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Quick Wits: Who Cares If Walking Is Exercise? (Response to Dr. Gabrielle Lyon) · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: Is walking exercise or not?
• 0:02
  Philip Pape: Dr Gabriel Lyon recently sparked a debate on this topic on social media.
• 0:07
  Philip Pape: But does it even matter?
• 0:10
  Philip Pape: Join me on today's Quick Wits, as I share my thoughts on why this question might be missing the point entirely and why strength training should be your top priority for physique development anyway.
• 0:20
  Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits and Weights podcast.
• 0:22
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and this twice-a-week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self-mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition.
• 0:33
  Philip Pape: We'll uncover science-backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset, with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best.
• 0:44
  Philip Pape: Let's dive right in.
• 0:45
  Philip Pape: Welcome to another Quick Wits, your go-to source for no-nonsense insights on optimizing everything.
• 0:55
  Philip Pape: Today we're tackling a recent controversy that was sparked by Dr Gabriel Lyon, and really it wasn't her fault.
• 1:01
  Philip Pape: A clip of her was posted from an interview that she was in, where she was asked whether walking was exercise.
• 1:07
  Philip Pape: She said no.
• 1:08
  Philip Pape: But there is a lot of context around it and I'm not going to get into the context, but I'm also not going to make the mistake of taking it out of context by addressing her saying it's not exercise directly.
• 1:20
  Philip Pape: I'm going to address the topic in general.
• 1:22
  Philip Pape: So, yes, it made waves.
• 1:24
  Philip Pape: There was a claim that walking is not exercise and, as someone who's always preaching the importance of strength training for building muscle and transforming your body, I do want to weigh in on this and offer my perspective.
• 1:34
  Philip Pape: And the first thing is you know, let's just, let's just put it out there If your primary goal is to build a strong muscular physique, then walking alone isn't going to cut it and honestly, I think that's what Dr Gabriel Lyon was getting at and that's totally true.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: It's true that walking is actually under the category of NEAT, which in its definition is non-exercise activity, thermogenesis, and it does contribute to your overall daily expenditure, but it's not the most efficient or effective way to quote unquote exercise if your main form of exercise, or training as we like to call it, is building muscle mass via strength training, and for that, of course, you have to have training a certain number of days in your week, you have to be progressively challenging your muscles with weights or other forms of resistance, and this is what triggers the muscle building process and gets your body to adapt and grow stronger over time.
• 2:28
  Philip Pape: What we talk about all the time and I know Dr Gabriel Lyon is all on board with building muscle.
• 2:34
  Philip Pape: Now, the other side of this is, you know, walking isn't useless, of course.
• 2:38
  Philip Pape: It's, in fact, far from useless.
• 2:40
  Philip Pape: It's one of the best things we can do.
• 2:41
  Philip Pape: It's great for your overall health, for your cardiovascular fitness, even your mental well-being all things that we've talked about on this show and it can be a valuable tool for increasing your step count, which is a proxy for your overall movement, for getting your butt off the couch or off the chair and just moving around, and, of course, for boosting your metabolic rate, which supports fat loss and does it in a way that doesn't recover or doesn't interfere with recovery from your lifting.
• 3:09
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're serious about transforming your physique, if you're trying to build as much muscle as possible, again, strength training has to be the priority, which means lifting weights consistently, focusing on compound lifts, targeting multiple muscle groups, progressively increasing the sets reps, sets of reps man, I am off today the sets reps and weight over time.
• 3:32
  Philip Pape: But let's go back to the original question.
• 3:33
  Philip Pape: Does it matter whether we classify walking as exercise or not?
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: All right, in the grand scheme of things, in my opinion probably not, because what matters is you are taking a comprehensive approach to your health, to your fitness, to your physique all of the things that prioritizes resistance training for muscle growth and incorporates walking and other forms of low intensity or even medium to high intensity movement and cardio for overall health and well-being.
• 4:01
  Philip Pape: It's not about being mutually exclusive, choosing one or the other or getting semantic about our labels, but rather finding the right balance or the right harmony and making sure you're covering all the bases.
• 4:13
  Philip Pape: So keep lifting, keep challenging yourself.
• 4:16
  Philip Pape: Also keep walking, because they all have benefits.
• 4:19
  Philip Pape: Just don't expect any one of these things to be the magic bullet, because they all come together to increase your energy flux and to be an everyday type of lifter.
• 4:29
  Philip Pape: At the end of the day, the real things that matter are not that walking is exercise or not.
• 4:33
  Philip Pape: It's staying focused on your goals, trusting the process and making sure the process is working for you and it's enjoyable.
• 4:39
  Philip Pape: And just keep putting in the work, keep showing up and whether you call it exercise or not and I prefer calling our deliberate, progress-based training, training and exercise is pretty much everything else and maybe, yes, walking, why not?
• 4:54
  Philip Pape: It doesn't really matter.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: You know every step you take, every rep you perform, is just getting you one step closer to the version of yourself you're trying to be and that you know you can be, that you know you are and you're just aspiring and building into that self-identity.
• 5:12
  Philip Pape: So go ahead, lace up the sneakers, throw on the walking sandals, do it barefoot, whatever floats your boat, you know.
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: Chalk up your hands in the gym, go lift some weights, all the things, and go claim that physique that you deserve.
• 5:21
  Philip Pape: Until next time again, keep lifting, keep walking, keep striving for greatness one day at a time, and thank you again for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights to share this episode with them.
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: And make sure to hit the follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode.
• 5:50
  Philip Pape: Until then, stay strong.