Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / The 20-Minute Fix for Menopause Belly Fat | Ep 469

Transcript

The 20-Minute Fix for Menopause Belly Fat | Ep 469 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: There is a specific fix for the kind of belly fat that shows up in the menopause transition, and it takes about 20 minutes per session, twice a week.
• 0:10
  Philip Pape: In one of the best studies we have on this, that was enough to drop visceral fat 24% in just 16 weeks.
• 0:18
  Philip Pape: You don't have to change your diet.
• 0:20
  Philip Pape: You don't have to have any hours in the gym.
• 0:22
  Philip Pape: Today I'm gonna walk you through what the research shows about menopause belly fat and this one form of conditioning that targets it specifically.
• 0:31
  Philip Pape: If you're under 40 or you're a guy, this still applies.
• 0:34
  Philip Pape: The mechanism is the same.
• 0:35
  Philip Pape: I think you're gonna enjoy this one.
• 0:37
  Philip Pape: Stay tuned.
• 0:38
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does.
• 0:51
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, founder of the Fitness Lab app.
• 0:56
  Philip Pape: And today I want to talk about something that I'll say surprises almost every woman that I coach who is over 40, and that is that the belly fat you get during the menopause transition, it happens to everyone.
• 1:11
  Philip Pape: Every woman knows what belly menopause belly is about.
• 1:15
  Philip Pape: There is a fix for this that is actually meaningful, that actually moves the needle.
• 1:20
  Philip Pape: And it's not walking more, it's not just losing body fat, it's not abloaded training, it's not the reducing alcohol or having more sleep.
• 1:28
  Philip Pape: All of those things are good.
• 1:29
  Philip Pape: All of those are goodness.
• 1:31
  Philip Pape: It is not chronic cardio, it's not a new eating protocol.
• 1:34
  Philip Pape: It's something that takes 20 minutes per session, twice a week, and it targets the specific kind of fat that gets redistributed during menopause.
• 1:44
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna pull together two pieces of evidence today for you.
• 1:47
  Philip Pape: The first is data from Dr.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: Bill Campbell.
• 1:50
  Philip Pape: He's a researcher at the University of South Florida.
• 1:52
  Philip Pape: He is awesome.
• 1:52
  Philip Pape: He's been on the show several times before.
• 1:55
  Philip Pape: He runs a monthly research review.
• 1:56
  Philip Pape: It's one of the ones I pay for called Body by Science.
• 2:00
  Philip Pape: We actually, or he actually featured me a while back, ironically, in an article or an issue related to abs and ab training.
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: And his latest issue and a recent workshop he did looked at this finding from the research, which is that menopause independently lowers your metabolism in a way that aging alone does not explain.
• 2:22
  Philip Pape: It's menopause, it's not aging.
• 2:24
  Philip Pape: It's very interesting because we always say, well, no, it's just the muscle mass, but there is some research suggesting there's something independent going on.
• 2:31
  Philip Pape: The second piece of evidence is exercise research on what reduces visceral fat.
• 2:38
  Philip Pape: That's the belly fat we're talking about when we say menobelly or menopause belly.
• 2:42
  Philip Pape: And this is where a lot of women are headed off in the wrong direction because oftentimes the advice of you just gotta lose body fat, you just have to move more, you just have to lift weights, which again are all great things, it doesn't target this specific problem.
• 2:56
  Philip Pape: So we're gonna talk about that today.
• 2:58
  Philip Pape: And then stick around to the end because I'm gonna give you a single question test that tells you whether you're doing this protocol correctly.
• 3:05
  Philip Pape: Okay, so we want to do this right once you know what it is.
• 3:08
  Philip Pape: Here's what we're going to cover.
• 3:10
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna walk you through why the metabolism drop in menopause is a real independent factor and what the best study ever done on this looked at.
• 3:19
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna show you why visceral fat is specifically what is driving the my belly fat has gone up even though nothing changed experience.
• 3:30
  Philip Pape: And then I'm gonna give you the 20-minute protocol that I use with my clients and with myself, along with who should start doing something else first before they do this.
• 3:39
  Philip Pape: Okay, so let's talk about the experience of women that I hear.
