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The Wellness Blueprint: With Dr. Caleb Davis
Welcome to The Wellness Blueprint with Dr. Caleb Davis, where we uncover the secrets to living a long, active, and pain-free life. Hosted by Dr. Caleb Davis, an orthopedic surgeon and fitness enthusiast, this podcast is your ultimate guide to musculoskeletal health, injury prevention, and wellness.
Dr. Davis combines his expertise as a shoulder and elbow specialist with a passion for empowering people to take charge of their health. From deep dives into cutting-edge restorative medicine to practical tips on avoiding surgery and optimizing recovery, The Wellness Blueprint offers valuable insights for anyone seeking to preserve their body and thrive at every stage of life.
Join us each week for professional guidance, fascinating medical discussions, and actionable strategies that help you move better, feel stronger, and stay functional for years to come. Whether you're an athlete, a weekend warrior, or someone looking to age gracefully, The Wellness Blueprint provides the tools to design a healthier you.
The Wellness Blueprint: With Dr. Caleb Davis
Episode 15: Lifting Fundamentals: Building Strength and Confidence in the New Year
In this episode of The Wellness Blueprint, Dr. Caleb Davis and co-host Nicole Davis explore the most effective exercise methods for achieving optimal health and fitness, especially as people set new fitness goals for the New Year.
Through personal anecdotes, Nicole shares her love for partner workouts and the exhilaration of high-intensity classes like CrossFit, despite their occasional mishaps. We also highlight the benefits of both solo and group exercise environments, and the unique role personal goals play in shaping your fitness adventure. It's a mix of humor, challenge, and motivation, all wrapped up in one enlightening episode.
As we break down the essentials, you'll discover the critical difference between compound and isolation exercises and why progressive overload is your best ally for muscle growth. We'll explore how evolving attitudes are empowering women to lift heavy weights, even during pregnancy, with inspiring stories like that of Annie Thorisdottir. There are insights into gym culture too, from the neurological perks of slow, controlled movements to the sometimes unhealthy aspects of competitive bodybuilding. We're here to guide your understanding of various training styles.
Finally, we dive into practical tips for beginners in the gym, whether you're weighing the benefits of free weights versus machines or aiming to balance your routine with resistance training. With the new year on the horizon, we're setting the stage for fresh resolutions, teasing future episodes on goal setting and Dry January. Reflecting on the holiday season and the excitement of new beginnings, we encourage you to start strong—maybe with a set of squats right now—and look forward to joining us on your fitness journey.
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Hey everybody and welcome back to the Wellness Blueprint with Dr Caleb Davis. I'm Dr Caleb Davis. As usual, we're joined by the beautiful, talented, wonderful, ecstatic, exciting Nicole Davis.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's a lot to live up to.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm just so happy that you're here.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you.
Speaker 1:I couldn't do this podcast without you, so thanks for joining us. So last week, in keeping with this New Year's resolution theme of everyone's going to be hitting the gym and exercising and trying to decide how they want to decide to get healthier and more fit, we're going to talk about different ways to exercise and what might be the most optimal approach. If you remember, if you listened, last week we talked about steady state cardio, like jogging or cycling or elliptical machine, and we talked about sprinting and high interval training and talked about the risks and benefits and pros and cons of both. Today I want to tackle a little bit more about weightlifting, strength training in general, or what people would call resistance training might be the most broad term. Nicole, tell me your thoughts.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's incredibly important, especially for women who are trying to prevent osteoporosis. We've also talked about sarcopenia in the past and how terribly damaging that can be. I enjoy weightlifting, but I really only enjoy it if I'm not doing it alone. I really struggle with doing workouts by myself myself, so it's helpful for me to have a workout buddy in person that I can do all the things with. So you might find yourself in a similar boat, but some people really enjoy going to the gym and working out and just kind of getting that me time. Caleb likes to listen to podcasts and whatever else when he's doing his weightlifting and that's sort of his recharge time.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. I love it Gives me time to think. Sometimes I turn the podcast off. Music you can think a little bit more. I love it. It gives me time to think. Sometimes I turn the podcast off. Music you can think a little bit more. I do love to learn, so I definitely listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts when I'm lifting weights. But you talked about having a partner. I think that's really important. I think a lot of men are more prone to exercise by themselves, although I've definitely worked out with friends in the past and that's fun, I think. In general making some broad generalizations here if we all understand that, I think women are a little bit more social and enjoy working out with groups, or at least a partner, more than men do. So what tell me about that? Do you usually just find a buddy to lift with you or do you like these group classes at gyms? What's? Have you tried both?
Speaker 2:I have tried both. I don't particularly like group classes that are meant for women, because I feel like they are.
Speaker 1:Speak freely, it's okay.
Speaker 2:They're a little lame.
Speaker 1:Lame.
Speaker 2:All right, I don't love it just because I am a very strong woman, and so you telling me to lift two-pound weights is not going to do anything for me.
