Episode 4: Haley Shapley

Hayley Shapley: 0:00

are still super impressive. Today she could like lift four men at a time.

Caroline Balinska: 0:10

Welcome to the Life On Purpose Over 40 podcast, where empowerment, elegance and health take center stage. I’ll be your guide on this thrilling journey to outshine your past self. This is a podcast all about transformation. We’re plunging head first into exactly what health, wellness, style, relationships and career look like as a woman over 40. You’ll be hearing from all the most sought after global train blazers and experts. This isn’t just about learning. It’s about embracing your inner, fierce, fabulous self. Let’s get started. Hi and welcome back to the show. Today we have the strong and smart Hailey Shatley. Hailey is an award winning journalist and she’s also a fitness instructor, and she’s also the author of Strong Like Her, which is what I wanted to get into today. She has written a book which is all about how women’s strength has changed and progressed over the years, and I wanted to ask her some questions about what women should think about when it comes to our strength, because I think a lot of the times, we think of ourselves as being the weaker sex. So I think that Hailey is actually going to bring us a really, really good insight into why we should realize how strong we are and how we can actually make that better for ourselves. So let’s get into the interview. Let’s have a chat to Hailey and find out how we can be strong as well. Hailey, welcome and thank you for joining me here today. Thank you so much for having me. I see that we’ve both got our little puffy sleeve tops on, so that’s fantastic.

Hayley Shapley: 1:44

We do. I love a puffy sleeve. So glad to be in good company.

Caroline Balinska: 1:48

Fantastic. Yeah, this is one of those tops that when I bought it I was like I wonder how much I’m gonna wear it, because in Amsterdam everyone’s pretty chill and relaxed and they don’t get dressed up that much. But I actually get a lot of use out of this because I like puffy sleeves, so I don’t care what anyone else is.

Hayley Shapley: 2:04

I am with you. I live in Seattle and it’s a very casual dress culture as well. Lots of you know outerwear and Gore-Tex and all of that, but I like to get dressed up.

Caroline Balinska: 2:15

Yes, I’m with you. So I actually came across to you a little while ago and I thought it was interesting because I’ve been going through I speak about my journey when it comes to finding out I was going through menopause the hard way and I found out just how important strength training was because I was the person that was into just doing some. I liked using my bands, I liked doing my Pilates, but I wasn’t into actually weight training. And when I came across your book, I thought it was fantastic that you do go into women and the strength of women in general and women when it comes to workouts, and you’re actually your background is you’re a fitness instructor.

Hayley Shapley: 3:00

I do have my certification, yes, but my background is mostly as a writer who just enjoys working out.

Caroline Balinska: 3:07

Yeah, fantastic, and I do see that on your website. You do talk about yourself and the fitness things that you go through and you have like a monthly or every few months you go through a different type of workout. Is that right? You’ve got a different goal for yourself.

Hayley Shapley: 3:20

Not that often but yeah, I do like to set these sort of big challenges for myself. So I rode my bike from Seattle to Portland that’s 206 miles. I submitted Mount Rainier, which is the highest glaciated peak in the continental United States. I ran a marathon. I competed in a bodybuilding show. So I just found as an adult it was harder to exercise than when I was a kid and I was playing on a lot of organized sports teams. So I was trying to find a way to, I don’t know, bring that competitive spirit back and find something that I could train for. And so I started kind of setting these different physical goals.

Caroline Balinska: 4:01

Okay, so I wasn’t even gonna start there with the questions, but I need to know, I need to know more about this. How do you do it? Because I can say that occasionally I was living in Barcelona for a while and they’ve got this amazing triathlon that they have on the beach there. It’s a really famous one in Europe and it’s a casual, it’s a public one. Anyone can do it, and when I was living there I’m like I’m gonna do this, and this year I was thinking about doing it, but I just I can’t get the motivation to do it. How do you do that?

Hayley Shapley: 4:33

I think it’s really difficult, you know, and it’s tough to get started with anything new or, frankly, to restart an activity that maybe you haven’t done in a while. So I think the first thing is to identify what your stumbling block is. So if it’s that you feel like you don’t have the knowledge that maybe you need, then can you find a trainer to help you out and show you some exercises, or can you take a group class, or can you find a friend who has some knowledge in this area. If you feel like you know it’s just kind of boring to do that triathlon training, then maybe it’s finding an accountability buddy, or maybe it’s finding a different activity, maybe that one doesn’t speak to you. If you feel like you don’t have the time, then maybe it’s scheduling it as an appointment in your calendar, the same way that you would schedule a meeting or a visit to the dentist or something along those lines. So I think the first step is really identifying like, oh, what’s keeping me from doing this thing that I wanna do and how can I address those obstacles?

