All or Something Podcast

What New Research Reveals About Women's Training

• Sohee and Ben Carpenter

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For some strange reason, we haven't yet talked about Sohee's PhD study, so we thought we better change that.

For years, exercise science has relied more heavily on studies in men, leaving important questions about how women respond to resistance training unanswered.

In this episode of the All or Something Podcast, we discuss Sohee's newly completed PhD research investigating high-intensity circuit training in women. Rather than simply reviewing the existing evidence, she spent years conducting her own study to address an important gap in the literature.

We explain why previous research often underestimated training intensity in women, how her study was designed to overcome these limitations, what the results showed, and what they mean for women who want to build muscle, get stronger, or simply train more effectively.

Along the way, we also discuss why research in women is often more complex than research in men, the challenges of completing a PhD while building a career, and what it's like to finally see years of work come to an end.

Whether you're interested in resistance training, exercise science, or just curious about how research actually gets done, we hope you enjoy the conversation.

Topics covered:
- Why women have historically been underrepresented in exercise science
- High-intensity circuit training explained
- Training close to muscular failure
- What Sohee's PhD study found
- Practical implications for women (and men) who lift weights
- Common misconceptions about women's training

If you enjoy evidence-based conversations about fitness, nutrition, and health, subscribe for new episodes every week.

P.S., If you want to support us and would like monthly lifting workouts, you can join the Momentum by Sohee fitness app. http://momentumbysohee.com

If you are interested in fat loss science, you can purchase Ben's best-selling comprehensive fat loss book, Everything Fat Loss. http://geni.us/EverythingFatLoss

SPEAKER_00

Today we are talking about a very special topic and one of my favourite topics in the whole wide world, which is my wife. Or more specifically, my wife's PhD. Now I think it's kind of funny that we are 20 plus episodes in and at no point have we actually discussed your PhD in detail. I think that's I think it's us dropping the ball. I also think it is maybe Sohi being too humble because while we're talking about other people's research, at no point did she want to be like, oh, hi, I've done some research. So I think we should do a whole episode about this. Let's do it. So if we rewind slightly, back in 2019, before we first met, Sohi was doing a seminar with three other women. And I promoted it on my stories. And part of the reason I promoted it on my stories is because, at least at the time, I thought that there was a distinct lack of female educators in the industry relative to how many men there are in the industry. I follow a lot of men, I didn't follow that many women that were putting out educational content. And when I saw you were doing a seminar, I was like, this is great. I think people should sign up to it. And we hadn't spoken, we'd never met at this point. And that was kind of how we got into talking.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I don't think we'd ever exchanged messages in the DMs ever before then, even though we had been Instagram mutuals since I want to say 2017, but we weren't on actual speaking terms. So that was the first time you tagged me and obviously the other three women. And I remember this was the summer of 2019. I was so surprised because it came out of nowhere for me that of course I go, Oh my god, thank you so much. You're so supportive. And then I felt like it was a little bit of a what is it called? Foreshadowing Yeah. Of the support you'd continue to give me. Or maybe it was a little preview of what was to come.

SPEAKER_00

I feel like maybe that's a nice reminder to men out there that actually if you're nice and you support women, it's actually kind of quite like it. Yeah, they quite like it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Who knew? Who knew? So let's kick things off. Let's start off. Most obvious question, of course, is what made you want to get a PhD in the first place?

SPEAKER_01

I think it's relevant to mention first and foremost that my PhD is in sports science, so it's super relevant to our careers and also the audience at large.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, this isn't like you've got a PhD.

SPEAKER_01

Paleontology.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, but we want to talk about it anyway. This is like this is so highly relevant. I actually so I personally feel bad that we haven't spoken about this because I feel like I should have forced the issue.

SPEAKER_01

It's fine. You know what happened? Okay, last year when we launched this podcast, which was late 2025, I thought, hmm, it would have been nice to do an episode on my training study that was published, but I feel like it's been so many months now that maybe the window has passed. Of course I was wrong. The findings are still very much relevant. So now we're coming back to it.

SPEAKER_00

If we didn't talk about research because it was more than six months old or whatever, we basically would almost never talk about research ever.

SPEAKER_01

That's true.

SPEAKER_00

So I think it's uh I think it's really cool that you do research full stop or you have done research. But I actually think it's kind of cool that I know what you're like, and I think the fact that we're this far into the podcast and we haven't actually spoken about your PhD study, yeah, I think it says a lot about how humble you are. Yeah. I will say Which is why I've forced this episode a little bit.

SPEAKER_01

I know it's kind of far away, but if anyone's watching on video, if we ever go to a a full whole the whole podcast corner view, you'll see that the first page of my published study is actually up on our our pinboard back there, which is I think it's been there since the beginning, which is kind of cool. Anyway, to answer your question.

SPEAKER_00

So anyway.

SPEAKER_01

Anyway, anyway, why did I want to get a PhD? There were multiple reasons. One, I want to experience academia for myself. I thought that, you know, I spent a lot of time actually reading research papers, but if I got to immerse myself in the actual process of ethics approval, writing a proposal, collecting data, analyzing the data, doing a write-up and going through the uh research paper publication process, I thought I think it'd be better for me as a professional and also give me a much better appreciation for what researchers go through. Two, I wanted to challenge myself intellectually. I thought, okay, I have my bachelor's degree, I have my master's degree in health psychology. Um, I think it'd be kind of a fun, I say fun lightly, I put that in heavy quotes. I wouldn't describe a PhD as fun necessarily. Loop back to a little bit later, I think. Um, but I thought I feel like I need to scratch that itch of I need this challenge. I want this challenge. Um, and I'll I also want to mention that I come from uh a family upbringing where education has always been very, very heavily emphasized. For example, uh we have uh MD, we have and two PhDs on my parents' side of the family. And I think there might be a couple more as well. But anyway, and then my grandfather also also was a um had his PhD, was a university professor. So to me, that was kind of normal, you know, even though they didn't necessarily push me in that direction. I thought, okay, I think I want to challenge myself in this way. Uh third, I wanted to do more research on women. And it was, you know, we all we see the the people complaining, which is very valid, about there is a dearth of research in women in the sports science. Great word in the sports science field. All so many of the training and exercise studies are done on men, which is very, very true. We will loop back to that as well. And of course, is one thing to say, we need more research on men, on women, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I thought, okay, why not why not, why not actually be the change? If I think we need more research on women, why don't I do some of the research on women? My last reason, which I'm not sure how much we want to get into this, is I wanted to be taken more seriously as an industry professional. I did not want to be lumped into another I I am trying to word this very carefully. I thought if I I thought if I had more academic credentials, and I think this is true to an extent, that people would say, oh, she's she's an actual credible person in the industry, we should actually listen to her and take her seriously. That was that was a big part of it. Which is frustrating that that that the thought even crosses my mind, of course. But I do think it is the reality for women by default to be taken less seriously.