Speaker 1:I'm a strong, independent woman and I can lift more than you. Is that what you tell the? You tell you up to the teacher and say I know more than you. Did you pull a Ron Swanson?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like I know more than you.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, pretty much, yeah, no. So I just I, if I do a group class, it's something more high intensity interval training like CrossFit or something like that. I have tried Orange Theory. I just really couldn't get into it. Sorry, I tried, I really did try. I think part of it was the running, part of it was just the music was so loud that my ears were bleeding. It's sort of like going into a church when the music is so loud and I'm like I just can't. So yeah, I have an issue with that, probably because I'm in my mid thirties.
Speaker 1:What if they played Tupac?
Speaker 2:or Eminem, you know who?
Speaker 1:those are right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, who that is, who dat, who dat, who dat.
Speaker 1:That's last week. Nicole thought Epoch was a rapper.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it did.
Speaker 1:We talked about the excessive oxygen consumption after exercise. So I had to school her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got schooled real hard and share all my massive hip-hop knowledge. Yes, as a classically trained musician.
Speaker 1:Yeah, saying the words Tupac and Eminem actually is pretty much the extent of my hip-hop knowledge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah we're pretty boring in that way.
Speaker 1:Sorry, guys no question.
Speaker 2:We can tell you all sorts of stuff about Rachmaninoff and Beethoven and Mozart.
Speaker 1:I'm going to cut you off there, okay. Yep All right, we'll do a classical music.
Speaker 2:I didn't give up my cool kid card. I never had it.
Speaker 1:We, neither of us, ever had the cool kid card. We really never did.
Speaker 2:That's cool. We're the nerds that united together Are you thinking about doing CrossFit again?
Speaker 2:I am thinking about doing it again just because it was so effective for me, but it also did lead to injuries. I had this hip bursitis issue and I think that was mostly my fault. I get kind of competitive and so I wanted to outlift other dudes in the class or be kind of the the bad, the bad-ass chick I. That's something that I have to watch out for. That's more of a pride thing than anything. Now, when I've tried a class like bar, it's very effective at what?
Speaker 1:what's it?
Speaker 2:effective at utilizing smaller muscle groups. It seems like something they do to isolate, like the smaller muscle groups. So, like you, basically you're holding. One time I went to class.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm not a bar expert like one time I went and you're like holding the bar and you basically are, have one foot flat on the ground and then the other foot you're just bringing it out to the side and you basically are, have one foot flat on the ground and then the other foot you're just bringing it out to the side and that small sweeping motion over and over and over again to like exhaustion, and it was like that small muscle in your hip no, no, nothing against bar, but that sounds horrible to me.
Speaker 1:That sounds so boring yeah, no, it wasn't.
Speaker 2:It wasn't. It wasn't for me, but it was very effective.
Speaker 1:I was very sore but it was not my kind of thing. So as far as CrossFit goes, CrossFit gets a lot of hate from people who don't do CrossFit.
Speaker 2:I think it's just because you're better than everyone else If you do CrossFit, you're better, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that might be. That may be. Time will tell. I think people hate on CrossFit a lot just because there's so many injuries and there are. There are a lot of people who get hurt at CrossFit.
Speaker 2:Oh, like you as a shoulder surgeon, when you see people doing the pull-ups, the way that they do pull-ups, the pull-ups.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that drives me crazy, but I do not hot take. I do not hate CrossFit. I think it can be very beneficial if it's done correctly. The problem with CrossFit is it takes complex compound movements, meaning movements and exercises that use multiple joints that are not in isolation. So think like a clean and jerk, where you throw a bar up on your chest and then press it overhead. It's a very complicated movement that requires a lot of focus and precision to do it correctly and safely. And then CrossFit takes that exercise and says, okay, now do this 20 times as fast as you can and as much weight as you can, and do it as many times as you can in this amount of time, which encourages people to compete against one another and push through bad form and leads to injury.
Speaker 1:I think that's the problem with CrossFit. There's nothing inherently wrong with it. I think it can be very good for people. It's more that combining high-intensity interval training and strength training, which to me is ideal, some people just take it overboard. Just like anything in this world, you can take a good thing and make it bad if you do it to excess, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, we're probably getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. So last week we talked about cardio. What's the number one killer of adults in North America?
Speaker 2:Heart disease.
Speaker 1:Heart disease. So I think people hear heart disease. They think I'm going to go run, I'm going to have better cardiovascular health, I'm going to burn calories while I'm running, I'm going to have a healthier heart, so I'll live longer. There's something to that, but I think a lot of people overlook the health benefits of weight training. I think a lot of people think people just weight train for their egos, because they want to have big muscles and look good.
Speaker 2:I mean, you do look good babe.
Speaker 1:You look good too, babe. Oh, thanks, thank you, we got to stop flirting like this, never.
