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The Better Fitness Podcast
Hosted by Sarah Showalter and Collin McGee, The Better Fitness Podcast takes you behind the scenes of building a successful fitness journey—inside and outside the gym. Each episode, we explore strength training, nutrition, and other wellness topics through personal experience, insightful interviews with members, coaches, and industry experts. We’ll also dive into gym culture, the fitness industry, and the business behind building a brand like AFC.
The Better Fitness Podcast
Strength Training 101
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We dive into the science and applications of strength training for all ages, defining what it is and dispelling common misconceptions about how to build real strength.
• Strength training requires working muscles at 70-80% of maximum capacity, not high-rep endurance activities
• Children as young as 6-7 can safely strength train, with research showing no negative impacts on growth
• People in their 80s and beyond benefit tremendously from proper strength training for fall prevention and quality of life
• Training 2-3 times weekly with full-body sessions is the "Goldilocks zone" for most people seeking results
• Power (ability to move quickly) is lost twice as fast as strength with aging, making speed training crucial alongside strength work
• Consistent practice of fundamental movements like squats, presses, and pulls applies across all ages, just modified appropriately
• There are no "bad exercises," only inappropriate applications based on individual circumstances
• Functional fitness prioritizes training that improves real-life movement patterns and abilities
If you're a current Alliance Fitness Center member who has never had a Functional Range Assessment (FRA), we're looking for three volunteers to receive a free assessment as part of our coach training program. Contact us to participate!
Episode Introduction and Weekend Recap
Speaker 1Welcome back to the Better Fitness Podcast . If you're new here , I am Coach Sarah . I'm Coach Colin . And we both work at Alliance Fitness Center . We are based out of Wyomissing Pennsylvania , and we are going to talk about all things strength training , because technically , this is a strength training podcast .
Speaker 3That's right , this episode unofficially sponsored by Kenya ramen Because it was so good . Hopefully they sponsor us very shortly . Our coaches are hungry and your ramen is fantastic .
Speaker 1It was very good . They also have rice bowls too , so if you're not a ramen fan or a sushi fan , I had a sweet teriyaki pork rice bowl and it was delicious . So 10 out of 10 , highly recommend .
Speaker 3That's amazing . But if you don't like spicy ramen , you should look yourself in the mirror and consider yourself why , why it's so good .
Speaker 1I mean spicy ramen is very spicy but so good . Okay , so going into the nitty gritty , before we go into the nitty gritty , rather , let's chat about your weekend that you just had . You were just up in Cornell , your alma mater , you had a baseball reunion . So tell us about that . What did you do ? How'd it go it ?
Speaker 3was really rainy . If anyone knows where I've been to upstate New York and especially Ithaca near Lake Cayuga and all that stuff , the lake effect , everything sucks , but it's for a little bit of spring and the summer is beautiful . It kind of makes up the rest of the nine months of the year , but it was a great weekend we are . We're celebrating our assistant coaches 35 years , I think , finally retired , um , and the guy is a exemplary model of a father figure respectful , supportive , yet firm educator and is always clear . How passionate he was about the sport . Um , and the fact that we almost had like 35 guys , I think , from all over the country show up on a whim to see him kind of spoke volumes about who he was .
Speaker 3It was a great weekend . Got to see the new field and the facilities , got to shadow the football team in the weight room Cornell's a Division I school on almost all sports . The strength and conditioning facilities are fantastic and have been really upgraded with not only their colors and their branding but a lot of their technology and whatnot . So it was cool to hang out with the coaches , who were really friendly and let me be a little flat on the wall hang out with the kids and interact and stuff . So it was a good weekend for sure .
Speaker 1Is Cornell Division I in football too .
Speaker 3Kind of I think they're Division I AA . I don't know what that means , but they're not fully individual .
Speaker 1Is that like an Ivy League thing ?
Speaker 3Not really .
Speaker 2I think the divisions depend on a lot of different things when it comes to the size of your program , what you want to do , what you want to have funding-wise , there's a lot that goes into it . Yeah , it's a little weird . I still don't know . I have no idea .
Speaker 1Did you learn anything new while you were shadowing in the strength training room ?
Speaker 3I think it was just really nice to see a different strength training organization .
Speaker 3When it comes to the sets and reps , the thought processes were about the same , which is really nice to see .
Speaker 3That the strength coaches were using a lot of objective information and force gauging and velocity based measurements to better understand the athletes , preparedness and trying to find that like strong enough so that they just don't continue to push strength for no reason because there's a diminishing returns when it comes to strength training .
Speaker 3You know if you can squat 200 pounds and get to 300 pounds , you probably have a lot of value . But the value from squatting , you know four to 500 pounds you get way less benefit for an unreasonable amount of risk . And so they can start to quantify that strong enough , whatever it is for the risk , and so they can start to quantify that strong enough , whatever it is for the sports . And then they start to switch gears and start to train more power . And how can you take that strength and learn to use it quickly and measure it and see if that's improving . And then that allows them to really direct their athletes into the stuff that's going to translate to the field a lot more , which isn't endless strength . It's strong enough and then making them move fast , making them move explosively and athletically , and then getting good at the sport with quality of practice and rest and recovery and all that kind of stuff . So it was cool to see everything people doing their job ?
Speaker 3oh yeah , people yeah do their job really well . Um , so hats off to cornell , as always , and it's cool to see that we do the same thing with uh . Technology that costs about two percent of what they spend , but we don't have a hundred thousand dollar budget for tech not yet , not yet sponsors who wants to sponsor us ? Perch and what was else there . Kaiser and Powerlift , the racks were really cool . I don't know what they were . Never heard of them before .
