Episode #370: Dr. Sohee Carpenter on High-Intensity Circuits vs. Traditional Lifting, New Research, and Coaching Her Mom

24:59Yes. Closer to failure, more soreness potentially. And so you leave the class, you're like, I got a good workout. And it's like, yeah, I feel obliterated. Yeah. I think that's really tricky too, because I do think that people expect to feel that way at the end of those types of workouts. But we know that if, if I were training someone who was an actual beginner to lifting, we know that's not the smartest approach. It's probably best to have them do like a shorter session, uh, maybe like 30 minutes, have them rest for longer, um, go slower, pay attention to their form, have them do like one or two working sets of every exercise and then have them leave feeling really good.

25:34And so we can hopefully mitigate some muscle soreness the next couple of days. But I think when that happens, you run the risk of them being like, Oh, exactly. I don't feel anything that did nothing. I'm not going to go back. And so I do think while the, the approach that, you know, I described is probably the better approach from a long-term and, you know, smart trainer perspective, responsible perspective, is that, is it going to actually backfire in terms of getting them to come back? Because they don't understand. Yeah, because they'd hear them suffer or something like that. Yeah. They're like, oh, I don't feel obliterated.

26:05I'm not going to go back. But then of course, you have on the other side, maybe they're too sore the next few days and then they hate it. So there's also that. So I don't know. I think it's tricky, kind of balanced, like what's actually the right approach to do things versus what people think that they want because they're not always the same. Yeah. I think there's some opportunities for learning when, you know, people are warming up. You get to describe, Hey, here are the goals of the workout. Here's how you should feel. And you said, here's why we structured it this way. I mean, I assume look at 45, I assume is doing well financially.

26:33Other class, class. Yeah. Yeah. Like whatever, they have a sauce that's working from a adherence, reducing the churn rate, getting people to participate and come back standpoint. But like you probably make the program a little better. I feel pretty confident. I mean, I I've already, I've toyed with the idea and I'm very much right now firmly know but i'm like oh man if i could ever if i ever want to open my own gym i already know how i'd run it i'd probably make it uh like small group sessions they'd probably be mostly uh like traditional strength training uh base or at least you know starting out with traditional strength training maybe ending with a couple of uh intelligently programmed circuits things like that but it would be yeah it was it would all be about like okay if you're a beginner here's your maybe like your four-week beginner intro course that you're going to start with then after that you can then graduate to the intermediate advanced group.

27:19And then this is how we're going to do things. We're not doing things for time. We're doing things for, you know, rep. We're going to learn to embrace the rest periods, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I've all thought about those things. Unfortunately, as I'm sure you probably know, running a in-person gym is extremely time consuming. Logistics can be really, really rough to work with. Profit margin is like almost non-existent. So lots of things to consider there, but I'm like, I like the idea of it. We need an AI hologram of Sohi. And it would just like, she can do that while you're busy. You can do everything.

27:51Yeah. Like, don't make it, don't make it. Honestly, I love, I love working with people in person. I find it extremely gratifying in a way that the online work will never measure up. We know this, the in-person relationships are so valuable, but at the same time, you know, really, and people who are in person, you know, full-time personal trainers at a gym will understand. Obviously, it's a huge sacrifice to make in terms of your time and energy. consumption. Yep. So I love training people in person, but I only have so many hours in a day and I'm like, Oh, gotta make a trade off somewhere. A hundred percent.

28:24All right. So that link to her paper is in the show notes below. And so I encourage you to take a read again, even if you're like, look, I understand that's all this now the background reading and stuff is, is excellent in the paper. So well done. Yeah. Thank you. And actually the one other point I want to mention, because when I posted about the study, of course we got some, well, Chris is like, well, you know, not a lot of us can do that exact circuit in our gym setting. It's not meant to be literal. No, because you know, I don't expect people to have access to a leg press and a flat dumbbell, like a bench press and a trap bar machine, like trap bar deadlift.

28:56Yeah. A trap bar, all three of them at the same time. Of course, if you're at a busy gym, you're not realistically, that's not going to happen. Jerk face. Yeah. You take it up all the equipment, but you can find similar alternatives where you can maybe maximize like space efficiency. Maybe you can find dumbbell turners for all of them. You know, those there's, always options and alternatives yeah to make things work for the leg press you could do some sort of squat pattern a goblet squat for what for example one yeah i mean whatever some sort of uh squat pattern type movement yeah or you can also add in uh unilateral exercises which we purposely didn't do because obviously for like through max testing it's a lot trickier to be like well she got four reps on this leg and two reps on this leg so what do we say so we kept it bilateral for everything but you could obviously swap in like reverse lunges step ups things like that if you wanted to.

