Grit, Heat, and HYROX

What happens when a hot-room yoga leader and a strength-obsessed coach decide to tackle a doubles HYROX together? We share the plan, the missteps, and the gritty mindset it takes to run eight 1Ks while grinding through sled pushes, sandbag lunges, and wall balls—without wrecking our bodies or our schedules. Kate Giampapa of Journey Yoga Retreats brings two decades of teaching, heat adaptation, and breath-driven focus; I bring CrossFit mechanics, strength programming, and a love for functional fitness. The clash of styles becomes a partnership built on smarter recovery and practical problem-solving.

We map out an eight-week approach designed for busy lives: compromised running between stations, targeted posterior-chain work, mobility that actually sticks, and honest guardrails to avoid overtraining. Heat training takes center stage as a tool to raise cardiovascular demand at lower loads and reduce injury risk—especially crucial as we navigate our 40s. We get real about the shoe dilemma (running turnover vs lifting stability), time crunches, and finding a gym home with turf, sleds, ergs, and a sauna. Then we dig into the stories that shaped our choices: Kate’s L4-L5 discectomy after ignoring a pain signal, my failed foot reconstruction and the pivot to modification and longevity. The throughline is simple: listen first, load second.

Beyond race prep, Kate opens the door to Journey Yoga Retreats—Sayulita in spring, rotating destinations in fall—where you choose your path: Bikram, vinyasa, partner play, restorative, and a moving meditation of 108 sun salutations. No judgment, just community, clarity, and the kind of rest that makes training work. 

If you’re curious about HYROX training, heat adaptation, injury prevention, or how yoga and strength can elevate each other, you’ll find a roadmap you can use.

Follow our training updates, share your shoe recommendations, and tell us which HYROX station you’d split with a partner. Subscribe, leave a review, and pass this along to a friend who’s ready to turn an “impossible-possible” goal into a plan.

https://www.journeyyogaretreats.com/

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Until the next time - stay gritty you badass! 

Transcript

Meet Kate and Define Grit

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Welcome to episode 13. This is Lucky 13 of Squats and Seances. Today we are going to take a little detour. I have somebody special that we're going to meet with today. This is Kate Gianpapa of Journey Yoga Retreats. Please allow me to introduce Kate. Kate took her first yoga class in 2004 in Massachusetts and began teacher training with Bekram less than three years later in Hawaii. And she has been teaching full-time ever since. She spent a decade in Aspen, Colorado, immersed in her daily practice while teaching yoga to ex-games and Olympic athletes, students, and people of all ages and sizes. As a yoga leader in the community, Kate hosted an outdoor yoga television show, Yoga with a View, founded a mountaintop yoga class with Aspen's Ski Company, and became a Lululemon yoga ambassador. Now living in California, she has found herself in the hot room teaching large groups of all levels. Kate enjoys introducing yoga to beginners and experts alike. She also has attended and taught many advanced yoga seminars and trainings and gets a thrill out of motivating and inspiring more seasoned yogis to go further physically, emotionally, and mentally. As a certified birth doula, Kate also offers prenatal and postpartum yoga, as well as birth education. When Kate isn't planning her next yoga class or retreat, you can find her playing with her young children and husband on the beaches and parks of California.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Welcome, Kate. Thank you so much, Vanessa. I appreciate you having me on here.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

And I can't wait to chat with you. I'm so excited to have you here today. Before we get chatting and talking about what's bringing us together today, there's one question that I ask every first-time guest on the show. And that is what does gritty mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Gosh, I have so many things that came in my head immediately. I think the first thing was when you fall down to get back up. Whether it's falling out of a yoga pose or some hardship at work or with the family and knowing something is hard that you can get through it. And that's being gritty. It's it's perseverance, it's determination, it's continuing on, even when it's dark and scary and hard.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Oh, that's awesome. I love it. Thank you for contributing. There's gonna be a poster coming out, and you'll get to have her name on it now. So I have had the privilege of training with Kate in the hot room for many years now. And towards

