2697: 7 Lies Older People are Told About Fitness

0:00Adam Schafer:If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, seven lies older people are told about fitness. We will set you straight. Now, this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Viori, the best at leisure wear you'll find anywhere. By the way, you get the best discount anywhere through our link. Go to VioriClothing.com. That's V-U-O-R-I, clothing.com, forward slash Mind Pump.

0:41Adam Schafer:That link will get you 20 % off. We also have a sale on a program this month, MAPS GLP-1. This is a workout program with nutritional guidance and lifestyle guidance that helps people specifically who are taking a GLP-1 for weight loss. So if you're using terzepatide, semaglutide, Ozempic, Wigovi, this program is designed for you to maximize fat loss, minimize muscle loss, maybe even get you stronger. Go check it out. Go to mapsglp1.com. Use the code GLP50 for 50 % off. Here comes the show. All right, today we're going to talk about seven lies that older people are constantly told about fitness.

1:22Adam Schafer:We're going to crush these lies and encourage you to start exercising. It's one of the best things you could do. We're going to break it down. Let's go. Break it down. Yes. Before we get into the lies, I'm going to bring up a study. There's a lot of studies on exercise and older population. And I'm talking about people over 60. There's studies done on people in their 70s, and I even found a study of people in their 80s. Okay, and I just want to talk about the studies a little bit. I brought one up here just so that people can kind of see what can happen if you exercise properly. Now, this particular study occurred over three months.

2:05Adam Schafer:So this was a 12-week study. Here's what they found with this population. You ready? Knee extension strength increased. Now, this group exercised twice a week for about 30 to 40 minutes of strength training. How old was this group? This particular group was 65 and older. And the intensity was moderate. So this wasn't like a crazy workout, okay? And we'll talk about our own personal experience, but I'll just quote this study. You can find tons of studies. There's so many of them done on this population. But check out the strength gains that they saw in that period of time. Knee extension strength went up on average 174%.

2:44Adam Schafer:Okay? 174%. Means they're more than doubling their strength. More than double.

2:49Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

2:49Adam Schafer:More than double. On the low end, 61%. On the high end, there was an individual that increased their knee strength, knee extension strength by 374%. Leg press strength went up 130 % on average. Overall gains of strength in the upper body were between 20 % to 50%. Now let's talk about muscle mass gains. There was a 10 % to 13 % increase in muscle fiber hypertrophy across the board. Mid-thigh girth increased by 2.7 centimeters, which correlates with the first part, which was done with a CT scan. And then functional improvements. Walking speed improved by 50%, indicating better mobility and reduced fall risk.

3:37Adam Schafer:The control group, zero gains in anything, of course. They had a group that did nothing, and they saw zero.

3:42Sal Di Stefano:I wonder how much was controlled, too, nutritionally, because I would bet that put on a high-protein diet in conjunction with this.

3:52Adam Schafer:There was no nutritional intervention. This was all exercise.

3:55Sal Di Stefano:I just want to point out how much more compelling this is, because in my experience, that's always a challenge. It's always been, I don't care how old or young you are, clients tend to struggle with hitting the optimal amount of protein and so if there was no control for that and they basically just introduced strength training and they saw that good of benefits imagine i would argue if i got a hold of that same group and was like strict about hey we're going to also bump your protein while we do this i bet you would see almost double that

4:27Adam Schafer:which is crazy to think about that yes 100 percent uh in in other studies we'll we'll compare compare strength gains in older populations to younger populations. And the rate of gain of strength gains are similar. Okay. So there's this belief that as you get older, your body's ability to adapt to exercise, uh, it just, you just don't adapt as well. It's not true. Now your ultimate capacity changes, obviously your max strength at 70 is not going to be what your max strength potential was, let's say, at 30. But the strength gains happen very quickly, especially when you first start exercising. So what we're going to do is we're going to go through the lies.

5:08Adam Schafer:A lot of the myths that people are sold in this age group around exercise. And I'll start with the first one, which is that cardiovascular exercise is the best form of exercise for the aging population.

5:18Sal Di Stefano:Now, this myth is perpetuated by what we know about the benefits of heart health in relation to cardiovascular. And so this is why I think it becomes, and your doctor, right? Your doctor tends to promote this over squatting or doing an exercise, like doing a new weight training routine. And so by default, this has been used as the main form of exercise for the elderly, and it just isn't the most ideal one at all.

5:49Adam Schafer:It doesn't even come close. Let's just talk about heart health here for a second. The data will show clearly that when it comes to overall heart health, reductions in cardiovascular events, reductions in cardiovascular disease, in heart function and health, strength training is not just as good as cardiovascular training, but probably better in a few other ways. And part of the reason for this, now cardio is great for endurance. Okay. So if you want lots of endurance, cardio is a great way to exercise, but that doesn't mean you don't gain endurance from strength training because you do gain endurance.

