The resistance training revolution with Sal Di Stefano

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:00.830] – Allan
Hey Raz, how are things going?

[00:02:02.240] – Rachel
Good, Allan, how are you today?

[00:02:05.000] – Allan
I'm on a mend, I'm starting to feel a little bit better, still have almost a whole nother week of quarantine. The way they do it here is, you if you test negative, I mean, test positive, then, yeah, I passed. Then you have to spend two weeks going through quarantine. So, I mean, I have been pretty much locked upstairs at the bed breakfast for a little over a week and a half now. So we're on kind of the wind down days.

[00:02:37.010] – Allan
We're recording this on a Monday and so on Thursday, technically, I think she can go in and get tested. And then Friday would be my day to go back in and get tested. So I'm not sure if we're going to try to go together or how exactly that's going to work out. But anyway, we'll go back and get tested and hopefully everything will be negative then. And we can resume our lives. But yeah, feeling better and slowly getting back on my feet.

[00:03:02.990] – Rachel
Good.

[00:03:03.530] – Allan
Getting things done. Fell way behind on everything.

[00:03:08.210] – Rachel
For sure.

[00:03:08.990] – Allan
But you know, because you can't sleep 20 hours, 16 hours a day and be productive.

[00:03:14.810] – Rachel
Right.

[00:03:17.630] – Allan
I was eating or sleeping. That was pretty much it for about three or four days there, so.

[00:03:24.430] – Rachel
Wow. Well, I'm glad you're feeling a little bit better, and that's good.

[00:03:28.550] – Allan
How are things up there?

[00:03:29.870] – Rachel
Oh, good. We're finally getting some good weather. I'm he acclimating getting ready. I'm looking at my taper now for my fifty miler will be coming up in a couple of weeks. It'll probably be very close to when this airs. So I'm kind of looking at the taper phase right now, just taking it down a notch and getting used to running in the heat so that it's been good.

[00:03:51.050] – Allan
Hydrate.

[00:03:52.220] – Rachel
Yes, lots and lots.

[00:03:55.010] – Allan
Hydrate. Hydrate. And if you need to go back and listen to the last couple episodes, because, you know, there's a couple out there and hydration is one of the keys for making sure that you're in a good state to get your fifty in.

[00:04:08.180] – Rachel
That's for sure. Yeah. Thanks so much.

Interview

[00:04:48.290] – Allan
Sal, welcome to the 40+ Fitness.

[00:04:50.900] – Sal
Awesome. Thanks for having me on.

[00:04:52.250] – Allan
Yeah. You know your book, The Resistance Training Revolution. I think if we stopped right there, you'd lose a lot of people. But then you had this subtitle, so really cool subtitle that says The No Cardio Way to Burn Fat and Age-Proof Your Body in Only 60 Minutes Per Week.

[00:05:08.660] – Sal
Yes.

[00:05:09.230] – Allan
That rings a bell.

[00:05:11.120] – Sal
Yeah. You know, it's funny, the publisher, actually the publisher really wanted that in on the cover. And I was slightly, no pun intended, resistant to it because it sounds a little bit like a lot of the stuff we hear from the fitness space whenever they're trying to market a new diet or new workout plan. But I knew I could back it up with the information in the book. And you're right, resistance training, you know, to people like us in fitness, we know what that means.

[00:05:39.140] – Sal
But the average person. Probably doesn't have an idea, or if they do, it's not the right idea in terms of what I'm talking about. So, we put the whole thing there. So it made sense to people who had it who didn't know.

[00:05:51.190] – Allan
Yeah. And when you get into the book, it'll make a ton of sense to you. Why he put it that way and exactly what we're after here. But let's just kind of dive right on it. You know, a lot of people will hear terms like weightlifting and workout and, you know, they walk into a weight room and honest truth, most of them never make it past the treadmills. You've run a gym. So, you know, the treadmills are always in the front of the gym because that's about as deep as three quarters of the people are going to make it.

[00:06:20.380] – Allan
And they don't really see changes in their body or their health or their fitness over the course of even maybe years of only going that deep into the gym. Why is resistance training so good for us?

[00:06:33.280] – Sal
Well, resistance training, first off, to define it right. It's utilizing resistance in a specific way to build strength and muscle. So it's not just using resistance. Right. It's using it in a way designed to build specifically strength and muscle. So you could, you know, walking uses resistance because you're using your body. So does running, so does swimming. But none of those are done in a fashion to really focus on building strength and muscle. So resistance training, that's kind of the umbrella term.

[00:07:05.830] – Sal
And there's lots of different ways to perform resistance training. In that way, you can use just your body weight, just your body weight can provide most people with sufficient resistance, especially with the right workout plan to elicit those types of things that talk about strength and muscle. You could also use, of course, weights, dumbbells and barbells. You could use machines and resistance bands and pretty much anything that'll give you resistance that you can use in the ways that I outlined can be classified as resistance training.

[00:07:37.570] – Sal
Now, why is it so valuable? Resistance training elicits an adaptation response in the body that is extremely protective and directly counters all of the chronic health issues that are result of the modern lives that we live in. So if you look at modern societies, and especially if you were to compare modern societies to pre modern societies, you would see that we have some pretty unique chronic health issues. The most obvious being obesity. Obesity was largely a non-issue for most of human history.

[00:08:16.930] – Sal
It wasn't a problem. We didn't die from eating too much or having too much body fat just didn't happen. But because we've made food so easily accessible and palatable and because our lives are so extremely sedentary and because and I talk about this in the book, we've become very weak with very little strength and muscle. Obesity now is a reality for a majority of people that live in modern societies. And obesity contributes to quite a few chronic health issues. Diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer's, heart disease, the list goes on.

[00:08:56.080] – Sal
And then even without obesity, dementia, Alzheimer's, diabetes, there is a significant portion of people who will suffer from those things who are not obese, but they are also oftentimes the result of modern life. And so understanding this and there's much more that goes into this, right. So modern life is very busy at sedentary. Most people will not dedicate more than two or three days a week of exercise in their schedule. It just doesn't work for most people.

[00:09:24.250] – Sal
I've learned this through decades of training people. When you consider all these factors, there's only one form of exercise that really is effective at helping us. And it's not the one that most people do or the one that most people pick or even the one that most doctors have recommended in the past. The one form of exercise that's best for all of this is resistance training. And of course, a lot of people, when they hear that, especially when I say lifting weights, they picture bodybuilders or people with extreme bodies.

[00:09:54.430] – Sal
And that's unfortunate. And really, that's the result of a lot of misinformation, stereotypes and stigma that are almost entirely false, that really don't apply to the average person. So the goal with the book was to illuminate that to change, to get the average person to understand the value of resistance training and to pick up some weights or do some form of that exercise in pursuit of improving their health or even just to look better.

[00:10:21.820] – Allan
Yeah, and being over 40, you know, you brought this up in the book as well. There's things happening in our body that weight training, resistance training is going to specifically address, such as hormone imbalances, particularly with testosterone. It's going to address some other issues like osteopenia. Can you go a little bit into those benefits,

[00:10:41.900] – Sal
yeah, so let's start with bone loss or bone weakening, which is actually quite a big problem, even it affects men, affects more women, but it also affects men.

[00:10:51.070] – Sal
So this is the weakening of bone, osteopenia. And then, of course, when it gets real bad, it becomes osteoporosis and this can become quite a big problem. Resistance training, remember the the the primary adaptation that resistance training causes in the body. And this is, by the way, a good conversation that we can get into a little later in terms of when you view exercise, you want to look at the workout and then understand the adaptations that the exercise or workout is causing in the body, rather than just looking at the calories burned while performing the exercise.

