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49: You Don’t Know How Strong You Are (Says Research)
938 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to Season 3 and Episode 49 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss the common tendency for people (not just women) to under load when lifting weights to build muscle and strength. In fact, it’s likely a slight majority of people in the gym are either not lifting heavy enough or taking sets close enough to failure to make changes to their muscle mass or strength!
You will learn:
- If left to their own devices, the average lifter gravitates toward sets of 10 with 50-55% of a 1 repetition max, which would not be stimulating enough to make a change to muscle mass or hypertrophy.
- That research has shown people are likely to leave too many reps in reserve (ending the set too soon) and why this will not make your muscles bigger or your body stronger.
- That research has shown that a slight majority of people select weights that are too light for a given rep range and why this will not make your muscles bigger or your body stronger.
- That if a slight majority of people with access to a fully equipped gym are prone to underloading, then people working out at home with more limited equipment might be even more prone to underloading.
- How heavy, moderate, and light loads are defined according to exercise science.
- A working definition of “serious lifters” which is people who track their workouts and correctly apply the principle of progressive overload to their training protocol. AKA, people who see results from their training!
- How laundry detergent can explain why people are so stuck on doing 3 sets of 10.
- How strength training is a lot like yoga in that it is literally ALL about listening to your body.
- How feelings can explain the tendency to underload, like avoiding feelings of discomfort or avoiding feeling embarrassed if you cannot lift a weight successfully.
- Getting close to failure is key for success in strength training.
- That healthy boundaries for women includes learning your no, but also learning your yes, especially when it comes to saying yes to loading sufficiently to build muscular strength and bone density.
Sign up here for the Live Strength Training Webinar on Sept 14th with 30 day replay
Article by Stronger By Science - Most Lifters Train Too Light
Self-Selected Resistance Exercise Load: Implications for Research and Prescription
Episode 32: Load & Volume: When is Enough Enough? When is it Too Much?
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Philosophy
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up-to-date and cutting-edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
Hosts' Backgrounds and Recording Plans
00:00:42
Speaker
Welcome to season three of the movement logic podcast. I'm Laurel beavers dwarf. I'm here with my co-host and one of my buddies, dr. Sarah court dpt. So we are going to reggae fest tonight at the Hollywood ball. Maybe no, we're going. Okay. We're who knows? I'm I have
00:01:03
Speaker
It should be fun. I think so. I've never been to the Hollywood Bowl. That is the part that I'm most excited about. It's just for you to see it because it's so iconic. It's really, really cool. Well, so Sarah and I are here batch recording episodes for this season, having a good old LA time.
Listener Appreciation and Community Feedback
00:01:20
Speaker
And we are also today in this particular episode talking about the tendency for
00:01:28
Speaker
People to under load, right? Not just women. And so we're going to get into that soon. But we've also been reading some reviews from folks. And so today we're reading a review left on Apple Podcast by Yogi Cyclist. Oh. And Yogi Cyclist gave us five stars. Love it.
00:01:46
Speaker
And Yogi Cyclist writes, although I am not a teacher, although I am not a teacher, I fall into the category of a mindful movement person needing to approach movement in a cerebral manner, questions galore on details. I thoroughly enjoyed and found this podcast so relevant
00:02:07
Speaker
Very focused and no fluff. Congratulations on your debut. So we got this one early on. They like our cerebral manner. Yeah. I think that's a compliment. Oh, 100%. I also think that they're being very generous in their no fluff description, because every now and then there's some fluff. There's a little fluff, but it's very charming fluff maybe, which is what is important.
Main Topic Introduction: Underloading in Training
00:02:36
Speaker
charming fluff i feel like charming fluff is yet another t-shirt charming fluff we just have so many t-shirt ideas maybe we should stop podcasting and just sell t-shirts i mean okay well today let's get into our topic which is about underloading and actually how common it is again not just among women as it turns out it's possible that on average
00:03:01
Speaker
Maybe a slight majority of all people, male and female, trained and untrained lifters, are underloading.
Research Insights on Underloading
00:03:10
Speaker
The evidence from the research I'm going to share with you today, I found on one of my favorite blogs, the Stronger Science Blog. The evidence certainly supports this idea and also what I've anecdotally noticed in training women. Specifically, in my case, women who work out from home, which is that many have, from what I can tell, weights that are some of them a little too light for the exercises they're doing in general.
00:03:39
Speaker
When we share this research with you, we'll talk about it. Keep in mind that these are people who have access to fully equipped gyms. And then I think what we can then maybe extrapolate from that is if you don't have access to a fully equipped gym and you're working with the limited equipment that you have at home, that you actually might be even more inclined to underload. At least I am a little reluctant to go out and spend money on stuff that
00:04:03
Speaker
I want to be really, really, really sure I need. So I think it's easy to delay getting the heavier kettlebells or getting the barbells.
Personal Experiences with Training Loads
00:04:12
Speaker
Frankly, even knowing that that's something that you need to do. I mean, you know, I especially for a long time, I was like, yeah, I've got, you know, I was tossing around weight that I was like, well, this is heavier than, you know, some people might be like, I considered like, well, I've got my 25 pound and my 30 pound kettlebell, my 35 pound kettlebell. And that felt significant.
00:04:34
Speaker
And it didn't occur to me that maybe at some point I needed to go any higher than that. It just seemed like, well, this feels heavy to me. Right. Right. Right. So let's get right into it. We're actually going to
00:04:48
Speaker
I'm sorry, yogi cyclist. There's not going to be as much fluff in this episode. Oh, no. Well, there might be. That's what I'm here for. Okay.
Study on Self-Selected Resistance Loads
00:04:55
Speaker
The first study, which I'll link in the show notes that, uh, that we'll, we're going to look at is this, this one called self-selected resistance exercise load implications for research and prescription. So self-selected load. We're going to look at the difference between self-selected load versus self-selected rep range here.
00:05:17
Speaker
and the connection between those two things. So in this study, researchers asked 160 trained subjects what load they'd normally use to perform sets of 10 reps on the bench press. So it'd be like, hey, Sarah, I want you to go pick a weight you think you can bench press 10 times. And then Sarah would go over to the
00:05:37
Speaker
rack or that would choose the plates to put on the barbell that she thought she could lift 10 times. Okay. Then the researchers had the subjects complete the set to failure. So now I'm going to flip it on Sarah and I'm going to say, okay, Sarah, you're actually
00:05:52
Speaker
going to just do as many reps as you can until you reach failure. So possibly more than the 10 you told me I was originally going to take. Well, I asked you how much weight you could lift 10 times. And so I didn't tell you how close you should get to failure. I just asked you how much weight do you think you could lift 10 times. And now I'm going to say.
00:06:11
Speaker
I'm not going to say go do 10 reps. I say to you, go do as many reps as you can until you can't do another rep. And that is how failures often defined as going to a point at which you go to press the weight and you can't. And guess how many reps on average these subjects completed? Well, I would say this. I have a feeling it's more than 10. Right.
00:06:37
Speaker
If it's more than 10, that's really super normal and that is not the definition of underloading. If you were to grab a weight and press it 12 times and reach failure, I would be like, wow, you were really accurate in your load selection because in this case, Sarah, in selecting that weight, if she had only pressed it 10 times, had theoretically left two reps in reserve or had worked to an RPE eight. We're going to link.
00:07:03
Speaker
two episodes in the show notes if you don't know what we're talking about when we use the terms RIR reps in reserve or RPE. We have a couple of episodes on that. We're not going to get into it in this episode.
