The Food Medic - S3 E8 - Strength Training for Beginners

Episode Date: August 27, 2019

The topic of this weeks show is strength training, and while it is not about food or nutrition (directly anyway) it is something that is so incredibly important for our health. This week Dr.Hazel is joined on the by two incredible strength coaches and personal trainers; Adam Willis and Laura Hoggins. Adam Willis is a Strength Coach, Mentor, Consultant & the Co-Owner of Lean Body Performance, an online coaching business. He is also the host of The Empowered Body Podcast. Laura Hoggins is a Fitness Coach and Personal Trainer. She teaches a mix of modified strongman, strength and conditioning circuits across the city at London’s top fitness venues - including her own concept class at ministry of sound fitness ‘lifted’. Laura has also just released her debut book Lift Yourself: A Training Guide to Getting Fit and Feeling Strong for Life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Hello, and welcome back to the Food Medic Podcast. I'm your host, as always, Dr. Hazel Wallace. I'm an NHS doctor and founder of The Food Medic, which is an educational platform that aims to pick apart the fact from fad when it comes to nutrition and other aspects of health. The topic of today's show is strength training and while that's not about food or nutrition directly anyway, it is something that is so incredibly important for health and something I personally feel very passionate about. I'm also qualified level two and level three personal trainer for those who aren't aware and something I qualified in back at medical school. But on a personal level,

I'm also really passionate about weightlifting. And as most of you guys know, I do CrossFit a couple of times a week. So today I'm joined on the podcast by two incredible strength coaches, Adam Willis and Laura Hogins. Now, Adam is a strength coach, mentor, consultant, and co-owner of Lean Body Performance, an online coaching business. He is also host of the Empowered Body podcast. With almost two decades of experience, he has worked with everyone from the general population to high level athletes and combines his extensive knowledge with real life experience to help his clients achieve their goals. Adam was also my coach once upon a time and taught me a lot so this is why I really want to get him

on the show. And Laura is a fitness coach and personal trainer. She teaches a mix of modified strongman strength and conditioning circuits across the city at london's top fitness venues including her own concept class at ministry of sound fitness called lifted which you absolutely have to try if you come to london because it's one of the best group classes that i've been to laura has also released her debut book lift yourself a training guide to getting fit and feeling strong for life. So absolutely check that one out. You can probably find it on Amazon and all good bookstores. Now, as always, I have a listener question to share with you. And this week it is, do you really have to drink a protein shake within 30 minutes of lifting?

So if you're interested in finding out what the answer to that question is, make sure to keep listening to the end of the show. Adam and Laura, welcome to the podcast so obviously the reason i wanted to get you guys on here is to chat about weightlifting and well strength training in general i think most of us well us here in the in the studio have our experience or the first time we've ever lifted a weight and how that felt. And I know I started lifting weights, I say lifting weights,

lifted my first weight about eight years ago. At the time, my boyfriend took me to the gym, was like, right, we'll teach you how to squat. I put a barbell on my back. The barbell was a curling bar. Amazing. And here I was and I thought I was super strong but that was my introduction to weightlifting and to be fair I haven't looked back so I'd love to hear your first experience with with lifting weights and

and how you got into it Laura do you want to go first yeah definitely so my first experience of weightlifting is actually in a previous I kind of call it a previous life when I wasn't a full-time PT and I was working in an office and I was highly stressed and I just wanted this sort of level of escape I really felt like you know I need to do some sort of fitness and I went to the the gym underneath the office and there was this thing called body attack and it really was a body attack. It was horrendously challenging. And after I started doing that, they were like, you should go to Body Pump. And I was like, oh, cool. What's that? They're like, oh, they use the barbells. I was like, oh, that sounds, that sounds big. And I remember going there. I think you do like 1000 reps to like some really

awesome Kelly Clarkson remixes. And everyone's really into it. Everyone's super passionate. And that was it, body pump. I was like, wow, I've got this barbell on my back. I think I probably had about fives either side. So I was really hitting the big weights at that stage. But there was something about it. I just absolutely loved it. It felt so empowering.

And that was it. I just wanted to find out how I could do more and lift heavier. Yeah. How long ago was that? About six or seven years ago. I think I lived the body pump dream for about a year before I had built up the confidence to go and do. Well, I started with CrossFit.