[00:11:24.640] – Sal
So when we look at the adaptations, which are to build strength and muscle, it also directly does that to bone because muscle anchors at bone. So studies will show that most forms of exercise have some positive effect on bone, but usually it's very little. For example, people with osteopenia, if they run or walk or cycle, they'll notice a little bit of an increase in bone mass in the lower extremities, not much in the upper extremities swimming you'll see really small incremental changes with resistance training.

[00:11:59.860] – Sal
It's like, night and day, like nothing comes close to the bone strengthening effects of resistance training. Now, you mentioned hormones. A lot of people like to hear about this one because, you know, as we get older, we start to feel differently. Maybe libido drops a little bit. It's not as easy for us to burn body fat our skin. Does it look the same? We don't have the same vigor. And some of that is a result of just getting older.

[00:12:25.570] – Sal
And some of that as a result of changes in hormones, for example, and men, testosterone levels start to decline right around in our thirties. And it just continues that way until the day we die. Men and women, aside from menopause, they still get imbalances with estrogen, progesterone. They also have issues with their own testosterone, both men and women. Growth hormone, which some doctors will call the youth hormone, will decline as we get older.

[00:12:55.300] – Sal
And so a lot of people are interested in ways to naturally improve our hormone profile because it makes us feel good, right? If you give an older man testosterone, he starts to feel amazing and younger and has more vigor. If you balance out a woman's hormones artificially through either utilizing estrogen, progesterone or even growth hormone, she'll feel the same way. She'll feel more vigor, younger, more energy. So a lot of people are interested. How can I do that naturally?

[00:13:25.630] – Sal
Well, improving your health generally well can positively affect those, but it's not a huge effect. In fact, some forms of exercise tend to have a negative effect on hormones. For example, cardiovascular activity has been shown in some studies to lower testosterone quite reliably in men, in my experience. And women, especially when women are already present with some hormone imbalances or symptoms of hormone imbalances, cardiovascular activity can actually make that much worse. Resistance training is the only form of exercise that has been shown to reliably raise testosterone in all men.

[00:14:03.190] – Sal
So whether your testosterone is low in the middle or even high, you'll get a raising of testosterone. Not only that, but it also increases the density of androgen receptors in the body. So these are the receptors that testosterone attaches to. So you want to think of testosterone. It's like a key and the receptor is a lock. And if you have a lot of testosterone but you don't have very many of these locks, it's not going to do much in your body.

[00:14:26.890] – Sal
So more androgen receptors makes your testosterone just more effective. Well, resistance training not only raises testosterone, but also increases androgen receptor density. In women, It's been shown to balance out estrogen and progesterone. In both men and women, It raises growth hormone levels, brings them up to more youthful levels. In both men and women, muscle is by far the most effective way to improve insulin sensitivity, which is a very important thing, right? Insensitivity is insulin or insulin resistance ultimately causes things like diabetes.

[00:15:04.060] – Sal
It leads to cognitive dysfunction, excess body fat storage, especially in places that may be in store body fat before. So if you notice, as you get older, you as you gain weight, you notice your body fat is kind of being stored a little bit differently, could be result of hormone imbalances or insulin resistance. And so resistance training positively affects all these things. And so you might wonder why why does why does lifting weights or using resistance bands or doing body weight exercises to build muscle strength, why does that have such a positive effect on our hormones.

[00:15:38.620] – Sal
Again, it has to do with the specific adaptations that it asked the body to do so resistance training really is the only form of exercise that we could categorize as being pro tissue. So pro tissue in the body. Most other forms of exercise and in particular cardiovascular exercise, which includes running, swimming, cycling and those kinds of workouts. Those are anti-tissue. They tend to be, they want your body to get rid of active tissue. So let's start with that for a second.

[00:16:14.530] – Sal
So what does that mean? When you do lots of cardiovascular activity, when do you do any form of exercise? Your body aims at becoming better at that form of exercise. And so it adapts. That's an adaptation process, right. So if you go running and it's your first time, it's really challenging. A half a mile is very exhausting to you. Your muscles burn, your lungs burns really hard. Your body senses this. It's a stress.

[00:16:40.180] – Sal
It's a stress on the body. And everybody says, OK, we need to get better at doing this so that next time the same insult, the same stress won't bother us as much. And so you become more fit. You get better at that type of exercise. That's what adaptation is. Now, what does specifically speaking, what does what happens to the body when your body is trying to get better at endurance type activity, which is what cardiovascular exercise is, whether you're on an elliptical or running or riding a bike.

[00:17:13.050] – Sal
In order to get better at endurance exercise, it does a few different things. One is it learns to become more efficient with energy or more efficient with calories, OK, because cardiovascular activity burns a lot of calories during the time that you're doing it. So during an hour of cardio, you're going to burn more calories than doing an hour of other forms of exercise. So within that hour of exercise, you're burning all these calories. Your body's like, OK, we need to get better at being efficient with calories, not unlike a car that could adapt to your driving habits, becoming more of a hybrid or a one cylinder engine trying to burn less gasoline.

[00:17:52.980] – Sal
Also simultaneously, your body says we need stamina, but we also don't need strength. We just don't need much strength at all. We just need endurance. And so what your body does is it actually reduces muscle mass. Studies are very, they show this very clearly that if you lose weight through diet and cardio, so if that's your formula, that roughly half of the weight that you lose will be muscle mass. So in other words, if you lose 10 pounds, five of it will be body fat.

[00:18:25.950] – Sal
Five of it will be muscle. And what this does is it slows down the metabolism, makes you more efficient with your calorie burn, and it makes you better at cardiovascular activity. And so over time, your body burns less calories. You'll notice at first you lost weight and then you stop losing weight and you plateaus how people experience cardio with diet when it comes to weight loss and they end up with a slower metabolism. But nonetheless, one of the primary adaptations is even right out the gates is to reduce muscle mass to make you better and more efficient at this particular activity.

[00:19:00.190] – Sal
So it's anti tissue. OK, now think of the hormones that are involved with reducing muscle mass or at the very least, what hormones would combat muscle loss. Right. What hormones get in the way of losing muscle? Well, testosterone. Testosterone makes your body want to keep muscle. So this may be why cardiovascular exercise or endurance exercise in men has been shown to reliably lower testosterone. Your body wants to get rid of muscle so it can't have all this testosterone floating around.

[00:19:30.360] – Sal
Growth hormone is another one. You start to see over time a reduction in growth hormone. In women, you see a spike in cortisol. Cortisol is great for energy, but it's terrible for muscle. So when your cortisol goes up, you get a little bit hyped and energy. This is the fight or flight hormone, but over time it burns away muscle, making you more efficient at your activity. So anti tissue. OK, now let's look at resistance training, resistance training while you're performing, you don't burn a ton of calories, at least not in comparison to other forms of exercise.

[00:19:58.140] – Sal
But that's OK because we're not worried about the calories we're burning in that hour of workout. In fact, even with cardio, it's still insignificant, even though it's more still not that big of a deal. Well, we want to look at is how is this telling my body to change? What are the signals that it's sending to my body? So with resistance training, my body's sensing we need strength and we need muscle. That's what we need right now.