6:27Adam Schafer:In fact, the type of endurance you gain from strength training is more applicable to your life than the endurance you'll get from cardio because strength training makes you stronger. And what you really need as you get older is strength and stability. Now here's why strength training in many cases, and again, I'm talking about the data, actually outperforms cardio for heart health, and that has to do with insulin sensitivity. So building muscle or strengthening muscle improves insulin sensitivity, and there's a very strong correlation between insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease. We know this.

7:03Adam Schafer:We know this in extreme cases with diabetes, for example. Building muscle makes you far more insulin sensitive because, Well, number one, muscle is a storage vessel for sugars and carbohydrates, but also muscle itself is insulin sensitive. Cardiovascular exercise will improve insulin sensitivity while you do it, but it doesn't contribute to this permanent change in insulin sensitivity, not nearly as much as strength training. So even just heart health strength training has been shown to be superior. But then when we look at all cause mortality, because you're just looking at the heart, which again, I made the case.

7:42Adam Schafer:And again, look at the data.

7:43Justin Andrews:We'll look at like osteopenia and osteoporosis. And what's the best form of training in that regard? That's definitely weight training.

7:50Adam Schafer:Strengthening bone, reducing risk of fracture and fall and resilience if you do become ill.

7:56Justin Andrews:Cardio doesn't touch that.

7:57Adam Schafer:Doesn't touch it. So strength training, if you had to pick one form of exercise as you got older, that would give you the most bang for your buck in terms of longevity and health. The data is very, very, very clear. It's actually strength training. And then just to add a cherry on top, the amount of strength training required to reap the majority of the benefits you'll get from strength training is very little. It's actually quite little. In fact, the data will show in the aging population, one day a week will give you probably about 70 % of all the results you get from strength training. You'll get from one day a week.

8:35Adam Schafer:Two days a week gets you close to 80%. You just don't need to do a lot of it to reap tremendous benefits. And it's very protective when you have muscles protected when you're not doing any type of activity. Again, in my experience, by the way, in this population, the benefits they get from proper exercise are actually more profound than I see in the younger population because they tend to come to me very deconditioned. So you see this huge turnaround. The next big lie, which we kind of talked about, is your body won't get stronger or build muscle.

9:06Justin Andrews:Oh, yeah. And I've actually had clients that thought this and believe this. And because of their age range and, you know, the thought that your health just naturally declines over time, that they weren't actually going to be able to build a substantial amount of muscle or like that wasn't, they were just able to maintain at this point, which is not true. They can still build muscle.

9:28Sal Di Stefano:This is why I've never liked those studies that show for every year after a certain age. Every decade after 30. Yeah, you lose this percentage of muscle because it makes people think that, oh, no, it's assumed. Yeah, it's inevitable that, oh, as I age, I'm just going to lose muscle. When in fact, I've had many clients that never weight trained, didn't get started until they were 50, 60 years old, and had more muscle at 50 or 60 than they did in their 30s. and a lot of people do not realize. In fact, we still get, this is a common question. We have a group that we do, the Muscle Mommy group with women, right?

10:07Sal Di Stefano:That we've done the Muscle Mommy movement that we were doing a lot of women in that group. We had it just the other night. Someone asked that, like that was older, said, you know, can I still build muscle? And I'm past 50. It's like, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You can still build muscle. And I've had a lot of clients that were in their best shape of their life at 50, 60, and even 70 years old. So it's very possible.

10:30Adam Schafer:It's actually reasonable. If you're not strength training now and you're 65 or older, it's reasonable that if you, all things being okay, right, that you're going to double your strength within a year. Double. That's reasonable. By the way, I read a study in 90 days. So I'm giving you a very conservative, like if you start out and let's say, you know, right now you're like, man, I could barely do 10 body weight squats. it's very reasonable that at the end of the year you'll be able to do 20. In fact, it's reasonable that that'll probably happen within three months, not just a year. So think about that right now.

11:04Adam Schafer:If you're listening to this, you can be twice as strong as you are now within a year. And again, that's not like a pie-in-the-sky goal. That's something I can – Very conservative. It's extremely conservative. I mean, I could promise that to someone, barring any major illness or injury, that that's going to happen. That's going to happen. Another lie is that exercise or in particular strength training is dangerous. This is not true whatsoever. If you do it properly with good technique, good control, and you apply exercise appropriately, right, according to your current fitness level, what your body's capable of, you progressively, well, you progress yourself in an appropriate way.