SPEAKER_00

And I remember so I can't remember if when we were talking about doing this episode we said we would do this later or if we would do it now, but to make sure that we do it. I remember you saying to me that some people said to you there isn't really likely to be a benefit to your career for you pursuing a PhD.

SPEAKER_01

I had several colleagues when I was talking about getting my PhD actively discouraged me from doing it because to them they said, you know, that's not guaranteed to make you more money. It's not guaranteed to help your business, so why are you doing this? And for me, I said, Well, my motivation for my career has never been financially motivated. Uh, if if that were the case, I would be doing things very, very differently. Um, so yeah, actually, if anything, it's probably the opposite. At least for the years that you're doing your PhD, you are going to take a financial hit. Uh, you don't have you simply don't have the bandwidth to commit to it. And also for the PhD program that I was in, I did have to pay tuition and I paid that out of my own pocket as well. So yeah, I was I was not I would like financially it was not a good decision.

SPEAKER_00

I would like to dwell on this part a little bit more just to really drive that home for people listening. So I can actually be the mirror of this if you want, although I'm perhaps not the best example. Let's use you and you have a twin, if you will. So if Sohi's twin is on social media and she is selling coaching programs or selling books or apps or whatever, any time that she spends doing a PhD is one time away from m earning money. Yeah. Two, PhDs cost a lot of money, more than most people realise, more than I realise, I think. They also take a lot of time. So it's kind of like are you willing to take on an additional part-time job that costs you money, costs you so much mental bandwidth, costs you so much energy, and essentially takes you out of your business while you're working on something else. And ultimately, it's not like if you were in a career ladder, it's not like you need a PhD to apply for this position. Some some are like that. So if you wanted to be a strength coach at a sports team, sometimes they will say you need a relevant degree or whatever to even apply for this, but that doesn't impact you at all. You aren't doing anything where you needed a PhD to do what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01

Right, because I'm self-employed.

SPEAKER_00

You could have literally carried on, never done a PhD, in theory, never done a master's, yeah, and that wouldn't have impacted that wouldn't have negatively impacted your income and your career at all, but you still wanted to do it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I think that's really cool. I think it's really cool because you're doing something, you're doing something for you because you wanted to do it, and I think it helps drive home. Part of the reason I wanted to dwell on this is because I think it drives home to people that this isn't some people get into this career because they want to earn money, and some people get into this career because they love it, and I think it's very clear that you love it, and I think most people won't realize how distant second earning money is for you relative to this is an industry that I love and and and and a career that I want to pursue, and and the education is obviously one aspect of that.

SPEAKER_01

And I also actually I would tell myself it's gonna be a few years of discomfort and pain, but I get to have lifelong gratification from knowing that I pushed myself in that way, and guess what? Now I have those degrees and I get to keep them forever, and I never have to do it again.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. Thankfully.

SPEAKER_01

Which I love.

SPEAKER_00

Thankfully, yeah. So let's go back to the thing that you said, one of those four points. Why did you want to research women specifically?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I'm a woman, first of all.

SPEAKER_00

Women are my target audience, women are my target audience, and I wanted to be able to say I was only laughing because it was like you paused and then you're like, Well, I'm a woman. And I thought if you ended it there, it would have looked really good.

SPEAKER_01

I want to know what the research says about how exercise would apply to me and how exercise would apply to my clients and my target audience. So it made sense to focus on women. I love training women. Back when I lived in San Diego, I had a studio and I would train women uh exclusively, basically. And I kind of I have like thoughts of do I want to do it here too? But we'll talk about that later. Uh but I I really love working with women. So it it was a no-brainer. We're gonna keep doing if I want to do research, we're gonna do research on women, especially because we don't have enough of it. It's that simple.

SPEAKER_00

One of the things that I think is really cool is I know you've already touched on it, but I like to be your biggest cheerleader, you know? And I think it's really cool that you were training women and you're like, I think there's a lack of research in women. I want to, as I've said before in a video that I made about your PhD, I think it's inspirational as fuck that you decided that you essentially wanted to be the change, because you can talk about a lack of research in women, but actually saying, okay, I will go and I will start conducting research in women is such a huge labour of love that I think is probably underappreciated by people for how much work goes into it, which of course we will touch on soon. Yes. The next question that I think is perhaps most important is why do you think there's a lack of research in women? Specific with exercise and weight training, obviously.

SPEAKER_01

Well, first of all, we know that women were not even encouraged to exercise until recent decades. So that's a big part of it. And in fact, they were actively discouraged from exercising. And you've done a video talking about how the different types of quote unquote exercise women were quote unquote allowed to do uh in the like the 70s, the 80s, and women exercising regularly is a recent phenomenon, right? Which I think is great, but we need to push that more. I also think that men people take an interest in in in men in general as default over women, I think, when it comes to research. That's what I think. And I don't I don't know, I don't know if how much of it is misogyny or what.

SPEAKER_00

I think part of it, I know we've talked about this on previous episodes, part of it was supposedly that they were simpler participants. Like, I don't know, you're pulling a face like that's an awkward thing to say. This isn't a derogatory thing from a biological perspective. It's simpler to study a man over an eight-week period if you're doing body composition, than it is to study women. Because if women have menstrual cycles, that can impact their body composition, it can cause their weight to fluctuate or whatever. They're essentially confounding variables that researchers should have to take on board. Whereas with men you don't have to worry about that stuff.

SPEAKER_01

I would disagree, but we don't have to No, you can disagree. We can we don't have to dive into that. Why do you disagree? I think that um because you can still study women anyway.

SPEAKER_00

That shouldn't stop. But what I mean is when on research papers that that talk about barriers to studying in women, part of it is essentially that if you want to study women well, it requires more thought process, more diligence, which is why some of the research papers on like menstrual cycle, for example, are like, yeah, they factored it in, but we still can't really conclude much from the research.

SPEAKER_01

I also think that depending on the population you're trying to study, women face more barriers. We know this, women face more barriers to exercising regularly, which can also mean that recruiting participants, women participants for studies can be much harder as well. We will definitely which is something that I experienced uh during my data collection process as too. Uh, we know that women in general tend to have more responsibilities at home, especially if they have children where they might not feel like they have support, where um we have their family and friends, and we also have research for this as well, um, sometimes actively discouraging them from exercising and say you shouldn't be taking the time away from your children, or maybe they don't have support where there's no one who can look after their kids while they go to the gym for an hour for themselves. So there's that stuff too.

