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28: Pink Dumbbells and the Shrinking Female Body
1.1k Plays2 years ago
Welcome to Season 2 and Episode 28 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss how women have been hoodwinked into believing that strength training is not for them - when in fact it’s the most protective and valuable training for women to do, in particular for bone density for women post-menopause.
- The history of weightlifting and bodybuilding in the US, including the influence of Jack LaLanne and Arnold Schwarzenegger
- How the myths of “lifting weights make you bulky” and “you’ll injure yourself if you lift weights” are deeply detrimental to women’s health
- The importance of your training environment and how many gyms are off-putting to women and other people who have been subjected to somatic dominance
- How weight lifting has a PR problem
- That women’s muscle mass and bone density both benefit from heavy lifting
- What are the parameters for heavy lifting and why is there so much confusion around the terms
www.sarahcourtdpt.com for a free guide to squat/deadlift/chest press with weight
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Backgrounds
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, Sarah here. In this episode, Laurel and I talk about women's experiences with lifting weights, going to gyms, or CrossFit, and the circumstances around how these can turn negative. While we have centered this conversation around women, we include all people who have had a negative experience, been intimidated, or made to feel like they didn't belong. This episode is for you, too. And now, here's our show.
00:00:30
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yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts.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.
00:01:02
Speaker
Welcome to season two and episode 28 of the Movement Logic Podcast.
Podcasting Challenges and Strategies
00:01:06
Speaker
I am Dr. Sarah Kort, physical therapist, and I'm here with my co-host, strength coach, and yoga teacher, Laurel Beaverstorf. We are in season two. Laurel, can you believe it?
00:01:17
Speaker
I can and I can't. It's exciting. I have missed recording for sure. Yes. But I also maybe haven't missed all the other stuff around it, which is the work. The work part. Yeah. Well, I loved researching the episodes and I miss talking to you. So I'm very happy to be back. I can't say that I'm looking forward to writing the show notes, but I'll get over it.
00:01:44
Speaker
Why is that the worst part? I don't know. There's something about the way that my brain works that I just can't get it together with the show notes. They're hard. They're hard for sure. Well, so what have you been up to since last we spoke?
00:01:57
Speaker
I got my shit, can I say that on my own podcast? I got my shit together and I'm taking a different approach to my business this year, which is I'm sort of planning everything out in advance, my business being my virtual studio. I obviously have lots of businesses apparently.
00:02:14
Speaker
Just like the one with you. This one is a business, yep. Yeah. So I, you know, I'm feeling a little bit more grounded because I know what's coming in my virtual studio. I don't have to just make it up. I don't be, I don't be thinking like, Oh God, what am I going to teach two months from now? It's literally on a PDF calendar that many people have downloaded now. So it like, that's, that's it. Like I've held myself accountable. I can't change my mind.
00:02:38
Speaker
And I have to say it's one of the most freeing decisions I've ever made. So on one hand, I'm kind of like putting all my cards out on the table, but on the other hand, I've given myself just such a feeling of now like space and I can find a rhythm, a work rhythm. Yeah.
00:02:54
Speaker
No, that's so huge. I bought one of those huge wall calendars that you can dry erase on. And I sort of in a similar in a similar vein, everything that I post on the on the intergram previously was a very sort of like, Oh, God, what am I doing this week? And I would sort of come up with some things.
00:03:13
Speaker
I am now charting. I have three months planned of social media content and it's very exciting because it's the same thing. I don't have to come up with anything and feel the pressure of that. I just look at the calendar and be like, okay, what's happening this week? Great. When do I have time to record this day? I'm going to record all those things on this day.
00:03:32
Speaker
That sounds amazing. It sounds like similar to what I did. Only I need to talk more with you about that because for some reason I have the hardest time planning social media content in advance.
Social Media and Content Planning
00:03:43
Speaker
It's just this whole other thing for me. I don't know why. It's like I rely on adrenaline. And so if I plan it in advance, I don't get my hit of adrenaline somehow.
00:03:51
Speaker
dopamine, dopamine. The other thing that I do is there's definitely days when I'm more creative on not only like what do I want to talk about, but how do I want to make it happen? And so I have separate from the calendar, I have this sort of running list of ideas. And I mean, I remember there was a there was one random Sunday, where like five or six ideas just like came out of me. And I'm like, jumping out of the shower, running over, writing it down. Because I was like, don't lose it, don't lose it, don't lose it.
00:04:18
Speaker
you know, so that's kind of how I organized. But I will say also, I took a social media course that was very much about like this kind of organization and
00:04:32
Speaker
categorizing the different types of posts and when you're doing what kind of post and who it's for and all that kind of stuff. And it can get a little heady, but if you prefer to be organized or if it helps you, which it really helps me, because I don't have a lot of extra time like most people, it was very, very helpful to get super organized like that. That's amazing. I'm just flying by the seat of my pants. I think you think you are, but I don't think you actually are.
00:04:59
Speaker
Really? Okay. Well, thank you. I'm glad that you see me in a better light than I see myself. One of the things that, as you guys know, we always record these episodes a little bit in advance. As this episode is coming out, Laurel and I are currently possibly on a beach in Puerto Vallarta. The reason we're on a beach together, it was our genius friend Laurel's idea that we go on a, I'm going to say, quote unquote, podcasting vacation, which I don't know if
00:05:28
Speaker
That's a thing? It's a total oxymoron. We're on vacation, but we also are going to work our asses off because I think that's just either just the two of ours are temperaments, probably why we work together so well. And then also Laurel said, why don't we go away and just do a bunch of episodes together? And I was like, it sounds great, especially since there's a beach, perhaps some cocktails. Yes, whales. It's a great way to watch. Hopefully we're going to see some whales.
00:05:57
Speaker
All right, so let's get to this episode. But before we do that, you know, Laurel, I have one request for our listeners. Only one. Do you know what it is? Just one. I know, I know. Well, look, one of my resolutions for the year is to ask better questions. And so instead of asking 15 different things of our listeners, I just want to ask them one thing. Do you know what I want to ask them? It sounds really doable. What is it? I want them to subscribe.
00:06:26
Speaker
to our podcast. Oh, I don't know. That's tough. How do you do that? Well, it's not tough. No, I'm just kidding. It's not that hard. If you go on, so either Apple Podcast or Stitcher or what the other ones are called, there's a few. I think most of our listeners are on Apple Podcasts. But anyway, you go to the main show page, which is not that hard to find. And then there's usually a plus button or a subscribe button or something like that, and you hit that.
00:06:52
Speaker
And the reason why, there's two reasons. There's a reason for us and there's a reason for you. The reason for us that it's really important for us that you subscribe is that when you do that, the algorithm overlords notice, and then they put our podcast in front of more people like you that they think would appreciate the work that we're doing. And we really want to get this in front of as many people as possible. So if you subscribe, that way, more people will get access to the show.
00:07:21
Speaker
And then what do you think, Laurel? I mean, there's definitely something in it for people to subscribe, especially this season, right? Yeah. Well, this season, I think we are doubling down. And I feel like our level of organization is taking a few steps up.
00:07:37
Speaker
in terms of trying to plan content so that it's themed a little bit more tightly around some ideas, some concepts and themes, some learning curves that I think our audience is really excited about right now. And so each episode is going to be different. Obviously, we're a big fan of variety, but we're also good fans of progression, which we'll talk about today.
00:08:04
Speaker
So, of course, I'm going to relate this to string training. But our episodes, because we're going to film a lot of them in Puerto Vallarta, especially, I think that they're going to be continuations of a longer, larger conversation. And so staying up to date
00:08:20
Speaker
in terms of like where the conversation is going. It's not like serial, like we're not gonna tell like one long story about a murder, but we are gonna tell one long story about the body in various ways. And so I think that it'd be super cool if you came along with us and we're here with us every week.
00:08:42
Speaker
There's sort of an umbrella, a conceptual umbrella around this entire season, which is a little different than our first season. And so again, it's not like if you miss an episode, you're like, wait, they told us in the last episode who the killer was? What? You will not, you may not get as much of the nuance of the conversation that we're having, and we want you to get every single drop.
00:09:06
Speaker
of us. Let's get into what this episode is about.
Myths and History of Women in Weightlifting
00:09:10
Speaker
Our first episode of the season is called Pink Dumbbells and the Shrinking Female Body because Laurel and I both feel really strongly about getting people and women in particular beyond this idea that the small pink dumbbells are the only ones they can or should use. So
00:09:27
Speaker
You should get ready in this episode for some rage, at least for me, I can't speak for my co-host, some myth-busting, and also some encouragement, some pointers on, you know, if you want to get into lifting weights that aren't pink, how would you go about doing it?