Implications of Underloading on Hypertrophy
00:07:13
Speaker
But what happened actually in this study is that they actually were able to perform 16 reps of the bench press. And that was on average. So on average, people could complete 16 reps.
00:07:28
Speaker
and a quarter of them could complete 19 reps. So these people selected a weight that was too light. And the reason it's too light is that basically their goal, okay, so now we have to talk about what their goal was. The goal was to increase muscle size, aka to induce hypertrophy.
00:07:49
Speaker
In order to induce hypertrophy, we have to get closer to failure than that. In fact, I think that you probably want to get within two reps.
00:07:59
Speaker
one plus one or two reps, right? So between one and three reps shy of failure to cause hypertrophy to happen. And so I just, I don't know, Sarah, what do you think? Do you think they're on the road to bigger muscles? Hypertrophy can happen with any amount of load, right? It's not exclusive to heavy load. Let's say you're lifting a weight that you can lift 19 times like some of these people did.
00:08:24
Speaker
That's going to take freaking forever. And to increase that mass in that way, if I had to do like three sets of 19
Training Intensity and Rest Times
00:08:32
Speaker
of something, right? And then that's just one exercise. I guess it's going to take me a really long time. Perhaps. It might. So it all kind of averages out though. Like if you're lifting a moderate load, you're resting more time than you are when you're lifting a lighter load. And when you're lifting a heavier load, you're resting more time than you are when you're lifting a moderate load.
00:08:49
Speaker
Basically, we kind of trade off the number of reps for the amount of time we have to rest. Typically, you're resting longer after heavy sets. The 10 rep range is a moderate rep range.
00:08:59
Speaker
Which means you're going to select a moderate load for you. What these people did though is they selected a light load. Right. So they selected a light load and they lifted it within what would be considered a moderate load rep range. That's the problem. For hypertrophy, that's the problem. It's also the problem for strength. The requirements for strength are different than they are for hypertrophy. Like Sarah said, you can build muscle with light, moderate, and heavy loads.
00:09:24
Speaker
As long as you get close enough to failure and it's harder to do that with a lighter load because you have to lift it more reps. It's arguably more uncomfortable for that reason as well because you're going to have those muscle burning or fatiguing sensations building.
00:09:38
Speaker
and then have to keep going, actually. Because if you stop too soon, you're just not going to send a signal to your muscles that they need to make themselves bigger. But strength, the requirements for strength are different. We don't have to get as close to failure to get stronger, typically, but we also have to be lifting at least moderate to heavy loads to get stronger.
Importance of Reaching Failure in Training
00:09:57
Speaker
If we're lifting lighter loads, like these people were, we're probably not going to build strength. We're probably going to build something more along the lines of strength endurance.
00:10:04
Speaker
But only if we're getting close enough to failure, right? It's highly possible that if you select a light load and work within a moderate rep range, you're really just wasting your time. And I say that, and I say that not to mean that there's not value in movement. Most people who lift a weight, the goal is either strength or some related outcome to strength.
00:10:24
Speaker
Strength is the outcome of multiple different adaptations in the body. One of those is hypertrophy. Not all strength increases result in hypertrophy, but all hypertrophy, I think we could safely say, does probably yield some amount of additional strength. Are we in Venn diagram territory? Kind of. I love it. My brain just goes there. First of all, we got to know what the goal is. Their goal is building muscle. They're probably not going to build muscle by underloading to that extent.
Meta-Analysis on Load Selection
00:10:52
Speaker
Stronger Besides also presented a meta-analysis titled, Are trainees lifting heavy enough? Self-selected loads and resistance exercise, a scoping review, and exploratory meta-analysis. So Sarah, just real quick, what is a meta-analysis? So meta-analysis is when you take a whole bunch of studies that have already been performed, and you go through a whole... I'm not going to go that deeply into it, but you select the ones that are
00:11:18
Speaker
Better quality and then you take the data with the results that they all achieved in their studies and obviously it has to like be with the same type of.
00:11:30
Speaker
investigation, right? The goal of the research has to be the same. And then you extrapolate all the data and then you have this much bigger data pool from which you can then run your statistical analysis and draw certain conclusions. It's a way, it's a much higher level of research than something like a single case study or a cohort study or anything where like it's just, this is the paper running this experiment for maybe the first time.
00:11:59
Speaker
So a meta-analysis means enough people have done this research that we can take all of the data and look at it, and that's going to give us just much more accurate information that way. Right on. Okay, so this meta-analysis incorporated a number of studies that looked at this idea of underloading. And so the investigators asked participants, how much weight would you select? Again, this is about
00:12:24
Speaker
self-selected load okay how much weight would you select in this exercise to perform one set of 10 reps so really similar to the bench press study they also in some studies more vaguely asked so i'm giving you like a more specific question now this is a more vague question
00:12:42
Speaker
What resistance intensity would you select to get a good workout? So again, that one's really devoid of a goal. It's like a good workout. What even is that? That's not a goal. Well, it's not a measurable thing. No. So the primary meta-analysis found that the typical self-selected load was 53.
00:13:06
Speaker
0.14% of a one RM. Now, again, those same episodes that I said I would link in the show notes that tell you about RPE and RIR also go over what it means to have a percentage of a one repetition max, which is what RM stands for.
00:13:25
Speaker
But here it is in a nutshell, if you are training heavy, you are training at a percentage of 85% and up of your, and this is your individual one repetition max, which you can either determine or estimate or predict, right? If you are training using moderate loads,
00:13:49
Speaker
which could still build strength, certainly could build muscle mass. You are training within a range of 70 to 85% of a 1RM. If you are selecting loads that are of a lower percentage than 70% of your 1RM,
00:14:08
Speaker
you are training with a light load and you could theoretically build muscle mass with that light load as long as you lift it enough times to where you get very close, like a one or two reps shy of failure, which by the way is very uncomfortable thing to do with a light load.
00:14:24
Speaker
These people selected a load that was 53.14%. Let's round up 55% of a 1RM. So Sarah, what was this light, moderate or heavy?
Perception vs. Reality in Strength Training
00:14:34
Speaker
This is very light. This is a light load. And it is not something that is going to build strength. Right. So. It's kind of wild when you think about, like, like, I don't know. When I, when I think about that in terms of self-selecting a load,
00:14:51
Speaker
And that question about, oh, you're getting a good workout. It just really reminds me of when I first would try to interact with weights, let's just say. And I remember this really clearly. I would go to the equinox in Pasadena, because I was teaching yoga there. So then I would be there. So afterwards, I would go find a kettlebell. And I think I was like, I don't know. I picked a kettlebell that was like,
00:15:16
Speaker
maybe 50 pounds, 40, 50 pounds. It was heavy, relatively heavy. And I would do some squats kind of holding it. I don't even remember like, I don't remember what I was doing, but I would do that. I'd do a bit of it and then I'd be like.
00:15:29
Speaker
That was good. And then I would put it back and then I would leave. And I just had no idea what I was doing or any sort of numerical value, like where that fell in terms of what was heavy to me or not heavy. But it is kind of wild that we're going off of this vague sense of something. And then I think also about now that I lift things that are legitimately for me heavy, meaning for me, they are in that 80,
00:15:56
Speaker
There you know sometimes 70 sometimes 80 sometimes 90% of my one RM and I'm like, oh Heavy is a completely different feeling kind of a thing because you cannot the higher it goes the fewer reps you're doing and sometimes in my program That's you know that I follow this training program
00:16:17
Speaker
And I'll look at him like, what am I doing today? You're doing a deadlift. It's this amount. You're doing two sets of like three reps or something like that. And I'll do it and I'll be like, thank God it wasn't four reps. Like the heavier the thing gets, like when you get into that really seriously heavy range,
00:16:32
Speaker
You're not faffing about with 16, 17, 18, you literally cannot. And it's such a different feeling to be picking something up knowing that you couldn't lift it more than three or four or five times. It's a totally different thing. And the, I don't know, it's kind of hard to describe as I'm thinking about it, but the feeling in your body of doing that kind of work is entirely different than picking something up and you're like, this feels kind of heavy, but you could then do like three sets of 10 of it.
