Episode 128: Why women over the age of 30 need to be lifting weights.

In this episode Matt describes the huge benefits of resistance training for women. He breaks it down into 5 areas:

·       Bone density and Osteoporosis 

·       Injury reduction 

·       Metabolic health

·       Fat loss

·       Quality of life

If you have a question for the podcast or are interested in working with Matt, you can reach out at:

• Email: info@wellnesseducationdubai.com
• Website: Wellness Education Dubai
• Instagram: @wellness_education_dubai
• Facebook: Matt Marney Fitness
• LinkedIn: Matt Marney (Wellness Education Dubai)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

The Matt Marni Podcast. Hello, welcome to The Matt Marni Podcast, episode 128. I hope you're well, guys. Today's episode is a solo cast topic. Why women over the age of 30 should be resistance training, lifting weights. Now, the reason I have decided to do this episode I talk a lot about stuff that I'm going to mention today. I speak to females that I come across in classes. I talk to friends. I talk to females when I do corporates. And it still surprises people when I describe this stuff. In fact, I taught a gym instructor course at the weekend. And this is a group of men and women who are looking to move into the personal training space and they're active and they lift and they were all surprised at how beneficial this stuff is for everyone but in particularly for females so I thought do you know what I'm going to do a whole episode so all the information's here so if I'm talking to someone and I'm maybe at a dinner party or I'm out and about I can give them some information but I can send them this link this is a podcast hopefully you can share with people in your life. And what I would like to say is when you think of resistance training, lifting weights, it can be free weights, it can be machines, it can be bands. And you might be thinking, why don't we use some weights in my Pilates class or I go to my body pump class. The loads, the weight that is being lifted is quite important. So I want you to think about loads where the individual lifting or pushing that load can do around 10, 15 max repetitions and then they can't do anymore. Now I'll explain as this episode goes on why that's important but they're the kinds of loads that we're thinking about. And so I'm going to break this down into five reasons, five reasons why females are over the age of 30 should be lifting weights and the first one I'm going to start with is bone density. Now, bone density is a thing that is tossed around. So yes, you must lift weights because of bone density. A lot of people kind of hear it and they go, yeah, sure. But how does it work? Why does it work? Well, I'm going to tell you. So the thing you need to realize is that bone is not static. It's a living dynamic thing. In fact, it has around 10 to 15% of your blood flow goes to bones. Your bones are constantly remodeling. Your bones produce red and white blood cells. There's bone marrow. So there is a lot going on in this dynamic thing we call a bone. In fact, you know, like our whole body, all our cells rejuvenate regularly. We are different people every few months. Literally, it's the same with our bones. Now, this constant remodeling that goes on is a combination of osteoblasts and osteoclasts. The way I teach this when I'm teaching courses is osteoblasts, think of the B, build. osteoclasts, clear bone. So you get this constant building of bone and clearing of bone. Now, up to the age of about 30, there's more osteoblasts than osteoclasts. So it's almost like we build our bank balance. Hopefully you're doing some activity as well in your younger years, which helps build your bank balance almost. But once you get to about 30, general balance. that ratio, that balance between osteoblast and osteoclast begins to shift. And we start to get a reduction in our bone density. You might be thinking, okay, so what's the problem with that? Well, the problem with that is a condition we call osteoporosis. You've probably heard of it. It means low bone density. There is a stage before that called osteopenia, and a huge percentage of females are already in that bracket. And if you want to get your bone density check, off the back of this podcast, you think, oh, I should get it checked. You get a DEXA scan, B-E-X-A, a DEXA scan, which will give you your numbers and tell you where your bone density is. Here are some statistics around osteoporosis. 22% of women over the age of 50 have osteoporosis. They may not know it, but that's the statistics. 6.5% of men. So this does affect men, but not to the same capacity. Why? Well, men have bigger skeletons. Our bones are naturally thicker. The outer shell, the cortical shell is thicker. Men also... know eat more food in their youth so we consume more protein we consume more calcium and which we'll talk about later there is more of a bias and men from a young age are more prone to be lifting weights anyway so this all adds up and means that this is not an issue that is that affects men as much they can be involved but females it's definitely a problem And actually on those stats, it's worth noting that in the first five to seven years of menopause, some women can lose up to 20% more bone density in that period because of hormonal changes and sometimes treatment itself. So this is a really important thing to bear in mind for women as they approach their 40s and 50s. And what is the problem with osteoporosis? Why is it an issue? The issue is to do with falls, falling over. Now, I worked on a fall prevention scheme back in the UK, and I have seen firsthand how devastating it is when someone with osteoporosis falls over. Because when they fall over, they fracture stuff. Sometimes the fall, and when they fracture something, they go to hospital, then they get told they have osteoporosis. It's almost like people are not even aware of it until they fall over. And it can be devastating. The key areas, fracture sites, the wrist is a key area because when you fall over, the arm will go out. Hopefully you don't fall over like a pole, just hit the floor. So it's the wrist, the ribs, and land on your side, on your pelvis, the head of the femur, the neck of the femur. So you fracture your hip. And this is serious. 