How & Why Women Should Strength Train & Do Less “Cardio”

00:00:00.000 | I'm a big believer in people, everybody getting ideally two or three resistance training sessions

00:00:09.200 | in per week and two, maybe three cardiovascular training sessions per week. That would be

00:00:15.500 | ideal. I'm very frankly delighted that nowadays there's such a push for women and men to resistance

00:00:21.820 | train. That wasn't the case when I was growing up. I recall taking my sister to the gym for

00:00:26.940 | the first time. I think she was the only woman in the gym when we were in high school. We've been

00:00:32.140 | talking about training, but we haven't really spelled out what you would suggest a novice,

00:00:37.840 | perhaps an intermediate resistance training, cardiovascular training program would look

00:00:45.340 | like in broad terms. I realize we don't have time here to get into all the nitty-gritty details.

00:00:49.840 | You've written about this elsewhere and we'll refer people to those terrific resources in the show

00:00:54.340 | note captions, but what would you like to see women doing? Maybe we can break up the age brackets

00:01:01.880 | because it sounds like this is something that is resurfacing again and again here. Women, let's say

00:01:07.320 | 30 and younger, women 31 to let's say 40, and then let's say 41 to 60, and then maybe 61 and on.

00:01:17.880 | In terms of how many sessions of resistance training per week, is it whole body training,

00:01:22.780 | how many sessions of cardiovascular training, and what sorts of examples could you give?

00:01:27.820 | Yeah. If we're looking at that 20 to 30-year-old, a lot of times I really try to get them to focus on

00:01:34.940 | the whole movement aspect first. We phase them in. Same with older women. Phase them in, learn how to move,

00:01:41.500 | learn complex movements, so that when you are going in to do resistance training, preferably three to four

00:01:47.960 | times a week, you can look at moving well, and it doesn't have to be a long period of time. If you're doing

00:01:54.220 | to failure, which works really well when you're younger, to increase strength and a little bit of hypertrophy,

00:01:59.980 | you're going to have to spend a little bit more time in the gym, so it might be 45 to 60 minutes.

00:02:05.260 | When we're looking at doing that four times a week, you can add in a sprint interval training at the end

00:02:11.380 | of one of those to get that super high intensity, or you can look at putting in, at the most, two hit

00:02:17.380 | sessions on separate days. If you're training specifically for something, so if I work with a

00:02:24.140 | lot of endurance athletes still, and they're like, well, how do I fit it in? It's like, okay, well,

00:02:28.640 | we look at the quality and how that fits into your training. So if you're training for a marathon,

00:02:33.820 | you're training for a triathlon, or other endurance stuff, you can take that high intensity work and put

00:02:39.220 | it into your training program. So ideally, we look at three to four resistance training with really good

00:02:46.260 | movement when we're in the younger set with two high intensities. When we start getting into our 30s,

00:02:54.600 | we start having an eye to how are we actually doing that resistance training. Instead of just going and

00:02:59.720 | doing a circuit, we're really focusing on let's do some compound movements. Let's look at doing some

00:03:05.660 | heavier work. Let's look at how we are periodizing. So we're having, you know, six week blocks and we're

00:03:11.800 | building on those blocks because we want that base foundation. So when we get to be 40 plus, we can

00:03:18.240 | actually go and do our power-based training. If you're in your 40s, you've never done resistance

00:03:23.780 | training at all, then we take between two weeks to four months to really learn how to move well,

00:03:32.380 | because there's a higher incidence of soft tissue injury and overall injury as we get into our 40s

00:03:38.980 | because of perturbations of estrogen. And ideally, when we get there, we're looking at that around three,

00:03:45.300 | minimum three resistance training with compound movements and either one sprint interval or two sprint

00:03:54.220 | intervals and one hit in a week.

00:03:55.660 | And just to remind people, compound movements, multi-joint movements, squats, deadlifts, chin-ups, rows,

00:04:01.040 | overhead presses, bench presses, et cetera, as opposed to isolation movements where only one joint is moving.

00:04:07.400 | Yeah.

00:04:07.840 | Yeah. And for everybody in all those age ranges that you describe, are you suggesting they train

00:04:16.020 | the same muscle groups three or four times per week, or they do some sort of split where it's upper body,

00:04:20.840 | lower body, take a day off, or upper body, take a day off, lower body, take a day off, whatever,

00:04:25.000 | what might work for them?

00:04:26.400 | Yeah. What works for them? If you're looking for short amount of time in the gym because of busy lives,

00:04:32.640 | then you can split it. If you're looking at, okay, well, I can allocate an hour to an hour and a half

00:04:38.160 | in the gym, then you can do total body with adequate rest. The key when you're younger is working to failure.

00:04:45.460 | The key when you're older is working heavy. Interesting.

00:04:49.260 | Yeah. So when we're looking at working to failure, we're trying to get more of that lean mass growth

00:04:54.740 | with strength. When we get older, because it's so difficult to put on lean mass, we really want to

00:05:00.900 | focus on the strength component because that becomes more important when we're talking about longevity.