Why HYROX and Choosing Doubles

SPEAKER_01 3:20

the end of this last summer, she approached me about doing a HYROX that's H-Y-R-O-X race. And me being me, of course, I said yes. So that's what we're here to chat about today. Kate is my training partner for Doubles HYROX race that's coming up in December. For any listeners that are wondering what is high rocks, it's a fairly new modality that combines short distance running with functional fitness stations. I'll just deal a quote directly from the HYROX website. HYROX combines both running and functional workout stations where participants run one kilometer, which for all of us in California is roughly 0.62 miles, followed by one functional workout station, and you repeat that sequence eight times. So we're signed up for the Devils High ROX, which means that we're committed to doing this race as a team of two. We have to complete the following events in this order. So it starts with that one kilometer run, then we divide and ski a thousand meters on the ski erg, one kilometer run. We do a 50 meter sled push divided between the two of us at 102 kigs, another run, and then we do a sled pull at 78 gigs, another run, 80 meters of burpee broad jumps, another run, 1,000 meters of rowing and another run, 200 meters of cattlebell farmers carries at 16 kigs in each hand, another run, 100 meters of sandbag lunges at 10 gigs, another run, and then we finish that off with 100 wall balls at four gigs, and then we're done. Or we're dead. I'm not sure which both. So, Kate, this is where I'm gonna bring you in on this. What prompted you to be like, this is what I want to do with my life come December?

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Um, like you, we both have been moving our bodies and working out for decades. And I thought, people ask me, what are you working out for? I always say my life, my children, my future. But I wanted to have a goal somewhere in our near future, a few months out. Our race is in December, so we still have a few months. And I just wanted a goal and I wanted to do it with a partner because I love camaraderie and I love, you know, we text each other back and forth. What'd you do today? How do you feel? Did you ice your knee? And I just I wanted something to look forward to. And I looked around the yoga room and I saw you and our dear friend Isha. And I'm like, one of them's gonna say yes, let's do this. And, you know, I thought I could learn so much from you, Vanessa, because your background is different from mine. I'm a lot yoga, yoga, yoga, yoga, and the weight lifting is newer, and it just sounded like something really fun to do with a partner, you know. And in my 20s, a couple of decades ago, I did a lot of triathlons, a lot of distance runs, marathons, trail runs. And that was such an individual sport. It was just me and the long road ahead for a marathon. And I saw I wanted to do doubles. I wanted to be with a friend, learn together. And I'm so glad you said yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Me too. Yeah, and I will have to introduce Isha on a future podcast episode. She's an ultra endurance athlete. I love that you touched on the background. So, for our listeners, you guys know my background is CrossFit bodybuilding, strength building, strength training in particular. And that's really my area of expertise. And adjacent to that is everything that Kate does in the yoga world. She is one of the strongest yogis I've ever personally met. I learn so much taking her class, which I try to do at least once a week. So very different backgrounds. I joke because Kate, you're also from the East Coast, right? Beautiful dark complexion. And but I'm from California and I'm super fair and pale. We're just like night and day coming together, both in our personalities and our training backgrounds. We've got CrossFit and you've got yoga. I think it's just gonna be such a beautiful partnership for this, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:51

I'm thrilled because, like you just said, we're we are so different,

Blending Yoga and Strength Worlds

SPEAKER_02 7:55

but there is that gumption that we have in common. And we want to, I mean, we're not gonna win this, but we want to win in the sense of we're not getting injured, we're having fun, we're getting strong. Like that's winning to me.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

