Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 001: Female Fitness Myths Exposed!

Episode Date: January 5, 2015

Women have been (and continue to be) fed a load of sh&t about fitness and fat loss. If you want to achieve a lean hard body it is time to stop following advice that wastes your time and slows your progress. Sal, Adam & Justin have trained hundreds of women and provide the answers you really need

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, pop, mind, pop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Welcome back to Mind Pump. This is Adam Schaefer, Justin Andrews, and Salda Stefano. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel, you guys, because it's freaking awesome. You know, today I think we're going to get into something that we don't really touch that much on, you guys, because it's freaking awesome. You know, today I think we're gonna get into something that we don't really touch that much on, you know, and we probably don't have very many women listeners. But for those that do listen,

we love you too, just as much. Actually, we love you more. Thank you. We love you. We don't really like the guys that listen. Yeah, so. Yeah. But, you know, there's a lot of stuff.

So first of all, women are a majority of our business So of course we love them personal training. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I think like 80% it's yeah, it's upside Definitely, and I don't know if that's because I don't think it's because women need more help them in I think it's the ego correct that men have they have 100% have a problem with accepting help from another man or another even Another woman in that matter, but Women are more open to it, you know there at least that's been in my experience It's like every every male that I've ever trained it it always feels so a little awkward at the beginning because it feels like unless they're just a cool Dude and which is one right one happened for sure. Yeah, everyone's so all you got to do to is very secure with

Himself very open. Okay. I'm looking for professional health. He sees it the right way. And but a lot of times it's like this, you don't want to be asked probably, I just need you to help me with a couple things. Yeah. I don't, I don't really need a personal trainer. I don't need anyone to really, you know, I've been lifting weights since I was, I used to be really buff. Yeah.

Yeah, let me tell you, you know, you should see what I looked like when I was your age. Oh, I love that. I love that. Yeah, I used to look like you. Yeah, really? You'll bring it to picture. You I used to look like you. Yeah, you're brilliant. You're brilliant. You're brilliant.

You're brilliant. You look like a 35 year old Sicilian dude with a beard. Right. So, you know, so I definitely, we definitely love the women. And we, but I definitely think because of that, I also think that a lot of gyms, a lot of programs, a lot of things have taken advantage of that. Well, it's interesting, you know, I love that you brought that up

because the fitness industry used to be all men. Uh, gyms used to be all guys, right? You know, no women lifted weights. We're talking like Jack Lillane. We're talking about BC, right? Before Christ. Yeah, exactly. No, no, no, women didn't go to the gym because it was guys that lifted weights to get stronger.

Women were supposed to be dainty and the kitchen. That kind of stuff back in the day. And so they didn't, they never went to gyms. And then supposed to be dainty and the kitchen, that kind of stuff back in the day. And so they never went to gyms. And then, you know, these gym owners found out, hey, we're missing like half of the demographic. We need to make, we can make some money off of women. But up until this point, they were advertising to men about getting stronger and being more manly.

So how did they change the paradigm? Well, what they did, and women I apologize on behalf of the fitness industry, but they lied to you so Bad they made up words. They actually made up terms to sell you gym Memberships so like like right off the top your head Justin. What's owned? Duh-tone is such a big one. It's a dirty word. It's such a, it's such, it's so bad though. And so right on that you guys said that because it's so ingrained, if you've worked for a gym, you know, especially a large chain, you've even got it ingrained yourself. I catch myself saying it everyone's wrong. That's a fresh egg right?

You're so gist and then you see it. You're so gist but you've been trained to say that word, you know, tone to a woman for so long because you don't want to intimidate her by saying getting buff or building muscle. Have any fur big? You tell a woman, I'm gonna build some muscle on you. Oh, but freak out. Oh, yeah, especially a girl coming in who wants to lose weight. She comes in, she wants to lose body fat. She looks at you and you tell her, well, what we're gonna do is we're gonna build some muscle. Yeah, she would see you later, dude, I ain't't hiring you. But tell you what we're gonna do though,

is I'm gonna tone your muscles. Well, we're not gonna build them, we're not gonna get all bulky in bay. We're gonna get bulky muscle, but I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tone your muscle. And they're like, that sounds wonderful. It's a market, it was a 100% marketing term. Does toning even exist?

No, because it's impossible. It reminds me of this one quote, what was it called? There's no such thing as firming and toning, only strong, getting stronger and weaker. That's it. The muscles, these are very simple. It's a very simple process. Yeah. Yeah. So the early stages of building muscle, a muscle will just feel tighter.

