Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
Top Ten Strength Training Lies
Ever feel like you've been fed a steady diet of fitness fibs? This episode, we cut through the noise and get to the meat of the matter on strength training myths. As we lay bare the top 10 misconceptions, you'll learn why women won't Hulk out from lifting weights, and why cardio isn't the fat-torching king it's made out to be. We also unravel the truth about weight loss drugs like Osempic, comparing them to the natural hormones of our body, and discuss how whole foods play a pivotal role in regulating our hunger and satiety. It's a no-holds-barred session aimed at equipping you with the facts to transform your fitness journey.
Are corsets the secret to a wasp waist? Spoiler alert: they're not. I'm here to tell you that muscle doesn't magically convert into fat, and spot reduction is a fitness fairy tale. We debunk these myths with gusto, reinforcing the value of proper core training and a balanced approach to nutrition. Plus, we take a shot at the notion that strength training isn't for endurance athletes, showcasing how athletes like NBA's Kevin Durant benefit from it. And for those thinking heavy lifting is just for the burly, think again – we clarify why strength training, with the right technique, is both safe and essential for everyone.
But we're doing more than just busting myths; we're building a fortress of knowledge. In our final chapter, we emphasize the importance of a learning community, inviting you to join a group of individuals as passionate about mental gains as they are about the physical ones. Together, we'll keep lifting each other up, sharing experiences, and achieving growth that transcends the weights we carry. This isn't just a podcast; it's a movement. So, tune in, get educated, and become a part of something greater.
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. He is 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 am Simon Devere and there is nothing new, except all that has been forgotten. Anyway, as you know, ran on a little bit long Last week. I got bogged down in some writing that I really didn't like and anyway, I didn't even get into the main topic that I had prepared. So my goal today is to actually get through our top 10 strength training lies. These are going to be arguments that I think you have seen made many times, but I wanted to actually have the time to run down and debunk every one of these in kind. But yeah, last time I got a little bit bogged down on some things that I didn't really plan on talking that long on, so my apologies. So we'll actually get it in today Before we do that.
Speaker 1:I swear I am going to get into it today, but there was a cool piece on Osempic out and just because this is one of the biggest things going on in health and fitness right now, the research is trickling out I just wanted to present it as it's kind of coming out in real time. So saw this at Scientific American and let's see, we've got it nearby. So let's actually go and cite the institutions that we are coming from today. University of Washington, gastroenterologist, so, anyway, the headline on the article was that our body has its own built-in Osempic, and the material that was presented was about how the main thing acting in these Osempic and similar drugs is a glucon-like peptide, which is a hormone that is produced in the intestines that helps us regulate food intake all on our own, I guess. In one way, this does remind me of a popular strength supplement, say creatine, which is naturally occurring in the body, but you sometimes supplement it in higher quantities. But yeah, so the main active ingredient in the popular weight drugs right now, weight loss drugs is a natural gut hormone that is primarily functioning to regulate hunger and satiety. These hormones send signals to the brain indicating fullness, and this is basically how these weight loss drugs are working.
Speaker 1:The thing I wanted to hone in on, though and this kind of circles back to something we talk a lot about here is that, prior to modern processed foods, the metabolic and regulatory pathways that we are now using sort of pharmaceutical or inducing pharmaceutical would have already occurred without those amendments. One of the big changes as to why are people having a hard time not knowing when they're full? Why are they not getting this signal from their metabolism, from their gut, to stop eating? This does circle back to what feels like my theory of everything but the processed foods. The food process that we have done, aimed at improving shelf life, stability, enhancing taste, removes a lot of the bioactive molecules, the fiber, the polyphenols that would help regulate and signal that system. So, anyway, this for me was one. It's interesting, because this is a new thing, that we don't have a lot of data to pull on, so I do want to highlight things as they come available. But I also think these new studies are again showing us things that we have already known. So, presuming that you are already healthy, what probably the best thing that you could take away and learn from this whole moment is that you should be eating whole foods. This, again, is more evidence that that is a great practice, and we are again learning that just through realizing that these mechanisms that exist in our gut do function and maintain appetite when we don't have food processing techniques that override our ability to use those regulatory functions.
Speaker 1:I think too and I've been clear on this is that I'm not anti by any stretch. But I do think that OZMPIC is not for everyone, and the cohort of people I don't think are going to be a great fit are people with relatively small fat loss goals. As we've talked many, many times, anytime you reduce your caloric input, there's a great chance that you're going to lose some muscle mass as well. That shouldn't dissuade us if that loss is what's needed. But there's a great chance that's going to happen and particularly is going to increase the closer you are to your goals. So if we have relatively larger amount of weight to lose, we're going to stand a better chance of not losing lean mass in that process than if you only have a small amount of fat to lose.
