Danielle Hayes, creator of Firefly Somatics™ and a Nervous System Specialist with nearly 20 years of weight training experience, shares her expert advice for conscious weight training. From debunking myths about carbs to understanding neuromechanics and training during your menstrual cycle, here’s what you need to know to optimise your fitness journey.
1. Carbs Do Not Make You Gain Body Fat
Let’s clear this up: carbs are not the enemy. Surplus calories—not carbs—are what lead to fat gain. In fact, carbohydrates are essential post-training to:
After a workout, your muscle cells need sugar to regenerate. Insulin, a key hormone, helps transport this sugar into your cells, aiding recovery and repair. It also shuttles amino acids (proteins) into your muscles, creating a powerful anabolic effect.
How Many Carbs Should You Eat Post-Training?
This depends on your goals, training intensity, and carb depletion levels. A good starting point is 20-40g of slow-releasing, low-glycaemic carbs paired with 20g of protein. For example:
Note: Women with PCOS or perimenopause may benefit from lower carb intake due to insulin sensitivity.
2. Avoid Cold Exposure Post-Training
Cold plunges might be trendy, but they’re not ideal after weight training. Cold exposure restricts blood flow and oxygen to muscles, reducing amino acid uptake and slowing protein synthesis.
Instead, focus on heat therapy post-training:
Heat helps your nervous system transition from a stress response (fight-or-flight) to a calm, recovery state (ventral vagal).
Rest is also crucial to allow your central and peripheral nervous systems to recalibrate.
3. Prioritise Neuromechanics in Your Training
Neuromechanics refers to how the nervous system and the musculoskeletal system interact to plan and perform body movements. Sometimes referred to as Biomechanics, every voluntary move we make is planned out by our brain, which sends signals through our nervous system to trigger our muscles to execute different tasks (called synergies).
While neuromechanics is a subsection of biomechanics, assessing how your nervous system controls the generation of your muscular force and the production of voluntary movement is essential for healthy and longevity, correct sequencing, so as to avoid injuries and physical pain due to poor firing and poor execution.
Understanding patterns in a person’s neural activity that generate their movements helps to identify sensorimotor deficits and ones motor variability, if there is imbalanced neural firing of particular muscle groups and hence low level muscle activation patterns and misaligned sequencing.
Danielle’s Experience
This is me speaking from my own experience enduring various training injuries (i.e. popped my sacroiliac tendon in a competition meet; QL’s imploding due to poor activation of the Psoas and Hip Flexors; 2 x grade 2 hamstring tears; broken left ankle; crushed the joint of my middle finger right hand) due to poor sequencing, deficit motor activation and imbalanced neuromuscular firing.
My patterns have also been conditioned to Powerlifting (bracing, tight trunk, poor lumbar mobility, strong adductors and weak abductors), as well as Bodybuilding (no lockout, Time Under Tension, pulsing), and Crossfit (just pull the damn weight, never mind form!). I also experienced two huge physical traumas to my left hip joint, one which left me with a Haematoma and damaged femur (where struggle to externally rotate my left hip).
Unless consciously unlearnt via neurophysiology plasticity practise, people walk around in bodies that are in conditioned patterns from childhood, while genetic disposition will be a factor too. I know this was the case for me!
Lower back issues (L4-5, nerve S3-5) run in my family. My grandfather wore a brace as a young man for spinal traction, my mother operates daily with 3 bulging discs and incremental sciatica, while my brother broke his spine (l4-5) THREE times and was left with no motor power in the leg each time. I, myself, have struggled with low back pain my whole adult life, as a result of poor neuromechanical patterning. My mother told me as a child, I was always falling over. I have weak ankles while I am knock knee, (genetically predisposed from my father’s family line) a condition in which the knees tilt inward while the ankles remain spaced apart.
Although I am training for 20 years, I’ve never consciously addressed my neuromechanics and biomechanics. Not until now, in divine timing.
I draw on my lived experiences in healing my own vessel, to help guide others and open the awareness to them. For me right now, neuromechanical issues are at the forefront of my personal healing journey. What I am currently healing. clients will also benefit from as I can share the wisdom and knowledge gained through experience. Personally I am going through another opening and layer of enlightenment as I rewire neuromechanically from poor anterior engagement and weak Psoas mobilisation
Generally….We learn neural mechanics and motor skills from early childhood. We learn patterning, through what’s called mirroring, from our primary caregivers as we see them walk in front of us constantly all through life. Secondarily we learn through the system. All that sitting at a school desk from Primary School all the way through Third Level Education, for hours every day, has a knock on effect to mechanical patterns. Low back pain being imprinted from lack of movement, poor core engagement, sitting putting us in forward position, thereby weakening muscles that stabilise our spine and trunk. Our bodies were not made to be imobile. We are intrinsically hunter gatherers.
The evolution of westernisation, industrialisation and capitalism has changed this path for us, on all levels – neurobiologically, mechanically, psychologically, physiologically.
Doesn’t it make sense?
4. Women Should Train During Their Menstrual Cycle
The myth that women shouldn’t weight train during menstruation is outdated. In fact, adjusting your training and nutrition to align with your cycle can optimise results.
It is well known that the menstrual cycle has a huge impact on female metabolic state, energy and mood. As such, going through the different stages of cycle, it is best adjust training regime and macronutrient intake accordingly to suit how you are feeling. By taking into account how your cycle impacts you during various points in the month, you can make your training work with you rather than against you.
To clarify, there are 4 phases: follicular, ovulation, luteal, and menstrual. The cycle begins immediately after you finish menstruating with the follicular phase, lasting 14 days. This phase is characterised by increasing estrogen, normal progesterone, and an average body temperature. Following this is ovulation, and is characterised by peak estrogen levels, increased progesterone and raised body temperature. From day 15 to 28, you’ll enter the luteal phase. This is when estrogen levels are reducing, progesterone is increasing, and your body temperature remains higher than normal. Menstruation then follows to kick start things off all over again.
So what should I do?
As a 37 year old woman, on a healing path 10 years, who had PMS issues and irregularities since teen years (that is, until I regulated my nervous system), while I’ve been weight training for almost 20 years…. Let me tell you, being in tune with your body and cycle is crucial for overall well being. No one is in your body, but you! Being self aware and in coherence with your vessel is pivotal to being in Self Mastery and connected to your “Divine Femininity”. No “coach” can tell you how you feel in your body, especially a man who has NO lived experience of menstruation. They can merely only guide you based on what the books have taught them.
Take your power back! If you want to feel good in your skin, listen to what your body is communicating across. Connect to whole body awareness, regulate your system and endocrine responses, work with your natural flow, and do not battle against it.
The Four Phases of Your Cycle:
Key Takeaways
Final Thoughts
Your fitness journey is unique. Get to know your body, your nervous system, your motor patterns, your biomechanics, your cycle (for females), what macronutrients and supplements your body needs. Make sure any programme you follow, is subjective, and uniquely designed for you.
Connect one-on-one to discuss your unique fitness needs and goals.
Connect one-on-one to discuss your unique fitness needs and goals.
Book your consultation with our expert team, and we’ll design a results-focused training program tailored specifically to your goals.
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