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How many times a week do you go to sleep with the best intentions that you're going to wake up early, you're going to work out, you're going to move your body, you're going to get energized, but then you wake up in the morning, you wake up a little late, you skip that workout, you just can't find the motivation to do it. Do you want to wake up every morning with more energy and actually want to move your body or just have the energy to chase your kids around? Do you want to stay strong, healthy, and independent into your 70s and 80s? What if I told you that strength training, not cardio, is your secret weapon? Fitness isn't just for athletes. It's for anyone who wants to feel strong in their own body. Now, you
don't need to deadlift 300 lb. You just need strength to move pain-free and live fully. Today's guests break down how strength training improves your bones, joints, brain, and even leadership skills. Whether you want to lift your kid without pain, or lead your team with more energy, this episode is for you. Today's first segment is from Andy Galpin, human performance expert, and he talks about why strength training is for everyone. I think so many of us think, oh, well, strength training is for bodybuilders or it's for specific types of athletes. But the truth is it can improve all of our performance. If you want to improve your nervous system, your bones, your joint health and brain,
we need to be strength training. Historically, it's been seen as risky. It's now proven to boost health and longevity. And this is true for me, too. I'm not a bodybuilder. I don't have plans to be one, but I've seen the value in making strength training a big part of my weekly workout routine. This next clip is for anyone who wants to keep their body pain-free and their brain sharp. Fitness can be I just want to be able to surf every day. Amazing. I'm in. Right. Fitness just means I want more energy with my kids. I'm I'm I'm here for all of that. All of that can be rooted in performance. We have a saying
that if you have a body, you're an athlete. which is to say, I don't care if you want to use those physical abilities to shoot a basketball or hit a golf ball like some of our clients, or you want to use that to just run your business better, be a better leader, make better decisions, to be able to work more hours and less fatigue. Fine, you're still asking your body to perform. It's the exact same thing except for a couple of little points at the end of physical movement skill, right? So, that's answer number one. Now taking this question entirely differently. If you look at what is generally true for most people, fitness is a combination of a handful of things.
You want to be able to do activities and not pay major consequences. That is it, right? I want to be able to walk up this dang hill and then not wake up tomorrow in screaming pain. So it is a I want to do A and I don't want B to happen as a consequence. Right? So I want to empower everyone to be able to have that and then not pay major consequences whether it's injury or handful of other things. So for most people to be execute a resilient physiology that is be able to do many things is it's one of the reasons again we called it aritates this concept of I want to be able to do many things and then not have severe consequences. So you're going to have some semblance of physical strength number one right? You don't need to be a
powerlifter or a bodybuilder or a weightlifter, blah, but minimal levels of strength. If you want to look at this from the medical perspective, I can make that argument. We can go into tons of the research. I was about to ask you that. Yeah. Why is strength so important? Because I feel like we've undervalued it for a long time. And you don't you could go your whole life. Well, I would say that we as a strength conditioning field didn't help ourselves much. This was actually the whole fun story here. In the early 1900s, strength training was viewed as something that was really delotterious. It was
dangerous. It was a long story here, but you'll have a heart attack. It's this thing, right? And that stayed along for a long period of time. The science said it was bad for you. And then the science changed. In fact, there's a famous individual named Dr. Karpovich who himself was a scientific advocate of this is dangerous and then collected more data and realized actually it's not dangerous. And then oh my gosh there's all these health benefits that happened in the 1950s and60s right after that on the back of it you've got Arnold Schwarzenegger you've got pumping iron you've got Conan you've got these things and you went from bad for my health to oh my gosh I can become a superhero and
this empowered a generation of men mostly oh my gosh I can become a physical superhero that was awesome but the downside of that was everyone's association with him with strength training was muscle and bodybuilding and that is a very limited perspective of strength. So scientifically the people in this field were not strength training people. The exercise physiologists, the nutritional scientists for in most part the 1960s through '90s were all endurance folks and so you had no research being done. I mean you couldn't make the argument anymore that it was bad for your health but there was no argument that it was really great for your health. And they had a whole generation of kids like me who came up