SPEAKER_00

I think something that is also important to drive home to people, depending on your age as you listen to this and your experience and your history. You said that women haven't exercised for very long relative to men, which is true. If you look at exercise videos from the 70s and 80s, there's kind of quite comedically, when you look back at them now, the way that women would exercise with very small ankle weights and things like that, like leotards versus lifting weights in the gym, which is what we're used to. But one of the things that I think is especially important to drive home is even say 10 or 15 years ago, on average, the number of women in a free weights area was tiny. And I have worked in commercial gyms, I say throughout my life, but until I moved here when I wasn't allowed to work with visas. I always worked in commercial gyms, and research papers will specifically talk about that women would often feel intimidated to go into the free weights area and would often feel intimidated to lift weights in general. And I can talk about that from a gym perspective because I literally remember working in a gym where the manager would talk about how they would segregate the gym to make sure that women had access to some equipment, but they didn't have to go into the scary big weights area. So where we have the big dumbbell rack with anything from, say, 10 pounds to 100 pounds, there would be a separate dumbbell rack somewhere else to make it easier for women to lift weights without having to join what one personal training manager described as a testosterone pit. So what it meant was women would often kind of be in a quiet corner with very limited equipment where ten one to ten pound dumbbells were on one of those really small dumbbell racks versus integrating using a leg press, using a bench press, using a lap pull-down, or all of the equipment that most men are used to.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. In a way, I understand it. I feel like if women already feel intimidated by lifting weights and then intimidated by being around loud, grunty, muscly men in the gym, they might actually prefer, oh, I like that there is a small section off here for me. Yeah. At the same time, I do think from a long-term perspective, it can then perpetuate the, okay, so these are the weights that we're gonna stick to, and those machines and the heavier weights are not for women. So there's that.

SPEAKER_00

So I I think even now, so although it's more common for women to lift weights and and lift heavy weights than it was even a few years ago, I think most people, if they look at the design of a lot of common gyms, they will notice that there there is kind of beginner equipment or more female-friendly equipment versus the hardcore plate-loaded equipment. Um so, as a I mean, kind of bad example, but good example depending on which way you look at it. There was one specific gym that I remember training at. And I think even if you look at designs of modern gyms nowadays, you'll often notice that there are kind of different beginner sections or women's sections that are less intimidating. But I remember training at a gym where it was a lot more hardcore, a lot of heavy weights, very, very male-dominated. And I literally remember that on the very, very rare occasion that a woman would walk into the gym, multiple guys would turn around and stare at them. And there was a member of staff there, there was there was one girl that worked there when I was much younger, and I remember saying to her, Isn't it really intimidating working out in this gym? Because it's like a rabbit walking into the lion's den, because you would literally see a group of guys, you could see when a woman had walked in the gym because a group of guys would turn their head in unison to look at the I guess fresh meat that was entering the cage. That's kind of how it felt. And I even remember saying at the time, if I was a woman, I wouldn't train here. And sometimes it wasn't even a woman that was training, they were just coming up to meet their boyfriend or whatever, but it was such a male kind of aggressive testosterone-fueled environment. And I think a lot of gyms have that ex-bodybuilding culture where it's very, very hardcore, lots and lots of heavy weights, and you know, it's it's hard for hard for women to want to integrate with that when men are grunting and dropping weights around, and men aren't always the most encouraging. We've been in gyms where you have even said to me, Can you come and stand near me? Because like guys are hovering to pressure me off equipment, and there's like Gold's gym where there are two well, four bench presses next to each other or whatever. And they would come and pressure you. Yeah. Like, how many sets have you got left? But then they wouldn't ask me and I'm next to it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And let's not forget also, sometimes it's women discouraging other women from exercising and especially specifically lifting weights. So it's not only men, it's sometimes coming from our own.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we know that especially with talking about exercising during pregnancy. I know you've got a lot of negative comments after that. Anyway, let's fast forward and let's talk about your PhD specifically.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Out of all of your PhD, there is one study that you have published, the one that we have here. So talk us through this as the most important, but talk about everything that you did and then talk about this one specifically.

SPEAKER_01

You want me to talk about the logistics of the training study? Okay. The paper that was published specifically was comparing high-intensity circuit training with traditional strength training in trained women. It was an eight-week training study. And by high intensity circuit training, all of us are familiar with circuits, right? You do a number of a certain number of exercises back to back with little to no rest, and you do them in a not to use the word again, in a circuit-like fashion, right? So if you have five exercises, you do exercise one, two, three, four, five, and then right back to one, two, three, four, five until you complete the total number of sets. That is what this was. However, the high intensity nature of it meant that you are actually pushing your sets close to failure. This is very different from how most people do circuits, at least from what I've observed, where they are pushing hard, but they're not pushing close to failure. And that's an important distinction. Okay. The traditional strength training group refers to when you do one exercise at a time, you do all the sets of one exercise at a time, you rest for longer. In this case, we had three minutes of rest. Between sets. So if the first exercise was a leg press, you do one set of leg press, rest three minutes, set two of leg press, rest three minutes, set three of leg press, and then you would move on to the subsequent exercise. That's what we meant by traditional strength training. For the circuit training, it was the same six exercises completed, which were leg press, flat double and bench press, trap bar deadlift. Then we also had lap pull down, barbell hip thrust, and standing dumbbell shoulder press. So both groups had the same six exercises, except the circuit training group, they would do the first three exercises in a circuit fashion, resting 35 seconds in between sets, doing three sets each. Once that was done, they would rest five minutes, and then they would do three sets of exercises four, five, and six, again in a circuit fashion until all those sets were done.