30% of people over the age of 75 who fracture their hip die within 18 months. Falls are the enemy as we age. And it's because of this, because of what I'm describing. It's devastating. I have known people who have fallen over. They've just landed, just literally a little fall, landed, put their hands down, fractured both their wrists, incapacitated. It's devastating. We're going to talk about muscle mass later on. When people of a certain age are incapacitated because of fractures, that leads into less activity, less muscle mass. People get fearful. Their gait changes. They're more guarded. They shuffle. So it is really, really devastating when people fall and fracture something. Stats on people falling over. Well, one in three people over the age of 65 has one fall at least annually. And that goes up to one in two for people over the age of 80. So this is a problem. People have low bone density, people fall over, people fracture stuff. I mean, fracture stuff absolutely devastates their lives and quite often leads to premature death. So how does lifting weights or adding resistance actually work? It works. I'll give you a mouthful here. Something called mechanotransduction. And this can happen in a couple of ways. So you've got axial loading of bones. So I don't know if I'm doing a press up, for example, and I'm pressing through my upper body. I'm loading through the wrists and my ulnar radius is taking load. So axial loading. Or when we lift weights and the muscle contracts and the tendon pulls on the bone This mechanotransduction, or it's called Wolf's Law, Sends a signal. The signal comes from osteocytes. They pick up the fact that there is load coming through the bones and the body is very adaptable. It adapts to stimulus. It then says to osteoblasts, we need to build more bone to help deal with these loads. So it's just a reaction, a natural reaction that the body creates if we regularly load bones. And you can do it in many ways. You can do it in press ups. You can even just doing a bicep curl. You're going to get, you know, the bicep tendon is going to pull on the ulna itself. So there are many different ways of doing it. Impact. So, you know, when you are jumping, this kind of stuff, I will say now, if someone is osteoporotic, there are certain frameworks that we use. So someone is, does have osteoporosis, we wouldn't be getting them jumping because, you know, impact could create fractures. But what I'm talking about is, you know, stuff you can do before that so lifting weights works on this concept of mechanotransduction put load through bones. And actually this is why I was mentioning, you know, the loads being a particular weight, because you might think, well, I'll just do loads of, you know, get the small dumbbell out and just do loads of presses above the head. It will have some impact, but there needs to be, there needs to be a mechanical load. So the mechanical load is the driver of adaptation. So it needs to be a certain weight. It needs to be around that, you know, eight to 15 repetition range, meaning the load is your hand or legs or wherever you're pushing or pulling from means that you can only manage that many reps before you you fail you have to stop and this is why and i'm not knocking things like cycling and swimming any activity is great cardiovascular benefits but remember when you are cycling or you're swimming you are not adding load to the bones Even runners, the people that run regularly, yes, impact through the lower limb. Absolutely. Lower limbs get low, but the upper limb runners, if they're not lifting weights, they tend to still be lacking bone density in the wrists, in the upper body, in the rib cage. So still... still prone to fractures when they fall. And yes, you can do site-specific stuff. So even if you are a runner, you know, you're running regularly, you can do some press-ups, you can load the upper limb, and the body will adapt. So if you feel you've got areas that feel particularly weak, you can target specific sites, and you're going to get an increasing density there. And so that's number one for you guys. Number one, lift weights. stimulate bones, create bone density, protect yourselves against falls and against fractures. And I suppose the next one leads into, I mentioned, you know, runners there and people that are active because you might be sitting there thinking, well, actually I'm not lifting weights, but I've played tennis my whole life. And, you know, I've added load and I've always been active and gyms are not for me. Well, the next reason you might want to consider resistance training is exactly that, avoiding injuries. So you might be a female who has always played sport. Gyms are not really your thing, and I get that, I understand it. But what I have seen is that if sport is your outlet, then injuries is the enemy. If you get injured, you're unable to play, you're unable to play, there's your