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Alright, so welcome everyone. This is going to be the very first inaugural podcast, the very first that we're putting out and it's going to be on a subject that I think many people are familiar from and I'm going to give my take on it. And hopefully if you're Gen X and if you're listening right now, you're going to find a lot of value in it for you. The subject is training with resistance and why Gen X should care. I can tell you that resistance training is a way of challenging muscles and gradually increasing their strength. Now as somebody who's seen and experienced amazing benefits from resistance training, I absolutely believe that including resistance training in a fitness routine is essential for several reasons and that's the topic today. The reasons why it's beneficial. What it's going to give you, why it's important for you, particularly to Gen X, particularly as you're getting out of your 30's into your 40's and into your 50's.
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Guys, there's a few key benefits and many people will when we talk about resistance training focus on the muscular skeletal health benefits. And for sure, we can't start a podcast on resistance training without mentioning them. If you haven't heard before, the musculoskeletal system, your muscles and bones, resistance training helps to improve the strength and endurance of your muscles, bones, joints and connective tissues. This can help you to maintain and improve your posture, balance, mobility and flexibility, which reduces the risk of injuries to your musculoskeletal system. There is also another key benefit of resistance training, which is an increased metabolic rate. This is something that people generally talk about in terms of cardio but that is a misconception out there, resistance training is really excellent in increasing metabolic health.
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Resistance training burns calories and increases lean muscle mass and this is important. Important because lean muscle mass results in caloric burning with greater efficiency, burning calories even at rest. As you increase the body's metabolic rate, this helps burn the calories more efficiently even when the body's at rest. This can be especially beneficial for weight loss and weight management. There's another reason, it doesn't just stop there, enhanced athletic performance. Now, guys, it's not just about if you're training for an event or a performance sport.
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Resistance training definitely improves muscular strength, power and endurance that are essential for many sports, athletic activities and life. Now here's a big one. As a Person over 40, way over 40 lol, I think that these benefits are also very significant. Reduced risk of chronic diseases. Resistance training has been shown to reduce or improve management of chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. This is because it improves metabolic health, reduces inflammation and promotes healthy body composition. Body composition is your ratio of lean tissue to adipose or fat tissue. Body composition is important.
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We accept a certain amount of fat, but we certainly want to have more lean tissue than fat tissue. Otherwise, we have problems, right? Also, I don't know when you will be listening to this, but the month of May when this podcast is coming out is Mental Health Month in North America. Now, as far as I'm concerned, every month should have the benefits of mental health awareness. And resistance training has been shown to reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety while improving self-esteem and confidence. I think those are super important things and I've been the beneficiary of this on so many occasions, perhaps even daily. So when we talk about resistance training, we've listened to the benefits, we've discussed why resistance training is beneficial. I want to get into a little bit of an overview to help break down what is resistance training to understand resistance training. Resistance training is a type of exercise that involves using weights or resistance bands or body weight to build strength and improve muscle tone.
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And I don't like using the word muscle tone but I use it because I know that there's a lot of people that will refer to tone, in actuality it's strength, it's muscle density, improving the quality of the muscle by building strength using weights, resistance bands, free weights, body weights, machines. Resistance could be isometric, could be pushing against the ground, a wall, this does lead to overall health, it leads to fitness, and those things improve the quality of life. So resistance training, bottom line, improves the quality of life. Doesn't matter how you do it, doesn't matter when, some of the most commonly practiced forms of resistance training are; I think most people will will defer to the idea of free weights now these free weights includes barbells and plates, bumper plates, cast-iron plates, whatever Dumbbells and Kettlebells are also free weights Anything that's not attached to a machine that requires the athlete, the participant to control and stabilize the movement patterns. So if you're if you're responsible for controlling and stabilizing the movement pattern chances are you're using a form of free weight. We touched on weight machines, now machines are common, I know that many years ago, even now, Nautilus and Hammer Strength are common names that are synonymous with training. The purpose of these machines is to provide resistance. These and machines like these are very commonly found in gyms and provide a guided, secure range of motion for specific muscle groups to endure (experience) and overcome resistance.