Caroline Balinska: 5:41

Okay, good one. That is something that I need to think about, and I think it’s a triathlon. That is not my thing. I’m not a runner, I definitely have got bad knees so I can’t run, and I’m not a swimmer.

Hayley Shapley: 5:55

That’s hate.

Caroline Balinska: 5:58

I’m ashamed to say that, growing up in Australia, I’m not a swimmer. I can swim, but I’m not a strong swimmer. So, yeah, that might be what’s holding me back from my triathlon idea.

Hayley Shapley: 6:08

I thought you had to be a strong swimmer growing up in Australia I thought that was like a rule.

Caroline Balinska: 6:13

Yeah, so it is. If you wanna get away from the sharks that the idea is you just don’t go in the water and then you’re fine.

Hayley Shapley: 6:20

No, we all learn to swim.

Caroline Balinska: 6:22

Really, it’s a big thing in Australia that we learn how to swim and I was actually a really good swimmer. I was actually I used to swim in the backstroke in school in all of our competitions, but now, yeah, I think I lost it after many years of staying being in Australia. You stay out of the sun if you’re smart, because of how dangerous the sun is there. And that is why, like a lot of people say, how do you stay so young? And that is definitely one of my secrets of why I’ve stayed so looking so young is that if you see women in Australia that some tan a lot, their skin looks aged, and so I’ve got that skin that just goes red within 10 seconds, and so I stayed out of the sun, which meant I didn’t go swimming a lot, I didn’t go to the beach a lot when I was growing up, and I think that’s what happened to me. So, yeah, that’s my swimming thing. So I think the point is give up on the triathlon. I think that’s the thing.

Hayley Shapley: 7:18

Well, maybe not. If it’s something you really wanna do, I think it’s just breaking it into more manageable chunks and setting a training schedule for yourself so that you know what you’re planning to do and like you wake up every day and you know, okay, today I am going to swim laps at the pool for 45 minutes, and it’s already set. So I did a triathlon a long time ago and I felt the same way, but about cycling Like I just never felt like I was a good bike handler. I learned to ride a bike later than other kids and it was always something I felt a little insecure about, and so the bike portion really felt daunting to me. But I just started with okay, I don’t have a bike, first I need to get a bike. And then I found a friend who also wanted to do the triathlon and it became a really great bonding experience for us because we ended up spending a lot of time together and we are still best friends to this day. So I really credit that triathlon that we did together that summer with cementing our friendship.

Caroline Balinska: 8:26

Okay. So, even as you say that, it just makes me, yeah, I realized that the cycling part is really enjoyable for me. I used to love that was. What I loved about living in Melbourne was we’ve got an amazing place to cycle, so I think I’m going to try something with cycling. I think that’s my thing. That would be cool. Yeah, love it. Good, good advice. Thank you very much. You’ve just solved one of my problems, thank you. Talking about swimming, one of the articles I found that you had been part of and I know you speak about it a bit, but I did read an article about it as well, about Annette Kellerman. That was her name.

Hayley Shapley: 9:05

Yeah, she was a 19 year old woman.

Caroline Balinska: 9:07

I found that really interesting. I think, growing up in Australia, I didn’t know that story. Australia’s not good at school for education, which people don’t realize, but the education system, the public system, is not great in Australia and we don’t learn about these amazing people. And this was actually really interesting. So can you give us a little bit of information about her, because I don’t want to botch the story?

Hayley Shapley: 9:31

Sure, and I think part of why I wrote this book is because no one learns about these women. No matter what country you grow up in, you’re not likely to learn about the women that I profile in your history books. So I wanted to change that, and Annette Kellerman was one of the women whose story I came across. She was, as you mentioned, australian, and when she was young she got rickets, which is a disease that weakens the bones, and so, in order to gain strength, she started swimming, and she actually got pretty good at it, so good that she became an Australian national champion when she was a teenager. So after that point she headed to the UK and she had this big goal to swim the English Channel. This was the big thing in adventure sports at the time. It was what the daredevils were trying to do, and no woman had done it yet. So this is in the early 1900s, and she decided she wanted to be the first. Unfortunately, she did not make it across, but she really attracted a lot of attention for how much grit and determination she showed while she was in the water. So people started to take notice of her and she got an invitation to give a swimming performance in front of the Royal Family, but she discovered that she would not be able to wear her typical swimsuit. When she did that, she came over from Australia wearing the swimsuit of the country, which was at the time. It was just a unisex swimsuit that both men and women wore. It was sleeveless and it was a one piece that had shorts. But showing your legs was not considered proper in England at the time or in the United States, so she was expected to wear a skirted swimsuit. But skirted swimsuits were very hard to swim in, so she didn’t want to hinder her actual performance. So she came up with a plan to sew some black tights into her swimsuit so that it would be more modest, and she ended up wearing that for her performance. And this swimsuit like absolutely took off. It got dubbed the Kellerman, manufacturers started to make them and it allowed women to actually swim instead of having to wear the kind of bathing costume that was considered proper at the time in many parts of the world, which was a blouse with puff sleeves, actually like we’re wearing, but we probably wouldn’t swim in these A skirt, booties, a waist or, sorry, a belt around your waist. The costumes were usually made of wool or flannel because these would keep you warm but they obviously weren’t very buoyant. So her swimsuit kind of revolutionized women being able to swim because they now had something that they could wear, that was socially acceptable, that they could actually use in a functional way.

