February 10, 2023 • 32 mins
This is the first Q&A episode ever for Wits & Weights!
I'm covering four training-related questions from followers of our Facebook group (Wits & Weights) and plan to do more episodes like this to answer your questions there and on Instagram (follow me at @witsandweights), with a shoutout to you (if you want)!
And if you like this Q&A type of episode, let me know and I'll do more of them to release on Fridays between my other episodes. Just email me (philip@witsandweights.com) or direct message me on Instagram.
Questions:
- What would a solid strength training protocol for women over 40 look like?
- Another woman over 40 here. I have been lifting with progressive overload for a year and I have not been able to progress as much as I would like. It’s not that I don’t want to go heavier; I just don’t feel safe in doing one rep, let alone 4-6. What are my options?
- Does research show a difference between a 3-day full-body strength training schedule vs. breaking it up into a 4- or 5-day split such as Push/Core, Pull/Calves, Legs/Core, Full Body?
- What are your recommended pre- and post-workout nutrition strategies?
Episode resources:
- Join our Facebook community (FREE) to watch future episodes LIVE (days or weeks before they come out on the podcast)
👩💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment:
https://witsandweights.com/free-call
🎓 Get your first challenge + 2 weeks FREE in Wits & Weights Physique University (WWPU)
👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support
👋 Let's connect! Ask a question, get my FREE newsletter, or find me on Instagram
📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS
🏋️♀️ Download Boostcamp for free for evidence-based workout programs
🫙 Get 20% off Legion supplements with code WITSpod
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Philip Pape (00:08):
Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast, where we
discuss getting strong andhealthy with strength training
and sustainable nutrition. I'myour host, Philip Pape. And in
each episode, we examinestrategies to help you achieve
physical self mastery through ahealthy skepticism of the
fitness industry, and acommitment to consistent
nutrition and training forsustainable results.
(00:31):
Welcome to another episode ofWits & Weights. This is the
first ever q&a episode for theshow. And if you find it
helpful, the best thing youcould do for me is to let others
know and submit a rating andreview on Apple or Spotify. So
people can more easily find it.
That's the way to do it. Spreadthe word spread the love, I
really appreciate it. And I'mgrateful for that. If you don't
(00:54):
know me, my name is Philip Pape.
And I help high achievers usetheir wits to build their best
body reclaim their time andbecome their most capable,
confident selves in the gym, andin life, so they can show up and
make an impact. Today I'manswering for training related
questions from followers of ourFacebook group, and plan to
(01:16):
answer more in the future fromthat group as well as on
Instagram. You can find thegroup linked in the show notes
or just search for Wits &Weights, and you can find me on
IG at Wits & Weights. Alright,let's jump into today's four
questions. Question. One is fromChristina M. She asks, What
(01:38):
would a solid strength trainingprotocol for women over 40 look
like? Alright, I'm going tospend the most time on this
question today. And then theremaining questions are also
training related. What I want tostart with is just the basic
principles of strength trainingthat apply to everyone. And then
add on the considerations forwomen over 40. So the most
(02:01):
important thing about trainingis that you get the right
balance of intensity, volume andfrequency. So intensity, what we
mean by that is the weight onthe bar, the load on the bar,
not how much your you know,heart rate is going and how hard
the workout feels. But reallythe weight on the bar, we also
(02:21):
want to have progressiveoverload. And that is simply
increasing your volume overtime, usually in the form of
increasing your weight on thebar over time or your intensity.
But you could of course,increase it through other means,
such as volume, and sets andreps. The next thing which is
critical, so critical is goodform. I've seen people jump into
(02:42):
a training program and start toprogressively overload, but
they're using poor form. And onone hand, it leads to a chance
of injury. But on the otherhand, it also prevents you from
properly and efficiently liftingthe weight, and then actually
getting the benefits ofprogressive overload. And before
long, you're at too heavy of aweight. It doesn't feel safe, it
doesn't feel effective, becauseyou never dialed in form from
(03:03):
the beginning. And then finally,I'm just going to mention this
right up front. If you areunsure about a lot of this, even
if you go the DIY method, andyou've done everything you can
to read and listen and watchvideos, and you're still
uncomfortable with it. Pleaseget a coach get a trainer. Okay,
not just me. I'm not even apersonal trainer. I'm a
nutrition coach. But I provideoversight and form checks and I
(03:25):
refer people to trainers, butjust find any trainer you can
who seems to know what they'retalking about when it comes to
the big movements like squatsand deadlifts. So that's that's
the basics. Now, what is ourgoal? Our goal when we strength
train, at least for me and myclients is strength, first and
foremost, as a beginner, andsize. So building muscle. And
(03:49):
for women, this may be expressedin terms of getting lean getting
tone, you're definitely notgoing to get bulky. I think we
know that we've put that myth tobed a while ago. building
muscles the only way to improveyour body composition and get
lean we know that and if youwant to hear me go on and on
about that check out some of myother more recent episodes. But
if our goal is strength andsize, we basically need to apply
(04:13):
a few principles to our muscleswhen we're working out and then
pick our program and protocolaccordingly. The first is
mechanical tension. So simplythe load that we place on our
muscles from lifting heavyweights, is going to put tension
on the muscle to stimulate it togrow. Somewhat related to that
(04:35):
is activating the most amount ofmuscle fibers as possible. The
more muscle fibers we activatenot only muscle groups, but
actually the different sizefibers within a single muscle.
