Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
Pilates vs Strength Training
The debate gets a dose of reality as we examine the core of the matter—quite literally. From the core-centric focus of Pilates to kettlebell swings that make your heart race, this episode dissects the unique benefits of various strength tools. I'll guide you through the nuances of resistance band magic when mixed with traditional weights, and unveil the secret arsenal that cable machines provide for muscle isolation. Whether you're a novice or a seasoned athlete, understanding these modalities means crafting a workout regime that's tailored to your needs, pushing you closer to your fitness ambitions.
As we come full circle, remember that fitness is more art than science, more personal than universal. In the closing chapter, I invite you to embrace the fluidity of fitness, to listen intently to your body's rhythm and harmonize with the unique melodies of different workout methods. By fostering mental agility alongside physical strength, we grow not just in body, but in spirit and understanding. So join me, and together let's forge a path toward a fitness philosophy that's as dynamic and individual as you are. Keep lifting, keep learning, and let's get stronger, smarter, and more in tune with every episode.
Producer: Thor Benander
Editor: Luke Morey
Intro Theme: Ajax Benander
Intro: Timothy Durant
For more, visit Simon at The Antagonist
Welcome to the Mind Muscle Podcast. Here's your host, simon Devere, and welcome back to Mind Muscle, the place we study the history, science and philosophy behind everything in health and fitness. Today, I'm Simon Devere, and there is nothing new except all that has been forgotten. All right, so I'm going to be coming in a little bit hot. Today read an article that, quite frankly, pissed me off. So, anyway, I wanted to break down exactly why, and then when I get done with that, I think that's going to lead us into a useful discussion. We're going to talk about the top 10 strength training lies that I see constantly. This article that we're going to talk about was a great demonstration of many of them. But, yeah, that is what I kind of want to cover today. And then one other sort of pragmatic, positive takeaway I hope that we will have by the time we finish up today is that I want to talk about how you can actually choose a strength training modality with critical thinking instead of dogmatic adherence to trend pieces.
Speaker 1:But anyway, guys, I actually got another thing I wanted to share with you before we get into the main topic of the day, but I had an interesting night. I was on the couch watching TV with my wife and then Amazon showed up, which is not weird, really normal at my house. But my wife grabbed the package and was like, oh, you got a package. And that is weird because I don't really buy much stuff and I usually remember when I do so I was not expecting anything and package comes, but sure enough, it's got my name on it. So I opened this up and then you know more surprise I not only do I not remember buying this, but it's actually a stuffed animal from my daughter's favorite movie right now, which I'll throw me and my wife under the bus. You guys can all judge our horrible parenting. Her favorite movie right now is Five Nights at Freddy's, which is a horror movie that, from what I understand, they kind of missed their target demo when they made this movie. I think they thought it was going to be like young adults that were interested. But kids really liked the animatronic and, yeah, they just. They did a really big billboard campaign around Los Angeles. So when they were promoting the film at the Grove you know popular mall here with a movie theater and a whole bunch of other stuff but my daughter was literally posing for pictures and making me take pictures ever with every poster. So I did not choose for her to be interested in this film at all. But it was out there and my daughter decided she really liked the animals. So anyway, we did actually buy my daughter a couple of the stuffed animals for Christmas. Anyway, this was from my wife, but I guess they they got the merch after the movie because they didn't realize that it was going to be a hit with kids. So the stuffed animals came out after the movie.
Speaker 1:Anyway, my daughter's seeing at the mall, she's seeing this, you know, at school, off the other kids. She decides she's really into Five Nights at Freddy's. And so yeah, it's actually Freddy, like the little stuffed Freddy. And you know, obviously I just gave it to my daughter, confused how it got there, but I also just assumed that it was going to be a family member. And then, you know, next day I get around to calling everybody and you know, call my mom no. Call my brother no. You know, nobody is claiming this doll.
Speaker 1:And so then finally, it dawns on me that I should probably check my Amazon account. And it's actually funny. But I log in to my Amazon account and then I had like nine items in my cart and, lo and behold, it was like $300 worth of stuffed animals that fortunately hadn't been purchased yet. But then went to purchase history and mystery solved the mystery Freddy was purchased from my phone, from my Amazon account. So, yeah, moral of that story this is going to be more of a financial health story. But if you have kids, make sure that you don't have one click buy enabled on your Amazon account and you might even want to enter a password before you log in. Anyway, these are some of the changes that I am considering to my Amazon account, because now, clearly my daughter knows how to use my technology. So, yeah, for years I had optimized that account just to make quick purchases and not prompt me for confirmation or passwords or anything, and anyway, getting to see now the weakness in that strategy. So, anyway, simon has to make some changes to password protection and things like that.
Speaker 1:But anyway, for any parents out there, maybe this has already happened. If it hasn't, get ahead of it and go ahead and lock that down, because your kids are going to learn technology way faster than you think It'll be. It's coming, even if you got little ones, trust me. But anyway, guys, that was just fun, I had a good laugh and, yeah, she's not even in trouble. She probably thinks it's the coolest thing ever. She can find an image and then have it show up in the door a couple days later. But yeah, we'll lock the passwords down and get that taken care of.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, so the article, though, that I really wanted to start in on first and then this is going to be one great fuel for me to rip apart a lot of common techniques that people use in the fitness space, but also, I think it's just going to lead us into a discussion on talking about the most common strength training lies, fallacies, whatever you want to call them. But so, yeah, the focus of the article that I read. This was called Pilates versus Strength Training, and also, I just want to be clear, even where I saw this talk a lot about information, health and often that I am going to get fed articles that I'm not actively seeking. The one place that I have left because I don't use Twitter, I don't use Facebook, any places like that, so I'm not getting sent articles from there. Google Chrome, just my browser. When you actually just open a new tab, they obviously have access to my search history and my online behavior, so then they try to pick articles that they believe I'm going to be interested in based on my history. So, anyway, open a new tab.