Caroline Balinska: 12:41

It is crazy. So when I was reading that article, it’s amazing to think what they expected women to swim in back then. It’s mind blowing and the going on that the full outfit. I also read that there was a huge catastrophe in New York the ship that Right.

Hayley Shapley: 13:02

Yeah, yeah, I talk in the book about this unfortunate disaster that happened in New York, where there was a ship that was taking mostly women and children to a picnic to celebrate the beginning of summer, and basically everything that could have gone wrong on this ship did, and it caught fire and the flames were fanned. A lot of mistakes were made. There wasn’t safety equipment on board. When there was, it disintegrated in their hands, so they were quite close to shore. So, theoretically, most of them should have been able to swim to shore, but women didn’t learn to swim at this time because they didn’t have anything to swim in. And women were afraid to learn to swim for that very reason, because if you got in the water with all of that heavy clothing on, you would sink and it would be really hard to float, and so it was something that they kind of avoided. Unfortunately, many people perished that day, and it kind of woke up New York City, and then municipalities across the United States and elsewhere, to the importance of teaching everyone to swim, not just boys, but girls as well, and so this is when swimming became something that communities started to view as not like a recreational activity but a life safety one. So something good did come out of it, and this was all kind of happening at the same time that that color man was on the scene and this new swimsuit is being developed, and so we start to see more women swimming, and today more girls actually swim than boys in the United States, which is interesting. So it worked and of course, we want everyone to know how to swim, because it is a life safety issue Interesting.

Caroline Balinska: 15:04

Okay, so you did touch on it a moment ago about Annette Kellerman, but the other question I had was about are there any other women that you think have paved the way? Like you said, we’re not taught about this in history. If you’re saying in the US and Australia definitely not, are there other women that you think are women that we should know about?

Hayley Shapley: 15:25

Yes, I mean, that is what’s strong like her is all about. Is these women we should know about and I have them starting in ancient Greece and going all the way through modern times. But I think one that I like that I actually don’t talk about that much is Frances Willard, and she was the president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which was a fairly influential organization in the US, founded in the 1870s, and when she was a kid she loved to run wild outside and play and that was something she really enjoyed. And as she became older that wasn’t acceptable for young women. So she put on the corset, put on the high heels and went about her business of being a lady. But she always kind of regretted that she lost that part of herself and she felt like her physical and mental well-being were out of balance. So in the 1890s, along comes the safety bicycle, and this became a worldwide craze, because while there had been bicycles before this, they were very hard to ride and it wasn’t something that the everyday person could really do. But now there was this bicycle, which is basically the same version of the bike that we have today, and I mean people just started riding them in droves. And so by this time Frances Willard was 53. And she decided she was going to learn to ride a bicycle, and this was considered somewhat unusual for a woman of her age to take on that kind of challenge. But she loved it so much that she named her bike Gladys, because it made her glad, and she published a book that would help others learn how to ride a bike, because she recognized that it was about the physical fitness, the physical activity and the benefits that you get from that and the fresh air. But it was also a form of independence. So there was a lot tied up into being able to exert your body in that way, and so I really like what she did, because I think she especially showed women who were older that they could still learn something new and that they could still exercise.

Caroline Balinska: 17:45

Thank you, and talking about dress code of women, I know what it’s like trying to ride a bike. I live in Amsterdam now and everyone rides everywhere and trying to ride around in high heels and a dress is not always the easiest, so that’s interesting. It would have been hard work for them as well back then.

