Breaking Down the New ACSM Guidelines

Welcome to the Show. We are back with another exciting episode. This episode is going to be all about the new ACSM's resistance training guidelines. Also, we will touch a bit on exercise snacks. If a few of you do not know what that is, you are going to learn all about it, which I am excited about. Our guest is Dr. Lauren Shelton, a physical therapy doctor and the creator of Loa Movement, which is a fitness platform centered on longevity and the idea that movement should help us live better for longer, which I love. I’m excited you are back. I know that was a brief intro, but if you want to share a little bit about your background, that would be great.

Thanks so much, Anna. I am a doctor of physical therapy, as Anna just said, and I did an orthopedic residency at Mayo Clinic, Florida, and worked specifically with a population with hypermobility. I worked in the hypermobility clinic there. That can be really eye-opening to realize, like, “A lot of people are out here trying to exercise, but they are having a lot of pain while doing it.”

That is really what caused me to want to launch Loa, a platform that is really focused on helping people work out in a way that does not just exacerbate pain, because so many people are trying to work out, but they are like, “I actually feel pretty good. When I go to work out, it is when my back hurts, my knee hurts, or whatever.” That is my goal is to help people like, “Let us keep people moving. Let us keep people with strength training, but in a way that is helping them feel good.”

Which is so needed, preventing so much. I guess let us get into the new ACSM guidelines. For people, who I feel like is probably the majority, myself included, who have not read the ACSM guidelines, what would you say the big takeaway is for the newer resistance training recommendations? 

I really love that Dr. Stuart Phillips, one of the authors of the ACSM guidelines. He wrote a takeaway point, and he said, “Consistency beats complexity.” I just love that line. I did not even want to change it or try to make it my own. I just wanted to directly quote him because I think these guidelines did a really good job of saying things like, “If you cannot find a program that you enjoy and that you will stick to, everything else is pointless.” I just liked that it was really highlighted in the guidelines that way, because a lot of us are dealing with this information overload of all the information online, and some people just freeze up, and then they do nothing. It is like, “Consistency beats complexity. Find something that you can do and do it consistently.”

I also think it takes the pressure out of it, and it makes people more likely to actually move and get stronger. It makes it way less overwhelming. I do think, especially on sites like Instagram and TikTok and everything there, can just be like info overload. Just information paralysis. 

Every exercise to optimize this, or you are doing this wrong if you are doing this. I know we will touch on that tonight, but that is just not true. There are not like a million right and wrongs when it comes to exercise. It is like, actually, essentially in a really, really silly way, everything works. It is only when you are trying to, maybe you are an athlete who is trying to perform at a high level. It is like, sure. That is very different.

Tonight, what we are talking about, these ACSM guidelines, are for regular adults. We are not talking about someone who is trying to compete in Olympic weightlifting or be a professional basketball player. We are literally talking about average people who are trying to exercise to be healthy. That is just an important nuance because, if you are talking about an elite athlete, they might have to train differently. That is not what we are talking about. 

That is definitely the minority, not the majority.

For sure. 

Would you say anything has meaningfully changed, or is it more that they are just a little bit clearer on what actually works?

Originally, it has been a long time coming to be updated because it has been about ten years. I want to say it was 2017, so it has been about nine years since they have been updated, and the previous guidelines were just like, we want you to get like 150 minutes of moderate exercise. Movement basically, and then like strength training two days a week. They were just very broad. Nothing is wrong with that. It is not like they are wrong.

It is just that, like, it is not super helpful for someone who is actually truly looking for guidelines, because that could literally mean anything. Now, the new guidelines that just came out last month, March, 2026. They walked through, and they showed us, “Anything works. Resistance training of all kinds works, whether you want to use bands, whether you want to be in a gym, whether you want to do a home program, all of that works.” What we mean when we say everything works is that if you take somebody who is not doing any resistance training and define resistance training as it could be, it is loading your muscles.

You could be using dumbbells, or you could be using bands, like we just said. It is the reason we say resistance training versus strength training, even though oftentimes those are used synonymously, because technically, you might be resistance training with the goal of hypertrophy versus strength. Resistance training encompasses all of that. There is a lot of overlap there. Typically, when someone says resistance training, strength training, whatever, they are meeting the same thing, but that is why the guideline says that.

Back to what I am saying now, there is more information for people to be like, “Everything works. If you are comparing it to someone who is sedentary and not exercising, you could virtually do anything. It is going to improve versus doing nothing.” However, these new guidelines are saying, “Great, that is great. That should really encourage everyone to do something.” What if your goal is to really improve strength?

What if you really want to hypertrophy, AKA increase the muscle mass of a certain muscle? They go into different guidelines for those things. I can go ahead and talk about them now. For strength, they talk about really optimizing strength using a heavy load at the equivalent of around 80% of your one rep max, which is how you would want to train to optimize strength. There is a lot of nuance here, because that does not mean lighter loads do not build strength. They do. It just means the most direct route if you were like, Anna wants to really build strength when it comes to her squats.

The best way to do that is training around 80% of your one rep max. That means using your squat to the point where you are getting pretty close to failure in around six to eight repetitions. That is going to be around 80% or above for one rep max. However, going back to everything works, if you are somebody who is like, “I am just a regular individual trying to build some strength. I do not really do much right now.” You are like, “I am going to do some squats. I am going to do sets of fifteen.” That will also build strength. It is just not as direct if you are truly trying to optimize strength. Does that make sense?

No, it does. I also think it is encouraging for people who feel limited, especially for people who have bad knees or hips. Struggle with things. It is like, you would sometimes hear these recommendations, and you would be overwhelmed and not want to start because you are like, “I cannot do that 80%.” A lot of people can do the modifications. They can actually maybe do a lower load and more frequent reps. It is really encouraging that they changed it that way so that people can see the difference.

It is important to understand that it depends on the movement. This is why I will often have people with a lot of joint pain. I try to push them more toward isolated movements. I like to do isolation and compounding in my classes. You are getting a variety. If you were like, every time I load up a barbell back squat at 80% of my one rep max, like, I do not primarily feel like my glutes, quads, or hamstrings. I feel like my lower back. I would tell that person. I would be like, first of all, if you are not feeling the intended stimulus, you are probably not getting the intended benefit.

If you go and load up the barbell and all you feel is back pain, you are probably just hurting your back. That is an important thing, because I think there is this mindset of like no pain, no gain. People are like, “It hurts now, but if I get better and better at it, I will probably grow my glutes.” It is like, no, if it is hurting, it is hurting. There is a reason. It is probably because you are actually just loading your back, not your glutes. I tell people like that, it is like, Machines can be helpful, more isolated movements. You can work at 80% of your one rep max on a leg press machine.

That is where I think people just hear 80% of the one rep max, and they are like, “That is super heavy, and it has to be like a deadlift or a back squat.” It is like, “No. That is a percentage of your one rep max. You could do 80% of your one rep max for a bicep curl.” That might be holding a 15-pound dumbbell for some people. That is where I like to continue, that is where it is like, “Find what works for you so you can be consistent.” I am one of those people who like to be strong. Barbell back squats really hurt my knees. 

For so long, I tried to ignore that. It literally just got me in a place where I was in more and more pain. I like to tell people, “Just realize that it is a percentage. It is different for every movement. You can pick any movement and train in that 6 to 8 rep range to optimize for strength.” You do not have to train in that rep range to get stronger, but if you are trying to optimize. When we talk about hypertrophy, muscle growth, the guidelines for hypertrophy are around ten sets per muscle group per week. I was like, “When I got the guy in line, because I am like, that is actually a lot.”

If you think about it, like for me, on a typical week, I would say I am getting around 6 to 8 sets per muscle group per week. I like to do four 30-minute workouts. This is how I program on my app. Between those four workouts, you are going to hit all your muscle groups twice. Let us say you hit your chest on Tuesday, and then we hit it again on Friday. You are probably doing around 3 to 4 sets of chest in both those workouts. 

