Beyond Strength: Powerlifting with a Purpose w/ Tamara Walcott
Release Date: 08/27/2024
Pre-Workout Nutrition for Early Morning Training Sessions
Fuel Your Strength
If you train early in the morning, you might be wondering what to eat before your session to arrive fueled and perform well. In this episode, you'll learn how to approach pre-workout nutrition for early morning workouts, especially when you’re short on time but still want enough fuel to make it through your session without gassing out. You'll learn how to factor in training intensity, how much time you have before your session, hydration, and what you did the day before. This is a practical episode for athletes over 40. What you’ll learn in this episode: How to fuel early morning...
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How to Strength Train as a Hobbyist Athlete
Fuel Your Strength
If you’re a hobbyist athlete over 40 who loves your sport – cycling, running, pickleball, martial arts to name a few – but you’ve been hesitating to start strength training, this episode is for you. In today’s episode of the Fuel Your Strength podcast, you'll hear exactly how to strength train as an athletic woman over 40 without sacrificing time for your sport. This is a simple, sustainable blueprint for building muscle, improving power, preventing injury, and staying in the game long-term – without living in the gym five days a week. What you’ll learn in this...
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How to Stop Quitting the Gym
Fuel Your Strength
Story time! I'm sharing a personal story from my early triathlon days that still shapes how I coaches lifters today. What started as a scary open-water swim became a powerful lesson about progress, patience, and why perfection is not required to move forward. In this episode, you'll reframe how you think about missed workouts, imperfect weeks, and all-or-nothing thinking in fitness. If you’ve ever felt like skipping one session meant you blew it, this episode offers a grounding reminder: that forward progress counts, even when it doesn’t look pretty. What you’ll learn in this episode: ...
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Strength Training Lessons from 15 Years of Lifting Weights
Fuel Your Strength
If I could go back and talk to beginner-me in 2010, there are a handful of strength training lessons I would absolutely whisper in her ear. Not because I did everything wrong, but because so much frustration, second-guessing, and spinning my wheels could’ve been avoided with a little context and coaching. In this episode, I’m reflecting on more than 15 years of consistent lifting, coaching, and learning the hard way. Whether you’re brand new to strength training, a few years in, or coming back after a break, these lessons will help you train smarter, progress more confidently, and stop...
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Rebuilding Strength After 80? Change How You See Aging
Fuel Your Strength
Is it really never too late to start strength training – even if you’re in your 80s and you’ve never touched a barbell? You'll hear from journalist Clare Johnston of the “Rebuilding Mum and Dad” project, about what happens when older adults begin true progressive strength training from scratch – and why the results can feel straight-up miraculous (without being magic). Clare shares how her parents started lifting in their 80s after years of mobility decline, osteoporosis concerns, and “we’ve tried everything” frustration. Together, they built a simple garage setup, worked...
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Women’s Fitness Over 40: Cutting Through the Confusion with Nikki Naab-Levy
Fuel Your Strength
If you’ve been feeling like women’s fitness over 40 is a nonstop back-and-forth debate - like you’re courtside at Wimbledon watching the ball whip from one hot take to another - you’re not imagining it. Social media is loud right now, especially when it comes to what women should or shouldn’t be doing in midlife. That noise can make it hard to trust your instincts or know what actually matters for building strength and aging athletically. In this episode, I’m joined by strength for hypermobility & nutrition coach Nikki Naab-Levy. Together, we unpack the most confusing fitness...
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How to Be More Consistent in the Gym Over 40
Fuel Your Strength
Life is life-ing especially in midlife. One day you’re fired up, smashing your lifts, and thinking the whole week will be a highlight reel; two days later you’re sleep-deprived, stressed, and wondering who parked a bus on your quads. In this episode, you'll learn a structured-yet-flexible strategy to use with your lifting to ride the wave of real-life energy swings so you can keep showing up, build muscle, and actually enjoy the process. We’ll break down how to anchor your week with strength, layer in cardio, and use auto-regulation (RPE/RIR) to dial intensity up or down without ditching...
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The 5 Hard Truths Your Lifting Needs After 40
Fuel Your Strength
If you’ve ever heard a coach say “it’s not wrong, but it’s not right either,” you’ll resonate with this episode. Dive into the nuance that gets lost in punchy social media hot takes – especially for athletic women over 40 who want strength, muscle, and better performance without the fluff. Get insight into why your progress may feel stuck, what to do about it, and how to build muscle with less frustration. Get practical coaching on progressive overload, program hopping, hypertrophy, auto-regulation, and why DIY training isn’t actually “free.” What you’ll learn in this...
