Twenty pounds heavier than her dancing days, and she says her face looks younger

Madison is about 20 pounds heavier than she was as a professional dancer. She also thinks she looks younger in the face now than she did in her 20s.

She is the head coach at Hollywood West in Long Beach, New York. Not California. She runs a semi private personal training program, does virtual and in home training, and competes in powerlifting twice a year. Her next meet is in about eight weeks. I have been taking photos for her for about four years, so I have watched some of this happen in the pictures before she said any of it out loud.

She just turned 32 and everyone keeps asking if she is nervous

Her answer was that she has never been hotter, never made this much money, never been this confident. She says every year in her 30s keeps getting better than her 20s. And her clients back it up. The people in their 40s tell her the 40s beat the 30s. The healthy people in their 50s tell her the 50s beat the 40s.

1:28

“I've never been hotter. Never made this much money.”

Part of that question is about being single. She hears it in the gym too. Clients sign up to shred for the wed, and tell her their wedding day is the most important day of their life and they have to look a certain way.

Her friend group is married with kids, divorced, engaged, never had a boyfriend, all of it. She says the common denominator is that they are all thriving in their own way. She uses the word bad bitch for that, and she means it as a compliment. A confident woman who knows what she wants and is not afraid to set boundaries.

The bulky fear, from someone who had it

Madison has been in the industry for 12 years, but she did not touch a barbell until 2020. Before that it was sculpt work, ankle weights, wrist weights. Dancer arms. Long and lean. When she started barbell training she was nervous to train upper body because she did not want to be big. Her coworkers told her that was like saying driving a car turns you into a race car driver.

8:38

“They're like, you're not gonna get huge.”

Five years later she lifts very heavy, competes, and is going to state championships. She does not look at herself and think bulky. And if someone else said it, she says she does not care at this point.

The scale went up and that was not the problem

From our first shoot to now she is about 10 pounds heavier. Some muscle, some fat. Not mad about it. From her dancing days it is about 20 pounds. She says she sees women working hard, making great progress, and still stuck on the scale not moving fast enough.

She was blunt about what chasing leaner actually costs. If the goal is 0 percent body fat, you would not exist. Push past a healthy range and you are looking at hormonal issues, hair loss, losing your cycle, brain fog. They have an in body scanner at work and she says people get obsessive with it. Her question back to them is simple. What do you need to get leaner for.

10:34

“You lose fat from your face. It actually ages you.”

My side of it

I am 46. I started lifting 14 years ago. I do not drink, I do not smoke, I do not do any drugs. Genetics you cannot control, but what you can control, you control. I am usually leanest at 155. Right now I am 162 and I feel softer. There are days where for about an hour I am thinking I should be shredded. Men get their own version of the stigma. Six pack, big chest, bigger arms.

What lifting actually gave her

She started in 2020, when COVID hit and her dance career got stripped from her without it being her choice. Lifting gave her somewhere to put the energy and the anger, and something that was genuinely hard. She failed at things and had to come back from failing.

She also has Hashimoto's. Her thyroid is attacking itself, which slows it down. Medication puts her levels where they should be, but it does not treat the autoimmune disease. The symptoms she feels most are fatigue, brain fog, and muscle and joint pain. She has had hair loss. She has a nodule pushing on her vocal cords, which is part of why her voice is raspy now.

14:08

“It's a fatigue that's not tiredness. Sleeping doesn't help.”

Before barbells she was working at Orange Theory. She would take one high intensity class and feel like she had the flu for the next two days, so she could not train again for a couple of days. Switching to strength training and powerlifting, she has seen her energy go up and her ability to manage fatigue go up. She will not tell someone to quit something they enjoy, but for her and for a lot of the autoimmune girls she works with, high intensity was wrecking the body.

What she would actually program for you

Her own training is not what she gives a client. For the average woman who wants to build muscle, feel stronger and maybe lose some fat, this is the shape of the week. The core four compound lifts are squat, bench press, overhead press, deadlift. The accessory work is whatever the client cares about, glutes, triceps, whatever they will keep showing up for. You cannot spot reduce fat, but you can build those muscles, and if she does not find out what you like, you are not going to like coming to the gym.

1750 during the week so the weekend fits

She is five feet tall, about 125 pounds, strength training four times a week, getting 10,000 steps. She calculates her maintenance at about 2000 calories. During the week she sets it at 1750, which is roughly a 300 calorie deficit, five days out of seven. She tracks in MyFitnessPal, uses meal prep companies for lunches and late dinners because she gets home at 8.30 and is not cooking anything good at that hour, and cooks Tuesday and Thursday nights when she is off. She has held 125 for about a year, and she needs to, because powerlifting is a weight class sport.

24:52

“I order late night Taco Bell at three in the morning.”

She is not pretending any of that is healthy. She said alcohol is a poison for your body. She likes two martinis with her friends on a Friday or Saturday, gossiping, a little tipsy. She is not doing it every night, not blacking out, not drinking high sugar high calorie stuff. When clients ask if they have to give up their wine, the answer is no, but if it is every day of the week she wants to know why, and that might be a bigger issue she refers out.

The version that does not work is eating 1100 all week so you can ball out on the weekend. You lose strength, you lose energy, your workouts suck, you get brain fog. And she says calories are not the whole picture anyway. Protein is having its moment, labels say high protein when the number says otherwise, and meanwhile people forget micronutrients and fiber. Colon cancer is on the rise in younger people. Add some color.

One thing that was not planned

Gabby called in halfway through the recording and ended up on the episode. Nobody paid her and it was not staged. It did give me an idea. A show people can actually call into.