Hayley Shapley: 18:06

Right, and that actually you know and I go into this in the book but the bike really did revolutionize dress code at the time because as women started riding the bike they brought the hemlines up a little bit because it was hard to pedal if you had that floor length skirt. And then they started to take away some of those petticoats under the skirt and then they started to stop wearing their corsets, you know, and it kind of unleashed this whole thing where once their clothing was less restrictive, they were like what else have we been? You? know, kept away from what? What other restrictions do we have? That we didn’t even really realize until we took this one away, so it’s kind of amazing. I think clothes are often seen as something trivial, but they really do matter and they have been used as a means of control in a lot of situations. They kept women out of the water, they kept women from riding a bike right, and lots of other things. So you know we shouldn’t overlook the importance of clothing, even though you know we talk about our furlough sleeves and things like that. But clothes matter and those are just a couple of examples of how.

Caroline Balinska: 19:23

Something that I speak about a lot, but you are the expert, so I’d love you to give us more information. Why is strength training so important for women over the age of 40?

Hayley Shapley: 19:34

That’s a great question in there. We could spend the a long time talking about this, which I know that you know, so where do I want to start? So I think, first off, a really important reason for women to strength train is that it keeps your bones strong, and this is more important for women than any other group, for older women, because about half of women over 50 will break a bone due to osteoporosis. That’s a startling statistic. So unfortunately, our bones do start to decline in density when we’re around 30, but strength training can help keep them nice and dense, and you don’t have to be pushing super heavy loads for that. You really just have to be doing some form of resistance training and you can stave off a lot of that.

Caroline Balinska: 20:23

So is that resistance bands? Is that body?

Hayley Shapley: 20:26

weight? Good question. Yeah, resistance training can be anything in which your muscles are fighting against some form of resistance. So it could be picking up a barbell, which people typically think of. It could be using dumbbells, it could be using a kettlebell, it could be using resistance bands, like you mentioned. It could even be doing some body weight exercises, like a pushup, because you are resisting against gravity there. So there’s a lot of different forms of resistance training. If one of them doesn’t appeal to you, you can always try another.

Caroline Balinska: 21:00

So staying away? Yoga is not doing that for us. The yoga is not giving us that.

Hayley Shapley: 21:05

There are some. I was just in a yoga class yesterday and we were doing pushups, so there are probably some elements of resistance there, but I would say that yoga is more for mobility or for the meditative side of things. There are so many different styles of yoga now, but there are these different buckets of fitness that we look at In addition to the strength training, which is where the resistance comes in. There’s the cardio, which we tend to know about. This is anything that gets your heart rate up, so walking, running, swimming, biking. Then there’s flexibility, or mobility, which is what yoga is really great for. Then there’s balance, which yoga is also good for if, depending on what kind of yoga you’re doing, and so many of these other activities also play into balance. These are the big blocks of fitness that you want to make sure you’re doing a little bit of all of them, ideally, in order to be well-rounded. There’s a statistic I don’t want to say it wrong but it’s something like if you are over 70 and you can balance on each leg for over 10 seconds, you are at just a greatly increased chance of not hurting yourself, basically of not breaking a hip if you fall, because you’ve got that ability to. If you stumble to catch yourself and if you’re not able to stand on one foot for a very long, then you are more at risk of taking a tumble. This becomes very important when you’re older. It’s something I’ve been working on with my grandfather, actually, because it’s harder as you get older, but it’s much easier if you can, if you practice that balance now and you maintain it. Now it’s never too late. I always like to say it’s never too late for any of this, for strength training, for cardio, for balance. You’re going to put yourself in a real head start if you have these skills or abilities or you’ve built up this muscle mass or bone density as you are moving into those decades where you start to lose it.

Caroline Balinska: 23:26

That is so true. It’s much harder to go when you get into your 60s and 70s and realizing things are going wrong and saying I’m going to try to fix it now. I know because of what I’ve gone through for the last couple of years. If I would have done the right thing along the way and known that I was going through menopause, that I’d started menopause, it would have been a lot easier to get to where I am now, because it did take me longer than it should have, I think. Taking care of things straight away, I think on that point as well, what I do love as well is because I’m one of those people. First of all, I don’t have a lot of time. Second of all, I get really bored really easily. I need to do things that don’t bore me. I do know the difference between enjoying something and not enjoying it, forcing yourself to do it. You never get into that habit if you’re forced into it. I don’t want to live my life living by things that I’m forced to do. I’d rather find ways to make it something I want to do. I do realize for myself that there’s certain balancing activities that is actually building my core. At the same time, it’s strengthening my back and it’s strengthening my stomach muscles. I’m doing three things in one time. That’s why I say it. I’m like, okay, I’ve got to practice my balancing, but I’m actually building my core at the same time. It’s less planking that I have to do because I’ve already done some of that now. That’s the way I take care of trying to get as much exercise in as I can.

