Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2567: Women Who Lift: Breaking Myths and Building Muscle

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Women Who Lift: Breaking Myths and Building Muscle The new norm. (1:07) Why has this trend shifted? (4:36) Selling strength training for women, the real benefits, and what makes it unique. (7:08) #1 – Promotes better hormone profiles. (7:51) #2 - Have better skin. (17:55) #3 - Can eat more and stay leaner. (21:31) #4 - Have better curves. (24:14) #5 - Feel empowered. (27:23) #6 - Sleep better. (30:55) #7 - Are in less pain. (33:07) #8- Look better (body composition vs weight). (37:51) Questions: How many days a week should a woman lift weights? (39:40) I have a lot of weight to lose. Should I lift weights or lose weight first? (41:57) I don’t want to get bulky. I want to look lean. Should I skip lifting? (43:10) I heard that high reps are better for a feminine look. Is this true? (46:10) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Code MINDPUMP for 20% off your first order (new customers) and double rewards points for existing customers. ** Special Promotion: MAPS Muscle Mommy 50% off! ** Code WOMEN50 at checkout ** Mind Pump # 1647: Ten Female Fitness Lies Mind Pump # 2345: The Muscle Mommy Revolution Mind Pump # 2502: Hormone Therapy for Aesthetics With Dr. Lauren Fitzgerald 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 Pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Ladies, this episode is for you. This is about women who lift and all of the distinct, unique benefits you get from strength training that other forms of exercise just don't compare with. By the way, this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Legion. They make high-performance supplements for people who are interested in muscle building, fat loss, endurance, strength. Get yourself a discount. Go to

buylegion.com forward slash mind pump. Use code mind pump and get 20% off your first order also because of this episode Muscle mommy our program for women who want to shape sculpt their body who want to be strong Who want to have a faster metabolism that program is 50% off for this episode only if you're interested go to maps muscle Mommy calm use the code women50 for 50% off. Here comes the show. One of the fastest growing trends in fitness is women lifting weights. It's exploding and this is a good thing.

We've been talking about the benefits of strength training for women for 10 years. Forever. Today's episode, we're going to separate fact from fiction. What does lifting weights do for women? Is it better than other forms of exercise? Should everybody lift weights? Let's go. We're almost, uh,

I feel like we're almost there where this is no longer going to be a hot topic. It really does. And I always question, the new norm is it, I hate that term, but my little bubble that I'm in that I feel that way or is really the general pop even privy to this? Like where if you asked a random lady on the street who doesn't already go to the gym, is she aware of this? Or have we just done a good job so far of penetrating the fitness community that most women in the fitness community

are aware of this now, but we haven't quite moved our way out beyond that. What do you think? No, this is real, it's a real trend. It's a real trend that's being measured by Club Business International, by Ursa, by gym owners, gym managers. It's a real trend.

Social media, you now see this is a huge trend. I see it personally, but of course it's a real trend. Social media, you now see, this is a huge trend. I see it personally, but of course that's an anecdote, but I see it when I go into gyms. It's very different than it was when I first trained clients, started training clients in gyms in the late 90s. It's even different than it was 10 years ago when we started the podcast.

I'd like to say that we've played a role in this, but it's been a massive shift. So gyms now are changing their footprint. They're putting more, they're dedicating more space to free weights and strength training than they ever did before. And the fastest growing demographic that's interested in strength training are both, there's two separate ones that they're seeing, women and the older population. Well, generally strength training is growing across the board, but historically

it was men that were interested in strength training, and it wasn't women, and it definitely wasn't older population. But now everybody seems to be more interested, but in particular women, because a lot of the myths that surrounded strength training have been dispelled, and there's enough women now that strength train, that are on social media, that is to its benefits, that talk about how great it is that women are seeing these examples and going, oh, I don't need to be afraid of this. This is actually a good form of exercise.

Then they try it and of course, you know this, we train clients for years. When you get people's strength training, when you get women's strength training, they're sold. As soon as they do it for a couple months the right way, it's like, this is amazing. Well, I think that message is definitely penetrated, the general public, in terms of the value of strength training and that they should consider it. I think with the emerging new sort of trend

that we're seeing, that we even discussed on the podcast before was the fact that we're seeing, that we even discussed on the podcast before was the fact that we need to be in a surplus and we need to increase calories. We need to be able to feed this muscle growth to happen, which is something that was always a bit of a reserve because the thought going in is I need to lose weight, I need to shed body fat, I need to do all these things to reduce calories when in fact, a lot of times women getting into building muscle and really building their body up and increasing calories is what's been beneficial.

All the things that go along with strength training are growing. I want to believe that we played somewhat of a role in this. Do you guys think of what other factors have? What else has made this trend shift? Crossfit, social media, women, the trend of wanting a bigger butt or a rounder butt. I think that's, yeah. All of those played a role, right? Because Crossfit-

You can't do that without calories and strength training. I actually think that is an even bigger role than maybe the credit we give it because in the 80s and 90s the coke supermodel was like the look really unhealthy very thin yes super thin no muscle and you just don't hear that anymore from even young girls that are like looking looking at other girls on magazines and and or social media, they're pointing to girls that are built. They're pointing to girls that do not look like this thin as a rail look.

