Ep 459: Empowering Women to Master Strength and Longevity at Any Age – With Lalaina “Lala” Duncan

What does fitness look like as you get older?  How does being strong prepare you for life’s challenges?  Lalaina “Lala” Duncan started her coaching career at 37 and hasn’t looked back. She’s a highly sought after women’s strength and longevity coach and she’s all in on helping her clients prioritize their health and happiness. She’s seen her clients through life’s challenges from babies to cancer and everything in between.  I admire Lala for her work and I’m honored to be working with her to optimize her health. In this episode of The Health Fix Podcast, I interview Lala Duncan on her coaching style, holding space for her clients, what it’s like to train clients for life’s challenges, flexing on guys at the gym and her take on working with me. 

Resources From The Show:

• Instagram: @liftwithlala
• Instagram: @Dogpound
• Dogpound’s Website

Our Partners

Podcast Transcript

1:40 – Strength and longevity coaching

4:57 – Differences in training men vs women

9:28 – Negative self doubt in clients

9:57 – Can you be too old for lifting?

15:51 – Client improvement stories

25:12 – What brought Lala to working with Dr. Krause

33:40 – When is it time to go see your doctor

37:36 – How Lala hooked up with the Dog Pound gym

39:42 – Virtual online training

50:24 – Lala’s favorite lift and favorite workout

55:44 – How to work with Lala

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[Intro] Welcome to the Health Fix Podcast, where health junkies get their weekly

fix of tips, tools, and techniques to have limitless energy, sharp minds, and fit

physiques for life.

Hey Health Junkies! On this episode of the Health Fix Podcast, I’m interviewing

Lalaina “Lala” Duncan. She’s a highly sought after women’s strength and longevity

coach, and all in on helping her clients prioritize their health and happiness.

not only do I admire Lala for her work, we happen to work together to help optimize her health.

So in this episode of The Health Fix Podcast, I’m going to interview Lala on her coaching style

and your experience as well as what it’s like to work with me. So you guys can get a little sense

of what working with me is all about. So let’s introduce you to Lala Duncan.

Hey, health junkies. I love Lalaina, otherwise known as Lala Duncan on today. And she is a strength

and longevity coach. I love that title and we’re going to be getting into what that means

and how looking at strength and fitness as you get older evolves a little bit but how we can

embrace it and really get the results that we want as we get older. So, Lala, welcome to The

Health Fix Podcast. 

LALA: Thank you. I’m super excited to be on Jannine. 

JANNINE: Man, I’ve been thinking about

this podcast for a while because I was like, there’s so many things I want to talk about and so many

things I want people to hear. And one of the things that really struck me about you,

especially the first thing that jumps out on me on your Instagram is the strength and longevity

coach. Will you tell us a little bit about what that means to you and how you’re working with clients

in that department? 

LALA: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s something that just kind of naturally evolved for

me as well, a lot to do with my own personal journey, with my own fitness because I, long

story short, like I didn’t even start. I had never even picked up weights until like I

was 37 years old. So I kind of started strength training a little bit later in life. And then

I kind of fell into more strength sports. So I started out from going from doing nothing

like yoga and spinning classes to joining a strong man gym and then trying to compete

in strong woman competitions. So I kind of went from like one extreme to the other.

So then kind of from there I got into CrossFit kind of the same thing, just, you know, again,

going into more competitive strength sports arena. And then once I moved back to the US,

I started doing personal training and I started realizing that kind of like the way I was used to

training myself wasn’t really applicable to the people that I was training. I started training

primarily middle-aged men when I got to New York and then middle-aged women started to follow and

that was more of my demographic and I started to notice that we were all kind of searching for

for the same thing, which was, of course, obviously,

everyone wanted to look good, but more or less,

we all just wanted to feel our best.

So that’s kind of just how it started for me.

I had to evolve from more of like the sports,

being an athlete type of mentality when it came to training,

to kind of like, how can I sustain this

and keep doing it forever?

Like if you’re not training for a competition,

then what are you training for?

And so I mean, for me and everyone outside training,

we’re training for life, you know?

So.

JANNINE:  I love the concept of training for life.

So I think a lot of people, when we think of training,

you know, unfortunately, as it is in the U.S. in particular,

it’s like, I need to lose weight.

I need to get ready for this.

I need to get ready for that.

But it’s like, wait, wait, wait.

LALA: There’s always a short-term goal.

– Yeah.

JANNINE: Yes, yes, it’s like, what about life?

What about like, you know, I always talk to folks

and I’m guessing you’re probably in the same camp here.

Like, I don’t want to be in a nursing home ever.

Like, I don’t want assisted living,

and I want to be able to get off the toilet, you know,

at any given time.

LALA: By yourself.

JANNINE: Hands down, hands down.

And public bathrooms, I want to be able to hover

if I need to.

LALA: Yes, yeah, it’s important.

LALA: Absolutely.  

JANNINE: Incredibly.