on that but then also like science and started saying like why aren't we doing studies on strength and highintensity stuff and well that only lasted so long before work started coming out in that area and now it is so clear we have mechanism we have epidemiological evidence we have randomized control trials in men and women young old and the research goes on physical strength is one of the single strongest pun intended predictors of lif lifespan. And so you've got lifespan, which is how long you're going to live. You have health span, which people talk about now, which is how many how healthy are you within those years. And now scientifically, we call that strength span, right? And what they're saying is strength span, it's not the only thing
that matters, but it's an important characteristic to your health span. If you lack physical strength, a number of things start to happen. Number one, uh this is one of the reasons why we look at for the record like leg strength and grip strength as two of the most ubiquitous predictors. You'll see this all across the literature as statistically significant predictors of mortality. And in fact, some of the papers that directly compare strength, again, mostly leg strength, leg extension, and grip strength to V2 max oftent times, but not always, but oftent times will show strength is a stronger predictor of mortality or all cause mortality than V2 max. So, we've we've talked at nauseium, you know, the last
bunch of years about important V2 maxes, and it's absolutely true, but strength is right there as an equivalent predictor of how long you're going to live. So, the question is why? Well, you have correlation and causation here. Lots of evidence on both sides. If you are weak, say in your hands, it is a proxy for overall strength. So, that and of itself is true. It's also direct intervention. If you can't carry a bag confidently and you can't put a backpack in an overhead compartment, you're not going to take the bus. You're very less like you're much less likely to go on an airplane. This now leads to secondary problems with social isolation. You're not confident. One of the single biggest predictors or one of
the single biggest issues we have with unsuccessful aging is that people when people start to feel like they become a burden on society, they start to withdraw rapidly. No one wants to be the person in line holding everybody up. No one wants like you just you know all those examples there, right? So people are more likely to just socially withdraw and now we're having all the secondary problems of social isolation and even physical activity starts to go down because people don't leave their house, they watch TV more and this whole cascade of things start to happen. And so we have direct and indirect mechanisms there that say again you don't have to be massively strong but just maintain some semblance of grip
strength. Your legs are going to tell the same story. This is your interface with the world. your legs and your hands. And so your ability to locomote, to move throughout the world is mostly your legs. If you don't feel confident that you can walk up the steps of that museum, slowly you stop going on those trips. You start doing that extra thing. It hurts too much. It's too exhausting. Again, fill in all the blanks here. And so having some sort of physical leg strength gives you confidence that allows general physical activity, which then pays all those additional benefits. that doesn't even carry and count the
direct physical benefits. So if we start looking at muscle specifically muscle quality and this can be defined a lot of different ways is going to regulate in part things like your blood glucose and you've I'm sure talked to many people about the importance of metabolic health. Skeletal muscle is going to explain about 80% of the variance in your resting metabolic rate. That's that's your you know your fast or slow metabolism. Again, 80% of the variance is going to be explained by how much lean muscle you have for the most part. So, you don't need to be huge, but losing muscle is called sarcopenia. If it's you lose muscle faster than you should be with aging, highly associated with inflammatory states, reduced
resting metabolic rate, which then goes right back to the equation. Uh, glucose regulation, inflamm like all of these things start to happen. Last fire hose. I know I'm going after it this a little bit here, but this is a topic of clear passion to me is you have the presence of strength as well as the act of the training itself. So going through the strength training process has additional benefits to things like your central nervous system, brain and neurological system. The evidence is very clear. Your physical brain will stay healthier in terms of uh white matter and things like that when you strength train. it will
stay around a lot longer. There's actually a lot of research now that's starting to point to the fact that things like dementia and Alzheimer's late onset specifically is highly preventable. And that by highly I mean it's an extraordinarily high number. You'd have to get a neuroscientist on to really get numbers there, but it's way more preventable than we realize specifically from physical activity and exercise as a not the only thing there, but a huge component to that. Lastly, why? Remember, the way that you move throughout the world has three big components to it. So, when you picked your leg up like that, you just shifted your toe. What ended up happening there is three things. Some signal went from
your central nervous system. This could be your brain, spinal cord, it doesn't matter. Nerves send a signal. That's part one. Part two, those nerves activate or turn on muscles and then the muscles contract. That's part two. Those muscles are surrounded by connective tissue. The connective tissue actually is tied into your bone. Pulling the connective tissue is what actually made your foot move like that. So connective tissue is part three. So the reality is anytime you're strength training, you're keeping connective tissue healthier. You're keeping that muscle quality high and you're continuing to keep that nervous system activated. Keeping that nervous system alive is keeping your
