Myth Busting Part 6 | Trainers Talking Truths

Listen to this Podcast Episode

Jenny and Dan do some fitness mythbusting covering topics like “No Pain, No Gain”, “Crunches will give you a six-pack”, “Running is bad for your knees” and the always popular “More is better”. Tune in to hear a couple of long-time trainers talking truths!

Introduction:

Welcome to Trainers Talking Truths. This is an ISSA podcast, dedicated to exploring the fitness industry and uncovering the whys and hows of personal training. To do that, we'll talk directly to the industry experts and certified trainers. We'll dig into fitness programming, business tactics, nutrition, and more. You'll even hear from current training clients who offer insight from the other side. We've got the fitness industry covered, so turn up the volume and enjoy the drive.

Jenny Scott:

Hello, world. Welcome back for another ISSA podcast Trainers Talking Truths. It's your co-host Jenny here with my favorite co-host, Dan, the man, Duran. What's up, Dan?

Dan Duran:

Well, Jenny, I've got this tune in my head and it won't go away. And maybe I'm aging myself here, but I want to hear intro music to this episode that kind of goes like… [hums Ghostbusters tune]

Jenny Scott:

Oh, my gosh-

Dan Duran:

... MythBusters!

Jenny Scott:

I'm going to tell you the same thing I tell my fiancé, which is no singing. No singing, no singing, no singing. None of it. I have no joy in my house. No, I'm kidding.

Dan Duran:

And I've also heard I have a face for podcast, so we'll just keep moving on.

Jenny Scott:

That's awesome. Yes, we are busting some myths today, Dan. My favorite part about these myth-busting episodes, you guys, it's not just so that we can sit here and talk and listen to our own voices. A lot of these myths and things that we're going to talk about, you guys are going to encounter, or maybe you have encountered these with clients or random people coming up to you on the street saying, "Oh, you look fit," or, "Are you a trainer? I have a question for you." So we need to know how to educate people when it comes to these things. Not say, "Oh my God, that's the dumbest thing I've heard." We don't want to tell people that. But we can say, "No, that's not quite correct. Here's what actually is going on." So that's our whole point behind these myths.

So if you guys have myths, we would love to hear, throw it on our Facebook page, put it in the comments for the episode. We would love to hear what myths or things that you guys are coming across and help you guys address them or tell us the way that you address these things. That's awesome. We'd love to hear what you guys have as far as input for these, but I'm super excited to bust myths. Are you ready for this, Dan?

Dan Duran:

I am. I am. And you know what I want to add to that, Jenny, is that we have a list here that we put together based on feedback and folks that have submitted them and our experts put together. Here's the thing, I think all but maybe one of them I believed for many years.

Jenny Scott:

At some point, right?

Dan Duran:

Yeah, until I entered this industry. So for the listeners out there, we're not approaching this like, "Well, duh." I'm approaching it like, "It took me a long time to figure that one out too."

Jenny Scott:

Right, let me give you some info so you can avoid all the mistakes that I made, right?

Dan Duran:

That's right. That's a long list, Jenny.

Jenny Scott:

This list is by no means all-inclusive.

Dan Duran:

That's right.

Myth #1: No pain, no gain

Jenny Scott:

So let's start with our first one. I'll ask it here, Dan. Okay, so the first myth, no pain, no gain. We have to exercise through pain in order to see progress. What say you?

Dan Duran:

No, I disagree 100%. Of course it always depends and there's examples of, what is discomfort? What is pain? And I'm going to kind of first start with that, the difference between discomfort and pain. If something hurts, that's your body telling you something's not working properly. And adding more stress, more load, more range of motion is probably not the way to go. And now discomfort, that's not uncommon and often needed to maybe overcome or go just beyond something that you've done before. So for example, in progressive overload or running a little further or running a little faster, it might be a little bit of discomfort there. But absolutely, pain is there for a reason. You need to listen to your body, take a step back, find out if you need to refer out, or maybe you just need a break.

