Exercise Coach

Workout and Recovery Secrets That Actually Work

Jared Van Bruaene — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 01:00:44 +0000

Season 2 / Episode 53

SHOW NOTES

Are you sabotaging your strength gains without realizing it?

Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher continue the Series on the Principles of Exercise Design. In today’s episode, they break down the concept of inroading, explain how every workout triggers both fatigue and adaptation, and reveal why recovery is just as important as effort.

They cover how to maximize strength gains, avoid plateaus, optimize training frequency, and use your body’s natural recovery cycle to build lasting progress.

Dr. Fisher explains how inroading works. It’s the immediate fatigue you feel when a muscle is pushed to true effort. That short-term drop in performance is exactly what triggers long-term adaptation.
Dr. Fisher highlights why you always feel weaker at the end of a workout. The workout itself isn’t where strength appears; it’s where the demand for strength is created. Your body waits until you’re resting to build the improvements that lead to more strength.
Amy reveals why inroading is such an important part of strength training. It lets you reach the deeper layers of muscle fibers that light, easy reps never touch. And once you can reach those fibers consistently, your long-term progress becomes far more predictable.
Dr. Fisher explains the two phases every workout goes through. First, you feel the immediate drop in energy and strength, and that part happens instantly. The second part, the repair phase, is quiet, slow, and where all the positive changes take place.
Dr. Fisher highlights the problem with insufficient recovery.
Dr. Fisher explains how strength gains come from a simple pattern. You give your body a clear challenge, then you get out of the way long enough for it to respond. When that cycle isn’t interrupted, your progress becomes steady and consistent.
Amy covers how long most people need to recover from a hard session. For many, that window sits somewhere between 24 and 48 hours, especially after real effort. That’s why back-to-back strength days tend to do more harm than good.
What long-term research says about training frequency. Two workouts a week hits the sweet spot where your body gets enough stimulus but still has room to recover. You can grow with once-a-week sessions too, but going past two rarely adds any new benefit.
Dr. Fisher explains how outside stress affects your progress in the gym.
Poor sleep, emotional strain, or a stressful week at work drains the same energy your workouts require.
Amy covers why the best personal trainers pay close attention to recovery when designing a strength plan. They know the workout is only half the story, and the real improvements show up when your body has time to adapt.
Dr. Fisher highlights why consistency wins out over intensity. Showing up twice a week across months and years outperforms short bursts of extreme effort followed by burnout.
Amy explains what actually happens after a workout ends.
The session challenges your muscles, but the growth happens later, when you’re resting and not even thinking about the gym. If recovery is high-quality, every return session should feel just a bit stronger than the last.
Dr. Fisher covers why extra sets aren’t the secret to growth. Once every muscle fiber has been recruited, more work doesn’t add more stimulus; it only adds more fatigue. And that extra fatigue delays the recovery you depend on for strength gains.
Dr. Fisher explains why doing more exercise isn’t the same as doing better exercise.
According to Dr. Fisher, making up for missed workouts is a trap. Doubling your workload because you skipped a session only leaves you sore, tired, and drained for days afterward.
Learn why simple, focused workouts beat complicated ones. A handful of well-chosen exercises taken to meaningful effort provide everything your body needs. Once that stimulus is delivered, more volume just becomes noise.
Amy covers the repeating cycle behind effective strength training. You challenge the muscle, you give it space to rebuild, and then you return slightly more capable than before.
Dr. Fisher explains how a good personal trainer will use inroading to push you just enough for growth. It’s not about doing more work than necessary, but hitting the right intensity so your muscles are challenged. Then, with proper recovery, each session builds on the last, and progress becomes consistent.
Dr. Fisher explains supercompensation in a way that actually makes sense. A hard workout drives your performance slightly below normal, but recovery lifts you above that normal line once the repair is done. And that rise above baseline is where the gains hide.
Dr. Fisher highlights what it really means to train smarter. You put in the right amount of effort, protect your recovery, and let those small improvements stack up. Over time, that balance takes you much further than grinding endlessly in the gym.

Mentioned in This Episode:

The Exercise Coach – Get 2 Free Sessions!

Submit your questions at StrengthChangesEverything.com

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Some people will certainly recover quicker. Some people will be able to do workouts much closer.

They’re going to see quite a bit of progress if they allow the stimulus to happen and that recovery to happen. Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, We will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training.

And now for today’s episode. Hey, thanks for joining us today on the Strength Changes Everything podcast. We are in a series on principles of exercise design. And within this series, we’re breaking down concepts that your trainer is going to implement in designing an exercise program that’s going to be the most safe, effective, and efficient exercise program you could potentially engage in. Today’s topic we’re going to discuss is inroading. What is inroading?

Why is this important for our strength gains and to see that continuous progress over time, which is really our goal at the end of the day, building up that strength to reach the genetic potential we have as we get older. So Dr. Fisher is with me today. And Dr. Fisher, I’m super excited for you to break down this concept and teach us all about what inroading is.

Yeah, this is an interesting concept and I think this really helps people to understand maybe how their workout formulates an adaptive response, especially over the longer term. And as previous, I’ve put together a few slides, so if you’re listening to this, this on the podcast, I’ll do everything I can to describe it. But if you can go, go watch this on YouTube, the images, obviously the old adage is a picture speaks a thousand words. And I definitely think the image sort of helps with, uh, with this, uh, theory. So on the screen right now.

We have an x -axis, which is time, and time is generic. It’s not marked with days, hours, or weeks, or months. We can think of it in terms of all of those things, really. And then our y -axis is fatigue or adaptation. So obviously, time is set midway up that y -axis. If we think of anything above the zero line, above the line that marks time, that would be an adaptation.

So that’s positive. Anything that’s below that line is fatigue. So that’s a degree of inroading. And that’s what we mean when we talk about inroading. It’s a fatigue or a negative, an acute negative response to a workout or to a stimulus. When we do a workout, we are weaker at the end of the workout than we were at the start of it.

The workout itself is not we don’t get stronger during the workout, the workout is a stimulus for adaptation. So I’ve shown on the screen a sine wave and it drops down to signal that we are weaker at the end of a workout and then it goes back up and it recovers back to basically a baseline level and then it moves above the baseline level to show super compensation. So every single workout we do can have a positive response. It can increase strength, it can increase muscle growth, and we’ve talked about numerous health benefits of course. So we know that every single workout has a negative and immediate negative response in our energy levels, but of course it can have a positive response over time. What we need to do is think about how we apply our next workout based on time.

So if we have insufficient recovery, then we effectively are training too quickly after our previous workout. So let’s say I train on Monday and now I come back and I train on maybe Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning. And it’s, you know, barely 36 hours. So I’ve maybe recovered from the first workout. I’m back to my baseline but there’s certainly no degree of supercompensation. So I get the same strength index that I got previously or I lift the same weight for the same number of repetitions.

It’s effectively a mirror image of the previous workouts where I’ve recovered from that initial fatigue but I’ve not allowed any degree of supercompensation. And of course, many people experience this and often we think about this in terms of a plateau. Now we’ve talked about a plateau on previous podcasts. So this is not to say that every plateau is a product of trading too, too close to our previous workout. Uh, we know that adaptations are not infinite. So we know a plateau is eventual to some extent, but we’ve talked about that a bit previously.

So I’m not going to get too far into that. But ultimately, if we keep training just that bit too early, where we’ve allowed recovery, but we haven’t allowed any adaptive response, it looks exactly as it does on the screen. And this is for sine waves that curve down, curve up, and then effectively curve down and up again and down and up again and down and up again. So we’re, we’re always recovering back to our baseline, but we’re never allowing time to adapt to the workout with a degree of speed. compensation.

Okay, so this is if we keep strength training too frequently, we’re basically only getting barely back to baseline and then digging back in and fatiguing ourself again and then getting, instead of stronger, we’re just getting back to baseline over and over and over. So we’re doing more work for less benefit, is that fair?

Yeah, that’s that’s completely fair. That’s completely fair. And of course, this is only maybe looking at our strength or our muscle size increases. We probably would still get many of the health benefits that we would expect from strength training. We would certainly get things like myokine release and we might see reductions in blood cholesterol or blood glucose or blood pressure or things like that. But of course, we’re not seeing our increase in strength because we’re simply not allowing time for recovery, for adaptation.

So we can then think of it as one end of the spectrum is what if we have that perfect stimulus recovery. So now I look back at the same curve and we have our sine wave which shows it, it decreases down during or at the end of a workout. So we’re in a state of fatigue, but then it increases above baseline to show super compensation. So what if we train at that very, very peak of the curve now? So if we train there, then now our fatigue after a workout might return us to our baseline, but then we can curve back up again to show an adaptive response. So now we have effectively two degrees of adaptation or two degrees of supercompensation.

And of course we can carry that on and say, well, if I then train again at the perfect time, then I have a third degree of adaptation of super compensation and we can continue that on infinitely for all intents and purposes and say, if we always trade at the perfect we’ll just continually get stronger and stronger and get bigger and bigger up to our genetic potential and up to our kind of natural limits.

So Dr. Fisher, really quick question for you. So what is the perfect recovery time?

Yeah, that’s a great question. So we know that for most people, fatigue is typically 24 to 48 hours. So I would never advocate somebody training in back -to -back days. I would say that there should always be a day’s recovery between workouts. I typically would think most people should take two days recovery between workouts. And I think Three days recovery between workouts is probably better still.

So, hence two workouts per week. And certainly there’s a huge body of research, most of the research that’s looked at training frequency has said two workouts per week is optimal. Training more frequently is certainly not beneficial and training less frequently might not produce the same adaptive response. but can do this, some evidence to say you can train once per week. Uh, so, you know, we can, we can certainly afford to take more rest than we typically think. Um, most people, uh, who engage in strength training probably train too frequently rather than too infrequently.

Um, now it’s worth clarifying, and I will get into this at the end, that we can think of strength training and resistance exercise session as a stimulus, as a stressor. So we look at the fatigue response on the curve. Well, if we don’t get much sleep, that will delay recovery. If we don’t have good nutrition, that will delay recovery. If we have other stresses that cause an increase in cortisol, which can prevent an anabolic response, then we might be worried about money, we might be worried about family, we might be worried about our job, we might get stressed out by traffic.

or by kids or by school or whatever it might be. So anything that causes an additional amount of stress, an additional spike in cortisol is also going to inhibit recovery. So it’s fair to say that some people might actually be okay training every other day and some people might need four or five days between workouts. Um, typically two workouts per week for the most part is, uh, is, is optimal for a training response. I think it would be fair to say if we know we have a period of high stress, then we might add in training days. Um, we might add in recovery days, excuse me.

Or if we know that we’re doing particularly well with nutrition and rest and so forth, then we, we know that we could afford to, um, to add in training days. But I think the best thing to the best way to think about this is the more consistent we are. So training twice per week through the course of a year will probably manage when we have periods of high and low stress or good or poor sleep or good or poor nutrition and so forth. But it helps us to stay consistent with our workouts. So there’s kind of other factors that come into play with that.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

One thing I’ll just chime in to, you know, when somebody is new to the exercise coach and they’re getting introduced to the workout for the first time and they do their first set, you know, they have a performance. They have a piece of data now in, in the cloud that is now their baseline, right? We can see, we can see what they can do. They test their initial strength that provides their strength. curve that’s customized to them to work at every second of that exercise. And then they perform their first set, and that becomes their baseline.

And so one thing I like to explain, which relates to the graph that you have here on the screen, is today you gave your muscles a stimulus. That stimulus was challenging for you. Now what’s going to happen is when you go home and rest and recover, your muscles are going to go through this repair period where they’re going to grow, they’re going to change, they’re going to adapt, and they’re going to get stronger. And because they’ve done that, the next time you come back in, again, assuming that there’s adequate recovery, they should be able to do a little bit more than they did today, and so on and so forth. So today’s baseline becomes your kind of your lowest one that you’re going to try to beat next time. And all of that is contingent on adequate recovery.

But that’s the most encouraging thing, especially for a new client to see, or especially for somebody who maybe hasn’t strength trained in a whole decade. They’re going to see quite a bit of progress quickly if they allow the stimulus to happen and that recovery to happen. So just wanted to kind of paint that picture as well based on what you just taught us.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Okay, so the next slides are going to be the opposite end of the spectrum. We’ve just talked about what if our stimulus is perfectly timed for adaptation? Well, now what if our stimulus is the perfectly the wrong time? So now imagine that we do a workout. Imagine if I do a workout this morning, And then I go and train again in the afternoon. So I’ve had all of that fatigue from the workout this morning.

But now I’m going to add more fatigue to it this afternoon. So again, we’ve shown on the screen the typical sine curve that we’ve shown with the end of a workout as the as the base of our curve and our supercompensation is the peak of our curve. But now we imagine that we reapply that training stimulus. at our lowest point where we’re at our most fatigued. Well, it takes twice as long now or more than to just to recover back to baseline.

And imagine if I now do this again, well, pretty quickly over maybe the series of a week or a couple of weeks, this might become overreaching where our body is in quite a severe state of fatigue, of muscular and even central fatigue. And if we carry this on for too much, it might quickly become overtraining. And overtraining is very much associated with a decrease in our immune system, susceptibility to things like, you know, the common cold or flu virus or things like that. So our immune system is really inhibited in its capacity to fight off infection. We’re probably also very fatigued. We might have disrupted sleep and so forth.

Cognitive function can be severely impaired and lots of poor things happen when we’re at that stage and it can take a bit of time to recover from. Now this is of course the other end of the spectrum, nobody will probably hit that point because not many people will try and do multiple workouts in a day or multiple workouts in fewer days. But we can certainly give this example and say, this is the extreme of inroading, but we’re simply not allowing our body to recover from the stimulus that we’ve provided.

Yeah, that more is better mentality really doesn’t apply here.

Yeah.

And that, of course, is more workouts. We can also think about it in terms of what if we do more in a workout. So the next curve I’ve called excess stimulus. So again, I’ve gone back to our baseline, we’ve showed our single sine wave curve, which shows our workout fatigue and then super compensation but now we’ve showed another single curve over the top and this time the curve drops down twice as low at the end of the workout so imagine now instead of instead of doing eight or ten exercises for a single set, we do three sets of each exercise. Or if we do 20 different exercises or 30 exercises or more, instead of our workout being completed within 30 minutes, we stay in the gym or we carry on going for two hours.

Well, at this point, we’ve increased the inroading into our muscles, we’ve increased the amount of fatigue, and we’ve inhibited or delayed our recovery capacity from that single workout. Now, arguably, we haven’t increased our capacity to adapt because Once you’ve recruited all muscle fibers, you’ve recruited all muscle fibers. There’s no benefits to re -recruit them. We know recruitment of muscle fibers is the stimulus. We’ve talked about on the previous podcast, when we talked about the size principle and recruitment of muscle fibers. Um, so there’s no greater benefits be had.

We just know now that we’ve eaten further into our recovery capacity, uh, by doing that, uh, by doing that extra work during the workout.

Dr. Fisher, would this be still advisable? Like, let’s say somebody can only strength train once in a week because they they’re traveling. You know, does that mean they should work double as hard during their session and then take off the second day and then go back to the in hopes to go back to the exact same place they would be with two workouts?

Well, so in your question, you said they work double as hard. So they’re working double as hard, the effort level, then that’s great because effort level is equal to recruitment. But if they’re working double as hard as in doing twice as much work during their workout, I think that’s something we should be really careful to do because more exercise doesn’t equal more adaptation. I think that Exercise is a measured dose. It’s a stimulus.

And even if somebody is training, is only able to train once per week, I think this is absolutely fine. This is the right stimulus to do. I wouldn’t want people to fatigue their body any more than is absolutely necessary because there are, of course, debilitating effects. We know that there’s muscle soreness. We know that there’s a peripheral muscular and a central neurological fatigue from a workout. So, If I go and train after this podcast, but I think, well, I can’t train for another week.

So I’m going to do twice as much work in the gym. All that I’m really going to do is feel pretty terrible for the next couple of days. I might feel worse muscularly. I might disrupt my sleep. I might feel more fatigued in my muscles. I’m not necessarily, uh, promoting greater adaptations in the longterm just cause I can’t train, uh, just cause I can’t train again.

Absolutely. Okay.

Thank you for answering that one. Yeah, no problem at all. So our takeaways from this is we can easily train with too much volume or too frequently. And we’ve talked about this before, and I said this in the podcast, that exercise is a dosage. We can definitely think of it in terms of medication. We really only need a handful of exercises taken to a sufficiently high effort.

And that’s it. As soon as we’ve done it, we want to get back out of the gym or back out of the studio and allow our muscles to recover to adapt and then when we’re recovered we can go back in or when they’ve adapted we can go back in and repeat. A good way to think about this is if we’re not seeing an adaptive response We might be doing too much or we might be training too frequently. Now, as we said earlier, if you’ve trained for a number of years and you’ve reached a plateau, a plateau is to some extent inevitable. And while there’s that constant strive for improvement, we’re down to diminishing returns.

So it’s percentage points, not big chunks of improvement. So training hard is the right stimulus, not training for a long time. And as I said, we can also consider all other lifestyle factors or life stresses, which might cause fatigue and or slow recovery. So I mentioned work, school, money, family, friends, sleep, nutrition, and so forth.

So all of those things might inhibit our recovery. Yes. Thank you. And I think that’s important if you’re a client, you know, just to understand that there are a lot of other factors besides just strength and your muscle physiology that will impact a workout on a given day. And so it’s important to protect yourself sometimes from that artificial discouragement that may come if you didn’t beat your previous workout strength index score on a given day. There’s a lot of other factors and these are important to keep in mind to give yourself a little bit of grace.

So I hope, you know, you learned today and my takeaway today from this podcast is that inroading is important to get into the muscle fiber recruitment that we have to do in order to achieve the positive adaptations that we’re looking for. But we also have to, the other side of the coin is to allow that adequate recovery so that we can continue to capitalize on the strength gains that are possible because of the inroading. And I really think that that’s a helpful way to look at this. Dr. Fisher, is that fair?

And do you have any kind of closing remarks or thoughts that you’d like to leave people with in terms of how they should look at the level of effort they give in their next workout? Yeah, I do have one final comment if that’s okay. And that’s that we should be cautious to only think of things in the short term. So some people might be listening to this podcast and they might be thinking, oh, like I train, you know, I’ve just started strength training and I train four days per week and I’m doing great. I get stronger every workout and I feel good for it. And I think the key thing that you have to think about is over the course of a few weeks, that might be fine.

But as you extend that to months or even years, then your capacity to adapt with that training frequency is certainly limited. So when we talk about this, one of the reasons we didn’t have a scale on the time axis is because some people will certainly recover quicker. Other people will recover slower. Some people will be able to do workouts much closer within a month, within a week. other people will need to space them out a little bit more. And hence, we kind of end up with that good average of two workouts per week.

So we should just be a bit cautious to think about things in a small scale.

We should really think about the bigger picture.

Wonderful.

Well, I hope that this episode taught you a little bit of something about how you can maximize your exercise results and by giving your body the stimulus and recovery that it needs to get to know your own body in terms of, you know, what factors play for you when you are recovering so that you can continue to see that progression and also give yourself grace when you need to with your workouts, but continue that journey and

up strength. We will see you next time on the podcast. Until then, I hope you remember strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything .

com. Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode. Here’s to you and your best health.

The post Workout and Recovery Secrets That Actually Work first appeared on Exercise Coach.

Maximize Your Gains with Proper Muscle Fiber Recruitment

Jared Van Bruaene — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 01:00:27 +0000

Season 2 / Episode 52

. . . .

SHOW NOTES

Are you activating all the muscle fibers in your workout, or are you leaving gains on the table?

Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher continue their deep dive into the Principles of Exercise Design. In today’s episode, they break down muscle fiber recruitment; why it matters, how your body decides which fibers to use, and what that means for your strength. They cover the Size Principle, the importance of continuous muscular loading, and how to structure your workout to reach the fibers that actually drive growth and performance.

Dr. Fisher explains the All-or-Nothing theory and why your muscles are either fully “on” or fully “off.”
He breaks down how your body only recruits the exact fibers needed for the task in front of you. Knowing this helps you understand why you need higher effort to see real strength gains.
Dr. Fisher explains that Type 1 fibers are cheap to use, so your body loves using them first. They handle endurance but don’t give you the strength you want. He shows how pushing harder in the gym is what finally taps into Type 2 fibers.
Learn why Type 2 fibers are powerful but expensive for your body to use. They fatigue quickly, so your system avoids them unless you give a strong stimulus. But once you activate them, that’s when real growth and strength improvements happen.
Dr. Fisher explains how your nervous system recruits muscle fibers from smallest to largest. It’s your body’s way of protecting energy while still meeting the force demands of your workout.
Amy highlights how the body is constantly trying to conserve energy. That means it avoids using high-cost muscle fibers unless absolutely necessary.
Dr. Fisher shares why multiple-set training often fails to push you to true effort. When you simply count reps, you usually stop far short of full muscle recruitment. So, you’re leaving huge results on the table without even realizing it.
Amy covers why resting between sets resets the whole muscle recruitment process.
Once your Type 1 fibers recover, your body goes right back to using them first. And that makes it harder for you to reach those high-impact Type 2 fibers that drive strength.
Amy highlights that if full muscle fiber recruitment is the goal, you don’t want to stop and restart the process over and over. Every pause delays that final layer of activation. And that delay means slower strength gains and less efficient workouts.
Dr. Fisher covers why eccentric loading is such a game-changer in strength training. We’re naturally stronger on the lowering phase, but most equipment doesn’t challenge us there. When you finally load that phase properly, you maintain deeper fiber recruitment for longer.
Dr. Fisher shares how exerbotics devices keep you working harder during the eccentric phase instead of giving you a break.
Amy and Dr. Fisher cover the biggest benefit of working with a personal trainer. With expert guidance and efficient workouts, you can achieve better results more quickly than you might on your own.
Dr. Fisher explains why walking and jogging are great for general health but not enough for full muscle recruitment.
Amy highlights that losing Type 2 fibers is the real reason people feel weaker, less balanced, and less stable over time. These fibers are the ones responsible for power and functional strength.
Amy covers the importance of eccentric training and how it helps you get more out of every rep. When you challenge the lowering phase, you keep more fibers active for longer. And that translates into faster progress with less time spent working out.
Dr. Fisher explains that strength training only works when you recruit all available fibers. Multi-set training often delays this because you keep letting fibers rest between rounds.
Dr. Fisher explains how a personal trainer can guide you to hit the right muscle fibers every time. Most people lift without fully recruiting the fibers that actually build strength and shape. With the right guidance, you maximize every rep for faster, noticeable results.
Amy highlights that your main job in a workout is simple. Recruit the fibers. When you keep them loaded continuously at the right effort, everything changes.

Mentioned in This Episode:

The Exercise Coach – Get 2 Free Sessions!

Submit your questions at StrengthChangesEverything.com

If we’re not strength training, we’re probably not getting to that point where we recruit those type 2 muscle fibers.

We lose our type 2 muscle fibers as we age. Those are the ones most responsible for our strength, our balance, our stamina.

It’s either on or it’s off. The muscle fiber is either recruited or it’s not recruited.

Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, We will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training. And now for today’s episode.

Welcome back, everybody. We are continuing a series on principles of exercise design, where we break down components of a workout, why those components are important, and what they mean in terms of your overall results from the exercise that you do. Today’s topic is muscle fiber recruitment. Why is muscle fiber recruitment important during your workout? We’re going to address something called the size principle and we’re going to talk about the benefits of continuous muscular loading without taking breaks. Your workout needs to include these things in order for you to achieve the most benefits.

So today we’re going to learn all about this this concept. Dr. Fisher is here and he’s going to jump right in today to explain what we mean by muscle fiber recruitment and why this concept is so important in our workout. So, hey, Dr. Fisher, how are you doing?

I’m doing very well today, Amy. I’m excited to get into this. How are you today?

I’m doing well. I just came off of a very challenging workout where I gave a lot of effort. And so I’m excited to sort of pat myself on the back. on the back today with understanding kind of what I was doing behind the scenes talking about this. So where would you like to start?

Yeah. So before we get into the size principle, there’s a couple of kind of theories we’re going to discuss here. And they’re relatively proven theories, but to some extent, they’re still theoretical models. So the first of which is called the all or nothing theory or the all or nothing concept. And basically what this says is the motor neurons and the corresponding muscle fibers are either switched on. So they’re recruited or they’re not recruited.

So they’re switched on or they’re switched off. And what that means is when I pick up something like a pencil or a cup of coffee, then I only recruit the muscle fibers required to perform that task.

And those muscle fibers are, are just switched on.

That’s it. So what some people have thought historically is that we recruit a lot of muscle fibers partially, but that’s not the case. We recruit only a few muscle fibers and only the ones that are required, but fully. So the way I often explain this is we can think of it like a light switch without a dimmer. It’s either on or it’s off. So a muscle fiber is either recruited or it’s not recruited.

And the reason that we have this is for small, low effort tasks, the body will only send a small impulse. So a low intensity signal. And that will cross the low threshold motor unit. and only recruit typically type 1 muscle fibers. So type 1 muscle fibers are low force and high endurance or fatigue resistant. And the reason that we recruit those first is because we can use them and then reuse them and then reuse them and so on and so forth.

So there’s not much cost to using them. If we want to get to our type 2 muscle fibers, well they’re high force and they’re also low endurance and they’re high fatiguing. So those type 2 muscle fibers are quite expensive to use. Once we’ve used them, they take time to recover. They take time to be able to be reused or re -recruited.

So We have to save those for later and we save them ultimately for a high enough impulse or a high enough signal from the brain. And that’s what leads us into the size principle, as you said at the start. And the size principle, which originates from two people called Denny Brown and Pennebacker in 1938. So it’s long, long time back, nearly a hundred years ago. They discovered that motor neurons were recruited from the smallest to the largest, which is exactly what we just said. Small motor neurons need less excitation or less stimulus to be activated than larger motor neurons.

Okay, so small motor neurons are our low threshold, and large motor neurons are our high threshold. So there was a really nice paper by Ralph Carpinelli, who was a colleague of mine years back, a wonderful man, and he summarized this in 2008, and he said, When the central nervous system recruits motor units, it begins with the smallest, most easily excited, least powerful motor units.

And it progresses to the larger, more difficult to excite, most powerful motor units to maintain or increase force.

Okay. So we have this sequential recruitment of muscle fibers and motor units that occurs when we, when we exercise or when we provide a stimulus. So I’ve put together a few slides for anybody who’s now watching on YouTube. We’ve got our first slide. just come up now and you might do a better job than me of describing this but I’ve done some artwork and I’m not known for my artwork but I’ve done some artwork which shows a muscle fiber or a muscle and within it we can see muscle fibers and the white muscle fibers are unrecruited or they’re switched off for all intents and purposes and the red muscle fibers are switched on. And I’ve given the example of if we exercise with a moderate load, so somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of our one repetition max, which is normally about 12 reps at a normal pace or about 90 seconds under tension, If you’re moving a bit slower, um, you know, it equates to around 90 seconds, let’s say.

So with our first three reps, we only recruit a few muscle fibers. So we recruit, it’s a low stimulus. It’s, it’s quite still quite an easy weight. Um, the, the weight of course, doesn’t change, but it’s still quite easy for us because we’re not fatigued. So we only recruit those low threshold motor units, probably. predominantly type one muscle fibers.

Now, as we move on, you can see in the next slide, I have upgraded us to reps four to six out of 12 rep max. So this is out of a maximum of 12 repetitions. So we’re about halfway there. And now we’ve recruited maybe a third to a half of muscle fibers, but they’re still only or still predominantly are type one, low threshold muscle fibers. Okay. Now as we move on and we move to reps 7 to 9, so kind of with each successive rep we recruit more muscle fibers.