So I’m guessing that a lot of your folks

are kind of thinking through that.

And one of the things that you had mentioned,

you were training like middle-aged men

and then switched to women.

What do you find is different between mentalities,

between men and women when it comes to fitness

and like the little intricacies?

LALA: So that’s interesting.

The way I would train them as far as exercise selection

and programming and things like that,

I always geared everyone towards strength training.

The difference is obviously the, you know,

how you break through to certain clients and try,

I would say with women, the hardest thing is the buy-in.

You know, with men, it’s a little bit different.

The buy-in is different.

With my male clients, ’cause I was training men

that were type A professional, very successful middle age,

getting them to warm up before loading the bar

would say like 225 for bench press,

that was the hardest thing.

Like getting my men out of this idea of,

well, I used to lift this much.

You know what I mean?

And then you really trying to get them to kind of dial it back,

focus on good form technique,

try to get them to understand that maybe the reason

why your shoulder hurts every time you bend just

because you’re doing it incorrectly.

You know what I mean?

So that was kind of the hardest thing.

For my female clients,

the buy-in was, like you said,

they wanted to lose weight

they wanted to work on just one area of the body. I don’t want to work my upper body. I don’t want

to get big, you know, these things. And what I will say is as much as it seems like the culture

has changed, there’s still a lot of us over a certain age where we still have that mentality.

We still have those scars that we were, you know, left with when we were growing up where someone

said something to us about looking big or girls don’t lift weights or you don’t need to be strong

like whatever it is like we all we’re still kind of stuck with that a little bit it’s hard to get

that out of out of your mind so really just trying to get them to buy in and say no what you really

need to do what you’re saying what you want to have this like toned physique really you need to

to build muscle and this is how we’re gonna do it.

So it’s just kind of sprinkling a little bit of sugar

on the salt a little bit for them and not completely.

You know, I don’t ever wanna,

I’ll never say to a client like, no, we’re not doing that.

Like, okay, great.

Like you wanna work on abs or glutes like I get it.

I absolutely 100% get it,

but we’re gonna do these other things too

’cause we have to look at you as the whole person

and the whole body and what’s healthiest for you

is not just working abs and glutes every session.

You know, same thing with the men,

it’s not just always chest day.

Like we have to work our legs too, you know?

So I mean, that’s the biggest.

JANNINE: Oh man, it’s true.

It’s true.

I see it kind of in even in social media still,

you know, the guys are always like,

Yeah, you know, gotta get the guns in the chest going

and ladies, you know, we can, oh goodness,

we’re funny, we’re funny creatures.

Do you find that still, like you were saying

with the weightlifting side of things,

do you find that women are still a little bit more hesitant

to build muscle,

and to rate that, you know,

would get enough mitochondria

to kind of help the weight loss?

I sometimes find there’s a little conundrum

in that department with folks.

LALA: It’s definitely not,

I don’t notice it as much anymore,

but then again, a lot of the clients that I’m training

have been with me now for like four years or longer.

So they know what I’m gonna say and my beliefs

and my philosophy and things like that.

So we don’t talk about those things as much,

but what I do tend to get a lot is still kind of like,

having to pull clients out of this like negative self doubt

of, you know, I’ll ask them, hey, that was great.

We’re gonna go up.

Oh, no, no, I can’t.

It’s like, no, you can.

Like, I just watched you do that way.

You can definitely do 10 more pounds.

Like, you know what I mean?

It’s always this, you know, or even some of my clients,

like I said, I have clients ranging from 35 years old to 72.

And sometimes I’ll hear from like a nice 72 year old client,

she’s like, well, I just, I can’t do that.

I’m old and I’ll have to say to her, you do realize

that I have clients that are almost half your age,

who you’re pulling twice as much weight as they are.

Like this is not an age thing.

You know what I mean?

Like you’re, you know, this woman is super strong

and you know, not to knock anyone.

Like everyone’s, everyone’s strength is different

and everyone’s on a different path.

and everyone’s journey is in a different place.

But I’m just like, don’t use age as the excuse, you know?

So, yes.

JANNINE: That’s what I was hoping you’re kind of gonna say

because or talk about because that is such a thing.

I’ll have a lot of patience in mind.

I’ll be like, you know, I really think that

some strange training would be great for you.

And they’ll be like, I’m too old for that.

– And we get that stuck in our head, like,

oh, I shouldn’t be doing that.

I’m too old.

LALA: And that’s like, I try to tell people,

especially another thing that’s,

this is probably the hardest thing.

I should be grateful in the sense that like all the clients

that I work with love strength training, right?

Or even if they don’t love it,

they know why they need to do it.

My next battle that I’m working with the clients

is now trying to get people to get enough steps

in daily and doing things like zone two cardio.

There, you know, the excuse now I’m hearing is,

well, it’s just too boring to sit on a bike for 30 minutes.

You know, if it’s not like a Peloton class

or something like that or, you know,

don’t you get bored doing the stair climber for 30 minutes?