Jenny Scott:

I would agree with that. I think pain is a signal. Whenever we have pain or some kind of something that doesn't feel normal for you, and I'm using air quotes here because normal is relative, what does normal mean to you? So if your stomach's upset, maybe something's going on. It doesn't mean something's wrong or you're going to die, you have stomach cancer, it just means maybe something's a little off. Maybe you ate something off, et cetera. One of my favorite people ever though, Mr. John Bauer likes to say, or I've heard him say, "Just because something is painful, doesn't mean it's injured. And just because something is injured, doesn't mean it's going to be painful." So sometimes there is pain, sometimes there isn't, doesn't necessarily indicate an injury in a lot of cases.

But as far as for exercise, it doesn't have to be painful, especially while you're doing it. That might indicate maybe you're doing something incorrectly. We don't have to experience pain in order to experience progress. And I think that kind of ties into another one that we'll talk about later about soreness. There's a huge myth out there that you have to get sore in order to see results. And in fact, that's not the case. And it depends on what you're... It depends, our favorite answer in fitness. It depends on what you're doing. What kind of training are you doing? If you're doing strength training, for example, literally training for strength where you are lifting maximal or just sub-maximal lifts, that might be different. That might be a little bit painful as you recover because your muscle tissue is broken down in a different way.

If you're doing endurance work or just the average person exercising, you may or may not experience pain based on your training status or a soreness afterwards, but it's not an indicator that you had a great workout. I know there's people out there that are probably yelling at the speaker right now. Some people like that feeling of pain. I'm not one of them.

Dan Duran:

Nope. Nope. And I would submit that if you're training people, okay, thinking about a client, let's put it in a client perspective, it's very unlikely that they like it either.

Jenny Scott:

Some people get scared. Have you ever experienced that? When I used to work in the gyms, I would have somebody who's brand new to exercise. We do just a little bit, a 30-minute session, I wouldn't call it easy, easy is not a word I use. Simple. But it's something that's new for them and they call me up the next day day or text me the next day. They're like, "Oh my gosh, I can't get up. What's wrong with my legs?" It can be scary for some people because they've never experienced it before, so we have to remember that.

Myth #2: More exercise is always better for improving fitness and health

Dan Duran:

You bet. Okay, I've got one for you. This is one of my favorites. This is one of my favorites. More is better. More is better. More exercise is always better for improving fitness and health. What say you?

Jenny Scott:

I'd be very careful when we say something always does something. So in some cases, sure, more may be better. If you're trying to improve your cardiovascular endurance, for example, then doing more cardiovascular endurance could potentially help you doing that depending on what you're doing. But more is not always better. We also have to make sure that we're appropriately challenging the body, applying the right stimulus based on what we're trying to accomplish. But then we also need to, more importantly, I would argue, recover from that activity. I saw somebody in bootcamp once, no fault against them, but they said, "I train to failure every time I train." And my question was, "Excuse me. Why? Why?" That's uncomfortable. It's a lot of activity. It's a lot of stress you're placing on your body.

And if you do that every time that you train, and I think if I remember correctly, this person trained like five or six days a week. I was like, "So you're giving your body one day a week to recover from training to failure every day? How's that working out for you? Are you a little bit more broke down than you were six months ago? Because I would assume so." So no, more exercise is not necessarily always better. It depends on what you're trying to do and what it is that you are working on. But there's a point where you have the diminishing returns or you're not getting out of it what you think you should be because you're doing too much and you have not physically recovered. Would you agree, Dan?

Dan Duran:

Everything Jenny said, 100%. And I'll add and well, first of all, ditto own the recovery. Absolutely crucial, that recovery component. And ISSA happens to have an exercise recovery specialist course that I believe Jenny put together.

Jenny Scott:

Sure do.

Dan Duran:

Just saying. The other thing to that to keep in mind is the stress that it puts on your body neurologically. And so your autonomic nervous system, when it's under a constant state of stress or the sympathetic nervous system is upregulated because you're doing too much or not recovering enough, that's going to work against those things that you're trying to do as well.

Jenny Scott:

Your gains.