Speaker 1Powerlift , powerlift , powerlift . Powerlift cars ? I don't know , yeah , so , so it was a good weekend . It was dope . Thanks .
Speaker 2How was your weekend ? Was it hot and humid and enjoyable ?
Speaker 1It was a great weekend . I ran the Broad Street Run yesterday , sunday May 4th , in Philly center city , philly , and it was an experience . I will say that it's kind of crazy . For a 10-mile race , there was 40,000 runners . That is like world marathon status right there . It was kind of crazy . A lot of people . Unfortunately , the weather was not on our side . It was supposed to rain at the start , which I would have very much welcomed , but it did not rain until like one o'clock that day and for the whole race it was probably like close to 70 degrees and it was warm and humid AF sounds like about that I uh , yeah , I don't do well in humidity .
Speaker 1I don't know who does well in humidity , but yeah it was .
Speaker 1It was an experience , like I said , but it was my first race back post um stress fracture in my foot , um , and really I have to cut myself some slack I . I didn't do as well as I wanted to yesterday but , like I said , I needed to give myself some slack because really I've only been running consistently post injury for only three months . So I did , I guess , fairly well , considering how much I walked I . It was my first race where I accepted beer from spectators , so I , even though the race , it was really warm right from the get-go , right from the jump , I knew it was not going to be my day .
Speaker 1Um , I tried to turn it around as much as I possible the second half and make the most of it and have a party . So , yeah , then we went to the phillies game afterwards and where it poured then . So , but yeah it was , it was a good experience . Will I do it again ? Probably not . I'll save the lots of people , lots of runners for for like a world marathon , like I said , like chicago or boston , something like that so yeah sure oh yeah , that was , that was my weekend , what ?
Speaker 1okay , so into the nitty-gritty strength training , strength training 101 . So if you don't know colin , he is the smartest person you will probably
Colin's Cornell Visit and Training Philosophy
Speaker 1ever meet um a lot of people at the gym . Uh , call him the professor . It's kind of like an Einstein , if you will . Sometimes lacks common sense .
Speaker 3Who needs it ?
Speaker 1But sometimes lacks knowledge of common skills . But it's fine , he reads research papers for fun . So I will be basically the facilitator of today's episode and he will be answering all the questions and talking all the science-y stuff about what strength training is . So I think it sounds silly , but I think we should define what strength training actually is . I think most of us think we know what it is , but what is it and what is it not ?
Speaker 3Yeah , I always like coming at it from the angle of what strength training isn't , because a lot of people will get confused and have a lot of misconceptions around . I'm getting stronger , and so on and so forth . So things I've heard before uh , like runners . Runners will be like oh , I'm gonna go out and run and my ability to run one mile to running five miles , from running alone means my legs are getting stronger . Or cyclists will go out and they'll just get on the bike a bunch and like my legs are getting stronger . Or cyclists will go out and they'll just get on the bike a bunch and like my legs are getting stronger , and so on and so forth .
Speaker 3The issue with that is that strength training is more about getting towards the , the movement and ultimately the muscles , near maximum ability , practicing doing that a bunch and teaching your brain how to send more signal to your muscle , get more of your muscle to work harder and then repeat . That is typically done with efforts around 70 to 80 percent of your max and movements that are very simple and stable . So you can imagine a squat or a leg press or a bench press and things like that , where the running example and the cycling example are very , very , very low on the muscular effort side of things . It's has to be because you can do thousands of reps of them . You cannot do thousands of reps of pure strength training . Just it wouldn't be strength training right now . You can see , you know lots of force .
Speaker 3It's a common fact to throw around that runners experience three to five times their body weight every time they take a step . So it's not that it's not hard , but it is different from true quote unquote strength training , which I would define as some type of slow and controlled near maximum effort for the muscle or the movement in a controlled and stable environment . And it can't be done for many , many , many reps . Otherwise you're just not working as heavier , as intensely as you think it is . Even though running a marathon , 26 miles , at the end of that thing you're feeling like death . But feelings can be really deceiving because the thing that needs to happen is this minimum effort relative to your max . Otherwise it's not strength training and basically , otherwise you're not getting the benefits of what strength training can do for you fits what strength training can , can do for you .
Speaker 1So for someone that , let's say , likes to cycle they don't do anything else , they just like to cycle , but they're , they feel like they're getting like a good , like a good pump in their quads quote-unquote , pump , um , and they think they're getting stronger . Are they getting stronger ?
Speaker 3their must do their muscles get stronger from doing the cycling there's probably um blips on the radar during their training on the calendar year where a cycling effort goes uphill steeply and they have to work pretty hard for a couple , like a 30 second stretch , or they've cycled so long they get to a point of maybe near failure and in tiny doses you do have muscle growth stimulus or muscle growth requests from the body and a little bit of strength training because it's some high effort . But the issue is that it's still not dosed as heavy as the quads can be working , because if I dosed it really heavy for the quads that might look like a five rep and you can't do any more lunge exercise where cycling , even the hardest cycle , is going to be 30 to 100 reps . Imagine your legs just ripping around . You know , if you do something on a site you could , you can crank up some of these bikes to a heavy , heavy resistance and you're gonna be like trudging through mud . That's pretty strength training I would .
