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3rd Exercise Rule to Break After 50: A Workout Only Counts If It's Hard · Making Muscle Memories

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is the third of the five exercise rules that you can throw out after the age of 50 and replace it with smarter, more intelligent training methodologies that will not only strengthen your muscles but keep your joints healthy.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: After 40 years of work in the fitness industry, I have learned that real strength isn't just built through exercise, but through experience.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I will share with you some of the science as well as the stories that have shaped my work.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: We are all building muscle memories.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: One rep, one story, and one day at a time.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Making Muscle Memories Podcast.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Lauren Irk, and in this episode, we are in the third rule that we can throw out after the age of 50.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this rule is something that I think a lot of you will resonate with, and this is if the workout isn't hard, it didn't count.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, when I started having to slow down due to all the overuse injuries, car accident that I had, knee surgeries that I had, I was not able to work out anywhere near as hard as I wanted to.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so difficult when I was taking yoga and doing Pilates and things like this, trying to get my joints to feel better.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times I felt like I wasn't doing enough.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I, of course, I had an exercise addiction.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I hear this from a lot of people.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: They feel like if the workout does not leave them feeling depleted, feeling exhausted, feeling sore the next day, having their heart rate up and sweating, the workout didn't do anything.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so as a group fitness instructor and a personal trainer, it puts a lot of pressure on us because sometimes when a client comes in and they want to, you know, get a certain amount of exercise in, you look at what they're dealing with and you understand where their goals are, but given the fact that they have multiple injuries, they're having uh you know, they're up in age, they haven't exercised maybe in a long time, to get them there is gonna take some time.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And not everybody is willing to go through those steps.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about what we think of as a workout.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some people think of a workout as I'm gonna go out, put my headphones on, I'm gonna run, I'm gonna get my heart rate up, I'm gonna be sweaty, and I have to run for a specific amount of time.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, like if I haven't run for an hour, let's say, it's not really a workout.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So they wouldn't call walking in the neighborhood after dinner a workout because none of those things really took place.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say that I was doing a strength training routine.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Some people would say it isn't strength training because I didn't lift weights and it didn't make me sore.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so the idea that I could maybe be exerting my muscles without weights doesn't really feel like a workout.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: For some people, working out is all about heart rate training.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't feel like I have accomplished my workout until my heart rate reaches X number of beats per minute and it's sustained for 20 minutes or longer.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: So like running up the steps and going for a quick interval would not be considered considered a workout because I didn't sustain it for a long period of time.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And do you remember back in the, I guess it was the early 2000s, when everything was about fat loss and it had to be 20 minutes at least, otherwise you didn't start burning fat, as if there's no other way to burn calories but to do this low-intensity, you know, uh workouts where I was just continuously pushing myself for like an hour at a time.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Soreness is also a benchmark.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm certainly, and I can put together sometimes the best training session for a client, and they get done with it, and if they wake up the next day and they weren't sore, they come back and like, well, I wasn't really sore, and they think that that was a bad workout because they weren't sore, they weren't depleted.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: So these are some of the memes that I want to challenge in this episode because this is absolutely not what you need for a workout.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: I am a muscle activation specialist as well as a certified yoga therapist and personal trainer, and let me tell you something.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Just because you went out and walked and you got your heart rate up and you started sweating, it does not tell me anything about whether or not all the muscles that you needed to train, all of your weaknesses were addressed, and whether your muscles were being utilized properly.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Muscle contractions, proper muscle contractions, have to be the priority when we get to be up in age 40 and up, I'm gonna say, easy, even as young as that, because we are losing muscle every decade that we are alive past the age of 30, we're losing 3 to 8 to 10 percent of our muscle mass every year.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: So mindful, purposeful muscle contractions must be the priority.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: We have to go through when we work out, we have to go through a myriad of joint positions, and we have to work all the muscles that we need to work.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, again, being an MAT specialist, the things that I notice on nearly everyone, and I'm talking even people that you would think that are fit, weak core, trunk and spine muscles, always weak.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can almost guarantee the first time you work with someone, those muscles are going to test weak.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Weak hip flexors, weak glutes, weak lower, weak lower leg and foot, weak upper traps.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's areas that the that almost every single person needs to be treated in.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever you start, whenever I start working with a client, I always say, we're gonna start on your core.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's the most important piece.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is really difficult for somebody that you know justifies a workout for getting on their bike and riding 50 miles.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Work on my core, and sometimes it becomes very challenging to do that.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: When I work with my clients on my platform, FIS On Demand, I always start when I'm dealing with muscular imbalances, which is if you're not dealing with those, it's going to show up.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's like if you don't plug up the leak in your house, the house is going to have problems the older it gets, right?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So when you think about doing core strength, people always think, well, I'll just do a few sit-ups and I'm done, right?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's not how you do it.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: How many different ways does the trunk move?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we can flex, we can extend, we can sidebend, we can flex forward, we can we can rotate to the left, we can rotate to the right.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't even even come into play, scapular motion and hip motion and how that plays in.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So there are literally a million exercises that we could do with the core.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people, when they start working with me, they're like, oh my gosh, I had no idea that my core was really this weak.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: But isometrics are great because they force us to slow down.