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Episode 7: The Truth About Fitness: Muscle, Movement, and Long-Term Health
51 Plays26 days ago
- Most people think fitness is about workouts and appearance. It’s not. In this episode of the Body Evolution Podcast, we zoom in on one of the most misunderstood pillars of health — fitness — and what it actually means to build a body that stays strong, capable, and resilient for life. We cover why modern life has made movement something you now have to do intentionally, why one hour at the gym doesn’t cancel out a sedentary day, and why muscle is one of the most powerful predictors of how long — and how well — you’ll live. You’ll also learn the five functional movement patterns that matter most, how to keep strength training simple and effective, and why consistency beats intensity every time. Whether you’re just starting or looking to train smarter, this episode will change how you think about movement.
In this episode: ∙ Why modern life made us too sedentary ∙ NEAT: the movement that burns more than you think ∙ Why muscle is a longevity predictor (the PURE study — 140,000 people) ∙ Sarcopenia: the silent muscle loss starting at 30 ∙ The 5 functional movements everyone should be doing ∙ How to structure 2–3 sessions a week for real results ∙ Why recovery and protein are part of the training, not optional ∙ How to make strength part of your identity — not just your schedule
This episode is an invitation to see movement differently — not as punishment, but as support. When you build strength in a way that fits your life, you’re not just training for now. You’re protecting your future.
🔗 Resources mentioned: ∙ PURE Study (grip strength & mortality): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25982160/∙ WHO Physical Activity Guidelines: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240015128∙ Harvard — Strength Training & Aging: https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging-and-longevity/strength-training-builds-more-than-muscles∙ NIH — Sarcopenia: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK560813/📲 Follow Body Evolution: Website: www.body-evolve.comLinktree: https://linktr.ee/body_evolution
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Transcript
Introduction to Body Evolution
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to a space for movement, mindset, and sustainable rhythm. This is Body Evolution.
Hosts' Introduction and Podcast Focus
00:00:14
Speaker
Hi, welcome to the Body Evolution podcast, where health becomes simple, sustainable, and human. Hi, I'm Corey Repp. And I'm Elio Berenguer, and we break down fitness, nutrition, habits, and energy through one lens, what actually works in real life.
The Five Pillars of Health
00:00:32
Speaker
So in previous episodes, we have been talking about the five pillars of health. And there are areas that these areas support our real life, not making it sustainable for well-being.
Rethinking Fitness Beyond Aesthetics
00:00:47
Speaker
And today we're going to do a little bit of a zoom in one of these pillars.
00:00:53
Speaker
We're going to go in a zoom into the part of fitness. because most people think that fitness is about workouts, calories and aesthetics, but real health goes deeper.
Importance of Movement
00:01:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's about building a body that stays capable, strong, stable, resilient, like through your whole life. That's what really that fitness and exercise is about. So today we're going to go into why movement will create a bigger category of movement, not just fitness. Why movement matters so much and why why your muscle is very deeply connected connected to your health, not only for right now for strength, but for long term health and resilience.
00:01:36
Speaker
Exactly. And it's so important that we dip into this area and we understand why modern life have removed these points.
00:01:48
Speaker
Yeah. So why do you think movement really needs to be um intentional today? Like, why don't we why can't we just go about living our lives and be healthy? why do Why do we need to intentionally go into movement today versus like how historically humans have evolved naturally?
00:02:07
Speaker
Well, i I love this concept of why we have to be intentional these days.
Impact of Modern Lifestyle on Movement
00:02:14
Speaker
And the thing is that is to understand how we have been evolving for millennials, of thousands and thousands of years.
00:02:23
Speaker
And we were always in an active lifestyle. So for a long time, we were doing gathering, we were hunting, we were moving from one place to another place. We were nomads for a long time and we needed to keep our body in constant movement for dangers, for survival, for anything. So whatever we were doing, we were always active. We were moving, climbing, walking, carrying things. We were lifting weights, moving water to the to the little tribe, you know, and we were hunting and bringing the animals. So we were always in constant movements. There were moments that we needed to run because there was a predator. There were moments that we needed just to chill out and walk long time long distances to get anything of food. So we were...