Speaker 1:This was the first article I saw. I try to avoid reading those things as a general rule, but I hated the headline so much Pilates being better than Strength Training that I had to read it, and then, when I was reading it, it was actually. What's impressive about it is it is such a terrible piece of writing that it actually can be informative in a negative sense. So I actually did jot down some of the worst quotes, which, admittedly, is going to be almost the entire article. But again, I'm not even going to mention the person's name or the publication, because that's pointless and it would only drive them traffic they don't deserve. We can pretty much run down all of the errors in this style of thinking and then, if you read any other health and fitness articles later today, you're probably going to see these same techniques employed towards a different product or core interest, if you will. So anyway, just absolutely terrible article.
Speaker 1:So here let's start there. Pilates versus Strength Training that right there. Stupid framing, right out of the gate. This would be like a four year in geometry class and we wanted to have a very serious debate where people got their feelings all tied up and their identities tied up in it, about whether squares, rectangles, diamonds, trapezoids or parallelograms are better than the other. Most people who learned about quadrilaterals would understand quickly they're all quadrilaterals and so, similarly, strength Training versus Pilates.
Speaker 1:This is what I would call a false binary dichotomy. Pilates is strength training, like, if we have this idea of strength training, within that is this subset called Pilates. So Pilates versus Strength Training, right off the bat, fallacious binary dichotomy. And again, these are useful in writing because it allows us to create an in group, an out group. There's an obvious exclusion of the middle, of everybody who doesn't fit in, but those people aren't talked about or thought about in the false binary dichotomy. So it allows us to make a bunch of straw man arguments that, though they are not strong, can appear so because we rigged up the whole game to make it look like we're saying something when in reality we haven't really gotten much done anyway. But anyway, first off, pilates is strength training. Writing an entire article about Pilates versus Strength Training vast misunderstanding of, obviously, what strength training and therefore what Pilates is as well. So that's not a distinction that I would make.
Speaker 1:Tension is tension, my friends. We'll dive into that later. But whether you are creating tension with your body weight, with a resistance band, with a kettlebell, with a Pilates reformer, that's all strength training. If you are creating that tension and moving through it, that's strength training. That doesn't matter what your gym calls it or what they're trying to market in there. So yeah, then kind of dive in further down, and this again, this line emblematic of trend pieces. But we got in 2024, traditional weight lifting is losing steam, while stylish strength training methods like Pilates and Calisthenics are heating up. And actually they actually deviated from their script. I didn't notice this when I jotted it down, but they at least technically said it correctly there Strength training methods like Pilates. So yeah, that's it. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next video. Bye, actually, I got to crack myself.
Speaker 1:We just found one true statement in the article. I think I misframed that early on, but yes, they accidentally stated there Pilates is a form of strength training. Writing an entire article of one versus the other, then it's kind of silly. Also in that sentence too, though, you see them trying to make a distinction between calisthenics, which to me is just body weight strength training. So again, in this bin of strength training, this article is proposing that Pilates and calisthenics are superior. But they are actually a part of that bin of strength training. Another sentence I couldn't stand.
Speaker 1:So quote these sleek techniques build strong, lean muscles without the grunting and clanging of barbells. So again, even just this writing was this like a English major turned health writer, because trying to get some fun imagery in there. But again, we're making assumptions about how people are lifting. Grunting is bad, don't play tennis. But actually it's entirely possible to lift weights with any modality without grunting or clanging your weights, if you set them down carefully.
Speaker 1:Similarly, I would like sometimes you'd want to actually question what is a sleek technique? And then I even love this line how do you build lean muscle versus bulky muscle? And I would actually like to know in science, what fiber types are those, the lean muscles versus the bulky ones? How do they contract? Again, I'm not the expert. I mention that often. I am still learning myself, but I have been in this space for quite a while. I have no idea what sleek lean muscles are. This hasn't actually shown up in any of the scientific literature I've looked at. So again, possibly a study here in 2024 describing sleek, lean muscles, I'm unaware.
Speaker 1:Sounds very similar to the idea of toning, which we've talked about before, but obviously tone is the appearance of visible muscle. There's no such thing as a toning exercise. In order to get tone, you increase the size of the visible muscle, decrease the amount of subcutaneous fat over the muscle. There are no toning exercises. So, again, it's trying to market the idea that if you've been to a Pilates studio, just like if you walked past a yoga studio, you probably saw a lot of strong, lean people walking out of that studio. And while it can sometimes seem intuitive to copy those methods, if you walked by I'm in LA, so you go by the John Wooden Center, you see LA and you see a bunch of tall guys walking out of there and then you think, ah, got it, basketball, that's what I need to get taller. So, again, what we're really focusing on here is actually self-selection criteria, not adaptations that come from the exercise itself.
