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How Much Weight Training is Too Much? [Preview clip from my coaching program]
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Transcript
Link Between Exercise and Disease Risk
00:00:03
Speaker
So in this video, I'm going to look at a paper with you called Muscle Strengthening Activities are associated with lower risk and mortality in non in major non-communicable diseases, a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies.
00:00:24
Speaker
This was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine 2022, a couple of years ago, and basically they wanted to look at the associations between muscle strengthening activities and the risk of non-communicable diseases and mortality in adults independent of aerobic
Optimal Exercise Duration
00:00:46
Speaker
activity. So this is only for Muscle strengthening activities weight training resistance training call it what you will So they looked at 16 studies right and The good news is that muscle strengthening activities were associated with a 10 to 17 lower percent lower risk of all-cause mortality cardiovascular disease total cancer diabetes and lung cancer and
00:01:22
Speaker
So that looks good so far.
00:01:26
Speaker
But this here part is where things get a little bit hairy. So J-shaped associations with the maximum risk reduction of approximately 10, 20% at approximately 30 to 60 minutes per week of muscle strengthening activities were found for all cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, and total cancer.
Understanding J-shaped Associations
00:01:52
Speaker
So what first of all,
00:01:56
Speaker
Maximum risk reduction, in this case, this is observational data. It's not amazing to begin with, right? So you have to take research like this with a grain of salt, but this is the kind of research that is often used to promote stuff like, you know, meat, reducing meat consumption or the eggs are bad for your saturated animal fat.
00:02:21
Speaker
they use it for that purpose. So the the reason I think it's interesting to look at first of all let's understand what is a J-shaped association and also keep in mind this what I just said that maximum risk reduction of approximately 10 to 20 percent that's relative risk which is very it's still it's it's very miniscule even though it looks like a ah lot when it's relative risk it really is not super useful also we have to remember that this this kind of research is confounded because the the same two people that they have the same similar data points in terms of age is the same they might exercise for the exact same time every week but But one could live in a very polluted city, eat and eat bad food and drink alcohol every day and smoke cigarettes. And then the other could live in you know the suburbs or in the country in fresh air, eating organic food, grow their own food.
00:03:28
Speaker
and so the same amount of exercise would affect those two people in different ways.
Exercise Recommendations for Different Groups
00:03:35
Speaker
And this kind of research does not account for that. However, as you will see, when we start looking at the charts, you'll see why it's still significant and we still have to kind of take it into consideration when we are creating a strength and conditioning program for ourselves, especially if our goal is longevity.
00:03:57
Speaker
If you're an athlete, for example one of my clients is a professional ah Major League Baseball pitcher. obviously pro athlete at the elite level level, I cannot tell him you need to exercise less, you need to train less. I have some clients that are,
00:04:18
Speaker
as ah their um sport is they kind of their main hobby, they love it and with those folks we cannot, I cannot tell them you need to exercise less, you need to play less of your sport because they came to me in order to improve sports performance and recovery. So in those instances, if you're getting paid for it or if you're super passionate about it, that's totally
Health vs. Fitness
00:04:41
Speaker
fine. But we have to understand we are taking a hit when we're doing a lot of exercise. It's not just aerobic or endurance exercise. It's the same story with weight training. Now, on the other sort of end of the spectrum, if you have an existing
00:05:01
Speaker
health condition or health issue or multiple health issues. or you are kind of 50 plus, let's say, you can't really put an age there, cut off, it's a spectrum. But if you're kind of a little bit older, or if you your goal is only longevity, you don't have performance goals, you don't have body composition goals, you don't wanna be a rock's wall, you don't wanna be shredded, diced. you know um So if if you were one of those two, so you wanna restore your health,
00:05:35
Speaker
and optimize it and maintain optimal health and longevity, you absolutely do not need a lot of her exercise.
