The Mindset & Strategy Before You Step Foot in the Gym

Connecting Mind to Muscle: The Secret to Aesthetics

Before you touch a single barbell or dumbbell, you need to understand that hypertrophy is as much visual art as it is physical science. You cannot just blindly move weights from point A to point B.

To look truly jacked and snatched, you have to actively build the mind-muscle connection. When you perform an exercise, your brain should be 100% focused on the specific muscle group being targeted. Visualize the tissue stretching under the load and forcefully contracting at the peak of the movement. Underneath each exercise below, you will find the exact aesthetic target—the specific visual change we are hunting for—to help you connect your mind to the movement. If you can’t feel the target muscle working, you need to slow down the movement, reset your posture, and focus.

The Midlife Pivot: Why Your Old Tricks Don’t Work Anymore

This entire system is built specifically for women in their mid-30s and up—those who are entering perimenopause and those who are fully post-menopausal.

Let’s be completely honest: everything you did in your 20s and early 30s to manage your body is not working anymore. If you have been a chronic dieter your whole life, your body is dealing with a host of built-up issues. Years of being in a chronic calorie deficit, mixed with intense roller skating, endless scrimmaging, and piling way too much extra cardio and intense plyometrics on top of it all, has absolutely wrecked your engine.

You are reading this right now because your metabolism has slowed to a crawl. You have hit a wall where you physically cannot decrease your calories anymore—doing so is completely unsafe and unsustainable. You cannot starve your way out of this phase of life.

It is time to completely flip the script. You need to switch your plan entirely to getting jacked. We are going to train like bodybuilders to make our muscles physically bigger, focusing entirely on muscle mass, not just basic muscle strength. Building bigger muscles is the ultimate key to repairing your metabolic health and firing up a slow, stubborn metabolism.

While we are going to train like bodybuilders to build some big-ass muscles and look jacked, we are not going to eat like bodybuilders on a restrictive cutting diet. Instead, we are going to eat enough clean calories to give our metabolism the space it needs to heal. Once you build that solid foundation of muscle mass, your body will finally start running the way it’s supposed to.

The Reality Check: Social Media vs. Real Life

While we are on the subject of getting jacked, let’s have a serious reality check about what you see online.

A lot of these fitness influencers you see on your feed have muscles popping out everywhere while staying unbelievably lean. Let’s be real: that is not natural. A huge percentage of them are on high amounts of testosterone or other performance-enhancing gear to maintain that level of lean muscle mass.

Stop looking at them and comparing your progress to theirs—unless you plan on taking a bunch of steroids yourself. I highly, highly do not recommend going down that path. You are already a roller skater. You already live an incredibly active, healthy, and badass lifestyle. In my opinion, you do not need drugs to get the body or the performance you want. Let your body do everything naturally and trust the process. (But hey, don’t just listen to me—I’m a trainer, not a doctor!). Build your mass honestly, feed it well, and own your natural power.

The Fuel Rule: Why a Low-Carb Diet Fails This Plan

Let’s be completely clear: if you are trying to do this workout while on a low-carb diet, this is not going to work.

When you go to the gym for a hypertrophy block, you aren’t going there simply to waste time burning random calories. You are going there to execute a high-performance, maximum-effort workout. You absolutely cannot lift to your true capacity or hit the deep, muscle-building reps if your body is running on empty. You need fuel, and that fuel means carbohydrates.

Scientifically, your muscles rely heavily on stored glucose, known as glycogen, to produce energy rapidly under heavy loads. If your glycogen stores are depleted from a low-carb diet, your muscles will physically lose power mid-set, your intensity will tank, and you won’t trigger the muscle mass growth you need to upgrade your metabolism. We are talking about clean, performance-driven carbohydrates here—not processed sweets or donuts, but high-quality energy sources.

Your Target Carbohydrate Options

• Pre-Workout Fuel (Eat 60–90 minutes before your workout for sustained energy): A slice of Ezekiel bread topped with avocado or a thin layer of nut butter, a whole-grain or brown rice cake with peanut butter and a light drizzle of honey, or a small portion of slow-burning oatmeal or a banana.
• Post-Workout Recovery (Eat within 60 minutes after your workout to restock muscle energy): Clean, easily digestible starches like steamed white Jasmine rice paired with your protein, baked sweet potatoes or yams to immediately kickstart tissue recovery, or air-popped popcorn prepared with a clean oil like avocado oil.