And so I even think that, and I think what comes with that is we've had a shift in culture on what a woman thinks looks pretty or sexy, both men and fit women for that matter. And I think more people are realizing you can't get that body without lifting weights, unless you were just genetically born with great muscularity, which is very rare, especially for a female. And we have a lot of these women that have these great shaped butts and bodies and legs and you just, you can't get that through just running and diet, you've got to lift weights. And so I think that's probably played maybe one of the biggest roles. Yeah, and they're seeing examples of it. So like

female fitness influencers now promote the benefits of strength training quite a bit. So when you see someone on Instagram that looks the way you want to look, and they're saying, I lift weights, I get stronger, there's more social proof. And the more women you see who lift, and the more women who talk about it, the more women who are going to do it. Now, we've been proponents of strength training since day one.

When I started personal training clients, this was always the primary form of exercise that I used. And the majority of my clients were women. I mean, that's just the way the personal training clients, like this was always the primary form of exercise that I used, and the majority of my clients were women. I mean, that's just the way the personal training clientele. It's for all trainers. Tends to skew as you tend to see more women hire personal trainers than men. And you always had to overcome the objections and the fears.

I'm gonna get bulky, I'm gonna whatever, and we'll get to that kind of stuff. But once they did it, after, it took about two or three months, they were sold. And it was like, okay, this is amazing I feel better. I look better and the data also ports us. And so I want to what I want to do is I want to sell Strength training for women. I want to really sell it I want to really talk about the real benefits and what makes it unique because

Exercising in general is good for you, right movement in general is good for you Regardless of the style of movement whether it's dancing, running, swimming, biking, pilates, yoga, strength training. If it improves your health you're going to see benefits. You're going to probably look better. But what are the unique benefits of strength training versus other forms of exercise? These are the ones that are supported by some data or a lot of data, but definitely by our experience training lots of clients and also training lots of trainers who train clients. Remember, we've been doing this for over two decades.

So here's the first point. I think this is a good point to start with, which is strength training really does promote a better hormone profile in a more effective way than other forms of exercise. So anytime you improve your health, and if exercise is a part of that formula, you're going to see an improvement in your hormone profile. But strength training is unique in that it encourages a youthful hormone profile

because of the signal that strength training promotes. Strength training sends forth a signal that is pro tissue. One of the primary signals that strength training sends, so all exercise sends a signal to the body that says do more of this, more stamina, more flexibility, more strength, whatever. The primary signal of strength training is build muscle and get stronger. In order to build muscle, muscle is active, it's this tissue on your body, it's very active, it's insulin sensitive. In order to do that, your body has to organize its hormones in a way to do that. If you were to look at an ideal muscle building hormone profile, what you would see is a youthful hormone profile. You'd see great insulin sensitivity, which by the way,

the most effective way to improve insulin sensitivity is to simply get stronger and build muscle. Insulin's very, excuse me, muscle's very insulin sensitive. It's a storage vessel for glycogen, which is what comes from carbohydrate consumption or sugar consumption. So when you have more places to store it,

you're not gonna respond to it in the same way. You're gonna have better blood sugar levels. So you're more insulin sensitive. You get growth hormone levels that tend to rise. That's what happens when you start to build muscle. You get, as you build muscle, you get more androgen receptors. Okay, that's called androgen receptor density. So these are the locks that the key of testosterone attaches to to activate and regardless of what your testosterone levels are, if I were to give an example,

if I were to double your androgen receptor density or double the amount of androgen receptors that you have, even with the same testosterone, you've now doubled the effectiveness of your testosterone. Okay, because it has twice as many places to dock into. You utilize more of it. And now, is that important for women? It's just as important for women as it is for men.

There's a myth that testosterone is a male hormone. It's not, it's a human hormone. We just have different ratios, but testosterone is just as important for women as it is for men and women have the same symptoms that men get when their testosterone is low. So they'll have low libido, more fat mass, less muscle, less energy, less drive, more anxiety, more depression when their testosterone is low. So they'll have low libido, more fat mass, less muscle, less energy, less drive, more anxiety, more depression when their testosterone is low. So building muscle increases the effectiveness of your testosterone and you also get this balancing of estrogen or progesterone as those change throughout your monthly cycle. So strength training on its own is far more

effective at promoting this youthful hormone profile that your body needs to build muscle which is the signal that you send with strength training. Other forms of exercise simply don't do this as effectively and you could talk to any hormone specialist, you talk to any functional medicine practitioner when they're trying to balance out somebody's hormones, strength training, so long as it's appropriate, is what is typically recommended as a primary form of exercise. So okay, and I'm glad you started to go that direction because I was already thinking of like the counter argument for somebody else that, like let's say I'm hardcore into Pilates

or I'm a big runner and basically anything that makes you healthier than what you were before you're doing is going to improve the hormone profile. So how would you convince someone like me who let's say is a hardcore Pilates person who's already seen the improvement in my hormone profile from doing Pilates and I believe that's that my why why should I go switch over to strength training like What is your argument for why that's better? A better hormone profile that is a result of being healthier is great.

But strength training makes you healthier, so you get that effect. But it also directly tells the body to create a hormone profile that is pro-muscle building. We need muscle. Okay, so in other words, you're sending a straight direct signal. So your hormones don't improve

as a byproduct of improved health alone, that happens, but you're also sending a specific signal direct to the hormones that say, we gotta build muscle, we need a hormone profile that does that. And the hormone building profile that builds muscle is the youthful one that you had when you were in your late teens, early 20s.

