2670: Pilates, Yoga, Running, CrossFit, & Strength Training Face Off!

15:19Adam Schafer:I thought it might've been a little bit older, but it's in that age group. Um, and it brought us, I mean, here's how popular yoga is. Yoga brought us an entire category of, uh, workout clothes. I know. I mean, oh yeah. I mean, uh, you know, Lululemon, uh, was connected to yoga and then it became like a thing. Now this is like a clothing, you know, a piece of clothing people wear all the time.

15:42Sal Di Stefano:So I'm generally speaking, I'm a big fan of clients doing it. In fact, clients that I had that were already doing it, I complimented strength training so well. Yes, it's a great form of exercise to compliment others. Yes. And so I never, anytime I had a client doing it, I always encouraged them to continue doing it. And this is even before my knowledge around mobility practices and corrective work that we started to do later in our career and understand, which I would argue is just a more specific type of yoga, right? where you're doing very specific movements to that client based off of their needs and their issues, right?

16:20Sal Di Stefano:But it does such a good general stroke of movements that I think this is why it does so well is most people will go to it and benefit from it. They'll do it and go, oh my God, I feel amazing. It addresses what I saw as a trainer, like come in, one of the biggest problems I saw is like a lot of people just aren't in their own body. And it really like builds that body awareness and that intrinsic control. And so to be able to have control, to hold poses, to understand, you know, all these ranges of motion you don't express and like how important they are. I think it's great. That's such a good point, Justin.

16:54Sal Di Stefano:You're taking me back to remembering like new clients that I would get that were like big into yoga. Like I actually had a much easier time teaching exercises and movements to clients that had a yoga background. That's right. They have great cueing. Yes. Because they cued really well. Very good cueing. They understand core really well and stability. like, and those are all, those are foundations to strength training principles. So if you have good strong core, you have good, you have good mobility, good range of motion, good connectivity that translates really well and good cueing, right? It translates really well.

17:25Adam Schafer:And we're talking to traditional like vinyasa flow, maybe even yin yoga, but more, more of that vinyasa flow. And Justin, what you said was so right. Like a good yoga instructor, uh, it's not stretching. Some people who've never done yoga think, oh, you're just stretching. No, no no you are intentional and the instructors cue you in a particular way but the the cues they'll use the as we'll say things like draw your energy out against the mat or pull this in here yeah or tuck here yeah um and so you're right it really does and that's good for flexibility obviously here's the biggest pro with yoga it tends to be recuperative at least the traditional forms yeah now you can go do power yoga which i didn't consider yoga that's just you're trying to

18:04Sal Di Stefano:make it something else you know that's a that's probably a good argument sal for also why it gained its popularity when it gained its popularity. Totally. Here we are on the rise of stress, technology, all those things like that.

18:13Adam Schafer:Whereas other forms of exercise glorify beating the crap out of yourself. They'd go to yoga and they'd feel good. What a good point.

18:19Sal Di Stefano:Probably a big reason why it had such a rise in the last couple of decades.

18:26Adam Schafer:It's the form of exercise I would recommend my clients who wanted to do more activity, but who also I identified were just, the stress is too high.

18:35Sal Di Stefano:It's too high to have you go do - Which was super common for all of us in the Silicon Valley. That's right. Being in the Silicon Valley, you got a lot of, you know, men and women that grind high stress type jobs. Yoga seemed to be a really good answer to. Totally.

18:48Adam Schafer:And it's not uncommon. I know this, my wife was a yoga instructor and I did it for a little, for a little while. Like, uh, you go in these classes, it's not uncommon to see people get emotional in a yoga class because they're in their body. These are people who push everything out all the time at work, stress, go, go, go. And then they're in there and they're focusing on their breath feeling everything slowing down and you see people crying next to you the interesting

19:11Sal Di Stefano:point to be made here is that it's still 70 female i would make the case that far more men would benefit from this totally yeah you know totally i think that i think that this isn't a thing that it's it's flipped on who's attracted to it in fact i would like the case good at it men are i would make the case that a large portion of my yoga females would benefit from moving a little bit away and more strength and exercises that stress the body a little bit differently and more of my men that would probably benefit from that.