Nutrition is 90% of Your Backbone: Don’t Let It Go Up in Flames

If you completely ignore your nutrition, everything you do during these intense gym sessions will go up in flames. Your body naturally prefers to hold onto or add fat tissue because fat is an incredibly easy, passive fuel source for it to store. If you don’t feed the system correctly, you can end up losing your hard-earned muscle tissue while staying soft and soft-looking around your stomach and hips.

The more physical muscle mass you build, the harder your metabolism has to work every single day to maintain it. Your nutrition is the absolute backbone of this entire transformation.

To protect your hard work, take a day—typically Sunday—to completely dial in and prepare. Use that day to cook your bulk proteins, pre-mix your seasonings, and portion out your pre- and post-workout carbs so they are always ready to grab. This keeps you from screwing up your nutrition on your way to the gym or rushing home starving after a hard session.

The Truth About Nutrition Plans: Do Your Own Research

I do not hand out generic nutrition plans because every single human body is vastly different.

Take me, for example. I am an elite athlete, I have been skating at least three times a week for 2 to 3 hours at a time, and I have been on eight wheels since 1986. For years, I kept myself in a constant calorie deficit, meaning my body was essentially starving while trying to perform at the highest level. Because of that chronic under-eating and intense athletic output, I completely threw my thyroid and my liver function out of whack. I am exactly one of those athletes who historically did not eat enough food, so my recovery and nutrition strategy is going to look completely different from yours.

You need to go down your own rabbit hole when it comes to dialing in your food. Track your food intake meticulously for at least a few weeks just to become fully conscious of exactly what you are putting into your body. Pay close attention to how your pre- and post-workout meals make you feel.

If you need to hire a professional nutritionist to look at your bloodwork and your specific lifestyle, do it. But remember: knowledge is power. Do your own research, learn how your unique metabolism responds, and never blindly put the future of your physical health into someone else’s hands. Get educated, protect your mass, and fuel your body to win!

The Core Philosophy: Do Not Change the Exercises

To build actual, physical muscle mass, look jacked and snatched, and upgrade your metabolic engine, you must run this exact same program for a full 4 to 6 weeks.

Your muscles do not need new exercises every week. The first two weeks are simply your nervous system mastering the movements. Real muscle mass is built by mastering these specific patterns and forcing the tissue to adapt over time. That is exactly why we do not switch workouts.

If you do not have the equipment for this layout in your garage, it really is that simple: get a gym membership. Grab your bestie, get a gym membership, and go get this work done together.

Week 1: How to Hunt for Your Baseline Weight

On your very first week, your entire goal during those 3 to 4 sets is to figure out the exact weight that is right for you.

• The 12-Rep Rule: If you hit number 12, and you are not shaking, struggling, or losing your form, that weight is too light. Pick up a heavier weight.
• The Technical Failure Rule: You know you have found the right weight when you start losing your form. This does not mean you keep pushing with garbage, dangerous movement just to finish a rep. The second your form starts getting bad, that is your stopping point. That is your true max line.
• Lock It In: Once you find the weight where reps 8 through 12 make you shake and challenge your form, write it down. You are going to use that exact same weight next week when you start the routine over again.

How to Progress in Weeks 2–4

Once your baseline weights are written down from Week 1, you will systematically increase the demands of those exact same movements using Progressive Overload:

• Week 2: Use your locked-in Week 1 weights, but try to push for 1 to 2 more clean reps per set.
• Week 3: Once you can hit 12 reps with perfect form, bump the weight up slightly and drop back down to 8 reps.
• Week 4: Push that new, heavier weight for maximum density and reps.

Keep your rest periods strictly between 60 and 90 seconds to maximize metabolic stress.

The Weight Training Plan

Day 1: The Derby Base (Quad & Glute Engine)

Focus: Building thick, powerful leg mass to maintain your derby stance, generate explosive blocking power, and shape a firm, powerful lower body.

