Dr Rupy: If exercise were a pill, it would be the most powerful drug on the planet. It protects your brain, lowers the risk of heart disease and Alzheimer's, reduces stress, boosts energy. But yet, people still struggle to fit it in. And I am in the same bucket. So today, we are putting together a practical, evidence-based guide to exercise for everyone. Whether you are a busy parent like myself, a professional who struggles to find the time to move, we will show you the minimum that makes the biggest difference. If you are older and thinking about healthy aging, we will talk about why this is important for protecting bone, muscle, and ensuring that you are independent as you age, as well as how to approach going to an intimidating weight section of a gym for the first time. We are going to talk about teens, younger people, the myths around training at that age, and how movement can shape brain health and set children up for life. If you are already into fitness, we will dive into how to break plateaus, track progress, and how to optimise performance. Today, I am really pleased to note that I am joined by Dr Andy Galpin. He is one of the world's leading experts in human performance. He is someone I wish I had on speed dial when I first started trying to figure out how to train smart, not just hard. He is a professor at Parker University and executive director of the Human Performance Centre. He has a PhD in human bioenergetics. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and he has worked with some of the most elite athletes on the planet, from Olympic gold medallists, champions in UFC, NFL, military special forces. Honestly, this is the guy. He is also co-founder of several innovative companies, including Absolute Rest, which is a sleep study company that enables you to have a sleep study quality assessment of how you are sleeping in your own home. I highly recommend you check out Absolute Rest. I want you to think of this episode almost like a session with Andy, but for all of us. By the end, you will have a clear, evidence-based understanding of how to use exercise to support your health at any stage of life. We will talk about the exercise priorities at each stage of life, from teenagers to older adults, how to personalise your training using intensity, volume, timing, and recovery, and why bone health matters a lot more than you think and what to do about it as well. I really hope that this is going to be one of those conversations that reframes how you think about movement, not just performance or aesthetics, but for longevity, energy, and quality of life. As I am talking to you about exercise, it reminds me of my morning ritual before I go and train at the gym, which is to enjoy a coffee. The coffee of choice is, of course, Exhale Coffee. I am Chief Science Officer for Exhale Coffee, and we lab test the coffee to ensure that it is free of pesticides, mould, and heavy metals, and it is high in polyphenols. The way we get them high in polyphenols is by a specific roasting formula, and it tastes absolutely incredible. I would not get behind a coffee that didn't taste great because it is one of life's most treasured pleasures. It is phenomenal, and you can get a free bag to try Exhale Coffee yourself. Absolutely free, just click the link in the podcast description. And talking of free trials, we have a free trial for the Doctor's Kitchen app. The Doctor's Kitchen app helps you plan, cook, and track your healthy eating habits. You can take a picture of whatever you are eating, and it will give you a breakdown of the inflammatory potential or the anti-inflammatory potential of your recipe, the protein and fibre, which are the two big important macronutrients I think we should all be cognisant of, as well as giving you thousands of recipes to choose from that are all science-backed and doctor-approved. So try it out for free. We are adding new recipes every single month, and there are some incredible pieces of feedback that we have got since we launched a couple of years ago, and it is getting better and better every month. So go check it out. Again, you can find that podcast link in the podcast description. For now, this is my wonderful conversation with Professor Andy Galpin. I really hope you enjoy it.
Dr Andy Galpin: So glad that we were able to do this in person. I know we were going to connect in LA.
Dr Rupy: I want to make this podcast almost like an evergreen, practical, evidence-based guide to training for everyone from busy parents, older adults, and I also want to talk about teens and younger adults as well. Almost like a session with you, right? Our audience are relatively healthy, probably a lot healthier than your average person. They probably do a run every week, they might play tennis. Where do you think the exercise gaps are in most people's routines that they are missing that we should actually be focusing on if we are in the pursuit of optimising our health?
Dr Andy Galpin: First of all, the bar you just set is pretty high. Let's make this evergreen and applicable to everybody. Okay, well, let's do it. It's an interesting question given the audience framing that you have there. So where we tend to see people is hopefully people are doing something for their cardiovascular, aerobic, and there are lots of phrases we could use for that, but this is the run, this is the tennis, things like that. So you are burning energy, you are doing something in that realm. Which is great. And then there is also a subset of people who are kind of on the other end of the spectrum, which is maybe they are going to the gym, they are lifting weights two to three times a week, and that's great. I would say at the very high level for all those people you mentioned, we should have something every week that is in one of those two just really major broad camps. General recommendation for most people, unless you got an ultra-specific goal, two days a week of each. Within that we could go way more, five days strength training, two days endurance, the opposite, like all kinds of stuff. But for the average person with that broad of a range, the goal should be around two at minimum of each. And then the way you go about it and the type and the intensity and the programming, like we can really now tailor that to your wants, your desires, your backgrounds, your availability, your equipment access, your revenue, or your financial capacity and things like that. But that would be the highest level for all the people you mentioned minimal. And then what I would probably do is subdivide that endurance piece into at least one of those is something where you are getting to a really, really high heart rate. One way or the other. And then one of those doesn't necessarily have to be at a high rate, but should be more of a longer term. Doesn't have to be zone one, don't care about that, just something where you are working for more than 30 consecutive minutes without a break. And then something where you are going to get to some pretty high, close to max or max-ish heart rate. And so I think if everyone was doing something like that, we could certainly spend time subdividing the strength into different things like that, but the highest level that's what I would say.
Dr Rupy: Okay. Let's dive into specific demographics and then perhaps we can go into a bit more detail on exactly what a high heart rate would mean for an individual, how long is long enough for like steady state cardio or zone two, and then the types of strength training we should be focusing on depending on the age group. So let's take over 55 year old with a specific reference to menopause as well, post-menopausal people. What kind of things should we be opting for and focusing on for those people from a health goals point of view? Like let's say what are the main health goals that we should be worried about? Is it muscle mass? Is it bone health?