00:03:21
Speaker
always with physical effort as part of our our everyday life and that's how the human body was built now to be moving from one place to another to survival to be strong enough to fight out for data to escape to carry things so it was very natural we didn't have to think about i need movement i need to do something you It was the only way to live.
00:03:53
Speaker
And in the modern environments, what we have found out is that with all these commodities and they're amazing, but each time we begin to reduce it, invented once we invented the wheel, a lot of movement began to stop because even when we were on horses, we have to keep the horse healthy. We have to feed the horse and do things and do we're doing movement and exercising different muscles.
00:04:18
Speaker
But once we began just to drive or take a car or an airplane, then we began that we can work from home like these days. And the majority of a lot of the works we have these days is about knowledge. So it's sitting down.
00:04:36
Speaker
It's sitting down for long, long hours. So what happened is that in the past, we we didn't need a gym. And you didn't have to think about, I have to lift weights or, you didn't have to think about nothing of that that was natural that's the way we were evolving and these days we have to be intentional why because we have become sedentary with all these commodities the cars taking you from one place to another trains some people what they walk is a little bit in the house to move from one place to another then go to the car take the car get to the office sit down in a desk work long hours come back home
00:05:17
Speaker
and sit down again to watch television or to keep on working on your computer or something like that and we lose that we lose that so we have to be intentional let sedentary lifestyles affects everything affects our word sleep affects our nutrition affects our word metabolism so Yes, we have to keep on moving in in this path where we have to be intentional with our movement. I don't know. What do you think about this?
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's it's funny because you hearken back to when we evolved and and how we evolved for hundreds of thousands of years.
Intentional Movement for Longevity
00:06:01
Speaker
to build these bodies the way they're built, it was constant movement. It was, I mean, and I i think about like when I go camping and when I go camping, I'll go really camping. and when you're like setting up your camp and you have to, you know, get the water, you have to pump, you know filter the water. You've got to get something to cook. You got to gather firewood. You've got to do, you know, build your structure. You're always, It seems like you're always doing something to maintain. You're always moving your body. You're always getting up. You're lifting something. You're you're reaching for something. You're going, you're squatting down. You're doing all these things.
00:06:32
Speaker
And that's just how you have to live your life in in in that state. and it's a very, very minor window we get into it if we just intentionally go out and camp. But that was that was life for so many people for so long. And that's how our bodies evolved to be constantly moving, constantly working.
00:06:49
Speaker
The other part is... is that the other reason for being int intentional is we want more longevity than than ah our predecessors ever had. know,
00:07:00
Speaker
the the key for them was to get to reproductive age and reproduce and then to be able to raise raise the children. and And even the grandparents were around a while to help help the next generation, you know, in and in the tribal kind of sense, but they were still only around to 40, 45 years, right? Now we want to we want our lives to be a greater experience for longer. There's another reason to be intentional about our movement, right? yeah But yeah, I mean, some some stats I looked up was,
00:07:29
Speaker
yeah those those people back then hunter gatherer population populations naturally would walk and you know we talk about getting our steps in five to ten miles a day yeah that's you know and uh and typical sedentary person get like three to four thousand steps a day sometimes sometimes less and those those kind of stuff that that adds up to maybe a mile mile and a half you know kind of thing uh that's 18 to or so that the five to 10 miles is eight to 16 kilometers for people who are yeah not not into the miles thing. But um so that so there there's we're we've reduced it by like tenfold in so many ways yeah in in how much we've moved. And so.
00:08:15
Speaker
Really, our bodies are made to move and every system in our body is affected by movement and and the sedentary lifestyle. I mean, gets into sleep quality. People don't say don't sleep well it's because moving your body. When you move your body, you sleep better. Of course, there's a lot of reasons it could be, but that's a major factor.