Speaker 3I would tip my cap to that um , but it's just different and the importance is that the benefits that you receive from cycling or submaximal many rep things , is just going to be different from strength training , which is high effort , low rep stuff . You need both . But you cannot assume that one will give you the benefits of all . You're going to miss out on a lot of benefits from the other half .
Speaker 1Yeah , it's kind of like how runners , and especially the old school class of runners , will say that running hills , like hill training , is strength training training and that is further from the truth , right it's one step in the right direction , but still pretty far off yeah , like . Yes , you are getting stronger at hills , but not necessarily the stimulus that the muscle needs right and that's the definition .
Speaker 3That's important because a lot of people will use the term um , I'm getting stronger at x interchangeably with better , and better is not stronger , better , better is just better . So if you're getting better at running hills , you can absolutely not get stronger and still get better , because you just learn how to do it . You're getting more coordinated , you're learning the skill and so your brain and body become more efficient at taking the strength that you have and using it better or more efficiently per step in the task . That is uphill . So you might get up a hill faster or you might feel better at the top of that hill . But if you were to go measure the effort coming out of your quads on a machine , it might be the same .
Speaker 3So person A and B they both run up hills better , faster . But I take person A onto a squat and a leg press and person B on a squat and a leg press . If one of them , let's say B , in the past four weeks has improved their leg press , they have gotten truly stronger . But it is a hundred percent possible that there's a person person A that doesn't get that much stronger in a leg press yet can still run faster up a hill in the same context , and so better is not stronger , stronger is stronger and better is more comprehensive around skill and learning how to do things efficiently yeah , okay , um , to backtrack a little bit .
Speaker 1So , strength training , like , who is it ? Who is it good for ? Obviously it's good for runners , because we already talked about that in cyclists and and the athletes , um , but who else is it good for , um ? And how can you talk about like how , like who we train at the gym and kind of how , how we do that , like our philosophy ?
Speaker 3so if you fall under the classification of genus species homo sapien , you need the strength train , which means everyone .
Speaker 1For those that didn't get that joke , okay , so nerds who's who's the youngest like what's the youngest age that you think that you , you train ?
Speaker 3uh , I have helped .
Speaker 3Those are like six or seven years old I think with strength training and it is absolute mythology that kids and the youth cannot lift weights . It is a whisper down the alley of some old observational research papers that basically looked at um labor intensive work and called it strength training . And these kids were just not eating well and their growth and development was stunted . And therefore strength training . And these kids were just not eating well and their growth and development was stunted . And therefore strength training and everything physical labor became growth stunting .
Speaker 3But to this day in more modern research , there's no paper that will confirm or support that physical activity is detrimental for a youth's growth and development Absolutely not . In fact , the most risky thing you can do for your kids is let them play sports . I'll say it again the most risky thing you can do for your kids is let them play sports . There is nothing more dangerous than high velocity , chaotic physical activity in high volumes , under competitive nature and , alongside doing that , five or six other sports which you are probably let your kids do because the multi-sport athlete is really important .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 3So strength training is totally safe and my qualifications for the minimum age for someone to lift is . This is supported by the research . So I'm the middleman . They're just emotionally able to handle instruction . So if I say , hey , little Johnny , here's a dumbbell , put it by your side , bring it up to your shoulder and down like a bicep curl , and he takes it and he throws it . It hits little Ashley in the face . Little Johnny's not ready to lift weights , and now little Ashley is not either .
Speaker 1So that's like from like a mental and emotional standpoint . So there's nothing like there's no physical physiologically Gotcha , yeah , yeah , because that's I mean , that's so true , like who do you know that ? Really like got seriously injured from lifting weights ? And that's like .
Speaker 3You're obviously like an olympic power lifter , or right like doing crossfit and at that point it's your sport yeah sport for whiskey .
Speaker 3Yeah , as far as athletes go , like they get injured
What is Strength Training?
Speaker 3, like they have these serious injuries like tears and broken bones , from doing the actual sport itself , yeah , 100% and any of the injuries that were showed in these papers happened from like accidents or happened from like environmental based accidents , like the room wasn't clean or they weren't supervised and they're goofing off kind of thing . But the risk for actual injury like if little johnny is holding a dumbbell doing a squat , the risk his quad is going to explode is next to nothing so what's like ?
Speaker 1what's the benefit of a kid that's like six or seven to start strength training ? What's the benefit to that ?
Speaker 3learning , growth and development , enhanced body awareness , motor control , hormonal regulation to help them manifest better muscle tissue tendon , and this confidence , like the benefits , are just innumerable . When it comes to lifting heavy lifting weights , you know , I mean relatively heavy , um , and there's just no consequence . Besides , now , if you're a bad coach or you have a dirty gym and you're unsupervised and you take in crazy little kids , sure then it's dangerous , but so is everything anything right um , but the benefits are just everything .
Speaker 3And when it comes to injury prevention , to a like a gray area of understanding , strength training in almost any form that gets you stronger , it reduces injury risk up to like 50 automatically , and then there are nuanced levels to this when it comes to what you're doing and how effective that strength training is . That preventing like hamstrings or acl tears and all that kind of stuff , um , but yeah , there's just , there's no bad to it can't convince me . There's a single bad thing about letting kids lift anyone lift .
Speaker 1So yeah , so on the other other end of the spectrum , um , what about the more senior population ? What is the oldest human that you have coached and what is the benefit to that ? Um , mary's 88 I would say like something like that , I forget sorry , mary , if you're hearing this , I forget your name .