Speaker 1:So, again, if by looking at people walking out of yoga or Pilates studios, you jump to the conclusion that, oh, pilates makes people long and lean, consider that there's actually a sample bias going on in there as well, and it's not like 300 million Americans are forced into Pilates studios and then they come out long and lean. There's a specific type of person that already even walks into a Pilates studio to begin with. So you're slightly switching gears here. But you'll notice the same thing with boxing gyms. When you go into a boxing gym, in short, you're not around the homecoming kings, you're not hanging out with the people who had fun in high school. You already know that the second you step in the door, again in a boxing gym, we're not talking about a random sample. We are talking about of these 300 million Americans. What percentage of them and what type of life did they lead to want to come to a place where people are going to punch them in the face? So again, we have a biased sample group.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't make a whole bunch of leaps about how Americans are based on what I see going on in my boxing gym Wildcard boxing, by the way. But yeah, freddie Roach is the head trainer up there. If I made assumptions on the people I see in that boxing gym out to the country, I would be wildly off. This is a place where multiple world champion fighters train. The sample bias happens right at the door. So, again, extrapolating from that set of people would be silly of me to do and I also wouldn't do it in a Pilates studio. It's not just unique to my boxing gym. You're going to notice this in a lot of spots. All right, so, yeah, it actually just keeps getting worse, though, in my opinion. So Pilates offers several advantages over weightlifting, including the following it's a full body workout, okay. So yeah, we'll keep going with them for a second, but I'm already getting annoyed.
Speaker 1:Pilates exercises target all of the major muscle groups in one session, and then they try to you know, slam weightlifting here by saying specific weightlifting exercises tend to isolate muscles. Yeah, I know what you mean a bicep curl would. But since we're talking about specific exercises, how about a squat? Try doing a barbell squat without engaging your core. I dare you, you're literally going to fall on your face and have the barbell crush you from behind. That's what squatting without core looks like. Try to deadlift without your core. Try to do a pull-up without your core.
Speaker 1:So, again, this is actually just a incredibly stupid and running it back to, and I even know most people aren't even trying to become bodybuilders, but a lot of people who are slamming strength training, are trying to use the stenotype the image in their mind of what bodybuilding is, to slam the sport. But when you don't have complete knowledge of what that sport is, then you start making analogies like this that actually don't make any sense, and the basis I'm getting out here is so the sport of bodybuilding prior to anabolic steroids I believe we talked about this on a past episode, but the splits that people used in what is now called the golden age of bodybuilding, the time before anabolic steroids, those were total body splits. By the way, you would typically train it three, four times a week. This was popularized by a man named Reg Park and so, yes, the total body training, bodybuilding split. It's actually like the oldest split that there is Part splits, which this piece is trying to say are emblematic of all weightlifting exercises.
Speaker 1:Part splits don't actually appear until anabolic steroids, and so we even know anabolic steroids. We talked about this on our focus on PEDs, but these were not available until roughly the 1950s. These were synthesized in the 40s, not available to normal people at that point In the 50s is when you start seeing them trickling in and then thus the influence in programming. So the half truth that this article used to spin its lie was that part splits exist. Cool, that part's right.
Speaker 1:But the idea that that encompasses all of strength training, weightlifting, is flat out not true. That type of split it is knocking encompasses a small part of I don't even know how to assess this. And I'm only saying small because even if you go within the subset of bodybuilders which again is under the subset of strength training, as is Pilates, but now we're in this bin of bodybuilders Again you're going to find some do total body workouts, some do part splits upper, lower, push pull legs. This is not something that bodybuilders tend to be wildly dogmatic about. This tends to be something bodybuilders are going to experiment and tweak constantly and then again, in general, most novices are actually going to start with a total body split and then move into a part split as they get a little bit more accomplished.
Speaker 1:But again, just the idea that you can't get a full body workout with weightlifting. That is a straw man argument. What the writer of this article did, right there was just came up with the weakest version of weightlifting or strength training in order to slam that in its construct. So again, way bigger than fitness. Watch how many straw man arguments you see when people are trying to prove their point. They're never going to go seek out the smartest person who disagrees with them. They're going to go find the dumbest or the worst, shred that argument and then they're going to ignore the far better arguments that they actually aren't capable of dismantling. So anyway, there you go right there. That's most popular commentary. Once you get the straw man fallacy, you'll start tuning out a lot more people, anyway. Next thing I couldn't stand.
Speaker 1:So Pilates focuses on core strength. Core is central to Pilates, targeting abdominals, obliques, lower back muscles. Yeah, I think we did touch on this briefly, but you can't do most bodybuilding movements without the use of your core Again, misuse of core, which I know we've talked here. But core isn't just abdominals, this is all of the muscles that support your spine. So, particularly when you are using any compound movement whether you're doing that with Pilates, a barbell, a kettlebell, a dumbbell, just your body weight compound movements are always going to require the stabilizing of the spine. And even though I like the product, this was like a core pitch of TRX, which I own. I, like you guys want to advertise on the show. I'll get you a discount code. I don't know, but TRX is a great product, but even then they pitched it as oh, every exercise is a core exercise on a TRX and again, nice marketing, because people like that, but it's, again, also true of every other strength training modality. I don't know how you would achieve most lifts without the use of your core, and almost every single lift with an external load is going to require the stabilizing of the spine, so I guess half truth. Yes, pilates focuses on core. Good news, though, so does everything else, so don't worry, that's not the only way to strengthen and work your abs.
Speaker 1:My bar that I do want to add here, though, is this is almost pushing this idea that you can do all of your ab work with just compound movements. This was something that I used to believe. I wasn't doing this with Pilates, but there were a few years where I thought, oh, I don't need to do ab work. I squat, I deadlift, all those exercises I challenged you to try to do without your abs. From the standpoint of having a strong functional core, yes, but in truth, you're really going to find that most of the people who have visible abs actually do some form of direct ab training.
