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SARAH COURT, PT, DPT, E-RYT

Physical Therapist, movement mentor, yoga teacher trainer.

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CHEST PRESS 1: COUNTER PLANK

January 3, 2023 by Sarah

HOW TO CHEST PRESS WITH WEIGHTS CHEST PRESS 1: COUNTER PLANK

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sarahcourtdpt

Discovered this when I was goofing around… How

Discovered this when I was goofing around…

How heavy can you do? 15lb was a challenge!

Grip strength is a marker for longevity, as it indicates you’ve been using your upper body to carry, push, lift, pull and more.

Want to get significantly stronger?

I can help you do that in person or online.

No time like the present - let’s get on it!

-SCDPT

😴REST BETWEEN SETS😴 If you’re new to the

😴REST BETWEEN SETS😴

If you’re new to the tempo of lifting heavy weights, it can feel strange to rest so much.

🏃‍♀️We get this feeling that we should be doing jumping jacks or some other kind of up-tempo heart rate elevating activity.

In reality, you can literally sit down.

Stare into space.

Check your email if that’s your vibe.

🏋️‍♂️By giving your body a physical rest, you will improve your lifting capability for the next round.

What do you like to do between sets?

I teach strength training from rehab to barbells online and in person.

DM me if you wanna work together!

#osteoporosis #osteoporosisprevention #osteopenia #osteopeniaprevention #womenwholift #womenwholiftheavy #bonedensity #dexascan #impacttraining #liftmortrial

🧠Your body’s not stupid. 💪It’s going t

🧠Your body’s not stupid.

💪It’s going to try and find the easiest solution to the problem to expend the least amount of effort.

However: sometimes we want to expend the most amount of effort in order to build strength, coordination, balance, and resilience.

✅Want a free mini barbell course AND get on the list for the next Bone Density Course: Lift for Longevity starting in May 2025?

🔗🔗🔗Link in bio to sign up!

🐶If you need a little smile today, here’s my

🐶If you need a little smile today, here’s my secret therapy weapon for my private clients: Henry!

If you enjoy being sat on, having your toes nibbled, and gentle requests for head pats, he’s your guy.

He’ll lower your cortisol and give you a serotonin and dopamine boost.

All he asks for in return are your socks (for some gentle nibbling - he wouldn’t dream of ripping them up).

✅ If you’re looking for some movement therapy, shoot me a DM

✅ We can work in person or over zoom

✅ Let’s get you going again!

CW: Eating disorder 💜Making friends with your

CW: Eating disorder

💜Making friends with your body💜

💪When I first started lifting heavy a couple of years ago, I was still carrying around the remnants of my long ago eating disorder.

This meant that I eventually hit a roadblock in my PRs, because I did not feed my body enough to build the additional muscle I needed.

This continued to be a mental block for about a year, until I started thinking about the word bulky, and how we demonize it, and how I was still unconsciously demonizing it, i.e. “I’ll lift heavy weights, but I don’t want to look like I do.”

So about 8 months ago, I started to flip the script for myself, because I had this nagging feeling that I wasn’t walking my talk.

I treated it like an experiment: what would happen if I actively focused on adding bulk to my body? I knew that to do it, I would have to eat more in general.

It wasn’t easy, and I was actually surprised at how tenacious those disordered eating thoughts still were. But over time, I started to appreciate that getting bigger was a good thing.

Now that I have the energy to lift 4x/week, I’ve been steadily breaking through long standing PRs.

Now that I’m focused on what my body can do rather than what it looks like, it doesn’t give me anxiety when a patient brings donuts to the clinic.

Now that there’s literally more of me taking up space, I feel happier day to day.

If this is something you want to talk about, comment or DM me. It truly takes a village for some of this work and I had a lot of help.

-SCDPT

#anorexiaawareness #anorexianervosarecovery #anorexiarecovery #eatingdisorderrecovery #eatingdisordersupport #orthorexiarecovery #womenwholiftweights #womenwholiftheavy #bulkygirlsummer

On keeping going… There’s a great book calle

On keeping going…

There’s a great book called “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry” by Jack Kornfield. It’s about still dealing with the daily tasks of life when we are on the quest for enlightenment.

🏋️‍♂️I got a new deadlift PR the other week, which has not happened for a year, for a variety of reasons.

🤔And now that I got it, what do I do?

I keep going. I do the lifting laundry.

We are often so goal focused in our fitness, and goals can be great motivators.

But lifting weights is a lifelong practice, which will undoubtedly come with a lot of ups and downs.

So just keep going.

-SCDPT

💪WEIGHTS + HYPERMOBILITY FTW I’ve always had

💪WEIGHTS + HYPERMOBILITY FTW

I’ve always had a lot of range in my shoulders, and it has always returned easily after injury or incident, like a frozen shoulder in my 3rd year of PT school (fun!).

What I didn’t have was strength at end range, so a sudden movement like this always risked a feeling of almost-dislocation, an uncomfortable strain, a lack of stability.

🏋️‍♂️And then I started lifting heavy.

In the video, I apply more backward force to the bar at the top of the lift than I need to, and I go to the end of my range, which is a hyperextension position for my shoulders.

