Amira Lamb is a fitness pro with close to 30 years of experience in the industry. Amira’s love of movement began as a child when she studied gymnastics and dance. But it was the fitness pros she’d see on ESPN in the 80s and early 90s, like Bess Motta, Gilad Janklowicz, and Tami Lee Webb, who inspired her to pursue a career in fitness. While earning her Bachelor’s degree in Exercise Science from UMASS Amherst, Amirabegan personal training and leading high-energy group fitness classes.
She also competed in bodybuilding, winning her first show when she turned 35 and soon after achieving “Pro Status” with the IFBB federation.
For Amira, the invigorating feeling of exercise and its positive impact on the body drives her to help others find love in fitness and an appreciation for what their bodies can do.
Amira has been an advocate for minimalist footwear and training barefoot when possible for many years.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Amira Lamb about being a barefoot bodybuilder.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How sitting on the floor can be more beneficial than sitting on furniture.
– Why becoming a professional bodybuilder can be expensive.
– How you must incorporate nutrition into your fitness routine to see results you want.
– How there are different exercises you can do to strengthen your feet.
– How being a bodybuilder means having your entire day, including what you eat, planned out.
Connect with Amira:
Guest Contact Info
Instagram
@amiralamb
Connect with Steven:
Website
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Steven Sashen:
Okay, here’s the message for the day, throw away your furniture. You heard me right, your chairs, your beds, your couches, your Lovesacs, whatever you’ve got, you don’t need them. We’re going to talk about that maybe on today’s episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting typically feet first, because those things are your foundation. And here we break down the propaganda, the mythology, and sometimes the flat out lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run, or walk, or play, or dance, or do yoga, or CrossFit, or whatever it’s you like to do for fun, and to do that effectively and efficiently and enjoyably, and especially enjoyably, because if you’re now having a good time, you’re not going to keep it up anyway. So find something you like and find someone you want to do it with. Have a good time doing that.
I’m Steven Sashen from xeroshoes.com, your host of the podcast. We call it The MOVEMENT Movement because we, and that includes you, I’ll tell you how in a second, are creating a movement about natural movement, letting your body do what bodies are made to do, not getting in the way and interfering with modern technology. I’m okay with technology, but sometimes it doesn’t actually do what people think. And the way you’re part of this is really simple, just spread the word. If you like what we hear, then just tell people about it. Go to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com. You don’t need to do anything to join. There’s no fee, there’s no secret handshake, we don’t have a song that we sing every morning, but that’s where you’ll find all the previous episodes where you can subscribe to hear about upcoming episodes, where you can find all the places we have the podcast and all the places we’re on social media where you can jump in and share and have some fun.
So speaking of having fun, why don’t we get started with our guest who I’m not even going to introduce because I want her to do it. Tell people who you are and what you do.
Amira Lamb:
Hello there. My name is Amira Lamb and I live in New York City. I’m a group fitness instructor, fitness expert. I do all things fitness. I’ve been doing it since 1994, 1995, as soon as I graduated from high school, I’ve been involved in all elements of the fitness industry.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, interesting. We’ll have to have that conversation. I appreciate you saying, “I graduated high school in 94, 95.” I don’t think I’ve felt so old in months after hearing someone say that. Well, it’s not so bad. I graduated high school in 1980s and that’s not too bad. But for some reason, hearing 94, it’s like, “Oh, Jesus.” And now since I teased this, Amira, by saying, “Throw away your furniture,” you are clearly sitting on furniture. Would you like to comment on that?
Amira Lamb:
Yes. So typically I’m never on furniture. Whenever I’m at home, I’m always on the floor. So I’m trying to look like a civilized person by sitting on my furniture, but normally I’m never on this sofa. It’s just very uncomfortable.
Steven Sashen:
So you’re sitting when you’re having food, same thing?
Amira Lamb:
Honestly, yes.
Steven Sashen:
We have delightful furniture, and, not infrequently, same thing sitting on the floor, having dinner on the floor. We have a great couch in front of our big TV. Half the time I get in front of the couch and sit on the floor and I’m stretching or doing something. And it’s one of those things, I don’t know about you, but when I do it, I keep thinking, growing up, this never happened, this is not how anyone in my family behaved, they would’ve told me to get off the floor. So what got you off furniture?
Amira Lamb:
What got me off furniture? Actually, growing up, I spent a lot of time on the floor anyways, unless I was seated at the table to eat, or if I was maybe doing homework, but other than that, I’ve always been really active. So I would do tricks and flips or exercise or do handstands against the wall growing up, so I don’t remember sitting all that much. And if I were to sit, it would be on the floor, for sure.
Steven Sashen:
The only time I remember my dad being on the floor was when he was trying to build something, put together a coffee table or a TV stand, which invariably he would lose the instructions and never get it done correctly. But that’s my only memory of ever seeing an adult on the floor growing up.
Amira Lamb:
Oh, okay. For adults, yes, I would see them on the furniture, but me personally I would be on the floor.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and you said also doing handstands against the wall, were you ever doing gymnasticsy things?