29:41Yeah, agreed. When you see a squat pattern or a press pattern or row pattern or hinge pattern, you there are multiple subs within those categories. We predict they'd all work reasonably well for the same sort of health promotion, stuff like that. This podcast is brought to you by Biggs. At Barbell Medicine, we spend a lot of time talking about what it takes to build a body that can handle high level performance. But the recovery and health side is just as critical. Over the last six years, an incredible team of health care professionals did something that most people thought was impossible. They helped rebuild the body of legendary Olympian Lindsey Vonn after a series of devastating injuries.

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30:48You get 15 % off your first order at wearfigs.com with code FIGSRX. That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSRX. All right. Let's shift gears a little bit. One thing I wanted to talk to you about for a long time now was your experience in training your mom. At the beginning of this year, I also like how your face lights up because the same thing happens to me. I started training my dad after his second knee replacement. And it's always been a goal to get my dad to start lifting regularly, which I think is pretty common amongst people who regularly exercise. So if you can tell us a little bit about your mom and what prompted her to get started with you.

31:25So my mom right now, she's 64 and she's actually been training on and off for probably over 10 years, but she's always had a trainer in some capacity, someone working with her. And so when eventually I want to say like six years ago, we ended up living in the same general area. Um, uh, actually I want to say like closer to four years ago was when we moved out to OC, which is where they also are in Orange County. And then, uh, you know, I immediately built a garage gym. And so she would come over and, uh, like I want want to say once or twice a week. And it was oftentimes my, I was the one prompting her because she's, she's not someone who inherently loves to exercise.

32:07She's not the type to go out and do a workout by herself, but if she has the accountability, she will, she will show up. Right. So every time she does any form of exercise, golfing, Pilates, lifting with me is always with someone else. Okay. Right. So that's something that I noticed very early on. I also noticed that she's not the type to enjoy pushing herself much on her own and um you know and i say this with the most love of my heart i don't she doesn't have the greatest body awareness in the gym so i'll have her let's say i'll have her do a set of goblet squats um we'll rest two minutes three minutes and i'll say okay do it again she goes what am i doing hey what what i do you know and then you know and then the next week i'll say okay this is your warm-up set here's your weight and she'd be like this is way too heavy and i'm like you did this last week as a warm-up and And she's like, oh, you know, so it's like you need she's someone who really needs someone there with her to be like, this is how the exercise looks.

33:02This is the way you're going to do. This is how many reps you're going to perform. Yeah. So she really needs a lot of that guidance. But she's great, at least with me, not with my dad, funnily enough. She's great at listening to me as a trainer. But then, you know, if it's my dad's trainer, she she's like, I'm not doing this. I don't want to do this anymore. You know how you know how it is with like family members can be like that sometimes. but um it was it was really fun because uh i wanted to keep it it was really important to me to make it a very positive experience for her and that meant uh at least for now those types of you know the f45 orange those classes would not be a good fit for her i think she'd feel too overwhelmed the music would probably be too loud the rest periods would be too short so i was like i have to cater this to her but also make the short sessions short enough that she is willing to actually show up in the first place so my first several sessions with her they were like 20 minutes long.

33:51They were very, very short. And I would do, yeah, I would do like two sets of maybe six exercises and I would like super set, you know, upper, lower, upper, lower, upper, lower. And then I'd be like, okay, that's done. And then she's like, oh, that's it. Oh, yay. I'm done. And then over time you slowly add on more, you slowly add on more, you make them a little bit, you know, tougher, you add the load and so on. And then over time she saw, oh, she, and then she would show up the next week and be like, oh, my golf game is getting really good. My golf swing is really strong and everyone's starting to notice.

34:19And then she gets more excited about it. And you say, yeah, that's because you're lifting weights and you're getting stronger here. And then she becomes more motivated to keep going. So it became a really positive feedback loop. So we've been we've been trained together on and off for a number of years now. It's been really fun. Yeah, no, that's a similar similar kind of experience with my dad, Leonard. He he does like exercising, but he would not do the type of exercise that I want him to do. Yeah. Which look full marks to him. Like you want to go to the gym. You want to lift some weights. You want to do some cardio or as he calls it, cardio's, which I don't know.