I'm not trying to get on the podium. I want to finish with that feel-good, you know, feeling. And what I've learned from you, and even just this past month, is how organized you are. How are you researching everything? Like I signed, I got us into this high rox idea, and someone was like, What do you do? I'm like, Oh, I don't know. We run and lift weights. Like, I've never pushed a slut before. I've never done the ski erg ever in my life. I mean, I just picked up those giant balls for the wall balls for the first time, you know, a month ago. So I'm kind of a jump right in, say yes no matter what. And I love that you are helping me prep and organize and keep me on a schedule because I need to learn about rest days.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Because we're talking about some of the challenges that we both have been facing, right? Because we've been just already just getting into this. So, to give listeners an idea, we're gonna follow an eight-week training protocol because Kate and I are both what I would consider well beyond average fitness capacity. Like we both train professionally in mini outlets every day, seven days a week. And so we have this baseline of conditioning that that we're working with. That's to our advantage in some ways, and in some ways to our disadvantage. We'll chat on that too. So, what I'm getting from you, Kate is really your why was I I've got to do, I want to do something novel and I want to do it in community. Yes. I want to learn and grow in community in an area that might be adjacent to something I think I know, but is gonna challenge me. I love that. I think when I asked the same question of myself when I was preparing for this, like what is my why? You know, when you asked me, I had one of those jump out of the plane and didn't check my parachute first moments. Like that's not very much me, but I was so compelled when I talked to you and your energy and your enthusiasm that I was like, God, I can't, I can't not do this with this woman. This is gonna be amazing. You know, I've done Spartan races, tough mutters, half marathons, crossfit comps, bodybuilding comps, but I've never done high rocks. It seems like the right ratio for me of distance running to functional fitness that it's probably I might be dangerously addicted to by the time I finish training for this. But like every few years, I kind of like to give myself one of those impossible, possible goals. It's how I got into bodybuilding and the IFBB in the first place, where I was like, post-divorce, I'm 35, single mom. Oh, this sounds like a great time to take on my first bodybuilding competition, said no one ever. And then I did. You know, it's just one of those weird things. So being a lifelong student of movement, that's where I really see that's kind of the common denominator for both of us is we're like, just try something new. Exactly. So let's see, race is in December. We're traveling to a destination that I'm not to gonna disclose today. We're gonna build some suspense into this, but we will be traveling to compete. Our training, our official training period's gonna start in another week or two. I think it starts mid-October, right? And so trying to get us together on the podcast now so that listeners will be able to follow us through our social media accounts together as well as apart. And then we'll chat, we'll circle back in season two to talk about post-race, how everything went. I wanted to get into now about like some of the challenges that we've been facing. We're both fitness professionals, we both have families, we both work. Uh, I'm curious, before you started training for the high rocks with me, if you can rewind a little bit, where did you primarily find yourself training in what capacity prior to starting the high rocks training?

SPEAKER_02 11:58

When I read a little bit about the high rocks, I noticed it was run event, run event, run. So I laced up my sneakers again for the first time in a long time. Because I've always been, you know, barefoot on a yoga mat or lifting weights with clients. So for me, before we met, I remember I was on the East

Training Structure, Heat, and Recovery

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Coast visiting family, and that's when I called you. And I was just trying to put miles in just to get ready for the running part of high rocks. So that's where I think I need to work on the most. And I know I have it in there. It's, I mean, I ran track and field at UMass. I did, you know, competitive running as a young 20 all the way into 30-year-old. But it's in there. I just have to go find it again and lace up my sneaks, and that's what I'm doing. So I think that will be my biggest challenge is being confident enough to do that 0.62 miles after, you know, pushing a sled, after throwing around weights. It's gonna be a challenge for sure. But that's really what I've been working on the most before I met you is every other day put in some miles. Yeah. Because I'm always on the mat and I'm like, I'm I'm so flexible, but I need to be strong. And I think more yogis need to lift weights and more weightlifters need yoga. So I want to be that person who's in the middle that's like they're both necessary. They're both great friends.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Amen to that. I agree. Been preaching that for so many years to my crossfitters, and it's really hard to get them to stretch, even just within the confines of a workout that they have in the box, and then talking to my yogi friends about how they need to lift weights.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

Yeah, well, and there's such a misconception where weightlifters think, well, yoga's too easy. I don't want to go in there. I'm I'm a weightlifter. I want to lift. And yogis are like, I'm too scared to lift weights. It's too hard. But it's it's not. You start with a lighter weight, you start with what your body can handle. And the same with CrossFitters going into yoga. You're not gonna jump into an advanced practice, you start with what your body's able to do. And you can do yoga in a chair and you can do yoga on the floor. You don't have to jump, you're not gonna do a handstand your first day. So I think there is a misconception where we all have to like meet in the middle and meet where your body is and be in the season that you're in that day.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

I would encourage any crossfitter that thinks yoga isn't challenging to come take one of Kate's class. You will be on your mat in a puddle of sweat wondering what just happened to you. It's magical. I love it. It really isn't. What percentage of your time do you think you spend training in a hot room environment?