00:09:43
Speaker
I wanted to talk first about the history of weightlifting. I have to say, when I was doing this research, it was deeply entertaining for a lot of reasons. A lot of it being just the things that I read about how prehistoric people also lifted weights. I'm super impressed with this research you did, Sarah. Let's not exaggerate how hard I worked on it most if I got from Wikipedia, but it doesn't mean it's not facts. Shout out to Wikipedia.
00:10:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah. Listen, so Laurel, I have a question for you. I like to ask Laurel, if you guys didn't know this already, I like to ask her like almost impossible questions and see if she has any way of coming up with the answer. So Laurel, here's my question for you. Do you know in what year was weightlifting first introduced in the Olympic Games?
00:10:35
Speaker
in the year of ancient Greece? I have no clue. I don't even know where to start. So I don't know what that means.
00:10:49
Speaker
the olympics are from ancient greece so olympics are from year one whatever that was sure so i'm you um okay so that's not an incorrect answer so much as it is an incorrect answer oh did i get it right
00:11:06
Speaker
No, mostly because what I'm talking about, so I'm gonna give you a second chance to answer the question because I need to write my question more clearly. A second chance to fail, I love it. No, no, no, no, you might get this one. So I'm talking about the Olympic games, the Olympics, as we know them now, like the modern day Olympics. Oh, okay. In what year was weightlifting introduced? Around World War II. That's a decent guess. The 40s. You're about 40 years late.
00:11:36
Speaker
Oh. Believe it or not. So the Olympic Games in 1896. Okay. 1896 was the first weightlifting competition in the Olympics. And then it's turn of the century. Yeah.
00:11:47
Speaker
And then it sort of became more variety, more different aspects of it, more different categories. But that was the very first date of that. But to your point, people have been picking up heavy things from the beginning of time. And one of my favorite things that I learned was that there's evidence of prehistoric tribes in Greece, where the Olympics came from, but also in Scotland. And having grown up in the UK, this sounds very Scottish to me. The competition was that you'd find a big rock.
00:12:17
Speaker
And then a bunch of, I'm assuming, men would try to lift the rock and whoever lifted the heaviest rock was the winner and they would get to write their, they would inscribe their initials or something about themselves, their name or a picture or something into the stone so that it was like the thing they lifted also became the trophy.
00:12:38
Speaker
I learned about that on Braveheart. Oh, do they do it in Braveheart? Yeah. Oh, no way. I think they might throw the stones though, so not just lift them, but they actually try to throw them. They took it a step further. It feels very, not to stereotype, but it feels very bro-ish. And I wouldn't be surprised if there's people still doing stuff like this today.
00:12:58
Speaker
Oh yeah, I mean, strongman competitions? Sure. I mean, yes, for sure, strongman competitions. What I love about these things is people get so obsessed with, in a good way, so obsessed with doing this one thing, which is lifting this large rock.
00:13:16
Speaker
It's sort of like, you know, lifting a heavy barbell too, but it's even like further removed from that in that like they've like sort of gone back to this really basic object from like the beginning of time and decided they're going to compete and get to be like the best in the world at lifting this large round stone. So okay, so we've got our strong man competition, but if we go back in time a little bit right around to the turn of the century when
00:13:42
Speaker
the weightlifting sort of first became popular. This was the beginning of dumbbells and barbells, like what we see today, but they started with containers that you would fill with sand or water, and then eventually they became the sort of metal plates that we associate with lifting. And we have to also credit really, I mean, I was familiar with his name, but I didn't have any idea how influential
00:14:09
Speaker
Jack LaLanne was on the entire sport and industry of lifting weights. Is it Jack LaLanne or Jack LaLanne? I don't know. I don't know. I've never heard of him. I'm going to say Jack LaLanne and you can, other people can, you know, tweet me if I'm wrong. I'm not on Twitter. So he opened
00:14:27
Speaker
The first gym, the first thing that we would even begin to remotely recognize as something similar to a gym we would see today in Malibu in 1936. He had a huge influence on this board. He literally invented a bunch of the machines, including the Smith machine. What's the Smith machine? You'll probably describe it better. It's the one where you're in a cage.
00:14:51
Speaker
It's so it basically there is assistance provided. I'm not really sure exactly how the machine changes the resistance but Smith machines mess with the strength curve in a kind of an odd way. But they're supposed to be safer because you can't
00:15:09
Speaker
drop the weight but they end up being kind of difficult to use because so if you put the the bar it's a barbell right you put it on your back and then you're gonna go ahead and do a back squat that the machine controls the descent of the bar and then helps you almost like lift it but it forces you into a completely vertical bar path which is not realistic to the way the bar would travel through space if it were on your back there would be deviations to that and so it ends up being
00:15:39
Speaker
kind of forcing you into potentially a squat position or a deadlift position that is not really that natural to the way you actually move. But I've seen people get really creative with them. So like I've seen people lie down on their back and use it as like a
00:15:54
Speaker
a press machine and I don't know. There's ways to use it for sure. It has a lot of value, but it's not my favorite for the typical. Well, if Jack was still alive, I would pass on your notes to him that it's not your favorite machine. No. Please don't tell him I said this. Yeah, I can't. Oh yeah, he's dead. He's dead. But anyway, he invented a bunch of machines. He basically brought it to the world.
00:16:24
Speaker
He had a very popular TV show, an exercise TV show that was on TV for over 30 years, which is kind of unheard of. And he also, during that show, he really encouraged, he was one of the first people that encouraged not only women, but elderly people.
00:16:40
Speaker
and also people with physical disabilities that they also needed to exercise. And he also wore these really snazzy jumpsuits. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, just Google his name because the outfits were someone else. And I think that was sort of part of his whole glamorous whatever image that he created for himself. He also did a bunch of crazy things. He pulled a boat.
00:17:05
Speaker
while handcuffed, swimming, handcuffed, pulled a boat from Alcatraz to like San Francisco, the city. What? And it was like, you know, he did all these like wild feats of prowess.
Gym Environments and Gender Dynamics
00:17:19
Speaker
And so he was a really influential person. And your story about the snazzy jumpsuits though, it makes me think about how sometimes the most important
00:17:32
Speaker
ingredients to a good, I don't know, habit like strength training is training environment, which I think is completely underestimated.
00:17:42
Speaker
So with these snazzy jumpsuits, he was creating some kind of like attraction or intrigue around the training environment where people got to like see people dressed in kind of the razzle dazzle outfits they were wearing or encouraged them to like dress up to work out. And that had some appeal for people similar to how maybe like lifting large balls of cement has appeal
00:18:12
Speaker
other types of people? When they're training in the woods or something, that training environment has appeal to some types of people. I don't know, it's interesting how the training environment that a community or a culture can create will either repel or attract. Absolutely. I'm sure it's the success of things like Lululemon and all of the whole idea that you have particular clothes for working out.
00:18:41
Speaker
I'm sure, you know, he was one of the pioneers for that as well, or one of the major influences for that as well. Like, here's a new thing you're going to do. And it's such a new thing that you need a whole new outfit for it. Yeah, you know, so so he was a big, big influence. And then, you know, gyms that sort of resembled anything like what we consider what we would imagine when we walk into a gym today, those started to appear in like the 1950s, and the 1960s. But then bodybuilding,
00:19:10
Speaker
became really popular in the 1970s after the release of a very famous movie called Pumping Iron starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Laurel, have you seen Pumping Iron? No, but I will. I've seen some clips of it here and there. I think one of the things we might be doing right now as you're listening to this podcast is watching Pumping Iron in Puerto Vallarta while we also hang out with the whales and have a cocktail on the beach.
00:19:37
Speaker
I'm going to read you the little description of it because it made me giggle. Here's the description. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in this documentary about the hundred days leading up to the 1975 Mr. Olympia contest.
00:19:48
Speaker
five-time former champion Schwarzenegger is pitted against shy newcomer Lou Ferrigno, who if listeners, if you don't know who that is, the TV show, the original Incredible Hulk TV show, when, what's his name, Banner turns into the Hulk and goes all, Hulk's out and the person who plays the Hulk is Lou Ferrigno.
00:20:10
Speaker
painted green, so there's a little extra detail for you, pitted against shy newcomer Lou Ferrigno in a showdown that is as mental as it is physical. With psychological warfare, intense determination, trash talking, and the easy charm that would later catapult Schwarzenegger to stardom, pumping iron changed the world of bodybuilding forever.
