Get everyone Sam here and a ripping guest coming up in today's show. I always think about how my training's evolved and what I do now. It's what he's to do differently, and the one constant for me no matter what things I'm trying, whether I'm trying to get more flexible, or boost my running or try swimming or cycling or whatever it is, but the one constant is always my
resistance training, my strength training. It's the non negotiable for me from a training perspective, no matter what other exercise or movement is happening around it. And it's something I wasn't always the case, you know. I'd often drop my resistance training for a little while in my twenties and even early thirties. But for the last decade it's been the one thing that I will not waiver on, so much so that I still see my own personal trainer. So today we are going to bring him into the studio.
He's an absolute I don't like the word guru, but he's a guru. The knowledge which this man has, the experience this man has still to this day blows me away, and he can share some of that wisdom with you all today it's Gary Matthewson, who is ex Mister Australia eight or seven times. Mister Victoria has more qualifications, degrees, certificates than you can poke a stick at. He's coming
in the studio. He's going to educate me and you all on the importance of strength training, in particularly importance of strength training for beginners or women. That's coming up next. And then we're going to talk about how you protect or reserve or preserve your social energy during this very social period of the year. That's coming up a little later in the show. But now it's time for Gary. This is the Woodlife. There is a guest I'm really
excited to have on the WOODLFE today. When I was twenty, I came over from Tasmania. I had my short shorts on, I had my bum bag. I was the biggest walking cliche personal trainer you have ever seen, had my slick back hair, had my little tank top on, and I joined what was probably the best personal training cheer in Australia at the time. And one of those wonderful trainers was a guy called Buff. No one ever knew his
first name. He was as wide as he was tall, and he was four percent body fat, and beneath what was a fairly imposing exterior was the nicest, most knowledgeable human being you'll ever meet. And he really took me under my wing as a twenty year old. He taught me an enormous amount still to this day. So twenty three years later, I still train with Buff once a week and I go in there and we pump on and we talk about how great we were in yesteryear and we have a good old laugh, and it's one
of my favorite hours of my week. I still learn at least one thing every session, and I've been doing this for twenty three years and being to UNI and taking sixty thousand PTA apartments. But your knowledge and the way you evolve your knowledge is just incredible. So it was about damn time we got you on the wood Life to talk about strength training.
Welcome mate, Sammy, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. And that is an introduction. I'd better say something because they're probably thinking there's no one there who is this boat.
Your real name is Gary Matthewson, but everyone knows you as Buff and you're the big gentle giant. And it's really interesting because I think back to when we met each other twenty three years ago about how people thought about strength training, and it's evolved the life way, but it's got a long way to go. Why are you so passionate about strength training and why do you think it's so important?
I mean, so we've got the obvious benefits, you know, like so getting stronger, adding muscle, you know, the ability to get leaner, hard health, brain health, posture, joint function and health. There is like a there there's stress management, looking good in your clothes, looking good not in your So they're probably the more obvious ones.
So what what's the thing that drives your passion because you don't work with people to get six packs very.
No, not really, not anymore. I mean with strength training, like all the biological systems in our body are upregulated and optimized, you know, so things like our gut microbiome functions and is healthier when we strength train. Our immune system gets stronger, metabolism, metabolism, all those sorts of things. You know, we manage our blood sugars more effectively, we manage our cortisol and our insulin more effectively when we
strength train. We are strength training even optimizes you like your thyroid hormones and your sex hormones, so it regulates those as well, which is really important once you get the other side of say even you know, thirty and above.
When I first heard about the importance of weight training or strength training as you get older, my head went to, well, it really is for the fifty five pluses, but it's not for fifty five plus. It's nice you start losing the lean muscle mass, the mobility, the bone density at one age.
Yeah, so like thirty, I think, Yeah, there's a thing called psycopene era, which is age related muscle loss. So we all, you know, a lot of people think, oh, that's I don't need to worry about that because that's old.
That's my people.
Yeah, it's like that's for the seventy five year olds and so forth. But the interesting thing is, mate, it happens as early as in our thirties. If we're not doing anything, they're saying, movie to lose.
It couldn't be true. Yeah, it's so true. So because I know you do a lot of work on longevity and quality of life, you know, you're literally shaving decades off people's lives, and they've got a spring in their step and they're like a lot of them are nearly thrown the towel in. Yes, yeah, that was that's a young person's game. And I'll never play golf again, or I will never you know, I can barely walk up
the driveway and now, so no I do. I started cycling and strength training, and I play golf and tennis. And yeah, but they're back. They're back to doing things they were doing in their thirties and forties that they haven't done for decades. Well, that's right.