Amira Lamb:
Yeah, when I was younger I did gymnastics and some dance.
Steven Sashen:
I am a former All-American gymnast, and I love when someone says handstands because typically only gymnasts will use the word handstand in a sentence. And I’d never met anyone who wasn’t a gymnast who understands why it feels so good to get upside down.
Amira Lamb:
Oh yeah, it feels incredible. I do it still and I’m going to be 47 this year.
Steven Sashen:
I do the same. In fact, I bought a set of parallettes and been doing handstands on those and against the wall, all of those things, and I wish more people could… I haven’t thought about doing something to help people get more comfortable getting upside down that way because it just resets my whole brain.
Amira Lamb:
Yes, I agree. Even doing simple things like Down Dogs from yoga, even that just inverted feels good.
Steven Sashen:
That one never quite did it for me, I’ll admit.
Amira Lamb:
It’s not the same, but…
Steven Sashen:
So you mentioned even bodybuilding. This is a fascinating world, I have a friend who lives down the street who’s a former Mr. America, which is a crazy thing to be able to say of yourself just because of the sound of that. I talked to a guy yesterday, not in the bodybuilding world, but a very well known former powerlifter, but the bodybuilding game is a whole other universe. How and when did that happen for you?
Amira Lamb:
I started strength training or bodybuilding once I started with… As soon as I graduated from high school and I started teaching group fitness, so I started teaching in a gym, and so I started strength training, and then I just continued strength training. And I used to look up to the people who competed in Fitness America. I used to want to compete in Fitness America pageants, which is bodybuilding but softer. It’s in that world.
Steven Sashen:
Well, let’s just say it this way, it wasn’t about getting huge.
Amira Lamb:
No, it was never about getting huge. It’s about getting defined, more muscular, but it wasn’t about size, it was more about proportion and just there was a look to it. So I always wanted to compete in Fitness America, and then I thought about competing in Figure. I never had the time. Also, I come from a really strict upbringing, religious upbringing, so my parents, they would not condone something like that.
Steven Sashen:
Pause right there. What religious text explicitly says no bodybuilding allowed?
Amira Lamb:
None, except that when you’re on stage, you’re not wearing that much, and it can look like a very self-oriented practice, which to an extent it is, so it’s just not something that my parents were cool with, so I waited until I was older. But it’s also a very expensive sport, there’s so much involved in competing, so much, until finally one year I had two friends who were going to do a show, one of them dropped out and then the other woman was like, “Amira, you should do this competition. You should do it. You have…” I forget how many months, maybe six months, and I’d been training for years already so I really just had to diet down and get my stage presentation together, so she connected me to her coach. And my second friend, she ended up dropping out, she didn’t end up competing, but I ended up doing the show.
And I went into the show totally open-minded, it was for bikini, for an the NPC Federation, so I went in totally open-minded. I was like, “Whatever happens happens. I don’t expect to win, I don’t expect anything.” I had just turned 35 so I competed in the open, which is all ages, and then also masters, which is 35 and over. So for my first show, I placed second in open, and then I placed first in masters. So then I was like, “Oh, wait a second.” And when something like that happens, you’re bit by a bug, and then you just want to keep going. I wasn’t planning on continuing, I was just going to do that one show to see how it went, and then I just kept going. Every show I did did really well. I typically won masters and then placed at least in the top four for open. I was always very close to turning pro. So then finally I did turn pro, and then I did a couple shows as an IFBB bikini pro.
Steven Sashen:
I want to ask two questions, and if I don’t get them out of my head, I’ll forget one. One is I’m dying to hear what the difference was between competing not pro versus pro. But the other thing, the first thing you said is doing this is really expensive, and that’s not something most people would think of because you go to the gym, you lift weights, you do whatever, you eat some food. So talk to me about the cost part and then talk to me about what happened after you went pro and what the difference was.
Amira Lamb:
So for the costs, suits for women are about $500 and up.
Steven Sashen:
Wait, hold on. Five square inches of sequins material is 500 bucks up. Holy moly. How?
Amira Lamb:
It didn’t start like that, when they first started with the bikini division, I think some women even had off the rack bikinis that you can get from a store, but now everything’s custom, blinged out, and it’s so expensive. So for my first show, I had a really inexpensive suit. I remember the cost, for whatever reason, it was $75, I think, but it just wasn’t right. I really needed a better suit. But I’ve had suits issues my entire competing… Whatever it’s called, my entire timeline of competing, suit malfunctions, just the wrong suit.
Steven Sashen:
Pause right there.
Amira Lamb:
Suits being too big.
Steven Sashen:
Pause right there. Please describe suit malfunction.
Amira Lamb:
I had one situation, maybe two, where the glue helped me. If there was no such thing as Bikini Bite, I wouldn’t have been able to get on the stage because it was literally the glue that was holding the bikini bottoms up.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, geez.