19:45Adam Schafer:Now, it's not a great way to build muscle. It's not a great way to build athletic performance. You get some strength stamina a little bit. And if you do yoga a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, and you don't combine it with strength training, you can actually, in some areas, cause instability because of the positions that you're holding for a long period of time. I've had yoga instructors who've had hip issues that hired me to do strength training with them to solve some of those hip issues. Next up is running. Probably the most popular form of exercise for decades. Yeah. Okay. Still is. Yes. The history of running.

20:20Adam Schafer:This is the ready, set, go. I'm going to get in shape. That's it. The history of running. I mean, I don't know. How far back can you go? This is like, this is, running's interesting because it's the one physical activity that humans actually outperform almost any other animal at. Okay. So if you were to look at humans physically, we're pretty weak. Like you put us out in the wild and you have us compete against other animals. We're going to get our butt kicked. One thing that we do better than most is run for distance. Run for distance and throw. Yeah, and throw. That's the other one, right? But running for distance is we're actually built.

20:54Adam Schafer:You can argue we're built to run. We have these big knee joints, these huge glute muscles. You look at other primates, they have these tiny little glutes. We have these big glutes. We're on two legs. evolutionary scientists would say was because we evolved to become apex predators. That's so we could throw and out-trek or out-run animals. There was an old race. I don't know if they do it anymore, but there was a race where a human would race a horse for distance and 50 % of the time the human would win, which is pretty wild when you think about that because of our ability. And we sweat so we could really, you know, let off heat really well.

21:28Adam Schafer:This is a 50-50 male-female. It's really split with the demographic. 60 % are between 30 to 49. Definitely that older. Older, huh? Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know why I think this is? I think it's because there's a myth with running. And I just, in fact, I just sold the myth a little bit by saying we were built to run. There's a myth that it's a very simple, basic, you don't need a lot of technique, just go run.

21:52Sal Di Stefano:I think the age thing speaks more to the famous book in the 70s.

21:57Adam Schafer:Probably, that's the running revolution.

21:59Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. I mean, that was the 70s, mid-70s or late 70s when that was, Doug? yeah somewhere somewhere in that time so that would put most these people in their you know 40s that would probably be have read this book maybe some of them in their 30s now complete complete book of running 1977 77 yeah it was that that was a huge that was a huge moment in time right because prior to that you wouldn't just see people running on the street no unless

22:23Adam Schafer:you were like la or something like you and then suddenly everybody started running running shoes exploded rocky came out by the way that was another movie that really pushed you know running to the forefront. So you're probably right. But again, I think the other reason is people look at running. They stopped running when they were kids. Then they become 44 or 38 and they're like, oh, I need to lose weight. I think I'll just go work out and I'll just go run. And there's a myth around that because although our bodies are built to run, if you stop running for a long time, you don't know how to run.

22:55Yeah. You lose the technique.

22:57Adam Schafer:Yeah, dude. So it's great for endurance, great for stamina, one of the biggest cons, it's the highest injury risk.

23:02Sal Di Stefano:Well, it also, it also. Repetitive stress. I think another point to be made is, and you have it up there, is it's middle income. So it's low barrier. I mean, the moment you decide, I need to make a change. I need to make a change. I need to get in shape. I need to lose fat. Say, insert goal. Like you literally can lace up your shoes and go outside and start doing it, which I imagine is a huge factor that plays a role because how many people said they were going to go to the gym or said they're going to sign up for Pilates and never showed up. Yeah. You know, because they had to go find a class.

23:34Sal Di Stefano:They had to go pay the bill. This is like, I'll just run one ever.

23:35Adam Schafer:Yeah.

23:36Sal Di Stefano:It's just like, I need to change. I go literally, how many people just thought about it and then went and actually just did it right away. Yes.

