Why You NEED to Lift Weights Over 50 (It Won't Make You Bulky)

If you are over 50 and you're wondering whether it's too late to start lifting or whether

walking and yoga are enough, you're going to want to hear this one.

On today's bonus episode, I'm bringing you a replay of my conversation with Lynn Hardy

on her show The Aging Games Podcasts.

She asked me a lot of the same questions I hear every day, things like, why should I

lift instead of doing yoga or Pilates?

How much protein do I really need?

What about carbs?

Am I going to get bulky?

And can I actually build muscle at this age?

We also discussed sitting and why it's an independent risk factor for your health, exercise snacks,

sprinting, crossfit, and why I stopped doing it, and a simple three-day-a-week lifting

framework that works for beginners and advanced lifters alike.

I think you're going to get a lot out of this one, so please enjoy the conversation.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Tag Podcast.

I have a very special guest for you guys today, and we're going to be talking about one

of my favorite topics, lifting weights, getting jacked over 50, and why muscle is so important

as we're getting older.

So Philip, welcome to The Podcast.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself for the audience.

Sure, Lynn.

Thanks so much for having me.

My name is Philip Pape.

I'm the founder and host of Whits and Wates.

It all started with a podcast because I personally had two decades of my life, my 20s and 30s,

where I struggled with fitness and nutrition and had no clue what I was doing.

I was an engineer behind a desk, very sedentary, and as I got older, as I had kids, I realized

something had to change.

So in my 30s, I started crossfit thinking that was a solution, right?

We all did that.

We all did that, because that was around the right time, around 2010, but it was during

those years for about eight, ten years where I did a lot of experimentation.

I learned how to use a barbell.

I learned about conditioning, but I didn't really learn all the right things.

How to progress and how to build muscle, how to control my diet in the right way and make

it sustainable.

So around when I was about 40, I was 39, turning 40 right before the pandemic, I finally

did a lot of listening to podcasts, watching videos, reading books, came across the muscle

and strength pyramids by Eric Helms, and also starting strength, and some of the big

nutrition guys in the space, like Alan Aragon and Dr. Bill Campbell and all these names.

I'm sure your audience knows a lot of these and really just started to flood my brain with

this so-called evidence-based fitness and nutrition and started to apply that myself.

And I spent the year of 2020 building a home gym, because that's what I had to do with

the gyms.

Yeah, we all did that interview, exactly.

And I started squatting, deadlifting, pressing with barbells, just very simple, strength-based

movements, building over time, eating a lot of food, drinking a lot of whole milk, because

I didn't know what I was doing exactly.

And just learning, learning, learning.

And through that year and the following year, I kind of started to figure out what worked

with a lot of the information in the industry coming into my ears, but sorting through it

and trying to cut through that noise.

And had my first successful, I'll say bulk and cut, let's just say, where I built some

muscle for the first time in my life in a meaningful way, cut some fat, felt better about

my body for the first time in my entire life, because I was always self-conscious about

my body.

And then to decide I wanted to share it with the world.

So I started my podcast late 2021, fast forward a few months, one of my guests, who was

also a coworker at the time, wanted me to coach her, she was a powerlifter, said, what

are you talking about?

Nutrition coaching.

It's like, look it up.

So I looked it up.

When I commit myself to something, I go all in and I learn and I do it.

I became a coach.

I started working with people.

And really that's now what, three, four years later, that I've been helping folks with

their nutrition in their building muscle.

Well done.

So what was your biggest issue?

You said you were self-conscious.

Was it were you overweight or under-muscled?

What was the problem?

Everybody knows this term, dad bod, right?

So kind of like, never a little overweight or a little underweight with no muscle depended

on my diet.

So if I was really gung-ho on my keto or my low carb diet for a while, which I did,

then I would lose a bunch of weight, but lose a bunch of muscle I didn't have muscles.

And I'd feel like skinny fat.

And then the other extreme was just overweight, didn't want to take my shirt off, pale white

guy on the beach with a shirt on, kind of deal.

So yeah, but it's some degree of the same struggles that your listeners can all relate

to in some way of just, don't know what to do.

I'm a hard worker.

I have a decent career, you know, I'm a family guy, but I really self-conscious don't

know what to do with my physical fitness.

Yeah, I think this happens a lot, and my audience is ladies over 50.

And we're all struggling, you know, the hormones are changing and everything that worked for

us before, as far as weight loss or getting fit just doesn't work anymore.

And a lot of women are believing that, okay, well, we just need to work harder.

You know, we need to run further.

We need to do more cardio, burn more calories, eat less calories.

What do you say to that?

I say, I challenge the idea that it actually ever worked, and because I use the same messaging,

right?

And I'm like, what worked for you in your 20s?

I think what happens is, you know, your hormones are at their peak, you know, your ovarian

function for women is at its peak in your, you know, teens and 20s, right?

Because that's your peak reproductive years, according to evolution.

And for men that's testosterone, you have a bunch of muscle men.

You have a lot of muscle mass that you've grown through your teenage years through puberty.

And you have all this function going on, so you just don't know what you don't know.

And then once you get to your 30s and 40s, as the hormones decline, and then the muscle

mass declines, and then life gets more stressful, right?

And you start doing, moving less without even realizing it, then it just starts to accumulate

that the lifestyle you've led would inevitably lead to this point.

So that's kind of what I say to it.

And I also say that no matter what age you are, you can change it to the day you die.

To your 90s, you can change that trajectory and be healthier and more fit and functional.

Isn't that cool that you can actually build muscle at any age?

You can start at any age.

Obviously, if you have a background of working out, it's easier to build.

But the fact that it's never too late, like really gives people a lot of hope.

Yeah.

And women in particular, because your audience is mostly women, would you say, yeah,

there's like a fragility narrative in the space right now, right?