• Barbell or Goblet Squats
  • Volume: 4 sets x 8–12 reps
  • Aesthetic Target: Building sweep and definition in the front of the thighs (quadriceps) to create a firm, dense foundation.
  • Execution: Slow down-phase (3 seconds), pause at the bottom, drive up. Keep the tension on the quads.
• Walking Lunges (Weighted)
  • Volume: 3 sets x 10–12 reps per leg
  • Aesthetic Target: Lifting the tie-in area where the lower glutes meet the upper hamstrings, shaping and tightening the back of the legs.
  • Execution: Step deep to hit the glutes and hamstrings, maintaining total control.
• Romanian Deadlifts (RDLs) OR Dumbbell Glute Bridges (Alternate)
  • Volume: 4 sets x 8–10 reps
  • Aesthetic Target: Stripping away flabbiness from the back of the thighs and hardening the glute-hamstring junction.
  • RDL Execution: Hinge at the hips, feeling a massive stretch in the hamstrings before squeezing the glutes at the top.
  • Alternate Option: For anyone who struggles to keep their spine neutral and ends up hurting their lower back on RDLs, swap this out for Dumbbell Glute Bridges lying flat on the floor with a heavy dumbbell across your hips. It targets the exact same glute and hamstring engine but completely protects your lower back.
• Leg Press or Hack Squat
  • Volume: 3 sets x 12–15 reps
  • Aesthetic Target: Flooding the lower body with maximum blood flow to trigger overall leg density and keep the legs looking solid and sculpted.
  • Execution: High volume here to pack on metabolic stress. Do not lock out your knees at the top.

Day 2: The Core & Armor (Upper Body Mass)

Focus: Building a solid upper frame to take impact, clear packs, look incredibly jacked and snatched, and create a powerful physical presence.

• Dumbbell Bench Press
  • Volume: 4 sets x 8–12 reps
  • Aesthetic Target: Firming and tightening the chest tissue and under-arm area, providing a lifted, athletic upper frame.
  • Execution: Allows for a deeper range of motion than a barbell, putting maximum stretch on the chest fibers.
• Seated Cable Rows or Bent-Over Rows
  • Volume: 4 sets x 10–12 reps
  • Aesthetic Target: Carving out mid-back definition and posture, which physically tightens your baseline frame to make your waist appear visually smaller and more snatched.
  • Execution: Squeeze your shoulder blades together tightly at the peak of the movement to build back thickness.
• Overhead Dumbbell Press
  • Volume: 3 sets x 8–12 reps
  • Aesthetic Target: Building round, capped shoulders that create a beautiful, athletic frame and balance out the proportions of your arms.
  • Execution: Builds the shoulder caps needed for strong, stable bracing on the track.
• Lat Pulldowns
  • Volume: 3 sets x 10–12 reps
  • Aesthetic Target: Tapering the upper outer back, widening the upper frame slightly to accentuate the visual illusion of a smaller, tighter waistline.
  • Execution: Slow, controlled release on the way up to maximize the time under tension.

Day 3: The Lateral Engine (Hamstrings, Glutes & Hips)

Focus: Target the lateral stabilizers and posterior chain to maximize your crossover power, boundary control, and build a lifted, functional upper leg and hip profile.

• Hip Thrusts (Barbell or Smith Machine)
  • Volume: 4 sets x 10–12 reps
  • Aesthetic Target: Maximum glute development—building a high, round, and hard shape by targeting the absolute bulk of the muscle tissue.
  • Execution: Hold a 2-second hard squeeze at the top of every single rep. This is the absolute king for building glute mass.
• Bulgarian Split Squats
  • Volume: 3 sets x 8–12 reps per leg
  • Aesthetic Target: Deep independent sculpting of each leg, rounding out the glutes and leaning out the thighs.
  • Execution: Holds immense tension on one leg at a time, fixing left-to-right muscle imbalances from constantly turning left.
• Lateral Band Walks or Weighted Cable Hip Abductions
  • Volume: 3 sets x 15 reps per side
  • Aesthetic Target: Tightening the outer hips and the upper side-glutes (gluteus medius) to pull the silhouette together and provide structural stability.
  • Execution: Target the glute medius to build lateral stability and hip mass.
• Hanging Knee Raises or Weighted Cable Crunches
  • Volume: 3 sets x 12–15 reps
  • Aesthetic Target: Building a dense, defined abdominal wall to pull in a soft midsection and flatten the stomach through thick, functional muscle underneath.
  • Execution: Focus on the slow burn to build a solid, thick core wall that can absorb high-velocity impacts.

Now let’s get in the gym, slay this peri and post menopause phase, and let’s stay looking jacked and rollerskating forever. I would like every single one of you to join the rollerskating over 90 club!