Speaker 1:I do think too many people that are buying this drug right now don't have what we consider the right amount of weight loss. If you're kind of in that like five to 10 and you're trying to tighten it up and tone it, those are the ideas you're normally gravitating to. You're not the best candidate, and this is where I sound like everybody's annoying grandfather. But the all roads really do point to lifestyle if that's the camp that you're in, and even if you are going after it for significantly greater weight loss, I think it can be a great bridge or a first step to getting started, but it's also not a shortcut to skip the lifestyle thing. Same for the five to 10 pound crowd we're still going to want to learn all those and take on board a bunch of healthy habits. This can be a great thing to get you started and get some weight down, which is going to make exercise frankly easier, reducing joint pain, making a lot of modalities a little friendlier and just more realistic for someone to stick to. That being said, we are still I don't care which camp you're in.
Speaker 1:I really don't see this as like a cheat code or a shortcut to skipping over lifestyle changes. And so, anyway, just as I know, as more and more people are going to continue to have access, this isn't something that I think is bad by any stretch. Just don't use this to avoid doing the lifestyle work that we all should be focusing on from time to time and being in flowing with adherence and whatnot. But yeah, I just don't want to see this used as an excuse to not make lifestyle changes, because I don't really think that's going to set people up on the best foot, but yeah, so just found that interesting. We all have a form of ozempic in our gut right now, and if you want to feel the impact of that system, make sure that you are selecting more natural, unprocessed foods, and then the same benefits that people are getting right now from these brand new weight loss drugs are going to be readily accessible to you in that state. So anyway, that's it.
Speaker 1:I do want to get into our unfinished business from last week. So yeah, obviously last week, rather, I did get bogged down a bit in the pros of a GPT enhanced health writer and yeah, but the false binary dichotomy that was cast between Pilates and strength training was a very, very common technique and lie that I see in health and fitness writing. We did trash the article and I think we did get into a better way to choose strength training modalities than reading trend pieces, but we did not get into the 10 most common strength training lies that I see elsewhere. And admittedly, for you long time listeners, I do think that we might be repeating on a couple here, but I haven't stopped seeing these in print, so we're going to keep smashing them until they go away.
Speaker 1:Number one strength training makes you bulky. This is especially prevalent among women. This myth it assumes that strength training inevitably leads to a bulky physique. In reality, gaining a lot of muscle masses a really slow process depends a lot on diet, genetics, training supplements, etc. I know that we did just cover this recently when we were talking about the differences in training for men and women, but this take is really annoying to me on a lot of levels and let's come at it this way first. So if you're like myself and you actually have focused, directed your training and your lifestyle towards this goal at any port in your life, you can confirm that this doesn't happen accidentally easily.
Speaker 1:Any time that I have tried to gain muscle, it's actually been pretty difficult and, if I don't really keep track of a lot of things, really unlikely to happen. So when people say this, it Again. I don't really think they're doing this, they're not thinking through what they're saying, but it really diminishes the hard work that people do put in. You don't have to respect their goal. That's not what I'm asking. You just have to understand that it actually does take a long time. It's not going to happen quickly, easily, accidentally. Let's come at it actually from a different angle. I know that it's not everybody's goal because we hear this a lot.
Speaker 1:But play devil's advocate for two seconds and pretend it was. Just pretend that you actually did want to gain muscle. What would you have to do? The following, you should know, is not going to be great infomercial. This is not going to be sponsored by anybody because it's not going to sound very good. Just say that you are brand new. You've never done any strength training ever.
Speaker 1:With your newbie gains, I will promise you perhaps one to two pounds of muscle gain per month. I know you're going to find supplement ads promising you a lot better. I'm sorry if that number doesn't sound great, because it's never going to get better than that. If you're an intermediate athlete, that's going to slow down to maybe a half pound to a pound of muscle mass in a month. When you become advanced, then it's going to get even slower. Put another way, let's say that you're trying to put on 10 pounds of muscle brand new beginner. That might happen in five to 10 months If you were intermediate. Maybe we're only looking at like 10 to 20 months. If you are an advanced athlete, there's a really good chance that could take a year or more, as your body is pretty well adapted to a lot of different training forms. But also, to be honest, just doing the weightlifting five and six times per week for the duration of time that I mentioned, that's actually not going to cut it. If that's all you did, the chance that you got that rate of muscle gain that I told you wouldn't be good, because you need to fuel enough protein and calories to make sure that happens.