34:56That's great. Yeah. Hats off to you. But I, you know, in this particular case, he was coming off this knee replacement and he suffered a pretty significant loss of not only mobility, although now his pain was better, but in strength and such. And so that was his like motivation. And so, you know, admittedly for he's 73 now, admittedly, it's challenging to get a septuagenarian under the barbell to squat, for example, especially if they haven't been doing it their whole life. You know, so that's not something he would do. And I actually asked him because I was out of town for a bit. I was like, hey, would you like do the leg press?

35:31He's like, how do you use that? And I'm like, OK, so we need we need some guidance here. Yeah. Yeah. And so it sounds like her initial program was relatively shorter, less sets, less volume or whatever. And then as she not only got more familiar with the exercises, but also as her fitness improved, her training tolerance improved, you added more. So if her initial sessions were 20 minutes-ish, right, with lighter weights and whatever relatively, how long do her sessions last now? I mean, is she – They're – yeah, they're like 50 minutes, five zero minutes now, so almost an hour. And if you do that twice a week, that's a lot.

36:05that's a lot of lifting oh yeah that's really good and what's nice is that because it's obviously my private gym she plays the music that she wants when she's wrestling she does whatever she wants uh when my dad's here they turn on npr actually oh okay i don't know i didn't know what i expect like pink pony club but no no my parents are very they love the classical music and stuff so sometimes my dad will play opera i don't know and i'm like you know and sometimes i have to override like listen i can't do this because i'm also working out so i'm gonna change the music to something that i can lift to but i give them a lot of flexibility like for example when we're home uh and she's training on my garage gym between sets she likes to wander out to my garden and check on my plants yeah which is nice for your plants yeah i'm like that's great uh but and then i'll let you know when you have to come back in to do your next set you gotta call mom come back it's time to squat she's like in her she's got her gardening gloves on and she's like digging you know in the dirt and whatever but i think it's quite cute because she obviously wouldn't be able to do that in a, in a, in a different gym setting with a different trainer.

37:06Not a lot of gardens at the local 24 hour. Yeah. So I'm like, you know what, as long as you're doing your sets, I don't care what you do in between. Totally. Yeah. One of, one of the interesting things here that I want you to speak to is on like progression here. Um, we've, we've, we've gone through so much like trying to public facing, um, uh, publishing about what is really progressive overload. What is progressive? And the way we explain it is that as your fitness increases, whether it's measured by strength, whether it's measured by cardiorespiratory fitness, training tolerance, whatever, you'll have to do more to get the same type of training stress.

37:41You're really not trying to increase the training stress, but really just match it to your new level of fitness. Whereas on the other side of things, people are like, no, you just have to add weight every time you go to the gym or add a rep. Right, which is obviously an oversimplification. Because if we don't think that strength improves really reliably on a weekly basis, for example, then adding weight or adding a rep would really just be like, we'll just make it harder. And it's like, well, it should be the same level of hard. Because you're supposed to be getting fitter over time. Yeah, it's like chicken egg kind of situation.

38:08Is that what you use with her? Yes, but we're also talking about exercise progressions too, right? So if she's doing a incline pushup or a torso elevated pushup, which I like to do it on a squat rack as much as possible, obviously not realistic for everyone, especially if you're at a busy gym, but it's very easy to adjust the height of the barbell, right? you're like oh you're on this number hole then you're you lower over time um so for example if she's doing like three sets of eight at a given height like shoulder height barbell and it's obviously starting to get easy for her i would either add reps or i'm like okay let's lower the height of the bar that way um even even though when you log it you're like okay she's on whole so and so um the total load technically does increase because she's lifting more of her relative body weight uh it's technically technically still considered an exercise progression because you're making the exercise itself harder so i mean you can do this with almost every every movement pattern you can find regressions and progressions totally um but for example i probably would not have her do a barbell back squat per se big given her movement patterns and her level of body awareness but maybe i'll have her do a lever squat or i can have her do a leg press yes i can have her do a goblet squat those things i can have her do a unilateral like a braced dumbbell split squat.