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How to Adjust Workouts When You’re Short on Time
Fuel Your Strength
Life doesn’t always respect your perfectly planned training week. If you’re a woman over 40 following a strength training program, you might be juggling sleep swings, work crunches, hormonal shifts, caretaking, and everything in between. This episode breaks down how to keep your momentum without falling into the all-or-nothing trap so you still get a damn good training stimulus on busy days. Steph explains a simple framework for structured flexibility – keeping the big-picture plan while adapting the day’s session. You’ll learn three practical ways to modify workouts using RPE / RIR,...
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The Over-40 Lifting Formula I’d Follow If I Started Again Tomorrow
Fuel Your Strength
Feeling like the Tin Man when your feet hit the floor – and winded on a single flight of stairs – doesn’t have to be “just your 40s.” In this episode, we call BS on the idea that midlife means inevitable decline and lays out a clear, doable plan for rebuilding strength, muscle, and pep in your step over the next six months. No doom and gloom here – just evidence-informed training that respects your real life. You’ll learn exactly how to structure your workouts for results: which compound lifts to prioritize, how to sprinkle in isolation work the smart way, and why adding power...
info_outlineI want you to imagine a heavy deadlift. How challenging it is, the focus needed, to tune everything else out and give it your best. Now, imagine that the barbell weighs over 650 pounds. That is the reality for Tamara Walcott, a world record holder in powerlifting. But Tamara didn't always have this confidence. Having to overcome obesity and single mom guilt made Tamara the inspiring and powerful woman that she is today.
Key Takeaways
If You Want to Get Stronger, You Should:
- Work with people who support your goals and lift you up in times of hardship
- Accept that failure and obstacles are going to be part of the process and that you can overcome them anyway
- Fuel properly and often in order to support both your body and your mind
Overcoming Setbacks with Tamara Walcott
Tamara Walcott, the Plus Size Fitness Queen, is a record-breaking athlete, a resilient mompreneur, and a motivation to all. Her journey, marked by her triumph over food addiction and obesity, inspires others to embrace mental resilience and celebrate every victory. In this episode, we explore Tamara's world-record-setting story and join her on a transformative journey.
Stay Dedicated To Your Destination, Even If You Can’t See It
After stumbling into a powerlifting gym in 2017, Tamara realized that she would have to change from the inside out to achieve her goals. By 2018, she was coming in first place in her first competitions and realized that to take care of others around her, she had to take care of herself first.
Her mindset, mission, and ability to navigate setbacks helped her break an all-time world record while training just three days per week. These traits, combined with her dedication and ability to accept failure as part of the process, have gotten her to where she is today.
Your Strength Is Your Sexy
Proving to yourself that you can do something you couldn't do before is one of Tamara’s favorite parts of powerlifting. Her mission is to bring more women into the sport and eventually get the deserved recognition from associations such as ESPN and the Olympics.
She works to encourage women to stop letting comparison steal their joy and instead compete against themselves while ensuring they are fueling enough. If you believe in your ability to keep going despite the obstacles in the way, anything is possible.
Are you feeling called to lift something heavy? Share how you are getting involved in the community with me in the comments on the episode page.
In This Episode
- How Tamara got bit by the powerlifting bug (6:28)
- Surprising things about powerlifting as a sport and lessons learned (13:34)
- Discover the environment and energy of a powerlifting meet (16:46)
- Inner dialogue tips and the importance of pushing past your own limiting beliefs (26:40)
- Looking at the training schedule of a recording-breaking single power mom powerlifter (32:51)
- Understanding ‘My Strength is My Sexy’, ‘Women in Powerlifting’, and more (45:52)
Quotes
“I think that is the exciting thing about it, is that anyone can be a part of this sport, and not a lot of people know about it yet. Which is why I want to keep talking about it.” (5:36)
“You get one minute to do your movement. But that one minute feels like 10 seconds. But it’s the best 10 seconds of your life.” (17:24)
“Powerlifting literally saved my life.” (19:40)
“I think the most common misconception, even when I was heavier, was that I had to eat less in order to lose weight. I had to eat less to be at the body aesthetic that I wanted to be. It's not that you have to eat less, you just have to eat the right things and fuel your body right for whatever your performance is or what your program is.” (35:39)
“Failure is a part of the process. It doesn't mean to quit and give up, it means to learn what you can learn and press on.” (41:27)
Featured on the Show
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My Strength Is My Sexy Gym Tour Tickets
Tamara Walcott 641LB Womens Elephant Bar Deadlift Record Video
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