So now I’ve recruited more and I might have started to tip into some of the type 2 muscle fibers as well to be able to continue to lift this weight, continue to exercise with this weight. And when I finally get to the last few reps, so I’ve said here reps 10 to 12, so rep 12 of a 12 rep max would be the maximal effort. So let’s call this the maximal effort that we can give. We’re now recruiting as many muscle fibers as we can recruit voluntarily. Now in some cases that’s still not all of our muscle fibers we still hold a couple in reserve just because our body likes to do that it likes to keep some back but ultimately we’ve recruited as many as we can and this is important because recruitment is our stimulus for adaptation.

Ultimately a muscle fiber is not going to get stronger and it’s not going to get bigger if we don’t recruit that muscle fiber with a stimulus to change. Absolutely.

It’s kind of like your body is trying to conserve energy and it’s doing all it can to avoid fatiguing itself too much until you give it a proper stimulus where it has no other choice, right? Yeah, that’s exactly the case. Our body is desperately trying to preserve everything because we have, of course, our fight or flight response. So it will always try and keep something in reserve just in case of emergency, just in case we have to do something. So it, and hence why it will always recruit the type one muscle fibers first, because They’re easy. We can recruit them and then we can re -recruit them and reuse them over and over again.

And we can recruit them and we can use them for a prolonged period. A good way to think of this is a lot of our postural muscles, our trunk muscles, our abdominal muscles and our low back muscles, for example, are predominantly type one. And that’s because we use them over and over again through the day. And for example, right now I’m stood up. So they’re helping me to stand and maintain posture. So they’re doing a lot of work, but it’s not a high force to do that.

It’s just a continued contraction. do that. So they’re low force but also low fatigue or high fatigue resistance. They’re resistant to fatigue. So that’s if we were to do a single set of exercise to a sufficiently high degree of effort. Now we can also think of this in terms of what if we did multiple sets because lots of people will talk about single and multiple set strength training.

And it’s quite nice to think about muscle fiber recruitment in that context. So our next slide now talks about a multiple set approach. So in set one, we have effectively the same thing that we had in our early repetitions. With our single set approach, we recruit a series of muscle fibers. And the problem with a multiple set approach is we don’t often train to the highest degree of effort. We kind of train to a given number of reps and I’ve taken the magical three by 10 approach in my example here.

So. Our body is physically capable of doing 12 reps, but we only do 10. So we have what’s called incomplete recruitment. So we’ve recruited some muscle fibers to do the job because we’ve been doing exercise. It’s been progressively getting harder with each repetition. My effort level has gone up.

The stimulus that I’m sending, the impulse that I’m sending from my brain to my motor neurons has increased. It has recruited some high threshold motor units, but not all of them. But the problem therein lies, because after my 10 repetitions, I put the weight down and I rest and I recover. And in recovering, I’ve allowed those type one muscle fibers to completely rest and completely recover to be able to be re -recruited. So now I begin set two, but actually I’ve kind of taken two steps forward, but one step back. So I’m going to do.

allowed some muscle fibers to recover. So now when I start the exercise set, I’m effectively starting over. So it takes me another 10 reps to get to a point of similar recruitment. I do 10 reps, even though I could do 12, and I still have incomplete recruitment. So I’ve done two sets. I’ve done twice as much work as I would have done beforehand, but I still haven’t got to the same place of recruitment because I’ve allowed muscle fibers to recover.

So now I get to my third set. And again, between set two and set three, I might take a break. I might take typically two minutes. And again, I’ve allowed some of those muscle fibers to completely recover. So now, again, I’ve taken two steps forward, but one step back. So I begin my exercise set, and now I might do my 10 reps. And because of fatigue of some of the other muscle fibers, I might still get to the same point of stimulus, the same point of recruitment as I would have with my single set to momentary failure or to sufficiently high effort.

But it’s taken me three times as long to get there because I kept stopping at submaximal effort level with incomplete recruitment. And then I allowed muscle fibers to recover in between the sets. And hence why there’s this kind of debate about single and multiple sets. And as we’ve talked about previously, they actually tend to get us to the same place. There’s almost no difference in our adaptive response. But our problem lies if we have a recovery time between our multiple sets.

We need to repeat the exercise just to get to that high recruitment level.

Perfect. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And if muscle fiber recruitment is our goal, we don’t want to stop recruiting muscle fibers multiple times during the exercise before we get to the end where we’ve recruited all of them because that is our ultimate goal, right?

Dr. Fisher, are you familiar with the toy Lightbrite?

I’m not familiar with Lightbrite. Okay, so in the 80s, when I was growing up, there was a very popular toy called Lightbrite. And it is a grid of little holes. that comes with little plastic colorful beads that you stick inside the holes and then behind all of the holes is a master light. And so you would make these designs with your beads on the front by placing your beads in different places and then turn the light on. It was such a delight to see your artwork.

So what this visual that you have here in the podcast, and if you’re not listening, if you picture a light bright and you’re familiar with it, picture the whole light bright board filled in with the beads. and turned on with all of the beads lit up, right? It’s kind of like that’s the ultimate goal is to recruit as many as you can and light them all up as much as possible. You don’t want you know, a bunch of them turning out. But when you take breaks or when you let too much time go by, it’s like a bunch of these lights go out. It’s like pulling a bunch out when your goal really is to recruit all of them.

And so that’s kind of the analogy that I that comes to my mind. So, Dr. Fisher, a quick follow up question, too. So your you just explained basically splitting up an exercise into multiple sets. You gave the examples example of three sets of 10 with this. Would this dimming of the muscle fibers or sort of like unrecruitment of the muscle fibers that we’re trying to recruit during a set still happen as well if we took too long of a break within one set?

So let’s say we were doing one set and then we just took 10 seconds off. Yeah, absolutely. So this is, this is where it starts to get interesting. So we can, of course, if you do a repetition and then you pause, uh, for, you know, a couple of seconds and then repeat, there will be some degree of recovery. Uh, now with the exerbotics devices, of course, there’s, if you pause, if you unload the muscle, either the extended or the flexed position at the end of the concentric or the eccentric position, you know, if you see that bar drop right down because you’re not pressing anymore. that’s resting.

You know that you’re doing that, you know that you’re resting. So that’s allowing for a degree of recovery. So there will be some degree of recovery there, but it’s of course momentary. So how much that actually allows a muscle fiber to recover is quite questionable. It’s not the same as taking two or three minutes rest in between sets. Now we can even go one step further than all of this.

And we can talk about the difference between a free weight or a selectorized machine and the isokinetic devices of the exercise coach. Because when we talk about the eccentric component of an exercise repetition, we know that we’re 40 % stronger in the eccentric phase. So even when I’m pushing almost as hard as I can to lift a weight, when I lower the weight, I’m much, much stronger. So the weight is still sub -maximal on the way down. So some muscle fibers are derecruited in that time, they’re allowed to switch off and essentially recover. But with the exerbotics devices, as you will have guessed, noticed in your workout earlier today, in the eccentric phase of the workout it’s actually harder that the motor plate is coming back towards you with more force.

so you can now push on it harder, and it’s around 40 % more effort. But that maintains that high level of recruitment, and in fact, it maintains the high level of type 2 muscle fiber recruitment, which are the key muscle fibers that we’re trying to stimulate. to stimulate to get stronger and to grow bigger. And they’re the ones that we typically lose as we get older. And they’re the ones that we obviously want to train and provide stimulus to, to adapt, to retain. So somebody the other day asked me about going for walks and going for a jog about, you know, staying fit and recruiting muscle fibers.

And I said, you know, Of course, we should definitely go for a walk and definitely go for a jog, they can be good for you. But if we’re not strength training, we’re probably not getting to that point where we recruit those type two muscle fibers. And as I said, they’re the ones that we lose.

So this method of strength training, specifically with exerbotics, but for the most part with high effort is what recruits those type two muscle fibers to adapt, to get stronger and helps us to keep hold of them. Yeah. At our exercise coach studios, oftentimes we’ll educate clients. You know, you just mentioned we lose our type two muscle fibers as we age, and those are the ones most responsible for our strength, our balance, our stamina. And so when we notice a lack of strength as the older we get, It’s because we are losing those type 2 muscle fibers. I mean, we still have our type 1 active to get around from move to point A to point B, right, to take that walk or to go to the grocery store.

And we’re not losing that capability that quickly as we get older. But what we’re losing is the strength, which we have to recruit type 2 muscle fibers for. One other thing we often point out, which is what you were just talking about, too, with the eccentric demand on our muscles where we are stronger. Oftentimes, we love to point out the first time somebody does a leg press exercise, they complete their set, they give a little bit higher effort on that eccentric because they just can. They can give a little bit more effort because they’ll be stronger there.

At the end of the set on the screen, they’ll be able to see their concentric average effort and their eccentric average effort. And oftentimes we will see, just for an example of like a young woman, for example, maybe she’s at 75 average strength index on her concentric, but she’s like 105 on her eccentric. And so a very simple comparison we can point out is, you know, if you were doing this, like press on a weight stack machine where you had to just choose one weight to work at the entire time, you would have to select 75, just to begin the exercise, but on the way back, you could be working at 105, but you’re leaving that on the table because you’re stuck at the 75.

And that really helps people to understand like, okay, I’m activating more every single second of this exercise, which is part of the reason it makes me stronger faster.

And so I hope that helps you, you know, picture If you are an exercise coach client, if you experienced the power of eccentric training at a studio, why that is.

Fantastic. Fantastic. So my takeaway points from this, uh, this session were that our stimulus is recruitment and it’s essential for adaptation. It’s strength training to high effort that recruits all available muscle fibers. And multi -set strength training allows recovery between sets.

So if we’re lifting the same weight, it just allows some of those muscle fibers to recover, so we end up re -recruiting them, and it just delays full muscle fiber recruitment. So, you know, it’s hopefully a relatively simple concept, and hopefully the slides will have helped the viewers to understand all of that. Yeah, they were awesome, Dr. Fisher. Thank you for breaking this down for us. Remember, when you work out, Get those muscle fibers recruited. The best way to do that is by loading them continuously at the right level of effort.

So go get your workout in today, and we will see you next time on the podcast. Until then, we hope you remember, strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything . com.

Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode. Here’s to you and your best health.

The post Maximize Your Gains with Proper Muscle Fiber Recruitment first appeared on Exercise Coach.

Warming Up: Do You Really Need a Warm-Up Exercise Before Strength Training?

Jared Van Bruaene — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 01:00:39 +0000

Season 2 / Episode 51

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SHOW NOTES

Do you really need to warm up before a strength training workout? Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher kick off a brand-new series titled Principles of Exercise Design. In this series, they’ll break down the key components that make every workout safer, more effective, and better aligned with your goals.

In today’s episode, they explore one of the most debated topics in fitness: the warm-up. You’ll learn what science says about warming up, when it’s truly necessary, and why strength training might already include everything your body needs to prepare.

Tune in to hear how understanding the purpose behind warm-ups can help you train smarter, reduce wasted time, and focus on what actually drives results.

Dr. Fisher starts by asking whether a warm-up is really necessary before strength training.
He explains that extensive research shows no real need for a separate warm-up before lifting. The very nature of strength training includes a built-in progression that prepares the muscles safely and effectively.
Dr. Fisher explains that most people don’t begin their first repetition at maximum effort. Instead, the gradual increase in resistance and intensity throughout the set gently primes the muscles for heavier loads.
Dr. Fisher highlights how progressive recruitment within a set serves as a warm-up. As you perform each repetition, your body gradually activates more muscle fibers. This process raises muscle temperature, enhances coordination, and makes an additional warm-up unnecessary.
Amy and Dr. Fisher explain why some exercises, like sprints, need a warm-up.
Sprinting is an all-out movement that demands maximum force right from the start. To avoid injury, the body must be prepared through light activation that prepares the muscles and joints.
Dr. Fisher highlights that strength training is controlled, not explosive. Exercises like leg presses or chest presses never begin with maximal effort or range of motion. The gradual increase in load throughout the session replaces the need for stretching or separate warm-ups.
Amy explores the logic behind warming up. She points out that it’s sensible before activities demanding sudden force or unpredictable motion. But in strength training, your first repetitions are never your hardest, so the warm-up happens organically within the session.
Dr. Fisher explains why good personal trainers skip long warm-ups. The goal isn’t to fill time; it’s to let your muscles warm naturally as resistance and effort increase.
Amy and Dr. Fisher break down the two types of warm-up: general and specific. A general warm-up involves light activity, like cycling for a few minutes, to increase circulation and muscle temperature. It feels good, but it isn’t essential before resistance training.
Dr. Fisher describes a specific warm-up as targeted preparation for a heavy lift. This means gradually increasing load with lighter sets before attempting a maximal effort. It’s useful when working toward top performance in compound lifts like deadlifts.
Learn how personal training keeps you from overdoing your workouts. Dr. Fisher explains that a good session should be structured so your body adjusts safely, reducing fatigue and building strength without unnecessary strain.
Dr. Fisher discusses whether wearing warm clothes affects muscle readiness.
He clarifies that feeling warm doesn’t mean the muscles are functionally prepared. True readiness comes from gradually increasing effort, not from external temperature.
Amy concludes by summarizing the key insight from today’s episode. In strength training, the warm-up is already built into the structure of the exercise itself. The progressive loading and fiber recruitment at the start of each set make a separate warm-up unnecessary.

Mentioned in This Episode:

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We go into the studio, we start a leg press, a chest press, a pull down, whatever exercise it might be. It’s never going to be maximal range of motion. There’s no need for stretching. And it’s never going to be maximal effort.

What you just described is, you know, the theoretical purpose between why somebody would warm up. Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training.

And now for today’s episode.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome back to the Strength Changes Everything podcast. Today, we are kicking off a series entitled Principles of Exercise Design. So in this series of episodes, we’re going to be describing different components of exercise design and why each one is important in order to gain the maximum benefit from your exercise session. Today, we are kicking off this series by discussing the concept of a warm -up. It’s a very common question we get asked about, is a warm -up necessary prior to a strength training workout? Why would somebody choose to warm up versus not choose to warm up?

And how should we think about that in terms of the need to warm up prior to our strength training session? So we’re going to address this question, and Dr. Fisher is with me today. Dr. Fisher, Where would you like to start in answering this question, you know, do I need to warm up?

Yeah, it’s a question that’s been an ongoing debate, you know, for a long time. And there’s actually a wealth of research around the concept of warm -ups within strength training and it all points back to the same thing that there’s absolutely no need to do a warm -up prior to a strength training workout and in fact the way I typically talk about this is that actually you do do a warm -up when you do a strength training workout because seldom will somebody go and begin a strength training workout with a maximal effort movement in their very first repetition of their very first exercise. So, if we think logically that I start the workout with a leg press, let’s say, or a chest press, you know, a multi -joint movement, and as soon as I start to lift the weight or apply force to the movement arm, It’s not maximal efforts. It’s very much submaximal because it’s the first repetition. And even if the eccentric component is harder, which of course it is in Xbox devices, um, it’s still not maximal.

So there’s kind of progressive, uh, recruitment as we will talk about later on about muscle fiber recruitment. There’s that progressive recruitment during that set of exercise that is in itself a warmup.

Yeah, it’s like the difference between an explosive movement and a gradual loading, right?

Exactly, exactly. And of course, strength training, we’ve talked about this before, speed of movement and things like that. And we’re looking for control. We’re looking for muscular tension to be key during an exercise. So there’s a huge amount of control within that strength training set or exercise or however you want to think about that. And it’s certainly not analogous to a sport or a sprint or anything like that.

If I’m going to go and do a sprint, well a sprint by its very nature is maximal effort. So I’m going to push into the ground as hard as I can, I’m going to stretch my legs as hard as I can, I’m going to apply high forces through my muscles, through my joints, through the tissues, my ligamentous tissue around my joints and so forth. So I’m going to need my body to be prepared to do that. So I might do some warm -ups and ready my muscles and I might do some stretches to prepare my joints and my mobility and allow my muscles to lengthen and so forth. But that’s not what a strength training workout is. And of course, if we think about in terms of a sport, if I go and play basketball, everybody on our basketball team will go through a warmup and it serves multiple purposes.

For a start in a team sport, there’s a cognitive component to it where we’re all interacting, we’re talking to each other, we’re all gauging each other’s own movements. But I’m also preparing my body for a game where I will now do a maximal vertical jump or a maximal change of direction or a high force sprint or something like that. Um, you know, the very unpredictable nature of sports in and of itself. And of course that applies across every sport we can think of really. It’s not just basketball, whereas strength training is far more controlled. So we go into the studio, we start a leg press, a chest press, a pull down, whatever exercise it might be.

It’s never going to be maximal range of motion. So there’s no need for stretching and it’s never going to be maximal effort. Now at the end of the set, there’s high effort and in later exercises, there might be higher effort, but certainly not at the start of the session.

If you think about it, what you just described is, you know, the theoretical purpose between why somebody would warm up. So what you’re saying is, you know, it makes sense to warm up before an event where you are going to place a heavy demand on your muscles or surprise them with quick, heavy loads or forces due to the nature of the event. But in a strength training session, you really cannot give everything you can give the very first second of any exercise anyway. You sit down and you begin the exercise and you begin to recruit those muscle fibers as you work harder and harder and harder. But the first rep is really, it’s almost impossible to actually give a hundred percent on the first second of the first rep anyway. You’re building that up.

It’s baked right into the session itself. Each new muscle group you do. Is that fair?

Yeah, that’s completely fair. That’s completely fair.

Perfect.

So what you’re saying then is there’s no research that suggests that it’s important to warm up prior to a strength training session, especially one that’s controlled and where you’re being coached to gradually build up effort over time into your maximum.

Yeah. All the research that’s looked at warm ups prior to strength training, there’s nothing that suggested that a warm up is necessary. Now, it’s worth just getting into a bit of detail, actually. There’s two types of warm -up. There’s what’s called a general warm -up and a specific warm -up. And a general warm -up would be, let’s say I’m going to go into the studio and do a session, a resistance training session, but I want to just warm up my body.

So I might get on the bike for five minutes. or I might go for a jog for a few minutes beforehand. And that’s a general warmup. And we think of that in terms of getting blood pumping around our body and warming up our muscles and so forth. And of course, that would never be sufficient to prepare you for a maximal sprint or a maximal vertical. anyway but it does feel good because it warms up muscles and it gets blood moving and so on and so forth.

The alternative would be a specific warm -up which says okay i’m going to go and do a maximal effort deadlift let’s say for example so before i do a maximal effort deadlift i’m going to do some submaximal repetitions. So if I can deadlift 500 pounds, I might do a deadlift of 100 pounds and a few reps at 200 pounds and gradually work my way up to that maximal effort deadlift. Well, if you watch powerlifting competitors, they will never start with their maximal weight. So they will always do a submaximal lift.

But that’s because they’re focused on that single maximal repetition.

Okay. So If you go and do a normal strength training work -up, the general warm -up doesn’t give you anything more than the first few repetitions of an exercise anyway, because that’s exactly what’s going to get blood going, it’s going to get your muscles warm and so forth. And because you’re never going to do that single maximal repetition, you don’t need to do multiple sets beforehand where you do a lighter load. If we think about it in that analogy, The initial repetitions are the specific warmup that lead to the final maximal repetition. So yeah, there’s just, the research is very clear.

There’s absolutely no benefits to a warmup prior to a resistance exercise workout. I love that. Yeah, that makes total sense. If you think about that same logic, right? The best warmup for a chest press at maximal effort is a chest press at slightly submaximal effort, which you’re going to do with the first rep. And so you are, you are getting prepared specifically in the most precise way possible with your beginning reps. That makes a lot of sense.

Do you have any other comments to leave listeners with about this?

Yeah. So the only other thing that I often, I often help people think about, or I see is that people will begin exercise, maybe wearing more clothes than they will often finish exercise. So they might start a workout when they feel a bit colder. And of course, if you do that, if you want to start a workout, wearing a hoodie or wearing a, you know, a long sleeve top of some kind to, cause you feel warmer in doing that, then you should absolutely do that. And if that helps. your temperature go up that bit quicker, that’s absolutely great.

But you should also be mindful that as your temperature rises, you might then want to take off that hoodie or that long sleeve top or whatever it might be so that you don’t get too hot during the workout. Now, of course, in contrast, you can start wearing just a t -shirt or a training top, whatever that might be, and feel that bit colder.

Or you might feel that bit colder from a temperature point of view, but you can be safe in the knowledge that your muscles are going to warm up during those initial repetitions anyway, and pretty soon you’ll be up to temperature. Yeah, that’s actually an interesting. I haven’t really thought about it that way.

So is being physically warm mean your muscles are warmed up though? Well, this is of course the point and being physically warm doesn’t necessarily mean that your muscles are physically warmed up, ready to go because our body maintains a pretty, pretty narrow margin as far as its core temperature anyway. But when we move blood in and out of a muscle, we certainly prepare that muscle to produce energy and to contract and relax. There tends to be a perceptual feeling that if our muscle is warm, we’re more ready to contract out. Although it would be interesting to look at the research around the perceptual response to warmups.

I don’t think that’s been looked at in much detail that I’m aware of.

Yeah.

Okay.

Perfect.

So basically what we’ve learned today here in this episode is that when it comes to a strength training workout, There isn’t another type of warmup that is necessary prior to engaging in a strength training workout because the type of loading that we’re doing and the type of muscle fiber recruitment that we are doing is baked right into the beginning of the exercise set itself. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for explaining that, Dr. Fisher, and I look forward to the next set of episodes within this series as we break down other concepts behind the workout and behind the most effective ways to exercise as we continue our series on principles of exercise design. We look forward to seeing you next week, and until then, we hope you remember, strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend.

You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything . com. Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode. Here’s to you and your best health.

The post Warming Up: Do You Really Need a Warm-Up Exercise Before Strength Training? first appeared on Exercise Coach.

Gratitude Benefits: The Science Behind a Healthier, Happier You

Jared Van Bruaene — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 01:00:41 +0000

Season 2 / Episode 50

. . . .

SHOW NOTES

What if one small daily shift could improve your mood, health, and motivation? Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher break down the science and practice of gratitude. In today’s episode, they unpack how gratitude reshapes your outlook on life, boosts exercise habits, and even improves your health. Tune in to hear practical ways to build a daily gratitude practice, the real value of personal trainers, and how positivity ripples through families and communities.

Amy explains that with Thanksgiving and the holidays coming up, it’s the perfect moment to look at how gratitude shapes our overall well-being.
Amy shares Harvard-backed research showing that gratitude is strongly linked to greater happiness. People who practice it consistently feel more positive, enjoy life more deeply, cope better with adversity, and build stronger relationships.
Amy highlights a study where participants wrote weekly reflections on specific topics. One group listed things they were grateful for, another focused on daily annoyances, and a third simply logged neutral events.
Amy explains that after just 10 weeks, the gratitude group not only felt more optimistic, but they also exercised more and visited the doctor less.
Dr. Fisher highlights that focusing on what’s good in our lives naturally builds a more positive outlook. And that emotional shift changes how we move through the world, physically and mentally.
Amy and Dr. Fisher share that people with a more positive outlook often engage more in exercise and strength training.
Dr. Fisher points out that this is a two-way street: exercise boosts positivity, and positivity increases your likelihood of working out. It’s a reinforcing loop that improves the mind and body at the same time.
Amy explains that a gratitude practice can be as simple as 5 minutes a day, five days a week, for six weeks. Research shows this habit supports mental wellness and creates lasting perspective shifts.
Dr. Fisher shares that when we practice gratitude, we tend to spread it. Our positive emotions rub off on the people around us, and that ripple effect can change cultures and relationships.
Amy highlights how grateful she is for the exercise coaches who show up every day to guide clients through life-changing workouts. She recognizes that their impact reaches far beyond reps and sets.
Amy and Dr. Fisher emphasize that personal trainers bring the kind of knowledge, communication skills, and real-world relationship-building that no lab can replicate.
Dr. Fisher explains that exercise coaches combine science, like physiology and biomechanics, with soft skills that help clients feel seen and supported. That blend is what gets real results session after session.
Dr. Fisher highlights that personal trainers are, in many ways, healthcare professionals delivering preventative and rehabilitative support. Yet society often undervalues them, which is why he’s so passionate about celebrating them.
Dr. Fisher and Amy cover how the benefits of strength training ripple outward: healthier and fitter people influence their families, coworkers, and communities.

Mentioned in This Episode:

The Exercise Coach – Get 2 Free Sessions!

Submit your questions at StrengthChangesEverything.com

Practicing gratitude or having a grateful mindset can actually lead to somebody participating in exercise more.

It seems really logical as well that if we focus on the positive things in our life, if we focus on the things that we’re grateful for, that helps us to have a positive outlook.

Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training. And now for today’s episode.

Today’s episode is all about gratitude. Here in the United States, we have Thanksgiving coming up and we’re approaching the holiday season. You know, it can feel two different kinds of ways for people. Sometimes people look forward to the holidays with a lot of anticipation and joy. It can be a very celebratory time with family and a time to, you know, reflect on the goodness of life. We also want to acknowledge that it can be difficult, right, and bring up things that are more challenging.

But overall, you know, there’s a connection between gratitude that we feel in life and our overall sense of well -being. And holidays can bring that out, especially holidays like Thanksgiving, where we’re thinking about the gratitude we face in our life. So, Dr. Fisher, I actually came prepared today with two different articles that I came across citing some research on gratitude. And I want to know, you know, what you think about these. OK, can I share what I found?

Yeah, I’m excited to hear them.

OK, perfect.

So this first article that I came across is from Harvard Health, and it’s talking about some findings that researchers have linked gratitude with some outcomes. So it talks about, you know, in positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships. This article cites some research done by some professors in California and in Miami where this is really interesting. Listen to this. So they had some participants write a few sentences each week focusing on particular topics.

One group wrote about things that they were grateful for that had occurred during a week. A second group wrote about daily irritations or things that it displeased them. And the third wrote about events that affected them, one way or the other, with no emphasis necessarily on being positive or negative. And after 10 weeks, those that wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. Surprisingly, and this is interesting for us too, they also exercised more. and had fewer visits to physicians than those who focused on sources of aggravation.

What do you think about that?

Wow, that’s a fascinating piece of research. And I love that you brought that to the show today. I certainly wasn’t aware of that. But it seems really logical as well that if we focus on the positive things in our life, if we focus on the things that we’re grateful for, maybe our friends or our health or our family, um, or, or wherever it might be, then that helps us to, to have a positive outlook. Whereas if we were to focus on the things that are bringing us down or the problems or any negativity, then we naturally would feel more negative from it.

So yeah, it makes perfect sense, but I love that there’s research around that in, you know, like you said, positive health psychology. I also love that people who had a more positive outlook. we’re more likely to engage in exercise. So that’s definitely a two -way street because people who exercise feel more positive. But if you feel more positive, then you are clearly more likely to exercise as well. So that’s fantastic.

Right.

And then to build upon that, and some of these outcomes that they studied have lasting lingering effects in these participants as well. They cite another one in this Harvard article about an assignment they gave these participants to deliver a letter to somebody to thank them properly for something that they did that positively influenced their life and deliver it to this person. And after doing that, these participants felt gladness and joy for like a month afterwards. It’s just really interesting that these interventions and these decisions can actually have these lasting, lingering effects in how people feel. Of course, we want to acknowledge at the same time, it’s not proving a cause and effect, but there is always this strong association between gratitude and somebody’s well -being, and we talked about that. But to build upon the health outcomes part, so we talked about, yeah, this is cool that Practicing gratitude or having a grateful mindset can actually lead to someone participating in exercise more or having less visits to the doctor.

The second article I came across is from UCLA Health. so they talk about, and it’s called, it’s all about the health benefits of gratitude. And it says, you know, research shows that practicing gratitude and a practice of gratitude consists of, here’s an example of it, 15 minutes a day, five days a week for at least six weeks, okay, that would be considered like a gratitude practice, can enhance mental wellness and possibly promote a lasting change in perspective. Gratitude and its mental health benefits can also positively affect your physical health. So now they’re going to break down how improving somebody’s mental health through a gratitude practice then has effects with or may have potential effects in your physical health. They talk about in this article that taking time daily to be thankful may reduce depression or symptoms of depression, lessen anxiety, support heart health.