That comes to six to eight sets a week. There was a lot of chatter online about people getting discouraged. I had actually had a lot of people reach out to me on Instagram because they saw the new guidelines. They are like, “You are saying the guidelines say that I cannot grow muscle mass and like to increase muscle mass if I am not doing ten sets per week per muscle group?” That is where I really had to clarify to people, that is not what this is saying. 

When you actually look at the literature that they are citing to make this recommendation, there is a dose response to hypertrophy. This means that the more sets per week that you do, the more your muscles will grow. If you do two sets of chest per week versus four sets versus 6 versus 8 versus 10, you are going to get more muscle mass growth with 10 sets. It is obvious. It is not really that shocking.

No, it makes common sense.

What happened was that people saw that number, and people freaked out. First of all, the guidelines say around ten. You also have to remember that these guidelines are to optimize hypertrophy. The other thing is when you look at a lot of these studies, that ten mark is where the benefits of muscle mass start to level off because this is not a linear relationship. If you did twenty sets per week of chest, let us say, and someone else did ten sets per week of chest, you are not going to get double the muscle mass growth. It is not linear. 

Why I think the ten was chosen is because that starts to be where it starts to level off, where you are not going to get twelve sets per week, which is not going to be bumping you the way those first ten sets are. Take home a message there. It is really important to understand that I do not get ten sets per muscle group per week. For glutes and some of my bigger muscle groups, yeah, sure. I just taught a class today for our platform, where we did probably around 5 to 6 sets of glutes in that one class. Talking about hamstrings, we only did three sets. People do not need to stress about ten so much. 

However, if you were like, “No, my ultimate goal is to really grow this one muscle group.” You are someone who is really concerned about hypertrophy. Maybe that is just like, you are on a GLP-1, and you really want to preserve muscle mass or something. That could be someone who is like, you know what? I am going to really try to increase the volume of workouts per week. You have got to go over that consistency meets complexity. 

If you are someone who is trying to hit ten sets of every single muscle group per week, and you just get frustrated and burn out and stop working out, that is so much worse than being like, “I actually can achieve 6 to 8 sets per muscle group per week. That is doable for me in four workouts. I can hit four workouts per week. That is where I am at. I am like, “That is doable. I know I am still building muscle mass. I am still getting stronger. 

I am good with that. Not everything needs to be super optimized. We are just regular people.” That was my, like, when people would reach out, freak out on Instagram DMs, being like, “Lauren, ten sets per week. That is so much. I do not have time for that.” I am like, “That is totally fine. If you do not have time for it, then you do not have time for it. That is fine. You are still going to build muscle. It is okay.” That is how I like to talk about it.

I love that because it is just maybe our culture, and just very common. If you are trying to take care of your body and, like in the exercise realm, like to have this pressure of like, “Wait, no, I need to do it all. You get overwhelmed.” Especially like what you were talking about before. I remember there are so many like even exercise classes that I have been to where I am like, “This hurts. This is tweaking. They said to keep going. I need to do twelve. I might not quite be feeling it the way that they are saying, but like, I am hurting, so that has to mean I am doing something.” It is like, no, that actually means like you are injuring yourself. I would realize that, like a week, when the next week, like my back is out. I cannot work out because I was stupid.

You knew in the moment a little bit too. That is why I have really been loving this phrase. I literally was just thinking about it this week. What I said at the beginning here is that if you are not feeling the desired stimulus, you are probably not feeling the desired benefit. I do not think I lived under that. I do not think I have lived by that for the first twenty years of my life or 25 years of my life. I just truly thought, I do not know, the instructor is telling me to do X, Y, and Z. It must be benefiting me. Even when you are like, “This is really hurting.”

I know. Maybe it is just also my personality, but I feel like it would go into everything, not just strength classes. Also, if I am doing a yoga class, I am like, “No, I am making that stretch.”

One more main guideline to touch on that they talk about is power. The rest of the guidelines are more like, “Muscle endurance. They are just like most everything.” The specific guideline they talk about optimizing with strength. Remember, we said 80% or above if you are one at max. Hypertrophy, ten sets or more per week. Again, all of these, you will improve even if you do not do those exact recommendations. Power. They said to use a little bit lighter loads, so 30% to 70% of your one rep max, and think about moving quickly in the concentric phase, so the muscle is shortening. 

Let us say you are doing a step down. As the muscle is lengthening, as you lower down from a step, you might go slowly. You press up quickly to move back up. Let us use an example of a squat. If you are lowering down a squat, you would go slow with control. As you stand back up, you might move a little bit faster. I liked that. That was one of my favorite recommendations from the guidelines because I think it just made power training really simple. A lot of times, people hear power, and they think it has to be so insane, like the Playa routine. That is crazy for athletes or something. 

It is like, no, there is some value in making some sets a little bit lighter, not 80% of your one rep max, a little bit lighter than that. See if you can go a little faster. That is how I have implemented it in my classes for my app. We are going to do some movements where we are picking up a little bit heavier weights and challenging ourselves. Maybe we drop that weight, grab a little bit lighter weight, and we do a similar movement, but we try to move a little faster. Just really simple, but I think, yeah, really easy to implement. I like that recommendation a lot.

For people who work out, but like they are just getting into it, and they do not quite understand the difference between power and strength. How would you explain to a layperson how a layperson does not really work out, like what the difference would be?

Strength, you can think of it like how heavy you're trying to lift. When someone is really trying to increase strength, they are trying to lift the heaviest weight possible. That is a silly, most simple way to put it, but it is true. It is going to be dependent on the exercise. If you are like, “I really want to increase my strength with a bench press, a basic movement.” You are training in a way that you are like, I am training close to my one rep max because my goal in increasing strength is what is the heaviest I can do? I do think it is important that it is not super relevant to a lot of people.

If you are not competing in powerlifting and stuff, I do not really care what my run max is. Do I want to be strong? Yeah, but that is the true definition, which is when in the research and how we measure strength is what someone's one rep max is. How much can they lift? One time. How much can you put on that barbell and bench press? One time. That is the measure of strength. For power, there is a speed component. Can you take this object, and how fast can you move it? You have a weight, can you move quicker?

We see with aging that all of these things decline with aging. If you are not working out to mitigate these losses, you will lose strength, so you will not be able to lift as heavily. You will lose hypertrophy, meaning your actual muscle mass in your bones is going to be less. You will lose power. You are going to have a hard time doing things with a little bit of speed. The crazy thing that I think is super encouraging is that all three of those things can be changed, even if you are not specifically training for strength, hypertrophy, or power. Any weightlifting program will improve all three of those things. 

None of those things happens in isolation. Think about it. Let us just say you gave your parents. Maybe your parents do not work out, although I think your parents do. For the sake of this example, your parents do not work out. You are like, “They are never going to do Lauren's fitness app, even though I have been trying to convince them. I just gave them a circuit where they do ten squats and six push-ups or something, something random.”

The reality is they are going to not only, if they are not doing anything, and now they are doing that, by building strength with those movements, they will increase strength. They will increase some degree of muscle mass, hypertrophy. They will increase power because if you build some strength, that is going to allow them to move faster in life. That is why all three of those things do really overlap. The guidelines are just saying, “If you are trying to optimize one of those things, here is how you would train.”

Which I love. I do think if somebody were to pull this up and look at it, it could be overwhelming and be like, “How do I do all of this?” The average person would think, “Wait, I do need to do all of these.” It is like that is not what it is saying. When people hear strengths, training guidelines, how would you say that would look like them in everyday life, like over a normal week? How would people like to work that in?