00:05:07.360 | Because if you're looking at the strength component from a central nervous system standpoint,

00:05:11.840 | we see it feeds forward into better proprioception, attenuation of cognitive decline.

00:05:18.300 | And this is the other thing that you in neurosciences would understand, the sex differences in things like

00:05:24.480 | dementia and Alzheimer's. There's some really interesting research looking at strength training

00:05:29.440 | and that power-based stuff when we're getting into our older ages because we get more neural growth patterns

00:05:36.100 | and more neural pathways.

00:05:37.460 | Even some interesting literature about emphasizing some unilateral movements as people get older,

00:05:42.880 | not just dual limb movements or dual limb simultaneous movements. You always want to

00:05:47.260 | train both sides of your body, folks. But so if I understand correctly, younger women should

00:05:54.080 | train to failure, try and generate strength and hypertrophy. As women get older, they should

00:06:00.160 | emphasize more strength training, leave some repetitions in reserve, but train heavier.

00:06:04.180 | It makes so much sense what you're saying. Because what we know about the nervous system as we age is that

00:06:12.120 | there's some atrophy or at least some weakening of neuromuscular connections and the upper motor neurons

00:06:18.060 | in the brain that control the neuromuscular connections in the spinal cord out to the muscle.

00:06:22.300 | There's something really sticky about this idea in terms of longevity that I don't think anyone else has ever said.

00:06:29.840 | No, the thing about it is men age more in a linear fashion, whereas women, we have a definitive point

00:06:37.460 | in our late 40s, early 50s, where all of a sudden things go to shit, where it's that perimenopausal state.

00:06:44.360 | And I can't tell you how many emails and DMs I get in a day from women who are like,

00:06:49.220 | I'm 46 or I'm 47.

00:06:50.780 | I'm putting on body fat. I don't know what's going on.

00:06:53.740 | I can't sleep.

00:06:54.540 | And then we say, it's perimenopause.

00:06:56.380 | They're like, what is that?

00:06:57.340 | And so when we're looking at perimenopause, it is a huge change in the body because you're having

00:07:05.640 | less and less of your sex hormones circulating.

00:07:08.060 | More and more anovulatory cycles means no progesterone or very low progesterone.

00:07:13.440 | You're having a difference in the pulse of your estradiol to those flatline aspects.

00:07:19.040 | And because every system in the body is affected by it, this is why you see more soft tissue injuries.

00:07:24.020 | Like two of the biggest things that women who are in their 40s are going to PTs about are frozen shoulder

00:07:29.400 | and plantar fascia.

00:07:30.220 | These are two really indicative issues that are happening in perimenopause.

00:07:35.240 | So that whole section of mid to mid 40s to early 50s is a definitive aging point where I really

00:07:44.240 | tried to get women to get into the heavy lifting and get into the patterns of polarizing their

00:07:48.960 | training, not putting an emphasis on zone two, just really looking at how am I polarizing?

00:07:54.640 | How am I affecting my central nervous system?

00:07:57.060 | So that when they get into that one point in time of that perimenopause, their body is already

00:08:03.520 | conditioned for the stress that's coming.

00:08:05.600 | Whereas men, we see that kind of stuff happens in their late 50s, early 60s.

00:08:10.960 | So the soft tissue injuries, the change in body comp comes at a later time.

00:08:16.120 | So yes, looking at how we're scoping our strength training, definitely something to think about

00:08:22.900 | in a longevity factor.

00:08:24.320 | But for women, there's a better indication of the timing across the ages of when you should

00:08:29.700 | start implementing.

00:08:30.720 | For men, I think you have a better bandwidth of when you should start implementing.

00:08:34.980 | My observation is that most women sort of, unless they know better, default to cardiovascular

00:08:41.480 | exercise as opposed to resistance training.

00:08:43.540 | So if a woman in her 40s, late 30s to let's say 50, is doing two to four sessions of resistance

00:08:52.760 | training workouts per week, and they also really like cardio or they feel they want to or should

00:08:59.560 | do cardio, should they be careful about how much cardio they're doing?

00:09:03.580 | And is there a best form of cardio?

00:09:05.280 | Should they really emphasize the high-intensity interval training?

00:09:08.300 | Should they avoid zone two?

00:09:10.380 | We should probably also define for people what zone two is if they don't already know.

00:09:14.240 | So I am notorious for slamming things like Orange Theory and F45 because they market specifically

00:09:22.180 | to that age group of women.

00:09:23.700 | And it's not appropriate because it's not true high-intensity work.

00:09:28.360 | When we're looking at women who are really trying to maximize body composition change and longevity

00:09:34.420 | and unfortunately default to cardio because they think, oh, that's going to help change

00:09:39.160 | my body composition.

00:09:40.040 | It's going to help me lose body fat.

00:09:41.460 | It doesn't.

