- 2 days ago
Strengthspan | Strong Talk | Men's Health
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00I want to hit you guys with the five kinds of strength that we're thinking about in men's health.
00:03Absolute strength, right? Which is the idea, obviously, that you can lift heavy, right?
00:07Because everybody should have some level of absolute strength. There's explosive strength.
00:10Can you be powerful and generate force quickly? Functional strength. Can you use that strength
00:14like in the real world, right? We call it aesthetic strength so we can keep it to like a strength,
00:18right? But it's basically like building muscle and kind of looking the part, which I kind of want to
00:22dive into a lot because I think there's more to that than people realize. And then there's aerobic
00:26strength like, can you run, right? They're the right categories. Are we missing anything?
00:31Missing a ton. I don't love the definitions of a lot of those either.
00:36Oh, God. Yeah. You know, I have the same feelings probably.
00:40Oh, I don't. I don't. Look, this is the episode where Pat and Ed beat each other up.
01:06So we're back here on Strong Talk. And today we're talking pure strength, something we
01:10at Men's Health like think of as strength span. And we're doing that with Andy Spear,
01:14who approaches strength, I feel like, in a very different way as a Peloton instructor
01:18than me and Pat approach strength.
01:21What's up, Beth? It's good to be here.
01:22Yeah, I've known you for a while. Yeah. One of the things I've been really fascinated with
01:25with you is just when I was introduced to you, I was very into muscle. And obviously you think
01:31about muscle, but you also think about strength in terms of cardio and other things. And I'm curious
01:36just to start off, what do you think guys totally miss about strength? And when you look at the way,
01:41you know, we talk about it, you know, muscle and fitness, we're always talking muscle, muscle,
01:45muscle. Do we think we look at strength to one dimensionally?
01:48I think some people look at strength and I don't want to use the word too one dimensionally,
01:52but they can look at it from their perspective of what is important to them and what they're
01:58prioritizing in their life at that time. And I think that ebbs and flows from 20s, 30s, 40s.
02:06Some people stay kind of in one lane. Some people have kind of veer off and take different
02:12experimentations and priorities, if you will. So, you know, again, I never one of you wanted to say
02:18you have to do it this way or think about it this way. That's not how I operate.
02:22Because that also feels one dimensional anyway, right?
02:25Correct. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I've always been a little bit more of a jack of all trades
02:31than a pinpoint, you know, going after one thing. And I've, you know, over the years done,
02:37you know, I've competed in Olympic lifting. I gave my hand at one physique competition way back in
02:43the day. But I'm going to say I've never been on the gold medal stand at those events. But if
02:50you
02:50put me, you know, doing all these things kind of back, I do pretty well on everything.
02:54I think that's what impressed me about you when I first met you. Because again, like I definitely,
02:58I broke in with like, I had a bodybuilding gym, right? So I was always doing like, can I get
03:03stronger and build more muscle? And when I met you, it was really early in my men's health tenure.
03:08And you're talking about all these things, like how heavy can you do a get up, right?
03:12Then it was like body weight strength. And then we went out running, right? You kind of helped me
03:17rethink some things because I definitely I just lifted and played basketball, right? And I fell
03:21into a lot of stuff, right? But there is there is all kind of this other stuff to it. And
03:25that's kind
03:25of what I think we're thinking about it. Men's health a lot for the project we're on, which is
03:29about just different kinds of strength. I want to hit you guys with the five kinds of strength that
03:35we're thinking about in men's health. I got it written out so I don't forget. But there's
03:37absolute strength, right? Which is the idea, obviously, that you can lift heavy, right?
03:41Because everybody should have some level of absolute strength. There's explosive strength,
03:45can you be powerful and generate force quickly, right? Functional strength, can you use that
03:48strength like in the real world, right? And then we've got two that there's obviously,
03:53we call it aesthetic strength. So we can keep it to like a strength, right? But it's basically like
03:56building muscle and kind of looking the part, which I kind of want to dive into a lot,
04:00because I think there's more to that than people realize. And then there's aerobic strength,
04:03like can you run, right? I hate you guys with those five categories. Do you think
04:07they're the right categories? Are we missing anything?
04:11Missing a ton. And I don't love the definitions of a lot of those either.
04:16Oh, God.
04:17Yeah. You know, you got absolute strength. And that's just like, that's regardless of body weight.
04:23Okay. Then you've, because you're always talking absolute and relative strength.
04:26Yeah. As differentiation points, relative strength being, you know, how strong are you
04:31per kilogram of body weight? Functional strength. I mean, don't even get me started on that one.
04:36I have the same feelings probably. You know, I don't, I don't love, this is, this is the episode
04:40where Pat and Ed beat each other up, but go on. Yeah. You know, it's, it's just specificity.
04:44You are strong at what you have been doing. And if you're not doing something, you're not strong
04:49at it because you haven't been training it and doing it. So, you know, we love to use these words
04:55in the real world. Well, the real world is complex and a million different things happen.
05:00And, you know, so what are we talking about in the real world? Like we're talking about a
05:04construction worker. We're talking about, you know, us having a deal with city bikes in the
05:09snow and lifting them over the snow bank and jamming them into the dock. Like, you know.
05:14I would, I would argue though, that that's kind of the challenge of, of kind of a good,
05:17to some level, right? That's the challenge of a good fitness routine. Can whatever you're doing
05:22in the gym somehow translate to the real world? Because it's not going to be the exact same
05:25thing, but we know that we know there are some things that have carryover, right? And
05:29it's like, all I know is I always hear this thing about, Oh, can you carry your grocery
05:32bags to the car? If you're really strong in the weight room, of course you can. It's such
05:37a sub threshold task at that point. Like you don't need to do loaded carries to be able
05:43to carry your grocery bags. If you just do a well-rounded program, you're going to have
05:46the requisite capabilities to handle that, that small task. Yeah. I think, I think as
05:52far as strength specifically, and I use that as far as, you know, carries dumbbells, barbells,
05:59lifting. Uh, if you can't, you know, if you're, and I see this a lot and it's funny when I
06:04was
06:04training people for years, um, someone would come in and say, I don't want to lift this much
06:11weight. That's 25 pound kettlebells, very heavy. And then, you know, then she shows me a picture
06:17of her, like tossing her 50 pound child in the air, like with no problem. And I'm like, Hey,
06:22we can like, don't be afraid of the steel here. We can, we can work on that. So there, there's
06:27the strength transfer, which I agree with what Pat said. If we're like well-rounded in the gym,
06:33general menial tasks shouldn't be an issue. Yeah.
