#180: Why Your Son Shouldn't Be Your Strength Coach

There's a scene I watch play out in the weight room over and over. A woman walks in with her grown son, he's excited to show her the ropes, and they get through one workout together. Then I never see her again. Not with him. Not on her own. 

Somehow he killed the whole thing before it even started, and he had no idea he was doing it. 

In this episode I get into why the person who loves you most might be the wrong person to coach you, and what to do instead.

Enjoy the show!

Resources Mentioned:

Learn to Lift

Strength Training Membership 

Transcript

#180: Why Your Son Shouldn't Be Your Strength Coach

[00:00:00] Today I wanna talk about a phenomenon that I see all the time in the weight room, which is a mother-son combination coming in. And every time I watch with curiosity what the son will have their mother do The mom's clearly there for the first time. The son is eager to teach her what he knows. They go through the workout, and I never see them again, not together, not the mom by herself.
[00:00:28] Somehow he has managed to kill her enthusiasm for strength training, and it's actually no wonder. Your son is not the best strength coach for you, and in this episode, I'm gonna explain three reasons why and I'm also gonna explain how you could strength train with your son in a way that both of you can enjoy so it becomes a lifelong passion you can share. Let's get into it
[00:00:58]  I wanna start by saying that I think it is an amazing idea to have a joint hobby with your son. I would love that if there was something I could do with my son. My ex-husband, he plays golf with my sons, so it's something that he can easily spend hours with them, catch up with them. A great excuse. He pays the golf round, he pays the lunch afterwards, they come.
[00:01:22] Okay? And I think it's amazing if your son is interested in your health. I mean, he should be, because if you get weaker, then he's gonna be taking care of you in a few years, when you start to get frail and not be able to live independently. So on both those counts, what an amazing idea. And yet, what I see in practice is that this really doesn't work.
[00:01:50] And the proof kind of in my mind that it doesn't work is that I don't see them repeatedly. I see them once and that's it, and I don't even see the mom coming back repeatedly. So somehow he's been able to get her interested in the weight room, she has been interested in coming to the weight room, and then it's gotten killed very, very quickly, and that is a problem.
[00:02:13] Okay? And I see three main things that are so different between the mother and the son which make this as a joint hobby not really workable in the way that they're starting to do it. The first is that their goals are really, really different. Okay? If you think about a young man, and believe me, during those two and three-minute breaks between sets, that I've spent hours watching young men in the weight room, their focus is completely different from a midlife woman's focus.
[00:02:49] They are concerned about growing their chest muscles. That is their number one muscle. They want pecs. Then backs, they wanna have a nice V, and then their arms. Like, that is their main focus. All right? Whereas a woman in midlife, she's concerned about things like her whole body getting stronger, strengthening her bones, aging well, being able to live independently, and those things require a full body program, not a huge focus on one muscle group or another, but overall strength and musculature.
[00:03:29] And strength training, lower body, upper body, so that your bones get stronger, and doing that in a pretty even way. Okay? So their program isn't gonna be totally different. And in practice what this looks like, and I, oh my gosh, I see it over and over again, is that the guy, the son, is having his mother do three different chest exercises in their session so that they can hit the upper pecs, the mid pecs, and the lower pecs.
[00:03:58] Now, I don't know about you, but I do not know very many women who are super concerned about what their pecs look like. That's probably the last body part that they care about 'cause you know what? We have boobs down there. So in a way, like, whether our pec muscles stick out a little bit more or a little less is kind of irrelevant.
[00:04:17] And having great pec muscles is actually not gonna help us with a lot of the things that we are concerned about, like getting up off the floor, being able to carry our groceries, all these kinds of things, right? Surviving in life. And the problem is that in a training session, you only have a certain amount of time.
[00:04:38] I mean, h- I don't know very many women who have, like, three hours to spend training. You kinda wanna get in, do your workout, and go on because you have a lot of other stuff to do. Kind of spending three exercises on one muscle group is really inefficient for the goals that we have. So really, the mothers and the sons programs are going to look extremely, extremely different.
[00:05:08] And this brings me right into point number two, which is that, they say we have the same 24 hours in a day, but, I remember when I was 20, even though I was working, somehow I had time to go to the weight room, and work out, and run, and party, and do all these things because I, like, recovered totally differently.
[00:05:32] I, I don't know how I even found all the time to do all the things that I could do. Nowadays, I really have to, fit my weight training sessions into my week. I have to juggle my work, juggle, running the house, taking care of my children, of course, like, taking care of my aging parents, and then also having a social life, and it is not the same 24 hours.