[00:20:19.800] – Sal
We're not worried about being efficient with calories. We're not worried about tons of endurance. We need strength and muscle. And so you end up building muscle as a result. Now, studies show that resistance training in combination with diet. So a lot of these are the same studies you see on cardio. And so we'll compare the two resistance training and diet results in all fat loss or in some cases, you'll see fat loss with a little bit of muscle gain.

[00:20:47.610] – Sal
So if you lose ten pounds doing resistance training, it's all body fat or you might actually gain some muscle in the process. Right. Now, think of the hormones that are involved with building muscle. You need testosterone. You need growth hormone. You need to be sensitive to insulin. Insulin can actually build muscle or when you utilize it efficiently, effectively. We can't have cortisol levels that are too high all the time. And in women, we need a balance of estrogen and progesterone.

[00:21:19.830] – Sal
So through the the adaptation signal, the direct adaptation that resistance training is asking the body to engage in, your body optimizes its own hormones in order to adapt. So resistance training from a hormonal standpoint is incredible. It's superior. So if you want if you're getting older and you want to feel younger through the method of having more youthful levels of hormones, resistance training stands head and shoulders above any other form of exercise.

[00:21:55.140] – Allan
Yeah. Now as we get into this, for someone that hasn't lifted before, I think basic terms can be really important. But beyond that, you had some specific thoughts on pretty much each of the terms that I'm going to bring up. Can you talk a little bit about reps and sets? And why those are important or how we would use those?

[00:22:15.580] – Sal
Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up, too, because I did write the book for there's a few different people that I thought of when I wrote the book, a few avatars. One of them are the coaches and trainers as a way to arm them, because this is something that we're constantly having to communicate and battle with whenever we're talking to potential clients. So it's a great tool. I also thought about primarily the average person, the average person who, when they think of exercise, if their doctor tells them to workout or whatever, they don't think of resistance training.

[00:22:45.130] – Sal
They think of going for a walk or running, swimming or cycling. So they don't know what these terms are. They might have heard reps and sets, but they don't know what they are. So a repetition is when you perform one full motion of the exercise. So let's say I'm doing a curl, right. This would be a curl, like a rep would be bringing it up and then bringing it down. So that's one. So one repetition.

[00:23:06.670] – Sal
A set is a number of repetitions that are performed together before I rest to perform another set. So let's say my workout today consists of 10 reps of the curl. So then I'll do my ten reps. Once I'm done with my 10th rep, I put the weight down. That is a set. So if your workout says, do you know three sets of ten reps of bicep curls, you know, you're supposed to perform this exercise with four, ten reps rest and that's one set.

[00:23:39.790] – Sal
And then repeat that two more times.

[00:23:42.010] – Allan
OK, another phrase you got into was range of motion. And I think this is an area that's really, really important because using proper range of motion can be huge. And I see so many people in the gym that they don't. And so can you talk a little bit about what range of motion is within the doing the exercise and how that's important to us?

[00:24:04.330] – Sal
Yeah, so range of motion really just refers to when you're doing the rep, you know how far you go down, how far you go up. So just to put it quite plainly, right. So again, to do the curl all the way down, all the way up, that's my range of motion. Now, range of motion, there is an ideal range of motion for every exercise, but there's also a range of motion that's individual to the person when they're working out. The best way to get the best results, to gain the best results, the best benefits, all the benefits of resistance training,

[00:24:39.370] – Sal
You want to train in a full range of motion that you own for your body. In other words, the range of motion that you have control and stability over. OK, so if I'm doing a squat, for example, and I can go all the way down and go all the way up, but with good control, good stability, I have you know, I'm connected to my muscles and I feel like I'm in control in the entire rep, then that's the best range of motion for.

[00:25:06.550] – Sal
Now, let's say you're doing a squat and I could go all the way down and all the way up. But at the bottom, my low back rounds and my knees cave in a little bit and I just don't have lots of stability at the bottom. Well, that's a range of motion. You shouldn't train and we're going to stop you and have you trained above that. So essentially, you want to train within your fullest range of motion to the fullest range of motion that you have the most control and stability in.

[00:25:30.820] – Allan
now doing so, you'll gain strength within that range of motion. And if you find that you can't perform a full range of motion because you don't have the control and stability over time, challenging yourself again within reason will elongate your range of motion and will increase the range of motion. So there's a common myth around resistance training that it is not a good form of exercise for flexibility. It's not a good form of exercise for mobility. And it makes us tight.

[00:26:02.860] – Sal
Right. People say, oh, if you lift weights or you do lots of resistance training, it's going to make you really stiff and tight. In that myth. And it is a myth. It's a complete myth. Probably comes from the extreme bodybuilders that work out and they move around like they can't move very well. And in popular media probably doesn't help when bodybuilders or people with big muscles are depicted in movies, are typically depicted as being very stiff and very tight.

[00:26:28.750] – Sal
The truth is, resistance training is one of the best forms of exercise for functional flexibility. OK. So functional flexibility is the flexibility that you have strength and control over. Right. So flexibility is just range of motion. Functional flexibility is, do I own that range of motion? Am I strong in that range of motion? So to give you an example, I have a six month old baby at home. Right. So new baby, six months old.

[00:26:58.870] – Sal
He's very flexible, like most babies. I mean, I could take his legs and I can put them up by his head and put them in the splits. And it's no problem. But he has very little functional flexibility. In fact, he's very unstable. So although I can take his legs and bend them all over the place, he would be prone to injury if you were to try to move within those ranges of motion or even with load, right.

[00:27:19.310] – Sal
He's got very little control. Resistance training because you're training with resistance to strengthen your body as you train within your ranges of motion and as those ranges of motion improve and increase, you own them, you control them and you're strong within them. So it's the difference between somebody who can sit in a squat versus someone who can sit in a squat and their kid can jump on them and it doesn't hurt them or they can jump out of the squat and it doesn't bother them or they can hold something or they can do it with load.

[00:27:49.970] – Sal
So functional flexibility, which is the kind of flexibility that you need when none of us need extreme ranges of motion, you know it's not doing the splits is cool. But the average person, there's really not a lot of value in doing the splits, but there is a lot of value in being able to twist and turn and bend over and lift a box and move the couch and play with your kids. And, you know, you step off a curb and catch yourself.

[00:28:15.650] – Sal
Those are all functional flexibility. And that's what resistance training provides that other forms of exercise really don't. They don't provide resistance within ranges of motion, or at least not in a way that builds strength within those ranges of motion.

[00:28:28.670] – Allan
Yeah, the way I like to put it is I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105, you know, which is a twist and it's a stand up from a seated position all on my own without a bar, without assistance. So and I think that's really important because as we look at strength training through the full range of motion means every rep, you're going to get more value out of it.

[00:28:51.230] – Sal
Right.

[00:28:51.520] – Allan
Not wasting energy, going in there, doing half motions.

[00:28:54.380] – Allan
You're actually getting the most out of that exercise. Another term that I think is really important when we're talking about the value of a rep is tempo. Can you talk about tempo?

[00:29:05.390] – Sal
Tempo is just refers to the speed that you perform the repetition, really. So back to the curl, right, if it takes me three seconds to go down, three seconds to go up and maybe a one second pause at the top or whatever, that would be referred to as a three one three tempo or whatever, we don't get that complicated. The average person does, it's not that not super important. What's important is to know that you want a controlled tempo.