39:24And maybe over time you progress that to a dumbbell in each hand doing reverse lunges. Yep. You know, there's always variations you can do like that. It's the same thing I've done with my, did my dad. Now, obviously you had some, uh, anatomical, uh, you know, limitations initially, but safety squat bar box squats and you're people like, why did you start there? And I'm like, well, I'm a power lifter and like old habits die hard. Like I want people to squat, but he could do it. And also him holding that was much easier than a, straight barbell yeah yeah but his range of motion was limited initially as well as his like awareness of kinesthetic awareness you know from right so you probably had him do like higher higher box squats yep got lower eventually didn't need the box anymore could squat to you know to depth and same thing on a debt on the deadlift initially it was from an elevated surface and then it was from the ground and so there are multiple multiple options and you know some sometimes it does add load like in the push-up example that you have uh sometimes it adds a stability component like going from an assisted split squat to a freestanding split squat of some version.

40:24And yeah, obviously you can add reps, you can add sets. But the whole point here of the progressions is that once their fitness is improved to a point where their current prescription is no longer challenging enough for them, you have to change something. But you don't make that change ahead of time. That's kind of the line in the sand I'm drawing. It's like, as you get stronger, the weight will go up. You don't add the weight necessarily to get stronger, if that makes sense. And I think people have a tough time with that. They're like, oh, I just have to add five pounds every single time. And I'm like, big if true.

40:55That would be incredible. Like, imagine if, imagine you put five pounds on your deadlift every single week. Well, why am I not deadlifted a thousand pounds? Right. Right. And then I think we do have a lot of people thinking that and then they get upset if they can't get strength every week. And I'm like, can you imagine how much you'd be lifting by the end of the year if you really were lifting that much more every single week, even if it was two and a half pounds every week, that would be incredible. Yeah. I have a shirt that I bought. It was an incorrect purchase. It was one of those things like a targeted ad and I was like, oh, cool.

41:24It was just a random like LSKD shirt or whatever. And on the back, it says 1 % better every day. I'm like, well, so then at the end of the year, 365. That's a big percentage. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that that's reasonable. I get the message, but come on, guys. The idea of it is nice, but when you really do the math, you're like, that doesn't make sense. Yeah. So she's training with you every single time, approximately twice a week. Is that what you guys are doing? once or twice a week depends on her it actually depends on like both our availabilities okay and actually sometimes she does come to but now i also have a warehouse gym which is where i am now sometimes my parents will come here without me and they'll be like hey we're here now we're training and then it's always the same thing where my dad's like she didn't listen to me but she still did some stuff but i'm like i don't care as long as you're doing it yeah you're trying yeah the participation is you're showing up you're doing it um and obviously if they're traveling a lot more it's harder for them to be consistent but i'm like i don't mind those breaks here and there as long as you eventually get back to it yeah but yeah she's she's doing great what was what would you say like the biggest challenge that you faced with with uh training her and while you while you marinate on that just with my own with my dad the biggest challenge for him is almost holding him back a little bit because he's like he's like just add more weight and i'm like because his thing is like he's like i want to look like you i'm like well i don't know that that's in the cards just like i've taken some various specific steps to get here but hey uh he's like but if i lift more weight i'm gonna look like you i'm like that's oh anyway that's gonna challenge i think it was probably the opposite for my mom where she convinces herself that everything's too heavy for her even when she's more than capable you know as i mentioned earlier when she's she's done it as a warm-up set before the week prior and she's like oh this is really heavy and i'm like no this is a warm-up set it's a literal warm-up set and then you then of course you increase the load for the next second she wants to get to like there's no way i can do this and then she busts out eight pristine wraps and i'm like okay you did it so every it's kind of like every exercise feels a little bit like that but you know i've been training with her training her for long enough where i can't anticipate this and um you're not really dismissing their complaints per se but you know that they are telling themselves a false narrative yeah you had a redirect like look you might feel this but the reality yeah and we're not gonna do we're not i'm not gonna listen to you in this specific scenario because we know for a fact that is incorrect yeah yeah exactly so that's probably the big thing for her so i mean if anything i think it really demonstrates that every person is different and their obstacles and their mental barriers are different and you have to approach them all differently also she is the type to get very frustrated if you over correct or you nitpick so i have never been super i've never been a super stickler about her form yeah You're not like barking at her between right now.