Speaker 3That's what you get for coming in unannounced today and ruining my time you don't forget her name .
Speaker 1You're her age . Whatever you said , I forget her name um , and so strength , by the way and mary .
Speaker 3Mary loves colin and they joke , so that's right , it's fine I better see this posted on facebook with everything else you did um the strength training for the aging athlete as we like to tell them um number one is just again that muscular tendon tissue strength becomes more resilient , so you are more resilient towards injury . It greatly enhances the reduction of your fall risk , the improvement of your power output to have a better quality of life and more range of motion , longevity , brain health , heart health , everything else that keeps you living longer and living as long as your potential deems you . Strength training can greatly help with , and it comes in the form of the same things I would give a 30 year old , whatever the shapes of the exercises and the intensity just get modified . So my seven year old kid , my 88 year old I was going to call her my grandma , but she's basically my family 88 year old Mary .
Speaker 3Mary and then my 30 year old self . We all squat , all of us squat , all of us dumbbell bro , all of us jump and run in some fashion , but just the way a seven year old does it and the way I do it and the way someone in their 80s does . It just looks a little different , but all the principles are same . We're using something that is relatively heavy for us , again near that maximum effort for the movement or the muscle . It's simple , it's stable and its ability to be repeated over time and naturally progressed . It's all the same because it all has the very benefit . And then the benefits just speak a little differently to the decade . So there's growth and development , hormonal regulation in the younger kids , there's the maintenance of the tissue , health and quality in your aging self , and then when you're in the middle , it kind of does a little bit of all those things for the same reasons .
Speaker 1So I need to know what does jumping look like for Mary ?
Speaker 3Jumping for Mary .
Speaker 1Like the speed , look like .
Speaker 3So if you can imagine a college athlete and they're jumping onto a box right For the 80-year old plus person and mary has a knee replacement , so what we would do with her , that would be quote-unquote . Jumping is probably just like the oh , excuse me , boba tea's coming up the med ball like standing chest toss so mary has a med ball .
Speaker 3She's in like a little squat and she's 20 feet away from a cement wall and she has to kind of not , she doesn't leave the ground with this jump , but she stands up really quickly and then she pushes the ball really fast . All of that is a nose to toes high velocity movement that essentially would be jumping if she was just doing it a little higher . But she won't because of her knee and we're not going to make her actually jump on a wobbly knee replacement . But that is quote-unquote jump , which is principally just higher speeds than the individual will engage with on average throughout their day . So for athletes , we try and get them to move as fast , if not faster , than their sport .
Who Benefits from Strength Training?
Speaker 3And then for everyone else , whatever you're doing on average for the day . Let's say you're a weekend warrior and like to go jog , we're going to make you sprint . You're a sedentary person and you just sit down , we're going to make you move through a ladder and jump around a little bit .
Speaker 1So why is that important , like , why is it important to move a little bit faster than you normally would , to move a little bit faster than you normally would like ? Is it important to like , add that like power , quote-unquote , sprinting element into the training , especially especially to talk to the um , the elder , the senior population ?
Speaker 3because your body can either be , um , like a light switch or a dimmer when it comes to your movements and your strength . So when you strength train , you are moving heavy things relatively with high effort Power . The only difference in definition is the time frame that you do that in . So if I squat a lot of geese back there , if I squat 100 pounds and it takes me 10 seconds to do it for one rep , hypothetically , sarah squats 100 pounds and it takes her two seconds to do it . She is more powerful that . That not only comes from the muscle in the brain . But to teach someone to move faster , you actually have to move faster because the timeliness and the quickness of that communication from brain to muscle is a trainable quality that is separate from just telling a lot of your muscle to help out in the task . So when we there's a great quote that I might botch here , there's a great quote that I might botch here um , but they say that , uh , you don't grow old and stop playing . They say you grow old because you stop playing .
Speaker 3Athletic movements and high quality movements keep you quick and snappy and mobile and all that kind of stuff . So the nature of our environment tells your body and tells your brain how to be able to behave and react on a daily basis . So if you're only telling your body to move things heavy and slow , that's great , but you can't assume that you're also going to be able to move fast . And move fast can look like sprinting , or it could look like some little kid is running through the grocery and you got to get out the way , or you kind of misstep and you fall off the curb or two steps and then you can quickly catch yourself without falling down . Examples of the brain telling the muscle to use the strength it has , but a lot faster than just oh , I know , I have to slowly lift this thing up .
Speaker 3So you have to incorporate the fastness of telling your body how to move , because that is just a separate trainable quality . That is different from strength training , which is telling your body how to give a lot of effort . They are interconnected but they do not change the same by doing one thing . There is no one size truly fits all when it comes to that . There's a good research paper from I forget his name right now Bossera has worked with them . From I forget his name right now Baser has worked with them . Where the ability to tell your body how to move fast reduces twice as fast as your body's general ability to give a lot of effort . So in simple terms , you lose power twice as fast as you lose strength as you age .
Speaker 1So you need to not only lift heavy things , but you also need to tell your body how to move fast in the relatively appropriate form for you cool , yeah , um , can you talk about , like , what our training philosophy is at afc and how you because you're a fitness fitness director how you came to adapting that philosophy and kind of distilling that into like me , um , and all the coaches that are underneath of , like I know we are a functional fitness gym , like that's what we like to kind of preach upon . Um , so can you touch upon that a little bit , like what functional fitness is and how you adapted our philosophy ? Yes , uh .