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I shouldn't say endure (experience is a better description) and overcome resistance. Okay, so machine weights. And then we can also can also experience resistance, the benefits of resistance training with bodyweight exercises. Now, most common bodyweight exercises, everybody's heard of them, you've done them in gym class, chances are way back when in high school, college, whenever, hopefully you've done them recently, but push-ups, body weight squats, and lunges, for example, will target muscle groups without the use of external weight. So you can actually do those just with your body weight. You'll experience resistance as you push against an immovable object. In this case it will be the floor and you'll use your body's weight as a resistance. And then after that, you've got free weights or machine weights.
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You have body weight we've just discussed and now resistance bands, big elastic band looking suckers that offer resistance and they're they're extremely versatile, they can use be used for mobility for flexibility, and also for resistance. These are basically big flexible bands that provide resistance in a variety of directions. They can be used for a variety of exercises to increase strength and endurance and resistance bands are really cool because they have a fantastic strength curve as you're closer in the beginning of the movement you'll have a little bit less resistance. And then when you're at your farther points in the movement towards the end, you're gonna have a little bit more (resistance). So they offer an interesting dynamic within resistance training. And in the hands of somebody who knows what to do with them, They can be quite a challenging and exciting mode of resistance training. And many of you may have also seen suspension training.
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There's a company that was pretty popular a long time ago, they're still out there, TRX. They offer suspension trainers. And this consists basically of a set of adjustable straps that allows you to create or to perform a variety of exercises using body weight primarily as resistance. They were something which was common amongst troops when they were deployed because they could basically set them up anywhere and it provided an opportunity for a full-body workout. So there's suspension training, and last, what can I throw in there, medicine balls.
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Yeah. Okay. So medicine balls are weighted balls, slam balls, stuff like that. Anything, similar like a Bulgarian bag, any type of weighted ball (or bag) that can be thrown or lifted in a variety of ways to build strength and help you also to improve power. Okay, so these are a bunch of modalities. These are a bunch of tools that we have to create resistance inside of a training command or a training program. It's worth noting that a combination of many what we discussed is often used to create a well-rounded resistance training program that ensures all the major muscle groups get targeted and worked, and an experienced trainer, somebody who's able to put all these things together, can really help to program the best method of resistance training. Some of the most commonly practiced forms....
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...nobody likes to admit this. I'm loathe to admit it. But the reality is that for most people after 40 years old, even after 35 and unfortunately, we're seeing it even in in people much younger and it's sad but the reality is that our muscles begin to lose mass and strength and these results, nobody wants to admit it, but it does result in decreased mobility, a little bit of loss of balance slowly that increases over time and as a result, there's an increased risk of injury. Now, resistance training is just simply an effective way to slow this process down. It's inevitable. It's going to happen to everybody. But you know what? There's no reason why at 40 you should have to except a loss of mobility or an increased risk of injury.
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No reason at 50 you should have to, even 60 or 70. As far as I'm concerned, the majority of people out there properly trained with a little bit of care, investing a little bit and effort into their health and well-being through resistance training should be able to be in control of their own health. That's not going to happen unless you take action, take stock and do something about it now. And resistance training is definitely your tool of choice, right? Because resistance training is going to cause the muscles to pay attention. It's going to cause them to look up, say, hey, you know what? I got to do something now. And this is going to stimulate your body's repair process. Resistance training, it's going to cause this, these little tiny micro traumas in our muscles and the muscles got to be like, Oh, I don't like this.
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I'm not comfortable, so let me repair and get stronger so I can deal with this. Just like when life throws you a curveball, grab it, throw it back, you learn a lesson, you move on. Same thing with the muscles, over time this is gonna lead to an increase in muscle mass and strength and it's going to also improve your bone density, your joint health and overall physical function. Why? What are your muscles attached to? They're attached by tendons to the bones, as the muscle grows stronger, the tendon says, hey I got to meet this new demand. So they gets stronger also, it's attached to a bone, that bone also gets stronger too as a result of the resistance training. That's something that we'll definitely get into at another time, a little bit deeper level. But for right now, let's just say that resistance training is going to help you become stronger and healthier.