That was petrifying. Yeah, that was a big jump. Yeah, huge jump. Ironically, you talk about jump. One of the first workouts I did included a lot of box jumps. And I'm not afraid to admit I could not do one. From my great height of five foot three this box felt that's tall as Adam. For our friends Adam is very tall. It was like so hang on you want me to lift all those weights

over there and then jump on this box five million times without dying. Okay I'll give it a go and that's where it started yeah. Nice about you Adam I wish mine was as cool as that um I was playing basketball to a good standard I was playing in the national league and we had a only one way to describe him an incredibly crazy American coach who kind of got us into lifting the one thing that you notice about American sports is they start lifting at kind of 13 14 years of age when they're at high school. And he got us, and obviously in this country, not really allowed in a gym until you're about 18 to lift weights. And as soon as we all hit 18, he gave us lifting programs,

and we got lifting from there. And the funny part of it is that I started for sport performance. I stayed for female attention, really. That was kind of the reason I stayed. I was 6'7", about 12 and a half, 13 stone, so I built like a pipe cleaner. And as soon as I started putting some mass on me, I started noticing that I got more attention from females.

So that's kind of what kept me lifting. Interesting. Okay, so one thing that I really want to talk about, something I'm really passionate about is strength training for women because I think for men for example like it's a bit easier to transgress into that from you know from sport for example but for women there's a bit of a bigger hurdle and there's still lots of misconceptions around strength training women are less likely to be represented in in research in this field and I think women

are still less likely to take part in sport, although things are changing. I think there's also this idea that women and men need to train differently. And this is something I'd love to ask you, Adam, because you program strength training for a living. Do you program differently for men and women? Do you think that is something that people need to take into consideration? I would say in the grand scheme of things, no, no, I don't program differently. I think there's considerations to have. The only real two differences between male and female

is that you have to take consideration at times for menstrual cycle and pre-postnatal if the client is pregnant or has just had a child. Those are really the only two differences, variations. You can look at things like women's ability to handle more volume, so more sets and reps. There's a small difference there, there isn't that a huge amount even if you look at research i had um greg knuckles onto on my podcast and he said the only real two differences research back

differences male females is the risk of acl injury with females is higher and females need more neck training because they're at high risk of concussion if they play if they're in collision or fight sports so there's really only two differences that need to happen and most general population that i deal with females don't want a big neck and they're not doing things that their acl might suddenly rupture so i love neck day yeah it's brilliant who doesn't love huge traps and a thick neck on a woman so but yeah really yeah for me there's no real huge difference other than the menstrual cycle needs to be accounted for and pre-personatal. And Laura, you do like a lot of class-based exercises with both male and female clients.

Do you tailor it differently or are you just like everyone just get stuck in and don't worry about, you know, what sex you are? Yeah, I think, well, you have a workout that is not gender specific, but as Adam mentioned, there are some considerations when training with women. So how I like to coach in a group scenario is here's the movement pattern that I want you to work for. Here is the reps or the time domain that you're going to work for. And select a weight or find a way of moving that feels challenging for the time, but isn't going to pull you out of bad form. So, of course, you know, we'll be working on certain reps or sets at times,

but actually it's about the weight selection and the movement ability of the individual that isn't really necessarily about, you know, whether you're a guy or a girl. Yeah, absolutely. I think I just wanted to cover that off before we got into it because, I mean, you can take a quick scroll through Instagram and there's, you know, like very female-focused workouts and very male-focused workouts. When I say female-focused, I mean like bingoing target workouts or booty sculpting and then with men,

it's just like how to get bigger, how to get fast. And that frustrates me a little bit because I do agree with you there's considerations sometimes that you need to take in into consideration but we shouldn't be separating out exercises for male or women and women shouldn't feel like they can't go to a certain part of the gym and men shouldn't feel like they can't go to a certain part of the gym but I definitely think that's changing especially in the gyms that I've been going to which is really good to see. But while we're very passionate about training and have been doing it for a little while, there's like lots of people who've never tried it who are really keen to try it.

