Q&A 108: Deadlifts, Back Squats, Kettle Bell Swings, How to Fix High Cholesterol

Join our Stronger Than Your Boyfriend Facebook group to ask questions that we will address on the podcast!

Question 1: What should I do if my program calls for low reps / high weight for my deadlifts, but I’m coming off of a back injury?

Question 2: If I am not tracking macros and pretty much know I am not eating enough, is my heavy strength training I’m doing worthless?

Question 3: if I got bloodwork done and my cholesterol came back high, should I cut out red meat, high fat dairy, eggs, etc to get it lower?

Question 4: Why does my lower back get tight after back squats?

Question 5: Where should I put kettlebell swings into my program?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Stronger Than Your Boyfriend Podcast. We are Heather and Katie, owners of Barpath Fitness, here to help you dip through the bullshit and toxic misinformation for the permeates of the fitness industry. Today we have a QA podcast. We sure do. Let's do it. Okay. Yes. Five questions today. Going big. All right. So, first question that was asked of us. Question one. What should I do if my program calls for low reps and high weight for my deadlifts, but I'm coming off a back injury?

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Okay, couple follow-up questions. Are you following just a generalized program? Because if you have an injury, I would definitely recommend working with a coach who can personalize your program because I know for sure that if my client is coming off a back injury, we're not going to be doing just, and I'm assuming this person means just regular conventional deadlifts pulling from the floor with a barbell. I'm not doing that with a client yet coming off a back injury. We're going to be doing more glute strengthening stuff, probably a lot of single leg deadlifting. So option to maybe switch up the variation, but also, I mean, you can start lighter, but where are you at with your pain? Are you still in pain? Does it still hurt to hinge? Is it manageable pain? Like there's just a lot of follow-up questions for this. But I would ease into that because that's pretty intense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

My question is why do you have a program that calls for low reps and high weight coming off a back injury? Right. That's my whole question.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

I'm assuming this person is just following a program that they bought online or something. Because or they have a coach who's just really, really not good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Because that's like the worst move you can do. I would change your program.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yeah. Or well, here's the thing. If they're doing low reps, high weight for everything, that could also irritate the back if you're doing like an overhead press or something that you're not that your core, your spine, your shoulders, you're not ready for post back injury. So I don't know. There's probably more in the program you need to look at, but at least change that deadlift variation.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yeah. I will say I injured my SI joint, what, 2024 was it? And I didn't deadlift from the floor for a long time, a very long time. And today, actually, because I'm doing something in September that involves deadlifting, I have to start conventional deadlifting again. And I have been working so much on my glutes and hips for like two years. Uh, and today I started I pulled 135 for a bunch of reps. Yeah. And it felt completely different than it used to feel. That's cool. That was really cool. It felt like I was using my glutes and hamstrings for like the first time ever. Um, so with conventional, because conventional is hard for me. I have weird lovers. Um I mean, I didn't do deadlifts from the floor for over a year when I hurt my back. So I did different variations of I did different variations of hinging, right? Right. Warnings, I did some RTLs and things like that and worked the weight up over time. But from the floor, it took me a long time to get back to it. So just keep that in mind with your program.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Yeah, that's the thing. You don't have to conventionally deadlift from the floor. You need to hinge. And if you can't, because of your back injury, you need to work towards being able to hinge again. But you don't have to do barbell deadlifts. I have a client who's he hurt his back a long time ago. It's fine now, but I don't do any barbell conventional deadlifting with him because one, it scares him, which I totally get, but it's not like we're not training his posterior chain. So if you like doing that, I mean deadlifts are obviously great. And if you want to get back to that and get back to the lower rep, high weight, you know, training, you know, as far as phasing in and out of your program, you can. It's just you maybe need to be a little bit more patient because I mean you just you just took two years off of it. Or probably over two years. So I mean, you have to do it. You have to rehab, you have to strengthen the glutes, the core, everything else to help prevent that in the future.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Yeah, I worked my way up to from very, very light hinging with like no weight at all, just body weight for a long time while I was recovering, up to pretty heavy RDLs, Romanian deadlifts. And that felt pretty good to build that up over time. And then I started pulling from the floor. So I think that's a good progression.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Yeah, I my general recommendation is to work with a professional because they'll be able to meet you where you're at and then program for where you're at. Because we obviously know individualized programming is the best. So, I mean, if it's not feasible, you could do some of the options that we talked about, or just take those out, work on strengthening the posterior chain with other exercises if you can't quite hinge yet. But it also depends on where you're at in your recovery. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Okay. All right, let's move on to question number two. If I'm not tracking macros and I pretty much know I'm not eating enough, is my heavy strength training I'm doing worthless?