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Let's conclude with an overview of some of the physical function and performance benefits of resistance training. Increase and improve your endurance, your power, and in doing so you're also going to improve your cardiovascular fitness, that's going to happen too. You're going to increase flexibility, you're definitely going to increase coordination, and you're going to enhance your overall motor skills. Now, this is great and everything, but there's another benefit of resistance training that we haven't we haven't really fully touched on. We'll just look at this a little bit more. Injury prevention, yes resistance training is going to help.
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It helps, it absolutely helps to prevent injuries by improving your strength, your flexibility, and promoting better mechanics and movement patterns, better muscle recruitment patterns, enhancing your coordination and balance, and quite frankly increasing your bone density, which is great in the event of a fall or something like that. All of this combined reduces the risks of injuries during exercise and other everyday activities, right? All because of fitness! When it's incorporated into your life It's still gonna be on a per hour basis within your week, a relatively small portion of your everyday life. The rest of the time, you're gonna be working. You might be working physically, maybe you work in an office, whatever, but everybody, for the most part, has to do their groceries, has to do a whole bunch of other mundane chores around the house, this, that, and the other. And every now and again, we actually like to go out and do things. How many times have you heard somebody say, oh, I don't know what happened, I was being so careful and this happened! Well, yeah, well, just maybe that guy or woman who was training, perhaps they encountered the same challenge, but their body reacted better to it and they were able to save themselves from that fall or they were able to do something to mitigate an injury.
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So resistance training, definitely big top grades for prevention of injuries and I mean, there's a ton of overall health benefits that come with injury prevention. You're strengthening your muscles, your bones, you're improving your balance, your coordination, you're enhancing your metabolism, which increases or decreases the risk of a whole bunch of other health problems, like diabetes, obesity, hypertension, heart disease. And resistance training is versatile, right? Anybody of any level of fitness can participate in resistance training. It can be targeted to specific goals, like weight loss, like muscular development, body sculpting, building, and of course, obviously, sports performance. If you want to play golf, tennis, be a marathon runner, do triathlon, resistance training… there's something in there for you to protect your body and keep you at your top levels. And help you reach those top levels. And last but not least, guys, resistance training is actually fun.
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It's actually fun. There's a ton of ways to make it enjoyable and stay motivated and committed as you're embarking on this healthy lifestyle. So it's not just good for you and it's not like, eat your veggies, (which is good too lol) there's a lot of fun that you can have with resistance training. Okay, so moving on. How the heck do we get started with this wonderful thing? If you've never gone into a gym, never done resistance training before, thought it was for a bunch of conceited meatheads and Instagram models… well, maybe on some level you might be right, but it's not JUST for them! My friends, it is for you, too. So to help you bring into mind a way that you might be able to or might be interested in participating in your very own resistance training routine, I've got to tell you how you can get started with resistance training.
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So we're going to break down some different equipment options. I think we touched on a lot in the beginning of this podcast. So you've got weights, bands, bodyweight. For somebody who's never done resistance training before, bodyweight and bands. Bodyweight and bands I really think is a great way to go. Okay. And why? Because, well, bodyweight you have it, it's on you.
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It's there. Adding on to bodyweight resistance bands. Why? They're lightweight. They're inexpensive. They're great for beginners. I mean, they're wonderful for very advanced people also, but they're a great point of entry, least amount of friction for beginners. They work on strength, flexibility, and you can work with mobility, they're awesome.
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Resistance bands. I can and probably will do a whole podcast on resistance bands, but whatever. You can go to a fitness center, you can go to a gym, you can go to a community center, there's recreational facilities, good stores where you can go buy stuff to make your own home gym and everything. I got so much to say on home gyms, down the road I'm definitely going to do an episode just on that, and of course, if you get into the free weight thing which down the road I definitely think is a great place to go, you know you have your dumbbells. They're super, If you have a set of adjustable dumbbells, they're so versatile and they give you access to so many different exercises, you just can't go wrong.