brain alive. It's physically what you're doing. It's keeping your entire nervous system around and fine-tuned. It's the same process. And so when we tend to think about strength training as something we're doing for our muscles, we cannot forget we're also doing it for our joints, we're doing it for our bones, and we're also doing it for our brains and nervous system. This next segment is from Dave Asprey, pioneer on the future of human performance, health, and longevity. And he talks to us about how to hack laziness. How many of you know that you just keep being blocked by your laziness, your lethargy, maybe even your fatigue? He talks about how your body is designed to save energy. And he
talks about how to work with your body, not against it. Now, if you're someone who doesn't love working out or doesn't have time to go to the gym for an hour every day, Dave explains how to use laziness to your advantage. Smarter workouts, less time. This part blows my mind. He talks about how just 15 minutes a week with the right methods can be better than five hours of cardio. Now, if you're someone who needs that push to stay consistent, but wants it to be simple and achievable, listen to this. You talk about tapping into the power of laziness. Tell me how you do that and what does that mean? Because I think a lot of you're going to make a lot of people happy today.
I will. But even talking about laziness, it the only thing worse is talking about death. I mean, people they don't want to do it. So when I would you do an Instagram post about laziness, people would just not watch it because like I don't want to face that. And we've all been shamed for being lazy. There's that coach. It's like don't be so lazy. Run around the field again. And the teacher, you know, you're not performing or your parents. So we have all this shame about it. The reality though is that your body has an operating system. I call it the meat operating system. And a lot of spiritual work is actually accessing that. And it has a very strong desire to not waste energy. And that is a sacred
thing, right? Imagine if we had two people and one of them says, "Working hard gets results." And I said, "All right, guys, go dig a ditch." And one of them says, "I got my shovel." And the other one says, "I got a tractor." Okay. The guy with the tractor was done in 20 minutes. And the other guy works for 3 days. And we somehow believe without thinking the virtuous guy is the guy with a shovel because he worked hard. And we're unconsciously believing that working hard gets results. So we shame ourselves when we don't work hard. And sadly, when we work hard and we don't get results, we start feeling like victims, which is really toxic. We all know people work really hard and don't
get results. Maybe it's because we have a belief system in there that doesn't work. And when we say, well, couldn't I do this in an easier way? We start feeling shame. No, it's not okay to do it the easy way because the virtue comes from the struggle. But in the world that we live in, the virtue comes from getting it done. And understanding that you will always have a desire to be lazy. And think about it. You wake up and you say, "All right, I could go to the gym or there's a couch and there's donuts and Netflix." the couch is always going to look sexier. And there we start, well, I should want the gym. No, you shouldn't.
Your body really does want the extra energy from the donuts and not using any energy in case there's a famine. So, embracing that your motivation from your body is to save energy. And there's nothing wrong with that. So, then how do you use that to motivate yourself? That's how to hack laziness. Well, if you go to the gym, let's say you're going to do cardio, you go to spin class. If you did an hour a day, five days a week, okay, that's aggressive. You're going to improve after two months, you're 2% improvement in your fitness. If you do the lazy way, the thing I write about in Smarter Not Harder, you're going to spend 15 minutes a week. You will not sweat. That's the
amount of time you spend brushing your teeth, by the way. You'll improve by 12%. Six times more. So, you wake up and you say, "Today, I'm going to save 50 minutes of not working at the gym cuz I'm going to do it better." And all of a sudden, it's really motivating because the body says, "I get to save energy at the gym." And then the body aligns its motivation with what your mind wants. And then the resistance fades. And it's a really important thing. It's something that I've never seen written about anywhere. So use the savings of time, the savings of energy to motivate yourself. But you know who does know about this? Big food companies. they will send you a 25 cent coupon and oh look I saved 25 cents because to our
body saving money feels like a lot more than it really is right so it's about unconscious view of reality so since we know our body does that without our knowledge or permission let's just use it to our advantage instead of against us yeah absolutely so using a 15-minute workout per day no using a 15-minute workout five minutes three times a week five minutes three times a week. How is that having a 12% change? Well, maybe working hard doesn't get results when it comes to exercise. And I want to be really clear, the ability to work hard is necessary for you to get things done in the world, but working hard without the right tools is a fool's errand.
