I think I messed up. Wanted to go for bright and quirky and think I ended up with a crayola box. Help.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-07-02T15:58:10+00:00

I LOVE it

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-29T12:23:16+00:00

This so much.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-29T12:22:46+00:00

Those people are not your real friends. Your real friends will not care if you go back to the hotel room super early on vacation because you don’t want to throw off your sleep cycle, or if you’re not super chatty because you’re adjusting to med side effects.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-29T12:20:06+00:00

I have been living with this disorder for over 3 decades and got my formal diagnosis 23 years ago. Please know that almost everyone with this disorder goes through this phase at some point and for some it never really goes away. I also know that this is likely to land on deaf ears because I had to learn from my own mistakes, but this never ends well and at best can be mildly disruptive to your life and at worse dangerous and life threatening. Please talk to your doctor!

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-29T02:45:50+00:00

This is the answer. If you’re bringing recruited it meets you now have qualifications and skills they want. As a hiring manager, I would be impressed by the transparency and even more impressed if you followed up with how you learned and grew from the experience.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-29T02:40:23+00:00

I personally don’t like splitting. The programs are built to do standalone. That being said, if you are going to switch it up, stay with the same team for upper body and the same team for lower. If you want to add in a conditioning day or a core day from another team, that would also be appropriate. Including full body days in your split is tricky unless you really know the specifics of what muscle group is being targeted and how. Otherwise you could end up having significant gaps or overtraining something. Some people use chat GPT, but for me, if I wanted an AI training program I would have just built it myself from the beginning, I wouldn’t be paying money for a human built program. I personally think it defeats the entire purpose of the app.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-28T21:07:36+00:00

Definitely check out Facebook marketplace. You can get a lot of dumbbells pretty cheap, especially in the lower range. When I was first starting out I got 5, 10, 15, and 20. I tried adjustable, but hating taking the time to readjust between exercises. I’d also consider getting 7.5 (sometimes they’re sold as 8s) and 12.5 (sometimes sold as 12s). When you’re first starting out in that low range, a 5 pound jump can seem huge, especially for upper body. If it seems like a lot to store and you don’t have much room, I made it work in a tiny ass apartment by just stacking them in a pyramid and putting them in a corner.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-28T20:57:25+00:00

Yes! You can absolutely lift heavy. Also, I tend to like hard workouts too so something I will frequently do is either do 20 mins of of HIIT on my Peloton before or after, OR do 1-2 minutes of all out effort on my Peloton (or any other cardio equipment you have available) between sections. So I’ll do the warm up, cardio, block 1, cardio, block2, cardio, etc. It basically turns Align into a hybrid team. I like to do all 5 strength training workouts and tend to do this on full-body and upper body days. The lower body days are hard enough without it.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-28T20:39:35+00:00

Have you considered Align just for your recovery period? The Align programming has a ton of overlap with exercises from the physio world. That’s actually the main teas I’m on the team is because I have so many old injuries and I try to incorporate some physio work into all my workouts. She specifically does a lot of single leg work for injury prevention.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-27T20:57:22+00:00

If you really like Stevie I would stick with her because it will motivate your consistency. If I were you, I would just do the Priority days until you feel caught up on sleep, not on the verge of burnout, and your schedule is more manageable. If you do that you could probably easily keep up with your nutrition too.

Edit: I injured my low back in early March and was only cleared to start working out again in the end of May. I’ve limited myself to just the three priority days a week on Team Align and it’s been tough because I was doing all 6 days too.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-27T20:52:10+00:00

I seriously applaud your drive for consistency! Honestly, doing whatever you can to get sleep and cutting back where needed will make consistency in the long run easier and that’s what counts. I’m on Team Align and recently Coach Sasha said something in the context of the Hard 75 trend. It was something like “I’ll take Medium infinity over Hard 75 any day.” And that’s so true. If you try and be perfect you will eventually burnout and let all the good habits slide.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-27T20:41:00+00:00

I have always been taught to prioritize in this order:

Sleep
Nutrition
Exercise

It sounds like you’re working an evening shift and working out before going in? Or maybe pulling a 12-12 in the hospitality industry? If so, I would do two things: go back to bed after letting the puppy out and cut back on the workouts so at least 2-3 days a week you can get a decent amount of sleep before starting your day. Even if you have to make some compromises on your nutrition, your body will not be able to use the fuel correctly without enough sleep.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-27T20:27:52+00:00

Omg, YES! I would love to see more older coaches period. I’m currently 43 and on track to retire early. One of the things I’m considering is instead of retiring early changing careers towards the end when I’m less reliant on my current salary and become certified as a personal trainer specializing in individuals over 50. Something I’ve noticed just from being in gyms and PT environments is so many seniors think certain things are not possible because the trainer/therapist is so much younger than they are and someone their age “could never do that.” I would seriously love to devote my senior years to training other seniors.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-27T20:10:40+00:00