So for a youthful hormone profile, nothing beats strength training. It just directly does it best. Also, I mean, a lot of those other methods have a lot of repetitive stress and don't have distinctive rest periods where there's a distinctive difference between strength training, uh, in cardiovascular training and also to like oxidative stress and,

you know, full recovery. You're not going to, so think of it like this. Sleep is the ultimate balancer of hormones, right? So that's like your, your body's repairing itself. It's, it's replenishing stores. It's, it's rebuilding cells. And so if you look at that in your training, you have to have like these distinctive rest periods in order to then send the right signal. This is literally, I'm trying to gain muscle and strength,

and strength is the focus. It's not mixed signaling with cardiovascular training. Yeah, well, let me just to back you up. So strength training, you need less of it to produce the result you're looking for than other forms of exercise. So, to build endurance requires a lot of practice training endurance.

To build strength, you don't need to do a lot. And so, when it comes to stressing the body, which I think we were talking about, Justin, strength training tends to be less of a stress on the body because the dose tends to be less that's required. Now you can overdo strength training, you can overdo anything. But appropriate strength training tends to

stress the body less than appropriate levels of other form of exercise. But if you're doing it right and you're actually moving forward, you have to have adequate rest. So I want to stay here because I really want to drill this point home because I really think that when we think back to all the clients that we train, and again, primarily female clients, probably some of the most life-changing stories came from the clients that I, my female clients

that I got to adopt strength training. And one of the reasons why it was so life-changing was because of what you're talking about right now. And a lot of times, these are clients that did Pilates already or did running already. They were active. They weren't, I'm talking about somebody who I got that was obese and then also I got up strength training and I bounced. I'm talking about people that were already active people. They were doing other forms of modality. And then I got them to strength train and it radically changed. Massive difference. So if you were, and I know this is putting you on the spot to give me like a generic answer,

but again, trying to drill this point home, because I know I have listeners right now that have a modality of training that they love to do. They go to their class, they've been comfortable doing that for 10 years. It's like, oh, you know, why do I wanna switch over to this kind of training? So if you had to score on a scale of one,

one being terrible, 10 being the best or awesome, as far as balancing the hormone, and we look at, I'd say, probably the top five forms of exercise, running, swimming, Pilates, yoga, and strength training, maybe top five, somewhere around there, how would you score those and compare them? So there's always an individual variance,

it has to be applied appropriately. Of course. Okay, so I'll say all that first. Yeah, let's pretend. But if it's applied appropriately and properly for the individual, strength training is in a different universe. So you have hormone profiles improve

because my health is better, and then you have the effect of, I'm directly telling my hormones to become youthful because they need to build more muscle. It is above and beyond that. So you talk to, if you talk to any female hormone specialist, you can talk to male hormone specialist,

but talk to any female hormone specialist. These are doctors that specialize in hormone therapy. So they actually put people on hormones. They put people, women on testosterone, they put women on thyroid or they manage the hormone. By the way, we just had one of the leading experts in menopause and perimenopause come on and one of the first things that she said is like Strength range. Strength range. They will all tell you, strength range. They will all tell you that's the primary form of exercise and walking would be a really close one just for overall activity.

Yeah. And in fact what they'll also tell you when you talk to them is many times they tell these women to stop doing the crazy cardio, do the crazy circuits. And move the strength training. So maybe then you would score like this, and again, correct me if I'm wrong here, like all the other ones I named besides strength training

would probably hover around somewhere of getting a five or a six. And then strength training's 10. It's like all those you could argue, oh swimming could be pretty good for health and pro home, because they all, the other ones all can make you healthier, which then improves your hormone profile,

but nothing directly impacts. Let's talk about the main hormone, some of the big issues that women can suffer from. Like PCOS, very strong connection between that, and insulin resistance, okay? Strength training, building muscle, directly combats insulin resistance better than any other form of exercise.

Look at thyroid. Build muscle, your thyroid becomes more effective. Thyroid issues are very common with women. And I'm not talking about all the other hormones. Cortisol, you build some muscle, you get a natural, you get a much, a good profile of cortisol starts to develop because of the muscle building process.

And then I mentioned that. So, yeah, so when it comes to hormone profile in promoting a youthful hormone profile, by the way, this is anecdotal, okay, but we see this in the gyms. You can talk to any gym owner, gym manager, you see the women in their 40s, 50s and 60s that are good at strength training versus the ones 40s, 50s, and 60s that are good at strength training versus the ones 40s, 50s, 60s that do lots of group classes, lots of cardio, they look younger. The strength training women look younger because of this hormone profile situation. Which I think leads to your second point.

Correct. Which is going into the have better skin. Have better skin. And I'm assuming this is a big part of that. Because I think one of the number one things a dermatologist would tell somebody who has got really bad skin, a lot of times their hormone profile is all over the place. And they normally prescribe them things

to try and control their hormones. Also this though, so here's the other thing. So there was a recent study, I brought it up on other episodes, where they compared the effects of strength training to other forms of exercise to skin health. The collagen, production, elasticity, the visible lines and wrinkles, all that stuff. Strength training was superior because it promoted the rebuilding or the building of

the collagen matrixes in the skin. Now, why is that? By the way, in this study, all forms of exercise improve skin. So anytime you improve your health, your skin's going to look better. But strength training, it promotes something called muscle protein synthesis or the building of tissue.