Dr Andy Galpin: From a it's all of it. It really is. The most obvious answer here, very specifically post-menopause, you are going right to bone health. That is your risk is extremely high, especially depending upon how you entered menopause. So if you are at risk already or osteopenic or osteoporosis, and then after menopause, now we are really, really particularly concerned about that. But at the same time, you are not going to be at a good spot there if you are under-muscled. You are not going to be at a good spot if your cardiovascular system is poor. You are not going to be at a good spot if you are over fat. So none of those things, if they are really bad, all any of those things that are red flags immediately become your top priority. The way that we often approach this is find the thing that is the biggest drain on your system, the highest risk, and turn that into your short-term priority. And by short-term, I mean six months to a year. So we always think about these types of questions on decades rather than weeks. And so if I were to say, okay, you're post-menopausal, you're 59 years old, we don't really maybe you've done a little exercise, but we haven't really structured, we haven't had a plan, we haven't really gone after this. Okay. The next year, we are going to focus on A. Then the year after that, and then when you like that's how we would approach that question. For the clients we work with in that exact situation, that is exactly how we do it. We can get down, we will eventually get down to specific protocols and programs for the individual day, but we really like to think that big because it allows us to give a focus. And why that matters is exercise adaptations are better achieved when you have fewer things you are trying to do at once. And so we like to give these folks like, hey, let's just use this example. We are concerned, we either have data on you about your bone mineral density and it's one of these things, or we don't know, but let's just assume because you are 59 year old female, post-menopausal, we know your general risk is high. So that is a fair thing to target. And we might say, yeah, you know, your body composition is a little poor right now, but we are more concerned about bone health. So we are going to optimise our training around bone health and if we lose a little bit of fat, awesome. But if we don't, we are not going to be freaking out. We wouldn't consider the programme to have failed. If your body fat stayed the same, but we actually saw progress in bone. Now once we get that under control and the medical team and you are all happy with bone mineral density, then we will reprioritise a little bit and start now paying more attention to your power or your grip strength or any of these other things that are also important in that equation. But you really want to stay focused.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I love that framing actually, because listeners to this podcast, if they are literally tuning in every single week, are probably going to feel overwhelmed. They are going to be like, okay, I've got to do my muscle, I've got to focus on my bone, what about my cardiovascular health? What about the way I look? What about my fat? You know, all these things are killing me so I need to attack them all together. And then you kind of give yourself an exercise regime and it is like seven days, each day is optimised for whatever that exercise is to, you know, focus on cardiovascular health, whatever it might be. So the fact that you are saying you give people permission to actually piece it out, like six months you are going to focus on this. Don't worry about the other stuff. We are going to optimise that and then we are going to move on to the next goal. I love that.
Dr Andy Galpin: Now, I want to clarify, when I say focus, I don't mean only. Or exclusively. So I am not saying stop all your running. Quit the tennis club. Okay. What we are just saying is it is your priority. So it is 60%, it is 70%, it is, I mean priority can be different. It is the thing where you are travelling and you only have the chance to work out once. What do you pick? You pick the priority. You got sick, work got busy. That's what a priority means. It doesn't mean it is the exclusive and only thing you do, right? So our company is going to prioritise revenue this quarter. Okay, great. That doesn't mean you stop everything else. It just means when S hits the fan, what is the thing you go to? And that is something we use with all of our clients because whether you are one of our high performers, you are an executive, you are a pro athlete, or you are none of those, and but you have a family. Things will grab your time. And they will be more important than your exercise. This will happen commonly. I want to make the choice a priori about what we are going to default to. We are not going to react to the situation, right? You got sick, you got tired, the airline pushed you back and you are at the airport and you don't want to do the thing. Coach, I know the programme today, but I got to cut stuff short, so I only got 40 minutes, I only got 10 minutes. What's the one? I don't want to have to answer that question. I want you to automatically know. You will always know. Great, if I have to get this in and, you know, from like a business coaching perspective, you'll hear people say this all the time. Wake up in the morning, what's the single thing you have to get done today? That's the most important and do that. And everything else is there. It's the same thing with our exercise. It's the same thing with our food. What's the one thing we have to get done today if you are travelling or you don't have control or all the different scenarios that pop up. Great. Execute the most important thing. But in order to execute that, you have to actually know what that thing is. So we make that decision ahead of time. So our athletes, our clients always know. Super tired. God, just I got myself to the gym, but I don't have it in me to do all my mobility and all my stretching and all this. I just got to get this done. Okay. And then usually once that happens you are like, okay, I can do the rest. But even if not, great, we got the thing done. If you can stay focused on that for six weeks, 10 weeks, this will really start to build. Exercise adaptations live on the principle of specificity. Which is to say, the phrase we will use in our side of the equation is SAID. S-A-I-D, right? So Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demand. The physiological principle. If you want to get better at hitting a golf ball, the most important training you could ever do, hit golf balls. Great. You want to get stronger, the most important thing you can ever do is practice the heaviest load possible. But in reality, you can't only ever just hit golf balls and be a better golfer, right? You can't ever just do a one repetition maximum. But conceptually, what we are trying to do is build an exercise programme that allows us to do that thing as often as possible. So we build everything else around that, but that is the reality. If it boils down to it and we can't do the other stuff, okay. Do that thing and everything else will survive. And if you do that, physiology will respond because it is getting that direct stimulus. That's the point, you know, I was really trying to make. Imagine if you were, do you have any animals? Do you have a dog?
Dr Rupy: I do, yeah, I got a five-year-old Cavapoo.
Dr Andy Galpin: Oh my gosh. If you were trying to train her and you wanted to teach her commands and tricks and all these things. And I would say, okay, what's the one command you think is the most important? And if you made sure when you got busy or travelling, you still did that command every single day, a year later, that thing will be so dialed. That command will never, ever, ever be lost again. Because it was hit always, always, always, always, always. And then you move on to the second command you want. And the first one's never going to go away. You could not do that command in that dog for three or four years and come back to it and it would be there. Because there was enough specificity, there was enough neurological adaptation, connective tissue adaptation, skeletal muscle adaptation where that is now a really ingrained pattern. That's how we want to think about this.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, definitely. I mean it's almost there's a parallel with habit stacking as well, just generally, right? Like I mean I know the first thing I do when I get up in the morning, I go and I meditate, I check my wearable for my sleep score, and then I stretch. Like that for me took years of that pattern of just constantly doing that every single day. Before I started lifting weights actually, that was the one thing that I was doing all the time to like improve my back and all the rest of it. So I wouldn't advise people to start all of those different things on day one because it takes time. And, you know, just that repetition of like constantly getting yourself entrenched, it just it now becomes like second nature. I don't have to actively think about it.