[00:29:32.790] – Sal
When you do resistance training, OK, so there are definitely cases where a fast tempo is valuable, but really that's relegated to athletes who need speed and power. The average person, there's not a ton of value in doing fast repetitions. They tend to increase risk and oftentimes decrease what's called the tension on the muscles of someone not as good a results. Right. So you want a controlled tempo. I tend to tell people you want to take at least three seconds on the way down and at least three seconds on the way up.

[00:30:08.290] – Sal
Just you want to be controlled. So if I'm doing an overhead press, I'm pressing like this and then coming down, rather than throwing it up and down and having kind of this loose tempo and tempo is important. Like I said, it reduces risk and it stimulates the muscle and the body in a more effective way. So generally speaking, for most people, for most people's results, especially if your goal is fat loss, health, sculpting your body, you want a controlled tempo.

[00:30:35.350] – Allan
Yeah. Because otherwise momentum's doing a lot of the work for you and you're not really in control of that weight, which is kind of dangerous. And then the final one where I think people really struggle is the concepts of intensity and failure. And I kind of lump those two a little bit more together. But you talked about them separately in the book. Can you talk a little bit about intensity and failure and why we've got to find the right mix of those and why failure isn't really the goal?

[00:31:03.550] – Allan
Like you would have heard this in the past. No, no pain, no gain. You know, you've got to train to failure if you want to grow. All those were kind of mantras in the gym 40 years, 30 years ago. And I still hear them today. And so that's kind of what's kind of scary is even in my 40s and 50s, there's still people training that way.

[00:31:23.800] – Sal
Yeah, intensity is an important factor in your workout, right. Because it needs to be hard enough. So that your body thinks that it needs to adapt in order to get better, otherwise your body has no reason to adapt and adaptation takes energy, it changes your body. And your body doesn't do that for no reason, especially not building muscle. Muscles are expensive tissue. You're only ever going to have as much muscle and strength as your body thinks you need.

[00:31:51.490] – Sal
You'll never have more than it thinks you need. It costs calories. It takes up energy. Remember, we evolved for the most part in environments where calories are very difficult to come by. So your body doesn't want to just make you burn more calories for no reason. It's going to need a reason to. So intensity is important because I have to give my body a reason and intensity is part of the formula in order to change. OK, so that's true.

[00:32:19.420] – Sal
So there's a vein of truth in the no pain, no gain slogan. Now, the problem is people take it way too far. And the problem is that the intensity is quite individual. And what I mean by that is if I take somebody who's never worked out, it takes very little intensity to get their body to change. Their body is used to doing nothing. And so a few sets of body weight squats at a moderate intensity where they can feel it a little bit, they can feel their legs burn a little bit.

[00:32:48.130] – Sal
That's about it. That's enough. That's enough to get their body to change. Now, somebody who's extremely advanced, who's been training for years, who's very strong or very fit and gotten their body to a very high level, to get their body to change even more, they're probably going to have to train much harder than the person I talked about earlier, because their bodies again, it needs a reason. It's already adapted to a certain level of intensity and whatever.

[00:33:14.590] – Sal
To go any further, I need to find ways to train harder or to send a different signal. By the way, and this is true for intensity, but also for how long you work out, how many exercises you do and all that stuff. The right dose for your body is going to get you there the fastest. More than that won't get you there faster. In fact, it'll get you there slower. And sometimes you won't get there at all.

[00:33:40.680] – Sal
And less than that will get you there slower. So it's the right dose. More not good, less not good. And the right dose is different from person to person. And it's different for you as your fitness improves, as you start to get better at the workout. So remember that. So the when you go into workout or you're working out your training, think about what have I done before, oh, I'm just getting started. It's not going to take much.

[00:34:08.280] – Sal
Now, some people have trouble with this. And they said, well, how do I gauge, you know, the right intensity? One way to know that you might have gone too hard is by if you're sore, if you get muscle soreness. Now, most people think muscle soreness indicates that they had a good workout. So if I get really saw that was a great workout. I worked out my legs and I can barely walk today. That means I must have had a great workout.

[00:34:33.690] – Sal
It's actually the opposite. You should you should feel no to little soreness after your workout. In fact, my goal with people is to have them feel no soreness when they're training. Now, that's pretty hard because once you're kind of testing the intensity, you might go over a little bit and get a little sore. And that's OK to get a little sore. But if your soreness lasts longer than a day, you went too hard. You need to back off a little bit.

[00:34:56.050] – Sal
Now, you mentioned failure. Failure is a term that's used in fitness and resistance training to mean that you lifted a weight or didn't exercise until you could no longer perform another repetition of that exercise. Right. So back to Curls, right. If I did Curls to failure, well, I'm just going to keep going until I can't curl the dumbbell with good form anymore. And so now I've hit failure. And so the value that has been preached around failure is well, if you're trying to figure out what the right intensity is, then, you know, you've at least hit it if you've gone to failure because there's nothing beyond that.

[00:35:32.560] – Sal
And so you're going to be OK. But remember what I said. If you go too hard, you'll get there a little slower. Now, studies also show that failure, even for people who train at an advanced level, is usually too much intensity. In fact, it stresses the body too much and it results in this prioritization of healing rather than adaptation. So what are those two things? Healing is recovery. OK, so let's step away from exercise for a second and let's just talk about skin.

[00:36:04.330] – Sal
So let's say I handle a rough object and I, I scratch my skin or I make my skin a little raw on my hand so my body will heal the skin. That's the healing part. That's the recovery part. And then when it's done with that, my body may say, let's make this skin tougher so that next time it's not going to cause the same damage. And so then I start to develop a callus. Right. The callus is adaptation.

[00:36:34.360] – Sal
The healing was just getting me back to where I was before. Well, if you train with too much intensity or too long or too hard for your body, your body will only prioritize healing because that's what it has to do. It has to heal. And it can't even think about getting resources to add new tissue, to add muscle or to get you to adapt. And so what ends up happening when you do this is you end up getting really sore or tired and then you heal and then you go back to the gym again and do the same thing over and over again and you never improve.

[00:37:07.360] – Sal
So it's like I get sore, my soreness goes away, I work out, I get sore, soreness goes away. Nothing changes. I don't get stronger. I don't really build any muscle. I don't really burn body fat. I'm just cause it's like, again, like the skin. I'm just constantly waiting for it to heal and then I mess with it again, never allowing my skin to develop a callus. So that's why it's very important to be judicious with your intensity and to apply the right intensity.

[00:37:34.840] – Sal
If your goal is to get your body to change and adapt, then do it smart. Don't just do it hard.

[00:37:42.710] – Allan
Now, I want to get into one more concept before we get into the actual what the workouts are kind of about in this, I thought I thought this was brilliant in talking about why people don't follow through. You know, they'll start a training program. They'll say they want to lose weight. And then they don't necessarily follow through. In the first day, you know, they sign that gym membership and they buy the 12 lessons and, you know, they're ready to go.

[00:38:08.330] – Allan
And they make the first lessons and then they're ready to quit three weeks. You called this motivation versus discipline. I mean, you know, the two concepts of why motivation doesn't serve us, but discipline does. Can you talk about those two concepts and how we can put that and get the right mindset going into the gym or in our home gym?

[00:38:27.710] – Sal
Yeah. We're especially when it comes to fitness, we are obsessed. The average person is obsessed with motivation and the fitness industry doesn't help this. It promotes motivation is the key to long term fitness success. So everything is market around that. It's exciting. It's fun. It's motivating. We're here to inspire you and all that stuff. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with motivation. I love feeling motivated like anybody else. It's an incredible feeling.

