Question for the ladies - Friday, October 2nd, 2026
Question for the ladies
Wednesday I shared a pretty personal post on my own social media about perimenopause.
It was probably one of the more vulnerable things I've shared in a while, mostly because I'm still trying to figure out what exactly is going on myself.
I don't know for certain that I'm in perimenopause. But at my age and the way I feel, my training feels different, and there are days when I just don't entirely feel like myself. So there's a pretty good chance this is where I am. And I was NOT prepared for it.
If you had asked me a few years ago what menopause looked like, I probably would have said hot flashes and night sweats. I also would have assumed it was something that happened sometime in your 50s. That was pretty much the extent of my knowledge.
I wasn't prepared to wake up one day and feel a nervousness or anxiousness about coming to work. To a gym that I co own, and a place I absolutely love. A place I've walked into almost every day for more than a decade and where I am surrounded by people I genuinely care about.
I wasn't prepared for my patience to suddenly disappear some days. I wasn't prepared to be tired for seemingly no reason. I wasn't prepared for training to feel different or for my body to respond differently to things it has done for years. And I definitely wasn't prepared to suddenly be able to hear every single conversation, barbell, footstep and noise happening inside a 7800 square foot gym simultaneously.
Apparently vampire hearing is a thing.
I'm sharing this here for the same reason I shared it personally yesterday. Do I need sympathy? Absolutely not. Am I looking for pity? Nope. But this is a stage of life that, as women, we don't really get to opt out of, and maybe we should talk about it more.
Steph and I have talked before about the idea of hosting a Women's Night at CFI, to talk about training through the changes that women go through monthly, and lately I've been thinking that maybe now is the time.
We have an incredible group of women who train here, and they span generations.
We have women older than me who have already gone through perimenopause and menopause. What did you experience? What do you wish someone had told you? How did you adjust your training? What helped? What didn't? What would you tell those of us walking into it now?
Then there are a whole lot of us right around my age who might currently be somewhere in the middle of it. What are you experiencing? What are you doing? Have you changed the way you train? Have you talked to your doctor? Have you changed anything with your nutrition, recovery or sleep? Are you also occasionally wondering where the hell the normal version of yourself went?
And then we have our younger women. Maybe you're 25, 30 or 35 and this isn't even remotely on your radar yet. I can tell you that it wasn't on mine either. And maybe you'd actually like to know what's coming. Not so that you can dread it. Not so that a room full of women can scare the hell out of you. But so that when something starts to change, you don't feel completely blindsided by it.
Maybe there's an opportunity here for all of us to learn from each other.
We talk all the time about training through different stages of life. Pregnancy. Postpartum. Injuries. Aging. Changing goals. Stressful seasons. Busy seasons. We adjust training because our bodies and our lives aren't exactly the same at 46 as they were at 26.
Women's bodies also change throughout the month and throughout our lives. Our energy can change. Recovery can change. Sleep can change. Strength can change. How we feel walking into the gym can change. That doesn't mean we stop training. If anything, I think it makes having a place to train, and women to train alongside, even more valuable.
Maybe a Women's Night looks like an hour or so at CFI with no workout, no clock and no leaderboard. Just a group of women sitting together and having an honest conversation about training through all of it. Menstrual cycles, perimenopause, menopause, etc.
Maybe it also looks like bringing in some local women who specialize in women's health, hormones and our changing bodies to add some actual education to the conversation. I've already started running the idea past a few local women who work in this space to see if they might be interested in joining us and doing a little educational talk. Because while there is a lot we can learn from each other's experiences, there is also a lot of value in having knowledgeable professionals in the room who can help us understand what's actually happening inside our bodies and answer some of our questions.
And there's another piece of this that Steph and I have been talking about.
Back in 2020, we created sheMVMNT. A part of CrossFit Indestri, but for women. Taken from the idea of an event I use to run called Women Strong. The idea behind sheMVMNT is Strength. Health. Empowerment. Of women, by women, for women, through movement.
It's been a while since we've done anything with sheMVMNT. In the past, we’ve hosted a few women’s workouts for international women’s day. And as mentioned I use to run an event, and retreat called Women Strong, through UG.
But maybe this is where we strike up sheMVMNT again.
Maybe this becomes a CrossFit Indestri / sheMVMNT Women's Night. A chance to bring women together, not just to talk about perimenopause and menopause, but about what it means to train, move and take care of ourselves through the different stages of being a woman.
We don’t know exactly what it looks like just yet. But the thought of having a room full of women with a whole lot of collective life experience come together to talk, and listen feels helpful.
So ladies of CFI, I'm just putting this out there.
Would this be of interest and helpful for you?
Would you come?
Because if there's enough interest, maybe it's time to bring sheMVMNT back and have a Women's Night.
Friday, October 2nd, 2026
Focus:
Back Squat
2 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 2
Do last 3 sets at 80% - 85%
WOD:
10 min AMRAP
10 Wall Balls 20/14
4 Shuttle runs (Beam to Beam)
Check back each night at 8pm for the next days WOD .
Contact us: Address: 200 Mountain Rd #3, Collingwood, ON L9Y 4V5 Phone: (705) 444-0006 Follow us on Instagram @crossfit_indestri