Dan Duran:

Your gains. So what happens when you have excess cortisol and or a cortisol bath as I like to call it, you actually decrease muscle tissue and your immune system is compromised, so you end up getting sick. So you can't get your five, six days workouts-

Jenny Scott:

No, or you're that person who's sniffling in the gym all the time.

Dan Duran:

Yeah, don't be that person. So the stress that it puts on your system neurologically and hormonally is the other thing to consider. Less is more sometimes is the best way to approach it.

Jenny Scott:

Fair. I like it. What do they call it, the minimum viable product?

Dan Duran:

There you go. Yeah, the MVP.

Jenny Scott:

Yeah. The minimal amount that you can do to get the result that you're looking for.

Dan Duran:

That works. I mean, do you really want to live in the gym?

Myth #3: Stretching before exercise prevents injury

Jenny Scott:

I know, right? I got one here for you, Dan. Stretching before exercise prevents injury.

Dan Duran:

Oh, man. I didn't do enough digging ahead of time on this one, but I have several studies that I pulled out years ago to give to my son's football coach around this topic because static, prolonged hold stretching, research, and Jenny, I know you're the research guru here, you can probably tell me the name and the date and who did it, has actually demonstrated that it can inhibit performance, strength and increase risk of injury. And I'm talking about static hold, 20, 30-second static stretches. Compared to what we call dynamic stretching, right? So, movement. So I would submit that static stretching before training, running, lifting, probably not the best way to go. Not a bad thing to do after because you're not worried about inhibiting performance. Whereas dynamic stretching, warming up, warming up the body, getting the blood flowing, warming up the joints, especially the ones that are going to be utilized in that training session, that will help prevent injury. That's my 2 cents.

Jenny Scott:

Yep. I would agree with that because it depends on what type of stretching we're talking about because stretching, very broad topic. So yeah, the type of stretching matters, but there's a little something something called the link tension relationship. If you're familiar, if you know, you know. If you aren't familiar, look it up. It's a very interesting... It's not even a theory, but it's a concept that our muscle fibers overlap. Thick and thin filaments act in the mycin, and they overlap. There is an ideal amount of overlap to create the most amount of force that a muscle can create. When that muscle is elongated or we excessively stretch it, statically specifically, before exercise, we're lengthening or shortening the amount of overlap, or reducing the amount of overlap I should say, of they actin in myosin filaments, which means they might still be able to contract, but they're not able to create as much force, definitely not as quickly.

Same thing if they are too much overlapped, meaning we have tight muscles, adhesions, things like that. Again, we can't really create as much force as possible when we have too much overlap. So they've scientifically narrowed it down, I don't know the number off the top of my head, the number of micrometers that we want the overlap of the sarcomere to be to create maximal force. They've narrowed it down to a range. Some, I won't say nerd, some person out there figured that out. And it's important to understand because we would like our muscles to be within that overlap range. I mean, it's not like we can look at your... You can't look at your arm and be like, "Oh yeah, I'm in the right spot." But we can do things to prevent it from not being in that range. And a lot of that has to do with mobility, flexibility, and a good warmup. So love that one.

Myth #4: Crunches give you a six-pack

Dan Duran:

So I have one for you, Jenny, and this is perfect. It's perfect that I'm asking Jenny this question. If you don't know this, listeners, Jenny's a competitive body builder. And I've seen buddy seen pictures of her, photos in competition, and she indeed does have a six-pack. I think there's more than six showing there.

Jenny Scott:

No, there’s 6, the top ones are a little crooked.

Dan Duran:

All right. Well, you definitely have one. And on that note, did you get that doing crunches? Do crunches give you a six-pack?

Jenny Scott:

So I get this one all the time. I have a lot of my athletes who are like, "Oh, let's do ab work today." I'm like, "For what?" "I want to get a six-pack for summer, coach." I'm like, "So let's talk about this, right?" Everybody has a, air quotes, six-pack, right? It's your rectus abdominis muscle. Everybody's looks like that underneath. I always like to say, "Do you have a six-pack in a cooler or is it in plastic wrap? Can you see it or not? How big is your cooler is the question, right?" But we all have a rectus abdominis. I hear people all the time, "Oh, I don't have abs."

