Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Your Pilates, Yoga, or Barre Class Is NOT Strength Training | Ep 455

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Your Pilates, Yoga, or Barre Class Is NOT Strength Training | Ep 455 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: If you've been doing Pilates or yoga or bar classes and counting that as your strength training, you're missing one of the most important adaptations your body needs.
• 0:08
  Philip Pape: And it's not flexibility, it's not core strength, it's not balance.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: Today I'm gonna show you the specific reason these modalities just stop building muscle within weeks, why that matters more as you age, and the one type of training that no other modality can replace.
• 0:24
  Philip Pape: You're also gonna learn what a nine-month study of Pilates found when researchers measured muscle growth.
• 0:34
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds a hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does.
• 0:44
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Pape, and here is the situation.
• 0:48
  Philip Pape: I talk to women every week who tell me that they are doing strength training.
• 0:52
  Philip Pape: And then when I ask what that looks like, they say, Oh, I'm doing Pilates three times a week, or I'm doing hot yoga, or I'm doing this bar class and some resistance ban work at home.
• 1:01
  Philip Pape: And they're frustrated because despite consistently showing up to these classes, sometimes for years, their body composition hasn't really changed.
• 1:10
  Philip Pape: They're not building the strength or muscle they expected.
• 1:13
  Philip Pape: They don't feel noticeably stronger.
• 1:15
  Philip Pape: Or if they did, it was for a few weeks, maybe a few months, and then it stopped.
• 1:19
  Philip Pape: And if they're over 40 or in perimenopause, they might be watching their muscle and bone density go the opposite direction despite all of that effort.
• 1:27
  Philip Pape: And, you know, I'll be honest, these activities are decent.
• 1:30
  Philip Pape: They have real evidence-backed benefits.
• 1:33
  Philip Pape: And I'm gonna tell you what they are later in this episode because I don't want to just trash on every mode of movement.
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: I think movement is great.
• 1:39
  Philip Pape: But I also owe you the honest answer on what the research says about building and preserving muscle and bone, both are important, and these modalities just do not meet that threshold.
• 1:52
  Philip Pape: They don't.
• 1:53
  Philip Pape: And it's not because they're bad.
• 1:55
  Philip Pape: I have no judgment against them in general.
• 1:57
  Philip Pape: I'm specifically talking about strength and muscle.
• 2:00
  Philip Pape: These modalities are designed for something that is not that.
• 2:04
  Philip Pape: So if that's what your goal is to get stronger to build muscle to improve your body composition, we're gonna have to do something more effective.
• 2:11
  Philip Pape: Then I want you to stick around to the end because I'm going to share a three-question audit that you can run for yourself on any workout.
• 2:19
  Philip Pape: It takes 10 seconds to know whether it qualifies as what I'll call real strength training.
• 2:24
  Philip Pape: And you might be surprised by the answer, so stick around for that.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: So today you're gonna learn the two biological requirements that any exercise has to meet to build muscle, why your body stops adapting to Pilates and yoga within just a few weeks, and the specific data from studies on what happens to muscle and bone when you rely on these modalities versus actual progressive resistance training, especially as we age, especially over 40.
• 2:52
  Philip Pape: So let's just jump right into it and talk about the conventional wisdom and why it sounds right.
• 3:00
  Philip Pape: I always like to start there because there's a lot of truth in these things, and then we can break it apart from there.
• 3:05
  Philip Pape: So if you hear, you know, do Pilates for strength, I know Pilates are very popular right now, or yoga can build muscle, or bar can sculpt and tone you.
• 3:15
  Philip Pape: There is a grain of truth in all of it because these activities use your muscles.
• 3:20
  Philip Pape: You feel them working.
• 3:22
  Philip Pape: They are a little bit more low than not doing those activities.
• 3:26
  Philip Pape: You might even be sore the next day, especially when you first start.
