Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1547: The Hidden Benefits of Lifting Weights

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover the lesser known benefits of resistance training.  The top attributes we connect with lifting weight too. (1:47) It’s about the journey, not the destination. (2:58) The Hidden Benefits of Lifting Weights. (4:32) #1 – Increases Androgen Receptor Density. (7:24) #2 – Balances out your hormones. (10:42) #3 – Boosts your libido. (17:40) #4 – Improves your mood. (19:25) #5 – Enhances your cognitive function/neuro-pathways. (23:40) #6 – Expands your mobility. (27:48) #7 – Improves the health of your heart. (32:07) #8 – Strengthens your bones. (34:36) #9 – Promotes better sleep. (39:38) Related Links/Products Mentioned May Specials: MAPS Aesthetic & the Extreme Fitness Bundle 50% off!  **Promo code “MAYSPECIAL” at checkout** Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** The Alchemist Androgen receptors and testosterone in men—Effects of protein ingestion, resistance exercise and fiber type Tip: How to Increase Androgen Receptor Density | T NATION The BEST Natural Testosterone Booster – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1137: The #1 Form Of Exercise For Health & Longevity The effect of resistance training on cognitive function in the older adults: a systematic review of randomized clinical trials Mind Pump #1542: How Bodybuilders Ruined Weight Lifting For Everyone 5 Long-Term Benefits of Resistance Training – Mind Pump Blog The Resistance Training Revolution – Book by Sal Di Stefano Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pup, right? In today's episode, we talk about lifting weights, strength training, resistance training. But we don't talk about how it makes you stronger or speeds up your metabolism.

Those are all true. What we talk about are they hidden secret benefits of doing these things. So you're gonna love this episode because I bet you don't know, resistance training did so much more than build muscle, burn body fat, make you look incredibly sexy. Also, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Legion.

Now, Legion makes some of the best performance enhancing supplements you'll find anywhere. No artificial sweeteners, the labels are accurate. Everything is on the label, so there's no weird mixes that tells you exactly how much of each ingredient is in the bottle. They sell pre-workout supplements. We like some of the pre-workouts. Pulse is great. They got protein powders both vegan and Way-based go check them out. They have much more go to buy legion.com. That's be you Y

LG Iowan.com Forward slash mine pump and use the code mine pump for 20% off Also, we're running a massive promotion. Maps aesthetic is 50% off. This is a bodybuilding inspired workout program. And the extreme fitness bundle, which includes Maps hit, maps performance, maps prime, and the intuitive nutrition guide. That's 50% off.

You can find out more about those or just sign up at mapsfitinistproducts.com and use the code mayspecial for the discount. You know that last episode that we did really sparked a topic idea, which one? Well, so we just recorded one of our episodes. Oh, you mean like literally last? Yeah, so and you know, one of the questions

was from a trainer and the question was how do I get my client to communicate all of the effects that they're getting from exercise or resistance training? And it really made me think because, you know, one of the problems that we have with exercise, especially resistance training, is that we only connect a couple attributes to it or a couple things of value.

And those are, am I getting leaner, and am I looking better, right? When, yeah, that's it. In fact, if you ask the average person, when you had a client, hey, how you like it in workouts, that's what they would think, am I losing weight, am I looking better, and they wouldn't even know to be aware of all of the other benefits that are very real,

that resistance training provided, and dare I say more important than the looking better and getting lean, which believe it or not, the things that we're gonna, I think we should talk about today, are actually more valuable, and when people start to realize them and connect them to resistance training,

actually pay attention to how these things are being affected positively. Their consistency improves and they tend to train more appropriately. It reminds me of the book, The Alchemist. Yeah. You know, you have this goal, this guy has this goal the entire time and you're reading this book and he's trying to get to this place and he keeps having all these things that take him left and right and all these issues. And when you finally get to the destination, what you realize is like, yeah, the goal is great and all, but really the goal was in the journey along there. And that's, and so the scale and the way you look, right? So the

mirror and the scale, that's great. That's the end goal and that's awesome. And there's nothing wrong with somebody saying, I wanna look this way or I wanna lose way. There's nothing wrong with that, but really the most valuable stuff is in the journey on the way there. And your job as a coach is to be able to help the client make that connection to those things.