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say that I was just gonna hold a muscle contraction, just come and lay on the ground and just hold a crunch and try to stay there and really focus on contracting the muscles and draw the rib cage down to the hips and try to actually shorten the rectus abdominis.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Most people have a difficult time doing this because they've never worked on control like this.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: They've never gone to the end of their range where their joint can no longer move, when the muscle fibers are the shortest, and actually hold that, keeping a certain amount of tension on them for a period of time without recruiting other muscles, like recruiting muscles in the neck or the hip flexors.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Not that that's a bad thing, but working on focusing in those muscle areas.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And for a lot of people, that is a big wake-up call.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because isometrics, which are the cornerstone of everything that I do, this is when we can practice some of the ranges that we're not getting when we're outside doing our walking program, or we're not getting when we're playing pickleball.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Core training is what allows you to play pickleball without having an injury, right?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: So isometrics must be, in my opinion, the benchmark.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Isometrics also show you how your body moves.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if we think about a workout as I'm just going to go through these motions, and I'm gonna, as long as I've gone through all these motions, I'm done with my workout.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that your muscles were were actually contributing, the right muscles were contributing to that range of motion.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, I could do a pushing motion and be using my abs, I could be using my legs, I could be using my feet.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm not really even using my pectoral or my shoulder muscles that adequately.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else is doing it, and I don't even realize that I have a huge weakness there.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: I may not even notice how much range that my shoulder can even go through, which becomes much more problematic when we think about control and we think about moving through positions without feeling pain, right?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And by the same token, when we don't actually slow down and we don't actually do workouts that are more mindful and really make us focus on our deficits, this is going to increase our opportunity to compensate.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And compensation is definitely not a bad thing, but when we do isometrics, it is definitely gonna show us how we are compensating.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: So usually when I work with a client and I tell them I want to do a 15-minute isometric routine, they go, okay, I'll do 15 minutes.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like I an hour is a workout to me, 15 minutes is nothing.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just gonna have them go through a series of motions, like I'm gonna have them hold flexion, I'm gonna have them leaning back at various positions of flexion, I may have them roll to their stomach and extend their spine back, maybe even turn to one side and hold that for about five seconds.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: They start to notice immediately, oh my gosh, when I was holding that, I was shaking.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was so hard, like I didn't even realize how much I can't bend backwards without engaging my glutes.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's really good information to have because if we don't have the information about where our deficits are, how in the world are we going to actually progress without filling in the holes?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for myself, some of the best workouts that I have ever had have been the workouts that I've done that forced me to slow down because I was injured.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was the yoga workouts that I did after my second knee surgery.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was the Pilates workouts that I did after I was had hurt my back from bending over and picking something up, like it was actually a client that I picked up that was way too heavy.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And when I have to force myself to slow down and feel every point of that contraction, that to me is a workout.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: When we work out, here's something I want you to wrap your brain around.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: You have my permission.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, all workouts should never make you sore.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Soreness is inflammation.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Soreness is a misprogressed workout.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm going from isolation work to integration work, from isometric work to concentric work, from concentric to eccentric and back and forth, from non-moving to moving, from single joint to multi-joint, from stable to unstable, from light to heavy.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is how we progress a workout.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: When we slow down, when we're more mindful, when we actually give our body what it needs, it's like nutrition.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have anybody to tell you, oh man, we know what you really need today?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: You need to slow down.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: You need to work on your breathing, you need to work on your balance, you need to work on your strength from left to right.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna actually lift a little bit slower today.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're actually gonna go into a position and we're gonna hold that position today.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things will actually give you such more mindset of what a good workout truly is.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I always love it when a client comes back to me and they say to me, Oh my gosh, I got done with your session today and I had like so much energy.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I actually feel good.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And today I feel more confident about doing something again.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: So people that have been through things like a surgery or a painful experience, maybe they've been through a lot of stress, maybe they had someone, a death in their family, maybe there's a lot of fear around exercise.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you haven't exercised in a while, or maybe you're just afraid that if I exercise today, there's no there's no way that I'm gonna be able to perform the way that I used to, which listen to step number two in this series, and you'll get a little bit more information about that.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Either way, all of those things, they will teach you that a good workout does not have to be hard.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: You do not have to be sore.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're allowed to meet your body where it is.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Change your mindset about what a good workout consists of instead of saying to myself, what is appropriate for me today?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm all for stressing your muscles, I'm all for working harder.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: But if we are working harder, just because we have heard somewhere from somebody that it has to be hard to be beneficial, I'm just gonna tell you something.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes our workouts can be so detrimental to our body, they can leave us feeling so depleted.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: It actually sets us back.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: It creates more inflammation in our joints, and it actually, because we have to step away from exercise for a while, I can make the argument that we are actually losing muscle from that workout.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope that those ideas helped you.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear your comments if you're watching this on YouTube.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure to like and subscribe.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Also, if you know anybody that I can help, please forward this their way.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next time for rule number four of the exercise rules that we need to throw out after the age of 50.