Dr Andy Galpin: You know what is interesting about that? People who are real exercise junkies have a really hard time meditating. They have a hard time stretching. Why? It is their tenth priority, right? You did it the opposite. Now you probably never miss your meditation and your stretching. But why? Because you prioritised that for years and now you have the mental bandwidth and the push and the grit to prioritise your exercise training because that other piece does not take any motivation or willpower. It's just there. So you can go the other direction too. So if you are the one struggling to do your maintenance and your stretching and every other stuff, okay, great. You probably will get your way to the gym because you love that. Now let's put our willpower and our challenge and our time on this other stuff that we are trying to work on. But the point is, exactly right, you stack the habit. You do this, you do this, you do this, and now it becomes less difficult. It is very hard to make 20 changes at once. Sometimes we need that full lifestyle overhaul. But the reality of it is we are trying to stack and then thinking about this on the many months to years timeline says, okay, you are, I mean if we change the avatar a little bit and we say, alright, this is a, you know, 36-year-old, 42-year-old, whatever. Maybe you were sporty as a younger person, but been some years now and that back is pretty tight and then you got the blood work done and the doc's like, you got to start making all the things that happen and you are like, oh gosh, okay. I'll probably put the beers down a little bit now and I got to pay attention and oh my god. All right, awesome. If you think, what would it take to be my healthiest at 50? That is a completely different framing like, oh, well, okay I got 12 years. Yeah, yeah we got 12 years. I don't need this whole thing to happen in four months. And that is like, and if I said, okay, you got your company to run and you got your kids and whatever and you are trying to, you know, trying to make it up and you are trying to get a promotion. Do you think we could lose 15 kilos over the next 10 years? Oh yeah. Do you really think we could get enough stretching done to have the back pain go away in 10 years? Yeah, I could do that in 10 years. Okay, great. So year one let's focus on the body weight and let's let's get this down. The goal is, you know, after year two to be down eight kilos sustainably where you still can have fun. Oh, that's complete. I mean you know this from like a psychological perspective, we tend to really, really over index what we can get done in a day. And under index what we can get done in a year.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely.
Dr Andy Galpin: So you frame it like that and you are just like, okay. All I am asking you this year, we are going to get down eight kilos. But end of the year. Oh, oh yeah, I can do that. Now what happens? You are still now you are 43 and you have done it all. The whole all the changes have been made at two years in, right. We've done all this. And now we are 42 going you are young, you are healthy, you got another 80 years. Oh, we are set. So give me two or three years right now and set this foundation up for you to be as healthy as you ever want to be and you will have all the functionality you ever want the rest of your life. I'll do that deal. I'll sign that deal.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely. Yeah, that longer time horizon, and I think giving yourself permission to make those changes over that time period is a psychological shift that people should make because most people are trying to get something done for January, before summer, getting beach body ready, whatever it might be depending on what your age group is. And I think allowing yourself to take the time to invest in small habits and allow them to compound is definitely like a mindset frame that people should invest in for sure.
Dr Andy Galpin: Can I tell you the downside of that approach?
Dr Rupy: Go for it.
Dr Andy Galpin: There's no urgency.
Dr Rupy: Ah, yeah. So people like, oh, I can do it next week.
Dr Andy Galpin: 100%. So you if you are going to take an approach like I just did, you have to have daily accountability. You have to have quarterly accountability, monthly accountability. Because if not you just go, oh I got a year. I got a year. Oh, well it is just like my it is my birthday and then it is you will make all the excuses and then nothing. So the nice part about the like this has to be done by January and you are going to put a thousand quid into like an account and you're going to lose it like that creates like do it now. It just depends on people, how they like to operate, what kind of systems and structures they have. So, like anything, right, there are pros and cons to it. But we like that approach because we are going to have that touch point still. And we can break it down and say, we are going to get there in a year. I can do that, okay. So initially starting the programme it feels attainable. But then we are going to set quarterly goals, we are going to set monthly goals, we are going to set weekly goals, and then we are going to establish daily habits. Now we have check in, now we have accountability, and now we have progress monitoring and all that. And there will be ups and downs, but we can check in and go, okay great. We haven't lost any weight this month. That's fine. We look at the last three months, we are still on projection, we are totally good. That said, we are not making progress. So let's are we executing the habits? If we are executing the habits and we are not making the progress, we are fine. But if it has come down to you are not executing the tasks, now we are going, we got to refocus here. We are not we are fine, but we are making we are not going to get there if we keep this up. So that's how we handle it. But again, different approaches.
Dr Rupy: Everyone's different, yeah. I mean, little sidebar, I am trying to get a Murph in under 40 minutes. So a Murph for listeners is a mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 press-ups, 300 squats and then another mile run. All with a weight vest. I think it is about eight kilos. And I want I wanted to have done it by the age 40. I turned 40 this year. But I am going to try and get it in my 40th year. So cheeky just a bit. I got a little bit of an injury and it set me back a bit. So I am trying to like work on that and I don't think I am as fastidious as making sure that I am hitting quarterly goals or monthly goals. But what it is encouraging me to do is certain stretching activities in the morning that are geared towards protecting my shoulders because if I want to be able to achieve that in the time that I want to do it in, I got to make sure that I am healthy as well. Like first principle, don't injure yourself, and then like, you know, go for your goals. So that's sort of like what I am focusing on at the moment.
Dr Andy Galpin: Tissue tolerance is real. We have to build it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. I want to talk to you about that a bit later actually. Let's focus on bone health. You did a brilliant podcast episode all about bone health recently. Honestly, it was brilliant. It was so, so good. And the way you broke down the sort of both sides of the equation, osteoclasts and osteoblasts, why this is so important. A number actually that I hadn't come across, 40% of the population, I believe it might be the US population, is osteopenic. That is shocking.
Dr Andy Galpin: It's pretty consistent around the world, actually. So those data were from the US, but if you look at the data that are available from every country we have legitimate data, it is not a pretty picture. And in fact, it is one of the markers that I think is the most concerning in all human health. Nobody pays attention to bone. Nobody talks about it. But it is the one that is progressing in the negative direction the fastest. We are losing bone health faster than we are that is a bigger concern than obesity. In the sense that everyone is aware obesity has a problem. And there is some glimmer of hope with that. With the new drugs, so on and so forth, right? There are great resources. Everyone generally accepts the basic principles of quality nutrition. There is some argument down the line, but when it comes to bone health, it is this silent killer. No one addresses it, no one talks about it. And the bigger issue is we understand again roughly why obesity is happening. And people are now aware I have to move more, I have to eat better, and some combination and but in terms of bone health, it is only declining because our lifestyles are only going in that direction. That is the only intervention we have for bone specifically. You can manage weight without exercise. Very clearly. You are not going to manage bone in a sedentary lifestyle. It is just not going to happen. So even a little bit of exercise here and there is not going to be sufficient. And then one of the areas that I brought up, the argument I had in the podcast was this is the most problematic because bone, unlike obesity or muscle or connective tissue for that matter, is pretty much determined by what happens in a three to four year window as a child. You can control your obesity 100% as an adult at any time you choose. You cannot do that with bone. The story is already over at that point. So it is this is why I think this is like this critical thing we have to pay attention to. And it does not affect us all equally. Women have a much, much, much bigger challenge to pay attention to. You mentioned you brought up this with the menopause equation, but this is a it is not a female specific and only issue, but it is a absolutely a bigger concern with our young girls.