SPEAKER_00

So I have more questions that I would like you to explain when it comes to your study. But just rewind slightly. Yeah. And essentially where this helps fill the gap in the literature.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Okay. For some context, when I was doing my review of the existing literature out there, what I found was one, there were some studies on circuit training in women out there. And there were specifically three or four studies in women that mentioned high-intensity circuit training. They used the same acronym, H I C T. However, when you read the methodology and you read uh about the exercises that they employed, it was a lot of bodyweight movements. It was things like jumping jacks, planks, maybe some bodyweight squats. And it was not done. They had there was no mention about how hard they were pushing. It was usually done maybe for a certain length of time, right? Maybe I'm gonna put this out there. This is not necessarily accurate. Maybe they might say, All right, you're gonna do jumping jacks for 30 seconds, and then you rest 30 seconds, and then you do the next exercise for one minute on 30 seconds off, and so on and so forth. And what I noticed was, okay, first of all, there's no, there's not a lot of external mode happening here. Bodyweight exercises are great, but if you're pushing to muscular failure, that's not gonna be enough. Okay. Uh and they would then say, Oh, based on this, women saw these body calm changes or these strength changes, right? I'm like, that's fine, that's totally fine. That's not what I want to look at. So in my particular study, uh, you'll notice that we controlled specifically for effort and obviously exercises and other things too. But I wanted to control for effort where both conditions, regardless of if you were doing the circuit or if you were doing the traditional strength training, both groups were pushing close to failure.

SPEAKER_00

So that is the thing that I think a lot of people, we should perhaps like insert a quick definition here. So when you talk about intensity, what a lot of people immediately have in their head is how hard they're working. So for example, if someone is doing bodyweight squats for several minutes straight, they might be sweating a lot, their legs might turn to jelly, they might feel like they're gonna vomit, whatever it is. Yeah, but that's still a very low intensity because intensity in the strength training world is your percentage of your one rep max. So, for example, let's say I went into the gym and because this is hypothetical, I'll make up the numbers. I can squat 1,000 kilograms. If I go to the gym and I lift 100 kilograms and I do that until I vomit, that's an incredibly hard workout, but it's still a very low percentage of my OneRet Max. So working hard is not necessarily high intensity. So when you talk about circuit training and the existing literature, when you say that it's high quote unquote high intensity, but it's not high intensity, that's because jumping jacks for most people or burpees or planks or whatever, they literally aren't they they can't be high intensity.

SPEAKER_01

How can you push jumping jacks to failure? I mean, maybe you technically can, but it would take a lot.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So you'd be like, I can't do one more.

SPEAKER_00

So it's almost like I I think the way people can view this is the existing literature is more like what women might do in an exercise class, as an example. Is that fair? Yeah, maybe. So let's say for example, I was in an aerobic studio and I had a small handful of clients and not much equipment. If I was confined by what I could do with them, you would tend to do things that are very high repetition because you don't have heavy weights and you can't get them bench pressing and squatting, there's no squat rack. And that's why fitness instructors and personal trainers would often do like circuit training with people because they're trying to get people to work out in their home or whatever. Yeah. But that is not the high intensity that you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. By high intensity, another word, I mean, you can think of it as high effort, okay? And by high effort, again, I think.

SPEAKER_00

I was gonna say we need Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Uh again, pushing your sets close to failure to where if you did one more rep, you'd be like, I can't do one more because I'm not gonna be able to finish that next repetition. That's how hard we were pushing.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Uh what was really interesting was that even though we recruited trained women, and in this case we said you need to have six months or more of resistance training experience.

SPEAKER_00

Before you go on to that, can you quickly tell us why you picked the exercises? Is that okay? Is it only because I rewound slightly and you were talking about your exercise selection? And I know the exercise selection was important.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I wanted to train full body, I wanted to do full body sessions, especially because they were coming in three days a week, ideally, obviously, with one day of rest in between. So when we were choosing the exercises, you have to choose exercises that are accessible to the participants. Meaning we chose a leg press instead of a barbell back squat. Why? Anyone who's an experienced trainee or an experienced trainer knows that back squat can be quite a technical lift. And many people, for various reasons, are not able to perform back squats to full depth comfortably. Okay. Uh so leg press, much, much lower learning curve, much, much, much less technical. So I felt more comfortable with that. Uh, another example was the trap-ball deadlift. I chose trap-ball deadlift as my hip hinge, uh hip extension movement over something like the conventional deadlift, because again, the learning curve is much lower. Okay. We have a lot of people, once again, they they have a hard time. Maybe they can't reach the barbell on the ground without uh compensating somewhere else with their form or something like that. Whereas trap bar, especially if you do a high bar trap bar exercise, the bars are in a higher position and especially and also the neutral grip can make it feel better for them overall. So there is that as well. Um, and then lap lap pull down instead of a bodyweight pull-up, as much as I love pull-ups as my upper body pulling exercise. I would have probably guessed with the participants we ended up getting, maybe two or three women would have been able to actually do bodyweight pull-ups. Okay. So in that regard, it made sense to do a lap pull-down, right? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that was basically the theme of what's most accessible for for women to do that's still going to get them an effective full body training program.

SPEAKER_00

I think full body workout. I think one of the important things that people need to realize with that is when you explain the rationale, it's very easy to look at research papers and be like, I don't like that they did a leg extension, or I don't like that they did a leg press. Why weren't they squatting? Or if they were squatting, they weren't squatting deep enough, they were only going to parallel instead of going all the way down. But imagine you, as the listener or viewer, are a researcher, and you have a group of, let's say a few dozen women coming in and they're starting a weight training program with you, you don't get a couple of weeks or even a few hours to coach them to do exercises well. You need to be able to get them to execute the lift to a high enough competency straight away. So if you said, okay, we're gonna do a heavy back squat first, as you said, if you're an experienced trainer, you will know that that is a shit show really fast.

SPEAKER_01

And it's also not only about learning curve, there's also the psychological component. For example, if if I were a potential participant for this study and I saw the exercises involved, and I saw that it was gonna be barbell back squats, three sets were gonna push you close to failure for every set, I think that alone would have deterred me personally from wanting to participate. I squats are my least my least, they're not my least favorite. They're my weakest relative lift. And I am personally, I don't like pushing my barbell back squats heavy. And I think there's a big fear component in a lot of people with some exercises. So you have to consider that as well.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um next big question before we I I haven't forgotten the thing I interrupted you on. We're gonna circle back to it. But most importantly, what were the results?