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If we wanted to go to free weight right away, I would definitely say dumbbells and an adjustable bench. If you have dumbbells and an adjustable bench, you have almost everything that you need. Probably wouldn't need anything more for some time to come. And if you had just dumbbells, well, that's okay too. Just adjustable dumbbells or a couple of different weight varieties. I mean just even there you're doing good basically resistance training It's very easy to find a point of entry that can be rewarding and fun. Weight machines, typically you're going to find those in a gym. Bodyweight exercises you can do at home. Another thing that's also easy to find everywhere is medicine balls, slam balls, things like this.
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The important thing I want to leave you is choosing equipment that fits your needs and your goals. If you're new to resistance training I don't think that you need very much to be honest with you. I think that you're going to do very well with body weight and some bands and you can literally start off with body weight for a couple of weeks and then move to bands and with bands, you have a lot that you can do with them before you have to move on. From bands, maybe adjustable dumbbells. The great thing about bands is that they're super cheap, you don't even need a gym membership to access them... hey, this is actually a good time to put a plug. Okay, so here's my plug. This is going to be my one plug, shameless I'm going to put an Amazon link in this podcast where you can pick up a set of bands.
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It's an affiliate link so it does not cost anything extra to you, but if you do use the link to pick up those bands or anything else that you go to after those bands, I actually get this tiny little kickback and yeah, it might one day help to buy me a bottle of water or something. But yeah, the reality of it is, (the link that I'm gonna leave) I've been using those very same bands myself and with clients virtually every single day for the last 3 years and I know that they are effective. They work well, and I feel really good about recommending them to anybody and everybody. As a matter of fact several of my clients have picked them up and use them very effectively in the training routines they have. The goal here really is just to give you an introduction to resistance training and obviously with the billions of hours and pages that have been devoted in a variety of media on the subject, I'm not going to be able to touch on everything, but just let me try to wind down with a couple of things that I think that I really want you to know about in resistance training. First of all, yes, it's easy to get into it, but there are some things that are very super important, and I can't stress their importance enough. And the first one is proper form and technique, okay? Proper form and technique is everything, because the whole goal of resistance training is to make you stronger. But to do that we have to work within a certain natural range of motion and if we go outside of those natural ranges of motion without being trained or properly prepared for it, sometimes even so, then the opposite of what we're looking to accomplish can happen and we don't want that.
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So the importance of proper form and technique, super important and that's why working either within the tutelage of a well-designed program or working with a trainer who understands your particular type of body understands your challenges is of supreme importance, one of the best investments that you can possibly make. When we're talking about resistance training, we're talking about moving weight, so what is important is to gradually ease into resistance training and gradually increase resistance over time. Now here's the thing especially for you guys that used to be very athletic at some time maybe you were at a high school, you know football team, soccer, whatever, maybe you've been skiing for the last 20 years or something, you're still active, but you haven't been doing resistance training. I can't stress this enough, the importance of gradually easing into it. What I like to see with resistance training with people is that usually first and foremost I won't even begin somebody in resistance training right away until we've assessed and help them to fire their muscles in a correct recruitment pattern so that they prepare themselves for a resistance training, and then I really like to see people ease into it in a way that they're not overly damaging their muscles. So they don't have this massive delayed onset muscle soreness, (DOMS) which overcomes them and they feel like they're going to die and regret ever having listened to this guy on that podcast telling them how great resistance training ever was right! So it's gradual increase of resistance over time and for anybody out there who's like, you used to be in fantastic shape,
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good for you. It's going to come back faster, but everybody slowly, we ease into it slowly. And next, last but not least, if you're like a mountain biker, you're into tennis, you're a skier, whatever, you're saying, I'm busy, I got good cardio, I can run for days and everything, that's great, that's wonderful okay. But there's ways to incorporate, you should be incorporating resistance training into your existing routine, okay? There are super ways to protect your body from the impacts that it's under to keep it performing at its top levels for the longest amount of time possible. And If you don't incorporate resistance training, over time you will eventually suffer from an injury, even if it is that you are active.