Speaker 1:There is a very spirited debate around whether one should include it or not. But I'm just being honest. You're not going to find many people with visible abs who say no direct ab training is necessary. Not trying to slander them, but you're mostly going to see that argument being made from people who do not have a six pack abs. So again, I don't care. Some people's goal is to have it, some people isn't. The goal is you should probably do some direct ab training.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't listen to this idea that you can accomplish it all with compound movements. If your goals instead are more health and function, then don't worry about it. But this idea that you can do all of your core training using compound movements whether they are in Pilates, bodybuilding, whatever I get why people say it and the context that can be valid in that's not something I do myself. But again, that has more to do with my personal goals than, yeah, you can have a sufficiently strong core doing just compound movements. You're going to have a much better chance of visible abs if you do some direct ab training. So yeah to this point that Pilates is this modality. It's the only one that focuses on abs. That's bullshit. In addition, if that's why you chose it because you really want to have great abs. I would encourage you to also get into a caloric deficit and do some direct ab training.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't expect the Pilates all by itself to give you the abs that this article is promising. You're going to have to attack it from more than one way. Just getting on the reformer ain't going to do it All right. Another stupid one from it. So Pilates improves flexibility. It's the fluid movements of Pilates that promote mobility and range of motion.
Speaker 1:Weightlifting shortens the muscles, but not true. What the fuck is an eccentric? I mean, I'll answer it since I'm supposed to be the host. But when you're lifting, there's that portion where the muscle is stretching, like the fibers lengthen and tear and stretch. That's called an eccentric contraction. Then you get to the end range of motion. You're going to pause, get an isometric and then there is a shortening cycle. Half truth or, I guess, third truth in this sense 33.3%, right, but yeah, it shortens on the concentric.
Speaker 1:But the idea that weightlifting shortens the muscle is well, in short, bullshit. Weightlifting, especially full range of motion, improves mobility and flexibility and then, ironically, by the exact same mechanism that Pilates promotes and improves mobility. Pilates is tension Moving, is tension Moving with tension into extended ranges of motion, improves mobility and flexibility. Stunning, but yeah, so anyway, bullshit. Pilates, yes, does promote mobility and range of motion. So does strength training. They are just simply different modalities.
Speaker 1:And then also, let's be really honest too, though, about what a reformer actually is. When you get down onto a reformer, if you guys have seen one, you're ostensibly attaching cables to your limbs and then doing different movements. I am not a Pilates instructor, but there was a fancy gym that I used to work at here in Los Angeles, and we had a Pilates instructor and we referred clients back and forth to each other all the time. I literally can't count how many hours of reformer sessions I have seen, and the vast majority of the exercises you are going to do on a Pilates reformer you could also do on a cable machine. What I will say particularly this trainer I knew she was great and she ran her clients through really good stuff, so I always thought that her sessions had value.
Speaker 1:But again, the value in the session was her, not the reformer. If you took her out of the gym and you just let people walk in there and use her reformer, nothing would have happened for her clients. And so, again, don't get tripped up on the modality If I don't have her here to vouch this, but I would be willing to argue that if she'd been into a gym and they hadn't sourced up a Pilates reformer but all they had was a cable stack, she could take every client that she normally works with, lay them on the ground next to the cables and do every single exercise she's used to doing. On the reformer Might have to add in a couple other things, like some slide pads, furniture sliders, stuff like that, but again, there is nothing that a good Pilates instructor would be tied to the reformer. They could actually get completely off of that modality, use a cable stack and some furniture sliders and do the whole damn thing. So, yeah, anyway, this was all just coming from flexibility. All strength training improves flexibility. That's just a fact. It doesn't matter which modality you are using.
Speaker 1:Next argument they made couldn't stand. So Pilates prevents injuries and emphasizes alignment and posture to protect joints, while of course, weightlifting destroys them and breaks you. Okay, first off, you can get injured doing anything. By the way and I'm not just doing this for argument's sake yesterday One of my clients who also splits time with Pilates I was actually helping rehab her in a traditional strength training session. If I'm an injury, she suffered on a reformer. So don't believe that at all. If it doesn't matter what you're training, if you have a crappy instructor, you could get hurt.
Speaker 1:Doing body weight treadmill, it really doesn't matter, you can get hurt everywhere if you're doing things in improper form Certainly not unique to weights and absolutely applies to Pilates, by the way. So don't walk into a workout thinking, oh, this is risk-free, zero risk. There's no such thing as zero risk in real life. But, as we've talked about here, I don't want to monger in creating fear because it's stupid. The chance that you are going to get seriously injured in your workout is incredibly low. As we talked about again in the past, studies show that all forms of exercise carry risk, and those risks are so exceedingly low to come nowhere near the benefits. This really isn't worth thinking about. If you are concerned, just make sure you're training with good people. Go learn from responsible people. That can be a trainer, that can be a friend, but it's nowhere near as hard as it's being made out to be, so don't sweat it.
Speaker 1:This one doesn't require much thought. Oh, and here we go. Another bonus for Pilates the Lotties. You only need a mat. Okay, same with body weight strength training. But they go on to say weights necessitate buying plates, bars, machines and having more, or access to a gym membership. Okay, yeah, so not true. Only if you can make a distinction and delineation between body weight strength training and strength training. But again, they're all in the same umbrella, if you will. So that's not a distinction I would make. But, yeah, fair point. You can do Matt Pilates, you can also do body weight strength training, so I'm not sure why that is a point here. Okay, then they.