Because they don't even know to pay attention. Oh, I would argue that's the most important job of a coach, especially because of that fact. Whatever brought them into the gym, there's various reasons, but for the most parts, those two attributes that they're looking for the most is I want to lose weight or I want to look better, but it's really the responsibility and the job of the coach to highlight a lot of these other beneficial Things that happen as a result that that provide even more value to build on the rest of their life

Yeah, now to be clear all forms of exercise if done appropriately and applied properly Provide tremendous benefits across the board, but resistance training is quite unique in some very important areas. And I think that's what we should focus on because if people have a misunderstanding about exercise, boy, does that misunderstanding get even worse with resistance training? And the truth is resistance training actually provides hidden benefits that are quite unique to resistance training. So, and here's one of the main reasons why.

And we'll start with the first point. But before we do, I'm going to explain why you see certain unique benefits from resistance training that you don't see from other forms of exercise. Other forms of exercise, in particular, cardiovascular activity or cardio, which is a broad category that includes running, swimming, biking, rowing, the form of exercise that most average people think of when you say workout or exercise, at least the first form of exercise that they'll go and do if their doctor tells them to work out, cardiovascular exercise is an anti-tissue form of exercise. Resistance training is in a unique category. In fact, it's the only form of exercise that is

training is in a unique category. In fact, it's the only form of exercise that is specifically pro tissue. So one is anti-tissue, one is pro tissue. So what the hell does that mean? I just say please simplify that. No problem. So when you're doing cardiovascular activity, any form of exercise, well, let's stick with cardio.

When you're doing cardiovascular activity, you are sending a signal to the body, right? So it's a stress on the body. And what happens when you stress the body is your body tries to adapt to that stress, so that next time the same insult doesn't provide the same level of stress. So another example would be you got in the sun and the UV rays hit your skin and it causes some damage and your body goes, okay, let's adapt. So that next time when this happens again, we don't get the same kind of damage and your skin darkens and tans and makes you more resilient

So when you do exercise the same thing happens So you do cardio and your body tries to become better at cardio Which requires a few different things it requires endurance Not a lot of strength and efficiency with calorie burn because while you're doing your running you're burning a lot of calories So your body's trying to become efficient with calories and it doesn't need a lot of strength. So when you see studies with cardio, in combination with diet, so someone's trying to lose weight,

they do cardio with diet, what you typically see is a 50, 50 muscle fat loss start to happen. So the body loses body fat as a result of the calorie deficit, but it also loses muscle because cardio is literally sending a signal to your body that says, we need less weight, we need less muscle, we don't need much strength and too much muscle burns too many calories. So it's anti-tissue, due to tons of cardio and your body adapts by lowering or reducing

the amount of muscle mass that you have on your body. Resisting training is unique. It's the only form of exercise where the specific signal that it's sending is pro tissue. The number one adaptation that happens from resistance training is add muscle, add tissue. Now because muscle is a very metabolically active tissue, a lot of amazing things have to happen in order for this particular adaptation to happen. The first thing that has to happen is your hormones actually start to balance out.

I'll think about this for a second. What hormones do you think of when you think of building muscle? testosterone. testosterone. That's number one, right? What about growth hormone? That's another hormone that we start to think about what about insulin

insulin is another hormone right What about cortisol cortisol is another hormone involved the muscle building that because it goes up and builds muscle It rather it goes down to my score dissolve estrogen progesterone the estrogen progesterone balance in women is very important For muscle building if that balance is off they have a very tough time building muscle. So when you send this signal to your body that says, we need to build muscle in men reliably, if it's appropriate, you reliably see a raise in testosterone. Here's the cool part.

Regardless, testosterone's low, if it's in the middle, even if it's high, you see the testosterone levels raise. Not only that, but here's a cool part, right? It was a study that was done recently where they compared groups of men and they were trying to see if different testosterone levels within a particular range, so they weren't extreme, it wasn't like they compared really low to really high, but rather people kind of in the middle, low middle, high middle, and they said, okay, how much does this affect muscle hypertrophy, which is the fancy term for muscle building?

And what they found was that the levels didn't make that big of a difference. What made a difference was Androgen Receptor Density. So Androgen Receptors are what the testosterone attaches to. So if you have a lot of these receptors, then even if you have a lower testosterone, it's more effective on your body, then if you have a lot of testosterone, but you have a lot of these receptors, then even if you have a lower testosterone, it's more effective on your body, then if you have a lot of testosterone, but you have a little bit of these receptors, okay. What does resistance training do to the body?

Increases, androgen receptor density. It's literally priming your body with hormones and receptors in a way to make it build more muscle. Growth hormone goes up as well, reliably in both men and women. We talked about insulin, right? Does it spike insulin? No, it just makes your body more sensitive to insulin.