• 3:29
  Philip Pape: And then there's always the marketing aspect with the wording, like Pilates sculpts long, lean muscles or yoga builds functional strength, right?
• 3:37
  Philip Pape: You've heard it all.
• 3:39
  Philip Pape: For someone who was previously sedentary, any of these, and let's just let the cat out of the bag, any form of exercise whatsoever practically, is going to produce noticeable improvements in the first few weeks.
• 3:52
  Philip Pape: You are gonna get stronger functionally.
• 3:54
  Philip Pape: Guess what?
• 3:55
  Philip Pape: Riding a bike when you were previously sedentary is also gonna build some muscle initially.
• 4:00
  Philip Pape: You're gonna feel more capable from doing these things as well.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: You might really enjoy the classes, you might feel like you are accomplishing something really powerful, and you are in some sense.
• 4:11
  Philip Pape: Does that translate to ultimately what you want to get out of it?
• 4:15
  Philip Pape: Well, the problem is what happens after that honeymoon period, after those first few weeks.
• 4:21
  Philip Pape: And more importantly, the problem is not it's what's not happening in your body, especially if you're older, especially if you're perimenopause or post-menopause.
• 4:31
  Philip Pape: If your goal is to build or maintain muscle mass and your bone density, that is why I'm calling out these particular populations who we work a lot with with our coaching, and I know how important that is.
• 4:43
  Philip Pape: Avoiding osteoporosis, avoiding sarcopenia.
• 4:47
  Philip Pape: Very, very important.
• 4:48
  Philip Pape: So let me define what's actually required for your muscles to grow.
• 4:51
  Philip Pape: There's two non-negotiable requirements, two requirements, just to simplify it.
• 4:56
  Philip Pape: Number one is sufficient mechanical tension on the muscle.
• 5:01
  Philip Pape: This means the muscle has to be loaded heavily enough that the fibers experience real force, right?
• 5:08
  Philip Pape: Strength is simply the application of force, the production of force.
• 5:12
  Philip Pape: This is what activates the signaling pathways that your body is so capable of activating, especially what's called the mTOR pathway.
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: We're not going to go into details, but that tells your body to build new muscle protein when combined with eating protein, we build muscle.
• 5:26
  Philip Pape: So mechanical tension is, I'll say, the number one, if the only principle we care about on the muscle.
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: Number two, what else is required for muscle to grow is proximity to failure.
• 5:39
  Philip Pape: Now, this is kind of a proxy of number one in a way, because getting proximity to failure leads to mechanical tension.
• 5:48
  Philip Pape: So it's almost like secondary, but it's very important because the set that you're doing, the set of whatever it is, let's say you're doing a bench press, it has to be hard enough that you're within a few reps of the point where you physically cannot do another rep with good form.
• 6:02
  Philip Pape: We've seen multiple studies that back this up.
• 6:04
  Philip Pape: There was a 2022 study that showed that low load training not taking a failure produced far less hypertrophy, hypertrophy is muscle growth, than the same training taken to failure.
• 6:16
  Philip Pape: There was a 2024 meta-aggression that confirmed the dose response relationship as well.
• 6:20
  Philip Pape: Now it was just a couple of years ago.
• 6:21
  Philip Pape: Again, the closer your sets are to failure, the more muscle you build.
• 6:25
  Philip Pape: And of course, that's because it is giving you, number one, sufficient mechanical tension.
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: And that's actually all it comes down to.
• 6:33
  Philip Pape: All the other talk about volume and intensity and everything else are to affect that outcome.
• 6:39
  Philip Pape: Now, think about a Pilates class.
• 6:41
  Philip Pape: Think about a flow in yoga, right?
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: The stretching flow, the position flow.
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: Think about a bar session if you're familiar with these.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: Are you approaching muscular failure on any set?
• 6:52
  Philip Pape: Honestly.
• 6:53
  Philip Pape: Honestly, are you?
• 6:55
  Philip Pape: And if it's one set, great, but are you doing it on a consistent basis?