23:41Adam Schafer:Yes. Again, great. One of the best, if you want that steady state endurance, running is at the top. I mean, any sport that requires endurance incorporates some form of running. Okay. As part of their training. The problem is, is it's technical. if you don't have good technique and you go run to fatigue, first off, your technique already is terrible. Then when you get tired, technique gets even worse. And the injury risk on running is the highest. It's actually the highest injury risk of all traditional forms of exercise. You'd have to go to extreme sports to find higher injury risk. It also promotes muscle loss.

24:17Adam Schafer:If you run a lot, especially combined with a calorie deficit, because you're trying to lose weight, your body tries to become a better endurance machine so it pairs down this expensive calorie burning you know tissue called muscle so you end up you can end up with this kind of skinny fat uh type of body that has a lot of stamina and joints just take a beating yes and it's it's

24:37Sal Di Stefano:also a stressful yes on the body is we're nothing about walking right now this like running ends up being a very high high stress yes on the body that's the it was the form of that unless a client

24:49Adam Schafer:loved running and then hired me. If I had a client that was like, hey, I want to also start running, I almost always discouraged them. No, no, no, don't add running to what we're doing right now. It's going to add too much stress to your body and it's not going to be good. It's not going to be good. Next up, we have CrossFit. CrossFit's interesting. This is a newer form of exercise. We were around when it really took off. It was 2001. And it was here. Oh, yeah. When it was in Santa Cruz. Yeah, it was right in my backyard. Justin's backyard. That's right. Greg Glassman, who was a gymnast and had understood strength, training a bunch of things, he wanted to create a form of exercise that was multidisciplinary, that kind of gave you everything.

25:31Adam Schafer:And so he came up with this idea of CrossFit. It's about 60 % female, which I find interesting. I thought it would be 50-50. I didn't know that.

25:39Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, that's what it said. I didn't know that. Yeah, it was a little bit more women. I would have guessed more male. Is that recently? Yeah, did that swing over the years? That's recent.

25:48Adam Schafer:40%. the biggest age group that does CrossFit 25 to 35, although you have kind of a broad range, higher income CrossFit boxes are expensive. Here's what's interesting about CrossFit. It went from being essentially invented to becoming one of the most influential, popular form of exercise in a very, like in a decade. Probably the fastest. It was so influential. Look, we've been in gyms forever. It influenced all strength training. Yeah. All CrossFit made people squat and deadlift. It made weightlifting a normal thing. Do you remember Jim Jones? Yeah. Yeah. That was even before CrossFit. Yeah. Yeah.

26:27It was.

26:27Sal Di Stefano:That's what they were, they were using. They use for a Spartan movie. Oh yeah. So the original Spartan movie trained Jim Jones, which was like pre CrossFit. Yeah. Uh huh. That was back. Yeah. When they just started doing the warehouse thing and like low tech, high effect kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, it was interesting because I was very much immersed in all of that, uh, in terms of unconventional training and also using like tires and, you know, real old school method stuff. And then, yeah, the CrossFit just put it all together in one, one modality. Back to your point about how much it changed the industry.

27:03Sal Di Stefano:I mean, it changed the, the, the blueprint and the, the layout of every gym. That's right. Like, I mean, even if you were a commercial gym that had nothing to do with CrossFit, You changed your gym because it got that popular.

27:16Adam Schafer:Squat racks everywhere all of a sudden. Bumper plates everywhere.

27:19Sal Di Stefano:Everybody has artificial turf now in their gyms. That was CrossFit. Yeah.

27:22Adam Schafer:Now, you might be thinking if you're listening to this, well, it's because it was so effective. That's not why CrossFit took over. CrossFit took over.

27:31Sal Di Stefano:Best in community. They did the best in community.