Muscle belly we call it is goingto maximize your growth Okay,
and we get that from bigmovements generally Big full
(04:58):
body movements or compoundmovement.
the next principle isprogressive overload, which I
already mentioned before. Butnow we understand the reason we
use progressive overload is toincrease that mechanical tension
over time. Because every timeyou do that, you then stress the
muscles, you take the time torecover, and then your muscles
(05:18):
adapt, and now you're able tolift a heavier weight. And so
you don't want to keep liftingthe same weight because that
will not further stress yourmuscles and they just won't grow
anymore. You've probably heardlike muscles grow, when you're
recovering or muscles grow whileyou're asleep, they don't grow
in the gym, that's where thatcomes from.
Okay, as far as movements toaccomplish this, we can simplify
(05:39):
it into three generalcategories, pushing, pulling,
and squatting. So for pushing,we have the benchpress and the
overhead press. So bench presseslaying flat on your back, and
pressing and then the overheadpress is standing. The pulling
movements would be deadlift, androws. So the deadlift is just
(06:02):
picking something off theground, and rows are going to be
bent, usually bent over andpulling something back in a
rowing movement to work you'reback. And by the way, beginners
don't really have to use rose,in my opinion, you can
incorporate those a littlelater. And then the squat, okay,
so the squat is the mother ofall lifts, in my opinion,
because it works, the largestmuscle groups, quads, the hips,
(06:25):
the glutes, the hamstrings, thecalves, and it even uses your
stabilizers like your core, andyou're back. So it's kind of a
full body movement. And when youtalk about wanting to build
bigger biceps or tighter back orbigger glutes, I say, well,
first, you got to get thefoundation, squat, deadlift, and
pressing, I mean, the pressingdoesn't even really contribute
to the lower body. But thesquats and deadlifts definitely
(06:49):
do. And they contribute to thecore and everything else. So
those are the basic basicmovements that you want. In a
beginner program. You don't needbarbell curls, you don't you
don't even need like chins andpull ups until you get a little
bit a little bit in like a fewmonths in. You don't need
isolation movements, you don'tneed machines, you don't need
(07:10):
cables, all that you don't needthose, okay, for a basic
program. So what is the protocollook like now? Okay, and I
really hope this I know, this isa long answer to a question in
the q&a segment. But I thinkthis is important. So the
program should allow you toworkout three to five days a
week, okay? Two days would be ifyou're significantly older, and
(07:32):
you've never lifted like 70Plus, but everybody else should
be able to work out at leastthree to five days a week. And I
one of the later questions ofthe four questions. Today, I'm
going to talk about thedifference between three and
four or five day splits, andwhich one's more beneficial? So
stay tuned for that question. So35 workouts per week, I liked
(07:53):
the advice by Mike Matthews ofLegion athletics, in terms of
how many sets to do and he likesto say nine to 12 Hard sets per
major muscle group, okay, perweek, which basically comes out
to be nine to 12 sets ofsomething per workout, or to
make it really easy three orfour movements with like three
(08:15):
or four sets. Fair enough. Sothree or four movements, three
or four sets, you're not goingto do seven movements or eight
different machines or anythinglike that, I can do cardio, none
of that three to five movements.
Keeping it simple, I would usestraight sets across at first,
what does that mean, you'regoing to do say three sets of
five, or three sets of four, orthree sets of six, and just go
(08:36):
up in weight each time. Don'tmake it complicated with rep
ranges and RPE are IR if you'veheard all these terms, don't let
them you know, confused thebeginning phase, which we want
to keep very simple. You want togo heavy, what does that mean?