And just to expand on how that how that works. It talks about many benefits of gratitude also support heart health, improving depression symptoms, sleep, diet, and exercise, reduces the risk of heart disease. Several studies show that a grateful mindset positively affects biomarkers associated with the risk for heart disease. And then finally, it talks about how gratitude can help relieve stress and improve sleep. So this episode isn’t just a feel -good episode, it’s directly going to impact, you know, doing something like this on a regular basis has direct implications for your health. What do you think of that?

I love it. I’ve stood here almost agog at this. It’s really fascinating. This is an area of research that’s unknown to me. So I love the learning of it, if nothing else. So I’m very grateful for that.

Thank you for that, Amy. But I love this idea that we can really have this positive impact and this lasting positive impact Whilst you were saying that, some of the things that were coming to mind were the idea that, um, you probably, you probably know the old kind of mirroring studies where they say that if you go on the street and you smile at somebody, they’re more likely to smile back or if somebody smiles at you. Yeah. So, so this comes back down to this empathy and, and it’s obviously not exactly the same, but it made me think about how, when we’re positive, we kind of spread positivity. When we’re grateful and we show gratitude, we probably spread that positive emotion.

And of course. goodness, whether it’s psychological or physiological kind of, uh, kind of grows and catalyzes further good feelings and positivity.

So I love it.

I love it.

That’s great. It’s like that joyous feeling you get when you do something kind for somebody else. The example that comes immediately to mind is at the coffee drive -thru. Some, sometimes people will pay it forward and that means they paid for your order and you get to the window and you hear that and you’re just like, Oh my gosh. I feel so loved. And then what do you want to do?

You want to turn around and do that for the next person in line. And then you feel doubly good. It is very, very true. And I know everybody listening has direct experiences or examples that they might think of as well when it comes to this. And of course, you know, to express gratitude, there’s various ways you can do that. You can give somebody something like a gift or a tangible thing that you know is going to help them.

You can write down your thoughtful or gratitude, things that you’re thankful for, you can just reflect and think to yourself, take a few moments and step outside and take a deep breath and just ponder and reflect to yourself on things or you can share it with other people. You can use your words and talk to somebody else about it, right? And so let’s talk, you know, right now together about some gratitude. And, you know, we wanted to take the rest of the time on this podcast to really verbalize some gratitude that we have for certain individuals, and those are the exercise coaches. that work in our studios, the trainers every day out there who are delivering workouts that change people’s lives. This show is about the fact that strength changes everything and all of the wonderful benefits that those people participating in strength training are getting every day from their workouts.

But the people responsible for delivering these workouts are the coaches. So Dr. Fisher, what are your initial thoughts on this?

What comes to mind when you think of the value of trainers? Yeah, well, I mean, we really can’t put a price tag on the value of trainers. I often kind of talked as an academic and as a researcher and a scientist, uh, all of the things that I can do within a lab are great, but if they never transitioned to the real world, then it’s all for naught. It doesn’t mean anything. So it has to be down to somebody on the front line. And I always say that, you know, exercise physiologists or exercise coach trainers are there on the front line.

delivering the workouts, working with the client, using those soft skills, as well as that academic knowledge and that physiology knowledge and biomechanics knowledge of strength training and, and health and so forth to really work with the client in front of them get the most from that client. And then of course, Do it over again and over again and over again. So there’s this continued, you know, energy required from an exercise coach, a practitioner with every single client that walks in their door, they need to have their A game with every single person. And it’s just such, it’s a wonderful thing. to see. I’ve stood at the back of exercise coach studios and really watched coaches deliver this to client after client or to small group sessions.

And, um, it’s really admirable.

And I love the idea that we’re devoting this Thanksgiving episode to, uh, to the coaches themselves. Yeah. Have you ever heard that quote? I, and I might, I’m going to butcher this because I don’t even know if I’m saying it correctly, but the point being.

People won’t remember, you know, like the things that you say, they’ll remember what you, how you make them feel.

Have you heard that quote? Yeah, absolutely. And I think about, you know, the environment that our coaches create, um, in, in studios, clients enjoy coming. We want to create environments that clients enjoy coming to. They look forward to seeing their coach because the coach is almost like family, you know, and when everybody wants to go and, and work with somebody that they enjoy being with. You know, and if you don’t enjoy the person you’re going to go see, then you’re going to have less motivation to go and do that.

And so we really focus on bringing the energy and the connection personally, you know, to our client experience for them to feel seen, cared for and feel like family. We celebrate that, that connection that coaches can make where they become what we call a precious and permanent part. of a client’s life. What we mean by that is that we would love to see clients get to the point where the exercise coach experience, which includes the workout itself, and the family connection that they have, that feeling that they have seeing the coaches, becomes a precious and permanent part of their life, something they don’t want to give up, something that is high value to them, that they like, that they appreciate, and they don’t want to give up. They don’t want to stop doing because of all of the positive that comes from it. We hope that if you listen to this podcast regularly, you believe in the profound value of strength training itself.

But of course, human relationships is what life is about as well, right?

So let’s combine these, these two things to truly live our best life.

Yeah.

What a wonderful sentiment. And you might have thought I was going to get through an entire episode without talking about some research, but I am going to jump in now and talk about some research. All right. One of the studies we did some time back, we looked at uh, perceptions of clients with their trainer. And many of them even past kind of specific comments that they saw their trainer, uh, you know, in the same view as they saw their kind of family physician, uh, you know, there was a real trust relationship. There was an identification of their education level.

Um, you know, we know that the effort it takes to become a trainer, you know, to go through the studying and qualify in that way, but also the continued education, um, And obviously this show is even a big part of that because of the, the, the science that we discuss here. Um, but the clients will look at their trainers in the same view as, as their doctors and their dentists and as other medical professionals. And of course, we’ve talked about the idea that a trainer is viewable as a medical professional, because what they’re delivering is preventative healthcare and it’s rehabilitative or prehabilitative healthcare. But they’re often not seen with that level of esteem by society. And hence really us giving them a big shout out today with this episode, because we know that many clients do see them in that way. Um, and they really should be seen in that way.

Uh, I was at a conference number of years back and, and somebody spoke and, and they said. that statistically after a certain number of workouts, and I don’t recall exactly how many, but if you’ve delivered a certain number of workouts then you’ve probably saved somebody’s life.

Uh, and that’s such a wonderful thing to think about. I hope all the coaches listening to this, you know, really, really can hear that and, and, you know, give themselves a pat on the back and, uh, and, and think about all the, all the things that they’ve done that positively impacted people’s lives, both in the, in the time that they’ve been training them, but also in that person’s future. Um, you know, all the physiological and psychological health benefits that they will see over the longterm. And you know what else I think about just to expand upon that point is not only the life change that a client receives firsthand as a result of working with our coaches, but the ripple effects to that client’s family and that client’s direct community and relationships. When that client is healthier and happier because of their interaction at the exercise coach and whatever else is feeding that to, There are implications for that person’s grandkids and that person’s children about the quality of this person’s life moving forward and society as a whole, those people’s friends and networks. You truly are, you don’t even know sometimes the impact that you’re making on not only this person directly, but other people.

And so I just don’t know of something, hardly anything more meaningful than that. And that’s what motivates me owning businesses like this to knowing the impact that we make every day. I’ve had clients tell our coaches that their life is completely different because of the exercise coach. I’ve had coaches get invited to funerals. I’ve had coaches get invited to cabins and boats because they become like family.

And so these are the ways, coaches, that you make a difference. And the benefits of strength training that we talk about on the show would never happen without you. They wouldn’t. So thank you for being kind of that intermediary to bring this change, this positive change to the masses in the work that you do every day. We cannot overstate our gratitude to you. Thank you for all you do.

Yeah. You know, James, I don’t know.

I’m just thankful for being able to work with you and the show and the way that it makes me feel good to know the good that people receive from listening to this, I’ve been told directly that it’s extremely helpful and motivating. And all we want is for people to take this information and use it to fuel their fire for changing their life for the better. Ultimately, at the end of the day, that’s our goal. And so I appreciate the opportunity to do this and as a listener, if you’re listening to this today, we appreciate you listening. So thanks, Amy. I mean, obviously, we’re both so grateful to each other for what’s going on for what we deliver in the podcast.

But we’re really grateful to the listeners as well at the show who are obviously taking the time to engage in strength training and engage in the podcast to positively impact their own health. And as Amy said, the ripple effect on to to other people, their friends and their family and their co -workers and so forth. So thank you so much for engaging in the show itself. Remember, if you have any questions or any comments, any thoughts, please join us at strengthchangeseverything . com where you can ask any questions and we’ll answer anything that we can. And thanks for everything.

And remember, strength changes everything.

The post Gratitude Benefits: The Science Behind a Healthier, Happier You first appeared on Exercise Coach.

How to Spot Reliable Fitness and Health Advice Online

Jared Van Bruaene — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 01:00:19 +0000

Season 2 / Episode 49

. . . .

SHOW NOTES

Tired of conflicting fitness and health advice online and not sure what to trust? Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher dive deep into how to separate fact from fiction in health, exercise, and wellness. In today’s episode, they unpack how to spot trustworthy research, avoid hype, and make smart decisions for your fitness journey. They break down the biggest myths, why social media isn’t enough, and how a personal trainer can guide you to results that actually stick.

Amy starts by explaining why most people feel overwhelmed by fitness advice online.
Dr. Fisher explains that not all research is unbiased—big companies often fund studies to sell products. You have to ask, “Who benefits from this claim?” This is the first step to spotting marketing dressed as science.
Amy covers why magic bullet fitness solutions are everywhere, but progress takes hard work. She explains why shortcuts rarely work and how to focus on what actually delivers results.
For Dr. Fisher, experts don’t know everything, and the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know much. He shares how to stay humble, curious, and avoid overconfidence in fitness claims.
Amy and Dr. Fisher agree that one viral Instagram post doesn’t make a method true. You need to question the hype, check the evidence, and avoid being swept up in trends. Amy walks you through how to do it without stress.
Before trying a new routine you saw online, check in with a personal trainer. They can help you interpret research and apply it safely.
Dr. Fisher reveals why lab-based studies often don’t reflect real-world outcomes. Just because something works in a controlled setting doesn’t mean it works for you.
Amy and Dr. Fisher cover how AI tools like ChatGPT can help you find solid research quickly—but only if you ask the right questions. Look for references, meta-analyses, and reviews.
Scrolling on Facebook isn’t research. Facebook and social media are designed to sell, not educate. If your goals matter, scrolling alone won’t get you the answers you need.
Before adding a new exercise or routine, check the evidence. Ask yourself, “Does research support this?” and “What contradicts it?” These two questions save time and frustration.
According to Dr. Fisher, people tend to seek confirmation rather than truth. If you only look for evidence that supports your beliefs, you miss the bigger picture. He explains how to uncover research that challenges you.
Wonder why fitness fads come and go so quickly? Amy explains that many are just marketing campaigns in disguise. She shares how to spot trends that are hype versus those backed by science.
Dr. Fisher explains that big research can be misleading when the funder has an agenda. Even credible-looking studies can push products. He teaches how to critically evaluate who benefits from the research.
Dr. Fisher covers how hard work beats shortcuts every time. He explains why real fitness results require consistency and how to identify programs that actually deliver.
Dr. Fisher reveals that using Google Scholar or PubMed isn’t as complicated as it seems. He walks you through finding studies, reviews, and meta-analyses to make your own evidence-based decisions.
For Amy, working with a personal trainer, coach, or medical expert is still the safest way to reach your goals. Social media can’t replace personalized guidance. Amy explains how to combine online research with real-world support.

Mentioned in This Episode:

The Exercise Coach – Get 2 Free Sessions!

Submit your questions at StrengthChangesEverything.com

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail–but Some Don’t by Nate Silver

I think the thing that we first have to ask is what’s the actual benefit that we want to get from it? Expert implies that, you know, we’ve almost stopped learning. I think that the greatest minds on the planet never stop learning.

If we want to work smarter, not harder, let’s take the time to evaluate things that we come across. Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training.

And now for today’s episode. Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast. Hey, have you ever felt like there is a lot of competing information out there when you look up something online, there are sometimes multiple results, and some of them disagree with one another, especially when it comes to health and fitness and exercise. We all can recognize that there have been trends and fads that have come and gone over the years in this area, and sometimes it can be hard to tell what to believe and what not to believe when you come across a claim out there. Not only that, but More recently, in recent years, AI has come onto the scene and there are videos that people come across now and there might be things that you see that you wonder, is that even real? And between all of the competing information, fads, fashions, the algorithms of our social media that continue to feed us certain things, how do we decide what’s true?

How do we know what to believe and how to ask the right kind of questions to know if a claim is true? So that is what this episode is about. If you’ve ever felt frustrated in that area, this episode is for you. Dr. Fisher, I’m so excited to talk about this topic with you today.

Yeah, I love talking about kind of the information and misinformation that exists in the world across multiple planes, but that’s certainly over -exercised science. So yeah, interesting question.

Yeah. And you actually referenced a book about this by Nate Silver about this topic. What point did he make in that book too? I wanted to bring that up.

Yeah. So there’s a great book and it’s under the genre of popular science. So it’s certainly not a hardcore science book. I definitely encourage listeners to go out and have a look if they’re interested in this topic. It’s called The Signal and the Noise. And he gets into a dialogue with multiple examples, politics and economics and, and, and multiple other kinds of facets of society, where he talks about the fact that there’s a wealth of information available.

And especially now, you know, 2025, we are inundated with information from multiple sources, as you say, from algorithms and social media. And it’s about being able to see the signal within that noise. And as I said, that’s the title of the book, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver. And yes, it’s a good read for anybody interested in kind of learning how to cut through all this misinformation or all the wealth of information that maybe isn’t as useful.

as some of it can be. Okay, so this episode is entirely dedicated to credibility and exercise information.

So Dr. Fisher, tell the listeners some of the things they’re going to learn in today’s episode. Yeah, so there’s a few kind of key points. So one of the big things is everybody goes on Instagram and social media sites and they hear somebody say something and they go away and they kind of immediately follow those claims or they may go away and immediately follow those claims. So it’s a case of why you should or shouldn’t listen to the claims on social media sites. Why you should or shouldn’t listen to people who are citing academic research.

why you should or shouldn’t listen to people who make challenges based on logic and based on science, and above all else, why you should seek the truth and make a decision for yourself, almost regardless of the other party’s information that’s being kind of spouted to you. And in that sense, we’re kind of going to get into how to do a bit of research and find a bit of information for yourself that’s hopefully science backed.

And we’re not going to get into teaching people how to read research articles, which might be quite heavy going, but at least how to find genuine information. Okay, so this is going to be super helpful for you if this is something that you’re interested in and struggled with. All right, Dr. Fisher, here’s my first question for you. If you come across a claim, what are the initial questions going through your mind to kind of evaluate that claim?

So in other words, if I come across something, what are some of the questions I should ask myself when I see new information? Yeah, I think this is the key thing. So whenever we receive information, we should always ask ourselves, is there a theoretical framework for the why? So is there a physiological rationale or explanation for why doing something helps something or has certain change? So for example, if we talk about engaging in strength training, making your muscles stronger or making your muscles bigger. We can talk about the way mechanotransduction, which is the stimulus of tension within the muscle and the muscle fibers,

is created from the external weights used and how that stimulus creates kind of a proliferation of satellite cells, of cells within the body, which go to the muscle and help the muscle to grow bigger. So we have a kind of a mechanism as to why, we have a rationale and a justification as to why something happens. If we talk about how strength training maybe improves blood pressure, we know that it improves endothelial function, so it can improve the elasticity of our arteries and our artery walls where our blood pumps. So there has to be a justification for why.

So if somebody is making a claim about something or somebody is selling something, then there has to be, or there should be, some sort of explanation as to why it works or the mechanisms as to how it works. I think about when I learned to write papers in elementary school, a persuasive essay. I was taught to make my claim. or say my thesis or at the beginning of a paragraph, make a claim. And then you have to cite supporting evidence. Right.

So it’s one thing to say something, but is there any mechanism as to why or how this may work that supports the claim being made? So, yeah, that’s that’s super helpful. Yeah. And then, as you just said, it’s about evidence. Is there evidence that underpins the claims that are being made or the statements that are being made? So You know, is somebody citing scientific research or, or where did the information that they’re using come from?

Is it come from their own trials or is it a single case example? Uh, could that person be an outlier and actually whatever they’re claiming doesn’t hold true across the population? Or are they citing, you know, a large scale study or a number of studies? We’ve previously talked about meta -analysis, which is a combination of studies. So if they’re citing kind of meta -analytic data. than dust.

like a pretty solid foundation for, for any claims that are being made. As we get into that, we can sort of say, what, what is the existing research, you know, randomized control trials, case studies and so forth. But we might also then start to ask, okay, well, who supported or who funded that research? We know that. big organizations, uh, have a lot of money to maybe put into their research and development departments and they might be able to fund research and, and that just happens to support the sales of their product or, or so forth. So, you know, if we go back long enough, uh, I don’t think anybody would be ignorant to the fact that, um, you know, certain tobacco companies, you know, did research that underplayed.

or, or showed the, there were no harmful effects of, of smoking tobacco products and cigarettes.

And actually independent research has obviously shown that there are considerable harmful effects. So, you know, if there’s somebody with a vested interest and they have enough money behind them, then, you know, to some extent research can, can be. manipulated to some extent to show certain claims, but there should always be a note on that research that effectively is a conflict of interest, that it was funded by these organizations or these bodies or these people or parties and so forth. Yeah, another example that I became aware of too is that the sugar industry also did this, is that they funded research efforts to basically come to the conclusion and spread the information to the public that fat, dietary fat, was to blame for people gaining weight instead of sugar consumption. And it was a very prevalent understanding.

which sparked the low -fat movement. And it came out that it was all funded by the sugar industry. And so the conflict of interest there is very important to recognize and call out if you can track that down. Absolutely. So then, you know, asking that question, um, and we can also even ask the question of the person that’s making the claims. Does that person have an agenda?

You know, many people will go on social media and they’ll cite kind of, uh, certain training methodologies or they’ll cite certain products or things like that. And, you know, they should declare as a conflict of interest, whether they’re an employee of that company, um, or whether they, uh, make a product that’s aligned to, uh, to that, that philosophy or, or so on and so forth, or it should be at least glaringly obvious. I don’t think anybody would, um, would question us because of the fact that this podcast is part of the exercise coach.

I’m an employee of the exercise coach. So I think that’s a fair disclaimer that the claims that I’m making about health train, the health benefits of strength training, well, they’re evidence based. It should, of course, be clear that I work for the exercise coach which has a vested interest in people’s strength training. So, you know, that there, you know, sometimes those conflicts of interest will be kind of hidden away a little bit, but we we should always be able to find them. OK, so so really to summarize some of the main major questions we should ask ourselves when you come across something. Does the person promoting this have some kind of agenda?

Are they to gain because they said how wonderful the supplement was, but they also sell that supplement? Who is supported? the research or is there any existing research cited behind the claim being made? What did that research consist of?

You know, is this an anecdote? or is this a population -based, proven, large -scale study, research conclusion? Anecdotes, to me, honestly, I think that’s one of the biggest ones is for me this was great and this works and okay great but is there any evidence of how it works or does it work at a population level or was it just something that you appreciated because anecdotes don’t necessarily translate one person to another. So one of the things that I’ve seen a lot on social media is a certain different types of training. I’m not going to mention them, um, but they fit with, with our kind of preexisting bias. So they maybe say that I can build more muscle or I can lose more fat, or I can do a certain thing.

And they almost make these, these promises. And they, they might fit with my biases that I want that. I want that quick fix. I want that more muscle. I want to lose that fat. I want that healthier body, whatever it might be.

But the reality is internally, we know that the exercise is hard work. It’s meant to be hard work. So the health benefits are attainable, but we can’t kind of have. massive shortcuts to those things, but we still want them. We still want what I call the magic bullet. We’re still seeking that magic bullet.

So if somebody’s selling that magic bullet, it’s easy to go, wow, maybe that’s something we’ve all overlooked. Maybe that’s the secret that’s been hiding all this time. So it’s tricky with the way information is put out there in some places. And the other thing that we sometimes see is something called the Dunning -Kruger effect. And this often falls into our own biases as well. And I’ll show an image on the screen now of the Dunning -Kruger effect.

And this is, uh, this has, if you’re watching on YouTube and you can see this obviously, but if you’re listening on the podcast, it’s a simple graph that has knowledge across the x -axis and confidence across the y -axis. And as we move along the x -axis and gain some knowledge, our confidence goes sky high. And it’s actually where our confidence peak was just a little bit of information. And the Dunning -Kruger effect basically says that we acquire some information, we become passionate about a topic, but we think based on that small amount of information that we know, because we don’t know it’s only a small amount of information at this stage, but we think that we kind of know a lot. So our confidence to go away and discuss it with other people and tell other people, uh, you know, all the great things about such and such a product or such and such an experience are.

Fantastic. So we kind of go out and we share that information. Now, if you’re looking on YouTube, you’ll also see that that’s marked as our, our stage of ignorance, a little bit of information, a huge amount of confidence. It leads to a little bit of ignorance. We kind of go out and pass that information on. As we then acquire more information.

So maybe now we start to read around the area a little bit more. Maybe we start to see the counter arguments around something and there are counter arguments around everything. You know, there are people arguing everything. If you know, I’m not going to get into some of the things I don’t want to risk offending anybody, but if somebody can argue one point that there was always somebody who can argue a counterpoint. So as we acquire more information and more knowledge, we reach a stage where our confidence in that subject drops down again, and it drops down quite rapidly. So now we’re not so confident to go and talk about it.

We’re not so confident that we understand it. And we’re not so confident to go and kind of spread that information because we’re not clear. on what everything means. And we, on the curve, that’s often referred to as the stage of being cultured. We now understand that there was more information than, than we were aware of. We’ve acquired more information, but we’re not sure now our confidence isn’t there.

And then the final stage of the Dunning -Kruger effect is when we acquire a lot more knowledge and the curve kind of can be, can be extrapolated any direction or any extreme that we want it to go. But as we move further along the X axis, our confidence goes back up again. And it’s actually labeled as expert. I actually don’t like the phrase expert because I think most people that are loosely an expert on a subject know that what we know is infinitely less than what there is to know. So, expert implies that we’ve almost stopped learning.

I think that the greatest minds on the planet never stop learning. Um, there’s always further research. There’s always more information to be gleaned from certain things, but certainly as, as our knowledge increases, our confidence goes up again, but we now might hold, um, a more educated viewpoint where we understand the different perspectives and certainly economists and, and, uh, you know, people that are experts in sort of politics will have a potentially more balanced view. Yeah, this is true. I can see this, um, in real life and it’s kind of like the wiser, the wiser you get, the more you realize you don’t know type of adage. And it is, it is also, um, you know, when you hear people speak with a little bit more nuance and a little bit of disclaimer about, you know, what they’re claiming, um, it can reflect that they’re, factoring in the counter arguments that they have come across that exists out there.

And my guess is that a lot of times people who are coming on Instagram and super excited about something are more in that peak, like, I just discovered something. This is good.

It made me feel good once.

And then they’re sort of proclaiming it to the world, but maybe there’s more to learn and be learned about that topic.

So thanks for sharing with us. Yeah, of course. Of course. So as we kind of wade through the idea of information and misinformation, it’s also worth kind of touching on, uh, constructs of efficacy and effectiveness. And this is kind of a, uh, an interesting, uh, concept within science. So efficacy is does something work?

And typically we look at whether something works in a controlled environment, in a vacuum, in a laboratory based setting where every other variable is controlled for. Now, because of that, and because of the expense, it’s, uh, it’s generally a relatively low sample size. I want to say relatively low. It’s obviously relative to the general sample size for that area of study. So in strength training, that might be 10 or 15 people per group. Um, in medicine, it’s probably far greater, but how well variables are controlled, uh, is, is beyond my remit to talk about.

I don’t do medical research in that way. In contrast, effectiveness is how well something works in the real world. And as a part of that construct, it’s whether people will actually do it. So for example, if I came on the podcast and I was touting that everybody should do a six hour strength training workout, and they should also drink five bottles of red wine at night, and that would help them to, you know, be stronger and healthier and so on and so forth. Well, The efficacy of it might be proven in the, in a laboratory setting, but in the real world, the question we have to ask is, is it, is it good and will it work? do a six hour workout and then go and drink five bottles of wine every night?

And hopefully the answer is no, they won’t go and do a six hour workout and they probably won’t go and drink five bottles of wine every night either.

Cause it’s just not practical in the real world. So many science, uh, approaches look at something, does something work in a lab? Yes. And then it should also go and ask the question, does it work in the real world? Now, this is interesting because a lot of science has looked at the lab, but it hasn’t looked at the real world. And a lot of the time when the company is trying to sell you a product or a philosophy or anything like that, then.

They, they haven’t really assessed how well it works in the real world. So for example, we’re going to get onto the topic of cold water immersion in just a moment. Um, so for example, if somebody is selling cold water immersion tanks or cryotherapy chambers or something like that, then buying the cold water immersion chamber or the cryo chamber or anything like that is the, the, the kind of the easiest part of that commitment. The purchasing of the product, the hardest part is the doing of it. So, uh, and the analogy I often make is, you know, we buy a book to learn something and the book will sit on our shelf.

Well, the buying of the book is the easy part.

The reading of the book, the acquiring of the knowledge is the harder part. So that efficacy versus effectiveness is also an interesting way up when we hear, uh, certain things being touted. Yeah. So I think this, you know, to drive home this point, it’s like if I hear something and I’ve ask myself the appropriate questions to see, yes, there is research behind it. Yes, this probably is accurate, this claim. Now, do I want to implement it for myself?

Will I be implementing this and taking this information on and taking action with it? And then what you’re saying with the effectiveness pieces, will I do this? And can I do this right now in my life? And will this be reasonable for me to take on right now?

Because it only works for me if I do the thing. So something could be good. for some people doesn’t mean everyone will do it. Yeah. So I briefly then gave the example of, of cold water immersion. And of course there are a lot of fitness trends and fads and things like that.

Um, and I’m not for a second suggesting that every example I’m going to give now is just a fad and doesn’t have any efficacy around it, but they’re just some of the big things that I hear talked about more recently. So cold water immersion, weighted vests, and zone two cardio are three of the big ones that I just see, uh, you know, all over social media that everybody should do hours of zone two cardio. That should be our kind of big push. That’s our big intensity level. Everybody should move wearing weighted vests and we all should do cold water immersion. Well, I think the thing that we first have to ask, especially when we start to hear ourself or see yourself inundated with this is what’s the actual benefit that we want to get from it.

So if, for example, I said zone two cardio, well, if somebody is, is wanting to do zone two cardio, then, or is believing zone two cardio would be good for them, then they should ask, okay, why is it good for me? What, what, what will it help you with? And many of the claims around zone 2 cardio is that it burns more fat than other exercise intensities. Now in fact it does burn more fat than other exercise intensities, but that’s in part because it’s of a low enough intensity that the energy substrate that you will use to produce energy is predominantly fat. What the claims don’t say is that it burns more calories. than other exercise intensities.

So it burns more fat but not actually more calories. So certainly higher exercise intensities or interval training interspersed of low effort and high effort will actually be more beneficial in the long term for cardiorespiratory fitness and metabolic health and things like that. So, and I’m not saying people shouldn’t do zone 2 cardio, I’m just saying we should ask the question of how will it benefit me and so forth. The example that I’ve given that I said I would come back to is cold water immersion. So many people, uh, recently have touted cold water immersion for fat loss, and I’m not going to answer that question, but what I am going to do is help the listener or the reader, uh, or the viewer, I should say, go and answer that question for themselves. So I put up on the screen now, Google Scholar.

