Good a team.
Welcome to another installment of Well it's really part B of part two of the conversation I began yesterday about strength training. Hope you're enjoying it. Here's part two. So the next question is what are the different strength training options? So generally we're you know, we're talking about free weights. When we talk about free weights, we're talking about dumb bells and bar bells and kettle bells and plates. You know, so you know what a ten kilo plate is. You
slide it on the end of the barbell. You know what that is.
So they're all called free weights.
And what I like about free weights is there's a huge amount of flexibility and a multitude of different applications and like the beauty of Let's say you've got one hundred pounds of weights and a barbell that weighs twenty five pounds, so you've got in total, you've got one hundred and twenty five pounds or give or take what is that fifty you know, about fifty five k's in total, Like just with that bar and just with those weights,
there is probably you know, there's definitely thirty, forty, fifty sixty exercises that you can do, and then when we chuck in different benches and so on, there's we could, probably if we had enough time, figure out one hundred different exercises that can be done just with something simple like a barbell and some plates. So free weights are
definitely an option. What is probably a limitation or a caveat with free weights is that lifting free weights compared to the other options I'm about to talk about, can be comparatively more dangerous. I've seen many times people drop things and plates slide off barbells, and people get injured or almost injured in gyms. Myself included doing things where
they they haven't set something up properly. Also, the other thing to keep in mind about free weights, like somebody jumping on say a ball, a fitball or an exercise ball with a couple of dumbells, doing dumbbell bench press, lying on your back, doing a version of a bench press on a ball with dumbbells that's the separate weight each hand. Well, that requires quite a bit of competence
and confidence and skill and balance and technique. So using free weights really well requires a level of competence and skill that the average person will not have first time.
In the gym.
In fact, they won't have They might be naturally better at it than some, but definitely training safely and optimally with free weights is something that needs to develop over time. And people have said to me many times. But let's say, for example, you know what a barbell bench press is, So a pinloaded bench press where you lie on a bench and then you push up some handles that are fixed to some pinloaded plates where you push in a pin what are basically a steel kind of peg to
make the weight heavier or lighter. You can't overbalance because it's on runners and it's about as safe as you can get from a weight training perspective. So doing strength training with pinloaded equipment or similar. There's hydraulic equipment, there's different kinds of machine based exercise equipment. But let's just most gyms have got pinloaded equipment. Go into any gym, any normal commercial gym, there will be.
Nelly.
Any normal commercial gym, there'll be pinloaded equipment.
I guess I.
Should say that very easy to teach, very easy to do, and relatively safe. Not as functional. That is, for example, if I'm lying on a ball as I described before, doing a Dumbell bench press. I'm because only my feet are on the ground and my shoulders are on the ball.
I'm using all of the muscles from my ankles up to my neck basically to stabilize me because I'm on an unstable surface that is a ball, and my shoulder stabilizers are working over time, and my hips and everything, and so there's a lot more muscles being involved and required to execute that movement effectively, versus are harps lying
on a pinloaded machine. The reason that I like the pinloaded machines initially is that they're easy to teach, they're easy to do, and it's really you're still building strength, but it's really good for people to gain confidence in a gym. Anybody that comes to the gym that's pretty scared, that doesn't have any any or much prior experience, that's
a bit uncomfortable in that environment. I would almost always start them on pinloaded equipment if I have that option, purely from the point of view, so that they can have a strength training experience without going through the potential trauma of looking silly or being embarrassed, or having to learn a new technical skill on day one and so on. So free weights, pinloaded weights, and there are a bunch of other options in you know, you could call rock climbing.
There's indoor rock climbing centers. You could call that strength training, which it is. You could call using reformer beds in pilate studios strength training, which it is. I'm just talking about mainstream gyms for the moment, and I guess we would also chuck in there. You know, body weight training is a very legitimate and very very effective way to build not only strength, but also muscular endurance and overall functions.
So you know, some people think, yeah, but the problem with body weight is that you're lifting the same weight, so.
There's no real progression.
Well, grasshopper, you don't really understand progression if you think that is the case. And so there are a lot of ways to increase stress. There are a lot of ways to increase the level of intensity, even if you were using the same in inverted commas weight. So my weight is eighty five kilos, so my body weight eighty
five kilos. Now I could jump on the floor right now and do ten push ups, chest to ground, arms locked out at the top, right down, right up, right down, right up, and ten push ups might take me about ten seconds, and for me that would be very easy. But what if the same bloke with the same body, the same weight did the same exercise, but he slowed it down by ten times. What if instead of doing one push up in one second and finishing, I set of ten push ups in ten seconds. What if each rep?