Speaker 1:So, also in that time period, obviously ranging from roughly five months to up to a year, depending on your experience you're also going to need to prep, prepare, purchase or make yourself All of the meals consistent with your physique goals. You can't miss, actually, even for one week. There are lots of people enjoy things like spring break, summer vacation, holidays. Just know that through all of those in the calendar year, you're going to be on a meal plan and you're going to be sourcing and doing that the entire time, every single day. You're going to be getting adequate protein. That's going to be about one gram per pound of body weight. You're going to consistently eat in a caloric surplus.
Speaker 1:When you say this, it sounds fun, but go ask somebody who ever had to actually put on weight for a sport, how much fun it is to eat when you're legitimately not hungry. The other part that makes it not fun is it's not like you get to go and just eat any calories you want and load up on all your favorite things. You're going to have to keep them within your nutritional guidelines based on your plan. What this actually looks like in reality a lot of times is you eating a plate of grilled chicken at 8.30pm because you were low on protein today. Super fun to force feed stuff like that, oh, and then to even know that that it's 8.30 and I'm low on my protein. You're going to need a log and it's going to need to be accurate and well kept. Otherwise you're not even going to have that information. I'm assuming we're doing this without steroids, so we're definitely sleeping seven to nine hours every single night. Same thing.
Speaker 1:If you skip out on that, don't expect the rate of muscle gain that I promised upfront, even though it wasn't very fast to reduce that if you're not going to get the sleep and again, we're talking roughly between five months and a year so adjust your social calendar accordingly. There are a lot of events you will not be at if that's your goal, and since we're going to be saying no to a lot of things like you don't have to do it the entire time, but you're going to be saying no to alcohol a lot more and same thing, you can do it. But again, just for every one of those things that you don't want to do, slow down that rate of muscle gain that I promised at the top, because it won't happen that quickly If we're not firing on all cylinders. So anyway, the only reason I just laid all that down was just to demonstrate that it's actually really really hard to consistently gain muscle and if you're not checking all the boxes over a long period of time, it isn't going to happen.
Speaker 1:The idea that strength training is going to make you bulky If you don't want to be bulky not going to happen. If it was true, all the people that want to do this would be doing it a really different way. And I actually do have a theory why people think it's really easy to gain muscle. And again, I think this gets back to the media ecosystem and just basically the fact that there are a lot of people bombarding us with the idea that elite fitness is really really easy to achieve and anybody who's ever been in an advertisement the chance that they're actually on gear being shot in a studio with lights, makeup, post-production. That's most of the advertisements, and so those results really are not realistic. The people that you have seen advertising products that say it's really easy, it isn't. Their entire life is organized around that, nothing else. You haven't ever seen a fitness model with a balanced life. So, yeah, I do think that this kind of trickles down just from people constantly hearing how easy it is to do everything and they just think if they're getting look at a dumbbell wrong, that they're going to wind up looking like somebody who is selling them supplements. Again, if you're not trying to get bulky, don't worry, you won't.
Speaker 1:I have thought a lot about this one because I get this so many times over the years and there's perhaps one valid idea in this at all. Many trainers do like to get bulky. Now, this is not obviously a representative sample group. When you get into this subset of people who have gone into personal training, you're now getting into a world where a much higher percent of people want to be bulky, enjoy lifting weights and actually find the whole damn thing fun, so that there is a propensity for many trainers to push and project their own goals on to their clients. So this is maybe the only way I could actually see this happening to somebody was like, let's say, you hired a trainer and your goal wasn't bodybuilding. They trained you like a bodybuilder anyway, because that's the stuff that they like to do and those are the progressions that they know how to work. That could be why so many people have told me oh, I bulk up so easy. I'm a genetic freak, and they have no history of demonstrating that in measurable athletics state championships, regionals these people somehow managed to skate underneath all athletic scouts and pop up in a gym in their mid-30s as these genetic freak supermuscle gainers. And again, you can probably tell I find it highly unlikely that's you, but it is possible. Yeah, let's say you just got matched with a bad trainer and they tried to push you into a modality that wasn't suited for you. Yeah, but I do just want to remind people there is the chance you're going to get bulky from strength training if that wasn't your goal near zero, and then, if it did happen, you literally have some of the most amazing genetics. You probably should go be an athlete or something, because that's not the way it is for normal people. You're lucky if that's what you got going on, all right, number two.
Speaker 1:Number one still won't die, but the idea that cardio is better for fat loss. Cardio does burn calories, but strength training, in terms of fat loss, is going to be the much more valuable piece. Two levels to come at this, but Namely well one. Cardio isn't the ideal energy system for fat loss. The state that I see most people doing it in this is not stating it has no value. This is saying it's not ideal for fat loss. There's a whole range of other fitness goals that aren't fat loss that cardio can be great for. It is not great for fat loss because you are in the wrong energy system.