Like, this is another thing.

Unfortunately, I think that I’m noticing is like,

If you can’t just for 30 minutes,

walk on an incline on the treadmill

and pop some headphones in and listen to a podcast or music,

we have bigger problems here.

So that trying to get people to get in

that necessary cardiovascular movement,

because I’m like, do you think you’re bored now?

Wait 20, 30 years from now when you’re really bored,

You can’t get out of your bed ridden,

because you can’t get out of bed, you know?

Like you have zero stamina to do anything.

So.

JANNINE:Oh, that is a thing.

And now I have to agree with you.

I think I’ve seen it shift as like social media

and folks keep saying like cardio isn’t, you know,

the bass and then there was some other training,

I’m not training research study about, you know,

does it really matter how many steps you take in a day?

And I’m like, oh gosh.

The people I see that are the oldest in thriving are moving all day long.

LALA: All day long.

JANNINE: Yeah.

LALA: All day long.

I mean, we were meant to, you know, we’re meant to walk, we’re meant to move, you know.

So I don’t know.

I think it’s hard.

Like I said, you get once you can get people to kind of, you know, buy into one thing, then

And they think, well, that’s it.

I’m doing that.

OK, well, now we’ve got that part done.

So now there’s this other piece in their life.

But I’m doing what you asked me to do.

Like, well, yeah, that’s why I say

I’m a coach for strength and longevity,

because we’re not just looking at the strength component of it.

There is so much more.

I’m trying to work with my clients, like I said,

like on the cardiovascular element of it.

So a lot of my clients like to pickle ball,

you know what I mean?

And see things and they’re like, you know,

oh my God, I just, I’m so tired.

Like, you know, like, well, yes, we need to train,

you know, do some cardiovascular, you know,

biking or treadmill or, you know,

stair climbing or something, work up that stamina

and it’ll help you with your pickle ball.

or tennis or whatever it is you want to do.

But, you know, yeah.

And then nutrition, that’s a whole nother beast

’cause then people, you know, you try to explain to people,

okay, now we’ve got this taken care of.

Now we got to work on our nutrition, oh, and our sleep.

And then, you know, it’s just so overwhelming,

I think for a lot of people.

So I try to just take it in small steps.

JANNINE: Yeah, same thing. I experienced the same thing. I agree. It’s taking little bites out. Okay.

You’ve got that mastered now to the next now to the next because I, you know, as you’ve

seen probably, and I mean, I know I’ve even done it to myself and I’ve tried to do everything

at once even to myself like, okay, I’m going to do this new routine. I’m going to do everything.

LALA: Yeah. 

JANNINE: It’s, it’s, it’s too, it’s too much. It’s too much. Now, with the aspect of seeing

folks for the last four years. I’m sure you’ve seen some changes over the time and different

shifts as women are getting older, but also as women are maybe doing more cardio, maybe

they have more energy because that seems to be one of the main complaints I hear from

a lot of folks. What have you seen in terms of improvement with strength training with

the cardio nutrition sleep, all the pillars that you’re working on with folks?

LALA: I have in particular like a couple of clients in mind.

Like I said, or you said, I’ve been with clients

for like the last four years, steadily.

And we’ve been through a lot of ups and downs.

It’s been challenging.

There’s been, you know, families, you know,

babies being born. I’ve had clients battle cancer during this time. We’ve had, I’ve had a client

like lose a lot of weight and then struggle with gaining it back. And then now we’re in a place

where we’re kind of like in that happy middle ground that’s a little bit more sustainable.

Obviously, jobs, changing jobs, that’s always a big one that tends to kind of spiral some people.

Because I think the overarching theme I’ve noticed with like most of my female clients is

they know they need to do these things for themselves, but almost every single one of them when it comes to

training. And so that’s something that we try to work on as far as just like, you know, making sure

that scheduling is right for them. Just, I always try to get my clients to focus on trying to knock

this out first thing in their morning. You know, not everyone’s day starts as early as mine.

But for most clients, I’m like, you have to try and do this first thing in the morning. We need to

to take care of you first before you can take care of anyone else.

But yeah, I’ve seen one of my favorite stories

is a client who lives in Minneapolis.

She’s 53 now.

She came to me four years ago

right at the beginning of the pandemic.

And she was already in excellent shape.

She had done bar Pilates like, you know,

always been active her entire life.

But it was funny when we were kind of like interviewing

to work together, she I said, well, you know,

what is it that you want to focus on or learn or, you know?

And she said, I really wanna learn to deadlift.

And I wasn’t expecting that answer

’cause I was expecting, you know,

oh, I wanna like build my glutes, or, you know?

And she said it like almost like as a question,

she goes, I wanna learn to deadlift?

You know, so we started working together and, you know, three times a week.