And this is what this is what you, when you say, oh, I feel more toned, you know, because I know there's some women right now listening, saying, oh, but that's not true because I lifted weights, you know, a certain way and I'm getting bigger, but my muscles got tighter. Actually, what happened is they did get bigger. They just got bigger to a much smaller degree to the point where you don't see visible size,

you just feel tighter. And the word tone is just baloney, but it's not, that's the more popular word, but that's not the one that irritates me the most one more. Oh, I've got some that piss me off so bad so like Pilates is really guilty of this crap and they'll say something like do you are lengthening exercises to give you long-lein muscle? What the fuck can you change muscle insertion unless you have surgery and some removes? You know your bicep tendon and reattach it.

You don't make the muscle forage on your leg, on your seamer. Gives you an extra four inches on your femur and then reattaches. Yeah, and they'll say, look at dancers. Look at professional dancers. Look how long and lean they look. You want to know by the look long and lean

because at that level of training, when you're at that high level and you're a professional dancer, not only do you train hard, but you also genetically fit the ball. As you can see, it's not like a swimmer all of a sudden gets like a narrow waist, big long lats and long arms. You started that way. Yes, you started off that way.

You didn't grow bat wings later on. You know, you know, you was already built to be a star. Well, I remember in the early days, I've been working out for a long time. I was my first gym membership was 15. And the first gym I went to was not too far from my house in San Jose. And they actually, some gyms still have this, maybe not so much in California,

because California's always on the forefront of fitness. But they actually had a separate women's section from men's section. That's a woman's first gym I started. That was that way. And here's the funny thing, the women's section had the same equipment. But that's smaller, right?

And like purple. Yes. The poultry was a different color. And the weight stacked and go was heavy. But it was the same fucking equipment. That's great. It was the same equipment. I mean, how patronizing, I don't know.

Like maybe I'd have to get a female perspective on that. Well, I just think about this. I just find that so funny. It's gonna be very intimidating. And you know, for a a woman it could be very similar for me. They probably have to like and they I also have when I bring my card to a mechanic and I don't know shit about my engine. You could probably tell me the flux capacitor is broken and I would pay you a thousand dollars to fix it. So I'm sure that I watch too much back to the future.

Those aren't real. That's the only part I knew in a car because of that movie. back to the future. Those aren't real. That's the only part I knew in a car because of that movie. So, you know, I'm sure it can be really intimidating. So, you know, what are some things that, you know, for them to feel more comfortable? And the first thing that comes to mind is to be okay with understanding that, you know, you have fat cells and you have muscle cells. It doesn't work like it's like this shaping of the cell. It doesn't work that way. You either build them, you break them down. It's just pretty simple like that. So you're either adding fat or you're losing it.

You're either adding muscle or you're losing it. And it's all over your body. Yeah, exactly. And you know, something that I always explain to, or I try and explain is that one of the best things that we can do as a female is to actually lift some good heavyweight, build some muscle and build up your metabolism. It's awesome for women to do that, especially like bone density issues.

And that's a real thing. They have to be conscious of that after a certain age. Well, let's even talk about the cosmetic. One of the best things, first of all, let's rewind for a second. Some women are afraid of getting too big or too muscular. There's an extremely small percentage of the female population that will get big and muscular lifting weights like a professional bodybuilder. And chances are you can already tell. You look at them and they already look that way.

So 99.9% of you, if you never take steroids You you can train as heavy as I do you could train like the hardest hardcore bodybuilder power lifter And what'll end up happening to you is you'll get very tight You'll get amazing curves you'll get leaner and you'll look really good naked And it's all the side effects. No, you know why I say really good naked because you can get skinny By just doing cardio and then you put a bathing suit on or bikini and I've- I've had female clients come to me and say, oh, I lost all this weight, but then I put a bikini on and my butt looks kind of, you know, they'll tell me, my butt looks kind

of flabby and that's because they don't have muscle. Can I say too right now? Okay. Can I say that part of this fault or who's at fault or to blame is this the bullshit, you know, magazines and Victoria's secret and dude, being that skinny is not sexy. Very unattractive for men. Very unattractive for men. It is not, and I'm sure Sal will sit here and bring it down once, not that way for nature.