SPEAKER_02 14:46

Um, I do teach 19 classes per week. And um about nine or 10 of them are in the hot room. So the others are much gentler. It's either prenatal or postpartum where we're not sweating, we're not doing vigorous poses, and the other few are also with private clients in the comfort of their own home. So it's not 105 degrees like you know, we haven't. And I'm grateful for that because being in the hot room 19 classes a week would be too much for my body. I mean, it can only drink so many electrolytes and water and coconut water. But um yeah, I'm in the hot room at seven days a week. And it is safe because I'm eating the right food and I'm hydrating enough. And when I teach, I am a firm believer that I'm not practicing. And when I'm practicing, I'm not teaching. You have to do one or the other. I mean, I can roll out my mat and I can be in the pose demonstrating, but if I'm speaking while in the pose, that's not yoga. Being in the pose, you have to be focusing on your breath, engaging certain muscles. And I'm walking around the room and giving air when needed and adjusting people's bodies. That's the same in CrossFit.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

If you're doing the movement, you're not coaching, you're not attending to the movement of the athlete that's exactly. I just bring up the hot room capacity because I think in the last several years, I've gravitated towards more of that high-intensity interval training in the hot room, in addition to my yoga practice there. And I found that there's really good clinical research to support that this type of training does help stave off things like rhabdomyolysis, right? And decreases the risk of injury. My muscles get warm and they're pliable. They're more deceptive to load as well as range of motion when I work in a heated environment. I found that it increases my cardiovascular endurance threshold, my distress tolerance for training in uncomfortable situations, which I think of high rocks is going to be a lot of compromised running and trying to get our breath back, running, and then boom, go right into this move that's gonna require that presence and focus that you have to have when you're holding a yoga posture. So I say all of this because as I've aged and I wonder, I think we're pretty close in age, that it becomes more challenging to hit those high-intensity training thresholds without injury. You know, so what I used to be able to go and do outside of a heated room, that high impact, heavy load, high CNS movements that are really critical to maintaining health and vitality now come with a much higher risk of injury when I do them in a non-heated environment. If I add the heat, I found that I can train with slightly lighter loads and use less impact, but I still get the same intensity when I use my biofeedback and I'm tracking it, right? So I think that your 19 classes a week in the hot room 100% is gonna help prepare you for this race. Like you're used to working in a level of distress and on your body, if you will, even if though you're highly adapted for it now, that is giving you such a leg up for what we're doing, going to be doing. I'm super excited. So I wanted to talk also about some of the logistical challenges that we've already faced coming together on this. Like I mentioned, work, kids, husbands. We have full busy lives, which is a blessing. Figuring out what training program we were going to follow, finding time, consolidating

Time, Logistics, and Gear Dilemmas

SPEAKER_01 18:15

a workout location. Because we did reach out to a couple different places and we just couldn't come together on like a solid place to train. But we have one now. What else? Finding space and equipment. Is there anything you can think of? I haven't mentioned.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

No, it's mostly time together. Like I want more time with you. And when we are together, I feel like I'm always looking at my watch, like, oh no, we only have 30 more minutes. Oh no. But we're we're fitting it in. And what I know you're doing, and what I know I can do is we're working, you know, on our own. And you're getting on your rower and um getting on the Peloton and um hitting the pavement sometimes at 5:30 in the morning while my kids are asleep because that's the only time I can run.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Yeah. So sitting that run training in is no joke. I'm doing the same and restructuring my training during the week so that I can allocate time for longer distance runs. Like you said, it's just time. There's a finite number of hours in the day. Yeah. I feel pretty blessed that we were able to come together on a location that we could train together that has everything, which is great. We've got turf, we have sleds, we have all the equipment. Yeah. Should we actually have enough time in our day? They have an infrared sauna, they've got a hot room, like we could literally do everything there. So I feel really grateful for that. Looking forward to, as we get more into our training schedule, adding more time there, but also realizing that comes at a cost. I'm gonna have to subtract hours from other training modalities that I've been doing. Yeah. One other thing I wanted to talk about too was the feedback that we've already been getting from our individual bodies, because we have been doing this sort of adjacent, like parallel training and then coming together once a week to get this started. We are both coming off of injury or carry around old stories about how we think our bodies can move. For me, especially being in my 40s, injury prevention is key. And I think probably the same for you is we get injured, we can't function. We can't do our jobs in the fitness industry. We can't take care of our kids, we can't maintain.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

