Episode
Gym Mistakes, Food Traps & a Medical Miss That Shouldn’t Happen
- Podcast
- Midlife Mayhem
- Published
- Apr 26, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1698
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Summary
This Week in Coaching: What Went Wrong (That Didn’t Have To) This episode is a bit different. I’m pulling straight from my week, because what shows up in coaching isn’t random—it’s patterns. And most of the time I’m sitting there thinking… 👉 this didn’t need to happen. Three situations stood out this week. Different on the surface, but all pointing to the same thing: a gap between what people are doing and what their body actually needs. ⚠️ The Machine That Keeps Hurting People Let’s start in the gym. The rotary torso machine—the one where you sit down, lock yourself in, and twist side to side with resistance. It looks targeted. It feels effective. 👉 That’s exactly why it’s misleading. Your spine is not designed to repeatedly twist under load. Your upper back can rotate, but your lower back is built for stability. Its job is to transfer force, not generate it through rotation. And the SI joint? It barely moves at all. So when you’re locked into a machine and forced to rotate, you’re pushing movement into areas that are supposed to resist it. That caught up with one of my clients this week. She trains consistently, does everything right—but added this into a run of hard sessions. 👉 Result: irritated SI joint and a miserable few days. Not just the machine—but very likely the tipping point. What I hear all the time is, “but it helps with golf.” No, it doesn’t. A golf swing is a coordinated, full-body movement. This machine removes that coordination entirely. It isolates something that shouldn’t be isolated. And then there’s the real reason most people are on it… 👉 they want to lose fat around their waist. That’s not how fat loss works. You can’t target it. And ironically, overloading the obliques can actually make the waist look thicker. So you’ve got a movement that does…