• 6:58
  Philip Pape: There's usually an instructor, and the instructor's pacing the group.
• 7:01
  Philip Pape: The choreography dictates when you stop and the movements dictate what you're doing.
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: It's not the training to proximity to failure with your muscles like you would if you were doing reps on your own with free weights or machine or something like that.
• 7:15
  Philip Pape: The cultural emphasis in these things is more on the control, on the flow, on the connection, on the pace, on sometimes the aerobic aspect of it as well.
• 7:25
  Philip Pape: Um, there's often music involved, sometimes, sometimes not.
• 7:28
  Philip Pape: It's not about, hey, let's get really close to failure to do something really hard where you want to quit and putting enough tension on your muscles.
• 7:37
  Philip Pape: There might be a different type of discomfort, right?
• 7:40
  Philip Pape: A different type of discomfort like sweating, soreness, your heart rate, but not the mechanical tension.
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: The mechanical tension is not there.
• 7:49
  Philip Pape: A Pilates reformer works with springs that follow something called Hooke's law.
• 7:55
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna throw in some engineering for you or physics here.
• 7:59
  Philip Pape: The typical working resistance is five to 30 kilograms per exercise.
• 8:05
  Philip Pape: And the maximum resistance tops out around 50 to 130 kilograms, and it depends on the brand and the position of the reformer.
• 8:13
  Philip Pape: So for your lower body, that ceiling gets reached really fast, right?
• 8:17
  Philip Pape: Because those are much bigger muscles.
• 8:19
  Philip Pape: For comparison, a moderately trained woman might squat 135 pounds, which converted to kilograms is 61 kilograms, and then she's adding weight every few weeks.
• 8:32
  Philip Pape: So she quickly blows past what the reformer could possibly give her, probably within a few weeks, maybe a few months, again, depending on your starting point.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: And that's it.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: And the reformer can't keep up anymore.
• 8:44
  Philip Pape: And that's why we talk about the first few weeks as being not as important, because of course anything can cause growth when you're starting from a very weak baseline.
• 8:53
  Philip Pape: And then beyond that, you're not going to get it anymore.
• 8:55
  Philip Pape: You might maintain something, maybe, but that's not what we're trying to do.
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: We're not trying to maintain, we're trying to build muscle and increase bone density and maintain bone density as well.
• 9:05
  Philip Pape: So that brings us to progressive overload, which is the principle that ties all this together.
• 9:12
  Philip Pape: Your body is really good at adapting.
• 9:15
  Philip Pape: It's like a machine when it comes to adaptation.
• 9:17
  Philip Pape: When your body encounters a stimulus, it adapts to handle that stimulus, and then it needs a bigger stimulus to keep adapting.
• 9:24
  Philip Pape: That is built into our biology.
• 9:26
  Philip Pape: It is why you're not sore after your third week of the same Pilates routine or of the same squat on Monday.
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: Your body adapts.
• 9:36
  Philip Pape: The signal is weakened, and now you're only maintaining.
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: Now, the difference with the squat and the Pilates is the squat keeps going up.
• 9:44
  Philip Pape: The Pilates maxes out.
• 9:45
  Philip Pape: You see the difference.
• 9:46
  Philip Pape: And the research on this is clear as well.
• 9:48
  Philip Pape: It's called the repeated bout effect.
• 9:50
  Philip Pape: A single bout of exercise provides substantial protection against muscle damage from subsequent identical bouts.
• 9:59
  Philip Pape: And so at the molecular level, the number of genes that are activated by the same workout, right?
• 10:05
  Philip Pape: Because that's adaptation, drops significantly within just three weeks.
• 10:10
  Philip Pape: And then your body literally stops responding at the cellular level, especially when the load doesn't go up.
• 10:16
  Philip Pape: So on one hand, there's a benefit to this in that you won't get super sore.
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: On the other hand, it's a disadvantage if you're not actually increasing the load.