SPEAKER_01

The results were kind of cool. Both groups, whether you did eight weeks of high-intensity circuit training or eight weeks of traditional strength training, saw similar gains in three rate max strength because we tested three rate max pre- and post lean body mass and body fat loss. Which means they're on a from a physiological standpoint, their gains were similar. That's pretty cool. Uh, notably, and unsurprisingly, their circuit group finished their workouts quite a bit faster than the traditional strength training group. It was it was roughly 50 to 60 minutes for the circuit training group sessions from beginning to end compared to closer to 75 or 80 minutes in the traditional strength training group. So that's around what is that, like 20-ish minutes faster. If you bring that to the real world, that's a big time difference. 20 minutes difference can be the that that that can mean, oh, this is this workout is worth doing versus I don't have the time to make this happen at all. So that was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00

So uh one of the things that I think is super important for people to realize is if you look at two different exercise protocols and you're like, oh, the results were similar. In some ways that's a very non-exciting finding. But to me, that's actually the reason that this is important because if you say actually you can get similar results doing this different training style, it opens the world to giving people choice. Yes. So I think a good parallel example that might be more easy for people to kind of resonate with is if you say if you don't like doing 60 minutes of jogging, you can do 30 minutes of interval training or sprinting or whatever, and you might be able to get similar results in terms of body composition or strength or whatever it is. But the point is you are giving people the option of a different training modality, slightly different training modality to essentially save time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And I do think the results are encouraging because what it's essentially saying is contrary to what we may have been told, which is what I was also told in prior years, circuit training is not less effective than traditional strength training. Again, if you are pushing your sets, it's gonna be a I'm gonna repeat this ad nauseum. If you are pushing your sets close to failure, that's it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so if I go to the gym and I pick up some very light dumbbells for me and I do 10 or 15 reps and then I stop, but I could have done 20 reps or 30 reps. Yeah, if I do a five exercises or six exercises in quick succession, it will feel hard, but that is not high-intensity circuit training the way you would.

SPEAKER_01

No, that would be a regular circuit.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. So if you want to save time in the gym and you want to do circuits, you are essentially pushing yourself towards failure in the same way you would strength train, like with traditional strength training, but you're cutting down the rest period and then saving time that way rather than using lighter weights intentionally, which is how most people approach circuit training. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I actually would say, which is going back to the point I was making earlier, is that even with the participants in my program, which again, they were they were trained lifters, right? What they thought was pushing close to failure was not actually pushing close to failure. So I was monitoring every single set. It was either me or um Rachel who helped me run the study. Um, but basically we monitored every single set of every single participant. A lot of times we would select, we'll have them select the loads and we would tell them how many reps to do within the 8 to 15 target rep range. The number of times, I would say almost every single participant, they were they would grab lighter weights and try to end their set at fewer reps than they were actually capable of. And they were very, very surprised at how much more they could actually do, how much more they had left in the tank. When I asked them about this, a lot of them would say, I'm not super sure of my form, therefore I don't want to push too hard in case I get hurt. So that was maybe subconsciously keeping them a bit more conservative with their effort overall. But under the guise of, under the guidance of an experienced trainer, me, they were able to lift so, so much more. So that was really interesting. And it makes me wonder how many women are out there when they train themselves in the gym doing the same thing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I think there are there are two things that one we can I think I'd like to talk about this from a a woman-only perspective, but two, this is not a woman specific phenomenon. So there are multiple research papers where they will get participants to train to what they think is failure, like close to failure, and then they will essentially push them harder. Yeah, and a lot of people will be several reps short, yeah, sometimes a surprising number of reps short. And I have noticed this with my clients, the same with me, I'm not immune from it. So, for example, I remember training with a a guy, a good guy friend of mine, and we were both doing hack squats. He was weaker than me, he knew he was weaker than me, he would try and keep up, and there was like a level of competition. And we were doing hack squats like 10 to 12, and it was hard. And I remember him going to the toilet, and when he came back, he said, Oh, how many reps did you do? And I intentionally lied, but in a way that I thought he would know I was lying, and I said, I did 20. And I thought he was gonna laugh and be like, Fuck off, no, you didn't. And he's like, Did you really? And I was like, Wait, he believes me, and I said, Yeah, I did 20. He did 21 the next set. But the point was on our first two sets, we were doing like eight to ten. Wow. But the moment that he thought I had done twenty, he did twenty one. So even though he was an experienced one fitness professional, two, someone who'd been lifting weights for years, three, someone who pushes himself hard in the gym, or so he thought, it means that he was at least 10 reps short of failure. Wow. Which means that he was only doing 50%-ish of the reps that he could have done. So this isn't a definitely like female only issue. Yeah. But you will have more insight on this is are there reasons why women might be more apprehensive of or less experienced of pushing to failure than men, for example? What do you think?

SPEAKER_01

I think some of it, I think a lot of it is subconscious, and I think they don't realize they're doing it. So one would be what I mentioned, which is unsure of their form, lack of confidence. Two might be they I have to be again very careful with my wording. I think women, uh, a lot of women tend to gravitate toward group classes, which I think is great, right? There's a social aspect which is fantastic, help helping helping people show up and be more consistent with exercise. I also think that when you are there with a friend, and I've seen this happen a lot, they treat it as social hour, which is fine, but sometimes that means they're having casual conversations while they're in the middle of a set, yeah. Which means they're not actually pushing the effort. So it could be the case that they're not actually thinking of how hard am I actually pushing my sets. To them, it's oh, I'm doing an exercise, therefore it counts, right? Which of course, exercise is better than no exercise, it's still better than nothing. But if your if your goal is to gain muscle, to to strengthen your bone density, to improve your strength, all these things, you have to be thinking about your effort.

SPEAKER_00

So, my theory on this, from my own experience, I know everyone's got a different gym story depending on what their gym's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. From the gyms that I have worked in, the percentage of people in the free weights area, the the women was tended to be very, very low. But when women went into the free weights area, they tended to have different exercise selection. So, for example, on a Monday, there's a running joke that it's international chess day. There would often be cues of guys waiting for the bench press, and they would have be like a group of four friends where they're rotating or whatever. I can't remember in I don't know, what, 20 years in the fitness industry, I can't remember ever seeing a group of women cycling on the bench press, for example. And it doesn't mean that women wouldn't bench press, but I think that there are some exercises that are very kind of male-dominated. So there are exercises like say split squats. I would get loads of my clients doing split squats, guy or girl, and women would often push harder than men on exercises like that. But if I was going to put them on a bench press, on average, I think they would be far less experienced or bench pressing compared to the average guy. So I think if you give someone a pair of dumbbells and say, push towards failure on this, I think it's normal for some people to be like, Well, I'm not very experienced, it feels wobbly, I'm a bit uncertain.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, also, I think it hasn't been encouraged in women to push hard in the gym until recently as well. That I think is I'm glad you said it's like I I have people in my life who when they see me picking up, let's say, 45 a pound dumbbells in each hand, they go, Whoa, whoa, whoa, is that what you're lifting? That's way too heavy for you. And if if I wasn't as confident in my own lifting capabilities as I am, that might have been enough for me to be like, oh, okay, I guess I should pick up lighter weights. You know, they might be like, oh, that's not lady-like, you shouldn't be lifting that. So there's, of course, that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think that's important. Yeah. So to round this off, an important thing that all researchers will know, but when you publish your own findings, you will talk about research limitations.