Speaker 1:You're probably burning glycogen, so if you are on a low carb diet, you're going to be getting that from breaking down tissues, but if you are not, you are just simply getting it from the carbs that you are eating. So in either instance, you're not really helping out a physique with either going through catabolic reactions to break down lean mass to fuel activity or breaking down carbohydrates to fuel your activity. Neither one of those things is getting into your fat mass, which is what a fat loss workout is supposed to be about. Additionally, because what we just talked about you're going to rip through your glycogen stores If you don't have a ton of diet discipline. You're going to find that cardio work like that tends to increase your appetite and thus your diet fatigue. Being in a caloric deficit for a prolonged period of time. If your program is built around, cardio is just going to suck more. Quite frankly, whenever I do this, I really do prefer walking because I can pretty much scale that up to wherever it needs to be and I'm never going to feel that on appetite and diet fatigue.
Speaker 1:I love sports. If I'm in a fat loss, that's not time to go play basketball. That's not time to go box. I've done it because I'm an idiot sometimes and, yeah, one it's stupid, particularly the boxing just from the standpoint of you're going to get your ass kicked. And then, two, after getting your ass kicked, you're going to want to screw up your diet and all the goals and everything you set up because you just burned so many calories fighting like the worst version of yourself. Yeah, it's a bad idea. I did it. Learned from that. One cannot recommend guys one star, don't recommend going to your boxing gym in a caloric deficit. Yeah, that one not a great idea. Totally done it myself, though.
Speaker 1:Weight training this is again why I'm always pushing this in a fat loss program is that again, when we're reducing calories, there is a great chance that we're going to accidentally break down some muscle in the process. Weight training is going to be the best way to try to spare our lean body mass. The workouts are going to be total body. They're not going to look like bodybuilders workouts. We just simply want to stimulate and touch each muscle that we don't want our body to think that we are not using and thus break it down. We would like it to do that to the fat tissue that we would no longer like keeping that muscle mass. This again is not about aesthetics, body image, any of that at all. The reason we want the muscle mass is it's going to increase the metabolic rate. If we keep the metabolic rate up, then the number of calories we can eat is higher, because our body burns more calories at rest. This is going to make our weight loss, our fat loss goals, more sustainable and easier to achieve. If we can do that with a higher metabolic threshold, anyway, the bigger metabolism you can bring into a cut, the more successful and the longer you can realistically sustain that. Yeah, all that strength training is by far going to be the easier, more repeatable. This is why I'm always pushing people through that. For fat loss, not doing cardio, it really does need to die. It's a thousand times easier to just do some sensible strength training and walk and monitor your diet if that's your goal. You don't need to get sweaty and do repetitive exercises Most people who aren't doing them already don't like.
Speaker 1:Anyway, number three going heavy is dangerous. Yeah, you already know how I feel here. Everything is dangerous to some extent, but heavy weights, fortunately, can be lifted safely with proper form and technique. Quite simply, we could end the discussion right there, but whatever, no, I can do a little better defending it. Obviously, the danger in lifting heavy weights it comes in lifting weights that are too heavy for your current level or with proper form. I definitely wouldn't argue that strength sports are not dangerous.
Speaker 1:If we're talking powerlifting, crossfit, yep, you're right. So we're all sports Basketball, football, tennis. If you're going to take on a sport, you're going to get injured. I'm not really considering that. I'm considering going heavy in the context of a well-programmed and designed workout. We got to say it again. But let's say you were a woman. No, you really should be going heavy If you wanted the most efficacious workout session. Studies have shown that women respond better to high load training than low load training. So don't do it in bad form. Don't round your back when you're deadlifting. Yes, obviously, do it correctly, but no, not only is going heavy not dangerous, it's the best thing for over 50% of the population, slightly, and even more since it's probably right for even more than just women. So, yeah, this is really, really stupid and I don't know my feelings on this one.
Speaker 1:Going heavy is hard and that's why this message gets out there, because people want to rationalize, not doing something. That's difficult, and I could get a lot more popular if I would cosine that one right there because, that not being true, that would be fun. That would like I was saying. There's a lot of these things. People say that I wish they were true, because I have been trying to get stronger and put on muscle and if any of this stuff was true, it would have made the road a lot easier. But no, unfortunately it's all bullshit, so we have to do a whole another hour on running these things down again. Yeah, similar vein, but I actually got it with a separate one. Free weights are dangerous no, they're not similar pitch, but yeah, you need to do it in proper form. So I'm not going to defend people doing it poorly, but I want to go a different direction on this one. I want to talk about some things with similar risk to free weights running You've seen a lot of people with running get joint issues, stress, fractures, team sports I'd actually put that one up maybe as one of the higher injury rates.
