The Three Things Every Truly Great Workout Needs
…and how I built a class that lets you feel them all in 66 intentional minutes.
My Journey with Fitness
After a lifetime as an athlete: D1 women’s rugby with a <5-minute mile time, >700 hours of yoga, a marathon, and one very humbling 40-lb weight loss journey, you learn a thing or two about what actually makes a workout work for you.
Not the “I should do this because everyone says I should” version of working out, but the version that supports your longevity, your mental clarity, your body composition, your emotional regulation, and honestly… Your joy.
As I move out of the life-season of carrying my children in my belly, and into the life-season of carrying my children on my hip, I’ve felt the call to make one of my highest priorities sculpting my body into it’s next version, one that is strong, nourished, and prepared for a long life ahead of raising good humans that I can run around with and lift easily now, as well as a woman in the future who always walks into the rooms that are most important to her daughters, radiating warmth, and the confidence only accomplished when you feel good in your own skin.
I’ve been in the lab developing my dream workout for quite some time, and so in today’s article, I thought I’d share it with you!
For me, a truly great workout has three non-negotiables:
Building My Dream Workout — My Non-Negotiables
1. Dynamic Stretching for Mobility
Your longevity insurance policy.
Dynamic stretching is the single most important part of any workout because it prepares your body for everything else you’re about to ask of it. Unlike static stretching, which you hold, dynamic stretching moves your joints through their full range of motion, warming tissues, increasing blood flow, lubricating your joints, and “turning on” the neural pathways that support balance and coordination. It’s the part of the workout most people skip, and ironically the thing that prevents injury, improves long-term mobility (and health), and keeps your workouts effective decade after decade.
This is one of the reasons I fell so deeply in love with Ritual Hot Yoga. At its core, RHY is a mobility class disguised as a spiritual sweat session. The heat, the breath, the flow, it’s dynamic stretching that simultaneously builds strength and delivers a cardio experience. Everything about it supports longevity.
When you think about why mobility matters, it really comes down to these things:
First: Our modern lifestyle puts us in the same shape all day, shoulders rounded, chest tight, hips locked, spine flexed. When you spend hours at a laptop or holding a toddler, your body takes that shape. Muscles shorten, others weaken. Your posture collapses forward. Dynamic stretching is what pulls you out of that pattern. It opens the chest, strengthens the upper back, and restores symmetry. It’s literally the antidote to sedentary life.
Second: Mobility keeps your muscles elastic and functional. Strength training without stretching creates rigidity, the fibers rebuild stronger, yes, but also shorter and tighter if not counterbalanced. That’s why, for example, you see people who are strong but can barely sit cross-legged: their muscles behave like guitar strings (rigid, taught, ready to snap) instead of rubber bands (resilient, flexible, ready to move).
Optimizing fir a body that is mobile decade after decade means prioritizing movement that helps us maintain that rubber band like fluid strength, not brittle strength.
And finally, there’s the energetic layer. Dynamic stretching increases circulation, stimulates the lymphatic system, and helps release “stuck” tension and emotional residue stored in the fascia. It moves stagnant energy, literally and metaphorically, dislodging it and shaking it loose into processable bits. IMO, it’s one of the quickest ways to reset your mood, your body, and your nervous system.
So as I thought about my dream workout and started the process of building it, mobility wasn’t an afterthought. It was a fundamental need. Not optional. Not negotiable. Essential.
2. Strength Training
Strong muscles, strong bones, strong mind.
Strength training is the second non-negotiable because it’s the foundation of a healthy, capable, confident body, and the science of why is so clear: as we age, we naturally lose muscle mass and bone density. Without intervention, both decline every single year after your 30s. The most effective intervention? Lifting heavy things.
Strength training works on multiple levels:
Muscles: When you work a muscle, you create tiny micro-tears. Your body repairs those tears by rebuilding the muscle fibers thicker and stronger. Over time, this increases muscle mass, improves metabolism, and shapes your physique. Think of it like contributing to a 401k or chiseling the David from a brick of Marble, your body remembers your past investments and chisels. Even if you fall off your routine, when you come back, the muscle memory kicks in fast. The gains reveal themselves and compound over time.
