Rest intervals part 2: the mindset behind not being able to slow down

Most women have been taught to approach fitness the same way they approach life in a hustle culture—go faster, burn more, never slow down. But that’s not the design God gave us.

In this episode, AJ breaks down the surprising power of rest intervals—not just in your workouts, but in the way you approach your entire life.

Starting with the creation story, we explore how God built a rhythm of work and rest into the very fabric of the world. Adam and Eve’s first full day wasn’t spent grinding—it was spent resting with God. From the very beginning, humanity was designed to work from rest, not for rest.

AJ then connects that bigger picture to the modern fitness culture many women are trapped in:

constant cardio, chasing exhaustion, and believing that sweating more means achieving more.

But when it comes to building strength, muscle, and long-term health, rest is not laziness—it’s strategy.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why rest intervals are essential for building lean muscle

• The physiological reason strength training requires recovery between sets

• Why “cardio bunny” culture keeps women stuck in burnout cycles

• How discipline in the gym mirrors spiritual discipline in life

• How God’s design for rhythms of work and rest leads to greater strength—physically and spiritually

If you’ve ever felt guilty for slowing down in your workouts—or in your life—this episode will challenge the way you think about effort, discipline, and rest.

Because sometimes the most powerful thing you can do… is pause, recover, and prepare for the next rep.