• 10:24
  Philip Pape: You're not going to adapt any further.
• 10:26
  Philip Pape: And this is exactly where Pilates, yoga, and bar and things like it hit a wall.
• 10:31
  Philip Pape: And even something like CrossFit, if you're not actually progressively overloading the strength component, let alone the other aspects of CrossFit that kind of get in the way.
• 10:39
  Philip Pape: We don't have to go into that.
• 10:40
  Philip Pape: Whereas with a barbell or dumbbells or a machine, a cable machine, really a lot of options.
• 10:45
  Philip Pape: It doesn't have to be just barbells, you actually solve this problem very elegantly.
• 10:50
  Philip Pape: This is why I love strength training, because it's just a very efficient, elegant, straightforward solution to the problem.
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: What do you do?
• 10:57
  Philip Pape: You add two and a half pounds or five pounds or 10 pounds, whatever makes sense, whether it's dumbbells or barbells, you add some weight.
• 11:04
  Philip Pape: Small incremental increases that keep the stimulus ahead of the adaptation.
• 11:10
  Philip Pape: I actually found I was actually looking up if there are official recommendations, and actually the ACSM recommends two to 10% load increases when you can exceed your target reps by one or two.
• 11:22
  Philip Pape: It's an interesting metric.
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: I always just say, look, you're gonna figure it out.
• 11:26
  Philip Pape: It's gonna be probably five to 10%, and it's gonna depend on recovery and depend on how strong you've already gotten.
• 11:31
  Philip Pape: But that's kind of an interesting metric, right?
• 11:33
  Philip Pape: Because it means if you, if your target reps are let's say, let's say eight to 10 reps, and you can get to 11 or 12 reps, then you would go up between two to 10%.
• 11:43
  Philip Pape: Now again, I have different ways of coaching folks.
• 11:46
  Philip Pape: I don't, I actually would rather you increase the weight by default and have the reps come down.
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: And then when the reps fall too far low, you can reset.
• 11:55
  Philip Pape: But that's it's two halves of the same idea.
• 11:58
  Philip Pape: It's progressive overload.
• 11:59
  Philip Pape: Either way, you're increasing the load or the volume in some way over time, and that's how muscle keeps growing for years.
• 12:06
  Philip Pape: And of course, the reason it's growing is what?
• 12:08
  Philip Pape: Go way back to earlier in the episode because of mechanical tension.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: Now, what does progression look like in Pilates?
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: Well, you go from a medium spring to a heavy spring, and that might be the only jump available for that exercise.
• 12:23
  Philip Pape: Or you can change the lever arm, and that changes the movement pattern entirely.
• 12:26
  Philip Pape: So now you're not even doing the same movement pattern.
• 12:28
  Philip Pape: You can't just incrementally increase in an objective way, like a two and a half or five pound increment.
• 12:33
  Philip Pape: There's no systematic path from week six to week 26 with the load increases by small predictable amounts.
• 12:39
  Philip Pape: I'm sorry, it just doesn't work.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: Yoga, how about yoga?
• 12:42
  Philip Pape: Well, your body is the load there.
• 12:43
  Philip Pape: This is more like uh body weight or calisthenics in a way, and your body weight doesn't change, right?
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: Unless you want to eat a bunch of food and become fatter to make it harder on yourself.
• 12:52
  Philip Pape: That's not the way we do things.
• 12:54
  Philip Pape: You can progress from, you know, to harder poses, but the jump from like a standard plank to one arm variation is a actually a massive jump.
• 13:02
  Philip Pape: There's no middle ground.
• 13:04
  Philip Pape: It's like going from squatting 95 to squatting 225.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: The point is it's not objectively incrementally loadable.
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: And then when you think of bar, you've got lightweight, you've got high reps, you've got these pulsing movements, the load is fixed, it's some very, very lightweights, like two to five pounds.
• 13:18
  Philip Pape: Once your muscles are used to that, and that happens in a few weeks, the stimulus is gone.