As I was saying, how I like to break it down for my members is four 30-minute workouts, and between all of those workouts, they are hitting all their muscle groups twice. On Monday and Tuesday, between those two classes, we are hitting all of our muscle groups once, and on Thursday and Friday, we are hitting all of our muscle groups once. One of the things they really hit on in the guidelines is, “You really want to hit a goal like a minimum of two workouts per week.” When they were talking about that, they meant like you hit all of your muscle groups twice.

I have just found it could be really tricky. I am a mom, I have two kids, and I am a business owner. I am genuinely at this phase of my life, and I do not have time to work out for a full hour. It is just not going to happen. If you are only working out two days a week, based on the guidelines, if you are trying to hit all the muscle groups and do every two to three sets per exercise, you'll cover everything. Those are probably going to look more like one-hour workouts if they are like if you are trying to really hit what the guidelines are saying. That is why I really prefer four 30-minute workouts. 

However, there are studies that have shown that they took one exercise for every single muscle group. Let us say leg press for a hamstring curl. I do not know the exact exercises they use. There is one exercise per muscle group, and maybe chest press for the chest or row for the back. Bicep curls, triceps. You may have been around like 8 to 10 exercises, and they just did one set working close to failure. That would probably take 15 to 20 minutes. A few days later, they did that again. They only did it two times a week. They showed that these people made significant gains in strength and muscle mass. 

I do think that was super encouraging because it is like, is that person technically hitting the ACSM guidelines? No. If you are at a point in your life where you are like, “I can only work two days a week,” that is like, you could literally do 1 or 2 sets per muscle group, and you are still going to have noticeable improvements. That was super encouraging to me. I love that study. Brad Schoenfeld, he is one of the authors on that study. He is one of my favorite researchers. He is responsible for a zillion strength and conditioning studies. 

Literally, probably has more publications than anyone. I just love his studies because he's showing like, “There is almost no minimum.” How fun is that? It is like literally almost any amount that you are going to put in, you are going to reap benefits from. There is not really any low threshold. That is really cool. It is like, ideally, in a regular world, the best-case scenario, we are getting somebody working out. Four-ish days a week, around 30 minutes, and everything twice. If you cannot do that, you can do less, and that is so much better than doing nothing.

That is really encouraging. I am sure, like you, there are going to be people tuning in who are like, “Who can't do four 30-minute workouts?” There are going to be people on the other side who are like, “I cannot even do like, barely can do one 30-minute workout.” It is encouraging to see that even if you are just doing a couple, it actually makes a big improvement and has a big impact on your health.

It is helpful for, which leads us into the next question, but like for people who do not work out, I think it is also encouraging to be like, “You do not like tomorrow, then you have to have this insane workout routine to like make a difference.” It is like, actually, whatever change you are doing does make a difference. I guess, going into that, do the recommendations look different for somebody who is brand new to exercise versus somebody who has been exercising for years or trained for years?

I am actually going to say yes on this because it is not that I do not think that someone brand new should follow these guidelines. It is a bit much for somebody who has not established any consistency, because I work with a lot of people who literally do not work out prior to working with me. Maybe they join the half, and they reach out to me, and they are like, “Lauren, I have not been consistent with exercise in eight years or something like that.” I can think of a few people specifically that I have told, “I want you just to get consistent with two workouts a week.” 

Remember, my workouts are 30 minutes. That is like the equivalent of essentially, I want them to hit all their muscle groups at least once a week. They are not going to do an hour-long workout. They are not going to do. Thirty minutes is all they've got. Some of them are like, “I just cannot bring myself to do it more.” The reason why two is such a great number is that I tell them like one weekday, “If you have to work long hours at work, can you get up early or stay up late or find time one weekday and then hit one weekend day?”

That is why I think the guidelines could be a little bit different if you are just getting started, because I want people to build consistency there. Once they have built consistency, and I am talking like at least like a good three months of two times a week, they are in, no matter what, they have built that foundation. That is when I say, “Let us add on. Let us see if we can actually get you into these recommendations. Let us see if we can get you to get a little higher volume for a little more hypertrophy, maybe lifting a little bit heavier, challenging yourself a little more for a little more strength.” 

Having some moves moves a little faster. That is where I guess I would not say no, in the sense that the guidelines do very clearly say that anything works and it is okay. We do less. People would stress when they read the guidelines because there are a lot of specifics to be helpful. I would say at the beginning, “Do not worry about specifics. Show up two days a week, because that is what I consider the bare minimum to still see some change. Be consistent for three months.” We can start being like, “Let us start optimizing some things. Let us maybe add a third or fourth workout. Let us see if we can increase the volume here or there.” That is my recommendation. 

Again, I think that is just so encouraging. I am very glad that they changed it to show that anything really does make a difference. Especially in the United States. I know this can be a global issue, but I think movement or lack of movement is an issue. There are more and more jobs or desk jobs. More and more jobs are just sitting at a computer, not moving, not taking any breaks, versus like, back in the old days, it was like my laundry machine did all of the work for me. If it were like way back when, I would actually have to hand-wash all that. 

That is a lot of exercise. That is a lot of movement. It has just changed, and so I do think that as a society, we just do not move as much. If we're actually trying to make the time for it is very easy to just sit and not get that movement. I also think a lot of people get overwhelmed because they think they need to have this perfect exercise routine. If they are not going to the gym every day, then it is pointless. That is where this is really encouraging. I guess a lot of people get confused by sets, reps, and intensity. Maybe just explaining what the differences are. 

I actually love this question because some people think they know what intensity is, and they get really confused. At least from what I've seen, people like to reach out or comment on stuff on Instagram. I am like, I do not think people actually know what that word means in terms of how it's defined in exercise science literature. Let us start with sets and reps because those are pretty simple. If you were doing a bicep curl. We all know what that is. You grab the dumbbell, and you are doing bicep curls. You were like, “One, two, three, all the way to eight or so.” 

That is eight repetitions. Each time you do a movement, that is a repetition. Let us say you went over and did some chest press for eight reps, and you came back to bicep curls. Now you are doing a second set of eight repetitions. A set is a grouping of repetitions. Typically, in a workout, the most common regimen that most people see is three sets of 10. That means you did ten bicep curls, and then you did something else, or you took a break, and then you came back and did ten more. You took a break, and then you came back and did ten more. That is three sets of ten repetitions. 

Now, for intensity, this is where I think people get really tripped up. For strength training, intensity is talking about the percentage of your one rep max. Moderate intensity lifting is honestly what I mostly do. It is lifting between around 60% to 80% of your one rep max. High intensity lifting is like 80% or above, and low intensity is 50% or below of your one rep max. Here is where I think people think that intensity means effort or how hard something is. It does not. For example, let us say you were working at 60% of your one rep max. 

For our bicep curl example, let us say for you that it is holding like a 12-pound dumbbell. You work and work and work at 60% of your one rep max until you hit the point of muscle failure. That means you could not do another rep. That is going to feel really hard. You got all the way to the point that you could not do another rep. Now, let us say you rest for a few days. You come back, and you are like, “I am going to work at a high intensity. I am going to work at 80% of my one rep max.” You grab that 20-pound dumbbell, and you do bicep curls. 

Within a few reps, you are already hitting failure. You get all the way to that point of failure. In both situations, you hit all the way to that point of muscle failure. Both should feel very hard. They are both very challenging. Effort is high. One is considered moderate intensity, and one is considered high intensity. Intensity does not equal effort when it comes to strength training. When we are talking about the literature, and we say something is low intensity, that does not mean easy. It means you are lifting a lighter load for more repetitions.

If you were loaded up a barbell back squat at 50% of your one rep max, and I said, “Anna Marie, go do a hundred repetitions, that is low intensity.” That is going to be really hard. That is high effort. That is in the literature, actually, a really important distinction. I am glad you asked that question because what we see to drive change, the guidelines talk about this, as long as effort remains high, it does not really matter what intensity you are working at. We already talked about optimizing strength, want to lift at a higher intensity. 