00:17:01
Speaker
Yeah. It also feels really, really different than doing yoga or Pilates. Oh, big time. Big time. And not in a bad way. No. I think it's just important to note that it is... You should not expect to feel the same. No. I also want to say something about this feel it out approach that you had, Sarah, because I had one similar. I would kind of walk into the gym and inevitably I would start with bicep curls. Oh, nice. I like it. And inevitably I would do a set of 10. Excellent. And I would inevitably work my way up to doing three sets of 10 of bicep curls.
00:17:32
Speaker
And then I'd be like, huh, that was cool. What else would I do, though, other than bicep curls or three sets of 10? So I kind of just made it up. And that was a good experience for me to just even be in the gym and be figuring it out myself. And I would say if you did a couple of random exercises like that with maybe a weight that was probably not
00:17:57
Speaker
a moderate load. Maybe I was probably underloading as well or you're just kind of trial and erroring it and you like you think like maybe I could do three sets of ten with that load and then it ends up being too heavy or whatever. Like it's not a bad way to learn. I'm a real trial and error type learner.
00:18:13
Speaker
And what I will say is like if that's your approach long term, you're probably going to have a higher baseline of strength than had you not walked into the weight room at all. It's better than nothing. It's way better than nothing. In fact, I would say like that's the fine way to start. Yeah. That's how many people start. So all of that to be said though, if you do have a goal of getting stronger or getting, you know, a better muscle development
Progression from Novice to Serious Lifter
00:18:39
Speaker
happening on your body or you want to build bone, right?
00:18:43
Speaker
a more organized approach that uses the tools that are long established in strength training, like training load charts, RPE, things like that to help you know what to lift, and also a program that tells you how much to bump it up every week. Like, this is going to save you a ton of time. Yes. Sarah's favorite expression is faffing about. It will prevent you from faffing about and wasting your own precious time.
00:19:09
Speaker
Sometimes faffing about is actually really fun. But in this instance, I would say there's a limited amount of faffing that you'd want to do. Now, at a certain point in the article, Greg Knuckles, we love Greg Knuckles, and we respect his work, and we are big fans of Stronger by Science. So I often reference Stronger by Science a lot on these podcasts. He noted that he thought, because Greg Knuckles is a trained power lifter and won championships and is a strength scientist. But he noted that there's probably a difference between what these
00:19:38
Speaker
research papers are calling trained lifters and what he considers to be a serious lifter, which I thought I thought that was just so interesting kind of knowing his work, which is that you can be a trained lifter. In other words, you could be like Sarah and I walking into the gym and kind of randomly doing stuff for years.
00:19:58
Speaker
making a little bit of progress, but maybe not really kind of riding a plateau probably, right? Or you can kind of be like Greg Knuckles, who's a serious lifter, and you can apply all of the tools that you have freely at your disposal to make sure that you are actually making changes to your body in kind of a scientific, systematic way.
00:20:17
Speaker
such that, like Greg, you become so strong that you win championships. That's not what Sarah and I are trying to do. But anyway, you can be a serious lifter. And I think what Greg means is you're going to track your workouts. You're going to write them down. You're going to reference them the next time you go in. You're going to know your load percentages. You're going to know how to use a training load chart. You're going to know how to use R-P-E-R-I-R. You're going to apply these tools.
00:20:40
Speaker
And you are going to pretty much guarantee that you continue to progress. Yeah, definitely. That's what a serious lifter does. It's not always what a trained lifter does, though, as it turns out according to this research. Yeah, I mean, you know, I am trained enough, or even before I started lifting more heavily,
00:20:59
Speaker
You know, I knew enough about like how to pick a thing up and generally where my shape it you should you know, I had some amount of work with weights before so that I guess that would put me in the category of trained versus someone who walks into a gym and has no idea like how would you even do a what is a biceps curl. An untrained lifter is someone who doesn't know what a biceps curl is maybe but it's also somebody who has never exposed their body.
00:21:23
Speaker
Basically, someone who's untrained is someone who's never strength trained before. Their body has never experienced that stimulus. You can be somebody who's had your body experience that stimulus and still, as it turns out, not know really what you're doing. His definition of a serious lifter is,
00:21:42
Speaker
you know, kind of, I guess I am now a serious lifter because I am following a program where you're not underloading. I'm sure as shit not underloading. Can you remind us what your deadlift was in February and what it is now? Thank you. That's proof that you're not underloading. Yeah. Well, the way you know you're not underloading is your weight is going up. And so I can do you one better. When I started in November of 2022, I was
00:22:10
Speaker
I would say now probably underloading and I think that's not uncommon in the beginning because I don't think it's a problem. Yeah. No, because I was like, well, I didn't know enough at that point to know really what very heavy felt like because I've never really done it before. I will say this, that there has been some research showing that people who are untrained can actually do this thing called underloading and still make changes because they are so sensitive to the stimulus.
00:22:36
Speaker
far more so than they are after they are no longer untrained. And then we have to get a little bit more serious. Sorry to interrupt. That's OK. So when I first started, I picked a deadlift of 70 pounds because that felt like, eh, this is hard-ish, but not impossible. And then I just kept doing my program. And it's a four-week.
00:22:55
Speaker
program that you just repeat repeat repeat because at the end of the four week program you work on your one you figure out what is my one rep max now and in theory it's gone up and then you enter the new numbers and beep boop boop now you've got another four weeks but now you're at this next higher level of load so
00:23:14
Speaker
i in february my deadlift was hundred pounds so from november to february i added 30 pounds what but again i think the 70 starting point was a bit too low but anyway and then my most recent and to be fair my my training schedule currently is all whackadoo because
00:23:34
Speaker
Of a bunch of things work related and I haven't been able to do it as as Regularly as I usually do and I'm like, well, can I jump in and say something? I bet you haven't lost much strength Yes, I agree because I'm gonna do a whole solo episode on D training and like what what the timeline is for building strength versus what it is for losing strength and the good news is that you It takes a lot longer to lose strength than it does to build it great Which is another reason that strength training is just such a valuable investment. Yeah
00:24:03
Speaker
Anyway, keep going. So I haven't tested this lately, but the last time I looked at it, my one RM for my deadlift was 145 pounds.
00:24:10
Speaker
Wow. She more than doubled her deadlift. In less than a year. In less than a year. Them's those newbie games right there. Yes, no for sure. I feel like every... I think honestly, probably 100 would have been a more appropriate place to start. Yes. But yes, in any event, you know you're not underloading when the number keeps going up. That is the name of the game, right? If you're not tracking,
00:24:37
Speaker
You maybe don't know that. Certainly if you're not following a program and you're kind of just wandering into the gym and doing whatever, you're probably not going to be able to know that. That isn't to say that wandering into the gym or taking one off like kettlebell classes here or there or whatever, it isn't going to raise your baseline of strength and it's not for nothing in any stretch of the imagination. But if you want to be a serious lifter, I think the name of the game is
00:25:01
Speaker
to really pursue gains, honestly, to pursue results.