Dr Rupy: Let's dive into just how important that window of time is because it might be a bit disheartening if people hear about this and they have been to their doctor and they have been diagnosed with a DEXA scan with osteoporosis or osteopenia, and then they listen to your podcast like, oh, that window of opportunity was like when I was a kid. Let's talk about that and perhaps for any new parents, I am a new parent, I have got an 11 and a half month old who is running around all over the place and like that is actually been a real eye opener for me because I am going to be making sure that I am making sure that he is going to be doing as much movement and strength exercising to protect his bones for when he is 50, 60.
Dr Andy Galpin: There is a bright story here. We there is plenty of research on adults, middle aged and older individuals and bone. There are exercise options, there is a lot of options. There are nutrition things we can pay attention to. And then there are actually a series of drugs. And then I what I can also tell you is there is a whole series of drugs on the way. Things that are in various phases of clinical trials. I don't know which ones are going to work, we'll see. But this is something people are working on. I will actually I am actually reasonably hopeful that those drugs will be useful. I don't think at this point I am convinced they are going to be anywhere as close to effective as our GLP-1 agonists are for body composition, but you have options. And we have alternative therapies, biologicals and other things that are probably actually going to outpace those. But the things you can control right now and do, we will just assume prevention is off the table. We are already there. Lots of research. Resistance exercise. Particularly what is called axial loading. So vertical loading does it. Very particular things like plyometrics and landing. And these things that you probably wouldn't associate an older post-menopausal lady doing. But these are there. There have been some studies on things like weighted vests and walking, and those just don't seem to be very productive. They are awesome for other things. But I I can't really make a strong argument that yeah, grab that weight vest and go ruck and that is going to do a ton for your bone mineral density. It is not enough load. Bone is very specific like that where it takes a lot of compression loading for it to really do anything. So that's that is an option. Um, there has been some research on things like vibration training. So these are platforms and plates that you stand on and they vibrated really high frequency.
Dr Rupy: Was that like the Power Plate thing?
Dr Andy Galpin: Exactly.
Dr Rupy: Oh right. Yeah yeah. I remember those were really popular in my gym like a few years ago. I haven't seen one for years.
Dr Andy Galpin: Yeah. Um, reasonable. Okay not the not as strong, not as good of evidence as high quality strength training. But a reasonable option particularly for somebody who is at the beginning, who is maybe can get a plate at home and they can do it every single day, but they don't know how to lift weights, like it is not the same but it is a viable alternative and an option. And then you even have other technologies that we don't have necessarily data on, but they are plausible, um, like EMS suits. So these are compression suits you can put on that will electrically stimulate muscle. And so for the person that doesn't again know how to exercise or is bedridden or has injuries or is coming off of a surgery or childbirth like any number of things and they are not equal exchanges to exercise. But they are options for unique cases. Um, we have looked at these for our astronauts. Bone mineral loss is a really big problem in space, you lose all gravity. Particularly for Mars. Like we are not going to get the Mars is not a rocket problem. Mars is a physiology problem. And you can't use weights. There is no gravity in space. So your bring all your dumbbells you want, doesn't help, right. So there is lots of alternatives and things like that that are out there that are being explored. And I think why what I am trying to position this as is strength training and if you have poor nutrition, getting just a reasonable are going to be your best bets for the average person. And that is effective. What we are defining as effective though is bone takes a long time. You have to now look at this on the six month at minimum. If you get a DEXA done and you work really hard for six weeks, you should assume there will be zero change in your next DEXA for your bone mineral density. Two months, three months, you should still assume nothing. Six months, you probably still should assume very minimal change. So it is very antithetical to muscle mass or aesthetics or anything like that, energy, sleep, because it is going the the window for you to know that it is working is a is really long. So we have to think about it like that. But the data are there if you do this and you especially if you stack it for years, it will work. It is just a matter of you got to have some belief and buy in.
Dr Rupy: That is a really good point. I don't actually know what the bone turnover is off the top of my head, but I imagine it is a lot more than muscle cells and liver cells and-
Dr Andy Galpin: Oh well I mean it could happen super fast at the at the um the micro level. But yeah, in terms of if you are looking at a gross measurement like that, it is going to take months to see a statistically significant, clinically meaningful change in tissues. So if you were to do a like a an RCT on bone and you are out your training was six weeks, like you are going to you are going to fail. You have those have to be six month long to 12 month long studies.
Dr Rupy: The LIFTMOR study that you referred to in your podcast, that was a- was that over 12 weeks or was it longer than that?
Dr Andy Galpin: Oh probably much longer. I don't remember off the top of my head.
Dr Rupy: Okay. So that that is a really good sort of um marker for any imagine I am a 55 year old plus woman who is uh diagnosed with osteoporosis. Um what kind of training regime were they using and what can be learned from that uh in in someone's weekly regime?
Dr Andy Galpin: Yeah. There is a LIFTMOR is great. There is been a lot of other ones that have tinkered around where we what we shouldn't worry about is the exact details of the program. Because not that they made it up, but in general when you do things like this like you take what other people have done and you kind of come up with something else. It is kind of arbitrary. Yeah. But it is it is very arbitrary. It could have been something else or something else or a million. So you want to think about just like conceptually what is the program trying to do and long as you get there. And it you are really are looking at a combination of what I said earlier. It is a combination of fast eccentric loading. So this is a land. Why is that helpful for bone? Well, you have a little bit of the axial loading, right? So when you jump and you land, you get gravity smashing on a bone. But what you also get is that connective tissue that is pulling on the bone. But it is doing it at a rapid pace. And it is rapidly pulling back and it is rapidly pulling back. That little part of the connective tissue that is attached to the bone is then getting stressed a bunch. It is pulling on really fast. That is very stimulating on that little small region. And so you have both those combinations. The strength training itself has the loading, but that is also why you are getting adaptation. It is the connective tissue that is wrapped on the bone that is getting pulled on and tugged on that is stimulating it. So this is why the connective tissue is healthier. You get the neurological adaptations, you get the muscular adaptations, you get the endocrine response, you get the immune response, and now you are also stimulating bone as well. So those are the two big components of of most if I am summarizing all of the research in that area that tend to be the combination of the most effective. So if you want to lift weights three days a week and add two days a week of plyometrics, fine. If you want to lift four days a week and do, you know, one or two plyometric exercises every day, fine. I mean you can look at the LIFTMOR stuff. I think it is open access. So you guys can link it and people can go read, you can maybe put the the whole training protocol up for people. If you want just follow that. Like do the exact same thing probably work.