If you are somebody who likes, “I have joint pain or this or that,” and you use a little bit of a lighter weight and keep that effort high, meaning you just do more reps to where it gets really hard, you are going to see benefits across the board. That is where I really like moderate intensity lifting. I feel I have a lot of joint pain, probably from all the insane stuff I did when I was younger, which felt terrible in my body because I did not listen to my body, and I just pushed through. I am very mindful of things like, “I would rather do a barbell back squat a little bit lighter weight and do a set of ten repetitions,” which is considered moderate intensity.

Most people do not get that. By definition, if you can do ten reps, you are already out of that 80% of your one rep max. If you did ten reps and you are getting close to muscle failure, that is going to feel really hard. Whereas I just do not love loading up a barbell back squat and hitting failure in five repetitions. It would take so much weight to do that that it usually ends up really hurting my back and my knees. For me, I am not trying to feel fear monger because there is nothing inherently wrong with that. 

Some people feel great about that, and I encourage those people to do that. For me personally, it does not. I am not saying, “Heavy back squats hurt your knees.” Nope, that is not what I am saying at all. Please do not confuse that. I am just merely saying there are going to be certain people that I am like, “That just does not feel good in my body.” It is like, great, as long as you keep effort high, do not worry so much about the intensity. You can use different weights and different rep ranges and play around with the intensity, and just keep that effort high.

Which I love because I mean, everybody is different. That is the other thing that I also liked about these guidelines, which is that I really think consistency is so important, and then any exercise that you do, how it has an impact is important. Everybody can be more aware of their own body and how they respond to different exercises, and they can make adjustments and not feel like, “I am missing out on all this benefit because I cannot do what the person next to me is doing.”

It used to be like, especially in exercise classes, like that was like the mentality of, “No, this is what you need to do. If you modify something, you are weak. I think it’s a good reminder for everybody that everyone's bodies are different. You are going to respond to things differently in terms of things like one exercise that feels great for me might hurt you a lot, and one exercise that you love might hurt me. It is nice to have that freedom to be like, “You actually can still have significant improvement even when you are adjusting things, and like the intensity can be different. 

That is why I actually really pushed back on this online, like this narrative, because for so long, I felt like a failure because I am like, “I am a doctor of physical therapy and I cannot barbell back squat at like 90% of my one rep max.” I would force my body to do that. I really believe that is like a huge reason why I dealt with so much knee pain and stuff, because I just felt like if I could not do that, how could I be this like an expert in exercise? If I can barbell back squat at 90% of my one rep max. It really got to me and upset me. 

Now I am like, “I do not want other people to feel like that.” That is why I talk about this so much. I am like, “What is wrong with loading the barbell at 70% of your one rep max and doing more reps than the person beside you? What does that matter?” I just stopped letting it define me. It sounds so silly, but it really did affect me mentally for so long. I am like, “Dude, I am a doctor of physical therapy. I am over here.” That is my message to people is other regular people feel like me, and they want to feel validated that what they are doing is beneficial for their body, because it is. I really push back on that narrative.

That segues into the next question overlaps. Do people need to train to failure? Until you feel dead and completely.

I was actually shocked at how much this was highlighted in the guidelines that you do not need to do that. People are also confused online because people were like, “What? Every single physical therapist and trainer has been talking for years about hitting failure.” Yes, but no, I think people do not really hear the nuance. People say they are approaching failure. You must approach failure. That is what we were talking about, keeping that effort high. That just means getting several reps away from failure. In our bicep curl example, if you picked up like a 2-pound dumbbell, as you could literally do 100 reps, you are probably still not going to feel like it is very challenging.

Effort was still going to be low. Does that make sense? Effort has to be high. You do have to approach that point where you're like, “The reps start to slow down. They start to feel challenging.” You need to get all the way to the point where you physically cannot do another rep, AKA failure. No, that you do not. You need to approach failure. 

The way I like to define it for everybody, because for whatever reason, I think failure in people's minds is just like how they feel, unless they are just absolutely destroyed on the floor, that they did not do anything. That is not what that means. It means that you fail the movement with good form. The way I like to really word it is if you are doing a movement, if the last two to three repetitions feel very challenging, you are good. 

That is all you have to worry about because that means you are approaching failure. You just want to make sure you did not end the set being like, “I could have done ten more. That is probably too light.” If you are doing a set of ten and you end at the set and you are like, “I could have easily done ten more.” You probably need to go up and wait. That is where it is just like, “As long as those last few reps are challenging to the point that you feel like you have to slow down in speed, that is a big one.” 

If something feels really hard, you cannot just knock it out really fast.” If you had loaded up that barbell with 70% of your one-round max, and you are doing 8, 9, and 10 should still feel pretty tricky. You're like, “I pushed myself.” You are good. You do not have to work all the way to failure. You want those last few repetitions to be hard, AKA approaching muscle failure.

When people are just focusing on results, what would you say would matter the most? Lifting heavy, getting close to fatigue, or just being consistent?

First, you would have to define what the result is that they want. I do think if someone was saying, and this is where strength training is very specific. The said principle Specific Adaptations to Impose Demands that principle is always arranged through because if you were like, “What's the most important out of those three when it comes to strength,” I would probably be like, “Honestly, like probably lifting heavy.” 

If your goal is to lift the maximum possible, then lifting heavy. If across the board, you were saying, what's the most important for just health benefits for the average adult, I would always say consistency. All three things are important, but consistency will always win. Doing one workout every other week is never going to move the needle. Really got like that minimum of two workouts a week, I believe, is really the minimum to actually move the needle on like, “I am getting stronger. I am building some muscle.”

I also think, unless you're in high school, college is really young where your body can take more abuse. It is unlikely that you are going to be able to lift super heavy, like once, and then in three weeks lift super heavy and get anything out of that apart from injury. I also think that is where it is.

Consistency is still going to win. That is such a good point.

A high schooler probably can get away with that. I know I could not.

Dude, I would just like to walk out of class fresh from like zero warmup and be like, “Let me see what my one rep max my back squat is.” Now I would like to die or something. 

Now there is no way.

Explode. 

What did the guidelines say about resistance training for older adults?

This is a great question because I think there is a lot of narrative online that's like older adults, specifically like women in menopause, that gets targeted all the time. You need these, like specific training protocols and guidelines. What we have seen is not true. Even, believe it or not, in menopause, going through menopause, post-menopausal, pre-menopausal, women can build muscle the same. There is no difference.

I love that, because I feel like everything on Instagram right now is telling me, “If I have not built all the muscle right now, it is going to be like a good jillion times harder later. I can maybe build a little bit.”

That is not true at all. They have, literally, just. I am new to studying. I was actually just looking at it today. Another one from Dr. Stu Phillips that I was talking about. He was talking about this specifically. The reason why you see all these declines in menopause is the same as you see declines with regular aging. They were correlating it to just people. It is like when most people are aging, as you advance in years, you begin to become more inactive, more sedentary, and then muscle wasting, all of these things happen. VO2 max goes down, meaning your cardiovascular fitness or strength. 

What they found is that it literally was not related to menopause. It was just regular aging. If you are post-menopausal, you want to go and start strength training regularly, you are going to see the benefits that you would have seen prior to menopause. You are going to respond the same. You do not need a menopause specific program. You do not need a specific program for older adults. These guidelines that will work for you in your 20s will work for you in your 70s and 80s. It's just incredible because it really takes the pressure off of things like, “I need this specific protocol and do this and do this.”

It's like, “No, you do not.” Literally, resistance training works for everybody. There is no such thing as someone who is a non-responder to resistance training. You put someone through a 12-week program, 100% of people are going to improve in strength. It's just not possible. That's how the body responds so well, which is so cool. I do think it should be said. It does not mean that menopause does not impose certain challenges to exercise. 