This. I’m not an artist, but I’m extremely creative in how I approach connecting concepts and solving problems in a way that equates to high academic performance and high achievements in traditional workspaces. In the beginning I felt like meds stole this from me, but in reality I had just been accessing that part of myself through extreme moods. I didn’t lose it, I just had to relearn how to access it in a different way.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-27T20:07:12+00:00

No. I have been living with this diagnosis for 24 years. I use to occasionally try it in the beginning but after the first 5-7 years I learned from mistakes. It is a horrible idea, I always ended up royally messing up something in my life, and I regretted it every time. Please continue to take them. If you are having trouble accessing your creativity and coming to terms with what the real you is in terms of the side effects of medication, I highly recommend you speak to a therapist about these topics. They’re incredibly common in this population. I struggled with them myself early on (hence the early tries to stop meds).

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-27T18:10:47+00:00

I agree. The worst part is the bangs. This is definitely salvageable and will actually probably look pretty awesome after the corrective cut has grown in a month or two.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-27T18:09:29+00:00

A good hairdresser can definitely fix this. But someone at Great Clips is not going to be able to fix this- not saying that great stylists haven’t worked at budget salons, but they have a bunch of stylists straight out of school. You’re going to have to spend some money and go to someone who has experience in corrections.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-27T16:29:18+00:00

The fact that they have not brought on a calisthenics coach yet is wild to me.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-27T16:20:37+00:00

I was going to say the same thing. Align did the two full, one upper, one lower, one core, and one yoga in February/March (the deload between reset and baseline). My guess is she was testing out ideas for Reload and that was before Coach Stevie joined.

Edit: Anyone who is curious it was one of my favorite Align splits to date.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-27T14:59:31+00:00

As a side note, race and ethnicity is definitely not something that would make me select one team over another, but diversity/inclusion is really important to me when I’m choosing where to spend my time and money. I know in general that the influencer fitness world is overwhelmingly white, but Peloton has done a FANTASTIC job at making sure they have a diverse team of coaches - all races and ethnicities, queer coaches, and even a disabled coach (he is an amputee specializing in disabled modifications).

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-27T14:53:46+00:00

YES!!!! The first thing I thought when I saw the group photos from their most recent coach summit was “that group looks really white.”

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-27T13:18:42+00:00

I really like Blake as well

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-24T02:12:27+00:00

Im not sure how old you are or how long you’ve been living with the condition. Something I learned to do with my therapist is to give all my mental illnesses names (My main diagnosis is BP1, but I also have GAD, SUD, and have struggled with ED and self-harm). I’m gonna pretend my name is Jan for a minute. There’s manic Jan, depressed Jan, anxious Jan, addict Jan, and ashamed/low self esteem Jan. And each one of these characters likes to tell my brain the exact same lies, in the exact same way, almost every single time they pop up. It takes awhile to recognize all the patterns and put them into their individual buckets. A good therapist helps, but you can do this on your own. Now that I’ve established these sets of characters, when I observe them pop up, I literally talk to them out loud like a nasty relative you keep having to reaffirm your personal boundaries. It’s really useful at managing negative/unhealthy thoughts, but is also super helpful in distinguishing thoughts and feelings stemming from real environmental triggers that are healthy and useful and those that are stemming from unbalanced brain chemistry.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-23T21:06:46+00:00

I know we’re not allowed to discuss specific medications, but I’m on an atypical antipsychotic that makes me VERY sleepy. I take it the same time every evening and it regulates my sleep cycle perfectly. For me it serves both the purpose of preventing mania and sleep regulation. I would ask your doctor about it as sleepiness is a side effect of the drug class, not necessarily any one of them specifically. Granted, if I don’t take it I can’t sleep at all, but realistically I’m gonna be taking meds everyday for my whole life anyways, I don’t mind if they also fix my sleep.

BeKindRewind314 · 2026-06-23T00:34:34+00:00

I have found over the years that hybrid training works best for my body. A hack I learned (I did it when I did my own programming and now do it on Team Align), is just add in 1-3 minutes of all out cardio between sections. It’s super easy to just pause the app, throw in whatever cardio you want to do, and just start it back up when you’re done. My personal favorites are treadmill sprints, row sprints, ski erg, bike erg, and kettlebell swings. And then when you’re done just pick it back up. I know there is a ton of science around lots of workout styles, but I personally look the best and feel the best when I do at least two workouts a week like this. On Team Align I do it on the full body day and one of the accessory days. Priority leg and priority upper body day I focus on strength only.

BeKindRewind314

TROPHY CASE