Speaker 3So I have to shout out my first ever like mentors and educational weekend workshops uh , mike boyle and the certified functional strength certification , so kevin carr and steve bigelow and all the homies from massachusetts that really showed me how you can be a super knowledgeable and helpful person while also being like a cool person . So , so love that stuff . Great stories from those guys and that education and certification weekend showed me how to take the cool knowledge of muscle this and bone that and physiology this , but be able to package it in an actual , practical , you know 60 minute session that you're dealing with real humans and you can get them in and communicate with them and connect , get them to enjoy this fitness and working out stuff , but also in a way that keeps them safe while progressing and seeing the results and whatnot . So our , our philosophy , I'd say , boils down to teaching people how to practically work out and enjoy doing it , so much so that they consistently come two to three times a week for the rest of their lives , which is the biggest magic pill when it comes to seeing results . It's just do you do it and do you do it for long enough ? Now , on top of that , I think we do a really good job of how effectively we do things and the choices we make and the exercises we choose and the doses that we implement . A little bit of that comes down to good communication on hey , how heavy was that ? You think you can go a little heavier ? Great , let's do it .
Speaker 3Or even with our athletes , we have the ability to measure things and put actual numbers and data to things . So I know exactly . Going into today's session with Caroline , I saw that a recent test from her deadlift test showed that her numbers stayed about the same . So I made the choice for a new programming today to focus more on , like , high effort strength , because I want to see that number go up a little bit . So we have information that tells us exactly what direction to take our people going towards the results that they're looking for .
Speaker 3And we do so in ways where and this is again a CFSC thing where our first rule , our first law , is do no harm . So whatever we do , we no one's getting hurt . And when accidents happen and I've certainly pushed some people a little too far , to the point they might have tweaked something a little bit no more than a couple days and they're back . But um , so it's just dealing with humans and whatnot , but the number one thing you have to do is make sure that whatever you're doing is not going to get someone hurt .
Speaker 3You know , then you're enjoying fitness , they're making it a sustainable , lifelong goal and then you're also giving them the results and the performance that they want . And I think a lot of people enjoy what we do . They stick around Some people , freaking , stick around way too long . We love them all and I think that we show people how fun and enjoyable fitness is , and the people that find that early in their lives see a much healthier life , not only with strength and mobility up and down stairs or running or whatnot , but with health and mental health and confidence and the ability to kind of tackle the world comprehensively .
Speaker 1So that's aggression . Yeah , so do you ever do like upper body , lower body splits , like push pull days , like what's the difference between doing a full body lift and doing those kind of splits ? Or even just like body part splits like a back and thighs day or chest and triceps day ?
Speaker 3the old body part . Split training like upper , lower abs or push , pull , blah , blah , blah or back and buys comes from the old like bodybuilding style things , where to make a muscle grow to its absolute limit you have to hit it from as many angles as possible and as much frequency as possible that you can still kind of recover from and whatnot Layer in some of the steroids people have been doing and the information kind of gets confusing whether or not it actually worked or not . But that's kind of where that comes from . We are not dealing with bodybuilders in our demographic . We're dealing with people that just need to get a little stronger , lose a little bit of weight , feel a little better , move a little better and then live their lives .
Speaker 3That can be done in a much smaller dose and when we want someone to be healthier and stronger , nose to toes , the more boxes that we can check per day per week , the better of a job that we can do that .
Speaker 3So , rather than having a back and byes day and then a leg day and see them twice a week and only get really one day's worth of stuff , if you do a full body effort , you can hit , push and pull and arms and back and toes and calves and neck and this and that , and over the course of time , more of that person is going to get better , is going to move better , is going to feel a lot stronger , because they don't need their biceps to become the size of their head , which might require four days of biceps . Our people can get a lot stronger doing a lot less . As long as they're coming in two to three times a week , they're hitting those minimum efforts and they're staying healthy and they're recovering well . And this even goes for like our highest performing individual athletes . We don't do a ton , a ton of training and every single one gets really strong , really healthy . They go to college , they come back and they're like , oh my God , I was so prepared and I feel better .
Speaker 3And yeah , because I was that person in college , I way over did it , yeah , better . And yeah , because I was that person in college , I way over did it , yeah , got hurt , all that kind of stuff , and I realized more is not better , better is better so , and that brings me to my next question .
Speaker 1So , like our sweet spot is like two to three times a week to strength train . To come to the gym , is it bad necessarily to be lifting weights like five , six , maybe seven times a week ?
Speaker 3uh no , I used to believe that you absolutely needed 24 hours of rest before you lifted again in the same body group or whatnot . If you dive into it a little bit , um , the amount of time it requires for a particular muscle group and really getting into the weeds , like the region of the muscle itself .
Speaker 3To recover is dependent upon a lot of different variables and it's all about how you train the muscle . That tells you how much you have to recover and when you should train it again in a particular way so that you don't lead into overtraining . So , for example , a very stressful version of exercise is running downhill . Running downhill is terrible .
Speaker 1It's terrible , terrible , it's terrible Ask .
Speaker 3Sarah's leg . Most of you will be familiar with the negative exercise in which you might control the exercise slowly to the end of the range of motion but you're not really creating the range of motion . That is an eccentric contraction . In eccentric contractions you just accumulate a lot of muscle fatigue . This comes from a lot of intricate processes inside the muscle . Maybe for another podcast , if you will um as compared to cycling .