For example, if you are having a hard time sleeping at night from hormone changes or hot flashes and joint pain and stuff, is that going to create barriers for you to be consistent with exercise? Yes. That is not. That's very real. In the same way, you would probably have barriers in other parts of your life, like going through residency or postpartum. It's like, “I am sleep deprived. My body is not feeling as good as it is.” It does not mean that you do not respond to strength training. It just means like, “You're going to have to be hypervigilant about listening to your body and not pushing through something that's painful.” 

We've talked about it multiple times already tonight. It's just helpful for women to say, “4 I will benefit from strength training.” If I've had a night where I did not sleep at all, maybe I do a dumbbell class that's low to the ground. I'm mostly lying on the ground doing chest presses and some glute bridges and things because you might be too exhausted to be doing a bunch of standing heavy movements. I think that's where it's just like, “Nope, you do not need a specific protocol, but it does not mean there are not going to be challenges.”

Listen to your body. Again, do not try to be like me, I feel like how I was always taught and raised. Just push through. If you're not struggling, and again, some struggle with lifting weights as needed, but not hurting.

Not in pain. You want effort, and you want to be tired from your muscles. You do not want your joints to feel pain. 

I find that encouraging because I do feel like Instagram, I feel like all of the reels lately have been all about like, “You're not going to be able to grow your muscle. You need to do it right now.” Again, you do need to do it right now consistently.

You do need to do it now. 

They make it seem like it's going to be this impossible thing once you hit menopause. I also feel like it is the other thing that I always see that comes up, which is like how you have to have a specific exercise around, like when your period, and like, please. 

There is no literature to support this. 

I know. The number of times I have actually had people ask me about this, and I am like, again, common sense. Listen to your body. You're going to have days where you're really tired. Maybe you are really cramping from your period, and you did not get good sleep or something. Yes, in that aspect. Lay down when you are doing your reps, take it a little bit easier, but that is just like the common sense of listening to your body. It is not that you need a specific workout, like during this phase of your cycle, during this phase of your cycle. 

What if you showed up for your workout and you felt amazing, but like, “I am on this specific phase, and this phase means I should take it easy.” It is like that makes no sense. It truly makes no sense. Some people are going to be heavily affected by their cycle. Others are not. I am going to be so honest with you, I am thankfully just one of those people who make zero difference for me. The thing that affects my workouts way more than my cycle is how tired I am. It would make no sense for me to be like, “I am on my period, I should take it easy.” 

Why? If you feel good, you feel good. It is crazy. It is so marketable to tell somebody, “You do not know what you are doing in the gym, and you need my specific cycle syncing program,” or “You do not know what you are doing in the gym, so you need my specific menopause program.” It sells to say things like, “Actually, you are a moron, you do not know what to do, you need this program.” It is like, no, you do not. I even tell people with my program, I am like, “There are a million programs out there.”

If you are someone who loves CrossFit, and that is what will get me in the gym with the community, I would be like, “Do that.” I have a lot of members who are like, “No, CrossFit hurts my joints, and your workouts on the Lowa app are what get me consistent.” There are different things for different people, and not everything is going to work for everybody. Not everything is going to be the same things that motivate people and keep them consistent. I just want people to find that for themselves and be able to be consistent, whether it is my app or someone else's. It is really not rocket science.

What I love is that yours is actually based on science and data and studies, which is great.

I do like to read, that is true, I do like that. 

What would you say is a minimum effective dose for someone who wants results but does not want to spend their life in the gym? Which we talked about a little bit.

I would definitely say two times a week. At least hitting every muscle group once is probably going to be a minimum. That one set that I was talking about, where they did one set of everything, they did it for two days. Technically, they hit two sets of every muscle group per week. It was on two separate days. There is not really a study out there that is saying, “If you just hit all your muscle groups one time per week.” 

However, systematic reviews say that, like overall volume for the week, it is what counts. If you were doing two 30-minute workouts, let us say, and you were at least getting three sets of every single muscle group, that is definitely going to do something compared to doing nothing. I would say probably minimum two, and hitting all of your muscle groups at least once, with about three sets. That is probably the minimum

I love that. Now we are going to segue into exercise snacks, which is one of my favorite things, but I think they have been like a big buzzword lately. What are exercise snacks?

Exercise snacks are really just a very brief bout of usually a cardio movement. Does not have to be. That is most of the studies. It is showing somebody quickly running upstairs for twenty seconds or hopping on a bike and doing a max effort sprint for 30 seconds. That being said, that is the workout. It is very different from what we would traditionally think of. You would go do cardio for 30 minutes or sprint intervals for 12 to 15 minutes. You would go do a strength training program that is going to take you around 30 minutes. We are talking about something that is around one minute or like one to five minutes. Honestly, some of them, if you do not include the warm-up, we are talking like 20 to 30 seconds. Super short. 

Why do you think the idea has taken off so much now?

First of all, I really feel like a big thing was COVID, and having people all of a sudden, everyone is like sedentary work from home jobs. They had access to maybe a stairwell at their house, or maybe they had a bike, like a Peloton or something. 

They could not go to the gym anymore because it was closed.

Researchers are always like, “Wait, exercise science people, like how can we help people move without it? How can we knock down all the barriers, basically? How can we get someone who does not normally exercise to do something, and will it have a meaningful effect on their health?”

It sounds like they are research-backed. Would you say that they are backed by good research, or do you think they are just being like, now it is just all like the Instagram hype? 

I will talk about a couple of studies. One of them looked at a warmup where they did, they warmed up, they did a 22nd sprint, and then they did a cool down, and this was on a bike. They spread that out over morning, noon, and night. It was over the course of a day, with around one to four hours of rest in between. 

As if they were sitting or working on their computer, and then they would just go to their bike and then come back.

Literally, yeah. They would be like, “Let me go to my bike. They made them briefly warm up.” Honestly, I think it is just because in the study, they wanted to cover their butts a little bit and not have someone like, honestly, if you are doing one 20-second sprint, I do not know. If I were doing this in my own practicality, which we will talk about a little bit, like how to integrate this into your life, I am not going to be warming up. I would be like, hop on my bike, 20 seconds, all out, boom, I am done. They did that three times in a day, though. There was at least one to four hours of rest in between. The other group did three 20-second sprints with a couple of minutes of break in between. It ended up being about a ten-minute workout. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Both of them were just doing three 20-second sprints a day. One of them was doing them all together. One of them is doing them spread out, which is really cool, because that is like a 20-second workout. You know what I mean? Whereas taking 10 minutes in the middle of a workday might be really challenging. Being like, at one point, my husband had to work from home for a job. They would literally get like five-minute breaks to go potty and stuff like that. It is like, “Dude, you could easily knock out a twenty-second sprint interval on that. He actually did stuff like that.

I will talk about that, but he did do that. What they saw is that the group that did the three separate and spaced them out still had a 4% increase in their VO2 max. The group that did all three together had a 6%. Both of them had a statistically significant increase in VO2 max. It was slightly more when they were all together, which makes sense. They are doing a ten-minute workout versus spreading out twenty seconds. It is pretty cool that spread out still had a statistically significant increase in VO2 max by 4%. They were doing it three days a week. Not even every day. 

I thought that was super cool. Granted, 4%, is this taking the place of a full fifteen-minute sprint and overall workout, or a 30-minute jog? No. It actually is moving the needle. Really knocking down the barriers with people like, “I totally remember like in residency when I had absolutely zero time.” Actually, this is when my husband and I were into it. We were very into it. We had a little garage gym. I would get in two strength sessions a week. I would do one weekday and one weekend. It was literally all I could do in residency. There was no free time, unless I was cutting into sleeping hours.

I remember I would try to do an exercise snack. I would be at work. I remember I was a physical therapist, obviously. I was working with patients, and there was equipment everywhere. I would literally, at lunch, run over to a bike and just do a 30-second sprint, be like, boom, that is it. That is all I have time for. Is that better than doing 15-minute sprint intervals? No. No one is arguing that. 