Longitudinal Analysis of Load Selection
00:25:05
Speaker
Okay, so the researchers of this metanalysis also conducted an exploratory longitudinal analysis, and it found that subjects self-selected progressively heavier loads over time when they had lower rep targets, but tended to stick with more conservative loads
00:25:25
Speaker
when they had higher rep targets. This is really interesting to me. Can you repeat that? Yeah, so what it means is that over time,
00:25:34
Speaker
If you gave someone a low rep target, if you were like, I want you to select a weight that you think you could lift five times, that's a low rep target. Low rep, when you hear low rep, you should think heavy load. That people selected progressively heavier loads over time when they had low rep targets, but tended to just kind of stick with and get pretty complacent with to take more conservative loads when they had higher rep targets. So a higher rep target would be like 15 reps, right?
00:26:02
Speaker
And so again, if you're lifting something 15 times, that thing is probably not doing the best job it could do to help you get stronger, but it could be helping you build muscle. However, if your load selection for 15 reps is too conservative, you're going to be doing neither one. And then if you are working at a lower rep range, meaning a heavier load, what this is suggesting, this longitudinal
00:26:27
Speaker
exploratory analysis suggests that people are just less likely for some reason, people are less likely to under load when the rep target is lower. So they're more likely to select a load that would actually make a change to maybe muscle growth, maybe strength. It's so interesting. It's really interesting. You're literally saying, okay, well, if I only have to list this five times,
00:26:54
Speaker
It could probably be pretty heavy. Right. And one of the things that I, when I'm working with people in the clinic and starting to introduce them to the parameters of strength training specifically and how it might be different than what they're used to, right? They're used to this like pretty low weight, but sort of three sets of 10 approach.
00:27:15
Speaker
And to be fair, I use three sets of ten all the time because in a rehab setting, one of the first things we're trying to rebuild for people is endurance, not strength. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is being stronger, but it's stronger in endurance. It's resilience, right? And so like you kind of have to get that under your belt, but anyway.
00:27:34
Speaker
The idea that I kind of have to reiterate for people and I guess, I guess, you know, sometimes when something is like, well, obvious to you, but maybe you don't realize that it's not obvious to everybody. So to me, it was obvious that if I was going to be lifting something heavy, I was not going to be trying to do three sets of 10 of it. But if, if all you've ever heard in the sort of reps and sets world is the ubiquitous three sets of 10.
00:27:56
Speaker
It's not unfair to think that you might assume that all weightlifting is three sets of 10, including when that shit gets really heavy. Which would be impossible. It would be impossible. I find myself surprising my patients very often when I say things like, you're only going to have to lift this six times. And they're like, that's a number? No, really. Because we think if you're stuck in that three sets of 10 thing, the number is 10.
00:28:25
Speaker
There's not a world where the number is not 10. So that exposing people to this idea that maybe you're doing four sets of four or five sets of five, my personal least favorite, six sets of six, I absolutely detest.
Debunking High Rep Range Misconceptions
00:28:39
Speaker
But anyway, more to the point, this idea that you could do a workout that has value, but only pick something up four times, it reminds me of
00:28:50
Speaker
how we don't believe something could be efficient or useful enough if you're not spending as much time as we think you should be spending doing it. Laundry detergent is mostly water because
00:29:05
Speaker
the amount of detergent that you actually need to clean your clothes is tiny. And what they discovered in like marketing research studies is people didn't believe that like a teaspoon of something could actually clean an entire, you know, washing machine full of clothing. So they bulk it up with a bunch of water and people look at a half a cup of something like, yeah, that seems like the right amount. Yeah. That's why I get the little laundry detergent sheets now because it's so much better for the environment. That's true. This giant plastic jug away every month. That's mostly filled with water.
00:29:35
Speaker
Right? And you're going to fill your machine with water anyway. Right. Exactly. But that sort of thing where it's like we have this idea of like, what is the amount that is going to be valuable of something to do? And for whatever reason, we've decided that a rep range under 10 seems like it's not going to do enough stuff. Yeah. It's not going to be a good use of our time. Which is not the case. Not even remotely. Okay.
00:30:05
Speaker
But I do think this is a good opportunity for us to actually talk about our six month progressive overload, strength training, weight lifting, bone density course, don't you? Yeah, I do. So our bone density course is a six month course and it includes a six month program within it. It also includes bonus courses like strength training 101 and all about osteoporosis.
00:30:36
Speaker
But the bulk of the content is really the program. And the program is six months because why, Sarah? Because six months is in the research when you are able to start seeing changes to bone density. So if you are going to start doing this kind of progressive overload, no matter what weight you're starting from, you're not going to see any change in your bone density typically until you're past that six-month mark. Right. And so we need at least that amount of time to make a change.
00:31:05
Speaker
It's properly programmed, which means that we start you where you are.
Starting with Moderate Loads
00:31:10
Speaker
So in the beginning, we're going to be focusing a ton on techniques. So you might be lifting what would be more moderate or even lightweight in the beginning for you so that you can really dial in the technique of working with a barbell. Now it is a barbell.
00:31:23
Speaker
specific program, but that doesn't mean that you can't take a lot of the information we're sharing and apply it to using dumbbells and kettlebells. You certainly can. We just simply believe that a barbell is the best, most logical piece of equipment that you would want to become familiar with if you want to be able to progressively overload for life. And so this is the other thing too. This is a six month program, but that's not to say that you are going to
00:31:49
Speaker
ideally lift weights for six months and then stop. This is basically us helping you get started over a course of time where you will have ample time to learn how to use weights, learn how to strength train,
00:32:03
Speaker
learn how to progressively overload, learn how to progress toward lifting heavy weights, and barbells are the best way to be able to progress for life. But then we want you to keep going when this program ends and we'll give you ways of continuing to use our program
00:32:19
Speaker
to continue going right so it doesn't end at six months it's it's something that we can continue to cycle back on and and use you know what it reminds me of sorry to break in but i was just thinking while you were talking about that it reminds me of like you know when you see some a parent helping a child learn how to ride a bicycle with no training wheels and i mean i remember this is how i learned my dad held on to the back of the bike
00:32:42
Speaker
And I started pedaling and he's running alongside me and at some point he lets go and I kept going, right? And it's that moment where like, you don't know as the person I'm like, when did that happen, right? So in that metaphor analogy story, Laurel and I are like your parent. We're going to hold on to you. Is that weird? We're going to hold on to your bike, your metaphorical bike. And we are going to hold your hand the whole way through.
00:33:04
Speaker
And then our goal is to make ourselves no longer necessary so that you can then continue to work on your strength for the rest of your life.
Course Structure and Benefits
00:33:13
Speaker
The course is called Lift for Longevity for a Reason. Yeah. And two things that are really important. One, you own the course when you buy it. So it's yours forever. It'll always live in your computer. And then number two is that this course is structured in a way that we have not encountered any others. First of all, there are no six-month programs that are guided.
00:33:32
Speaker
with live option and recorded follow along classes included with it. So a rude awakening for me when I was going from yoga into the strength training world and like I wanted to get stronger. It's like, Oh, I need a program. Okay. I finally got that through my head. I can't just be one off classes all the time. So then I invested in a program and I got emailed a PDF. I was like, wait, where's the program? Where, where's the content? Literally all the PDF. So the PDF was linked to videos on Vimeo.
00:33:57
Speaker
So yes, you're like, how do I do a bent over row? Let me click over to this one minute demo video on Vimeo. And look, that's a fine way to be given a program. The thing is that it's actually very, very different, though, than how yoga practitioners
00:34:14
Speaker
and even Pilates teachers are used to being taught movement. We're used to going to a class where there's a group of people and being guided step by step through what to do in the class.