Amira Lamb:
Horrific. Because, for me, I end up losing so much weight during the final week, but even on the final day because you end up eliminating water. So I don’t take drugs, but I do take herbs to get rid of the extra body water. So when I’ve done that, I just shrink, everything shrinks on competition day, including even my feet, my feet shrink, everything shrinks.
Steven Sashen:
Oh my God. This is a conversation that I would adore having with a male bodybuilder as well, because that’s even crazier, if that malfunctioned, that would be insane in the membrane. Oh, man. Okay. So anyway, 500 bucks plus, holy moly for some dental floss and a little bit of gauze. If you’re not on gear, you’re not taking drugs, that’s a cost you’re not incurring, and that can be tremendous. Are there any other things that people would never imagine that factor into doing this where you’re fronting all the costs?
Amira Lamb:
Mm-hmm. Tanning. So some people go to a tanning bed before the actual spray tan, but the spray tan process, that’s… I’ll try to remember the cost. I want to say $200, but then there’s also the makeup, the whole hair, makeup, the jewelry that you wear, my earrings, those can be $50 and up for earrings for the sage, and then bracelets, same thing, $50 here and there, lashes. There’s really so much. And then also what you wear backstage, usually have to travel, usually have to stay in a hotel, and then if you have a coach, you have to pay your coach, and then you have to pay for the coach to be able to come backstage. There’s a fee for that. Then, also, if you’re not pro, you have to pay to enter the competition. So to pay to enter the competition, I want to say it’s at least $100 per division. It’s either 100 or $200 per division. And now there’s so many divisions.
So now that people are doing it for years, they’re not just retiring, there’s open, then there’s masters 35 and over, then there might be masters 40 and over, 45 and over, 50 and over, 55.
Steven Sashen:
And you got to pay for every one of those, oh, that’s crazy.
Amira Lamb:
There’s a ton of money. There’s a ton of money involved.
Steven Sashen:
Wow. And so then when you turn pro, what changes?
Amira Lamb:
You don’t have to pay to enter competitions, and then you have the opportunity to win money if you’re in the top five.
Steven Sashen:
You don’t need to be pro, but I imagine it certainly helps if you’re getting any sort of endorsement things or doing any modeling or anything like that, I imagine that just really opens up once you turn pro as well, or it could.
Amira Lamb:
It’s almost like a carrot that’s dangled in front of people.
Steven Sashen:
Really?
Amira Lamb:
It’s great. I’m so happy and proud to be an IFBB pro. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Only people in that world really know what it means.
Steven Sashen:
Right. And so it’s funny, it’s very clear to me, I don’t know much about on the women’s side, I know on the guy’s side, there are a couple of guys who make extremely large amounts of money, and there’s a whole bunch of guys who are not. And the gap is massive. It occurs to me, I have to tell you the story, you’ll get a kick out of it, I don’t remember what inspired me, I think maybe just one day I opened the newspaper and saw an ad that said… I was living in Boulder, Colorado at the time, and it was the Colorado… Wait, was it the… Oh man, Colorado Amateur Bodybuilding and something. Anyways, big bodybuilding competition. Oh, Northern Colorado Amateur Bodybuilding Competition. So it was fitness, it was bodybuilding, it was every category they had, this is, let’s call it, 15 years ago.
And I went, “Oh, this will be cool,” and so I went and it was one of the most wonderful events that I’ve ever been to for a couple reasons. One, it was just fascinating. So you mentioned getting spray tan, you see people on stage, or you see people off-stage, and it looks like they’ve just been hit with some Dutch Boy black paint. And then they get on stage and it looks like they just have a bit of a tan, so seeing the difference is really fascinating. But the thing that was so amazing about it, there was two parts, one, I’ve never been in an audience that was more supportive of the people on stage in my life, because there was people on that stage who clearly weren’t ready to be on that stage, and everybody else in that room has been that person before. It was so unbelievably touching and wonderful and moving seeing that, and also just Boulder, Colorado, seeing a bunch of bodybuilders, it was an unusual thing, and so I liked seeing communities that are not normally represented in Boulder. That was fun.
But literally I was in the back row crying at how supportive everybody was. And then they had some IFBB pro male bodybuilder show up to guest pose. And one year I was there, it was a guy named Günter Schlierkamp. Günter in the off-season weighed 325 pounds, and he is opposing on stage, then he starts running out in the audience to pose in front of people, and everyone is keeping their respectful distance except for me. I’m running up getting as close to this guy as I can because it looks like someone took a cow apart and put it back together underneath your skin. I’d never seen a human being that big before, and it was just blowing my mind. It was totally, totally fascinating. Whether you find it attractive or not independent, anthropologically, it’s one of the most outrageous things you’ve ever seen. It just doesn’t seem real or possible. And so that was just terribly fascinating. I went back for years to watch that show, because it was, again, just utterly, utterly delightful.
Amira Lamb:
Shows are fun.
Steven Sashen:
That’s my story. And I wasn’t even part of it. I was just there as a third party observer and it was dreamy. All right. Bodybuilding, when did you stop competing?