cardiovascular output gone, all the mental health associations that come with it, socialization aspect. And when people who play sport regularly get injured, they do suffer, they suffer. physically and supplementally. And so what you need to consider is the value of lifting weights in terms of injury prevention, particularly as we age. So as we age, we naturally start to lose muscle mass. It's kind of the same as with bone density. There's something called sarcopenia. It affects all of us. It's a natural loss of muscle mass as we age. Now, we don't really have to experience a huge amount of sarcopenia, but if you are sedentary, you definitely will lose it at a quicker rate. But even for people who play sport regularly, they will experience that lack of muscle mass or a loss of muscle mass around particular joints and the hips and knees are joints that will be taking up a lot of slack during you know tennis football anything even runners you know these are the main areas of the body which are taking loads and if you add in changes of direction you know there's a recipe for injuries so when you think about the muscles almost being the first line of defense around any joint then of course you've got you know ligaments because the ligaments is almost like, you know, the second line of defense. Ligaments are, particularly around the hips and knees, there are lots of ligaments. And ligaments have a kind of elastic tendency. They give the joint a bit of support. They can assist if a joint becomes, you know, moves in a certain direction. The ligaments can assist in bringing joints back into alignment. And then obviously the last layer is the joint itself. So if the first line of defense, the musculature around joints becomes weakened as a result of, you know, sarcopenia, just wear and tear, you're not doing specific strengthening work, then it means the ligaments then start to pick up a little bit more slack, a second line of defense. Now, ligaments, they have that elastic tendency, but if they are, if you're over-reliant on these, you know, soft tissue structures, then they, They themselves can become quite loose and lax, and that creates more instability for a joint. And if a joint starts to become unstable, then there is more unnecessary wear and tear that goes on within that joint. So if you want to continue to play sport, and hopefully your joints are going to respond okay to that, then doing specific training of the musculature around the hips and knees would be very useful. Common injuries as well for females, particularly as they get into that perimenopausal, menopausal stage is patellar tendonitis, the tendons where the muscles at the front, the thigh muscles basically, go into the kneecap and that forms the patellar tendon. So issues with the patellar tendon and the Achilles tendon. These are common areas that become inflamed. Now you have to remember as well, this is the importance of resistance training is that it's not just about muscles themselves. When we resistance train ligaments and tendons, the tendons which actually attach a muscle to a bone, they respond to loads just like muscles do, just like bones do. So if you can regularly resistance train, you can keep the tendons and the ligaments, particularly the tendons, in a more healthy stage to avoid injury. So if you are someone who, you know, plays sport or you just want to avoid injuries and niggles as you age, strength training is going to be really useful. It's going to help with joint stability. It's also going to help with ligament and tendon strength. So building and maintaining muscle mass and all the structures around it is going to be useful. If you can avoid injuries, you can continue doing the activities that you really enjoy. So yeah, number two, strength training, particularly runners. I'm going to say this, runners need to i know a lot of runners and they will not go in the weights room it's just they just don't the two don't marry and it's like look at elite runners now they've recognized the benefits of it so if you're somebody runs a lot and you want to continue to run regularly get in the gym and put some load through those muscles and those tendons that surround the joints. Okay, number three, metabolic health is huge. So when I talk about metabolic health, thinking metabolism, yes, but let's break this down and simplify it. Your muscles is where glucose uptake occurs. So you eat food, whatever it is. It could be an apple, an orange, or a muffin. It is digested. It ends up in your bloodstream, has glucose, blood sugar. Body then deals with it. Insulin is produced, comes along, and it shuttles that glucose away. Muscle is where we store glucose. So The more muscle you have, the more places you've got to store the glucose, the calories, you might think in those terms, just in terms of energy. If there isn't any glucose storage available in muscles, it potentially ends up on your hips as adipose tissue, as fat. Now, the other thing to consider when resistance training is something called insulin sensitivity. This ties into pre-diabetes, diabetes. I'm not going to go there. I've done a whole episode on that. But when you resistance train, your muscles become more sensitive to the signal from insulin. Because sometimes when our diet is particularly high in carbohydrates and there's spots in blood sugar levels there's constant surge of insulin sometimes a bit like the boy who cried wolf the cells the muscle cells can become a little bit resistant to the signals so you know glucose isn't as much glucose isn't shut all the way as maybe could be it ends up being stored