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Transcript

I Hate the Gym · After the Rush Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I am lying on the floor of a gym I do not like looking up at the ceiling and
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: a 30 year old named Kat my personal trainer is standing
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: over me completely unmoved waiting for me to get up and do it again I could tell her
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: in clinical detail
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: exactly what is happening in my legs right now the muscle fibers the lactate
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: the whole physiological story i spent my working life understanding bodies like this
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: one none of that knowledge is getting me off this floor 18 months before this i was
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: in a wheelchair i had a fractured ankle held together with hardware 30 pounds
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: of extra weight i did not want
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: and a bone density scan that put me one short step from osteoporosis a surgeon
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: who reconstructed my ankle and said out loud wow she has soft bones so that is
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: the distance wheelchair to floor and the floor counts as progress
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: because I got down here on purpose and I am about to get back up on purpose
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is about strength and bone and the very careful advice
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: that I think has it exactly backward.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: It is also about the gym, which I still hate, and why I go anyway.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: welcome to after the rush i'm Katherine McDowell this is a place for people in
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: or near the chapter past 55 who are not in crisis
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: and not finished just standing somewhere
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: the old maps do not quite cover every episode is its own door if this is
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: the first one you have found you have not missed anything you can start right here
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: today let's start on the floor
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: i need to be honest about the gym before we go any further because it matters to
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: the story i hate it not in a soft wistful i wish i loved it way i hate it with
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: the settled conviction of a person who has thought it over and arrived at
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: a firm position the grunting the men who pose for the mirrors like they are staging
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: a one-man show about their own shoulders
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: the young people who seem to have misplaced large portions of their workout clothing
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: and feel no concern about it at all the teenage boys who and I say this
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: with real compassion because they truly cannot help it yet have not been introduced
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: to deodorant the music always louder than the room requires by a margin
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: that feels personal I wanted that on the record I hate the gym I go four times
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: a week
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Here is how that happened, and here is the part I wish I had taken seriously a decade earlier.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you the starting line honestly.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: The soft bones had a reason.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: I spent close to three years on high dose steroids for an autoimmune condition,
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: which is its own long story for its own episode.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: The short version is that steroids,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: taken long enough, are very good at quietly pulling calcium out of bone.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: it is one of those side effects you read on the pamphlet and think surely not and
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: then later oh six months before i broke
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: the ankle i had my first bone density scan it came back at
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: a minus 2.1 osteopenia one point away from osteoporosis in a body
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: that had spent its whole career understanding bones and teaching other people
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: about them
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: so when the surgeon made his remark in the operating room it was not news
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: to me it was a confirmation of something i already knew
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: and had been quietly dreading and then i was in a wheelchair looking at
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: a number i understood far too well thinking that this was simply where
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: the story went from here down and carefully now here is where the usual advice
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: and i part ways
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: when your bones are soft the instinct and a great deal of
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: the advice you will be handed is
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: to protect them be careful do not fall walk gently stretch gently treat
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: the skeleton like something already broken
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: so it does not break any further bone does not actually work that way
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: bone is not a fixed score you are stuck with for the rest of your life it is
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: a living tissue it is constantly tearing itself down and building itself back
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: and it decides how much to build based on what you ask of it ask very little
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: and it sees no reason to spend energy maintaining strength it does not appear
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: to need ask a great deal
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: put real structural load through it and it gets the message that there is work
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: to be done and it does the work the thing that sends
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: that message is not gentle walking is good for you and I am not going
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: to talk you out of a walk but walking is not the signal the signal is load the kind
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: that feels like far too much and then over months stops feeling like too much
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: which is the body quietly telling you it adapted while you were busy complaining
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: about it i knew this as a clinician i had even written about it there is
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: a study i keep returning to an australian trial with the name liftmore published
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: in 2018 the researchers took about a hundred postmenopausal women with low bone mass
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: that is the exact group everyone is most nervous about putting under a barbell
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: they had them do supervised high intensity resistance training
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: with some impact work twice a week half an hour at a time
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: for around eight months genuinely heavy work not pastel dumbbells the women who did
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: the heavy work improved their bone density at the spine and the hip while
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: the comparison group the ones doing the gentle home program drifted the other way
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: and it was done safely in the very population we had all been taught to keep away
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: from heavy loading.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be careful here because this is
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: the place I would not let myself overstate it, even off the air.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is one well-run trial in a specific group of women on a specific supervised program.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: it is not a promise that everyone who picks up a weight reverses their bone loss