Ordinarily, before lifting, this might have tweaked something. At best it would have been that instability feeling.

But here, I feel the resistance of the muscle I have built, and it’s like bouncing off a trampoline.

➡️➡️➡️Please stop telling hypermobile people that they shouldn’t lift heavy, when it’s literally the opposite of what we need.

And I’m not saying that the deconditioned hypermobile person starts with an 80lb deadlift, but if progressed appropriately for the individual, there’s no reason why they can’t.

I just deadlifted 160lbs the other day, which is the most I’ve ever done. It took me over 2 years of dedicated barbell work to get there.

And if it’s not something you teach, then send them to someone who does (like me!)

Wanna get strong AF and build joint stability? Shoot me a DM and let’s do this!

When you’re worried your bike is lonely so you b

When you’re worried your bike is lonely so you buy her a friend #janice #nigel #sv650s #tw200

💪PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD💪 My heaviest lift to

💪PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD💪

My heaviest lift to date that took over 2 years to reach, due to some ups and downs AKA life.

Very close to deadlifting my own body weight (though if I keep gaining muscle mass that line is gonna keep shifting 🤣)

#osteoporosisprevention #osteoporosisawareness #osteoporosis #osteopenia #bonedensity #menopausefitness #menopausehealth #perimenopausefitness #estrogenloss #estrogen

✋🛑STOP 🛑✋ Can we get past this, please?

✋🛑STOP 🛑✋

Can we get past this, please?

It’s outdated
It’s patriarchal
It’s demeaning
It’s diminishing

Change starts with each of us.

Each of us choosing to move away from fearing our own potential because it might come with muscles.

Wanna get stronger?

Click the link in bio for a free bone density mini course.

It’s time to take ourselves seriously. 💪💪💪

#osteoporosisprevention #osteoporosis #osteopenia #womenwholiftheavy #womenwholiftweights #toningworkout

💪One of the reasons women don’t lift heavy is

💪One of the reasons women don’t lift heavy is they are afraid they’ll get bulky.

But we’re missing the point.

We should be asking a different question:

➡️What’s wrong with bulky?

➡️Why shouldn’t I want to get bulky?

✅If being bulky is going to make me unattractive to certain people, then good.

✅At this point in time, having a strong body as a woman is a political act.

✅It makes us less docile. It makes us more dangerous. I would rather be strong and dangerous than skinny and afraid.

💪Instead of telling women they won’t get bulky, let’s normalize bulky.

💪Let’s stop treating bulky like a four-letter word.

💪Let’s bulk the F up.

Just as a reminder, why do we lift heavy?

➡️Lifting heavy weights (85% of your max capacity or higher) is one of the only research-proven ways to improve bone mineral density and guard against osteoporosis/osteopenia
➡️Yoga doesn’t do it - and neither does Pilates
➡️It prevents muscle atrophy (which starts in your 30s)
➡️It’s preventative against injury, promotes longevity, improves mood, and builds your functional capacity and resilience
➡️Most people (women in particular) do not lift anywhere near the weight they need to in order to gain these benefits

Got questions about our Bone Density Course?

Join Sarah and Laurel for a FREE live Q&A session!

Tuesday October 1st at 8:30am PT/11:30am ET with 30-day replay

Can’t make it live? Watch on replay for 30 days!

🔗in bio to sign up!

YogaU: are you paying attention? This is a seriou

YogaU: are you paying attention?

This is a serious problem.

Listen to our latest podcast episode, Make YogaU Make Sense, where we explore whether yoga strengthens bones, examining @yogauonline’s claims and Dr Loren Fishman’s controversial study. We uncover how Yoga U often exaggerates or cherry-picks evidence while overlooking effective bone-building exercises like heavy resistance and impact training.

In this episode, you will learn:

➡️How research can be misrepresented to support biases.
➡️The difference between bone resorption and bone-building.
➡️Why yoga isn’t effective for bone strengthening due to lack of adequate loading and progressive overload.
➡️The limitations of yoga’s balance improvements for real-world activities.
➡️The importance of critically evaluating research claims about yoga and bone health.

🔗 in bio to listen.

💪😍💪 casually pulling a golf cart full of

💪😍💪 casually pulling a golf cart full of people like it ain’t no thing.

@alissawithaz is a natural born BAMF

Who pulled it better?

If you STILL think deadlifts are bad for your back

If you STILL think deadlifts are bad for your back, I’ve got a summer home in Antarctica I’d love to sell you… 😜

👉Here’s something good for you: a free life strength training class!

👉September 19th at 8:30am PT/11:30am ET
FREE online or watch later - there’s a 30-day replay

If you’re at all aware of what Movement Logic is about, you’ll know that lifting heavy:

✅Is one of the only research-proven ways to improve bone mineral density and guard against osteoporosis/osteopenia
✅Yoga doesn’t do it - and neither does Pilates
✅It prevents muscle atrophy (which starts in your 30s)
✅It is preventative against injury, promotes longevity, improves mood, and builds your functional capacity and resilience
✅Most people (women in particular) do not lift anywhere near the weight they need to in order to gain these benefits

Join Laurel and Sarah and:

➡️Sample a strength class
that will replicate the workouts in our Bone Density Course: Lift for Longevity
➡️Receive live, personalized feedback as you work out, or benefit from hearing our cues on replay
➡️Have the option of camera on or off, depending on what you’re comfortable with
➡️Repeat the class as often as you like!