00:20:33
Speaker
My goodness. I mean, somebody wrote that copy. I mean, let's change the world of body. I mean, I guess it probably did change the world of bodybuilding forever, but it certainly increased its popularity and its visibility for sure. And so then as far as women specifically are concerned, women weightlifters like as a sport, as a competitive sport, it did not really get any recognition until the 70s and the 80s, the 1970s and the 1980s.
00:21:03
Speaker
And then weightlifting for women outside of it being for a competition started to gain more popularity in the 1990s. Can I ask a question? Sure. When you're saying weightlifting, are we talking about competitive weightlifting and are we talking about strength competitions or bodybuilding? So as a sport, so both bodybuilding and probably weightlifting as competition for women didn't really start to happen until
00:21:27
Speaker
the 70s and the 80s, right around when it was happening for men, I'm sure it started to develop for women. I would assume not to the degree of popularity or recognition, but to some extent. And then in the 90s, it's sort of when it became more popularized for women just as a form of exercise. So outside of just doing your cardio and your step class or whatever, you might also pick up some weights.
00:21:58
Speaker
The popularity of CrossFit, which kind of exploded in the early 2000s, then also encouraged more women to lift weight both, I think, for sport and for exercise. I think CrossFit is probably a funnel for women who maybe get into lifting weights and then get into it so much that they decide they actually want to compete and start training to compete. I read that there are actually more women who participate in CrossFit than men.
00:22:25
Speaker
that it actually slightly, yeah, I read that. I think I read that. I might've been in the Times. It was, I think, from a fairly reputable source. Interesting. Yeah, the population skews more toward the female. Cool. Crossfit. Good. Yeah. And then now, about one in five women in the US do some sort of weightlifting, which is okay, but we could definitely do better. Yeah. We could definitely do better because that's 20%. Do we know what it is for men?
00:22:56
Speaker
research that. Okay, that's all right. I'm sorry. 20% sounds lower than what it would be for men. I bet it's higher for men. Yeah, I think so too. If you wanted to take a guess, what would you guess? 40%. No, 30%. 30%, okay. 35%. Yeah, somewhere in there. Between 30 and 40. Yeah. So our research has found that between 30 and 40% of men are lifting weights. Fake news. Fake news. But so I think in the general
00:23:26
Speaker
you know, mind of women, let's say. I don't know what the general mind of women is, but I think women, we are monolithic. We have one mind that we share. Men, if you're listening and you didn't know that, news. The actual news is not fake news. No, but I think most women still categorize, you know, and I'll put it in quotes, lifting heavy as something that female athletes do.
00:23:54
Speaker
not like Loretta who lives next door or your friend from church, right? It's sort of like heavy lifting is the domain of women who are doing it for competition, for some sort of sport. And that women can certainly use weights, but they don't, the domain of heavier weight or this idea of lifting something that is heavy. Like a barbell. Yeah, especially a barbell.
00:24:20
Speaker
especially a barbell, is the domain of women who are doing it for competition only. I think that's true. There are two big myths around this that perpetuate this idea. The first one is that lifting heavy will make you bulky. The second one is that lifting heavy will cause you to injure yourself.
00:24:42
Speaker
I remember when I was a yoga teacher in New York, I had a client, you know, another one of, and if you want to hear segue, if you want to hear about Laurel and I's experience with teaching privates in New York, you definitely need to go back to season one and listen to that episode.
00:24:57
Speaker
I don't remember which number it is, but we have a lot of very funny stories. But this is another one of my super fancy clients. The room that her clothes lived in was the room that we used for her sessions. Her clothes had an entire room, not just a closet.
00:25:13
Speaker
I would show up and I would have to wait 10 minutes until she finished arguing with her boyfriend about why can't people just get their own private jets to our wedding. I'm not even kidding. And then I would go in the room that her clothes lived in. But I remember so clearly one time she said to me,
00:25:31
Speaker
and I'm gonna sort of do a gesture which is not obviously good on a podcast but I'll describe what I'm doing. She pointed to her arm and she said I don't want to get those like muscles and she basically like drew with her finger a bicep on her arm. Her arm was one straight line and there was no curvature on and she and she sort of drew well I don't I don't want to get those muscles and she drew a picture on her of what that would be and I was like
00:25:55
Speaker
In my head, I was like, you would have to eat a lot more for you to get heading off on your body. Nothing to do with what we're doing. But no problem. We're just going to move and stretch and make you feel good.
00:26:06
Speaker
Yeah. And we didn't work very long because we were repeating ideas. But anyway, this idea that you're going to get bulky or that bulky is some male characteristic that does not belong on women or there's a negative connotation around it. So it makes me really sad. Yeah. Tell me your thoughts on these scare tactics, the bulking and the injuring ideas. Well, the story of this client of yours who just really didn't want a bicep.
00:26:35
Speaker
I mean, she has a bison muscle, but she didn't want it to be visible on her body. Makes me sad because I feel like that's a really common fear that women have that they just don't want to present as muscular. And I think that what's sad about that is that muscle mass is such a good thing to have on your body for so many reasons that have to do
00:27:00
Speaker
with strength and being strong and being able to do things in your life, fun things, right? And maybe not have to worry so much about the consequences of those things, going on adventures of all sorts, right? You know, from like everything from like the daily mundane activities of life
00:27:19
Speaker
romance, things that happen between romantic couples, vacations and hiking, climbing things, jumping off of things, lifting heavy shit, lifting heavy not shit, like your dog and your child and things that you care about. And this idea that, like, I don't want to have the literally only tissue of my body.
00:27:49
Speaker
of the four that makes all of that more possible. I don't want that on my body. It's almost like saying, I don't want that for my life. I don't want to be as free. I don't want to have as much fun.
00:28:05
Speaker
I don't want to be able to express myself as freely as I physically could because I don't want to have muscles, which are the thing that we need to have strength to do a lot of this stuff. And it just makes me sad because where the heck did this come from, this idea that like, I don't want to look this way.
00:28:26
Speaker
Even though if I acquire this muscle mass, I will be able to do all these great things, I don't want to look this way because then what? Then I won't be attractive. And if I'm not attractive, then I won't be accepted. And if I'm not accepted, then I'm a big nobody.
00:28:44
Speaker
so sad you know the this whole idea of the of the pink dumbbell and why i talk shit about it so much i want to back up and say look there's nothing wrong with the pink dumbbell itself it it is an inanimate object please pink
00:29:06
Speaker
Why do you hate America? So they're inanimate objects, right? They ain't none of themselves. It's like when Bic for a hot second came out with a pen for women. Do you remember this from like maybe 10 years ago? Yeah. They came out with a pen for women. I thought they were razors. Oh, they're also pens. No, they make pens. They also make lighters. But anyway, they had a pen for women. And everyone was like, what the fuck? And then they quickly got rid of it.
00:29:30
Speaker
believe it or not right too you know yeah exactly and like oh my god do we need a specially sized pen for our the old pens were so heavy oh i could barely lift the old thank god you came up with a pen that i can finally hold and not have my hand cramp up but you know this kind of stuff still goes on like my fingers were getting too swollen i started to worry my hand was getting bulky from that man pen i was looking too bulky in my fingers i was gonna get hurt myself with that heavy man pen
00:29:57
Speaker
Well, but so that kind of stuff still goes on, like M&Ms right now, they're making a female only M&Ms.
00:30:05
Speaker
But what they- Now? Today? Yes, today. 2023? Uh-huh. So it's not- Is it low calorie? It's not low calorie. No, no. Okay. So they flipped it a little bit. It's not that the M&Ms themselves are only different. It is that the... So I can't remember which colors, but in the advertising for M&Ms, they have M&Ms that are talking and moving around, right?
00:30:28
Speaker
Some of them are men and some of them are women. And so they're having bags of M&Ms that are only the women colors. I think it's green and brown and one other color. And their whole thing is like, we're supporting women flipping the script or something. And I'm like, thank you, M&Ms. You really told the patriarchy off with your specific for women M&Ms that you just want me to buy from you. So it's so stupid. Yeah, it's really dumb. So that kind of nonsense continues.
00:30:57
Speaker
So there's that. The pink dumbbells themselves, because let's categorize them, they're usually one, two, three, maybe five pounds. They're very low weight. I use them all the time with my patients who are rehabbing from injury, because it is absolutely appropriate for situations like that.
00:31:18
Speaker
But we don't stop there. The whole idea is that we start at a level that they can do and then we progress them back to whatever level they were at before or perhaps improve the level they were at before. So they're useful if you have an injury. They're useful if you haven't ever picked up anything heavy.