Amira Lamb:
Let’s see. I did not compete during the shutdown, so I think my last show was the year before the shutdown.
Steven Sashen:
Got it. And so this is funny, this is going to sound horrible, when we got in touch with you and vice versa about being on the show, there were some things that you said and it was like, “Oh yeah, I definitely want to talk to you.” I have no memory of what any of those were. And if I was smart, I would’ve looked them up, but I was in a hospital having some surgery for a week, and then I came back and had COVID for a week, and my brain just turned on this morning, so I don’t have a whole lot to ask other than if you have any memory of what was interesting to you about wanting to be here. Otherwise, I have a fun question to ask after that.
Amira Lamb:
So wanting to be on this episode of the show?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. What are you doing here?
Amira Lamb:
We actually met I don’t know how many years ago. Especially with the shutdown, my timeframe was all messed up, but we met, we were at a mutual friend’s conference, Emily Splichal.
Steven Sashen:
Oh my God, thank you. Oh, man.
Amira Lamb:
It was in Colorado. It was a barefoot conference. At the time I remember your company, but you only had sandals at the time. And I also remember there was… It wasn’t a competition necessarily, but it was a high jump competition.
Steven Sashen:
Vertical jump, yeah.
Amira Lamb:
And your technique was so on point. That’s what I remember.
Steven Sashen:
Well, first of all, A, if I were the kind of person who got embarrassed, I’d be so embarrassed. But mostly it’s like, “Right.” I was going, “I knew you looked familiar,” and I couldn’t place it in my brain. And I’m also really bad out of context. If I meet somebody somewhere and then see them somewhere else, it doesn’t register. My joke about that is I meet some lady on the street, it’s like, “God, you look familiar.” She goes, “Yeah, I’m your mother.” It’s like, “Oh, you live at home, right? You do the cookies, that’s you.” So I’m horrible that way. So that was a very entertaining event. Emily Splichal, a surgical podiatrist who has been teaching about barefoot movement as well. So what got you to go to that event? Let’s start there.
Amira Lamb:
Okay. I’ve known Emily forever, well, for a very long time. I’m one of her students, so I take her courses and her certifications, and she was holding this conference in Colorado I wanted to attend because I’m very much into barefoot training, so I went. I think I assisted also with something.
Steven Sashen:
You definitely did, but I won’t remember what.
Amira Lamb:
I remember helping her put it together the day before. I don’t remember exactly. So I wanted to attend, because this is my thing, I love barefoot training and minimalist footwear. I’ve been about that since I was young. But then I’ve been wearing minimalist shoes since, I want to say, 2005.
Steven Sashen:
Is there any overlap between that and what you were doing or discovering when you were either strength training or training for bodybuilding?
Amira Lamb:
Well, I didn’t start training bodybuilding until much later, so I started training… I did my first show when I was 35, I am going to be 47 this year, so you can do the math there. I started wearing minimalist footwear training in 2005, so I don’t know if there was actual overlap. It’s just something that I was already doing.
Steven Sashen:
Right. That’s interesting because I asked in part because I’ve talked to a couple powerlifters lately, they’ve reached out, who were saying, oh, once they switched to something minimalist, they started setting personal bests. And the first one was someone who said, “I set a personal best in the bench press.” And my initial reaction, my knee-jerk reaction was, huh. And then I instantly remembered pro powerlifters, they say, “Oh yeah, bench press starts with your feet.” As does almost everything else you would do. And so I didn’t know if that was something you were conscious of, or it was just part of your life, and so you never had the experience of making that change and going, “Holy crap.”
Amira Lamb:
Yeah, it was just part of my life. But one thing, it’s not related to bodybuilding, but it’s related to teaching fitness classes, occasionally I would forget my shoes. So I’d go to the gym, I’d be like, “Oh, no, I don’t have my shoes. What will I do?” So then I had to teach class barefoot, and it felt so much better. And I dreamt about a shoe that just would allow my feet to feel free while working out, because I hated having all my toes squished together.
Steven Sashen:
Did you ever think to invite other people in the class to kick off their shoes?
Amira Lamb:
Yes, I have. People have copied me.
Steven Sashen:
How do they respond to that?
Amira Lamb:
They love it.
Steven Sashen:
It’s something that I can imagine. It’s my favorite thing at a gym, or I hear from someone who goes to a gym and they go, “Well, they said I can’t go barefoot.” And then I go, “Ask them why.” They go, “Well, in case you drop something on your foot.” I go, “Well, how is the fraction of a millimeter of nylon that’s covering your toes in your shoes going to make a difference?” And I said, “Try asking them that.” And then, of course, they have no response. I say, “Well, here’s what you do. You walk in, in shoes, and then you just take them off when you’re working out until someone notices, then you put them back on until they leave, and then you take them off again.” The only place I’ve ever gotten hassled about being in bare feet is Whole Foods in Boulder.
Amira Lamb:
You go grocery shopping barefoot?
Steven Sashen:
You don’t?