00:08:35
Speaker
um Also, you're energy regulation, your metabolism, all of that stuff is dictated by movement by using the systems in your body the way they're meant to be used. And and that affects your overall health as well. and we'll get in a little deeper into how the know muscle quality and and strength get into a health aspect.
00:08:58
Speaker
and And there is the concept of what they say NEAT. That is the concept that is how much expenditure we're doing in normal activity like when we are not constantly like i go for a run or I go to do exercise but the the concept of how your metabolism is working almost when you are rest but before the rest was not sitting down in a couch like resting we're talking about normal a movement like walking from here pick up this squat for picking on something movement And this is that non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And this is only how much expenditure we do, like with this little step, like going up some steps, walking a lot around, picking up something, and this will really, really affect how much you expand there.
00:10:00
Speaker
hundreds and thousands of calories can be expended more in one year just doing these kind of things that are not like focused on on exercise and we have we have a myth uh the myth that we with like these days we say i go to the gym one hour so that's enough you know and then the rest of the day you're just sitting down like i don't need more because i went to the gym and the reality is some people even training regularly, they can have metabolic issues because then they spend eight, 10, 15 hours a day doing nothing else, you know?
Muscle Strength and Health
00:10:40
Speaker
They went one hour and then
00:10:42
Speaker
the whole day they are just sitting down and relax and the body expects movement so we have to understand that for our metabolism is very important for our brain is very important for our sleep for our nutrition that key we keep constant movement so this is the foundation this is the basis so it's very interesting to see some people that just replace the gym for an active lifestyle. So it's more important for your longevity having an active lifestyle than just going to the gym for one hour day.
00:11:22
Speaker
That's most more important. Now, if you combine them, perfect. That's a sweet spot. But only going to the gym, not doing anything in the rest of the day, that's not the best approach that we have.
00:11:38
Speaker
And we have to be aware that a sedentary, some people think that because they go to the gym, they don't have a sedentary lifestyle. If you spend more than ah eight hours or 10 hours a day sitting down and not moving, you have a sedentary lifestyle.
00:11:56
Speaker
And and this this technique to the other point, when we talk about fitness, yes, we think about aesthetics and I want to be muscle and be strong, but they have found out that muscle is super important for our longevity and we're losing that. So I wanted to ask you, Corizo, what do you think about why do so many scientists now these days, they are so focused on how important is to be strong and build muscle and it's a predictor for longevity in health.
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, it had they've been doing more and more research and and I think that it's gotten more into the popular knowledge of that resistance exercise is important for everybody.
00:12:44
Speaker
And why that is, I mean, it used to be that, oh, you know, it's only for strong young men who want to be getting big muscles. That's what weightlifting was for. Right. And but.
00:12:56
Speaker
over and over again, they're doing more and more studies on longevity and they're linking muscle health to longevity in so many ways because your muscle is not just for moving your body. It's not just for aesthetics. it It really plays a key role in our metabolism and and what muscle is, is it's very hungry for energy, right? It it it likes to burn energy. And so We have we you people talk about blood glucose and and being pre-diabetic and diabetic and.
00:13:30
Speaker
becoming insensitive to insulin, which is pre-diabetic and, you know you know, the insulin spikes with too much glucose spike, all that stuff happens. And that's really horrible for our bodies, horrible for our cardiovascular systems. um And what muscle good muscle does is it basically acts like a ah sink.
00:13:48
Speaker
It's really sucks up the glucose in your blood. And even without without ah too much insulin needed. it can it can it can take glucose. i mean The function of insulin is to take take the sugars out of your blood and and bring it into the cells and so that it delivers the energy to your cells. So that's why insulin always goes with the sugar. Right. And so.
00:14:12
Speaker
muscle can take sugar out of your blood without even needing insulin. and so And so when you have a lot of muscle or strong muscle or quality muscle and you're stimulating those muscles, they always want to suck up more glycogen. Even in repose, even when you're just sitting down, those muscles will absorb more energy and consume more energy.