So whatever insulin you are, you do have, is now affecting your body more effectively. In fact, it's one of the best protections against insulin resistance is to build muscle. Now to your point about energy and receptors, does this only happen in a caloric surplus with resistance training or does this happen regardless of where your calories are? If you have a caloric surplus and it's not too extreme, you're going to still see it. If you have a calorie deficit and it's not too extreme, you're going to also see this.

So it's always telling your body to build muscle. Now if you don't provide your body with the calories and the building blocks to build muscle, obviously it's not gonna happen. Nonetheless, your body's still gonna prime itself to build muscle. Now the next thing is to provide it with the nutrients to do so, right?

Estrogen and progesterone, you know, when I used to train to the back half of my career, I started working a lot with clients that would be more challenging in my early years. So in my early years, I didn't work with tons of really challenging clients later on. My studio was next to a hospital and I had a lot of clients that were doctors and surgeons and they would actually send me some of their patients and these were more challenging clients. And I also worked with functional medicine practitioners.

In fact, I had one of my studio for a little while. And they would send me women that had all these symptoms back then they called it adrenal fatigue. Now today we know it's HPA or HPTA axis dysfunction where the hypothalamus, the pituitary, the thyroid, it's just it's not they're not balancing out properly. They have all these symptoms like excess fatigue. Their body can't control, like they have bad resilience to hot or cold, so they get really cold easily or they get really hot, really uncomfortable. Their body seems to hold on to body fat.

Again, we used to call that a journal fatigue now. It's called HPA access dysfunction. Nonetheless, when these functional medicine practitioners will send these people to me, resistance training, appropriate resistance training, where we are teaching the body to build muscle, in combination with, of course, you know, all the other stuff, reduce stress and better diet and all that stuff, we would get this wonderful balancing out effect of their hormones and the body. And the functional medicine practitioners, or by the way, this is where I got this from,

they would tell me that, oh, you know, why it's so effective, Sal, is because resistance training is telling her body to build muscle. And in order for her body to build muscle, it has to balance out those hormones. So what it's doing is directly balancing out hormones through exercise. Now, no other form of exercise does this. Other forms of exercise may help balance out hormones indirectly by improving your general health, that can definitely happen. But only resistance training directly causes these improvements in your hormone profile. I talked about cortisol. It'll even help your body react to cortisol better and lower cortisol, so long as it's done appropriately. Because again, your body's like we need to build

muscle. Let's change these hormones around so that we can do so. Well, and technically, other forms of exercise may benefit some of these things, but more often than not, they actually can hurt these things. For example, somebody who is, let's say their hormones are not optimal, and they decide that they want to lose 30 pounds and pursue to that, maybe the doctor tells them they have to. And, you know, they're a big caffeine person, they drink a lot of caffeine, they've got a high performing job, and they sign up for F-45 in Orange Stereo

because that's what their friends are doing, and they love the competitive environment and high intensity. What happens to this person's hormones? No, it gets worse, it gets much worse. You know what's funny? I interview it gets worse. It gets much worse. You know what's funny? I interview a doctor, Aloh, he's actually got a YouTube channel,

real great guy, he's a cardio, I believe he's a cardiologist. He interviewed me because he's a cardiologist. He's done lots of deep study on this, and he loves the message of resistance training. He literally, yesterday, shared a study with me that where they compared groups of men with different forms of exercise. One group did cardio, one group did resistance training.

Okay. Now, predictably, the resistance training group raised their testosterone, okay. The group that did just the cardio, guess what happened? They lowered their testosterone. Not only did their testosterone levels not change, but they actually went down. Now this makes sense again, because if you're doing

lots of cardio, it's telling your body, we need to get rid of this muscle, we don't need it and it's bringing too many calories, we gotta adapt, and in order to do that, your body's gonna lower its testosterone level. It's a direct result of the signal that you're sending. It's a different signal, which, back to your original point of like pro tissue

versus like anti-tissue. And I think it's, there's a totally different signal that you're providing your body in terms of like the environment that we're creating. Like what kind of stress are we trying to build up towards? Do I need this type of protective tissue to help me get through this type of load and demand I'm placing on my body versus, you know, do I need all I need any kind of excess weight

to get through this sort of endurance type stress? Yeah, think about it this way, right? If you were to inject somebody with hormones to make them anabolic, to make them build muscle just through hormones, what are the hormones you'd give them? Well, you'd raise testosterone and women, again, you'd balance progesterone estrogen, you'd give them growth hormone, you'd find ways to get their cortisol in check, because that's what makes the muscle happen. What if you wanted

somebody to waste away? What if you wanted to give them injections to slow their metabolism down, right? It wouldn't be all, it wouldn't be any of those things. It would be opposite. You'd be giving them things to make those hormones go down in order to do those things, to make those things happen. So resistance training directly balances out hormones in a rejuvenating way, right? Because all these things that we're talking about are youth hormones, right?