[00:39:01.760] – Sal
But like any other state of mind, it's fleeting, OK? It doesn't exist permanently. You can't permanently stay motivated. So the challenge is never, how do I stay consistent with my workout? How do I stay consistent with my nutrition when I'm motivated? That's never an issue. Never. That's not a problem. Never had to convince a motivated client to workout or to eat right? Right. The challenge is when that state of mind goes away like it always does.

[00:39:35.120] – Sal
It always will. It's inevitable. OK, so how do we maintain long-term success? Well, it's not through focusing on motivation. Now, you can welcome motivation when it comes. Have fun with it. That might be when you push a little harder. That might be when you get a little bit more dedicated. That's probably when you can have the most fun doing what you're doing. But really, we want to focus on how do we stay consistent when that goes away.

[00:40:03.830] – Sal
And the way to do that is through developing the skill of discipline. So the good news is that what will keep you consistent is the skill. It's called discipline. And like any skill, you can work on it and make it better. You can actually develop it so that you can have a tremendous sense and skill of discipline. So someone might ask, how the heck do I do that? How do I develop the skill of discipline? Well, to put it plainly, when you're ready to get started and there's a little bit more complexity to this, but I'm going to simplify it. When you're ready to get started on working out, when you're ready to get started with, you know, looking at your diet and maybe cleaning it up, ask yourself the following.

[00:40:51.860] – Sal
What is one step or change I can make now that I know I can maintain forever? And you want to use the context of forever. It's the only way to do this. And you have to be very honest with yourself. OK, remember, by the way, when you're doing this, you're probably in a motivated state of mind. So when people start to do this, they're in that motivated state of mind. Remember that you're in that motivated state of mind.

[00:41:16.880] – Sal
OK, if you ask somebody what their goals are when they're motivated, they're always different than when they're not so motivated. I'm super hyped and, you know, I want to build a business. And what's your goal? I want to be a Millionaire in the next year. And then you ask him five months later on, the motivation goes away and you find that it's much different. Same thing with fitness. Right. So you might remember that you might be motivated state of mind.

[00:41:38.330] – Sal
So talk to your normal self and ask yourself what's one step I can take that I know I can maintain forever now? It still needs to be challenging. So it can't be like an easy step for you because otherwise it doesn't have any meaning. It has to have some kind of meaning, but it does need to be something, you know, you can maintain forever. Start there once you do that consistently and once that becomes something that is now easy and doesn't really require you to utilize your skill of discipline, then you move on to the next step.

[00:42:13.700] – Sal
And this looks very different from person to person. You know, I've had clients where the first step that we took was to have them drink an extra two glasses of water a day. Like that's the first step that we took where I've had clients, where the first step was to read one page from a nutrition book or to do fifteen minutes once a week of exercise. That's the first step that they had. But as you work on this, you actually start to get this kind of

[00:42:41.410] – Sal
a snowball effect, and it starts to happen faster and faster, and what you'll find is, although you won't get those fast initial results like you might when you're hyper motivated and you throw everything at yourself but the kitchen sink, what you'll find is the results have a snowball effect. So although initially you might have seen this with your results, like, oh, I lost 10 pounds and then I plateaued and then, five months later gained it back and then some with this you might start real slow, but then it starts to accelerate, accelerate as if it's fallen off a cliff and then it's permanent and then it becomes permanent.

[00:43:16.720] – Sal
And I know people when they hear me say it takes a little longer initially to think, oh, my gosh, I don't want to wait any longer. I'm ready right now. You know, it's not as long as you think. It's definitely not as long as you think. Little changes, boy, do they add up over a period of time. You know, if I took two parallel lines that were perfectly parallel and I moved one a half a degree away from the other one just a half a degree, you wouldn't even be able to tell by looking at the lines with the naked eye.

[00:43:44.260] – Sal
But if you followed them for a mile or two miles, boy, the distance would start to become quite massive. So that's how you develop the skill of discipline. Slowly pick one thing at a time, wait for it to stick. Oh, that feels good. I think I'm ready for the next step. And by the way, again, this is the only way that I have ever seen as a trainer, and I've trained people for four decades,

[00:44:07.600] – Sal
This is the only permanent way for success. All the other hyper motivated. Let's do this and crush it and whatever. I'm that's it, I'm starting five days a week and I'm doing this crazy diet. That approach has a 90 something percent plus fail rate. OK, everybody fails doing it the other way. So it's a guarantee. So even if you you're thinking yourself like, oh, you know what? I just want to get those quick results, you'll fail.

[00:44:37.040] – Sal
So it's a waste of your time. It's complete waste your time. And I'll even add that when you fail, each time you fail doing it that way, you set your body up for more challenges in the future through slower metabolisms, less muscle, more hormone issues. And psychologically, if you failed at losing weight four times through that old method, at some point you're just going to want to give up. I don't want to do that anymore.

[00:45:04.130] – Sal
I know what happens every time I do it, it sucks and I disappoint myself. So I'm not doing it. Develop a skill of discipline. Take your time. And again, there's a little more to this than what I'm saying. But this is very simple explanation. And your chances of success are significantly higher.

[00:45:21.910] – Allan
Absolutely. Now, the resistance training revolution workouts, you have three kind of different levels there. One of them is body weight. Only one of them is body weight with dumbbell. And then the third one is with a little bit more equipment, like a squat rack and a bar and so a little bit more advanced. But something I think that's really cool because someone can get started with pretty much just themselves and a few little implements that you can pick up practically anywhere.

[00:45:50.470] – Allan
Amazon will have it at your door tomorrow kind of stuff. And I think one of the cool things I liked about the exercise is that I want you to kind of get into as you get into it, is you use this concept called priming. This is not like they go warm up or go stretch before you do these exercises. But we're going to do some specific work before we do the work to make sure that we're in the right posture and right range of motion and all of it to be able to perform this work safely.

[00:46:18.850] – Allan
Can you talk a little bit about the workouts and in particular why priming would be so important?

[00:46:23.610] – Sal
Yes, all the workouts are traditional resistance training. They're all designed to give you those benefits that I talked about earlier. Right. Speeding up the metabolism, making your body more efficient, fat burning machine so you burn more calories, balancing your hormones, shaping sculpting your body. You're all designed to do that. But I gave three workouts because I wanted to make sure that people who had no equipment had a workout that they could perform. And then I did workouts with basic equipment because as you become stronger and more advanced, you may want to utilize weights to augment your workouts.

[00:47:01.000] – Sal
And free weights in particular are extremely versatile. They fit and mold any body, whether you're young or old or whatever. And again, they're very, very inexpensive and effective. So I gave three workouts so people have those options. Now, and by the way, dumbbells and barbells, very inexpensive pieces of equipment. It's incredible how much money people spend on ineffective, crappy pieces of equipment and how inexpensive a pair of dumbbells is. I mean, I used to tell my clients, this as a trainer.

[00:47:32.860] – Sal
You know, I'd say you can have the most fancy gym in the world. Give me a pair of dumbbells and a bench and I'll train anybody and I'll get them in phenomenal shape. And any good trainer will know exactly what or will agree with me and they'll know exactly what I'm talking about. All right. So let's talk about priming. So priming is another term for warm up. Now, the reason why I don't say warm up is because it's different.

[00:47:54.640] – Sal
Now, the goal of a warm up in a lot of people don't know this, right? People think when you're warming up, what you're doing is you're making the muscles warm. Therefore, it makes them more elastic or more pliable so I won't hurt myself. That's really not what's happening. Your muscles are not made out of rubber, so they don't become more elastic or less elastic because of hot or cold. Unless you froze your muscles, you went in subzero temperatures, actually froze your body.