06:36Yeah. I've started to think about and feel in my life a little bit more now, like what's the,
06:42I use the word athleticism. Yeah. And I know that can be kind of as broadly placed as strength,
06:47but what's my ability to like move, to cut, to accelerate and decelerate quickly, um, with or
06:55without some sort of load on me. Um, can I go for long distances and short distances? And like,
07:02that's kind of how I try to, at least when I'm teaching classes, like, and again, there are a
07:08lot of restrictions from working on a mat with dumbbells to a lot of real, real life applications.
07:14We're very aware of that, but what can you do to pro to prepare someone for, you know, a lot
07:20of the,
07:20the different avenues in life that they may or may not encounter, um, at a level that, you know,
07:27I kind of train gen pop. Like that's, that's what I do. Um, I don't train professional athletes at a
07:33high level of competition. Um, you know, and a lot of it's kind of one, one sided really. I only
07:39have,
07:39I say this and we get some feedback sometimes through social media, but, um, so, you know,
07:45that's kind of when you list off those five terms of strength, my view, my lens right now from where
07:52I'm at and where I've been for a little while is general population. How do we best prepare them
07:58for either what's going to happen in the real world for them, whatever that means. And it's
08:04relatively similar to everybody. And, or if they're competing in some sort of competition
08:09that most likely like a high rocks, like a marathon, like a, any sort of strength, it's not
08:15the highest level of competition. People that play tennis or golf or something like that,
08:20like, so that they have some ability to get into a cut, rotate, et cetera.
08:25Exactly. Do you think, do you think though, do you guys think those are aside from, you know,
08:28the horrible definitions apparently, which for the record, for the record, there's just so,
08:32I always think there's a lot missing too. What do you think is missing? Well,
08:35there's no eccentric versus concentric versus isometric. It doesn't talk about different
08:40velocities. I mean, even in the NSCA textbook, the chapter strength, the definition is the amount
08:48of force that a given joint can create at a specific velocity. Okay. So at different speeds
08:56of movement, you can be, you can be strong, slow, and then not have high rate of force development.
09:02And it's, it's directional too. You can be strong, concentric, overcoming gravity,
09:09but have very poor absorption and going with gravity strength. And then the speed at which
09:14you're absorbing. When we think about kind of longevity, like longevity and kind of like all
09:19around strength, like a guy, like, like Corey, like the kind of strength Corey would want. Right.
09:23If we're thinking about stuff like that, right. What, and we had to keep in mind, like,
09:27it's always gap analysis, I think is where we're going. What, yeah. What do you think people are
09:31terrible at absorbing forces and they're terrible at absorbing them quickly. So I'm always looking for
09:38opportunities to overload the eccentric, the absorption phase and give people an opportunity
09:44to do it quickly. And that, like, as you started saying that, of course, my mind is like, okay,
09:49we all think about muscles all the time, but tendons, ligaments, connected tissue. Yeah. That's
09:55where things really start to break down and go. And when just one of those guys, it's like, you know,
10:00it's not a, Oh, I streamed my hamstring. Like, Oh, you're that's surgery. You're out for a while.
10:05And as a quick, somewhat accurate statement, the muscles are the brakes and the tendons are the
10:10springs. And when they start behaving in opposite directions, that's when you start having injuries
10:15take place. Like when the muscles try to be the springs, you have a muscle tear. When the tendons
10:20try to be the brakes, you have a tendon injury. It's, you know, that's a rough statement.
10:25Sure. Yeah. And which to, when we talk about longevity too, like the thing we hear about every
10:30over 40 guy, right? The thing that ends every, every sporting career for over 40 guy, we had
10:35Sterling Brown on it is the Achilles, right? Which again is like, that's the tendon trying to be the
10:40brakes. And it's usually a fatigue situation where the muscle is fatigued. It's no longer absorbing
10:45very well to be the brakes. And then the other guy tries to do the job. And it's like having
10:50the
10:51electrician try to fix your toilet. And then, so it's, it's interesting because when we talk
10:57about, you got a good task rabbit, sometimes you get lucky. Most of the time, you got crap
11:02everywhere though. So it's interesting because while we talk about force absorption, right?
11:06If we're trying to help guys, if we kind of say that that's like, I guess the gap in this
11:10little kind of strength profile we've created here, right? What is kind of, I guess, what do
11:15you, I guess it's just force absorption, right? But what's the best way for people to train
11:19that and bulletproofing? Well, you know, I would say that the plyometric is a really
11:26untapped area for a lot of people. And there with plyometrics, you have different categories
11:30and the deep tier category. So getting like dropping into a deep squat quickly so that
11:37you're absorbing down there. And then, you know, ping is on the opposite side where there's
11:41very little joint bending and it just, you're getting off the ground quickly, like a pogo.
11:45And then you have your in-between ones as well. But, um, also just like there's tech now that
11:51exists, you know, like we've played with the Voltra, the Oxfit is another one. These tools
11:56that, that provide eccentric overload, uh, hopefully are, you know, affordable for everybody going
12:02forward. But, um, you know, that's, that's a great device and tool to be able to attack
12:07that area that people are really missing.