What's the difference between a 20 year old that's healthy is hormones and a 50 year old of hormones that are, that's healthy? Well, the difference is the 20 year olds have higher growth hormone, higher testosterone, better insulin sensitivity, et cetera. So what resistance strain does is actually puts those hormones in a way through its pro tissue effects to kind of make you younger.

Now, do you think this is one of the major contributors to clients saying things like, man, I remember when I was younger, my body would just respond. I would lift weights or change my diet a little bit, and then it would respond away. But now I tell you what, once you get into your 40s or your 50s, your body just doesn't respond. Do you think that this is one of the primary reasons for that?

It's because of their hormone profile has changed so dramatically since their teens. Yeah, and I think obviously there's a reason why that's starting to change. Of course, aging is, you're gonna get some changes in hormones naturally, but a big reason is because we are, we don't move. Yeah.

And that inactivity, by the way, by itself inactivity is unhealthy, right? That's true, but let's forget that for a second. Let's just pretend that inactivity wasn't healthy, wasn't unhealthy. But what's the result of the inactivity, the direct result? Less muscle, less strength. So yes, you are seeing these negative hormone responses, mainly because

people are weaker with less muscle. And you can follow along, you know, you can see charts, they do these studies where they see how much muscle mass people lose with each decade of life. And that's, it's a correlating, it goes back and forth. We don't need muscle, how do we lower muscle? We don't need these antibiotic hormones lower those. Oh, now we need less muscle. And it just gets worse.

Sometimes it's a really slow gradual degrade too. That a lot of people don't realize, like if they've tried to keep up workouts in like a certain window of like an hour a day versus what they used to do all the time didn't realize how much more active they were and how you know even their work environment has changed uh you know the way that they're actually addressing their body and how imbalanced they are in terms of like getting sleep and all these other factors in the world. Yes and let's talk about libido right because

hormones affect libido resistance training is a libido booster. Now to be clear, anything you do that improves your health will probably improve your libido, okay? But again, because of these hormone effects, no form of exercise directly stimulates libido, like resistance training. If your body is in a hormonal state to build muscle, your body is, your libido is going to go up.

And you don't believe me, go inject yourself some testosterone or give yourself some growth hormone injections and see what happens. Well, this has to be a evolutionary trait, right? To where like when you're in your optimal state of health is when you're best to reproduce. Absolutely.

Yeah, and so that's just, it's one of those things you don't really associate all the time, but you know, getting closer to that balance in that optimal state is going to provide a much better result. I also think it's important that people understand that there's a huge spectrum on here too, right? So sometimes you think you're okay, but there's still a lot more room for you to be way better.

You know, for example, you could go through something, be off hormonally a little bit and not so out of whack, it's hurting you. Just chalk it up to age. Yeah, you just chalk it up to age or I just don't feel great, but it could be a main reason why you're not seeing the results that you should for the effort that you're putting towards

your diet and your training because those are out of balance. And the type of training and dieting you can be doing may be actually making it worse. Exactly. Exactly. So resistance training, lifting weights, phenomenal, the best when it comes, I mean, properly applied, of course, when it comes to balancing out hormones. Now, that leads us to the next one, which is improved mood. How much do your hormones affect your mood?

Tremendously, you know it's funny when I had a family friend whose daughter was transitioned, so she was transgender and she went on testosterone. One of the first things that she noticed was her mood was very elevated because testosterone is this kind of feel-good hormone. This happens to man as well. Low testosterone makes you feel kind of shitty. High testosterone makes you feel really good. Now when women, the balance of progesterone and estrogen makes your mood feel either good

or bad. If it's out of balance, you don't feel so good. If it's in balance, you feel great. Gorthorn mount is another one, right? Gorthorn mount gives you energy and makes you feel good. And then it leads us to cognition. You know what's funny is that, I must have said this, at least a hundred times

on this podcast, but cognitive decline, dementia, Alzheimer's, and all the categories of things that happens to our minds and brains that Reduces our cognitive performance. You know, it's funny If you take someone who's got Alzheimer's dementia and you put them on a ketogenic diet You can pretty reliably see an improvement in cognitive function This is we've known this for a long time. I was not a this is not a surprise, right? It's not a new thing You put them on a keto diet, they eliminate carbs,