Speaker 3So let's say , sarah runs downhill and then she cycles she's using her legs hill and then she cycles she's using her legs . Cycling is way more recoverable . If sarah ran 100 steps and cycled 100 steps , sarah could cycle 100 steps every day for the rest of her life . There's no contact with the ground , there's no high force , there's no eccentric , and so it really depends on how you use the body and that will determine how long you need to rest . But more often than not , something that is very new might be fatiguing . Something that is again in the eccentric or negative contractions is very fatiguing , or high volume of things can be very , very fatiguing sneakily . So those are the things that you have to look for and better understand in your training program , and that's going to let you know I can work out Monday and Tuesday , or oh dang , I got to wait until Thursday to work out , even though my session was today , monday , right is one day a week of strength training too little ?
Speaker 3Yes , If you want to see results , like good results , minimum of twice a week , full body kind of thing , so that your body gets enough frequency , and doing enough sets and reps per week . Three times a week is probably the Goldilocks zone . I like it . Four times a week , sure , if you want to , if you're strategic . But one time a week will maintain your strength that you've gained if you have a good experience level and it might even be enough for you to see some results if you're brand new to lifting .
Speaker 3However , I think even in the maintenance world it's like after two months , once a week is not enough and you're just going to get weaker because your body is going to do exactly what you tell it . So if you're telling it , hey , I want you to get stronger , I'm going to consistently challenge you , it'll get stronger . If you tell it , hey , we're going to kind of be lazy , we're only going to do it once a week or nothing . It's going to get lazy and not be able to do anything . So if you want to see results , get into the gym , do the thing
Functional Fitness Philosophy
Speaker 3at least twice a week , if not three times a week . You know you wouldn't go golfing once a week and expect yourself to be good , you just need more reps .
Speaker 1Yeah , agreed . Is there any exercise that is bad ? Let's , let's talk why . Why are burpees bad , dumb burpees burpees are my question . I know , yeah what burpees ?
Speaker 3uh , burpees are just a highly complicated high again your body hitting the ground . Exercise done for the wrong reasons under the wrong terms . So if I , if I really wanted to fracture someone's palm and the wrist , I would ask them to fall to the ground and try and catch themselves over and over and over again . That's how I would purposely break someone's wrist . Yet we continue to try and use it as cardio doesn't make sense . Um , it doesn't last long enough to be cardio like it's hard . It gets your heart rate up . But I've talked about this in a presentation . We can send you a link to the whole presentation . Just because something is hard and it gets your heart rate up doesn't make it cardio like boo a little bit of heart rate elevation .
Speaker 3There you can see how terrified she was , was it cardio ? No right . Blood pressure changes with like medication and temperature and emotions and all these kind of things that can make your heart rate go up and down , and it's just not going to actually elicit the same cardiovascular heart changes that true cardio does . Um , as well as other parts of the body , so it's just like an overly complicated exercise that's done for a misleading reason . Sure people can do it ? Sure high school football has been doing it forever and you know it's painful and it gives you a mental toughness and I think there's just smarter ways to .
Speaker 1I think the military does it too .
Speaker 3Right yeah , but the military is such a good example for exercise , except for our homie , taylor Starsh , who's doing really well with the Air Force and all that kind of stuff . So there are some really good places . There's a lot of other functional range crew working with some spec ops and Navy SEALs . So there are good parts of the military , so there are good parts in the military .
Speaker 2But you're like general bootcamp military Woof , no offense , love military .
Speaker 3A lot of my friends are Marines and we have this conversation all the time , like the people that need to be the fittest in the world and the healthiest in the world to do the craziest things ever that they sign up for is the military and they also are the ones doing the dumbest stuff to get them prepared .
Speaker 3So back ass words , and I get the dumbest stuff to get them prepared . So back ass words and I get it . You like you need to find that seventh gear that doesn't exist in normal civilian life . So you do a bunch of crazy stuff like hell week and whatnot , but there's got to be a good balance , normal yeah you need to be healthy to carry a 70 pound rockin ar-15 . Whatever up m16 up a hill to yeah .
Speaker 1So the same thing with too , with , like police officers and firefighters yeah you know like what their fitness tests look like probably stupid .
Speaker 3I don't . I haven't seen him a long time . Um , I know a lot like we're working with . Well , she's working for the air force and something I was working with was going for like the police stuff . It's like mild signs and sit-ups and still different stuff that doesn't relate to chasing down bad guys , I wonder too if , like , they have like annual or like bi-annually tests too to make sure .
Speaker 1Probably not yeah , because that's definitely , that should definitely be there .
Speaker 3They make you do a bunch of dumb stuff to get into the academy and they probably don't do anything to make sure you're actually healthy .
Speaker 1So Anyway , we digress , we digress , we digress . Back to my question . Is there any exercise , especially like , maybe for like , the five or six year old to the 88 year old ? Is there any exercise that ?
Speaker 3Like objectively bad .
Speaker 1Yes , and not burpees , like like a exercise that you would give a Average age , human , and not burpees like like a exercise that you would give a average age human .
Speaker 3No , I don't think .
Speaker 3I'm still convinced that there's no bad , yeah , exercise , I think there are there's like articles , like magazine articles out there that say like people over the age of 17 no , there's only good exercises done under bad circumstances , like if you had a shoulder replacement and then you decided to do full range of motion pull-ups a week after surgery . You know something like that . Or you have poor wrist mobility , you do burpees , or you have a history of like knee arthritis or patellar pain or runner's knee . You have a bunch of time off . You go back into the gym for personal training and the first thing they do with you is like walking lunges . You know there's just good exercises under different circumstances , but they're just done at bad times .