Now, if you’re not familiar with Google Scholar, hopefully you’re familiar with Google. And if you go onto Google and you type in Scholar. Then you will see that there is a secondary kind of subsidiary site called Google Scholar. And Google Scholar is kind of a reference of academic sources. So if I go into Google Scholar and I’ve simply typed in cold water immersion and fat loss and is all caps and that for that way, it’s, um, it includes both terms where we see cold water immersion and the term fat loss. and I put that into Google Scholar and as you can see on the screen if you’re watching on YouTube there’s 113 ,000 sources, 113 ,000 results in 0 .25 seconds.

If I click on since 2025 there’s now 17 ,200 so I can actually kind of refine that down to the most recent research and many of those are empirical -based studies. In fact It’s predominantly empirical -based research studies. where actually you’ll be able to get hold of the full text article and have a read through yourself if you’re interested. But if not, you would at least be able to get hold of the abstract. And the abstract is normally 200, 250 words as a brief synopsis of the study itself, maybe the methodologies used and the findings. So Google Scholar can be a great place to go away and say, okay, I’ve heard this information.

Is this true? I can go and look it up on Google Scholar. Okay. So a secondary source that can be used is something called PubMed.

And I always used to laugh at my students and said, this is not as exciting as it sounds because it has absolutely nothing to do with pubs.

Uh, and of course they didn’t laugh either. Um, but what it is. Amy, you laughed. I’ll give you a laugh on that one. My son would tell me that’s my prototypical dad joke. So there we go.

So it’s actually public medicine, and it’s a public medicine database. And it’s saying all the scientific research studies are published there. And these are high level scientific studies. So many journals are not PubMed indexed. they haven’t reached the kind of caliber to be PubMed indexed. So these are, for want of a better term, let’s say the best of the best.

And I’ve put in the same term of cold water immersion and fat loss for recent searches, and we’ve got 24 results. So we’ve specifically got a lot less than if I click on any of those, then I’ll be able to go to the article itself. or I’ll be able to go to the abstract there on the PubMed database and also I’ll be able to go to the full text link if it’s available. Now it’s worth clarifying that the publishing system in science is broken. So in many cases, you, uh, won’t be able to access the full text of the article, uh, because they publishers charge, uh, people to go in and read and access the full article. But that’s a real shame in and of itself.

You may be able to find it somewhere else online if you go and do a search for that, uh, for that title. But there’s two ways that you can really. Uh, start to look at science for yourself and make up your own mind because.

All I’ve put in there is cold water, immersion and fat loss. I’ve not put, uh, does it benefit fat loss or, um, you know, uh, is there evidence against the benefits of cold water, immersion and fat loss?

I’ve simply put in the two terms and everything that I find.

I have no idea whether it will be supportive or not of whether cold water immersion is good for fat loss.

Right. And you may put in a search term and see that there are studies done that disprove it, right? Exactly. Exactly. And of course, if we go back to Google Scholar, then the original search that I did that returned 113 ,000 results, it’s almost certain that some of those searches will have disproven it. Many, many of them may have proven it.

And so it’s, it’s starting to find a balance. And what you’re really looking for is if you see the terms, a review or a systematic review or a meta -analysis.

then hopefully you’re starting to see kind of a combination of all of the good quality studies in a topic. Uh, and you’ve heard me talk about meta -analyses and the health benefits and the strength training benefits, uh, um, of, uh, of strength training, I should say. So we know that that’s kind of the spearhead. That’s the real tip of, of academic research. Okay, and that’s helpful.

And Dr. Fisher, so basically the gold standard is a review or a meta -analysis. You mentioned briefly before, I just wanna make sure listeners know what the definition of this is, an empirical study. What is that? Can you define what that is? Yeah, so an empirical study is normally a randomized controlled trial, but an empirical study is really a test of does something work. It’s a single case, sorry, it’s a single study example.

So if I had a group of people or two groups of people, one group used the, whatever method it was or whatever medication it was. One group didn’t, they were either a control group or they were on a next best training method or next best medication. And then I’m looking at which of these two methods produced the best results based on what my outcome variables were. Uh, we, uh, we should have, that should be what’s called a randomized control trial. And that means that every participant, when they enter this study is randomized into either the training method or the, the, the, the variable that we’re interested in or the control group. Um, and so we have, what’s called an RCT, a randomized control trial.

Beyond that, we have, what’s called the systematic review. So systematic review. is where authors have gone away and they’ve used specific search criteria. They’ve said, okay, I want to look at research studies that are this long in weeks or months or years that had a certain population demographic, maybe adults over 25 or adults over 65, or maybe, um, symptomatic participants with low back pain or whatever the criteria might be. And they found all previous studies that have used those, that have met those criteria. And then they’ve talked about those studies themselves.

The step beyond that is called a meta -analysis. And a meta -analysis is where all the data from those studies has been extracted. And it’s been effectively analyzed. all in combination. So instead of having 10 studies, which each have a hundred people in, we now, we now effectively looking at them all as a single study with a thousand people. And that starts to become a lot more meaningful because we might find that there’s a very, very small effect in favor of something in those 10 studies.

But when we add them all together, it becomes a much larger effect in that thousand people. So, and that’s called a meta -analysis. And that really is thought of as the higher end of research. Now it’s worth me clarifying, I’ve been relatively critical of meta -analyses in the past. Uh, in publishing, I’ve published a few papers that have kind of challenged the idea of publishing rationalities, but the methodology has, it has moved on since then. And I think that most of them now we can be relatively confident in their findings.

Awesome. Uh, so we’ve talked about Google scholar and we’ve talked about PubMed and they’re definitely both, both sites that I would, I would recommend if somebody has any questions, any genuine academic questions, and they’re really interested in, in kind of a search for the truth. And then the last one that I’m going to draw people towards, and I’m anxious to do so, but I’m also pragmatic over what people, people do when they’re looking for information. But I’m also going to talk a bit about ChatGPT. So we know that everything now is using AI. AI is everywhere.

I saw a video the other day of a child on a porch getting on a crocodile and the crocodile ran away. And if you now looked at the videos that come up on my social media feed, you would think that I had an obsession with crocodiles or alligators on front porches, because it seems to be every other video on my feed. And of course, many, many of them, and I presume all of them, are AI. generated but there we go so we can be relatively fearful of AI but I think it’s still a tool that we can use so we can use it in the same way we use PubMed in the same way we use Google Scholar but I’ve amended the term a little bit so I’ve asked is there evidence for cold water immersion and fat loss use references to support So again, if you’re watching on YouTube, you’ll see that on the screen. And if you’re listening, then you can, you can use that term and you can go to ChatGPT and type that in. And ChatGPT came back with, here’s a summary of the current evidence around cold water immersion and fat loss.

What we know, what’s suggestive and what remains unclear. Now I really like that because it’s not, ChatGPT doesn’t have a dog in the fight here. It doesn’t care whether I want cold water immersion to be, you know, victorious and to be great for fat loss, or whether I am anti -cold water immersion, interested in care. So it’s really taking an unbiased approach based on my criteria. What we can see is saying what the evidence does suggest, what isn’t supported, or is very weak, and it’s saying practical takeaways. Now, again, if you’re watching on YouTube, you’ll see this, but if you’re listening to the podcast, then under each bullet point that it makes, it has a link and the link is to, in this case, is to PubMed.

So the first link is to PubMed. So I’m going to click on that link and see where we go. And it takes me straight back to PubMed citing an article, Role of Body Fat in the Prediction of Metabolic Response for Immersion in Cold Water. So the great thing here is what CHAT -GPT can do for you is it can find the evidence that supports the claims that it’s making. Now, it won’t do that unless you add the statement, use references to support or use academic, you know, evidence to support these claims or whatever, whatever you might type, but it can do that for you.

It can go away and find those, those papers themselves and literally cite those papers for those claims. And one of the reasons why I know so much about this, apart from the fact that it’s quite obvious now, is as an academic, this was my big fear with many students, that they would go away and ask a question that I might ask them as an assignment and type it into ChatGPT, and ChatGPT would go away and find resources for them. Well, fundamentally, Finding resources is not something I’m concerned about as long as they, they then make up their own mind.

And I think that brings me full circle to ultimately the onus is on you as an individual to decide whether or not you believe the information that you have read.

And I think that. Most people listening to this podcast are smarter to know if they’ve only heard the claims of one person on social media and they choose to believe them, they’re not basing their beliefs on a huge amount of evidence. If they’ve gone away and they’ve found five or 10 scientific research studies and read the abstracts or even the whole paper, and they’ve got a more balanced viewpoint, then I think that they can probably be pretty pretty strong in their beliefs. So I think it’s really important to just know what information is out there and know how to access that information. Absolutely. Yeah, this is really helpful.

So, Dr. Fisher just showed us how to research something on our own.

He just demoed for us how to search using Google Scholar, PubMed, Chat, GPT to see if a claim that you came across is accurate. And I like the point you make, Dr. Fisher, of, you know, it’s not showing me especially with the chat GPT made the point of it’s not showing me what I what it believes I want to know or what I what it thinks I already believe. It’s showing me what is actually out there objectively. And so, you know, why should somebody not consider scrolling their Facebook page as research? Well, Their Facebook page is, is, is going to give them a lot of marketing.

So it was companies looking to sell products, it’s companies looking to make money and so forth. So as soon as somebody has a financial, as soon as there’s money to be made in something, I think we have to be questioning of their claims and their statements. You know, if somebody says to me, you know, you, you should go and do this or go and try this. That’s one thing. But if somebody says, you should buy this product because it will help you, it’s a supplement that will help you to lose weight. It’s a product that will help you to gain intelligence.

It’s a product that will help you to build muscle. It’s going to cost you, I don’t know, $9 .99 a week, and you can buy a year’s supply right now for 50 % off. I think most people are savvy enough to know that you know, for want of a better term, they’re sort of snake oil salesmen.

They’re just trying to sell something with some kind of claims around them.

So we get a lot of that on social media.

If anybody’s like me, I, uh, you know, you’ve, you’ve probably all heard on the podcast that I blew out my ACL a couple of years back. So I still on my social media sites, get adverts for knee supports and knee braces and things like that. So we just have to be cautious of, of the information that is sent to us. Absolutely. Right.

It’s, it’s so true.

Um, I just, you know, kind of. As we wrap up the episode, I mean, I would admit to to being a person who has kind of an action bias, like I’ve talked before about if I learn something new, I. probably one of those people who really wants to try it out and will try it and take action because I want to believe that it’s going to help me, you know. And so this episode reminds me of if I’m going to take the time and energy and effort to really implement something, I better know that there’s some kind of evidence to support it if I really am going to spend all that time and energy on it. Right.

And so It’s just too time consuming to spin your wheels on trying a little of this and a little of that and money, you know, too. I think about supplements and things when it may or may not be really working. So if we want to work smarter, not harder, let’s take the time to evaluate things that we come across. I really, really appreciate you breaking all this down for us. And so, you know, Dr. Fisher, if you were to encourage the listeners today with one kind of takeaway, you know, what would be in your mind the most important takeaway for a listener who is hearing this for the first time? Yeah.

Okay. So I think first thing is if somebody has health or fitness goals, they probably should go and chat to somebody face to face rather than look for sort of things on social media. You know, We, we all are, we’re all sent information on things and, and maybe that sways the way that we interact with products or interact with, uh, with certain things. But actually if we go out and seek information, then we probably go to unbiased sources. Whereas the sources that come to us, come to us deliberately because they’re trying to sell something. So, you know, when we engage in things on social media, that’s still selling a philosophy, or they’re still selling an agenda, or they’re still selling themselves for the number of views they can get.

and so on and so forth.

So, you know, I think going out, you making the effort to do a search for something, whether it’s on PubMed or Google scholar or track GPT or going to, uh, an exercise professional or a medical professional, I think is first and foremost, the best way to go from there.

I think we, we then should.

look for other information. And a lot of the time, what we can do is actually look for information that contradicts our beliefs. So instead of thinking, I believe cold water immersion is going to be good for fat loss, we might start to look up the studies that show that cold water immersion isn’t good for fat loss and see if those studies exist and see the quality of those studies. Because if they’re just as good, then maybe it challenges our own, our own beliefs. Yeah. And we may learn to, you know, that cold water immersion or whatever the thing is, is good for something else, or it works for a different thing than we thought it worked for.

Right. Like maybe it’s just good for, um, mental energy or, you know, feeling like you can conquer the day subconsciously, you know, but maybe it’s not exactly the thing that’s going to work for the, what we thought it would work for. And so that’s actually helpful information when you take the time to do something with. OK, that’s really, really helpful. You know, at the exercise coach, we have a white paper. It’s the strength changes everything.

And it, white paper, and co -authored by Dr. Fisher here and Brian Sagan, and it cites all of the research behind everything we do at our studios and what evidence supports this process, why we do things this way. And so it’s really encouraging for us to be able to lean on this information when we say, this is why we’re doing it this way, because it’s proven to be effective. This helps the most people achieve the most amount of benefit. It’s comforting to know that there is evidence to what you’re doing so that you know you’re not going to spin your wheels. And my takeaway from this episode is that it’s worth evaluating the claims, it’s worth knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing, and why you’re listening to whom you’re listening. This podcast is meant for education and the things that we share here are research -based.

That’s why Dr. Fisher is on this podcast. He brings a wealth of the research to bear on various topics. And so anything that you want to know, one thing we do at this podcast is we answer your questions on health and on exercise and on fitness. And so if there is something In addition to the research that you’re going to do on PubMed and ChatGPT and Google Scholar, if you want to ask us here on the podcast, go to strengthchangeseverything . com and submit your question there. Go out and take your life into your own hands today.

We will see you next week on the podcast. Until then, we hope you remember strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything . com.

The post How to Spot Reliable Fitness and Health Advice Online first appeared on Exercise Coach.

The Strength Training Benefits You’ll See From the First Month to the First Year

Jared Van Bruaene — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 01:00:06 +0000

Season 2 / Episode 48

. . . .

SHOW NOTES

What benefits can you actually expect in your first year of strength training? Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher continue their conversation on the benefits of strength training. In today’s episode, they unpack the real, research-backed adaptations that happen within the first one to 12 months of training. They break down what you can expect to feel after a few weeks, what continues to improve month by month, and why sticking with it pays off far beyond muscle and strength.

Amy starts by explaining that exercise isn’t something you do once and tick off your list. It’s a habit that keeps giving back the longer you stick with it. Every session is like a small deposit that compounds into a stronger, healthier you.
Dr. Fisher says strength training is an investment in yourself. You’re not just building muscle, you’re buying more energy, confidence, and independence for your future self. The time you put in now will pay you back in ways that go far beyond the gym.
For Amy, a good personal trainer will remind you that the first few weeks aren’t about lifting heavy, they’re about teaching your body to move better.
Your coordination improves, your posture feels stronger, and your confidence starts to grow. Those early wins are what keep you coming back.
Dr. Fisher explains what happens within the first four weeks of strength training. Your muscles learn to work together better, your flexibility starts improving, and your blood pressure can even begin to drop. You may not see big physical changes yet, but your body is already rewiring itself for better performance.
Dr. Fisher says that after about eight weeks, you might notice your shirts fitting a little tighter around the arms or shoulders. That’s your muscles growing and taking shape.
Dr. Fisher shares that after eight weeks of training, your body activates a powerful cleanup process called autophagy. Old or damaged cells are cleared away and replaced with healthier ones. It’s like your body is renovating itself from the inside out.
Dr. Fisher explains that when we don’t move or train, damaged cells hang around longer than they should. But when we strength train, we help the body recycle old cells and build new, healthy ones. You’re literally helping your body stay young and resilient from the inside.
Research shows that after 11 weeks of strength training, anxiety symptoms go down in both healthy people and those struggling with clinical anxiety. It’s proof that lifting weights isn’t just for your muscles, it’s for your mind too.
Amy adds that most people don’t realize how deeply exercise helps with anxiety. It’s not just the happy feeling right after a workout, it’s the long-term changes happening in your brain chemistry. You’re training your body to handle stress better and find calm more easily.
Learn why most people fall in and out of their workout routines. The biggest benefits only come when you make working out part of your life, not a phase. T
That’s why working with a strength coach is important. When motivation fades, your trainer keeps you grounded, reminding you why you started.
Dr. Fisher compares strength training to saving for retirement. You don’t put money away once and expect to retire rich; you invest steadily over time. Every workout you do is like another deposit toward a stronger, healthier future.
Dr. Fisher says one of his favorite milestones happens around 13 weeks. That’s when people start hearing compliments like “you look different” or “what have you been doing.” Those moments make all the early effort worth it because now the change isn’t just internal, it’s visible.
When someone notices and says you look stronger, you naturally want to keep going. It’s that social boost that turns exercise into something you genuinely enjoy.
By the 16-week mark, your body becomes more sensitive to insulin. For some people, that means reversing type 2 diabetes completely. You’re giving your body the ability to balance blood sugar naturally, just by staying consistent with your workouts.
Understand that strength training doesn’t have to take hours a day or feel overwhelming. Even short, focused workouts can completely change how you look and feel in just a few months.
Dr. Fisher highlights that after about six months, your body starts burning more calories even at rest. Your metabolism naturally speeds up, and you’re using more energy just by living your normal life. You’re literally becoming a more efficient version of yourself.
Dr. Fisher explains that consistent strength training can make your biological age younger than your actual age. You’re not just feeling younger, your cells are acting younger too.
Dr. Fisher breaks down research that compared strength training to yoga and Pilates.
Amy says the first six to twelve months of training are where the magic happens. That’s when you see big shifts in strength, energy, and even mood. Once you start feeling those changes, it’s hard to imagine ever going back.
According to Dr. Fisher, strength training should become as normal as brushing your teeth. You don’t do it for a few months and stop; you do it because it keeps you healthy and balanced every single day. It becomes part of who you are.
Amy closes by saying that no matter your age or starting point, it’s never too late to begin. The progress might start quietly, but it builds faster than you think. Every workout is a reminder that you’re taking care of the only body you’ll ever have.
During that first year, there will be days you doubt yourself, but having a personal trainer or a strength coach in your corner keeps you grounded. You start realizing you’re capable of so much more than you thought.

Mentioned in This Episode:

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Submit your questions at StrengthChangesEverything.com

It’s not about losing fat. It’s about engaging in strength training and seeing the positive adaptations that they can see.

There’s a lot happening. Month one, month two, month three, month four. It starts compounding upon itself over that first year.

Each single person can make a difference for themselves.

Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training. And now for today’s episode.

Welcome back to the Strength Changes Everything podcast. Today’s episode is part two of a two -part episode series where we are discussing the adaptations that happen when one exercises. In the first episode, we talked about the immediate benefits of strength training. What happens in the body after just one single session? of exercise. And if you missed that episode, I highly encourage you to go back because it’s a lot of very exciting and significant benefits that occur immediately after one single bout of whole effort exercise.

Now, in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the benefits or adaptations that research has documented happen to people within the first one to 12 months of strength training. I want you to consider this episode in terms of an investment you would consider making in your health. If you visit an exercise coach studio and you tell the coach there that you’re interested in getting started, your coach will going to urge you, they are going to encourage you to make at least a six to 12 month investment in yourself in order to achieve the transformation that we know exercise can deliver. This episode is going to break down why that is and what happens over each of those months to set you up for the longest term success. It’s too easy to look at health, in my opinion, as like an SOS intervention.

Exercise is something I have to pick up and then maybe drop, right? Like I’m going to do this for two months and then I’m going to stop because I have to fix something urgently and then I’m going to get rid of it. That mindset won’t serve us. And so this episode we’ll talk about why that is. And I hope you come away from this episode encouraged and having a deeper conviction. about the benefit of making exercise a longer term investment into yourself.

All right, Dr. Fisher, I’m so excited to kind of dive into this with you and to break down some of the benefits that will occur, you know, research has shown along the way. So do you want to take this conversation kind of like from start to finish? What types of things are going to happen in month one or two? Where would you like to start?

Actually, first of all, I just want to touch on something you just said in the introduction there, and this is a really great point. So I want to reiterate it. People often think about time and about financial cost of exercise. And there’s a thought of like, how much does it cost me and how much time will it cost me? But actually, you know, we have Matt, we had Matt brisky on the podcast months back. Um, you know, people can go and look that one back up on the, in the back catalog.

And one of the things he said is exercise is an investment. Strength training is an investment. So we invest, you know, a financial investment, but we also invest our time. And it’s about the rewards that we get. So when does that investment start paying off? And that’s how I think it’s a really nice way to frame these adaptations.

So what does the research say about how that investment is going to start to pay us back in the, as you said, one to 12 month time period?

Exactly. And spoiler alert, you’re going to get a big ROI on strength training. I’m just going to tell you that right now.

Oh, my goodness. I mean, the idea that strength training could be a short term fix for anything is, you know, it’s crazy. I mean, yes, of course, people want to get a bit stronger if they’ve had an injury or if they’re about to have surgery or if they want to lose weight. That’s great. But the long term benefits, the true health span adaptations really appear. When, uh, when we engage in strength training for, for a prolonged period, you know, I passed a comment the other day you were there, Amy.

And I said, you know, four months will always be four weeks and a year will always be four months. It’s really about, uh, continued adherence to strength training as this will, this will show. One of the things that I should caveat about this is it is something of a research review. I put together a document around some of these adaptations and the timescale around these adaptations. But it’s not to say that if I say, oh, the research says this will happen in six weeks, that at five and a half weeks, it won’t have happened. It will happen at some point within that six -week period.

And of course, it might happen much sooner. But the reality is many, many studies that are done are a pre and post test intervention. So they’ll look at a strength training intervention that’s four weeks long or eight or 12 weeks long, and they might look at blood pressure or functional performance or cognitive performance, and they’ll have a pre and a post test. So they’re simply saying this eight week intervention improved such and such a parameter. But that’s not to say that you wouldn’t have made improvements beforehand.

Yeah, and that’s a really great point. And one other caveat, which if you’re listening to this, you’re going to understand is that everybody starts from a different baseline. And these adaptations are presupposing that you are strength training consistently, you know, consistently, that you’re not skipping workouts, that you’re not coming in and only giving a half effort, right? So all of these are kind of understood, you know, sort of pieces of the puzzle.

Yeah, yeah.

And many of these research studies will have used, you know, what I would consider the gold standard of strength training, you know, supervised strength training. So it’s not to say that if you were to go away and do them on your own, you wouldn’t get these adaptations. But we know that adherence is lower if you go and train on your own. We know that intensity of effort is lower if you go and train on your own. So these align really nicely with the strength training at the exercise coach where you’re doing, you know, the right intensity and you have supervised workouts and so forth, just like the scientific studies that we’ll talk about.

Okay, perfect. So let’s dive in.

So some of the shortest research studies and strength training are only four weeks in duration. And that’s a really short time to see adaptations, but we do see some, and we typically see strength adaptations. And they’re quite often neuromuscular in nature. So we see things like neuromuscular efficiency. And this is really important because it’s really about our body’s ability to recruit muscle fibers. So our muscle fibers are there.

We just haven’t been able to use them until this time. So our body’s efficiency in many processes is really, really important to our long -term health and well -being. So the fact that we see improved neuromuscular efficiency in four is great. We also see evidence of blood pressure reduction in hypertensive patients. So if you have high blood pressure and you engage in resistance training regularly, then normally within the first four weeks you should start to see reductions in blood pressure.

And then the other main one that we see within the first four weeks is that flexibility starts to improve. So as well as being able to turn on muscles to contract, Uh, it’s actually also our ability to turn off muscles. Um, so we see range of motion of joints and we see the muscles capacity to lengthen and shorten on demand is improved. Uh, and lengthen of course, is our flexibility, the lengthening of the muscle. We’re able to switch off the muscle. It’s not being tight.

It’s not being pulled. Uh, it’s not under tension. It’s being able, it’s being allowed to lengthen normally. So we even see improved flexibility and range of motion as well.

Perfect. Okay, so that’s in four weeks.

Yeah, so all those are just the first four weeks. So then the next study duration we typically see is anything around six weeks. So we often see many, many strengthening studies are just six weeks in duration. And that’s again, a really short time to see adaptations, but there are a number of key ones. So we see neurologically, we see improved motor unit firing frequency, and this links back to sort of the neurological adaptations that we’ve seen. But there are a number of neurological adaptations, and one of them is simply motor unit firing frequency.

And that’s how quickly and how efficiently our brain can send the impulse for muscles to contract from our brain to the muscles that we’re requiring. So the increased motor unit firing rate is really good. We see older adults see improvements in proprioception and functional capacity, which includes things like their gait, so their walking ability. and in their dynamic balance as well. So if you are a bit older or if you have a parent or a friend who maybe is a bit older, then if they start to engage in strength training, then within the first six weeks, they should see improvements in their ability to walk and their balance and so forth. And of course, the confidence that goes along with that.

We also see that at this stage, cardiorespiratory fitness starts to improve. So most people think that strength training is to build strength and build muscle size, and traditional cardiovascular exercise is to build cardiorespiratory fitness. But actually six weeks of strength training is evidence to show improvements in cardiovascular fitness. So you might find that when you go for those long walks, you’re finding it easier, or you might find that you’re walking up and down stairs easier, or so forth. Or you might find that your normal day -to -day tasks just don’t get you so hot, or so out of breath, and so forth. And of course, that’s a really important one for our day -to -day activity, as well as for athletes looking to improve their fitness.

We can then talk about seeing reductions in something called C -reactive protein, which is a pro -inflammatory cytokine. So CRP, or C -reactive protein, is basically a chemical marker that’s often measured in blood assessment. And it’s representative of chronic or systemic inflammation. Now, that’s a pretty bad thing. The last thing we want is systemic inflammation. We’ve talked about it previously on the podcast.

But after six weeks of strength training, we start to see our CRP levels come down. And to be honest, CRP is pretty much a good marker for overall health. Uh, when we talk about inflammation, it’s worth kind of clarifying acute inflammation. If you, you know, bang your elbow and it swells, or if you bang your shin and it swells, uh, or hurt your knee and it swells, that’s acute inflammation cystitis. is that our body is constantly thinking that there’s some kind of infection or some kind of injury that it’s having to fight against. And so it prompts these pro -inflammatory cytokines.

Our body doesn’t want to be fighting against itself. So, you know, knowing that they come down around the six -week mark or before the six -week mark is really beneficial. Finally, at six weeks, we also start to see some muscle fiber hypertrophy. So, that basically means the muscle is starting to get bigger. Um, now it might be happening at kind of a micro or ultra structural levels are happening within the muscle, but we do start to see these changes and it’s really important. We often talk about the importance of muscular strength, but muscle mass and muscle size can be key markers for our longterm health and wellbeing and reductions in, in all cause mortality as well as other noncommunicable diseases and comorbidities.

So the fact that we are starting to see changes at a muscular level is showing that our strength training is really paying off.

Right. And an oversimplified way to understand this, by the six weeks, your muscles are getting better at working hard. They are better able to recruit muscle fibers to perform the tasks. They are getting a little bit stronger. They’re changing, um, and a very subtle level to be able to benefit from maximally from your exercises. Not only that, but your inflammation is starting to decrease, your flexibility is starting to improve, your blood pressure is starting to lower, which are pretty exciting.

And so a lot of this is sort of behind the scenes, right?

I would say, not visible yet, but you’re starting to feel a little bit different by this point. Yeah, I think that’s a great point. And many of the adaptations that we’ll talk about are things that we don’t see. We just don’t see on a day -to -day basis. You know, I don’t see my blood pressure and how it changes.