all of a sudden, their cognitive performance goes up. Now, why is that, right? It's because some of the causes, and they think, some of the causes of this cognitive decline, was their body and brains inability to utilize glucose, or how their body reacts to carbohydrates? They're just inundated with it like continuously versus like never getting themselves

into that fat adapted state. Right, or it's just their brains lose, because they're insulin sensitivity, they become insulin resistant. In fact, they call Alzheimer's dementia type three diabetes. So improve insulin sensitivity, you see improved cognition. Not just that though, okay. Movement and exercise, people think you're just exercising your muscles, you're working

your brain quite a bit, your brain has to control what's going on. You're providing yourself neurofeedback. Oh, totally. And so, like all these different, you know, nerves and sensors in your body. Like if you're actively expressing movement and articulating your joints, you're sending a lot of information to your brain and your brain's gonna be more responsive to that. And if you're taking that in, it actually has this crazy effect

where you can retain more information and you can be sharper as well, the more you add movement with your study. I want to circle back to the mood point you made a little more, just because this was something that affected me when I came off of testosterone, and maybe the hardest part of seeing that or feeling. I remember.

It was, I consider myself a very positive person. Like I have a very positive outlook on life, I'm very optimistic. I knew what I was getting into by coming off a testosterone. So I was mentally prepared for what was ahead of me. Like I was very aware of what the studies say around low testosterone and depression and things like that. So I was ready for it and it still hit me like a ton of bricks

and took me a long time to get out of, and it's not just that. You have to understand that there's a compounding effect from that. You don't have, your mood is down. It's that much harder to get in the gym and go exercise and do things. Which then makes it worse. It makes it worse. And so, man, that in itself is a reason to focus on this.

And I remember that feeling when you're that low, man, when I get in there and I finally train and I just focus on this. And I remember that feeling when you're that low, man, when I get in there and I'd finally train and I just Focus on a couple of strength building exercises like squatting or deadlifting or head press. I'd have this nice little surge for the next 24 hours because of that, but I'd have to like I'd have to have the mental discipline to get myself in there to do the movements Because it was so hard to get myself out of bed feeling like that was such low testosterone. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because that was your own experience. And so, you know, firsthand what that feels like. Yeah, tough. So what it feels like to have your hormones be at a balance.

Now back to the cognition aspect, you know, when you're working out, you're developing neural pathways. You're actually training and growing your brain in essence. In fact, that shows studies where people will do certain movements and they'll see changes in the brain structure. Because your brain is developing along with your muscles because your brain is with controls. That's why you learn skills and techniques

and that's why you get better at them. Not just because your muscles get stronger, but rather because your central nervous system also learns to adapt. Okay, so we know that, right? All forms of exercise will cause a lot of these neural adaptations, but here's the difference between resistance training and other forms of exercise. Let's say I run, let's say that's my form of exercise I run. It's the same motion over and over again. I'm gonna develop

neural pathways to do it, but at some point that's it. I'm one leg in front of the other, I'm running, it's the same thing over and over. Same thing. It's not very cognitively difficult. No, same thing was biking if I just bike or it's the same thing over and over again. Okay. With resistance training, there's literally an infinite number of exercises and ways to perform each exercise. And it's actually encouraged that you train your body in this way. If you follow any of our programs, you'll find that there's definitely staple exercises, but there's lots of other exercises that we put in there. And then there's changes in tempo, form, technique, repetitions, directions. You can train someone in every single direction with resistance training, whereas other forms of exercises are very straightforward. What does this do to the brain? It develops and builds the brain in tremendous ways.

Properioseptivability, that's your ability to know where you are in space. Spatial awareness. Spatial awareness, right? As you get older, you lose this. One of the reasons why you tend to lose your balance. Resistance training, because it's so multifaceted, because it's so multi-planeer, because it's very challenging. If you do a good resistance training workout, you can't just be lost in your thoughts,

like you can when you run, you're there in the set. Now between sets, you might be able to think about whatever, but when you're doing your focus because it requires concentration, that improves cognitive performance. Now, have you seen that compared to anything like, say, you know, for example, I remember my grandmother used to love doing crossword puzzles to train that,

right? So she didn't lose all the different words and you're trying to put how many and that challenges the brain in a similar fashion. Have you seen studies that actually compare that as far as resistance training up there with that type of brain training? It's better, yeah. It's even better. It is because when you, yes,

training your mind through thinking definitely improves or helps preserve cognitive function. But when you include, when you're challenging your mind, but you're including physical feedback, it's a much louder signal and it requires more development out of the brain. Because if I stop moving completely, if you put me like a whole body cast,

but you constantly have me thinking all the time, and as my muscles atrophy, as I lose the ability to walk or run or stand, those parts of my brain start to atrophy. So that physical feedback plus the mental stimulation is really the key for cognitive trauma. I'd argue this is probably one of the most exciting fields that's emerging right now in our space in terms of like being able to train the brain.