Speaker 1:So there's something to that. You do look good a mirror, you know, look good in a tight t-shirt when you weight train, but there's so much more to it. One of the things that leads to a lot of heart disease is diabetes, and having more muscle mass and doing straight training can actually really help regulate blood sugar and decrease your risk of diabetes, and it can have a whole different host of other health effects that have to do with lower inflammation, better utilization of calories and just having a higher basal metabolic rate of burning calories in general. So there are enormous health effects of having more muscle mass. So, focusing on that, moving forward in this episode, I think I want to encourage everyone to do more strength training. Just doing a squat, a bench press, a deadlift doesn't necessarily have the same cardiovascular benefits that doing sprinting or steady state cardio does, but I'm trying to emphasize that building more muscle mass is synergistic to all that and it's very, very important.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you've seen where people run a whole lot. They do lots and lots of running. They're marathon runners, but they may still be overweight and they may not have much muscle mass on them because they don't strength train Right and you can run into that problem One of the things I see a lot of people, even though they run a lot, they adapt to that they stop progressing and they still eat lots and lots of food. So they're actually still Eating more calories than they're burning and they still eat lots and lots of food. So they're actually still eating more calories than they're burning and they're not weight training. So their basal metabolic rate's really not that high and if all they do is steady state cardio, they may not be having that high of an EPOC effect which, just to review, is an increased calorie burn post-exercise, which is highest after strength training and lowest after steady state cardio. Does that make sense for all the people out there listening? Nicole's make sense for all the people out there listening? Nicole's my gauge for what normal people understand.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you explained it well. If I had to explain it to somebody, I wouldn't remember what EPOC stands for, but I could tell them that it's the amount of calories that your body burns post exercise, and it is you know, we should call it what?
Speaker 1:the afterburn, afterburn, the afterburn, the afterburn of exercise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Nice Kind of like a jet afterburner. Isn't afterburn sort of associated with heartburn?
Speaker 1:Heartburn.
Speaker 2:Isn't it?
Speaker 1:sort of associated with heartburn. No, I've always thought of afterburn as like a jet plane or something. Anyway, I'm calling it afterburn.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:TM trademark. Dr Big guy, it's mine now.
Speaker 2:There you go, you own it, yeah, and so it's higher with strength training than it is with steady state cardio.
Speaker 1:That's right. So the afterburn is more after you've done some strength training. Okay, I've established why strength training is important. We've talked about it in multiple episodes, especially the sarcopenia episode. If you go back and listen to our squat strong live long episode I forget the number, but it was probably that's the name of the episode you can go talk about why strength training is so important. So I do encourage you to go back and listen to that one. That was actually a pretty popular episode for our 12 listeners. So what I wanted to get into today is have you heard this debate of oh, I do really high reps but low weight because I just want to be toned, versus I lift big weights twice and I want to be a big caveman?
Speaker 1:yeah what do you think of that? What have you heard? What's your impression?
Speaker 2:normally I just roll my eyes inside inwardly, um, because I know, having been married to you for at least 13 years, poor, poor woman, but that's just sort of a little bit of BS. So I know that there's things like hypertrophy training and I know that there are certain things that you can do to kind of pump your muscles up so that they look a little bit bigger in the shorter term, and I know that there's yeah, wait, say what it was again that like the two scenarios you gave.
Speaker 1:Low weight, high reps for what people call toning versus high weight and low reps. When I say rep, I mean repetition. So a power lifter is going to bench press for two repetitions but he might be bench pressing 500 pounds. When I think of the toning exercise, I think of a girl holding a two pound pink dumbbell and doing 30 repetitions.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, okay, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. I gotcha, no. I know, for in order for muscles to be toned or to grow or whatever, that you have to overstress them, and one of the most effective ways to do that is to increase the weight, and one of the most effective ways to do that is to increase the weight.
Speaker 1:It's a concept called progressive overload, meaning once your body adapts to a certain stress, weight or repetition range, you have to increase to keep seeing improvements in your muscle mass and conditioning. Yes, so that's what we mean by progressive overload. So we've set the stage. Let's talk about machines versus isolation movements and compound movements and high rep versus low rep exercises as well. Do you know what a compound movement is? Don't make a poop joke. I know you want to. What's a compound movement?
Speaker 2:Well, I was thinking more like a clean and jerk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:A clean and jerk is a compound movement. If you want to go with the most basic definition, it is a movement involving exercise that incorporates multiple joints, versus an isolation movement. Probably the most classic is you can imagine a guy squatting down and putting his elbow on his leg and just doing a bicep curl. You know what I'm talking about. Or a bench where you isolate the elbow and all you do is just move that single joint. That'd be an isolation exercise.