[00:48:23.290] – Sal
If you're if you're alive, you're that's not what's happening to your muscles. What actually happens, and the reason why when you get warm or warm up, your body feels looser. And when you're not warmed up, you feel tired or whatever. Really what's happening has very little to do with your muscle and has everything to do with your central nervous system. So the central nervous system, which includes your brain, really is the control center for your muscles.

[00:48:49.330] – Sal
So any time you move a muscle, it's the central nervous system that's telling the muscle to do something. And warming up is trying to get the central nervous system to be ready for exercise. Priming just does this in a superior way. So we'll talk about, for example, the more common way that the average person probably tries to warm up, which is just static stretching. Right. So in classes do this still to this day. Right.

[00:49:19.660] – Sal
So I'm going to work out or I'm going to run or whatever. Let me do some hamstring stretches. Let me, so I touch my toes, let me stretch my quads. So I'll grab my ankle, pull it back and let me stretch my calves and I'm going to be warmed up or whatever. Well, first off, not a great way to warm up, but you may be wondering. Well, I do get more flexible. I know when I stretch my hamstrings, I all of a sudden can if I hold that position, I can touch my toes more after about thirty seconds.

[00:49:49.990] – Sal
Well, what that's doing is it's sending a signal to the central nervous system that's telling central nervous system to kind of relax that muscle and allow it to elongate a little bit. OK, so now you have muscles that allow themselves to elongate more. You increase the range of motion. Why this is not a good thing before you exercise, and studies actually show static stretching increases risk of injury is because you don't want a larger range of motion that your central nervous system isn't entirely connected to.

[00:50:21.430] – Sal
So the reason why you get more flexible as you're holding that stretch is because the central nervous system is to put, I guess, to it's not entirely working this way, but this will explain a little bit. It's disconnecting a little bit or relaxing. It's signal is turning off and allowing that muscle to stretch. You don't want your central nervous system to be turned off when you're exercising. You want it to be on, because if you move in that range of motion or you have to do something quick or you're lifting a weight or whatever, you want it to be connected, because if it's not connected, that's how you hurt yourself.

[00:50:53.500] – Sal
That's how you end up injuring yourself. Like the example of my baby son, like I told you about earlier in this podcast. So the best way to warm up really is to prime your central nervous system. To turn it on and to turn it on in ranges of motion and larger range of motion so that when you exercise, it's safer, so that when you exercise, you're connected to the exercise so you can activate the muscles that you're really trying to target so that when you're squatting, if you want to feel it in your glutes, you can feel it in your glutes.

[00:51:29.110] – Sal
If I'm shoulder pressing, I want to feel it in my shoulders. If I'm doing an overhead press, my back doesn't hurt because my core is active in my central nervous system's telling my core to stabilize my body. Priming does this. OK, so what is priming look like? There's lots of there's an almost infinite number of priming exercises. I put some of my favorite ones in the book in the workouts. But to give you like a simple example, we'll use the example of, like, the hamstring stretch.

[00:52:03.530] – Sal
Right. So let's say you sit on the floor, you put your hamstring straight or your legs straight out in front of you and you go to touch your foot rather than sitting in that position, what I'm going to do is I'm going to stretch in that position and then I'm going to push down with my leg to activate my hamstring, and then I'm going to pull up with my leg to activate my hip flexor all while holding that stretch will give an example.

[00:52:25.820] – Sal
So what I'm doing is I'm although I'm stretching the muscle, I'm telling central nervous system to connect to this new range of motion, not to relax, but rather to allow me to stretch, but then also to connect to this range of motion. So priming does this. And I gave an example of I didn't even put that movement in the book because that's a silly priming exercise. There's much better ones. Ninety ninety is a good example of one.

[00:52:50.710] – Sal
There's Frager's and lots of other exercises that are excellent. So in the workouts, what's included are your 5 to 10 minute priming sessions that then prepare you for your workout and they make the workout safer and more effective.

[00:53:05.800] – Allan
OK, Sal, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:53:15.230] – Sal
OK, so wellness requires balance, it requires balance, you can be too extreme with fitness and nutrition, and that's dysfunctional and unhealthy and you can also be too extreme in the opposite direction. So for me, wellness is always meant balance. OK, so one step to achieve balance is to enter into an exercise program or nutrition program from the mindset of self care and self-love. So I'm doing this workout not because I hate my body, not because I think I'm fat and I'm gross or whatever, but rather I want to take care of my body.

[00:53:53.910] – Sal
I want to take care of myself because I'm someone that deserves those things. Now, why does that provide balance? Because taking care of myself most times means I'm exercising. Most times it means I'm eating pretty healthy. I'm not eating lots of junk food. I'm not drinking less alcohol. But sometimes taking care of myself means I'm not exercising. Sometimes taking care of myself means I'm enjoying some pizza with some beer or I'm enjoying some time with my friends not being active and having some drinks or whatever.

[00:54:29.360] – Sal
So when you go from the state of mind to self care, then you naturally start to find some balance which leads to wellness. What's another thing that I think another step for wellness? Remember that wellness is a sphere that includes much more than just exercise and diet. Wellness includes the relationships that you have with the people around you. It includes the relationship you have with yourself. How do you feel about yourself? How do you treat yourself?

[00:54:57.140] – Sal
It includes a spiritual practice which can look like organized religion. It can look like meditation. Essentially, it's a forty thousand view of forty thousand foot view of the world and life. And what is the meaning behind why and what I'm doing and that'll get you through the tough parts of things. And then the third thing is to remember that challenge actually is what gives our lives meaning. And challenge is actually a component of happiness. If you look at the studies on happiness, you'll find that we need to be challenged in order to be happy.

[00:55:38.750] – Sal
And that just frames our lives. That just puts us in a different position because life is hard for everybody. And if you accept challenge, it's still hard. So I'm not going to say it makes it easy, but accept it and understand that it brings you meaning and purpose and it's a component of happiness, then you might not add a layer of resistance to it.

[00:56:02.640] – Allan
Thank you. So if someone wanted to learn more about you or the book, The Resistance Training Revolution, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:56:10.730] – Sal
So the book you can find any bookstore, you can find it anywhere they sell books or you can go to the resistancetrainingrevolution dotcom. You can find me on my podcast that I host with my two co-hosts, Mind Pump, and that's on all podcast platforms. And you can also find me on Instagram.

[00:56:28.520] – Sal
That's the social media of choice that I use. And my name on Instagram is Mind Pump Sal.

[00:56:34.630] – Allan
awesome. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/489 and I'll be sure to have the links there. Sal, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:56:44.330] – Sal
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

Post Show/Recap

[00:56:50.770] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:56:52.430] – Rachel
Hey, Alan, you know, I am the first one to say that resistance training is super important, but this is the first time I think that I've ever heard it being better than cardio or anything else, for that matter.

[00:57:06.850] – Allan
Well, I think where a lot of people kind of lose the math on this and it can go both ways as one. Yes. If you have more muscle mass, your body is going to burn more calories at rest. It's going to burn more calories in everything you do because your body is supporting more mass. In mass times distance is power. I mean, that's where all the stuff's coming from. All this energy is going is moving you around, keeping you there, keeping that mass on.