00:31:39
Speaker
You know, it might be where you yourself are starting. So that's fine. But it's more to me what the idea is. It's the reason why they are pink in the first place. Yeah. If they were, you know, if cross the board, they were green. If there was some color that isn't so associated with girls in particular, not even women. Right. It's not women colors. It's girl colors. Yeah. And it stands for this this shrinkage of women's bodies, this desire for women's bodies to stay
00:32:09
Speaker
essentially prepubescent. To look like little girls or even a little bit to look like little boys. The pressure on women to not take up more space and to keep yourself small and keep your voice down.
00:32:24
Speaker
and don't have an appetite, right? Don't have an appetite, like you're saying, don't have an appetite for life, but also don't eat too much and stay weak, stay in need of assistance, stay in this place in society where you require assistance from a man to do basic tasks, right? It's all these qualities that
00:32:49
Speaker
if a man takes up space and he speaks out and he gets bigger, he's praised for that, right? And if women do it, they are very often vilified for
Societal Pressures on Women's Bodies
00:32:59
Speaker
it. And this message has been so internalized by so many women, that then you get the story of my client who doesn't want her arm to have, you know, a muscle on it.
00:33:10
Speaker
Because in her understanding of her role in society, of what she should look like, it is entirely the external appearance. And the external appearance has to be one way. There's only one acceptable way. And it's small, right? I mean, like a lot of women, I had a pretty serious eating disorder when I was in college. And it lasted all the way through to sort of my mid 20s, right? So a good eight to 10 years of my life.
00:33:39
Speaker
some of the time more serious than others. To be fair, I was also at that time modeling, and so there was a ton of pressure from the modeling industry to stay skinny, right? But, and it was also the time of like Kate Moss and sort of heroin sheik, so really skinny, really no muscles, that kind of thing.
00:33:56
Speaker
Yeah, and a lot of times how fitness is marketed is via images of models who are incredibly thin, lifting pink dumbbells. Lifting pink dumbbells. Or there's hilarious, if you go on stock images, there's a lot of funny images of a woman holding a pink dumbbell and laughing, which are pointing at it and laughing kind of thing. But it's just continuing this belief for people, for women, that the only space that is appropriate for them to occupy is this space of staying small.
00:34:28
Speaker
There's the part of me that feels like it's sad that women don't want to have more muscle on their body. And then there's also the part of me that's like, yeah, but you're not actually going to get bulky probably. And I say probably because women's ability to build muscle mass is genetic. I mean, it's largely influenced by genetics and also how you train.
00:34:50
Speaker
really across the board, we're lacking in a very important hormone that would, you know, lead us potentially if we had more of it in our body via pharmaceuticals and steroids to be able to build more muscle testosterone, right? We have like a small fraction of testosterone in our body compared to men. And this simply puts a very real ceiling on how much muscle mass we're actually
00:35:17
Speaker
going to be able to develop. Now, per muscle size, like however much muscle I have on my body, if we took the equivalent in a male, if we were training the same amount and we were, you know, basically doing the same things to build our strength, we could pound for pound.
00:35:35
Speaker
exhibit the same amount of strength, okay? So it's not that women's muscles are weaker than men's muscles. It's simply that men have more muscle because they have testosterone. That is the thing, right? So this idea that I'm going to get bulky and then I'm going to be shunned by society is sad. But it's also just stupid because it's
00:36:00
Speaker
Not going to happen. Like you said, it's going to require some energy or caloric surplus. You're going to have to eat more than your body is using.
00:36:13
Speaker
on a daily basis, and then you're also going to have to train pretty hard, especially after the first six months of training, where your gains are going to really taper off. You're no longer a beginner. You're going to have to work really, really hard. And even women who work really, really hard to get bulky, a lot of times they just don't, because they're not willing to inject and use steroids. So they just don't, despite their efforts.
00:36:40
Speaker
It's kind of a two-fold face palm. It's like, I just don't get it. Well, and the other part is, if we're talking about the other myth, which is if you lift something heavy, you're going to hurt yourself. The huge irony around that is that it's the not lifting heavy that's going to lead you to hurt yourself. Because if you are lacking in strength, especially as we get older and we have muscle mass atrophy that starts in your 30s,
00:37:10
Speaker
friends, and it's something like three to eight percent per decade, you lose muscle mass. So not doing anything to combat that and making yourself weaker is exactly how you are going to hurt yourself because you're going to step funny and not be able to recover, or you're going to try to pick something up and you're going to tweak your back. Right? So it's- And what about fractures?
00:37:33
Speaker
Oh, exactly. I mean, this is your own density. Exactly. I mean, for women's muscle. Yeah, yeah. This decrease in muscle leads to also well, and also for women post menopause, the lack of estrogen in their body causes that bone density to just start to go down and down and down. So you're weaker
00:37:50
Speaker
you are more nervous about falling, you are not challenging your body. And then when you do say trip and fall, you're going to break a bone much, much more likely, you're much more likely to break a bone. So it's it's it is ironic that this like, oh, I'm going to hurt myself if I if I do something where I challenge my body in a in a safe and organized way. It's exactly the opposite of that. That is true. If you don't do that, you're going to hurt yourself. And
00:38:18
Speaker
I'm really proud of my mom because she at the moment, I mean, I've been pushing this a lot and finally she is working with a trainer, which is very exciting.
00:38:28
Speaker
And so she tried to lift a barbell, just the bar. 35 or 45 pounds? I'm assuming that he did not put the 45 pound one on her. I think probably the 30. It could have been a 25 or a 15 even. Yeah, I think it's the 30 pound. Anyway, so the first time she tried it, she was like, it hurt my knees. That's what she said to me. And I said, okay. And I just kind of didn't comment any more about it and it didn't make a big deal of it.
00:38:56
Speaker
And then she told me that more recently she was able to, I don't know if it was a squat or a deadlift, but she was able to like use the bar again and it felt fine. I was like, yes, yes. So it's really important that we're encouraging all the women that we know to start to lift heavier. I think this might be a good place to talk about more myths that we come across in the movement world. And I'm speaking specifically about myths around our hips and our SI joint.
00:39:24
Speaker
Because this is an area of the body that the people in the movement world are really, really obsessed with. Don't you find like they open your hips constantly, I want to release my, I don't know, so as or something like people are really into it. And at the same time, they're also terrified of injuring their SI joints because of bad posture or, you know, inherently bad movement or
00:39:49
Speaker
Things of that nature, bad, bad, bad, bad movement. Well, and there's just a ton of misinformation out there and there's a ton of myths, just like lifting heavy is going to make you injure yourself. There's a ton of myths around what to do when you're having pain in your hips. And the answer is like stretching is not always the solution. Another yoga asana is not always the solution.
00:40:14
Speaker
And also your body is designed, it's made, it's evolved, we've evolved to heal, right? We've evolved to adapt and change. This idea that like some little yoga pose is gonna dislocate my SI joint, pooey.
00:40:35
Speaker
Well, so the reason why Laurel and I have segwayed into talking about this is we wanted to let you guys know about a free hips mini course that we created along with Jason Perique. And, you know, there's, there's a ton of really interesting things that we talk about in this mini course.
00:40:51
Speaker
not just the anatomy of things like sciatica or hypermobility or yoga butt or your SI joint, which we do talk about, but also broader concepts like does gender matter when we're cueing for the pelvis?
00:41:07
Speaker
Yeah, I remember talking about whether or not we store emotions on our hips with you and Jason. And I remember having sort of an epiphany while talking, which is why I love podcasting, because I have my best ideas while I'm just saying things. Things are coming out of my mouth. And I'm like, oh, yes, that's true. But I was talking about these ideas.
00:41:26
Speaker
storing emotions in the hips. And I was like, what a silly concept. But then I was like, but is it? It is. It clearly is. I mean, your hips are not a Tupperware container. But what the conversation eventually led to is this idea of making meaning of our lives. And a lot of times, things happen to us. And it isn't until after they happen to us that we start to actually make meaning of the things that happen. And so when people think that emotions are stored in their hips, it's that they were in a class where they felt safe, where they were
00:41:53
Speaker
Listening to their body where they may be relaxed and then they had some sensation of stretching perception of stretching in their hips and then they had some emotional response to that and then that.
00:42:04
Speaker
created some type of story or meaning for the thing that happened to them in the past. And then this idea that we store emotions or trauma in our body somehow comes about. And I think that it's one thing to say like, oh, that's so stupid and stop saying that. And it's another thing to go like, why do people believe this? What is it about the way that we process our stories in our lives that connects to our bodies in these moments where we're doing something physical and then suddenly we have this emotional
00:42:30
Speaker
experience. And I think that at the end of the day, it comes down to how we make meaning. And I was just like, wow, this is just such an enriching conversation. And so we would love you to listen to the conversations that we had about these massive myths that are very pervasive still to this day. Because we do it, I think,
00:42:50
Speaker
really in a way that invites multiple viewpoints. It's not just like, we're going to bust this myth and this is wrong and we're right because we researched it. It's like, yes, that, but also like, hey, let's have some empathy. Let's try to understand where people are coming from. Let's see how this actually, we can look at this and understand this from not just the hard facts of science necessarily or the research, but rather like how are humans? How do we work? How do we think?