• 3:44
  Philip Pape: Obviously, I'm not a woman.
• 3:45
  Philip Pape: There's a lot of things I don't experience, including what men experience.
• 3:49
  Philip Pape: So I have to listen, I have to empathize, I have to hear your experiences.
• 3:53
  Philip Pape: And our women over 40, which is roughly 70 to 80% of our clients and our members of Eat More Lift Heavy, are going along, eating about the same as you always have, training about the same.
• 4:05
  Philip Pape: And suddenly there is belly fat that wasn't there before, right?
• 4:09
  Philip Pape: Your clothes just fit differently.
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: The scale might not even be that different.
• 4:13
  Philip Pape: If you go listen to our last solo episode, all about three metrics before summer.
• 4:17
  Philip Pape: If you're trying to lose fat, we talk about the scale weight there.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: Your scale weight may not be different, but your body distribution has changed.
• 4:24
  Philip Pape: And it feels like everything that you've used in the past to help with this is are not working.
• 4:30
  Philip Pape: Even dieting, even exercise, even moving.
• 4:33
  Philip Pape: And so the intuitive response, though, is to try those things again.
• 4:36
  Philip Pape: You're gonna eat a little less, move a little more, add some cardio.
• 4:39
  Philip Pape: I appreciate the intuition, right?
• 4:41
  Philip Pape: When something has worked in the past, we feel like it should work again.
• 4:44
  Philip Pape: And energy balance still matters.
• 4:47
  Philip Pape: It's physics at the most basic level.
• 4:50
  Philip Pape: But what the research shows that's happening explains a bit why those don't always produce the same results in this window.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about that.
• 5:00
  Philip Pape: Dr.
• 5:00
  Philip Pape: Bill Campbell, love the guy.
• 5:02
  Philip Pape: Okay, he's he's just such a great science communicator and educator.
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: And in his March 2026 research review, and then he did a workshop for coaches, he looked at a study.
• 5:11
  Philip Pape: The study he broke down followed 158 women for four years.
• 5:15
  Philip Pape: All of them started pre-menopausal.
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: All of them were at least 43 when they entered the study.
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: And a subset of 34 women spent 24 hours inside a metabolic chamber at the beginning of the study and 24 hours inside the same one four years later.
• 5:31
  Philip Pape: And that's kind of a gold standard for measuring metabolism, you know, as best we can, so we can measure the actual calories burned.
• 5:40
  Philip Pape: Here's what they found.
• 5:41
  Philip Pape: Pretty cool.
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: The women who remained pre-menopausal over the four years, they lost about 150 calories a day of their metabolic rate.
• 5:49
  Philip Pape: That's their metabolism went down by 150.
• 5:52
  Philip Pape: And that's just aging, right?
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: And happens all to all of us as we age a little, likely due to due to the loss of muscle mass.
• 5:59
  Philip Pape: So that's kind of its own factor that affects everyone.
• 6:02
  Philip Pape: The women who transitioned from pre- to post-menopausal over those same four years lost 200 calories a day.
• 6:09
  Philip Pape: That's 50 calorie per day difference.
• 6:12
  Philip Pape: And it was specifically attributable to menopause, not to aging, not to activity differences.
• 6:18
  Philip Pape: They controlled for activity inside the chamber.
• 6:21
  Philip Pape: Now, 50 calories doesn't sound like a lot, but think about what that adds up to.
• 6:25
  Philip Pape: Just do basic math.
• 6:26
  Philip Pape: 50 calories a day over four years equals five pounds of extra body fat from the metabolism drop alone, with no change in eating or moving.
• 6:37
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 6:37
  Philip Pape: So, this is that little tax on menopause that we're trying to understand as really good researchers actually study this population, which we haven't studied women in menopause, let alone women, let's be honest, in much of the research for all these years.
• 6:53
  Philip Pape: The second piece of this data that again is not talked about too much, is what fuel your body is burning.
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: Let me explain.
• 7:03
  Philip Pape: They measured something called substrate oxidation, which just means are you burning fat, carbs, or protein for energy?