Speaker 1:Probably one of the most common compound movements people see in the gym is deadlifts or squats. You're having to use your lumbar spine, your hips, your knees, to some extent your shoulders even to move and you're using hundreds of muscle groups versus one muscle group on an isolation exercise. As you might imagine, doing all those muscle groups is going to activate more stress on your body and burn more calories and work more muscles and be more efficient than isolation. A that was written in 2015 in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine found that both compound and machine-based exercises that are more isolation improved strength, but compound lifts activated more of the smaller stabilizing muscles more effectively and were generally more effective at creating strength.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's give a few more examples of what a compound movement is. So I mentioned a clean and jerk, but what about a squat?
Speaker 1:A squat would definitely be a compound movement, as would a deadlift. Most free bar exercises where you're standing and moving a weight are gonna be compound movements. Even a bench press is a compound movement, although not nearly as much as a squat would be, because you're using your elbows, wrists and shoulders, so you're working multiple joints. Exercises like good mornings or Romanian deadlifts or things like that are also compound movements.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Most isolation movements you have to be sitting down and trying to isolate all but one joint from moving. Now some people suggest that older people use exercises on machines rather than compound movements and younger people do compound movements and there's some wisdom to this, especially generationally, when you meet people who are in their 60s and above. A lot of these people did not grow up lifting weights, so their breadth of knowledge of compound, complicated exercise is limited. I know I'm generalizing. There's plenty of people who are above the age of 60 who are perfectly the age of 60, who are perfectly knowledgeable, but we're just speaking in general terms here.
Speaker 1:I'm an orthopedic surgeon and a lot of my patients come to me and have never lifted a weight in their life and I'm trying to get them to lift weights to build muscle density and bone density for their health and longevity. And they are. They have no clue, and that's not me trying to be disparaging to them. They've just never grew up that way. Gyms are now so ubiquitous in our society and culture, so younger people who were born into that culture are much more experienced.
Speaker 2:You used a lot of three four-syllable words there. Yeah, yeah, ubiquitous.
Speaker 1:Ubiquitous.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Ubiquitous means it's everywhere. Yeah, no, I know.
Speaker 2:But I'm just trying to say, you know, let's maybe bring it down from Dr Caleb Davis back down to Dr Big Guy or something.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Thanks, nicole. Yeah, gyms are everywhere. It's part of our culture now, not so much for other people. We've discussed in other episodes too, too, how, especially for women from other generations who are older, there's this big mental block of exercising, because they think it's not ladylike or it's going to make them look too masculine or even just, I think, back in the day when women were pregnant, it was very much discouraged for them to exercise.
Speaker 2:They're like oh well, you have to rest, you have to rest, whereas these days we know that as long as a woman has been exercising prior to getting pregnant, that it's best for her and her unborn child to continue to exercise.
Speaker 1:To a degree. Absolutely, there's riskier exercises than others, but I think that has been a big shift.
Speaker 2:But there are also a lot of health and wellness experts and OBGYNs who specialize in women who exercise while pregnant and also post-pregnancy I guess you call that postpartum exercising especially for those like super cool female athletes, like all the daughters, the Thoris daughters.
Speaker 1:Annie Thoris daughter. Yeah, there are a lot of videos of her doing intense crossfit workouts with a big pregnant belly.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that lady's impressive.
Speaker 2:Yes, she is I love watching her lift.
Speaker 1:She's just such an impressive athlete. Plus, she's Icelandic, which we both love Iceland.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we really do. Plus, their salt's really good, by the way, icelandic salt, okay, anyway thanks for the digression. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I will say, just like last week we talked about jumping straight into sprinting and high intensity interval training can be dangerous if you have no exercise experience. I think that the conventional wisdom that older patients with no experience may do better from isolation machine type exercises before getting into compound lifting. So I think there is some wisdom there.
Speaker 2:Wait, can we talk about rhabdo real quick?
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:That was something I always heard is like oh, if you go straight into CrossFit or something like high intensity interval training, then you're going to get rhabdo.
Speaker 1:The average.
Speaker 2:So rhabdo is rhabdo. What Dialysis right?
Speaker 1:Rhabdomyolysis.
Speaker 2:Oh see, I got that wrong.
Speaker 1:Rhabdomyolysis is the full term, but people in CrossFit refer to it as Rabdo for short. So Rabdo is a funny thing. Rabdo is not something that the normal person is just going to get by going to the gym and exercising. It's generally going to be because they're in a group and they're being pushed and they're not saying no because of peer pressure and they're competitive and they go so far that they actually start breaking down their muscle tissue to a dangerous degree. So let's define rhabdo Now. This could have been a fractured fax too.
Speaker 1:Maybe let's make it a fractured fax. Okay, hey everybody, welcome to Fractured Facts. Today we're going to talk about rhabdomyolysis.
Speaker 2:Slow your speech down, man. You're talking way too fast.