12:09And for people who don't know, obviously the Voltra, the Voltra and the Oxfit, very similar
12:13to tonal. Right. And that's just their cable machines that have like a level of, they allow
12:18you to be explosive and powerful and train in ways that the standard gym cable machines just don't
12:22permit. And heavier on the negative than the positive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The adjustments on
12:26the, the eccentric loading and the snap. I remember the old, uh, the old K boxes.
12:30Mm hmm. Oh yeah. That was probably one of the first ones that came on.
12:33And those old weight releasers that you had on the bar, you can only get one rep and they fall
12:37off.
12:38Yeah. I do. I do think to, to your point though, too, like the idea of like, when people think
12:42plyos, they think, Oh, how high can I jump? Can I go really far? Right. And they think of the
12:46extreme level of plows. And I think the underappreciated thing is those, you know, I call them
12:50like, like low, low amplitude plyos. Right. And just look like very, just quick jumping. Right.
12:56Bounce. Right. Just the ability, like, can guys bounce as they get older? And I feel like
13:00the ability to bounce down your stairs diminishes and everything gets hard.
13:03Yeah. That's a, that's a big part of what I bring in my classes. And again, realizing you're on a
13:10mat,
13:10you have body weight and we have dumbbells for the most part. That's what we do, um, in the strength
13:14classes. But given the time I have in per class, we're doing some sort of jumping and bouncing on
13:23some level. Yeah. Whether that's, you know, starting out just like some easy little pogos,
13:27and then you go side to side on the pogos, then you kind of do a bouncy skip into a
13:30march. Um,
13:33you know, we don't do a whole lot of like single leg hopping for distance because we have a six
13:37foot
13:37mat, but that's something to build up to, to be able, if you, if your body can handle a single
13:42leg hop for 10 or 12 reps and you're coordinated and relatively explosive, you're probably in like
13:48pretty decent shape to like attack general athletics in, in a way that's not gonna, not gonna blow
13:55something out. Um, but frequency of bouncing, absorbing, and I love Pat's definition of the
14:01continuum of like, you got the pogos at one end, you got like the slow drop squats at the other
14:06end,
14:07and then using some sort of overload, whether it's a free weight in some way or some cable system to
14:14really overload the eccentric in the muscular system. Um, I think those are like,
14:20in my mind, some of the best preventative measures and also allows you to like actually
14:26perform if you want to perform better in some sort of athletics. Yeah. It's not flashy too.
14:30I think about this, a simple thing like every guy can do is, or should learn how to do is
14:34jump rope.
14:34Right. And I think like, you know, two, three minutes a day. Right. And that gets you,
14:38it gets you a little bit of bounce. It basically is the pogo just with like, you know, and implement.
14:42Yeah. Right. And it's something that every guy, I think every guy should do. And I, I also think
14:46for a lot of guys, they don't realize it until, you know, this is what I've experienced when I
14:49train with guys, I'll be like, Hey, let's jump rope. And then it, it takes a minute. Right.
14:53Because we don't do it. Some coordination involved too. Yeah. Right. All that patterning is,
14:58is worth it. Yeah. And I just think that I was a professional fighter 20 years ago.
15:02Yeah. I was the worst jump roping fighter of all time.
15:05How do you jump rope game now as a fighter? Horrible. I can't even imagine. It would just be
15:10like red lines on my shins and back probably. Yeah. But you know, if I worked at it, like,
15:16but I, I agree. I think that the coordination, the rhythm, the timing, the elasticity,
15:20and it's not an intensity because I think people are going from not doing anything to let's do max
15:26jumps and it's like depth drop. Yeah. Like, yeah. What are we doing here? Let's start at an appropriate
15:30level. Yeah. I think every plyo, every plyo story we've ever done in men's health. Right.
15:34It, it started like that's, that stuff, the jet jumps and the power jumps, those come
15:38much later. Right. It literally almost always starts when I do a program. Yeah. It's like,
15:42it's too much, it's two weeks of, can you just jump rope or can you just do the pogo? And
15:47again,
15:47for most guys, after like a minute of that, it's so much harder because they're not ready for it.
15:52Right. Again, to your point, if you don't do it, you can't, you're prepared for it. Right.
15:56I don't even want to know what jumping rope would be like right now for me.
15:59Um, that's our next video. Um, I want to talk about absolute strength a little bit,
16:04though, too. Right. Um, because, and again, I feel like that's something, that's something
16:08I definitely think about. Right. I've always been obsessed with like, actually, I hate deadlifting.
16:11Right. But I've tried to get good at it because I hate it. Right. I think one of the curious
16:14questions of the absolute strength is like, how much of it do you need? And obviously I remember
16:18you and I were training last year and we talked about this. It was like, you get to a certain
16:21point.
16:22It's like when you can deadlift 400 pounds, if you can, you know, bench press like, you know,
16:26300 pounds, when is it too much? And when are there kind of diminishing returns on it?
16:30You know, and I guess I'm curious for you guys, how you think about that?
16:36Like what's too strong? Well, I, you know, in my mind, when I'm thinking about a strong guy,
16:41it's a very basic place to start like a, a two, three, four guy. And what I mean by that
16:46is two
16:46plates on the bench, three plates on the squat, four plates on the deadlift. Like, if you can do
16:50that, I'm like, Hey, you're strong, you know, like you can obviously go way beyond that. But,
16:55you know, a two, three, four guy is kind of where my mind, you know, and for a long time
17:00has kind of started as being like, you check that box.
17:03Okay. I'm just glad I check all your boxes. Um, what about you?
17:07Yeah. I mean, so that's kind of a, I would totally agree with that in the kind of traditional,
17:11like easy barbell computation of like, okay, do you have the general requisite weight room strength to,
17:19you know, not feel like a weenie? Like, um, but you know, and I, more recently in my life,
17:27just because between teaching classes, trying to do like this athletic stuff, I started training
17:33for high rocks a little bit too. So, um, again, we only have so much time to train and focus
17:38to
17:38put towards one thing. Yeah. Um, I think there's still a huge benefit towards training and touching
17:47that upper end, that upper end strength threshold. I think it's really still very important. Um,
17:54I think as we, and I get older and our focus is if I'm training for powerlifting, then yeah,
18:02we better be getting up there. If I'm bodybuilding, like that's definitely a critical component of it.