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And even if you do, you might suffer from one anyway, but I can tell you something, the chances are much less. Alright, so to move on, the last thing that I'm going to bring to your attention is what I've seen in actual, real life. Some of the benefits that I've seen in actual, real life from resistance training, in the hopes that, you might be able to bring some parallels between these experiences that I'm gonna share with you, and things that either you've seen yourself or experiencing yourself. And it might be that catalyst that brings you a little bit closer to that link in the chain that brings you a little bit closer to resistance training and improving, increasing your health and performance and ultimately the quality enjoyment of your life. First composite that I created is that of the sedentary person. So this is somebody that spends the majority of their day week month year without doing any physical activities in their work or personal life, but most primarily in their work, maybe sitting where their posture is not that great and slowly they're creating muscular compensations as a result of perhaps leaning forward towards a computer or any number of things. So these sedentary people, they're going to get their benefit or one of their biggest benefits and improvement of their quality of life from increasing their strength and their muscle mass. And we remember muscle mass and I'm not talking about getting big and jacked here, I'm just talking about conserving, maintaining, having lean muscle mass which is important for metabolic health, and metabolic health, we know the fat to lean muscle ratio is super important with
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obesity, diabetes, things like this, right? And also, you know, these are the same people that are prone to osteoporosis from lack of activity and, you know, nutrition. There's a bunch of stuff behind there, but resistance training helps them by increasing their bone density and helps to prevent or manage those exact conditions. Okay, resistance training, we talked about metabolism, but it's also going to improve your posture, right? It's going to improve your posture, your balance, your flexibility. If you spend the majority of your time commuting to work in a seat, to and from work in a seat, sitting in a seat at work. You're not working on your posture, your balance or your flexibility very much and then on the weekend you go out that one time when you get away from the city and you go out like that once or twice a year and you do some sort of activity and you just like keel over from what you're doing. We can't expect to do nothing 360 Days of the year and then expect for 5 wonderful days of vacation that we have to do something great. It just doesn't work out, if you do the math, if you do the ratios, you know that there's going to be a problem, and that happens way too often.
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And Last, final, HUGE thing for sedentary people is that you get an increase of overall energy levels and improved mental health. How many people out there are sedentary, just feel like they're on fire, like they have a whole bunch of energy and they're all excited and happy and can do everything to take over the world? Not very many, right? And those same people, a lot of them in their cubicles or whatever sedentary job they have, commuting back and forth… A lot of them, well, quite frankly, they might feel not as perky Inside as that they're letting on And that is a mental health issue. We can catch a cold well, we can also catch a funk. Guys, resistance training, increase the energy, improves your mental health, sedentary, that's the ticket. Gotta do it. So, let's move on. I have another group of people that I think resistance training really is great for. These are the casual athletes.
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These might be cubicle surfers, keyboard athletes who are running around a little bit on a shop floor, but at the end of the day, Even though they may have always been very athletic and they've maintained that into their 30s, 40s and beyond, but they're not doing resistance training and they're sort of riding on their laurels and maybe they're feeling it's just getting a little bit more difficult. Maybe they're not performing like they used to and are wondering why. Resistance training for you guys, for you casual athletes out there, this is going to be a boon, a huge mega dose of improved endurance and power, which is going to boost your performance at work; it's going to boost your performance in sports and every other physical activity that you participate in as well as and you'll love this part, it can help to prevent injuries by increasing your strength and stability in muscles and the tendons. You know the attachment points on the bones, you're building insurance. You're creating an insurance policy against injury, except you're not being reactive, you're being proactive. So instead of an insurance policy which is reactive to an event, resistance training is proactive to make sure it doesn't happen. So there we go, the fact that you participate in resistance training, I want to be clear about this, I don't want anybody to say, yeah, well, Neil told me if I do resistance training, I'm never going to get injured.
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Not true, you can get injured too. We can feel like Superman, do something stupid, hurt ourselves as a result of resistance training, it happens. And that's why it's really important, if you go back to one of my other points where I said form, technique and working with somebody who can show you the ropes, super important. For all of you casual athletes out there, this is definitely a hedge against injury and you're going to improve your performance. Also, super important, it's going to help you improve your cardiovascular health because it's going to help you increase your heart rate and reduce your blood pressure. So resistance training for the win, Casual athletes, increase your heart rate while reducing your blood pressure.