Where like, you know, you're broken and you can't do this and it's fear-mongering, right?

In my opinion, where, if I just to spell one myth, for example, women can build muscle

at the same rate as men.

That might be a surprise to you right now, if you're listening, because you have, you

start with less muscle mass, I'm sorry to say, that's just the luck of the drill.

Women have more fat.

Yeah, more fat.

You know, we're blessed with more fat.

But, and, but, you know, it doesn't matter how much testosterone you have, whatever,

you can build muscle at the same rate as men.

That's one myth.

And then the other thing is the hormone decline or menopause.

You know, menopause transition is like a three and a half year period, right?

And I've talked about this on my show as well.

I've learned a lot about it for a guy, right?

I've learned a lot about it.

And it's, while yes, the, the progesterone drops, the estrogen changes, DHA, like all

the reproductive hormones, follicle stimulating hormone, and it happens really quickly.

A lot of what we see doesn't really have to do with aging.

It just has to do with the lifestyle.

And what I like to tell women is, if you can get the lifestyle together, right?

Which there's, there's a way to do that with a minimum effective dose that's time efficient

and not like super stressful.

You can then see what's left in terms of pharmaceutical support or HRT supporters, something like

that you might need.

But a lot of women and men find that just improving their lifestyle mitigates a lot of those

issues.

And then the fragility narrative totally goes away.

I mean, I, I talk to women every day when they're, you know, 40s, 50s, 60s, they're just

living a great life.

And they might have struggled a lot more if it weren't for the lifestyle changes.

So why muscle?

Why is muscle so important?

This is a big one.

Muscle is, is like an endocrine organ, right?

It is a, it's part of your hormonal system and we don't think of it that way.

It's effectively other than your skin, it's kind of your biggest organ on your body, if

you think of it.

It's the one thing that you have the most control over in terms of change, in terms of your

tissue, right?

Because yes, you can change your body fat.

That's energy storage.

But your muscle mass is, is part of your physical tissue.

And it's associated with every marker of longevity, of health, of metabolism, of inflammation,

of anything you can possibly say that leads to the decline in aging such that if you can

improve it, you're going to turn back the clock.

You're going to be 20 years younger than your peers by the time you're in your 60s and

70s, in terms of your physical age.

And you're going to avoid a lot of those, those things that we worry about, like fragility,

you know, falls, bone, bone fractures, type 2 diabetes, all the obesity related disease

as well, because building muscle supports losing fat and it allows you to carry more fat

with less health issues.

So I just told you like the benefits of muscle, right?

But it is one of the most strong predictors of how well we age because of all of those.

Metabolic health and glucose and insulin sensitivity is another big one.

I love to talk about Lynn.

People are worried about carbs.

Well, if you have more muscle and you're training for muscle, both of those are huge sinks

for glucose and glucogen, glycogen, so you could eat more carbs and your food will be

better partitioned in your body so that you can thrive even on higher calories.

So it just cascades to one benefit after another.

I love it.

What's your diet like, Philip?

My diet is pretty flexible.

So in terms of...

So you don't follow like a keto or a carnivore or any kind of strict diet?

I do not.

Nope.

And I don't advocate for that either.

I'm not against somebody following a protocol or diet if the end result is it works for

them and it makes them feel good.

That's the goal, right?

As opposed to doing it because you think it's the right thing to do.

My personal diet is anchored in protein.

So plenty of...

And we can get into numbers.

But sufficient protein for building muscle, holding on to muscle.

And then I have plenty of fats for hormone support, energy, and then the rest is carbs.

So when you do it that way, you end up having probably like 15, 20% of your diet is protein.

Maybe 30% of your calories is fat and the rest is carbs.

So like...

I mean, I can get into details but...

Yeah, getting into details.

Because let's talk about protein because we're always on about how important protein

is as we're getting older.

And I always tell the ladies, you know, make sure you prioritize protein.

Make sure you're getting enough protein because it's very difficult.

If you're looking at like, you know, two grams per body weight, pound body weight, right?

That's quite a bit.

Like for me, I need to be eating like 120, 140 grams of protein a day.

And it's hard.

Like now for the first time I started tracking my microbes and my macros and everything

which I've never done before.

And I'm shocked at how hard it is to get the right amount of protein in for my body.

So what could we do with that?

Or do you even recommend that to consume higher amounts of protein?

No, I get the question all the time.

Just yesterday my group, a new client asks, she's like, my target seems to be around

0.7 grams per pound.

But I've heard you need one gram per pound and that's so much more.

How do I do it?

And first I said, okay, hold on.

Take a step back.

So what's seven grams per pound is what the evidence currently suggests?

Sorry, I was talking about kilos.

So what I was talking about.

I got it.

Yes, exactly.

I figured you were.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One point six to two point two grams per kilogram.

Yes.

Or exactly.

Point eight or point seven to one per pound.

Exactly.

Should I speak in metric or?

No, either one is fine.

Okay.

I mean, you're up.

So I'm like all mixed up.

Yeah.

Katie are living in Europe.

So it's like half my brains and kilos.

The other half simple.

Got it.

So let's just say the lower end of that.

So the point seven grams per pound or the one point six grams per kilogram is more than

enough for 90, 95% of what you're looking for in terms of your needs.

Now I always tell people like if you can bump it up a little more, you might see other

benefits for a society, you know, fullness, you might have an advantage with your muscle

building and preservation, especially in fat loss.

So when you're in a calorie deficit, having more protein can help hold onto that muscle

more easily.

But you have to balance that with sustainability and variety and like what you like and what

you, you know, how many calories you have because if you're a lower metabolism person, just

naturally, it's going to not leave you as much room for the fats and carbs.

You might have to make some trade-offs.

If you're a guy that eats 3,000 calories, it's like, why are you not getting the full

gram per pound?