00:34:28
Speaker
I think that it's more yoga slash Pilates teacher friendly to do the course the way we're doing it. We're offering one live class a week. You don't have to attend live. It's all going to be recorded. We're going to ask you to strength train more than one time a week, but we are not only going to provide you with a demo video of every single exercise that you're going to do in the program, we're also going to provide you with a full length class of every single workout in the program.
00:34:53
Speaker
So you will always have the option to just watch a quick demo and work out on your own like the rest of the strength training world is doing, or you will always have the option to take the workouts as though it were kind of like a yoga class or a Pilates class for it to be a guided follow along experience. I cannot find anything like this, not to mention the fact that we have a physical therapist,
00:35:15
Speaker
Who's that? And a strength coach? Who's that? Teaming up? Who are they? To provide you with this content. It's Sarah and I. We have a breadth of knowledge and a breadth of expertise and a breadth of qualifications that it's
00:35:30
Speaker
You also don't always find, right? So we have something for you that will give you a taste test of what this program is going to be, which is a free webinar. And the webinar is just basically a workout. The way this workout will work is that you'll show up
00:35:45
Speaker
with whatever equipment you have. So if you have barbells, great. If you just have a broomstick, that's also good. And maybe if you have a couple dumbbells and kettlebells, we're going to take you through the experience of a workout. We're also going to do exactly what we're going to do in the course, which is leave time at the end of the workout for Q&A. We're also going to do exactly what we're going to do in the course, which is provide individuals with form check feedback and take questions. So it's going to be very interactive and basically an exact replica or
00:36:15
Speaker
It's going to be an example of how this program will be for you to take in its longer form. This is a free webinar. You get a 30-day replay. It's happening on September 14th if you want to attend live. If you can't attend live, again, you will get emailed the replay.
00:36:30
Speaker
You'll be able to take the class a couple of times, get a feel for what it's going to be like. And then knowing that's the bulk of the content, like you'd be able to make a better decision about whether or not this of course is something that you want to invest in. Absolutely. So alternatives to this are obviously like to get one-on-one personal training sessions, which I will never not recommend. It's a great idea. But in terms of costs, sometimes that can be a major valid objection. Like people just don't have
00:36:56
Speaker
a couple hundred dollars every month lying around to pay their personal trainer and I think that you know that warrants longer discussion. If you don't have that type of money the cost of this longer form course that
00:37:08
Speaker
that we're presenting to you is a fraction of that cost. It's not the same thing as working with a personal trainer, but it has a lot of the same benefits because there's that live, real-time personal feedback component to it. If that's interesting to you, make sure you go to our show notes where you can sign up
00:37:28
Speaker
to get the Zoom link for our webinar that is taking place on September 14th. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it too. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And the other thing is, if you have been listening to this podcast, this is who Laurel and I are. This is not like... These people are showing up in that class as well. So just get ready for... They'll be there. These people will be there. By they, we mean we. We'll be there.
00:37:57
Speaker
All right, another longitudinal analysis compared the effects of self-selecting rep targets. So this is different than self-selecting loads. Now you give them a weight, you give them a load, and you tell them to select how many reps they're going to do.
Tendencies in Load Selection
00:38:12
Speaker
And it found again that people tended to leave about six to seven reps in the tank. The difference increased with lower loads than with higher loads.
00:38:25
Speaker
So what does that mean? It means that people left more reps in the tank with lower loads, lighter weights, than they did with higher loads.
00:38:35
Speaker
So six to seven reps in the tank, Sarah. Yes. That's the pretty good distance from failure. That's potentially an entire set of lifts away from failure. So you might, if you're a beginner, brand new, completely sensitized to the loads of strength training, make some changes by staying that far away from failure maybe for a little while. Briefly. But if you have any amount of training under your belt, that's not going to do much.
00:39:01
Speaker
So here I'm just going to read, quote, almost no matter what, it seems that people gravitate toward loads that correspond to 50 to 50 percent of a 1RM. Similarly, so that's a lightweight, right? Similarly with loads ranging from 30 to 70 percent of a 1RM.
00:39:18
Speaker
it appears that most people self-selected sets of about 10 reps. So 30% is a very lightweight, and you're going to only do 10 reps of that? 70% is a weight that you could theoretically lift 12 times before not being able to lift it again. And so if you're selecting 70% of a 1RM and doing 10 reps, you're probably doing pretty good. And that's a moderate rep range. So you're going to make changes to your strength, your hypertrophy. It's not maximum strength. It may not be the best one for bone density, but it's good.
00:39:45
Speaker
But then there's everything below that, which is like if you're only doing 10 reps of 60%, 50%, 40%, 30%, you're underloading. Really simplified, it appears that the median lifter tends to gravitate towards sets of 10 reps with about 50% of a 1RM if left to their own devices, if they're just feeling it out, right? Faffing about. Faffing about, feeling it out. Okay.
00:40:12
Speaker
All right, so based on everything I just shared about, the room for air seems to decrease as the load gets heavier or the rep range gets smaller. This bodes well, I think, for heavy strength training, just in the sense of you're maybe less likely to faff about. If you're given something of substantial weight or given a rep range that's a little lower, something happens in the human mind where we're like,
00:40:39
Speaker
Okay, this isn't going to be so bad because I only have to do a couple of reps or this is heavy, so therefore I don't know what happens. It's interesting. He even said, he was like, I wasn't expecting it to be this many people underloading. The other thing that's really bizarre in addition to this many people underloading, under selecting their rep range is that
00:41:07
Speaker
even after people did a one RM test, like even after they went through the process of determining using a training low chart, most likely, or even just building up to their one RM, what their one RM is objectively speaking.
00:41:23
Speaker
that this did not really decrease their tendency to under load. So now all that says to me is that either there's not a goal that's very clear in their minds about what they're trying to do, or if there is, they don't know what's required to achieve it, or they don't know how to use a training load chart. It's like one of those three things is happening here.
00:41:41
Speaker
Or maybe all of them. All of them. The ability to... It's a lot easier to sense what two more reps feels like than what five more reps feels like. Yeah, it is. What's the case then, too, that kind of tracks with this idea that you're less likely to underload with smaller rep ranges and heavier loads is that you're also better able to estimate
00:42:04
Speaker
your proximity to failure with heavy loads than you are with lighter loads. You're also better able to predict what your 1RM is using a training load chart when you lift a heavier load to make that extrapolation. So if you lift a weight 20 times to failure and then you read across the chart and you go, okay, based on that, my 1RM should be this, that number you get is much more likely to be inaccurate than if you were to lift a load five times and get really close to failure and then trace across the chart and go,
00:42:34
Speaker
predicted 1RM is this that that number is going to be more accurate so there's more just it looks like when you're lifting light when you're lifting moderate it's easier to not get close enough to failure it's easier to miscalculate your 1RM it's just it's actually easier to waste your own time not to say that lifting light loads lifting moderate loads is has no value at all i mean in our course
00:42:57
Speaker
bone density course lift for longevity you are definitely not gonna be lifting heavy every single exercise every single day like that also.
Balanced Programming for Optimal Results
00:43:05
Speaker
Is a recipe for not being as successful as you possibly could be with string training that that's not good programming and especially if you're on the newer side we're not gonna have you start out with like you know you're ninety percent one r.m. like it's important to.