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: Well, the postmenopausal group was burning significantly less fat to fuel their daily life compared to the women who stayed pre-menopausal.
• 7:20
  Philip Pape: And they were burning more protein, which basically means they were losing lean tissue.
• 7:25
  Philip Pape: So your body has shifted its fuel preference away from fat and toward muscle.
• 7:30
  Philip Pape: Less fat burn, more muscle burn, more fat stored.
• 7:33
  Philip Pape: Again, burn is a very loose, unscientific term, but you get the idea.
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: And then guess where you store that fat?
• 7:38
  Philip Pape: In the belly.
• 7:40
  Philip Pape: Belly fat, yes.
• 7:42
  Philip Pape: So that is the setup to this story.
• 7:45
  Philip Pape: You're dealing with a metabolism that's compensating downward, a body that shifted its preference towards storing fat in the belly, specifically.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: Your body is really good at compensation, and that's the whole problem here.
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: You can you can add 30 minutes of, say, moderate movement and lose a chunk of that back in reduced movement throughout the rest of your day because your body compensates.
• 8:08
  Philip Pape: Millions of years of evolution optimizing for keeping things in homeostasis.
• 8:13
  Philip Pape: What your body doesn't compensate well against is what we're going to talk about today: a brief maximum intensity signal that could potentially do something about your belly fat.
• 8:24
  Philip Pape: Oh, let's talk about it.
• 8:26
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 8:26
  Philip Pape: The menopause transition, it doesn't just add body fat, right?
• 8:31
  Philip Pape: We've been talking about the fact that it adds specific fat in your visceral, your abdominal area.
• 8:37
  Philip Pape: There's two main places that your body stores fat.
• 8:40
  Philip Pape: Subcutaneous fat is the fat right under the skin.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: That's the fat that you can pinch and see.
• 8:44
  Philip Pape: It is, I'll say, metabolically calm or quiet.
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: It doesn't do much besides just sit there.
• 8:50
  Philip Pape: Visceral fat is different.
• 8:52
  Philip Pape: That's the fat in your abdomen.
• 8:53
  Philip Pape: It's wrapped around your organs.
• 8:55
  Philip Pape: It is metabolically active.
• 8:56
  Philip Pape: It pumps out inflammatory signals, which we can measure in the blood.
• 9:00
  Philip Pape: It drives insulin resistance.
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: It's the fat that correlates with cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and even cognitive decline.
• 9:08
  Philip Pape: So when we say menopause belly, we're not talking about subcutaneous fat.
• 9:12
  Philip Pape: We're talking about a body-wide redistribution of fat toward the visceral compartment, driven largely by the drop in estrogen.
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: And this is this is not arguable.
• 9:25
  Philip Pape: Like this is not debatable.
• 9:26
  Philip Pape: Menopause research studies have looked at this.
• 9:29
  Philip Pape: We know this happens.
• 9:30
  Philip Pape: Cross-sectional studies, longitudinal, metabolic chambers, they all say the same thing that during menopause, your visceral fat goes up and it goes up quite a bit.
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: So the question is what targets visceral fat?
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: Because if we're going to invest our time and recovery, which is limited, into something, we want it to work on the thing that all of you are frustrated about.
• 9:48
  Philip Pape: So here's where it gets interesting.
• 9:50
  Philip Pape: For about a decade, the research has been pointing to something that now we have pretty good confidence in.
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: There was a landmark study by a French researcher named Baylard in 2016.
• 10:03
  Philip Pape: He took 17 postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes and he had them do two short cycling sessions per week for 16 weeks.
• 10:12
  Philip Pape: So these are about 20-minute sessions.
• 10:14
  Philip Pape: They didn't change anything else, not their diet, not anything.
• 10:17
  Philip Pape: The result was that their abdominal fat dropped 8%.
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: Visceral fat specifically dropped 24%.
• 10:25
  Philip Pape: 24% in 16 weeks.
• 10:28
  Philip Pape: That's crazy with two 20-minute sessions per week on a cycle.
• 10:32
  Philip Pape: And for today's episode, the the key here is that those sessions were sprint intervals.
• 10:39
  Philip Pape: They weren't steady state cardio.