00:05:47
Speaker
Health is done in the kitchen and with the supplementation and stress reduction and fitness is done with the exercise. Exercise is not the major health a thing that makes you healthy. It's the diet, the supplementation, stress reduction, toxin reduction, getting the metabolism working. The fitness aspect is is great. It's great to be fit and feel good and be strong. I just want us to separate the distinction between fitness and health. they they can You can be extremely
00:06:20
Speaker
healthy not very fit and it can be extremely fit and very very unhealthy so we have to kind of really understand where is the cutoff and I think this I try not to ramble too much ah let's just get into the kind of the data a little bit more but when you kind of see it on the charts I think it would make a lot of sense for you so So maximum risk reduction at 30 to 60 minutes of muscle strengthening activities per week. Okay. So 30 to 60 minutes, let's look at the, so just just to kind of briefly look at the number. So the, so they were all cause mortality. Let's just go to, don't do that directly. All cause mortality.
00:07:11
Speaker
okay so we have 47 studies seven so meta-analyses 42 000 cases 263 out of sorry 42 000 cases out of 263 000 participants for cardiovascular disease it was 16 000 cases out of about a quarter a million people. Cancer was 21,000 cases out of about half a million people. okay Just kind of look at the amount of people being analyzed as part of this this stuff. And then we won't go into the various types of cancers and diabetes, but just just let's look at cancer, cardiovascular disease, and all cause mortality.
00:08:01
Speaker
Now, for all-cause mortality, I'm going to scroll down directly to the
Visualizing Exercise Impact
00:08:05
Speaker
chart. So this is what they talk about when they say a J-shaped association. So as you can see here, we have on this axis here, on the Y-axis, the relative risk. So 1.0.
00:08:20
Speaker
is a sedentary person doing no ah no muscle strengthening activities during the week, okay? Now as you do more, x so the x-axis on the horizontally, it's minutes. So zero, 50, 100, 150, 200 minutes per week, and you know, 200 minutes per week, that's five hours, okay? Five hours of weights, basically, resistance training.
00:08:48
Speaker
So as we approach 40 minutes per week of muscle strengthening activities, this is where in, in this sort of set of data, the relative risk is the lowest at 0.83. Okay. Again, relative, relative risk, this much of a relative risk decrease or increase is not super compelling, right? But it it's what we have. that And the the fact is, as you can see, you kind of start going back the other direction. As you go from 50 minutes to 100 minutes, you're actually, the relative risk starts to increase again. And then it starts over 100 minutes per week. It starts to then increase faster.
00:09:44
Speaker
and then at about 140 minutes per week. So that's basically two, two one hour sessions in a 20 minute session. Then the relative risk at that point goes back to 1.0 same as the person doing no muscle strengthening activities.
Balancing Exercise and Recovery
00:10:04
Speaker
And then as that increases,
00:10:09
Speaker
the relative risk starts to approach 1.2. So and we we were down to 0.8 almost. Now kind of the other way, a similar sort of jump in the opposite direction at 200 minutes. So five hours a week, your relative risk is like one point, okay, that's a 1.15. That's for all cause mortality. And similarly, the cardiovascular disease,
00:10:38
Speaker
um we have at 60 minutes per week the relative risk is 0.82 where it is the lowest and then after that it starts to increase and then at 130 minutes so about two hours per week of um muscle strengthening activities we are back to a relative risk of 1.0 so same as the person doing no exercise no lifting no resistance training and then it starts to again go back up and at 200 minutes or five hours you are at almost 1.2 relative risk
00:11:16
Speaker
okay And it the way the trend looks, the way these two curves look, it looks like the more exercise you're doing, the higher the relative risk, at least according to you know this data. That's the the way to check. So doing a but moral of the story.
00:11:35
Speaker
We can't, i I know a lot of folks, especially if you kind of listened to me for a while, or if you're a client, in you understand that endurance exercise is not the way to go. But that doesn't mean that we just replace those, let's say you were doing three strength training sessions per week, then two more aerobic cardio, whatever.
00:12:00
Speaker
sessions ah the other days. That doesn't mean you can just remove ah replace those with more weight training or whatever else. I don't think don't think that is actually beneficial for most people. I think that's beyond the threshold of most people as a sort of capacity to to recover. And I don't think it's necessary unless you're training for a sport for a specific event, which occasionally, we we if one as long as we understand that we are taking that hit in order to compete in a tournament or whatever, that is that is fine. But we have to make sure that our ducks are in a row in terms of the recovery.