18:06If I want to just have that neuromuscular adaptation available. Yeah. Um, I can still
18:13train that. And what I've been doing recently is just kind of like working up to like one or two
18:19sets of a kind of single or double that feel like pretty heavy to me. Um, I'm, I'm not gonna
18:25lie.
18:26I haven't been keeping track of my numbers for a while in that top end department, but, uh, just
18:31being able to tap on that for a couple sets and a couple reps and then back off. And I'm
18:36not doing
18:3610 by two at something anymore. Cause I don't feel like I need that for where I'm at, but still
18:42with
18:42the trap bar, with the barbell bench, being able to like, okay, I can get some of that nervous system
18:47response at a very lower, at a lower volume, but still get that stimulus. And that's kind of where
18:54I'm at. And I think that approach of being really strategic with your heavy reps and even really
19:00strategic with your, you know, reps to failure or whatever you're using for your working sets and
19:05not having a bunch of fluff around it is really important as you age. And as your time commitments
19:12kind of take over and as you're interested in other things outside of the gym.
19:17So it's interesting. I kind of disagree. So I get the two, three, four thing. I think it's over.
19:21I think that's almost oversimplified, right? Cause I generally think, I generally think of it as
19:27like, everybody should be able to bench press their body weight. Right. Um, if we're going to go with
19:31the squat and I have thoughts on that, but we're going to go with the squat, like you should be
19:34able to one and a half time or one and like a quarter times your body weight. Right. And you
19:38should
19:38be able to one and a half times your body weight on a deadlift. Right. Which, and it's funny,
19:42cause I, I, I, well, that's relative strength. This was an absolute strength.
19:45But I, it's funny cause I, cause I was trying to think like, and I guess, yeah,
19:49technically like absolute, I guess I think of them as the same. I think of, I guess the,
19:53the better term versus absolute strength might be like top end strength. You know, I think it's
19:57about like how just max strength. Yeah. Like Matt, yeah. Like max strength. Right. Um, I, you know,
20:03and so using the term absolute, you're right. Might not be the ideal, but I think of it as,
20:07as for everybody, it should be like a percentage or what can they do? We should be able to hit
20:12our
20:12body weight on all those lists and then exceed it. Right. Um, but I think you have to be able
20:16to do that because I think, I feel like the thing you and I mostly disagree with on this show,
20:23right? Maybe we'll find out is, um, cause I'm always a little bit more like,
20:27I want to be more of a Swiss army knife human. You want to be more your, well, that's my
20:31personal
20:32goals, but I have no problem with someone else wanting to be a Swiss army knife. Yeah. I think you
20:36kind of need, I think you need to maintain all that strength, but still have, you know,
20:41a relative amount of like aerobic capacity. Right. And then have a relative amount of,
20:45you know, again, be able to apply that strength. You might be surprised at how much aerobic work
20:49I do. I'm actually, I want to hear this. I wouldn't be surprised actually. I mean, I,
20:53I accumulate, um, 150 minutes of steady state a week. Yeah. And then on top of that,
21:02like right now it's an hour of like track work and then typically like, you know, 10,000 steps a
21:10day.
21:11And on Sunday, I usually do a three hour hike. Oh wow. So it's a lot of aerobics that I
21:16do.
21:17It's just that if I'm in a place of gaining weight, you back down my aerobic fitness,
21:23even if I'm maintaining that total volume decreases, you know, once I start losing weight,
21:29my aerobic fitness increases and it's like very measurable, like it's unbelievable.
21:34Just kind of like the weight you're, cause you're toning around. I mean, there's a lot
21:38like physiologically, but like there's, there's kind of a seesaw of pathways between mTOR,
21:45which is your muscle building and your AMPK, which is your sort of aerobic driving pathway.
21:50And when you're in a calorie surplus, it's going to tip towards mTOR and AMPK is going to suffer.
21:56And when you're in a deficit, it goes the other way. So, and that's sort of the beginning of the
22:03physiological pathways that drive those, those states. It's always hard. Is it because I know
22:08it that that happens? I don't think so because the numbers are so dramatic, but you know.
22:13So you're saying, are you saying that biologically, like if we're in a calorie surplus,
22:18we're more predisposed to, we're automatically in a situation that's going to build more muscle.
22:22Yeah. And, and be less effective cardiovascular. Yes. Yeah. Do that. I didn't because it's
22:28interesting because when people, when people kind of, and as you're increasing cross-sectional
22:32area of the tissue, you're going to decrease your mitochondrial capacities and there's more
22:38space. There's more space. You have more distance for gases to have to travel to reach mitochondria,
22:45and you're just less packed in the tissue. And what people don't realize is it's a three-dimensional
22:51space. It's a muscle. Yeah. So you're increasing in a three-dimensional manner and you just can't
22:58keep up with the mitochondrial density at that point. That's very clear and evident in the physiques.
23:08Yeah. You know, we, we look at, you take the science he just explained, and then you look at a
23:13high level distance runner versus a strength athlete. Right. And then people in between who are a little
23:19more strength and anaerobic based or the high rocks, you know, strength, aerobic based. And you just
23:25clearly see that I'm going to get hammered in high rocks, like just no shot. Like we'll get hammered
23:30under the barbell these days. Yeah. It's just where it's just where we are at this time in our training
23:34career. Yeah. And I think that's something that, you know, I kind of joke around about it. Like,
23:40oh man, I'm so out of shape for this or I'm so out of shape for that. But your, your
23:45goal is your goal.