[00:57:36.490] – Allan
Now, if you were to try to use just weight lifting and I'm just going to lift weights and try to lose weight, that's probably not actually going to happen. So there's still some nutritional things that you have to focus on. The weight loss is going to happen in the kitchen. It's not going to happen in the gym. And I think that's really the message of all this. Now, what type of exercise would be best for reducing body fat?

[00:58:06.310] – Allan
OK, not weight, not weight, fat.

[00:58:10.630] – Allan
And I think it's it's pretty simple to see that, yes, you can run. And if you're taking care of your nutrition, you're going to lose weight and you're going to lose some fat, but you're also going to lose muscle mass. There's not a marathoner out there, you look at the professional marathoners and they are bone thin. They have just enough muscle to run.

[00:58:37.570] – Rachel
Yeah.

[00:58:38.320] – Allan
And if you sat down and put them on a bench press, probably not one of them could bench press their weight because they've never been asked to do that. That's not a part of who they are. Whereas you can look at a sprinter and you can look at them and say, OK, that individuals carrying a lot of muscle mass because they're going shorter distances and they're sprinting and they're getting that done. And so that's a different type of work and it requires a different body type to be good at it.

[00:59:05.390] – Allan
OK, you could take a marathoner and have them run a sprint and they'd be OK. Or you could have someone who's a sprinter and they could probably run a marathon. But again, they're just going to be OK, the body type to do those things. And sometimes that's self-selecting. If there's a lot of conversations out there about how yoga, all these, you know, long lean women and men are doing yoga.

[00:59:33.190] – Allan
And the reality is most of them are self-selecting to do yoga because they're they're lean and thin and long limbed. And they're just naturally moved towards things you're good at. Everybody does that. You know, if you're good at lifting weights, you're going to want to lift more weights. If you're good at running, you're going to want to run. That's just natural. But when we start talking about your body's ability to burn fat, if you have more muscle mass, you're going to burn more fat in general.

[01:00:03.280] – Allan
So there is some math to it from that perspective. But the amount of muscle mass and the amount of calories that muscle mass burns is not this huge, huge number, but it's a little number over a long period of time. So if you're working to maintain muscle mass, you're putting yourself in a good position to burn fat. So you're retaining muscle mass and you're burning fat. So you've got to find that balance of those two. And that means your nutrition has to be spot on.

[01:00:34.300] – Allan
You have to be getting adequate protein to maintain muscle mass. And you've got to be lifting, you've got to be lifting heavy stuff to have that muscle mass. Otherwise your body is going to say you're a runner. You really don't need this extra muscle on your torso. It's not helping you run and your body will start to get rid of that. If you're not doing other side to side stuff and doing other lifting, certain leg muscles are going to atrophy over time.

[01:01:04.420] – Allan
And, the muscles that you use to run are going to be really strong and lean. And they're going to do what you want them to do for the running you're trying to do. And that's where your optimization is, at least from an athletic perspective.

[01:01:18.850] – Rachel
Yeah. Yeah. I can't think of any sport that doesn't spend some amount of time in a weight room lifting weights or doing or body weight training, doing some sort of resistance training. And even runners, especially when you reach my age bracket. Forty plus it's important because by doing these types of resistance training, you're putting more, I guess, focus different muscle groups, which support that sport for me, it's running, but I'm sure baseball players, football players, you know, everybody spend some amount of time in the gym.

[01:01:56.390] – Allan
Yeah, they do. But you'll notice, OK, you're not going to see this hugely muscular guy playing tennis. Right. You know, they're going to have some muscle definition, but they're not going to be a bodybuilder look, they're not going to have that look because that's not conducive to their sport. And so, you know, if you're going to do this, you're going to do come across training, you are going to do resistance training.

[01:02:24.320] – Allan
You just have to think of it in those lines. If you're naturally inclined to add a lot of muscle mass for certain sports, it's not going to make you better. I was, generally I have the frame and the musculature of a sprinter, not very fast, but so I'm a very slow sprinter. But I basically have that musculature. So when I was running marathons, I was this weirdo. You know, I didn't look like them.

[01:02:53.390] – Allan
They were all pencil thin, lean guys. And I'm coming up, and they're like, OK, you should be, you know, Body-building, you shouldn't be running Ultra's. And I agree with them, I was getting way too much muscle mass to be good at marathons.

[01:03:12.110] – Rachel
yeah, there's probably a point of diminishing returns, but I think it's still definitely important to spend some time in the gym somehow doing some body weight or weight training.

[01:03:23.000] – Allan
Yeah. And I think that's really the message I'd like to get to is unfortunately or fortunately, because, you know, this is the way gym life goes, is people will buy a gym membership, OK. And a percentage of those people will go in and they'll find themselves at the treadmills because they're the most commonly used piece of equipment. We put those in the front. OK, and then the next layer is going to be machines and then the final layer is going to be the free weights.

[01:03:51.680] – Allan
Now, that's that's in most gyms. If they have the capacity to structure their gym, that's how they're going to structure it, because they know that 80 percent of the people are never going to make it past the treadmills and ellipticals that they're going to walk in and that's their workout. Now, the other side of what we also know is after three weeks of not seeing any benefit from being on the treadmill, 45 minutes to an hour every day, five days a week, they stop coming. They just signed a contract.

[01:04:21.060] – Allan
So you're making that payment. That money keeps coming out of your checking account. And then because you get comfortable with that money coming out of your checking account, you never even bother to cancel when the year's over. And so they have a constant supply of money coming into the gym for you to not use their equipment. And so that's how most gyms are structured financially. That's how they make it. That's how they're successful is by you coming in, getting on the treadmill, not seeing results and then leaving and not coming back.

[01:04:51.780] – Allan
And well, what Sal's trying to say, what I'm trying to say is if you work for yourself a little bit deeper into the gym and start doing some other exercises, you're going to see not just an advantage for weight loss. You're going to see other general advantages in your life when you're strong enough to do things that you couldn't do before. Now, you're not dependent on someone else. And so if you've had to have someone else open a jar of pickles for you, that's a clear indication your grip strength wasn't strong enough and you lost and you're losing independence.

[01:05:30.110] – Allan
You're now dependent on someone to open jars for you. And that's just one indication that you could be stronger and you could be independent, you could do those things for yourself. You just have to focus on realizing that strength training is a very important dynamic. It's one of the first dynamics that causes people to lose independence.

[01:05:54.050] – Rachel
Yeah, that makes total sense.

[01:05:55.700] – Allan
You know, you lose strengthen your muscles and bones. You fall, you break something. And for a lot of people done and I don't really have a nice way to say it, but, you know, for a lot of people, breaking a hip in their 60s is really the end. They've literally just written the script for the last chapter of their life with that fall. So taking some time, getting yourself stronger. Look, working on those modalities that aren't calorie burning, you know, because, it can't all be about weight loss, you know, your whole life, your whole fitness and health and cannot all be about weight loss.

[01:06:39.370] – Allan
When you get into that mindset, you're kind of losing, you're losing so much of what this whole formula is about that, you know, you win or lose on one bet, you know, I'm all in on weight loss and then the weight loss doesn't come, we've lost that. Whereas if you can sit down and say, well, my goal was to get stronger, lose some body fat and feel better. Aand you do get stronger and you know, you're lifting more weight and you find yourself in an everyday situation using that strength.

[01:07:16.680] – Allan
that's that wins. Maybe you didn't lose the weight you wanted. Maybe you wanted to be down at one hundred and twenty pounds or a hundred thirty pounds. And, you know, you're stuck at 150. You're you're still stronger. More capable. You have all of these other wins and things. You've got more energy. You know, energy is life. And so, you know, yes, weight loss can be important factor for a lot of people.