Protein is the building block of all tissue, including your skin. So when you're lifting weights and you're sending this direct signal to your muscles to build, you're also sending this systemic signal to the rest of your body that says, build more everything. And so you see stronger bones and you see skin. Skin in the data, and again, we've seen this anecdotally.

But yes, the studies show that strength training promotes the building of skin. in the data, and again, we've seen this anecdotally. But this- Hair too? Yes, the studies show that strength training promotes the building of skin. Not just the health of it, but the building of skin. And so when it comes to skin, this is the best form of exercise. And again, we have the studies to support this. You broke it down the way I wanted you to

because I feel like so many other forms of exercise use similar arguments on how to, because getting healthier makes a lot of all these markers improve. That's right. And so there's an argument to be made about going swimming or going running or doing Pilates or doing those things to improve this, but it's like, it's almost like, yes, all those things are good.

And yes, all those things make you a healthy version of yourself, but nothing is even on the same level as what strength training is. No, and I want to be very clear, I'm not trying to discourage somebody to stop doing the form of exercise that they love doing, but what I am trying to do, and this is true for most people, or most women that work out,

they have a set amount of time that they work out. Three days a week, or two days a week, or four days a week. They don't have all the time in the world, they're not gonna do 15 different forms of exercise. And they're like, which one do I pick? Which one do I pick because they're all whatever. I enjoy them all, I guess.

I just want the one that gives me the best results. And many women are, they move away from strength training because of the myths that surround it or because they don't know that in comparison to other forms of exercise, they're probably gonna get more of what they're looking for. And that's the support. By far and to that point, Sal,

this is how I always took a client like that. I would never tell my client, right, and I could never do this with these clients, that love Pilates, love swimming, love running, one of those things, okay, stop doing that, let me show you and prove to you what I would do is just give me one day a week. Give me one day a week of full body strength training.

A traditional strength training. Let's keep doing your Pilates the other two days. Let's keep doing your running like you're saying. And let me show you what one day a week will already, for somebody who's already been doing these things, that's always how I got them. Cause then they would be like, oh shit, this one day a week I added, all I did was let go of one day of my running or one day of my swimming or one day of my Pilates, picked up one day of this strength training like this trainer told me, and I've already seen more improvement than I ever have, and then now they're bought in. That's right.

This next one is one of the things that I think now women are becoming more aware of, one of the components of strength training, which is it allows you to eat more and stay leaner because it builds the lean tissue that burns calories. Now I know that there's some debate around this, but the evidence is clear with those of us who've coached and trained lots of people. When I have women that I strength train with primarily, and I have them do what's called a reverse diet

where we slowly increase their calories, increase their protein to feed the muscle tissue, we see this dramatic change in their metabolism. I mean, it's not, this is, it's common, it was common to have a female client be able to eat 500 more calories a day and be leaner. 500 more calories.

All day. That was common. Less common, but still I would see this, would be women who could eat 1,000 calories more a day and be able to keep on and be able to Stay lean and I'm talking about two days a week of strength training We're not doing anything else and they were doing before tons of cardio That's I mean that that was what was common to is that not only did they were they able to eat more but there

This is what sold Katrina. Yeah, well, I've told the story before when we first met I didn't tell her anything about how she was training I allowed her to do her thing and I just, I know better than to come in and new boyfriend, come in and start telling you how to lift or telling you how to eat. Even though I knew all this stuff that she was doing, I'm like, man, this would be so much easier until she finally came to me. And the first thing we did, cut out all that running, reverse diet, build muscle, let's get strong, long rest periods, so different than how she'd ever trained before.

And you look a year later after that, she looks back and goes like, this is crazy. I'm eating more than I've ever ate before. I'm training less frequently as far as the time that I'm doing that. And I have the best body I've ever had at this point in my life. Like blue and then forever she was converted. Yeah. Muscle, uh, burns calories at rest. Uh, and that's not the full answer, by the way. There's some mystery as to how the metabolism gets so fast

through the strength building process and through feeding that muscle. But it really is, it's a real effect, and it's traumatic, and it's awesome, meaning you do less work, you eat more, and you stay leaner. And I think that really resonates with a lot of women, especially women who've tried to lose weight. That resonates with everybody, bro. Cutting calories. The only way you can be lean and have flexibility leaner. And I think that really resonates with a lot of women, especially women who've tried to lose weight.

That resonates with everybody, bro. Cutting calories. The only way you can be lean and have flexibility is like the only method. Who does that not sound good to? Who does the idea of like, you get to work out less, you get to eat more and stay in better shape. Who does that not sound good to? That's right. Everybody that sounds good.

Because otherwise you're cutting, you're getting to a certain point where you just add a little bit of, oh, I'm just going to have a little bit on the weekend and it's like 500 extra calories, you feel that. You don't have that flexibility, it's a rough place. Muscle is great for the flexibility to eat more food. Next up, you have better curves. I think this is another reason why women

are starting to strength train. It started with the build a bigger butt or get a bigger butt kind of trend. Then women are like, well, how do I get a bigger butt? We're like, well, your butt's a muscle, so you got to build it. They started training and strengthening and they saw their butt get rounder. Then they saw their hamstrings get a little better curve and they started doing upper body exercise and my posture gets better, my arms look leaner.