We just don't associate again that the brain is so interconnected with the entire body and you know how what we do and all that matters and they're finding ways to increase focus and distractability and all that to be able to be resilient to that by working your body out in a certain way and providing even more challenge and neurofeedback so that way you're sharper. Well, again, remember how I said earlier,

because it's pro tissue, it's pro muscle, your body balances out and increases the hormones and puts them in a way to promote muscle growth. Okay, because it's such a stimulating activity balances out and increases the hormones and puts them in a way to promote muscle growth. Okay. Because it's such a stimulating activity for the brain, your body actually produces more of the brain stimulating chemical known as brain derived neurotropic factors. P-E-N-F. Yeah, it's like miracle growth.

So doing exercise in general raises, resistance training tends to raise it even higher. Here's another hidden benefit mobility. Now mobility used to be synonymous with flexibility, right? So all you want to become more mobile, just become more flexible. You know, that's not true, right? Just because you have a larger range of motion isn't gonna make you more mobile. In fact, my six month old son is very flexible. I mean, I can lay him on the floor and I can bend his leg over here and bring it over there. And he's very flexible, not mobile at all. In fact, if I put a little bit of load on him,

he's gonna hurt himself, right? No, I haven't tried that, but mobility is range of motion with strength and control. So when you're doing proper resistance training, which includes nice, full range of motion, it also includes challenging your range of motion and working on ways to get better range of motion with load, which could be just your body, or if you get stronger, you add weight, like dumbbells, barbells, machines, whatever, you are actually strong in that range of motion. So it's the difference between getting down on a squat

and getting down a squat with load or getting down a squat and moving quickly because you have to or you got to grab your kid or whatever. Improved mobility, there is no form of exercise that compares to resistance training because other forms of exercise don't do that the same way. This one's a hard one to overcome though because of the stigma we talked about

in that other episode just recently. Bodybuilder one, because there's still this idea that it makes you tight. Yeah, your muscle bound. If you lift weights, and your goal is to be more mobile or flexible, lifting weights is counterproductive because it makes you tight. And so it couldn't be further from the truth, but it's still a stigma, and it's still one of those ones that's hard to get across to somebody that, no, actually, if you really want to improve mobility, strength training is one of the best things we could possibly do.

Take the tightest bodybuilder that you know, okay? The tightest bodybuilder you know has more mobility than the average person, okay? This is a fact, right? So, is it going to make you ultimately as flexible as yoga or lots of stretching? No, those are very specific for just crazy flexibility. So no, you're not going to be able to twist yourself into a pretzel with proper resistance training, but you will gain a tremendous amount of functional flexibility and mobility. The kind that just translates into every day life. So you might not be able to sit in a splits, but in real life, you're probably never

going to sit in the splits, but you will have to quickly twist and grab your kid because they jumped off the curb or lift up a box or get down real low to fix something in your car or whatever. This is what resistance training provides, proper resistance training. It's that full range of motion, connection, and mobility that you need in the real world, which results in less pain and makes you resistant to injury. People hurt themselves because of their weak.

That's the bottom, when people say, I hurt myself because I'm tight, no, you weren't strong enough to support that movement. So although you feel tight, the reality is you're weak and tight. That's what caused the injury. And this was like one of the most, I mean, common things that you would see as a trainer

and a coach. I mean, when I had a client that got hurt that was, you know, above the age of 30, it was, it was never dead lifting a hundred, you know, tons of weight or squatting or doing this crazy exercise. It was always doing a very basic movement, but they lacked the mobility. They lacked the control and strength in that range of motion, and it was pulling a weed, or picking a shampoo bottle up out of the shower,

or picking their kid up, or reaching back to hand them something in the car seat behind them. They're on a frisbee. Yeah, a frisbee, something so basic, because they lacked that mobility. So this one I think is just undervalued. I mean, it's so important.