Yes. And one of my companies, it's a franchise. We're about to be over about 30 locations signed. So, we're opening across the country. It's called Upgrade Labs. You can go to own and upgradeabs.com and open one in your neighborhood and we have the technology to do this. It uses artificial intelligence and it causes you to move slower than you want and then way harder than you really want to but only for 20 seconds. And then here's the trick. As soon as you're done, you take some really deep breaths and it guides you with the AI to say breathe deeper. And it brings your heart rate down. So what your body really responds to is really strong stimulation like a tiger was going to catch you and then a feeling of safety
and calm when you have enough minerals, you have enough nutrients, says, "Oh, I guess I should improve my performance." But if you go to the spin class, okay, the tiger chases you on the first sprint and then you keep running and then you sprint again and you keep running and the body believes I'm being hunted and it doesn't get away. And if you're combining that with a low calorie diet, oh, there's a famine and I'm continuously hunted for an hour a day. No wonder it's not going to improve. It doesn't have any energy to improve. It's just stressed. So, the precise dose of exercise, it matters so much. And the liberating thing, you're going to hate me for saying this. So, you notice I'm in better shape than
before. 20 minutes a week is my entire workout regimen. And I'm like, I'm doing all right. You're stacked. Yeah. That's epic, man. And you said it beautifully on page 21. You said your body does not care how much time you do something hard. It cares about how quickly you do something hard, how hard it is, and how quickly it returns to baseline. There you go. Page 21. That is and that resonated with me a lot because and we'll talk about this later on. I don't want to get into it now, but you talk about this in the book as well. why the infrared sauna and why cold plunges kind of ex that explains exactly that process especially if you're doing both back and forth and you'd think that getting in the cold for you're like oh
I'd have to sit in there for a long time but it's actually how long is it uncomfortable for right that where it's actually working because you're saying once it becomes normalized once anything becomes normalized whether it's spin class whether it's sitting in the cold or whatever it may be it's now not having that effect it doesn't work. In fact, if you got in a in a normal warm bathtub and slowly cooled the water, you would have no benefits from doing that. And instead, it's that you got in and it was a rapid drop in temperature and then you got out and the body warmed itself up again. And it's teaching the body that it is safe to warm itself up and then it becomes better at creating heat. If your body's better at creating heat, it means your
metabolism works better. And so, we've unpacked all of this using machine learning and artificial intelligence. And today, most people, they buy gem memberships and they don't go. There's $400 million a year of ghost memberships where people pay and never show up because, well, if I have the membership, I might show up, but the lazy impulse of the body wins because the gym doesn't have a good return on investment of your time. Wow. And I'm not saying you shouldn't work out. No, I know. And if you go to the gym, awesome. Uh, I enjoy that as well. But I'd frankly rather go to a yoga class in my spare time. And then you can get the muscles in about three to five times
less time than going to the gym. You get the cardio in, I don't know, 15 minutes versus 5 hours a week. I don't know the ratio there, but it's crazy. And it's much better cardio anyway. And so all of a sudden, you're saying, "Wait, I got my strength. I got my cardio." And that was what led me to create Upgrade Labs because people want to come in and do this. And what do you do with the extra time? Well, how about we train your brain with neuro feedback? How about we train your stress response so you can be more resilient when things are weird at work or at home or things like that? Or how about we just make it so your body
recovers better than it ever did? And what we're dealing with now is a world full of stress and never any recovery time. So let's use technology to handle the easy stuff like muscles and cardio and then let's take the extra save time to make our brains better and to make our stress handling better. Absolutely has changed my life. Have you got one in LA? Upgrade labs. There's one at the Beverly Hilton, although that hotel is about to get renovated. And there's one in Santa Monica underneath Arnold Schwarzenegger's office. I want to go.