Speaker 1:Pilates offers mental benefits. Maybe this is the one that pissed me off the most. The concentration required boosts mind, body awareness and mental clarity. Weightlifting is mindless Okay, again, just bullshit. And then this is funny because there is a term mind muscle connection, and this didn't come from Pilates folks. Actually this came from the bodybuilders.
Speaker 1:And Arnold specifically talked about when you're chasing a pump and how you do that, and it is, of course, focusing your mind on the muscle you are training, becoming very aware of those three distinct contractions I was talking about, and while you're on that, concentric envisioning squeezing it. So again, when Arnold even describes to you how to do a bicep curl and you realize how Arnold does a bicep curl versus how other people do bicep curls. One, you might pick up why Arnold's biceps looked a little better than the average gym goers. And two, you're going to pick up that, oh, there's actually quite a lot of mental discipline required to lift like Arnold. You have to focus on the tempo, you have to focus on the muscle you're training. So again, this one I just found frankly laughable, because the whole idea of connecting your mind to your muscle this again, even though nobody wants to give them any credit this is a bodybuilding concept, friends. That is where this comes from. Similarly stupid, though, because skipping over bodybuilding.
Speaker 1:Weightlifting has been shown in scientific studies to reduce anxiety, reduce depression, improve self-esteem, confidence, improve stress, improve cognitive function, improve your sleep, increase your mindfulness, even though she says it's mindless. And again, pilates is strength training, so the way it gets you those mental benefits is the same way you could do it on any other modality. Whether it was a TRX, a resistance band, a dumbbell, it doesn't matter. All forms of strength training are getting these mental benefits, not only Pilates. The bonus on Pilates according to this, it caters to different fitness levels. Beginners can obviously start with basic Pilates moves, while experts can take it to the next level.
Speaker 1:Weightlifting requires access to a trainer and guidance to get started. Again, I would frankly make the same argument to get started with Pilates. I don't know how somebody with no experience is just going to come into a gym, lay on a mat and do great Pilates moves all on their own. So if that's a knock that you need guidance to get started, not sure what else in life doesn't have that feature, to be honest. And just the idea that only Pilates is scalable is very stupid.
Speaker 1:Every single modality, again, is scalable. One of the most obvious ones lighten up the fucking weight. They actually make barbells in different weights. I don't know if you knew that, but there's training ones. There's women's barbells, men's, but they do. They range in length, weight etc. And then, even if one of those was maybe too heavy, maybe it'd start with a dumbbell. And again, those also come in different sizes. Yeah, I have literally seen them from one pound to 200. So I am just not sure where this idea that Pilates is the only scalable workout comes from. My eyes and my lived experience just prove this one. Every time I walk into any gym, no matter how poorly outfitted, I have never walked into a gym and not seen scalable options for strength training. So, yeah, that one's pretty bad, all right, and then I'm done bagging on this after this one.
Speaker 1:But it provides an elegant workout. All Pilates movements have graceful, dance-like feel compared to brute force of lifting. All right, so whatever. Whatever the fuck an elegant workout is? I don't know, but it kind of looks just like a nebulous bullshit term that doesn't have a definition that we can just use to promote this workout as elegant, whatever that means.
Speaker 1:The one part that I can relate to in this is I talk a lot about movement aesthetics. I actually do know what this means. Like I've seen an elegant deadlift versus a non-elegant deadlift. This person probably wouldn't describe any deadlifting as elegant or squatting, but for me it does get into the aesthetic quality of the movement and again, I believe you have that opportunity to move your body with elegance and grace in literally any movement discipline. I'm a former basketball player but again, I grew up worshiping Michael Jordan and if anybody can remember Mike flying through the air, he perhaps looked elegant, at least to some, and many athletes have done Pilates. I actually used to train a NFL Pro Bowler who did so not anti-Pilates at all, but Mike didn't. Mike trained with Tim Grover and he trained with weights, and when he jumped in the air he looked pretty elegant. So, yeah, anyway, this whole piece again.
Speaker 1:The only reason I even chose to focus on it is I did I thought one. It really is emblematic of a lot of the writing that you're going to see in the health and fitness space and, in short, what I see is this article is drawing lines where, in reality, there are none. It is making distinctions that are not real. It's just basically reinforcing tribalism in the health and fitness space. Articles like this are going to continue to perform well online, even someone like me who, as you can tell by this, I fucking hate almost every line that was in that article. And yet the algorithm based on me researching fitness pieces and sorting stuff is like hey, simon's going to like this, here's some good content. That content is shit, and you and I are going to keep seeing content like that because the message that it is pervading is more optimized for placing ads for specific products.
Speaker 1:But as we kind of run down, you're going to notice so many not just people promoting Pilates, but you're going to see this with people promoting whatever their thing is. People are going to do this. Crossfit, bodybuilding even things that I just defended. Somebody right now is using these same techniques to come up with a bullshit promotion for even some good ideas, exaggerating half truths, drawing lines where there aren't any. But again, this is what annoys me the most about the fitness space and to my eye, this is still the content that continues to perform the best. So again, apologies on my end for clicking.