00:43:20
Speaker
you know, work at a lower load where you are working on your form and understanding like the, you know, where you feel it in your body and what muscles are activated and all of these techniques and skills that you need to acquire so that you can then progress the load and make it heavier. And to your point that you made early on in the episode, Sarah, it's also
00:43:41
Speaker
going to be time spent getting used to the feeling of strength training if you've not been strength training before. Right. Which is very different than doing yoga, which is very different than doing Pilates. And in some ways, it requires a gradual and positive identity shift for many women especially. Just kind of getting on board with this new way of being in your body should be supported by a relatively less intense
00:44:07
Speaker
load selection, I think. Yeah. No, I agree. That's what our program really does, is it walks you
00:44:13
Speaker
with us hand in hand toward the skill and knowledge and ability to lift heavy for life. Okay, another thing that this research showed is that when subjects self-selected loads over multiple sets, they selected slightly heavier loads set to set.
Warm-Up Sets to Determine Loads
00:44:33
Speaker
So they got a first set, they selected their load, then they got a second try at the second set.
00:44:39
Speaker
And based on the first set, they could go, actually that didn't feel that challenging. I think I could bump it up and then say maybe same thing for the third, fourth and fifth set. So they were given time to self-select and then self-correct. And so in our program, we are going to encourage the use of warmup sets, largely for the purpose of not underloading because what do warmup sets do, Sarah?
00:45:04
Speaker
Well, so warm-up sets are the... So if you're doing your strength workout, you might do sort of a generalized warm-up, which is kind of just bigger movements, getting your body ready for exercise, stretching things, waking things up. Increasing your core temperature is probably the primary reason you do a general warm-up.
00:45:24
Speaker
And then you might, you should, I like, we encourage warm-up sets, which are sets of the exercise that you're going to do. So let's say, for example, it's a deadlift. Before you do the sets and reps that is appropriate for you for whatever that today's workout is, you're going to do some prior to that that are lighter on purpose.
00:45:48
Speaker
and so it's sort of twofold you either already know like if you're working with a program like i am where everything's plugged in and told to me you already know what your like let's say i'm doing a deadlift and is a hundred pounds and it's four sets of three at a hundred pounds okay i already know that that's what my work is going to be so my warm-up sets
00:46:08
Speaker
I might be picking something that's 50% of that, and then I'll do a set like that. And then maybe I'll pick something that's 75% of it, and I'll do a set like that. So if you already know what your target amount's going to be, you can kind of do the math backwards. The other option is, like these people in this study, if you don't know what the number's going to be, you can use these warmup sets to help give you a sense of what you think you could do.
00:46:34
Speaker
maybe you pick something that seems reasonable to you and you start lifting it and you're like, wow, I was actually able to do like 10 of these. Okay, if I can do 10 of it, from what I understand, from all of the times I've listened to Laurel and Sarah on this podcast talking about what rep range is heavy, if I can do 10 of this weight, maybe I should add, let me add 20 pounds to this and see what that feels like. And in our course, Lift for Longevity, we actually have
00:47:00
Speaker
an entire course called String Training 101 where you're actually going to not just have to go and listen to this podcast, but there'll be short, concise videos about how to use a training load chart so that you know how to use this chart that you can download off the internet for free and go, well, if I can do 10 reps at this load,
00:47:16
Speaker
If I use this chart, I see that I could probably do five reps at this load. Another way to think of warm-up sets is as a specific warm-up. If you spend five minutes doing a general warm-up, the warm-up sets you do before each working set or each of the working sets is a specific warm-up. It's a specific warm-up in the sense that you get to dial in your form, you get to check in with how you're doing with the movement.
00:47:41
Speaker
You get to practice the movement. You get to load the movement somewhat. And then the warm-up ends and the work begins. And the work is where you go, okay, now I'm going to put some weight on the bar that is appropriate to me where I am in my program and where I am in my training. And I'm going to work. And I'm going to let that work be stimulating. Right.
00:48:02
Speaker
I like as well this is something that you talked about a lot and I really like as well this idea of the working sets being a way to kind of like tone your nervous system in a way like you're preparing your body for this very different feeling like we've been talking about this very different feeling kind of an activity where you're about to pick up something that is legitimately heavy for you right so we're kind of it's a rehearsal
00:48:26
Speaker
right, of what that's going to feel like. And it also, then you can be like, oh, well, yeah, supposedly I'm going to a hundred pounds today, but you know what, I slept weird and my shoulder hurts and I'm tired and I don't feel great. So maybe I'm not actually going to do that to myself right now. And your warmup sets might be a good way to kind of check in on like, well, what can you tolerate today? Yeah. And so we combine the very, I would say, scientific approach of using a training load chart
00:48:54
Speaker
with the far more subjective and oftentimes more useful auto regulatory approach of RPE rate of perceived exertion slash and its counterpart RIR that together they're a match made in heaven. I mean, I'm just swooning over the use of auto regulatory here. Well, it's very yogic, right? Like string training is actually surprisingly too many who don't, again, really know what it is. They have an idea, a vague idea.
00:49:24
Speaker
based on loose associations and impressions that are often toxic, that are broadcast to them via the toxic fitness culture that they're exposed to on social media, a lot of people don't realize that actually strength training is all about listening to your body. That sounds like a social media post we should do. Well, there you go. Somebody, our assistant somebody, will you write that down? All right. If you want to know what I really think about these test subjects and why they're underloading, I think
Human Nature and Underloading
00:49:53
Speaker
And it's largely because they lack understanding of some really key concepts around strength. They don't know how to strength train. I think the goal is probably poorly defined, but I also think that they're human beings. And me, I'm a human being, you're a human being, all human beings. I suspect underloading is more about feelings, or as I like to call them, fee-fees, of not really wanting to get that uncomfortable or be embarrassed.
00:50:19
Speaker
So I don't want to get that uncomfortable by selecting an appropriate load to where doing 10 reps is actually going to be uncomfortable for those last couple of reps. That's another way of saying that those last few reps are going to be stimulating.
00:50:33
Speaker
to being able to make a change in my body. Strength training is not always comfortable. It's sure not. And we get used to the discomfort of it. In fact, the discomfort actually becomes a little bit addictive in my opinion. I love now the feeling of it getting uncomfortable. I didn't maybe know that I was, I didn't know if I was feeling the right type of discomfort in the beginning. So I think I was a little too ambiguous. I didn't have a coach walking me through it all. The other thing I think that happens is if you're in a research setting or in a public gym, you don't want to be
00:51:02
Speaker
made a fool. You don't want to pick up a weight that you're not going to be able to lift because then you look like a weakling and you know what nature does to the weaklings. So you don't want to become food for the predators. This is another reason why I think it's important that in the beginning you start with loads that can actually feel pretty comfortable and get used to the feeling of strength training. I think it's also important to strength train in positive, encouraging environments
00:51:32
Speaker
where maybe people are more likely to share your values. Look like you. Look like you have a sense of humor about things, not take themselves too seriously. Who are these people you're talking about? I mean, I can think of a couple right here in this room. So in this room full of two people, I can think of two
Overcoming Underloading and Achieving Gains
00:51:51
Speaker
people. Yeah, no, but here's the deal. I train women who are between the ages of 35 and 65 on Zoom twice a week.
00:52:00
Speaker
in my virtual studio. And we have been working on this together for a while, this idea of things getting to be a little uncomfortable. And I've witnessed their transformation from underloading to loading, man, like their weights have gotten big.
00:52:18
Speaker
Awesome. And their amazement at their ability to build muscle, and their ability to do a pull-up, and their ability to do these things they never in their wildest dreams thought they would do. And I also get to engage in these really rich and interesting conversations based on the really amazing questions they ask me, or the observations they make. So case in point, a student a couple days ago raised awareness to me that she thought that the word failure was a very big bummer. She was like, why do we call it getting close to failure?