She had shoulder replacement surgery, you know, two weeks after shoulder replacement surgery,

she’s in the gym with her arm in a sling, like, and, you know, we’re, we’re draping, you know,

we’ve got belt on her. She’s doing squats with a belt around her waist, you know, she’s got

chains around her neck. Like the woman is just incredible, right? So we got through shoulder

replacement surgery. Then at 51, she tells me that they’re going to have two more babies

with a surrogate. Oh, so at 51, she has newborn babies, two of them. Oh my. And she said to me,

she goes after the babies were born and I went up to Minneapolis to visit her. She says to me,

I didn’t know how hard it was going to be. She already had two children that were grown,

but she said I didn’t know how hard it was going to be having small children again. And thank God,

I’m strong now so that I can, you know, carry these two children around and be, you know,

help you enough to like run after them and everything. So then that was the second challenge we went

through and then in early spring of last year she was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer

And I went, she said to me, she took a lot of time off to kind of deal with what was going to

be going on with her treatment. And she came back to me and she said, I don’t want to train

three days a week. I want to train four days a week. And I said, Oh, okay. She’s and all throughout

chemo. This woman trained with the exception of a few times because there were times where she

was very ill from the treatment. He trained four times a week and I went to one of the chemo

treatments with her and I had had a conversation with her dad. Her dad was there at the house

And he said to me, he thanked me.

He goes, thank you for working with her

and making her strong so that she could beat this

or go through this.

And I said to him, I said, I didn’t know why.

When she came to me in 2020, I said,

I didn’t know why she was coming to me

because she was already in such incredible shape.

And I said, now we were training hard.

Like we were training really hard.

She was deadlifting.

She was safety bar squatting.

I mean, this woman had never done any of this.

Oh, well.

And I said to her dad, I said, I didn’t

know what we were training for.

But now I do.

We were training for her to battle this cancer.

And that’s what we were training for.

So everyone trains for something different.

And I think what’s really important to understand is that, you know,

we don’t know what life is going to throw at us, right? If we live long enough,

something is going to come up, right? So the healthier we can be, the stronger we can be,

the more present we can be with our health right now only makes us more prepared for when

when those things happen.

So that’s kind of how I look at it now,

using hers as an example.

We didn’t know what we were training for.

We were like, “Why are we lifting all these heavy weights?

“Why are you putting on muscle like crazy life?”

We were just, she was enjoying herself,

learning something new and having fun.

And the type of treatment of chemo that she was doing

was one that really eats away at the muscle.

And her doctors told her, they said,

you are very fortunate to have the amount

of lean muscle on you that you have,

’cause you’re gonna need every ounce of it

to fight to go through this.

JANNINE: Wow.

LALA: So even to hear a doctor say that, like, was profound.

JANNINE: Yes.

LALA: So, yeah.

JANNINE: Wow.

LALA: Gives me chills every time, even just like talking about it. Because yeah,

she’s amazing. 

JANNINE: Yes. Oh my God. 

LALA:  I mean, yeah, that’s just one

story. I have so like all my clients are very, they’re all

amazing in so many different ways and they’re all battling their

own things, you know, so our training sessions are, they’re

not just training sessions. It’s, you know, therapy sessions, a

A lot of times, you know, someone just needs like 10 minutes to talk or get, get out of

a mood or get out of their head or, you know, so we do that.

JANNINE: That’s the beauty of, of a personnel trainer and having someone that can be beside you

through this stuff and work through hard stuff, right?

Not only just life, but hard workouts.

And that’s the one thing I think about, you know, in the trainer and doctor and you know,

all these things where we are working with folks one on one, we really get to share part

of their life, but also be able to share space for them too.

So cool.

LALA: Yeah, it is.

It’s very rewarding.

JANNINE: I agree.

Oh, I agree.

Now you and I of course are working together and we’re working on optimizing your health

and working on helping you to train

and basically train for life.

So tell us a little bit, or I guess tell the folks

who are listening a little bit about

what brought you to chat with me in the first place

and kind of talk about some of the changes you saw

within your workouts and things of that nature

so that maybe someone who’s listening

might get a sense of like, oh, this may be happening to me.

Maybe I need to seek some help in this department.

LALA: Absolutely.

Well, one, I know of you because you work with my partner, John, and I saw how you had

helped him.

He had his GI issues, which you helped him with tremendously.

And I remember it wasn’t, I want to say like for myself, there wasn’t one specific tipping

point where I was like, oh, I need to figure this out. I think it was just an accumulation

of things of just all kind of adding up to me not feeling like myself. If that makes

any sense. I, um, as you know, I was dealing with this kind of like numbing tingling saying,

I think that was probably the number one thing.

I had been dealing with that since,

gosh, September of 2021 was when I first started noticing it.

And I started having like this numbness and tingling

that was happening in my arms at night.

So months and months into a year of that happening

and getting poor sleep kind of snowballed,

I think a lot of other things that were happening.

And then because of the lack of sleep,

it was really just affecting my mood.

And then that was affecting my desire

to even train myself.

So I would work all day with clients.

I would have a break, you know, mid-morning,

sometimes in always an hour, sometimes two hours.