SPEAKER_01

Of course.

SPEAKER_00

So, what are the limitations of your own research? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Here's the thing. Here was the interesting thing, and I knew this would happen too. Doing my own research and publishing my own paper as a first author for the first time gave me that much more appreciation for how hard conducting research actually is. I think it's very, very easy for women, for people in general to be like, well, this study isn't great because XYZ and picking apart, blah, blah. Why didn't the authors do this? Why didn't the authors do that? No.

SPEAKER_00

Especially on social media if people don't like the study. If they don't like the study's findings.

SPEAKER_01

I saw it happening this morning in the comments of a post that I did recently.

SPEAKER_00

It's like a running joke where if the study agrees with what you think, you're like, oh great, you know, here's research that sports. Right. But if it's something that they don't like, it's like, well, if I use a fine-toothed comb, I can find three things that I dislike about the book.

SPEAKER_01

Right, but a lot of time the reality is there has to the limitation was there, or else the research wouldn't have had ha happened at all. You know, there's sometimes there's no way around it. Of course, there's sometimes you're thinking, why did they choose, why did they sometimes it is stuff that could have easily changed, but not always. Okay. So for me, it was two main things. One would be the obvious one, which is sample size. We had 14 participants total. And of course, in when I did post about my research on social media, of course, you get the pushback of, well, the sample size was really small. Um, and uh, and and and and I will say you should you should you should never make definitive statements and strong practical application recommendations across the board based on one single study ever, especially if it is a smaller sample size. But my study within the context of other studies looking at similar things, we have actually reached the same conclusion. And that obviously then makes the results more robust, the recommendations more robust.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, can I talk about your sample size just briefly? Yeah. So this was it's hard for me to emphasize how hard your PhD was. So just quickly, don't go into it too much, but how long did it take from beginning to end? When you started to when you finished, not how much constant work was it?

SPEAKER_01

Sure. Well, there were some delays and whatnot, but I would I started in I think October of 2018, and then I got my diploma in August of 20. 25.

SPEAKER_00

It was 2026. Okay, yes.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. That means it was almost seven years from beginning to end.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And part of the reason it's seven years was one, you moved, two, was COVID. Yep. Three, you were on a distance program with AUT, but you were doing your study at a different local university, which created a year's worth of ethics approval. Right, right, right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um and to clarify, AUT stands for Auckland University of Technology. But funnily enough, I've actually never stepped on foot, step, step foot onto the campus because it was like he said it was a whole it's a virtual program.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. So the reason I wanted to talk about this is when you were doing your participant research. Recruitment, which you are very good at. You are a named author on several papers where you have helped with participant recruitment. Yeah, I can put them on the screen, but this was your first lead author study. Yeah. So you have hundreds of thousands of people that follow you on social media across platforms, probably a million plus, or in that ballpark. You, when you were looking for participants, I remember you were finding it so hard to get people to sign up that you created a poster like a flyer and you were like free personal training. And I remember you were like, I'm not sure if we're allowed to do this. We have to find out if it's within the rules of the university that you were at. But you were essentially advertising free personal training for women. So you're advertising free personal training. One, how much does that cost in California? How much does that cost when you're doing I will train you three times a week for free? You are someone who is very experienced in the fitness industry with a master's degree at the time, PhD candidate with a million followers on social media, and you were still struggling to get. I think originally you told me that you were aiming for something like 35 participants. I can't remember why I have that number in my head. I might be right. But I remember you saying that we're shooting for about 35, and you got to the point you're we where you're like, I'm not sure we can even get 20. Yeah. And when people look at sample sizes, it's so easy to go, well, there aren't enough people for this to be statistically significant or adequately powered. But you were literally advertising three times a week, free personal training with a very experienced, highly qualified professional, and you couldn't get people to sign up for you.

SPEAKER_01

It's really hard. Uh, I will say with the other studies that I did, uh, which included surveys, which included acute study, where women would come into the training lab, but only for four sessions total, I believe. We were able to get a lot more participants for those ones. Yeah. And obviously for survey, especially if it's as ministered online, you can get that. I think I got, I want to say, don't quote me on this, maybe close to 4,000 people, maybe more, completing this uh survey or who took the survey. And as far as people who actually completed the survey and everything, it was over 2,000. So that was great. And sample size for that was fantastic. When it comes to then wanting participants to stay for an eight-week training study, which is actually longer than eight weeks because that's eight weeks of training, but you have to do pre- and post-testing. So it's actually closer to 10 weeks total. Then logistically, you run into, well, I can't commit because I'm out of town during these dates, or I have responsibilities with my kids, so I can't do that and I can't do this. You know, there's there's reasons, there's always reasons. Uh so in the end, for as far as sample size, it came down to we're gonna get as many as we can, and that's gonna have to be enough. Yeah. That was really it.

SPEAKER_00

And I I think that when people are aware of that, there are then other limitations that you'll be able to talk about. But when people look at research papers, they will often say things like, Well, those are untrained participants, so I don't like it because I'm more experienced, so I want this research to be in bodybuilders, or are they highly trained or whatever? Or we didn't have food diaries or we didn't have this or whatever. But every single additional thing you ask people to do creates friction for people wanting to sign up. Yeah, and if you had said, okay, we want women, but we don't just want women, we want highly trained women who've been lifting for at least three years or whatever, right? You would have had no one. Yeah. Essentially.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I would have had like two people. Yeah. And then you one person in each, in each condition.

SPEAKER_00

And then one of them drops out. Yeah. And one of them gets this is a case study, right?

SPEAKER_01

Right. Right. Anyway, so that was the one uh one of the biggest limitations. The other one was it was really, really difficult to standardize conditions for the DEXA body scans, body composition uh scans. So we know that DEXA is considered the gold standard for assessing body composition. And thankfully, we did have access to a DEXA uh machine at the campus that I was collecting data at. However, you know, ideally you want to be, you want the participants to be coming in fasted. You want them to come in to be taking their body comp at the same time. So if at pre pre-intervention, if they came in at 10 a.m. fasted, then ideally post-intervention, they're doing the same thing, 10 a.m. fasted, whatever, right? Logistically, oh my gosh, it's next to impossible for it to work out that way. Not only do you have to work around that participant's schedule availability, you also have to work around my availability as well as the professor that I was working with, he was the one who was running the you have to get certified in in California to to run Dexter scans. He was the one who was certified, so he had to be there as well. And he's teaching classes. I'm still, I'm still training participants because people can start the study at at they don't have to all start at the same time. So someone might be finishing up uh and doing their body comp post-intervention body comp scan while I'm still training someone who's in wake week four of the study, for example. I have to run across, I have to make sure that I'm not uh I don't have to train another person at the same time, but also I have to leave enough time in between the sessions for me to run across campus and be present for the DEXA scan and then run back to make it back in time for the next person's training session. So logistically, it was honestly kind of a nightmare to try to try to make it work. It felt like you're you're juggling five balls at the same time and you don't know how to juggle. That that's kind of how it felt for me.