11:45Adam Schafer:It's not only safe, but it improves your safety overall. So I've trained many, many people. At one point, majority of my clients were over 60 and not a single, I actually had never had an injury while training someone. They were under my care. I watched their technique, watched their form. We applied exercise properly and nobody got hurt. Yeah.

12:11Justin Andrews:And a lot of times this gets perpetuated by like some doctors out there that are trying to prevent certain movements like the deadlift, for instance, you know, to avoid that at all costs. And, you know, obviously technique and progressively overloading has to be a major factor of doing it correctly. But it's going to do the opposite. It's going to strengthen you and be more resilient towards forces you're going to face.

12:35Sal Di Stefano:Not only that, but every exercise that you can think of that maybe you consider dangerous or scary or you're very insecure about trying because it looks hard, there's a regression. There's a regression to that movement. There is a movement that, I mean, many of my clients that were advanced age, I did not start with a barbell back squat. No. Some of those clients, the exercise looked like getting up and down from a chair. That's right. That's your squat. Some of it started with me assisting them, and then eventually came them by itself, and then eventually came one leg doing it. It's like there is a way for you to take every exercise that maybe somebody else has deemed dangerous and you regress that movement and nothing is wrong with starting with the regression.

13:24Sal Di Stefano:In fact, I'd encourage starting with something like our map starter type of program that's regressed way back and then eventually progressing to that if needed.

13:33Adam Schafer:And if you're really afraid or worried about the risk of injury during exercise, hire a trainer. Hire a trainer. This demographic is such a great demographic for personal trainers because, number one, they tend to have the time and some of the expendable income to invest in a personal trainer once a week. Trainers who are trained in working with people in this age group are very good at what they do, and you're not going to get hurt. They're going to train you appropriately, and it's very safe. It's actually safer than other forms of exercise because it's very controlled. Remember this. Like, when it comes, like, if you have a major injury or you're recovering from an accident, the form of exercise that a rehab specialist, a doctor, will apply is strength training.

14:22Adam Schafer:This is what you do if you go to a physical therapist. They use forms of strength training because it's so safe. So it's a complete myth that it's dangerous. Next up, this is a big one. This is a big one. well, I already have bad knees. I've already got a bad back. This is just going to make those things worse. It's going to make it worse, right? No. The opposite. Properly performed strength training is the best thing you could do for chronic pain. Period. End of story. Not just my opinion. Again, look at the data. It's very, very clear. Chronic pain is different than an acute injury. Like if you tore your knee and you need it to heal, that's different.

15:01Adam Schafer:Don't go work it out. Wait till it heals. but if you've got knee pain that's been with you for years or decades or back pain that's been with you for years or decades that's a result of dysfunction which starts with weakness there is a dysfunction in that joint and what controls and stabilizes the joint are muscles if you look at all your joints and you took all the muscles off the joint does nothing it just sits there what makes the joint move and function are all the muscles that surround it and control it And if some of those muscles are weak or tight or both, the joint itself starts to function in a way that is dysfunctional.

15:37Adam Schafer:That's what causes pain. That's what causes the joints to wear down. If you look at your knee and you look at the way the kneecap slides over the femur and the way the knee flexes and extends, if it's moving the way it's supposed to and supported the way it's supposed to be supported by the muscles, there's no pain. If it's moving in a way that's suboptimal, that joint starts to wear down. Now, the question people often ask me is, well, my joint's already worn down. What can I do now? Your joints heal. People don't realize this, but joints heal once they start moving properly. Once the surrounding joint starts to move properly and this happens.

16:14Adam Schafer:Plus, don't you want to build some stability around it?

16:17Justin Andrews:Yeah, regardless. So you can actually walk and have function and do like daily activities. it's you know what it's such a defeatist way to look at it for i i used to like deal with this with um you know my my grandpa my grandma and like trying to you know really reinforce the fact that we need to get stronger so you know a lot of these pain signals will will dampen because now we have more security and more stability there around the joints yeah and i mean just we'll talk about the

16:45Adam Schafer:back because that's a very constant most common area of pain is back pain if you took your spine out of your body, it's made up of multiple joints. What puts the spine in proper alignment and prevents it from moving and flexing? It's all the muscles that surround it and stabilize it.

17:00Sal Di Stefano:Well, I mean, all chronic pain, the root of it is weakness and instability, right? So if you are suffering from chronic pain in your knees, in your shoulders, in your neck, in your back, the root cause of that is weakness and instability of the muscles. Therefore, training those muscles to be more stable and strong is the way you alleviate that pain.