• 10:41
  Philip Pape: Because we know this, the moderate steady state group in the same study did not see significant visceral fat reduction.
• 10:47
  Philip Pape: Isn't this incredible?
• 10:48
  Philip Pape: And by the way, we're gonna we're gonna touch on this a few times, but you guys know I've been talking about sprinting for a long time.
• 10:54
  Philip Pape: I just hadn't quite been able to connect it to this specific benefit yet.
• 10:58
  Philip Pape: And now we can, and this is just just this is just incredible.
• 11:01
  Philip Pape: A follow-up study from Dupuis in 2020, why'd I say it that way, 2020, extended this to non-diabetic postmenopausal women, and they found the same thing.
• 11:11
  Philip Pape: Sprint intervals reduce their abdominal and visceral fat, whereas moderate cardio didn't change it in the same way.
• 11:17
  Philip Pape: And then when they added resistance training on top of sprinting, guess what?
• 11:22
  Philip Pape: They got fat loss and they got increased muscle mass.
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: And of course, that's the only combination that did that, which makes sense.
• 11:29
  Philip Pape: We've got to lift weights if we want to add muscle.
• 11:32
  Philip Pape: Now, let's all we always have to be honest about research and how reliable it is.
• 11:37
  Philip Pape: The the broader meta-analysis that compared sprint intervals to moderate cardio on total fat showed them as roughly equivalent when you match for total work.
• 11:47
  Philip Pape: In other words, from the thermodynamics perspective, sprints aren't magic, which is consistent with everything I've been talking about, right?
• 11:55
  Philip Pape: Like the type you do doesn't matter.
• 11:57
  Philip Pape: But in this context, the the way they target physiologically the visceral fat is a difference that matters.
• 12:06
  Philip Pape: And there's a practical aspect here, and that is the time efficiency.
• 12:11
  Philip Pape: So let's start with that one real quick.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: Sprint intervals can produce the same or better results in about a third of the weekly time.
• 12:18
  Philip Pape: When we talk about conditioning and cardio, okay, specifically.
• 12:21
  Philip Pape: Aside from walking, like a lot of us love to walk, and I encourage walking, and honestly, you can walk a lot.
• 12:26
  Philip Pape: And I don't necessarily like to compare walking to sprinting in terms of time efficiency.
• 12:31
  Philip Pape: It's a different thing, right?
• 12:32
  Philip Pape: So for women in menopause whose recovery capacity is getting more limited, this is a really big deal because your limited time, limited recovery, there's a stress component to this.
• 12:43
  Philip Pape: And then if you have these long, frequent sessions of cardio, now you get compensation on top of an already stressed system.
• 12:50
  Philip Pape: That's why we don't like that necessarily.
• 12:52
  Philip Pape: Why I encourage a lot of women to do less, to be more efficient with their time in the gym and outside the gym.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: So sprint intervals are a really good tool in that perspective.
• 13:01
  Philip Pape: The second one is more specific, and this is the one that's the most interesting about visceral fat, belly fat.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: Listen up.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: In post-menopausal women, specifically, sprint intervals outperform steady-state cardio for reducing visceral fat.
• 13:16
  Philip Pape: Like the Maylard and the Dupuis findings that I just talked about, which are not isolated.
• 13:21
  Philip Pape: The, you know, there's this popular narrative that sprints burn belly fat through a calorie afterburn effect.
• 13:29
  Philip Pape: No, that is not correct.
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: And if I've ever said on this show, I would I retract it and say that I was wrong as well.
• 13:35
  Philip Pape: We call that epoch exercise post-sector, or I never know, I never say this right, but it's like post-uh oxygen consumption.
• 13:43
  Philip Pape: Exercise post-oxygen consumption.
• 13:45
  Philip Pape: And that's burning calories after you do the exercise.
• 13:49
  Philip Pape: It's very minimal.
• 13:50
  Philip Pape: It's like 40 to 50 calories.
• 13:52
  Philip Pape: The real benefit is the chronic adaptation.
• 13:55
  Philip Pape: There is a catecholamine response that occurs over weeks and months.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: And what it does, this is technical stuff.