Amira Lamb:
No.
Steven Sashen:
Oh my God, it’s the best.
Amira Lamb:
No.
Steven Sashen:
It’s awesome. So my line is go to the produce section on a hot summer day when the misters turn on, it’s the closest thing to being a kid running through a sprinkler. The floors, they’re totally smooth, they’re nice and cool. I go barefoot a lot of places. I was in Costco a while ago, and if I’m wearing shoes, I wear mismatched colors, and so for some reason I was wearing shoes. And the guy behind me in the pharmacy line says, “Hey, your shoes don’t match.” And the pharmacist, without even looking up or missing a beat, says, “He’s wearing shoes?” So where are places that you have not ventured out barefoot, and why? Not that you should, but just for the fun of it.
Amira Lamb:
Well, there is a difference between Colorado and New York City.
Steven Sashen:
I was in New York two weeks ago, and yes, I did walk around in bare feet, huh.
Amira Lamb:
Yeah, but I’m sure that people who saw you-
Steven Sashen:
Thought I was nuts.
Amira Lamb:
They immediately knew that you were not a New Yorker.
Steven Sashen:
But I lived in New York for 10 years. No, they would know from a mile away because my clothes weren’t all black. But New York is one of those places where you can get away with almost anything, and no one will really care, but it’s doable. I’ve done it.
Amira Lamb:
It’s doable, but…
Steven Sashen:
All right. Okay.
Amira Lamb:
I won’t do it.
Steven Sashen:
Just walk around the block once, just try it once.
Amira Lamb:
No.
Steven Sashen:
One time. Half a block.
Amira Lamb:
Absolutely not.
Steven Sashen:
Hit a bodega, answer the door, anything.
Amira Lamb:
Definitely not.
Steven Sashen:
I say all this because it’s one of those things that’s really interesting because if you tried it, I’m not suggesting you do, there are a couple of interesting things that happen. One, you feel incredibly, and you prepare yourself for people to say things that almost never happens. And then the other thing is you notice how weird it is that people notice from really far away. It’s very strange how attuned we are to people’s feet. And if you’re wearing some weird shoe or you’re in bare feet, people spot you from 50 yards away. It’s really wild. And it’s just a fascinating thing to watch what your mind does about who you think you are when you’re walking around barefoot in someplace where people don’t. My favorite is when kids come up with their parents, they’ll say to their parents, “Hey, that man’s not wearing shoes.”
And then you hear what the parents say, and sometimes they’re hip enough to say, “Well, why don’t you ask him why?” And they’ll ask me, “How come you’re not wearing shoes?” I say, “Do you like wearing shoes?” And they go, “No.” I go, “Yeah, me either.” Or I say, “Have you ever been to the beach?” And they go, “Yes.” I say, “Do you wear shoes at the beach?” They say, “No.” I say, “Why don’t we just pretend we’re at the beach?” And they go, “Oh.” And I’ve never seen a kid kick off his shoes and have his parents be okay, but it’s just a fascinating thing. And conversely, there’s times lately where I put on shoes when I’m going out because I’m just not in the mood for the conversation, but even that’s a fascinating thing. Anyway, back to you for the win. So how have you taken any things that you’ve done with Emily, and aside from whatever you may have discovered in your own life, what else are you doing with that with other human beings?
Amira Lamb:
Let’s see. I teach barefoot strength classes, so there’s that. I do a lot of rolling. So she has a Neuro Ball, so I use it for the entire body, but specifically for the feet, I use it for the feet, which is great. Also, a lot of my clients use her products, so she also has a mat, which is fantastic for barefoot training, but that’s really it.
Steven Sashen:
So when you’re doing a barefoot strength program for people who are watching slash listening, what are some things that you do that maybe they could try?
Amira Lamb:
They could try incorporating short foot while doing squats or lunges? So that’s where-
Steven Sashen:
Describe that one.
Amira Lamb:
I do my own type of short foot, I should say.
Steven Sashen:
So let’s hear it. Your secret’s safe with me.
Amira Lamb:
All right. So it’s more of just focusing on splaying the toes, and then as you come up that’s when you begin to grip.
Steven Sashen:
Wait. This is going to be one of those annoying things where I’m going to ask you to teach people who are not here. So walk through, give the instructions to people, if they’re somewhere where they can try it, they can try it.
Amira Lamb:
Okay. Let’s see. I’ll have them do a wall sit. They can practice working their feet while in a wall squat, wall sit. So if they’re in a wall squat, their back would be against the wall, their feet would be out, and their thighs would be parallel to the floor. And then from there, they could just practice splaying their toes, lifting and slaying the toes, and then gripping, and just feeling the body sensation. So they might feel their pelvic floor lifts or their abdominals engage more. That’s one thing they could do. Something else they could do would be a split squat or a lunge. And while lowering, they would splay the toes of their front foot, and then to initiate coming up, they would initiate from their feet. So it’s almost like you’re gripping or using your feet to lift yourself up as opposed to just driving through your heel.