So I like to educate my clients on that because I believe muscle is the organ of longevity. Yeah right, okay, all right, So there's a strong correlation between the amount of muscle mass we possess and longevity. But health and longevity, but not just a long life, Samy, It's about health span as well, not just live span. I like the old saying. It's like, we don't stop lifting because we grow old, we grow old because we stop lifting.
I love that. I love that our audience is predominantly women, not only but I would say eighty percent, right, So I'd love to drill down a little bit more on females doing weight training because We've got a lot of questions about females doing weight training. How many times a week would you recommend someone does weight training a female?
Right, Well, depending on training age. Now what I mean by that is how long have they been training? How they beginner? They intermediate, or are they advanced?
Yeah so not they're actually chronological age. But have you been in the gym for ten years or it's your first workout, that's you've been doing this for forty years?
Exactly right, So I just say beginner comes in day one, it says to me or asks me the question how many how many sessions a week should I should I train? And my answer would probably be something like, if it's starting from scratch, I would probably just start with maybe to thirty to forty five minute sessions, probably even thirty
to start with. Because one, we need to you know, obviously get used to putting load through our bodies, but also to we need we need to get the person a chance to build up their work capacity because it's all new and they are going to get some post workouts on.
Us quality not quantity. Door you still saw from the previous workout. You're not going to get the quality, are you? That's right. So yeah, got to be great news to our listeners because I think I think that's a massive mental hurd of aer I know I should do train, but I just don't have the time to do six sessions a week. So hang on, you don't have to go for an hour and you don't have to do six sessions a week.
And the other thing too, semi is who said you've got to go to the gym.
Yeah, that's the other thing I think there's a bit of a.
Misconception there to I've got to go to the gym. No, you don't. I mean, you know, I mean look at your program.
And dumbbells bands composed dumb bells. Yeah, you do it at the beach.
You can do it in the garage lander, it doesn't matter. So yeah, so it's doesn't doesn't necessarily have to be you know, or got to go to a fully equipped gym. Because there's the other thing too, Some people find that intimidating. So even so when we strength train two saying you like it, it boosts the performance of our mitochondria, So we know what. So we're not getting too sciencey, but I think it's just sort of good to know like, so, as we know, the mio chondria is the powerhouse of
we sell in our body. Our bodies have a band round about seventy trillion cells in them, right, It's a lot of cells. So by strength training, we can actually boost the performance of those cells, which equates to more energy.
Yeah.
Okay. The other thing is too, if we strength train, where you can actually increase the amount of mitochondriary we have too, which would mean more energy. Here some people saying, and you have more of them and more of them.
Yeah.
So the mitochondria, like I said, is the powerhouse, that's the energy center.
So isn't that interesting that because when I train with you, we push hard, we do I can barely, you know, pick my car keys up at the end of the day.
He's pretty damn good.
No he's not. But it doesn't I don't. I don't then feel flat as a pancake for the rest of the day. By the time I actually have shaken it off and I do get back to my car, I definitely have more energy. Definitely. So before we go into specific exercise, because I really do want to pick your brain and we can maybe use what's what is your definition of strength training to listeners.
My definition of strength training is using some form of resistance, whether that be a body weight or a bar bell or a dumb bell or a band or whatever, using some form of resistance to create a stimulus in the body, so adaptation stimulus in the body. So when we overload, when we overload the muscles in the body, they respond by getting stronger. Right, Yeah, the body is a very
intelligent gine, isn't it. So you know when we put when we stress it and we load it external load, it adapts by becoming stronger and then the muscles.
Will grow muscles. Basically.
Yeah, that's my definition.
Which is a great definition because I think the amount of people I see in the gym not wasting their time, but they're not getting much out of it. They're doing the same weight, same exercises that you know use. Like you say, the body is smart. They're not shocking the body. They're not overloading the body in any way. You know, they're lifting the same seven kilo dumbbells that they lifted three years ago, doing the same exercise for three sets
of ten. Now it's better than doing nothing, but it's not really overloading the body, not really, And look, I mean you're very good at encouraging people in very small increments to change the intensity of the exercise to a few more reps, do a bit more weight. You know, there's a number of different ways that we can create overload. It's not just weight.