Oh, absolutely. You're always Yeah. I need to come in. I didn't Yeah. This is I didn't realize. That's awesome. Yeah. In fact, the first one opened 8 years ago in Santa Monica. I've been working on this for a long time before we decided to let anyone open a business at Upgrade Labs. And part of this is it's a global movement now. Biohacking it's a thing. You go to Latin America, you go to Japan, it doesn't matter. There's biohacking all over the world and it's expensive to build a million-dollar lab like I did at my house with all this advanced tech. So, what if we just made it available for everyone? This third clip is from Sonada Greer, the fitness expert and mindset coach and Kim Kardashian's personal
trainer. And in it, she talks about why strength is at the foundation of our workouts. Now, all exercise methods have benefits, but strength training is the base. We hear so much about the importance of protein, but here is how and when you should eat protein plus carbs to enhance your training. If you're feeling overwhelmed or have never done strength training, Sonada explains how to be more structured as a beginner and more flexible if advanced. We all want the secret to aging well and increasing longevity. But what if I told you that secret was strength training? It increases bone density and muscle mass. If you can only do one thing, start with strength training. I know I
keep saying that in this episode, but it's because I want to simplify it for you. Walk us through the different types of exercise. You obviously focus on strength training. I want to hear about the benefits of that, but you know, people are trying to make sense of like, do I need to do Pilates? Do I need to do yoga? Do I need to do HIT workouts? Do I need, you know, there's just so much on offer today, especially in LA, but there's so much on offer all over the world, and people are just wondering what's going to work. I was telling you earlier that you know if I'm doing a workout and I'm not seeing progress either in strength or physique or whatever it may be then you get discouraged and then you let go of it.
So walk us through the different benefits of different exercises and why strength training is a priority for you. In my actual programming I also incorporate some higher intensity and I try to weave in a little bit of fun cardio. So I do incorporate different modalities. is not strictly, you know, strength training or and it's not powerlifting by any means. It's is strength training, but I do incorporate like hit sessions and some cardio because you need I value all of the components, uh all of the different modalities, but for me, strength training is sort of like the golden standard because that is what is going to strengthen your bones. that's what's going to build muscle mass and a vast array of other benefits um that not every modality has. You know, strength
training is proven to increase, like I said, bone density and muscle mass wi-i which are so crucial to longevity and a healthy longevity. And you know, longevity now has become such a buzzword. And if you could do one thing for your longevity is strength is strength train. what's actually happening when we do strength training like why does it link to longevity the bone density is an important part what else is happening because of strength training because what I always hear about is you know as you get older and if you fall over you need the strength to pick yourself back up but like what how is strength training in other ways really impacting our longevity.
Yeah. I mean because it is in our bone density max is reached at about age 25 to 30 and from there we start to lose bone density and by the age 40 and on we start to lose bone density faster than we can build it. So then what happens at that point is that when we do fall we break a hip or a wrist and then the chances of recovery from that are much less. So that leads to deaths. I think there is like 32,000 deaths caused from fall injuries in adults like 65 and older. And obviously if you can build and muscles the same way, you start losing after the age of 30, believe it or not, you start losing um muscle mass at about 3 to 8% um every decade. So that's that's an incredible those are incredible numbers.
I mean at the age 30 is a little bit slower but then it starts to pick up at 40 50 and then by 60 is even faster. So if you can build as much as you can in bone and muscle as when you can, that will just help you carry um it will help you carry yourself through and healthier in the older years in the later years of life because again you can either prevent yourself for falling or you can recover faster from an injury because your bone density um is where it is more optimal than it would have been if you hadn't been building that bone mass and especially for women, women are more prone to osteoporosis which is bone density loss than men. Um and by menopause the numbers are staggering as to that bone density loss. Um and for men actually even though
um instance is less than women their causality of death their death due to falls is higher than women. Oh wow. So, I mean, a lot of the time, I know it's like when we're in our 20s or even our 30s, we think of ourselves as invincible. You know, we've got these amazing bodies. They're they're incredible, of course, but how do we prepare ourselves now when it is possible for the future ourselves? Our future self will thank us. This is really powerful stuff, Sonata. This is really going to connect with the audience to hear these reset studies and recognizing the changes that are happening in every decade because I think so many of us like you said and
I remember that I remember being 22 years old and thinking I was Superman right and thinking nothing could defeat me and I remember my dad kept telling me you need to focus on your health you need to focus on your health and I was like I'm healthy it doesn't matter and then you know when I had a couple of my own personal challenges with health it really kind stuck with me as to what an investment it needed to be. What are some of the biggest things that you consistently see getting in people's way when they're trying to get fitter and stronger? What are the challenges, the most common ones that you see people that you've trained over the years that you find they struggle with?