Hayley Shapley: 24:52

Yeah, that makes sense. I think it’s good to be efficient. It’s good to recognize what you like to do and to put your efforts there, instead of trying to force yourself to do something that you really don’t enjoy.

Caroline Balinska: 25:04

There’s so many options now We’ve got so many things that we can do. It’s not even about doing a gym. You can do so many different types of activities that don’t need to be. I know people that go to circus school.

Hayley Shapley: 25:16

Yeah, definitely. I did a couple trapeze classes at a circus school and I loved it. It was so fun and it’s a really great core workout. It has to have a good core to bring your legs up. I always recommend people try new things too, because sometimes we have these ideas. I think, especially as women, that certain activities aren’t for us, or maybe we grew up with these ideas, that I grew up with this idea that women in my family, we don’t have upper body strength, I can’t do pull-ups, I can’t climb ropes, I can’t do things like that, can’t. So Then I realized when I was older, I can do those things, I just have to work at them. But I can climb a rope. Now and I have been able to do pull-ups, I just had kind of these self-limiting beliefs that a lot of people do, based off of these stories that get passed down. So if you think, oh gosh, that’s not for me, you might be right. But if you’ve never tried it, it could be worth trying, because you might end up enjoying it more than you thought you would.

Caroline Balinska: 26:24

Yes, I think we as women have a lot of self-limiting beliefs in a lot of ways that we need to step apart of and find ways to talk ourselves out of. That, that’s for sure.

Hayley Shapley: 26:36

Yeah, definitely, and I know so. We talked about bones and how important that is. Muscle mass, too, starts to decline as we age, and that is why strength training is great. It happens to everyone, but if you have muscle mass to start with, then you will be ahead of the game. But also really helpful one thing we don’t think a lot about. Maybe you do, because you mentioned that you’re quite flexible, but we’ve got tendons and ligaments and cartilage and fascia and kind of these little parts of our body that keep it all held together. And these connective tissues are really important for injury prevention and they get strengthened right alongside our muscles when we’re doing this strength training or resistance training. So keeping all of that healthy is really important as we get older as well, and that’s also why it’s important to kind of gradually work your way up, because your muscles are big for the most part and they’re strong and they can handle heavy loads, but your cartilage isn’t going to respond as fast, your tendons aren’t going to respond as fast. So you might be able to go out and squat 200 pounds with no warm up and no building up to it, but your knee is probably not going to be very happy about it. So when you are embarking on a new strength training program, it is always important to warm up and to work your way up, even if you feel like you’re working a little bit under your capacity at first, so that you just get your body used to these new movements that you’re doing or that you haven’t done in a while and you just get everything kind of ready to go and strengthened on its own schedule so that you don’t have those injuries.

Caroline Balinska: 28:30

No, that’s actually a really good point and I’ve never thought about it like that. But yeah, I’ve had a few things with ligaments. We have to be careful. And there’s another point that’s been spoken about a lot lately and I find that, especially going through menopause, I think it’s something that I learned, I remember from the time I was 30, I was like I stood in the chair at 30, the weight doesn’t stay off as well as it used to, and I used to always say, yep, our metabolism is changing. But I found out there’s been a lot of studies recently and it’s not our metabolism changing. It is that our muscle mass is declining and it’s our muscles that help us take the fat away. That it breaks down the fat. Yeah, is that correct? I don’t know if you can explain it.

Hayley Shapley: 29:18

Yeah, so the more muscle mass you have, the more lean muscle you have, the more your metabolism is working. So if you have more muscle mass you’ll burn more calories at rest and that sarcopenia that I mentioned does start around age 30 where your muscle mass naturally declines if you’re not doing anything to keep it around, and that does put on weight, because we talked about meat. So those calories you’re burning just through your activities of daily living decrease if you have less muscle mass. So if you want to do what you can to keep as much muscle mass around so that you are, you’re keeping your metabolism going and it is burning those calories for you even when you’re at rest.

Caroline Balinska: 30:13

Yeah, I think that where’s women need to pay more attention to, the more of the holistic picture rather than this. I think that I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been taught eat less calories and move more and then that’s it. But I think that there’s a lot more to it than that, and I think I don’t know if we’re learning more or if it’s something that just I was brainwashed into believing it was just that one way. But I think it’s got a lot more to do with not just moving more, but about moving in the right way and making sure that we’ve got the right proteins in our body and the right exercises.