as body fat so when we resistance train your muscles become more sensitive to insulin it means when you eat the cake or you eat the crisps or even the fruit or veg, that glucose gets stored away in muscle cells, which is good moving forward. The other thing I'm talking about Insulin is if there are high amounts of insulin present in the bloodstream because, you know, you're consuming particular types of foods, then you can get something called hyperinsulinemia. It just means high levels of insulin. If you've got high levels of insulin knocking around, it can be inflammatory. Chuck in stuff like adrenaline and cortisol and glucose and this mix. This can be inflammatory and inflammation can cause all sorts of problems. in the system. For females, there's a direct correlation between PCOS and prediabetes and hyperinsulinemia and this whole inflammatory process. And the really useful thing about strength training, resistance training, is that when you stimulate the muscle, There is a protein called GLUT4 that lives in the muscle cells. And what it does is it allows the muscles to suck glucose in without the need for insulin. It bypasses that kind of process. So just think of it in these ways. When I resistance train, the muscles suck in glucose without the need for this insulin knocking on the door to say, let these glucose molecules in. So as a result, our blood sugar levels drop. There's also less need for insulin. to shut all the glucose away. So it's a win-win for you from that standpoint. So metabolic health, really important to consider. Prediabetes, diabetes, still a thing for men and women. PCOS is polycystic ovary syndrome is definitely an issue for females of a certain age and actually females from about the age of late 20s moving forward. metabolism, metabolic health. So when you think of metabolism, I suppose you think of, you know, how well I burn calories. So that leads into number four. This is going to get people interested. People are always interested in this one. Weight loss. So how is lifting weights going to help me lose weight? So I think I'm going to reframe what I just said. I said weight loss. I actually think fat loss is probably a better goal. And I think that's what people are really looking for. They're looking for that body recomposition. They want to look leaner. They want to look more athletic. And so that's reduction of body fat. Now, I'm not saying losing weight isn't important. If you are morbidly obese, absolutely. Losing weight is the key. But I think we can get kind of stuck on to the number on the scale, and I've spoken about this in previous podcasts. So... Glucose is stored in muscles. You spoke about that a moment ago. So when you eat food, it's stored in muscles. So this is why men can eat more in general than females. You know, if you look at a packet of something, it says men 2,500 calories, women 2,000. It's to do with, obviously men are bigger, but they contain more lean mass. So that's quite an important factor. And I think it's important to say that females have, I think, been sold a lie in the fitness industry and it's changing and more younger women are lifting now it's becoming the norm and social media is helping support that but i think females were told for a long time that you do cardio to lose weight it's what you need to do and you do activities that are you know low weight high rep type stuff or toning about that in a moment but what you need to remember is When you do a lot of cardio, your body adapts to that stimulus. Let's say you run a lot, or you start running, and you're using that as a means to lose weight or reduce body fat. Your body adapts to it, so you become more effective or more efficient at doing cardio. The body adapts, you produce more oxygen carrying cells, viability of your lungs goes up, your heart pumps stronger. So it requires less energy for you to do the cardio. So the output or the result is not as great in terms of energy balance, deficit, whatever it is you're looking to achieve. The other thing to remember is that muscle is expensive. It costs a lot of energy. It requires nutrients. It requires oxygen. So if you're doing a huge amount of cardio and the body wants to make you as efficient as possible doing cardio, and you are in a deficit and you are starting to lose weight, the body will strip you of muscle mass and fat. because muscle mass is expensive. So it will strip you of both. This is really important when you think about the role of muscle in terms of your metabolism, your resting metabolic rate. Hopefully we want to be able to continue to enjoy food as we age. This is really important to remember. If you are, even if you are just on a diet, let's say you're not doing cardio, but you're tidying your nutrition up, and to lose weight or reduce body fat, which is ideally what we want, because if we lose weight, we could be losing muscle and fat, and it will reflect on the scales. Muscle is heavier than fat. You might think, wow, I've lost loads of weight this week. Well, you've lost a stack of muscle, which is quite important. So you're in a deficit, slight deficit. If you are resistance training whilst you are tidying your nutrition up in a bid to reduce body fat, you are sending a signal into your nervous system. We are still picking heavy things up is the signal that you're sending. Now, your nervous system doesn't know you are lifting weights to maintain muscle mass. It has no idea, just thinks for whatever reason, you need to lift heavy stuff regularly and it must be for survival. Why else would you be doing it? So when you send that signal in to the