23:45Yeah. And like we, as fitness professionals, I think like it's realizing that, yes, our personal
23:53goals are one thing, but we can support people in their goals in life, in fitness. Um, you know,
24:01us three are really pretty smart dudes, I would say, and are very capable of supporting somebody in
24:05one goal, even if it's not, you know, the old days as a personal trainer, everybody who was on a
24:10power
24:10lifting cycle, their, their clients would be power lifting everybody's body, you know, and like,
24:14no, let's learn Olympic lifting together. Like, right. Maybe you should learn it first and then
24:17teach it to somebody. But, um, yeah, so that's, you know, again, it's, it's where our priorities
24:24are. It's like, I don't get angry at you because your Spotify list is different to my, you know what
24:28I mean? It's like, I like this stuff. You like that stuff. Yeah. So, so I just want to go
24:32back to the
24:32muscle thing, just so people understand. So essentially what you're saying is the bigger our muscles get,
24:36right? Yep. The more the mitochondria space out. And because of that,
24:40it's harder for your body to, when you're in that state, it's harder for your body to
24:46just supply oxygen to your muscles. Correct. Yeah. So that's a less effective cardio body
24:51versus like the guys who are running marathons, like their muscles are smaller. So the mitochondria
24:56is closer. So that's why it's so easy for us to get, for them to, you know, so, and they
25:00want to
25:01create that state, right? Because that's what I would say they're more optimized to do it rather than
25:05say, it's so easy for them to do it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Easy is not easy to run a two
25:08hour marathon. Nothing about thinking about a two hour marathon doesn't sound easy. Right.
25:14But there's just simply less diffusion distance for oxygen to have to travel in and CO2 to have
25:19to travel out. So one of the interesting questions when you get to that though, right, then becomes
25:23like, again, we have this large conversation about, and we're telling everybody, you know,
25:27on the street, right. These days, everybody needs to build more muscle. Right. And some of that
25:31is because in general, people just like normal people just don't train enough. Right. And they
25:36haven't built enough muscle. Right. Is there an upper limit? Right. Where like, I guess, and it's,
25:41I'm not explaining this very well, but we're like, you know, you want to put on a certain amount of
25:44muscle without losing your cardio. Contextual. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's based on what are your goals?
25:51My goal is to look good as 180 pound guy. I want to look like I have about for longevity,
25:56decent physique. Well, I think so performance and longevity live on the opposite sides of the
26:01spectrum. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't know that this is my tough conversation. I would say high
26:08performance is definitely this place that like separates itself from longevity. You know what
26:12I mean? What it takes to, to compete in certain sports at a super high level, but other sports,
26:18maybe a little less, you know what I mean? Like elites in certain sports are probably healthier than
26:22elites and others. I agree there, you know, it's within that I, you know, it, again, it goes to like,
26:29are we training for very specific attributes, only those attributes and the ones that don't
26:35interfere with them? Or are we trying to give ourself multiple attributes at a, you know,
26:41at a, at a slightly lower level and in long, if you're looking at just a muscle, right? Like,
26:47is there like, is the data seems to be supporting this idea that more muscle is better for longevity
26:53in large part because it's a tissue war as you age and you're just using tissue over time. So if
26:59you
26:59have more, you have a bigger bank account to drain over time. Uh, but I think that, I think it
27:05has
27:05to be. So I, I, so it's also not what I'm going, I'm trying to, I'm trying to, I think
27:10the, I think
27:11the conversation goes for more muscle, right? It's interesting because my, my perspective, right,
27:16is I think it is, I think we, I think sometimes the conversation goes too much toward muscle,
27:21right? Kind of tell general, general population, if you can't do anything, go into the gym and lift
27:25and that has to be the prime thing. Right. And then they, they kind of think they're taken care
27:29of. And I think. VO2 wins in the data. That's what I, and talk, talk to us about why. Well,
27:35there's no greater predictor of mortality than your VO2 max. VO2 max is the measure of your aerobic
27:41fitness. Yeah. Okay. So it, it, it's a math equation. Yeah. It is your cardiac output times your
27:47AVO2 distance, a difference. So cardiac output is how much blood does your heart put out per minute?
27:53AVO2 difference is how much oxygen is in your arteries, how much is in your veins. So how much do
27:59is extracted at the working tissues? So it's mostly a heart measure, you know, is your heart bigger?
28:06Does it pump out more blood and is it highly efficient with every beat pumping out a giant
28:12percentage of the amount of blood inside of it? Okay. If your VO, your VO2 as a measurement,
28:19we can measure it in a lab. We can measure it with indirect tests. There's a lot of ways that
28:23we can
28:23estimate it or directly measure it. And we've done a million studies. And what we see is that no other
28:31variable predicts how long you're going to live more than your VO2 max, not whether or not you're a
28:42fact that you have not even the fact, not even not whether or not you have built a certain amount
28:46of muscle or not. No, that, that is close. Muscle mass seems to be another major, major predictor of
28:54this stuff, but it is not surpassed VO2 max. I think the key is kind of what we're, what we
28:59were getting
29:00at here is in some ways you got to rob Peter to pay Paul between these two areas. Like if
29:06your muscle
29:07mass goes crazy and you're ready to win the Olympia, well, your VO2 is probably going to be in the
29:11toilet because the diffusion distance is like 10 miles. Conversely, if you have absolutely no muscle
29:18tissue and you get a disease, that's pretty significant from a tissue wasting, you got no
29:24tissue to waste. You're done. Like, and then once you lose tissue, good luck running. Yeah. Good luck
29:30getting it back. Yeah. As you, as you age with any sort of issues. Yeah. That's yeah. And you're all
29:36bones. If you fall down, you break your hip, you know? Yeah. So it's about finding that kind of
29:41balance. Yep. And again, that's why I feel, I feel like the conversation, the conversation we're
29:46having society right now is so shifted towards muscle, right? Yeah. That we don't talk enough
29:50about VO2. And again, I also think we don't talk about like that muscle. If we build it, you know,
29:56with strength movements and hypertrophy movements, right? Like my ability to deadlift, I may be able
30:01to deadlift a ton, but I may not be able to jump or be explosive and use that power in
30:04a different way.