Bones: Bones respond to stress just like muscles do. When you lift weights, the mechanical loading stimulates osteoblast activity, a fancy word for saying the process responsible for building and regenerating bones. This helps prevent the weakening of bones that leads to osteoporosis as we age. Weight-bearing exercise is one of the most powerful tools for bone longevity… and bone longevity matters when you age and start to fear things like a bad fall taking you out.
Hormones + Mood: Strength training boosts endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin. It reduces cortisol. It improves insulin sensitivity. Translating that from science into vibe: lifting can turn a good mood electric, or take a terrible mood and purge the frustration right out of your body. It’s emotional alchemy. It’s empowerment you can feel immediately.
Badass with a nice ass: Aesthetically speaking, strength training is also what creates that firm, toned, snatched look that most people want but can’t get from cardio alone. Muscle is what shapes the body. Strength is what defines it. So if you want to go from a pancake booty to a poppin one, all that is yours for the taking, with strength-training.
To me, strength training is the holy grail of mood regulation, and the heart of any effective fitness plan. So again, in building my dream workout this was an essential.
3. Cardio
Your daily internal reset button.
Cardio is the third pillar because your heart and lungs are the engines of your entire system. Cardiovascular exercise improves heart health, increases lung capacity, and boosts circulation, which delivers oxygen and nutrients to tissues more efficiently.
When done consistently, cardio: Strengthens your heart muscle, helping it pump more blood with less effort, improves your body’s ability to use oxygen efficiently, enhances mitochondrial function (a fancy way of saying how your body converts food into energy), supports lymphatic drainage (basically a rinse cycle for your body’s toxins), reduces inflammation and stress hormones, and improves cognitive clarity and emotional resilience.
Tell me that doesn’t’ sound like a miracle drug? I often describe cardio as a full-body “detox,” not in the trendy sense but the physiological one. When your heart rate rises, your body increases circulation, flushes out metabolic byproducts, and oxygenates your cells. You literally hit resset on the most life-supporting components of your internal environment of your body.
Energetically, it’s a huge mood-shifter: It elevates you. It clears mental fog. It recalibrates your entire system.
And personally? While the Stairmaster is forever my cardio of choice (because it builds lower-body strength, elevates my heart rate quickly, and gives me that euphoric endorphin rush that feels like a spiritual experience wrapped inside a sweat session), any heart-pumping, lung-burning cardio is going to transform your “how good you feel in the morning when you get up” baseline!
To me, cardio is not just the optimal climactic point for any great workout, because done well the dopamine and endorphins hit right after you finish, but it’s also the best “rinse cycle” I’ve found to bring up my “feel good baseline”.
So again, when designing my dream workout, this was a non-negotiable.
My 66-Minute Ritual
With all this in mind, when Ronnie and I built our home gym in the basement, I finally had the space and creative freedom to take what I was doing at the Gym, and to bring it into my home, designing a space that accommodated the class I always wished existed. A class that blends:
The mobility + meditation of yoga
The strength and conditioning of my D1 days
The cardio high of a Stairmaster climb
The ambiance of a candlelit studio
The power of a perfectly engineered playlist
I also wanted to reduce any potential friction in my way from walking into my house, to into my gym for the workout itself, so I wanted something, like Ritual Hot Yoga, that gave me the ability to start SLOW, in candlelight and with shoes optional. What I’ve found is if I can simply get to my yoga mat, I can generally keep going until a workout is done.
So I’ve been going down to my “lab” (aka the basement studio) every morning after daycare drop-off, experimenting with what I need in the space, the flow and format of the workout, how the playlist supports it, and what both the physical and energetic result feels like after taking my own “workout class”. Can I repeat this every day? If I do, do I get the results I want? What friction can I eliminate so there is no mental friction between me and a workout on the days “I just don’t feel like it”? And what is required to make this feel like a spiritual workout, not just a physical one?
And here’s where I’ve landed…
The Format: Why 66 Minutes?
First and foremost, angel #s… and secondly, because transformation, both physical and energetic, needs time, space, and intention.