00:09:42.720 | Is this things like soul cycle as well?

00:09:44.580 | Yeah.

00:09:45.120 | Okay.

00:09:45.200 | I've never done any of these.

00:09:46.580 | Yeah.

00:09:46.900 | But I imagine there's a lot of spinning, a lot of moving, a lot of sweating, and a lot

00:09:50.740 | of, quote unquote, calories burned emphasis.

00:09:53.900 | Yes, there is.

00:09:55.200 | But it puts women squarely in moderate intensity where they're so used to leaving one of those

00:10:00.760 | classes feeling absolutely smashed that when you tell them, actually, that training doesn't

00:10:05.780 | work for you because it's putting you in a state of intensity that drives cortisol up.

00:10:10.740 | But it's not a strong enough stress to invoke the post-exercise growth hormone and testosterone

00:10:16.460 | responses that we want to dampen that cortisol.

00:10:19.640 | So this is why we have that hyperbole of women who are in their 40s plus shouldn't do high-intensity

00:10:25.960 | work.

00:10:26.360 | It's like, well, actually, they shouldn't do moderate intensity.

00:10:29.640 | They need to avoid that.

00:10:31.040 | Polarizing, absolutely.

00:10:32.580 | That's what we want.

00:10:33.700 | We want true high-intensity work, which is one to four minutes of 80% or more.

00:10:39.580 | Or if you're doing sprint interval, it's full gas for 30 seconds or less.

00:10:44.080 | And you're doing that a couple of times a week.

00:10:46.540 | You're not doing it every day because you need to have enough recovery to hit those intensities

00:10:52.680 | truly because those are the intensities that are going to give you those post-exercise hormonal

00:10:58.740 | responses to drop cortisol.

00:11:00.200 | When we're looking at women who are like, oh, well, I love going out for hours and hours on

00:11:06.740 | my bike and I love, you know, doing my spin classes, it's like, okay, but we need to look

00:11:11.960 | at the big rock here.

00:11:12.900 | If you are looking for longevity and body composition change and cognition and all those things, you

00:11:19.180 | have to polarize your training and that has to be the focus.

00:11:21.960 | But soul food, like I come up with a long background of endurance.

00:11:26.840 | I now love riding my gravel bike on the weekends for long periods of time, which is not optimal

00:11:31.700 | for me, my age, that kind of stuff for all the things that I want to see improvements in.

00:11:37.980 | But mentally, it's great.

00:11:40.260 | So when we talk about going out for that long stuff, zone two is at low conversation and that's fine

00:11:46.540 | for mental health and being out in nature.

00:11:49.720 | But for optimal health and well-being, we don't want to do that.

00:11:54.260 | We want to look at resistance training as a bedrock and true high-intensity work to help with body

00:12:01.920 | composition change, metabolic control, insulin sensitivity, brain health, and dropping that

00:12:08.020 | cortisol.

00:12:08.360 | So you've mentioned polarized training.

00:12:11.300 | If I understand correctly, this would be a woman doing three or four days of high-intensity

00:12:16.920 | resistance training for 45 to 60 or 45 to 75 minutes per session.

00:12:22.660 | And then at the opposite extreme, maybe just walking a lot or jogging a lot.

00:12:29.560 | So is that what you're talking about, polarized training, as opposed to these other forms

00:12:33.840 | of training where it's designed to get people sweating like crazy, breathing hard for long

00:12:39.340 | periods of time, but neither putting them in the landscape of inducing muscle strength adaptations

00:12:45.060 | and hypertrophy adaptations, nor really taxing the cardiovascular system enough to create an

00:12:51.360 | increase in longevity, for instance.

00:12:52.960 | When I talk about polarizing, I look at the high-intensity strength.

00:12:56.760 | That's really hard on the central nervous system.

00:12:58.940 | And then we look from a cardiovascular standpoint of doing true high-intensity work.

00:13:04.020 | So the walking is more of the recovery.

00:13:07.240 | So if you're going to go out and do something long, it has to be very, very easy.

00:13:12.740 | If you are looking at cardiovascular and you want that big sweat, then we are talking true

00:13:19.040 | sprint interval training.

00:13:20.720 | So what I have a lot of women do is a 20-minute lower body heavy set, and then they'll go on

00:13:28.120 | the assault bike and do as hard as they can for 30 seconds, and then recover as much as

00:13:33.660 | they need to, to go then do another 30 seconds as hard as they can.

00:13:37.780 | Most people go, oh, I can do four or five of those.

00:13:40.640 | After two, they're completely gassed because it's that hard of work.

00:13:44.260 | And that's what I mean by polarizing.

00:13:45.840 | You have very, very low intensity for recovery and super, super high intensity for metabolic

00:13:52.060 | and cardiovascular changes is what we're after.

00:13:54.660 | You have very, very low intensity for recovery and super high intensity for recovery and super high intensity.

How & Why Women Should Strength Train & Do Less “Cardio” | Dr. Stacy Sims & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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