What if each push up took me ten seconds. So what if I'm at the top of the movement and I go slowly to the ground five seconds, and then I come slowly back to the top of the movement, arm straight. Now I've done one rep, one repetition ten seconds. I do ten of those. Now my time under tension, that is how long my muscles are working for. My time under tension has gone from ten seconds to one
hundred seconds. And the intensity and the pain and the stress and the training effect and the value has gone through the fucking roof because I've just gone from a one or two out of ten hard to a fifteen out of ten hard using the exact same weight my body, doing the exact same movement a push up, stressing the
exact same muscles in a different way. So there are a lot of ways to increase intensity to make the training effects differently different and to get really good results with fuck all equipment or what seems to be not a lot of options. Remember, your body, your muscles are just biological tissues that respond to different stimuli, you know. Like for example, even if we go back just to the the push up example, so let's say you wanted
to well, how else could I make it different? All right, Well, instead of having two feet on the ground, have one. So now instead of having four anchor points, two feet, two hands, now you've got three. Oh wow, Yeah, well that that's harder. Yeah, that's harder. That's harder because in a way, you're lifting more weight. Yeah you're lifting the same body weight, but because you've got now you've got one foot off the ground, trust me, it's more in
inverted commas weight or more stress more accurately. Now, now do that same thing, but put that foot up on a chair and have your hands down on the ground and that oh fuck right now. All of these are examples of progression. Remember we spoke earlier about adaptation versus progression. This is the way that we create a progressive overload model of exercise without more equipment or more weight. Okay, the next question is how often should I train and
for how long? Now, literally thousands of people listen to this show, So for me to go, oh, everyone should do this would be flawed, it would be wrong, it would be misleading. And so I'm going to say, I think everyone who is capable should do a minimum. I mean, this is the rockety rock rock bottom. A minimum of
twenty minutes of strength training three times a week. That's what I think, And that is really just based on me, just you know, working with people forty five, I think ideally I would love people to do somewhere between thirty and sixty minutes three times a week. Now, that doesn't mean rushing through the workout. That doesn't mean you're in the gym for sixty minutes and you're lifting for sixty minutes.
That just means you're at the gym for thirty to sixty and probably about half that time you're actually lifting something. So in a thirty minute workout, there might be fifteen minutes where you're not lifting anything because you're lifting for a minute, you're recovering for a minute. But when you leave the gym, you've done fifteen minutes having your muscles under stress. So and again, how long you should train, how often you should train, how hard you should train.
These are questions that I can't specifically answer for obvious reasons. If it was you and me one on one and I got to know your story and I got to, you know, understand your body and your needs and your goals, and your capacity, and your injury history and your medical issues if you have any and bah bah bah all of that, then I could I could prescribe you a
program which would be relatively specific to your needs. But even with that, we go all right, you know, Sally, here's your program based on everything you've told me that the conversation, We've had a little bit of testing, we've done, but we're still going to see how your body responds. We're still going to see how your body responds, and we're going to tweak and we're going to adapt as
we go. Even with my own training, my training varies over time as I get older, as I as things change, as my shoulder is temporarily fucked, so I've got to modify and work around that. And and I guess this comes down to, you know, how do you find the right program? Well, how you find the right program for you look. In an ideal world, you would have someone with a lot of knowledge right your program and that
person with I'm talking about an ideal world. We don't live in an ideal world, but some of you might be able to make this happen. That is, you find someone. You either find a very experienced personal trainer, somebody with a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience and a lot of runs on the board in terms of prescribing exercise, writing programs, working with a broad cross section of humans with different bodies and different needs and different environments.
You need someone who is vastly experienced. No disrespect to brand newbies. Everybody's got to start somewhere. But I'm telling you what I think is best for you. Like I don't want the mechanic that qualified last tuesday to work on my car, no disrespect. Everyone's got to start somewhere. But if we're talking about how do you find the best pro for you, you want someone with experience.
You want someone with experience, and.
That program is going to be designed based on your needs, your individual physical needs, your body type, and like I said, medical stuff, injury stuff, and also the specific goals that you have, like what is it that you want to do and be and change and optimize.
You know.
It might be I want to build upper body muscle strength. I want to strengthen my weak, shitty lower back. I want to lower my blood pressure. I worked with someone recently who one of their main goals is to increase grip strength because they've got really like really weak hands and really you know, and they've got other goals, but they're like, how.