27:32Adam Schafer:And this is what people need to understand. Yes. This is what gym owners need to understand is that if you want to do great, the most important thing you can do is culture. It's more important than your equipment. It's more important than anything. it's the culture and crossfit nailed it with culture and they proved strongest one out there

27:47Sal Di Stefano:they proved that they proved they could do a concrete dungeon with no ac with minimal equipment if they built a good culture and they did a great job incredible and and and credit where it's due like effective exercises yes there was a lot of effective exercise when you talk about and i know you're not there yet to get ahead of you but you know you talk about building muscle burning body fat things that are metabolic i mean uh they win this category so far so far what we've talked about uh they did the best exercise building building the ultimate physique uh both metabolically physically they win right here yeah and they did a great job with that they did now

28:26Adam Schafer:what are the cons it is just inappropriate uh for most people well there's a reason why the

28:31Sal Di Stefano:this is all the categories goes 25 to 35 yeah because by about 35 you go like oh i can't do this shit forever.

28:39Adam Schafer:It's feeling good. The culture, as great as the culture is, the one flaw with the culture is its intensity celebrating. It's like, beat yourself. Go, drive.

28:49Sal Di Stefano:To the point that their mascot was a rhabdo clown. It was a clown throwing up. They try to hide that. You know that, right? Of course. It was bad for pub, dude. It was real bad for pub later on. It was a badge of honor thing and it's funny because it appealed to a lot of ex-athletes, military, you know, people. Hardcore people. yeah hardcore and crazy and so it was like you know they just wore it as a badge of honor but uh yeah in terms of sustainability and all that yeah i would definitely almost on there i almost

29:18Adam Schafer:always unless you love it it's your favorite thing or whatever i almost always discourage people from uh from doing crossfit as a form of exercise um and people know that we talk about all the time just it's just it's just about beating the crap out of yourself and yeah they got great exercises great culture uh now there's a lot of crossfit boxes now that try to move away from that yeah

29:36Sal Di Stefano:but that just proves your point right there even more it's like it's it's a lot of times when we and anytime we mention that we always get somebody dms and pushbacks well mine's different it's like yeah well it's getting less crossfit that's right yeah like hyrox is the light version yeah they've just they over time i think they've they've listened and they've seen and so they you know So you have – and kudos to the owners that are modifying and changing it to make it better. You know what I'm saying? It still does just – for the listener, it does not equal a superior way of strength training.

30:08Sal Di Stefano:No. Not by any stretch of the means at all. And there's a reason why it's attracted to the young man and woman's game because you're a little more resilient at that age and you can handle that beating at that high of a level. So it's not – that would be the cons. It's just inappropriate for most people. Right. I mean, just almost every client. And I remember going through this long before it became trendy and everybody else. You know, Justin, guys like me were in our gym doing this before it was popular. And I mean, that was in my 20s. And so I thought it was fun and cool. But I never took that and went like, I'm going to train my clients this way.

30:43Sal Di Stefano:I'd already trained enough people to know like, oh, like I can't train. I don't have a single client. It didn't make sense for General Pop at all. No, it didn't at all. I was just like, this is when I looked at my client list. I'm like, yeah, no, Karen is not going to do that. I was like, she'll never come back if I do that to her.

30:59Adam Schafer:It's not going to work. Last, we have strength training. The history of strength training goes back really far. There's evidence of gladiators using resistance to build their bodies up. It didn't turn into the kind of strength training that we know until the late, early 1900s when you saw the golden, what they call the bronze era, where they made barbells and dumbbells. and kettlebells. So strength training's been around for a little while. It's about 50-50, male-female, which is awesome. Which is cool because that was not, it was like 80-20 when we were trainers. Yes, in the 90s, you go in a freeway area and it was like - 80-20, 90-10.

31:38Adam Schafer:Easy. It was easily that.

31:39Sal Di Stefano:Super easy. So that's a really cool stat to see. Huge swing, huge swing.

31:43Adam Schafer:50 % between 18 to 34.