Steven Sashen:
That’s a really interesting thing, the image that you gave me as I was doing that, there’s this concept that this guy, Pavel Tsatsouline, who brought kettlebells to America, or made people aware of kettlebells, he refers to it as irradiation. If you’re going to do a pull-up, gripping the bar as hard as you can, because that… I think there’s some mythology around this, but it signals from your hand down that, hey, something’s about to happen, and so it pre-loads or pre-potentiates the motion. So doing that with a lingers squat of splaying the toes all the way down, then gripping to almost have that be the initiating thing to push you up, that’s a really interesting way to play with that. I really like that.
Amira Lamb:
It’s like a way of grounding or rooting yourself to the floor too.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, those are good ones. So are you only teaching in and around New York?
Amira Lamb:
I teach on Zoom as well.
Steven Sashen:
Well, then we will come to that in the not too distant future, and people can find out how to participate with you. Did you start doing that just during the pandemic, or did that happen before?
Amira Lamb:
Yeah, during the pandemic, that’s when I started doing Zoom.
Steven Sashen:
How did that change your coaching, teaching life, discovering that you could start doing things online and not just with humans in real life?
Amira Lamb:
Well, before the shutdown, I’d already started training people who were taking my classes online. So a lot of times people take classes, they worked so hard on my classes, but they weren’t seeing the results mostly because of their nutrition, so I created an online program for the people in my classes to incorporate nutrition so that they could get the results that they wanted. But I would also give them training programs to do in the weight room, so they weren’t just stuck in the group class setting, so they saw awesome results. So I already had that set up before the shutdown. And then with the shutdown, I just expanded it to Zoom, so it was a combination of the nutrition, but not so much the weight training since all the gyms were closed. So it was back to group classes in a sense.
Steven Sashen:
Do you find either one more or less satisfying than the other?
Amira Lamb:
You mean Zoom versus in-person?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Amira Lamb:
I like both.
Steven Sashen:
What are the differences that make that balance them out?
Amira Lamb:
Nothing beats the energy of a classroom, so there’s that. And then for Zoom, it’s like all my people that have been with me for years, we’ve been together for years so that’s a community. Whereas, now after the shutdown and other things do open up, I’m actually working for other companies, so it’s a new crop of people, but I still love the in-person experience and that feeling, but Zoom, those people are my people.
Steven Sashen:
Where are you doing in-person stuff?
Amira Lamb:
In person, I teach for Lifetime mostly.
Steven Sashen:
Got it. Their offices are right down the street.
Amira Lamb:
Oh, really?
Steven Sashen:
Well, they have two offices. They have the ones in Minneapolis or somewhere in the upper Midwest, and then there’s an office here, and so it’s a fun one. There’s a whole bunch of thoughts going through my head and I can’t find the one that I want to land on next. This is going to sound odd, but going back to bodybuilding things for the fun of it, was there any transition effects for you when you decided to stop competing?
Amira Lamb:
No, because, after my last show, I was planning on competing one more time, at least to redeem myself because I didn’t prepare for that show well. So I block it from memory, and I’m like, “That show didn’t happen. That was my worst show ever.” The one before that was probably my best show ever. So I really wanted to redeem myself. But then the shutdown happened, and, I don’t know, I’d still love to redeem myself. At the same time, competing is really hard because I want so many specific situations. I want the venue and the hotel to be under the same roof. Ideally I’d want it to be in Florida, ideally I’d want it to be hosted by a specific promoter. So there are too many variables. I don’t know if things would all line up.
Oh, and also, one more thing, I love preparing, I love prep. Show day is very difficult for me because you don’t drink water and it’s a long day, you have the tanning. Tanning is hard because you’re in a hotel room with a bunch of little tents set up where you can stand, and then everyone’s naked, and then they just do spray tanning, and it’s so cold. Then their fans blowing on you and it’s just you’re freezing. And I don’t like being cold. So the tanning experience turns me off. It’s the fans, being cold. And then once you get your layer of tanner on, when you stay at a hotel, you have to bring your own sheets because otherwise you just destroy the furniture and the sheets and everything. So the day before the show and show day are very challenging and unenjoyable.
Steven Sashen:
This is a thing that’s the irony, or there’s a better word for it that I can’t find about any of those fitness things, bodybuilding or fitness, anything in between, is that it’s all about being fit, being healthy, being the best you can be, and on that day, those last couple days, you are the exact opposite of that.
Amira Lamb:
Oh yeah, absolutely. You’re emaciated, you’re dehydrated. It’s hard.
Steven Sashen:
But when you said you enjoy the prep, even the dieting?
Amira Lamb:
Mm-hmm. I love it.
Steven Sashen:
Really?
Amira Lamb:
Mm-hmm.
Steven Sashen:
What do you do? Is there specific about it that you find enjoyable, or just the putting yourself through it that you find that challenge pleasant?
Amira Lamb:
I like the regimen. I like discipline. It’s fun for me, it’s highly enjoyable.