And this is one of the questions that people ask me, you know, like, hey, I really feel inspired. I've been, you know, watching my friends or seeing people on Instagram who lift weights. But where do I start? What would be your advice to an absolute beginner newbie never lifted a weight doesn't know where to start I guess ideally it would be amazing if you could connect with a fitness professional on a one-to-one basis because it's fine having a lot of things online but it's a one-way communication and I think if you're just starting out there's lots of considerations in terms of people's ability, mobility, ability to move safely, that that first level of assessment you can't do via YouTube. So

someone that can assess how you move, or just giving you that face to face reinforcement that actually what you're feeling looks good to me. And sometimes even what looks good isn't necessarily moving in the right way so i would say if you're not assessing you're guessing so if you can find someone a fitness professional that you can have that first initial gym introduction with and also to show you around the gym you know if it's your local gym it can feel super intimidating just to walk in and you've got this sea of machines and you think what the hell do i do with that you just sort of sit back to front on the lat pulldown machine and start pressing with it like how do you know so so that i think would be good just to sort of assess you physically

and also give you the confidence that you're doing doing the right thing yeah i'm pretty much going to agree with everything laura said there i mean ultimately the general population who aren't in the fitness community they don't understand our language. They speak a different language to us. And essentially, when you can watch something on Instagram or YouTube or whatever you're doing, and you might think or feel it's right, but most people who don't train, they don't know how their body moves. They don't know where they should be feeling things. It's the reason when I coach a deadlift, I don't say that it works the lower back because I don't want people to feel it in their lower back and think that's acceptable because that's

not the idea of the exercise. So I think going to see a trainer that first time, it's almost like an interpreter. So you've got this foreign language of movement, of exercise, the trainer's going to interpret it for you so you can understand it. They should put it in a context that you're going to understand. And as a beginner, that's really important to then take forward and hopefully build a really solid foundation to launch your fitness journey on. Yeah, absolutely.

And now, like we just spoke about, you can get loads of different programs online from various trainers. Some people aren't even trainers, but there's lots of programs available. And some of the exercises are just so weird and wonderful that I'm like I don't even know what that's supposed to be doing but let's strip it back to basics Adam what would you say are like the core fundamental exercises that you would love to see in every program that you just think are bog standard nail these first and

then worry about the kind of fancy stuff at the end ultimately Ultimately, it boils down to the fundamental movement patterns. It is a squat pattern, which is appropriate for you based on your abilities limitations. Some form of hinge or deadlift movement. Some form of push, whether that's horizontal, you're lying on your back and pushing or a push-up. Some form of overhead pressing, a horizontal or vertical pull, so a row variation or a chin-up or a lat pull-down.

And then some form of single leg activity whether it's a split squat single leg Romanian deadlift something like that and then obviously we have core and loaded carries so farmer's walks and weighted walks off the back of that but ultimately it doesn't have to get too much more complicated than that really just want to introduce those movements to start off with that they're going to set you a great foundation and be able to build from there yeah and laura when it comes to training you know like adam you just pointed out we talk a different language we talk about reps and sets and loading and hinge movements and things like that when it comes to rep ranges for example for some people they just go to the gym and they do their own stuff if I was looking to get strong versus build endurance for example what would be the difference in the kind of reps and sets that

I'd be going for there there's lots of ways you can look at this and I sound really sad every time I say it does depend on the individual because it depends on your training level as a beginner I would always encourage people to work within an 8 to 12 rep range and development of strength is everyone starting from a different baseline so the principle of it is find where you're relatively comfortable and at that point if you're moving safely and well within say the 8 to 12 rep range which is sort of your traditional hypertrophy then you start to apply the principle of progressive overload onto that movement pattern so let's take for example a squat if you're a

complete beginner i would assess your movement pattern first if you're moving safe and well within your mobility your ability to move in that squat variation then you could start applying intensity and that doesn't at the start actually mean holding a weight, holding dumbbells, it could be applying a tempo. So when I say a tempo, I mean the lowering phase, what we call the eccentric phase of a squat, you could maybe go down for three seconds and come up for one or two. And actually the total training volume, the time, the amount of seconds your muscle is under tension is increased. So therefore, that's progressively overloading a movement. And then you could start to introduce

some weight. So if you're a beginner level, I would say to start there as you become more advanced, or say an intermediate or an advanced level trainer, to develop strength, sort of from a raw strength or power perspective, you will be able to have the ability to lift heavier. And that means lowering the reps. So lifting heavy for lower reps, potentially longer rest periods will be your level of progressive overload. If you continue to press 10 to 12 reps above your head of 10 kilos, that's all you're ever going to be good at doing because your body adapts to that stimulus and you will make no progress. So you could start to increase the weight. It's all relative to the weight that you can do for those reps,

if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, I think we have to look at like defining the terms on a continuum. So strength, we can have like powerlifters, strongmen, like one rep maxes on one end. Endurance essentially can go all the way up to these people that do crazy ultramarathons.