It's already not, it's not okay. We were not designed that way to be attracted to that. Oh, honey, there's, there's Yeah, there's no I don't know if you I don't know if any of you guys have ever dated a girl That's like that who's actually what we used to call a skinny fat where you just skinny and soft and you and you grab her ass And you're it's like marshmallow. Yeah, and she but she's looks like she's super fit because she's small and she's lean and she does a lot of cardio And she eats like salads all day long Yeah, and so she has like no muscle mass to her and you touch any part of her body and it's just like It's like even I mean look even from another standpoint I mean some women I'm sure trained because they want to look more or work out because they want to look more attractive to the opposite sex

Just like men do the same thing But then there's a lot of women that just work out because they want to look better from themselves And they're all fit. Yeah, and let me tell you something there if you had to pick one modality of exercise You have all these different modalities of exercise right yoga Pilates weight training cardio running whatever if you had to pick one That would most radically change your body in the positive way in terms of A, how you look, B, how you move, how you feel on a cellular level, affecting your hormones in a positive way, affecting your mood in a positive way,

giving you better energy level, speeding up your metabolism, nothing holds a candle to resist the training. No way, not even close away. Nothing in your best, I'll tell you what, if you don't believe me, this is what you do. Look at women who've been exercising for a long time who are in their 60s, let's just say their 60s, okay. Find women who are runners, their whole lives in their 60s.

Find women who did yoga, their whole lives in the 60s and then find women in their 60s who were natural, who've always lifted weights. And look at the difference in how they move, look at their bodies, look at their metabolism, energy, look at all those things. Because resistance training, and a lot of people don't understand this, affects your body so much more than just while you're working out. Hormones get affected. Your hormones stay youthful because in order to build muscle, you have to have a certain amount of certain anabolic hormones.

So resistance training actually stimulates those hormones. And so you retain this youthful hormone level. So for example, for men, as the age or testosterone levels decline, but if they lift weights properly, their testosterone levels don't but if they lift weights properly, their testosterone levels don't decline nearly as much. And these same things happen to women. Metabolism gets faster, skin will look better as a result. You know, I've seen lots of long distance runners who are lean and run, you know, for years

and years and years, and they've got this weather to look. And they do because of all the oxidative stress, all that long distance running puts on the body. Whereas resistance training doesn't do that to the body if you do it properly. Let's talk about probably one of the, you just kind of skim by it right now, but with women that come to the gym,

a majority of them are encapsulated by what we said, but a big piece of them I think also, thought of the category of losing weight, significant weight, put on weight over the year, or you've got what we call what people call baby weight, and they want to come in. It's their January, it's beginning of the year, we want to lose weight, and what weight lifting does for your metabolism. You know, a lot of people don't realize this, but for every pound of muscle that you build on your body, your body is going to burn an additional 60 calories a day

just to sustain that muscle. So let's say you are a female and you come in initially with your trainer and he tells you, are you tell him that you want to lose 30 pounds? And he says, okay, but he's a smart guy. Okay, we're gonna back up a little bit. He's a smart trainer and he tells you that, what we're gonna do before we start to lose the 30 pounds is I'm going to I'm going to rebuild your metabolism back up

and then we're going to do this the right way so you can sustain it for the rest of your life and we don't just drop 30 pounds because what I would explain to somebody is that losing 30 pounds is very simple, you know, you just quit eating all the shit that you were eating before you joined the membership and run like crazy on the treadmill and you're going to lose weight. Now the problem with that is if you've already yo yo dieted before your metabolism you join the membership and run like crazy on the treadmill and you're going to lose weight. Now, the problem with that is if you've already yo yo diited before your metabolism been kind of shot, you're getting older, whatever the case may be while your metabolism slowed down, you can still rebuild that.

You can still rebuild your metabolism is a free flowing thing that's ever changing. Should it adapt? Yes, it adapts and people think that when you get older, like you just will never have the metabolism of you can build your metabolism better than when it was when you were 25 when you were 20 when you're in your teens, you can build it better than that. So if you were eating correctly and poorly back then it was it was running. Yeah, because you were running around because you were young kid, but you can rebuild that metabolism. And part of that is learning how to eat correctly and one of the best things you could do to help aid that and speed that process along is

building lean body mass, building muscle. Because if you put five to six pounds of muscle on, so let's say a month goes by and you're with this smart trainer and you wanted to lose 30 pounds. And he adds two pounds to you. A month goes by, you've been training with them three to four times a week and you've put two pounds on the scale. Of muscle. Your muscle. Your pistol.

You're now 32 pounds away from what you thought your goal was. But what you don't maybe don't realize, because this guy's a smart personal trainer, is he's got you eating now 2,500, 2,700 calories, more calories than you've ever consumed before, and you've added a good solid four to five pounds of muscle. And you actually probably lost a pound or two along the way, but don't feel it because you don't see the scale that way.