Steven Sashen:
It’s like you’ve got your whole day, literally every moment, including everything you put in your mouth planned out.
Amira Lamb:
Yeah, because once all of that is planned out, it’s like I can think about other things. I don’t have to think about training. I don’t have to think about what I’m going to be eating. That’s set.
Steven Sashen:
Oh my God, I love it. And when you’re in diet mode, are you eating basically the same thing just day after day after day?
Amira Lamb:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
And you don’t find your brain just wanting to explode because of the monotony of it?
Amira Lamb:
No.
Steven Sashen:
Love it. There’s a number of times where I’ve seen various people in the fitness world talk about this, and even the guys who are the open bodybuilders who are taking very interesting amounts of drugs, who they say, “Everyone thinks that if they took the drugs, they could look like this.” No, no, no, no, no. You got to be someone who can handle and enjoy the kind of things that you just described, which is a whole other universe for most people.
Amira Lamb:
Yeah, it is extreme. It’s different.
Steven Sashen:
And was that something that you knew about yourself, or did you discover that as you got into fitness and bodybuilding?
Amira Lamb:
No, I’ve always been like that.
Steven Sashen:
How did it show up before you started applying it here?
Amira Lamb:
If I want to put myself on any type of regimen, I’ll do it. It’s just something that it makes sense.
Steven Sashen:
No, look, I say this with nothing but admiration, because I am the opposite. One of my if I had a bajillion dollars fantasies is I have someone who just does meal prep for me so I don’t have to think about it at all, because otherwise, left in my own devices, I don’t do focus very well, I don’t do routine very well. And someone said to me, they talked to me about it as a business person, they go, “What are your entrepreneurial routines?” I go, “Wake up, go to the bathroom, go to sleep at the end of the day. Everything in between, completely up in the air.”
Amira Lamb:
Wow.
Steven Sashen:
And I love the idea of having that kind of structure, but it’s not going to happen of my own accord. I would have to have someone not beating me over the head with it, but making it so that it’s the easiest thing for me to do because I won’t do it on my own.
Amira Lamb:
I think, like what I said before, I enjoy it because it frees up the other parts.
Steven Sashen:
I’ll say this in a fun way. I know someone who is the spiritual leader of a cult. We are not friends, I just know who this person is, I’ve been involved in semi-private conversations with this person who said, and that for some people might at least narrow that down into a smaller number of humans that I could be talking about, her favorite thing is when she’s back at her ashram in India, because since she’s the head of everything, everyone takes care of everything for her. And she says, “All I have to do is what they ask me to. I don’t have to do any thinking about any of those things during my day, and I can think about all these other things because all of that’s taken care of.” Now that I say it, it sounds pretty delightful.
Amira Lamb:
Yeah, it does.
Steven Sashen:
I’m not there yet, but maybe someday I’ll be able to actually try that out. So when you do that, are you setting all that structure up for yourself and doing all the meal prep and all that? Or do you have anybody helping? Because, again, if I have to do all the setup for it, if I have to plan for it, then it’s not going to happen.
Amira Lamb:
Yeah, I set it up. For my first coach, she basically taught me how to set it up, and then I just stuck with it all years, even after moving on from her.
Steven Sashen:
This is one of those things where I’ve never had this thought, I never imagined really thinking about the difference between you and me in this case of what that’s like and what it would take to really go through the motions, make it happen, and then stick to it. And now that it’s in my brain, it’s like, “Oh, okay, definitely fascinating, definitely have to try that at some point.”
Amira Lamb:
The other, one thing that is helpful is fear when it comes to prep.
Steven Sashen:
How so?
Amira Lamb:
Because you’re going to be on stage in something this big, and you’re going to be photographed so you have that fear, that element of fear in terms of preparation. I didn’t have enough fear on my last show, I was just a little bit too confident, but I have substantial fear for all the other shows.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s brilliant. And another thing, so you weren’t doing this with any medical assistance, let’s call it, for lack of a better term. Were the women you were competing against, were they on gear or were they natural?
Amira Lamb:
I have no clue.
Steven Sashen:
Didn’t come up in conversation?
Amira Lamb:
No.
Steven Sashen:
I know another bodybuilder who was a national champion way back when, to this day he will not admit that he ever took anything where it is so screamingly obvious that he and all of the people who were competing in that era were, will not admit it. It’s like Liberace never admitted he was gay, this guy will never admit he injected anything into his body, and could not be more obvious. And I find that really interesting because lately, especially on YouTube, a lot of bodybuilders are coming out saying, “Yeah, here’s what I did.”
And what’s most fascinating to me about that is all these guys, and this is not really surprising, they’re all hyper responds. A lot of these guys are taking less testosterone than your average 50-year-old gym rat who’s taking to try to just stay in shape and pretend that he’s not getting older, because they just are hyper, hyper responsive. And that’s just shocking to people. It’s like, “Oh, I took just this little thing.” It’s like, “Here’s exactly what I did.” And I’m a big fan of people telling the truth. I don’t know why. It’s just one of those things. And I wish these conversations were more open about what people are or aren’t doing, because, if nothing else, it makes it so much harder for you to compare yourself to someone who you’re nothing like and set unrealistic expectations.