And I would find every excuse in the book not to train myself.

but yet I’d go and then go work with someone

and talk about the importance of why they should be trained.

And this was happening a lot.

And I started to realize that

I don’t think it wasn’t burnout from anything

that I was already doing.

It was just a lack of desire in so many areas.

I was fatigued mentally, physically.

Like I said, like some nights,

I think I was lucky if I was getting like three hours of sleep.

This numbness was really,

it was starting to

seriously affect my life.

But then also,

’cause when did I come to you?

It was in

the fall of 2022.

JANNINE: Yes.

LALA: Yes.

I knew I wanted to start, I knew my body was going through changes, you know, mid-40s,

you know, little bit of, you know, always had weight fluctuation, but it was starting

to become a bit more extreme.

I was getting that, you know, elusive, like puffiness feeling.

I was tired all the time.

I just felt completely run down.

And then we started working together

and you ran a bunch of tests on me.

And I think the first things we started working on

was addressing by a very low iron.

JANNINE: Yep.

LALA: And then a few other things,

but I think one of the major tipping points was,

I had just started this new kind of like supplement protocol that you had put me on.

And then I went to Qatar for work.

And I was there for two weeks.

And I had gotten sick or I was sick.

What I thought was just like a sinus head cold before going to Qatar.

And I saw, oh, we’re going there desert, the heat, like it’ll, you know, help dry this,

I’ll be fine. So I go there and just progressively over the two weeks got worse,

came back home around Christmas of 2022, and then it just kept getting worse.

And then finally I went to the doctor and I had bacterial pneumonia, and this has now been like

six weeks because I came back to the States and continued to just get worse for like four weeks.

Yeah, it was terrible. So I, after that, after the, I got cleared up by the pneumonia,

got back on the supplement regime that we were on. I decided at that point, once I was done with

the pneumonia, I was like, that is the worst I’ve ever felt. Like, it was the worst I had ever felt,

just walking up the stairs.

It felt like I had never exercised a day in my life.

It just, I knew I never wanted to feel like that again.

So from that point on, it just,

it kickstarted this whole process for me

about taking care of my health first.

John laughs ’cause he like, he opens up our cabinet

And he’s like, oh my God, you cannot be taking all these supplements.

I’m like, well, I’m not necessarily taking them all at the same time.

But I just– I– You know

after several months, I think, of prioritizing,

working out first thing in the morning

before taking on other clients and then

working on getting my supplementation up, I felt amazing.

I say around March of last year, March 2023, coincidentally,

I felt like my health was going up this way.

And then that’s when I find out the news from my client that she was

diagnosed with cancer and I just was like, you know,

I don’t know. I didn’t know what to think. I was feeling amazing at that time.

And yeah, it’s something that I don’t want to stop.

That kind of sparked so many other things.

It sparked me, my interest in really wanting

to dive into my nutrition,

because I had always been the type of person

who kind of just ate whatever I wanted,

which could have led to some of the deficiency, I guess.

‘Cause I wasn’t really prioritizing eating the things

needed to eat like you know leafy greens and things like that. So it just once you

felt bad and then you feel good again it’s just like getting for me it was

just getting a second chance like I really wanted to just every single day

feel my best and that’s what I want for my clients like you know it it hurts me

me when I have clients say like they’re just not feeling good, you know, and they can’t

explain why.

And I understand because I couldn’t explain why.

I was still able to train, you know, physically, it’s not like I was hurt.

I was still physically able to train.

I was just choosing not to because I just don’t feel like it, you know, and that wasn’t

normal.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

JANNINE: Huge, huge stuff going through something like that,

where you see someone not feeling well,

and yourself, same thing.

It’s like, these things are turning points.

Let’s put it that way where it’s like,

man, I am not going back there.

And I know when we first met you definitely were dragging.

It was from just even missing you before that

at a training and to when we met.

I was like, dang, this girl, we gotta, we gotta booster up.

LALA: I think, I think to one of the things that I noticed

is that for most women,

we’re just so used to just taking on so much, right?

So I think a lot of times,

and I’ve heard this too from clients,

they’re like, you know, they’ll tell me,

Oh, I don’t feel that.

Oh, okay, well go, why don’t you go and see your doctor?

Why don’t you go, no, it’s not, it’s not that bad.

And I, you know, I think a lot of women feel like

unless it’s something catastrophic, you know,

it doesn’t need to be addressed.

And something as simple as you or I,

not feeling our absolute best,

Why? I think less than that. You know what I mean? Like don’t you deserve every single day?

You know, I know I focus on trying to make sure that everyone else in my life is as the food that

they need, you know, is as the sleep that they need is feeling their best. Like don’t I deserve

that too? You know? So I think that’s the thing is that for most women, especially if you’re listening

to this just because you don’t you know just because something catastrophic hasn’t happened to you

or you’re not sick or something like that if you’re just not feeling good and you’re not sure why

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JANNINE: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, the way you begin talking, you know, today in the podcast about

like, I just wasn’t feeling like me. I think that’s a very common statement that I hear.