Do I do that?
And I said, go get yourself a rubber ball or a tennis ball or something that's pretty pumped up, pretty hard, and just squeeze that motherfucker all day, or not all day, but every now and then.
Think of it.
Squeeze right hand, ten reps, left hand ten reps, you know, squeeze in hold five, let it out, squeeze, you know whatever, just doing different. Like bodies are adaptable, muscles are adaptable. So what is it that you want with your body? It might just be, you know what harps overall. Overall, I just want to be functional. I just want to be able to do life with minimal pain, with optimal ease in terms of being able to, you know, navigate all the practical requirements of moving my body and doing
the things that I need to do. You know what was interesting. And if you didn't see it and you don't follow me, then go to my Facebook page. I've got two face if you like. I've got two Facebook pages. One is a professional one, which is I think the photo of me is gray, like a black and white, and the other one is a color photo that that one is my personal one. And there's I've got like five thousand friends and thirty thousand followers or something. Jump
on there and just follow me if you want. But my long winded.
Point is.
Yesterday I had coffee, so I'm recording this Saturday, two thirty eight pm. Yesterday morning, Friday, I had coffee with some friends of mine, Jan and Ian. And Jan used to work for me. They've actually been on the show. They've actually been on the show. I'm going to get them back on. Jan is eighty four years young, Ian is eighty six, and they are both fucking amazing. I mean that's not me being positive or me being glowing.
They are incredible. For Ian is eighty six, and Ian moves and seems and has the energy of Again, this is just my observation and my anecdotal judgment. But I've worked with fucking thousands of humans, so I think I'm a pretty good judge. This eighty six year old dude is like a fit, strong, functional sixty year old. I mean at eighty six, it is crazy. I mean, this guy's eighty six and can do overhand, full body, full range. I should say, chin ups right up, right down. Eighty
six years old. The average eighty six year old could not hold their body weight for two seconds, maybe five, probably zero. And by the way, if you're eighty six and have never done that, don't try right now.
Let's build up to that. Now.
These guys train every day, they do something. And so he does weights three or four days a week. He splits it up.
Into upper body and lower body.
He does he does standing paddle board two times a week for five and a half kilometers. So he stands on a paddle board in the bay, on the in the in the sea, and he paddles five and a half kilometers. He paddles for I think it's Blackrock to Halfman Bay of black Rock, or vice versa. Anyway, he rides his mountain bike every you know, every second day or so. He lifts weights. His wife, Jan is eighty four.
She does boxing once a week, She trains so boxing with a trainer once a week, she does strength training with a trainer once a week. She does strength training by herself twice a week, and then she hooks up with her girlfriends and goes and walks the stairs and the ramps at the beach. Now, what I love about these two is they are doing exactly what I am
talking about today. They are. Now you think they're genetically completely differently because their husband and wife they're not genetically related, but they are both absolutely outstandingly functional and operational, not because they're genetically gifted, but because they are doing these things, Like they have both been strength training for decades, and now what they get to enjoy is a biological age and a level of function that is, I would guess
decades younger than the calendar decade, younger than.
Their chronological age.
And so, you know, this is the beauty of being able to get over this fucking story that we have in our culture of what is age appropriate. You know, we base activities for certain people on you know, we go, oh, well, you're this old, therefore you should what you should bowl or you should sit in a circle of chairs and hit balloons around to each other. I'm not trying to be disparaging, but the fox's sake, what we need is
we need old people getting strong and proactively being encouraged. Obviously, we've got to work with what we've got, the limitations they have, of course, and we can't all go into the gym. And you know, gung Ho, I understand that. I understand that, but you know what that the human body is fucking incredibly adaptable and resilient. And you know, one of the things that we're doing now, a friend of mine, Robin Robin Vincent, has got an organization called
Strength Over Cancer. She's a fucking gun good a rob I hope you're listening to this Strength over Cancer, and you know she's working with and all of She's got this great organization and these great people that volunteer their time to work with people who are battling or dealing with, navigating whatever you want to call it, the cancer journey.