Dr Rupy: For the for the listener, what does plyometrics mean?
Dr Andy Galpin: Plyometrics um when you think about them we generally start to think about things like loading landing and jumping. But specifically what it means is a high paced eccentric coupled by a concentric. Okay. So this could look like jumping and landing or landing and re-jumping. A lot of times you will see people doing like throwing kettlebells or sorry throwing medicine balls. Um it the key though to plyometrics is that it is a rapid eccentric. And eccentric would be again you land on the ground and then you get back up. When you run when you sprint, your foot is landing fast and contracting again really quickly. That is the part we are looking for. And it is different than strength training because when you are doing a like say leg extension machine, you are not bouncing at the bottom as hard and fast as you possibly can because you are going to break the machine and make a bunch of noise and things like that. So we will pull that apart specifically and isolate that because it allows you to have that rapid eccentric concentric contraction.
Dr Rupy: This is so interesting for me because when I started my medical career uh and we were faced with osteoporotic largely women although obviously it is happening across sexes, um the last thing I would have thought about advising them is to do some of these plyometric exercises, right? Because you just have this image of these brittle bones that are going to fracture the moment you put any load on them whatsoever. But now we know that is complete opposite.
Dr Andy Galpin: It is one of the biggest misconceptions. If you look at the research that have done even loaded plyometrics. So put a waist vest on and jump and land. You just do not see injuries. You don't see people withdrawing, we don't see uh reports that people have to go back to the IRB, oh like all these people getting hurt. Um people tend to tolerate it. Having done training studies in older individuals myself, nobody stops. Nobody shows up late. Nobody withdraws. You do this in college kids and you are going to have retention rates that are you know terrible. But there is just no reason as long as the program is intelligent and you are not progressing it too fast and the volume is fine. Like if it is reasonably well done, um just because they are older we are not these brittle frail things that we have to bubble wrap. People can and should train again within reason, supervised, all the things. But yeah you can and absolutely should be recommending these things. Um one of the things that we are seeing the most right now in the world across the world are Achilles tears. This is happening in for many reasons, but in large part because people went from a lifestyle where you were on your feet and walking some. So your foot, ankle, and Achilles had tolerance. And you went to that to living on Zoom. And now your Achilles which requires hours of loading per day. It is not a propulsion tissue. It is not a tissue meant to be explosive. It is meant to be active and on and anti-gravity for hours and hours a day. And so you cut that stimulus down by literally seven, eight, 10 hours to zero because you are sitting on Zoom. And then you go out and play pickleball. Gone. Gone. Gone. So we have to appreciate the the way that we refer to that and I have said it a couple times now, but to be clear now, it is tissue tolerance. Is it tolerant to loading? Is it used to that? And one thing so we know again from space flight is when you take muscles like that, when we when people go to space, International Space Station and beyond, we don't have issues with their glutes. Like we don't have issues with their deltoids and hamstrings. The issues are their spinal erectors. Their soleus. The slow twitch, the postural muscles because you are not realizing but your back muscles are on for again almost every waking minute of the day. And now that load goes from again literally eight to 10 hours of loading contraction per day to zero. Your hamstrings are rarely loaded. They are used to being off most of the day. And then when they are on, it is high velocity, high power, high force contractions. Your anti-gravity your postural muscles are the opposite. So when you go and you change loading patterns in that extreme environment, one more time, space flight is just the perfect analogy to going from I at least walked to my car, I drove, I parked, I walked into the building, I went to work, I walked. Those little things, when you go overnight to zero and now you do that for two years, that is a huge loss of basal activity. Those tissue are then not tolerant to anything. And then you go pick up pickleball and two weeks in boom Achilles is gone. Because you are going at a not only are you loading it again, but you are loading it really fast. A lot of times twice a week and you are playing super hard which is awesome but you did not give that tissue you gave it two years of off and now you gave it three weeks of on. Like no even six weeks, eight weeks. Like it is not enough time for that thing to really get back to where it used to be. And so you put fast contraction on that and it goes.
Dr Rupy: I am noticing it so much in colleagues of mine, you know. I mean not the ones that are working in A&E because they are generally on their feet but ones that are in clinic for extended periods of time and they go and play Padel like Padel over here is a lot more popular than pickleball. But it is the same it is the same thinking behind it. And the way you have sort of parlayed that with what we what's going on in space is is like an extreme example of what we are doing in our sedentary lifestyles.
Dr Andy Galpin: I don't people don't realize this but the reason that at least in the States um and several other countries too that we have funded human performance research in space is because it is a perfect model for aging. So there are direct equivalents between a month in space equaling this amount of years on earth. And so we can actually run aging studies in humans by sending people to space for a few months. And you will see those direct predictions. There is another set of a style of research called bed rest. So these classic set of studies that have been done for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days or even plus that. Where we take people and put them in a bed where their head is below their feet for months at a time. They don't get up and go to the toilet. Like they never their head will not come above their feet for months at a time. And we can use those to stimulate space flight or simulate space flight rather. Healthy individuals.
Dr Rupy: Oh my gosh. How do you get that past ethics? You got some willing college students.
Dr Andy Galpin: Well the pay gets pretty high. But they are very very challenging studies to pull off, right? But you live in a hospital bed with your head below your feet for months at a time. And the changes that happen in the first few weeks are extraordinary. And again the reason what we can do that the value proposition is because it stimulates or simulates rather again space flight which simulates aging. That's the whole connection. So we can predict and project what happens and everything from the tissue like we focus on but to the vestibular system like one of the other big challenges people don't realize at all about space flight is your eyes. It is really really hard um because the pressure on earth that keeps the fluids around your eyes in the right position and keeps them going. But the vestibular issues, eyes ears are a really really unsolved a really big problem and an unsolved challenge in space flight. So yeah that that type of physiology gets really fun and interesting because it leaves everything behind and we got to figure out what happens. But it is such a nice microcosm of what happens when you have a sedentary lifestyle. It is toned way up like it is accelerated to level 100 but the same thing.
Dr Rupy: So from a research point of view that is amazing right. You can actually determine whether some of these longevity agents are actually working or whatever manner. I mean are you a fan of any interventions as a result of some of those those studies that you have done? Like walking desks I am thinking of or.