[01:07:44.250] – Allan
And also I was really trying to say is don't stop at the treadmills.

[01:07:49.430] – Rachel
Right.

[01:07:49.500] – Allan
Go a little deeper into the gym. There's no reason for you to feel intimidated by that. And if you are, message me and we can have some conversations about how to feel more comfortable in that part of the gym, because, you know, a lot of that is you've never done this. You don't know how that machine works. You don't know how that equipment can be used.

[01:08:09.840] – Allan
You don't have a workout. You don't have all these things. But the reality is that's the easy part. The hard part is literally walking past that treadmill and going a little deeper. That's the hard part. Once you get that done, you can learn everything else.

[01:08:25.650] – Rachel
Well, for sure. You know, I've been that person, though. I've been that person who has had a gym membership, walks in the gym and like, you know, everything just escapes my head. I don't even know where to start. What do I do with this? But, you know, if there's personal trainers like yourself and myself and I'm sure the gym has personal trainers on staff, but if you go in there with some sort of a goal in mind or, you know, something purposeful and you can learn, learn how to lift weights and emotion that makes your arm stronger or legs stronger or core stronger, I mean, if you have a plan would be helpful and then seek strengths from that or with that in mind.

[01:09:03.300] – Allan
Yeah, and that is important is the plan. And then the other side of it is, I will say this for weightlifting and this weightlifting is probably one of the few things that where you shouldn't just play to your strengths.

[01:09:15.630] – Rachel
Good points.

[01:09:16.560] – Allan
So many people will go in there and, you know, you'll see the pictures of the guy who's really muscular upper body and has bird legs. That's a thing. That's what actually happens because people get to where they're focused on what one part of them, their strengths are.

[01:09:33.750] – Allan
Or maybe they're always doing like, I know I went to the YMCA when I was in my 20s and there was this one guy I'd come in and he was an older guy. And like, I was just he was so, so freakin strong in the bench press. But that's all he ever did. He really came in the gym and he did bench press and then he would skip a day and he'd be back in the next time.

[01:09:58.070] – Allan
Bench press and they need to skip a day and then the next day he'd be in. Bench press. And don't get me wrong, at the time, the guy could bench press as much as I could squat, but I doubt he could squat as much as I could bench press because he never used his legs. He never lifted. He only did bench press. And it looked you could see it. I mean, literally, he came and he looked worked.

[01:10:19.750] – Allan
He looked deformed a little bit. And I know, unfortunately, you know, at his age and a little bit older, he probably started having back problems, started having some issues where those imbalances are going to start playing against you. So, you know, I will just say is have a plan, please. Have a plan. Don't just go in there and start throwing things around. Right. Feels good. Don't get me wrong.

[01:10:40.720] – Allan
Throwing ahead and planning around feels great. Just get in there and start throwing stuff around and you feel like you're accomplishing something. Maybe sore as crap the next day, you know, and you're going to feel like you did something which is one of the cool things about weightlifting is one of the ways of working out where after doing the workout, not only are you tired then, but three days later you're still feeling it. Most other ways of working out don't give you that feedback, not necessarily the right feedback, but it is feedback.

[01:11:12.280] – Allan
So I'm just saying, have a plan, find a simple program, go in. If you don't know how to use a certain piece of equipment or don't know how to use a particular exercise, take some time to talk to somebody. Who knows, it can be an online trainer like Rachel or myself. It can be someone at the gym that's scheduled to do that. And, is there available to show you? But learn the form, learn how to do the exercises and know which exercises you need to do which days and and how that works for getting the work done, getting the recovery.

[01:11:46.030] – Allan
But yeah, Sal's not wrong and saying that the treadmill is not your friend for weight loss.

[01:11:53.020] – Rachel
Sure.

[01:11:53.560] – Allan
Because again you're sending signals everything you do, everything you eat, everything every movement you do, every thought you have is a piece of information for your body. OK, and so if you're giving your body the wrong information, you're going to get the wrong result. It's quite literally it works that way. So if you're training your body that you have to run every day, that's cool.

[01:12:18.040] – Allan
Your body is going to adapt to be a runner's body. And if you like, the look of the marathoner. And that's the body shape you want to have and you feel good doing it then, Run. Do it outside, though, you know. Treadmill's fine, but, you know, come on, get outside, have some fun, get some sunshine. There's other health benefits to being out in nature, in the sun and all those things.

[01:12:45.330] – Allan
Plus running outdoors is different than running on a treadmill. Very, very different. So, being a good treadmill runner does not make you a good runner at all. It can help. It can help build endurance. But it's not making you an overall better, more balanced runner. So just realize the treadmill is going to send signals to your body and it's not going to retain muscle because that's not the signal. That's not what you're telling your body.

[01:13:11.490] – Allan
So the information you put in, which is the work you do or the food you're eating or the thoughts that you have is the starting of the conversation. And then your hormones are going to pick up that messaging and their balance and everything that they're doing is going to work around that to get you where the message is sending it. So, yes, your testosterone will probably go down if you're just a chronic runner. That's because you don't need the testosterone, because you're not building muscle.

[01:13:45.060] – Allan
If you're lifting heavy weights, the signal in to your muscles are bigger and testosterone has to ratchet up a little bit to make that happen. Now we're over 40, so our testosterone is not going to be like a 20 year olds and therefore our musculature is not going to be like a 20 year old unless we're doing something in the middle to affect that signaling like testosterone therapy, steroids, his arms, those types of things. There are things you can do to disrupt that chain, put something in the middle of it, but in a general sense,

[01:14:27.100] – Allan
You're not going to get big and muscular if you're a runner, you're not necessarily going to signal to your body to lose body fat either, because there's a reason there's a term called Tofi. Which is thin on the outside, fat on the inside. You know that there's a signaling there. And so if you're chronically running, your body's getting signaling to potentially be a Tofi if you're not focused on your nutrition and other health aspects as well.

[01:15:00.380] – Rachel
Well, for sure. I totally tell everybody that resistance training is important to be a good runner. But I think it's also important for just aging and having the strength to just to live an active lifestyle as we do get older. So I think everyone should spend some time doing some sort of resistance training of some sort.

[01:15:20.090] – Allan
I obviously agree. And I would also say, if you're not working on if you're just lifting and you're not working on your stamina, you're also leaving something off the table that you should have. So you find that balance, find that thing that's going to make you the balanced person that you really want to be. And that's the strength, the bone and muscle density and thickness and mass and also having some stamina, you know, to be able to move that mass of where you needed to be when you need it to be there because, you know, you never know.

[01:15:57.500] – Allan
And have to go and do something that's going to require a lot more stamina. So building all of those to be the person that you need to be is really where all of this comes together. So don't necessarily listen to Sal or me or Rachel about what we want for ourselves. You need to have all of it. You need to have it in the right proportion to who you want to be, because fitness is not a look. Fitness is fit for tasks.

[01:16:25.760] – Allan
So decide who you need to be and then build your fitness programming around that.

[01:16:32.310] – Rachel
That's perfect. Yeah, that's very individualized.

[01:16:36.620] – Allan
Absolutely. All right, Rachel, we can talk next week.

[01:16:40.130] – Rachel
All right. Take care.

[01:16:41.570] – Allan
Bye

[01:16:42.320] – Rachel
bye now.

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