Everything looks better even though maybe I'm at the same weight even. This is what's crazy about this. Muscle looks good on your body, it just does. Now, can you get too muscular? Yes. Is it likely you'll get too muscular? No, it's extremely unlikely. It's extremely, extremely, extremely unlikely

that you're gonna strength train and build too much muscle. Okay, that's just the fact period, end of story. So every single woman listening to this right now, train like a bodybuilder as hard as you want, eat like a bodybuilder as much as you want. None of you are gonna come to me and say, oh, I built too much muscle. It doesn't happen.

The women you see who look like this are so rare, it's more rare than a seven foot tall person. It's extremely rare to have the kind of genetics that build that kind of muscle. And then many of those women are also on male levels of hormones, okay? They're on testosterone or anabolic steroids. You're not gonna build muscle.

The women that look the way that most women wanna look like on social media or whatever, these fitness women, they lift weights like bodybuilders. That's primarily what they do. You have to. If you want to sculpt and shape a body, there's no way around doing that without strength training.

Right. Listen, we cannot change someone's morphology. If somebody is six foot five, comparing them to a five two person and saying, I want my body to look exactly like that, structurally they'll never be. But you can take these body types that are very different and you can build attributes on this person to create the illusion and shape them to look like that. I mean, again, this reminds me of the overcoming this with Katrina when we first got there. She did not like lifting, especially stuff for her back because she felt like I had a

broad back. And if I touched any weights like that, it just got worse. And I'm like, listen, I can sculpt your physique through lifting back exercises and weights to give you this more hourglass. And she just was so hard to get her to believe that. But it's like, watch what happens when I build your delts, watch what happens when we lean out and your waist comes in and we build and it's like, it'll create more of that. So even technically her back might've been bigger as far as the actual circumference Looks the way she looks the way she wants because we created that sculpt and you have to do that through weights You can't do that through any other form of Exercise to get the look that people are trying to obtain and that is the coolest part about lifting weights is you can sculpt a physique

To damn near do anything you kind of want. That's right. You could literally pick body parts. You could develop more. You could shape more. It's focused body sculpting. Other forms of exercise you don't focus. You're running a lot. You're moving your legs a lot. You're swimming a lot. But strength training, I can say I want more of this, more of that. I want less of this. I'll focus less on that. You can literally shape and sculpt your body and build the kind of body you want, the curves that you want. Next is you feel empowered. One of the most empowering feelings in my experience for my female clients, one of the most empowering feelings that they would express to me would be when they got strong. The first time this really occurred, because I would hear this all

the time from female clients, oh my God, I like lifting weights. I don't realize how much I'd like it. I feel so empowered. I feel so empowered. I don't know what they meant by that, empowered. You hear that with women feeling empowered all the time. Like what does that mean exactly? Like okay, you feel empowered. But then I had a female client explain to me a situation that happened to her where she was traveling for work.

So she comes in to train with me and she's super excited. I'm like hey, what's going on? She's like I gotta tell you, the coolest thing happened to me over the weekend when I was traveling. So what happened? She was like, well, I'm flying to China. She worked for a tech company and she was a petite woman. She said, for the first time in my life, I put my bag in the overhead compartment by myself. And then she says, I felt so empowered. And then I got it. I understand. I never understood this as a man because She says, I felt so empowered. And then I got it, I understand.

I never understood this as a man because I never have felt like I needed someone else to do something for me, to carry something for me. But women often, to do certain things, they look to a man to, hey, open this jar, hey, carry this thing, hey, move this thing for me. But what if you could double your strength, which is reasonable.

If you're not lifting weights now and you start lifting weights, it's reasonable to double your strength. You could do that within a year or two. How empowered would you feel twice as strong as you are now? I think it's the most underrated thing that happened that my clients didn't ask for or think they even wanted. It was like I have so many stories like that that I can tell of the the female client who came in wanting like let's say, a look or to get healthy or whatever, and as a byproduct, didn't realize how much they fell in love with the strength part.

Because maybe they didn't, just like you, didn't think about all those things. They're just a second nature. Hey, if I got to lift my bag up in my head, I got to find someone to help me. Or if I got to carry that big 50-pound bag of dog food, I got to ask the kid to walk me out and load it up in the car. They had all these situations that we take for granted that they feel like I gotta ask somebody else that they no longer had to do because they had the strength to do it easily compared to what it was like before.

That was my favorite, was to take someone like that who didn't even realize how much they loved or would like strength, give them that strength, and then they saw all the things that it affected, and it was like, oh my God, I love this. By the way, what I said a few minutes ago is totally reasonable and realistic, okay? Most women, right, barring injury or mobility issue

or some health issue, most women who go from not really strength training to proper, like real strength training, like you lift you know weights your rest you do sets You're trying to get stronger, right? Women who go from not lifting weights to properly lifting weights It is reasonable to expect that you'll probably double your strength within a couple years I would argue double your I would argue way more. I'm giving the most conservative. That's what I mean I'm giving a very conservative answer here like think about this right now if you're listening. Right now, whatever you're doing, you're sitting down, you're walking, whatever, you're listening to us

talk. How do you think you would feel if you were twice as strong as you are not? And we would see it all the time where all their lifts would go up double in weight. And I'm being very conservative. And by the way, I could triple someone's strength. You feel what it's like to be 10% stronger. Imagine twice as strong. Yeah, you can feel like, you get 10% stronger, any male or female, you feel that. You notice the difference, you're 10% stronger. You're double.