SPEAKER_00

I feel like that's in some way summarizes how you felt about a lot of your PhD.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, oh yeah. Uh and so ultimately what happened was there were times when we had a participant who pre-intervention, they did come in at 10 a.m. fasted, but post-intervention, we could the only time we could make work was at 6 p.m. on a Friday.

SPEAKER_00

So people won't realize this because they hear that DEXA scan is like DEXA scan or underwater weighing or whatever as kind of gold standards of of body composition analysis. What most people won't realize is actually how delicate they are to testing conditions. So if someone has fat mass and lean body mass, but someone eats more food or they have um higher carbohydrate meals or more sodium or whatever, yeah, you can manipulate your lean body mass measurement based on that. And Grant Tinsley has done some research. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, as that is why it's like if you're fasted on one measurement, ideally you have to be fasted the same time of day. Otherwise, it can be like, oh, you have gained three pounds of lean body mass and all they've done is changed.

SPEAKER_01

Because and the important point here is that a lot of people think lean body mass refers to only muscle, but it's basically it's everything in your body that's not fat mass, including water weight, including technically food in your stomach. So if you've had three meals that day and chugged two liters of water, of course you've peed some of it out and whatnot, but you're gonna still retain some of that in your body in the evening.

SPEAKER_00

It's like technically, if I stood on the scales now, if I had only 10 kilograms of fat on my whole body and I stood on the scales, and then I did it again after drinking two liters of water, sure, right, I would weigh two kilos more, and that's not two kilos of fat. Therefore, it's two kilos of lean body mass.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So of course, when you're interpreting the results, you have to take that into consideration. Yeah. That it may not be fully accurate. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Is there anything you would do differently if you were doing the whole research paper again?

SPEAKER_01

Two things I would do differently that were within my control. One, I would have the participants keep food logs throughout the training session. That way we can uh make sure that their diets were as standardized as possible. We did ask them, please do not change your diet actively. Of course, there might be some subconscious tweaking here and there, but we do not want you actively dieting. We do not want you actively eating more or not even increasing your protein intake, nothing. Okay. Ideally, they stay the same across the entire study duration. Food logs would have helped us actually validate, be sure of that. We didn't have that. Second thing that we could have done that we didn't think of until after was I wish that we would have actually properly timed every session from the minute they pick up their first weight to the minute, to the second, I'm gonna say the second, the second they set them down at the end of their workout, we should have timed exactly this, exactly that. That way we could have said, okay, the strength training, this traditional strength training group was exactly, you know, this took this many percentage minutes longer than the circuit training group. That would have been a nice data to have. Because we didn't do that, all we can do is say approximately this much longer than, you know, it was approximately 20 minutes longer or 20 minutes faster and so on.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

That was it.

SPEAKER_00

So reflections and takeaways, practical implementations. Anyone who's listening to this or watching this, they want to know how this impacts them, unless they just want to learn about you, which of course is awesome. Yeah. So does this mean that anyone who wants to save time in the gym should be doing high-intensity circuit training? Not circuit training necessarily, but high-intensity circuit training specifically. Right.

SPEAKER_01

Not necessarily. High intensity circuit training is one option.

SPEAKER_00

That's how you know she cares about the answer because most people on social media are very like, this is the best way or this is the worst way. Whereas people who are more educated and care about your results more tend to give more nuance.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. To reiterate, we found that both conditions, whether you're doing high-intensity circuit training or traditional strength training, had similar increases in lean body mass, strength, and also decreases in body fat loss. Okay. This is good news. From a time-saving perspective, the circuit training group, of course, was better. Right. However, you also have to consider other variables, such as what is your personal preference? Some of the people really hate circuit training. That's probably I would be on the side. That's not my personal preference. I prefer to do exercises one at a time and have longer rest periods in between. Uh, also, what is your work capacity? High intensity circuit training is not easy. It's really, really hard. When you are pushing as hard as you are supposed to push, it is hard. You have to have the level of fitness, a quite a high level of fitness, to be able to keep up.

SPEAKER_00

Can I give a personal story on that super quick? So I was on a strength and conditioning course once. It's only because obviously we're talking about female-specific research, but I want people to know when things aren't female specific. So I was on a strength and conditioning course once, and part of that is you would try different workouts and you would get people coaching you, and you get people pushing you hard because they want you to know how it feels to push to that level with different energy systems, blah blah blah blah blah. One of the workouts we did was similar, high-intensity circuit training, and it was four exercises, and on paper, it was the simplest programme I've ever seen. It was squat, bench press, deadlift, pull-up. That was it. Uh you would do one, rest 60 seconds, do another rest 60 seconds, blah blah blah. On paper, super easy. But the whole point was it's as easy as your execution makes it because if you push close to failure on a squat for 12 reps, 60 seconds later, you don't want to bench press because that's a really hard set. And I think I lasted two circuits, and I literally thought, I think I might shit my pants or I might throw up. And I very quickly walked out of the gym thinking, I think I'm gonna throw up, walked down the stairs. I remember going to the bathroom, and I was like, I have I I'm not sure which end it's coming out of, but there isn't a sink and a toilet next to each other, so I'm gonna have to pick and hope for the best. So I sat down, thankfully didn't throw up. But the whole point is if you push to actual failure, there isn't one more rep in the tank. Yeah, the recovery that that requires is so much more than people realize that if you are pushing sets to failure in a circuit fashion, it's hard, it's really fucking hard.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So there's that as well. So even if you are an advanced lifter, it's still going to be difficult. Okay. You also have to consider your gym layout, equipment availability, and also the other people who might be in your environment. If you're if your only option is to go to a busy commercial gym at peak hour every day, you probably won't be able to replicate the exact six exercises that I did in my study. Yeah. Right. You like it's not considered good gym etiquette to take up multiple pieces of gym equipment at once. That's obvious.