🔗Link in bio to sign up for our FREE Live Strength Class get a taste of what it’s like to train with us (plus a 30 day replay so you can do it again)!

[Not only that - Strength Class participants will receive a discount on our upcoming Bone Density Course: Lift For Longevity]

⬇️Stick your questions in the comments!

📍SAVE THIS POST for when you want a reminder to

📍SAVE THIS POST for when you want a reminder to keep going.

Chloe gave me permission to post this and use her name. She’s been a patient of mine for the past 4 years, and during that time has almost totally overcome a neurologic injury.

When I met her, she was bent over using a walker and had very little use of her left hand.

Now… well, a video speaks a thousand words.

For the PTs, OTs, and all the care teams out there: this is WHY we do it. 💪🥹😍💪

Chloe is starting college in a few weeks. Look out, world.

#thisiswhywedoit #physicaltherapist #physiotherapy #occupationaltherapist #occupationaltherapy #womenbelongstrong #womenwholift #womenwholiftheavy #bulkygirlsummer #ﬁtnessinspiration

👉👉Have you listened to the latest Movement L

👉👉Have you listened to the latest Movement Logic podcast ep yet?

In this episode, Laurel and Sarah dive into the history of how DEXA scans came to be so ubiquitous, what are the risks around osteoporosis medication, and whether osteoporosis and osteopenia were intended to be diagnoses in the first place.

You will learn:

👉How was the DEXA score for osteoporosis first decided on
👉Was osteopenia supposed to be a diagnosis for treatment
👉What role did Merck play in getting more women to take their new drug Fosamax
👉What are the risk factors for the side effects of bisphosphonate drugs
👉What is the difference between a population risk vs an individual risk
👉Why it’s not recommended to get a DEXA scan before you are 65 years old
👉The role of iatrogenesis in the medication choices and use for women with osteoporosis

🔗 in bio for our FREE Live Strength Class (and sample our Bone Density Course) on September 19th at 8:30am PT/11:30am ET with free replay!

Two days at @motoventuresdirtfirst learning dirt b

Two days at @motoventuresdirtfirst learning dirt bike skills! Had a blast, learned a TON, thank you so much Andre and Kylie! I’ll be back for more. 🏍️🏍️🏍️

Images/videos:
1. Learning to stand
2. Putting things together
3. Braking hard day one
4. Braking hard day two
5. Cornering day two
6. Talking through turning a stuck bike
7. Don’t brake in the turn
8. Send in the clown

Bulky doesn’t always mean big. We’re been so

Bulky doesn’t always mean big.

We’re been so conditioned to dismantle our bodies, to find fault with non-existent “problems,” that a small change in our appearance can feel enormous and uncomfortable.

I’m working on being comfortable in my discomfort. 💪💪💪

#bulkygirlsummer #womenbelongstrong #osteoporosisprevention #osteopenia #womenwholiftheavy #womenwholiftweights

Yoga can’t do this. Pilates can’t do it eithe

Yoga can’t do this.
Pilates can’t do it either.
Sorry/not sorry.

We have some INCREDIBLE news to share

As you know, at Movement Logic we run a 6 month live online bone density course, lift for longevity, where we teach women to lift heavy with barbells.

Some of our participants had already been diagnosed with osteoporosis via a DEXA scan, and wanted to improve their bone density using heavy lifting and impact training, just like many women successfully did in the LIFTMOR trial (and that is open source, you can google it and read about it if you aren’t familiar with it).

So: we just heard from one of our participants, Kathy Page (@kathypageyoga), who had been diagnosed with osteoporosis before starting our course.

She just did a follow up DEXA scan and… drumroll please… has REVERSED her OSTEoporosis! Just by doing heavy weight training and impact training in our Bone Density Course. She didn’t have to go on any medication.

AND as a fun side effect she’s now strong AF.

So we want to say congratulations to Kathy for putting in the work, and if this sounds like something that you’d like to try, osteoporosis or not, you can join us for our next round starting in October by joining our mailing list at the link.

#womenwholiftheavy #strongwomen💪 #osteoporosisprevention #strongwomenlift #strongwomenlift #osteopenia #womenover50fitness #strongwomenrule #bulkygirlsummer #bulkisbeautiful #yogabody #reverseosteoporosis #reverseosteopenia

WATCH TO THE END 🐶 Research tells us that post

WATCH TO THE END 🐶

Research tells us that posture and pain do not correlate

So instead of micromanaging everyone’s posture in your class, get them strong in a variety of places

Way more fun for everyone!

#goodposture #posturecorrection #postureexercises #posturetips #womenwholiftheavy #strongwomen💪 #osteoporosisprevention #strongwomenlift #osteopenia #womenover50fitness #strongwomenrule

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