Here’s how those 66 minutes are structured:
20 minutes of meditation + dynamic yoga
20 minutes of strength
20 minutes on stairs or your cardio modality of choice
6 minutes of cool down + final meditation
During this 66 minute sweat sesh, the energy builds, the playlist crescendos, and the high point of class hits exactly as your endorphins skyrocket. It’s a chemical affair, truly (every time I take my own class, I feel like the buzziest, most awakened version of myself). Every 66 minute class follows a consistent protocol, just like working with a trainer, you stick to the plan and the plan delivers. It delivers mobility, strength, cardio, and a total body buzz, every time.
What You Need
So what do you need for this workout: Here’s the ideal setup (AKA my home-gym altar) that you can replicate in your own gym, or if that’s not possible, these are the components you’ll want to map out a path between and/or gather at the gym you go to.
Equipment
Stairmaster — We have this one
Yoga mat — I like the Lululemon extra large one
Dumbbells — This is our set
Strength bench — We have this one, it’s sooo sturdy
Bala bands — I have four total, two for my ankles, two for my wrists, 2 lbs each
Weighted vest — I wear 25 lbs
Candlelight or low ambient lighting — Here are the candles in my room
Yoga block — I lay on this one at the beginning of class before or during meditation so that I can stretch my chest out, counterbalancing all that folding forward I do as a mom with young kids, as well as at my computer, desk, and phone all day
Clothing
Vibrams (or socks / barefoot vibes) — I know these are sooo dorky, but they allow me to go from yoga, to strength, to stairs without having to stop to put on shoes or change my shoes, plus I don’t have to wear socks. Converting from tennis shoes to these has reduced a ton of mental, physical, and time friction for me… I don’t feel like I am ‘forcing myself to workout’ if I am basically barefoot (mental friction eliminated) and I don’t have to stop between yoga, strenghth, and stairs to put on or swap shoes (physical and time friction). It’s a game-changer!
Leggings — I love my Lululemon Align Leggings, I have 5 pairs of the exact same so I don’t have to ever make a decision on what outfit I am going to wear. I love that these are soft and flexible, that I do'n’t have to fuss with them between the different aspects of the workout, and also they look cute at daycare drop off, so I don’t have to think twice about putting them on before I leave the house, which means I am dressed and ready to go when I get back from drop off.
Sports bra — I hate a super tight sports bra, with the format of this class, even though I am bustier than a lot of women, I can wear something that is supportive, but not rigid, which again, reduces the friction I feel when getting dressed for class, since I don’t need something to hold me down for any aspect of the workout. Again, I put this on before I leave for daycare drop, so by the time I get back home I am ready to go.
Disposables
Water bottle — Any water-holding container will do, but I love my Yeti and Stanley
Sweat towel — Totally optional, but sometimes my hands get sweaty and so having something to wipe off the sweat between weights sets is an essential for me
Clorox wipes — Make sure to clean your space at the end of your workout!
Storage
Locker — I wanted a place to put all my stuff that looked cute made my workout room look nice and cleaned up when I was done, and this locker did the trick!
Inpsiration
I have a black and white photo of me and my family that I have hanging under our light, it looks like a little alter… but this is my WHY, so every time I flick on the light, I am reminded of why I am here, and inspired to put forward my biggest and best effort
(Note: Don’t have all of this? Here are the swaps I would make: awap the Stairmaster for incline walking, jogging, or rowing (it will activate both strength and cardio this way). Lift whatever heavy things are around you. Light a single candle or play spa lighting on your phone. This is about intention, not perfection.)
Are You Ready To Take a Class With Me?
I’ve built four signature workouts to choose from, each one a full-body energetic reset:
Upper Body — Link coming soon
Lower Body — Link coming soon
Full Body — Link coming soon
Benchmark Workout (your “progress check” moment) — Link coming soon
Each one blends mobility, strength, and cardio into one intentional, endorphin-forward ritual.
If you’re ready to feel strong, fluid, grounded, and lit up from the inside out… I’d love for you to take class with me.
I can’t wait to hear what you think!
I truly hope you enjoy these classes! If you do, reach out and let me know! I can’t wait to hear what you think.