It's true. Our body is our asset. And if we get hurt and everything goes. So our someone asked me, What do you want out of high rocks? I'm like, to not be injured, to learn how to squat correctly. Like you're teaching me ways to squat where my knees don't hurt. You're teaching me ways to lift weights, you know, those snatches where I keep the weight close to my body. I think we both have that in common. We want to do this injury free. And, you know, I have had a dissectomy in my lower back, and I am pushing the mid-40s. And I want to show my children mostly how strong we can be as we're getting older.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Do you mind speaking a little bit about what happened with your back? I think it's very powerful for people, especially for anybody carrying around stories about their bodies, right? And what they happened, what can and can't they do in the future or right in the present moment.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

My major issue with my back injury was my ego. I felt something like not pop. I didn't hear a pop, but I felt something that was wrong and I kept going. So my ego was like, You're almost done with this bike ride, Kate. Keep pedaling, just go, go harder and finish strong when I should have stopped. So it happened while I was on a bike. And I know I should have stopped riding and gotten off the bike. So my ego is what hurt me. And ultimately, my L4 and L5 kind of slipped out of place and they landed on nerve, a nerve root. So, you know, we have billions of nerves coming out of a nerve root, but that

Injury Stories and Smarter Training

SPEAKER_02 22:10

nerve root got smashed by my disc. So then my left leg went immediately numb and I had what was called drop foot. It's a term where one foot moves and the other one doesn't. So I was limping. I had a two-year-old and a five-year-old at the time. I could not pick my children up. I couldn't walk up the stairs. Like again, I couldn't, I mean, I could teach yoga because I have a voice, but I couldn't demonstrate. I couldn't. So the story of that is really you have to listen to your body. And I say that every single class, whether it's a group or a private or children, I'm gonna go teach first graders yoga today. And I'm gonna say, everybody listen to your bodies, although they're gonna be so flexible. And it's important that when your body says stop, I feel like a red flag. You have to listen, that you don't push through pain. We can work around it and we could figure out ways to still stay active. But my injury came by not listening to my body. So now it's a blessing in disguise. Like I'm ultra aware. Like I was telling you recently, oh, my calf started cramping in a run. I stopped running. I like immediately stopped. I stretched my calf, I put ice on it, then heat, ice and heat. And if I didn't hurt my back, I probably would have run through a calf cramp or little tweak, and then I'd be out for six to eight weeks. Instead, I was only out for three days. Yeah, right into injury. Yeah. So I did end up getting the discs taken off the route. So uh hence the dissectomy, you know. They I went into surgery, and um, when I woke up from anesthesia, my foot was moving around with the other. So it worked. Wow. Immediately it worked. And, you know, I I thank so much modern medicine and MRI is and and doctors who can fix because some people, not some, all of my people were like, you're a yogi, you're gonna be fine. Just stretch your back, just meditate, just do this, just do that. And I was like, I need to seek a much deeper, more medical versus meditating on healing or you know, read the book now, your mind will heal your back. It's like sometimes you just need to have surgery.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Absolutely. You got to listen to the episode I did with the neurosurgeon in yoga where we talked about like yoga can do a lot to prevent, but there are certain situations where you do need medical intervention. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. What was the time frame? How far out are you from when that happened?