nervous system, it says, oh, hold up, we don't strip muscle. We still need this muscle. So if you're in a slight deficit in terms of energy, it will hopefully take adipose tissue, lipolysis, breakdown fat to provide you with energy. So as you start to lose weight, the recomposition is you maintain muscle mass and then you reduce body fat. And that is what we're looking for, really. We want to look leaner. And this is what concerns me most about the whole Ozempic situation. I'm not against people using Ozempic, but what I am seeing, and I'm seeing it in my life, is people who are using Minjaro or Ozempic, they are suppressing their appetite. They suppress their appetite, they go into a deficit. This is how it works. I mean, Ozempic does work more on the insulin sensitivity stuff, which we have already spoken about. So it makes your cells more receptive to the calories. You store more calories away in muscle. You can lift weights and do the same thing. But it's the appetite suppressant aspect that creates the deficit, hopefully, and creates the weight loss. But if you are not sending a signal into your nervous system whilst you're in this deficit and losing weight, all that happens is you become a smaller version of the fat person, the overweight person. There's no signal going in. The body strips muscle and fat. So if you know somebody, because it's all the rage at the moment, who's taking Minjaro, Ozenpick, get them to do some resistance training. That's what all the evidence suggests. Keep sending that signal in to the nervous system, hold on to muscle, burn fat. You don't want to end up a smaller, softer version because guess what happens? You lose muscle. Muscle is hard to build, particularly as we age. If you lose muscle, your metabolism drops. It may drop to a lower position so you have less calories. You're in this constant flow. This is where a lot of yo-yo dieting goes on. So if fat loss, is your goal. You create a deficit any way you can. You can do it with foods. You can do it with exercise. I'm not saying don't do cardio, but continue to send that signal in. Once you're in a deficit, we hold on to muscle. We need muscle. We burn fat. The final reason to resistance train for females over the age of 30 is, I think, the most important, quality of life. Now, this encompasses a lot of what I've already said. But I think, when I see it, there is a fear around aging. There's... This vision of sitting in a care home, stuck in a chair, lonely, dribbling on yourself. And this is one path, definitely one path. But it doesn't have to be that way. And I mean, I've mentioned this on the podcast before, when I am teaching group classes, particularly reformer stuff, which encompasses in certain exercises, this level of load and it creates discomfort, metabolic damage in muscles, lactic acid, basically. I will shout out, and it's normally a room full of women in a reformer class, and they know what I'm going to say. I say this, your future self, looking back now and smiling at you. And they smile. And I genuinely mean it. It's like the fitness industry activity, we can sometimes be so short-termist around stuff. Get ripped, get lean for the summer. It's like, what about your future self? Quality of life, enjoying life into your 70s and 80s. If you have a pension or you have a mortgage, you are saving so you can enjoy your later lives. And the thing is, if you don't take care of the musculoskeletal system, your muscles, your bones, you can't enjoy that life. Now, I spoke and we've mentioned, you know, falls already and bone density. And it is, people fall over, they fracture stuff, their confidence is shattered, the world gets smaller. But muscle mass, and most importantly, the tight muscle mass that you look after and hold on to is key. So we have different muscle fibers in each muscle. It's a combination of, and I'm gonna simplify this, but type one fibers and type two. The type 1 fibers are endurance fibers. Oxygenated fibers, if you go for a long walk, you're standing up all day, you'll be using type 1 fibers. You go for a run, you're using predominantly type 1 fibers. So it's endurance-based stuff. The type two fibers, these are the strength, the explosive fibers. High force, quick to fatigue type fibers. Now these are the fibers that atrophy, that we lose. as we age. So I mentioned something earlier called sarcopenia, which affects all of us. So loss of muscle mass. When we lose muscle, it's these type two fibers that we lose first. And the reason these are so important is because when people fall over, Again, they don't trip and then just hit the floor. Normally, their leg gets out. They move their leg to stop them falling. But when someone trips and lands and moves onto one leg, it requires a lot of force back to resist that falling body. And this is what happens. People trip, they get their leg out there, but it's just not strong enough to support the weight they hit the floor. If people are trying to get in and out of chairs or on and off the toilet, we're talking about basic independence, which people are deprived of as they age. That's why people get so fearful of aging. This vision of just being looked after and not being able to move and you're stuck in front of the TV all day. You need those type two fibers. If you do fall over and you don't manage to fracture anything, guess what? You need type 2 fibres to get up off the floor. And females, particularly females, they have a lack of upper limb strength. We see it. It's why when you say the word press up, a lot of females frown at me. And it's because men have had this strength training