Speaker 1:Even if you're just getting into recreational leagues and stuff like that, the chance that you get hurt is almost 100%. Cycling, especially outdoor you got traffic, you got falls. If you do them long enough, you're going to get both. I used to ride about 10,000 miles a year for a few years there and had all of those happen many times Car doors, people not paying attention, falling, hitting potholes, you name it. But yep, if you cycle outside, you're going to get hurt a lot.
Speaker 1:Yoga, believe it or not, you can even get hurt doing yoga and, ironically, by the exact same capacity that you could probably do it when you're lifting weights. Both disciplines are really going to encourage and drive people to push beyond their limits. If you're not doing that properly, you can get hurt. But again, I just think it's stupid why weights always get. They're like pit bulls or something. All the stats show that.
Speaker 1:There's all these other dogs that are a little less threatening looking, that are way more violent, way more annoying, but it's just something about the look that gets people and, yeah, even using that analogy, I probably just lost them because they're like they're killing machines. But yeah, that's what I mean. There is just something about the barbell that triggers an emotional reaction that does get people to not look at data and likelihoods. Akitas, by the way, those are the ones you actually want to watch out for. And yeah, obviously not that a pit bull can't bite, but I've had a Chihuahua and a Pitbull and the Pitbull isn't going to touch you, but the Chihuahua would have got you. But yeah, anyway, individual variation and people's environments kind of have a lot to do with things.
Speaker 1:Making big, stupid, dogmatic rules doesn't work in a lot of things, isn't that funny? But yeah, anyway, the idea that freeweights are dangerous very, very stupid. Falls in general are like the number one injury that I see bringing people into the gym and the source of the falls range from sports to hobbies, routine activity, by far the most common injury. And then, as I do often, but simply because I cited some risks associated with some other forms of exercise, let's circle back to reality. And the risks associated with any one of the exercise forms that I mentioned are so much lower than the benefits that we know to exist that this, frankly, just isn't a valid reason to skip out on exercise Period.
Speaker 1:Full stop Doesn't matter what discipline you are trying to say has no value. Just be honest and say I don't want to do it. But don't come around and try to convince other people that these things that you don't want to do are dangerous. It's kind of past time to retire that one. Moving down the line, some people keep pushing this idea that old people shouldn't be lifting weights. I don't even normally say that. I usually say advanced age, but they say old people shouldn't lift weights. I lift weights with my advanced age clients and don't really notice any of the issues that the people fear mongering around it. Try to point out. On the contrary, I think strength training is highly beneficial, particularly for older adults, as it's one of the most direct ways to combat muscle loss a lot of the hormones that tend to decrease with age, strengthens bones, improves balance Just mention it but it's going to decrease the likelihood of falls. Prep strength this is actually one of the things that most correlates with longevity.
Speaker 1:What I will say to any trainers that work with older clients is just have an open mind about exercise selection and modality. If you are partial to some form because that's what you like to use or that's what you're most experienced with, just have an open mind. Expand your playbook, because this is the particular realm where I don't think it helps to fall in love with any specific modality. You need to be flexible. You need to meet people where they are and just get them into something that, frankly, they can progress and move on in. Having open mind is again kind of be helpful, because people are going to be bringing in different priors, different experiences, injuries, etc. If you're working with this cohort, you need to have a little bit more open mind. If you think the barbell basics are all you need, you might need to branch out a little bit, but no, I more deal with this.
Speaker 1:On the other end, that people seem to think that older adults are so fragile and frail that you can't hand them a kettlebell or a barbell or something like that. It's the taboo that I would like to step on its face a little bit more. If we were as fragile as people sometimes think we are, I don't think any of us would be here, quite frankly. And so, yep, even in older age, human beings should be doing human things Push, pull, hinge, squat. I'm going to choose the one that's most scalable for you. But, man, if it's a barbell or kettlebell and you can actually do it, I wouldn't simply throw it in the closet because you're older than I am. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Number six this one's stupid. This one don't go either.
Speaker 1:But do you ever hear anybody say that muscle turns into fat when you stop training? So that that's one of those reasons why they never got big, you know, yeah, I just didn't want it to like downgrade into fat. It's not the look I'm going for. Yeah, bro, makes sense, but for the fact that muscle and fat are two different tissue types, and stop training. The muscle will decrease, but it doesn't turn into fat. Here's what actually happens, if you guys want to know. So, yeah, you got somebody that used to work out a lot and they put on a lot of muscle, they stop working out. Quite simply, the muscle mass decreased and they added fat. So this is like the opposite of the nebulous fitness term known as tone, where you are decreasing the subcutaneous layer of fat while you are increasing the size of muscle. You will notice a lot of guys that used to work out a lot and no longer do. They still got their frame and it looks like it, so they can have this appearance that the muscle just turned into fat. But no, the muscle decreased and the fat is now where the muscle used to be.