00:52:48
Speaker
It just makes me lose all the energy and positivity in my body. And I feel like it's a total bummer. And I was like, I feel you. That's a really interesting observation. And it might be really confusing to people who are not familiar with strength training lingo to hear, we want to get close to failure. Because ironically, and somewhat poetically, the closer you get to failure within a range, you don't have to go to failure. You don't even have to get that super duper one rep shy of failure. But if you get close enough to failure, which
00:53:18
Speaker
In these research studies, we're finding people just aren't getting close enough to failure. If you do get close enough to failure, you're more likely to be successful. That's the funny thing. But it does require that you step outside of your comfort zone. And so I also think that it's a good idea to step into different
00:53:39
Speaker
communities of knowledge and communities of practice in the sense that I think it's a good idea if you're a yoga teacher or Pilates teacher to step outside of that community of practice regularly and step into a completely different community of practice where you're going to hear different terminology, where things are going to be looked at in a completely different way, where cues are going to land very differently, where the goals are extremely different. Because what it does is it actually expands your lexicon, it expands your repertoire,
00:54:06
Speaker
It expands your capacity and it expands your ability to really understand movement at its most fundamental level. So here we have this word failure, which means something negative in most people's minds. So does stress by the way, right? But in strength training, failure is something we want to move toward and stress is something we want to apply to our bodies because when we stress our bodies close enough to failure, we succeed in making our bodies stronger. It's wild, right? It's so cool. Yeah. All right.
00:54:33
Speaker
Now I want to talk about healthy boundaries. Seems like a little bit of an abrupt switch of topics, but here's where I'm going with this. It kind of comes down to gender lines here because there are observable differences between the way men and women behave, most notably in the weight room, in my opinion, and about boundaries, healthy boundaries.
Gender Dynamics and Gym Interactions
00:54:54
Speaker
It's no secret that gyms are toxic environments for lots of different populations of people, not just women. And it's not necessarily all the men's fault. But here's what I think. I think that you're much more likely to be mansplained in a gym if you're a woman. And in other words, you're much more likely for a man to come up to you in some way, shape or form and make you feel like you don't know what you're doing. But this research suggests that men and women equally don't know what they're doing in this room.
00:55:19
Speaker
Because the research didn't find that women were underloading more than men. It actually found that men were underloading as much as women were. So here's what I want to say. If you're a woman in the weight room and a guy comes up to you and tries to tell you how to do something, just remember it's highly likely. It's likely or not that he doesn't know what he's talking about.
00:55:37
Speaker
I think that's a good thing just to keep in mind. Yeah. And that you probably know about as much as he does. And you can employ the very useful phrase, thank you for your input. Fuck off. As the subtext of thank you for your input. I wouldn't say thank you for your input personally. I just get really, I don't know if you've noticed this about me, but I don't like being told what to do. What?
00:55:58
Speaker
I've never noticed that about you. Unless I asked to be told what to do. I'm not a big fan of unsolicited advice. I'm allergic to it. The absolute worst thing you can start a sentence with, to me, is you should, anything. Right. Because my response is, why don't you do that? My mother used to say, you shouldn't shut on people, Laurel.
00:56:17
Speaker
You shouldn't shoot on people? Stop shooting on people. That's right. That's right. No, but I'm just, I mean, I'm sort of joking about the thank you for your input because to me that's a very passive aggressive way to say fuck off. But just the real point is you're not necessarily doing anything incorrectly and this person mansplaining it to you doesn't necessarily know anything more than you do.
00:56:36
Speaker
Right, and so have you had any negative experiences with men in the weight room? Because I want to share, just I just want to share a couple just to like kind of air air this because I think a lot of times we have an idea that an experience will be negative based validly on associations that we've made or experiences we've had in the past and it's not sometimes it's good to hear other people's experiences and to be validated in that way to go like it's not just me right or it's not just that it's not all gyms necessarily
00:57:04
Speaker
So one time I was using the pull-up machine and a guy kind of sauntered over with an overconfident kind of swagger and he like flirty kind of looked at me a little ways like do you notice that you're you're pulling yourself up in this particular way and like why don't you try it this way and I was like do you know that it's actually a
00:57:26
Speaker
not a good idea to give people unsolicited advice in the gym. Did you say that? I'm actually not passive aggressive. I'm aggressive aggressive, especially when you trigger me with things that I find extremely annoying. I had two older brothers growing up. I know how to assert myself with people who are bigger than me, with men, and with men who are older than me. Just ask my father.
00:57:53
Speaker
It's not hard for me in that circumstance to do that, but that's because also I'm operating from a place of privilege. I've never been made to feel afraid in a gym, or honestly, I think I've been fairly fortunate in my life to where I haven't been made to feel afraid in the presence of men either.
00:58:14
Speaker
And I can honestly say that. And I know that many women, if not most women, cannot say that. I mean, don't get me wrong. I've definitely been assaulted. And I've definitely had like random things happen to me. But I don't walk around afraid because of those things, because their severity wasn't such that I would feel afraid, that I do feel afraid. But I can understand how somebody who has had anyone, not just women, like anyone who's been hurt,
00:58:39
Speaker
and made to feel afraid, would have a hard time in the gym, would feel intimidated. It's not even about violence or assault. It's like just feeling intimidated like you don't know what you're doing. But here's what I'm going to say. This guy, it's highly likely he didn't know what the hell he was talking about. And I didn't care either way if he did or he didn't. The point of the matter was he made me feel unwelcome by coming up to me and giving me advice I didn't ask him for. I had no idea how qualified or unqualified he was.
00:59:05
Speaker
it's a really super irresponsible thing to do. So a red flag should be, even if someone does seem to know what they're doing based on what you see, if they're giving you unsolicited advice, they're completely off base. And you should, I think, in my opinion, unless you've got a good vibe for me and it seemed like it was okay to you, but just know that that's inappropriate behavior. I don't think anybody worth their salt who knows anything about strength training or gym cultures would condone that type of behavior.
00:59:32
Speaker
It's inappropriate. Absolutely. Well, what I'm really curious about is after you said this is inappropriate, what happened? He got really uncomfortable. He was not expecting that. I'm sure he wasn't. I think he wanted me to be pleasant and smile and sort of like, oh, I don't know what I'm doing. I was like, no, this is go away, basically. I love that. I love that. Another thing that happened to me in the gym is I was actually, it was a mild form of sexual harassment where I was at the machines.
00:59:57
Speaker
And this guy just kept giving me this really aggressive, prolonged, look you up and down, check your body out type.
01:00:07
Speaker
stare, and that was enough for me to report him to management. Oh, good for you. That's awesome. Well, yeah, because I don't have to be made to feel unsafe in a gym that I pay just as much money to be there as he does. Exactly. And that was a whole thing. I was trying to think, while you've been talking, I'm trying to think if I had had examples of feeling like I got mansplained. There's one that I do remember from forever and ever ago, so I would call this in my faffing about phase. I think this is like even pre-being a yoga teacher.
01:00:37
Speaker
I was on some machine and I guess I was doing it
01:00:42
Speaker
too quickly for this one man's preference. And so he came over and he was basically like, hey, hey, slow down, little lady. Or it was kind of that vibe where he was like, you know, and then he was like, well, the eccentric phase of the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And I was like, you know, you lost me at little lady, basically. Jesus Christ. He really actually said little lady. I don't remember. It was a while ago, but it was it was along those lines. It was like, hey there, girly. Slow your roll kind of thing. There's so much infantilization of women. And in the weight room, it is rampant. Yes.