• 13:21
  Philip Pape: You're just having fun at that point, getting a sweat on, having some fun exercise with the ladies, and that's it.
• 13:27
  Philip Pape: And again, I'm not trying to be dismissive about it, but it you're you're training muscular endurance, you're not training strength, you're not getting muscle growth out of these things.
• 13:35
  Philip Pape: And I'm saying all this with love because I want you guys to get what you want.
• 13:39
  Philip Pape: And these these these activities fit under to me, they fit more in cardio, the cardio slash fun category.
• 13:46
  Philip Pape: They don't fit into the strength training and muscle building category.
• 13:50
  Philip Pape: Um, and here's a little nerdy fact.
• 13:52
  Philip Pape: There was a 2024 meta-aggression of 67 studies over 2,000 subjects, and they found that the volume hypertrophy relationship follows a square root function.
• 14:03
  Philip Pape: Stick with me, even if you know what I'm talking about, stick with me.
• 14:05
  Philip Pape: It means the more reps that you pile on at the same load, the less additional growth you get per rep.
• 14:13
  Philip Pape: This is why we don't advocate for super high reps.
• 14:16
  Philip Pape: We advocate for a moderate rep range, but going up in weight.
• 14:20
  Philip Pape: Now, that rep range is still pretty wide, anything from one rep to say 20, 25, even 30 reps.
• 14:26
  Philip Pape: But with something like, again, yoga or bar or Pilates, you know, if if you were even to quantify it as reps, you would have to just get more and more and more reps to try to get close to that mechanical tension.
• 14:38
  Philip Pape: And eventually it just becomes impossible.
• 14:40
  Philip Pape: Very quickly, it becomes impossible to do that, let alone being not objectively incrementable, incrementally loadable.
• 14:47
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 14:47
  Philip Pape: So you're hearing this and thinking, okay, Philip, I get it.
• 14:50
  Philip Pape: I need to lift heavy.
• 14:51
  Philip Pape: And that's where the word heavy comes into play here.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: It's not too heavy for you, it's simply heavy enough to be proximal to failure to cause mechanical tension so you can build muscle and strength.
• 15:01
  Philip Pape: How do you do it though?
• 15:02
  Philip Pape: What program do you do it?
• 15:03
  Philip Pape: How do you set up your nutrition, your recovery, your energy, your sleep to support it?
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: That is what Eat More Lift Heavy is designed to solve.
• 15:10
  Philip Pape: We just launched this week, yesterday, March 30th, as this episode comes out.
• 15:15
  Philip Pape: It is now open to the public.
• 15:16
  Philip Pape: It is my 26 week, so that's six months, coached program.
• 15:20
  Philip Pape: We have another coach in the group, Coach Carol, where we take you through three phases.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: Stop guessing, where you build awareness, you set your baseline, eat more lift heavy, where you execute with real-time coaching adjustments, just what we're talking about today.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: And then trust yourself where you build the skills to manage your own physique independently.
• 15:38
  Philip Pape: And you learn the skills week by week and they build on each other.
• 15:42
  Philip Pape: You get a coach-assigned training program from day one.
• 15:46
  Philip Pape: It is matched to your equipment, your schedule, your experience level.
• 15:49
  Philip Pape: So, yes, if you're coming from yoga or bar or Pilates, we are gonna help you get to where you need to be.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: And of course, super important, a nutrition strategy, live coaching calls, community support, all of that for accountability.
• 16:02
  Philip Pape: And accountability itself is super, super important.
• 16:05
  Philip Pape: And very few, if anybody else at this price point offers both the training and nutrition coaching together in this uh skill building approach.
• 16:14
  Philip Pape: So if this episode is making you think about your training approach and how to get the help that you need, go to eatmore liftheavy.com.
• 16:21
  Philip Pape: That is eatmore liftheavy.com.
• 16:23
  Philip Pape: Link is in the show notes.