If you didn't have abs, you would physically not be able to stand up, so that is incorrect. You do have abdominal muscles. It's just a matter of whether or not you can see them and what the body fat percentage has to be for somebody to be able to see their absolutely, it varies. It's different for everyone because everybody's body is going to be different. But no, crunches will strengthen your rectus abdominis muscles and some of your other core musculature. Sure, they'll absolutely strengthen them. Loaded ab work will make the muscle thicker, depending on the volume and the intensity and what you're doing with them. So I don't like weighted core work, personally. But crunches are not going to give you a six-pack because we all already have one. It's a matter of losing body fat so that you can see it.

Dan Duran:

Well, I love that. I've never heard that, they're in the cooler. The six-pack is a... I love that.

Jenny Scott:

Yep. Six-pack in the cooler.

Dan Duran:

And here's another saying, and a lot of folks have heard it and my son definitely knows it because I'm always preaching it to him, abs are made in the kitchen. So Jenny's point, it's about nutrition. The reminder out there is that the core muscles in general, which that is one of, their role, not only maintaining upright posture and so forth, but their role is to be able to transfer energy from the upper part of your body to the bottom part of your body and vice versa. You stand up, you push on something, you stand up, you press a cable machine, you move a refrigerator, you pick up a rock, whatever it is, you're transferring energy. So if you're doing exercises that are transferring energy or utilizing energy in an open chain between your hands and your feet or your upper body and your lower... You are training abs, you all right training your core muscles, they're getting a workout, they just might still be in the cooler.

Jenny Scott:

Yep. You might need to unpack those babies. I love it. We're going to take a quick break for an ISSA review.

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Myth #5: Exercise machines are safer than free weights

Jenny Scott:

All right, next up here, Dan. Machines are safer than free weights.

Dan Duran:

Ooh, you know-

Jenny Scott:

I feel like these are just kind of absolutes too, which it's starting to bother me now.

Dan Duran:

I know.

Jenny Scott:

Life is absolute, right?

Dan Duran:

And that's how I heard the majority of these myself though, is very general terms. And even as a fitness director hiring trainers that were less experienced, maybe they were recently certified or they didn't have a lot of experience in the gym, there was an assumption that a beginner client, again, air quotes, but is going to be safer on a machine. Back to the answer, it depends. So I'll tell you one of the things that I don't like about machines is there's a fixed path of motion. So it's dictating where... For example, a overhead press or military press, a shoulder press. My client or I may have difficulty raising my arm straight up over my head in that plane, in the frontal plane, but being able to keep my hands back, but the machine is forcing them there.

So sometimes it's going to take you into a range of motion that maybe you're not prepared to do. So in that sense, it could actually be more unsafe. Whereas if I'm using a dumbbell or body weight, my body's going to travel into the path that it feels comfortable and where it has rhythm, where it has timing, where it's used to moving. So is it always safer? No. Is it easier to learn? Probably, because as far as coordination, there's a lot less coordination involved when you just sit and press or lift, the machine takes the guesswork out of it for you. But from a safety standpoint, I believe you can get injured on a machine just as easily as you can get injured with a free weight.

Jenny Scott:

I agree. Yeah, you absolutely can get injured just as easily. Machines are great for isolation. Of course. There's a time and place where machines are amazing. If you have somebody who's just learning, like you said. If you're bodybuilding type training where you're trying to isolate certain muscle groups, most of those machines are designed to isolate certain muscle groups, but they also take your core out of it. For example, the overhead press you mentioned. Most of the overhead press machines that I know of are seated, right? So if you're seated while you're doing the movement, you're able to isolate your shoulders and your traps depending on how high up you go and what range of motion you're using, but you're not using your core because you're not standing on your own two feet, you're not stabilizing your own body. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, it depends on what are you trying to accomplish.

So machines are great, first of all, for the people out there who are like, "No machines." Expand your horizons. Maybe try a day where you do a couple of machines. But are they safer than free weights? Not necessarily. We can't say that as an absolute for sure.