Hayley Shapley: 30:54

Yeah, absolutely it’s so it’s. It’s complex and there’s a lot that we don’t know about all kinds of things. Nutrition Nutrition is a relatively recent science and so we don’t have the same understanding of it that we do about things like physics or chemistry, which we’ve been studying for so much longer. We also don’t study women very often. You know, women are still so underrepresented in academic studies and we don’t understand that well how pregnancy and menstruation and menopause and these life phases with women, how it affects things. But I totally agree with what you’re saying. I think you know we get taught it’s all about calories in, calories out and if you eat little enough you’ll be fine. And in my personal experience and and people will say this is impossible, but in my personal experience, like just eating a low amount does not, it doesn’t work in the long term. And you really do have to have everything in balance and you have to be eating enough protein to support your muscle growth, you have to be sleeping enough, you have to be recovering from your workouts and just from your daily life and there are a lot of things that go into it and it’s definitely not as simple as eat less, move more, just can be very like good, just general pillars to think about. But I think that most women here eat less a lot, and they don’t need to hear that any more than they already do. I think move more is something a lot of people can hear, because most people are not getting their the recommended amount of exercise a day, and I think it’s always good to you know to encourage people to do that. But some people are getting too much exercise and they’re not recovering enough, and then they’re not eating enough, and that fuels a whole cycle that can be very detrimental to your health. So it’s not simple, and I do hope that we continue to do more research so we learn more about all of this and how we can be at our optimal health.

Caroline Balinska: 33:14

And so just a little bit more about your book, just so that people know if they wanna read it. It’s not just about exercise, is that? It’s not just about fitness and exercise, it’s about women in general.

Hayley Shapley: 33:26

It is focused on physically strong women. So I wanted to tell the story of women who’ve been pushing the bounds of their physical potential since the beginning of time, and I really wanted to focus on our ideas about women and muscularity, because when I was growing up, you didn’t wanna be bigger. That was not a thing that we strived for and the idea of muscles on women seemed strange, I think, to a lot of people. And I noticed that in the past 10 years, like so many more women were getting into activities like power lifting and weight lifting and CrossFit and obstacle course racing and this kind of a thing, and I felt like I was seeing more women in the public eye who had visible muscularity and it was becoming cool and I wanted to kind of know how did that start? You know, how long have women been allowed to exercise? Who were some of the trailblazers who’ve allowed us to work out, to lift heavy weights, that kind of a thing. And it took me on this journey through history and looking for the you know the really like, brave, brash women along the way who said I’m gonna run a marathon, even though women aren’t allowed to do that. I’m gonna lift weights on Muscle Beach, even though that is not a thing that people do for fun. I’ve got a circus star from the early 1900s who inspired people with her. You know her feats of strength that are still super impressive today. She could like lift four men at a time. These women open the door so that we can do things like go to a Po’a Hadis class. We can do things like ride a bike Ride a bike, of course, you know, we can go jogging Jogging wasn’t even a thing for women until relatively recently, you know and we can play organized sports, which also we got a late start on. So I feel like when people talk about strong women, they’re often talking about mental and emotional strength, which I think is super important. But I think that all of these types of strength feed into each other and you’ve got to have your mental and emotional and social health and spiritual health and all of that, but you’ve also got to have your physical health in line, and we don’t often talk about women being physically strong, but they are, and so that is what strong like her really celebrates and highlights is these physically strong women, both everyday women and really high performers, elite athletes I cover a spectrum but really celebrates what women can do physically.

Caroline Balinska: 36:27

So this sounds like a book. My stepdaughter has just entered high school this year oh, now she’s going into her second year of high school and it sounds like a book of her age group that the end of primary school son of high school girls should really be told that they should be part of the education system to understand all of this. I think from what you’re saying and it’s I know from her and her friends and I know what we were like, I was like, I know what my friends were like, I know that we didn’t get that information that we should be strong and be proud to be strong and try to be strong, the mindset of the women are allowed to be strong and are allowed to take on the world and are allowed to do these things. I think, yes, for women our age, we need to know about that more so than we are. But I also think that teenage girls should really be reading about this and understanding how important that is for them as well.