bias. We've been lifting weights from a young age because it's okay. We want big arms and big pecs. This is a cultural thing. But here are your reasons. Look after those type 2 fibres. The only way you can really train them is with higher loads. Doing loads and loads of reps isn't going to stimulate. There won't be enough load there to stimulate those fibres. And we need to hold on to them because these are the fibres we lose. And when I talk about quality of life, what I mean is that people maybe fall over, maybe fracture something, maybe they don't. They just start to become more nervous. They get weaker. Muscles around joints become weaker. We've mentioned that when we talk about injuries. And all of a sudden, the world just becomes smaller and it happens so quickly, guys. I've seen it in my own life. I've seen it with people I know. They're just tottering along and all of a sudden, boom, they just become frail. They fall over in a supermarket or they fall at home. Their confidence is shattered. They're then fearful of places, anywhere with stairs or going to the cinema is now ruled out or how much walking do I have to do? Can I manage it? Do I need a wheelchair? chair at the airport there's all this stuff mobility scooters my god i see people in the uk particularly dashing around on mobility scooters i'm saying there's not a place for these of course there are but the point i'm trying to make is is that we don't look after these type two fivers the world gets smaller we do less we see less people social connection It's all tied into, can you navigate the world? I'm going to say this now. I don't, when I go in the gym and I lift weights, oh, there's a bit of vanity. You know, I like a bit of muscle mass and I like cake. So I want somewhere to store glucose and I want my insulin sensitivity to stay high. I want to be a fat middle-aged man. I get all that. But he's my main motivator. It's because I talk about this stuff a lot and because I've worked on full schemes and I've worked in stroke rehab settings. I've worked with older people. I don't know what age I'm going to get to. I have no idea. Genetics plays a huge role. Something could happen to me, an accident, whatever. So I'm not doing this stuff to live to 90, 100. But guess what? Whatever age I get to I want to have the ability to live my life to do what I want to do I'm not talking about you know doing handstands or doing heavy deadlifts no no no I just want to be able to go where I want in the world without fear I want to enjoy my life There's a difference between getting old and aging well, enjoying life. What are the last 10, 15 years of your life going to look like? I hope I'm able to go out with friends, go shopping with family, not be fearful, get on an aeroplane if I want to get on an aeroplane, not be concerned about the stairs in a mall, not be frightened that if I do fall over, I'm going to fracture my hip. And this is the thing to bear in mind muscle protects bones when you have more muscle mass around your hips the glutes etc it protects bone and there's an obvious correlation if someone has more muscle mass then you have to train that muscle if you're training that muscle you're exposing bones to load mechanotransduction And if you're listening to this and you think, I'm in my 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, it is never too late to start doing this stuff. There is research, there's evidence to suggest that we can build muscle, we can stimulate bone growth into our 90s. I saw a video, this just came to mind, there's a guy called Dick Van Dyke. And he did a video with the guy from Coldplay. Dick Van Dyke, you'll know him. He was in Mary Poppins. He was an actor and a dancer and a singer. He's 99 years old. He's done this video with Coldplay guy and he's 99. He's dancing and moving. And I was inspired. All right, genetics probably plays a part, but here's a guy that's been active his whole life. That just came to mind. But anyway, it's incredible. The point I'm trying to make is it doesn't matter what age you are. I'm not giving you specifics on this podcast. There are many, many different ways of doing this. And if you do want to have a listen, there's episode 15, I think. I talk about machines versus free weights. And episode 36, I think, is if you're time poor in the gym. But if you're unsure, you don't know where to start, and you're worried about injuring yourself, hire someone. It's an investment in your future self. Hire someone. I'm not saying you have to stand with them in the gym for the rest of your life. I do it often with people. Hire a personal trainer. Tell them what you want. I want to learn to resistance train, lift weights, work with me, educate me, put programs together. It does not have to be complicated. It really doesn't. But what I want you to understand, and this is me wrapping this podcast up, is that resistance training is not just fitness and health. It's longevity and joy, genuine joy, enjoying your life till the day you die. And so I'll leave you with this. get in the gym, right? Females particularly, heard all the evidence, all right? Bone density, metabolic health, losing weight, preventing injuries, quality of life, enjoying your life, get in the gym. And when you feel that burn and it's uncomfortable or you're thinking, I can't be bothered to go to the gym, remember that your future self, she is out there now. When you're in the gym and it's hurting your future self, is out there now smiling back at you because she has been out all day, gone upstairs and enjoying her life well into her 80s. Speak to you soon, guys.