SPEAKER_02 24:53

It was four years ago. Okay. This July. So 2021. 2021.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

For some reason in my mind, I thought it was 10 years ago. You have so much flexibility that I would never have guessed you were only four years ago.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

You know, it made me stronger because I now but I now know how to train smarter because of it. Yeah. So I do see myself as a much stronger person after hurting my back. And I have, you know, friends that have also gone through injury that agree. They say an injury is a blessing in disguise. Nobody wants to be injured. We don't want to get surgery, but sometimes it just forces us to learn how to properly and better take care of ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

It's been really neat to work with you so far and see how much you're learning already about movement, functional movement from the ground up. I won't spend a lot of time going over it, but I don't know how many listeners know my story. I had a total foot reconstruction in 2020 that failed. I was not listening to my body, and I was distance running on a very deformed left foot. It was congenital. Right about the time I was 40 almost. I kept running. I could not turn off the ego. I'm like, no, I'm fine. I'm just gonna push through. And my tendon, the tendon that wraps around the medial aspect of the where you should have an arch in your foot, had completely collapsed and was so swollen I could barely walk. I had to get a surgery to correct it. Unfortunately, the surgeries failed. One of the plates didn't take, and then when they took the plate out, they broke the joint. So after three or four surgeries, I said, no more. We're just gonna leave it the way it is, and I'm gonna try to rehab it. So it's still technically broken, but I can walk, I can run. And it's a miracle, but again, I have to just like you listen to my body. It talks and it tells me don't do that. That hurt. Or if that's the movement you need to do, we're gonna find a way to engage the same muscles, but through a different path. Cause you know, your foot can't handle that, Vanessa. So much powerful feedback about being willing to modify and adapt doesn't mean less than that you can still accomplish amazing things with your body if you're willing to listen, right? To the feedback it gives you. Yep. Thank you for sharing about your story so everyone can hear it too. They're gonna watch us, they're gonna see you, and they're gonna be like, that woman is freaking amazing. We had back surgery four years ago. Look what she's doing.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

And here we are in a high rock top. Yeah. Our bodies are amazing, our bodies are miracles. And if you treat it right, you know, and both you and I are living that sober life, and it's important to wake up with a clear mind and be present when you're lifting heavy weights, and yeah, to be, you know, very much on that path of health.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

I love that you touched on a nutrition aspect as well when you're talking about the volume of work that you do in the hot room. What you put in your body matters more than any amount of training you could possibly do. Absolutely. You know, fluids, the right electrolytes, good nutrition. Yeah, choosing to like for me in particular, choosing to live a life that is alcohol free has really served me with all of this. That was what was right for me. And it helps me, like you just said, be more present and aware so that I can hear my body a little bit better when it's talking to me. I wanted to circle

Race Fears, Favorites, and Footwear

SPEAKER_01 28:30

back to the events and the race. So I listed all of them. There's eight. That's a lot. What is the one station that you're most excited for?

SPEAKER_02 28:40

If there was one, yeah, there is one. I can't wait to push the sled. Okay. I'm excited about that. I feel like I've been pushing strollers and pulling the red wagon cars. Yes, yeah. Okay. I'm excited for the hand and the farmer's carry because I'm one of those guilty who takes every grocery bag in on one trip. So I love load up both arms and I can carry heavy bags of groceries. So I'm very excited about those two events. What are you the most nervous for? Um, are we including the run in this? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it counts. It doesn't have to be a station. It could absolutely be. I am I'm the most I'm gonna use the word excited, but it really does mean nervous about the run. About the run. Even though like running is probably what I've know how to do the most, considering I ran track and field for eight years, high school and college, and I participated in so many running races, but never then go push the sled, then go do the sandbag lunges, then like I've run long distance, I've run short distance. But then I would just stop, drink my water, and stretch. Be done. But I'm I'm nervous to then run again after pushing the sled, run again after those lunges. Yeah. Run again. Like the fatigue and our quads and hamstrings is gonna be real. Yep. We're absolutely most nervous. I am most nervous about that run.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

I think the runs for me as well. And those weighted sandbag lunges are gonna be so gnarly. They're at the end, at least. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

Right? It's our second to last, I think. After that is wall balls. After we're fully exhausted, it's gonna be so hard.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