00:14:34
Speaker
they they consume more energy, they're high maintenance material, you call it. That's why you know, you need to maintain them because you got to use it or lose it are our, our,
00:14:46
Speaker
history of evolution is, is if if it's energy expensive, which a muscle is, it takes a lot of energy, then our body doesn't want to keep it if we don't need it. If we're not using it, okay, we're going to shed that stuff because it's it takes a lot of on our energy. and And historically, we never had a lot to eat. We didn't have a lot of food. It was always trying to be conservative.
00:15:09
Speaker
And that's how our bodies work. So they it anytime it gets to store energy, in a in ah an efficient way which is our fat it'll do that and anytime it can get rid of energy uh dense material like your muscle or energy sucking material like muscle it'll it'll reduce it but that's why we stimulate the muscle to keep it safe well we want we want this muscle we need this muscle even if it's working out that that tells our body we need the muscle uh then we can maintain it and it makes our metabolic health so
Maintaining Mobility with Age
00:15:41
Speaker
much. And then then of course, you know, as we get older, it protects our joints through, you know, the mobility and ability to do things and and and resistance to falls and just makes us more functional throughout our life, you know, for resilience to disease and and independence and in living and just full experience of life, because as we get older,
00:16:04
Speaker
You can do less and less because you don't have the energy. You don't have the mobility. Can't do the things you want to do. And why not extend that? And that's what good functional health does for you. you You're able to use, and that's the muscles.
00:16:21
Speaker
You know, the more strength you have now, when you lose it as you get older, because inevitably it's going to decline eventually. But the more you delay that decline,
00:16:33
Speaker
the more functionality you gain as you get older yes and i love what you were explaining about uh when your body wants to save energy what we don't use the body say okay i'm not gonna put the energy there so in the past as we were talking well the body knew that it needed to put a lot of energy in the muscles because you needed to survive and you were using it all the time so We didn't need it like consciously send a signal to the body, hey, I need to keep this because it was a natural rhythm of life.
00:17:06
Speaker
But now these days, if you are sedentary, your body stops sending energy to those parts and you get weaker. And not only the importance of muscle building strength is not only for the muscle, but for the bones. It's signaling. It's an adaptation machine of our body. So it says, oh okay, I need strong muscles, so I keep taking things that are with some weight, at the same time, you're sending a signal of, hey, I keep, my bones have to be strong. So I need to keep my bones too in good quality. And as you were saying, the joints, the mobility, so it regenerates better, it heals better in those aspects because the body understands I need them.
00:17:52
Speaker
If I don't use them, your joints get weaker, your muscles get weaker, your everything, part of the body that you don't use begins to go weaker.
00:18:02
Speaker
and And I love, and there is a lot of studies about ah muscle and the strength. yeah What you can tell us about these studies. yeah with there's There's kind of a myth that that cardiovascular health is the key to longevity that, you know, and it is very important, of course. But there's these very, very strong links to muscular strength with longevity. And and there's a study that they did was a very, a very good study. They used 140,000 people across 17 countries. They call it the pure study.
00:18:37
Speaker
And they in the just involved grip strength because it was easy to measure. um And ah and There's nothing magic about grip strength versus the full body strength. Grip strength was kind of a proxy for how strong is this person in general? How are they? What's their muscle quality in general? and And you could be relatively easily translated into your grip strength. So so they ease. They what they did is they grip strength predict, they found that grip strength predicted mortality better than blood pressure. And we all know, we've all heard, you know, high blood pressure is very dangerous for your health and it's really linked to to mortality issues.
00:19:19
Speaker
They found that grip strength was a better indicator of longevity than blood pressure. which is an amazing discovery, right? And it just highlights how important and and don't, again, i want to go into this.
00:19:33
Speaker
People have marketed you know g grippers for for older people to get grip strength because it grip strength so important. No, it's not about that. It's about having general muscular health and and getting better and in in yeah all your all your muscles to be strong and healthy. That is really what the predictor of the the longevity is. So muscle muscle is so much not just about appearance. It's one of the really the strongest predictor of health and longevity in general.