Speaker 1:Alright, okay, so let's talk about rhabdomyolysis, since you brought it up. It's a serious medical condition that can be life-threatening. It's characterized by the breakdown of skeletal muscle fibers let's just think about your normal muscles we're talking about and it releases. It leads to the cells actually, in a word, explode. It makes it sound a little bit more dramatic, so I enjoy that and they start releasing huge amounts of protein into your bloodstream, which can eventually cause damage to your kidneys. That's usually the one thing that we worry about. So you're talking about we talked about micro tearing of the muscle tissue on our last episode. This is thinking about macro tearing. Like you're having large amounts of tissue damage because you've exercised to an excess, so most people are just going to the gym. This is not going to happen to them. It's famous in CrossFit because there's more of this high intensity group peer pressure mindset. Really, the thing that really gets people in trouble is it can cause permanent kidney damage. If you have a large enough protein volume released into your bloodstream, that can cause that tissue damage.
Speaker 2:Don't you start urinating blood or something?
Speaker 1:Well, yes, that myoglobin gets into the urine, it becomes dark and brown, and that can be one sign that you're having serious rhabdomyolysis. And if this happens to you, you must go to the hospital yeah, you need to be hydrated and sometimes people even need dialysis, I believe that's why I thought it was called rhabdo dialysis yeah I knew there was.
Speaker 2:It was in there somewhere, that's okay. I've also called myocardial infarctions and that's not a thing I'm sorry oh wait, what did I? What did I say?
Speaker 1:I called it you used to call it a myocardial infraction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what it was.
Speaker 1:No, but you were right. It's called a myocardial infarction as a heart attack.
Speaker 1:Okay, an infarction is just an acute loss of blood to a tissue and then that tissue dies. Treatment for rhabdomyolysis usually involves extreme hydration, meaning IV fluids. Needing to get IV fluids to get to help clear and flush out your kidneys from being damaged. In horrible, severe cases, dialysis, where they actually have to clean your blood for you through a machine, and also rebalancing your electrolytes because your kidney is no longer able to balance your electrolytes appropriately. But in severe cases some people even get compartment syndrome, where their muscles swell up so much that they have to have surgery to have them opened up so that they can have room for the swelling, which is something that yours truly would do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was gonna say I've only ever heard of compartment syndrome when it came to you having to go in like with bones and stuff.
Speaker 1:Most compartment syndromes that I take care of have to do with a fracture or a serious high level trauma. However, you can see them in athletes who have overexertion and rhabdomyolysis. I also see them in people who use drugs. I've even had people fall asleep on their legs for so long because they are so zonked out on heroin. They you know a normal person that they fell asleep in an unhealthy position would move. But if you're altered out on heroin, a normal person if they fell asleep in an unhealthy position would move. But if you're altered because of heroin, you may sleep on your leg incorrectly for 20 hours and then you can develop compartment syndrome that way too.
Speaker 2:What about toilet texting?
Speaker 1:There's only one person I know in this world who can get compartment syndrome from toilet texting, and she's sitting right across from me.
Speaker 2:Not on the toilet. She's not currently sitting on a toilet, but she has been known to have her sciatic nerve go out, because she I'm not the only one. Okay, I still hold that 50 of the population is like me 50.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, we'll have to do a poll yeah, I told you to do a poll. Well, I think maybe that'll be our next tiktok poll. How many of you have had your sciatic nerve go out while sitting on the toilet?
Speaker 2:no, but you know you just got how many of you, how many of you, have had your legs fall asleep while sitting on the toilet. No, but you know you just got how how many of you, how how many of you, have had your legs fall asleep while sitting on the toilet. Yeah, cause they don't know, it's a sciatic nerve, unless they've listened to our podcast which they should. Yeah, they should.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, all right. Well, I'll get right on that.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I mean priorities, man, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do want to reinforce the fact that increased muscle tissue helps regulate insulin and blood glucose, reducing your risks of diabetes, and also resistance training is critically important for bone density. I think a lot of people are under the misconception that running will be adequate enough for bone density because it's quote unquote impact training. However, I think that progressive overload, like putting a barbell on your back and doing a squat is is much more beneficial than running. If you're looking to increase your bone density, you're talking about just using your body weight to impact on asphalt, potentially to try to create that stimulus to make your bones harder, but I believe that a progressive overload with strength training will be much more beneficial. There's a lot of studies that would agree with me.
Speaker 2:What about for people who have small children and they like do the baby wearing thing? Is that because the kid will grow?
Speaker 1:I guess if someone, if my dad, tried to pick me up, I think that'd be pretty good exercise.
Speaker 2:As the 250 pound man that you are today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's pretty good resistance training if someone tried to carry me around. If you want me to jump on your back, we'll give it a try. So getting back to this rep range concept, a lot of people swear by the high reps. Low weight means you won't get bulky and you'll get this quote unquote toned muscle look rather than a fuller muscle look. Have you ever heard this concept? I feel like it's very popular with women in general. They want to focus on lower weights and just doing 20 to 30 repetitions, where, if you talk to someone who goes, a male, who goes to the gym a lot and does more of what we call a classic bodybuilder rep range, which would be eight to 12 repetitions with a heavier weight. And then you've got the power lifters, who sometimes do one to two reps, lifting as heavy as possible.