I don’t see some of the markers around cognitive function. But if I feel better and I’m able to move more and so forth, then obviously that’s a great marker for our quality of life, which we’ve talked about previously. So as we move into studies that have been eight weeks in duration, we see continued reductions in blood pressure. We’ve already talked about that starting to come down, but we can see it come down further at the eight -week mark. One of the key ones that we see from strength training studies that are eight weeks is a reduction in HbA1c levels. So that’s our basically our resting blood sugar levels.

And that’s key because it’s starting to reverse diabetes. So we’re starting to see improvements in our body’s ability to manage our sugar within our blood. So many people that are insulin resistant or that have diabetes will have an incorrect management of blood sugar, so they won’t be able to take in the insulin, either the insulin won’t be released to allow the sugar to go into our muscles and be stored within our body, and so it will stay within our blood, which is very, very bad. But in this case, we’re seeing that after eight weeks, our resting blood sugar levels are starting to reduce, so our insulin response is far more normal, or is becoming normal. We start to see things like reduction in pain, improvement in physical function in people now with osteoarthritis. So we said improvement in physical function in older adults, but now in people that maybe have a painful medical condition such as osteoarthritis.

And we also see improved posture. So reductions in sagittal spinal curves. So basically the way our spine might not be straight or might not be aligned. We should have a normal lordosis curve. in our spine, but we shouldn’t have shifts sagittally, which is laterally. So we can start to see posture improves and pelvic tilt, which is where our pelvis might tilt forward.

If we have tight hip flexors from spending too much time in a sitting position, well, we now start to see our posture is now in a more level tilt while we’re standing. Our hip flexors, we talked about flexibility, our hip flexors are probably lengthening better and our posture is better overall. So, absolutely key. We started to see It further increases in muscle hypertrophy. This is almost a continued thing from sort of six weeks onwards. We’ll see this continued sort of adaptation of muscle hypertrophy, but it starts to become evident at a whole muscle level.

So you might find that your t -shirt is starting to fit tighter around the biceps after eight weeks of strength training or, you know, or so forth. So we’re starting to see that those, those really sort of more notable physical adaptations. And then the last one, and this is my favorite one for the eight week mark, is autophagy. And this is one that we’ve actually not really talked about on the podcast. So we have a natural cell death and kind of cell recycling process called autophagy and apoptosis. Most people, we generally don’t think about it day to day, but the cells have a certain lifespan and then they effectively die or they’re cleared away through autophagy.

And then they’re effectively recycled. Any good bits from the cells, any good bits are used to form more DNA. And what actually happens, and this is interesting, what actually happens is cancer is a product of improper cell death and improper cell replication.

So basically, cells replicate with a mutation to

them. And a lot of that is thought to occur because if we don’t have appropriate autophagy and apoptosis, if we don’t have appropriate cell death and cell recycling, then we allow mutated cells to replicate, or damaged cells to replicate. Um, one of the problems is when we don’t exercise, when we don’t strength train specifically, we allow that to occur. Whereas when we do exercise and when we do strength train, we encourage autophagy. So we encourage appropriate cell death. Damaged cells are basically cleared away from our body and newer cells can be rebuilt, uh, using any good bits from them.

but also they’re not allowed to replicate.

So, and that links longer term, that links to a reduction in multiple types of cancer. Wow. That is pretty cool. You can think of that in a very simple way as kind of like, um, internal house cleaning is right. You’re like, you’re, you’re resetting yourself internally or regenerating the right, the right type of cells internally and, um, helping, you know, sort of what shouldn’t be there to move out. And so, yeah, that is pretty awesome.

I did not realize the connection between strength training and autophagy. I have heard of it, and I know it’s really good, but that’s pretty exciting that strength training can trigger that. Yeah, a lot of the time when people talk about autophagy, they make reference to it in terms of intermittent fasting, and they talk about or longer term fasting. If you go for 18 hours without fueling your body with food, then you kind of program this cell death for appropriate cells. It’s interesting because of course, once you’re at 18 hours, your body is going to require some nutrients.

It’s going to require fuel.

So it will start to break down the things that are already kind of damaged and broken.

But the idea that we can kind of preempt that by engaging in strength training to clear away the ones we don’t want, clear away the weaker cells, as I like to think about it, then then we can ultimately improve our body’s efficiency and strength.

Awesome. OK, so that’s the eight week mark, eight week mark, like two months. All that’s happened within the first two months of strength training, right? So we’ve seen some phenomenal adaptations already. Um, so there’s some studies that are only nine weeks that are nine weeks in duration. And a lot of these are linked to kind of the eccentric component, which is definitely worth talking about in terms of exerbotics, because there’s a greater eccentric load.

Eccentric is the lowering of the weight. So of course, there’s no weight stack on the exerbotics devices, but it’s where. A chest press or a leg press is the pressing out, it’s the coming back. So of course on an exerbotics device, it’s motor controlled because it’s technologically enabled. It’s far more advanced than many exercise facilities. But because of that eccentric load, which we are 40 % stronger in, we also see different adaptations within our sarcomeres.

So we’ve started to add sarcomeres in series as well as in parallel. So without getting into too fine a detail, We have some of the smallest levels within our muscle, and I think we have touched on this briefly in the past, are our sarcomeres. Typically, when we engage in strength training, we add sarcomeres in parallel. So we kind of build up this level of sarcomeres, and that adds to our kind of muscle hypertrophy. But actually, when we have a very heavy or very forced eccentric component to our strength training, such as exerbotics, we actually add sarcomeres in series as well. So we add sarcomeres next to each other, and that allows

for greater flexibility as well.

So we’re kind of optimizing this muscular adaptation.

It’s not just increases in parallel, it’s increases in series as well. That’s awesome. So as we move to 11 -week studies, we see things like reduced anxiety symptoms in both healthy and symptomatic participants. And this is, we can’t understate this. I was at a social gathering a few weeks back and I was talking with a number of friends and I asked after their children who were all grownups now, sort of late teens, early twenties, and Almost every other person that I spoke to said that their children were doing great. They all had a good job or they were doing great at college, but they were struggling a bit with anxiety.

And I thought there’s a real prevalence in society right now of anxiety, of sort of trait anxiety that is kind of ingrained in them. It’s not the state of them. It’s not the situation they’re in. It’s built into their person. Well, But 11 weeks of strength training has shown to reduce anxiety symptoms, both in healthy people, so people who really aren’t showing any evidence of clinical anxiety, and in symptomatic people who are showing clinical anxiety levels.

And then the other one is continued static and dynamic and reactive balance as a product of strength training in combination with balance training. And that’s really nice because of course many of the exercise coach studios now incorporate balance training into their programming. That’s pretty awesome. I don’t think that a lot of people realize that exercise can physiologically help them reduce anxiety. I think people understand at a very basic level that exercise produces endorphins.

I feel good immediately after, but looking at exercise as an intervention at a very physiological level to set you up for reduced longer -term anxiety is kind of another level of understanding and I think just sort of an icing on the cake to you know that boost of and mood that you get immediately following your workout knowing that you’re doing something for yourself longer term if that’s a struggle for you? Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of talk about how the cognitive functions or the cognitive benefits of strength training work. And there’s a lot of talk about how we cross the blood brain barrier or myokines. You know, we’ve talked about brain -derived neurotrophic factor in the past as well.

And we’ll talk about other cognitive benefits as we move on.

But they’re certainly the most, you know, underappreciated, in my opinion, as far as adaptations to strength training. Absolutely. So moving on to 12 weeks then, we start to see, well, we now see continued reduction in blood pressure and we start to be able to see some of the mechanisms associated with this. So it’s not just that we can say, okay, blood pressure has gone down, we start to see changes in nitric oxide metabolites as well. which link to blood pressure. So it’s not just a short -term response, it’s now that our body is functioning at a far more efficient level to maintain normalized blood pressure levels.

And we also see continued reductions in low back pain. So, of course, some studies will have been shorter and some studies will have been longer, and some people will have had chronic low back pain for longer or shorter or it been more serious. But in this instance, there are studies that are 12 weeks in duration showing that once weekly lumbar extension strength training can reduce low back pain. And then go back to our brain health and our cognitive function, we see that there’s a great study that shows 12 weeks of resistance training recovered cognitive function in elderly patients with mild cognitive impairment. So elderly patients who were showing some decline in their cognitive function, and this was actually saying that some of that decline was actually recovered after 12 weeks of strength training.

And this links to the next one, which is that strength training or strength increases, I should say, is correlated with the neurochemical markers associated with long -term brain health.

So I spoke about this at a conference a few years back and somebody asked me what I thought was the most exciting research that I’d read that year.

And this was certainly the most exciting research because while I’m well aware that physiologically I’m helping my body as I age and I’m giving myself the best opportunity to function physically well, the idea that as I maintain my strength, I maintain that relationship with some of the neurochemical markers that are associated with long -term brain health and cognitive function is obviously really important to me and should be important to everybody. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, and then the final one for the 12 -week marker is combined strength and balance program is showing significant reduction in the risk of a number of falls in older adults. you know, something like 60 % of people over the age of 60 will have a fall at some point. And for many people, that will produce some kind of injury, or it will become debilitating in their engagement in social activity, because they may feel less confident in their day -to -day activity. And oftentimes, it leads to second or third falls as well.

So the idea that a strengthened program now could reduce risk and number of falls in older adults is really important. Yes, we see a lot of people come in with that goal, right, as fall reduction or they saw a parent fall and they don’t want that for themselves, right? And so there’s several components you’ve already mentioned about that make up somebody’s balance and fall risk.

And some of those that you mentioned were, you know, the proprioception and flexibility and physical strength and stamina, and they all are building up together to reduce this fall risk by roughly three months. Is that accurate, 12 weeks? Yeah, absolutely. And there was also gait and dynamic balance. So their ability, their walking control and their proficiency, if you like, maybe their confidence in walking, but yeah, flexibility. A lot of the times, a physiologist I worked with a number of years back once said that flexibility is so important in balance because we often trip.

But flexibility might be the ability to catch ourselves before we fall because of our ability to get our leg forward and plant our foot again and things like that.

And of course, the strength and the stability to do that. So, so, yeah, all of those things are building up to this point where we can now say, hey, there’s there’s definitely evidence of a reduced risk of and number of falls.

Wow. OK, so all of this has happened up through 12 weeks, right?

That’s where we’re at.

Yeah, so three months and we could have had a diabetic, overweight, high blood pressure person at risk of falls with some degree of cognitive impairment and weakness in their muscles and, you know, almost a dependence. And after 12 weeks of strength training, they could have seen improvements in every single one of those parameters. So, you know. But Dr. Fisher, here’s a question for you. Here’s a question for you. Let’s say that was me.

those were all of my goals that you just mentioned, and I hit the 12 -week mark because I was exercising faithfully and I achieved all of those. Does that mean I should then stop? Can I stop now then? Well, no, because the problem is that at the 12 -week mark, we may have set ourself up for a higher position, but ultimately that decline is almost inevitable. That’s part of our life. We’ve talked previously that our body is in an anabolic state when we’re young and is in the catabolic state as we age.

So we have this building phase when we’re young. And we know that because we grow through our early years and through puberty and so forth. But from our late 20s, 30s, we’re really on a decline, our catabolic state, our catabolic mechanisms increase and our anabolic mechanisms decrease. So we lose bone, we lose muscle, we lose strength, we lose cognitive function, we lose efficiency in our mechanisms around blood pressure and blood sugar control and things like that. And hence why we see such a high prevalence of those medical conditions. But the idea that we can reverse them is great, but we can’t engage in strength training for 12 weeks and say that that’s it for the rest of our life.

That’s our start. That should be us back on a healthy life, but we want to maintain that healthy life. So at that stage, it’s now about continued adherence to strength training. I’ve said it before, but You know, twice a week, 20 minutes is not, it’s not a huge investment, um, for the rest of your life, but really for the best quality life to thrive, not just to survive, but to thrive. That’s what it is. Uh, we want to be doing the workout that I did today on my, the last day that I’m alive, but with the same cognitive function and the same strength and the same

blood pressure. So I don’t take any medication up to that point. And I can engage with all my friends and family and, and my social groups and my, you know, physical activity right up to the final day. I know it’s so inspiring. And you know what, if you’re listening to this, and you self admittedly, would confess that you have a short -term mindset when it comes to exercise, that you have a tendency to pick it up and drop it, or have a little bit of a short -term mentality. Just, if you’ve ever seen the image of a cartoon of a man pushing a big boulder up a hill, we all understand that you’re pushing this boulder, big boulder up a hill ahead of you, and you’re making traction, but as soon as you stop pushing that boulder, what’s gonna happen?

You’re going to just fall right back down the hill and it’s going to flatten you. And that’s kind of how like aging is, is that we, um, with our guidance of a supervised strength training workout, conveniently, we are pushing this boulder up a hill with help. It’s not that hard.

It’s not that long, but we’re making a lot of good progress.

If we stop though, what’s going to happen, it’s going to roll right back down.

And so that’s what we want to avoid. Right. Yeah. There’s a couple of healthcare providers I’ve worked with in the UK, and we talked about it in terms of a pension. And obviously in the US it’s a 401k, but you spend so much of your life paying into your 401k so that when you retire, you have this benefit, you have this financial freedom. Um, to sustain the life you want.

Well, that’s exactly what you’re doing with your, with your body.

You’re paying, you’re investing in your body so that it will always be there to function for you.

And in this case, it’s not just your body, but your mind as well. Absolutely.

Okay. So that was a little aside, a little rant, and now we’re going to hop into what’s going to happen after. three -month mark. To be honest, it’s amazing I don’t go on more tangents. I’m renowned for going off on tangents, but I’ll stay on point for the rest of the podcast now. So we’re at 13 weeks.

This is one of my favorite adaptations. It says that muscle size increases become visible to friends and family. So there’s clearly evidence, there’s research studies that say that not only have we started to make physiological adaptations within our muscle, but that those adaptations to our muscle are now visible to the people around us. So, and I think that’s a great adaptation.

Now, maybe that’s the ego in me and the vanity in me that thinks it’s important for people to think that I’m muscular. And let’s be clear, I’m certainly not as muscular as many people out there. But I think the idea that you can engage in strength training and other people will notice the difference in you is so important. I’m sorry, but honestly, that’s probably one of the biggest social motivators because as soon as somebody sees you and says, what do you, what have you been doing? You look good. Great.

That, that really is.

Wow. That’s motivating.

Who wants to quit after that point? Right. They just are like, yeah, this is working. Yeah. That’s a good one. Okay.

So 14 weeks, we see continued improvements in blood pressure. And again, this time it’s mechanisms called endothelial functions. That’s our arteries and our veins ability to contract and relax. So when we’re young, our arteries have this great elasticity to allow more blood to flow through or to shrink down when there’s not so much blood flowing through based on our exercise demands. But our endothelial function, our artery’s ability to do that, changes with time. We lose that level of elasticity.

And at 14 weeks, the research says, we’ve now got improvements in our endothelial function. So we’re continuing to see these mechanisms that improve the function. improve our reductions in blood pressure or our normalization of blood pressure. At 15 weeks, we see studies where healthy people see reductions in LDL. So, LDL is low -density lipoproteins. That’s considered, often termed, the bad cholesterol.

Cholesterol is actually a hormone. It’s something produced by our body, so it’s not necessarily bad on its own, although we don’t want too much of it. But LDL is certainly the bad of the low -density, of the density lipoproteins. We often see increases in high -density lipoproteins in accordance with that reduction in low -density lipoproteins, so that’s also good. And we see reductions in total cholesterol, which is overall often what medical professionals, physicians, and GPs are looking at. And again, continued reductions in C -reactive protein, which we talked about earlier, linked to systemic and chronic inflammation.

Okay. So 16 weeks. And you can imagine now, I just kind of want to paint a bit of a picture. This is one of those tangents, Amy, forgive me. I paint a bit of a picture that, you know, I’ve run many of these studies. And or many studies like these, I should say, and you recruit participants and then you take them into a gym or a laboratory environment and you engage them in strength training, you know, twice a week to 16 weeks. So 16 weeks, we’re now at nearly four months.

So this is people that haven’t typically trained before. So you can imagine that if they weren’t encouraged to already go and do strength training, it’s hard to get them to stick with a program like this. And so The idea of making it more palatable by using a low volume, short duration, 20 minutes, twice per week approach is really, really important. And certainly they’re a lot more feasible to get people to adhere to those kinds of programs than of higher volume or time commitment. And I say that in part really just to give a shout out to a lot of the researchers that have done this kind of study that we’re talking about.

There’s a lot of time and money and effort goes into these studies. So kudos to the scientists behind this. So at 16 weeks. Older adults are seeing increases in bone mineral density. Wow, this is a really big one. We’ve talked about anabolic and catabolic stages of our life, and our bone density does start to diminish as we get older, and especially as a product of certain hormones within the female population specifically.

but our bone density just decreased, we can become osteopenic and osteoporosis, which quite literally means porous bones, makes them very brittle, puts us at a great risk of fracture if we fall. And after 16 weeks of strength training, we’re now seeing that our bones are increasing in density. So they’re not just, it’s not just our muscular system that’s becoming stronger, but it’s our skeletal system as well. We’re quite literally reversing aging with that. That can’t be underrated in what we’re talking about. You see improvements in muscle quality and insulin sensitivity, and we see the reversal of diabetes in many people.

So, I spoke with somebody not long back and they were saying, is it true that diabetes can be reversed by strength training? And my comment was, not necessarily in everybody, but there is absolutely evidence to show that some people go from being a fully blown diabetic to a pre -diabetic to having normal blood sugar levels and no longer having to look at their insulin levels and no longer being on the medication for being a diabetic. So strength training can absolutely reverse diabetes. We see improvements in cervical and shoulder angles, so our posture improves further. probably see improvements in our upper body control. So all the things that we are doing to make our posture worse by sitting at a desk, by leaning forward or by driving or, or so forth, we’re now seeing all of those things are reversing.

Uh, and we’re seeing our neck angle is here. So you can imagine with age, we’ve talked about catabolic state, but we also are kind of prompting this hunch back. kind of leg forward, neck forward, head forward approach. But we’re now seeing all of that start to be reversed with strength training. We see further psychological benefits. So self -perception is significantly improved.

Self -perception is how I think of myself. So many people will, of course, have low self -worth and self -efficacy, their perception of their ability to perform a given task. So the idea that strength training can help people feel better about themselves, about their engagement in their day -to -day activities and their capabilities is hugely important. And then in accordance, we also see reduced depressive symptoms in people undergoing treatment for depression.

So many people who have depressive symptoms may be put on medication or will be undergoing some kind of medically ensued treatment. Well, we often use the phrase exercise is medicine or strength training is medicine, and it’s absolutely medicine. We’re saying that strength training reduces depressive symptoms in people undergoing treatment for depression. So a few really big ones at that four -month mark. So if you were thinking of quitting at three months, at 12 weeks, these are all the things that we’re seeing beyond that time. You know what?

I mean, four months, you’re starting to become a different person. These are pretty big and significant ones, the bone density changes and the diabetes. Those are pretty concerning states of being for people to be in. they find themselves at various stages of their life in. And with intentionality, you know, it’s documented and research shows that in four months of intentional strength training, you can really, really combat those.

And it may not even be as much of a concern. You can see yourself fighting that and changing the numbers that you’re looking at and seeing that you’re on the right direction, that you’ve actually shifted your trajectory in a different direction than your body wanted to go or was going in. And I can see how that would improve your self -perception, too. I mean, even if those two weren’t your main things, who doesn’t want to feel better about themself, right? And by then, I think you’ve hopefully solidified more of a habit of exercise too, and you identify as that healthy person by then, which would be the goal. Yeah, I love your first comment there, that after four months, you’re really a different person.

And I think that speaks volumes about the people that do engage in strength training for a long -term, about their long -term goals, their long -term plans, their long -term health and the importance of their health. And like you said, you know, bone density and diabetes and psychological health and depression and self -perception, you know, are huge things. The idea that you can take somebody and make them into a different person that’s not osteoporotic or osteopenic, that’s not diabetic anymore, that doesn’t have a negative self -perception, that doesn’t have poor posture or weakness or dependence. You know, I often say, you know, we can see weakness everywhere because it exists in frailty, it exists in dependence, it exists in all the care homes in our society. What we want is to be independent. out of those care homes and keep our independence as long as we can.

And that’s exactly what we’re seeing with this time duration. And this is only 16 weeks. This is only four months. Four months in the grand scheme of things is really a drop in the ocean. But it’s then the conscious decision to sustain that and to sustain that health span. You know what, if you’re an exercise coach client, that is 32 workouts.

Again, here’s one other point, is that people sometimes, I’ve been guilty of this before I discovered the exercise coach, they look at fitness and health overhauling as this gigantic, all -consuming lifestyle shift that is a little bit daunting and requires a full -time job level of participation at the gym. and extreme nutritional changes and whatever else that you think is involved in this.

And to think that anybody can do 32 workouts. How many total minutes is that? If they’re only 20 minutes each, that’s not that many minutes of time to achieve all of these things. And so just putting this into perspective, if done correctly and if done right, you are really, really, really collapsing this timeline to meaningful and drastic change.

I just hope that encourages you if you’re listening to this today.

Yeah, fantastic. I love it. When you put that in perspective of 32 workouts, I can I have in my head somebody almost ticking them off, you know, and seeing these benefits as they as they go through this duration. Who would want to quit strength training if they were seeing these benefits? So, yeah. And then, OK, there’s a few more.

There’s only a few more to touch on. So if you’re listening, thank you. much for sticking with us this long. So at 26 weeks, so we now jump to the half year for six months. After six months of strength training, the evidence suggests that your resting energy expenditure has increased by around 7%. So, we talked on the previous podcast about the acute responses to strength training and we said that resting energy expenditure is elevated for up to 24 to 48 hours or even up to 72 hours in some studies.

At this stage now, your body has got that into this rhythm that your body stays healthy, it stays fit, it engages in this with some degree of regularity. And so your energy expenditure day to day is higher. And this is partly a product of the amount of muscle mass that you’ve added, whether it’s muscle density or whether it’s actually physical muscle size.

But you’re now burning 7 % more calories just just by being you, not by exercising, not by eating a certain way, just by being you, just by having six months of strength training under your belt.

So, and I love that. I think that’s, you know, why wouldn’t you want to do that? Why wouldn’t you want to keep going with that and keep adding muscle and keep elevating your energy expenditure? Amy, you called me out last week on eating a bag of peanut M &Ms. Yes, I did. Um, and I often joke about what people say to me, Oh my gosh, you’re this like health guru and, and, you know, PhD, and why would you eat that?

Something that’s so bad for you. And I always turn around and say, Hey, first of all, I love peanut M &Ms. So that’s my treat.

But second of all, I do all of those things so that now and then I can eat a bag of peanut M &Ms.

I think that’s okay. So, you know, knowing our energy expenditures increased gives us that, that freedom to maybe have a, have a, uh, you know, a cheat, a cheat day. now and then. Not a cheat day, not a cheat meal, but just a little snack now and then. Absolutely.

You know, put your critics to bed. Put them to rest, Dr. Fisher. Don’t let them talk to you like that. And I think it’s helpful to know, like, my body is working for me now, on my behalf, behind the scenes, if I make it to the six -month mark. I’ve done something that is setting my body up work in the background for my benefit, for my metabolic health, without me even doing anything, like that’s a win. Yeah.

So the next one is also a six -month study, and this was the drastic improvements in strength are associated with improved mitochondrial density and genetic expression. And basically what that means, and this was a phenomenal research paper, we could do a whole podcast based on this paper by Simon Milov, and Mark Tarnopolsky.

But basically what they did is they had older adults and they had younger adults and they looked at them at a cellular, a genetic level. and they put the older adults through six months of strength training. And then they reviewed their genetic expression and their mitochondrial density. They looked at how they were functioning at a cellular level, and they found that they were much, much closer to the 21 -year -olds now. And in fact, the title of the research paper was Strength Training Reverses Aging. So at this six -month mark now, you are Literally, a different person, your body internally at the cellular level is functioning like you are much, much younger than you are.

Holy cow. I like, it’s pretty fascinating to consider genetic expression. Just consider the fact that your genes are a certain combination of genes. and sequences of information, but how you look, feel, and function is highly variable based on that set of genes. way up there is the degree to which you participate in strength training. I mean, skin elasticity, energy, cognitive function, physical appearance.

There are like a hundred possible variations of the same individual that could exist in reality. And some are extremely unhealthy and some are fantastic. And it’s interesting because you can, to some extent, influence what that is. And so if that’s important to you, it’s really cool to understand that just the one behavior, just the one behavior of strength training can highly, highly influence your genetic expression for the better. Not only physically, not only externally or appearance, but also like internal with your health and what diseases you develop and what diseases you don’t develop. I just think that’s life changing information.

When I think about it, I create this kind of image in my brain that As you engage in a lifetime of strength training, as you engage in a strength training career, I often call it, you are quite literally reversing your body. You’re creating a biological age younger than your chronological age. Your cells and your genetic expression is different. Your bone density is improved. Your muscular system is improved. Cognitive function, endothelial function and blood pressure, insulin response and blood sugar control.

You know, all of these things are happening like a much, much younger person than you physically are. So, you know, it’s just phenomenal to think of these adaptations. So the very last one, which is a year -long study, and it almost plays down everything else that’s gone ahead, but the very last one is continued strength training shows improvements in executive function, which is cognitive function and neuroplasticity, above other exercise modalities.

And so the only real reason I bring this up, because we’ve talked about improved cognitive function at different time points, but this is a really nice study that’s one year long.

And what they did is they compared strength training to other exercise modalities, to things like just engaging in stretching, to things like yoga or Pilates.

And I’m absolutely not against yoga or Pilates at all. I think they’re great, but I think they’re secondary to the importance of strength training. So at this stage, it’s very clear strength training improves cognitive function and executive function to a greater degree than other exercise modalities. So at this stage, strength training is really winning out compared to any other exercise type you can choose. Amazing. Wow.

So, I mean, the benefits you just listed over this timeline. If you were listening and you caught this, I mean, there are different categories of things. And so whichever is most significant to you, you’re going to have some that matter more to you than other people. But you’ve covered neural changes and adaptations, cardiovascular, blood pressure -related adaptations, flexibility and function adaptations, musculoskeletal, metabolic and inflammation, pain and posture, and then psychological and cognitive. adaptations are sprinkled in at various points.

Some occur quicker than others, but really no matter what your goal, all of these are appearing within your first 6 to 12 months, which I think personally is a sweet spot because that is going to encourage you to keep going. If all these benefits took 24 months to happen, right? it’d just be too easy to get discouraged and decide that what you were doing isn’t working, right? And what you’re saying is there’s a lot happening month one, month two, month three, month four, a lot of it behind the scenes, but then you start, it starts compounding upon itself over that first year. And if you stop strength training at the two month mark, there are like triple the amount of benefits possible to you that you’re missing out on. And the boulder is going to roll back over you.

Yeah, I mean, there’s no doubt that every strength training session counts. So doing something someday is good, but it’s all about that long -term adherence, that long -term engagement. It’s all about this as a lifestyle habit. You know, the analogy that I often make, and I’ll do it again, so forgive me, is brushing your teeth. You know, we don’t brush our teeth for the first six months of our life and think, well, that’s that done.

Uh, you know, we, we get up when we do it every day, twice a day, and it’s, it’s routine.

And we don’t even think about not doing it. And the reality is that for my goodness, if everybody on the planet engaged in strength training twice a week, uh, for the rest of their life, I just, I look at the, the, the state of society economically, socially, uh, you know, road rage and depression and anxiety and things like this, and I’m physical ill health. And we would just live on a completely different planet. Um, but of course it’s not so easy, uh, global level, but each single person. can make a difference for themselves. Yes.

I, it’s, um, it is achievable. And, um, you know, one, one final frame for you as we wrap up this conversation. When we talk to clients, we talk about the journey they’re, they’re about to take. And, um, you know, if you lump some of these adaptations into sort of what happens in the first few months. one to two months, you could describe that as acclimation. So your coach may have talked to you about an acclimation phase, which is in general where your body is shifting and your muscles are waking up and they’re learning and they’re adapting initially on a lot of levels to the exercise stimulus you’re giving it.