00:20:02
Speaker
Okay. so when we get When we talk about as we age, I talked about we we start to get weaker as we get older. What actually happens to our muscles as we age, if especially if we don't train them? So there is we have found out that there is something called sarcopenia and we have two, osteopenia. And this is the natural loss of muscle strength and a bone density.
00:20:33
Speaker
And it's natural. While we age, we begin to lose this muscle and we begin to lose bone density. So it naturally declines while we begin to age. And being and inactive, as we were talking about signaling, if we have no signals to say, hey, become stronger, you're ah going to lose it even faster.
00:21:01
Speaker
So as strength training protects and delays the sarcopenia and pro protects and delays that osteopenia. So usually it's normal that around age of 30, we begin to lose a little bit of muscle.
00:21:19
Speaker
That is going to be incrementing when we're 40s and we're 50s and it's going to go up that percentage of muscle we lose for in a year. So usually you can be losing from 3 to 8% of muscle a year. And when we do the strength training, when we keep our body strong, we delay that. So you will be more in that 2%, 3% losing that muscle, that strength, or that bone density. But when you have a sedentary life, you are going to be more near to the ache or 10% of losing that muscle.
00:21:58
Speaker
So what this is telling you is that if you don't train yourself and you don't send a signal to your body to say, hey, I have to keep this. It's important for me. It's important for my survival.
00:22:11
Speaker
Well, if there is a curve, we will see that here is 60 and we have a decay. if someone had been training and keep training that the case gonna be slower and slower and the other one is gonna drop very fast and that's why a lot of people around 60, 70 began to have really struggles that are related with muscle and sometimes you see yourself like similar in the mirror but you're not realizing that you're losing muscle and you're creating more fat
00:22:44
Speaker
you know around more fat into the muscle between the muscles and everything and we are getting uh the body begins to go weaker and that's a problem that for for a long time there was a moment that we began to do more less run cardiovascular is the best way but we forget about the muscle and that create this problem so we really need to see that is very important the muscle for quality of life because it's true that with medicine and everything these days you have longevity so should you live longer years but the quality of those years are the most important is the health span it's not only i want to live more years because science right now and medicine are doing a great job with medicaments and a lot of surgeries and things to keep you alive for longer time. But the quality, it drops down really hard. And that's what we want to maintain. We want to be able to play with our grandchilds. We want to be able to have an active life, be more independent in the future. And even it's one of those parameters that can tell you if you're going to break your hip or no, is you're very weak. and you step with something when you are 70, it's very easily that you fall down and you break. There is no protection about your hip. There is no muscles there. you cannot
00:24:19
Speaker
put the hands and resist the heat, you know? so Or the strength to move your foot fast enough to catch yourself. x That is a strength related, that's power actually that that people need and that's another thing that the resistance exercise. The conclusion for me is exactly that ah if we don't use it, we lose it.
00:24:41
Speaker
It's as simple as that. So we need to keep on moving forward in teaching our body with signals that we have to, hey, i mean I need these to maintain these to survive. And that's the only way today, sadly, we have to do it intentionally. It's not in our natural rhythm of these days. Again, and and if we want to extend our life longer than would naturally be in our history, we want that we need to do it intentionally. Yes. And also, I we want i want to highlight that that curve goes down you know in your muscular strength and your bone density will go down if you in and in a consistent way if you have the same lifestyle.
00:25:26
Speaker
But it doesn't mean as you get older, you can't actually gain strength. Because if you've been if you've been under your ideal curve, you can jump up toward your ideal curve. Even later in life, you can gain strength.
00:25:38
Speaker
You can gain muscle density. or I'm sorry, muscle density, bone density. as well. So it's important for people to know that it's all is not lost. if i've If I've lost a lot of strength or maybe people are listening to this who are older and have lost a lot of strength or maybe they're in their 60s and it's like, oh, ba I can barely get out of bed anymore.