Because you also are going to have lots of carbs and fats.

So yeah, I'm a big proponent of that.

As far as getting it, there are so many sources of protein.

If you're an omnivore, of course, vegetarians, vegans, it's harder.

Yes.

You've got any animal-based source, lean meats.

Seafood is one of my favorites.

So low mercurally, mercury tuna, like, skip jack, any, any white fish, right?

Salmon's great, but it also has higher fats, so you just have to watch for that and shrimp.

I love peeling each shrimp as a snack, it's like pure protein.

So lean meats also dairy, any form of dairy, now people think eggs, but eggs do have a lot

of fat.

So you want to like add egg whites with eggs if you need more protein.

And of course, there's cottage cheese.

There's Greek yogurt.

There's fair-life milk.

And then you have all the plant-based sources like oats and all the soy-based products,

like tempeh and tofu and soy, I already said soy, and I think I basically listed most

of them.

Okay.

So you're advocating for high protein but lower fat, if I hear correctly?

Okay.

So we angered the protein on 0.71 gram per pound or 0.6 to 2.2 gram per kilogram.

Then I recommend 30% of your calories from fat plus or minus 10%.

So it's a big range.

Yes.

And 30% again is like a kind of a natural spot.

A lot of people will fall.

A lot of women I work with will tend to just eat leaner, so it'll fall more like 25 or

20% of their calories.

And then a lot of guys, I know they eat more meat, they have more saturated fat or something

and they might be up in 35%.

Or if you come from the keto world, you just are used to eating more fat in your diet.

And that's fine.

And then carbs are everything that's left.

So if you're even let's say, I don't know, 2500 calories, that might look like 150 or 200

grams of carbs, depending on how much protein you need.

If you're above that, it's going to get into two, three, and four hundreds, which tends

to be more men, but a bigger, stronger woman might be up there as well.

Yeah, it's really interesting about fat because I was in the keto world for many years,

keto carnivore.

But with keto, you're really focusing on fat.

You're like 70% fat and moderate to low protein.

But now things are changing.

So even in the keto world, now they're recommending lower fat, especially for women over 50

as your hormones are changing.

They're saying that your body is not able to tolerate as much fat anymore.

And in order to lose weight, you really need to reduce your fat and up your protein, which

kind of goes against the whole keto values.

Have you noticed that with your clients?

I mean, my clients come in right away knowing my philosophy that it's more flexible and

not specific to a diet.

And so they're probably already open to that idea.

But here's the way I frame it.

Instead of what you shouldn't have, it's what you should have.

And you alluded to this by saying protein.

I think I'm okay.

What are the pillars that we need for our health, for our longevity, for our strength,

for all of our goals?

Protein is great for all of them, right?

Because you're going to build tissue.

You're going to repair yourself.

Even when you're injured, when you're sick, protein is great.

And then fat, you don't need too much fat.

You need a certain amount of fat to support hormone health.

But not more than that, fat is needed for yourselves, your mitochondria, and so on.

But I like to say, okay, where does carbs come in here?

Because carbs is what's been fear-mongered.

And I think in the keto world, that's, or in the carnivore world, plants, fiber, carbs

are like a big no-no.

But I would say, look, we know that diets high in fiber are more associated with better mortality

outcomes, better health outcomes.

We don't have long-term studies on diets low in fiber.

It's more of a, like, maybe you're taking a risk.

Maybe you just don't know if you don't have fiber in your diet.

I prefer to look at it as fiber helps you stay full.

It helps with your gut.

It helps with your bowel movements, all that stuff.

And it gives you a lot of, and it's associated with plants and the carbs that keep you full,

right? The high fiber carbs.

The rest of carbs, I lean into the muscle side of the equation and I say, look,

having more carbs is going to help with building muscle and strength and having more energy.

And if that's important to you, you're going to see a difference 95% of the time.

And what I mean by that, Lane, is inevitably I have a client that comes in, they do fasted

training.

And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with fasted training.

In fact, recent research showing women doing fasted training, they can have just a successful

outcomes as not.

And I kind of used to be on the fence on this and say, you should eat before you train.

However, it seems anecdotally that most people who eat before they train will perform better

when they train and therefore they'll get a little bit faster progress over time and

they'll just feel better.

Have that banana, have that way protein before you eat.

And that's where carbs are powerful because carbs are glucose or sugar, right?

They get converted into glycogen in your muscle, in your liver.

And that's an immediate store of energy in the form of glycogen along with your ATP when

you work out.

And when you train, when you're lifting heavy weights, you need that spike of energy when

you go into that heavy, you know, eccentric on the way down and then you need to explode

back up.

Clients who don't do that report feeling drained, feeling wiped, not getting all the reps,

feeling like they couldn't go up and wait this week, something stalled.

Those are the kind of things I'm talking about with carbs.

Not to mention carbs, spare protein.

So when you have more carbs, you don't necessarily have to have as much protein as well and it

helps you have more balanced diet.

Very interesting.

What do you think about progressive overload when it comes to training?

It's everything.

Progressive overload is everything.

So if we think about why muscles grow, they grow because of mechanical tension.

That's it.

They grow because you are training really close to failure.

Your body gets stimulated through a hormonal process, right?

Growth hormone testosterone, everything.

And your body says, you know what?

You just pushed me so hard that I'm not quite capable of that.

I'm going to, while you're sleeping, we are going to increase the size of your

circle meters at your muscle cells.

We're just going to, you know, we're going to adapt to this, right?

We're going to adapt while you sleep.

Next time you go to the gym, you're going to be able to add a few pounds to the bar, right?

It's up to you now to do that.

So that's progressive overload.

So like the muscle tension happens when you push close to the limit.

But then every time you go to the gym, you have to keep pushing close to the limit.

So another way to put it is you're always training within a few rep shy of failure.