00:43:19
Speaker
And so it added, I think, an element of empathy that I thought really shone through. So anyway, I think it's a fabulous course. I think many people have let us know. Yeah, we've gotten a lot of great feedback about it already. So if this is something that sounds interesting to you and you would like to get this course, it's super easy. All you have to do is go to our website, which is movementlogictutorials.com.
00:43:41
Speaker
and you sign up for our mailing list. And in doing so, you'll receive this course. And then you'll also like, we give out a ton of free stuff. We really do. And I actually get a lot of feedback from people about how much they appreciate all of the free stuff that we give them. So if you want this and more free stuff, movementlogictutorials.com, there'll be a link in the show notes as well.
00:44:03
Speaker
Or you just go into your browser and you type movementlogitutorials.com. Yeah, yeah. Now that we've segued, I'm going to segue back into what we were talking about, which is this whole idea of these myths around lifting heavy is going to make you bulky or lifting heavy is going to hurt yourself. And when I was thinking of, you know, when I was sort of thinking about this topic as I was preparing for our conversation, it kind of struck me
00:44:31
Speaker
I tend to, I hope this is not a weird thing to share, but I tend to have a lot of ideas in the shower. I don't know why. Sarah, you almost never share anything weird. So I'm shocked. Shocked, frankly. You say extremely normal things all the time. So the fact that you're telling me about something that you're doing in the shower, let me clutch my pearls.
00:44:56
Speaker
But I don't know, I think maybe it's because it's like, you know, I'm a, you guys, I'm a water sign, I'm a Scorpio. And so like, I really love water and swimming and being in the water. And so I think when I'm in the water is when I'm at my most natural state of creativity and openness. And it's my state. No, I said state. Maybe it's my natural state. More importantly, so I had this when I was thinking about this episode,
00:45:27
Speaker
I had this thought in the shower, but that doesn't mean it's not a good thought. The thought that I had in the shower was we need more of an emphasis maybe in the media. Maybe it needs to be less of a niche place because I know that there are women who are occupying this space, but generally in the media, we see a lot of representation of
00:45:48
Speaker
women occupying the pink dumbbell space, the tiny body space. And we see some amount of representation of women in the competitive weightlifting space where the goal is hypertrophy of muscle, if it's bodybuilding, or the goal is achieving what would be considered extraordinary strength
00:46:12
Speaker
goals. And so we need this third space that needs to get more attention. And again, there are people occupying this space. It just doesn't get talked about a lot, which is a space where you're not at either extreme, but you're sort of in the middle, meaning you're purposefully choosing to lift things that are heavier. You are trying to increase your own strength. So you're doing things like progressive overload, which we're going to talk about in a minute.
00:46:41
Speaker
But there is not this end goal of competition or specific type of appearance. And it's where women are picking up heavier weight to help themselves. And the end goal is to help yourself, to make your body stronger, to experience all of the gains that you experience
00:47:03
Speaker
from gains, right? But without like a, you know, my goal is to just press X amount of weight. And like maybe you end up doing that, but the goal is just the journey is the goal, right? The experience is the goal, not an outward appearance or a winning some sort of competition. Yeah, I think the two things are like the aesthetic goals and the competitive goals or the performance goals. Yeah, those do tend to be sort of how
00:47:32
Speaker
weightlifting to women are predominantly sold. And I think I mean, if I were to choose one that I like better, it's the performance goal. Sure. However, yeah, those those goals can certainly accompany, you know, your goal to just have better, you know, bone density or maintain muscle mass. I think I think the thing that the thing that we need actually are training environments that are more attractive
00:47:58
Speaker
to actual human females, like people who are not, you know, supermodels, they're actually human females too. I'm not saying that they're not, but like... Across the board attraction, not niche attraction. Yeah, we need training environments that like, you know, maybe, so if you're thing, like I go to this CrossFit box that I really love, but I, you know, in high school, I was in the weight room with the football players and I played
00:48:27
Speaker
competitive sports. And so I'm I feel kind of at home in a gym. It's I don't find gyms to be a major turn off. I also have kind of a fuck you attitude about like not knowing what I'm doing. And I'm just like, so deal with it. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm learning. So you're just gonna have to like
00:48:43
Speaker
deal with my incompetence right now. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to freaking spend a lot of time over here using this machine while I try to figure out how to do it. And you know what? That's just how it's going to go. All right. And I can be kind of a bossy, you know? Well, there's that word bossy is problematic for women, isn't it? Right. Yeah. Yeah. My, my, my husband said, my daughter's bossy. I was like, would you say that if she were a little boy?
00:49:05
Speaker
It's true. It's true. She is bossy. But also, would you say that if she was a boy? Exactly. But what I'm saying is that that's not everybody's cup of tea. And so like, would your mother be comfortable, for example, your mother, would she like to go into a big, busy gym where they're, you know, blasting heavy metal?
00:49:27
Speaker
Or there's all that's around her are really big, muscly dudes. I feel like the training environment is not quite well matched to what maybe some women would feel a lot more comfortable training with. And to your point about CrossFit having more women, and that actually did surprise me, I would imagine that the cross-section of the women who are going to CrossFit, probably more of them closer to your
00:49:53
Speaker
You know history of sports in you know being used to being in a gym environment I think you know to someone who maybe hasn't spent as much time certainly to women who are not of our generation, but perhaps the generation above us and
00:50:08
Speaker
might feel turned off by that environment. There were, oh God, I wish I could remember what they were called. There was a series of gyms for women.
Empowerment Through Strength Training
00:50:16
Speaker
I want to say there were four. Yeah. Lucille, was it Lucille Roberts? Yes, Lucille Roberts. And I think there was also one called Curves. Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that those gyms probably had machines. I doubt they had barbells. I highly doubt they had barbells.
00:50:33
Speaker
And I think it was a lot of like group aerobics classes. Yeah, which is, there's nothing wrong with that. And like there's also, we haven't mentioned this yet, but there's the very real fact that like many women have been assaulted by men and have experienced somatic dominance of some form. Yeah.
00:50:51
Speaker
And so then it can also, it can be very triggering, I feel, for women to walk into, or like anyone who's been assaulted by a man, which are most people, by the way, who've been assaulted, have been assaulted by a man. So it's intimidating to walk into a space where there are, like you said, like really big, powerful looking dudes.
00:51:11
Speaker
who could lock your shit up because it reminds you of how unsafe you might be. Training environments are particularly, I feel, unfriendly to women for all of these reasons, many of which are subliminal. And then there's the possibility that you went and had a really bad experience, your first experience was bad, and so now you've basically
00:51:32
Speaker
you know, grouped or lumped all of these types of experiences as probably going to be as bad as this one experience that you had, right? And so I think there's just so many, so many, here's what I think, I think strength training has a PR problem.
00:51:48
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. Specifically with women. A really big one. Absolutely. A really big one. And frankly, from my perspective, on a large, big kind of business, the people with the biggest microphones aren't doing much to change that. It's people like you and I and other people on social media that we jive on and are following, that are trying to create a counter message to that, to try to be more welcoming and inclusive.
00:52:19
Speaker
I'm confused. I'm confused why these bigger gyms or these bigger fitness businesses aren't doing more to attract this 50% of the population to this style of exercise, this way of exercising strength training.
00:52:38
Speaker
like actual strength training, not pink dumbbells, right? When there's just literally no denying the benefits, the health benefits. And I would argue that women need it more than men because of what happens to us in menopause. To me, it just blows my mind. It's so, I'm going to use this word again. It's stupid. So stupid. It is stupid. It is stupid. I mean, talking about the benefits of like, if you're listening to there, you're this and you're like, okay, well, sure, fine.
00:53:05
Speaker
maybe i should be picking up something heavier but why like what's it gonna do for me it's gonna do a lot of things it it can actually and i see this a ton i see this at a rehab level uh where
00:53:17
Speaker
actually doing strength training, picking up weight, external weight, will get you out of pain because a lot of the time pain that people have is because they are deconditioned and they're deconditioned because they're afraid to pick up anything heavy because they're afraid they're going to hurt themselves and it becomes this vicious cycle that just feeds on itself where once you actually start to
00:53:40
Speaker
you know, in a obviously appropriate manner, add weight to the work that you're doing, you get muscle adaptation. The muscles are getting used correctly for what they're supposed to do, and that strength actually then becomes protective against future paint, which is very cool. The other big thing that I love about it, I mean, because I was thinking about this as well for myself and
00:54:06
Speaker
I touched on it a bit earlier. Having a eating disorder in some ways never completely leaves you, which is a very irritating thing. And in moments where I am feeling less positive about myself, the easiest thing in the world to take apart is what my body looks like. And so I'll catch an angle of myself in a mirror that I don't like, and I'm like, ugh, that kind of thing.
