How to Stop Quitting the Gym

Fuel Your Strength

Steph Gaudreau

Fitness, Nutrition, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2026

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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:

Why stopping completely doesn't get you any closer to your goals – but imperfect effort does
How all-or-nothing thinking quietly sabotages long-term strength training consistency
What "just keep swimming" really looks like inside a lifting program
Why flexibility is a skill – not a lack of discipline
How minimum effective effort can keep momentum alive during hard seasons
What strength training consistency actually looks like for women over 40

Enjoyed this episode and want more?

If this episode resonates and you're ready to stop guessing in the gym, you can try a free sample of Strong with Steph, my progressive strength training program built specifically for women over 40 who want structure and flexibility.

Try 7 days free at https://stephgaudreau.com/workout

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who's lifting (or thinking about starting), and make sure you're subscribed to Fuel Your Strength so you don't miss future episodes like this one.

Transcript

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0:00.0	When it comes to your lifting, one of the most important lessons you can implement is to channel
0:05.4	your inner finding emo. I'm going to tell you all about it on this episode of the podcast.
0:15.8	If you're an athletic 40-something woman who loves lifting weights, challenging yourself and doing hard shit,
0:23.2	the Fuel Your Strength podcast is for you. You'll learn how to eat, train, and recover smarter
0:29.7	so you build strength and muscle, have more energy, and perform better in and out of the gym.
0:36.9	I'm Strength Nutrition Strategist and Weightlifting Coach, Steph Goddrow.
0:41.2	The Fuel Your Strength podcast dives into evidence-based strategies for nutrition, training,
0:47.0	and recovery, and why, once you're approaching your 40s and beyond,
0:51.7	you need to do things a little differently than you did in your 20s.
0:55.5	We're here to challenge the limiting industry narratives about what women can and should do
1:01.0	in training and beyond. If that sounds good, hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app and let's go.
1:08.9	What's going on, my friend? Welcome back to Fuel Your Strength. I'm so happy that you're with me on this brand new episode. And we're going to get into it today. I have a little story time for you. This episode will probably be a bit shorter than normal, but I think this story really resonated when I shared it recently on social media. So I wanted to pass it on to those of you who didn't see it.
1:28.4	Now, of course, before we get into that, if you would like some help with your strength training, you just need a plan.
1:32.5	You want the freedom of walking in the gym and not having to worry about what to do.
1:37.2	You're just going to open the app and get to work.
1:40.7	Save that precious brain space for other things in life, know what to do, execute with confidence,
1:46.7	and see improvements, then check out a sample of Strong with Steph.gadra.com slash workout. And I'll send
1:52.9	you seven days. You can try it and then go from there. All right. So I want to tell you this story
1:58.4	about way back in my triathlon days. Many of you know, and I want to tell you this story about way back in my triathlon days.
2:02.2	Many of you know, and I alluded to it on the previous episode of the podcast,
2:06.4	and I have talked about this as well in the past, of my transition between triathlon
2:11.7	and endurance sports, like essentially ultra mountain biking, into strength training.
	...

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