Speaker 1:I didn't do my part to make the fitness space a smarter place with that, but I do want to challenge you, me, everybody. Let's be a little bit more mindful with our attention, as I do. I complain about this stuff a lot, but we actually can make it go away. If we stop giving these people our attention, the algorithm will stop sending this our way and they will stop producing content to go get their clicks. So, anyway, if you guys do start to notice any techniques like this in the articles you are reading, close the browser, block that site, whatever it is. But this, I think, is actually a small way that we actually can improve the discourse is by simply not consuming this type of information. Obviously, I'm in Hollywood, so trust me, when you stop watching, the shows get canceled, the actors disappear, do they even have VH1 anymore? But in 20 years maybe you'll get a little story about hey, whatever happened to that person? So, anyway, stop paying attention. It goes away. It always does, but yeah. So I don't want to be just purely negative.
Speaker 1:I thought it would be actually helpful now to talk a little bit about how we might actually choose a strength training modality with critical thinking instead of algorithmically generated health articles. So let's actually start with the one that I was seemingly slamming but I'm not actually down on at all. So let's circle back Pilates Reformer. Why might you actually seek that out? I'm not reading that article that we just broke down, hopefully. But no, some of the pros of Pilates Reformer would be that, again, we can work in ranges of motion that are going to be challenging to substitute on other modalities. I argued earlier that we probably could come up with a lot of stuff on a cable machine, but again, pilates Reformer is a great place to work on a number of course strength training exercises, flexibility and balance exercises. No bullshit there. That's all true. It's just not the only place you can do it. It's one.
Speaker 1:Another benefit I would say is Pilates is going to be a low impact form of working out. I do find that this is suitable for not only rehabilitation. That's where a lot of people are going to get into it. But again, some of my experience with this is actually dealing with some relatively high level athletes, and we were in the off season at that point. So I do think that these can be really useful for low impact strength training. Quite frankly, rehabilitative or even just an athlete in the off season isn't exactly strictly rehabilitative, but you really don't want them getting hurt in workouts or ruining anything, especially if they have a big contract. So that is a good place. You can feel good about putting an athlete in the off season.
Speaker 1:Some of the drawbacks to be honest, if you are focused on building muscle mass, this isn't going to be your first choice, not the best place to scale up a load. And then ironically, because this was in the article of the slam. But to me, pilates really does require specialized equipment and a good instructor. There are many good ones out there, but there also are many bad instructors. So, again, I would actually seek out referrals from people that you know or people that you trust, because this is it's like yoga instructors If you got a good one, they're some of the best. But this was too popular and there's a whole bunch of people that I don't know stated a holiday in Express and started teaching. So you are going to need good equipment and a good instructor. That's just par for the course if you want to do Pilates work on a reformer. As far as I'm concerned, body weight exercise, this is going to be the one that I think is just the most accessible for everybody. So obviously that's a pro, highly accessible, absolutely no equipment required.
Speaker 1:You can improve your body control, your functional strength, your hypertrophy, your relative strength. There are some of the limitations I guess we'll just get down to when you are lacking an external load, obviously we're going to be limited in maximal strength, hypertrophy and power development. If you had access to external loads you could generate more of those things. Progressions with body weight strength training are not going to be as straightforward as with external loads. Again, progressive overload way, way easier to manage, program coordinate with external loads than with relative strength exercises, and then the rules for progression are going to be slightly different. Those are the rules that we talk about, really kind of stick with the external loads, because, again, we just have a lot more ability to measure and understand exactly what we're doing with an external load than with body weight exercises, limb lengths, body weights there's a lot of other variables that are going to come in and make certain strength training goals a little bit more challenging. But body weight exercise is great slight limitation with your strength and hypertrophy development.
Speaker 1:Another one you're going to see a lot of resistance bands. These are great. I keep them in my gym bag Portable, light, versatile, I guess, good at all fitness levels, use them a lot in rehab, but then you can use them on the high end of the athletic spectrum, combining them with weight. Quite frankly, to make it progressive, a resistance band in general is what we call a progressive resistance. So obviously, as you extend a resistance band it's going to provide more tension than when it's not stretched. That feature gives us some added value with strength and power development, particularly when you combine them with a dumbbell, a kettlebell or a barbell, all of which I have done, by the way. But resistance bands on their own can still be used for power development. But typically you're working with such low loads If you aren't adding a resistance in that they're not really going to be power development if you don't have the combination of an external load with a band resisting on it. But anyway, the fact that the band provides you a progressive resistance can alter the strength curve kind of nerdy, but can alter the strength curve and actually set it up to be more appropriate for developing power. But a lot of what I actually use bands for in my training is going to be some corrective exercise things like that. But these are great workhorses. I could never get through a training day without numerous bands and things like that.
Speaker 1:Kettlebells pros great for functional strength. These got really popular. Obviously, pavel Tatzlin was the influencer, if you will, who brought it from Russia over here. We should actually probably talk about this in the future because I've gotten some more information on the origins of the kettlebell. Like a lot of things that the origin story has a lot of exaggerations, people claiming things that aren't theirs. We may need to revisit that, but anyway. In short though kettlebells great for functional strength. You're going to notice a lot of combat athletes, soldiers, et cetera Love the kettlebell. Kettlebells are a great way to train strength, your cardio all at once. Good for grip strength, coordination.