• 14:04
  Philip Pape: I had to write it down.
• 14:05
  Philip Pape: It increases the beta, the beta andranergic sensitivity of your visceral fat.
• 14:11
  Philip Pape: All that is, in plain English, it's the receptors that let your body mobilize fat for fuel.
• 14:19
  Philip Pape: That's what it is.
• 14:20
  Philip Pape: So guess what?
• 14:21
  Philip Pape: You're increasing the sensitivity of those.
• 14:23
  Philip Pape: That is awesome.
• 14:25
  Philip Pape: Your skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity goes up.
• 14:28
  Philip Pape: That is awesome.
• 14:29
  Philip Pape: Your mitochondrial function improves.
• 14:31
  Philip Pape: This is energy.
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: That is awesome.
• 14:33
  Philip Pape: These are long-term changes that compound chronically in a good way, in the best of ways.
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: So the summary of this piece is sprinting, it doesn't magically melt belly fat in one session.
• 14:47
  Philip Pape: We don't care about post-exercise consumption or afterburn effect or any of that.
• 14:51
  Philip Pape: You can't just sprint once and boom, there goes your belly fat.
• 14:53
  Philip Pape: What they do is over time, if you do these two sessions, 20 minutes each, there's an adaptive pressure on visceral fat that keeps showing up when we do these studies.
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: And we can't ignore that.
• 15:07
  Philip Pape: That is amazing data.
• 15:08
  Philip Pape: And it's time efficient, so it doesn't affect your recovery.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: It's actually anabolic when we talk about sprinting as well.
• 15:15
  Philip Pape: It supports your lifting.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: You can continue lifting heavy in parallel.
• 15:20
  Philip Pape: This is just an incredible combination of things that you can go after as you develop your training and movement routine.
• 15:28
  Philip Pape: Just so good.
• 15:29
  Philip Pape: So good.
• 15:30
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 15:30
  Philip Pape: Now, before I walk you through the exact protocol, I do have something that's going to make things a lot easier for you.
• 15:37
  Philip Pape: I do have a written guide called Sprinting for Fat Loss that I try to keep updated with some of this research.
• 15:44
  Philip Pape: In this case, it has the sprinting protocol that I recommend.
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: It's about six pages long, and it has the protocol I'm going to describe now.
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: It has the equipment options in terms of what you should start with, the warm-up, a little bit of a weekly template so you can fit it around your lifting, and even how to track progress.
• 16:01
  Philip Pape: All in a PDF, all free.
• 16:02
  Philip Pape: I've given it to you for free.
• 16:04
  Philip Pape: The only thing I need you to do is join my email list so I can send it to you.
• 16:07
  Philip Pape: So go to witsandweights.com slash email.
• 16:10
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash email.
• 16:12
  Philip Pape: Then once you're on the list, just reply to the welcome email and ask for the sprinting guide.
• 16:17
  Philip Pape: If you're already on my list, just reply to any email you get and ask for the sprinting guide.
• 16:22
  Philip Pape: I'll send it right over.
• 16:24
  Philip Pape: And that is it.
• 16:25
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 16:26
  Philip Pape: Witsandwaits.com slash email.
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: Join the list.
• 16:29
  Philip Pape: Ask for the sprinting guide.
• 16:30
  Philip Pape: Done.
• 16:31
  Philip Pape: I don't have a special link.
• 16:32
  Philip Pape: Sorry, you're gonna have to do it that way.
• 16:33
  Philip Pape: Wits and weights.com slash email.
• 16:36
  Philip Pape: So let's talk about that protocol.
• 16:37
  Philip Pape: All right, the protocol I use with clients and myself, I pull it directly from Brad Kearns, who runs the B Rad podcast.
• 16:44
  Philip Pape: He was on the show back, I think in episode 286.
• 16:47
  Philip Pape: He introduced me to this structure.
• 16:48
  Philip Pape: I've used it ever since.
• 16:50
  Philip Pape: It is awesome.
• 16:51
  Philip Pape: Okay, it's simple.
• 16:53
  Philip Pape: Four to eight sets of all out sprints.