I think those are what I'm excited for too. Again, I think for me, the running part of it is that story I carry with me of well, can I do it on my foot? Can I? Yeah. Yes, the answer is yes, I absolutely can. You can. I am gonna have to trust the process and the training that we've done and being very careful. One of the biggest obstacles I think we've run into that I didn't mention before, and I want to throw this out there so that if there's listeners that have suggestions, is the shoe debacle. So high rocks is primarily running, running shoes. Yes, there are zero drop shoes, but it is primarily these shoes are designed with a heel-to-toe drop intentionally, because when running, you want like a four-foot or mid-foot strike as you run. So we're kind of more on our toes, right? Everything in strength training world means get back in your posterior chain, which means you have to have your way back in your heels. So my strength training shoes, I usually wear nobles, love them for strength, love them for crossfit, horrible for running. Yeah. I mean, they're awful. So I've been training, I've been doing the workouts and running in my running shoes, which are then pushing me into my toes, which is not great for my alignment for strength. So we're open to suggestions if anyone has a great hybrid zero drop strength training running shoe, should such a thing exist. I know, right? I don't know. I ordered a pair of ultras to try that are for running primarily, but they have zero drop. And then I know Kate, you just ordered a pair of no bulls that we're gonna use for the strength training component. So we'll see if anybody has any ideas. So I wanted to put that out there for listeners. And before we close out, because we're just doing like a quick drop-in. Hi, this is Vanessa and Kate being crazy. Follow us on social media. I really want to make sure we have some time to chat about your side hustle. Let's talk about my yoga retreats.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

Yes, what is it? It is pure fun. That's all I like. I mean, I uh people ask me what kind of experience will I have? And I say, it's whatever you want. I offer a week-long vacation where I offer about three or four yoga classes a day.

Journey Yoga Retreats: Choose Your Path

SPEAKER_02 33:05

And you pick and choose. You can do one of them, you can do all four. Um, I also have a friend who comes from Canada. She's been at least 10 or 12 times, and she doesn't do any of the yoga classes. She just comes to to be with like-minded people, to eat the good food, to travel, to be in a um destination location. But um, I do call it journey yoga retreats because it is a it's a journey. It's not like our fitness life is a journey. It's there isn't like I did high rocks, now I'm never gonna work out again. There's no destination. I think our you and me specifically, our lifestyle is so we can be strong forever, not just in this season. So journey yoga retreats is I let people pick and choose really their own journey. And I go back to the same location every May, which is in Sayulita, and it's called Haramara Yoga Retreat. And it's the same owners, it's the same staff. It's on 13 acres on the water in the jungle, and it is just beautiful, beautiful, lush, clean, and safe. And I've gone there over 20 times, so I'm very close with the staff. And that is my that's my personal favorite. And in the fall, I would change location each year. So I've traveled to Indonesia and Hawaii a handful of times, and we did a retreat in Italy two or three times, Spain went to Greece just a year or two ago, Baja, Mexico. So it changes every fall, and it's the same every spring. So it's it's just really what I tell people who have never been is to do whatever you want. And I'm there to support that. And I speak with every participant before I say they can come. I want to make sure that we are all on the same page, that this is a week where people come to be themselves, that we don't judge. If someone's not taking any yoga classes, we don't judge them. If someone's taking all of them, we don't judge them. If someone's drinking mojitos all day at the pool, we don't judge them. And if someone is sober, I mean, it's I don't tell people you have to only drink juice today. You have to wake up and do 108 sun salutes at sunrise. I don't make people do anything. So I think that's what makes my retreat different from others, because there are a lot of a lot of retreat businesses out there that really curate the week hour by hour. And I don't want people to feel pressure. It's like they're paying me, they're taking a week away from family, a week away from work. I want them to leave comfortable and satisfied and happy that they were there, not that they felt like a school child being told what to do and when and where.

unknown 36:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:09

And it seems to work out. I mean, out of I will bring about 40 people average on each retreat. And every year I would say maybe 28 to 30 are returnees. So each year I get to like wow 10 people or wow 15 people who have never been. But almost always it's a group of us that have been doing traveling together, and we're like a fun little family of yogis who love to go salsa dancing at night or sit by the pool and watch the sunset. And like I said, and your first question is we have a lot of fun, but in a healthy way, in a very healthy way, you know.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

Yeah, you give them the framework. It's a week, it's in Mexico, and you have the location sourced and meals are included. Meals are included, okay, and obviously lodging, and you've got access to four yoga classes a day. Are you the only instructor? Are you doing all of it?