Well, the first one is relying on feelings. A lot of people rely on motivation. I don't feel motivated. So, you know, how or how do you get motivated to work out? A lot of the time I just am not motivated. I don't want to necessarily work out. The coziness of the home is a lot better than, you know, getting up and getting moving. But it's uh we don't rely on that. You know, you take that you take those feelings, you put them aside, and you put your shoes and you keep going cuz that's what you do. It's like brushing your teeth. you. There's no for me there's no um it's a non-negotiable. Working out is a non-negotiable. Not just for right now, not because of aesthetics, but for longevity. Like we're talking about quality longevity. Um aesthetics come.
It's beautiful. Once you do the things, the right things for your body with nutrition and working out, aesthetics are a byproduct that will come. Cuz a lot of people take that approach of like wanting to look a certain way, which I find can be motivating, but for it's it's short-lived, especially if the results are taken a little bit longer, which could take longer for some people. But if you are doing it again for those right reasons, for the reasons of like I want to be as strong as I can in this body so this body can carry me forward in a healthiest possible way for as long as uh as possible. So that is the biggest one that I face is like how do you how do I get motivated? How do I stay motivated? It's
like act. Don't wait for the feelings. Act. Um the other thing is I'm too busy. There's always time. I'm sorry, but you can always make time for yourself. You can find that time. A lot of the time we find I'll even there's been even arguments back and forth with people on Instagram. You know, I don't have time yet. Two hours later, they're still responding to that same chain of communication. Well, you had two hours right there. You have time. A lot of the time is just we analyze your day. Just analyze your day as to where you're you're spending time that you could carve out. Not saying don't watch TV or don't don't be on social media while watching TV.
Exactly. Do that. How can you incorporate it? I found that for me incorporating is so incorporate it. Exactly. I'm I'm a big believer of like not doing all or nothing. Mhm. So even when it comes to nutrition, it's like you want to eat a burger, fine. Just how can you maybe take one of the sides of the bun out? You know what I mean? How can you substitute half of the fries with a salad? It's like don't don't completely take things out. Try to incorporate uh in your life. So find out there is definitely always a little bit of time that you can find.
Absolutely. Yeah. When going back to the feelings point Yeah. I found that things that are good for me feel bad before Yes. but feel amazing after. Exactly. And the things that are bad for me, they feel really good before, but they don't feel so great after. And so I'm the same as you. When I wake up in the morning, I often go on a hike. That's like how I like to start my morning. I like the fresh air. Yeah. I go out for a walk. I like sweating and I like being active and I don't want to do something too strenuous because my day is quite busy.
Exactly. And I found that when I wake up in the morning, I don't want to work out. I don't feel like it. And you're so right that I just have to say to myself, I have to remind myself, but I know how I'll feel after. And when it comes to eating a burger, trust me, I want to eat a burger all the time. And I have to remind myself, but I know how it's going to feel after. And so, it's almost like you've got to connect your brain to the after feeling. Absolutely. Because the after feeling is so much more what you have to live with because the feeling before kind of comes and go.