And because you're getting stronger, those few rep shy of failures

going to be a heavier weight or more reps or more sets every time you go to the gym for that lift.

What do you say to women who are worried about getting too big, too bulky?

This is very common.

I know a lot of women shy away from lifting weights completely because they think they're going to be huge.

If you want the lean tone athletic look, if you want a six pack, if you want to find

biceps and a back and to look like a badass woman who is strong, but lean, you have to build muscle.

And I'll tell you what, this is the joke.

I always say, I would love to get bulky myself and I have a hard time doing it.

It takes years of years of lifting and eating and growing and being in a surplus,

let alone performance enhancing drugs when you look in your Instagram feed.

Like when you look, trust me, you know this Lynn.

If you're not careful, you look at a couple of good physiques on Instagram

and you get flooded with all the women with eight packs and on the beach.

And it's all doctored up.

It's all photos.

It's all and a lot of times it's drugs, too.

You know, it's these leap bodybuilder types.

Women, you're not going to get bulky at all.

Building visible muscle takes years.

I, most clients who I work with, like in short order, they're like, I want more muscle now.

Now that I've gotten into this, I see how cool it is to have the little Christmas tree in my back

and nice cut in my shoulders and the little bit of, you know,

lying in my biceps, you know, my wife jokes about it because I got her doing a program.

I don't coach her, but I said here, she won and won.

I said, here you go.

And she's like, look, look at my arms out just from a little bit of stress on your muscles.

So yeah, you're not going to get bulky.

And we all want beautiful arms.

I mean, that's, that's my struggle.

That's what I always struggle with.

And I've been, you know, training, lifting weights, working out,

building a bowler, I do everything and I cannot get the definition in my arms that I would want.

And I would kill for that.

Yeah.

So it's funny when we talk about physique, which, which there's nothing wrong with having a vanity goal

because at the end of the day, I always tell people, physique is an expression of a lot of things.

It's an expression of strength and function and health and how you look and it all ties together.

But if you really want to build the visibility, you're going to have to specialize for a bit

in that muscle group, right?

Like maybe train it two or four times a week, depending, you know, two or four exercises a week,

you're going to have to lose enough body fat to show it.

And you're going to have to repeat that cycle over time over several years.

So like, the problem for a lot of women is they never want to spend the time to truly build muscle.

They want to recomp, which we can do.

But I'll give an example.

I just had a client finished working with her.

She wanted to gain, she wanted to lose 10 pounds of fat.

At the end of the day, she lost six pounds of fat and gained three pounds of muscle.

Now, do you think she was disappointed?

No, she was thrilled because she felt better, she looked better, she had smaller waist size.

So she actually ended up only three pounds lighter on the scale,

but with a way better physique than we started, right?

And it takes time and also you have to sometimes do body fat.

That was like five or six months and that wasn't all in a fat loss phase.

I always think you should spend a month or two dialing in your behaviors and habits first

before you do a fat loss phase.

So the fat loss was like 10 or 12 weeks.

Yeah.

That's very impressive.

I'm sure she looks amazing.

Yeah, but this one client, I can tell you,

she went through a lot of mental and emotional struggles that we work through.

And this is common of like impatience, right?

Because you think, look, my goal is to lose 10 pounds on the scale.

And really, that's not your goal.

Is it your goal is to feel like yourself, like the person on the inside, right?

Is to be the confident person you are and to like be able to play with your kids or grandkids

or just go do the sport, you know, show up confidently at work.

You know, all those things are really what you want.

And there's a lot of emotional stuff to work through sometimes.

I have nothing to do with the nuts and bolts of physique development, you know what I mean?

No, it's true.

And it's also, it is true what you're saying, like the self confidence that it gives you.

Like I do bull during as well.

So when I come out of the bouldering club and I climb down that wall,

and I'm like, I walk out on the, you know, my muscles, everything's all pumped up.

And I'm like, I'm so badass.

You know, I'm walking through the barclad and you want to mess with me.

Like it's an amazing feeling.

Like I love the fact that I'm 55 and I'm strong, you know, that I feel strong.

I can carry anything I can pick it.

You know, I carry my husband around and he's like over 200 pounds or my son.

And I love having that strength that makes me feel really, really powerful.

Compared to a lot of women who, you know, my age or even younger,

they start getting frail and weak and their bones are deteriorating.

And it's just a really sad thing to see.

And it's so easy to avoid.

Yeah, no, I totally agree.

I hear the stories every day, either, you know, 65-year-old woman

who was having trouble getting off the chair and now she deadlifts

and can like, you know, get a knees feel good.

I mean, I hear this all the time with joints, you know, joint pain

because that affects a lot of people, especially women,

and bone density concern for osteopenia, osteoporosis.

And a lot of that is mitigated when you start lifting weights

because you're loading your skeleton and your muscles

to do what they're designed to do.

And you're therefore starting to bring everything up

to support your spine.

You're bringing everything in line with your hormones.

It's just a beautiful thing.

So to me, I can't say enough about lifting weights.

I know that's why you brought beyond, but like to anybody listening,

if you're not doing it, it's okay.

There's some, you can start and we can talk about like practical steps,

how to start.

Yeah, that was my next question.

Like, where would someone start?

If you know, if I've never worked out before,

I'm quite intimidated.

I'm scared to go to the gym.

I don't want people laughing at me.

Maybe I'm overweight.

I need to lose some weight.

And you're shy.

You're intimidated.

Where do you start?

I really, it really depends on the person,

but for a lot of women that I've talked to,

either if they're okay with going to the gym,

you know, it's having a very basic functional program

that you're confident in that you can do like two or three days a week, right?

If you don't want to go to the gym, like you said, gym intimidation,

there's stuff you can do at home with.

Body weight, with dumbbells.

