[00:00:00] Welcome to the UFFDA! podcast, hosted by Emily O'Connor and Jordan Rudolph. The UFFDA! podcast brings you a surprisingly fresh take on everyday topics in health, fitness, and everything in between. We want to open the door to explore new information and new solutions in a way that's easy for you to understand and apply to your own life.
Let's get into today's episode.
Introduction and Welcome
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Hello everybody. Welcome back to the UFFDA! podcast. I'm Jordan Rudolph.
And I'm Emily
Morris. Happy to be back on the show after Emily solo episode last week on what happens when you fail. If you haven't listened to that, go back and stop this one and listen to that now. Actually finish this one and listen.
Do it now [00:01:00] after
this. Yeah. They're not, they're not gonna be too related. You can listen to it at any time.
Yeah.
Debunking the Bulky Myth
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I think we're kind of taking a left turn pretty hard in today's episode as we discuss, uh, a, a myth that for some reason, 40 years later, 50 years later, is still being discussed amongst people.
Yeah, and I'd like to think that the people are discussing this are people that don't know shit about Jack.
That would be good. Good to think that. Um, I think it's something that, I mean, we've done it many times on the podcast. We just Google strength training on social media, and I think if we read the captions to the posts that we're finding of people that come up under that hashtag, uh.
Most of them, some of them are talking about this, the media certainly is still talking about it. Um, in terms of as we dive into strength training and some of this specifically related to females in strength training, uh, and that [00:02:00] is the myth that strength training makes you bulky.
The Benefits of Strength Training
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If we could wrap up and, and bottle or pill or dose in a shot.
All of the benefits that someone would get from strength training, all of them, we would be gazillionaires.
Mm-hmm.
Gazi, like without question, we, we, we, we wouldn't be able to keep up. It would be more popular than the, than the glide stuff. Absolutely. And one of those benefits that we're not talking about is getting bulky
does not come into the conversation.
Not even close. Not because it's not a benefit, but because it doesn't happen.
Doesn't happen. Right. And as we age, it becomes nearly impossible. And the only reason why it could be even possible is you are a genetic freak or you are taking substances that are borderline illegal
or fully legal.
Yes.
But borderline Sure.
Yes,
yes. Or fully legal. Yes. [00:03:00] Um, because people just don't get bulky. For no reason.
Misconceptions and Media Influence
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And, and, and, and it's, and it's just, it's funny like when the media says this stuff too, and, and social media, mainstream media, whatever it is, like we need another reason for people to be hesitant about doing something that might be the most beneficial thing that they can do for their lives, going now and going forward.
Mm-hmm. Like they're just putting another, another roadblock in front of it for get people and get, get, get in people's heads.
Well, it's, it's crazy when you say that and we think about it like that, that we. The same people that are saying, oh yes, strength training is beneficial, you should strength train like X, Y, Z are the same people that are.
Can be saying strength training also makes you bulky, so make sure you do it in this one very specific, lightweight, higher rep can't lift too heavy type of way. Because if we lift heavier, the only outcome is that we would become bulky. Mm-hmm. Right? And there's always [00:04:00] this all or nothing feeling around that.
There's no acknowledgement of the benefits of lifting heavy things, right? When we start to put, especially when they start to put weight limits on things in terms of like, oh, lifting over. 15 pounds, right? Like, oh, not good. Right? And now there's very real medical restrictions that might come into play there where they might say this, but when we think like, oh no, we have to stay light, but how many things do we then carry on a daily basis that are over the quote unquote light weights that we carry in the gym when we're supposed to be stressing our body above and beyond?
What is. Required of us in everyday life
and arguably when we're doing this stuff in the gym, arguably depending, our gym, I'm referencing this and biasing this with us, arguably the safest point of their day that they're going to be wind lifting something that might be straining. Mm-hmm. They, it is the safest environment you could think [00:05:00] of.
Right. Controlled Your weight is not moving. It's a supervisor. Uniform guided uniform objects. Guided, coached, everybody's watching, right? You've training. We've progressed up to lifting this point. We're not lifting a, yeah. 65 pound thing on day one, probably, right? Relative to the person. We're working our way up to all of these things.
But
again, what do we know? Going back to what I said in the first line of the show, like. These people are so well educated about shit about Jack. Right. And I know I'm saying it backwards. It's pur on purpose. It's, it, it's, they're gathering their information based on something that they decided in their head had to be true.
Mm-hmm. And when did they decide that to be true? And now how is that holding them back? Because people should be more worried about not getting bulky in terms of how much strength trainer they're doing. And also, I'm waiting for that day [00:06:00] to get bulky, by the way. Like I've, how long have you been doing this?
M 12? Pretty long topic. Years for both of us. Like pretty regularly, consistently. I've been working out for probably 12 years. 13 years? Mm-hmm. Probably a little longer. I'd probably say around there
two. Yeah. Mine's early college.
Probably longer. Yeah, mine's probably a little longer. Mm-hmm. Because mine started in college too.
I was thinking about how long I was, I've been a trainer slash coach, so it was definitely before that. Uh, I'm still waiting for that day. And, and, and still hoping for it. I guess maybe not. Maybe I've just been underachieving and more fearful 'cause I'm gonna get bulky, so I've just not pushed myself that hard one time.
Uh, people should be more worried about the rate at their losing muscle than the fear of them getting bulky from quote unquote strength training or too much strength training.
Mm-hmm.
Because we are losing muscle at an alarming rate after the age 38 to 40, depending on male or female. An alarming rate.