44:09So no, no, no. So even if her hips sag a little bit in the pushup, I don't, I'm not going to, I'm going to leave it. You know, I'm like, you're still doing the reps. You're, you're still getting the benefit of the exercise. So I'm going to leave it. So I think that has been another important thing for her is to be like, okay, keep it a fun environment where she doesn't get frustrated. Yeah. One of the interesting challenges I would have not predicted is that, so Leonard, I film him quite often just to like show him. Cause if he's like, this is heavy or this is light. And I show him like, well, actually the bar speed is kind of indicative that it actually is a challenge.

44:39But he will invariably post these things on Facebook as people, which is great. That's pretty sweet. Yeah. Totally. But like one of his recent deadlift sets, he did 275 for a couple sets of four. Yeah, right? I'm like, Leonard. Yeah. What a savage. Yeah, that's serious. But the comments underneath are not like, you know, go Leonard, go whatever. You know, they're more like, you're going to hurt yourself. Of course, yeah. So, you know, and it's like, and even in the gym, I've had people like try to pull me aside. and like, hey, are you sure that he should be doing these things? And I'm like, I'm pretty sure.

45:09Like, I'm pretty sure. Maybe if you want to look up barbell medicine. So obviously you're in a private setting so that you're not getting that in person. Oh, that would really annoy me. But it's, I mean, it's to be expected, I guess. It's almost like this learned fragility kind of thing or learned fear. This idea that if you're older, you're fragile and you can't, you're not capable or you shouldn't be lifting heavy things. And I think it's disempowering. It does us a disservice. Yeah. If anything, that population is more vulnerable to the effects of detraining and insufficient activity. And so most – what I find is that most fitness advice geared towards that audience, they results in underloading and undertraining.

45:50And I'm like it's better than nothing, to be clear. No hate comms, peace and love. It's better than nothing. But from like a maximizing the return on investment for time, let's put our best foot forward. Let's make sure it's an adequate resistance. You're doing an adequate number of reps. It's getting appropriately challenging. It shouldn't be maximal, but you're getting there. And rinse, lather, repeat. But these are people like, ah, no, you can never touch a barbell. I'm like, well, God forbid you got to pick something up off the floor in your day-to-day life or like sit down on the toilet and get up by yourself.

46:19I mean what's your – never squat. Like how do you interface with the environment? Yeah, and I think it also comes from those people who grew up in a generation where lifting weights wasn't that common to begin with. and especially i know i'm obviously um you're training your dad i'm training my mom but like women my mom growing up no one lifted women didn't lift at all yeah and so i think for them to even even for my mom when i have her dad lift like even like 115 125 pounds she's always like there's no way i can do this and i'll film her i'll send her the video and you know she was objecting the whole time she was doing it but then she'll go and send it to all her friends yeah yeah yeah that's pretty cute she's like oh look at how much weight i lifted uh so it's pretty cute but also it shows that there is a lot of learned false narrative.

47:04Yeah. That social learning component is huge. With how much you should or shouldn't lift, how much you should or shouldn't do or what we're capable of. And yet, obviously, they experience the benefits of it. Yeah. And then we know too, you know, there's research on participants in their 60s and 70s. You can still gain muscle and strength when you're older. So there really is never a point when it is too late to start lifting. Yeah. I'm mostly concerned. Which is really cool. Yeah. When it comes to exercise prescription in this population, if this was a special population, which the only reason I view it as special is like, look, most of these people are not active, which makes it special by default.

47:38But my biggest concern is underloading versus overloading. That seems to be more common. Has there been anything surprising that she's been able to do either in training or as a result of her training that you otherwise would not have guessed? I imagine a scenario where you're like, I don't know if mom can overhead press, for example. Oh, shoot. She's amazing. she's so good or a pull-up or i don't know anything like that that's happened that you've been surprised by uh i think her deadlift progress has been really good i will say that she still struggles with uh like proper hip hinge especially when it comes to like to the conventional deadlift versus trap high bar trap bar deadlift she's a lot more comfortable with but um it's been really cool to see her grind out some pretty heavy reps that even when she's like there's no way i can do that And then she does like six, you know?