If you're listening and you have the space and investment,

I can give you a home gym guy that's, like, gives you options

for how to set up a power rack and a bar and plate.

I know it sounds crazy.

You're like, oh my god, he's talking barbells,

but let me tell you, barbells are a game changer

for a lot of people I work with because they're very safe,

simple tool that can progress for the rest of your life.

And it's like the only thing you would have to buy

and you don't have to worry about all the machines and everything.

So I always say, start where you're at

and your level of enthusiasm because some women I've talked to,

they're like, they have an evolution to any thought of working out

because of something in their past

where it was like, it's miserable or didn't work

or they got made fun or whatever, right?

And I kind of be sensitive to that and say, okay,

what can we do at home?

Where do you practice the movement patterns,

the squat, the picking up, the deadlift, the pressing?

Just practice the movement patterns

and take equipment that will make it hard for you.

So that could be your body, right?

If you've got extra weight, great, that's an advantage

because that weight is gonna be load on you.

Take advantage, reframe it, that's an advantage.

It's also a dieting advantage we can talk about.

But yeah, start where you're at with like dumbbells

or bands or body weight.

Do the basic movement patterns

and three days a week doing squats, deadlifts

and some sort of press is huge.

As long as you go up and weight or reps each session,

each session, not each week, each session,

when you're beginning.

But if you're doing body weight exercises, for example,

how would you just increase the duration

or what would you do?

Yeah, so that was gonna be my next thing is,

you're gonna hit a wall, you're gonna get too strong for that,

right?

And because I don't know where you're starting from,

when I was helping my mom out a couple of years ago,

she was having knee pain and couldn't get off the couch,

we started on a chair.

And then after a week, she's like,

the chair's too easy, what do I do?

I said, let's go with a low box.

And then after that, she's like, what do I do next?

I say, okay, now we put the bar on your back,

it might just be a PVC pipe or it might be a barbell

or a women's barbell or whatever.

And so you're gonna have to do that.

So I have a lot of clients or people I've spoken to

who, for whatever reason, they can't have access

to a barbell or a gym, but they have dumbbells.

I strongly suggest the adjustable dumbbells.

You know, they're not the cheapest in the world,

but like they're compact.

And you're probably gonna invest five or six hundred bucks

to get the really big ones that'll let you grow for several years.

And especially as a woman, I'm not belittling women,

but women tend to be less strong than men.

So you have a little more leeway on the dumbbells.

But I will say most people will top out pretty soon

if you're doing it, right?

And you're like, what do I do next?

Well, then barbell machines and cables, you know,

if you can get to a gym or barbell at home is where I would go.

Yeah.

Would you recommend hiring a trainer?

Would that be important in the beginning to learn

from your exercises properly?

Yeah, 100%.

And you're gonna find this funny,

but a lot of people I work with,

I don't recommend they hire me because I'm a nutrition coach

that's lifestyle coach.

And I do a lot of the, like my prerequisite

is that you're already lifting when you come to me.

And I want to help you refine your technique.

I would actually work with somebody in person who's local.

You know, you can get an online coach

and a really good one could be decent with the form checks and stuff.

But it's really hard to see your mechanics

and fix them in real time without being in person.

So if you could get word of mouth recommendations

for a good coach who knows what he's talking about,

I know it's hard.

They can at least help you with some safety

and confidence with the form early on.

Yeah.

So that would be like initially, right?

Yeah, initially, but then I'll tell you what,

even if you're not gonna be perfect, like to this day,

I'm always gonna be personally working on my form, right?

So once you've kind of got a basic thing going,

online form checks can be very powerful, right?

So like, I do the clients or in our group

where you can just post a video.

And I'm gonna go in and either do a screen share or in text,

say, hey, you know, I don't,

I see you've got more room for depth there.

I want you to use this queue for your deadlift.

You know, I want you to look straight out,

like those little queues that help people fix their form.

And it's just a constant process of improvement.

I love that.

Well, have you ever heard of exercise snacks before?

I'm a big fan of exercise snacks.

What do you think of that for?

Okay, obviously, it's not really the progressive overload

and getting jacked, but it's I think also a great way

for people to stay fit, especially when they're very busy.

You know, I always tell people

why you're brushing your teeth, do 10 squats,

why you're waiting for the water to boil,

do counter pushups.

Do you think those small exercise snacks,

do you think they make a difference

or in the big picture, it's not enough?

They do.

I would never discourage them.

They're really helpful.

We have to look at our goal here, right?

If the goal is, like you said,

to get strong and build muscle and get jacked,

they're probably not going to move the needle a lot

because pretty quickly you're going to be too strong

for them to challenge your muscles.

So you're not really doing them for that.

I see exercise snacks.

Let me clarify two categories.

There's splitting up your workout routine

into maybe a couple times a day.

That's not really exercise snacks.

That's more of working around your schedule.

Exercise snacks would be every half hour, every hour,

every two hours, whatever.

You run up the stairs for a minute, right?

Or you go and walk around for two minutes,

or you do the air squats.

There's a really cool study from 2021.

I actually reviewed it on my podcast

where they compared air squats every 30 minutes

to walking every 30 minutes, to nothing

and just sitting down all day.

And these were all people who were sitting.

So desk jobs for eight hours.

And they found that the walking had the biggest impact

on muscle protein synthesis and blood flow

and insulin sensitivity.

Like all the health markers, and it was massive.

It was like, people who sat all day,

their muscle protein synthesis dropped by half.

People who walked once every 30 minutes,

it went up by 47% from baseline.

Wow.

And people who squatted,

it was a little bit less than the walking group.

Uh-huh, but it's also a good alternative

if you can't walk to at least and do a few squats.

Absolutely, although I know a lot of people,

most people would be like,

thank God I don't have to squat.

Let me just walk.

I can just walk.