And then eventually after that acclimation phase, you move into what’s called transformation or what you could call a transformation. You are transforming yourself from the inside out to become a different person. And our mission at The Exercise Coach that we talk about is to transform the way people age. If you’ve never heard us say that before, what we mean by that is we have a choice in the way we age and we can transform the usual aging process And with a short amount of time, two 20 -minute workouts per week, that leads to a transformation in the aging experience itself and in our lives. And that’s why we say that strength changes everything. It’s because it changes the amount of time and the trajectory of our life if we do it regularly.

And so I hope This information was encouraging to you. I hope that no matter what you’re after when it comes to exercise, that you have understood and absorbed at a deeper level what is really going on in your body. backed by research and that these are things that are going to continue to compound as you stick with it. Remember, every single bout of exercise you do produces positive adaptations. Every workout matters. So we’ve talked about every workout.

We’ve talked about this first year, one to 12 months. And, you know, think about a long -term approach to exercise, like Dr. Fisher said. Picture yourself 10 years from now, a healthier, stronger, more vibrant, younger feeling and functioning version of yourself. That is what you can achieve through this repetition. I just can’t emphasize that enough. Any closing comments, Dr. Fisher, about this?

You know, I have one closing comment and, uh, and I do appreciate that. I’ve gone on quite a lot about all the content here, but one of the things that we haven’t talked about is weight loss and many people will engage in exercise and strength training because of weight loss. We’ve been focused on the wrong tissue for decades. Throughout my entire lifespan, people have talked about weight loss and fat loss and dieting and things like that. And it’s not about weight loss. All of these things are in spite of weight loss.

All of these things are in spite of your adipose tissue or your body mass index. We should, we’ve been focused on that and we should have been focused on muscle all this time. And we’re now starting to see it. The data is there and it’s just, it’s really important that we get that information out to the people. Um, so they can know that it’s not about losing fat. It’s about engaging in strength training and seeing the positive adaptations that they can see.

Excellent. Yeah. Thank you for that point. We want you to feel and function decades younger than you are. And so if you could use help with that.

I hope that you will check out an exercise coach studio near you.

Visit exercisecoach . com to figure that out. If you ever have a question for us about strength, fitness, health, please visit the show so you can connect with us at strengthchangeseverything . com. We will see you next time on the podcast and hope you remember, strength changes everything. Thanks for listening.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything . com. Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode. Here’s to you and your best health.

The post The Strength Training Benefits You’ll See From the First Month to the First Year first appeared on Exercise Coach.

Acute Responses to Strength Training – Why Every Workout Counts!

Jared Van Bruaene — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 01:00:12 +0000

Season 2 / Episode 47

. . . .

SHOW NOTES

How long does it really take to feel the benefits of strength training? In this first episode of a two-part series, Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher explore the benefits of strength training. They break the question into two parts: the immediate changes you’ll feel right away and the longer-term adaptations that build strength, focus, and resilience over time. Expect to walk away with a deeper understanding of how strength training transforms not just your body, but your energy, mindset, and everyday performance.

Dr. Fisher starts by explaining the instant and long-term rewards of strength training.
The moment you start lifting, your body begins responding with powerful benefits like sharper focus and a better mood. And over time, those sessions compound into stronger muscles, better energy, and a more resilient body.
Amy and Dr. Fisher break down one of the body’s hidden superpowers: myokines. These small proteins get released during strength training and travel throughout your body, supporting your brain, organs, and overall well-being.
Dr. Fisher highlights how a single strength session can lift your mood and sharpen your mind. Research shows that after finishing a workout, most people feel clearer, calmer, and more alert. It’s one of the simplest ways to reset mentally after a stressful day.
According to Dr. Fisher, strength training before something big, like an interview or exam, can actually improve memory and focus. Instead of skipping your workout to read, he suggests doing it to help your brain work better under pressure. You walk in feeling grounded, confident, and ready to perform.
Amy points out how many people struggle with brain fog and mental fatigue. But just twenty minutes of strength training can bring clarity, focus, and a sense of energy that lasts all day.
Dr. Fisher shares how high-effort strength training helps reduce pain perception. It means your body literally becomes more tolerant of discomfort, both physically and mentally. Over time, you don’t just get stronger, you feel more capable of handling life’s challenges.
Dr. Fisher talks about how strength training increases energy expenditure for up to 48 hours afterward and how your body keeps burning calories long after you’ve left the gym.
He adds that this benefit doesn’t happen with regular cardio. Sure, a run burns calories in the moment, but strength training keeps the fire going for two more days.
Dr. Fisher explains that strength training also boosts muscle protein synthesis. That means your body starts repairing and building new muscle tissue long after the workout ends.
By engaging in strength training, you’re not just maintaining what you have — you’re actively creating a stronger, healthier version of yourself.
Dr. Fisher reminds us why consistency matters so much. Every workout is an opportunity for your body to respond, adapt, and grow stronger. Skipping sessions means missing out on the positive signals your body needs to keep performing at its best.
Amy encourages you to think twice the next time you feel tempted to skip the gym. That small 20-minute session could be exactly what turns your day around.
Dr. Fisher notes that these benefits don’t take months to show up. The body responds immediately, even after a single workout. So if you’re waiting to “feel ready,” the best time is actually right now.
Dr. Fisher shares that working with a strength coach can help you gain the most out of your strength training sessions.
Sometimes it’s not about pushing harder, but learning how to train smarter, with the right form, effort, and recovery. Having a personal trainer in your corner keeps you accountable and helps you discover just how strong you really are.
Amy says that a personal trainer helps you show up on the days you wouldn’t do it alone. And those are the days your body needs it most, when stress is high, energy is low, and your brain could use that endorphin lift.
Amy and Dr. Fisher cover how strength training builds confidence. You begin noticing small wins — lifting more, moving better, feeling capable. That quiet confidence often spills over into how you show up at work, home, and in relationships.
How to look at exercise differently: strength training teaches discipline, resilience, and patience — qualities that serve far beyond the gym. Every session is a reminder of what your body can do.
Amy closes by reminding us that strength training is one of the few things in life that gives immediate returns. For example, you walk in tired and walk out more alive.

Mentioned in This Episode:

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Submit your questions at StrengthChangesEverything.com

We should all love the idea of our body burning more calories. Our body is now working harder to recover following that strength training workout.

Maybe weight loss is one of your goals. I think you should pay particular attention to that. This is hugely important.

If you’ve been strength training for a long time, you get an even greater response.

Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training. And now for today’s episode.

Welcome back to the Strength Changes Everything podcast. Today is episode one of a two -part episode series in which we are answering a listener question that came in. And by the way, if you’re a listener to this podcast, you can visit strengthchangeseverything . com and click the submit a question orange button at the top right section of the page with any questions you may have for the show. And the question that we are answering today is how long will it take for me to experience adaptations or how long do adaptations take? Now on this show, we talk a lot about the benefits of strength training.

There are many different benefits that one can expect to achieve from strength training. And we’re splitting this question into two parts. We’re splitting it into what are the immediate benefits of strength training? In other words, what can you expect to experience after just a single exercise session? And what are the longer -term benefits? And that’ll be the second episode in this two -part series to answer this question.

And as we know, when it comes to the adaptations we experience from strength training, you know, people, everyone has different results that matter most to them, right? We’ve talked before about how some people are motivated to exercise because of building muscle mass or bigger muscles and muscle size. Other people are motivated just to feel better and sleep better. And some people are wanting to lose weight. So no matter which adaptation is most important to you, you’re going to want to listen to these two episodes in order to understand what you should expect if you are consistent in your strength training workouts.

So Dr. Fisher is with me today. And Dr. Fisher, today’s episode is answering, you know, what adaptations or what are the immediate benefits of a single strength training session? So how many benefits, research -based benefits, are we going to be introducing today?

So first of all, I think this is a really important question. I think people should go into their workout with some understanding or expectations of how long an adaptation might take. But also, as you said, highlight the acute responses to just a single bout of exercise. And this might be their very first strength training workout ever, or it might be how their body responds to each individual workout throughout their training lifestyle. So I’ve been training for decades and I still should see these responses from each individual workout. So we’ll talk today about five or six different acute responses to a resistance training session.

Alright, perfect.

So what is the first one?

Yeah, so I think the first one that probably most people will not be aware of, but something that we’ve definitely talked about kind of touching upon in different episodes on the podcast, and we did a deep dive into it more recently, is myokines. So when we have forced contraction of muscle, a high effort contraction of muscle, that muscle sends these myokines or these signaling proteins to positively influence other parts of our body. So we’ve talked about the myokines as an endocrine system. So it receives and interprets chemical signals and it receives this mechanical tension as a signal and it sends off these signaling messages around the body, which can positively impact the brain and our organs and so forth. So to me, the first and probably the most important is the release of myokines.

Right. If you missed the myokines episode, It’s just a couple episodes back.

Just scroll back a little bit in the history and you can learn all about these magic mayakhyans that are released immediately following a strength training session that do so much for our body. So from there, we have a couple of different ones. So, um, there’s a lot of research and we should clarify all of these are, are research -based, they’re evidence -based, there’s research, the scientific papers that show these are the acute responses to a resistance training session. So there’s two that I’m going to kind of group together, and this is why I said five or six. There’s, there’s improved mood. and there’s enhanced cognitive function.

And the reason I’m grouping them together is there’s kind of enhanced blood flow to our brain and there’s enhanced, as we talked about myokines, one of the myokines we’ve talked about previously is brain -derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF. And that’s a signaling protein that goes to our brain and can enhance our brain’s function and our cognitive function. So, after we’ve finished a workout, the evidence says that people are in a better mood in the acute period after a workout, and they also have enhanced cognitive function immediately after a workout and for a time after that workout. So, our brain is functioning really well. So lots of people will think that going into maybe an exam, the best thing that we can do is cram and cram and cram. And actually one of the best things that we can do before a, maybe an interview or an exam or anything that’s going to put us in a, maybe a stressful position, uh, where we want to be able to recall information and rely on, uh, memory recall and processing and other elements of cognitive function.

is actually do a strength training workout. So don’t think, okay, I’ve got that big interview today, or I’ve got that big exam, I should miss my workout and cram. Don’t do that. Do the studying beforehand.

And then on the day, still get in in that morning and do that workout. Yes. You know, what I think about is many times in our studios, and I’m sure this is what you’re describing is the reason why we hear this, is that clients will come in and they will drag themselves through the door for their appointment and their strength training session with us. And they’ll admit to us, you know, I really don’t feel my best today. I’m stressed. I’m kind of tired.

I don’t really want to be here, but I’m here. And we’ll celebrate the fact that they’re there and they will do their workout. And when they leave, they look back and they tell us, you know, I feel so much better. both physically and emotionally. And a lot of times people out there complain of brain fog. I mean, nobody likes that feeling of just their brain is mush or overwhelmed.

And so to have anything that you can do to improve that mental clarity and that focus or just feel better about your life and your ability to take on the day is like, who doesn’t want that?

Right.

And you’re saying that’s just on the other side of that 20 minutes during training session. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I love it. I love the way you praise that. I love the idea that people can walk out of a workout feeling like they’ve accomplished something, feeling a sense of mastery.

I mean, who wouldn’t? feel good? Who wouldn’t have an improved mood about that? And we all know that if I’m in a good mood and I smile, I pass that on to other people. So the world just becomes a better place for everybody.

Right. You know, so yeah, it’s, I think this is a great acute response to, uh, to strength training sessions.

Okay, so you just kind of lumped together an improved mood and enhanced cognitive function, you know, mental clarity, focus, and then we already talked about myokines. All right, what else? Okay, so the next one is a really undervalued and underdiscussed one, and this is called a reduced pain perception, which is exercise -induced hypoalgesia. And there’s an interesting phenomenon, and the mechanisms are not completely clear on this, so I’ll say that now before you put me on the spot. If somebody does a high effort strength training workout, it reduces their pain perception. So this is obviously particularly important for anybody who’s maybe got low back pain, chronic low back pain, or osteoarthritis we’ve talked about previously, or maybe fibromyalgia or other kind of comorbidities or clinical conditions which have an associated degree of pain.

Resistance training workouts have shown that within 15 minutes of that workout, there’s a lesser, there’s a muted response to pain. Now, we should clarify the way that’s assessed. It’s normally assessed through something called pain pressure threshold. And usually that is where you use a device that pushes on somebody’s skin. And it measures the amount of pressure applied before they report a certain value in pain or they report pain to be sort of unbearable or whatever it might be, whatever value the researchers are looking for. But it’s evidently reduced, or sorry, it’s evidently greater after a workout.

So a person can tolerate far more pain. or they have a reduced pain perception.

So it’s a really interesting phenomenon that I think obviously applies to, like I said, those clinical populations.

But I think it’s probably important for everybody, you know, anybody who might stub their toe or bang their elbow or anything like that, you know, it’s important to have, to be able to put in good place, like, our understanding of our body’s reaction to pain. Wow. That is really a cool one. I think, you know, a lot of people out there will, if they feel uncomfortable, if they feel kind of sore or there’s some kind of pain or dull pain or something that they’re experiencing, they actually may use that as an excuse to not exercise. And if you can just imagine, like, if I do my workout, I actually will probably, there’s a high likelihood that I’ll experience less pain or I won’t feel the effects of this pain so much. I can even say, I mean, as you’re describing this, I’ve had days where maybe I’ve been seated too long at a desk and hunched over my computer or working hard.

And so my neck and my shoulders are tight and sore. And then I go do my workout and I feel so much better.

I just don’t notice that pain anymore. That must be why that was, huh? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The next adaptation, and it’s an immediate, but it’s a prolonged adaptation, is elevated energy expenditure. So the research suggests that for 48 hours, so for two whole days after a high effort strength training workout, our body will burn more calories just in its normal activity.

Now, this is really important for two reasons. One, we should all love the idea of our body burning more calories. That’s great, right? This is not an excuse to go and eat that bag of potato chips or that donut or anything like that. But it’s just an understanding that our body is now working harder to recover to rebuild following that strength training workout. But the reason this is important is

we don’t get this adaptation from traditional cardiovascular or cardiorespiratory exercise. So if you go for a run, you might think, well, I went for a run for 30 minutes and my strength training session was only 20 minutes. So I burned more calories in my run. Well, in the actual 30 minute period compared to the 20 minute period, you maybe you did burn more calories you might not have but maybe you did but in the subsequent 48 hours you burn a higher number of calories following a resistance training workout than you will have done following a cardiovascular workout and in fact there’s even evidence to say that following a cardiorespiratory workout our energy expenditure actually drops as a kind of mechanism to preserve calories.

So it’s a really interesting, again, a really interesting phenomenon. But yeah, this idea of elevated energy expenditure is really important. Wow.

So you’re saying if one of my goals is to burn calories and to keep a healthy metabolic rate, and I have the choice between doing a cardio workout or a strength training workout, after that cardio session, my energy expenditure pretty much ceases right away. versus a strength training workout. After the strength training workout, I’m continuing to burn energy for up to 48 hours. Yeah, absolutely.

And this is actually, and we’ll kind of get into this when we talk about our chronic adaptations rather than just our acute responses, but if you’re new to resistance training, you absolutely get this response.

If you’ve been strength training for a long time, you get an even greater response. So people that have been training for six months will burn an even higher number of calories in the 48 hours after their workout compared to people that are just beginning strength training.

All right. Well, if you’re new to strength training and maybe weight loss is one of your goals, I think you should pay particular attention to that. be encouraged by this reality because this is hugely important. And the last one that we’ll talk about today is increased muscle protein synthesis. So typically we talk about for somewhere between three to six hours, potentially a bit longer than that, we have increased muscle protein synthesis. Now the reason this is important is, first of all, we have like a homeostasis within our body.

And that means that we have a natural kind of balance between anabolic or building mechanisms and catabolic and breaking down mechanisms. And that’s absolutely fine. That’s exactly how our body should be. But as we’ve talked about previously, as we age, we kind of…the seesaw, for want of a better term, tips, so we become a little bit more catabolic. Our bone breaks down a bit more than it rebuilds, and hence we can fall into osteoporosis. Our muscle breaks down more than it rebuilds, and hence we can fall into sarcopenia.

that doesn’t just happen in our 60s or 70s. It’s not like you suddenly hit 60 years old and you become sarcopenic. It’s a process. So what we actually see here is elevated muscle protein synthesis.

So instead of there being a balance or this favor of muscle protein breakdown, We’re tipping the balance the other way. So now there’s higher muscle protein synthesis. So one, we’re hanging onto the muscle that we’ve already got, but two, we’re actually helping to build more muscle or rebuild muscle that we may have lost. Wow.

So basically my strength training session is signaling my body to add muscle and strength and burn calories among other things.

It’s also signaling me to feel better.

and think better and function better in all of my physiological systems and in my organs.

I mean, it’s signaling a lot of good things that I want just from that one session alone. Is that right? Yeah. Every, every single session, uh, can, can produce these, these acute responses.

Oh my gosh. These are so great. So if you’re listening to this, I mean, I hope that you can latch on to at least one or two of these things to really inspire you. And I mean, Dr. Fisher, what would you say that a person listening to this episode should really glean and use this information in order to motivate them, you know, to work out? Yeah. So for me, the key, the key here is to never miss a workout.

You know, every single opportunity to work out is an opportunity to stimulate our body’s response in this way. Uh, you know, these are not chronic responses.

We don’t have enhanced mood for the next five years from a single workout.

This is something we need to keep doing with some degree of regularity. But as we can see from the elevated energy expenditure, every, you know, for up to 48 hours, it’s not something we need to do every day. It’s something just a couple times a week, and we can really kind of give our body that positive boost in things like cognitive function, or mood, or myokines, or pain perception, or energy expenditure, or muscle protein synthesis. So this is exactly what our body needs to really keep functioning optimally. Absolutely. So the next time, if you’re listening to this and you strength train, The next time you have that day where you just don’t feel like going in for your strength training workout, your little devil on your shoulder is trying to talk you out of it, or your lower self is trying to just say, let’s not do it today, I don’t want to do it today, or your motivation is in the tank, just keep in mind how amazing you can feel.

on the other side of that 20 minutes. You can tell yourself this is what we’re doing and this is why we are doing it. Latch on to these outcomes as your why for keeping up with your exercise habits, because it’s going to happen right away, which is amazing.

It doesn’t take months and months and months for you to get all these benefits.

You’re going to get it right away.

This is so exciting, Dr. Fisher. Thank you so much for explaining all of this. And I look forward to hearing more about the chronic or long term benefits of strength training in the next episode. Absolutely. All right. Well, we will see you next time on part two of this episode.

And until then, we hope you remember strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything . com. Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode.

Here’s to you and your best health.

The post Acute Responses to Strength Training – Why Every Workout Counts! first appeared on Exercise Coach.

Creatine – The Health Benefits Discussed and Myths Debunked

Jared Van Bruaene — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 01:00:41 +0000

Season 2 / Episode 46

. . . .

SHOW NOTES

You have heard of creatine, but you have no idea how much your body actually relies on it. Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher explore what creatine really is, why it matters for your health and performance, who should be using it, and how it actually works. They also tackle what the science actually says, how to use it in a way that makes sense for your lifestyle, and why so many people from athletes to everyday health seekers consider it a game changer.

Expect to walk away with practical takeaways you can use immediately, whether your goal is to train harder, improve recovery, support brain health, or simply live with more energy.

Dr. Fisher starts by explaining what creatine is and what it does.
It is one of the most researched supplements in the world and plays a direct role in how your body produces energy. Think of it as fuel storage that your muscles, brain, and organs can tap into when they need a boost.
Why is creatine so important? According to Dr. Fisher, creatine is essentially your body’s backup battery for energy, powering everything from your muscles to your brain. Without it, you would not be able to perform at your best physically or mentally.
Dr. Fisher explains how creatine boosts performance and allows you to exercise harder and longer.
Why athletes swear by creatine. From Olympic sprinters to football players, it is one of the most widely used supplements in sports. If you want to train like the best, creatine has likely been part of their routine.
Dr. Fisher highlights creatine health benefits that go beyond the gym.
Studies show creatine can lower cholesterol, protect your liver, and even help with blood sugar control. It is also linked to reducing bone loss, supporting brain health, and minimizing the risk of serious diseases.
Amy and Dr. Fisher cover why vegetarians may benefit even more from creatine.
Since plant based diets do not provide as much creatine naturally, supplements can make an even bigger difference. And yes, vegan friendly options are widely available.
According to Dr. Fisher, creatine is not just for athletes anymore. It is now considered a supplement for overall health and healthy aging.
Amy and Dr. Fisher cover the types of creatine. You can buy it as a pill, a powder, or even gummies. But the gold standard, the one most research supports, is creatine monohydrate.
Dr. Fisher on dosage: how much should you take daily? Research shows three to five grams per day is enough for most people. Smaller individuals may only need two to three grams, while larger athletes might go slightly above five.
Does creatine cause water retention? Dr. Fisher says no, there is no research to back that up. That old loading phase of 20 grams a day was more marketing than science, so stick to the steady daily dose.
Is creatine an anabolic steroid? Absolutely not. It has nothing to do with steroids chemically or functionally, so you can safely separate the two in your mind.
Is creatine safe for children and teens? While there is less research in younger groups, studies show no evidence of harm. Still, Dr. Fisher emphasizes focusing first on diet, sleep, hydration, and exercise before adding supplements.
Does creatine increase fat mass? Amy and Dr. Fisher reveal how creatine helps build lean muscle, which actually helps reduce body fat. If anything, it works in your favor for body composition.
Dr. Fisher busts the myth that creatine is only for strength athletes. It is not just for bodybuilders or powerlifters, it has broad health benefits for anyone. That is why today, it is considered more of a wellness supplement than a performance only one.
Is creatine only effective for men? According to Dr. Fisher, women benefit just as much. In fact, creatine may even support hormonal health, mood, and energy across the menstrual cycle.

Mentioned in This Episode:

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I would imagine there’s probably not an Olympic athlete on the planet that doesn’t take creatine. Lots of people will be listening and thinking, well, maybe I should be taking it.

These are some of the most common asked questions about this, maybe a little bit of misunderstanding or some mythology. So we’re going to break these down and clarify some things. Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios.

My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training. And now for today’s episode. Welcome back to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, everybody. Today we are talking about a popular supplement you may have heard of called creatine. This episode, we’re going to go through what creatine is, why it’s beneficial, who should be using it, how it works. And then we’re going to go through some rapid fire FAQs, frequently asked questions about this supplement.

There’s a lot of myths out there about this and so we’re going to cover those, debunk some of those, and just hopefully leave this episode today understanding a little bit better what creatine is, the benefits of it, and maybe how it could support you in your goals. So Dr. Fisher is here with me today and we’re going to just start by diving in and he’s going to cover for us kind of an overarching description of creatine. So Dr. Fisher, how’s it going today?

Yeah, very good. Thank you, Amy.

How are you?

I’m doing great.

So I’m looking forward to learning a little bit more about creatine. It’s newer to me. And I know you also take it. But let’s start by diving in and talking about what is creatine and what does it do?

Yeah. So it’s probably worth clarifying first off, creatine is one of the most researched supplements in existence. There’s just a plethora of academic studies that have looked at the effects of creatine, both from an exercise point of view, but also from a cognitive point of view and health benefit as well. So there is just an absolute mountain of research around creatine itself. But what is it? So it’s a natural compound that’s synthesized endogenously.

So the body will produce creatine from amino acids that we take in from meat or fish or eggs or so forth. But it’s also a naturally occurring product in meat and fish and eggs. So we can consume it, but we can also produce it. Now it’s primarily made in the liver, but also to some extent in the kidneys and the pancreas, and that’s worth a mention because we’ll probably come back to that a bit later on. But as far as what it is as a biological process, it’s stored in the scolipal muscle and it’s essential for providing energy. So creatine is converted to phosphocreatine and then it’s actually The process is adenosine diphosphate is added to phosphocreatine to regenerate adenosine triphosphate, and adenosine triphosphate, or ATP as it’s called, is basically our body’s way of producing energy.

So the best way to think of it is that creatine is essential for our body to have as either as a store or to produce, to be able to produce energy, whether that’s in our brain, in our organs, or in our skeletal muscle.

Okay, great. So it’s a very basic component of our metabolic system. how we produce energy in our bodies. Yeah. OK, great.

So then what exactly does creatine do and what what are the health benefits associated with, you know, adequate amounts of creatine in one’s body? Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, if we’ve got more creatine there to convert to phosphocreatine to add it to our energy production cycle, then we can exercise for longer. exercise harder, recruit higher threshold motor units and muscle fibers, so recruit those type 2 muscle fibers that we’ve talked about previously that are so important. So we tend to think of it in terms of the maximal end of exercise, that we can go for that extra percentage points longer, we can recruit those muscle fibers, we can improve our respiratory fitness and our muscular endurance as well. And that’s where the bulk of the body of research lies.

I would imagine there’s probably not an Olympic athlete on the planet that doesn’t take creatine or hasn’t taken creatine at some point, and there’s probably not many football players, soccer players, baseball players, basketball players, again, that don’t use creatine in some form, because it’s just one of the most commonly used supplements. Now, of course, if we’re gaining it from our nutritional habits, from a high meat diet or eggs or fish or so forth, as we said, then it might be that we are consuming a good amount of creatine. I tend to think of it as a bit of a belt and braces approach, that it’s a relatively inexpensive supplement. It’s a relatively small dosage with very minimal side effects, if any, and we will talk about that. So adding creatine into my diet as a supplement effectively doesn’t cost me anything. And so I’m sure most athletes, high -performance

athletes, feel exactly the same way. So when we talk about the health benefits, there’s a few studies that have shown that creatine can lower cholesterol. It can reduce accumulation of fat on the liver. It can reduce risk of heart disease and enhance glycemic control and glucose management. So reducing HbA1c levels, we’ve talked about that previously. And even things like it can reduce progression of cancer, minimize bone loss in older adults, and even enhance cognitive function.

Now, if we think about what we’ve just said about creatine as uh, one of the essential kind of building blocks of energy production, it kind of makes sense that it’s going to do those things, that it’s going to enhance cognitive function because our brain obviously is dependent upon energy as well, uh, minimize bone loss. So the more energy we have there, the less we’re reliant upon breaking down bone and things like that.

So, so there are a number of studies that have really supported great health benefits from creating as well.

Wow. Okay, great. So there’s quite a lot of benefits there then.

So then who should consider taking a creatine supplement?

Who would you say that it would be for?

Yeah. So, and this is the great question because lots of people will be listening and thinking, well, maybe I should be taking it. And the reality is, it’s for everybody. You know, historically, this has been a key supplement for athletes or for you know, young males looking to get stronger or build muscle or so forth. But the reality is, it’s for anybody. It’s shown to help regulate hormones in females.

It’s shown to retain muscle and bone density in older adults and cognitive function. So it’s great for the aging population. Everybody is now more and more aware of their physical strength and their muscle mass. And if creatine is gonna help support and maintain their strength and muscle mass, or help rebuild it if they’re engaging in strength training, then it’s almost an essential supplement for everybody. Now, we can add to that and say, based on where we can find creatine in our dietary habits, in meat, fish, and eggs, If you’re a vegetarian or a vegan listening to this podcast then creatine might be even more important for you and certainly the studies have shown that the effects of creatine are even greater for people on a vegetarian diet compared to people on an omnivore diet.

Um, so, and you can buy creatine that is vegan friendly and vegetarian friendly and so forth. So don’t think that there’s an animal product in what you’re consuming. It’s not that way at all. But yeah, so it could be specifically important for, for vegetarians. Um, and like I said, because it shows the, the aspects of cognitive function, improving, uh, increased energy and, and, you know, for people suffering with sleep deprivation and so forth. It’s really a supplement that everybody should consider.