Dr Andy Galpin: Yeah. um there is a Liftmore study that you referred to in your podcast that was a was that over 12 weeks or was it longer than that? Oh probably much longer. I don't remember off the top of my head. So that that is a really good sort of um marker for any imagine I am a 55 year old plus woman who is uh diagnosed with osteoporosis. Um what kind of training regime were they using and what can be learned from that uh in in someone's weekly regime? Yeah. There is a Liftmore is great. There is been a lot of other ones that have tinkered around where we what we shouldn't worry about is the exact details of the program. Because not that they made it up, but in general when you do things like this like you take what other people have done and you kind of come up with something else. It is kind of arbitrary. It could have been something else or something else or a million. So you want to think about just like conceptually what is the program trying to do and long as you get there. And it you are really are looking at a combination of what I said earlier. It is a combination of fast eccentric loading. So this is a land. Why is that helpful for bone? Well, you have a little bit of the axial loading, right? So when you jump and you land, you get gravity smashing on a bone. But what you also get is that connective tissue that is pulling on the bone. But it is doing it at a rapid pace. And it is rapidly pulling back and it is rapidly pulling back. That little part of the connective tissue that is attached to the bone is then getting stressed a bunch. It is pulling on really fast. That is very stimulating on that little small region. And so you have both those combinations. The strength training itself has the loading, but that is also why you are getting adaptation. It is the connective tissue that is wrapped on the bone that is getting pulled on and tugged on that is stimulating it. So this is why the connective tissue is healthier. You get the neurological adaptations, you get the muscular adaptations, you get the endocrine response, you get the immune response, and now you are also stimulating bone as well. So those are the two big components of of most if I am summarizing all of the research in that area that tend to be the combination of the most effective. So if you want to lift weights three days a week and add two days a week of plyometrics, fine. If you want to lift four days a week and do, you know, one or two plyometric exercises every day, fine. I mean you can look at the Liftmore stuff. I think it is open access. So you guys can link it and people can go read, you can maybe put the the whole training protocol up for people. If you want just follow that. Like do the exact same thing probably work.
Dr Rupy: Are you a fan of walking desks? You know these they are becoming really popular in the UK where you put like a little treadmill underneath your desk and you just you know.
Dr Andy Galpin: I hate them personally. I don't have one. I don't like it at all. I have some friends that are just junkies. And some of the people um Zach Moore who I work with at my coaching company he always like always on it. Um other folks I hate it. I actually what I will do because I don't like the like here thing right. Um what I'll do though is the a huge percentage of my virtual meetings I just have my camera and mic going and I I like bounce through the room. I am literally jumping up and down I am pacing back and forth like the only way I can do those kind of meetings so I don't like the treadmill but um conceptually I love it. Philosophically scientifically I love it. Personally just don't don't like it.
Dr Rupy: We had um a consultant spinal surgeon on a couple of weeks ago and he was like just put a timer on your phone and just get up like that is the best thing you can do for your back health just get up and move as often as possible no need for any fancy gadgets or anything like that so.
Dr Andy Galpin: That is one way to go about it. Uh some people have done little things where if you uh the little habit they create is as soon as every meeting is done you have to get up. Just like okay you done with the meeting get up. You want to set a timer. Um one thing that uh I have been talking about for many years is the really cool research on exercise snacks. So you can do things like that. These are 10 to 20 second bursts of maximal exertion where would like you would literally walk outside sprint come right back to work. And there is a a non-small amount of research on that showing you can actually get small improvements in VO2 max assuming your VO2 max isn't very high. Right you are a really well trained person you are not going to get that but uh a sedentary person or like kind of like a moderate to low level exercisers can see you know pretty small three to four to five milliliter per kilogram per minute increases in VO2 max by doing these these 20 second exercise snacks uh three four five five times a day. So I will do this when I am in studio because we have stairs in my studio where I am like okay sprint up and down walk down sprint up and down three times all right walk back in I don't have to change I don't have to like I am going to warm up. Um Andrew will do jumping jacks like he just like hammers out jumping jacks for a piece I am like fine like whatever he wants to do. But it is really funny actually because like we just pop out and all of a sudden these people are just like doing sprints up and down like what is happening?
Dr Rupy: We've got bars here on our studio on the ceiling and we we literally been doing chin-ups this morning so we are getting into it.
Dr Andy Galpin: That's why you look so pumped. Okay I get it. You are popping this morning I thought dang.
Dr Rupy: I want to move to to muscle health in a bit more detail here and some of the concepts that I have learned from from you and others around progressive overload and the the importance of progressive overload but you know if I am if I am my 50s and 60s and I haven't really lifted weights before like what are some of the exercises I should be focusing on and how would you recommend someone start if they have got no idea what they are doing.