Yeah, it's much easier for sure.

You know, but so I've been telling people

and I have one, I have an app on my phone,

I think it's called stand up.

It's like a free app that you can set a reminder

and every 30 minutes it reminds me to get up

and move around, you know, even now we're on this podcast.

I'm standing, right?

I'm standing, that's another thing I like.

But we're going to be not stuck.

This is great for an hour, but I'm not going to,

I'm not going to have my break.

So after that, I'll go for a walk.

Yeah.

And, and it's huge from that perspective.

So there's a lot of studies on walking in general,

step count and on movement snacks

that just show game changing levels of improvement

for health, mobility, joint, fluid, you know,

synovial fluid in your joints, vascular, health with the,

you know, some people buy those little ellipticals

for their feet, you know, the, yeah.

Yeah, well, even desk, right?

Under desk.

And even that shows those kinds of results, too,

of like just the fact that you're moving your body

in some way, you know, on a basis.

So yeah, we just spend, we just spend way too much time

just sitting around, lying around,

lounging around, scrolling on the phone.

I mean, humans are meant to be moving.

We are not plants, right?

Yeah, it's an independent risk factor.

Like you have people who, I've seen three different scenarios.

I've seen people who lift a lot,

and then they don't do anything else.

I see people who lift, and then they walk,

and they don't do anything else.

And then people who lift, walk and move.

And, and, and on each of those levels

is kind of a step change in the biomarkers

for health and longevity.

So like somebody who lifts, but doesn't do anything else,

they're gonna have great benefits from the lifting,

but they're actually letting a lot of it go to waste,

if you will, with their nutrient partitioning,

and everything else, because they're sitting around.

Like it's almost inflammatory to sit around.

I mean that in the true blood sense of inflammation,

you know, see reactive protein, interleukin six,

like the actual measurable blood markers,

not the hocus-pocus inflammation,

the influencers talk about, right?

Cosetoils are an inflammatory.

We can get into that whole thing.

Anyway, I'm sorry.

But then the middle category is if you lift and you walk,

but you don't, but you still sit around all day,

we still see a lot of issues with health markers.

And so you've got to do all of them.

Lift, walk, and move.

Yeah, I'm off for that.

I mean, walking is definitely like one of the best exercises

and pretty much anyone can do it anytime.

I'm, you know, if I don't do my 20,000 steps a day,

I feel like, you know, what am I doing with my life?

Like that's like, that's great.

That's impressive.

You should see my parents are 75,

and they're like 22, even for the other day, they did 40,000.

I think we're tired.

They're retired, yes.

I've done, I've walked a commino,

that's Santiago with them twice.

So, you know, like a walking family.

And they're 75, they have no joint issues,

no heart disease, like no pain, no back pain, nothing.

Like people don't realize that, you know,

the people that are sitting home with knee pain

and, you know, hip replacements and all that,

it's normally not from the overuse,

it's not from exercise, it's from lack of views.

100%.

Yeah, no, there's a lot of counterintuitive things

that I see in older generations, you know,

I think in my in-laws, they just recently discovered

the benefit of walking on their treadmill at home

and, oh my gosh, my knees feeling better.

Oh my gosh, my shoulder's fit.

And they're in their 70s, you finally figure this out, you know,

but they're too stubborn to like,

listen to others, you know, give them advice, right?

You understand that.

But yeah, the younger generations, I think,

we're in through podcasting,

we're trying to get that message out

of just being active, moving around.

Imagine the implications that we'll have

when we're all older, on our children,

not having to take care of us and not burdening

the healthcare system,

and that all leads to a better economy

and better everything else anyway.

Yeah, I'm very passionate about it.

No, it's absolutely true.

And you want to be able to play with your grandchildren

or even your great grandchildren

and get on the ground and you'll play with them

on the floor and get up and all that.

I mean, it's so important.

Yeah, and the other thing I hear

and you probably do as well is the back issues, right?

When you get older and the knees and the out and shoulders,

and you said like being mobile is part of it

and also lifting weights has helped a lot of people

in those areas.

I work with a lot of engineers

because that's where I come from who, you know,

I finally commit some, just do some dead lifts

that's going to solve your back issues.

Like how can that be as it can make it worse?

You know, fear mongering like

and they start deadlifting like a week later.

Oh my gosh, my back pain has gone, you know,

and I'm not saying it's a miracle or anything.

It's just common sense that when you start to use your body,

whether it is walking, whether it is lifting,

you're using what's there.

It's kind of like your robot

that was sitting gaining dust in the corner,

somebody turned you on and you started moving

and oiling up your joints again, right?

Well, as they say motion is the lotion.

Motion is the lotion, yeah.

And if you think of lifting weights,

you're putting a lot of gravitational load

on mechanical joints and connections in your body, right?

Like all your muscles insert into bone,

you have tendons and ligaments,

which are connective tissue, you have cartilage,

you have the fluid that connects it all

and you're basically just making all of that work mechanically

and like crank up again and start to build

and get stronger and bigger and the engine's bigger.

So your whole body is now just feeling lighter and more athletic.

You know what I mean?

It's a great visual.

Yeah, absolutely, I totally agree.

So how many times a week would you recommend lifting weights

for someone who's just starting out?

I think a beginner three days a week is solid,

three days for like a half hour to 45 minutes usually.

That's all, doesn't have to be longer.

Yeah, if you look up,

if your listeners look up starting strength, for example,

it's a basic barbell program, you'll see it has three movements

and it's three days a week, you know,

Monday, Wednesday, Friday, three.

And when you first start,

even if you take a long rest period,

which you should be, this is not circuit training,

this is not endurance training, you should be,

it should take maybe 45 minutes.

Now, as you get stronger and the weights get heavier,

it might take a little longer.

Also, as you become more advanced of a lifter,

you're gonna add more things in,

maybe you go to four days a week, right?