Dan Duran:

Well, I have one here for you, Jenny. And the other thing Jenny does is train athletes. And athletes, not all depends I guess on the sport, but in Jenny's case, they run.

Jenny Scott:

Some of them run badly.

Dan Duran:

Or Jenny makes them run.

Jenny Scott:

On occasion.

Myth #6: Running is bad for your knees

Dan Duran:

Here's one for you. And I've heard this time and time again, running is bad for your knees.

Jenny Scott:

Oh, I hear this one all the time. So first let me preface this, and you guys have definitely heard me say this before. In the last year and a half we've been doing this podcast, I do not run even when being chased. I am not a fan of running. It's just not my jam. You have to do things that like you enjoy, and I do not enjoy running. And I know Dan, you're my little ultra marathoner, my little runner. You love it. And for that, I say, good for you, good for you, boo-boo. But it's just not something that I enjoy. I do it and I'm like, "What are we running from? I feel anxious. Am I being chased by a dinosaur?"

Okay, so let me just get that out of the way. I do not run even when being chased. However, running is not necessarily bad for your knees. There's a lot of other things that could potentially be causing pain in your hip or your knee or your ankle for example, a lot of people will complain about. Usually, it's bad running form or potentially improper footwear. If you're a runner and you run all the time, like say you run outside, you need to change your shoes every... What is it? 150 miles or 200 miles or something you should be changing your shoes because the tread on your shoes wears down, which can impact the way that your foot strikes the ground, which then impacts straight up your kinetic chain. So that can absolutely cause pain.

But also, the way that your foot strikes the ground. If you have too much pronation, or too much supination, or you're too far on your toes, too far on your heels, your stride length is too long. There's all kinds of things that could go wrong in the mechanics of a running stride that could cause your foot to hit the ground in a different way that impacts your ankle, which impacts your knee, which impacts your hip. Continue on up the chain. You could have pain in your shoulders from running just because of the way it impacts your kinetic chain. So I wouldn't say that running is bad for your knees. Bad running form and improper footwear are bad for your knees while running.

Dan Duran:

Agree 100%, Jenny. And there's a saying that I used to use when people would come to me with this, I heard, "Running's bad for your knees," or, "It hurts when I run." And what I would like to say is it hurts because you don't run. So people will go out, go, "I'm going to start running today," and they get a new pair of sneakers or they get a pair for Christmas and they go out and try to run five miles. Yeah, it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt a lot if you have not been running. Just like anything that you do and what we teach is you have to adapt. You have to adapts to the stress.

Jenny Scott:

Start slow.

Dan Duran:

Yeah, you have to start slow, and that means walking and speed walking because our bodies are made, they're made to absorb ground reaction force. That's how we're made. And if you're sitting all the time and you're not absorbing ground reaction force, you actually put yourself in a... Basically, you're predisposed to have pain because you're running. Because you have no ground reaction force other than getting from your chair to your car, to your dinner table, to your bed. So it's building on a little bit at a time. The other thing is injuries. So I'm going to use the example myself. Like Jenny said, I've done a lot of running. I've done a lot of long-distance running. I started running when I was 40 years old, which I think we're going to talk about here in a bit.

But I started later in life, but I came into it with an injury from playing college football, so I was predisposed. And probably the best advice would be, Dan, don't go out and run 100 miles. I did it anyway. Was that a smart thing to do when you have no meniscus left in your knee? No, it's not. So please, if you already have injuries, if you have a predisposition, yes, it can be harmful to your knee. So that's something you're going to want to be mindful of or perhaps consult your physician about.

Jenny Scott:

Fair. Running is not for everyone, including me. I'll put myself in that pile over there.

Dan Duran:

Well, you clearly don't have to run to get a six-pack. We figured that one out.

Jenny Scott:

Correct. Thank goodness. Dodged a bullet.

Myth #7: You have to sweat to get a good workout

Jenny Scott:

All right, next one here. Dan, you need to sweat to good, get a good workout. Do you need to sweat? First of all, what does sweat have to do with it?