• 16:25
  Philip Pape: It is out now and people are loving it.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com.
• 16:30
  Philip Pape: Okay, so everything I've said so far applies to everyone.
• 16:33
  Philip Pape: I'll be honest, it applies to everyone.
• 16:34
  Philip Pape: The principles are the same.
• 16:36
  Philip Pape: But I want to spend a few minutes on why this matters even more with age, especially if you're over 40, especially if you're a woman entering or in the middle of perimenopause or menopause.
• 16:45
  Philip Pape: And there's really important data that I want to share.
• 16:48
  Philip Pape: A 2021 study found that sarcopenia, the prevalence of sarcopenia, which is what we we call clinically significant muscle loss and function, the loss of function and muscle with age, it jumps from about 3% in early perimenopause to roughly 30% in late perimenopause.
• 17:06
  Philip Pape: And that's a tenfold increase in a window of just a few years.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: And then after menopause, the muscle mass declines more linearly, about 0.6% a year.
• 17:16
  Philip Pape: And then bone loss accelerates 1.5% to 2.5% a year during the first decade after menopause.
• 17:22
  Philip Pape: And the key reason for this is declining estradiol, which removes a key anabolic signal because estradiol stimulates muscle satellite cell proliferation, it limits the degradation of your protein, and it inhibits inflammatory signals that break down muscle.
• 17:41
  Philip Pape: So, all this to say that when that hormonal protection drops, your muscles need more mechanical stimulus to get the same growth response, not less.
• 17:52
  Philip Pape: And ladies, your ability to grow muscle is still the same.
• 17:56
  Philip Pape: I want you to know that.
• 17:57
  Philip Pape: Your ability and percentage growth of muscle potential as you get older is still the same till you're pretty much till your 90s, is what we've discovered.
• 18:06
  Philip Pape: So your ability to build muscle is still there.
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: You just need to have the right stimulus.
• 18:12
  Philip Pape: And then for bone density, which is the other important piece, especially for women after 40, there's something called the mechanostat theory.
• 18:20
  Philip Pape: This is related to new bone formation.
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: New bone formation requires mechanical strain that exceeds 1500 micro strain.
• 18:29
  Philip Pape: And you don't have to measure that.
• 18:31
  Philip Pape: I don't even know how to measure that.
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: But heavy squats, deadlifts, and even impact exercises, so jumping type exercises, generate those strains.
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: And I've learned from talking to some really good experts in this area that heavy lifting above about 80% of your max, of your one rep max, or 85%, is what you need to maintain your bone density.
• 18:54
  Philip Pape: But if you want to reverse osteoporosis, reverse and build new bone because you've lost a lot, you also need some impact exercises on top of that.
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: So the matte Pilates, the gentle logo, the light bar, they don't produce that strain.
• 19:09
  Philip Pape: That's what I'm getting at.
• 19:11
  Philip Pape: And then aging bone becomes less mechanically sensitive, and the threshold rises when people are most vulnerable to osteoporosis.
• 19:21
  Philip Pape: And there was a study called the Liftmore trial.
• 19:23
  Philip Pape: I love that name, lift more without a knee, lift more.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: Postmenopausal women with low bone density did two 30-minute sessions a week of supervised lifting at greater than 85% of their one rep max.
• 19:37
  Philip Pape: Deadlifts, squats, overhead press.
• 19:39
  Philip Pape: Three of my favorites.
• 19:40
  Philip Pape: They did it for eight months, and the result was pretty staggering that lumbar spine bone mineral density improved 2.9% versus a 1.2% decline in the low intensity control group.
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: So that's a 4% difference.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: That's massive.
• 20:00
  Philip Pape: And not only massive, you heard what I just said.
• 20:02
  Philip Pape: Bone density went up in the training group in the high intense group, you know, high load group, and it actually went down in the other group, despite them actually training, but it was a low intensity.
• 20:13
  Philip Pape: That's huge.