It is still doing something. That is cool, because a lot of people would be like, “What? 30 seconds? That cannot possibly be doing anything meaningful.” It is like, “No, it is.” Another study, I really like this one because to me it is more related to something someone could do at work. They did three flights of stairs as fast as possible, about 60 steps. They did it three times per day, and then again three times per week. 

Similar to the other study. That would be like, let us say, on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, they were at the office, I am just giving an example, and they ran up 60 steps as fast as possible. They did that in the morning, around lunchtime, and then maybe like 3:00 before they got out for work. They just did that on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They saw that those people also had improvement. I want to say that was one they noticed around 5% improvement in VO2 max.

Nice, really? That much?

Yeah. It was still a percent improvement, a statistically significant percent improvement in VO2 max. Do not quote me. That one, either 3 or 5. I would have to look up that exact study to remember that specific number. I am positive it had statistically improved.

Makes me feel better because in the hospital, I call them long-call days, but you are in the hospital for twelve hours and stuff. A lot of times longer than that. Anyway, it is a smaller hospital, but there are three flights of stairs. There is actually one spot where there are four, but it does not go anywhere. That is what I do on my breaks. If I am just like, I just need to get up and move because I have been sitting and writing my notes and doing orders and stuff, and I have a little break, it is like, “I can do 30 seconds, and I can, or usually the flight of stairs takes me a little bit longer because I will do it a couple of times.” I love that it actually was studied.

That was literally the exact study that they did, which is actually why I like this one. This one was a little bit different because they compared it to controls who were just not doing it. Of course it was better than the controls, which I mean, that is still really awesome to be like, “The person that is like putting in those like one to two minute little bouts here and there is actually having a significant improvement in VO2 max, which is like shocking almost because you are like, “That is like not much, but also it was doing something.” 

I will maybe link the study POIDs for people to look up after, and if they want to look at the specific numbers here. I want to say it is around 5% to 5%. Increase in VO2 max. I remember it being very similar to the other study, which saw around 4% increase. I just think that is so cool because it is just knocking down that barrier. There are a few things. Someone could be like, “I work at a job where I have to wear dress clothes or whatever.” It is like, “That can be tricky. Maybe you are not running up the stairs.” 

The reality is, even in dress clothes, unless you are in high heels, even in non-ideal clothes, you could be like, “I am just going to go up these three flights of stairs pretty fast.” I can think of many times where maybe it is less than ideal, but if you have a gym at your job and there is a bike that might be even better than someone trying to do flights of stairs, just putting on what they are wearing right, maybe a bike would be more effective, or not more effective or more accessible.

We just talked about it, but in terms of it sounds like they can be as short as twenty seconds. 

Honestly, that is like a lot of the ones that they were doing sprints for, like 20, 30 seconds.

That is wild. I was thinking it was like at least a minute. 

No, I think the reason why the literature, like it says, “One to some minutes is because when you actually look at the protocol, they were warming up for like a minute, and then they did like a twenty-second sprint, and then they cooled down for like a minute or something. It ended up being like three total minutes, but it is like, no, they were really just sprinting for twenty seconds.

That is always why, honestly, I was like, “I am going to do this flight of stairs a couple of times because you have to go down to.” I was like, “The same.”

The stairs were literally three flights of stairs. That is it.

That is great.

That is because I specifically was reading this one because I wanted to make sure I had some specific numbers for three flights, and it said the equivalent of 60 steps. That was it. They did that three times a day. They did it one time, three times a day. That is like, “That is very doable. You could do 60 steps.” You could definitely do 60 steps in under a minute because it is not going to take you one second per step. Probably about 30 seconds.

I guess like, I obviously think it can make a difference in your health, but do you think a few minutes of movement here and there really will change your health in a meaningful way?

I actually have a few things to say about this because I do think it is important to clarify, and we already did, but it is like, this really is not taking, like, you are not going to be hitting the guidelines for cardiovascular health. You need 150 minutes. It is like the guidelines for cardiovascular-like movement. That is also, we are talking about 150 minutes, including walking, like light to moderate activity. However, I really feel like these can be very helpful if someone is like not used to doing sprint intervals or like pushing their body hard cardiovascularly.

It can be quite a barrier to be like, “Let us get on the treadmill or the bike and do twelve minutes of intervals. Intervals, if you are really pushing yourself, a twelve-minute workout, that can be a crusher. I feel like the thing that these exercise snacks really do is they take someone who is maybe not working out or maybe otherwise would not work out that day, and is actually providing a stimulus of, “Wait. I can just do one really hard sprint and then rest for a few hours, come back, another really hard sprint.” 

It does not have to be back to back to back to get the benefits. That is where I find it to be really helpful for someone who is just like, “I just have not built up that tolerance.” Cardio is miserable for me. I absolutely hate it. It could be like, “What if you just did one sprint and then you came back a few hours later and did another one?” That just seems so much more accessible. The other thing is, talking about a meaningful difference for the health, sure, it improved VO2 max by like 4% or 5%. That is really cool. The other thing is that it improves cognition. 

Any time you are breaking up sitting, it is different for you because you are probably doing rounds on the floor. Same with me when I was working in the clinic as a physical therapist. I was not sitting that much because I was demoing exercises and walking around. If you have a true desk job, which many people do, you are truly sitting on their computer. The difference they are going to feel in blood sugar control, let us say they do an exercise snack right before or after lunch, in improving circulation, it is not good for the blood pools in your legs. 

That is when you fly, your risk for DBT goes up. You do not get that pumping of your calves to help with that venous return. We need to look beyond just the cardiovascular benefits of being like, “What was that cool increase in VO2 max?” No, literally, people showed improved cognition. They came back, and they were not feeling like they could actually be sharper at their job. 

They had better blood sugar control and better circulation. It is more than just cardiovascular fitness. For those reasons, I would advocate that it is highly effective. Any single thing you can do to break up really long hours of sitting is going to be beneficial. Our body, like sitting, is not bad. We just do not want to sit consistently for eight hours without moving. Our bodies were made to sit.

Sitting is not going to be, it is fine. Sitting is great. We are sitting right now. It is just like, “I do not want to sit for eight hours.” If you have a job that is really like other than your lunch break, you are sitting. If you could motivate yourself to do some exercise, snacks, and maybe you only did it on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and you just did a few, like three per day, I think that would be massive dividends in your health beyond just cardiovascular fitness. 

As you said, I also think that people would see how much it helps because, like that is a lot of times, especially on the longer days when I am at work, that is when I do them more because I am stuck in the hospital. It can just get like your brain gets tired. It is like a lot of thinking that I am having to do. It is like taking care of patients and like making critical care decisions. It is like, but even just that little bit of running the stairs, like it really, actually makes a huge difference. If people are like, wait a minute, this is doable. They start doing it and say, “I actually feel a lot better when I do this.”

Oxygen heart pumping, like blood gushing, like rushing, like yeah, that is, your body is all of like, “Let us do this, let us wake up, we are ready.”

Now, do you see this helping with strength, too, or not as much? 

From what I could see, there is not a lot of literature on this in terms of strength. Most of it was like short little bouts of cardiovascular exercise. However, I do think I would make the case for, are you going to make massive gains like muscle mass or strength by doing something like a one-minute strength workout? No, you are not. In the same way, you are not going to make a massive gain in VO2 max. If someone is training for a half-marathon, we are not going to tell them to do exercise next. We are going to be like, “No, at a certain point you are probably going to need to go on like hour-long runs if you are trying to.” 

It is not going to take one for the other. I would, it is scary. I would be hesitant to be like, “It is not really going to take the place of strength training.” However, if you are a day and there is no way I am going to hit the gym. I honestly think it would be amazing to go over, do a wall sit, do a few squats, literally something as simple as, “Let me do 10 squats, 10 pushups, and go back to your chair.” That is the greatest thing about exercise. If people leave this podcast with one thing, I want it to be this. Exercise of all kinds has a dose of response. Meaning the more you do, the more benefit, but even a little bit has a little benefit. There is no such thing as “You did 10 squats. There is no benefit. You had to do at least 20 for it to do something.”