It's all about volume and frequency based on how you adapt.

So like if you don't do it enough,

if you don't squat enough frequently enough,

your body's just gonna detrain

back to its current strength level,

and it'll never progress.

And then you're just wasting time when you're under the gym,

you're like maintaining what you have.

So that's why you have to have enough volume and frequency.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And as far as the exercises,

would you recommend just focusing like on the basic exercises,

like pushing, pulling squats,

that kind of thing, you know, dead lips, bench presses,

or should people get into the more complex exercises?

Yeah, I would start with the natural human movement patterns,

done with the full range of motion.

So what you just said,

and people put them in different categories,

they'll say hinge, push, pull, they'll see squat,

dead lip, or whatever.

From an exercise perspective,

it looks like a form of squat,

where you're going all the way below parallel, right?

With some load, so that could be a goblet squat

with your dumbbell in your front of you.

It could be a front squat, it could be a back squat.

You know, I'm partial to the ones

that let you move the most weight, like a back squat,

but it doesn't have to be.

So you've got a squat,

then you've got a hinge, a hinge deadlift,

we call it a hinge, but really it's a pull, right?

It's a pull from the ground.

So that's a deadlift where you pick something up,

you pick a bar off the ground,

maybe dumbbells off the ground, maybe bands.

Then you've got pressing,

and I like both horizontal and vertical pressing.

So horizontal would be a bench press,

and vertical would be an overhead press of some kind.

But again, you could do different angles,

you know, if you have shoulder issues,

there's modifications,

but if you Monday, Wednesday, Friday do squat every day,

deadlift every day,

and then alternate between horizontal and vertical press,

that is enough to make a lot of progress

for the first six months to a year,

and get super strong and muscular.

You know, for more, you started.

I love that because it's simple.

You know, because people think you need

like this complex workout program,

and you've got all these exercises

that you have no idea how to do.

If you really master three, four exercises,

basics, exercises, and do them regularly,

you're gonna get the results.

It's because they're efficient.

They're efficient with time,

and they're efficient with your body,

which is great, especially if you don't have a lot of time.

They're called compound lifts, right?

Because they compound many, multiple to use,

and you know all this, but for the listener,

multiple joints, you think of a squat,

you're bending your hips at your knees and your ankles.

They're all bending, right?

Furthermore, when you do a squat,

your whole body and your posterior chain is engaged,

because your back has to stay tight,

your shoulders have to stay tight,

your scapulas squeezed, your glutes are tight,

your quads, your everything.

And then when you go all the way down to depth,

you're using all of your hip musculature,

you know, from your adductors from the outside,

to your adductors and groin muscles on the inside,

quads on the front, glutes and hands on the back,

you're hitting your ankles and calves,

you're putting isometric load into your back, right?

So you're just getting so much out of one lift,

same with the deadlift.

Now the pressing movements are a little more upper body focused,

but we need that as well.

We need that pushing strength.

We need our shoulders to be engaged, right?

We need to use our chest, all of that,

and then it all uses your back as well.

What do you think about kettlebells?

They're one of my favorite tools.

Are you a fan or not?

They're versatile.

They're very versatile.

I will say that you can do,

it's kind of like a landmine,

like which I used to do in CrossFit,

and I still have one at home,

the landmine, a barbell and a landmine.

They're very versatile.

I normally tell people like,

they're more of a supplemental or like an alternative

if maybe you can't have access to other things,

only because of practicality and load,

because you would have to have like a whole bunch

of kettlebells,

or I know they have some adjustable kettlebells nowadays.

So, do I have been seeing those?

I think so with a little dial,

and it like changes the radius,

so it depends on how big it pulls the bell out.

That's very cool.

I'll have to check that out.

Because I love doing outdoor exercises

rather than being inside the house.

Sure.

So that I get the whole benefit of being outdoors

and the sun and grounding barefoot and all that stuff.

So, you know, with a kettlebell,

it's so versatile and it's so easy to do.

And I can do that.

I mean, you could swing them, you can squat with them,

you can press them overhead, you can do all sorts of,

I get it.

I totally get it.

I always just come down to like sustainability,

practicality, equipment, blah, blah, blah.

Dan John, do you know Dan John?

He's like a kettlebell expert.

Yeah, yeah.

So, I always throw his name out there.

Amazing guy who like, you look at him, he's big,

you know, comes from the Olympic background

and he can do like snatches and cleans

and stuff with a barbell as if he's like a 20 year old.

It's insane.

It's so athletic, but he's this huge guy

and he's big into kettlebells, you know?

Yeah, it's very cool.

So we talked about CrossFit and looks like

you're not a big fan of CrossFit anymore.

We've all been there, we've all done that.

I think a lot of people have, but it's still quite popular.

What is wrong with CrossFit?

That's a leading question, but I like it, but I like it.

What's wrong with CrossFit is it doesn't do what people

thinks it thinks it does for them

and they're doing it for the wrong reason.

So like if your goal is to get massive amount

of high stress conditioning and maybe you want

to improve the skills of the CrossFit sports

because you want to compete in CrossFit,

that might be it's one area that it has some benefit.

Even the CrossFit athletes, you look at all the big athletes

from Framing, Froning, whatever to all the ones today,

their primary form of training is strength training

and then the CrossFit is more the specialization

for the sport so that they can compete.

So it's like a sport.

I did CrossFit very years thinking

it would improve my physique or make me stronger.

It may be a little stronger, of course,

because I went from sedentary to, well, puking

on the first day because that's how insane it is

to touching, you know, learning how to use a barbell,

but honestly the form was terrible

and they don't most boxes, that's what they call the gyms right,

have decent coaches, but the certification requirements

are pretty low, you have to go to a $1,000 class

and you get certified.