It’s not considered an athletic supplement anymore.

It’s really just a healthy lifestyle supplement. OK, that really, really helps just to kind of demystify, you know, what creatine is, how it works and who should be using it and why somebody would choose to use it. I hope that helps you if you’re listening to this. So then let’s talk about types of creatine.

What type of creatine, you know, should people be using?

taking.

Yeah. Yeah. So creatine is available in a number of forms. You can buy it as a pill, you can buy it as a powder or a capsule. You used to, I think you can buy like creating gummies now as well that you can kind of chew.

And so it’s available in a plethora of different formats for you to consume in whatever way might be your preference. The majority of research is done on what’s called creatine monohydrate. So it’s basically creatine where it’s bonded with one molecule of water, hence it gives it the monohydrate name. And that’s typically the most popular form of creatine supplement. It’s considered to be the sort of the purest form. It’s not mixed with other bulking agents and things like that.

And like I say, that’s that’s what the majority of the research has been done on.

So when we talk about health benefits, we’re talking about the research studies that have looked at creating monohydrate.

And this is a very fine powder that you effectively add to a to a drink of some kind. OK, and then what kind of dosage would you suggest then adding? Yeah, so this is a great question, because historically, there’s been talk about a loading phase. And of course, I’m sure we’ll talk about this in a moment. But actually, the evidence now says three to five grams per day is absolutely sufficient. You don’t need to take any more than that.

It can be based on your body size. So if you’re a much smaller male or female, you might choose to take, you know, two or three grams a day.

If you’re a much, much bigger male, you know, if you’re six foot six or seven foot or, you know, 250, 300 pounds, you could probably take a little bit more than five grams per day. But typically the research says three to five grams per day.

Okay, great, great. Okay. So Now, let’s just go through some FAQs. These are some of the most common asked questions about this, and some of these imply maybe a little bit of misunderstanding or some mythology.

So, we’re going to break these down and clarify some things.

Are you ready, Dr. Fisher? I’m ready, Lester Forge. Okay.

The first question is,

is, you know, does creatine lead to water retention? Okay. So there’s, there’s no evidence to support this. There’s no studies that have ever supported this. Um, and it’s probably built on the premise of taking a loading phase. So I mentioned this just a moment ago.

So historically, I mean, when I was in my teens, my late teens, I used creatine and it was, uh, at the time you took 20 grams a day for five days as a loading phase. So you used a hundred grams within the first five days of, of. buying a tub of creatine and then you drop to a sort of a five gram or three to five gram per day maintenance dosage. Now, I have no idea why it was pitched as a loading phase and the skeptic in me now thinks that actually it was just a great way for products to market a loading phase so that you used your tub of creatine powder a lot quicker.

You know, if you buy a 300 gram tub, that of course, if you get through a hundred grams in the first five days, then you’re going to buy more sooner.

Um, so, you know, so it was probably built around that, but there’s absolutely no evidence to support that, that creatine leads to water retention. Okay. And, and just if you’re new to the term loading phase, so basically the idea was you’re supposed to like add, you’re supposed to compound it a little bit more in your system.

You’re supposed to let it build up in your system for optimal effect.

Is that, is that the thinking? Yeah. So it was always advocated that your, your body is suffering with not having enough creatine. So you need to kind of add a lot of it every day for five days. You need to load your body. You need to kind of fill the, uh, fill the sink up and then you can kind of just drip feed it in bit by bit.

Well, now there’s no evidence to support that. So, you know, just three to five grams per day. Okay, awesome.

Thank you for clarifying. So the next question is, is creatine considered to be an anabolic steroid? Yeah, I hear this question a lot, especially from parents whose children are thinking of taking creatine. And it’s absolutely not an anabolic steroid. It’s a completely different chemical structure. It doesn’t have the same properties as an anabolic steroid in any way.

So it’s not steroidal in any format. In fact, there’s evidence to talk about safety in different population groups. But yeah, absolutely not an anabolic steroid. It’s not listed as a banned substance in any sport at all.

You know, I’ve done a lot of work with WADA and UK anti -doping, and it’s certainly not a banned substance. So it’s, yeah, it’s not an anabolic steroid at all. Okay.

Yeah, I can see why people may wonder that, just because it is going to help with your performance.

And so people think of that, and I think steroids do that too.

So maybe it’s sort of this like, one for the other mindset, but you’re saying that’s not true.

Great. How about the next one is, does creatine cause kidney damage or renal dysfunction? Yeah. So this is another kind of commonly held myth. And again, the experimental sort of controlled research says that when it’s ingested in recommended dosages of sort of three to five grams a day, that creates the subtle meditation doesn’t induce kidney damage or renal dysfunction in healthy individuals. There were a couple of studies, historic studies, where people with kidney failure on kidney dialysis took creatine and it had a negative impact on that.

They then stopped taking creatine almost instantly and their numbers changed almost instantly, so changed positively. So yes, it doesn’t seem that it causes any issues for healthy people when taken in normal dosages.

So it certainly shouldn’t be abused.

We certainly shouldn’t take a lot more than we need to. If you have no kidney issues, then it’s something to maybe consider discussing with your doctor or your physician. Okay, next question is, does creatine cause hair loss or baldness? Yeah, so again, this is a really funny one, because it’s associated with muscle building and strength increases. And that’s kind of this historic kind of acceptance of creatine use.

It is listed, as you mentioned, potentially, you know, a lot of people think of it in forms of a steroid. And therefore, a lot of people also think that creatine maybe increases testosterone, and there have been some studies which show that testosterone levels are associated with hair loss or baldness. Creatine doesn’t affect testosterone levels and therefore whether testosterone is or isn’t associated with hair loss or baldness, creatine isn’t going to impact it in any way.

Got you.

There’s a lot there. A lot of assumptions in that question.

Okay. How about the next one? So does creatine lead to dehydration and muscle cramping? Yeah, again, there’s absolutely no experimental or clinical research to validate the concept that creatine supplementation leads to dehydration or muscle cramping.

In fact, on a personal note, because I mix creatine in quite a large drink when I consume it, it probably makes me drink more or it adds to what I drink during the day.

So I would go as far as to say, you know, as long as we’re sensible about staying well hydrated, it certainly wouldn’t lead to

dehydration and muscle cramping and might even increase our hydration levels. Okay. So next, is creatine harmful for children and adolescents? Yeah, so this is going to be a great question from parents of young athletes or certainly young people who are looking to maybe build muscle or get fit or improve their fitness in some form. So they might look at taking supplements. So, first of all, it’s worth clarifying there’s no evidence to support that it’s harmful for children or adolescents at all.

There’s certainly no studies that have reported side effects in children or adolescents. But there is also limited or certainly less research in that population group compared to kind of the 18 plus population group of athletes and so forth. The one thing that I would say for any parent looking for support their child in their kind of athletic or health endeavors is it’s key to get. The, the things, the other things, right. You know, a healthy diet, good sleep patterns, good exercise habits, good hydration levels, you know, being outside in the sun, you know, and getting vitamin D, you know, all of the things that we generally consider as kind of healthy, a healthy lifestyle.

I would say it’s important to get those right first. They’re going to give you more bang for your buck than just not doing any of those things and adding creatine. But if you have a high school football player who is already devoted to the gym and devoted to their sleep habits and eats really well and so forth, then there’s certainly no evidence to say that creatine would be harmful for them in any way at all. OK, that’s a great answer. Very thorough. Thank you so much for that.

That really makes sense. And I always like how you remind us like, you know, we’re not trying to shortcut things. We have to get the basics correct, and then we can expand upon that from there. You know, there’s no such thing as like a free lunch.

We have to, we can’t shortcut health, you know, and so, you know, reminding us about those basics is very important. All right, next one. Does creatine increase fat mass? No, creatine doesn’t increase fat mass, and if anything, it increases muscle mass, which would serve to reduce fat mass. This is a myth that’s been held. Coming back to the water retention question, actually, there was an argument many, many years ago that people that took creatine sort of got bigger, but maybe got a little bit softer with it.

They weren’t as defined, as muscularly defined or as lean. Um, now what people do with their nutritional habits when they take a supplement or when they’re trying to build muscle, uh, quickly is they’ll often go through a bulking phase. So males will historically, you know, go through what they call a bulk where they’ll effectively just over consume calories with an intent to build muscle. They’ll add fat mass as well. And then they’ll go through a kind of a stripping phase where they’ll then try and strip that fat back down. and lean their body back down again.

And it’s a really funny concept because for the most part, all they do is they add fat and then they lose fat.

They don’t necessarily add any more muscle than they would have done if they just kept their diet pretty consistent. But yeah, as far as does creatine supplementation add fat mass? No, not at all. Okay, yep. I mean, is there anything to, if somebody’s doing a body composition scan and the fat cells have more water internally, would that read?

Is that what people are afraid of? Is maybe a body composition fat mass read that looks higher? because of the water. Well by that rationale if you use a bioelectrical impedance analysis so to need to scale or an in body or something like that the more hydrated a cell is then the the better the body composition reading you’ll get. So effectively, when you measure body composition using bioelectrical impedance analysis, you’re actually measuring hydration. So if somebody is very well hydrated, then their body composition will come back better than if they’re in a state of dehydration.

Um, cause the muscle is like 90 something percent water anyway.

So yes, there’s a, I can see why people would say, well, if you’ve got a hydrated fat cell compared to a shrunk fat cell, but creatine doesn’t go into fat cells or hydrate fat cells, creatine is there to help produce energy.

you know, stored, as we said, in the kidney, the liver, pancreas and muscle cells.

So it just doesn’t work that way. Gotcha.

All right.

Thank you, Dr. Fisher, for that.

That makes sense. All right. So then, is creatine only useful for resistance or power type of activities? Yeah. So this is the historic thinking that if you’re looking to get stronger or looking to do a sport where you, I don’t know, throw a shot or a javelin, then you can add creatine and you’ll get stronger and more powerful, but it’s not for the people.

That’s totally debunked now. Creatine, as we said earlier, has a large number of even health properties. So it’s certainly not just limited to that population group.

I would say that creatine is really now a health supplement rather than a sports performance supplement. Okay, all right, great. And the last FAQ that we have here today… is creatine only effective for males? But this is the age old kind of thinking that when it comes to strength training, uh, that’s for men and men should do strength training and, and, you know, that’s kind of their whole thing. Uh, and it’s not the case at all.

And our career is exactly the same. There’s no reason why creatine wouldn’t be equally effective for females for both the strength and kind of, uh, muscle building and muscle retention, uh, benefits. Um, but we can even go so far as to say that creatine, um.

can support hormonal regulation in females and hormonal health, including things like mood disturbances or stress or fatigue, which might be associated with menstrual cycle fluctuations.

Through the lifespan, through a female’s lifespan, through puberty and menopause, Creatine is shown to improve muscle function and bone health and cognitive function. I potentially buffer the effects of those hormonal shifts. So, you know, creatine certainly could be even more beneficial for females than it is for males. Gotcha. Okay. Well, that concludes kind of the rapid -fire FAQs about creatine.

And just so all the listeners know, I mean, this podcast is informational purposes only. This is for you to understand some of the known studied benefits of creatine. We’re not recommending anything specific to you personally. You should consult with your doctor related to any supplementation that you have. decide to take on, but I hope that you have learned a little bit of new information about some of the potential benefits of creatine, paying attention to, you know, your basics, are your basics in order? How is your nutrition foundation?

Is your strength training habit in place?

And then how could, you know, considering any additional supplementation benefit you and why that would be?

So I hope that’s what you got out of today’s podcast.

Dr. Fisher, is there anything else that you’d like to leave a listener for when it comes to considering a creatine supplement? No, I think we covered everything, Amy. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you for breaking it all down for us. And we will see you next time on the podcast.

Until then, I hope you remember strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything . com. Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode.

Here’s to you and your best health.

The post Creatine – The Health Benefits Discussed and Myths Debunked first appeared on Exercise Coach.

Science-based Single Set Strength Training: The Volume for Efficient Strength and Health Adaptations

Jared Van Bruaene — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 01:00:56 +0000

Season 2 / Episode 45

. . . .

SHOW NOTES

Can a single set actually make your muscles grow? Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher tackle a listener’s question: Can you really get results from a single set of exercises for a muscle group? They break down the science behind single versus multiple sets and explain why effort matters more than counting reps. Tune in to discover how to train smarter, save time, and still see real strength gains.

Amy kicks things off with the big question: can you really do just one set and still get the benefits of strength training?
Dr. Fisher’s answer—yes, you absolutely can. That one set, if pushed with real effort, is enough to trigger results.
Amy highlights a common training misconception. We’ve all been told that “more is better.” But the science shows that one quality set can be just as powerful as three.
Dr. Fisher breaks down research comparisons of single-set versus multiple-set training.
According to Dr. Fisher, effort is the key. A single set pushed to a high enough degree of effort matches the benefit of multiple sets. It’s intensity, not quantity, that makes the difference.
Amy points out the obvious when you train to failure. If your muscles literally cannot do another rep, what’s the point of extra sets? You’ve already achieved the adaptation you came for.
Dr. Fisher explains why stimulus matters more than volume. It’s the challenge to the muscle that drives change, not the endless repetition. With this approach, you can finish a workout in 20 to 30 minutes.
Dr. Fisher reframes exercise volume. It’s not just sets of one exercise, it’s total sets across the muscle group. Every compound and isolation move adds to the tally, whether you realize it or not.
For Amy, working with a personal trainer means you don’t have to guess how much volume is enough. They guide you to push just the right amount in each set, so one set can be enough if done correctly.
Dr. Fisher highlights the time trap of traditional training. Add up three sets for every exercise, plus two-minute rests, and you’re suddenly in the gym for two hours.
Amy highlights why people get confused about volume. Reps and sets are easy to measure. Effort isn’t—and that’s why so many default to doing “more” instead of doing “enough.”
Dr. Fisher shares the biggest benefit of working with a certified coach–you hit the right intensity in every session. Instead of mindlessly adding sets, they make sure the effort in each set actually counts toward growth.
Dr. Fisher explains how technology is changing the game. With exerbotics machines, effort can be measured in real time. That makes it easier to quantify progress and what actually drives results.
Dr. Fisher reframes training as a dosage. The right dosage sparks adaptation. More isn’t better—it’s just wasted effort if the goal has already been achieved.
According to Dr. Fisher, higher volume can sometimes deliver slightly bigger short-term gains. But those differences are small, hard to measure, and fade with time. Over six months to a year, single and multiple sets lead to the same results.
For Amy, if one set gets you the same outcome in a quarter of the time, why spend hours chasing more? Less time lifting means more time living.
Dr. Fisher shares a fascinating example from his PhD student’s research. Even elite-level powerlifters—athletes pushing squat, bench, and deadlift—got stronger with a single set once a week. If that works at the highest level, it’s more than enough for the rest of us.

Mentioned in This Episode:

The Exercise Coach – Get 2 Free Sessions!

Submit your questions at StrengthChangesEverything.com

This is a really intelligent way to train. It’s hard. It’s physically much more demanding.

The workout is a mixture of compound exercises and single joint or single muscle group exercises.

It’s the stimulus that we’re trying to achieve, not the actual total volume of the process in this case.

Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training. And now for today’s episode.

Welcome back to the Strength Changes Everything podcast. Today we are answering a question that has come in. So the question that came in is, Can I really just do a single set of exercise in a muscle group and get the benefits from it? So this episode is talking about the difference between single set and multiple set exercises in muscle groups. People sometimes kind of run across influencers on Instagram or other people who are recommending, you know, three sets of 10 for every exercise you do to get the best benefits. And so we’re going to address this question.

Is it really more beneficial to do a higher volume of exercise or more sets? Dr. Fisher is with me today to break this answer down for us. So, Dr. Fisher, can I really just do a single set of exercise and reap the benefits?

Yeah, you absolutely can. This is a really fascinating question that’s been probably one of the biggest debated topics in the area of strength training for decades, to be honest. And to some extent, I almost feel like this has been put to bed more recently in the last 10, 20 years or so. Um, some of my academic colleagues, when I hear them on a podcast now, often, um, they’ll often get asked things like, Oh, what’s the biggest thing that you’ve changed your mind on or that you’ve learned? And, and the most common answer I hear is, Oh, I used to think that more is better.

And now I understand that you can achieve similar results from just a single set of, of exercise. But obviously that’s not the only answer I’m going to give. I’ll get into some detail about this. And really, when somebody asks about how many sets they should do, they’re actually asking the question of volume, of how much exercise should I do? What should be my volume of training? So we can kind of look at that in a couple of different ways.

Before we get into that, what we should do is we should look at the origin of the three sets of 10. This is the accepted wisdom in strength training. This is what’s been around for a long, long time that people refer back to it. If you’re going to lift weights, you should do three sets of 10, right? That’s what’s accepted. Okay.

So let’s, let’s break this down. So in the early 1940s, captain Thomas DeLorme was in the U S army and he was rehabilitating, uh, injured veterans from the second world war. And he was one of the first people, we should be incredibly grateful to this guy to begin with, because he really invented progressive resistance training in the way that we know it today. The idea that you strengthen a muscle, that you can rehabilitate an injury, a limb or it’s a muscle or it’s a joint, by the use of strength training. And he quite famously sort of said, if you want to get stronger, why would you go and walk around a track and do lots and lots of exercise, low level exercise, when you can simply strengthen a muscle by lifting weights. And what he did is he started all of his, uh, all of his patients by them doing a set of 10 repetitions with about 50 % of the weight that they could lift to 10 repetitions.

So if you can imagine if I, if I can lift a hundred pounds for 10 reps, The first set that these people did with Thomas DeLorme was 50 pounds. They did 50 pounds for 10 reps. And the reason that they did that is because they’re in a state of rehabilitation, they’re injured, they’re recovering. So it’s kind of a warmup set. The next set they did was at 75 % of their 10 rep max. So the next set was at 75 pounds in this example. Okay.

So a first set of 10 reps at 50 pounds, a second set. of 10 reps at 75 pounds. And then the final set was 10 reps at their 10 rep max. So in my case, it would be 10 reps at a hundred pounds with the idea that on the 10th rep or around the 10th rep, I fail, I can’t complete any more repetitions. So I effectively do two warmup sets and then a single set to muscular failure or volitional fatigue or whatever terminals you were comfortable with. But the point being, it’s only one active set.

And in fact, if we get into the literature properly, Thomas DeLong changed his recommendations to be just a single set of exercise. So we then have to ask, why has the three sets of 10 really stuck around as long as it has? And the reality is, I mean, we could hypothesize, you know, any number of ways about why people like to do three sets of 10. But the reality I think is that we’re very, very comfortable with the number three. It’s really important in human society and in numerology as a whole. And I’m not a numerologist, but when I look at society and I look at the

number three, we have things like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. We have three meals a day. We talk about birth, life, and death. And when we have a story, there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. So the number three just. Repeatedly crops up within our social environment.

Um, the number three is a lucky number in Chinese. It’s symbolic of birth. Um, so there’s various kinds of elements where the number three just seems to have recurred within our life. The probably embeds it as an important number within our, within our kind of society. And it’s that reason that I think we’ve got very comfortable with the idea of three sets of 10. Because without that, why wouldn’t we do two sets of 10 or four sets of eight or five sets of 12?

You know, we’ve just fallen into this routine of three sets of 10, you know, maybe it’s because we can’t count past 10 or we can’t count past three. I don’t know. But really that’s, that seems to be the kind of the general thinking that we should do three sets of 10. Um, and that’s really the origin of it. So when we pause there for a second, we can say, hold on, this is not backed by science. This is backed by kind of dogma and, and, you know, social inclination and, you know, history, but it’s, but we should question it.

We should look at the science and say, okay, so do I need to do three sets of 10 or can I do more or should I do less or what should I do? So a lot of the research has compared single and multiple set training has compared the idea of doing one set of an exercise to doing three sets of an exercise. And for the most part. it’s proven that single sets of an exercise are at least as efficacious as doing multiple sets of the same exercise. So if I go down to the gym now and I do a set of knee extensions and I train to the point where I can’t do any more repetitions, that’s at least as good as if I do that set and then I rest for two minutes and then I repeat and then I rest for two minutes and then I repeat.

But it’s obviously infinitely more time efficient to do that over the long term to do that single set. So the idea is that a single set taken to a high enough degree of effort is at least as efficacious as a multiple sets. And once we start to realize that it’s actually relatively easy to say, hold on, why is that? Why would that be? And we can start to think about the stimulus, not the process. So the process is there.

I’m doing the strength training because I’m trying to stimulate something or the stimulus. is, or I’m trying to stimulate muscle fiber recruitment, motor unit recruitment. So I’m trying to recruit all the muscle fibers within my muscle. And if I train to a high enough degree of effort, if I train to the point where I can’t lift anymore, or I feel like I can’t lift anymore, then that’s recruited all of those muscle fibers. There’s no benefit to re -recruiting them. And in fact, arguably, we’re just overtraining by increasing the stimulus or by increasing the volume of training.

Um, what we should do at that point is allow the body to rest and recover and adapt and then repeat when we’re ready so that we can have that super compensation over time of getting stronger and getting bigger and so forth. Right. I think the difference I want to point out, and it seems obvious when you explain it this way too, is that if you, during your, your initial set, work the muscle to failure or fatigue, we’ve talked about that, where you can’t do any more, then what’s is the need for more sets come in if it cannot do any more, right?

You’ve made it. You’ve achieved the outcome that you’re trying to, to stimulate the adaptations that we’re going for. Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And I often laugh about it because, you know, a lot of the clients that we talk about, maybe in their forties or fifties or sixties or older, and they do a single set of exercise and it’s hard work. They understand that it’s hard work. Well, if they go and talk to some 20 year old or some teenager, uh, that’s a gym bro that goes to the gym and does that three sets of 10.

They can kind of jokingly say, Oh, I see you take the easy option where you’d rather be in the gym for two hours, uh, and have a two minute rest between every exercise, uh, or between every set. Then go to the exercise coach, uh, and do a set of exercise that’s hard and then move on to the next exercise and get it done, you know, hard, brief, intense in 30 minutes. So I often kind of laugh that, that, you know, this is a really intelligent way to train. It’s hard, it’s physically much more demanding, but it’s done in 30 minutes or 20 minutes. So, you know, it’s the stimulus that we’re trying to achieve, not the actual total volume of the process in this case. So the other thing that we can think about in terms of volume is that it’s not just about how many sets of a given exercise we do.

We can also think about it in terms of how many sets of total exercise for each muscle group. So for example, if I said we should do three sets of exercise for our triceps, well, if I do a chest press, then that activates my triceps. My triceps are the extensor muscles on the back of my upper arm. If I do an overhead press, that’s the same thing. It’s extending at the elbow, so I’m activating my triceps in that exercise. And if I now do a tricep press down, that’s again

the same muscle. Two of them are multi -joint movements, one of them is a single joint movement. We could look at the same for the lower body. If I do a leg press, that’s my quadriceps and my hamstrings and my glutes. If I do hip abduction, that’s my glutes. If I do a leg curl, that’s my hamstrings.

If I do a knee extension, that’s my quadriceps. So we’re never really thinking about the single set per muscle group, we’re almost always thinking about multiple sets for a muscle group, almost irrespective of whether you take a low volume single set approach or a high volume multiple set approach. And so the reality is that if you add in all of these different exercises that you might do in a workout, and you now extend that or extrapolate that to three sets of each exercise, and then you add in a two minute rest interval between each set, Then you’re going to be in the gym for two hours each session. Uh, and, uh, and the reality is that’s one of the biggest barriers to exercise anyway, that people just don’t have that kind of time to put into exercise. And then as we talk about volume, the other thing that we can think about in this concept is the amount of time the muscle is under tension for. So if we imagine our gym bro goes to the gym and they put a weight on the bar and they lift it for three sets of 10 and they do 10 repetitions.

Well, even if they lift it with relative control at two seconds concentric and two seconds eccentric, then the muscle is under tension for 40 seconds per set. Okay, so that’s a total of 120 seconds that the muscle is under tension for. Well, if you come to the exercise coach, and you do a single set, that single set might be 120 seconds in duration. That’s two minutes that the muscle is actually working that entire time for. And I would almost guarantee that muscle fiber recruitment is higher because you’ve not taken a two minute rest in between each set, which has allowed other muscle fibers and motor units to recover.

So the stimulus is actually greater in that single set than it is in those three sets that equate to the same time under load. And of course we can, you know, we can consider that across a number of different exercises, um, or different tools. So it’s a really interesting concept and it’s a shame that it’s still a debate. It’s a shame that it’s still a question people ask, but it’s understandable because there is so much dogma in this area that people still talk about.

Oh, it’s the amount of exercise is the, it’s how much exercise you do rather than the intensity of effort that you work out. which is the real driving force behind adaptation. Yeah. I wonder if there’s some level to which it’s just harder to quantify somebody’s effort traditionally, you know, it’s easier to quantify reps or time spent than effort sometimes. Um, except with the extra robotics technology where we’re able to quantify that and in real time, every single second you’re working out. But who knows why that is, but I love the point that you made several really bombshell points about.

working and keeping a muscle under load for 120 seconds, either by doing three sets of 10 with a really two -second cadence, keeping that muscle under load with a traditional weight in a gym, but you better stick with that and not cheat with speed or momentum, right? Or doing it at an exercise coach studio where it’s continuous load at a slow pace for 120 seconds, where you’re saying that your argument is that you could even get higher muscle recruitment or motor unit recruitment with that. That’s really great. That’s really great. And the other point that you mentioned too, it’s not about, we’re not, we shouldn’t think about it, this is what you’re saying, I believe, in terms of like one muscle group at a time.

How many reps did this one single muscle group get during my workout? The workout is a mixture of compound exercises and single joint or single muscle group exercises. one muscle group is getting worked in multiple ways during a workout.

It’s not just in a bicep curl. We’re activating that muscle in other exercises that we’re doing that are compound movements. So that’s really helpful to break down. Now, that’s exactly the point. And, you know, people need to think about the stimulus of what they’re trying to achieve rather than how much they do. You know, it was often talked about that strength training is about, you know, it’s a dosage.

Okay, so we take the required dosage. It’s not about, okay, how much can my body handle? It’s about what’s the dosage that’s required to stimulate the adaptation that I want to achieve. And of course, we’ve talked about so many of the physiological and psychological benefits of strength training. And the evidence is very clear that single set training can produce similar adaptations in strength, as well as, of course, the health benefits of cognitive function, myokine release, we’ve talked about recently on the podcast, metabolic function, glucose sensitivity, reduction in body fat, improvements in cholesterol measurements and so on and so forth. Now, interestingly, and it’s worth mentioning because somebody listening to the podcast will undoubtedly raise this question, but interestingly,

the only variable or the only outcome measure that still seems to be supported by a higher volume of training is muscle hypertrophy, so purely muscle size. Now, one of the things around that that I think is still a very contentious issue is that we’re limited by the duration of strict training studies. So if a study is eight weeks or 10 weeks or 12 weeks in duration, then maybe in that short period of time, a higher volume of training might produce slightly greater muscle size increases. But the question that I always ask of the research and of the science is that, first of all, is that really true? Is it really distinguishable? And it’s not always distinguishable.

There’s only a handful of research that supports that. But second of all, how does that level out over time or how does that change over time? a real time course. So if we extrapolate that to six months, the high volume approach doesn’t get you more hypertrophy, you just are more likely to plateau earlier in your muscle size increases, whereas the single set approach doesn’t plateau at the same time point. So it’s very likely that over a longer duration, rather than 8, 10 or 12 weeks, over a six month period or a year period, muscle size increases are identical between a single and multiple set.

uh, strength training approach. It’s just that the high volume approach got there a little bit quicker and the low volume approach got there a little bit slower, but ultimately they get to the same point. And that’s, that’s really the outcome that we’re interested in because if we’re only interested in engaging in strength training for eight weeks, well, we’re missing a trick really, because there’s so much more to be had in our adaptations beyond that eight week timeframe. Right.