00:25:56
Speaker
You can still gain strength. You can jump back up on your, you know, the highest potential curve you have is, you know, that you're strong and capable into your seventies and maybe it's going down slowly, you can still jump up toward that.
00:26:10
Speaker
And so even if you're down, you can still, you can still make up for it. And the earlier the better, but you can always do some improvement. Yes. And I love that, what you're saying, because even if you're 50 or 60 and you say it's too late for me, it's never late.
00:26:25
Speaker
Like this is when you say it's better late than never, you know, but always you can do something about, and, Even if you start at 50 or 60, if you begin to train, you can delay that curve. You can gain some strength. But not only that, you will improve your metabolism. So you're going to improve the markers we were talking about. So if you're pre-diabetic, if you have issues with insulin, they are going to improve, all of them. Just adding a little bit of a strength training. And it's not to go crazy about strength training. And it's not about all these things that you see in social media and these days that you have to do so many things and so many different trainings and everything. No, we have to learn that this to keep a
Key Functional Movements
00:27:14
Speaker
it simple. So I wanted to to ask you about, like if someone these days, they want to train their body, okay? And they want to train their body just to be healthy.
00:27:26
Speaker
We're talking about being healthy, not if you're in a competition, bodybuilding, or any sport, because then you will ah need a specific kind of training. But if someone these days wants to be healthy,
00:27:39
Speaker
What kind of movements actually matter the most for a person to be doing these days? Okay, yeah. there There are five sort of basic movements that we talk about in functional movement.
00:27:52
Speaker
ah the one the One of the main ones that everybody kind of knows what it is, it's it's a squat. And thats it can be something as simple as sitting down into a chair and standing back sitting but standing back up And, you know, the more range of motion, the better for for all of these things. And and but the squat is a basic motion and you can approximate that in a lot of ways that the gym, they got these machines called leg press. It's the same kind of motion for your for your body. Another one is number two is a hinge. A hinge is just bending over to pick something up.
00:28:25
Speaker
Right. So a hinge is sort of bending at the waist. And there's a lot of ways to do that as well. You can do single leg, you know, two legs down there. And it's it's for mobility at the hip and some strength to be able to lift things off the ground if you need to. And a squat is to lift things and so is a hinge. So if you need to lift something off the ground, something you might not be able to squat around to grab, you still need to be able to do that hinge motion.
00:28:53
Speaker
ah Then we get into upper body with a push. Push is a basic motion. You're pushing away from yourself. And that incorporates some your major muscle groups, your pectoral muscles, your deltoids, your triceps. That's the push motion. And so you get some of your major upper body muscles through the push motion.
00:29:13
Speaker
the rest of your major upper body muscles, you get through the pull motion. That's the number four, pull. So you're reaching and pulling something or reaching up and pulling something down or pulling your body weight up. Right. Those are that's the pull motion that gets into your back muscles. It gets into your biceps and the rear part of your shoulders. That that is very functional. Those push and pulls are all your functional motions for your upper body. Then you get something that combines upper and lower body as a carry.
00:29:41
Speaker
And that's something that you just may be holding some weight and maybe be holding it above on your shoulders, holding it in your arms and just walking with weight. That's a ah basic motion. And these are the the things going to keep your body functional, keep your body strong.
00:29:57
Speaker
And but by the way, it's if you do all of these motions and and we'll we'll talk about how to work them most efficiently in a little while. But If you do all these motions, your body's going to look better too.
00:30:08
Speaker
this is This is all in ah terms of a basic looking good. If you want to look at the aesthetics, you don't have to go and do all these fancy workouts that people talk about. All these you know crazy ah aerobic kind of stuff or dancing or or things that take this balance or handstands. And you don't have to go to the gym and do these isolation exercises like curls or you know these these things that people are doing that are you know very, very specific.