• 16:56
  Philip Pape: Each sprint is 10 to 20 seconds.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: Never go past 20 seconds, never go past eight sets.
• 17:02
  Philip Pape: Importantly, the rest time is six times the sprint time.
• 17:07
  Philip Pape: So if you sprint 10 seconds, you rest 60 seconds.
• 17:11
  Philip Pape: If you sprint 20 seconds, you're gonna rest two minutes.
• 17:14
  Philip Pape: Make sense?
• 17:15
  Philip Pape: And that's it.
• 17:16
  Philip Pape: Now you can rest longer, but don't rest shorter.
• 17:19
  Philip Pape: So one to two sessions per week, four to eight sets of all-out sprints for 10 to 20 seconds with six to one rest to sprint.
• 17:29
  Philip Pape: If that's confusing, get get the guide.
• 17:31
  Philip Pape: It's all written down for you.
• 17:32
  Philip Pape: So if you do the two sessions, then one of them, in my recommendation, should be flat brown, only one of them should be flat ground sprinting with good minimalist footwear.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: The other one should be on a low impact machine, like a cycle, a rower, a stair climber.
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: You can do them both on the machine, that's fine.
• 17:48
  Philip Pape: But don't do both as flat ground sprinting until you get adapted to it and you feel like it's appropriate and you can handle that.
• 17:54
  Philip Pape: The progression rule is the most important thing in this protocol, okay?
• 18:00
  Philip Pape: Because just like progressive overload with your lifting, you want to progress with your sprinting.
• 18:07
  Philip Pape: You do not do that by going past the 20 seconds or doing more sets.
• 18:13
  Philip Pape: You do it by getting faster within the same constraints.
• 18:18
  Philip Pape: Now, if your sprints are less than 20 seconds, well, then your goal is to get them up to 20 seconds.
• 18:24
  Philip Pape: If the number of sets is less than eight, well, your goal is to eventually get them to eight.
• 18:29
  Philip Pape: But eventually you're gonna cap out at eight sets, 20 second sprints.
• 18:33
  Philip Pape: Now the goal is just to get faster, more power, more speed, and you'll you'll get adapted and you'll get better, and that's exactly what's gonna happen over time.
• 18:43
  Philip Pape: And that's it.
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 18:45
  Philip Pape: Now, a lot of people ask me, okay, what do I actually do for the sprinting?
• 18:48
  Philip Pape: Well, let me give you kind of a hierarchy.
• 18:49
  Philip Pape: If you're brand new, start on a bike, an assault bike, stationary bike, spin bike, doesn't really matter.
• 18:54
  Philip Pape: It's the easiest way to get to near maximum effort without any joint risk.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: You could just quickly get to those fast sprints.
• 19:01
  Philip Pape: And it's also the type of modality they use in most of the sprint studies.
• 19:07
  Philip Pape: So there's a nice correlation there.
• 19:09
  Philip Pape: And then you can progress to something like an elliptical, a stair climber, or a rower, which are all low impact.
• 19:14
  Philip Pape: They're still anaerobic.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: They're a little bit tougher.
• 19:17
  Philip Pape: They have a little bit of skill involved.
• 19:18
  Philip Pape: If you want to go to ground-based sprinting, like actual sprinting, you can work up to it using hill sprints or incline sprints, which you could do on a sp on a treadmill, but I really discourage a treadmill at all for sprinting just because of the safety factor and the inability to easily get to full speed as quickly.
• 19:35
  Philip Pape: I would rather you just do it kind of on your own with one of these other machines or outside.
• 19:39
  Philip Pape: The incline reduces your max speed, which preserves your hamstring.
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: That's why it's a good way to build your tissue capacity before you go to flat ground.
• 19:48
  Philip Pape: But again, do not use a treadmill.
• 19:51
  Philip Pape: I know people do it.
• 19:52
  Philip Pape: Again, safety and the ability to accelerate, decelerate is very difficult.
• 19:56
  Philip Pape: And you're also not going to go all out on a treadmill.
• 20:00
  Philip Pape: Some part of your brain knows that you can't bail on it.
• 20:03
  Philip Pape: And so as a result, you clamp down on the effort, if that makes sense, as a safety mechanism.