30:05Right. So that's why I think like the other kind of the other piece of the conversation we miss
30:08often is like explosiveness, you know, I'd say your explosive power. Like if someone comes in and
30:15they can jump over a matchbook on day one, I could get them a lot stronger. They're still jumping over
30:21maybe two matchbooks on day 150. Exactly. Cause it's not, there is no, it's less trainable. It's more
30:26tightly controlled by genetics. You think it, so I also think like a little bit of learning curve,
30:32right? It's more your fast twitch, your, your, your fiber type profile. Yeah. I mean,
30:37yes. Being like measuring explosiveness. Yeah. Um, agreed with Pat that, that like training,
30:44the top end of that is much more restricted by who you are, but training, like we talked about earlier,
30:52they're bouncing low levels that like anybody can do that to just as for health of your tendons,
30:57health of health of your body is different than being able to like, you know, trade for Olympic
31:02lifting or some sort of performance explosiveness. So I don't necessarily think, you know, you're going
31:07to take somebody from like, you're going to take somebody off the street, right. And get them to go
31:11from jumping over two matchbooks to like dunking in basketball. Right. But I think they should have,
31:16they should have a level of fluidity and comfort with that jumping. And a lot of people,
31:19I mean, it's like a video game, right? In video games, sometimes you can't jump at all. I ask
31:23clients to jump sometimes and it's like, they can't do it because they haven't done it. Right.
31:27And so I think there has to just be a level of proficiency to it. You know,
31:30I think what Andy's getting at though, is really important. Like, yeah, like force production is
31:34always, it's never just one thing. Like you have muscular torque, but you also have elastic energy.
31:40And so if you do no elastic training, well, you have this deficiency over here.
31:44And then if you do no muscular development or you got a deficiency over there. So it's almost like,
31:50what do you need? Are we dealing with a person that's more of a kangaroo that's all bounce,
31:55but no strength? Or are we dealing with a gorilla that's all strength and no bounce,
31:58you know? And depending on what they need, like you kind of have to fill in those gaps.
32:03Yeah. Yeah. The gap filling like that. Yeah. I mean, we're all, we're all built for something
32:07genetically. Yeah. And then there's, you know, the pushers and the bouncers and the big guys and the
32:13little guys and like where, if it's just, again, if it's, I want to be healthy, I want to live
32:19for
32:19a long time. I want to feel good. I want to move. I want to be able to play this
32:22sport recreationally.
32:23Yeah. Run a couple of miles and look good on the beach. Like, okay, we're just going to start
32:27filling little buckets here and there. If it's a really performance based avenue that you're going
32:32down for whatever reason, you got to be very strategic on what buckets you're filling and then
32:36make sure you're not going to like leave anything too far to the wayside that it becomes an issue,
32:41either becoming injury prone or just like a lack in performance. But, um, it's just, you know,
32:47health and longevity is kind of filling all the buckets enough to be able to do what you want to
32:52do enough without overdoing anything and leaving anything else too by the wayside.
32:58I want to, I want to backtrack to one thing you said, you said earlier to do that, uh,
33:02earlier in this. And that is the fact that performance lives on kind of one side of the spectrum
33:05and longevity lives on the other. Right. Because I think one of the interesting things too,
33:09when you think about that in athletes, pro athletes tend to change for performance. Right.
33:13And most pro athletes are, they're terrific when they play. Right. And then years after when they're
33:18done, I remember when I used to cover the NFL, right. So a lot of like very, very in shape
33:23guys.
33:23Right. Um, and that's a lot of retired players and all those retired players were like beat up.
33:28Right. And on some of us, because yeah, you sacrifice some longevity to be really superior at the ability
33:33to, you know, run fast, jump far, whatever it is in your sport. Right. And I guess I'm curious if
33:38you
33:39guys see if there's a sport that maybe does lend itself to the tools of longevity a little bit better
33:45than, you know, again, like I've been around NBA players, um, who are great NBA players, and then
33:51they go out and play a pickup game at 45. And cause their joints are so beat up from all
33:54that, you know,
33:55it's like, it's a totally different thing. Right. So I'm, I guess I'm curious if there is a sport
34:00that like an average guy should spend a little more time in because it does lend itself to longevity.
34:06I have a thought that it is tennis. Right. And like, we did a story at men's health on tennis
34:11and I worked pretty closely with the editor on it. Right. And my thought on the reason it is tennis
34:15is
34:15because, is because when we're in our lives, right, we're moving forward. Right. We're moving in the
34:20sagittal plane. Right. And tennis by its very nature is lateral across the court. Right.
34:24And rotational. Right. So it literally covers the, in addition to it's pretty bouncy. Right.
34:30So it kind of accidentally covers all the bases that we don't cover in our day to day.
34:36I mean, I would agree to that to some level, um, you know, you also have to be careful,
34:40like that you're ready to do all these things. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah.
34:43Okay. So what is the primary thing that lets people rotate powerfully? Their ability to deal
34:49in the sagittal plane with gravity, which everybody misses. Okay. The primary force that you have
34:54to deal with before you can worry about turning and twisting is your anti-gravity capabilities.
35:00If you just look at the forces of these things. Yeah.
35:03Basically what it comes down to without a long winded explanation on physics
35:06is until you are horizontally moving your body or part of your body at over 120 miles an hour,
35:14the force of gravity pulling you down exceeds the wind resistance that you're going to encounter.
35:20Okay. So everybody gets all caught up in the fancy twisting and functional and this,
35:25that, and the other thing. Step one is ensuring that you have a strong sagittal foundation of muscles.