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Great stuff, and that brings us to the final category I'm going to touch on. All of the individuals who mainly focus on cardio activities, and I worked with a few of them, they could run circles around the majority of people out there on a bike, in the water, running, forget it. You have to be a ridiculously high level athlete to keep up with them, and resistance training helped them incredibly, with balance. Okay, we use resistance training to balance and work muscles that they were not used to working during that cardio activities, which gave them greater resilience in their actual activities, okay? Helped them to increase overall strength, power, which improved their performance in their cardio domains, their cardio workouts.
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And it also helped them, resistance training this is a huge one, when you're heavily into cardio, your body says, okay, I gotta get better at cardio, I gotta get better at running, I gotta be better at this, at that, and muscle is very expensive tissue. If your body needs to get rid of something to improve its cardio output It has no qualms again about getting rid of muscle. But here's the thing, you need to conserve and protect that muscle at all cost even if you're heavily into cardio, you need to protect your muscle at all cost and resistance training is going to help you to do that. It's going to prevent muscle loss and it's going to help you to boost your metabolism, which can also aid in weight (fat) loss and maintaining a healthy weight.
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So all the people out there who are relying on cardio and that's a whole, I won't even go down that rabbit hole, but if you're relying on cardio only for weight loss, It is a very difficult path. It's impossible. Cardio can definitely have a part of it, but resistance training is definitely the road that you want to use. Weight loss. Weight loss, what I really mean is fat loss, okay? Because we don't want to lose bone density, that's weight. We don't want to lose weight. What we want to lose is fat. So if you're, you know, need to lose weight, It's the fat you need to lose and the muscle is going to help you to do that.
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Okay, and of course, all my cardio guys and girls out there, resistance training is going to help you improve bone density and that's going to reduce the risk of injury because many of you, particularly if you're pounding the pavement, there's a lot of opportunity for your joints to break down, for you to have microscopic bone injuries, and resistance training is going to hedge you up against that. I'm going to leave in the show notes, a couple of references and examples of men over 40 who participated in studies that showed a lot of improvements from resistance training. 1 of them is from the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine showing middle-aged men who participated in 6 months of resistance training and how they had improvements in muscle strength and body composition, and overall physical function. There's another study published by the European Journal of Applied Physiology that shows resistance training and improvements in muscle strength and function in men with a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease okay COPD who are over the age of 40, very important because it demonstrates the opportunity people, for cardio health. There's also another study published in the Journal of aging and physical activity Showing resistance training improving the muscle strength and mobility in men over the age of 60, and you know if you're in your 40s or 50s and you're saying oh yeah 60 and you're sort of like discounting it, well let me tell you if you're in your 40s you're probably looking back and saying, oh my goodness, where did it go? It wasn't long ago I was 20, 25,...you're 40 now.
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If you're in your 50s, you're saying, well, I used to be 30, what the heck happened? Guys, prepare. It's around the corner. Okay. Important, resistance training for the win, okay. And there is also another study published in the Journal of Aging Research that showed that resistance training improved muscular strength and power and the quality of life in older men over the age of 70. I hate how that sounds,
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how about just men over the age of 70? A last link in there, a study published by the American Journal of Health showed resistance training Improved muscular strength, power, and insulin sensitivity in middle-aged men with obesity, so for anyone wanting to fight diabetic tendencies or obesity, there's a study in there that you might want to check out. Well guys, that's our first episode. I hope you enjoyed this topic as much as I did in preparing it. And if you know someone who would benefit from this episode, tell them about the show or just send them a link. If you want to share your thoughts on the topics we covered today, request a specific topic or just check in. You can join the conversation on our Facebook page and you might even get mentioned in an upcoming episode. Our next episode is going to cover the simple, but elusive link between resistance training and nutrition.
[00:39:05]:
To make sure you don't miss out, subscribe to Just Start if you haven't already done so. And remember to activate notifications. The very last information I have for you today is that even small changes can make a big difference to your overall strength, health and well-being. Don't forget to check out the show notes for links to join the conversation and special offers from our sponsors. That's it for now. Until next time, it's your time to Just Start applying what you've learned, training smarter, eating smarter and getting more out of life. Thanks for listening in, talk soon.
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*Check out my favourite Resistance Bands Set that I've used myself and with clients almost every day for over 3yrs including whenever I travel.
REFERENCE LINKS