I think sometimes that rep scheme becomes very, we try and idealize certain rep schemes of like, one to five is strength, six to 12 is hypertrophy, 12 plus is endurance. Well, we have to look at what the person needs and the adaptation we're after. As Laura rightly said, you can get stronger in every rep range, but then we have to define strength to that person for most people general population it's going to fall between the three to eight rep range when we look at hypertrophy research shows that you can build muscle between three and 30 reps however if you read the book uh endure and you start looking at things that go beyond 15 repetitions it becomes more about mental ability because the body wants to shut you down

mentally versus muscular contraction or anything inhibiting it so i would argue that a lot of people that could do 15 repetitions with an exercise if you push them could probably do 20 because it's their mind that's trying to stop them rather than the physicality of things so yeah i'll probably just confuse the situation there but ultimately like yes endurance is the further rep range and we're looking to build more endurance based qualities more aerobic based muscle fiber typing whereas the lower end is going to be strength but you can get stronger in all the rep ranges but as from a coaching standpoint and i think as a good question to ask yourself when clients do come forward and i get asked these questions laura probably does as well like what do i do for endurance first you need to define that term to be able to understand how you what you're trying

to progress what are you trying to get better at yeah and now I'm going to ask you an even more annoying and difficult to answer question which is something I'm always asked and that's how do I know what weight to lift and I think we sometimes chase down certain weights and Adam this will be familiar to you because I remember when for context Adam used to do my strength programming and I was like I really want to get 100 kilo deadlift and I just wanted to do that because there was other girls getting that and I was like I just want to join that club I never joined it until this year which is you know it took me a while to get there but my body just wasn't physically strong enough to get there that quickly and Adam used to always remind me to stop chasing just these arbitrary numbers and that's what it is they're arbitrary

and I'd love to know what do you advise to people where do they start out what way to start at yeah from my perspective if we start in our previous conversation is what is the goal what rep range are we trying to hit based on the training program that you're on say for example your training program you're going between 10 to 12 reps my opinion on what weight you should select is i would say find a weight that feels challenging for the rep range prescribed that maybe if asked to you could have done one more i don't ever like to ask my clients to go to failure yeah i'm exactly the same i usually work with a rate of perceived exertion which if you're familiar with the term it's predominantly used for aerobic training um but a scale of one to ten one being easy ten being really hard but now they've

converted it into essentially reps and reserves so a nine out of ten means you leave one rep in the tank eight out of ten means you leave two reps in the tank most of the work my clients do are between a seven and a nine so they're leaving between one to three repetitions in the tank now when it comes to loading yes that's the guide as a coach i have to provide some level of context because general population or new you don't know what 10 feels like so often my context for that is okay i want you to do some sort of push-up until you don't know what a 10 feels like. So often my context for that is, okay, I want you to do some sort of push up until you can't do another one. That's a 10. Now, if I asked you to do a nine, you stop just one more before that. But likewise with that, that's the guide I give them. But I would never ask someone to lift beyond their confidence because that's when people get injured

or they compensate. So yes, there's the guide there, but if eight out of 10 for you is 40 kilos, but your mind and your confidence only lets you do 30, we start there. Because we can still progress to that 40 eventually. But yeah, that's really the guide is like, lift what you feel confident with to start with, but you've got to progress. And yeah, leaving one to three reps in the tank,

don't go to failure, but you've got to, I always use the term like, you've got to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Like there's no good being having to have 10 reps in the tank at the end of your set. You you've got to, I always use the term, you've got to break a few eggs to make an omelette. There's no good being having to have 10 reps in the tank at the end of your set. You're not going to create any stress. You have to stress to create adaptation.

So you've got to go to that one to three left. Absolutely. And when it comes to the number of sessions per week, again, this is going to vary depending on your schedule, where you're at, whether you're a beginner, you're advanced, you've been doing this for a while. What's kind of the average or the optimum that you'd like to see your client training that in terms of sessions per week and how would one know whether they're doing too much?