00:54:32
Speaker
What lifting weight generally does for women is it changes this focus from appearance to how their body feels. And what you can do as well. Exactly, right? So your sense of strength, your sense of autonomy, your sense of, no, I don't need help carrying these groceries to the car, right? All of that stuff. Oh, no, I can get my bag into the overhead luggage. No problem. I do not need you to help me with. I am very often, and partly it's because I'm tall,
00:54:59
Speaker
but I'm very often out there helping women get their bags down from the thing because I'm like, I'll be damned if I sit here and a man does that. In terms of the PR,
00:55:11
Speaker
I'm like, I feel like I'm just like one woman at a time. I want to influence them into this idea of strength, right? Whether it's I am a woman helping you or I, a woman, am carrying this 30 pound bag of dog food out to the car or whatever, right? The other things that it does on a sort of anatomical, biological level, it increases your resting metabolic rate because muscles use up more energy at rest than adipose tissue, fatty tissue. So let's say weight loss is a goal for you, a health goal for you.
00:55:41
Speaker
lifting heavy weights will help you towards that goal. I think there's often so much emphasis on cardiovascular exercise for weight loss, and not as much on the strength training. And while it may be that the cardiovascular kind of more quickly shows you those changes, there was an interesting metaphor, I can't remember exactly, it was sort of like cardiovascular is like your checking account, strength training is your savings account. So over time, that strength training is going to help increase that resting metabolic rate
00:56:10
Speaker
and support all that cardiovascular work that you're doing. I love that. Yeah. There's also a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes from strength training, which I thought was pretty cool. And as we've talked about, it helps keep your bones strong and it puts you at much less risk for osteopenia and osteoporosis. And there's some horrible statistic where something like one in three women
00:56:36
Speaker
have an osteoporosis related fracture in their lifetime. Yeah, that's horrifying. One in three. That's too many. This is where I get really pissed off, because we've known this for a long time. And yet, women are being scared away from lifting heavy, which is literally one of two ways to improve your bone density. It's one of two ways. The other way is impact training. So impact training is when you're going to jump off of something and land
00:57:05
Speaker
or you're going to jump up and down and land and the ground force reaction is going to send impact through your body, right? Well, strength training does something similar for your bones. It stimulates your bones similarly through joint reaction forces, where your tendons pull on your bones and stimulate your bones to grow up, but you have to lift heavy weights to do it. And it's actually so affordable and simple to lift heavy weights.
00:57:27
Speaker
It's not a big deal. It's so mundane. It's like raising children or driving a car. Sure, you should probably know the basics. But it's not rocket science. It's no more dangerous. Listen to this. This one's going to probably cause some cognitive dissonance. It's lifting heavy, CrossFit, part of which involves lifting heavy. So they did some research on CrossFit and found that CrossFit was no more dangerous than any other exercise modality. That means that CrossFit is as safe as yoga.
00:57:54
Speaker
Well, yeah. She's pretty dang safe, OK? And then at the same time, we're talking about acute injuries sustained through doing physical activity. It's protective. Strength is protective. But this is where I get pissed off, because it's like, let's take a woman and know that she's going to start losing muscle and bone fairly rapidly from 30 on. She's going to be a one in three risk of an osteoporotic fracture. And let's make her afraid to strength train. Let's make her afraid to lift heavy weights. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. I know. It's such a crap.
00:58:23
Speaker
I, for a while, and this is actually for me personally, only changed relatively recently, for a while, I lifted things that I considered, you know, heavier than your average bear for women. So probably the heaviest thing that I would lift in my workouts was somewhere between like 25 and 30 pounds.
00:58:40
Speaker
you know, in a kettlebell form or dumbbell forms, I would do these weight, I would work out with weights pretty consistently, but I never increased or I never worked on increasing it, which is actually something that I am working on right now. But to do that, you have to do something called progressive overload, which sounds a little sort of clinical and scary. And I'm wondering, Laurel, if you can, in a way that is not clinical or scary, explain the principles of progressive overload, pop quiz. The principle of progressive overload basically just states that
00:59:10
Speaker
If you're going to make changes in your performance, you're going to make changes in your strength, right, then the stimulus needs to progressively, systematically, right, over time, not all of a sudden, but progressively, systematically over time, overload your body, it has to push you
00:59:29
Speaker
to a place that is a little bit harder, a little bit further along than what you were doing before. Progressive overload, it sounds like, okay, for progressive or forward thinking, we're thinking about the future. Progressive overload is really based on the past. It's based on what you have been doing. That's how you determine what to do. What are you changing over time? Well, this is where we get into
00:59:55
Speaker
overload. So you can overload different parameters. You could overload how many times you're working out in a week. So if you're working out twice in a week to overload, you would add that third session. You can overload by adding exercises to a workout. So if you're
01:00:12
Speaker
using four or five exercises in a workout and you add a sixth exercise or a seventh exercise, that's a form of overload. Another thing you can overload is load, the amount of weight you're lifting. Typically, you can also overload by adding reps, but typically when you overload weight, you're going to have to drop reps until the reps can creep up again and then you increase the weight again. And so it's just this
01:00:35
Speaker
kind of toggling of switches. It's important to understand that we can't just overload. We need to do it progressively. And we can't just progress because if the stimulus falls below the threshold for change, we won't actually be getting stronger. So you see lots of progressions on the internet. Like here's a progression to DownDog.
01:01:00
Speaker
And it's like, let's warm up the wrists, let's warm up the elbows, let's warm up the shoulders, let's warm up the hips. Let's put it all together. We did a progression.
01:01:07
Speaker
But in reality, a progression is something, when it comes to resistance training, not in reality, but when it comes to resistance, in the context of resistance training, it's something that takes place by toggling up or down these parameters, frequency, number of exercises, right volume, you could say load, right, over a long period of time, not in the course of a class. And this is why repetition
01:01:31
Speaker
is such an important thing. So I'm a variety junkie. I love to do different stuff all the time. And that's just who I am. And that's kind of what keeps me motivated. But if I am doing too much variety, it's like digging lots of shallow holes. If we want to get stronger, we actually have to pick some holes, and then we have to dig deep.
01:01:54
Speaker
and go for a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months of repeating the same exercise and pushing the envelope a little bit each time. And a little bit is just like five or 10%, maybe kind of tapering off and being on a plateau for a couple of weeks and then upping it again. And then there's life's up and downs. Like we're not going to
01:02:12
Speaker
see linear progression to infinity in the end of time, there's going to be ups and downs. But it's really committing to a program, honestly. That's actually something that I'm working on right now. But to your point about digging a few deeper holes. So I'm working on my deadlift, my squat, and my chest press. And I'm specifically working on
01:02:33
Speaker
increasing my ability. I am progressively overloading but to your point it is something that goes on over a period of time. I've been doing this for a couple of months and so far in terms of
01:02:46
Speaker
increasing weight, I think I've increased maybe five pounds on a few things. That's really it because I also partly had to get accustomed to dedicating time to lifting at that upper parameter of what my body can do, which was kind of a new thing for my body. It makes me think about, as I've been learning to ride a motorcycle when I first started, I mean, first of all, just going at all in space was like, holy shit. It was very intimidating.
01:03:14
Speaker
And then, you know, as I became more accustomed to being on it, I remember really clearly when, you know, 30 miles an hour felt like rocket fast speed. And I was like, I would look down at the odometer and I'd be like, not the odometer, the RPM, whatever, the speedometer, thank you. And I would say 30 and I'd be like, that's good. And I would just, that's as far, and for a while, you know, talking about plateaus, that was like as comfortable as I felt going. And then,
01:03:43
Speaker
I would just like rev it a little bit more and I would look down and be like, oh my God, 36. And then like, that would be my new, right? So, you know, and now I comfortably go, you know, 75, 80 without really thinking about it too much, but it didn't, I didn't start there. And it took, I mean, this is, I'm almost a year
01:04:00
Speaker
that I've been riding a motorcycle, right? So it takes time, right? But the idea of that speed feeling quote unquote heavy to me changed what felt fast eventually slowly changed, right? It's amazing. It's amazing how you can look back and go like, wow, especially if you track your workout and go like, wow, it used to be hard to press 15 pounds over my head and now I'm pressing 30 pounds over my head.