That's right. It's life changing. That's right, that's right. Next up, you sleep better. So again, this is backed by data. They've done studies comparing different forms of exercise to its effect or impact on sleep quality. By the way, women suffer from sleep disturbances more often than men do. When you look at

some of the data on this, it may be due to hormone fluctuations or maybe whatever, but women tend to suffer from sleep issues more than men do. So this is I think an important one. But when they compare strength training to other forms of exercise, strength training wins when it comes to which one improves sleep quality. You know the ability to fall asleep, the ability to stay asleep, like the different stages of sleep. Strength training is the best one. Now again to be fair all forms of exercise improve your health will make you sleep better. But if you want to pick the one that's the best, again the data supports strength training.

Now do you think that the reason why the strength training, because the first case I would make is just our bodies were meant to move. We were meant to move, we were meant to do things throughout the day. We have very sedentary lifestyle, so any sort of form of activity is going to greatly improve your sleep.

Now would you say the whole thing back to the hormonal, cortisol? It's the balancing of hormones. And is what really makes the strength training trump everything else? Because like you said, I think exercise period daily makes a tremendous difference on all my clients' sleep, but then strength training did seem to surpass it even better. Is that because of cortisol and what's going on hormonally that would make you make that argument? We're in speculation territory now

because they don't know why it's better for sleep, so this is pure speculation, but I think it has to do with the hormone. I think it has to do with insulin sensitivity too. You know, improved insulin sensitivity tends to impact sleep positively, and strength training does it very well. I mean, the strength, listen, there are studies on obese individuals where

they have them build muscle and lose no weight. Like I'm talking about really overweight people. All they have them do is build muscle. They don't lose a single parent of body. All their health markers improve. And well, not, I mean, in particular, their insulin sensitivity. So it's really, really effective for that. So that's speculating as to why, but again, the data shows it's the best for improving

your sleep. And next up, it's great for reducing pain. Here's how good it is when applied properly for pain. The primary form of exercise that rehab specialists or physical therapists use when trying to help somebody with back pain, shoulder pain, hip pain, knee pain, ankle pain, whatever. The primary form of exercise they use is some form of strength training. It is not cardio. It is not yoga. It is not- It's because the majority is related to a weakness.

That's right. And the weakness is really causing the dysfunction, which is the pain signal that there's something that's unsupported here and therefore your body's job is really to limit furthering an injury. So you have these natural limiters and so if we strength train, we build up that support system. We build up that support signal that feeds back that's like, okay, this is accounted for and it's strong enough

to now go through these types of movements. I feel like this is another one we really have to hammer home because I think it's one of the most important points. I remember when I realized this for myself. I always struggle with kind of low back pain and stuff like that, and it's very much so related to posture issues. My posture issues are related to weakness into like my core hip stability and that ability. And so I would not think, okay, even as a trainer,

I didn't think this way early on like that, hey, my low back is bothering me. I need to get better at squatting. I need like that. That doesn't, people don't make that connection. They think that, oh, lifting weights is hard. It's stressful. If I have bad knees, I have bad back, I have bad shoulders, uh, lifting weights that could, that puts me at risk. And so that's not a good idea when I'm so glad you said that Justin, that most chronic pain that people deal with is result from weakness somewhere and strength training is the best way to combat that.

And can't stress that enough that I don't know how many clients that I helped that suffered from chronic pain, we got to the root cause of what it was, where the weakness lie that was causing the downstream effect of chronic pain somewhere else. Because that's normally what it looks like, by the way. Bad knees is not normally bad knees. It's normally weak hips or weak ankles, right? I have instability or lack of mobility in the ankles. I have instability or lack of mobility in the hips.

Therefore, I feel the stress in my knees. Now as a client, I perceive that as I have bad knees, I shouldn't squat. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, this is what's beautiful about strength training. You don't have bad knees. Like, I'm not talking about somebody who broke their knee or had something made. Like most people that have chronic knee pain don't have bad knees. Like, I'm not talking about somebody who broke their knee or had something made.

Like, most people that have chronic knee pain don't have bad knees. They have poor mobility and strength in their ankles or their hips, and that is causing the stress in their knees. And the best thing that we can do is get strong, mobile hips, strong, mobile ankles. That results in good knees. And that is like crazy.

And that is most people that I had to train. Barring injury or some kind of autoimmune inflammatory disease, okay, barring those two main things, strong joints, okay, and why are they strong? They're supported by strong functional muscle, right? Joints don't move on their own. It's the muscle that moves the joints. Keeps the tracking properly. So strong muscles that support the knee, the ankle,

the hip, the spine, the neck, the shoulders, the wrists, the fingers, right? All the muscles that control the movement in these joints. If those all are strong and functional, your joints are fine. They don't hurt. In other words, a strong body doesn't have pain. Now, injury, different. Chronic inflammatory disease of some, different. But most pain, a majority of pain comes from weakness at the root, it's dysfunction.