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Well, no, it's not worthless, but why are you not eating enough? Start eating more. If you know this, eat more. That's my thing. It's not worthless. If you strength training just in general, you can build muscle, even if you're not hitting your protein intake, even if you're not eating the best, whatever. You will still build muscle. It's just it's not going to be optimal or optimized if you're not getting the right, well, if you're not eating healthy foods and you're not getting enough protein, but eating enough, that's tricky. You're you're going to probably end up getting injured. I don't know. That's just my guess if you're if you know you're not eating enough, because if you're not tracking your food, that tells me you're feeling it otherwise. So you're either feeling really fatigued, you're not sleeping that well, your joints hurt. So those things probably gonna lead to some burnout and or an injury. So start eating more question mark. Yeah, seriously. But tracking is not. Why? It's really easy. You just put in the food in the app and it tracks it for you. But I mean, you don't have to, but if you know you're not eating enough, eat more. Yeah. And eat more than that.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

I mean, I used to do it with a pen and paper when I was in college. That would be tedious as shit. Yeah, I wrote it down and then I did the math, and I took, you know, carbs times four and fat nine, and that's protein times four. Like I did, and then I was like, I could do this in Excel eventually, and then eventually. But yeah, I mean, yeah, it it's not fun, but it's not hard either. It's just tedious. But at the very least, understand what you're eating and do it for do it a few times just to get to it and see what it's like, and you'll you might yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

And it's not even not fun. It could be fun, could be fun, could be fun, or it's it's just is. It's not not fun and it's not fun. It's just like oh, that's such a yoga thing. It just is. Yeah, yeah. I figured that was like a a yogi thing per se. But you just do it. Yeah, I don't know, it's like strength training. Like strength training isn't necessarily fun or working out. I mean, it could be sometimes, yeah. Sometimes it is, but a lot most of the time, if you're doing it consistently, it's not fun. It's just it is, you just do it. So, and you don't have to do it forever. I mean, you and I have both been tracking for what, like 15 years on and off. 20. Yeah.

unknown 8:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

I started when I was almost 15.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

18 years old. Maybe 16. Yeah. And then once you get a even a couple months under your belt, it's like snap of a finger. And now they save all your meals. So if you eat stain quite every day, you just swipe.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Yesterday's breakfast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Yeah. I literally do that. And then maybe you adjust one or but it takes maybe 20 seconds.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

You can you can add recipes. That's my favorite thing. I start adding, I start doing different recipes that I know I'm gonna eat again. That way, it's not like you have to eat the same thing every day, just add your recipes in. Right. And then you just add them in bulk when you eat that day, and it's really nice. And it can even uh search the internet now, like my fitness file can. So you can you can be like, oh, the recipes at this URL, and check it because sometimes it fucks it up and you have to fix it. Uh-huh. But for the most part, it'll like pull most of the ingredients for you, which is nice.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

And one last thing I'll say about this is that you don't have to pay for these apps. They will try to get you to pay for their upgraded version, but you don't have to pay to use them. I haven't paid one time in my life for my fitness pal. Same. Yeah. So, and one other note is whatever you input as your activity and it spits out you should be eating this many calories a day or you have this many calories left. Don't listen to that either. Just use it because we don't know. It it doesn't know your metabolism. Yeah, you're using it just to get data. Like, what how many calories are you eating every day? And how many, you know, what are your macros? And then you just see, okay, what does a week look like? And then go from there.

unknown 9:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Just a warning on that.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

If you know you're not eating enough, I guess one of my questions on this is I know, like, it's all important, but protein for sure. Like when you strength train, what you're breaking things down. Like you're you're breaking things down so your body can adapt, technically, right? You can get stronger. And the adaptation happens with rest and protein. So if you don't, and there's that's oversimplifying it, but if you don't have those two things, then you can't actually adapt to the strength training. So your question, is it worthless? No, it's not worthless, but it might not be, yeah, like Katie said, you might get injured because you're not able to adapt because you don't have the protein and all the necessary things to rebuild. So Yeah, so exactly. Yeah. Okay. Question three. If I got blood work done and my cholesterol came back high, should I cut out red meat, high fat dairy, and eggs to get it lower?