00:30:36
Speaker
ah to specific muscle groups or specific to balance and doing crazy, you know, performative kind of exercises that, you know, you to get these, you know, TikTok and Instagram people. It's like they want to be entertaining. So they're like, look at what I can do with my body. And people think they need to do that for fitness. No, no.
00:30:53
Speaker
These are the basic movements, the squat, the hinge, the push, the pull carry. And they will make your body, they will transform your body into something that looks great if you do those consistently. yeah And then if you wanted to tweak something or really go into some higher level of bodybuilding or, or athletic performance, then you get into specifics, but these, these will get you 90% of the way there in terms of your, your body aesthetics as well. And I love that.
00:31:19
Speaker
I love what you're saying because. The five movements you just mentioned is really the natural movements you will do in a daily life. Like when we were talking about our ancestors and everything, these were the main movements they were doing. They were not training a specific muscle. I'm gonna train only my arm here or only my bicep. No, they were just doing movement. And all these movements you say, they integrate all the big muscles of the body. So you're working all the muscles.
00:31:50
Speaker
every muscle is interacting in these movements and they are the natural human movements and I love what you were saying because these movements help to recruit all these big muscles groups they stabilize the joints so they help the movement of the joints and they give you some coordination they like carrying you have to balance the weight we can do it with the back we can do it picking something but You have to stabilize. So it gives you a stabilization and coordination.
00:32:22
Speaker
I love these points. Yeah. And all of these functional movements where you use multi-joints at one time, you're you're practicing the coordination of muscles for those realistic life experiences that you're going to need to do. And that's why they call them functional movements because they actually coordinate your body to be able to to function throughout life as opposed to like you said, isolating a specific muscle just to make that muscle look a different way. Yeah. Yes, and and a point here is important to understand too that while we're talking about this, it's always to have in mind too that when you do this kind of strength trainings, we need a space now for recovery.
Recovery and Nutrition in Strength Training
00:33:03
Speaker
We need a moment for let the muscles build up a to recover from that stress that you put in the muscles. And you have to be a companion with some nutritional tool to help this development. So we have to have that in mind future episodes. Our pillars of health that we mentioned in previous episodes, they always interlink and they always overlap and and help each other out. And like you said, recovery is so important for this muscular strength and and and building and nutrition to to support it. Yeah, absolutely. and you know Yeah, go ahead.
00:33:39
Speaker
No, I was going to ask you, like, ah what is the difference between a multi-joint movement that we're talking versus a single movement of ah one joint, like only 21 thing? Okay, I can i can demonstrate it a little bit. then Let me see if I, you know, make make the camera focus a little bit. So let me say I'm doing a pull motion, which is a multi-joint exercise. So let's see if I can angle me down a little bit. Anyway, so pulling...
00:34:07
Speaker
is I'm reaching out and pulling back. So my shoulder's going backward, my elbow is bending. So that's a multi-joint exercise. So my shoulder going backward is being pulled by my lat, by my rear deltoid, that's pulling down. And then my elbow bending is my bicep pulling.
00:34:25
Speaker
and so and And I'm also using my grip strength to hold whatever I'm holding to pull on it. And so that's my forearms. And so you have multi-joint exercise working here. And so you're working major muscle groups, a bunch of different muscle groups, rear back, rear delts, biceps, all with a pull motion.
00:34:45
Speaker
An isolation motion would be just an arm curl to where I'm just bending at the elbow, just working the bicep part. So that's an isolation exercise versus a multi-joint functional movement. Okay.
00:34:59
Speaker
Beautiful. I love it Yeah. So... As we look into this, people might be asking, so how do I how do i do this? You've just described these motions.
00:35:11
Speaker
So what's what's a practical way to fit this kind of thing into my life? what What should I do to make this to start making this work for me? OK, so there is this thing these days that we think when we are going to train the... So there are several concepts that they are misunderstood. no Some people think that if they go to the gym and do strength training, especially it happens a lot with women and some men, I don't want to be bulk.