SPEAKER_02 37:10

I am the only instructor, yeah. Okay. I what I've done in the past is I've hired a meditation teacher to help us teach a few classes. I've hired a soundbowl artist to come. But I am the only that it's like a one-person run business. It's just me.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Four hours with you, that would be amazing. If I did four hours of yoga with you, I would be so strong by the time.

SPEAKER_02 37:34

Yeah, we sleep well. I mean, yeah, it's not we I teach a beakram sequence class, a vinyasa class, and then a partner yoga, which is a hoot. We all just laugh and have fun. And then the fourth, the fourth modality is restorative. So we're not doing rigorous yoga the whole time. And I have hired a few hit Pilates teachers. And yeah, it's every year it's a little bit different, but there's always 108 sun salutes at sunrise. There's always a Tamaskal, which is a sweat lodge where we get our heat.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

Do you do the sun salutes every day? No, 108 every day or just one time during the week. Just one time. I was like, wow, I can get through like five of them.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

And then I'm just quite if you've never done 108, we should do it together. I'm thinking maybe on October 8th, which is coming up because it's 10, 8. But it's it's a it's a mind breath. When you do 108 sun salutes, you breathe 1,080 times without interruption. So it's really a meditation where I would ask our student then to come in with a mantra or a word or something that resonates with them. So every breath you take, you kind of say that word or thought or sentence. So after you complete 108 sun salutes, it takes roughly 45 minutes. Then that mantra, then that that idea, that intuition, that thing that you're thought of is really just imprinted in you. Yeah. So it's it's actually a very beautiful, oh, I bet, energetic feeling. And it's if you're not familiar with a sun salute, it's you inhale arms up, exhale, forward fold, inhale, partway lift, exhale, chaturanga, inhale, upward facing dog, exhale, downward facing dog, inhale to the top of your mat, partway lift, exhale, forward fold, inhale, arms overhead, exhale, hands to center. That's one.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

And then you repeat that. So every time you you take a breath, you can inhale a word, exhale a word, inhale. And every time you come back to center, you can say your mantra. And after 108 times, it's pretty powerful.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

I can only imagine. What is the ace? We I need to do this.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

I know we should do it. I would need to do it's a when I don't know if it's a Wednesday or not. I think it's a Wednesday. I looked, but let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Okay, let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

That can be our training. That would be amazing.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

Where can people go to find out more about Journey Yoga Retreats?

SPEAKER_02 40:07

Right on my website, journeyyogaretreats.com. Okay. Yeah, I'll provide a link. I love to talk about it. And you can call me. And that's how I I would like to speak with people is on the phone and give them, you know, a rundown of what we do and make sure that it's something that they want to be part of.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

Awesome. What a gift. Thank you. All right, listeners. That's a wrap. This is just a shortish

Social Links, Season Close, and CTA

SPEAKER_01 40:30

and sweet snapshot into the craziness of our beautiful chaotic by design lives. You can follow both of us on social media. Get journey underscore yoga underscore retreats for Kate and then squats and seances for me. Follow us both for our training progressions and for race updates and wish us luck. We've got this. Thank you, Vanessa.

SPEAKER_02 40:56

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

Oh, what a pleasure. Thank you for listening to today's episode. I hope you found it interesting, actionable, and worthy of sharing. You can help contribute to this growing community by emailing topic ideas, suggestions for interviews, and feedback to Vanessa at squatsandseances.com. That's Vanessa with an E at squatsandseances.com. You can find new episodes of Squats and Seances on all major podcast platforms and the vlogcast on our YouTube channel Squats and Seances. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave us a review if you are enjoying the content. Season one will be drawing to a close on October 31st. Visit us at squatsandseances.com and subscribe to our newsletter while there you can also check out our weekly blog posts on all ways to optimize your health and fitness. Follow us on social media at squats and seances, on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And until next time, stay gritty, friends.