GetfitSmarter

09/09/2026

Wow, life is expanding in ways I could not yet imagine.

1. gathering in under the sunset ! Paula Lajaunie Viscogliosi led us through a meditation & visualization that brought us together with the elements including the 🌈
2. Family time with Mackenzie Diepold Johnston on shelter island
3. Purchased great art from Scott at the The Golden Hour Market curated by my good friends & colleagues
4. Completed the annual 3mi crossing with first time ever all female crew inspired & safely guided by Dawgpatch Bandits

So grateful!!

09/05/2026

Labor Day weekend has me thinking about our relationship with effort.

Sometimes we over-challenge ourselves—another extreme workout, stricter plan, harder reset—because intensity feels productive.

Sometimes we under-challenge ourselves and call it “listening to our body,” when we may actually be avoiding the discomfort of beginning.

Both can keep us from doing the actual thing.

The walk.
The honest conversation.
The meal that supports us.
The rest we truly need.
The workout that challenges us without punishing us.

I don’t believe habits are inherently “good” or “bad.” There is simply habit: a behavior repeated often enough that the body begins to expect it.

The more useful question is:

Is this habit helping me meet my life—or helping me avoid it?

Real growth doesn’t always require another manufactured extreme. Sometimes it’s choosing the appropriate challenge, staying present through the discomfort, and allowing that experience to expand what your nervous system knows you can handle.

This weekend, notice where you may be over-challenging, under-challenging, or avoiding the real challenge altogether.

What is one honest thing your body—or your life—is asking you to meet?

09/02/2026

Not all neuroplasticity has to happen at maximum intensity…

Aerobic exercise—walking, swimming, cycling, hiking, rowing—is measured relative to your capacity: your age, training history, fitness level, and how efficiently your body can use oxygen.

As the effort continues, your HPA axis helps mobilize energy so you can meet the demand. This is stress—but stress isn’t always harmful. In the right dose, it gives the body an opportunity to respond, adapt, and recover.

Aerobic movement also supports BDNF and brain pathways involved in learning, neuroplasticity, and emotional regulation.

But here’s what I find most powerful:

During strength or high-intensity training, the demand can be so great that most of your attention has to stay on the task. With sustained aerobic movement, the body is working—but there is often still space to notice your breath, feel your emotions, and observe the story running through your mind.

As a lifelong swimmer ( & now trekker )I’ve experienced this again and again. Rhythm creates a bridge between the physical body and the emotional body.

So the thought you carry into your walk, swim, or ride matters

Choose one before you begin.
Return to it while you move.
Notice who you are when you finish.

You’re not only building an aerobic engine. You’re practicing a new way of meeting yourself.

What thought are you taking into your movement today? 💚

08/30/2026

New research is finally talking about something I’ve understood through lived experience:

Your mental and emotional state does not stay outside the gym.

For years, I could train intensely while remaining completely dissociated from what I was feeling. I was physically present—but mentally and emotionally somewhere else.

Exercise helped me perform, achieve, and push through. But pushing my body did not automatically mean I was processing my emotions or creating a healthier relationship with myself.

A 2025 paper asked an important question: Do the antidepressant effects of exercise depend, in part, on mindset?

Research continues to show that movement supports mood, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and neuroplasticity. It also suggests that our expectations and beliefs can influence some of the psychological and neurophysiological benefits we experience from a workout.

In other words: exercise creates an opportunity for change—but what we rehearse within that window matters.

This is why my approach includes a specific recipe:

Before movement, we notice our current mental and emotional state and establish an intention.

During movement, we work with attention, breath, sensation, challenge, and the language we use toward ourselves.

After movement, we create space for recovery, reflection, and integration—rather than immediately returning to stress or criticism.

This is not just about completing a workout. It is about teaching the brain and body a new way of relating to challenge.

You can use exercise to disconnect, punish, and override yourself—or you can use it as a practice of neuroplasticity, emotional regulation, and reconnection.

That distinction is central to everything I teach.

If you want to experience an approach to fitness that trains your body and considers the state of your brain, nervous system, and emotions, send me “RECONNECT” to learn about my program. 🧠💚

08/28/2026

08/26/2026

You’re training your muscles, yes—but you’re also giving information to your brain, nervous system, cardiovascular system and metabolism.

It’s one of the reasons I don’t believe in randomly collecting workouts just because they’re “good for you.”

I want you to understand what you’re training and why.

After decades of swimming, competing, experimenting with different modalities and eventually coaching others, I’ve realized the best fitness isn’t about doing everything.

It’s about creating the right inputs—and learning how your own body responds.

That’s a huge part of what I’ll be teaching during our 28-Day Four Foundations Challenge starting September 1.

Curious? DM me “28.” 💙

08/24/2026

Who else feels the shift?

Summer is winding down
The days are getting shorter
Schedules are shifting

Do you find yourself suddenly thinking about getting “back on track.”?

This is when community matters most.

Starting September 1, we’re doing a 28-Day Four Foundations Challenge.

No extreme diet.
No perfect routine.
No working out every day.

Just one foundation each day to build consistency and learn what actually changes your energy, sleep, hunger, strength and mood.

You’ll get access to my private coaching community, weekly coaching + accountability, and most importantly—women doing this WITH you.

28 days. $111. One foundation at a time.

Already inside my coaching community? You’re already in. ❤️

And if you’re thinking, “I don’t have time…”

GOOD. 😂 That’s exactly what we’re working with.

You don’t need life to calm down to take care of yourself. You need foundations that can hold you when it doesn’t.

DM me “28” and I’ll send you the details.

September is coming either way. Let’s build some momentum. 🔥

08/22/2026

My teacher keeps pointing out that most people don't think about their breath on a day-to-day basis.