Heavy mean 75 to 85% of yourmax. Now you're not gonna know
(08:56):
what that is at the beginning.
So you just want to go withsomething that is achievable,
and then start going up fromthere. And you want to work in
the four to six rep range. Thereason we do that, and I like
five, it's right in the middlefive reps. The reason we do that
is it optimizes your volume itbalances, reps and sets, okay?
(09:20):
Or reps and weight. So if you gofour to six reps, you can lift
pretty heavy. If you were doinglike one rep, it would be way
too heavy and you probablywouldn't even have good form and
wouldn't give you enough volume.
If you're doing 20 reps, you'renot gonna have much weight and
you're gonna get fatigued reallyquickly and you're not going to
get the stimulus you need. Soaround five reps is ideal. Once
(09:40):
you start adding an accessorymovements, other movements, you
can go in higher rep ranges likesix to eight or eight to 10 at a
slightly lower weight. One ofthe important things we care
about in our program is stimulusto fatigue ratio. I think that's
I think Mike Israel, coined thatphrase And it's the idea that
you want the most musclestimulus, but you also want to
(10:01):
be able to recover. So alwayskeep that in mind, if you feel
like your training program isbeating you up, and you you come
sluggish to the gym every timeand you're doing everything
else, right? You know you'reeating, you're sleeping, and so
on, it may just be too muchstimulus. Conversely, if you
feel super fresh, and like youcould easily lift more weight,
and you probably shouldn't belifting more, you should be
lifting more. All right. Andthen finally, we're going to,
(10:24):
we're trying to work out soheavy that it feels like it's
one to three reps shy offailure. And as you get more
into training, you'll understandwhat that means. If you use sets
across and just go up in weighteach week, it'll keep you in
that range. And then we're goingto have decent rest periods
anywhere from two to fiveminutes between the movements.
(10:44):
Okay, so that was quite a bitthat could probably be a podcast
all to itself. But what are theconsiderations for people over
40 and women over 40? All right,and I say women and I say people
because a lot of it's the same,regardless of gender. The
differences for women that I'veseen, and that I think the
(11:04):
science or the evidence hasshown is women can generally
handle a little bit more volumeon average than men, which just
means that you might have to doa few extra reps, or take a
little bit less rest period, orhave do the movements more often
during the week. So with allthat sounds sounds like bad
news, right? Like you have to domore, but it also means that you
(11:24):
could recover more quickly. Sothat's the plus side of all of
that. And recovery is the nameof the game as we get old. So
I'm in my 40s. And I'm feeling Idon't feel like I was in my 20s
I couldn't work, do 90 minutesessions every day for six days
a week, no way. So let's talkabout the considerations to have
the most optimal workout andfeel your best but still make
(11:48):
progress. First, you're notgoing to like get something
they're not going to like this,but you've got to eat food,
you've got to eat enough. And ifyou really want to make gains in
the gym, you have to at leasteat at maintenance calories, but
more likely, you want to be in avery slight surplus. So
strengthen muscle gains and ofany meaningful amount, you're
not going to get them in a diet.
(12:10):
Okay, if you're brand new, andyou're in a very slight diet,
and you've got all the otherthings up to snuff, right like
your your steps and your sleepand your stress and your macros
and everything, then yeah, maybeyou can get a little body read
composition going on. But it'snot going to be optimal. If you
want to focus on just the goalof getting stronger and
(12:31):
increasing your muscle mass.
Knowing that later, you canquickly lop the fat off, you
need eat enough. So that'sthat's an important part of
training for over 40.
Recovery, recovery is veryimportant. So as a beginner,
you're probably going to beworking out three days a week.
And that gives you a good amountof rest periods a rest time. But
as you get more advanced, youmight end up working out four or
(12:53):
five days a week. And so youreally have to manage the
programming style versus yourability to recover recovery in a
couple of ways. One is recoverybetween sets. So taking long
enough rest periods, right. Andif you feel like you're just
winded by set two or three, youmight just need to wait longer.
And then recovery in terms ofdon't not doing the same
(13:15):
movement too many times in aweek. Like if you're doing a
three times per week squattingprogram. But you've been doing
that for three months, you maybe too fatigued doing that and
need to back off on thefrequency or at least on the
load. All right. Here's anotherconsideration for women
specifically, I found that womensometimes can handle more sets
(13:37):
with fewer reps. So for exampleof a program is written with
three sets of five, and youstart to plateau. Like let's say
you're on your second month oftraining, the overhead press and
you just don't feel like it'sgoing up. Switch it to five sets
of three. So if you think aboutit, you should be able to lift
more weight for three reps thanfor five reps, or, yeah, more
(14:00):
weight for three reps than forfive reps. But now you're just
going to do a couple extra sets.