01:04:27
Speaker
Totally. But I also want to say I had a baby, right? So I was strength training before I had my daughter and strength training all the way up to having her. And then I stopped strength training, obviously, because I had just had a baby and had a newborn and didn't have the time. And it took me several months to get back into the gym.
01:04:47
Speaker
And regularly, I was going here and there. And I had lost quite a bit of strength. I had lost quite a bit of conditioning, as you would expect. My whole abdomen had been reshaped for nine months. And so you could argue that I had kind of taken a step back. But you'd be amazed at how quickly strength comes back
01:05:07
Speaker
after initiate initially building that baseline of strength. And so progress is not linear, but also it's also progress that you're able to make once you establish a baseline of strength is much more rapid, actually getting it back is much faster than it took you to build it because of because of muscle memory, because you know, it once you've learned the technique, it's kind of
01:05:31
Speaker
it's going to come back a lot faster. You're going to be able to acquire that technique. Again, you won't have to worry so much about learning the technique. You've already learned it. Now you're just kind of coming back to building up the load over time. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, OK, well, I am starting to recognize perhaps my own internalized biases against lifting heavy or
Guides and Goals in Weightlifting
01:05:51
Speaker
how I think about it. And I'm starting to recognize, oh, maybe this is a good idea for me. And now you're interested in trying it, but you don't have a sense of where to start.
01:05:59
Speaker
The big thing is what is heavy and how do you figure it out because heavy is not a specific number. Heavy is a subjective experience. The easiest way to think about it, I definitely recommend and I'm sure Laurel does as well, if you're really starting to get into this to work with a professional to help you in the beginning because you're going to need to learn things like form and you're going to need to learn. It's a good idea to have somebody overseeing your progressive overload for you.
01:06:28
Speaker
But if you want to understand some of the basics of it or really one of the main concepts behind it, then let's say you were going to do a squat or something. Or let me make it even easier. Let's talk about a bicep curl because that's something that everybody can visualize. It's always the example, but it's because it's very easy to imagine and see. So the easiest way to figure out what is heavy in terms of working on strength in particular
01:06:56
Speaker
is it's how many times you can do a certain movement with a certain weight. And so if we take this biceps curl idea, let's say you take a five pound dumbbell and you start to do repetitions of your biceps curl and you find that you can do 15 of them,
01:07:15
Speaker
without really any problem, and that if you had to do maybe two or three more, that would probably be about it, but that it wasn't particularly exhausting for you. So that means at that weight, with that five pound dumbbell, what you're working on is something called endurance, or sometimes it's called strength endurance, which is just your body's ability to tolerate something that's not the maximum weight that it can tolerate, but it can tolerate it for a longer period of time.
01:07:42
Speaker
But if we want to get into what people categorize as building strength, we have to go with something that is heavier than that. So let's say you try, okay, you have an eight pound dumbbell, and you pick up the eight pound dumbbell, and then you try to do your biceps curls with the eight pound dumbbell, and you're finding, oh, okay, now I can really do, I can do about 10 of these, but it's definitely getting harder around like eight or nine. And if I was pushed, I could maybe do two or three more, but not any more than that.
01:08:12
Speaker
that 10 rep range you are in the the range that's considered strength and that's usually but somewhere between 8 and 12. And so then you work with that 8 pound dumbbell and you do that set of 10 biceps curls maybe 2 to 3 times a week and eventually because of your body's adaptations that will start to feel easier and that's when you get into that progressive overload and you either do
01:08:36
Speaker
more sets of it or you do the exercise more often or you increase the weight, perhaps now you're going to try a 10-pound dumbbell, something like that. Again, to my point, this is where working with a professional can help you because they will do that for you with all of the movements that you will be working on. It's certainly challenging for a non-professional to put together a progressive overload course by themselves. Because a biceps curl is one individual exercise, it's not an entire training program. Can I ask something?
01:09:04
Speaker
Please. What is it when it's below eight reps? Excellent question. So somewhere below eight, somewhere in the five, six-ish range, is what's considered power? It depends on who you ask, but power is actually velocity specific. So I mean, power is a function of force and velocity.
01:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, let me back up. So power, the science definition of power is velocity specific. What I consider like power lifting is a thing that, yes, that's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about power as a concept. I'm talking about power lifting is where you're lifting something that is extremely heavy for you and you can only do it a really few number of times, maybe two to three times.
01:09:49
Speaker
And it's heavy strength training that's most, I think, indicated for osteo, for bonusing. Absolutely. Absolutely. So something that's in that 85% to 90% to 95% of a 1RM. And then everything above 12 reps, I've heard, is light. But then if you go and you look at some of the research, they're using heavy to mean a different percentage. So it does actually depend on
01:10:14
Speaker
Who's talking about strength? Yes, yes. And I think there's confusion about it for that reason. There's definitely confusion. There's definitely people using one word to mean another thing, and the language is not sort of systematized especially well. I do think for somebody starting out, the concept of 10 is an easy, 10 repetitions is an easy number to hold on to.
01:10:39
Speaker
as a goal, you know? And again, then certainly that's why we would want some, I would want somebody brand new starting out to work with somebody and who understands all these different nuances and can perhaps create programming for them that maybe works on more of the strength versus the actual hypertrophy. I mean, I think one of the reasons too that 10 is the number that everyone has in their mind is that
01:11:04
Speaker
For most people, 10 is going to be the rep range that they're able to recover from the most efficiently and still see increases in strength. Whereas if you are lifting a load that is 90% of a 1RM, you're doing about five reps of that, you're going to have to rest a minimum of three minutes.
01:11:27
Speaker
And then you're going to do another five, right? But if you're doing a set of 10, you might only need a minute rest. So in other words, for the same amount of time, someone who's doing sets of 10 might actually be able to complete more work. They might be able to actually
01:11:41
Speaker
Work is force times distance. They might, in that workout, actually do more work than the person who's lifting heavy because they don't need as much time for recovery. But I think that's one point about it. The other point about it is that actually the stimuluses are different. So bones require a different amount of stimulus than muscles to grow. And so it's good to know the difference between what is considered sufficient for bone growth versus muscle growth and then to make decisions based on that.
01:12:10
Speaker
The fact that we are having this conversation about what each thing means is really a reflection of how it's confusing to everyone out there or different people saying different things or meaning different things. But I very much agree with your point. My original aim, talking about what does heavy mean, was just helping people understand, okay, it has to do with how many times you can lift something.
01:12:33
Speaker
and how heavy it is, and this idea of paying attention, because this is what I have a problem with with pink dumbbells. The pink dumbbells don't usually exhaust somebody. For me, part of it's about paying attention to, well, how am I now feeling? Having done seven of these, having done eight of these, having done nine of these, and starting to understand the nuance of that,
01:12:56
Speaker
so that you can then also start to understand when it's time to progress, right? When something is actually not as hard as it used to be. And it's something that I bring up with my clients, with my patients all the time is, you know, I give them homework to do. I talk about their homework with them every single week because I'm like, okay, which of these exercises are too easy now?
01:13:13
Speaker
And I really want them to reflect and pay attention. And they'll be like, oh, you know what? That one with the band that doesn't know that I think about it doesn't feel that hard anymore. I'm like, great. We're going to change the band. It's going to now it was yellow. Now it's going to be red. You know, things like that. The other side of this number 10 that people get really fixated on is that they assume that doing 10 of anything is
01:13:34
Speaker
the correct amount to do because it just burned into their brain. I used to go to the gym and not know what I was doing and I would walk up to a set of dumbbells and I'd be like, okay, I did 10. Great. Without any understanding of how those last few reps
01:13:50
Speaker
being the most important reps to really pay attention to felt in my body and this idea of like, how many more could I have done? Right. And, and what was it? Was it, could I have done 10 more because that 10 that therefore wasn't enough for strength? Could I have done two more? You know, maybe, but that's it. Then maybe 10 was enough for strength. I had no concept of exertion level and how important that is as it relates to the rep range you're working with, whether it be 10, five, 15.
01:14:20
Speaker
And to your point about bone density, it is absolutely true. I'm not building bone density necessarily if I can do something three sets of 10. The weight really has to be much, much higher. And by the weight being much, much higher, it means you cannot do as many repetitions of it. But that is the load that is actually impacting your bone versus the load that is impacting your muscle in terms of hypertrophy. I think that that is what a lot of research is suggesting.
01:14:48
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I don't know if you would call them gyms, but there's places, at least here in LA, that are specifically for people who are dealing with osteoporosis. You go to these places and they've got these different machines. From what I understand from people, the whole workout takes like 15 minutes max because you go around each of the machines and you do it once.