48:24Yeah, she's like, oh, just kidding. So that's been really great to see. And then obviously outside the gym, she is very independent. She does a lot of things on her own, which I love to see. And I'm hoping that that continues for a long time with her. Yeah. Yeah. Pops, we had been doing a bunch of lap pulldowns and variations thereof and rows and such. And I had this wild hair just to propose the idea to him because he was a Marine. He was in the military. And I was like, hey, do you remember, like, could you do a bunch of pull-ups like back in the day? He's like, oh, yeah, I was excellent at him.

48:54I'm like, you think you could do a pull up or chin up now? And he's like, huh, I probably haven't tried one in over 20 years. I'm like, well, why? Oh, my gosh. So I showed him. Right. And just do this. And he got up there and he cranked out three chin ups like right in a row. We had not. And I was like, dad, holy crap, man. What the heck? That's very cool. That one. And then there's a golf course that we play called Medeiros. And there's a forced. My dad will not move up a tee box. He just refuses, and we go back and forth. But anyway, there's a forced carry. I think it's 165 yards, whatever. And he's never been able to make the distance off the tee.

49:31And then, I don't know, a couple months into training, he finally does it. And he looks at me, and I go, either you got much better at golf all of a sudden, or this added strength is paying off. So now he's like, how do I swing the club faster? I'm like, all right, well, I don't know when you do speed training or anything, Leonard. But we'll just keep getting stronger and see what happens. Yeah. And I think using those kinds of motivators to get them to keep showing up and get, stay excited about lifting. I would absolutely use that to your advantage. Cause I do say this is going to help you to golf swing.

50:02Totally. This is going to give you a more powerful hip rotation, this and that. And she's like, Oh, that's great. I want to do more of this. And so a lot of, a lot of people, their main motivation for lifting is not, I want to be really good at lifting. It's, it's, it's either like, you know, general health improvement, or I want to get better at this thing outside the gym. And I think it's totally valid to have those reasons. And I would use that to your advantage as much as possible. Yeah, it's a great leverage point for motivational interviewing to do stuff. Not everybody is cut out to be a power lifter.

50:31And then also if you're like a science-based lifter, and that term has been used derogatorily as of late. But like you don't have to be like – So is educated apparently. That's true. You're educated. Actually, this is not the best exercise for like club head speed. I'm like, dude, shut up. Come on. Yeah. So I'll wrap this portion up. This is maybe the most important question I've ever asked on a podcast. So no. What advice do you have for somebody who wants to get their parent or loved one started in the gym? Obviously, you're in your mom's relationships close otherwise. And she knows you're a fitness professional and you have resources.

51:06Oh, just come over the garage or come to the warehouse gym. But a person who maybe doesn't have that background personally and that those resources personally, any sort of advice that you would give them here? Yes, I would try to, I like to keep an open invite for lifting. For example, there was a time, I want to say last year, the year before, when my mom's older sister was visiting for several weeks. And she would come over with my mom when my mom would come over to train at my garage gym. And my aunt, who doesn't really exercise, she would stand in the garage doorway and watch us as we would work out, we would lift together.

51:41And I'd always say, do you want to join? No, okay, that's fine. And then by week, the end of week two, she was like, okay, I'll try something. And I had her do like a 10 minute workout. And I wish she would have stayed for longer because, you know, I would have gotten her to do more and more. But it was very like, you don't want to force them. You don't want to scare them. You want to, I think like, you know, let them become curious and watch you over time. I think a lot of being a role model is really, really important to show that you're doing the thing. And so she'd watch us the whole time.

52:09And she finally was like, okay, I'll try this like low box step up, body weight step up for now. And then I'll do this, um, these rows and these, these, these, this, this dumbbell bench press and things like that. And, um, so I think leaving that door open is really important rather than making you feel like you're forcing them. You shouldn't be forcing them into like, you have to do this or else blah, blah, blah. Um, and the other thing I would do is find out what their biggest barriers are and remove those barriers as much as possible. For example, if they don't leave the house or they're afraid of being watched by other people, can you bring some equipment into their home and modify workouts that they can do in their living room?

52:46And take them through a workout. Let's do something for 15 minutes, one five. I don't care if it's ideal or whatever. All I'm trying to do is get you building the momentum of exercising and then over time we can always add from there. So that's kind of the approach that I would take. And again, make it fun. What music do you want to listen to? Do you want to have a TV show on in the background? I don't care. How can I make this fun for you? I think that's really, really important. It's great advice because – yeah, and I'm sure you get this question all the time too. It's like, oh, how do I get this person in my life that I care about to exercise?