Speaker 1:I guess we could put this in the cons, but they do require a fair amount of skill to do correctly. I don't know if I've ever seen a good kettlebell done. Good kettlebell swing, rather performed on Instagram. By the way, most people on Instagram doing their kettlebell swing do like a combination of a squat and a front raise. Good kettlebell swings are going to be a hip hinging movement. Yeah, we need to do a whole thing on kettlebells. I'm not going to do that today but yeah, it does require a little bit of skill to learn correctly. It's a relatively high learning curve not as high as the Olympic lifts with a barbell, but for me it's like one notch down on that continuum in terms of skill. Not going to start everybody here. Some people may never get there Because, again, it does require a decent amount of skill, has a relatively high learning curve. Love them, but not something I'm going to push everybody into.
Speaker 1:Cables Machines when I like about them. They provide constant tension throughout the entire range of motion in an exercise. Believe it or not. This doesn't always happen with other forms of resistance. If we're relying on gravity, pulling on an external load, depending on where you are, there are going to be certain parts of the range of motion where you're not getting any tension. First exercise that comes to mind.
Speaker 1:Now imagine that you were trying to do a dumbbell chest fly. You're on a bench, you got two dumbbells and you make a nice wide arc as you extend those arms out. But if you think about it, gravity is pulling straight down. So draw a straight line from your dumbbells. The pectoral is obviously now going to be laying flat, so it's going to be in tension when your arms are spread wide, like you're getting that bear hug. So think, as you raise those arms up, the higher you get, the less tension from gravity pulling the dumbbell down lands in your pectoral. That's the reason you're doing a chest fly is to train the pectoral. But at the top part of the range of motion there is no load being transferred into your pectorals.
Speaker 1:So again back to what's cool with cables Cables, you don't have that problem. The resistance is coming from the cable stack, not from the vector of gravity pulling on the load. It's coming from the vector of where you are positioned in orientation to the cable. So same exercise. This is why a cable chest fly is far superior to a dumbbell chest fly. Particularly when you get to the top of the range of motion. Your pec is still going to be engaged from the top all the way out to the stretch and back. So again, big pro for cables is that you're going to be getting constant tension throughout the exercise. This is going to be great for enhancing targeting a specific muscle or engagement from a specific spot. They're versatile because you can raise and lower move, change the angle. If you are not able to directly target the muscle that you are trying to, that is for lack of creativity. Quite frankly, cables are great at isolating specific muscles and keeping them in constant tension For maximal strength, generally, again, less effective than free weights.
Speaker 1:If you're generally concerned with maximal strength, you really should be doing the free weights. We'll get some. Put a con in here is also requires gym equipment. Obviously, actually, you could buy them, but one of the more expensive pieces, not something you see in most garage gyms, although I've seen it in a couple Barbells, even though everybody tells you they are so dangerous. They are the ideal tool for progressive overload, building overall strength and definitely big amounts of hypertrophy. If hypertrophy is your goal, we're probably going to combine barbells with some other tools, but I guess cons again requires access to equipment space Same as the Pilates Reformer. I wouldn't get going on this without a trainer, or at least somebody who is competent in the lifts. Don't just show up and do this on your own Then, lastly, we'll just wrap up with a couple other just odd modalities.
Speaker 1:If you will, you can obviously dumbbells. These are great. They provide unilateral training, great for addressing imbalances, great for increasing the range of motion. Take a barbell bench press versus a dumbbell bench press. With the dumbbells, my hands are not in a fixed position from when I start the lift. They can move throughout the lift and I can stretch the pec a little bit more. Dumbbells versus barbells leans a little bit more towards your aesthetic goals, but again, you combine it and do it anyway. Suspension trainers the TRX love these, as they say focuses on core strength, so does everything else. It really does focus on creating stability. These are great. Corrective tools Can enhance flexibility, balance. And then I use it a lot to regress basic body weight movements. If I have, say, an older adult who's still having trouble squatting, I can have them hold the TRX handles so they can descend a little bit deeper than they would working with their body weight.
Speaker 1:Last been, we'll talk about sandbags. Odd objects, unstable loads are cool because they force you to do a little bit more stabilizing or, as the market wants to hear, core engagement. Good for functional strength that's another word the market likes. Similarly, these are not going to be the best option for maximizing strength or maximizing hypertrophy. Sandbags, odd objects, things like that are going to be good for more functional or farm strength, if you will.
Speaker 1:But part of what I even want to just run that down quickly was that Each modality does have unique advantages and they can be effective depending on your fitness goals. But again, you're not going to get your best performance by dialing into any one of these modalities and rejecting all the others. These are actually going to be best used in conjunction with one another. So I did just quickly jot down a couple of powerful pairings. This is certainly not exhaustive, but the truth is in my sessions I got a truck. I roll up literally to my clients with barbells, kettlebells, dumbbells, bands, literally everything. Here Really, really common that I mix modalities in like every single session. I do so anyway. I just wanted to give you guys a couple pairings for some common goals that pop up.
Speaker 1:So let's say that you are focused on performance, you want to do better at a sport. You want to get stronger, whatever. We touched on this already. But I really like combining compound movements and resistance bands by putting the resistance band on. You know, say, your barbell. I'm doing a barbell squat A lot of times. What I'll do here is in my cage. I'm going to attach a band low to the cage, wrap it to the barbell, so when I lower down into the squat it's providing me at the bottom a low amount of tension from the band. But now, as I come up, the explosive portion of the lift is that concentric. That is when my muscle fiber is shortening. As I am standing up, the muscle fiber in the quad is shortening. By having to overcome the progressive resistance of the band, my muscles learn to supercompensate and overcome more force than is being applied by the weight. So again, this is going to work with any compound lift and a band. As you get closer to locking out that lift, the band is going to apply more tension. Awesome way to increase your power, improve your sport performance.