Exactly. Right. I want to eat a burger. I ate a burger. Now I don't feel so great. I don't want to work out. I ignore working out. I didn't work out. Now I don't feel so great. Right. And you're living with that feeling after for much longer than you're living with the feeling before. Very true. So that's definitely helped me. And the busy one is so true. I mean I feel like if I work out while watching I love watching football soccer highlights. I miss watching soccer and I don't get to watch it uh full I don't get to watch full games anymore because there are different timings because I live in LA. the games or in London or England and I will put on a highlights of the game which are
like 20 minutes and I'm like this is perfect for a 20inut workout. I can watch the highlights I can work out and it's going to force me to get through 20 minutes. Whereas if I didn't have the highlights on I know I'd give up in like six. And so when the highlights are on I know that I'll be able to get through a full 20-minute workout which is what I'm trying to do if I'm traveling or moving around. So I love that idea of incorporating things. Incorporating things and that's true when it comes to creating habits that are tough to create in the beginning. It how can you tack on something that is enjoyable like a little bit of a reward system. And a reward system doesn't have to be that I
get to eat, you know, words. What is the right reward system for being fit? Because I think a lot of people think it is getting to eat what you want. Yeah. It could be, you know, like you said, you like to watch the highlights, you know, a show that you enjoy or another activity that's enjoyable, you know, or if you want to treat yourself, find maybe when it comes to food, find a healthier option. I'm a great believer also in substituting. You know, a lot of the recipes that I post are I have a sweet tooth, a major sweet tooth. So, how can I create recipes that are healthy that will satisfy and will taste just as good as the naughty
uh food. So, it's just that for every person it could be different um what that reward for them is, but tack it on to it. And you know our um in the Wei Rise app we have Dr. Regina who is a habits expert, habits building expert, one of the I think four leading um uh researchers of habits and she has so much input and so much information on how to make habits sustainable. You know, I wish I had a Dr. Pocket Gmail that I could ask. Yeah. But yeah, she'll have such an amazing uh insight as to how to create and sustain these habits. Yeah. What's the biggest misconception with strength training? What do you think people get wrong? That women will get like bulky and big and gigantic. That's like the
biggest thing is like I don't want to get too bulky. I don't want to get too big. That's what you hear a lot. That's what I hear a lot and that is a huge misconception because uh in females our hormones are do not allow us to get to the levels that for example a man's physique can get naturally. It is not biologically uh I there's obviously different levels of hormones in different women that will promote growth in some more or less than others but I always say at the very at the end of the day you can just back off you if you are feeling but I guarantee you that once you start gaining a little bit of muscle you will be addicted you will because it the feeling of strength and confidence that
it that It gives you like a stronger body gives you at least for me and for the people that I've worked with those feelings that it gives them are far outweigh any negative u misconceptions. I'm going to say misconception because it is it's you're not going to get big. You're not going to get huge. You're not going to be like Hulk. I know Radhi loves strength training. like it's such a passion of hers and she loves that feeling of being stronger and loves that feeling of like it's it's amazing to see because I think you are right that we have this worry that our body's going to change and look a way that we don't want it to look.
Yeah. What should someone eat right before a workout and right after especially a strength training workout? So, before a workout, about an hour, maybe 30 minutes at uh at most, because you don't want to eat too close. I would eat um a combination of protein and carbs, maybe a little bit higher in and uh in carbs. And then afterwards, a meal that is higher in protein. So, at least 20 grams of protein in that meal after the workout. I mean, the studies are a little bit over the all over the place when it comes to this. Obviously, for somebody that's been working out for a long time, you're a little bit more flexible with that. Uh or for somebody that is um trying to that is trying to gain muscle mass or
weight. Again, it's a little bit more flexible versus a beginner, then you have to be a little bit more strict with strict, a little bit more on top of your nutrition when it comes to not just before and after, but throughout the day. And at the end of the day is what you're consuming throughout the day that is most important. So are you reaching so not so focused because a lot of people focus so much on before and after. I would start with how do you feel before a workout? Do you feel you know if you're working out in the morning and you're energized enough? Um then feel free to work out on an empty stomach. That's completely fine. And if you can carry that energy through, if
you feel like you need to have a little bit of nutrition beforehand, that's great, too. It's how do you optimize for yourself? How do you optimize for How do genetics play a role in achieving your goals? Genetics, they do play a role, a big role in the sense that well, genetics will not get you out of bed for sure. Because a lot of the time, you know, uh people see my physique and say, you know, it's all genetics. I actually had to fight against a lot of my genetics to get out of bed and work out. My I'm predisposed to depression and anxiety. So, battling those uh those factors, that's a genetic factor that goes into play. But then when it comes to actual physique building, um, yes, it
will you'll vary as to like the muscle mass that you'll put on, but you can always improve. You know, there's not let's not even bother working out because I don't build bigger muscles. You know, you don't even know till you've tried to what capacity you can build. M genetics will play a bit of a factor in the body that you're trying to achieve. You know, some people will carry a little bit more weight around their stomach. So, their abs will not be as uh easily uh visible as others. So, they'll have to in a healthy way potentially diet if they can, but uh to see the visible abdominal muscles. Not that is a golden standard of anything.