• 20:14
  Philip Pape: There were no fractures, there were no injuries, the compliance was over 87%.
• 20:18
  Philip Pape: Now, compare that to a 2021 meta-analysis of 11 studies that looked at Pilates and yoga for bone density in adult women, and those studies found no significant effect on bone density compared to controls.
• 20:33
  Philip Pape: The what they call pooled effect size was 0.07 and the confidence interval crossed zero.
• 20:39
  Philip Pape: Again, no significant effect on bone density.
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: I'm not surprised by that, but it's just good to know that there are studies that further back this up.
• 20:46
  Philip Pape: So I'm gonna say this differently.
• 20:47
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna summarize this differently.
• 20:49
  Philip Pape: Eight months of heavy lifting improved bone density by nearly 3%.
• 20:52
  Philip Pape: Pilates and yoga combined showed no effect.
• 20:56
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 20:56
  Philip Pape: That's the qualitative difference if you care about building bone versus watching it wear away.
• 21:02
  Philip Pape: Okay, so now what is the fix?
• 21:04
  Philip Pape: I told you it would be deceptively simple.
• 21:05
  Philip Pape: That's the mission of this podcast.
• 21:07
  Philip Pape: Even though I have a tendency to ramble sometimes, the fix is simple.
• 21:11
  Philip Pape: If you want to build and maintain muscle mass and bone density, you need progressive resistance training with external loading.
• 21:18
  Philip Pape: That could be barbells, dumbbells, cable machines, plate-loaded machines, anything where you can add weight in some way, resistance in some way, in small increments over time, training at least twice per week, ideally three or more, targeting all major muscle groups, and working at loads where your sets end within about three reps shy of failure.
• 21:37
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 21:37
  Philip Pape: That's in one paragraph what the fix is.
• 21:40
  Philip Pape: So it's not complicated, it's not sexy, it's not 30 days to a new you, it's not a challenge.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: It's just showing up, lifting heavy things, adding a little weight when you can, and doing that consistently for months and years.
• 21:50
  Philip Pape: Now, going back to the ACSM, they came out with brand new resistance training guidelines.
• 21:56
  Philip Pape: Their first update in 17 years, based on 137 systematic.
• 22:00
  Philip Pape: Reviews of over 30,000 participants, and here's what they recommend they recommend at least 60 to 85% of your one rep max for strength and hypertrophy development.
• 22:11
  Philip Pape: And that's consistent with what I've talked about before.
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: When we talked about strength versus hypertrophy, you need at least 30% for hypertrophy and 60% for strength.
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: So if you want both, you've got to be above 60%.
• 22:22
  Philip Pape: And if you want the bone density benefit, you've got to be above about 80 or 85% sometimes.
• 22:27
  Philip Pape: Not all the time, but a lot of the time.
• 22:29
  Philip Pape: Now, what about Pilates, yoga, and bar?
• 22:31
  Philip Pape: You don't have to quit them.
• 22:32
  Philip Pape: I wouldn't ask you to do that.
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: They actually excel at some things that resistance training can't.
• 22:37
  Philip Pape: So for example, Pilates can be effective for low back pain.
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: Now, I'm not saying that deadlifts are not also effective for low back pain because they can be as well, believe it or not.
• 22:46
  Philip Pape: But Pilates, interestingly, has been helpful for that and knee osteoparthritis pain and range of motion and core stability, appropriate reception, motor control, all of these things.
• 22:57
  Philip Pape: And once you take this with a grain of salt, too, because all of the do you, all of you who are strength training and not doing Pilates or yoga, whatever else, probably are also getting all these benefits as well.
• 23:06
  Philip Pape: But I'm just wanted to point out some of the benefits these have in isolation.
• 23:10
  Philip Pape: Yoga, of course, has been around forever, many, many years.
• 23:14
  Philip Pape: It's ancient and has a lot of evidence for reducing stress, anxiety, and depression.