• 20:09
  Philip Pape: And then that's not sprinting, it's just jogging really hard.
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: So, how does this fit into your schedule?
• 20:13
  Philip Pape: If you're lifting, all right.
• 20:15
  Philip Pape: I would use a, for example, three, three-day full body lifting split as an example here.
• 20:21
  Philip Pape: Let's say it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: Sprinting could be Tuesday and Saturday.
• 20:26
  Philip Pape: Not the morning of a lift day, not right before the lift.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: Ideally, 24 hours removed from a lower body session.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: If you're on a four-day upper lower, you can sprint on your upper days or your off days.
• 20:39
  Philip Pape: If you're on a five day, like a bodybuilding, power building type split, you could sprint on your off days or a few hours after upper body training.
• 20:48
  Philip Pape: Two quick rules.
• 20:49
  Philip Pape: One, you have to feel fresh before the sprint session.
• 20:52
  Philip Pape: If you're already fatigued, if you didn't sleep, if you're coming off a hard lifting day, push it to another day, right?
• 20:58
  Philip Pape: Sprinting while fatigued, that is how you get injured and you're not gonna be at your best performance.
• 21:02
  Philip Pape: The second rule is if your speed drops off during the session, like you get to set, I don't know, five, and your speed drops way off, you're done.
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: Stop.
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: Don't just rest longer and keep going.
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: Stop.
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: The session is over.
• 21:16
  Philip Pape: That's the session is over.
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: This is gonna tie to what I talk about at the end of the episode.
• 21:20
  Philip Pape: So I'm gonna come back to it.
• 21:21
  Philip Pape: Also, warming up.
• 21:22
  Philip Pape: Warming up's important.
• 21:24
  Philip Pape: If you're doing machine sprints, you could go say three to five minutes on the machine at a moderate speed.
• 21:29
  Philip Pape: And then you could do some 10-second buildups if you'd like.
• 21:33
  Philip Pape: If you're doing flat ground, you could do again three to five minutes of just light jogging or leg swings or high knees or butt kicks or any of that stuff.
• 21:40
  Philip Pape: And then maybe two or three progressive accelerations and then get into it.
• 21:44
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 21:44
  Philip Pape: If you're cold, you got to warm up.
• 21:46
  Philip Pape: The more adapted you get to this, probably the less warm up you need.
• 21:49
  Philip Pape: And then the whole session ends up being maybe 15 to 25 minutes, including the warm up, the sprint sets, the cooldown, all of that.
• 21:56
  Philip Pape: Two of those a week, that's 30 to 50 minutes.
• 21:59
  Philip Pape: Of sprinting, excuse me, per week.
• 22:02
  Philip Pape: And that is a fantastic dose for being correlated with a massive drop in visceral fat.
• 22:08
  Philip Pape: So everyone listening, especially ladies, especially in peri postmenopause who have the belly fat, who are writing in about this, who are curious about this, do this protocol and try it out and let me know how it goes.
• 22:19
  Philip Pape: One more thing shout out to Dr.
• 22:21
  Philip Pape: Bill Campbell again, because he said on a recent interview that for menopausal women specifically, he prefers short sprint sessions with fewer total sprints as opposed to a high rep hit because of the recovery burden of the hit.
• 22:36
  Philip Pape: The goal is not to get your heart rate up.
• 22:38
  Philip Pape: The goal is to get a brief maximum signal to trigger the adaptations that we're talking about today and then let your body recover and adapt.
• 22:47
  Philip Pape: That's really, really important.
• 22:49
  Philip Pape: All right, before we wrap up, I told you at the beginning I was gonna give you one single question test that tells you whether you actually sprinted or if you just ran hard and you're not getting all the benefits.
• 22:58
  Philip Pape: That's coming up in just a minute.
• 23:00
  Philip Pape: But if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, I get the sprinting, but I also know my lifting is inconsistent or my protein's probably too low.
• 23:09
  Philip Pape: And nothing has worked for me in the last two or three years of trying to get leaner, especially if as I get older, maybe I'm over 40, 50, beyond.