Dan Duran:

Yeah, boy, I definitely used to think that one for sure. And now, I'm just going to use an example of why you don't always sweat and why the environment plays such a factor. I work out in my shop in the morning and some mornings are below 10 degrees. So I'm trying to get a little bit of heat out. I don't sweat, I don't. I'm just trying to stay warm.

Jenny Scott:

Yeah, it's too cold. Yeah, your body's trying to warm.

Dan Duran:

It's too cold. I don't sweat. But I like to think I'm getting a pretty darn good workout. So there's one example. But no, what is the purpose of exercise in the format that we speak to? Again, it's to add a little additional stress to the body that wasn't added before, that you're going to adapt to through recovery, super compensate, get a little, whatever goal is, more flexible, bigger, stronger. Whatever that thing is you're trying to achieve means you just need a little bit more than before. It has nothing to do with whether you sweat or not.

Jenny Scott:

Yeah, I mean if you think about the physiological reason that we sweat, it's to cool your body down. So to your point, if you're in a cold environment, and actually in the most recent Journal of Strength and Conditioning, they were talking about a study where they had women specifically versus men, working out in a cold environment. They were running on a treadmill. And they found that women burn more fatty acids when they were in a cold environment on the treadmill than men did. Just throwing that out there. Really cool. It was in the most recent periodical of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning, NSCA. Great read. I thought it was interesting. Anyway, so the environment that you're in can impact the fact that your body has no need to dissipate heat because it's cold itself, it's trying to warm itself.

But also, think about it. If the pace of exercise that you're doing... So I have days where, for example, I'm doing shoulders and maybe some arm work because I'm a bodybuilder, so I split up my workouts. And maybe it's a 45-minute workout, but I'm moving at a slower pace, my sets might take 15, 20 seconds depending on how much load I'm using and how many reps I'm doing. And then I rest. I recover for a minute or two between. So my body pretty much stays at equilibrium the whole time. And there's times where I walk out there not having a sweated. Feeling like I can continue, I can go to the grocery store in these clothes because I didn't sweat. And that's fine, it doesn't mean I didn't get a great workout. It just means I had no need to sweat, my body didn't need to. Yeah. So the physiological reason I think outweighs the fact that we feel like we need to sweat just to get a good workout.

Dan Duran:

So I'm going to share that research that you just learned in the journal with my wife because that's our ritual in the evening. She's on the treadmill because again, it's cold, there's still snow on the ground out here where I am. And she walks on the treadmill, I ride a stationary bike in the evening. So I can let her know, "Hey honey, the research says you're burning more fat than I am." That'll make her happy.

Myth #8: High-intensity exercise is the best exercise for fat loss

Dan Duran:

I've got one for you here. High-intensity exercise, good old high-intensity. I think we're kind of starting to see that pendulum swing back, by the way, because that was trending big time for several years. High-intensity exercise is the best exercise for fat loss. Is it?

Jenny Scott:

No. So fat loss, I think the biggest common misconception for general population is that fat loss you have to do something, like I have to go exercise in a certain way, or for a certain amount of time, or burn this many calories in order to get fat loss. Fat loss at the end of the day is about energy balance, right? At its most simplest, calories in versus calories out. So it's more on a nutrition scale or are you burning more calories on a daily basis than you are consuming? That's what's going to drive fat loss. Not the fact that you did Tabata times 10 today or that you went to Orangetheory class. You're just facilitating it by burning more calories. So what you choose to do to burn those calories, I say do whatever you're going to do consistently. That's the best kind of exercise.

Doesn't have to be super, super high-intensity. And in fact, there's a lot of people out there who maybe shouldn't, based on health conditions or medications, or don't want to work at super high intensities. God love her, my 76-year-old mother is not going to... I totally have told this story before. She did an Orangetheory class once, back when I was teaching at Orangetheory. She was walking on the end treadmill. I walked up to her on the mic and I said, "Hey Betty, you going to speed up that treadmill?" She looked at me and she said, "Nope.” And she just kept going two miles an hour. And I was like, "Okay." Everybody laughed. I was like, "Okay, mama. Do you." But she was there. She was moving. At the end of the day, she burned some additional calories that she wouldn't have if she was sitting on tuft the whole day. So the type of exercise that you do doesn't necessarily play a role in fat loss specifically. At the end of the day, it's about that energy balance.