Just hypothetically saying that it'll take them longer than others to achieve that because again genetics do play a role in that. Talking about that, what is the health benefit of having a lower body fat percentage? Like what is the goal? Right? Because we know that people are trying to lower their body fat percentage in order to have abs. But what's the actual health benefit of having a lower body fat percentage? Yeah. And even with that, you want to maintain a healthier one. You So you don't want to go too low. You don't want to be too high. If you're going too low, then your hormones start to get messed up. And we don't want that.
Yeah. What happens if it goes too low? Um, if it goes too low, so then we start to, you know, women will start to miss their period. So it will affect them that way. Obviously, that puts the body in a little bit of a frenzy. It's not homeostasis anymore. um when it goes too high then you're starting to deal with cardiovascular issues um you know insulin resistance and all of the things that will then lead to an unhealthier individual. So there's a range there that we should be talking about cardio you said that you incorporate cardio. Yeah. How much is cardio important in a strength training practice and how much is it not needed?
The question would be what are the reasons for adding cardio? So are you adding cardio? because a lot of people think that cardio is what's going to help them lose weight and that's not necess that's not true. Um it's all about calories in versus calories out. So if you're talking about strictly losing weight is how many calories are you putting in your body and how many calories you're expending. So if you're deciding to utilize strength training as a way to expend those calories, great. If you're utilizing uh cardio, great. There is some studies again that suggest that you'll get faster into that fat burning phase if you're doing strength training before and then cardio after and also cardio. If you're doing
strength training also before and cardio after you're you're not compromising your strength training process um as if you were to do cardio beforehand. How much cardio that also is on individual basis. Um cardio a lot of people hate cardio. Uh, so what I try personally to do, I'll incorporate it on upper body days. So I'll do some what of an interval training. So I'll do an exercise that's upper body focused and then 30 seconds to a minute of sprinting and then another, you know, exercise or set of an upper body focused and then so that's what how I make it fun in my personal training and for everybody in the Wii Rise app. And obviously if you're wanting to add more cardio
because you feel like, you know, adding a steady state cardio session after a separate day, a separate part of the day um because you're wanting to be at a more of a caloric deficit. That's completely fine as well. It sounds like you don't like cardio. I don't love cardio. That's good for us to know. I so I ran marathons and that was great. I've run three marathons. I enjoyed it. You do put your body through a lot. But I have found personally what I've achieved through strength training when it comes physically and mentally has been far more rewarding than cardio. There's some, you know, benefit to cardio in the sense that some people feel more of the endorphins and the
feel-good hormones during hit sessions or cardio. So there is a benefit to that. Um and at the end of the day what is so while so let's say while I value strength training pick your poison at the end of the day or pick your remedy I should say pick your elixir you know what would that be for you as long as you can get some activity in. So while there is hierarchies of you what you want to achieve. So if you want to build muscle, strength training really is like the golden standard, right? But if you know you absolutely hate it. Um what is your activity of choice at the end of the day is what I would say. I want to end with a few takeaways and a few thoughts. Strength training isn't just
about looking a certain way. It's about living a certain way. More energy, better focus, fewer injuries. That's the real flex. I've personally felt this in the last few months where I've made strength training my go-to workout. You can start small, you can stay consistent, and you can build strength for your lifestyle. Now, if you got value from this episode, share it with someone who thinks cardio is the only way. And remember, a strong body and a strong mind leads to a strong life. I hope this episode helps you create one. If this year you're trying to live longer, live happier, live healthier, go and check out my conversation with the world's biggest longevity doctor, Peter Atia, on how to slow down aging and why
your emotional health is directly impacting your physical health. Acknowledge that there is surprisingly little known about the relationship between nutrition and health. People are going to be shocked to hear that cuz I think most people think the exact opposite.