[00:05:57] So I really need a super efficient, effective program where I literally can go in, do it, and get the heck out of there, and get my results, and get on with my life, that that is not, like, something where I'm spending a ton of time just in the weight room or doing my workouts. So it is, it is very different, like, the perspective.
[00:06:20] I mean, if you think yourself what life was like in your 20s, it was significantly different And then the third aspect of this has to do with our bodies. We aren't 20 anymore. We are not men. We are midlife, perimenopausal, menopausal, post-menopausal women. Our bodies are different than our own bodies were when we were 20.
[00:06:47] And even when we were 20, our bodies were not the same as 20-year-old men's. Our testosterone level's significantly lower. Our ability to recover is significantly different than it was when we were 20. I remember I played Division I lacrosse at Dartmouth, and, , I, I trained so much. I was running every other day, strength training every other day, practicing two hours a day.
[00:07:19] My recovery ability was insane compared to what it is today, where it, it's just so, so different.
[00:07:28] So what it really boils down to is we're kind of living in two different worlds with our sons. You know? We are in midlife, we have much less time, and we have really different goals for our strength training than what they do. And that means that we really are going to benefit from having a program that is designed for our bodies and our needs.
[00:07:56] It's not to say that the exercises are gonna necessarily be 100% different. Probably a lot of the things that you and your son do, or me and my son do in the gym, are the same. We both do bicep curls. We both do chest presses. But the volume and, yeah, primarily the volume, is going to be extremely different, and probably he, well, they, both my sons, do significantly less lower body work than I do.
[00:08:30] Whereas I know that having strong glutes and strong legs is going to benefit me enormously in the decades ahead, and so that is a focus area for me. Whereas chest, not so much So how can you reconcile this? So I think w- if you want to strength train with your son, there are definitely great ways to do that, and if he is interested in helping you out, I think yay.
[00:08:56] But what I would do there is I would get a program that's really more focused around a midlife woman's goals, so like my program, where you're training your whole body. And maybe you're even training just twice a week, because we are busy. Twice a week or three days a week is absolutely plenty. And then you can go to the weight room with your son.
[00:09:22] And the great way to use his help would be in having him evaluate your form because it may be that he's a form stickler. He can watch you and be like, "Hey, your elbow is like this," or, "You're, you're using your wrist... You're cocking your wrist here, and that may cause some tendonitis in your wrist if you don't watch out."
[00:09:41] That kind of thing you could absolutely benefit from your son, and it may make it much easier for you to walk into the weight room when you have that moral support of your son going there and a fun thing to do together. And I'll point out that, maybe it's not your son who is taking you.
[00:09:58] Maybe it is your husband or your lover or your friend, who has all the great intentions in the world. But take a program that is designed for you. A great scenario would be like, "Hey, I have this program that I wanna do. Let's go together, and you can show me the exercises." Something like that to get it going, right?
[00:10:20] You can watch the demo videos that your program gives, but having somebody demo it live could be super useful and then for them to watch you do it the first couple times and give you some tips on the form. That would be amazing. All right. So not to dissuade you from doing things with your son, but I've seen it kill enthusiasm so many times. 
[00:10:41] . And by the way, it's not only mother-son combinations. I see boyfriend-girlfriend combinations come to the gym, and the girlfriend is clearly... She wants to do this thing with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend is so happy that she's coming to the gym. And then they're training chest, and I'm thinking to myself, "What do young women want?"
[00:11:00] They want booties. They want legs. Women want shoulders. They want, firm, toned arms. So they're not really focused on the chest in the same way that the boys are. Sorry, boys. And I think that the boys wouldn't even necess- But I... It's funny, but it just... It happens over and over again. Anyhow So definitely want you to start strength training.
[00:11:24] Bring in your own program. If you're looking for a program to follow, join my Learn to Lift program, which is a 10-week strength training beginner program. Absolutely has exercises that I do even today, so it's not like beginner exercises, but it has the education that you need to really get the most out of your workouts.
[00:11:44] And then I have my strength training membership, which gives you the programming, and it's a progressive program, so each block builds upon the one before to make sure that you're training your body in different ways and avoiding things like one side getting stronger than the other and challenging your muscles with different movements.
[00:12:05] And you can learn more about those. Links are in the show notes. And with that, I leave you for this week and wish you a wonderful week ahead. Happy training