31:46Sal Di Stefano:Which is also cool too. So two big stats I saw when you wrote that up there that I thought was really interesting because I hadn't looked at this in a long time. The fact that it's a 50-50 split between male and female is so awesome because that was definitely a major flip-flop or like 80-20 or 90-10 men when we first started. And then even as young as 18, so 50 % are 18 to 34. So this is the youngest, which is a really cool sign. It does sound like the message is getting out.

32:13Adam Schafer:It is. Now, the pros, I mean, for ROI, right, return on investment, what I mean by that is the time spent with the results you're going to get if the results you're looking for are health, longevity, body composition change. Strength, metabolic. Nothing beats strength training. Nothing. And one of the reasons why is it's the most individualizable form of exercise of all the ones we talked about. CrossFit is a style. Yoga is a style. Pilates is a style. Strength training is so modifiable. Right. It's used in rehab with people who had terrible injuries or deconditioned. You can do it for athletic performance with super athletes.

32:53Adam Schafer:You can do it for bodybuilding. It's incredibly individualizable. And it's funny because when you look at the age demographics, of all the forms of exercise, it's the most appropriate for every age group. If you were to give me a child and tell me, you know, I would do a form of strength training. If you were to give me a really old person, it would be a form of strength training. Strength training is so individualizable. It's great for muscle and fat loss. For aesthetic change, you want to change the way your body looks. It's as close as you can get to being a sculptor.

33:26Sal Di Stefano:Well, I think that's such an important point to really nail home to because at least in my experience, most of the clients that hired me or came to me wanted to sculpt their physique. Whether they said it that way or not, that's what they were trying to do. When someone comes in and says, I want to lose as much body fat as I can and build a body, or I have these body parts they are not happy with and they want to look a certain way, that's sculpting. That's what sculpting is, to take a body part you're unhappy with and develop it or lose body fat in areas or look a different way, all of the above.

34:02Sal Di Stefano:That's strength training. That's right. I mean, that's true strength training. I think what really, you know, it leaped beyond just like what people used to think of it mainly as like bodybuilding or like an athletic pursuit where now people are realizing for just everyday average person and their health concerns, this addresses it better than all the rest of them. Because to, you know, building muscle, we realize like we're the fact that we're under muscled is contributing to a lot of these ailments that we see.

34:29Adam Schafer:If you were to do one hour of exercise a week and you wanted the biggest return for health and longevity, nothing comes close to strength training. Just for health and longevity. Not bodybuilding, not powerlifting, but just for longevity.

34:42Sal Di Stefano:That's what the data shows us. Now, the biggest con of this, of all the ones we've listed, this is the one that you probably want a trainer. That's right. To teach you and go through. Because all the rest, you could lace up your, and even though you probably shouldn't lace up your shoes and go for a run. but you even a crossfit you go to a class there's instruction and other people where with strength training uh you be and some people make the mistake just like lacing up the shoes and going running of just going to the gym and start doing a bunch of exercises but this one you want to probably have someone professionally put something together for you to reap the most benefits it

35:17Adam Schafer:because it's so it's so the the pro of it being so individualizable so modifiable is also the con Right. It also requires workout programming. I mean, if I were to list every strength training exercise or every exercise that could be used for strength training, I mean, it'd be a list that would be thousands of exercises long. Each one can be performed differently depending on what you're looking for.

35:40Sal Di Stefano:Each one can be regressed or progressed.

35:42Adam Schafer:Then there's programming that includes reps and sets. And then you look at the week and rest periods. And it's just like, what do I do with all this? So the con is it requires the most instruction. But I will say this. This is why the number one form of exercise used by trainers is strength training. It's because it's so effective, but also because that's where you need a trainer. So if this is what you're interested in, invest in a coach or a trainer for a short period of time, a couple months, a few months, and get those basics down. And then the ROI is just absolutely. Just keep building from there.

36:16Adam Schafer:That's it. Look, if you like our podcast, come find us on Instagram, Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance and MAPS Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price.

37:02The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a 5-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.