SPEAKER_01 10:23

You could. Maybe. Maybe. I mean, those things aren't inherently bad. And it it a lot of it it comes down to the quality of the meat. And I know that there's a lot of talk about that right now, but if you get if you want to eat red meat and you get grass-fed, it has a better fatty acid profile, so it doesn't necessarily affect cholesterol that much. But also, I'm not your doctor. I don't know what's going on with your genetics. And if your doctor tells you to stop eating red meat, maybe you should for a while because listen to your doctors. But uh it's kind of just depends on what your doctor says, but you could try it.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

I mean, yeah, a lot of times cholesterol is part of a bigger story, right? There are a lot of things that can impact cholesterol. And I think back in the day we always thought like high cholesterol meant one thing, right? Like it meant too much red meat. Too much red meat or whatever, you know, butter was given to you and you gotta stop. When in fact, a lot of things can impact your cholesterol, one of the number one things is alcohol. And I think a lot of people don't know that. But if you are drinking a lot, your cholesterol numbers will not be good. And there's also um something called FH. I'm gonna screw up the name of it, but familial hypercholesterolomia. Yeah, it's the genetic high cholesterol, basically. Um I I read that you can get tested for this, and I'm like, oh shit, I should, because I feel like I mean both my parents have high cholesterol and I have high cholesterol. Yeah. So I kind of feel like I have this. Um and I think I read, and I don't know, I didn't actually look into this stat, but I did quickly read from one source that one in 250 people might have this. So genetically, your cholesterol might be higher. And not that that's like a good thing. There's still issues there. It means you're more prone to a lot of things and you just have to be more careful. Um, also, as your hormones change, a menopause can uh impact your cholesterol, high stress, cortisol can change your cholesterol. Some medications that you take can impact your cholesterol. So the question is really it needs to be more than that. It needs to be talked to with your doctor and anyone who understands your lifestyle, because the answer could be more than just what you're eating. Yeah. What you're drinking, it could be your medication, it could be family history. And then it comes down to okay, well, what's your LDL or your excuse me, your HDL look like? Because I'm assuming this is your LDL that's high, which we don't want, right? What's your HDL like? Is it solid? Are you doing cardio? Do you have a lot of high density lipoprotein? If so, that really helps. And maybe that high cholesterol isn't as big of a deal if it's genetic and you have good uh HDL, but that's all conversations you should be having with a healthcare professional because there's a much bigger story to this.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Yeah. And unfortunately, maybe this is changing now. I don't necessarily see most conventional doctors who do blood work look at the bigger picture. So if feasible, and if you really want to get to the bottom of it, I think your best bet right now is more of a front functional medicine practitioner who's actually a doctor, a medical doctor who went through med school and has a license, not a chiropractor. Just saying.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

I will say lately I had to switch insurance to what's it called? Select health. And they are partners with Intermountain Health. And I have had a really good experience with Intermountain Health here in Colorado. Yeah. Um, both from the OBGYN side, awesome. Found a new OBGYN, very happy with her. Right. And also from the I finally went to a primary care because I just hadn't been in years, and I was like, I'm gonna do a primary care because I have health. And uh she was really cool. And they do labs and they do a lot of different things. They do HRT, all sorts of stuff. Oh cool. The rules are a little different when it comes to primary care. And she was kind of explaining it to me because I'm on progesterone, and she was like, Yeah, we're not able to give you progesterone without also estrogen. Like there's a lot of rules there, depending on which was nice. It was just nice to have some transparency there. Yeah. They can do there. Um, but anyway, I I really liked Intermountain Health, so shut up.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

I think we're getting, I think we're slowly moving to the the point where we're not just looking at one marker and saying, okay, do this and you'll fix it, but more of okay, a holistic bigger picture. If your doctor is just looking at one number and saying, your cholesterol's high, I would ask him, okay, well, what what is can you read me the rest of my labs? Like, what are what do my hormones say? A thyroid can potentially affect cholesterol too. My client who's just got insanely high cholesterol, like it's it's totally genetic. It's the FH or whatever. Yeah. And his thyroid is a little bit off, so he's doing taking stuff for his thyroid. So there's just so much. If I mean, hopefully feasible. You can maybe get your results looked at by a functional medicine practitioner if you have one. But again, it's really hard to say to just I don't really think cutting out red meat, high fat dairy, and eggs is really I mean I'd say instead, back to tracking, look at your saturated fat levels.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Like those things do have saturated fat. So that impacts it. But instead of just thinking about cutting out whole food groups, look at the amount of saturated fat you get every day and see if you can balance that a little bit more lower if it's high.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Because it's like, yeah, okay, should you cut it out if you're eating only that stuff and you're eating very high quantities of it? Okay, you don't have to cut it out completely, we can cut it back. Like eggs are so good for you, they have so many good nutrients. So, God, I would just hate to say don't eat eggs anymore, but it and high fat dairy, like really good for you too. Really good protein in there. Uh I don't know. So it yeah, I just God, that's still lingering around. Just cut out red meat and dairy, and you'll be fine. And it's not quite. Yeah, not quite. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

All right, question four. Why does my low back get tight after back squats?