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: if your skeleton is fragile the supervision is not optional and the conversation
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: with your own doctor comes before any conversation with a trainer I am telling you
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: where the evidence points not handing you a guarantee but the direction
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: of it is real I knew that as a clinician
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: what I learned next I learned as a patient and that turned out to be
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: a completely different kind of knowing my husband won me a gym membership I want
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: to be clear that I did not go looking for this he bid on a three-month membership at
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: a fundraiser for a friend's new acupuncture studio because my life occasionally has
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: the structure of a story that is trying a little too hard and he won
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: so we went I was just off the crutches
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: and we met cat cat is 30 and fit in the way
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: that suggests fitness is simply her resting state the way some people are good
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: at remembering names at a party she asked what i wanted i told her
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: the truth i wanted to be able to squat i wanted to be able to get up off the floor
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: if i went down which given the recent history was not a hypothetical
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: the week before in physical therapy i had not managed
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: a proper squat i had not managed to lift a ten pound bar i was by every measure
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: that mattered to a body that had spent its career on other people's bodies depleted
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: cat took all of that in the history the credentials the opinions i had
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: about how recovery works and then she put me to work i would love
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: to tell you she was gentle i would love to describe two women in
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: a gym laughing doing sensible things at a reasonable pace when i squawked
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: and i squawked she ignored me not unkindly
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: the way a good practitioner ignores the noise of effort once they have learned
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: to tell it apart from the signal of actual harm she had
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: a calm affectionate entirely unbothered expression that said i hear you
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: and we are continuing she also understood the genuinely hard thing which is
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: that knowing exactly what is happening in your own body does not give you one ounce
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: of the detachment required to push that body through the hard part
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: i could narrate in clinical detail what was happening while i lay on
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: the floor regretting my choices the narration did not finish the set
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: that was what cat was for she showed up to every session expecting me
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: to get somewhere not managing me toward modest goals expecting
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: when your body has let you down enough times that you have quietly started lowering
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: the bar on its own behalf
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: someone who refuses to lower it for you is a clinical tool it does not appear
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: on any billing code it works anyway 18 months in i had another scan
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: i do not have an elegant way to deliver the number so i will just give it
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: to you i started at a minus two point one one short step from osteoporosis
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: the new scan came back at a minus one normal range a full point better than
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: where i began i had moved from osteopenia back toward ordinary healthy bone
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: through strength training and a serious overhaul of how i ate
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: more protein better mineral support the magnesium and the k2 i have talked about
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: before and i was 30 pounds lighter while it happened no single piece of
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: that did it alone it was all of it together over time which is
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: the least marketable sentence in the entire wellness economy and also
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: the true one there is no one thing to sell you here there is load
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: and food and months and someone who will not let you quit early now the genre has
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: a word ready for this it would call this a reinvention story woman in
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: a wheelchair 18 months later lifting weights transformed new body new chapter i do
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: not see it that way and i would push back on the word even
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: though it is sitting right there in the title where the search engines can find it
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: i did not reinvent anything i did not become a new person i took
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: the body i already had the one that had been working and adapting my entire life
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: and i asked it to do structural work again that is not reinvention
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: that is design you do not need a different body for this chapter you need
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: to put honest load on the one you have been carrying around the whole time and
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: then let it answer
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: that distinction is not a word game it changes what you think you are starting
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: from reinvention says you are not enough yet design says you are already someone
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: the raw material is already here now let's use it i started from a wheelchair
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: with soft bones and a surgeon making remarks
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: by every reasonable measure i started late
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: the bone responded anyway the lateness was not the disqualifier i had assumed it was
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: so here is the ask and then i will let you go i am not going to tell you to join
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: a gym i still hate mine the shoulder theater is ongoing the deodorant situation
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: among the adolescent boys remains unresolved the music is exactly as loud
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: as it ever was
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: what I am going to ask is much smaller and you can do it today in your own house
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: with no audience at all get down to the floor and then get up and pay attention
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: to how you do it notice whether you need your hands a chair a wall
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: a running start there is no grade I am not scoring you I am asking you to find out
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: where you actually are
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: because you cannot design from a place you are refusing to look at that is
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: the whole assignment find the floor find out what it takes to leave it I will be at
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: the gym Monday hating it getting stronger the two have turned out
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: to be entirely compatible I'm Katherine McDowell I'll see you on the floor
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: if this reached you subscribe so the next one finds you and pass it to someone
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: who has been told a little too often to take it easy