35:32And that's why even golfers that live are hitting the ball farther. So it's the muscles on the front
35:38side and the backside. Yeah. You know, they're, they're, they're showing you where they move and
35:42when they combine, they go up. So, you know, the other muscles are on the insides and the outsides
35:48for the most part, and they allow you to lateralize and turn and, and look like we want to be
35:54able to
35:54lateralize and turn with speed and power. But until you've solved for gravity first, you know,
36:00and then if you get stronger at solving for gravity up to a threshold, you're going to enhance the
36:05rotational athlete. So it's interesting. So people skip that all the time. It's funny because when you
36:10say that, when you say those sagittal muscles, that, that really just get back to the basics,
36:14basics, like bench, deadlift, squat. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like dominate those. And then you,
36:20then you can move on and do all the, the other stuff. Yeah. As long as you hold a baseline
36:25level
36:26of strength sagittal. I just want to add one note to my original statement on the continuum.
36:31I like to say, I do too. I do too. But just to clarify, when I say performance,
36:36you know, I'm talking about the baseball pitcher throwing a hundred fastballs a game. I'm talking
36:40about the high end of like ultra repetitive nature or the contact sport where you're just getting
36:49hit over and over football fighting, whatever it is versus performance of like really pushing
36:56yourself hard. Yeah. And I think that just to make that clarification, like I think over a lifespan,
37:02like you can really push yourself hard on cardio on a row, or you can push yourself hard lifting in
37:07the gym to be strong as if it's done intelligently, but it's not what I was talking about is performance
37:13is like the high level of athletics where you're really focused on one thing and one thing only.
37:18And by nature of doing that, other things are going to kind of not.
37:22It's funny you went with, I was just about to say with baseball is a good example for the longevity
37:28to understand what it means because nowadays, how many pitchers have, you know, a Tommy John?
37:34I mean, it's almost every single one, right? And it's because they're pumping every single
37:38guy in the majors throwing 98 plus a bunch of guys are over a hundred. This was not the case
37:43back in the
37:43day. So the longevity of the pitcher, they'd throw complete games. They'd throw 200 innings
37:49a season. No problem. They'd throw their pitch for 18 years. Nowadays, these guys have shorter
37:55innings pitched short. Nobody's throwing complete games. Nobody's pitching as many innings a year.
38:00Their career is probably, but the performance is going up. So the longevity comes down.
38:06Which is also funny enough, a con of very, there's a very similar conversation in the NBA.
38:10Now, LeBron is basically saying that basketball games are harder now, right? Because guys have
38:14to be more- They have to run more, faster.
38:16Yeah, right. And this is also the era of the Achilles.
38:20Yes. So the performance goes up, the longevity comes down.
38:22Do you guys think it is tennis that is a sport though? Is that the sport of longevity?
38:27I have no idea. I think that it's a bunch of, I think that tennis probably wins because it's
38:32people that are higher socioeconomic that can participate in it. So they're going to have
38:36better diets in every other part of their life. So you're going to get all of this crap epidemiology
38:40studies stuff that confounds people. And then they think tennis is somehow a magic bullet.
38:45For the record, that's what I said about our story, but going on.
38:47Yeah.
38:47Yeah. Meta analysis. I mean, listen, I could say something like, I mean, soccer, ultimate
38:53frisbee, any like a sport where you're just, it's a field sport, you're moving in multiple
38:58directions. It's very visually oriented, still reactive. I think that's a very important thing
39:03too, is to have some sort of reaction training in life. I think we get out of that. And I
39:08know
39:09things like running in high rocks, it's, it's just, you do the thing.
39:12Yeah.
39:13Yeah.
39:13Um, you know, when I was training Muay Thai for years, I never at the level of the Pat,
39:17but like, that was something that I got.
39:19I wasn't a great kickbox. I just push people in the corner, step on their feet.
39:23Fair enough. Fair enough.
39:24Yeah.
39:25Um, but it's, you know, it's, it's a, it's a action reaction. Um, and I think that's something
39:30too, that probably plays into account.
39:33I, Iceland is the longest lived population in the world right now.
39:36Huh?
39:37And I don't think they're playing a whole lot of tennis there.
39:40So I, I think, uh, you know, generally speaking though, you know, there's, there's too many
39:45variables to try to pin it down to something. And there's like, there's so many, but like
39:49Okinawa is always really high. I don't know if they're a high tennis playing community.
39:53It's like, you know what I mean? Like, there's just a lot of things.
39:55There's always a lot of variables.
39:57I'm not even a fan of tennis.
39:58Don't be, don't be sedentary. Don't be sedentary, you know, exercise on top of that. And you're
40:05kind of checking a lot of boxes. I think the one interesting thing you just said too, is,
40:08um, is reactive strength, right? Or reactive, right? And just the idea, because we, we do
40:13in the gym, that's the one thing you don't necessarily get. And you don't, and you don't
40:17get that in your day to day very often either. Right? Like when you're walking down the street
40:21and stuff like that, if there is one thing guys do in the gym for reactive strength,
40:25if we, if we, and I think reactive strength is this forgotten world, right? If there is one
40:29thing in the gym that we can give guys to do for that, what would it be? Would it be
40:34something like,
40:35you know, like, uh, like, like, what is it? Fast feet into like, you know, on-command burpee,
40:39but that's what requires two people. What do we do to help guys get that?
40:41Yeah. I mean, you, you need, you need some sort of partner, whether it's in real life or digital
40:48to tell you to do something that you have to react to. You could hit those lights.
40:52Do you build it into your, you know, I try to build some of it in sometimes and, you know,
40:56follow my hand, follow my, my body. It doesn't carry over on film as well as it does in real
41:04life.
41:05And I don't know the science behind that, but I just know it, it's not as engaging. So, you know,
41:10I like mixing things up. I'm always throwing in a couple of little surprises here and there,
41:13just to keep you on your toes. But again, you know, the, the, the mental reaction, you, you kind
41:18of need something or, you know, you need to set up an environment that, that, that allows that,
41:24whether it's a team sport, um, whether you're doing, you know, sparring with somebody throwing
41:28tennis balls at them and moving out of the way or video games can be very reactive as well.