53:16And invariably where people tend to start, at least my experience has been, people want to extol the benefits of exercise. They want to do this long oratory of like, well, the data shows this or like – and it's like, look, most people by and large know that exercise would benefit them. That's not going to like trigger this, wow, now I'm so motivated. Thank you so much for your hour-long dinner time table talk. Instead, it's like, hey, why don't you come work out with me or why don't you let me show you some stuff in the gym? Like basically you're making it a little social. You're removing that barrier.

53:52You're removing the barrier of like, hey, I've never been to this. I don't know how to do the exercises. You're checking all of those common barriers off. And so there may be additional ones for the individual that in that case you would handle specifically. But yeah, I find like, look, don't you don't got to preach these people the same way. You don't have to tell a person who's smoking. They know. Stop it. Stop it. Yeah, they know. Yeah, we're right. It's how do you facilitate that? Yeah, actually. OK, so that reminds me. I don't know that I've ever talked about this publicly before, and I think it's OK for me to talk about.

54:19And so one of my chapters of my thesis, and we collected data on this too, we're trying to get it published, was a survey on perceived benefits and barriers to lifting in women. Right? Perceived. Right? And so we had women who self-identified as regularly resistance trained versus non-resistance trained. So people who lift regularly versus not. And we found actually that both groups had similar levels of perceived benefits to lifting. so even if you don't lift you understand the health benefits totally so you're to your point you're totally right there's no we don't have to be like this is what it's good for yeah okay that's great like we know that but it was obviously the difference came down to the non-lifting group their perceived barriers were much much higher and again i i think it's important to emphasize perceived totally because when you think you have less time even if you do have time you're going to feel more overwhelmed and you're going to be less willing to do the thing.

55:16And the biggest barrier was time effort. Uh, and social barrier was a, was a big one too. So how can we address those exact barriers? Okay, cool. Hey, um, can you find, uh, two jugs of water or sacks of rice around your home? Then you can live with me in your living room, you know, 20 minute follow along, do this with me. They're like, okay, I can do that. Then I can stay in my outfit. I don't have to change. I don't have to be embarrassed or self-conscious of other people watching me. And I don't have to worry about a commute to and from the gym. Done. I've addressed all those things. So lots of ways to facilitate that.

55:56Yeah. The ultimate goal is to get people bit by like this physical activity bug, this exercise bug. Oh, I feel good. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then I think it's almost human nature and I'm not a psychiatrist. This is not my area of expertise, But I think there is something that once you get that first taste of a win or success, that then people are like, how do I do it better? How do I get more out of this? How do I – and it's kind of a positive feedback loop, but then people are probably more open to, oh, maybe I would go to a gym. Maybe I would do something a little bit more, quote, optimal for the educated people.

56:28Yeah. Yeah. And well, yes, actually, that's a good point, because I think a lot of people, they're so they're so consumed with it has to be done perfectly or it has to be done optimally or I'm not going to do it at all. And I'm like, I don't care about what's optimal as long as you're doing something. And then we can always improve upon that over time. Yes. Yeah, agreed. Anyone who's able to should exercise. We want you to do as much of it as possible. But anything is nothing for sure. Yeah, which is why I think a lot of the debates we see online, like splitting hairs over, like what exercise and what angle of this and that exercise is.

56:59I'm like, I really don't think that. Couldn't care less. Important. Like not even a little bit. No, won't find me in the comment section. No. Yeah. No, this is great. This is excellent. I am sensitive to your time. And also just every time I get to talk to you has been amazing. So before we go, can you tell people where to find Dr. Sohee Carpenter? Yes. So my username is SoHeFit across every social media platform. I would say I'm most active on Instagram, but there's also a website. I'm on, I guess, Thrive is technically considered a newer social media platform. I'm like somewhat active on there too, but I'm on all the major platforms, SoHeFit.

57:42I'm pretty easy to find. We'll link all of our stuff in the show notes below. And as always, it's been a pleasure. Before you guys go anywhere, please leave us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps drive traffic to our podcast so we can keep bringing you all the latest nuance in health and fitness. Again, I'm Dr. Jordan Beigenbaum. Special thanks to Dr. Carpenter for joining us today. We'll catch you next week and every week right here on the Barbell Medicine Podcast.