And guess what's the one main thing that your body needs to make sure that it can function properly, has has an appropriate [00:07:00] metabolism and can lead to the most independence that you can have as you age. Strength, lean body mass. No
muscle mass. Muscle mass, right? And strength training is the way to preserve and build muscle mass up to.
And following that time as we go. Right.
The Importance of Progressive Overload
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So if we are not continuously now, to draw back to a previous episode, we talked about progressive overload. If we are not continuously, progressively overloading our body, adding more strain to the body, forcing the body to adapt to get stronger, to build more muscle, to get stronger with the muscle that we have, we will not be continuously giving the body the appropriate stimulus to be able to do so.
Right. We're then just lifting weights. Under conditions in which our body's comfortable certainly can be maintaining the muscle mass we have certainly not a bad thing necessarily, but are we getting [00:08:00] everything that we can out of that strength training session? Especially if the goal is to build or preserve muscle mass, we have to be doing more than we have in the past.
We have to be doing more or have to be doing challenging. That doesn't necessarily always mean more weight. Correct. It might mean more reps. It might mean more sets. It might just mean more often. Mm-hmm. Like instead of twice a week, you might have to go to three times a week. Mm-hmm. That's all we're saying in the grand scheme of more.
It doesn't just mean that you're supposed to go from 50 to a hundred pounds. Right. Sometimes though, you need to go 50 to 50, 1 50 to 52 50 to 53, 54, 55, whatever it is. Those things are true, and if you are not moving up in that direction, or not adding frequency, not adding volume, all we're doing is holding back on the same stimulus.
And guess what happens? The body adapts, like Emily was just saying, and you start losing muscle.
Mm-hmm.
But you're too, you're still too worried about getting bulky.
Well, the body will only preserve [00:09:00] the amount of muscle for which we're asking it to do, right? Correct. It is efficient. The body wants to kind of maintain this nice homeostasis.
It doesn't want. To grow or shrink necessarily. It just wants to stay as is, and it responds to the stimulus that we give it, right? Whether that be through nutrition, whether that be through strength training. In this case of the episode, through strength training, the body just responds to what we give it, and we have to give it the appropriate stimulus as we go.
If we're afraid of being bulky and not giving the appropriate stimulus of heavy strength training, because we're doing that. Our body certainly won't get bulky, but we've already discussed that that won't happen regardless, but it also won't have the appropriate strength stimulus to maintain the muscle, and that's what Regener was just talking about.
We start to lose that muscle very quickly,
very, very quickly, and you become less and less, uh, dependent. You be independent. You become independent, less and less independent. You [00:10:00] become more dependent on certain things.
Real-Life Examples and Motivation
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Um, there's a lot of people that we work with that see their, their parents in caregiving situations that motivate them to come to the gym, start the gym, do more in the gym.
Uh, a lot of these situations are heartbreaking, uh, and we're not trying to do this to make you super emotional and think that you need to do this more. But when you see for the other side of it, some, somebody who did not strength train somebody who has not gone down this route, uh, it's very obvious.
It's very obvious when we see sometimes we go to birthday parties for some of our members. 60, 70, 80-year-old year olds in here. We get invited to birthday parties or retirement parties, something like that. We show up and guess who they're surrounded with? A lot of people that they're are around their age.
And guess who's the one moving the best out of all of those people in that scenario? I remember going to a 80th birthday party for one of our clients once, and she's doing laps. Around this hall, around this, uh, conference center, whatever, it's convention center, um, to say hi to everybody and people are in their left and right in [00:11:00] walkers, wheelchairs, uh, assisted just everything.
They can barely move, barely do just activities of daily lift. Not even activities of daily living. Just barely move from the chair to the, to the bathroom and. We see the difference day in and day out. We are lucky enough and grateful enough to be surrounded by it. So we don't always get to see it because we're around people that are valuing this and treasuring this, but there are still some of our people that we work with that still believe in this bulky thing.
So this message goes out to everybody as much as it goes out to the, the importance of strength training. Uh, we understand that maybe this was called resistance training in the past. We don't like the word resistance all the time because it actually sounds like resisting resisted, right? It has the word resist in it.
Why would we call something that. Let's call it strength. We're building strength. We should call it life training, actually.
Mm-hmm. I mean, that's what we're doing, right? Like all the things you just said. Yes, we have to be strong to tackle them, but we don't necessarily have to be a power lifter.
Bodybuilder, right? Like be the [00:12:00] things that you might think of, the people that you might think of when you say, oh, I'm afraid of being bulky. But I think most of us, hopefully all can probably agree that we want to be able to live. Independent lives for as long as possible, right? We all have goals as it relates to being able to move our bodies in the way we want to.
Playing with kids, playing with grandkids, play golf, aging, playing golf. Playing golf. I was gonna say, playing all the different hobbies that people have, but playing golf is a huge one too. All of the things that we wanted to be able to, not only for one season or one month or one year, but for years and years and years to come.
As well,
a hundred percent. So don't worry about the bulky side of things. If it happens, show me. Show me everything that you're doing and everything that has happened. I would love to see it, 'cause I would love to learn from it and figure out how I can do it for myself.
Love it.
Conclusion and Call to Action
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With, with that, thank you guys so much for tuning into this week's episode of The Youth to Podcast.
Share this with someone who you think will find it [00:13:00] valuable. Leave us a rating or review, subscribe. Download all the things that help us to grow organically and we'll catch you in the next episode. Bye everybody.
Thanks everyone.
That's a wrap.