Speaker 1:And again, if you continue eating the same diet that you did when you built that physique, as you lose muscle, your body can't handle as many calories so you could actually eat. So again, you're really, really focused on your workouts, you build yourself up for the certain thing and you go on the vacation, and then you stop working out and you just eat. You keep eating the exact same thing you did to build your body. What happens over time is your metabolic rate gets lower and lower. With the reduction in muscle mass, the amount of calories that you are storing increases. So, again, muscle doesn't turn into fat when people stop working out, they tend to keep their diets level. They decrease in muscle, add some fat. That same person. Had they not kept their caloric threshold level, had it decreased as their training decreased, they could have kept their weight or just maintained the same level.
Speaker 1:But again, the idea that muscle and fat are interchangeable or convertible, that would be cool if true. Again, I don't know if people think this went out just to the standpoint of like, if it was, muscle gets converted into fat, then you would just get fat and just convert it to muscle. That would be way easier than all that stuff. I told you guys at the top about how you know figure out your body weight, set your protein according to your body weight, workout five, six days a week, do it all slow. It would be so much more fun to just like put on a ton of weight really fast and then just convert it into muscle. Except you can't do that. There are two different types of tissue so muscle doesn't turn into fat Once you stop training. Everybody can please stop saying that.
Speaker 1:All right, this is another one that you're going to see on a lot of ads, but you cannot spot reduce fat. There's no product that can target your belly fat. There's actually because I just saw this on Instagram, so let's kill this one while we're at it there's these corsets right now that are really popular, and there's some fit women advertising them that already have, you know, thin waist and great abs. The reason that I want to just flag this right here is this is a really, really stupid idea. You're basically going to pull this corset thing tight. That's actually going to like.
Speaker 1:The reason that we use weightlifting belts when we're trying to lift is that it can increase the tension in the core, and then that allows us to be able to lift heavier weight because the spine is stable. The problem, and why some people argue against this, is that when you use a belt, you start to lose the ability to do that for yourself. You can probably anticipate where I sit on the use of weight belts. I'm that middle of the road guy Do it sometimes, not every time, but this is the issue that I've actually seen real people do with those corsets that people like to sell on Instagram these days. If you get into one of those things, there's going to be a great chance that you wind up actually really weakening your transverse abdominal wall and you're honestly going to. You're here to improve the aesthetics of your abs. It's going to make it worse, not better. So really, really, really stay away from that stupid corset thing or anything promising spot reduction for a specific part of your body.
Speaker 1:Fat loss is systemic. You can't pick where it goes. That's determined by genetics. So if your parents are still alive, go yell at them. It's their fault. But yeah, you can't spot reduce Again.
Speaker 1:You can increase the size of the muscle beneath the fat. So actually I was listening back to the show we talked about this. It's a direct ab training. This is again why I sit on. If you want ripped abs, I suggest direct ab training. Yes, obviously, if we're going to show your abs, we need to decrease your fat to a certain level. But it's going to make it a little easier to show the abs if the muscles are a little bit larger. So it really can be helpful if I want to have ripped abs, to directly train the abs, same with any other part.
Speaker 1:If you're a part that you feel you really want to work on, we can maybe do in conjunction some exercises targeting that area and some caloric deficits that are going to bring your fat loss down systemically across your whole body, but there are no spot reducing exercises. That just doesn't work. Again, this is, unfortunately, totally up to genetics and it's totally not fair and doesn't make any sense. But where you lose fat and in what order, that's what determines that. Yeah, and there's no gels you can rub on the spot or the corset things. Those things are honestly going to actually take you farther from your goal. So that's why I did want to flag that right there and they'd stay the hell away from that. That's pushing you further away from where you want to be, all right.
Speaker 1:Number eight strength training isn't necessary for endurance athletes. And then I'm actually going to throw in here basketball players, because one really famous one made that a thing in my lifetime Kevin Durant. I'm not sub tweeting. He couldn't bench body weight and well, in fairness to him, he got made fun of for it and then he had to defend it. So I think, just like anything yeah, you could call that for something you're just going to double down and defend it. He's a great player, a world-class player, so that there would be asinine to argue that like, oh, he can't play because he can't bench. But it would be equally asinine to think that if he could bench his body weight he wouldn't be significantly better. Yeah, yeah, mm. Hmm. When, like an average person who's not a world-class athlete can just push you around physically like a kid, it follows that, like NBA athletes who actually train hard and do stuff regularly won't have much of a challenge with you physically. So as great as Kevin Durant has been without being able to do that, I don't even find it interesting that the Kevin Durant who could bench body weight would put that dude in a body bag. Quite frankly, him versus him screw everybody else. Had that guy built some strength, the strong version of KD would absolutely wreck the weak version that he felt to defend.