The majority of my clients are going to train between three to five days per week. I don't necessarily insist on a certain number if they tell me oh I can do three to four it's three because four is the best case scenario we're always going to go with what you could be consistent with i think you can achieve great results in three i have a goal making great results in two ultimately i think it's more of a case of what you do in that time and what you can recover from because it's not really a case of how much training can you do it's what can you recover from with that training so it's pointless you doing five and being so exhausted and fatigued that you're not progressing when three could see

you make great gains so really for me that's kind of what i'm looking at is finding that sweet spot what fits your schedule what allows you to recover well and what allows you to to achieve obviously some goals require a little bit more work if you're going to run a marathon you're going to need to do a little bit more work you're not really going to achieve it on three days per week so it's looking at what's required what you're to do, and then can you recover from it to actually progress? I echo Adam's points there. And I think a lot of the people that I train have quite stressful lifestyles and quite hectic schedules. And sometimes I'll have a client come to me and, you know, as soon as they've walked in, I can see that it's been a big week and and

sometimes they're not giving themselves the opportunity to recover enough given not just the stress of the workouts but also they leave my gym they have 500 emails they're sat at their desk hunched over that you know their body is is full of stress and they might report to me actually god it was such a busy day. I didn't eat anything until three today. So actually their nutrition, they might not be fueling that recovery as well as the amount of sleep they get. So it's almost like address the foundations of stress in someone's life and then start to see how much you can prescribe to be of a positive benefit. Because sometimes doing less might actually help them.

Yeah, absolutely. benefit because sometimes doing less might actually help them yeah absolutely and i guess for someone who may feel like they're overtraining in terms of from a symptom point of view what would they be experiencing or what would you expect to hear from them that would be those red flags for you to say hey i think you need to cut down on your training a little bit i certainly think there's some subjective measures sometimes you'll see enjoyment start to drop when someone's stressed and fatigued. Key ones for me is like performance indicators are going to be a good measure, which is why, you know, I like to follow a structured program, because if you can't at least repeat the effort you did the previous week, so let's say you're doing three sets of five for 50 kilos. If you can't at least repeat that effort, then there

is a chance you've not recovered from that workout or the previous training week. And we need to make some sort of adjustment. People seek out DOMS or delayed muscle soreness, you know, those tired legs that you get from doing leg day. They seek that out as a badge of honor. The issue is that if you have that, you're not recovering well. So if I've got a client who's experiencing a long delay with DOMS, or it's getting increasing, then we probably need to look at the recovery side of things. I'm not, however, just going to be reactionary to that.

I am going to look at nutrition. I'm going to look at sleep, stress factors. All of these are to come into account. But I have to look from something that's tangible. And for me, like the level of DOMS, which over a course for training phase, you are getting increased stress. So you're going to see a little bit at the start of a phase

and it may increase as we get to the end. But I had a client message me the other day and she's saying, like, my legs are heavy. The DOMS is just there. It's been there for a few days now. I'm like, okay, we need to deload and give you some recovery. But for me, that, if your performance starts to drop, then we need to make that adjustment.

Yeah, absolutely. And then there's other reasons why, you know, lots of us may hit a plateau for some reason. We might feel like we've been hitting, you know, increasing weights every week, and then we just get to this point where no weights are budging, we're still lifting the same weight, or we don't feel like we're progressing. What are some of the reasons for us to reach this plateau? And how can we overcome that kind of bump in the road well i think similar to the reasons that we've just described is that it may be that nutritionally

you're not fueling your body enough to repair because if you think about exercises of stress and if you're progressively overloading that your muscles are actually tearing right so actually you need to provide your body with enough time and nutritional support to rebuild bigger stronger prepared to be able to move better or more load so potentially the the nutrition side could be that sleep and recovery sleep is absolutely magic you know it is no secret that the gains are made in the recovery but also perhaps have a look at your your training program and just see is your training program providing the right level of progressive overload to enable you at different

intensities i would say like we talk about the different you can develop strength across different rep ranges sometimes actually just hammering after a new one rm isn't the way in which you could do it perhaps you know taking a step back and training in some different rep ranges or adding some tempo, a submaximal load may in time help you to then increase your 1RM. But for this one, I would say it is so individual. But those could be some of the things that I would look at. Yeah, I think you have to look at there is a level of accommodation to training when you have a program that I might set out a four week training program, but everyone's going to accommodate differently to it. Some people may take six weeks to accommodate to that stress. Other people may take three. And it depends on how you come into that training phase.

And if we look at like intensity, so load on the bar, sets and reps, and we start to progress that now, that person may reach their cap or plateau at three weeks. However might they might make six before we need to make a change but basically it's a law of accommodation so once you get to a certain point like we're trying to stress the body to create adaption we're trying to stress the body so it changes as it changes it will get to a point whereby that stress has kind of reached its peak whereby now we need to make a tweak to it we don't need to change everything we don't we just need to make a subtle tweak it could be a tempo it could It could be a tempo. It could be a change of rep scheme. It could be a change of sets.