It is like, no, literally everything does something. If you are going through a phase in your life where you are like, have no motivation to work out or no time to work out, could you just make a couple of little things? How could I fit a couple of little cardio exercise snacks into my day, or a couple of little bouts of squats and pushups, or just something super simple, no equipment, just that you could be like, I can fit in a couple of minutes here and there. That might just get you to the place where you are like, “This is not that bad. I would actually like to carve out some time to do a 15-minute workout or whatever.” That is what I really like there. 

We talked about it already, like it should be more of a supplement, but it definitely makes a difference. What would you say if somebody had a desk job? We talked about the stairs, so that is a great one. Most people probably do not have a bike. Are there any other exercise snacks that come to your mind for people who are in an office? Some people at home might have access to their Peloton or whatever bike they have. Some people might have that, but not everybody.

Most people are probably not going to want to stand up at their desk and do like a bunch of jumping jacks and squats if all their coworkers are sitting right there. Maybe, but like some people I do not know, I think it would be hard to be consistent if it were like every two hours. 

The squats are always the ones that I see, and I will do them at work, but usually it is like when my room is empty. Like, “I’m doing my squats.”

That is what I was going to say. Like, “There is Anna Marie back every two hours.” I was literally going to say, "This sounds so silly,” but I totally remember when I was sitting a lot. Actually, it was in physical therapy school because I was like, “Wait, when was that? I never had a very sedentary job in physical therapy school.” It was very sedentary, because we would be at an eight-hour lecture. I remember I would go into the bathroom stall and literally do 10, 20 squats before I use the bathroom, because no one is going to see you.

I just felt like, actually, you can be consistent versus, I do not know, it is weird if you are at an office and you are that person that is always doing random squats and stuff. That is an option. I also think a lot of corporate jobs, if you are working in an office, are starting to have gyms now. It is like, “Can I run to the gym for lunch?” You do not need to do a full workout.

It does not have to be a 30-minute thing. If all you have time for is a couple of exercise snacks and some squats and stuff, that is all you have time for. That is going to do something. I also think I really encourage people, if you truly work from home, work from a desk, and look on Facebook Marketplace. Get a bike. Get a rowing machine. Get something so that you can incorporate some of these little bits of movement during your day, and just break up the sitting. I cannot stress it enough, break up your sitting. 

Again, there is the added benefit of usually being more productive because you are getting all the blood flow, and it really helps you know in terms of how your brain functions. Is there ever a point where you think it just becomes like, you are doing this exercise snack, but it is too light or too random, where it is like, “Why are you doing that?”

No, I do not think so. I really do not. Are you going to be able to see a noticeable change in muscle mass by doing random ten squats? No, but like we were talking about, not all benefits have to be VO2 max or muscle mass. Can be like we just said, improve cognition, improve circulation, like blood sugar control. All of those things are meaningful, even if it is not something that you are going to be able to physically see. A lot of us Americans are very obsessed with aesthetics and stuff. It is like, “That does not necessarily mean something was effective, as if you can see some physical change in your body.” Exercise does a lot more than just that.

Would you say there are people who should be cautious before jumping into these short, intense bursts of exercise? 

Obviously, goes without saying if you have any heart condition or anything like that. I think sprinting, like if you were trying to do your exercise snack on a treadmill, I think it could be challenging with zero warm-up to go to like an all-out twenty-second sprint. I do really like a bike for this reason because I feel like a bike or a rowing machine. For me personally, when I do sprint intervals, I feel like I just do not have to warm up that long. I can cycle for like 20 seconds and do a 20-second sprint, boom, that is still less than a minute. 

Whereas I feel like running, for most people, can be a little bit trickier. If you have just been sitting at your desk for three hours and you hop on a treadmill and you are trying to do an all-out sprint, it could be a recipe for a pulled hamstring or something. Maybe you want to walk a bit, jog a bit, and do a 20-second sprint. That is why I do the running machine, the bike. I just do not think it typically requires as much warm-up. I do not think anything crazy. Do not think most people, just common sense. 

No, I would agree with that. Think more like common sense. Even people who are like are struggling with things, it is like they are going through what is difficult for them. Is still going to make a difference then. They are doing more than what their baseline would have been. Also, just like listening to your body and everything. How would you look at combining formal strength training with exercise snacks? Like a realistic weekly routine? 

I was actually thinking of it before we got on this call. Taking back to my example of residency, I think that was a really good time for me to relate to people who say things like, “I truly do not have time to work out.” The reality is that it is not just like a cop out. We are like people working full-time with kids and stuff. I get it. There are literally times in your life when it is from the time I wake up, the time I go to bed, right now, with two kids and my job. 

I do not have just like three minutes in my day. I do not just sit down and relax for a minute. That never happens. Sure, I hope to get it when my kids are a little bit older. I am hoping to have some time in my day where I can relax. It is really true. We do not all have the same 24 hours. Lauren at 25 did not have the same 24 hours that I have now at 33. I had tons of free hours. I went to the gym and worked out for an hour out of pure enjoyment. 

I say that to say, if you really think about it, that time when I was in residency, where I really felt like there was just no time in my day to work out, I still was like, I remember very vividly, one morning a week, I hated it. It was awful, but I would get up at 5:30. I would work out for about 30 to 45 minutes, and I only did that on one weekday, and then I would work out on a Saturday. Surely I did not do cardio because I straight up did not have time. I would like exercise snacks on the bike at work. I would randomly, for a few days, we would get a cop on it.

I would do like a twenty-second sprint and then like a break. I would do that three times. I did not like the idea of having to come back to it later in the day. Granted, I did wear physical therapist shoes to work and stuff like that. That was helpful. That is like a great way to combine it and saying like, if you are someone who is just like, I am at a point in my life where I just genuinely do not have time to exercise, but I know I need to be doing it. If you could commit to like two 30-minute strength sessions, and maybe just look at a couple of days a week that you can fit in some exercise next, and get a little bit of cardio. 

That is going to be so much better than doing nothing. I think it will also make it a lot easier when you transition into a phase of life where you are like, “Have a little more time. I really want to prioritize this. I want to start working out four days a week.” It is going to make it so much easier, because you have already built this tiny base and just given your body that exposure. Funny story, I worked with a coworker one time who wanted to start running. She had never run before. She used to tell me that what she was doing to get herself to start running was put on her shoes, put on her workout clothes, tie her shoes, go outside, and she would go on a three-minute run. 

I was like, “What?” She was like, because for her, she was like, the hardest thing is to get out the door and get started. She was like, “I would tell myself I want to do three-minute runs a week.” Everyone can do that. Everyone can go on a three-minute run. She would say, like, half the time, she would go out, and she would be like, wait, this is not that bad. 

She would end up going for a twenty-minute run. She was like, and some days I would literally go out and I would run three minutes, and I would be like, “Great, that is it. I would go home.” It was crazy because I was like, “I have never thought of it like that.” That is my mind, what exercise snacks do for people. It knocks down that barrier of like, do you tell somebody like, “I just want you to get in the habit of going on the treadmill and doing twenty minutes of sprints, or like jogging three miles. 

A lot of people are going to just be like, “I just cannot do that. That is just like, I am too tired from work. That sounds awful.” Whereas if you told somebody, like, “Can you go to this bike and do 20 seconds all out, they would be like, “I can do that.” I look at it as just giving your body that exposure. You stop thinking of it as this torturous thing. You can build a little capacity. When you do want to start working out a little bit more consistently and adding more time, you have already built a little bit of a base. You have built some exposure there. 