Dr Andy Galpin: Yeah these are really great questions. You said something earlier I want to pull back to which is you said it as first principles don't get hurt. You are starting you are 50 you are 60 don't get hurt. Don't baby yourself but I want you to start two or three steps below what you think you can do. And if we undershoot that for the first month fine. We can always get heavier. We can always do more but we can't go backwards right like you overshot it. It is generally not workout one where you are going to get hurt or workout six it is going to be that four week five week six week where you are like oh my god my shoulder is killing. And it is not going to be the oh I tore my ACL on the leg press machine it is going to be the like god this aching oh the steps hurt every time I step that is going to be it and it is going to happen several weeks in. So I would really encourage the first month or so do do like a reasonably less amount in load and volume and repetitions than than you think you can do. I would rather you start with higher frequency. Go to the gym more often. Don't start two days a week and do an hour long lift. Go five days a week and go 20 minutes if if you have the time right if you can only get there twice great fully understand. But given my druthers I want more touch points. I want more stimuli to the body. You can ramp that up as we go but I want because you are not doing enough load when I say load I mean it heavy how much is on the bar or the machine to where you are creating a ton of damage and you are not doing so many reps and so many exercises where we have this huge recovery window. I actually want the opposite. I want you to treat this like you would learn a golf shot. Practicing a lot. You are not going to come in and just start ripping as hard as you possibly can day one if you have never hit a golf ball. You are just going to try to make contact with the ball. And then you are going to go home and you are going to come back tomorrow and try to make contact with the ball. That is exactly what I want you to do in the gym. I want you to be practicing the movements. You are learning a skill. Your muscles learning your connective tissues learning your nervous system your central nervous system and peripheral nervous system are all literally learning. This is motor control. This is motor skill development. This is neurological development. Is all the above. And this stuff happens the best when it is dosed a lot. But the problem is if you dose a ton in one day this will lead to lots of fatigue. And when you are pretty well trained fine. But if you go in and you do so much that you are really sore really tired don't want to come back in the next day you have actually compromised is the ability to practice again. And at this point in our journey we are not interested in maximizing development. I am not trying to get the most muscle growth. I am not trying to get the most strength gain. So walk away from that goal for now and think I am here to develop tolerance to learn and to move well. That keeps my tissue healthy so I have avoided injury from literally the the tolerance perspective I have also avoided injury because I learned the technique better. I learned the technique better because I practiced more. That two entirely different mechanisms but both are keeping you with that first principle of don't get hurt now and don't set yourself up to get hurt later. So when you are just starting a lot of the times I recommend I love to say hire a quality trainer and if all you can afford is 10 sessions fine. But it is really important that you frame that trainer with going I am new to exercise I haven't worked I haven't really lifted weights I really don't know what I am doing I am not trying to change my physique I am hiring you right now for 10 sessions and my only goal is to leave those 10 sessions feeling more competent in my technique because the trainer is used to everybody saying the opposite. As a strength coach as a personal trainer you are told if you don't produce results in 30 days clients walk away. And this is really true and consistent. You have to have a tangible noticeable change in 30 days or retention in personal training goes off a cliff. So the ownership and then just like natural preservation you want to keep clients you got to show them a return really quickly. So they are going to default assume I got to get this person training hard I got to get them going because I got to see results they got to feel something. So just reframe them. I don't care if I lose any weight. I would like to but like okay I don't care if I feel stronger whatever. I want to leave because I can only afford six sessions. I can only afford five whatever right this training is expensive. I my primary goal is to know how to do every exercise in the program really well by the end of that and then I will take my chances and then maybe once every six months I will come back and hire you again check up form again check up movement and all that. And that is also something that at this point in time AI is just not good at. You can use AI as a as a beginning person to get a beginner trainer program. It is actually fine. But that is not the program is not the problem. The problem is are you sure you are moving correctly for your body. And I can't tell you what that looks like right now because every person's body moves differently. There are certain exercises that I could watch you do and go you know what make this little tweak over here that is fine. And then there is certain exercises I could watch you do and go this is just not in the cards for you ever like take or is this going to be six months you really want to spend six months like every day practicing. And some people are like yeah and some people are like no no no. Can we get there somewhere else yeah yeah we can get there somewhere else that will take me one session. Great like I would rather go over there. And so that is why I keep saying a person who is a technician. Don't get the don't hire the trainer who just has the most clients or is the best at fat loss or the most physique transformation. You want the technician. So you go in the gym and ask like who is the best at teaching beginner technique. Who do you got here. Great it is her over there she is our best at that. Okay great like that is what I am hiring. And then be upfront with them that this is this is all I can afford this many sessions this many thing and this is what I am after. I would really strongly encourage something like that so that you can go in and then the second thing I would say to that is if you are going to that commercial gym the first time you are going to be full of embarrassment and nervousness and a several things I want to say about that. You walk up to the front desk and you tell that person I don't know what I am doing I haven't been to the gym in years is anybody here can anybody here help me. And every single employee will go oh I got you. Because it is the tenth time they have heard that that day. Right like everybody's first day is their first day. Everybody thinks they know how to lift weights and everyone thinks they know how to run but very few do. It is like okay I know you lifted some weights like years ago but you have no idea what you are doing. You think you are like pretty good but you really don't have any idea. So they are there to help. Most people that are trainers too like like helping people. They really like this stuff right. So just I would just be blunt and bold like I have no idea what I am doing I used to lift some weights but I really actually don't know if I am doing it I don't know how to use any of these machines. Like can somebody walk me through oh I got you right you are going to get like let me walk you through four different ones here is a upper body press upper body pull two lower body ones uh do a few sets a few rounds of that today and you be good okay great. And then the same thing with the trainer. And then you will probably see the other people in there that got their gym bag and like they are clearly the pro who would probably also be like oh yeah oh yeah here I'll show you use that like people are generally super friendly in gym. You have the like occasional dorky influencers or like mad because you are in the background of their shot just like shh just get out of here right like but most people have their headphones stuff in but because they don't want other people bothering them but they are super happy to be like oh you don't know yeah yeah I'll show you use that like it was just a hard thing like introverted people are just like I am not going but fine like just grab the trainer grab the employee and if you have no idea what you are doing show me two or three exercises got you like hop in there and don't worry about like you will do all the dumb etiquette things like don't worry about it like you don't know what you are doing it is fine absolutely okay. So that would be for that person all that stuff was is recommendation I would make and that gets you a base to get you started the next time you walk in the gym you be like god I don't know what I am doing but I know those three machines so come in like I'll do those three machines and then I'll build one more machine and then I'll build one more and then you'll have more confident okay it is the it is the habit setting now I know five exercises really well now I add a sixth one now I add a seventh one and I don't have to worry about learning every machine and every exercise on month one or day one pick a couple get good at them and then add your repertoire after that.
Dr Rupy: That was definitely the mistake that I made when I first started going to the gym in my 20s I thought I had to rotate through every single machine in the gym. And now when I go to the gym I think I rotate around five or six um for a couple of months at a time and then I switch it up. Yeah caveat you know my goals are different to whoever is listening to this and I think it is really important um to I mean we will talk about specific exercises in a second um but these need to be um personalized to what your goals are what you are comfortable with and what your form is like as well to your point you know for me I don't think I actually am very good at doing squats and I have never been very good at squats and if I go anywhere near like 1.5 times my weight I get a back injury. No yeah there is something wrong with my form. Um so for squat for me I always go very light but when I am using the leg press machine for example I can go a lot heavier. So with that in mind you know if we are in the business of preserving muscle building muscle in our 50s and 60s what do you think and and we have gone through you know high frequency low load increasing the dose improving that neurological learning for your muscles to make sure that they are acclimatized and you are less likely to injure yourself you have hired a trainer what are those key exercises do you think we should be focusing on or key areas of the body um in our 50s and 60s.