And because women again have abetter recovery ability and
ability to handle volume, thisactually works pretty well
sometimes because you can getthose extra couple sets. Whereas
a male trainer might, you know,might find that too fatiguing in
terms of volume that the waythat structured. So we'll let
you progress continue toprogress. So think of instead of
(14:23):
three sets of five, five sets ofthree as a way to continue
progressing, okay? sleep andstress so important when you're
over 40 They're alwaysimportant, but if you can get
that eight or even nine hours ofsleep, if you can manage your
stress or a cut things out ofyour life you don't need, you
(14:43):
can find time to yourself andyou can find time for self care
as much as possible. That'sgonna go a long way in how you
feel in the gym and your abilityto make gains. We talked about
food, we talked about recovery.
The only other thing I would sayis don't Don't go with the same
program too hard for too long.
If you're six or eight weeks inor even 10 weeks in, and you're
(15:05):
feeling just beat up, you cantake a D load. And a D load is
where you take a very light weekwhere you still have high
intensity, but you do many fewersets. And you might even notch
the intensity down a bit like to80% of what you were doing, just
for that week, cut out all theaccessory movement, and then
continue with your block thenext week. That's one approach.
(15:28):
The other approach is justswitch it up. If you're doing a
strength based program, switchto a bodybuilding program, you
know, those are ways to kind ofallow your body body to keep
recovering. So I hope Christinathat that answers your question
is a lot of information, go backand watch or listen to this
(15:49):
again. And of course, you canreach out to me with direct
questions. And if there'sfurther q&a from that q&a
Answer, I will clarify more inthe future. Hey, this is Philip
Pape. And if you feel likeyou've put in effort to improve
your health and fitness, butaren't getting results, I invite
you to apply for a one on onecoaching to make real progress
and get the body you desire.
(16:12):
We'll work together to figureout what's missing so you can
look better, perform better andfeel better. Just go to wits &
weights.com/coaching, to learnabout my program and apply
today. Now back to the episode.
All right, question two is fromSophia G. She asks another woman
over 40 Here I've been liftingwith progressive overload for a
(16:33):
year, I've not been able toprogress as much as I would
like. It's not that I don't wantto go heavier. I just don't feel
safe in doing one rep, let alonefour to six. What are my
options? So Sophia, thanks forthat question. Obviously, you
you've already gotten know someof the information that I just
shared about training andtraining for women over 40. But
the struggle I'm sensing here ismore on the safety and the
(16:57):
confidence in the gym. So I'mgoing to repeat what I said
earlier in the episode and thatis, if you don't have a coach
yet, consider getting a coacheven if it's just for one or two
sessions to teach you themovements and look at your form
and give you feedback. Okay, youknow, if it's not in your budget
to hire a personal trainerongoing, just just have one or
(17:17):
two sessions. If you can find astarting strength coach in your
area, go online and look thatup. I would highly recommend
someone like that. I mean, I'veworked with them myself. Such as
oh man, what's his name inConnecticut?
Cheese. And you know, Cody,Cody's is Cody and Nino's his
(17:37):
name in Connecticut. And hehelped me tremendously with my
squat, my deadlift and my pressall in one session. That's one.
The second option is if you'regoing to do the DIY route, I
want you to take video of yourlifts and watch them back and
compare them to either books orvideos about that show you
proper form. Okay, so this is askill, it's a skill for life,
(18:01):
and you're going to constantlyhave to tweak and get better.
But unless you get feedback,it's very hard to know where
your bad habits are. So use thevideo and check and watch
yourself. Also, you could uploadyour video to one of a number of
groups online that do formchecks, okay, like I do form
checks for my clients directly,for example. And if you had a
remote coach like that could bean affordable option. If you
(18:23):
can't afford a personal trainer,in person, or remote coach, and
I know a few I could recommendcould give you a form check and
tell you what cues to use to tobetter lift some resources.