This stigma is so strong, right? Yeah. It's crazy, but yeah, no proper resistance training includes full range of motion. It also means if you can't do full range of motion, that you train yourself to be able to gain full range of motion. So let's say you could do full range of motion squats, full range of motion overhead presses,

full range of motion, rows and cable chops and windmills and lunges and caustic squats. You could do all that, full range of motion with load. Man, you've got real world amazing mobility, better functional mobility than the hyperfloxable person who likes to stretch all the time because you could do it with load. Now the next one, this one's another one that's a stigma which is heart health. You never hear resistance training being promoted

as a way to improve the health of your heart. Yeah, and again, too, I think a lot of times people associate with building mass. Like this is a problem with the whole BMI thing where we don't want to add more body mass to our existing physique and so like this just doesn't become a part of the conversation. It's about how can we get just this weight off all of it? Well, I think it's also because I mean there's a little bit of

I think common sense that makes people believe this. It's you know, cardiovascular training is strengthening the heart. The heart's a muscle. When you do cardiovascular training, you push the heart rate up. Your heart beats faster. It adapts. It gets stronger. Therefore, in turn, it should make the heart. And when you think about what makes the heart beat faster and harder than anything else, it's cardiovascular training. So I think that's why that's so popular is because that's been

because when you're running your heart's beating hard, right? So you think oh, this is good for my heart. You know, it's funny There's only one form of exercise. It's ever been shown to damage the heart Access cardio excessive Studies will show this lots of cardio Really it causes more of these calcium deposits in the heart that can become these plaques that could cause lots of issues But this is a fact. I'm not just making this up. And here's the other problem.

Resistance training hasn't been studied for health for as long as other forms of exercise. For a very long time, if you were trying to do a study on exercise in health, you picked cardio. This is the way it was for decades. Resistance training was like weight lifters and maybe athletic performance. But now for the past couple of decades,

we have studies that are specific to resistance training. And you know what they find when it comes to heart health? That resistance training is superior. There are studies that show that resistance training reduces visceral fat, the kind of fat that is surrounds the organs, including the heart, and resistance training is superior to other forms of exercise. In fact, that doctor, that interview me

that I talked about earlier, he's the one that brought that up to me. He goes, oh, he goes, he goes, he goes to studies now we're showing that. He goes, I tell all my patients to lift weights because now it's showing to be the best form of exercise for heart health. Probably because yes, it teaches your body

to burn more calories, so that's good, so you get leaner. But it also, it produces this hormonal environment that's much better. Again, we talked about insulin sensitivity. Like you get that as something that's better and is more resilient and just protective tissue. Yes, yes. Yes, yes.

Now the next one's kind of obvious, which is it strengthens your bones. You know, it's funny when they do studies on like running for osteophenia, what they'll show is they'll take like women who have osteopenia. This is when you start, you're starting to get bone loss and you're getting closer to osteoporosis. And then they'll test their bone mass after they've done running for a while. And what they'll find is a little bit of an increase of bone mass in the lower body

and nothing anywhere else, right? Because so obviously it's the legs pounding on the pavement. That's causing some bone mass increases, but it's not a ton. It's actually a little bit. In fact, the early studies people were like, God, you know, exercise really isn't that great for reversing osteopenia because they were all focused on cardiovascular exercise. Now, resistance training, they finally did studies on resistance training and bone mass. And what did they find? Reliably increases bone mass. In fact, it's pro tissue in the bone sense as well because muscle anchors to bone, stronger

muscles require stronger bones. And resistance training is performed through the whole body. So you don't just get stronger bones in your legs, but in your spine and your shoulders and every part of your body. Yeah, and specific directive force. So the only way to really isolate that and really expose tissue to that very direct type of force is to do resistance training. And that's going to affect the muscle,

that's going to affect the bone and is going to affect the ligaments in a very specific way, because it's going to have to adapt to this type of stress that's very specific to that area of your body. Right, right. It's funny that you say that it's kind of obvious or common, but I remember a lot of times when I had clients that had achy joints or they were brittle or had any issues with their bones were resistant to wanting to live.

I know. So even though you think it's common knowledge, I think a lot or somebody who's older, oh, they're old and brittle. Don't lift weights. Yeah, don't lift weights. That could be dangerous. So it's, you know, as it's common as you may think it is, I think it's common maybe in our circle. But I think for the masses, there's just still this idea of like, you should never take grandma to go, you to go squat or lift weights

like that, that's dangerous. She's very brittle. She could fall and break her hip. Why would you ever think about lifting weights with her? I used to train a lot of people in advance age towards the back half of my career. And they were some of my favorite clients for a lot of different reasons,

but one of the main reasons was it blew them away at how impactful one day a week of resistance training was. One day a week, I'm not joking, the majority of my clients over the age of 70 would see me once a week, the majority, I had a few of them that saw me twice a week, but most of them would come in once a week and they were all, and they always, you know, this is from a generation where like you said, I don't like resistance training, like why, look, I'm here, Sal, because, you know, Dr. Sonesa, who's your client, like, has told me 15 times to come here.