Speaker 1:But anyway, there are some athletes, believe it or not, particularly runners, cyclists, some basketball players who believe that strength training isn't necessary for their sport. This one I do understand, actually, because I was an athlete myself. A lot of times, the first times you get pushed into strength training, it's like the football coach or the wrestling coach or whatever your high school has. We don't really get specialized strength training for a lot of the other sports. So a lot of people, when they were introduced to strength training, were introduced to methods that were not right for their sport and again, sticking with the same example. Like Kevin Durant, he's damn near seven feet tall, so I have no idea about his background, but let's say he was at my high school. I know what they would have done. They would have took him into the gym and tried to get him to do a bunch of power cleans and benching, and when you're seven feet tall, you're just not good at any of that shit. So, yeah, I do think that there are going to be better ways to present a lot of these things to athletes, and you probably should have an understanding of anatomy and things like that. But the idea that these athletes wouldn't be better in their sports or that they're made better by neglecting strength training and not doing it, that's actually stupid.
Speaker 1:Strength is the killer app. It's relevant to every single sport, improves your force production, reduces your likelihood of injury. Mention this before. It's not going to be a replacement for your sport and your skill work, but when done correctly, it doesn't actually take that long. Now we actually have a good infomercial pitch. It's only going to take you like 20 minutes three times a week If you're doing it right. It shouldn't make you sore. It shouldn't be taking away from your practice and then, quite frankly, if you skip it one day, you're going to get hurt and then you're going to be in a physical therapist's office and then they're going to teach you all the same crap that I tried to tell you before you were in there and then whatever.
Speaker 1:This doesn't annoy me, but this has happened more than once. When somebody comes back to me from their physical therapist and they have this list of exercises from their physical therapist and it's literally the fucking list of things that I've been saying, I don't obviously say anything in that moment, but it happens quite a lot. So, anyway, if you ignore it upfront, you'll learn it one day and it's not going to be a fun day in your life that you're learning it on, unfortunately and yeah, not trying to dunk on you, I just I've had to deal with a lot of people trying to rehab these things you can save yourself a lot of time, money and pain If you get out in front of it, particularly you runners and cyclists your ankles, knees and hips it's going to trickle into your low back too. I already know a lot of the injuries you have. If you guys would just build up some quad strength and some hamstrings, you would really really appreciate it. But yeah, your physical therapist will tell you if you don't believe me. Anyway, this one kind of follows on the end of that one, because some people think that you need to spend hours in the gym for good results and that is again not true.
Speaker 1:Some of my favorite strength training programs literally require 20 minutes or less. Quality matters a lot more than quantity. Pure strength training is really short sessions. Actually, pure strength training is not a bodybuilding session Easy strength I've pumped it up here a bunch of times Dan John and Pavel best pure strength program that I've ever responded to. The workout was literally less than 20 minutes. So it particularly building good levels of strength, and I guess that kind of builds on to the last point.
Speaker 1:For athletes and cyclists, building impressive levels of strength really does not require what people think it does. So I think that is a big reason why they don't go and do that work, because they well one. They think it looks like Mr Olympia prep. They don't know what it really is. And again, how like it's really not that hard. Quite frankly, the easy strength system I've told you guys a million times but push, pull, hinge, squat, do 10 reps or less. Total volume, do a little warmup, I don't know. Five sets of two, three sets of three, that's nine reps, but that's close enough. That's it. That's all you need to do to build strength. Building strength is not the same as building muscle. So remember that whole diet tribe I went on earlier about. Do this for five to six and you don't have to do all that to build strength. So yeah, it really isn't as hard as people think it is. Most of the work actually goes in in the planning and the progression, which I think is also diminished. You know, you think you just snort some chalk and beat your chest and move some weights around and then you get strong. That's why a lot of people don't get strong, quite frankly.
Speaker 1:Last one we're going to end it on here today is this whole idea of no pain, no gain. Obviously, some muscle soreness is going to be normal, so I don't want to promise you guys like pain free workouts. But the point here is that pain is not a requisite for effectiveness and it's not even a great guide for Like. In a way, I feel like this is one of those newbie things when you're starting out, you're getting sore all the time, because you're unadapted to everything and you always get sore as you get experienced. You just don't get as sore as often.