Speaker 1:Let's say that you don't care about performance. You are more concerned with aesthetics. You got a beach trip, go into a wedding, whatever it may be. Here we're going to like more that combination of compound movements, cables and dumbbells, and then, frankly, the compound movements might actually be dumbbells rather than barbells. If your goal was, again, purely aesthetics With a barbell we're stuck with certain joint positions, grips etc. That might not be ideal for developing the hypertrophy or muscle gains that you're seeking. So, yeah, aesthetics, we're probably mixing. We're probably mixing strength training modalities. We want big compound movements. We're either going to be doing them with barbells or dumbbells and then it's going to be nice to actually add in some cables and things like that to focus and isolate on specific muscles that need work.
Speaker 1:Let's say you're coming up more with a functional split, if you will. You care about performing well, being healthy, all those things. This is kind of the GPP general physical preparedness path and we're probably doing barbells, kettlebells, sandbags, odd objects, everything Within this camp. I really don't see a benefit to getting dogmatic about the fitness tribes. You should be doing same as different. You should be sampling a lot of different things and you're going to, frankly, get a lot better benefits from having a bigger base to fall back on. You're not a specialist if you're in the functional fitness camp, so you shouldn't be doing 40-yard dash prep, anything hyper-specialized. You're a generalist and your training should reflect that.
Speaker 1:Last group is rehab, if you will, and this is where because I wanted to reclune the reformer but rehab I see a lot of bands, reformer work, trx, stuff like that. I have some clients that that is their goal. I've worked with people on a different end of the spectrum athletes who are just trying to have their off-season go well. That is a pairing of modalities that I actually think goes quite well together. But anyway, guys, I actually just glanced down at the time and here's the deal. You're almost an hour in and I haven't even touched on the 10 strength training lies. So we're going to go ahead and do this right now.
Speaker 1:This is going to be one of those to be continued. So, anyway, guys, next time when we pick up, I do promise I literally have them right here, but I want to be able to make sure I can go through them all with the focus that they deserve. I would be just smashing them in. So, yeah, to be continued. We're going to pick this up in a part two, where I actually will give you guys the top 10 most common weightlifting lies. But anyway, I do want to just circle back.
Speaker 1:Let's sum up what we did get to discuss today and as we wrap it up, I do want to reflect on the importance of understanding these, the issue of tribalism, if you will, in strength training, and the reason that I wanted to break down this article. I didn't mention the name, I didn't mention the publication. It's not to slam anybody, it's not to make myself superior to them. I'm actually hoping that this awareness helps you develop fitness programs that are going to be effective and tailored to your individual needs, goals and circumstances, not the needs of the people who want to market to you today. When you see these fallacies, name them, engage with them. It's going to help you steer clear of all of these one size fits all approaches.
Speaker 1:Fitness, we say all the time, is a personal journey. What works for one person may not work for another. I'm trying to speed up your learning curve by teaching you my mistakes, the things I've done well, what's come with my clients, etc. But understanding all this is going to allow us all to be less dogmatic in our approaches to health and fitness, more open to exploring different modalities, different ideas. Whether it's barbells, kettlebells, bodyweight exercises, pilates reformers, they all have benefits, they're all great. Tension is tension, movement is movement. I don't want to draw lines and build tribes where there really shouldn't be any, where it's not warranted.
Speaker 1:And, similarly to life itself, is dynamic and ever changing. So your relationship with your workouts and your fitness and your body is also going to change. That's why I can't speak in cookie cutter language. Do this, it doesn't work. As you grow older, your goals, your capabilities, your interests all change. I don't want to do any of the shit I was doing at 25 and that's no insult to Simon at 25. He was cool, not that guy anymore.
Speaker 1:But the strength training approach that works for you now might not be the one that you're doing in the future, and just simply being aware of the different training methods and their advantages and drawbacks, whatever it may be, is just going to allow you to make better choices about your regiment. That's it. Staying flexible and responsive to your body's changing needs is going to require you, over time, to use different modalities. These dogmatic beliefs are really not going to help. Again, it is just vital over a long run approach to fitness that your mindset be focused on learning, exploration, tinkering, playing.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of room for this stuff, and I do think first step is probably debunking a bunch of common fallacies that close people off to a world that is much larger than it's been taught to them. I would rather encourage people to try new methods, new classes, new modalities, than to tell them there's only one place to go, this is the one stop shop, the end, all be all. I really do think most people are going to be benefited actually by exploring different modalities, seeing how their body responds, and then, yeah, what I have offered, I think, can just help you shorten your curve in getting to that understanding of yourself. But you're going to do that, not me. So, anyway, in conclusion, I guess I would just say that understanding that the fallacies around strength training are going to empower you with knowledge.
Speaker 1:Quite frankly, in fitness as in life, there are no capital T truths. There's nothing that is absolutely right or wrong. What matters is finding what works for you, staying adaptable and, believe it or not, enjoying the journey. Anyway, I do want you guys keep challenging your limits, keep pushing, keep exploring and also keep listening to your body. This is honestly what is going to drive you to make the best choices, if you do get tuned in to that little voice in addition to mine. Anyway, guys, with that, I want to thank you guys for sticking with me again today. Until next time, remember, mind and muscle are inseparably intertwined. There are no gains without brains. Keep lifting and learning. Next week, maybe I'll tell you those 10 greatest lies Until then.