And I think a lot of people can resonate with that. And, and then what you just said happens,

It’s like, um, you know, my arm is I’m falling off.

I’m, I can still push through.

LALA: Yeah.

JANNINE: Oh, ladies, hear us right now.

Please.

LALA: Yes.

JANNINE: Now with, with your training, obviously you’re working, you’re, you’re

working out of the dog pound.

So I’d love for you to kind of tell folks a little bit about the dog pound.

I would love for you to tell folks, you know, where you can be found.

Things of that nature.

Because what I find unique about you is that you get women, you get us, you

get how we work, you get how life changes.

And of course, strength and longevity for life,

thinking through that whole concept, I’m all in on that.

So I would love for you to talk a little bit

about the dog pound.

How did you end up connecting with those folks

and being, I think you’re a lead trainer there, right?

You’re part of the crew.

LALA: Yeah, I am, well, I guess I should say I was a lead trainer

when I was working in person.

So I work all virtually now.

And long story short, I had moved around a lot over,

you know, since 2015, I went from Los Angeles to Hong Kong,

which is where I found fitness.

And then from Hong Kong to Copenhagen.

So when I landed in New York,

I had a completely different career.

So I was a trainer now before I was a fashion designer.

And I, someone I knew surprisingly from Copenhagen,

I remember right before I left said,

oh, there’s a gym in New York called the Dog Pound

and I had never heard of it

’cause I wasn’t in gym culture when I left the US.

So I looked at it and I was like,

oh, it says it’s personal training.

Well, I don’t need a personal trainer.

(laughs)

I thought, you know,

I was looking at it, I was looking for places to train myself.

You know what I mean?

So I was like, well, why would I go there?

I don’t want a personal trainer.

And surprisingly enough, I ended up

connecting through someone like through Instagram.

And the manager reached out to me and said,

“Hey, can you send me your resume?”

So I didn’t have a resume.

So I made one up and sent over and they called me in for an interview, you know, and that was that.

I went in for an interview, they offered me the job, and I think I started like a week later.

And yeah, so I was a lead trainer when I was working in, I worked at both locations, New York and LA, in person.

And then with a pandemic hit, we took everything online, but live virtual.

So all the clients that I were training in person switched over to live virtual, just like this,

you know, training. And we legit train. We started out very small, maybe a couple of dumbbells,

couple kettlebells, some bands. Most clients now have full gym set up, squat bars, cable machines,

like you name it, they have it. So we do full-on training. Four week blocks, clients train anywhere

from most or two to three days a week. I have a couple that are five. But yeah, I’d say on the

average three days a week. People are training and I was trying to get back to New York as much as

I could but I find the most value I have serves the clients virtually. It was actually a little

hard to work in because their clients are all over. Some are on the west coast, some are in the

the Midwest, I even have clients that live in Dubai. So clients are all over. So when

I would go to New York and work in person, I was still working virtual too. So I’d take

a in person client and then take a virtual client. And it doesn’t sound like a lot, but

just the switching back and forth between being in kind of like a loud gym where there’s a

lot of energy and music and people around to something a bit more intimate like this.

was a little hard for me to switch back and forth from.

So I just was like, well, if I go, I’d rather just work all in person a couple days.

But then I don’t want to disrupt my virtual client schedule.

So it’s just, it suits me so much better just to work virtually.

And I enjoy it. I hope the clients do too.

So, because to me, it’s as, it’s, I don’t see a difference between personal training

in person and what I do virtually.

I’m not saying that there isn’t a difference because I feel like a lot of people, a lot

of people do value it differently.

But to me, what I do with my clients is about as personal as you can get, you know, they’re

literally in my ear.

I can hear every breath the client makes.

I can hear them mumble under their breath

that they’re not happy that I gave them split squats.

You know what I mean?

Like it is as personal as it gets.

We, I’m in there with you.

So I hear their spouses shouting from the other room.

I hear kids in the background, dogs barking like it’s,

know, it’s very intimate and personal. But yeah, so I do all

that through Dog Pound and I’m very blessed that they, you know,

have allowed me to work remotely and still be able to service

clients this way. So that’s how it came about.

JANNINE: I love that you see it similar to me. It’s like you just get

into someone’s life. And and I feel like you can see behind

them, right? You can see like, now I understand why there’s a

problem with this because I just saw, you know, like you see

their stuff that they can’t hide from you or they can hide

from you when they show up at a gym, right? So it’s like, I’m

watching you guys. But but the truth is, is yeah, you get more

into their life. And the same with me, I at first when I went

from going in person and then into virtual is weird, right? It’s

like weird to figure it out. But I feel like there’s such a

more intimate connection you can get with folks like you’re

LALA: Well, I think I think one misconception that I want to clear up because I hear this a lot

too is people say, “Well, you can’t really coach someone that way because you can’t see

everything.”

It’s to me, it’s just like with any other sense, right?