But ultimately, these plateaus happen because the body's just accommodated to the training stress that it's been put under, and then we make that change. But I think you have to be careful not to be reactionary to it because one bad session doesn't mean you've plateaued. Yeah, that's very true. Okay, so we've kind of talked about strength training for the bulk of this conversation.

And I often get messages like, Hazel, you lift weights all the time, but when do you do cardio? Well, first of all, I do CrossFit. So I can assure you I do a lot of cardio. But we kind of like see it as these separate entities and like you either do one or you do the other. How can someone incorporate both into their training program without doing too much yeah well i guess i like to start and

by saying you know what is cardiovascular activity it's something that you know makes your heart rate rise so i could make a joke and say just lift weights faster and you can do it or you know i think it's very important that from a lifestyle perspective that we vary the intensity of the work that we do so doing your cardio doesn't mean killing yourself on the cross trainer it could be hey do you know what this weekend i'm going to go for a long walk that's cardiovascular activity that's actually very good to recover from or if you're very time poor you could if you're doing a lower volume strength session, you could incorporate more of a circuit.

So you're sort of doing upper body, lower body, so that you can try to manage your CV training within that. Or you could bolt it on to the end of your weightlifting. Again, it depends on the individual and the lifestyle that they have, how much time you have. Yeah, absolutely. It comes down to it depends and what cardiovascular or,obic fitness means to that person. Do they want to run a marathon, 5k? Do they just want to feel fitter? And people talk about like recovery days and active recovery. And often they go too hard on

that. If you do your cardiac output work, which is essentially keeping your heart rate between 60 to 70% of your maximum heart rate, your body stays parasympathetic. Well, now, you're not stressing your body. So I do all my recovery where I have two recovery days, I do it all within that range. Sometimes it's intervals, sometimes it's long, slow duration. But now I'm not adding stress. Now my actual active recovery day is active recovery, because I'm staying parasympathetic. What people do is go oh it's active recovery day i'm gonna go in and blast myself and they're sympathetic the whole time they're piling more stress on their body and it's one of those things like you only really need active recovery work if your trainings are hard anyway but that's one way you can build that in you can build it in with steps you can build in things very simply but it's understanding

contextually where are we on this sliding scale is it just going for a walk or is it running a marathon because it requires different abilities to plug that in yeah i think also when it comes to resistance training we all automatically think of the gym but we forget that we also have our body and our body weight which acts as a resistance for people who maybe can't afford or don't have time to go to a gym or traveling students etc how can you incorporate resistance training into kind of an at-home workout or traveling workout style scenario so if you're just purely doing that alone and you're and it's your on-ramp to fitness then anything you do is really going to help you. So just starting is always the win.

The tough thing becomes, again, your body will accommodate to things. So if it is just body weight, progressions can be really challenging. And often what happens is home workouts just turn into cardiovascular circuits. So if your goal is to get stronger, then that's when some investment in equipment or into getting improved calisthenics becomes important when it comes to going away sometimes what i try and get people to do is rather than just turning everything into some sort of circuit is we'll play

around with tempos so if i've got someone that's really strong we might have to go with a really long lowering so if they're doing a squat they may have to do like five to eight seconds on the way down and then a long pause at the bottom because we've got to create some sort of training stress. But yeah, if you're someone that trains at home, getting moving is the start if you're new because it's just the on-ramp to exercise. For me personally, I do think there's a limit you can get to with just body weight. At some point, we have to stress the body and usually that means putting some form of load or stress on us in some capacity. It doesn't necessarily have to be a barbell, but that has to happen for progression. So you may reach a certain level before you have to make an adjustment and maybe join a gym or

invest in some equipment. Okay. Yeah, I think also sometimes you may have to look at, is that person intimidated to go to a gym? Maybe that's a barrier we have to break down, but maybe for right now, that's the on-ramp. They're comfortable and they're okay exercising at home well great people are moving and they're doing something and then if you've got them as a client well now we can work on that barrier if there is one is it confidence is it how they're perceived in that environment which is where a lot of people feel embarrassed and so it's addressing that maybe yeah absolutely and now i know you guys aren't nutritionists but i'm sure you get loads of questions from your clients like what should i be eating and blah blah and

um the kind of sports supplement industry is absolutely booming as is the kind of nutritional supplement industry and i'm interested to know are supplements something that you guys would use with your clients to enhance performance or is it something that you're like no not my bag i'm not into it it depends it really you're not like supplements are really the clues in the title the supplementation they offer about you know they're the extra three percent the reason i use a whey protein supplement is because i live with a pescatarian so i don't get to eat steak and chicken that often unless I go out for dinner. So for me, that's there to help supplement my diet because my wife essentially just eats vegetables and fish. But I take magnesium before bed.