Misconceptions About Strength Training
00:35:42
Speaker
I don't want to be very big. you know And it's like, trust me, if if it was that easy, everybody would be already bulk and big. It's very hard to train for that. Then you have to do a lot of hours. But to be strong, to be fit and to have the strengths and everything, we don't need too much. This is the part where people misunderstood what is what we realistically can adapt in our lifestyle.
00:36:13
Speaker
So the simple structure will be two to three strength training a week. And they don't have to be one hour, two hours, three hour training. There are different modalities and different things. And I will say that between, it can be from 15 minutes to 45 minutes of strength training in each of these days.
00:36:38
Speaker
Usually you're going to get enough for being healthy. And we're talking about the basic, to be healthy. If you want to stra a train a strength for specific things, maybe you need more. But to keep ourselves, two, three times of strength sessions per week.
00:36:56
Speaker
theyre you're going to grow muscle and more if you had not been doing it for a long time you will see results ah faster and gaining faster now but if you have been training for a long time it's harder to build up over that and maybe you need more training you want to a bigger hypertrophy or something like that you will need more but two times a week or three times a week is enough.
00:37:22
Speaker
It's completely enough. And if you do these five movements that we were talking, in those five movements, we have a little bit more integration. So we can say that when you do a pull, one thing is pulling like a row to your to your body, and you're working some muscles. But then we have the pull, like lateral pull-downs or pull-ups, where we're working a little bit different group of muscles. They are all integrating, but it will aim at specific muscles in a better way than other. So for pulls, we have the two main, row, pull-ups. We have the squats, jewel will and the squats will work everything. And more if even when you come up, you put into your toes, then you're working even the calf at the same time, you know? um When we do deadlift or hinge, we will be training our glutes, our legs, our lower back that is so important like back extensions or something like that. Bringing something heavy up will make a stronger back, lower back. Then we have the push, like push-ups or we're pushing so we can push like shoulder press too is pushing up or pushing away in front of us.
00:38:42
Speaker
All those movements gonna bring you a lot of functionality. And then we have farmer carriers that they're known like just pick some weight and work with them. You can balance one one side, you can balance the other side or pick up with the weights in each of the hands and work with them or you can put a back heavy and work with them and you will be working balance, a stability and you will be engaging different kind of muscles, upper body and lower body. So if you do
00:39:14
Speaker
a session of a circuit like in 15 minutes of working each muscle that's if you're just starting that's enough and maybe this 15 minutes 20 or 30 minutes you will be done so we're talking about that maybe you have just to work out along a longer week one hour for the whole week an hour of training could be enough Ideally, maybe you do 30 minutes training. So it will be one hour and a half going three times to the gym.
00:39:48
Speaker
ah But it doesn't even have to go to the gym. You can do it in parks. You can do like you can do with your body weight. You know, if we want to build more strength, usually we'll have to add a little bit more overload of weight. But if you are just starting with your body weight is enough to just start. And when you reach a plateau, then you will add some weights. But we don't need more than that. That's very short training that gives you so much benefits in return.
Strength Training for Beginners
00:40:20
Speaker
So it's one of the most myth that people have around is that you have to work out for hours, five, six, 10 hours. You have to go five, so six days to the gym to be stronger. It's not true.
00:40:40
Speaker
One training of this helps you to maintain muscle. Two trainings or three trainings help you to develop a little bit more strength. And the science have shown exactly that with two strength training per week, you will improve muscle mass, bone density, and metabolic health with only two strength training in a week. And we are talking about from 30 to 60 minutes a weekly that can reduce by 10 to 20% mortality risk.
00:41:13
Speaker
Imagine that, how many how much people is paying a lot in medicaments when they are old to gain those 10 or 20% of mortality risk.
00:41:25
Speaker
And you can do it for free. You can do it at your home. You can just doing that. and for people who is just as starting forget about complicated routines with I don't know 20 kind of different exercises and doing this and that no you don't have to do all that when you're just starting a simple routine of these five