Yeah, yeah, and that could be it exactly. So it's not doesn't always equate to more weight. It could be less rest in between sets, it could be No, I want you to slow the reps down and attention absolutely make it harder. That way, you can make a lighter weight feel harder by slowing it down.
If you could only choose, let's say five strength exercises resistance exercises for a beginner that they could do. What would your five be? Okay, and maybe why because I think peop would like to hear the what but they'd love to get a bit more meat on the bones.
So for five for me would be a hip hinge. So the listeners, nos hip hinge is like the dead lift pattern, a squat the squat pattern. Yeah, okay, we know what the squad is lift squat, right, we would go a vertical and horizontal pull. So so a vertical would be something like a chin up or a lat pull down. Horizontal would be some form of a row, so bend over row or one dumbbell row, even a t r X roight yea.
Beautiful all right?
Where am I is that for? That's for and one more would be the press, so same there, horizontal or vertical. But then obviously so we'll probably go six because we need some core in there. Yeah, yeah, And that would be for me would be some form of anti extension, which would be just a basic plank, so we're resisting extension through the hip. Anti rotation, which would be something like a power of press. I'm not sure whether.
There's a little paloff. Press is where you've got a band or a cable and you're pushing it. It wants to pull you one way or the other because you're pushing it in front of your body, but it's pulling you back towards the machine or back towards the bar that the band is strapped too. So rather than you rotating, your core strength is to stop rotating stabilized, and so the more tension that's in the band, the further away you are, the harder it is to press it out
in front of your body. It's just some of these simple exercises. The amount of works and when you say, col, this is one of the things you taught me really early on. It's not just your tummy, mustards, your glutes, it's the deep tummy.
Everything between your shoulders and your knees is because what I consider the core.
I love that it's not doing a lot of people do the upper abs, which is while their glutes are switched off whenever they're doing core exercises, so they're strong up the top, but they're weak down the bottom. It really changes things. You know, can do a in inverted commas plank for three minutes, but then when you get them to switch everything on proper, I could last thirty seconds.
And it makes plain.
Really locks in your gastuff and I could talk shop all day. But it's really interesting because and the reason I ask you is the TikTok world, the Instagram world is all about wow factor, you know, to stop you scrolling. And I get it. I get it. I gots of fads and funky exercises and look at this guy doing a backflip on a bowsu with a bar on his back, and you'll probably kill yourself. You know, I'm being a bit facetious, but you know it's it's stupid, you know,
but it gets your attention, it does. But what it has sort of done to and I've witness this with clients. They come in and sometimes they expected all of these circus acts and you have to educate them that they might look good, but it's very little benefit to that. Trust me. The stuff we're going to do is going to give you the best bang for your buck. And so I just thought, but it's interesting if I had to train myself with six exercise so forget being the beginner,
I'll do the same thing absolutely. How long does it take to see ras eults from strength training if you are doing it two or three times.
Away, Well, what will happen first is will you actually notice strength gains fairly quickly within the first month. You'll notice things that actually feels a bit easier than it did.
Four weeks ago.
Then you'll, I think, and then it's the sort of the second four week bracket. You'll actually start to see a bit of a bit of movement, providing you know, nutritions on point, you're getting enough recovery. You might be doing some extra cardio away from the gym as well. Or in the gym, whatever. So providing all those things sort of in place as well, Yeah, within within sort of eight weeks, you're sort of starting to see.
Results, noticeably results.
That's I think that at that point in time, you really got to be committed because a lot of people say, I'm not not motivated. But as you and I both know, motivation comes and goes. So if you can stay committed to see that consistent and sort of see out that sort of first sort of couple of months, you know, and as long as all those other things are on point as well, you'll start seeing a shift big time.
Man. I just wanted to thank you for coming in because I think I think a lot of people get intimidated about weight training. A lot of people overthink it from a complexity perspective, a lot of people underestimate the importance of it. And I think you've addressed all three of those things in a really powerful way that will resonate with people. So if people want to follow you on social media your.
Pizza revolution, or just even might handle Gary Mathison, just out Gary Mathison on Insta.
And then what was the female one that you said was.
Great for female Girl's gone strong?
That girl's gone.
Strong, Molly Galbraith, she's she's very good.