01:01:11
Speaker
And also in weight rooms, quote unquote, weight rooms designed for women, we've got these tiny little pink dumbbells, right? They look like doll toys. I mean, so the topic of this section of our podcast is
01:01:28
Speaker
healthy boundaries and I'm getting there, promise, stay with me. I'm staying. I think there's tons of positive male energy in the gym and I'm really super inspired. For example, I go to a CrossFit gym and it's like 50% men, 50% women, and I've had nothing but total respect from all of the gentlemen there. I definitely don't want to come across as being
01:01:48
Speaker
someone who hates men. I love men. I just think that it's more likely that a man will try to explain something to a woman in a gym and make her feel uncomfortable or a man will make a woman feel uncomfortable by looking at her in an inappropriate way than it is for the opposite to happen.
01:02:10
Speaker
point out that there are real reasons why women don't feel welcome in a gym. And what this research here is suggesting that if you have been made to feel unwelcome by somebody who pretends to know more than you, there's a high likelihood that they don't know what they're doing. So you could just disregard them and also they're being jerks in the first place by making you as a woman feel unwelcome.
01:02:37
Speaker
I think it would be fantastic if either you or I or a listener having listened to this episode and understanding that most people are only lifting around 50% of their 1RM.
01:02:48
Speaker
if you are in a gym setting and a man or other domineering type of person, like perhaps a woman might do it, let's be fair, comes up to you and says something that a great response would be, oh, well, are you lifting more than 50% of your one RM? Because research shows that even trained lifters are not. That would be fun. I would love for someone to do that and then just report back on what happened. That feels like a boundary, doesn't it? Yeah. The other thing I want to say about boundaries is that
01:03:17
Speaker
Women are often, I think, made to feel like they don't know what they're doing when it comes to lifting weights, especially when it comes to lifting barbells. And that we're often encouraged as well through media and image and representations of women lifting weights that we should be lifting really small weights.
01:03:38
Speaker
And so we often also hear advice to women that you have to learn healthy boundaries. You have to learn your no. You have to learn to use the word no more often. I think it's equally important in the context that we're speaking about today to suggest that women also need to learn their yes. They also need to learn when to say, yes, I am ready. I can do this. I am competent and capable of learning this.
01:04:07
Speaker
equal right to be in this space and to be lifting with this equipment as my male counterpart and often younger male counterpart. So healthy boundaries mean learning your no but they also mean learning your yes and a big way to learn your yes in strength training is just make sure you're not underloading because if you're underloaning you are actually saying no. You're saying no to strength, you're saying no to longevity, you're saying no to bone density, you're saying no
01:04:36
Speaker
to staving off the loss of muscle, the loss of bone that speeds up as you age. So start saying, yes, start loading appropriately, which is going to require that you learn how to do that. And it might require some guidance. And it might also require
01:04:53
Speaker
that you start to just really much more readily disregard unsolicited advice or any type of presence in any gym that makes you feel like you're not welcome.
Home Training Equipment Discussion
01:05:04
Speaker
You say no to the stuff that is garbage so that you can yes the stuff that is not garbage, which is yourself. Yeah. And here's the deal too. You can do all of this at home. You don't have to even go to a gym and worry about any of this bullshit. But the thing about working out at home, Sarah, is that we don't have a fully equipped gym. Right.
01:05:23
Speaker
The psychology of money is tricky in that we can be working with a 20-pound kettlebell and be like, this is hard. And then six months later, we're like, is it still hard? I'm not sure. News flash, it shouldn't still be hard if you're properly, progressively overloading. And then we get into this mind game of like, do I need to buy another kettlebell though? Because isn't the 20-pound kettlebell just enough? And they're expensive. And they're expensive. And I don't have the space and da, da, da, da, where then we now have this additional barrier
01:05:51
Speaker
to being able to sufficiently load, which is that we are now reliant on our own willingness to invest in that bigger weight. This all comes around to the fact that this points to why Sarah and I really heavily promote the use of a barbell because the barbell is a one-time purchase. Basically, you get the equipment, you've got it, and you're going to be able to sufficiently load forever because it's a completely adjustable weight.
01:06:19
Speaker
Not to mention, if you're trying to build bone density or sufficiently load your lower body, right? At a certain point, you're going to outgrow a kettlebell. Oh, 100%. You're basically going to have to use upper body strength
01:06:32
Speaker
to sufficiently load your lower body with a kettlebell. And we all know that our lower body is lots and lots stronger than our upper body, probably twice as strong at least than our upper body, just due to the size of the muscles down there, right? So at a certain point, you may be able to continue to progressively overload your upper body with kettlebells and dumbbells, but you're going to reach a limit on your ability to continue to progressively overload your lower body. So Sarah went from a 70 pound deadlift
01:07:00
Speaker
to now deadlifting 140 pounds. There is such a thing as a 200 pound kettlebell, but good luck picking it up. Good Lord. I also made an Instagram post a little while ago where I show, and it's a little goofy for dramatic effect, but it's actually completely factual. Let's say I'm trying to do a squat with 100 pounds. If I'm trying to pick up two 50 pound dumbbells, I literally cannot.
01:07:29
Speaker
But I can go to the rack, put 100 pounds on a bar, put it on my back, and squat it no problem. So that was a super clear indication for me. It was like, all right, I have topped out in terms of what my arms can do relative to the amount I need for my lower body. Yeah.
01:07:47
Speaker
All right, all of this to say really the whole point of this particular podcast was know that underloading is really easy to do and don't do it. Your time has value.
01:08:02
Speaker
While you're at it, to make sure you're not underloading, have a clearly defined goal and know how to reach it. If you don't know how to reach it, find places, resources, people who can help you reach it. Sarah and I are a couple of those people, but obviously there are a lot of people who know what they're talking about when it comes to strength and conditioning. Seek out somebody who can help you make sure you're not underloading. Then finally, not underloading is really about having healthy boundaries. It's about knowing
01:08:30
Speaker
not just your limits, but also knowing the minimal effective dose, knowing the threshold that you need to reach to make a change.
01:08:39
Speaker
Knowing your limits as a woman, I think, is largely because of uniquely how women are treated or expected to behave in our society versus men. It's about learning your no and it's about learning how to use the word no. But in the case of strength and conditioning, it's also about learning your yes. It's about learning that you are capable of lifting more than a pink dumbbell.
01:09:02
Speaker
You probably know just as much as the dude next to you in the gym. That's what research shows. And you have everything available to you, just like men do, to build the same type of capacity that men do, as long as you allow yourself to say yes to strength training, to say yes to progressive overload, to say yes to external load, and yes, maybe even yes to lifting with barbells, which will allow you to say yes for life. Yes, you can.
01:09:31
Speaker
Yes, you can. I hope you've enjoyed this episode about underloading and why it's just another example of having poor boundaries. And you can check out our show notes for links to references that we mentioned in this podcast, including the wonderful blog post, Most Lifters Train to Light by our friend Greg Knuckles at Stronger by Science. He doesn't know who we are. I call him my friend because he's made a big difference in my life. We aspire to a friendship with that.
01:09:57
Speaker
You can also visit the MovementLogic website where you can get on our mailing list to be in the know about sales on our upcoming tutorials and courses, one of which is our bone density course, Lift for Longevity. Don't forget to sign up for the free webinar happening on September 14th where you get to taste test the program in the form of a workout
01:10:19
Speaker
and basically just like a super fun hangout session with Sarah and I. It's been great. If you can't attend live, that's totally fine. You'll get the recording emailed to you with a 30-day replay. Alrighty, thanks for joining us on the Moving Logic podcast. It helps us out enormously that if you liked this episode, you want to support Sarah and I's work on this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you next week!