And we know now and even people who are in the mid midst of chemotherapy and radio radiation therapy who are doing strength training, because we know that that's strength training, even for people who are in the middle of chemo and the cancer journey can be check with your doctor and all that. Don't jump in because I said it, but it can be protective and they are getting some
amazing results strength training. Honestly, it's like, you know, if we could produce, if we could you know what I'm going to say, don't you, If we could produce a drug that has the psychological, the physiological, biological, emotional, practical, real world benefits of strength training, if we had a that would be hands down the most popular, biggest selling, most profitable drug in the history of mankind. But there is no fucking magic pill, and the pill in inverted
commas that we need to take. Strength training is not quick, fun, easy, or painless. It's not without effort, it's not without sacrifice. So in a world that is obsessed with quick fixes and instant gratification and magic pills and safety nets and you know, two minute abs, it is so important that we get our mind in the right place to get our body in the right place. I've got a bit of evangelical then didn't I do that? I'm nearly done. I've got two questions. My second last question is how
hard should I train? I've kind of answered it. But the answer is initially not hard at all. Like I said, the first four to eight weeks, apart from all the other stuff I said, you're just trying to build a training base. You're trying not to get injured, you're trying to stay safe, You're trying to build a relationship with strength training and dumbells and barbells, etc. But once you're on the journey, and now you've been training for a while,
you've got some strength. You've got a bit of strength, you've got some technique, you've got some understanding, you know how to do things well. Then you can, with the right technique, being sensible and intelligent and strategic, you can train pretty fucking hard, pretty hard. I'm not talking about in a silly or reckless way, but you would be surprised, Like you just heard me tell you what Ian does.
Ian's eighty six. Ian is, like I said, is like someone thirty years younger, twenty five years younger, and he trains for an eighty six year old man stupidly hard, stupidly hard, but it ain't stupid because he's programmed and conditioned and work towards that literally decade. So we don't want to train over the top. We don't want to train too much or too long or too hard, but we also want to train at a level where our body has to adapt. Remember we've spoken earlier about maintenance
and progression. If we want our body to progress, we need to be training at a level, at an intensity, with enough variety so that there is a genuine need for adaptation, improvement, growth, transformation. And my last question is Harps, I didn't write that. I'm just saying that, Harps, what about recovery?
Good question.
So what we're doing in the gym is we're stimulating this adaptive response. But it's really when we're not at the gym that the good stuff happens, the growing, the recovery, the improvement, the adaptation. All we're doing in the gym is we're just stimulating that adaptive response. So how long you will have between workouts will vary.
But I'm like, as.
A really rough bro science guide, i would not be training the same muscle groups in terms of length, training more than every third day. So I wouldn't be going in on Monday training my chest and then back in on Tuesday train and my chest, or maybe even Wednesday
it might be Thursday. So again this is not a recommendation, but a lot of people and it seems to work quite well, tend to come around and they do what's called a split routine, by the way, which is where we just break up the muscle groups to train them on different days. It's not necessarily if strength is your goal, it's not necessarily a good idea to go in the gym and train chest and back and shoulders and biceps and triceps and lower back and abs and quads and
hamstrings and glutes and carbs all on the oneday. It's good to break that stuff up and so recovery between workouts. Or you can train every day, but you're not training the same things every day.
By the way, you don't need to train every day. And a really good.
A really good guide for some people is three on one off maybe, which is where we do we might do let's say, and this is an example, not a prescription, I might do chest and arms on day one, and then day two I do all lower body, lower back and lower body, and then day three because I did chest and arms on day one, day three I do shoulders and back, and then day four I have off so that's a recovery day in this program that I'm hypothesizing. But what that means is on day one, I'm doing
upper body, day two, I'm doing lower body. Day three I'm doing upper body, and day four I'm having off. So I'm never doing upper body two days in a row. I'm never doing legs two days in a row. Or it might just be upper body day off, lower body day off, upper body day off, lower body day off, upper body day off, low it whatever, but your body will tell you.
Your body will tell you.
All right, team, I just spoke for about an hour and ten minutes sitting in a room by myself. It only took me about fifteen goals at this fucking podcast. If you enjoyed it, I hope you do something with it. If you want to give me some feedback on it, just go to the the old Facebook page Rouni and tell me if you enjoyed it, because if you tell me not to stroke my ego, but then I might do something similar, I might open the door on some
more conversations. Obviously, the vast majority of what I'm doing at the moment, you know, is either conversations with people about their stuff, but invariably we're talking about, you know, a high performance from a cognitive and emotional and psychological and behavioral point of view. But I you know, also I acknowledge that we all live in a body, and you can't get one, you can't get another one, that the one that you've got is your one, that's your addition.
You can't you know, you can't fuck it up and then just go order another one. So I'm also of the opinion that we all need to really prioritize our body from the point of view that when we look after our body, we look after everything, because doing life in a body that's broken or unhealthy or on the way to being broken or unhealthy is no way to do life. All right, love your guts is see you next time.