She's a gem. Yeah, really good mate, Thanks for coming on the wood life. Here's to our listeners getting stronger.
Get lifting.
So that's Gary Buff as he's affectionately known. Have literally worked with him or worked out with him for twenty three years now, and he has taught me an enormous amount and very very grateful, grateful for knowing him. It was wonderful getting me to the shootout to share some of those pearls of wisdom with you all. Next up, as promised, we're going to talk about your social battery and how you recharge it. I know for me this time of year, the calendar it can be a bit
daunting even you look at it. You look at the December calendary. Oh how am I going to fit all this in? It's not like work goes anywhere, it's not like the kids give you a hiatus. It's trying to juggle it all. So up next, we're going to talk about how you best do juggle at all with recharging that social battery. All right, So how do we protect our social battery at this festive time of year? So I was thinking about this from two very different directions.
I was driving to the studio today because I'm a much more extroverted person than Snazes, I find within reason. I mean, I have my limits, but I get energy from social interaction with a lot of people. I almost find like it gives me a bit of a buzz, whereas it really freak Snares out a little bit. She's fine with a closer circle of friends, but she's not anywhere near as extravert as I am when it comes to meeting other people. And so that was the first
sort of point that I wanted to make. You've got to know what type of person you are, and you've got to know what your specific limits are. This is not something that you and your partner should probably have the same schedule for, or you and your group of friends should necessarily have the same schedule for, because you need to do what's right for you and you need to set your own personal limits. So you've got to look at what the calendar looks like, and not everything
could or should be one hundred percent. There'll be certain things on the social calendar that, yes, it is still the right thing to do, still the right thing to attend you've got to be polite, you've got to do the right thing. But you could probably achieve the same outcome by being there for two hours, not consuming alcohol and driving home as you could if you totally let
your hair down and went bananas for eight hours. And what felt like a good idea at the time then SAPs a lot of your time and energy and focus the next day or the next following day. So you've really got to pick those special occasions. I've said it a million times on the podcast before. Guess what goes Friday is not a special occasion. It's a day of
the week. And I think when it comes to the festive season, when there's two or three or four or five things on the calendar every week, you really have to be even more selective and disciplined. You have to plan ahead. Don't just get to each event and sort of say, I'll see what happens. Have a bit of a plan. Yep, I'm gonna limit myself to two hours.
I've got a big wak ahead. There's a few other things that will be probably more social than this that I absolutely need to be my social butterfly self at I'm going to make sure this is a two hour limit and a drive home situation. So that's setting the limits. So we've got know your personality type and then set your own personal limits. The third thing is, if it's all one way traffic at this time of the year, no matter how well you set your limits, you're probably
going to run that battery dead. You've got to do things that plug that charger in. That might be a massage, a swim, some extra sleep, staying more hydrated, meditating, just giving yourself thirty minutes to read a book or get some fresh air or go for a walk. You need to do something that puts energy back in. It can't be all busy, busy, busy. Take take take because no matter how superhuman you are, or how superhuman you think
you are, you will hit a wall eventually. So your nutrition, your sleep, your rest, your care routine, all of that needs to contribute. Not to recharging the battery back to full every time you do it, but little ten percent increments to bump that battery up in between social occasions can be an absolute game changer. And then the last one that I'll add it's sort of closely related to that, but I think in today's world we often underestimate its
negative power or its battery draining abilities. It's just phones and social media. I think we don't realize how much that can sapas we're comparing ourselves to others where we're scrolling when we should be sleeping, we're losing productivity, we're
staring at a screen constantly. If you can limit your social media time when everything else is so elevated, you'll find you just cope better because I think the social media comes in and when we're relatively in control of how busy our calendars are or how hectic our lives are, just from a busyness perspective, we sort of get away with it. But as that water is rising, if you're still jamming as much screen time as much social media in there as perhaps you do when you're not so busy,
you'll overflow yourself and something's got to give. So just it's just a matter of awareness and discipline. Set some limits on your screen time, set some limits on your social media, and be self aware. Be self aware to when that battery is getting over Be self aware to how long you've been scrolling or spending on your social media platforms, and give yourself a bit of battery charging stuff rather than social media stuff. Whenever the opportunity presents.
There you go. That's it for today's episode. I will see you next week for our final SO of the year, which I'm really excited about. If you've got any questions, of course, please there's a link in the show notes in the Woodlife inbox. And until then, I'll see you next week.