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Okay. For this one, I have to explain this to clients all the time. We are engaging your co your entire trunk when we're doing deadlifts, back squats, any kind of squat, really. It is okay if your lower back feels something. Those muscles can work too. They are allowed to work. The question is, where is it at on the spectrum? Tightness doesn't really mean anything to me usually. I'm just like, okay, great. Everything's gonna be tight after back after a good back squat session. If it's only your lower back and if it's a little bit more than a tightness feeling, well, then we have to work on strengthening, most likely, your your glute medius. We need to strengthen your hips, we need to maybe loosen up. We maybe need to do some hip mobility work so that your lower back isn't just screaming at you. So, follow-up question is like, where is it at on a spectrum? Is it just like, yeah, my lower back feels worked? Great, good for you. You did good job on your squats because I think people are just afraid to feel their lower back. Yeah. And I get that if you've had an injury and if it's very overwhelming there, then we need to address that and we need to work on strengthening your glutes, most likely. But yeah, I'm not really too worried about it because when you say tight and not pain, then I'm just like, yeah, it'll go away.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Honestly, the first time my lower bow back felt super quote unquote tight was when I joined my first this was a long time ago back at FFC, actually. I joined a like a 30-minute meditation class and I sat for 30 minutes. Oh, yeah. And if you haven't had your extensors on for 30 minutes before, yeah, back extensors, they get really tight afterward. They they feel it like so. I mean, there's a lot of reasons that your extensors could feel feel tightness. So tightness isn't like you're saying, necessarily, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

And I don't know. Just it's okay. Yeah. Still do the squats. I don't want this to to deter anyone from doing squats. Yes, yes. So okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

All right, question five. Where should I put kettlebell swings into my program? This is a great question.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yeah, not at the end during your ANWRAP, doing a bunch of burpees and running and kettlebell swings mixed together to do cardio. That's not where you should put that. Where I would, and I think outside of you know, Metcons, I think kettlebell swings are great. They're pretty safe if someone can hip hinge properly. And I think they're great to build the explosivity, you know, with that hip extension. I would recommend putting them couple a couple places, kind of depends on your goal. If you really are looking to get more explosive, put it at the start of a workout. If you're doing a full body routine, maybe three days a week. If you're doing a upper lower split, I would do it lower day, beginning of that. If you want to just work your your explosiveness, but it's not necessarily your main goal, you could put it towards the end. You just would be a little more fatigued, but I like it at the beginning when you're fresh, because this movement isn't necessarily meant to fatigue you, it's supposed to be explosive. Yeah. So that's why you want to think, okay, each rep you're pretty much going as hard as you can, hard as hard and as fast as you can with the, you know, with the hip extension. And I don't even necessarily like high reps on this because people program it for like 20 reps. And I'm like, okay, let's try five really explosive reps, and then you shouldn't really feel super fatigued after because it's not necessarily a like a muscle builder movement.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Yeah, I think for my program, if I were to do these right now, because power is not my first thing, but it's something that I would like, oh okay, this would be nice to work on. Yeah. In my thought process, this is a compound movement, right? Like it's a hinge. Um, you got knee bend, you got hip bend, and your arms are moving a little bit. Not really. They're kind of just going along for the ride. Yeah, they're just holding. So really it's your lower body compound movement, it's a hinge. However, it's not my primary hinge pattern, right? It's like it's an accessory hinge pattern to me. So I would actually put it because it's compound, I would put it before I do something like a hamstring curl or a quad extension. But I would do it after I do my big lifts, like my scroll. Okay, yeah, things like that. So that's how I treat it. It's kind of like a compound lift that's an accessory movement. So it goes in the middle almost.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Yeah. It just again, it depends on your goals.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

If you just totally depends.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Yeah. I mean, if you just want to do it just to do it, you can put it wherever you want. Yeah. But I'm always a fan of just doing it in the beginning, just because if we're gonna train it, we're gonna train it. And I want you to be fresh. But I do like right after your mainlift because let's just say you're training for a powerlifting competition and you're doing deadlifts, but you're obviously your priority isn't kettlebell swings, your priority is the deadlifts, but you mean you need some explosiveness for the lockout at the top. That's a good movement to do right after. So yeah. Goals and maybe have a good Yeah. Cool. Okay, that was five. We okay. We like these questions. We like when you ask us questions. You should join our Facebook group. It's joining my boyfriend and ask those questions in there. There have been some good ones rolling in lately. Or sliding to the D to the M's on the social meds. Yes. Do that. Do that. Okay. Do that. Okay. Peace out.