And it had me thinking — that isn't true for those of us who competed in submersive sports, or at an elite level

I used to swim to compete. On a weekly basis, I performed hypoxic sets — the most painful swim workout there is

Imagine holding your breath and moving through the water as fast as you can for 30 seconds. Then repeating it 20 times, without a single break

Now imagine doing that *after* you've already swum 3-4 miles in about 75 minutes, across different intervals and varying speeds

Would you be surprised if I told you I no longer have asthma?

I believe it was caused by the fumes of the chlorinated pool from the age of 5. The heat stress. The dense air. The severe fight-or-flight drive in the panic of competition — needing to finish first

Gasping for air at the touch of the wall. Raising my head only to see she'd beaten me by a tenth of a second. Still having to admit I didn't win, even though we'd practically swum the exact same race

Maybe you can relate, as we get older we ask ourselves, why did I put myself through this?

For me and some of my clients we have trained to become faster, more efficient, more capable of continuing even when the body said "f**k off", "hell no", "I can't". At the time, in our youth, we didn't have the language to describe everything that was being trained beneath the surface.

Through this I have gained an intimate relationship with the pain body, the idea that I don't have to suffer yet can choose to be uncomfortable in order to expand my human potential through dopaminergic and, reward pathways in the brain.

Now I swim, dive, and immerse myself in water for a different reason.

I still appreciate performance — but I recognize that something much bigger is happening.
You might call it spiritual. You might simply call it a deeply human experience.
---
When I enter the water, my relationship with breath changes.

Swimming teaches you to experience the desire for another breath without immediately reacting to it. You begin to recognize the difference between discomfort, urgency, and actual danger

This made me curious: does swimming change how the brain and body respond to breath?
Our bodies are constantly monitoring oxygen, carbon dioxide, and acidity. Sensors in the body communicate with regulatory centers in the brainstem, adjusting breathing, heart rate, and circulation

Swimming brings this unconscious conversation into awareness:

Inhale. Turn. Submerge. Exhale. Wait. Respond.

Many of my clients have agreed that I am not an ordinary trainer giving exercises to complete.

I've spent years inside the lived experience of training — competing, pushing physiological limits, navigating injury and recovery, teaching movement, swimming long distances, diving, trekking through mountains, and learning how breath, attention, and nervous-system state affect performance.

I don't teach this work only because I studied it. I teach it because I have lived it
My athletic background taught me how to build capacity. My relationship with water taught me how to listen. My studies of the brain, metabolism, and nervous system taught me how to connect the two.

That combination lets me see what a workout alone cannot reveal.

So here's what I actually look at...

I look at how you breathe under pressure. How you respond when something becomes uncomfortable. Whether your movement gives you energy or repeatedly depletes you. Whether your training is improving your heart, brain, metabolism, and your ability to meet your life.
This is why training or retreating with me is different.

I will challenge you — but I will also teach you how to hear yourself

We may use swimming, strength training, dance, hiking, yoga, breathwork, or stillness. I'm not attached to forcing everyone down the same path

There are many paths. My responsibility is to help you choose one intentionally — and then gather evidence that it's taking you where you want to go

We can observe resting heart rate, HRV, respiratory rate, sleep, recovery, strength, and aerobic capacity. We can also pay attention to energy, mood, cognition, symptoms, and — when appropriate — laboratory biomarkers

YES Data gives us information...
**YOUR relationship with your body gives that information meaning.**

I believe this is what exceptional coaching should do: not make you more dependent on someone else's instructions, but help you become more intelligent inside your own body

More capable of meeting discomfort without abandoning yourself

That is the intelligence I first learned in the water

It is also what I now bring into every training session, coaching relationship, and retreat I lead — including the one I'm currently opening spots for in Nepal, where this exact work happens far outside a gym, at altitude, in community

If any part of this landed for you, reply and let's talk.

With love,
Taylor
www.taylordiepold.com

08/19/2026

No, this is not Burning Man. 😂

But being in a circle in the desert did get me thinking…

We put a lot of weight on BIG experiences.

The retreat.
The ceremony.
The trip.
The challenge.
The breakthrough.
The 30 days where we finally “get our s**t together.”

I’ve had some incredible experiences in my life.

But what I’ve learned outside of those experiences has probably changed me more than the experiences themselves.

Because the real question is:

Who are you when you come home?

Can you practice the principle when nobody is watching?

Can you create connection without the circle?

Can you move your body without the class?

Can you take care of yourself when your schedule gets messy?

Can you find stillness without escaping to the desert?

That’s where I think the actual work happens.

And it’s a huge part of how I teach fitness and health.

I’m not trying to give you another intense experience that makes you feel amazing for a week.

I’m interested in helping you build foundations that still work on a random Tuesday when life is LIFE-ING. 😂

The experience can open the door.

What you practice afterward changes your life

08/17/2026

A little schedule update for Ecstatic Dance at Mandala Yoga Center - Amagansett

This Thursday, August 20, I’m so excited to welcome guest DJ Kai Parcher-Charles—kikaii joyy—to guide us through the wave.

Kai is a multimedia artist working across sonic and visual mediums. As a DJ, they dance between digital and vinyl, exploring the connections between funk, disco, psychedelic, house, and techno. Their intention on the dance floor is to invite you to groove, dive deep, and expand your frequency.

I’m really excited to dance with all of you this Thursday and experience what Kai brings to the space.

On August 27, our dance at Mandala will be postponed as we take a group trip to Montauk for 5Rhythms.

I’ll be back behind the decks on September 3, with Mimi closing our journey with the gong—and we’ll continue dancing every Thursday throughout September.

See you on the dance floor. 💫