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: It can reduce stress and mood, you know, help with mood.
• 23:22
  Philip Pape: It's one of the most effective well-being interventions for so many people.
• 23:26
  Philip Pape: And I know so many people love it.
• 23:28
  Philip Pape: There's many people in our group that teach it, that do it, that love it.
• 23:32
  Philip Pape: And I'm all for that if that's for you.
• 23:34
  Philip Pape: I think yoga is great.
• 23:34
  Philip Pape: I've done yoga before.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: I love many aspects of it, both for relaxation and for stretching and things like that.
• 23:40
  Philip Pape: So there's definitely independent benefits of these things.
• 23:43
  Philip Pape: And then the group fitness in general provides something.
• 23:46
  Philip Pape: And that is, for a lot of people, it keeps them adherent to their program.
• 23:50
  Philip Pape: And there's research to back this up.
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: And the relatedness aspect, higher attendance, long-term consistency versus training alone, the social support, the accountability, the enjoyment is very, very helpful.
• 24:01
  Philip Pape: So you have to use these things for what they're good at, like yoga for the recovery and stress, Pilates for maybe some rehab or pain management, bar and group for the social motivation.
• 24:11
  Philip Pape: But they're complements to strength training.
• 24:13
  Philip Pape: They're not replacements for strength training.
• 24:15
  Philip Pape: All right, before we wrap up, remember I promised you a three-question audit you can use on any workout to know instantly whether it counts as real strength training.
• 24:23
  Philip Pape: But if this episode is shifting how you think about your training, I ask you to do one thing.
• 24:28
  Philip Pape: Text this to a friend who's been doing Pilates or yoga and calling it strength training and tell them that I told you to send it if they're gonna get mad at you.
• 24:37
  Philip Pape: You might help them find out a new way to protect their muscle and bone for decades, the way we do it.
• 24:42
  Philip Pape: And if you realize that you need a structured plan to start lifting, go to eatmoreliftheavy.com and learn about what we offer.
• 24:49
  Philip Pape: 26 weeks of weeks of coach training and nutrition with a specific skill building approach.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: That's eatmoreliftheavy.com.
• 24:57
  Philip Pape: All right, here's how you can evaluate any work workout in 10 seconds to see if it's actually strength training.
• 25:03
  Philip Pape: Question one, did the load go up since the last time you did the workout?
• 25:06
  Philip Pape: Even a little, even two pounds, even one pound.
• 25:09
  Philip Pape: If the answer is no and it's been no for weeks, you've plateaued, it is not strength training.
• 25:13
  Philip Pape: Question two, did any set end within three reps of the point where you physically couldn't complete another set within three reps shy of failure?
• 25:21
  Philip Pape: If you finished every set feeling like you had five, seven, ten or more reps in you, no, stimulus wasn't strong enough.
• 25:28
  Philip Pape: Question three, can you add more weight next time?
• 25:31
  Philip Pape: In other words, does the exercise allow you to do so?
• 25:34
  Philip Pape: Not a harder variation, not more reps.
• 25:37
  Philip Pape: Can you actually add weight to the thing you're doing?
• 25:39
  Philip Pape: If the equipment or the movement pattern you're doing has a ceiling on load that doesn't let you do that, you've outgrown it.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: It's not a good tool for the job.
• 25:47
  Philip Pape: So if you answered no to two or three of these, what you're doing might be really good for exercise, if you want to call it that, but it's not gonna build muscle or strength.
• 25:55
  Philip Pape: And I know that is what you want to change.
• 25:58
  Philip Pape: All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 26:00
  Philip Pape: And remember, the exercise that protects your muscles and bones for the next 30 years isn't the one that is the most fun or that you enjoy doing necessarily.
• 26:10
  Philip Pape: It's the one that gets progressively heavier over time, and it is called training.
• 26:15
  Philip Pape: Strength training to be exact.
• 26:16
  Philip Pape: I'm Philip Hape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.