00:12:43
Speaker
the post-workout nutrition, ah sleep, um everything, diet, supplementation, stress reduction in other areas of life. And then just just quickly the cancer one.
Diverse Disease Risk Patterns
00:12:56
Speaker
So the relative risk is lowest at 30 minutes, 0.91, not a big bump. And then the relative risk at 130 minutes per week.
00:13:09
Speaker
is 1.1 and then it starts to trend back up, right? So the the only sort of anomalous thing was diabetes. There's an L-shaped curve. It seems like more exercise ah more exercise seems to you know reduce or relative risk, which relative the risk is kind of is really, it's incidence in the data where where there's an incidence of death that they can count towards that line. That is what
00:13:42
Speaker
It is so it's not like it's not like if you just start exercising double, triple, the whatever, that doesn't mean your risk increases. But in this data set, those that did, for example, for the all-cause mortality, those so those that did 40 minutes per week were at 0.3 relative risk. And then those that exercised five hours a week were like 1.15.
00:14:09
Speaker
So the other direction about 15% or so um But that's not really the the actual risk in the in physical reality It's the incidence in the data set where those people that did more exercise There was a higher incidence of death if you know what I mean in the data set just kind of the the whole Risk as a word is a little bit um misleading But what I hope, what I hope this, because these guys looked at what was the 17 studies, I think I said 16 or 17 papers. So they're looking at research that has been done over the past you know couple of decades or so. So what that means is
00:14:55
Speaker
even in this epidemiological sort of associational research, even here, we are seeing that more exercise is actually not associated with any you know reduced all-cause mortality or cardiovascular disease or cancer. And I'm just gonna quickly tell you, ah just read what they what they said. so was the conclusion at the end so the conclusion is so if if You have to understand so these folks cannot say
00:15:33
Speaker
going to report something that will not make sure to to make sure that their study gets published. They have to not ruffle too many feathers and rock the
Conclusions on Exercise Limits
00:15:43
Speaker
boat. So what they said was engaging in muscle strengthening activities was associated with a lower risk of all cause mortality and major non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, total cancer, diabetes, and lung cancer.
00:15:57
Speaker
Listen to this now. However, the influence of a higher volume of muscle strengthening activities on all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease and and total cancer is unclear considering the observed J-shaped association.
00:16:14
Speaker
And then they say, in addition, the combination of muscle strengthening activities and aerobic activities may provide a greater benefit for reducing all-cause cardiovascular disease and total cancer mortality. So it's it's like they just glossed over it because you can't really say something like, it seems like more exercise increases all-cause mortality, cancer, and cardiovascular disease, more than 130 minutes In fact, so basically if a regular person read the study and then they were telling their friend what they read, assuming they kind of understood what what they were talking about, they would say something along the lines of, so ah a little bit of exercise, like 30 to 60 minutes or week is probably good for you, but it seems like
00:17:11
Speaker
after to a above a couple of hours plus so at a couple of hours per week it's it's um it doesn't really, it's not really that, is it's about as good as not doing exercise, basically, at least from this perspective. And then above that, above 130, 40 minutes per week, it seems like it's actually harmful because it's associated with a higher incidence of death or an increased relative risk, right? So that's kind of what the data seems to show. And there again, there,
00:17:48
Speaker
They're looking, they're summarizing and they're ah they're analyzing other research that has ah done the research, right? So after All of this, you know you so many sort of layers of research and analysis and and stuff like that. If you're still not able to obfuscate the fact that more than two two hours per week of muscle strengthening activities increases relative risk, it means that it definitely is in there, right? It means that more than two, three hours per week of exercise
00:18:27
Speaker
is probably for most people a little bit too much. And again, if you're, if you have a health issue, um, if you're older, weaker, this kind of stuff, it's probably doing you more harm than good. I think that is the moral of the story.