Speaker 2:And then they like sit on the bench for five minutes and anger everyone, uh-huh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yep. Have you ever known someone who does that? Never. There can be benefit to all three of these different styles. The most critical concept of strength training, in my opinion, is progression of strength training, in my opinion, is progression. So if you're doing a lightweight for 20 to 30 reps, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but if you're not feeling fatigued or challenged by that, that means you're doing too little weight and a lot of times people are repping way too quickly. There's a lot of studies that just show the most important part of the lift is actually what we call the eccentric portion of the lift. So think about doing a squat. The eccentric portion of the lift is when you are lowering down to the ground and the concentric portion of the lift is where you're flexing your quadriceps to go back up.
Speaker 2:So what about for a bicep curl?
Speaker 1:A bicep curl is when you're lowering the weight would be the eccentric portion and the concentric portion would be when you're curling it back up towards yourself. A lot of people focus on the concentric because that's when the muscle contracts. They think that's when it's doing the most work and then you get to focus on moving all this weight. There's actually a lot of studies that have shown that slow eccentric work, or some people call it the negative portion of the lift, is actually the most beneficial thing for muscular growth, what we call hypertrophy, growing of the muscle in volume.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's for pull-ups. A lot of women I've had to do negative pull-ups. So I start by like standing on a box and then jumping up to kind of put my chin over the pull-up and then trying as slowly as I can to lower myself down. So rather than focusing on the actual motion of pulling myself up, I'm focusing on the negative aspect.
Speaker 1:Yep, I think a lot of people start doing it that way because they can't do a pull-up.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's how they build their way up to getting to it by just doing the eccentric portion of the lift, or what people would call negative pull-ups. So I've actually been giving this advice to a lot of my patients. I said, instead of focusing on bench pressing 500 pounds, drop the weight down to something more manageable and just go really slow on the negative, because you can get really good stimulation of your bones and your muscles by doing that, by increasing your time under tension with a slow, controlled movement. So you're sure to be having good technique because you're going slowly and you're having a lot of thought put into it and you're getting really good exercise, even though it's it may not be as flashy as throwing a lot of weight on and moving quickly through a repetition, but it makes sure that you're focused on having a safe, good technique while still getting a lot of good stress on the muscle.
Speaker 1:The take home for me again, it's a little bit of a cop out, but what is it that you enjoy most at the gym?
Speaker 1:I in general I would not do the 30 rep range because I find that if you're easily doing 30 reps, you're probably not challenging yourself enough. I think that the eight to 12 rep range is probably a pretty good idea for a lot of people, although I would challenge you to try heavier weights at times, because it can actually lead to neurologic adaptation, where you're able to utilize more muscle tissue and fibers as you challenge yourself to move heavier weights. I would encourage anyone, though, if they're going to be doing heavy squats and heavy deadlifts or bench presses, that you have someone with you to make sure that they're spotting you, and also have someone with you to check your form to make sure you're doing it appropriately and safely. There's even places online now where people will video themselves doing these exercises and compound lifts, and they'll share their videos with other people and say, hey, can you all check my form for me? So there's communities that do that as well.
Speaker 2:If you don't have a friend or coach who can help you, oh, there's, that's like the archetype of the gym male comes up to the female. Like that'd be his dream to have people just submit these videos and be like, can you help me? Uh-huh, you know, it's like kind of the trope help give advice to you at the gym, right?
Speaker 1:I'm not that guy at the gym, by the way, I well, I don't even work out at gym anymore, I just work out at home. But I just put my headphones in and try not to make eye contact and just do my lift and get out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, somebody interrupts him, and then it gets.
Speaker 1:You make me sound like a monster. I just like to be at the gym and do my thing. I'm not there to stare at all the sexy people. I'm just there to get my work done and get out. There's a lot of people in there chatting each other up, looking for a life partner, but I've already got one.
Speaker 2:That's right, I've already got one. That's right, I've got enough distractions at home.
Speaker 1:I've just got this beautiful woman around me all the time and I can't get anything done.
Speaker 2:Is that why you work out at home now too? Yeah, I couldn't stay away from you girl.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know it's hard. Nicole, can you think of anything in terms of this discussion of compound versus isolation, versus high rep versus low rep that maybe we didn't cover, that you think would be helpful or relevant to people?
Speaker 2:Maybe explain to people the difference between bodybuilding and powerlifting.
Speaker 1:Okay, bodybuilding is a term that I think is overused. Bodybuilding means you're going to build as much muscle as you can while making it all symmetric and proportional, and you're going to get on stage and compete, and it's all about symmetry and aesthetics. So a lot of people call it a bodybuilding-style workout, but I have never once got on stage and competed in bodybuilding, and so, even though people work out like bodybuilders, they're not necessarily bodybuilders, so that term makes me uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:Why don't you tell everybody your favorite movie?