SPEAKER_00

You can't hang a towel on five pieces. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But what you could do is maybe grab one or two pairs of dumbbells and find similar exercises that do the trick, right? So maybe instead of a tripod deadlift, maybe you can do a heavy dumbbell remaining deadlift, something like that, right? So that's an option as well. Maybe instead of a leg press, you can do a goblet squat or a dumbbell front squat, something like that. So there's the ways to make it work. Uh and then the last factor, which I've actually already covered, which was the exercise selection. Okay. So again, going back over it would be one personal preference, two work capacity, three gym layout and environment and equipment availability, and four exercise selection. So based on those factors, it depends, right?

SPEAKER_00

So let's say someone has 30 or 40 minutes to train, they want to know how they can implement this advice, your pioneering research. Yeah. What recommendations would you give them, assuming average circumstances? Most people don't have a private gym, most people can't do six exercises with perfect load for their 12 rep max or whatever. What advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_01

As far as how to structure the workout? Sure. I would do one of two options personally. One would be you can do circuit training for the entire session. Again, if you like it and you feel you can do it. The other option is you could you could perhaps employ a combination of traditional resistance training and high intensity circuit training, where the first one or two exercises of your session is going to be the straight sets where you do longer rest periods, one set at a time, one exercise at a time. Okay. Then let's say you have 20 minutes left, maybe you can do a 20-minute circuit at the end to finish off. That to me seems like a nice little compromise where you kind of get the best of both worlds. Um, but it depends on you. Do you like training that way? Then cool. Otherwise, doing full circuits is also fine.

SPEAKER_00

I would often do something similar where let's say there was one particular exercise that I really wanted to focus on for increasing strength gains. Let's say it was a deadlift or a bench press or whatever, I might do straight sets at the beginning with longer rest periods to make sure I'm using as heavy a load as I can. Yeah. And then knowing that those long rest periods have eaten into my workout time, I would then increase the density for the remainder. So let's say, for example, someone's doing five by five squat, but because they're powerlifting and they want to lift as heavy as possible, they're resting five minutes between sets. Already they're basically half an hour into a workout, not including warm-up time or whatever. So if they want to be out of the gym, they can't do another four exercises with that structure. So I would rest longer for my main exercise. And then I'll be like, okay, accessory work, I would superset or circuit or whatever, where you increase the density a little bit to try and get more volume.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, the other option you can do is, you know, earlier when I'm talking about my training study design, I specifically said the rest periods in between the sets for the circuit group was 35 seconds. You you can go longer, you can have longer rest periods. So you can instead of a circuit where you have three, four, five exercises back to back, maybe you do supersets where you pair together two exercises. But also maybe instead of resting 35 seconds in between sets or less, maybe you say, Okay, I'm gonna rest 90 seconds in between sets, between exercises. That's an option as well. So it doesn't have to be a strict, it has to be all this way or it has to be all that way. You can kind of mix and match it here and there to make it work. That's it.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Before we round off the episode, is there anything that I haven't asked you or anything else you want to end on?

SPEAKER_01

I would say based on not only the findings of my research, but also the body of evidence that we see out there, the theme that we're seeing over and over again is there are many, many different methods of resistance training that are effective for gaining muscle and strength and so on, even with different types of equipment, whether you're doing barbells, machines, even resistance bands, even body weight, as long as you are pushing close to failure. If you are pushing your sets close to failure, a lot, there is so much more wiggle room and flexibility in terms of the training program you design and the workouts that you do, which I think is really fantastic news. So a big part of it is what do you like to do? How do you like to train? Can we do that and push those sets hard?

SPEAKER_00

If you're pushing hard, a lot of the variables don't tend to matter as much as most people think. Correct. I think is a really good conclusion. Yeah. So I want to say thank you. And I think for me to emphasize how cool this is, I made a video on a similar research topic like supersets, I think 13 years ago. And I can pull it up on YouTube and I actually looked last night where I think I included four references, and every single reference, a couple of which you had included in your study anyway, every single reference, the only participant in those studies were men. Yeah. Not a single woman in all four studies. So the fact that 13 years ago I was talking about this topic and there were no women to be seen, and now I'm married to someone who was like, I want to change that, I want to be the change, I want to see more women in the weight room. Not only do you want to see more women in the weight room, but you were going to go out of your way, go through one of the hardest periods of your life, kind of selflessly, because it wasn't a financially driven thing for you, because you wanted to be the change that you wanted to see in the industry, I think is inspirational as fuck. Thank you. And I think I'm so happy that we could do an episode talking about this because I don't think it would be right for this to fly under the radar when one of our co-hosts is such a magnificent being.

SPEAKER_01

You're so kind.

SPEAKER_00

So thank you very much for that.

SPEAKER_01

That's my absolute pressure pleasure. One one more thing I want to say is I want to give massive, massive kudos to researchers out there who actually do crank out research. From after after the experience I've been through, personally, I have no interest in staying in academia in that capacity because of how much red tape I had to cut through. It was extremely tedious, extremely frustrating at times. So for some people to be full-time researchers, massive amount of respect for all of you. Yeah. But and the work you're doing is really, really important.

SPEAKER_00

I can testify that I don't think I've ever seen as many frustrated tears from you.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my gosh. The number of times, how many times did I say I think I want to quit?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I mean many times. Yeah. And I I remember saying I am literally not even not even one percent unsure that you can't do this. Oh yeah, my imposter syndrome was very, very but when it felt like you were running into walls repeatedly for things like ethics approval or whatever, things that are out of your hands. I appreciate that it's very frustrating because it doesn't feel like you can be the one to fix things. So uh I remember it being hard for you. I remember you saying that your PhD was harder than childbreath.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's true. And uh yeah, it was a lot of doubting my own abilities to do this. It was a lot of wading into unknown waters and figuring things out on my own, especially because I was a remote student. I don't have the the I don't I don't have the advantage of being around my peers in person. I don't have the advantage of being able to pop into my advisor's office uh on a random Tuesday. You know, it was all done remotely. But you know, I a lot of people said this said this to me, and I will agree. PhD having a PhD does not mean you're smarter than anyone else. It means that you've persisted for longer.

SPEAKER_00

You persisted for sure.

SPEAKER_01

I did persist.

SPEAKER_00

Although I don't want to downplay your intelligence. Obviously, that is not what we're saying, but you were it was definitely a testament to your persistence. Well it has been a a pleasure listening to you talk about this. It's been a privilege being by your side watching you go through such a big life milestone and achieving this. And I think well, I hope that everyone who has listened to this is appreciative of you.

SPEAKER_01

I had fun chatting about it.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you very much. I love you very much. Hi five, goodbye.