Speaker 1:So if you kind of keep that in your mind, that, on the one hand, that, oh, I need to feel sore, I'm not progressing, that's not true. Keep a log and manage your progression, that's a better way. But then, on the other hand, if it's dissuading you that, oh, I don't want to work out because if I'm going to make any gains, it's got to be painful, it doesn't, and, yeah, you're going to accidentally do a little bit too much volume and get a little sore, don't say that I'm promising you like totally pain free, never sore workouts, but it's not going to become a dominant feature of your life. And, like that, one time you get a little bit too sore, you're going to use that as feedback and you're going to adjust the load anyway. So, yeah, I just want you to know that you're not setting on some course of pain and asceticism if you decide to get into strength training. Yes, it's going to happen every now and again, but it's not required and, again, not even the best metric for people to use. That was one that I definitely fell into and if I wasn't feeling a muscle get sore, then you just kept going until that happened. That is a great path to over train. And then also you need to be a little bit more organized and make sure that you are progressing somewhat regularly. So if you're going in like I used to and just obliterating a muscle, in reality you're going to have no concept of how much work you're doing and then in the next session you're again. You're just going on, feel and kind of winging it and you'll go as good as your sleep and your nutrition in every session. But if that's your only metric, you're gauging it on the soreness every single session. I could be projecting, but I think the quality of your sessions is going to decrease pretty regularly over time. You're going to want to introduce new metrics to guide your training. Anyway, guys, that actually took me a lot longer than I anticipated.
Speaker 1:My objective in all of this stuff over the last two episodes is I did want to run down just a lot of the most common fallacies that I see about strength training in particularly the health and fitness writing space. Contrary to a lot of these opinion, strength training is it's one of the most customizable to individual variations. It's one of the most scalable to different experience levels. It's pretty much the most effective for a wide range of outcomes. As we're talking about different exercise modalities, it's really not an exaggeration to say it should be a part of everyone's health and fitness programming, whether you're an athlete, somebody concerned with anti-aging. There really are no exceptions, maybe varying or lesser degrees that one might be using it, but I really can't think of any populations that would not benefit from strength training. I also think there's a general theme in every one of the fallacies that we've run down, but every one of these things actually exists to either push a product, create an in or out group. The people pushing these things do have an agenda that isn't advancing the best practices. These are ways that again, I think you're going to see these arguments again and again and again and, just like the behavioral economists that I, like Kahneman and Tversky, gave us these cognitive fallacies, there really is power in naming something. You're going to see one of these things and you're going to remember this and you're going to disregard it so much faster than if you didn't have a word to call it by. If you will, anyway, I do think that you're going to see these everywhere. The one thing that I want to make sure is that I'm not at all sounding like any of these other people, that Obviously, I want to be really clear that I don't think that strength training is a cure-all.
Speaker 1:It's got a ton of benefits, but it's not a cure-all. That's the jump everybody makes when they become a charlatan. I also don't believe that it conveys your moral or ethical standing. Don't think it improves your position in the afterlife. I don't even necessarily think it contributes to making you a better person in any way. That's what a lot of these pitches hinge on too. Is that in this situation, I should put myself as the sage moral person because I've figured out how to count calories and get in the gym? It doesn't actually work that way. It just makes me a healthier person, not necessarily better. Maybe it'd be a better promise if I feigned to have access to ethics and morals that others don't. No, I think it's better that we separate these realms.
Speaker 1:Let's make it really clear that we're really focused on health today and with everything that we wind up talking about here. Literally, besides saying eat whole foods which I totally did at the top of the show, telling everybody to lift weights is the most sound health advice that I could give. Quite frankly, to be honest, I'm just at an age right now where I also can't pretend that my time here is infinite. I've never felt this way, but I'm at a point in life where it's getting increasingly hard to ignore. There's a lot of people listening that you've either directly or indirectly been a part of my life. All I want to do is just impart the best practices that I've learned in my short time. If you guys know anyone that's ever said any of these things to you, it's preachy, but share this one with them.
Speaker 1:I really do believe that if we continue to grow our community, we're all just going to learn faster. It's bed through tinkering and trying and playing with all these ideas over the years with real people, that I came by any of this to get to the point where I'm confident enough to share it with you all here. Frankly, you guys proved that you're committed to getting better by being here at the end of the show. You've been here with me all this time, so I already know that you're committed to getting better. Make sure that you find some other people in your lives who have that same commitment. I want them here, a part of our community, pushing, frankly, me to get a little bit better and just increase the speed that we all learn at.
Speaker 1:Keep in mind that these are. Take these things, use them in your own programming and accelerate your own path of learning. Make sure you pass it on and share it with others, because that is how we're going to get this thing out there. Anyway, guys, thanks again for sticking with me. Remember, mind and muscle are inseparably intertwined. There are no gains without brains. Keep lifting and learning. We'll do this again next week.