Speaker 1:I do love the movie Pumping Iron because it's just so entertaining and funny to watch that movie. But if you haven't watched it, I would check it out because it's a pretty funny look into that world. The original in the 70s with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno Great movie. I've watched it many times. I've never competed in bodybuilding, nor will I ever consider it. I think there's a lot of oh man, we could get into that and I'm not going to. Oh man, we could get into that and I'm not going to. But there's so many problems with bodybuilding, the culture, some of the unhealthy expectations and things that bodybuilders do to themselves, both men and women.
Speaker 2:Yeah, eating disorders.
Speaker 1:Right, there's so much there, it's not about health anymore at that point.
Speaker 2:In general, but also they'll do crazy things like restrict water intake.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cutting weight for shows, not to mention the rampant drug use. There's a lot of people, a lot of bodybuilders, die in their 40s. If you're getting into health, if you're getting into working out, lifting weights for your health and longevity, bodybuilding is not the way to go. It's not a healthy sport, although I still have a huge respect and admiration for people who have the discipline to compete in it, because it's a very difficult, complicated sport to compete in, so on that level.
Speaker 2:I do admire it.
Speaker 1:On the other hand, I would never really encourage anyone to do it really, unless you're just absolutely passionate about it and you really want to do it. I would say, okay, do it. Make sure you're doing it safely, which is hard to do. So most people, when they refer to bodybuilding style workouts, they're talking about eight to 12 reps of an exercise with heavy weights or power lifters are trying to lift as much weight as possible for a single rep when they're competing, so the goal is to be as mechanically advantageous as you can to move as much weight as possible. So it's a little bit of a different way of working out.
Speaker 1:I don't really encourage people to do either one. I think as long as you're getting progressively stronger, adding more weight to your lifts slowly and carefully, and you're doing it in a controlled, slow manner and safely, I don't think it really matters what way you prescribe to One thing I wanted to mention is a lot of these hotel gyms or maybe a place like the YMCA they might have like a circuit set up but a lot of them are things like a Smith machine, right?
Speaker 2:So would you recommend somebody, if they had to choose between doing something like a Smith machine, which you might have to describe what that is, versus like a freestanding squat rack? Which would you recommend?
Speaker 1:In broad terms, the more degrees of motion an exercise has, the more little muscle groups it'll work. So meaning if you're doing a standing dumbbell exercise, you're going to have to use more small muscle groups to stabilize yourself, and the more isolated the exercise becomes, the less of that you'll have. So we talked about that briefly. We talked about machines are more isolating, and compound movements with a barbell or dumbbells tend to use more muscle groups.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, for instance, one time you blew my mind because you told me that doing a bench press, where you're lying on your back and you've got the bar above you, doing that works less muscles than holding two separate dumbbells and doing the same bench press maneuver.
Speaker 1:That's right, because there's more degrees of freedom of motion of the weight.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if you ever have seen me bench press, you've seen me bench press on a barbell, quite a bit of weight and if you took that in a dumbbell I wouldn't be able to press the same amount of weight because there's more small stabilizing muscle groups that you have to use to stabilize those dumbbells.
Speaker 2:So I guess I just want to encourage people that even if they maybe they don't have a barbell at the house but they have dumbbells, like you can still do the movements like the bench press, and it's going to be great because you're able to use more degrees of motion and such.
Speaker 1:And since we talked about time under tension and slow, eccentric exercises, if you're at a hotel gym and you're used to squatting a whole lot of weight or bench pressing a whole lot of weight, you can make the exercise more challenging by just doing the repetitions more slowly. The descent of the exercise or the negative portion of the lift. You can just go way more slowly. Maybe even a four to five second count and you're going to make that exercise exponentially more challenging with a lighter weight. I would encourage people to do that. It's more safe and you don't have to feel discouraged from not being able to exercise, whether a hotel gym, well, and the other thing I'd bring up is with powerlifting.
Speaker 2:You say there's three major types of exercises right, the back squat, the dead lift and the bench press, bench press.
Speaker 1:So?
Speaker 2:so, if you're talking about competitive powerlifting, yes, those are the three lifts right in a competition and then if you talk about olympic lifting, which is what you see with people who compete in crossfit and such, they're the clean and jerks and what's the cleaning and the snatch and the snatch yeah so it's interesting like those are more compound movements, but those are also the ones that make the shoulder surgeon sitting across from me very nervous.
Speaker 1:Well, in my opinion, as someone who competed in powerlifting, I think the Olympic lifts are more complex.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think a lot more can go wrong if you're not careful. So not telling people not to do it, but I would encourage. I'm scared to do snatches and clean and jerks because I'm afraid of doing it wrong. I'm scared to do snatches and clean and jerks because I'm afraid of doing it wrong. I would never attempt to do those lifts without a coach who's there in person teaching me the correct technique and making sure I'm doing it safely, when I feel that a bench press is probably the easiest thing to learn. Now I'm biased because I've just been bench pressing a long time and I love it.