Amira Lamb:
Yeah, definitely. I have this conversation with one of my friends who also competes in a different federation, and when we look at people on Instagram especially who will say that they’ll coach someone, but it’s like you should be more honest about what it is that you’re doing to look the way you look, instead of marketing it as being natural when we know that it’s not natural.
Steven Sashen:
And even if it is natural, that’s another thing too, it’s like you’ve got freaky genetics.
Amira Lamb:
Oh, yeah.
Steven Sashen:
We had a guy in our gymnastics team in high school who I don’t know if we ever confirmed this, but he was just a beast. The guy just got bigger every day. And we used to tease him. It’s like, “So what’d you do for your biceps today?” He says, “Cheerios.” He just kept getting bigger, and he died relatively young. And because of what he died from, we suspect he had a genetic disease where he didn’t produce myostatin, which, for people who don’t know, limits muscle growth if you’re producing myostatin, and if you don’t produce it, basically you just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger with mild stimulation, and that’s what this guy did. If he was around now, he could pitch himself as I can make you look like me by doing my workout, but no one could ever look like him because he has this genetic anomaly.
I was at a paleo event, one of the first paleo events, and I said, “There’s 10 of you, quote, experts, none of you can agree on what paleo is, and then you’re not accounting for genetic freakishness.” They said, “Like what?” I said, “Well, you’re suggesting everyone should eat the same thing, but why would I, I’m a complete genetic freak, eat the same thing as some 105 pound Kenyan who runs marathons.” And they go, “Well, why do you think you’re a genetic freak?” I said, “Oh, for men at that time, for men over 45, I’m the third fastest Jew in the world.”
Amira Lamb:
I believe it because I saw you in action with the high jump and you had the best form out of everybody.
Steven Sashen:
And I had no idea how that happened because my parents were not athletic. And then I found my mom’s father, and I take it from my mom’s side of the family, I found my mom’s father’s high school yearbook when they were moving out of the house and about to throw it away, and I found his picture and underneath it said, “Gymnast.” And I said, “How come you never told me he was a gymnast just like me?” And my mom literally said, “I had no idea.”
Amira Lamb:
No way.
Steven Sashen:
Never came up in conversation.
Amira Lamb:
Oh my goodness.
Steven Sashen:
And for me, just for the sake of doing it, combine that with the fact that my junior high school and high school gym teacher was the three time world and five time national tumbling champion and one of the greatest teachers of anything ever. If I had been living literally across the street from where I grew up, I would’ve never met him. And so put that all together. It’s 99.9% luck, and that missing 0.1% is probably also luck. So anyway. Well, Amira, this is such a pleasure seeing you again, even though my memories of our first meeting are at best vague, and if it makes you feel any better, when I went to my 30th high school reunion, this woman walks up to me and I look at her name tag and I’m thinking, “Okay, we were definitely good friends in high school and that’s all I’ve got.” And I just couldn’t find a memory. And then she says, “Oh, remember when I came and stayed at your place in New York for a couple weeks?” And I’m thinking, nope, and I’m saying, “Yep.”
Amira Lamb:
Oh, no.
Steven Sashen:
Memory’s just a weird thing. So anyway, there’s that. But most importantly, if people want to get in touch with you for any of the things that we’ve talked about or more, how would they do that?
Amira Lamb:
They can go to my website, it is holistichottie.com, or they should follow me on Instagram, it’s @amiralamb. Let’s see.
Steven Sashen:
There you go. So please do take her up on that. I’m so thrilled to hear the things you’re doing. I do have this idea that over the next 10 years, we’re going to see more and more people starting to get hip to the importance of natural movement, starting feet first, obviously. FYI, there’s a major, major medical organization doing a study on elderly people and balance, and it’s going to be using our shoes for what they’re going to wear in that study, or at least for the people who are not in the control group. And I know there’s a lot going on that’s going to get more and more attention for the importance of foot strength, for balanced agility, mobility, and everything else we do.
So I’m looking forward to when you and many of us will be able to take advantage of that awareness. It couldn’t be more obvious except that it’s not that obvious for some reason. But because it’s one of those things that when you hear it, you just go, “Yeah, that makes sense. I can see that grow, grow, and then go exponential phenomenon.” And it’s people who are doing work like you’re doing that help make that happen, so thanks for being part of the tribe, as it were.
Amira Lamb:
Yeah, proudly.
Steven Sashen:
So everybody else, thank you all for being here. Just a reminder, again, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com for previous episodes, to subscribe, to find out about new episodes, to find out all the places you can get the podcast if you’re not getting it somewhere you like right now, and find out where we are on social media. And if you have any questions or feedback or ideas or people that you think should be on the show, drop me an email, I’m move, M-O-V-E, @jointhemovementmovement.com. And until then, go out, have fun, and live life feet first.