Hayley Shapley: 37:31

Definitely, and I have gotten feedback from teenagers who love the book, and I am so happy when younger people read it because I think it’s easy when you’re growing up to not realize that this wasn’t accessible to your grandmothers in the way that it is to you. Title IX in the United States allowed people to, or allowed girls and women to, play sports, really leveled the playing field for them, and that happened in the 1970s and that was in our lifetimes, right In a lot of people’s lifetimes. So I do think I’ve seen this shift with younger generations in terms of their acceptance of different body types and of kind of pursuing the activities that are important to you or that speak to you. They’re not as gendered in what they think people can and should do, and there are a lot of like powerlifting clubs in high schools now that women join, which was kind of just on the fringes, I think when I was growing up. There were a few girls who wrestled here and there, but I played basketball, I was a swimmer and I played tennis and when we went into the weight room it was just to do calisthenics, you know, it was not to actually lift any weights. And now coaches have their players lifting weights, their athletes lifting weights, because they know how important strength training is to so many sports, any sport where you need power and speed and all of that you can benefit from being stronger. But it just wasn’t as known back then.

Caroline Balinska: 39:24

Yeah, it’s amazing how quickly it’s changed too. I think that’s the thing that you know. It hasn’t taken that long because it’s definitely different from when I was growing up. So, yeah, for sure, fantastic. But it just makes me think the book is definitely a great gift idea, especially with Christmas. It’s September and I’m not trying not making any money from your book, but I’m gonna say right now that I think it sounds like a great gift for a Christmas present and I’ll put the link in the show notes so everyone can see that book.

Hayley Shapley: 39:53

Thank you, and I wanna ask it does have portraits really quick for the giftable angle. There are portraits of 23 modern day athletes in the book who were shot by celebrity photographer Sophie Holland. They are really beautiful. So it is like a coffee table beautiful book in addition to being like an actual you know book with great information to read a cultural history. So it’s got that element and it’s printed on really nice paper as well. So that helps. It was designed to be giftable.

Caroline Balinska: 40:23

I’ll put the link in the show notes. I wanted to ask you a couple of quick round questions that I have for all of my guests. Okay, and the first thing I wanna ask you is what are three things that you think every woman should take action on immediately for a happier and healthier life?

Hayley Shapley: 40:39

I think you know along the lines of what we’ve been talking about improving your health, and that might be something different for everyone, but like getting 15 minutes more sleep a night or carving some time out for yourself, or maybe it is finally setting that goal and you know that physical goal and pursuing it, I think there’s always something that we can be doing for our health and I think it’s really important. Trying something new, I think, is something to take action on. I just think you have to keep learning, you have to keep growing. As you get older, it’s easy to get stuck in our routines and our ruts, but when you get outside your comfort zone, you get outside the box. I think a lot of good things can happen and you might discover something that you really love. And then, third thing to take action on this affects health in a different way, but I think combating climate change is something I think about a lot in just making sure the earth is still here for future generations. So whatever that might look like for you whether it’s learning more about it or consuming less or recycling, whatever it might be I think keeping your environment healthy helps keep you healthy.

Caroline Balinska: 42:04

I love that. That’s fantastic. I always like this question because I get really interesting answers, and the environment is definitely one that I agree with, so I would not be able to pick three of my own, so I’m loving all the answers.

Hayley Shapley: 42:17

I’m just like the first three that came to my mind. I don’t know If you asked me on a different day, it’d be three different answers probably, but I think the whole idea of it is to allow people to think.C

aroline Balinska: 42:29

I think that that’s all I want. For people to sort of listen to you and say, hey, hang on, those things do resonate with me. So yeah no answers are bad answer. I think that someone’s going to get some information that’s going to help them. What is one word to describe your future, Hailey?

Hayley Shapley: 42:46

Oh, my future. I’ll say bustling, like I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know there’s always going to be a lot of stuff going on, like to stay busy, like to be active. So I hope it’s just bustling.

Caroline Balinska: 43:00

Fantastic, and what’s one of your core values or beliefs that’s helped you shape your actions and your decisions in your life?

Hayley Shapley: 43:09

Cool. I think I’m really value cultivating curiosity. It’s important to me to be curious about the world around me. It’s what set me on my career path to be a journalist, because I always get to ask a lot of questions. I like to understand why things are the way they are. I like to go down rabbit holes and learn, like absolutely everything there is to know about some random topic. You know, getting completely immersed in something Like I was just talking about. You know, I love to try new things, to get outside my comfort zone, and I think that all stems from from being curious and just having wonder. So that’s, that’s an important, I guess, core value of mine.

Caroline Balinska: 43:56

And I love that Fun fact about you. What is something that people should know about you?

Hayley Shapley: 44:03

I don’t know if this is something they should know, but I’m pretty good at memorizing song lyrics, and once they’re up here, they’re here for good. So you know, if a song’s playing that I haven’t heard in 25 years, I could probably sing it for you more forward.

Caroline Balinska: 44:21

What’s one of your passions or interests outside of work? Do you have something you said you’d like to try, new things? Is there something that you really lack at the moment?