You know, if you, you know, if you couldn’t smell what your taste would become stronger,

right?

You’d rely on other senses more.

Yes, I’m not there physically. So there are a lot of things that I had to learn

How to refine which is verbal keeling?

Sure, I can get up and I can demonstrate and I work in the gym next door or the gym from our house

So if I needed to go into the squat rack and show someone how to back squat I could

But doesn’t it serve me and serve the client better if I’m able to verbally communicate?

You know, all right, you’re gonna put your hands on the bar here

I want you to step up make sure that your feet are under your hips, you know what I mean?

like just being able to walk them through it so that they can visualize it

themselves doing it because

They’re gonna watch me do it and then when they do it, they’re like well

How come when I do it it doesn’t look like when she did it

So I’d rather just be able to walk them through it verbally.

So that was one thing was just getting better with my verbal cues.

The other thing is just kind of knowing the space and your client.

Like immediately when I train someone, especially if it’s someone new for the first time, I’m like,

“Okay, one, we are way too close.

I need you to back me up.

I want you to now turn the camera this way.

I want you to do everything from a three-quarter angle on set one, set two.

two I’m going to have you completely go from the side. You know what I mean? Like it’s you just learn

to do the different angles. We’re not doing one set of something. I’m doing three, four,

sometimes five sets of something. So I’m going to have you do it every time from a different angle

so that I can see. And I’m going to catch something different every time. And by the way, we used to

train in person. So I already know all the things that you do. You know what I mean? So that helps

too in a virtual sense is like, if I’ve already trained you in person, I already have that stored

up here. So I know where to go off of. So it does, I do feel like sometimes I have to like stand up for,

you know, when I listen to other podcast and stuff where they’re like, oh, it’s not real

coaching or personal training. It is. Am I not? Am I not still providing value to the client?

are you know, am I not still coaching them, getting them to reach their goals?

If I am, then I absolutely am coaching them. It is coaching them.

It doesn’t matter if it’s this, like if someone can coach you like this,

why can I not coach you like this? You know, so.

JANNINE: Well, I’m a wholeheartedly in on that because I.

Well, two things.

Having worked in a really loud gym like vigor and trying to work on foot work with folks

one on one with the loud music, I think there are things that you can miss just because

you’re distracted.

Someone drops away.

You know, something someone’s tapping on the shoulder and like, yo, whatever.

I think I think there’s beauty in one on one.

Internet based, you know, or, or, you know, zoom based, whatever you want to call it,

training because you’re not distracted.

There’s nobody bugging you at all.

are like laser beam on them. 

LALA: Oh, absolutely. I mean, even probably like you said, worse

so I’m like laser focused. They’re like, how did you see that? I’m like, because this

is all I’ve got to look at. I don’t have anything else. So yeah, I would prefer it.

JANNINE: I mean, the older I get and the longer I’ve been in the coaching game and the doctoring

game and the whole thing, I like the one on one. I don’t like

group. I like one on one. I like the person like I like the

personal attention. And I think it does go a long way in terms

of developing a relationship. And so I am I will defend you

every single time so much as to say something like that, because

I would I would go one to one on the results to and I bet you’re

getting a heck of a lot better results being able to laser

focus. 

LALA: Yeah, thank you. And I, and I hope so. And I think, um, you know, I want people to be a bit

more open to it. I understand that’s not, it’s not for everyone. I get it, you know, personally,

would I probably train that way? No. But I can tell you it works in so many ways like us, you know,

like I get questions all the time. I tell people about you and how we work together and they’re like,

well, so how do you work with her? I’m like, oh, we do our virtual health sessions and they’re like,

wow, really? Yes. Do you know how convenient that is? I don’t have to go, you know, drive across town

or anywhere else. Like, we’re able to get all this done. You send the test to my house. I do the test.

We send them in. You read me the results like it’s so convenient.

And I think that there’s something to that convenience of, you know,

removing all the challenges of the reasons of why you can’t get to the gym.

You know, you got to drive there.

Or the commute, maybe it’s 30 minutes away or whatever.

Take all those factors out. Just do it from home. You know what I mean? You know, why not?

JANNINE: It’s brilliant. It’s brilliant. And I’m really glad that we’re able to do that. I mean,

a lot of people just the pandemic for, you know, what it caused, but honestly, I think it opened

our eyes to like a lot of new possibilities within convenience and things we can do.

I always ask a question in terms of just something fun at the end of the podcast. And I had a

listed out here in terms of I have two for you, but I think they can roll into probably the same

question. What is your favorite lift and what’s your favorite workout? So I’ll let you kind of

differentiate what you want to say in those two and we’ll let you take it from here.

Oh, I think they’re going to kind of be synonymous. So

My favorite lift is bench press. And coincidentally, it’s my worst. Okay. Meaning it’s the one that I

just cannot really get past. Like, if my One-Ratt Max has never been like super big, I’ve never,

I can’t say I’ve ever had like a plate on each side. You know what I mean? Like that was kind of always the goal. I wanted to get 135.

