more weights on the bar. We're having a great time. I'm serious, Haley. I am serious. And because they are singlesex classes, like, this is actually really important. Here's another, you know, it's important to understand your clients. It's important to understand what's going to help them excel. We know that girls at that age will struggle to engage in a new skill, something they think might make them look a bit silly. If there's boys there, yeah, they will do it, right. You get them in a room with all girls where they're all kind of on a level playing field of not knowing what they're doing, and they just listen and they just engage and they play and they have a go at it. And by the end of it, we have had no end of people messaging and saying, I want to get my girl involved in this. How do I do that? Where can I go? It's awesome. It's just the best. And I feel as though obviously, oh, my God, I love this gym so much, and it has been the greatest joy of my life to build this community. But the Strong Girl Squad, I think, could even could add to that legacy, if you like, or could be something that actually goes nationwide. And that's the dream.

[58:25] Hayley Food Ninja: That would be amazing, wouldn't it? And just so important when, as you say, the only things that girls are exposed to these days in terms like instagram and very different kind of generally very, very skinny girls or doing different sorts of exercise and a lot of celebrities on these ridiculous celebrity diets and stuff like that. So I always say to people, I'm so glad my daughter's 27 now, so I'm so glad I haven't got a teenager now because, oh, my God, I would be terrified to see what they will look at on Instagram these days and how it must affect their idea of what a healthy person is or looks like or does, or the way that a healthy person eats. So it would be amazing if that kind of went nationwide and you had a complete to that.

[59:21] Kristen: We know that obviously social media is incredibly influencing on young minds, on young girls, but we also know that girls having real life role models, people in their lives that they can relate to, that they can look up to and who can hopefully work to guide them and to lead them, is more influencing than social media. Having real people, teachers, coaches, family members who love them and encourage them and guide them is the only counter to what's on social media. And so assembling a team of female Valkyrie coaches nationwide who can step into that role is the plan. Because it's the only antidote, is giving them real human beings that they can look up to and love. That's it. That's what we got to do.

[01:00:19] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah. That's so important. And what we're going to do is in the show notes, I will put the link. If you can give me some links to like how people can donate stuff or get involved or whatever, I will stick the link in the show notes and just have read of that and see how you can get involved if you want to do that. I have actually thank you. I know that I have quite an extensive workout wardrobe, as you know, and because we've just moved, I've just been through it. Also, I have some stuff to send you for any girls who wants nothing ridiculous in workout because, you know, I've got, you know, super loud shit. Normally if any of those girls are up for looking absolutely ridiculous, I've got some wadwear to send your way.

[01:01:05] Kristen: They love it. The brighter and crazier, the better. We asked for donations of like, sports, gears, shoes, leggings, whatever, because quite a lot of the girls don't have a lot of disposable income to be outfitting themselves for the gym. We got so much stuff sent through and they went wild. Like they went wild this summer. Yeah. And the brighter and crazier and the more coordinated, the better they'll do it. Thank you. You're a little person, so it'll fit some of my little people.

[01:01:40] Hayley Food Ninja: Awesome. Cool. So the final question I'm going to ask you before we wrap this up is what does health mean to you? What is your version of healthy and do you believe that you've now achieved that?

[01:01:53] Kristen: What a great question. I believe or I feel that healthy is when my body and mind are working at like an 80% optimum rate. When because I think 80% is about as much as anybody can hope for day to day, right?

[01:02:13] Hayley Food Ninja: Yes.

[01:02:13] Kristen: If my body will do all the things. That I want and needed to do, if I can work out, if I can get through the day without a banging headache, if I can, you know, be up for all the physical challenges that people throw at me, and if I can feel like my mood and productivity is like an eight out of ten, that's healthy to me. And I don't put an enormous amount of stock in my aesthetic anymore, other than, like, is my skin looking okay? Right?

[01:02:50] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah.

[01:02:53] Kristen: If I'm two kilos or four kilos heavier or lighter than I was this time last year, but all those other markers are in place, yeah, that's healthy to me. Can I do the things I want to do 80% of the time? Yeah, that'll do it'll. Do me tender age of 41. If I can maintain 80% efficiency from now until the time I'm 51, I'll be delighted.

[01:03:18] Hayley Food Ninja: Yeah, that's good. That's a good measure of health, I think, and a little bit like when we first worked together when I was talking about having those different gas burners, and you can't have all your work ones turned up and then still expect to be optimal in all the other areas. So I guess it's balance, isn't it? Which ends up being quite a common answer when I ask people what does health mean to them.

[01:03:42] Kristen: Yeah, I'm not surprised. And the balance that I've achieved in my life or the balance that I've achieved in the last couple of years having worked with you, is extremely precious to me. I recognize I can see it now, and I can see when it's getting out of balance and I'm no longer satisfied. It will be fine. It's like, well, it won't be unless you pull back and do the work. That's what it means to me, because.

[01:04:11] Hayley Food Ninja: I think people think that when you achieve what healthy means to you, oh, that's it, I've done it. But the real skill is in actually realizing that some of those threads, you're going to let go of them sometimes and actually, how do you gather them all back in to make sure nothing sort of unravels?

[01:04:26] Kristen: I think that's a big one, is knowing that it's never done.

[01:04:31] Hayley Food Ninja: Another point you never done. Right.

[01:04:36] Kristen: How hard is that to put in an instagram post? Health is a continuum. It goes from the day you're born to the day die, and it's never like, oh, what health completed? It made like, that doesn't right. You can put goals down and you can work towards those, and you can have, like, measures as you go through the continuum of health, but it's never done. And you can't just be like, well, I've achieved all my goals. That's me frozen in time from now until whenever I grave out. So it's a constant adjustment and balancing act. And I think sometimes those of us well, people like you and I were like, big tick box people. It's like tick done and we could potentially fall into the trap of thinking that, yeah, I don't have to worry about my health anymore. Fixed it, fix it.

[01:05:37] Hayley Food Ninja: Done. Awesome. Thank you so much. It's been so nice to talk to you. As I said before, you always have something interesting to say. It's always a good conversation, so I've really enjoyed it.

[01:05:51] Kristen: Wow. It's always a pleasure.

[01:05:53] Hayley Food Ninja: Thank you. And maybe I'll get you back on when Strong Girl Squad is about to take over the world and you can tell us how that's going.

[01:06:00] Kristen: Well, yeah, when I'm going in for my OBE, we can catch up, right? I joke about that all the time. I'm like, yeah, this is how we're all getting obese. And people like, that's not why we're doing this. Yeah.

[01:06:19] Hayley Food Ninja: And I'll be like.

[01:06:23] Kristen: I'm not going to say, no, we don't. It's funny. At the moment, we're up for an award, just like with the Lincolnshire like Active Lincolnshire Award. Wow. And I'm delighted because I'm hoping it will raise the profile of the project. Right. Not because I'm looking forward to putting on a frock and going to the Wards ceremony, but, yeah, there's some really exciting stuff in the works for the next year and I would love, love to come back on and talk to you about it and highlight some of our girls, some of our success stories because there's lots of them already.

[01:06:49] Hayley Food Ninja: That'd be awesome. Amazing. Thank you you so much and thank you, everyone, for listening. And I'll be back next week with Am. I doing another guest now. I think it's sold out next week. So, until then, take care of.

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