Dan Duran:

Agreed. And another thing that I'm going to throw in that I mentioned earlier is hormones, the endocrine system, stress. So, a lot of high-intensity intervals is much more stressful on your body. And again, we end up with a cortisol bath, one of the beautiful side effects of that is increased truncal fat. You hold more fat in your midsection. So, you're doing more high-intensity exercise because you think you're going to burn more fat, but you're jacking up your metabolism because you're working too hard and not recovering enough, and you store more fat in your abdomen. Huh? How's that working out for you?

Myth #9: You have to exercise at least one hour in order to see results

Jenny Scott:

All right, here's another one for you, Dan. You have to exercise for at least an hour, 60 minutes in order to see results.

Dan Duran:

No way. We're right back to what we talked about earlier and what I mentioned, is it's just a little bit more than you've done before. Now, first of all, even back up even more. Movement is good, folks. We need to move. I actually love the 10,000 step-a-day target. I think it's phenomenal. That gets you out, gets you moving. If everybody did just that every single day, you would see a market, in my opinion, market change in the percent of our population that's overweight or obese. That's just my 2 cents. All movement is good. So does it have to be a certain timeframe? Does it have to be an hour? Should it be 30 minutes? Should it be... All movement is good. Too much, as we talked about before, can be detrimental. Work within the range of, again, what do I have time for? What am I trying to achieve? And am I able to do just a little bit more than I did before?

Can I increase the challenge? Whether it's the intensity, whether it's a change in tempo or a shorter rest. Whatever those variable changes are, if I'm seeking that change, that super compensation. It's not about time. It's about how does it compare to the last time I did it? And an hour's allotted time. Not a lot of people have an hour to be able to work out. One of my mentors told me many years ago, and this is the guy I would follow around and ask him a million questions. And he always answered with, "Depends." Rodney Corn, we had him on here. He was the one that said, "I don't understand why gyms don't sell 15-minute training sessions." For most people starting out in movement, that is plenty of time to get them introduced to doing more than they were doing before, so that's my take on it.

Jenny Scott:

Yeah, I would agree with that. And I mean, to your point, not everybody has 60 minutes to work out. But to me, it's did you accomplish what you needed to accomplish? Whether that took you 20 minutes or whether that took you, hopefully not three hours, but I mean it takes you longer than an hour, then go for it. Accomplish what you need to accomplish if you have the time to do that. So the actual time time is so arbitrary to our bodies for the most part, outside of our circadian rhythm, which is a 24-hour clock time. Time is very arbitrary. Your body doesn't know, "Oh my gosh, it's 2:00 AM," or, "Oh my gosh, it's exactly 3:30 PM." It doesn't know that information. It knows if it's light or dark and what normally happens at this time based on your habits and your hormones and the way that things naturally fluctuate in your body, so time is arbitrary.

Myth #10: 40 years old is too late to start exercising

Dan Duran:

And speaking of time, can you start exercising after you're 40? Are you too old at 40? Is that too late?

Jenny Scott:

No, it's never too late. It's never too late for anything. Don't ask me to start running though, because I'm almost 40 and it's not half a chance. It's not. So I know where you're going with this. No, I'm kidding. But no, it's never too late. There's plenty of people out there who haven't exercised all their life or just never been into sports or athletics or doing any kind of movement. They can start at any age, right? It's just a matter of what condition is your body in? Pay attention to your preexisting conditions, your preexisting maybe joint issues if you have them, et cetera. Start slow, start low. That's what they always say. Start low, start slow and dig into something, but find something that you enjoy.

If you have somebody that's older and they want to start exercising, find out what they like to do and start there. It doesn't need to be in the gym, in the free weight area. Not everybody's comfortable in the gym or in the free weight area. And there's plenty of people in this world that don't want to walk into a gym. You don't have to go to a gym to exercise and to workout and to be healthy and fit. So find out what they like to do and just start slow, start low.