Speaker 2:You also did work with a coach at one point and they were incredibly helpful.
Speaker 1:That was especially for my deadlift though. Yeah, out of those three lifts the deadlift, the bench press and the squat I think the deadlift is the easiest one to mess up and hurt yourself with. So some of my patients I tell them look, don't even bother deadlifting, even though it's a fantastic exercise, because I'm just worried they're going to hurt themselves and rather than focus on other lifts.
Speaker 2:What are they most likely to hurt? Their low back, their low back, I see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're most likely to hurt their low back. And when you're dealing with lots of patients in a day and most of them have never exercised, you have to take a perfect is the enemy of good. You have to take the approach of okay, if I'm just getting them into the gym at all, it's a win. I'm not going to try to get them to do a perfect deadlift. They're more likely to hurt themselves and have good come out of that.
Speaker 2:Right, if they see you once every three to six months, if that.
Speaker 1:Potentially, it depends. You have to pick your battles, so to speak.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great way to wrap up. Let's talk about that. If you're just getting into exercise, let's wrap up both our episodes. If you're just getting into exercise, it's the new year. You want to get healthy. You're motivated to live a longer life, have better quality of life, have a better health span, be more functional, happy, be there for your family so you can lift your grandchildren, or just more spend time doing things you love with your kids, or whatever your motivation might be.
Speaker 1:I think getting started with steady state cardio is a great place to start. I would have a goal to eventually end up doing more high intensity interval training and sprinting. If your main goal is weight loss For generic longevity, I would definitely do some resistance training. Whatever that might be, whether it's CrossFit group classes, orange theory, just going to the gym and exercising on your own I would absolutely encourage you to make that at least a twice weekly activity, whether you're doing steady state cardio or sprinting, and know yourself. If you're like Nicole and you need a gym buddy, find someone who can be your partner and do that with you, and make it a goal that you go and work out twice a week at least with that person and then that also helps you stay a little bit more accountable into the new year past just the January new year's resolution kind of timeframe.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I would also harp on this all the time. I keep a journal. I really encourage people to keep journals and think about okay, I've started feeling better after I exercised for two weeks and think about how you felt. Did I sleep better that night? Did I wake up feeling more refreshed? Do I have less pain during the day? Am I feeling more awake during the day? You know you take note of how you're feeling when you do these things.
Speaker 2:The main thing is just know that you're, even though you are a unique sunflower, as a person, you're not actually that unique, because if you've thought it, chances are somebody else has thought it too. If you need an exercise buddy, you're not the only one who needs an exercise buddy. There's somebody out there who likes the same thing you like, and, given how many boutique gyms and fitness- Boutique, boutique, what's boutique?
Speaker 1:What do you mean? Boutique?
Speaker 2:Boutique Boutique. What's boutique? What do you mean? Boutique Boutique Is it what? I don't know, I'm just taking fun of you Boutique gyms, I think it's pronounced boutique.
Speaker 1:I think you're saying like bo-peep, you're saying like boutique.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm just teasing you. Boutique, is that better unique exercise places out there so you'll be able to find an exercise buddy.
Speaker 1:I think that pretty much wraps it up. I think the ideal world you'd incorporate steady state, high intensity interval training and strength training. Remember you need to progressively increase your strength training, but do it in a slow, safe and controlled manner. Don't be trying to go and max out your bench press every day because you think it's looks cool and you can brag to your friends that you have a better bench press. Believe me, if you get yourself hurt, you're not going to want to go back to the gym for six weeks and then you get demotivated and you get upset and frustrated. Also, remember, don't go out and start running sprints right away. Gradually work into it.
Speaker 1:I don't want you getting hurt and becoming discouraged. All of these things should be taken very slowly and progressed carefully and look for feedback when you can get it and don't be afraid to ask people questions. If you're in the gym, people tend to be very friendly and are happy to answer your questions. If you see someone who looks like they know what they're doing, my experience is that person is very happy to help you, as long as you approach them and just ask them politely. There's a lot of people in this fitness community who are very excited and happy to help you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I would say there's more people who are ready to infuse positivity than the few bad apples who infuse negativity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's absolutely true. Sometimes the bad apples, unfortunately, are the loudest, but if you find the good apples which most of them are, they're really very welcoming and helpful. I know that if you came and asked me anything at the gym, if I still went to the gym, I'd be happy to help you with anything I could. Nicole, I think that pretty much wraps up the episode. Thank you again for joining me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. Happy New Year everybody, and we're excited to hear about your fitness endeavors.
Speaker 1:That's right. Look for the Dry January podcast episode coming up soon. We'll be doing that and we can talk a little bit more about New Year's resolutions coming up soon, I think, and maybe some of the psychology behind that too. That might be fun and that'll be coming up in the next couple weeks. So I hope you all had a great Christmas, happy New Year and remember be humble, be happy, be healthy and go do some squats. We'll see you soon.