So when you look at the way a joint moves, there's an optimal way it moves, and there are sub or less optimal ways that they move. The less optimal ways are a result of muscles that can't move the joints properly, either because of lack of strength or stability, they're not working well together, and so that joint starts to tear down,

you start to create pain. So strong bodies don't hurt. Again, this is why when you go to a physical therapist with pain and they realize, okay, there's no major injury here, whatever, you got frozen shoulder, you have a little bit of inflammation, whatever. What they use is strength training.

Correctional exercise is just a form of strength training. Whether they use bands or body weight or isometrics, it's all strength training. So strength training is the best way to solve pain issues. By the way, regardless of what the kind of athlete you are, if you're, you could be an endurance athlete, you could be a, you could be whatever athlete you are, when you have pain, the form of exercise you use to correct that pain or make it away, strength training.

That's how effective it is. And then finally, you'll look better. You'll look better because strength training changes your body composition. It's not about your weight, it's about your body composition. Okay? I'll use a male example, right? A six foot tall, 200 pound male at 10% body fat looks very different than a six foot tall, 200 pound male at 20% body.

I mean, very different. 10% body fat, you got six pack abs. 20% body fat, you look squishy. Same body weight. The same is true for a 130 pound woman at 30% body fat versus 20% body fat. They could be the same height, same weight, they look very, very different.

So in other words, what's so awesome about this is your weight doesn't matter as much as your body composition, which is great if you're a slave to your scale, which I know a lot of women become slaves to. So in terms of changing how you look, it's the best form of exercise. I mean, I can't tell you how many times too I had somebody come in who initially wanted to lose weight. And at the end of our programming, we were the same weight or

higher, yet we were 10% body fat leaner. So, and many times you have to show somebody that before they realize that weight is so irrelevant. It's like it doesn't even matter. I can take anybody, whatever their current weight is, and make them dramatically look better and never mess with the weight on the scale. In fact, we do a really good job. We shouldn't see major swings on the scale for the most part. Obviously, if you're hundreds of pounds overweight, the scale's eventually gonna come down and it needs to come down. But for most people who think they just need to lose

20 to say even 40 pounds, most of the time, that person, I can take their exact weight, never move it and completely radically change the look of their body by their body composition. Got a few questions here. The first one is, how many days a week should a woman lift weights? Okay, so of course there's a different answer

from individual, but I'm gonna say, this is 100% ladies. Most women are gonna get most of the results they want from strength training with about two or three days a week of strength training. That's it. Not five days a week, not six days a week, but two, three days a week, four days a week

if you're super advanced, is right around the amount of strength training that you're gonna need to get incredible results. That's about it. One of the beauties of strength training is you send the signal to build muscle, and then you let it recover and adapt. You don't need to do it all the time.

In fact, doing it all the time tends to give you worse results. The vast majority of female clients that I've trained who were advanced, well, I was training them three days a week, that's it. I mean, I would really want to know who's asking this question, because I do know how hard sometimes it is to get somebody

to switch over modalities. I brought that up earlier. If someone that was asking this question was the three day a week yoga person that loves it, doesn't want to let go of it, or the swimmer, the runner, I normally would encourage this person, just let me show you one day a week. Let me show you one day of strength training.

Give me, give me a few months of you trusting the process and just trading out one of your other active days of the other modality did for one day. And I can show you enough results that I could probably get you to do two or three times and then by the time I get you two to three times, we can damn near do anything. I mean, damn near do anything from sculpting to performance goals to looking a certain way to building a body part.

I mean, you name what you wanna do through weight training and three days a week I can do all of that. Yeah, and you know, this brings up a good kind of side point here, which is the, with strength training, the programming is very important. So programming is what exercise I do, when I do the exercises, how I perform, the technique, how much of it,

and the order I do them makes a big difference. So all forms of exercise you need good technique, like running, cycling, swimming, yoga, they all need good technique, so does strength training, definitely. But strength training, like running is like, as long as I got good technique, I just run, okay, or cycle or whatever. Strength training, there's so many different exercises, so many different ways to do them. Good programming makes a massive

difference versus just lifting some weights. I have a lot of weight to lose, should I lift weights or lose weight first? No, a lot of people say, yeah, lift weights. Lifting weights can make the fat loss easier. Period, end of story. Speed up the metabolism, improve your hormone profile, feed the muscle, feed the muscle, so don't go and cut your calories like crazy, but allow yourself to kind of build some muscle

and set yourself up for some really good fat loss. Yeah, you avoid plateaus and hitting the wall that way. So if you set yourself up for the long term, you get flexibility as a result. I wanna be clear on this too, because we had a caller one time that made a comment that like, oh, I feel like you guys speak to those people that just need to lose the last 10 or 20 pounds all the time,

but you're not addressing those of us that need to lose 50 or 100, 150 pounds. It is the same answer. So if you're listening to this and you're asking the question like that, and even though you need to lose 100 to 150 pounds, the beginning process is the same. So if someone hired me and they only needed to lose 20 pounds versus the person who needed to lose a hundred and

fifty pounds the beginning of my programming the beginning of what I had that person do is to reverse diet and build muscle. It doesn't matter which end of this pattern. It just makes the it makes both those people's journey to getting to their goal much easier than the opposite way which is, I'm going to try and lose this weight first, then I'll go build muscle. Not a good strategy. I don't want to get bulky. I want to look lean.