Dan Duran:

Agree 100%. And I think that the thing that trips us up, Jenny, is the word exercise. So what is exercise? It was defined to me as a change in position or posture or place overcoming force. That means all movement is exercise, no matter what you do, because we're always fighting gravity. So exercise does not have to be dumbbells, barbells, machines, running, any of those things. It's just movement. So if you're over 40, it would be crazy to think that you can't start moving or moving more. So we're right back to find what you like and add just a little bit more each day till you get to that place where you can manage it for your time, it fits into your lifestyle because you will see results. All movement is good.

Jenny Scott:

Agreed. And that kind of plays into our last myth here. Movement is good. If we can keep our bodies moving... When we stop moving, especially specific joints or stop moving in general, that's when we run into issues.

Myth #11: Lifting weights will make you slow and inflexible

Jenny Scott:

But Dan, our last myth today, weightlifting will make you slow and inflexible. Lifting weights will make you slow and inflexible.

Dan Duran:

I say no. You will make you slow and inflexible. It's again, what do you do? What do you practice? What is your regimen or your routine? Are you working on your speed? Are you working on your flexibility? Because if you are and you're lifting weights, you're going to maintain that flexibility and that speed if that's what you're spending your time on. If you're spending all your time on trying to grow the size of your muscles and the density and the cross-sectional density of your muscles to get bigger, but you're not working on flexibility and you're not working on speed, yes, you're going to lose those things. But look at professional football players, how fast those cats can move. You look at these guys that are 270-280 pounds and they're fast as heck.

You see martial artists and MMA fighters who can do the splits and jump up in the air and do these really fancy kicks that are extremely muscular. So it's where you spend your time. Well, it's the SAID principle. It's the adaptation to the imposed demands. What are you spending your time on? If you continue to spend your time on flexibility and speed, whatever that means to you, quickness, et cetera, you can maintain that.

Jenny Scott:

Agreed. Yeah. I've had people, because of course I'm a bodybuilder, I compete in Figure, if you're familiar with that. So it's not huge, but we're bigger than average, and I'm not a small person. But I used to think this too. Like, "Oh, I want to train my shoulders. I want to get my shoulders bigger," and it's still my lagging body part, but I'm also a volleyball player. And so when I go up to attack the ball and I've got bulky shoulders, I'm not going to be able to move my shoulders as well. Well, if I keep that musculature limber and keep it flexible, keep it in the right length-tension relationship, if you will, but also keep that joint moving, there's absolutely no reason that being a little bit bigger than I was five, six years ago is going to prevent me from being an effective volleyball player.

So you're absolutely correct. We get out of things what we train. And so if you train flexibility, which is a thing, if you keep yourself mobile and flexible in all the joints that you actively train, then there's no reason that weightlifting should make you less flexible in those joints, unless you're neglecting them. So I would agree with that.

Dan Duran:

Well, I think we agreed on all of them, Jenny. There must be something to it.

Jenny Scott:

Yeah. And I know some of the studies that I mentioned, especially the ones... I am a member of the NSCA, so I do have access to the online journals. So the ones that I mentioned, I'm going to throw them in the podcast notes. So if you're interested in the cold stress study I mentioned about females and fatty acid oxidation, things like that, interesting study, I'll post the link for that one. I don't know if you guys can access it if you aren't members though, but at least you'll have the journal information so you can find it. But that is a really great journal. Lots of great stuff comes out in that one. And every week, I spend at least two or three hours reading through those journal articles and the discussions, and it's so interesting. But we'll be sure to include that stuff in the show notes for you guys today. Super fun. Super fun, Dan.

Dan Duran:

Love it. Well, keep the questions coming at us too, listeners. We love going through these. Sometimes it forces us to learn more in a specific area that maybe we're not as adept at speaking to, so keep challenging us and send us those myths.

Jenny Scott:

Yes, bring it on. Bring it on. Go out there into the world, you guys. Be fruitful, do all the things, but more importantly, make good choices. We'll be talking to you soon.