Hayley Shapley: 44:29

You know, I think, because I’m a writer, eventually like everything gets folded into my work because I just write about it. But one thing that’s not particularly work related is that I love to ride roller coasters. I have ever since I was young and I really like still enjoy those kind of adrenaline fueled experiences. So I’ve jumped off the Auckland Bridge, I’ve gone hang gliding off a cliff in Tennessee, I’ve skydived into a winery and been greeted by a glass of wine. So I love to get that little stomach drop in when I can and when I’m traveling. If there’s a good theme park where I’m going, I like to visit.

Caroline Balinska: 45:11

Okay, what’s your favourite roller coaster that you’ve been on?

Hayley Shapley: 45:14

My favourite roller coaster is Millennium Force at Cedar Point in Sandusky Ohio.

Caroline Balinska: 45:22

Okay, I do want to go there to visit some friends that I knew from Wisconsin, and if I get up the courage to ride a roller coaster, I will get on it.

Hayley Shapley: 45:33

It’s a great one. I love like a good coaster with big drops and I prefer steel coasters. I can appreciate an old school wooden coaster, but I just like a steel coaster where I’m sitting. Anyway, it ticks all the boxes and Cedar Point is considered by roller coaster aficionados to be, you know, among the best, if not the best, in terms of the ride quality.

Caroline Balinska: 46:03

So it’s a good place to go. Okay, you’re already scaring me, I don’t think I’m going to ride it. I get on the one with my daughter and my stepdaughter. They’re little ones for like kids and I’m, like whoa, not a real roller coaster person.

Hayley Shapley: 46:16

That’s fair, and my mom would always come with us because my whole family loves it in terms of like my aunts and uncles and cousins, and so we would go to theme parks when I was growing up, but my mom just held our purses and that’s okay. You know, there’s something for everyone.

Caroline Balinska: 46:31

Yeah, exactly, and this question for you is going to be quite important and I can’t wait to hear the answer. What is a book that has changed your life?

Hayley Shapley: 46:43

This is such a difficult question. I want to say something really profound, but all I keep returning to is first grade, when I first learned to read. I read kind of late and but once I started reading I read like voraciously and immediately jumped many grade levels in reading. But back then I was so into Nancy Drew and the babysitters club and the boxcar children and I would read several of them a week and I think that those are the books that turn me into a bookworm, which I think really impacted my life, eventually leading me to my career but also just making me a more well rounded person because I read so widely. So I’m sure there’s a better answer, but I think that you know those kind of classic chapter books really are what impacted me the most.

Caroline Balinska: 47:51

So the babysitters club was my thing when I was younger as well, and my stepdaughter, who’s 12, they’ve got it now on Netflix, the babysitters club series, yeah, and I said it to her. I said, oh my God, the babysitters club. And she looks at me and she’s like because I’m old, of course you know the babysitters club. And I’m like Hello, I’ll tell you about the babysitters club. I sat down with her. I’m like there’s Dawn, there’s blah blah, blah blah, there’s Claudia. And she’s like you know all their names that I’m like, yes.

Hayley Shapley: 48:19

Yeah, you always have to like figure out which one you were most like, or were you a combination between the two? And yeah.

Caroline Balinska: 48:28

So I know that feeling. When you say that those are the books that changed, like that actually made a big difference in your life, I get it. I actually really get that.

Hayley Shapley: 48:36

Yeah, I used to an elementary school. I actually turned the basement into a library for the other kids in the neighborhood and I had, like my collection of the babysitters club and Nancy Drew and boxcar children and sweet Valley twins and all of those. And I would like make these library slips, which kids probably don’t even know what those are anymore. But you have the stamp, you know, and so I would like stamp the books when they checked them out and they bring them back to me. But, yeah, I just like loved reading so much and I did eventually transition to you know some, some bigger books. But you can go wrong with those.

Caroline Balinska: 49:19

Yeah, you have to start somewhere. Fantastic, hailey, it has been absolutely fantastic talking to you and I’m going to put all of the information in the show notes for your website, for your book, I think, if you want to check it out, and it’s definitely a great gift. I think that I’m hopefully my stepdaughters are not listening, but I think that’s going to be their gift for the two elder ones this year, and it’s been amazing talking to you and I cannot wait to hear about your next thing and your journey, of what you choose to do, and I hope to have you back on the show at some stage talking about anything else you learned about other women or something else that you can share with us at another time.

Hayley Shapley: 49:58

Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me.

Caroline Balinska: 50:00

This has been fun, fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here and thanks everyone for watching.

Hayley Shapley: 50:05

Thank you.