And honestly, this is the case with most gyms

anywhere when it comes to trainers.

It's very hard to find really good ones.

And when it comes to form, CrossFit throws form out the window

because a lot of the wads are time-based

and they're rep-based and they're really fast.

So I know for a fact I've probably created some root causes

of later injuries from Crossfits of deadlifting,

you know, 135 pounds as many times

they could in whatever minutes or trying to deadlift,

21 deadlifts as fast as possible.

And you're just like slamming that stuff up.

And I had personal experience with the whole array

of Crossfit, I got decent at some of the stuff as well.

I'm very good conditioning.

Let me tell you, like my heart resting heart rate

was down like low 40s, now it's upper 40s,

but it was low 40s during Crossfit.

Having said all that, it's super high-stressful.

It can definitely injure you.

It doesn't provide the benefit of progressive strength

and muscle development over time.

And you don't need it in terms of the conditioning.

Like if you want to be well conditioned,

walking a little bit of high recovery sprinting

and some extra cardio sprinkled in at like medium intensity

is all you need unless you're an endurance athlete

and that's your goal.

So that's my thoughts on it.

No, sorry, I agree.

And you know, for women over 50,

we have a huge issue with cortisol.

And we don't want to be doing stuff

that it's going to spike the cortisol

because it's going to mess up the hormones,

it's going to mess up our sleep and everything.

So that's why I found Crossfit,

not the best type of exercise for women over 50.

What do you think about yoga pilates,

those kinds of things?

Can they replace weight training

or are they a good addition to weight training?

So it depends, like both of those have a big spectrum

of styles, right?

Like yoga has more strength style versus relaxation,

balance, you've got hot yoga,

you've got new yogas that I'm not even familiar with,

people are talking about.

Pilates is a little bit more you're using weights, right?

So I would say, unless you enjoy it

and are using it as a form of cardio

or supplementary work,

it's not really a great alternative

to strength training for that purpose.

But I've had clients who do that

or they'll do orange stereo, they'll do F45,

or they like their, what is that?

Tybo, or what's the dancing one?

Or the kickboxing.

Kickboxing and you know, Zumba, all that stuff.

And I'm like, look, let's create a pyramid.

And what's at the bottom?

But the bottom is lifting because what you care about,

what you came to me to talk about,

what your listeners care about is their body composition,

they want to be strong and functional,

they want to keep the stress low,

maybe they want to lose some fat and have a healthy lifestyle.

Okay, let's start with lifting weights at the bottom

and then maybe walking, you know?

And then above that is maybe some enjoyment

and this is where the sports piece comes in.

Pickleball, Zumba, yoga,

yoga actually I would kind of put as like a long walking.

I think most yoga is fine as much as you want to do

because it's kind of relaxing.

Stretching, stretching, relaxing.

You know, as long as it's not a time stressor, you know,

like, oh, I have to do yoga and I have to lift

and I can't fit it all in.

But the more, the stuff that uses weights and resistance

or something, you got to watch out

because it's going to interfere with your recovery

from your lifting sessions and it's going to create more stress.

And that could also reduce your metabolism a bit

and hold it back because of the stress response.

So it's kind of like, how do you balance that pyramid?

You know, and then sprinkled at the top

is like sport, performance, sprinting,

like the little bonus stuff at the top

that you want to boost your VO to max a little

or something like that if you have the time in inclination.

That's my thought on it.

It's really about goals and balance.

Do you think sprinting is important?

There's a form of sprinting I think is really beneficial

that I talk about ever since I met Brad Kerns.

He wrote, he co-wrote the book of Marxists

and called Born to Walk, great book.

So just everybody get it.

And I stole his protocol and now I use it

all the time with clients.

So I'm getting them credit.

I'm getting them credit.

In fact, I'm doing a workshop in a couple of weeks

called Adaptive Cardio.

And I have like a cardio pyramid

and sprinting's in the top section.

Because again, I don't want you to do the sprinting

until like you've dialed in, walking,

you know, have enough steps and you're lifting weights.

But the sprinting protocol sounds, it goes like this.

It's four to eight sets, 10 to 20 seconds all out,

six times recovery.

So if you sprint for 10 seconds,

you rest for at least a minute.

So it's not like hit, it's not like Tabata.

It's very high ratio of rest to work.

And it's no more than eight sets

and no more than 20 second per set.

And that's it.

You never go past that,

you just get faster and more powerful over time.

That's all.

And then you can do that once or twice a week.

If you do it twice a week,

make one of those not flat ground.

So make it on a machine.

So it's less stressful, right?

And if you do it flat ground,

it's better to do it on like a softer surface like a track.

But I mean, I have a road.

I'll just go on there every now and it's fine.

If you sprint lightly on your toes,

which you can't help but do,

the other thing I like about sprinting,

it's anabolic.

It's supportive of your hormones and recovery for lifting.

It doesn't detract from it.

And it is not running.

So let me tell you people,

if you don't want to run,

you hate running or whatever, it's not running.

Go sprint as fast as you can for 10 seconds

and report back.

Send me a note on Instagram.

Tell me if that's the same as running,

because I guarantee it's probably not.

It's like being a superhero.

It's not running.

No, I agree.

I love sprinting.

I do it with my dogs.

I have a dog with 16 and make sure I sprint with her

because it's important for her to run as well.

That was my conversation with Lynn Hardy

on the Aging Games podcast.

If you want to check out her show,

it's called The Aging Games.

I'll link to it at the show notes.

Now, if anything in that conversation,

hit you hard, resonated with you,

especially the part about eating more protein,

lifting heavier, building muscle

as your best tool for aging well.

That is exactly what we're building

with Eat More, Lift Heavy.

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You can use the link in the show notes as well.

That is witsandweights.com slash eat more.

Thank you for listening

and I'll talk to you next time.