Should I skip lifting? There's that myth again. I'm going to illustrate this a little more. So if you look at the... What's happened on social media is you have these extreme examples of people with muscle building genetics that are incredibly rare to the point where there are men who see Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 70s or maybe bodybuilders today and they think, well if I lift weights hard enough or long enough I'm going to look like them.

There are also women who on social media just look crazy muscular and so women are like, oh my God, I'm afraid of lifting weights, because I'll look like that. The truth is the genetics required to build that amount of muscle is so rare, it's probably more rare than someone who's seven foot tall, or maybe just as rare as someone who's seven foot tall. So in other words, when you walk around in the real world,

you're not at the NBA, you walk around the real world, how often do you see someone that's seven foot tall. So in other words, when you walk around in the real world, you're not at the NBA, you walk around the real world, how often do you see someone that's seven foot tall? Never. If anything, you remember the time, but one time you saw someone seven foot tall because it stood out and it was so rare. That's how rare this Arnold Schwarzenegger or pro bodybuilder, that chick that's got the veins

in her neck, muscle building, genetic stars, they're super rare. Then on top of it, they take anabolic steroids. But it's super, super rare. So if you are the person, if you're a woman listening to this and you're always the buffed-est, strongest person at your school, in your family, you're bigger and stronger than every male family member

and you don't lift weights, you have those genetics. If that's not you, don't worry about it, you're totally fine. I also think that this is a bit exacerbated at the beginning process of anybody's kind of weight loss or weightlifting journey that doesn't want to get bulky is understanding what's happening too, right? One, you're at a body fat percentage that you're not happy with. You eventually want to get leaner.

We're in the process right now of reverse dieting and building muscle. Well, when you lift weights, there's a little bit of inflammation, water retention, carbohydrates, everything gets flooded in the muscle. And so it has this temporary look of like you looking bigger. And it's more feeling, I think. It is. It's the feeling of the tightness. That's what I mean.

And that feeling, even a little bit of that perception, your shirt's a little bit tighter, maybe it is, you are, it's temporary. And it is part of the process of building muscle, building the metabolism, sculpting the body to get to that point. And so it's kind of think of the process of building muscle, building the metabolism, sculpting the body to get to that point. And so it's kind of think of it like this is like, if you were to tell someone

to make this beautiful sculpture out of clay, like you've got to give me the clay to pack on there so I can sculpt and do it. If you not going through that process, you're not allowing yourself to sculpt. You're not allowing yourself to go through those temporary moments of fluid,

nutrition, inflammation, to look a little bit like that, to temporarily get to the place where you can have the clay on there to carve away, to get to look what you want. Like we have to go through that process. You have to be okay with it. It's not a forever, you're going to look big and bulky. It's temporarily right now where we're at, but don't worry where we end up. The final sculpture of that is going to look amazing and bulky. It's temporarily right now where we're at, but don't worry where we end up. The final sculpture of that is going to look amazing and you'll be happy with it, but you have to learn to go through that process.

I heard that higher reps are better for a feminine look. Is this true? Yeah, another myth solved by the fitness industry. So any rep range between one to 30 done in a traditional strength training format is muscle building. So all those rep ranges are muscle building. But the myth is that the 30 reps is gonna give me

this feminine look and that doing two reps or three reps with a little heavy weight, to make my muscles explode and look bulky. That's false, they all build muscle. All of them build muscle. All of them are gonna give you the look that you're looking for. But don't be afraid of low rep. So one of my trade

secrets as a personal trainer, a lot of trainers know this by the way when you train long enough, one of my trade secrets with female clients was to introduce them to low reps because I know they never touched them. I know they never did five reps because they were afraid of them. So the first thing I do is train them on five reps and because it was so new they weren't used to it. Their body responded like crazy and they got amazing results and then they were clients for life. So all those rep ranges are effective,

but the most effective rep ranges are usually the ones you're not used to. Because there is a novelty of that. Okay, so there's another way to say this to this question is the high reps for a better feminine, there is one example of where that works for that lady. It's the lady who trains three to five reps. So if you're asking that question and all you train is three to five reps, then absolutely training high reps is going to make you look

more feminine because you'll build more muscle, you get leaner and you get more tone. That's the only person that's of it. The opposite is true for the female who trains high reps all the time. The best thing that you could do to look more feminine, to look leaner, to look more toned, to build more muscle is to train three to five reps. It's the novel stimulus that's gonna be so important. To Sal's point, anything between one and 30 builds muscle is good for the body.

Wherever you spend the most time, the opposite side of the spectrum is gonna give you the most amount of results. Yeah, and a good workout program, or good workout program, yeah, tends to shift you and phase you through different rep ranges. We have workout programs that we designed.

We have one for women. It's the only one we've ever made specifically for women. It's called Muscle Mommy and it's a fully programmed workout. It's three months long or a little longer. Exercises, sets, reps, video demos, a whole deal. Because of this episode it's 50% off. We're going to make it half off for women who are listening to this episode. You got to the end of it. You want workout programming, go to mapsmusclemommy.com, use the code women50 and you'll get it half off. You can also find us on Instagram. Justin

is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind Pump with Stefano. Adam is at Mind Pump. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Aesthetic,

nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a 5-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family.

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