So now I trust my doctor, so I'm gonna come and I'm gonna try this out. And I'd say, okay, we're gonna do once a week and they go, that's it, once a week. Is that even, is that even gonna do anything? It's a, just watch what happens. And it would blow their minds because they would regain abilities that they lost 15 years ago.

I'll never forget this with the day that this happened. I've shared this story before, but I was training another client. It wasn't even an appointment where I was supposed to train this particular person, but I was training another client and I had a small studio and all of a sudden I see her walk in for a second, I was confused like, oh shit, did I double book myself and I'm like, no, I can't. So she walks in and say, hey, what's going on?

Kim, what's happening? And she's like, I was next door, grocery shopping. I used to be, my studio was next to Nob Hill. So it's a grocery store here in the Bay Area. She was, I was at grocery shopping at Nob Hill. And for the first time in years, I was able to reach up by myself and close the trunk of my SUV.

Like, this is something she lost before. Now, walking didn't do that for her. Nothing did that for her. My one day a week of resistance training did this for her. I have another client who was losing bone mass and she had some other conditions, very, very strange rare situation, otherwise healthy. And she came, she referred to me by her doctor. And she was on injections to help her bone mass.

These were like autoimmune type drugs. And I said, look, we're going to lift weights. And if anything's going to make your bone mass stop declining and reverse, it's going to be lifting weights. And so she was like, okay, I trust you, but I but I'm skeptical her doctor was like let's give it a shot Well anyway, they were so shocked when she went back she went and got tested every six months got her bone mass tested every six months They were so shocked with the results in six months that her doctor called me and told me that they are making that a case study Oh, they literally made it a case study on resistance training for how it affected bone mass. As reliably as resistance training builds strength

and muscle, which it doesn't anybody, if you do it right, it will also strengthen bone and no other form of exercise does it like resistance training. Now the last one, this one, just recently, we're starting to see studies on this, because again, resistance training is only the last couple decades been studied for health benefits, right? Up until that, it was all performance. But they're now doing studies on resistance training and how it affects sleep.

And what they're finding is resistance training improves sleep in very tremendous ways. Now, the researchers, they conclude that it has to do with the fact that resistance training balances hormones. Well, besides the hormone balancing, the form of energy, muscle energy that you use, they conclude that it has to do with the fact that resistance training balances hormones. Well besides the hormone balancing, the form of energy, muscle energy that you use most when you're training for strength is ATP, right? Adenisine triphosphate, I'm sure I'm saying that wrong, but that's what it looks like. Now when you utilize ATP, it breaks down into adenisine.

Adenisine makes you sleepy. And they think that maybe one of the reasons why people, when they do resistance training, according to the studies, have so much better and deeper sleep. Now I knew this is a train, I don't know why, but I know as a trainer, my clients would always tell me how much better they were sleeping because they were working out with me a couple of times.

Well, I can tell a difference in myself on in days that you take off and you don't. Like if I, in fact, I actually will adjust my caffeine intake if I know I'm not going to work out. It's actually important that I do. Otherwise, just a little extra caffeine and a non workout day will ruin my sleep. It'll be, I'll be amped enough without expending any of that energy and movement to have not allowed me. Now, what exactly is happening in me? Chemistry-wise, I can't explain to you and tell you, but I can definitely tell you that there's a major difference between days that I get in a good lift in the day versus a day that I don't,

and I know that it's exaggerated if I don't lift, and I have a stimulant that actually will keep me up. Oh yeah, anecdotally, I was always like talking about that effect with clients and how, you know, just expressing this sort of pent up energy like within. And so it's like, we're holding in a lot of the energy. We're also stressing about all these other things. There's no actual release for that day. This carries over and this is something that then trickles into something like sleep where you know, you haven't got to that state where I feel like I've expressed all this energy I can relax. Excellent.

So look, I talk about all this and much more and the resistance training revolution. Just trying to change the paradigm around exercise and encouraging people to do the form of exercise that's the most effective for most people's goals. You can find that book at theresistorstrendyrevolution.com. Also if you like this podcast, go head over to mindpumpfree.com. We've got tons of free guides there that you can learn from. And finally you can find us all on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.

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