But really, you just made a huge shift in your metabolism and you're now on your way to rebuilding it. So the long story short, it's about being patient and doing things the right way, like when you first get started. So, and that's also where we stress, you know, research and getting either finding the tools, like we've all written books on nutrition

and diet and stuff like that for you to read. Read up on that shit. We talk about it a lot on our shows, a lot of us do this on our Instagram and social media tools. Like research before you guys just go into the gym and you go hire a personal trainer to start working out on the right approach. Otherwise, yeah, you might be successful

for that wedding date or summer coming around, but that shit's going to come back. Well, I mean, if you gain, you know, if you start with resistance training, let's say you do gain three pounds of lean body mass, you're not going to get bigger. It's not much. You're not going to notice size. If anything, you'll be the same size and you'll just feel tighter. Yeah. But now you're burning, you know, 200 more calories a day. Just sitting there, you know what that is? That's like 30 minutes on a stationary bike. Or every day.

Or a glass and a half a wine. Well, I don't even remember the last time I've actually had somebody like, okay, I want your scale weight. And then I want to keep checking your scale weight. That's something that I threw out a long time ago. Yeah, and here's, I'll tell you something right now. I'm about, I'm six feet tall, roughly maybe a little taller,

about six feet tall. I weigh about 196 pounds, 195 to 197. So about 196, I'm relatively lean, but my weight puts me at, if you look at my BMR, my body mass, the chart, the BMI chart, I'm actually considered overweight. I'm actually considered overweight. And I'm like super obese.

Yeah, so weight doesn't really, what does weight tell you? I'll tell you something right now. If I cut my leg off, I'll lose a lot of weight. Is it the kind of weight I want to lose? No, so like female athletes, you see some of these female athletes that are very lean and look fantastic. And a lot of, I've heard a lot of women say, well, I want to look like, you know, so like female athletes, you see some of these female athletes that are very lean and look fantastic. And a lot of, I've heard a lot of women say, well, I want to look like, you know,

so-and-so female athlete that looks phenomenal. If you go look at their weight, there are probably a good 15 pounds heavier than you think there. Yeah, that's what you think there. Oh, that's what I'm saying. They're about 15 pounds heavier than they think. Oh, always.

So who cares? Nobody's going to care how much you weigh. Right. When you look and feel fantastic. But let's be honest, that's a big indicator for the average person, especially the average person. Yeah, well, they should go more by size, right? Yeah, you feel.

Yeah, so it's always close. Yeah, tell me, you got on the scale, you feel it. Tell me how you feel. It's your conference. Size and performance. And nothing is more, somewhere, I don't know where this came from, but somehow a long time ago through society, strength became a masculine thing and it wasn't feminine, which is insane.

This isn't making any sense. There's nothing more feminine than, and I've had women tell me, you know, I've trained quite a few women in my years as a trainer, and they tell me how feminine they feel because they're stronger and more secure in their bodies and more stable in their bodies because of the strength that they've got from resistance training. And if you want rapid results, I'll tell you something right now, you'll get faster results in a month of lifting weights than you will anything else. You'll see it in the gym.

You'll go to the gym, you're 15 pounds stronger on a deadlift or something. You're not going to see that with other kinds of equipment with anything else. Resistance training produces quick rapid results that are long lasting that affect the whole body. So if you're getting into exercise now or if you're already exercise and you don't do resistance training, not only should you do it, but I think it should be the cornerstone of your program. I think it should be the base.

And the truth is, when you look at all facets of physical activity, endurance, stamina, agility, flexibility, all these things, the base for all of them is strength. If you're super flexible, if you do lots of yoga and you're super flexible but you don't have strength, you're setting yourself up for trouble. If you resist and strain properly, not only will you get much stronger, but there's lots of carryover. You're going yourself up for trouble. If you resist and strain properly, not only will you get much stronger, but there's lots of carry over. You're gonna get some endurance, you're gonna get some stamina,

you'll actually get some flexibility. And then that's a form of strength because they're using gravity and their body weight and they're placing themselves in an angle where yeah, it's a misconception, like just to add weights to a different type of a movement like that's completely the same thing It's just now it's in a different control and you have a different force in your hands It is and you see more women now in gyms

You see a lot more women lifting weights in gyms and I would say women are probably they're gonna surpass men And I'll tell you why you actually touched upon it the whole ego, I see guys lifting way more weight than they should with shitty form, and then they burn out or they hurt themselves. You don't really see women doing this because I think women don't have that ego thing where they're trying to convince them. They listen to advice. They do, they really do.

You tell a woman about tempo, it's great. And tech guy, you can stress that over increasing weight and they will perfect their form before they make the next step up and weight where men are the other way around where they're quick to increase the weight, but having prepared they stay down in a way that they can control and manage

and actually can finish their performance or rep with good form. You know, here's the good thing about resistance training with other facets of activity like endurance, to a certain extent the more the merrier. So like if you run three, four days a week, you're gonna get way more endurance than if you run twice a week.