Dr Andy Galpin: You want to pick as much as you can multi-joint exercises. Multi-joint. Sometimes you will hear this described as complex exercises but complex doesn't mean complicated. Okay. So complex and we use it in our science just simply means multiple joints moving at once. Okay. Is that the same as compound or is that different? It is different but you have a huge Venn diagram there. Like big crossover. Complicated exercises tend to be complex and tend to be compound. And all that but they are not like technically officially gotcha the same thing. What we are trying to say with all that saying is can you get multiple muscle groups done at once. If I am only going to do four exercises today and one of my four isolates only one of my biceps muscles I have a lot of other tissue that didn't get used today. If I am in the gym seven days a week and I am doing body part splits then I can afford to isolate exercises because I will eventually come back use those. But if I am only there a couple days a week three days a week and I am only picking a few exercises you want to make sure every muscle gets touched at least once a week or group of muscles. And you want to ideally train over the largest range of motion you can while still being safe and keeping cervical spine and all that in the right position so on and so forth. And everyone's range of motions are different but within you and your capacity and specifically we want to spend as much time at the how we will in this context define it as the end range of motion which means the greatest stretch. So we want to be going uh depending on the exercise it is up or down but you want to put the muscle on the biggest stretch you possibly can. This is a phenomenal way to improve flexibility. Okay. To improve range of motion. It is also the most stimulating and tat for tat it is the most growth developing. Okay. As well. So you get more muscle growth out of it you get more strength you the connective tissue will be challenged more and you will keep the joint healthier as long as you are balancing it. So you can work up to that you can get there but the default setting is all joints through all range of motion as much as we can particularly again at that high stretch capacity. So what's that look like I kind of gave some allusion alluded to it a little bit earlier but you want to pick at least one upper body pressing movement. So this is could be pressing overhead could be pressing horizontal like a bench press or a push-up could be pressing at an angle could be on a machine could be uh with a kettlebells or a barbell or your body weight if you are doing a push-up. You want to pick at least one upper body pulling exercise so you are bringing the implement closer to you. This could be a seated row machine it could be a pull down machine could be a pull-up could be uh a chainsaw or a dumbbell type of movement but something where you are making the weight come closer to you. And then you want to basically do the exact same thing on the bottom half. So we tend to call these lower body pressing. This is your leg press this is your leg extension this is a squat this is when you are pressing the you away from the earth or the earth away from you. And then lower body pulling. This is a little bit people don't necessarily associate like lower body pulling. Yeah. But it is the inverse. It is when you are pulling the implement to you. So this is a deadlift this is an RDL this is a hamstring curl or nordic curls or any combination of these types of things. And so when you do those big exercises let's say you are doing a hamstring curl on a machine well the hamstrings group crosses the hip joint and the knee joint. Not all the hamstrings muscles right but if if they are bent on both um on both joints you are going to get that entire lower half done. And you are probably depending on your pulling it may even get a little bit of the shank that the gastroc and the calf done as well. And so you can see the conceptually you might even depending on how you are doing it you might get your adductors and your groins going a little bit too you might even get your glutes or some other stuff. So we are trying to get multiple things done and we are also trying to establish movement patterns. Like learning how to move your joints as a human is really important. This is motor control. This is motor skill development. This is neurological development. It is all the above. And this stuff happens the best when it is dosed a lot. But the problem is if you dose a ton in one day this will lead to lots of fatigue. And when you are pretty well trained fine. But if you go in and you do so much that you are really sore really tired don't want to come back in the next day you have actually compromised is the ability to practice again. And at this point in our journey we are not interested in maximizing development. I am not trying to get the most muscle growth. I am not trying to get the most strength gain. So walk away from that goal for now and think I am here to develop tolerance to learn and to move well. That keeps my tissue healthy so I have avoided injury from literally the the tolerance perspective I have also avoided injury because I learned the technique better. I learned the technique better because I practiced more. That two entirely different mechanisms but both are keeping you with that first principle of don't get hurt now and don't set yourself up to get hurt later. So those are the four major categories I would throw in a fifth if you can. So ideally if it is that person going to the gym say two to three times a week I would advocate a full body session each time. Full body is not again every single muscle per se and then not in one exercise but trying to make sure all your pressing gets done at least once a week all your pulling is done. And the fifth category is something to do with the torso. Okay. So if people want to hear this as core or abs yeah fine. I get the sense you don't like that. I would rather torso. Um because you have rotational movements that need to happen. You have anti-rotation you have flexion you have extension you have lateral flexion like different things that need be moved there. But if you were to go three days a week pick one of the four categories you know two upper two lower one press one pull each and then you picked one torso exercise and then say day one you did a torso rotation day two you did a torso flexion extension day three you did torso lateral flexion you are going to be in a really really good spot. And I would recommend on those three days probably picking a different pressing exercise a different pulling exercise a different angle a different implement. So maybe machines uh Monday you do all machine. Wednesday you do all dumbbells. Or and then Friday you do uh unilateral work. So split squats or rear foot elevated split squats or walking this or carries or loads like all different things you can bring in there. Yeah. That is going to put you at a really really well balanced program and you can still be in and out of the gym in 40 minutes three days a week. That sounds great. That sounds perfect for me I mean like I I I am literally at this stage where I am trying to go through all those different four actually I need to add the fifth one the torso. Everybody leaves that one out. Yeah I know I am leaving that one out for for sure. And I I am imagining when you are doing those little movements for those watching on YouTube um the cables is that sort or can you do it with like dumbbells in your hand or like plates that kind of thing. Sure. Do it with body weight do it with plates you can do it with dumbbells or bands. Infinite ways we could get there. What do you like what do you hate what do you have access to. Yeah. What is open in your gym what is always you know full and have to wait for it takes forever. Okay we will work around that we can find different ways. We can get to these movements. The the phrase I always say that I wish I could tell you I invented but certainly did not is um the concepts are few. Uh-huh. But the methods are infinite. The concepts are few but the methods are infinite. All right so what is the concept we want you to rotate against load. The method oh jeez I could we could chat to give me 500 rotational movements right. Endless variations and some trainers and coaches are really good at coming up with iterations and thoughts. I am way more basic. Uh-huh. Like I I like I am not going to do that but like great. But we are all doing the same thing. Yeah. The concept is we are going to rotate you against load we are going to do it at this kind of intensity at this kind of repetition range this many days per week. That is the you mentioned you started this off by asking about progressive overload. We are all going to progressively overload. We are all going to do that that is what is causing the change. Whether you grabbed a band or a pulley machine or whatever is a little bit more of that person's flavor. Right it is the difference of going if I was a chef and you came to my restaurant and you were a chef and I went to your restaurant and we both served the same macros and the same ingredients and I am probably going to make a grilled chicken breast and broccoli and rice and like you might get some salt on there. Yeah. And then you might have this phenomenal recipe and it is a Michelin star. Yeah. We are doing the same thing you are going to dress it up more I am going to get it done faster you are going to have craft into it it is going to come with love and I am going to be like just shut up and eat like I don't care. Like that's yeah. So it is it is not an unimportant thing but what is important about that being a high quality meal and being filling was the other stuff. Is it yeah yeah. That is what makes stuff work. Gotcha. I love that.