I think in my strongest, I was doing a training camp in Russia and we were doing a got to bench press with

Mikhail… Oh god, I’m gonna butcher his last name. I’m not even gonna try. But anyways,

He was a strong, runner-up world strongest man, but he was also like an Olympic weightlifter

as well for the Russia team.

But anyways, he was working with us on Bench Press, and I think I got close to 135 or 60

kilos.

We’re in kilos.

I think it was 55 kilos is what I got.

So I got almost there.

It’s not my best lift, but I love it because to me,

it just feels so empowering.

There’s something about,

I love sitting down on the bench,

I like getting my song queued up.

Like, I have a pretty good arch.

So I like to arch, pull my shoulder blades back

before I lay back onto the bench

and get my hands on the bar and unrack it.

And I just feel super powerful,

even though I’m like, I’ve got like, you know, 20 on each side.

(laughs)

So– 

JANNINE:I love this.

LALA: So I’ll always do these interesting bench press setups,

like I’ll throw bands on there or chains

’cause I’m like, well, if I can’t go super heavy,

I might as well make it super fun.

So I don’t know, I just, I love it.

It’s so fun to me.

And like I said, I’m not overly strong at it,

but to me it’s just, yeah, it’s my favorite.

And so because of that,

I look forward to any upper body push day that we have

because my upper body responds really well

And the crazy pump that I get from an upper body day,

it’s like, it, it’s gonna sound so weird.

Like if we’re training at a commercial gym,

like a lifetime or something like that,

I remember we were at lifetime,

I think it was in Scottsdale, Arizona.

And we were at the lifetime and all the women

were doing like leg and booty workouts.

JANNINE: Uh-huh.

LALA: And all the men were doing arms.

And I was like, I’m supposed to deadlift today.

Now I’m just, I’m gonna do arms.

So I go in there and like straight up,

grab my bench in front of all the guys

and I’m like doing my curls and all this stuff.

And my veins are just popping, right?

Like I don’t know what it is in my upper body.

It just, it doesn’t last,

but during the workout, it’s just like veins everywhere.

my shoulders, like we’re showing striation

but during my lateral raises.

And I was trying so hard to flex on every man in the room.

(laughing)

‘Cause I was like, here I am just like, you know,

bulging veins, like everything.

And it was hilarious.

I don’t know if they caught on to what I was trying to do,

but I was definitely trying to flex.

(laughing)

JANNINE: Oh, girl, I love that.

Yes, upper body is my favorite.

Oh, man, you and I need to work out together

’cause that’s so my jam.

I love to like it up in there and yeah, just, I mean,

flexing on the guys is my fav.

LALA: I mean, with my fives, but you know, I was like,

“I’m ripped, look at me.”

(laughs)

JANNINE: Oh, I dig it, I dig it!

Oh my goodness.

Oh, Lala so much fun stuff.

I know we could probably talk for hours and hours.

LALA: Oh yeah.

JANNINE: I just love hearing your enthusiasm about working out,

but also just for your clients and your love for your clients

is so huge and it’s really special.

LALA: Thank you.

JANNINE: It’s really special to hear that.

So let’s tell folks where they can find you on Instagram

and wherever else that they can look you up.

And if you are taking new clients,

I’d love for you to share

like how they can get in touch with you that way too.

LALA: Sure.

So you can find me.

I think the easiest way would be through Instagram.

I’m @LiftWithLala.

That’s L-I-F-T with L-A-L-A.

And that’s probably the easiest place.

Like if you’re interested in training,

Reach out to me through Instagram.

Like I said, I am working for Dog Pound,

so you can also reach out to Dog Pound in New York

and inquire about working with me.

I’m always open to taking new clients.

I do kind of try to keep it small a little bit

because as we talked about like what I do,

I put a lot, I pour a lot into a client.

So I get a lot of people who reach out to me

and inquire about training and we’ll talk and we’ll meet

and it just doesn’t, a lot of times I have to say no

because I’m not willing to compromise on my services

or anything.

So I’d say if you wanted to work with me,

you have to be willing to invest in yourself

because that’s what it’s gonna be.

It’s an investment.

So yeah.

So I’m looking for people who want to invest.

JANNINE: Makes sense, makes sense.

I mean, it’s an investment in you.

It’s an investment in your longevity.

And you know, that’s, I mean,

you can’t put a price on that.

That’s priceless.

Absolutely. 

LALA: That’s right.

JANNINE: Oh, Lala, thanks again for coming on and chatting with me

and sharing your story and your favorite workout.

‘Cause now I’m like, that’s it.

We need videos of us doing that.

LALA: Thank you.

Yes, and also anyone listening,

if you’re looking for an amazing functional doctor,

hello, she’s right there.

I can attest to that.

So you’ve done a lot for me, Jannine.

So I want you to know that I appreciate you so much.

JANNINE: Thank you, right back at ya.

Hey, health

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