I mean, listening to this, it really sort of boils down to, for me, just the point of, if I don’t have to do more, why would I do more in terms of of sets and reps and and volume and the same concept applies with concentrated cardio. I could run for 45 minutes or walk for an hour and a half or I could do a single bout of concentrated cardio at a studio for five minutes or less and get the same metabolic impact. It’s like if I can get the same effect in a quarter or a tenth of the time, a fraction of the time, honestly, why wouldn’t I? I can go live my life and do the other things I want to do with my time. Yeah. Yeah.

100%, 100%. And there’s a large body of research that supports this now. In fact, one of my PhD students a few years back, he completed a few years back actually, Uh, his whole PhD was on what was called minimum effective dose.

And he worked a lot with very, very high level power lifters. So Olympic or national or international competitive power lifters. And one of the things he found in a training intervention with a lot of these athletes was that even a single set of resistance training once per week, uh, was producing strength increases in their squat, bench press, and deadlift, the three core lifts for power lifting. So it’s not just applicable at our lay population level. It’s applicable right across the spectrum to include sort of high level athletes as well.

So it’s a really interesting concept, but certainly it’s something that we’ve got bogged down with where we should have been focused on how hard we’re working rather than how much we’re doing. I love this.

Well, thank you for debunking this and thank you for setting a record straight, Dr. Fisher on this topic.

Um, it’s important to. know kind of fact from fiction when it comes to these kind of recommendations, so thank you so much for bringing the body of research and explaining what really the reality is behind this. Do you have any final closing thoughts on this question for listeners? No, nothing at all. Nothing at all. Excellent.

Well, I hope you go take this information and go work hard for your workout today. If you’re an exercise coach client, go give it your best and experience all these wonderful benefits. Thank you for these questions. Remember, you can submit your questions for the show at strengthchangeseverything . com. You can ask your coaches.

You can ask Dr. Fisher.

You can send your questions into the podcast, and we would love to address them.

So whatever you’re thinking, shoot us that question at strengthchangeseverything . com. We will see you next time on the podcast. Until then, we hope you remember strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend.

The post Science-based Single Set Strength Training: The Volume for Efficient Strength and Health Adaptations first appeared on Exercise Coach.

Struggling to Stay Consistent? 5 Tips to Build Your Motivation for Exercise

Jared Van Bruaene — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 01:00:46 +0000

Season 2 / Episode 44

. . . .

SHOW NOTES

Why do some people stay consistent with their health and fitness habits while others fall off after a few weeks?

In this episode, Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher share five tips to help you stay consistent with your workout routine. Learn the benefits of scheduling your workouts, why setting challenges makes goals easier to achieve, and how the right social support can fuel long-term consistency.

Tune in to discover simple, practical strategies that keep you on track even when motivation runs dry.

Amy starts by revealing the real reason most people struggle with motivation.
She explains that most fail because they don’t have a system to lean on when they don’t feel like doing anything. Once you build a solid structure, you don’t have to keep negotiating with yourself every day, you just show up and do it.
Tip #1: Schedule it.
- Your workout should be on your calendar. The moment you block off time, you instantly raise the odds of following through.
- Amy explains the power of scheduling. When you train at the same time, on the same day, week after week, you don’t have to think about it anymore. You’ve taken away the decision fatigue, and all that’s left is repetition — and repetition is what builds results.
- Even when you don’t feel like it, Amy says following through matters most. That single act of showing up when you’d rather skip tells your brain, “I keep my word.” And once you see yourself as someone who follows through, your confidence grows, and so does your consistency.
Tip #2: Create a challenge.
- Goals are good, but challenges are better because they’re specific and measurable. Whether it’s 30 days without junk food or 40 straight workouts, a challenge forces you to track your wins, and those little wins pile up into lasting change.
- Dr. Fisher explains why goals without action fall flat.
- Writing down “lose 10 pounds” feels nice, but it doesn’t move the needle on its own. It’s the daily steps you take toward that goal that create momentum.
- According to Amy, when you see progress in black and white — whether it’s workouts logged, weight lifted, or meals recorded — it lights a fire to keep going. The act of tracking doesn’t just measure growth, it actually fuels it.
- Dr. Fisher highlights how habits become automatic over time. In the beginning, discipline feels heavy, but the longer you practice good routines, the lighter they get.
- Amy shares the benefits of structured challenges. She talks about Exercise Coach’s 30-day metabolic comeback challenge, built on whole foods and consistent workouts. That combination of simplicity and accountability gives people results they can see and feel quickly.
- Dr. Fisher highlights the accountability that comes with working with a personal trainer. When someone is tracking your progress and guiding your choices, excuses lose their power.
Tip #3: Gather friends.
- Pursuing health doesn’t have to be a lonely road. The more you include friends or family in the process, the more motivated and committed you’ll both become.
- Amy explains why family habits matter. When you shift things like sleep, nutrition, or daily activity as a household, you build a culture of wellness instead of trying to go it alone.
- Amy shares how social support saved her progress. She recalls doing a 30-day challenge with her husband and admits she probably would’ve quit without him. Having even one supportive partner can make the difference between stopping and succeeding.
- Learn the importance of boundaries. Not everyone in your life will cheer on your healthy habits, and some will even try to pull you back.
- Protect your progress by drawing a line and surrounding yourself with people who genuinely want to see you win.
- Amy explains why a coach can be the difference-maker. Having a personal trainer by your side means you’re never facing the journey alone.
- A coach isn’t just there for accountability, they bring encouragement, structure, and belief when you need it most.
Tip #4: Listen to a podcast.
- Feeding your mind is just as important as training your body. The more you hear about health and strength, the more you begin to see yourself as the kind of person who lives that lifestyle.
- How to stack habits for maximum momentum. Listen to a podcast while walking, cycling, or lifting, and suddenly you’re training your body and your mindset at the same time. That layering effect makes progress faster and more fun.
Tip #5: Write down a positive message.
- Surrounding yourself with affirmations or quotes isn’t just feel-good fluff — it rewires your focus. When positivity is visible in your environment, it becomes easier to keep your mindset sharp.
- Amy explains how to fight your brain’s negativity bias. By default, our minds scan for danger and problems. Writing down uplifting reminders trains your brain to see possibilities instead of pitfalls.
- Dr. Fisher shares one of his favorite quotes: “Anticipation is worse than participation.” Most of the time, the fear of starting feels heavier than the act of doing. Once you step in, the resistance fades and you wonder why you waited so long.

Mentioned in This Episode:

The Exercise Coach – Get 2 Free Sessions!

Submit your questions at StrengthChangesEverything.com

Just accept that sometimes you’re going to get knocked down, but it’s just important to be able to get back up and get back on with things.

Because our thoughts influence our actions and our behaviors, and ultimately lead to our outcomes.

I love the idea that we’re not only trying to improve ourselves, but we’re trying to help other people along the road.

Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training. And now for today’s episode.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Strength Changes Everything podcast. Hey, something we hear all the time from clients and people who are checking out our exercise coach studios is that they struggle to stay motivated. You know, it’s very natural to struggle, to motivate yourself, to take healthy actions, to work out sometimes. Motivation is one of the biggest obstacles that people cite in sticking with or starting a healthy habit or exercise program. So this episode is all about some tips for digging into the motivation that will help you to make the healthy choices that you’re looking to do.

We’ve got a few different tips. We’ve got five tips to help you stay motivated in your fitness journey and in your health journey, and we’re going to cover those. And as we talk through each one, we’ll give you some examples, and we’ll even share some personal insights as well. that have helped Dr. Fisher and myself in our personal journeys as well. So hope you enjoyed today’s episode. We’re going to dive in with our first point.

So Dr. Fisher, you are the chief science officer.

here.

You’re going to be sharing these points, and then I’ll help elaborate on each one. But let’s just jump right in with the first point. So what would you say would be the number one tip that you would have to share with our listeners about staying motivated?

So, first of all, I think that any kind of tips that people have around staying motivated, people might have their own kind of key things that work for them. These are five tips that we have and people might find that some of them work and some of them don’t necessarily work for them, but these are things that we both have tried and work for us and we know work for the clients and there’s some kind of evidence around. So the first tip is to schedule. If you schedule something in your calendar, you are far far more likely to do it than if you don’t schedule it. We were talking before the podcast that today at some point I’m going to do my strength training workout And in the UK now it’s 10 to four in the afternoon. Uh, and I still haven’t done my workout.

So, uh, and we’ve already said that after we record this podcast, I might end up having to check emails again and carry on with some other work I wanted to do. Um, and it might be that I get to 8 PM and I ended up doing my workout then. And the reality is that’s okay. But if I had set a time today to do it, if I had scheduled it, then I know that I would have pens down email off for that time. And I would have. go on with that workout for the 30 minutes that it would take and that’s it.

So yeah, absolutely scheduling something into your diary is so important.

Yeah, I love the quote by James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. He says, you don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. If you think about the rhythm of your week, the rhythm of your day, think about when you feel the most awake. when you’re least likely to be distracted, the least likely to be tired, and try to plug your workouts into those consistent times each week. Take the guesswork out of when you’re going to work out by scheduling it even at the same day and the same time when you know that you’re not going to run into obstacles to going and doing your workout, right? The repetition and execution of healthy habits is the difference between those people who reach their goals and those people who do not.

So figure out when you can do your workout and schedule it in and obey it. And just also one other tip I have for you is even if you schedule your workout, you may not always feel like going. Executing and following through with the plan that you made tells yourself that you’re the type of person who follows through on your plans, and it encourages you and gives you more confidence to keep going. Just do it.

Okay?

So that’s tip number one is to schedule it in. All right, what’s number two?

Yeah, so tip number two is to create a target or find some kind of challenge to join. And this might be individual or it might be with friends or family. And it can really be anything you want it to be. You know, a lot of people will hear that and they’ll think, oh, well, I want to lose 10 pounds or I want to increase my strength or I want to go for a run. But what about not missing 10 workouts in a row? Or what about not having junk food for 10 days?

What about no potato chips for 10 days? And then see how long you can extend that streak for. Or what about trying to make sure you get eight hours sleep a night for the next week? It can be anything that you want it to be. As long as it’s something ideally measurable, something that you can track, something that you can see whether it’s successful or not, you can, you know, gauge success on.

Creating something, some kind of target, some kind of motivation, some kind of incentive for healthy habit, I think can be really important for people.

And you’ve mentioned before on other episodes to focus on process, not intent. on the outcome. And so an example of focusing on the process could be, I’m going to do two strength training workouts this week. And there’s something so satisfying about checking it, clicking a check box that you did that. I read in a book recently that has to do with scheduling that, you know, think about sporting events. The reason there’s so much excitement the entire time at a sporting event is because there’s a score being kept.

And everybody knows what that score is the entire time. And so they’re motivated to keep working as hard as they can to win because they see that number of what that score is the entire time. When you can score yourself, keep score or keep track in some way to know if you’re winning or losing, that is extremely motivating. So, for example, you might Find it satisfying to put in your planner the workouts and then highlight those yellow after you’ve done those, even that little gesture or checking those off. You can track progress on the workouts themselves. We have a app at our exercise coach studios.

Use the app to track your performance over time. Checking those things off and celebrating those little wins every week, the process can be super, super motivating.

Yeah, I think this is really important. And I think that, you know, we talked about the idea of weight loss or strength increases or things like that. Of course, if you choose a weight loss goal or a fat loss goal, you want to lose 10 pounds. Well, you can’t just write down the goal of lose 10 pounds and then not do anything. You can’t not change anything.

So you then have to have something in the process. You have to change something in what you’re doing, whether that’s to increase your energy expenditure, whether that’s to go for a walk every day or to go for a jog or to go for a walk with friends, you know, engage in strength training or to change your dietary habits, whatever it might be. But there has to be some kind of process in that. And as, as you said, I’m a big believer in, in the process of following the process. And I really think that once we engage in that as a habit, you know, we talked about the first goal, um, uh, scheduling, and we said about getting things into our, into our week as part of a habit. I think once our habits.

become good, whether that’s in diet or an exercise, they’re easier to maintain over the long period. And eventually they become something that we, we almost can’t do without. They’re just ingrained within our life. They become part of our identity, uh, to some extent. So, um, so I think that it’s really important to, to have that process around those goals.

Yes. And just to expand a little bit more about tracking your progress or participating in a challenge. We talked a little bit before about a 30 -day metabolic comeback challenge that we offer at the Exercise Coach Studios. What it is is 30 days of combining whole food eating with twice -weekly workouts in a concentrated period of time. We do a before and an after body composition scan for all of our clients to track the difference that they experience in those 30 days when they dedicate themselves to that. And there’s a huge social component In a Facebook group where people are daily sharing tips, sharing ideas, sharing wins.

If you have experienced a win and you share that with somebody else or maybe teach somebody else about what you’re learning. that really does help reinforce it to you. And the social element cannot be overstated. Gather, you know, other people or participate in social -based challenges. And that really, really can help you glean the motivation that you need, maybe even from others. Sometimes we have to borrow somebody else’s motivation when we can’t conjure that up on our own.

And that’s okay, too, right? We need one another in this journey. And so that’s what it’s all about. What’s the next tip?

So our third tip is gather friends. So I love this one. I love the idea that we’re not only trying to improve ourselves, but we’re trying to help other people along the road. You know, so it might be that we’re trying to engage in more, uh, as you said, maybe nutritional habits or sleep habits. So we might talk to our partner. uh, husband or wife or kids about going to bed early and the importance of sleep, or we might do that as a household, or it might be about junk food as a household.

Remind me about contacting friends and go for walks or engaging in semi -private workouts, you know, getting your friends to come along and engage in strength training with you. There’s a real kind of, um, social affiliation around strength training with other people that we, that we’re close to. And the idea that we are kind of, I’m going through this experience, it’s hard, but I’m going through it and you’re there with me and you’re going through it and so forth. And of course, the reality is if you’re a training exercise coach, then you’ve got a coach there by your side anyway. So there’s that kind of motivation and inspiration and that kind of social element as well. But I do really love the idea that you can.

Make healthy choices for yourself and get other people to be cheerleaders with you or boost your motivation and engagement in those habits.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, it is very evident that the more social support somebody has, the more likely they are to succeed. I remember the first time I completed a 30 day metabolic challenge with my husband. I think if he was not doing that with me, I would have just fallen off the bandwagon because we had the accountability of doing that together. And it was very difficult. a challenge. I felt sugar withdrawals and things like that.

I was it was it was difficult. Right. And so when when things get difficult, if you’re left to your own, it’s so easy to talk yourself out of things.

Right.

And so you need that. And so when people around you support you, that really can help you, like we just mentioned. And then the flip side to that, too, just to if you’re listening to this, if your social circle is really not value valuing health or fitness or if you have people in your life that are perhaps, you know, trying to dissuade you or, you know, not supportive of your healthy habits or kind of trying to tempt you into unhealthy lifestyle behaviors that you’re trying not to do, you might need to set some boundaries with those individuals because they’re not supportive of what you are trying to do. And so you need to get another group of people around you, even if it’s just your coach.

to report to initially, um, to help you, you know, make those, those right choices for yourself and not to get dragged down, um, away from what you’re trying to do. Right. So the, the impact of our, of our social group is, is quite drastic, especially in, as you’ve said, exercise and nutritional habits. So the example that I was used to give to my students is that, uh, as students, I used to say, if you, if you go out for a meal, would you order dessert? Would you order, you know, cake? or ice cream, or would you order some kind of dessert?

And these are all health and fitness students that said, no, no, I would never order dessert. I said, okay, well now imagine if I take you all out for dinner, and while we’re sat there at dinner, I order dessert. Now what are you going to do? And they go, well, yeah, okay. I’d be more inclined to order dessert now because I know I’m going to have to sit and wait at the end of the meal and kind of watch you eat this ice cream or this cake. And I said, okay.

And now imagine that I offered that I’m going to pay for the meal and I’m going to pay for dessert. Well, of course that again, immediately changed his habits. So our social gathering and our social groups and this kind of interaction can really influence our habits can really influence the decisions that we make. So if we do have a friend who always says, Hey, let’s go to insert fast food joint here. Then maybe that’s somebody who you don’t want to spend time having meals with. Maybe that’s somebody who you want to catch up for coffee, but not engaging in mealtime with, or maybe you want to talk to them about helping to change their habits as well and engaging in healthier food choices, things like that.

But I think we could all kind of realize that the people that we spend time with can certainly influence our, our habits.

Awesome.

I totally agree.

Okay. So, so far, just to recap, we’ve talked about scheduling in our calendar. We’ve talked about creating targets to track or a challenge to join. We’ve talked about gathering friends to support us. All right. Those are the first three we talked about.

We’ve got two more tips.

What is number four?

I’ll tell you.

So number four is an obvious one, uh, because everybody’s already doing this, but it’s listen to the podcast. Okay. So we’re big on, we’ve talked about routine. We’ve talked about process. Uh, we’ve talked about healthy habits. And I think this is an obvious one, but if you listen to this podcast, if you get excited to listen to this podcast, whether it’s a live

on the day of drops, whether it’s at some point later in the week, then it helps you to see yourself as somebody who is engaging in this kind of a lifestyle in exercise, in health, in good nutrition, um, and so forth. Um, so you will, you’ll identify as somebody who engages in healthy lifestyles and you’ll do that anyway, but you could also use the podcast. to go for a walk and listen to podcasts when you’re on a walk or a run or sat on an exercise bike or something like that. So use the podcast as something that you can take 20 minutes or so out of your day to do some low -level cardiovascular exercise or high -intensity cardiovascular exercise if you can exercise and listen to the podcast.

But, but engaging in the podcast is constantly giving you that, hopefully giving you that good advice as to how to improve your health and how strength training and exercise as a whole improves your health. But it’s also helping you identify as somebody who engages in healthy habits. Yes. I mean, I hope as a listener to this podcast, you have had that experience of being motivated by something you’ve heard that inspired you. Yes, this is what I want for myself. Yes, this is working.

Yes, there’s science to back up these behaviors that I’m engaging in as a strength training client. Yes, I want to keep this up. This is what we want for you. And I’ve told you, when you know better, you can do better. That is just something that’s been a theme for me personally. If I’ve learned something new, I have a motivation that pops up.

right away to take action on it, because I found out something that would help me. And so now I want to take that action on it, because I want that outcome for myself. Maybe I didn’t know that before. And now I know it. One example I’ve given. is reading the nutrition playbook at the exercise coach.

Understanding what dairy, grains, alcohols, sugars, maybe do, how inflammation works, what it all means in terms of health, I did not know that before. Once I learned that, I was motivated to say, yeah, this is, I want this for myself. I don’t want that for myself. And that’s what inspired me to start eating better. And it inspired me now, you know, it set me on a trajectory along with my strength training for a healthier metabolism. That was 10 years ago.

I truly don’t know where I would be today, metabolically speaking or health wise, if I hadn’t done that. And so.

you know, tapping into as much positive, helpful information as you can to inspire it, inspire your action is going to help you, you know, if you’re anything like me. James, do you have any examples like that as well in your life where you’ve like learned something and then it inspired you to make a change or to take a different action or to think differently? Yeah, I mean, on a day -to -day level, every time we record this podcast and talk about healthy habits, or we talk about some of the health benefits of strength training, it inspires me to go away and do a workout. I’m almost chomping at the bit to go and do a strength training session. One of the last podcasts we recorded, which listeners will have heard by now, was on myokines. And when I think about the The health benefits of my client, it makes me want to go out and lift weights.

It makes me want to go and strength train. So there’s that kind of thing, but there’s also, uh, you know, I have an experience with passive learning. I love the concept of kind of passive learning. So we’ve talked about listening to the podcast while you’re walking. You’re not, you’re not. intentionally trying to make notes and focus on details specifically.

Um, but as far as passive learning goes, when I was a student, I used to stick, stick, uh, things on the back of my, my bedroom door. So, uh, I, for example, stuck an anatomy charts on the back of my bedroom door and I, and I seldom, if ever stopped to read. the anatomy of the muscles and the bones and nervous system and so forth. But I opened and closed that door over and over again. And I, you know, took in that information. Um, so I think that we can really embrace kind of learning, uh, as part of our, as part of our existence, we’re designed to learn, we’re designed to take information in.

Um, so I love the idea of kind of listening to a podcast or engaging in learning, reading that. the Metabolic Comeback book and things like that to help us to support our healthy lifestyle. Absolutely. Awesome. Okay, so that was number four.

Listen to the podcast and dig into that motivation, the resources available.

What is the last one? Okay. So the last one is an easy one. It’s something that I really want to make everybody engage with right now, if they can. So if you’re sat listening to it, I want you to grab a post -it or grab a note or grab a piece of paper, grab something, and I want you to write a positive message. And it can be a positive message by you.

It can be something that you can do or that you can achieve, or you can accomplish, or it could be just a quote that you’ve heard somewhere. or something that somebody famous once said, some sort of inspirational or positive quote. I think there’s so much negativity in the world.

I often joke that I try to avoid watching the news because it’s filled with some of the terrible things that are happening in the world. But actually, we can surround ourselves, and especially our workplace and our home life, with a really positive environment by providing visual reminders or quotes that are inspiring, that are motivating, that will kind of cheer us up and bring positivity to our lives. Yeah, absolutely. Something I’ve learned years ago is that our brains do have something called a negativity bias. What that means is that they’re always looking for problems. They’re always looking for dangers and scanning the world to focus on what could go wrong, what is going wrong.

And it’s a protective mechanism that we have to focus on that. so that we can ideally obviously come up with a solution or a plan if that were to happen. But we can get very bogged down in those anxious ruminations or just negativity. And so we have to counteract that sometimes by leading our own selves in terms of what we want to thank because our thoughts influence our actions and our behaviors and ultimately lead to our outcomes. So start in your own mind and help your mind think about what is going to help you take the right kinds of actions that you’re trying to take.

And those visual reminders help us set our mind in the right place. So thinking about putting something up that will inspire you. I’m going to get the ball rolling for some listeners with a couple of quotes, if that’s okay. One of my favorite quotes, and I don’t know who to attribute this to, so that’s terrible. If you’re listening and you’re the first person that said this, I apologize for not attributing it to you. But one of my favorite quotes right now is,

anticipation is worse than participation so it’s this idea that we kind of have this thing that we want to do but we’re so scared of what it might cost us to do it the energy for maybe training for a long run or What might happen if you, I don’t know, my, my son does diving and he jumped off a seven meter diving board yesterday. So it’s that fear of doing the task, the anticipation of doing it, the fear of doing it is worse than the participation. He got out of the water after this and he was overjoyed. He was really excited that he’d done it. Um, so, you know, a lot of the time, the anticipation, the fear of it is, is way worse than actually just doing the task. So, you know, if you’re, if you’ve got something that you want to accomplish.

There you go. Don’t be scared of doing it. Just engage in doing it. Just follow a process and go after it. And then my second quote, I think is attributed to Muhammad Ali. Uh, and it’s, uh, it doesn’t matter if you get knocked down, it’s only matters if you don’t get back up.

Uh, and I think that’s really important because we all have setbacks. We all have things that will, uh, that will knock us down, whether it’s things in work, it’s things in life, whether it’s things in our habits, whether we miss a workout. whether we miss a good day of healthy food, whether we kind of fall off the wagon and have bad health, bad nutritional choices in a day.

But ultimately it’s about correcting that choice and moving back on the next day or with the next meal or whatever it might be. So I think it’s really important to just accept that sometimes you’re going to get knocked down, but it’s just important to be able to get back up and get back on with things. I love those. I really love those. They really tap into the human experience, right? We’re all trying to do our best and we may have fears about things.

We may have setbacks. We may not feel like it. It doesn’t mean we quit, right? I love those. Those are really, really good. I love that.

So of these five points that we’ve just made or these five tips, again, post -it notes or helpful words that we can look at, listen to the podcast. So like delving into knowledge that inspires us to make change, gathering friends around us to support us in our healthy habits.

creating targets or finding some kind of challenge to complete and scheduling it in your calendar. Dr. Fisher, I wonder which of these has been most helpful to you over the years and why is that? Probably two of them are the most significant for me. And I think on a micro level, scheduling is really important. I know that if I schedule a workout, if I schedule a task, if I schedule a meal, if I prepare a meal, things like that, if I make that, if I give that full thought and that planning to something, then I know that I can stick to it. It’s easy to do.

Um, but that’s certainly on a micro level. Um, I think on a macro level, probably creating a target or finding a challenge can be, can be really motivating to me in the past. I’ve done triathlon and half Ironman and things like that. And I know that if I, if I pick right now that I was going to do a marathon next year or even this year. Then I would start going out for a run much more regularly. I’ve started engaging in much more consistent exercise habits.

Uh, I might be, uh, more particular about my nutritional habits and my, you know, maintaining my weight or a healthy weight or reducing my body fat and so forth. So having a target can be, can be really good. But I also, I also love that kind of long -term day to day setting, uh, goal of, okay, how many hours of sleep did I get today? For example, right now, one of my big focuses is to get over eight hours of sleep a night. And every morning, I track it on my Garmin, as good as a Garmin could be.

And every morning, I look at my Garmin and I look at how much sleep I got. And I think, yeah, great. That’s another day that I got over eight hours of sleep. And then I look at, I’m just bringing it up now because I want to share this because I’m so excited by it. But then I look over the last four weeks and I say, how many days in a row have I successfully done this? And I’m going to show this to the camera right now for everybody listening.

There’s my streak of the green ones are the days I’ve had eight hours sleep. So I want to like a 16 day streak now of eight hours of sleep every night. So I think creating a streak and then trying to stick to that and trying to extend that personally for me is a really good one.

So those are my two. Uh, how about you, Amy? Okay. So first of all, one other comment. So if you’re a person who really isn’t as internally motivated as James here and, and like seeing that streak, one other like step on top of that, if you struggle is to send that streak to somebody else as an, a piece of accountability, right? Like if you’re just, you’re just, you know, yourself well enough to know, like you, your little demon on this shoulder talks you out of the angels.

advice on this shoulder and you just always listen to the demon, then include somebody else in the conversation, right? And so that’s just one thing I thought of. Maybe you can text that to me, James, next time when you get a bad day so I can make fun of you. No, I’m kidding. I won’t do that. I would say for me, the most helpful things when I first got started

in my journey of health, fitness, and nutrition, it was the knowledge, is learning new things, is sort of like knowing better, consuming information because that was so motivating to me. I already talked about why that was. And then over time, I would say nowadays it is just more about the consistency and the scheduling it in. And it’s normal for a motivate like what motivated me 10 years ago. It may not be the same thing that motivates me today because it was I’ve I’ve learned that and I believe it and I’m passionate about it still. But it’s not the same thing that’s going to get me out of my house, over to my studio and working out. It’s scheduling it now.

And that’s totally OK if you’re motivator changes over the years. That’s normal and natural. And so, you know, what may be working for you now may not be working in a few months. And that’s why we’ve given you multiple ideas today in this podcast to choose from.

And having more than one strategy in your life is important for this kind of stuff.

Any final closing comments, Dr. Fisher, for the listeners about motivation? No, I think we’ve covered everything that we wanted to cover today. Okay. Well, thank you for sharing these tips with us. I hope one of these really stands out to you at least if you’re listening to this and you’ve learned something new and can take that and use that as fuel to take the next right step in your fitness journey and your health journey today and for the next several days and years of your life. We’re with you.

We’re cheering you on as part of this podcast. Keep listening every week. We will see you next time on the podcast. Hope you remember, strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend.

You can submit a question or connect with the show. at strengthchangeseverything .com. com. Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode. Here’s to you and your best health.

The post Struggling to Stay Consistent? 5 Tips to Build Your Motivation for Exercise first appeared on Exercise Coach.