If you're a beginner with resistance training, it's not necessarily true. Most beginners can get great results with two days a week of resistance training. If they work the whole body and they do things like squats and deadlifts and overhead presses. And then maybe on the other days, they just remain active.

You don't have to do a lot of activity. Yeah, you don't have to do a lot of resistance training unless you want to go to the next level. But for most people, two days a week, you can get pretty far. How about the body's ability for adaptation too? The body's ability for adaptation for resistance training is far greater than it is for being able to get

depth of like cardio. Cardio, your body figures that out really, really fast. Really fast. And the results that you were even getting from cardio at the very beginning when you first started to finish greatly after a couple of weeks. It's actually really hard to get here. Hard to max exactly. And even when you start maxing it, your body becomes more efficient at burning less and

less calories. Utilizing less and less calories actually to perform that high intense cardio where weight training, there's so many different ways you can confuse the body to keep it guessing and to keep the body working and burning more calories and burning more fat. So a lot more room to play with that when you talk about sustained results. So Sal says it's one of the fastest, but it's also one of the best ways to sustain continuous results and breaking through plateaus where it's very easy. And it's also why when I take any client on and I start them off whether it's fat loss,

muscle gain doesn't matter. I actually stripped them of cardio when we first start and said I don't want you doing any. Yeah, I do the same thing. Until I learned your metabolism, I can build you a good foundational weight training program. And then your cardio is something we're gonna have in our back pocket later on the road

that I'm gonna utilize and teach you how to utilize that throughout your week. Cause I actually like to prescribe cardio based off of people learning how they they eat on a regular basis. I try and make something as realistic to their lifestyle and make it to a point where hey, you know what, if you're somebody who's going to go out to dinner with your your fiance or whatever every Saturday and that's something that that's important to you for whatever reasons and that's okay, you can still be normal and actually still getting really good shape.

But learn that, hey, a lot of times the average American, they don't realize this, but when you make those bad choices, it's always, it's not always, a lot of the time, it's on the worst time that you can do it. So just learning that and understanding that and understanding how you can counter that by setting yourself up. And that's how I like to use cardio. So, yeah, well, I mean, the majority of the calories you're going to burn throughout your day is when you're not working out. Yeah, it's the fact like it's obviously there's

certain factors that play into it like your intensity levels, like sometimes you'll get the hip-hop effect and you know, but for the most part, like, this is why it's so crucial in the beginning not to overdo it. Like you really want to keep it simple. You want to understand and learn your body, especially controlling yourself in space and understanding where you are in that space. And that's why I train, you know, I really try to focus attention on multiple planes. So it's not just about going forwards and backwards in the sagittal plane. It's also about going left to right.

It's also about twisting in the transverse plane. These are all things that mimic actual things that you're doing in real life. So if I'm reaching back to answer my kid in the back seat or something like that, right? That's me twisting in the transverse plane. And so why would I not train my body to handle that sort of force in my training program? And just to bring it back to how the fitness industry tries to target women and create words and things

that don't exist, a red light should go off anytime you see a supplement company that says, you know, this is designed for women. Yeah. This new multivitamin for women, this protein powder for women, or this workout program specifically designed for women. What the fuck? Like there is no difference between balance. Do you know the difference between a woman's multivitamin and a minz multivitamin?

What? 500 milligrams of iron. Yeah, they'll add a little bit for the mint. Yeah, they add a little bit more for the women because women typically lack in the iron and the Men need a little bit less. So that's it. Yeah, or nothing or they'll just they'll just pack it. They'll throw in a little extra B12 or they'll put some salt and metal for a man and make it pink or something. Which all that just so you guys know too, you can nutritionally pick up that much in food or something else. Your tie it throughout the day. So easily can you be off on all that. I mean, your best bet, you go into a gym, learn the big basic lifts, dead lifts, barbell squats, overhead presses, bench presses, rows, your lunges, you know, pull-ups if you can, if you can't pull down your traditional ab exercises and you're going to do great doing those types of things and that's

really it. If you can't do those exercises for whatever reason, then you can hire someone to correct muscle imbalances. But other than that, just go for it. And then number two, train to get stronger. Your goal should be to lift more weight in the gym. Your body will reflect that. And that's it. That'll give you so much better results than anything else you're going to listen to, anything designed specifically for women or whatever, get stronger at those big movements and I swear, our phones will be ringing off the hook you'll be thinking of.

pump.