I take D3 because we live in a country that just rains and it's dark and grey. And I think, I'll create it because it's, for me, I do notice a small effect while I'm on it, but it's also the most researched supplement out there. And it's proven to work. So really, that's all I take. Yeah. Yes.

I mean, similar. I guess it's for me, I would always encourage for client or, you know, peer to try and get it from there from food. And like Adam said, you know, it is, as the name suggests, it's a supplement. Personally, I'm that pescatarian annoying person and I do find it quite challenging sometimes to to get the right macro and micronutrients even so yes I do use it I do use um a protein supplement but for everyone else it's just more don't just use it as a oh it's instant gains you need to understand where you are deficient and and what could actually have the potential to help and know that the level of improvement is slim it can be used as a supplement

but ideally you'd be getting it from your your food intake yeah and i think you hit the nail on the head it doesn't make your muscles necessarily grow bigger and faster unless you're very deficient in protein which most of us in the western world are not but like you said adam it's super convenient if someone in your household or if you are not eating animal-based proteins it can be a good complete source of protein to add into your diet but what i don't want people to feel is that it's essential for you know improving their performance or you know building muscle it's not if you're getting a good protein-rich diet. I think we can add to that is that a lot of these things market like,

okay, before training, you've got to have your BCAAs. No, you don't because you're still processing properly breakfast or something you have before. If you train first thing in the morning, you don't eat, you had dinner within a few hours prior to that, you've got plenty of glycogen stores, you're going to be good to go. But then you also don't have to eat straight after like you're not going to lose your gains because you didn't have a protein shake within 30 seconds of putting the

weight stay in yeah okay guys i think we have covered everything but if anyone wants to find out more from you guys laura where can they find you yeah so i am on on the worldwide web on the gram at laura biceps because it's the bice Web, on the gram at Laura Biceps. Bicep curls are the most important exercise around, right? I also recently wrote my first book called Lift Yourself, which is out available to find. And it is actually a good theme to support our conversations around. If you're unsure of where to start in fitness and strength training in particular,

it can help give you a bit more guidance. Yeah, so there I am. For me, Instagram underscore Adam Willis. And I do have my own podcast, which is the Empowered Body Podcast. Amazing. I have a podcast as well. I forgot to say that. Biceps and Banter, of course.

Which Hazel was a wonderful guest on, so yeah. Yes, I was. We had so much banter. And then we did not do biceps afterwards. I did. We were gone. Every day. Every day is biceps day. Okay, well, thank you so much for joining me today, guys.

That was really useful and obviously great to have you both in the studio. Thank you so much. Thank you, Hazel. Cool. Okay, guys, that was Laura and Adam. I absolutely loved having both of them in the studio. Not only are they super knowledgeable,

but they are a lot of fun as well. So hopefully you guys learned a lot and enjoyed listening too. So now it's time to answer this week's listener question. Do you really have to drink a protein shake within 30 minutes of lifting? Now, a couple of episodes back, I tackled the question about

whether protein supplements are necessary. And I tackled the question about whether protein supplements are necessary and I know that we spoke about it in this podcast episode but this question is slightly different. So when it comes to post-workout protein the idea that it must be consumed within a certain amount of time after you stop training is often called the anabolic window. Now this window was once thought to be really narrow like an hour after exercising but actually now we know it's quite broad over a 24-hour period. So instead of worrying about getting your protein in straight after you train if you're having protein at breakfast lunch and dinner and at snack times you're going to be doing just fine. However a

final point to note is that protein sources, whether you train or not, do not need to be in the form of a supplement, just like we mentioned in the podcast. So it can be any form of protein rich source. So something like meat, fish, dairy, tofu, or if you're vegan, beans and pulses. Okay, guys, that's all from me. Don't forget, if you do have your own question for the show, you can always tweet, Facebook message or Instagram message me. And just make sure to use the hashtag the food medic podcast. See you next time.