• 23:16
  Philip Pape: That's who we built Eat More Lift Heavy for.
• 23:20
  Philip Pape: Eat More Lift Heavy is my 26-week coaching program along with Coach Carol.
• 23:25
  Philip Pape: It replaces our old physique university.
• 23:27
  Philip Pape: It is a huge upgrade.
• 23:28
  Philip Pape: The core premise is that most women over 40 or adults over 40 who are stuck with their physique are under-eating and under-recovering.
• 23:38
  Philip Pape: They're under-eating, under recovering.
• 23:40
  Philip Pape: It's not on you.
• 23:41
  Philip Pape: It's not a discipline problem or will problem.
• 23:43
  Philip Pape: We've got to eat more, especially protein, sometimes carbs, sometimes calories in general.
• 23:47
  Philip Pape: We have to lift heavy with progressive overload.
• 23:49
  Philip Pape: Heavy doesn't mean too heavy or unsafely heavy.
• 23:53
  Philip Pape: It means the right level of intensity to push the strength and muscle growth.
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: So that is what it's about.
• 23:59
  Philip Pape: Eat more, lift heavy.
• 24:00
  Philip Pape: It's structured in three phases.
• 24:02
  Philip Pape: Phase one helps you stop guessing.
• 24:04
  Philip Pape: You set up your measurement system so you know what you're working with.
• 24:07
  Philip Pape: Phase two is the eat more, lift heavy phase, where you execute the plan along with our support and live coaching.
• 24:14
  Philip Pape: And phase three is to trust yourself.
• 24:16
  Philip Pape: You graduate with the skills to manage your own physique with everything you've learned.
• 24:21
  Philip Pape: There are monthly coaching calls, there are training programs.
• 24:24
  Philip Pape: You get one assigned to you on day one.
• 24:26
  Philip Pape: There's coaches who respond in the community within 24 hours.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: We have a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.
• 24:32
  Philip Pape: All of that go to eatmore liftheavy.com.
• 24:34
  Philip Pape: That's eatmoreliftheavy.com.
• 24:36
  Philip Pape: Let's get you out of this cycle for good.
• 24:39
  Philip Pape: Get you on your way to a wonderful life, a wonderful physique, happiness with who you are in your body.
• 24:45
  Philip Pape: EatmoreLiftheavy.com.
• 24:47
  Philip Pape: All right, here's a question that tells you did I actually sprint the way Phillips talked about on this show that reduces belly fat?
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: Or am I pushing it hard but not quite getting there?
• 24:58
  Philip Pape: The question is, did my speed drop more than 10% across my sets?
• 25:03
  Philip Pape: And this is where data is helpful that you need to measure.
• 25:06
  Philip Pape: If your first sprint was a 15-second effort, and by the fourth set, you're two or three seconds slower over the same distance, you're done.
• 25:15
  Philip Pape: Do not rest longer, don't push through another set, stop the session.
• 25:19
  Philip Pape: The reason that sprinting works is because of neural recruitment of your fastest fibers.
• 25:26
  Philip Pape: Once those fibers are fatigued, any additional set is just practicing running slower.
• 25:32
  Philip Pape: You're not getting the sprint adaptation anymore.
• 25:34
  Philip Pape: You're actually piling up fatigue.
• 25:36
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like junk volume of running for no benefit.
• 25:40
  Philip Pape: So the test is simple here.
• 25:42
  Philip Pape: You need to time your sets, track your sets.
• 25:45
  Philip Pape: If your top speed is holding, keep going.
• 25:47
  Philip Pape: If it drops more than 10%, the session is over.
• 25:50
  Philip Pape: Go home.
• 25:51
  Philip Pape: You're done for the day.
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: You need to adapt to get a little faster and stronger so you can go further next time.
• 25:56
  Philip Pape: That's cool.
• 25:56
  Philip Pape: That tells you where you are.
• 25:58
  Philip Pape: And that's the difference between training and working out, just like when you lift weights.
• 26:02
  Philip Pape: All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 26:06
  Philip Pape: And remember, Menopause belly does have a targeted fix, and it's more in your control than you think.
• 26:13
  Philip Pape: I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.