Speaker 3And then they overload and overstress the individual and then they get hurt and then they can't see that it wasn't the lunge per se . It's just how the lunge was done and the timing of it and the dose of it and when they did it in their calendar year and training plan that was just inappropriate . Um , but then the lunge gets planned right and lifting gets planned , exercise gets planned and lifting heavy gets planned . It's lifting heavy , it's just doing good things under bad circumstances .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think a big question is do you need to do a separate session of abs ? Or do you need to do like five to 10 minutes of abs after your session . If you are the quote unquote ab finisher is like the buzzword , if you are like a bikini combat competitor bodybuilder .
Speaker 3You're on show . I think you need to specifically do your abs because you want to train the muscle so that they grow and they shape and stuff like that . Sure , if you are anyone else talk about this , you don't really need to do that again , unless you're like . My goal is to aesthetically see my abs and have them be a little shapely , right ? Yes , you could do a little bit of abs or strategically incorporate it , but not for like 10 minutes afterwards , not for a thousand reps . You can still do three by eight or three by ten or at least act like one or two ab exercises into the full body routine and that's more than enough because your abs are the same muscle as the rest of your body .
Speaker 3I don't have to double check the study , but I think it's some study that showed that the abdominals had a higher ratio of a muscle fiber type that is called type one versus type two .
Speaker 3So type one are the muscles that are very enduring they are the muscles in your back or the muscles that help you walk for a very long time and the type two muscle fibers are the bigger ones , like your quads and your back and your . You . And the type two muscle fibers are the bigger ones , like your quads and your back and your . You know that have more power .
Speaker 3And so someone whispered down the alley and equated that with the only way that your abs are going to get better is if you do 10 hours of 10,000 reps . That's not true , because there's type one and type two fibers intermixed in different ratios and all your muscles and you just train them essentially the same way and they grow . So again , if someone were to just do three by eight of some good controlled crunches and progressively made them a little harder over time and did them for three years , they would probably get the abs that they seek , assuming their nutrition and genetics and you know body fat percentage is there , um , as compared to the person that does 10 000 reps , because abs are different , it's no , you're just gonna end up overworking yourself , maybe tweaking something , and that's kind of where maybe , like ab training gets a bad rap for people's spines and whatnot .
Speaker 1Again , it's not the ab training , it's just people doing dumb stuff and calling it abs yeah , so and I think like the misconception is that I feel like the average population feels like they need to be doing a specific ab exercise to be working their abs right , when in reality , every exercise you do you should , your core is incorporated right , so it is working . I just know , like in the runner , in the runner world , um , you know , these online trainers will have like legs , legs and core , or arms and core , or 15 , 20 minute core workout , like you don't need that to get a stronger core . Like colin said . I think , like aesthetically , if you want to get like a 10 10 pack , then yes , you need to be doing the ab exercises .
Speaker 3But to get a stronger core , the stuff that you're already doing , like the big compound lifts , especially like it's doing enough , doing enough and you'll realize that the day that you do have like really sore abs and then you go to do anything else like get out of bed , you feel it . That means the muscles are working in that movement , so you're working hard . Everything's interconnected in that minimalistic way , and so your core is absolutely getting stronger . You don't need additional workload to do that .
Speaker 1Okay , last question , because I think , like you said earlier when we were talking about this , you could probably do a whole episode on this .
Speaker 3Yeah , this has been a solid Q&A , very good .
Speaker 1Oh , thank you .
Speaker 3There are no notes to this .
Speaker 1Yeah , we had no outline , this is just like .
Speaker 3Absolutely off the cuff yeah .
Speaker 1I'm impressed Even with me , because I'm not good at , like , thinking off the top of my head , she's getting better . I'm not good at talking , you guys . This is one of the reasons why I wanted to do a podcast , because I'm not good at talking . Anyway , what was my question ? No idea , we didn't say anything . Oh , I know we can probably do a whole other episode on this , but I think there's a lot of confusion around the terms flexibility versus mobility , so can you briefly
Exercise Myths and Misconceptions
Speaker 1define each of those ?
Speaker 3Briefly define each of those . Yeah , so how I would state it these days is , I think , as far as like the research which majority would term them mobility is the overall capacity to move .
Speaker 3So a very old double knee replacement , spinal fusion grandpa , as compared to your 18 year old , fresh into college division one athlete , the division one athlete is gonna have more mobility than the grandpa , not there .
Speaker 3The flexibility is then a term that comes in a couple iterations , where you have passive and active flexibility and then there are static and dynamic capacities to that . So you can have a active , dynamic flexibility which is kind of like swinging your leg you are creating the movement and it is in motion . There is a active static , so if I reach my arm over my head and I hold it , hold it , hold it I'm active , but it's not really moving over , at least at the end of it . Um . And then the passive ones are if I were to take sarah and like move her , like stretch her leg for her and so forth , um , there are those qualities , I think , what gets jumbled up , and I probably got caught up in this a couple years ago too , and for now , unless other information comes out , I think as long as you are understanding the passive nature of things .