41:33It's interesting too. Cause I think, I think also there's some cognitive benefits to that
41:36that people don't think of, right. When they get to do something reactive there,
41:39the trainer for a DK Metcalf for a while, one of the things he told me they did,
41:43they did, they would literally set up obstacles in, um, like a backyard or a field or something
41:48like that. Right. That way, instead of having to just go through football drills, he would be
41:52doing problem solving. Essentially he had to problem solve cause it would be different every
41:56time. Right. And I think it's interesting cause obviously we want to repeat motions in the gym.
42:00So we get stronger and more proficient at them. But I think having a little bit of like
42:05unexpected at the end of your program, again, it's not reactive, but I do think there's a lot of
42:08benefits to that mentally. There's no ability to improve reaction time. Yeah. There's an
42:14untrainable phenomenon and what happens in sports is pattern recognition by the brain. So you pick up
42:22cues and signals of what's happening and you process it faster and are ahead of it. You know,
42:28it's a learning sequence basically, you know, even just like chess and I just think it's an important
42:33learning sequence that people lose, um, over life. You know, there's a lot of like outdoor
42:40exercise seems to be more cognitively engaging for people as compared to the Stairmaster. So people
42:47spend more time in like doing things outdoors without realizing it. To me, it's like the answer
42:55is almost always more time doing the thing leads to greater improvements at the thing.
43:02You know, like if you want to win the spelling bee, guess what? You got to practice spelling
43:05words a lot more. If you want to change directions, well, you have to do change of direction drills
43:10and do them better. And that like usually involves a really wide base. You look at elite wide receivers
43:15when they're getting into cuts, they're like way out here with their feet. And none of us are going to
43:21have any chance being able to cover them. Like they just left us an hour ago and we're still
43:25standing there like wondering what happened because we're prepping for high rocks. Yeah. Right.
43:29But it's, you know, it's, it's, uh, again, it's specificity of time and, and then the brain
43:36recognizing previous experiences and doing it faster and over, over time for better predictive outcomes.
43:43So they're definitely like, I feel like 8 million different kinds of strength. Right.
43:47Yeah. Which I think is important too. Cause again, I think the, I feel like we've
43:50hit like a broad net today, but the one thing we did walk away with is like, it isn't just
43:54about
43:55muscle and strength are not simply and easily defined unless we want to keep them hyper,
44:00hyper simple. Right. There's a lot to it as we kind of wrap up here. I think what I'd really
44:04like for
44:04each of us to do is like, when we think about all around strength, right? If there was one message
44:09you had for guys about, you know, don't forget this as kind of like a component of strength. Like,
44:15what would that be? Mine is, I get, keep something that allows you to feel
44:22athletic and move in your routine. Um, and you have to maybe go outside of the lifting box for that.
44:29Uh, don't, don't lose this, you know, don't lose your resistance training. Um, don't lose your general
44:35cardio, but whatever it is, uh, some type of bouncing, some type of multi-directional movement,
44:42something fun. Uh, I think that's really an important part of being strong, um, and just
44:50capable. I, maybe the word is capable. Yeah. Um, in, in life, especially as, as we age, um,
44:57you know, patterns are important for building, building muscle and recognition, but kind of
45:03feeling the freedom to be able to move, transfer your body through space and not get hurt doing that.
45:09I, in, in my opinion, as I get older, it's something that I want to keep more and more,
45:13more so than my absolute deadlift strength at the end of the day.
45:17Got it. What about you, Pat?
45:19I'd say, uh, maximal strength is considered the mother of other forms of strength.
45:26So if you don't have a sufficient level of maximal force production, well, you can't have high rate of
45:32force development because you don't have enough force to begin with. So you need to, the,
45:37the mother has to be put in place first to be able to birth the other kinds of strength.
45:41Now, how strong is that? And like, we always say I'm like, is it a squat? Is it a, it's
45:47like,
45:47those are representations of strength, but they're not strength. Like they're just how,
45:54like how much weight can you lift in this exercise, which is aided by your dimensions
45:59and your leverages and all, all kinds of things. But if, if, if someone doesn't have a base of
46:06strength and we're trying to work on the children, yeah, you know, we're putting the cart before the
46:13horse. So the foundation needs to be put in before we worry about the electricity and the plumbing and
46:19all that stuff. It always starts. Yeah. It always starts with that basic strength, like,
46:23and, and aerobic fitness. That's the other base. I a hundred percent agree with basic strength,
46:29foundational movements, aerobic strength. Um, my perspective now is like, okay, speaking for
46:34myself, somebody who's like, I think I've built a decent base. Yeah. You've done it now. Um,
46:40now kind of go explore. So that was where my perspective on that answer was coming from. But
46:44if you're turned 45 and you've never walked into a gym, touched the weight, done a bodyweight
46:49squat in your life. Like let's start with the same as people worrying about their lactate threshold
46:53when they don't have any level of baseline aerobic fitness. Yeah. I think, I think my big thing is
47:00like a combination of both your ideas, right? It is like, I think it does still start with,
47:04you know, classic strength. Like everybody's got to get in the gym to your point. If you haven't,
47:08if you're 45 years old and you haven't lifted a weight, you know, probably time to start. Right.
47:11I think it is like, everybody needs to build towards those, that basic level of strength. And then from
47:18the first thing we don't do enough as a society is get outside and play, right? Whether it's like
47:23sport, whether it's, you know, playing around with the weights in some kind of different round way,
47:27whether it's hiding feet in the dirt. Yeah. It's like play and, but play like play in a real way.
47:33How
47:33many sets of play do I need to do? Uh, two days a week, two days a week though. Um,
47:39but I think it is
47:39like play, get out there and explore, um, different motions because that is like, I don't think it is
47:46tennis basketball. I don't think there is one number one sport, right? I think it is the thing
47:50that will give you the most benefit when it's playing in all the sandboxes. I think if they
47:54do that, um, and also check out the men's health strength span package, um, which covers all these
47:59strengths, although it's gotten a pretty hard critique today, then you'll have yourself covered.
48:03You have a great long life and stay strong, everyone.
Comments