Again, it goes back to consistency. I just think it helps build that consistency. It is like if you are just going out and you are like, “This is a day where I have heard a different analogy where it is like somebody just goes and drives to the gym.” You can get in your car and drive for minutes, but you do not have to go. They actually get used to the pattern of just like, because that is the hardest part, the door, and like the drive. Half the time when they are there, they are like, “Wait, now I am going to the gym.” It is like building that consistency. 

That is similar, like whether it is with exercise snacks or even resistance training. If you are able to, at least consistently get a pattern. When you are working out, it is a lot easier to build up. I also think it gives people a little bit of grace. When you go through super hard seasons. Where you do not have that same time. That is similar to working full-time jobs with little kids, with, like, it is just like life is insane. It is as if you are able to show up for some of it consistently,  then it is like, there might be a week where, like, “Wait, you, my parents are watching the kids more and helping out.” Now I get to go work out more. 

You have already made that habit of showing up. Yeah, I agree.

It is like then your body is more ready because you have already had this base of strength. A lot of times, people get overwhelmed. They just think, “I am not going to do anything.” That does the opposite because then you are just going to lose all the strength. At least with consistency at a minimum, you should like to stay where you are. A lot of times, as we talked about, you are still going to make some improvement. It might not be like the huge improvement you will make by going to the gym like six times a week and doing all the sets and reps and stuff, but it is still going to be an improvement. What do you think people are getting wrong right now when they try to follow fitness advice from social media? There are so many things.

All of these specific programs that we touched on earlier it is just being overcomplicated. You do not need to cycle sync. You do not need to do a menopause-specific workout. You do not need to do this crazily. It is honestly just simple. You need to do some movements, and when they start to feel easy, go up and wait. In a few weeks or months, when it starts to feel easy again, go up and wait a little bit more. It is like, it is literally that simple. As we said, everyone is a responder. Everyone can get stronger. 

The thing on social media is just like, there is all this fear-mongering and hypersensationalization of everything has to be a specific way. It has to be this or that. It just makes people feel like. The big one that really irritates me is like, “You have to eat breakfast before you work out. Otherwise, you are spiking your cortisol, and it is worse than if you did not work out.” That is absolutely not true. First of all, exercise by itself spikes your cortisol. It is temporary. That is literally what it is supposed to do. If you are, “I just do not have time to eat breakfast before your workout.” That is totally fine. 

There are so many different people where it is like, “I have to eat before I work out or else I am going to get sick.” There is another half that is like, “If I eat, I am going to get sick.” It is like, so you are like telling at least like 50% of that group.

That is the one that frustrates me the most because I am just like, do not give anyone any reason not to show up for their workout. Do not ever tell somebody that they might as well not work out if they cannot eat before, because some of the people who spread that message online are not saying that verbatim. They are not saying, “You might as well not work out if you cannot eat.” 

They are implying it with the viral reels that are like, “Fasting workouts do not work for women.” It is like, “What?” If you go and lift weights on an empty stomach, you are still going to get stronger. Do I want you to chronically under-eat? Obviously not. You need to refuel. You could do that after your workout, too. That is just so frustrating. Fasted workouts do work for women, men, and everyone. They are just regular workouts. You just need to go fuel yourself after. That irritates me.

I know. I feel like there is so much. I know we talked about it on the other podcast that we did together, but as that woman can only lift heavy or else like nothing is going to make a difference for your bones. Your bones will just turn straight brittle. That is the other one that gets me because people believe it, and they are like, “All this work that I have been doing is nothing.” It is like, “No. It is great. You have been doing so much, and it is making a difference.”

I literally have talked to one of my mom's friends. Actually, I did not talk to her. I talked to my mom, who was talking about it to friends. I was talking to my mom through them. She basically had stopped working out because she had literally listened to a podcast with a very prominent figure in the health and fitness space who had said, “Women, especially after menopause, should half-lift heavy or else it is not doing anything.” She was just like, “I guess I am not doing anything because she was lifting heavy, which really hurts my joints and my back, and I have a bad back.” She stopped working out. No joke.

It is like the exact opposite. 

I literally wrote a blog debunking a lot of the claims from this particular podcast that she had listened to and sent it to her to get her to start working out again. I was like, “This is a straight lie.” Sensationalized messaging sells. It is like, “Unless you are following this very specific protocol, you might as well just do nothing.” They are like, “Either do nothing because I do not want to buy that protocol or whatever, or they are selling it.” It is just like that. It really frustrates me. That is where I realized that misinformation is actually pretty harmful. It is not just like, “They should not say that.” It is like, “No.” Literally, you are making people think that unless they are squatting 80% of their one rep max, it might as well not show up when all of the literature says otherwise, like literally all of it. 

Also, there are so many people, and I feel like everybody needs an exercise baseline. Everybody will benefit. I especially like the group where it is, as you get older, your joints tend to hurt more. Overall, it tends to be harder to exercise. I feel like that is a group that can be targeted by this because they are like, “That is so unattainable for me.” What they can do, which would still have huge benefits for them, ends up not happening because they get this false message that it does not matter. This is probably part of it, but what is one thing you wish more people understood about strength training and just everyday movement?

Strength training would probably be that it really is pretty simple. I like my workouts to be fun, have a lot of variety, and I educate during them. The reality is that people think it has to be some crazy protocol. This is one of the things they talk about in the guidelines. You do not need something like periodized. I can never say that word. A protocol that is like, this week one through six you do this, and then 6 through 12 you do this. It can truly be as simple as you do a grouping of movements, and then when they start to feel easy, you go up and wait. 

It is genuinely that simple. If you do not want to think about it at all, there are plenty of apps for that. Come join Loa. I will take all the thought out of it for you. If you are like, “No, I do not want to work out with a video. I just want to do it at my house with this one dumbbell.” It is like, “Yeah, you can do some squats. You can do some push-ups. You can do some wall sits.” There is no barrier. It is all going to be helpful. When it starts to get easy, add a little weight. General movement, I would say something that really moves the needle is adding in just regular movement.

Not even like cardio workouts. Especially when it comes to weight management and metabolic health, if you are sitting all day and then you go do a 30, 45 minute workout, that is still sitting all day, and that is not good. We know that that is not great for health. It is like trying to figure out ways to just get movement in the day. For example, this is silly, and I get that I work from home now, and I have two kids, so this is not feasible for everyone, but for my life. When I go to the playground, I try not to just walk with my kids. 

We walk across the street, and there is a playground about a half mile from our house. We go all the time. When we get there, I make a conscious effort not to just sit on the park bench and scroll my phone. I am running around with my kids. A, I want to be present because I love them and they are cute. B, I am like, “No, this is movement. This is an exercise because I may not have time for a cardio workout today.” I think people oftentimes think cardio has to be this devoted time where they are jogging on a treadmill. It is like, “No, go on a walk with a friend today. I almost always have a meeting with someone we are going to walk together with.” 

Instead of sitting at a coffee shop, maybe we can do that after, but like, “Let us go on a 45-minute walk first and then sit down and grab a coffee.” Walk around in the grocery store. In as many ways as possible, you can just fit movement into your daily life. Even just like vacuuming it. How many times have I been around my house, sweeping my dirty floors, like sweating? Like that is exercise. That is cardio. I think just encouraging people, like, “Can you just incorporate more movement in your day? It does not even have to be formal cardio workouts.”

I 100 % agree. It just goes back to the more movement, the better. It all makes a difference. I think that is very encouraging. This was such an awesome episode. I am so glad that we got to talk about all this. Much fun as always. 

I hope everyone can now rest assured that the ACSM guideline is not telling them they all have to do a bazillion sets and this and that and all things. It is like, no. It is very simple. 

That was great. Hopefully, we will get to do another one soon. This was so fun. As always, this is not intended as medical advice, but for educational purposes only. Thanks so much for joining us on this episode. 

Thank you. Bye, Anna.

Bye. 

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