If you need knowledge about how the different energy systems work and how long to actually rest, check out my other episode about rest intervals!!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Are you a faith-driven woman ready to transform your health and fitness, level up your habits, and steward everything that God has blessed you with? If so, welcome to the Refinery Movement Podcast, the place for Christian women in fitness or women ready to step into it who want to build strong, faith-based habits that honor God and inspire their families and communities. I'm your host, AJ Amrine, lifelong athlete, former WWE superstar and founder of the Refinery Movement. My passion is to help women integrate faith and fitness and to make the church healthy again. Here we'll dive into powerful strategies, biblical principles, and practical tips to help you crush your goals. We'll also talk about balancing training, nutrition, and family life because you can steward the temple and still enjoy freedom, fun, and connection. So grab your protein shake, get comfy, and let's step into today's episode with boldness, clarity, and intention. Let's get refined.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Today we're talking about something that I've touched on before briefly, but I want to touch on it again and kind of look at it from um a deeper perspective of like bigger picture and then in the gym and how it affects our workouts and things like that. But we're talking about rest intervals today, yes, in the gym, but also in life. Because when you really start to look at how God designed creation, like let's take it all the way back to Genesis, you start to see something interesting. God designed us to work from rest, not work for rest. So God designed us to work from a place of rest, not work like for the weekend, or not like work to earn the rest. Think about the creation story. God creates the world in six days. And on the sixth day, he creates Adam and Eve. And then the very first thing that humanity experiences is rest. They're created on day six, and then on day seven is the Sabbath. So God didn't have them get right to work and go right out into the world. This means the first full day of Adam and Eve experienced as human beings was resting with God. They didn't earn it, they didn't grind for it, they started from it. We all started from it. Then they went out into the world and did the work that they were created to do. And that's important. We're the same way. We're designed that way because the world today operates the exact opposite way, right? The world says to move faster and do more and burn more calories and hustle harder. And if you're not exhausted, if you're not sweating profusely, you're probably not doing enough. But that's not God's rhythm. And honestly, you see the same broken rhythm play out all the time in women's fitness. There's this cycle I see over and over again of women who feel like they need to just constantly go super fast and always do intense cardio, like go fast, burn calories, sweat a lot, and punish your body, and then crash, you know, and undereat and feel exhausted. And your hormones go haywire, your metabolism slows down, and then you panic, and then you do even more cardio, and then your body's in this constant state of survival, and the whole thing becomes this dopamine-chasing, calorie-burning hamster wheel. And now hear me clearly though. I am not by any means anti-cardio. Cardio is good. Your heart needs it, your brain benefits from it, your cardiovascular system benefits from it, and there are different zones of cardio, and each one has a purpose, right? Zone one is very light activity, recovery work, and then zone two, my personal favorite, which is steady pace, where you can talk, but not sing. I mean, I can never sing, but you know what I mean. Uh, this builds your aerobic base and supports fat metabolism. Zone three and four cardio is like higher intensity work where you're pushing harder. And zone five is all out effort. And there's a place for all of these zones of cardio. You should absolutely have the capacity to move fast when life requires it. If your kid needed to be carried out of a house fire, you want the cardiovascular fitness to do that. Your brain health also benefits from cardio, your heart benefits from cardio, your resilience benefits from learning to push through hard effort. That character development piece, right? So cardio absolutely belongs in your life. But here's the problem that I'm talking about today. For many women, cardio is the entire plan. And the deeper issue isn't really about cardio. It's about the mentality behind it and maybe the lack of wisdom. Because the women who rush through workouts, who never slow down, who treat exercise like punishment, often live their entire lives that exact same way. And this is coming from someone who did this, right? So no judgment. Fast, white knuckling, checking boxes, trying to outrun something. But when everything is fast, you lose your why of like why you're doing any of this in the first place. And how the famous saying goes when you lose your why, you lose your way. So that's kind of big picture, you know, like Genesis, and then how you live your entire life. But now let's pull a little bit closer to the analogy of like all of this having to do with the gym. Let's talk about rest periods in strength training and adding in strength training and not just doing cardio. A lot of women hate rest periods, they feel awkward, they feel like it's wasted time, they want to rush to the next set. But here's the truth. And some of you guys aren't gonna like this, but if you feel like you don't need the rest between sets, you're not lifting heavy enough. Because when you lift a challenging weight, you need that rest. Your nervous system needs the time to recover before the next set and to optimize each rep. That rest interval is what allows your body to produce strength again. It's where the system resets. I usually rest like two minutes in between my squats in my primary block. Without that pause, your performance drops, your strength drops, your results drop. Rest intervals are not wasted time, they are part of the design. And that same principle applies to life. When everything's fast and everything is reactive, when everything is chasing the next dopamine hit, you lose the clarity that comes from slowing down long enough to actually train with intention. What would happen if we slowed down? Not slowed down in a lazy way or passive way, but slowed down enough to get that clarity and to train with intention. What if we trained our bodies the way we were actually designed to grow stronger and have health long term? Let me paint the picture of what that looks like. A strength session that starts with a thorough warm-up, then some primer exercises to activate the muscles that you're about to use and then work into some mobility work to prepare your joints. Then you move into your primary strength block, your main kind of compound movement for the day. This is where you're lifting the most like challenging weight. You're taking real rest periods between sets, you're focused, you're present. And if you need to know kind of how long to rest, check out my other podcast on rest intervals, and I go into all of that. But you're working on your mind muscle connection, you're not rushing anything, you're optimizing every single rep. And then you move into one or two circuits of accessory movements, and maybe the rest intervals are slightly shorter, and then you get into some core and conditioning, maybe eight to 10 minutes of zone two cardio, or if you have more time and you're on a fat loss journey, maybe you want to add more there into some steady state cardio, right? I love challenging my girls to get a walking pad and making sure that they get their steps in because what that does is it raises your total daily energy expenditure and it truly pays off in the long run. I know you guys hear me talk about it all the time. Get your steps in, get your steps in. But truly that like zone two cardio is so, so powerful. And that's where the little discipline adds up. And also going on walks is a great time to spend with God and quiet time. And then after that workout, you go home and you fuel your body with protein and you eat your body weight and protein through the day. Now, imagine strength training three times a week and hitting your protein goal every single day. Strength training intentionally, fueling your body consistently, getting sleep. That's when the long game begins to unfold. Because what happens over time is when you begin building that skeletal muscle mass, that lean muscle mass. And lean muscle mass is one of the most powerful protectors of long-term health that we have. Muscle improves insulin sensitivity, it improves your metabolism, it protects your bone density, reduces risk of chronic disease, supports your hormone health. Guys, build muscle. Muscle makes it easier to lose fat and keep it off. And as women age, muscle becomes even more important. Going into your 40s and 50s and 60s with higher lean muscle mass dramatically improves your quality of life. It protects against osteoporosis, it supports metabolism through menopause. I've even seen women reverse osteoporosis through consistent strength training. This is why the skinny agenda is over. Starving yourself and running on a treadmill for hours does not create long-term health. Strength does, and having that lean muscle mass. And honestly, strength is much closer to the life that God calls us to live because scripture consistently points to strength and discipline and stewardship of the body. In First Corinthians 6, 19 through 20, Paul writes, Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you? You are not your own, you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your body. Y'all, honoring God with your body doesn't mean shrinking yourself. It means building something strong to honor God. Notice how I said not just building something strong. Because I did that too. Don't just build something strong, build something strong to honor God. Okay. So here's the takeaway. Women, stop being afraid to lift heavy. I'm over it. I'm over seeing that on social media. I'm over it. Let's listen to the truth. Stop being afraid to lift heavy. It does not make you look masculine. Stop being afraid to slow down long enough to strain. Stop being afraid to slow down long enough to train with intention. Because when you're used to living in survival mode, slowing down can feel uncomfortable. But when you slow down, you start to see clearly. You start to train with purpose and you start to build something that actually lasts. And the enemy would love nothing more than to keep you stuck in that fast, distracted, exhausted cycle that often leads to binging and extreme, unsustainable ways of life. Because when you never slow down, you never step into the truth. Not in your life and not in your training. So take the rest interval. Work from a place of rest. Lift heavy, train intentionally, and build the kind of strength that you want to see your daughters do. Build the kind of strength that will carry you not just through your workouts, but through your entire life. So, like I said, I have another podcast on exactly kind of how long and the details of the different, you know, rest intervals and how to kind of structure a workout and how long you should actually rest. But this one I just wanted to touch on the idea of like the mentality behind actually slowing down and taking that rest in your workouts and how it's really a God thing. Like God designed it this way. There's no mistakes, there's no coincidences. He designed everything with intention and detail. And I do think that this is such a cool uh metaphor to how we live our lives and how it's hard sometimes to slow down and really it's easier most of the time to just kind of keep going. But that's not how we optimize the opportunities God is placing in our life so that we can live to the full potential of who God is calling us to be as a daughter of Christ. So, anyways, thank you guys so much for tuning in today. This one was a fun one, and yeah, stay refined until next time.