01:15:12
Speaker
And it's like, it's you do it once, it's crazy heavy. And then you go to the next thing and you do it once. Yeah, so exactly like and that's and that's the word. I mean, people have said to me like, I don't know, is it doing anything? I'm only there for like 10 minutes. And then like, yeah, but that's, that's what the research indicates is that the really, really heavy loads is what's important for bone density. And especially for women, again, who have been conditioned to believe that
01:15:35
Speaker
these small pink dumbbells are the right ones for them. This idea of like, well, what is the maximum heaviness of something that you could lift is a whole new idea. And for me, for example, like here I was faffing around with my 30 pound kettlebells. And then I was like, all right, well, this program that I'm starting with where I'm working with barbells, which is very exciting because again, it's sort of relatively new for me and it's crazy fun.
01:16:02
Speaker
But I had to establish at the beginning of the program what my one RM was, which if you're not familiar, the one rep max, it's a conceptual idea of like, how heavy of a thing could you lift just once? And part of the reason it's so hard to get a specific number for that is because
01:16:20
Speaker
a lot of reasons. The reason is a lot of reasons. You usually do a set of more than that, and then you do a bunch of math and figure out what would the weight be for one. I had to 1RM my squat and my deadlift and my chest press. It turned out I could deadlift something like 60 pounds, no problem.
01:16:40
Speaker
But I hadn't ever tried, especially. I hadn't ever tried to actually figure out, OK, what is that number? So it's exciting to discover how strong I actually am. And sometimes life forces you to discover it, right? Like you're put into a situation where you are now asked to lift something very heavy, for whatever reason. And you might as well discover it in a more controlled environment than have it foisted upon you by some unfortunate event like, I don't know,
01:17:10
Speaker
like there's a car on your baby or something like that. The classic story. Why are there so many babies getting run over by cars? I'm going to get a tiny, tiny plug for a non-movement logic product, which is something that I created myself, which is, if you go on my mailing list, which is sarahcourtdpt.com, I have a short series of videos that you'll get, and they're really about how do I go from either I've never lifted anything
01:17:39
Speaker
or I've only after lifted something really light, how do I actually start that progression? And so for a squat and for a deadlift and a chest press, we go through all those things. And we start with like getting in and out of a chair, which is a squat.
01:17:52
Speaker
Right? And movements using no weight or using TheraBands and eventually working up to using a weight. And so for me, the reason I created that was I just really want to encourage women to get started. Right. And once you get started and you start to feel stronger in your body, then maybe you're going to be more motivated to be like, hey, you know what? I'm going to go to the gym and I may take advantage of that free personal training session that I never took advantage of when I signed up for my gym membership or things like that. Right. And start to get into that world. So that's just a little plug for that. If you're like, well, this is a great conversation, but these people are
01:18:22
Speaker
at some level that I am not at, please know that we- I don't think- First of all- I don't think we come off that way at all. Okay. Well, anyway, I made a little guide for you. If you're like, I just don't even know where to start, you can go check it out on sarahcourtdpt.com. I'm going to check it out, Sarah.
01:18:38
Speaker
Thanks. So we've talked about my weightlifting and the goals, the things that I'm working on. I want to hear a little bit Laurel from you about your, if there's anything in particular you are working on right now. Yeah. I've been working on it for almost a year. I want to be able to do a muscle up.
01:18:54
Speaker
Nice. Can you explain what a muscle-up is? I'm having a hard time. A muscle-up is a cross between a pull-up and then a, well, it would be like a tricep dip. You're basically hanging from a bar and you pull yourself up, and then you transition your hands to then push yourself over the bar with straight arms. It's a gymnastics move. Gymnasts make it look like the easiest thing in the world.
01:19:19
Speaker
Yeah, I want to be able to do a muscle up. And I want to do it on a bar first, but then eventually I'd love to be able to do a ring muscle up, which is even harder. Oh my God. But here's my struggle, right? Is that I have improved my strength in so many different ways in the training environments that I'm working within, which is I have a personal trainer. I go to CrossFit and I train at home and all that good stuff, but not in the pull-up. And it's really frustrating me.
01:19:46
Speaker
what I'm working on doing now is progressively overloading my pull-up by actually doing more pull-up training in terms of frequency in the week. So instead of training pull-ups once or twice a week, I'm going to try to train them
01:20:02
Speaker
three times a week and then gradually add to that and see if just a little bit more frequency of input to my body makes a difference. But yeah, that's what I'm working on right now. And I sound frustrated. I'm actually really geeking out about it because I'm like, why is it that the pull-up is so hard for me? And there's all kinds of explanations for that. But my theory is that I'm just not actually sending the message to my body frequently enough that this is what we do now. So I'm basically going to help myself get with the program a little bit.
01:20:32
Speaker
keep sending that message, keep sending that input. And then we'll just, we can check in about this. I guess in Puerto Vallarta, which is a month and a half, hopefully I've seen some progress by then, but yeah. Yeah. Pull ups are still my obsession. Where are you working on?
01:20:47
Speaker
What am I working on? Yeah. Other than you're doing the big three. I'm doing my big three. You're power lifting. I know. It's fun. I am power lifting. Because half of the time, they're like, I'm looking at it. I'm like, how many of these am I doing? And they're like, five. OK. I'm doing five of these. And they're freaking hard. So for example, yesterday, and this whole training has different parameters where some days I'm lifting heavier things than others. And it's very scientific. And I'm glad that it exists.
01:21:12
Speaker
But I had something that was five sets of five yesterday. And to your point about lifting heavy and recovery time, like I would do a set of five and I'd be like, I need to walk around this room for a couple of minutes. Yeah. Before I do this again, you know, and you really, you sense it in your body. Like it's just no way because that fifth one is like you're, there was, there's a bit of a struggle. You're I'm on the struggle bus a little bit with that fifth one, which means I'm really, you know, overloading. That's the irony of strength too. Heavy, especially heavy strength training is, is mostly about resting.
01:21:41
Speaker
Yeah. You are out of my goals. You are actually spending more time resting. Yeah, than actually, I know. And it's like, I was like, it's the same thing where it's like, well, that took 15 minutes. Like, really? That's enough? 15? Okay. But the other thing- Are you making progress? I am making progress. So it's not- And steady, slow, steady progress. My goal, it's a bit of a silly is maybe the word for it. My goal is to be able to deadlift my body weight.
01:22:07
Speaker
Yeah. Which you can do, I believe. And our friend Trina can do. And I'm like, well. I'm deadlifts 245 pounds as of today. That's amazing. I had no idea you weighed 245 pounds. No, I'm kidding. But like, you know, I remember seeing a video of you where you're like.
01:22:26
Speaker
where you were deadlifting or maybe you were squatting your body weight or something. I know our friend Trina can also do either a squat or a deadlift her own body weight. I was like, well, that'd be fun. That's a fun goal. It doesn't necessarily mean anything. It's not like- I love performance goals. As you can tell, I'm obsessed with pullout. I feel like performance goals can be a double-edged sword, but for me, they are my favorite way to approach training because performance goals are probably one of the best ways to see aesthetic goals if you have aesthetic goals.
01:22:55
Speaker
They're also one of the best ways to see these physiological goals that might have like bone density, increased muscle mass. They're very simple and they're very hopefully attainable. And what's fun is like seeing the progress, right? I'm a big fan of progress and results. Yeah. Ask my personal trainer. Always like, how can we make this better? I want to get better at this. Yeah, it's a very trackable goal. So that's my mini goal at the moment. It'll be fun to see.
01:23:24
Speaker
That's cool. All right. Well, all you listeners out there, I really hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope that it was informative and it's encouraged you to either start to work your way towards lifting something heavy or to start to lift maybe a little heavier than you've been doing so far.
01:23:41
Speaker
You can check out our show notes for any of the things that we mentioned, things, links, various stories that I got from Wikipedia. I'll definitely
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:23:52
Speaker
link to that video to the movie Pumping Iron because I hope as many of you will watch it as we're going to watch it. Just a reminder, you can go to our website, movementlogictutorials.com and sign up for that free hips mini course that we talked about.
01:24:06
Speaker
And we will see you next time. In the words of our friend Arnold Schwarzenegger, I'll be back. Can I also say you definitely want to subscribe because you know, we're going to be referencing pumping iron a lot this season. So you're going to want to be like, what is this random quote that they keep saying that I've never in this like very bad Arnold voice? I'll be back.
01:24:37
Speaker
You need to work on your Austrian accent. Now I just sound like a robot. Alright, we should stop probably. Oh, hmm. Okay. Alright. Thanks so much you guys.