Speaker 3So again , if I take sarah's arm , her arm is dead , it is limp and I move it in the air . How far that goes is her passive flexibility . If I ask Sarah to then match that effort like , hey , sarah , my hands are off of you , can you put your arm over your head ? That is her active flexibility . All of these are trainable to an extent , but sometimes they're not . Sometimes the way that Sarah's hips are shaped are coming from her birth and her genetics and there is no way that I am going to increase her hip rotation if she's already bone on bone because of the way things are shaped .
Speaker 3And then different athletes and humans need different things . So most runners kind of get in their head about having tight hamstrings , when tight hamstrings are really advantageous to putting force into the ground and moving forward , which is kind of what you're trying to do . Um , unless you also want to do gymnastics on the side . Uh , you know , everyone has their own goals . So I think it's just unnecessarily confusing for no reason , because people are just having kind of like a a battle over words and it's not pushing anyone in a forward direction about how to actually improve this stuff At the gym . You know we look at you from nose to toes in our FRA and our movement assessment . Also shut up functional range systems Again , great people that have helped me think the way I do and do what we do at the gym and what we want to see is that just let your joints move well , I can move them through space , they don't click and pop in pain and this and that I ask you to move .
Speaker 3You have control over that . Boom Step one , complete step two . Now we get them strong , now we make them move fast , now we make them coordinated and skillful and then we just kind of get them up to the needs of your life . Then we rinse and repeat um , I think looking at it from that perspective makes it a lot simpler than kind of worrying about like oh , that's not a mobility exercise , that's a flexibility exercise or oh , that's not . It's just kind of pointless at the end of the day . You know we're just trying to get people to move better and it really just deals with strategic strength training , some stretching , some powerful movements , exposure to different , various ranges of motion and speeds . You know that your life and sport kind of require that you rinse , wash and repeat , and I go from that . So I might've been nuanced , long answer , but unfortunately that's the answer .
Speaker 1Give me one mobility exercise .
Speaker 3In my eyes right now it's like anything like squat . There's a mobility exercise . If you go through range of motion , you know a partial squat is just a partial mobility exercise , right , but also another mobility exercise . I think mobility is just the biggest umbrella , or maybe it's the tree . Someone had a good example . I think mobility is the tree and then everything else are the branches that come out from it . You know .
Speaker 1Because I think what's get get , I think what gets confusing is um like mobility , like like flexibility , being like the static stretching .
Speaker 3Yeah and mobility being the active version of it yes , yeah , yeah um , because I I learned that too from some things like cars like it's like mobility , like moving it in , like in space , like the range .
Speaker 3Yeah , I don't know , I'd have to before I put my house on my words . I'd have to go back and look into the actual research and do all my homework myself , um , but I I think there's more language around flexibility , with those terms in the research and the literature . Then there is mobility . I think mobility again kind of refers to the total capacity of one's ability to move . Some people do say flexibility is the passive and mobility is the active . It's not malicious to say that . I don't think at all . You know , it just came from someone's ability to kind of put it into like a system like this is what we're going to call this exercise . This is what we're going to call this exercise , to keep it really simple , because my like honest answer is probably really confusing . But it's really easy to say , hey , the passive stuff we're going to call the x , and then the active stuff we're're gonna call y , x day , y , day .
Speaker 3You're like oh , okay , that makes sense and so whatever honestly gets people going in the right direction , doing the right exercises , and allows the coaches to think systematically and have a universal language between their staff , their clients and whoever they're working with . You know , so be it , I don't care , I'm not gonna fight you on it , because at the end of the day of the coach , I'll just say , hey ,
Flexibility vs. Mobility Explained
Speaker 3are you trying to do this , this , this , like I said , oh , okay , okay , we're talking about the same thing . Cool , you know so , but you have this conversation on instagram with 30 second clips and all that . Yeah , that's gonna be confusing . Welcome to every other niche too .
Speaker 1They all have the same issue so maybe we will do a specific episode on flexibility and mobility and have make colin do some homework and read some research .
Speaker 3I mean , I have a I do have a whole two hour plus research driven course and presentation on this that I have on the like , the climbing site and stuff .
Speaker 1So it gets pretty nerdy , but I think it's still pretty up to date pretty good so um , so , speaking of the functional range assessments , our fras um , anyone who is listening , that is a current member of alliance fitness Center that has never had a FRA done on them before we will call on is training a few of our coaches on performing FRAs . So if getting one of these assessments is something that you're interested in and , again , you have never had one of these before , let us know . You can get one for free from one of our trainees yes correct . I hope I did not just no , we're looking for three people yeah , yeah , three people .
Speaker 1So , yeah , if you're a current member and you never had one before , let us know . So so , yeah , I think , I think that's pretty solid . That was pretty solid today .
Speaker 3Yeah , make sure , wherever you listen to this , if you can . You support us most beneficially by leaving us a review and sharing this with friends . So if you're listening to it on Spotify or iTunes or anywhere , hit that review button . Give us as many stars as we deserve extra points . If you're leaving a few words with us and then share with friends that you think would also enjoy the content , that is how more people like yourself hear this and how , hopefully , we can help more of those people , guiding them in the right direction when it comes to health and fitness and their goals . What did we say ? Better fitness , better podcast .
Speaker 1Remember that what was it ? Better Fitness , Better Podcast .
Speaker 3Better .
Speaker 1Fitness . Better Results , Better Fitness Way to not know the tagline , this is only our second episode , only these episodes , alright . Well , thanks for hanging out with us and catch you later . Better Fitness , Better Podcast . Better Fitness , Better Results .
Speaker 3Put a better podcast .
Speaker 1Okay , goodbye .