Okay, I would definitely checkout starting strength, the book
and all their videos andresources on the proper and safe
and effective way to lift. Iwould go look at videos by
(18:44):
barbell logic on YouTube. Okay,barbell logic, and then and then
let's talk about actual safetyin the gym. You want to use a
spotter like another person hasa spotter or the pins and
spotter arms on a power rackwhen at a minimum when you're
squatting and when you'rebenching Okay, so when you
squat, you want to sit the pinsor the spotter arms, those are
(19:06):
the the pins or the arms that goacross the rack that can be used
as stops as safety stops. Youwant to go down into a full
squat and set those just belowthat point. So if you have to
bail on the squat, you're goingto bail forward, you're not
going to go backward like inCrossFit where you dump the bar
and everything clanks to theground and then you damage
equipment, you're going to justgently lean forward set the bar
(19:29):
on the spotter. That's how yousafely squat. I do that myself
in my home gym. benchpress iseven more important because
benchpress actually could bedangerous. If you don't have a
spotter spotter arms because youcould drop the bar on your chest
or neck and then not be able toget out of it. Pardon me. So
again, spotter arms, you wantthem set up at the height
between your neck and chest. Sothat if you fail the rep, you
(19:53):
can just gently set it down andthen like scooch out from under
it while it's just safelysitting on the spotter arms. So
that's important. And thenhere's the thing, you said, you
feel you don't feel safe doingeven one rep, let alone four to
six, there, there has to be aweight that's light enough,
where you do feel safe doingfour to six, it might be the
(20:15):
empty 45 pound Olympic bar, orit might be an empty women's
bar, or like even a 15 poundbar, if you can get that, um,
you could buy one yourself, ifit's a home gym, or a PVC pipe,
or a mop or broom handleseriously, and do your four to
six, your three sets of four tosix or whatever, with that
(20:37):
weight, you should be able to dosomething, right, and then go up
from there. So if it's a 15pound bar, and you're like,
Yeah, this is no problem, youknow, add five pounds on each
side and make it 25 pounds. Oh,now this is starting to feel a
little heavy, but it's not socrazy heavy that you feel
unsafe. So start there. And theneach session just add a little
bit of weight. This is where youmight need microplates you have
(21:01):
to buy those, just put them inyour gym bag, where you get like
quarter pound, half pound, threequarter one pound plates, so
that you can go up by two poundsinstead of five or 10. Okay, so
I hope all that helps. And youjust going to iterate through
that process and developing thatskill, watching videos, reading
books, doing form checks,working with coaches as needed,
reaching out to me reaching outto others in our group, you
(21:24):
know, slowly progressing overtime, you know, backing off a
little bit if you feel unsafe,and you need to rework and form
and then just keep going andyou're gonna get there. All
right. Question number three isfrom Alan, F. My man Alan, he
asks, does research show adifference between a three day
full body work? Three day fullbody strength training schedule,
(21:47):
versus breaking it up into fouror five days split? Like push
core pull calves legs, core fullbody? Okay. He's saying is there
a difference in effectivenessbetween three days full body?
And four or five day body partsplits? And the answer is, the
research suggests that there'snot a difference for strength or
size. But there is a differencebased on you as an individual.
(22:12):
So you knew I was You knew I wasgoing to say it depends at some
point here, but I'm going tobreak it down exactly to give
you the decision tree to todecide that from. So two
research studies that came outjust in the past year two, one
is by ama evangelist at all in2021. And the conclusion was
that quote, resistance trainingtwice or four times per week has
(22:33):
similar effects on neuromuscularadaptation, provided weekly Set
volume is equal. Okay, so that'sneuro muscular adaptation. It
doesn't matter. The other studyPeterson at all in 2022, and
Brad Schoenfeld was on this. Andhe's, he's one of the
researchers that I reallyrespect out there. Quote, this
study did not show any benefitsfor split body resistance
(22:56):
training program compared tofull body resistance training
program on measures of maximaland explosive muscle strength,
and muscle mass. So again, theydidn't really find a difference.
What's the most important thing,Alan and everyone listening, as
we said before, progressiveoverload, okay, so whatever a
combination of intensity volume,and recovery allows for you as
(23:18):
an individual to get stronger,is the best program for you. But
there are some things toconsider. Okay. So the first one
is your training age and yourexperience, if you are beginner,
three days, full body, bar,none, I wouldn't even consider
anything else. And that'sbecause you get the best bang
for your buck in terms of thelifts in terms of your time,
(23:39):
it's time efficient, you're notgoing to have very long rest
periods, because you're new, andyou're gonna be able to recover
really quickly, within two daysto do all those movements again.
So you should be squatting everysession, you should be dead
lifting or pulling every sessionand doing some sort of press
every session, every session.
That's it, period. That's myopinion, no matter what age you
are, unless you're very, very,very old and have never lifted,
(23:59):
maybe it's two days a week,okay? Another factor is ability
to recover between sessions.
This is often tied to the firstthing, age and training
experience. So the older you arethe hardest to recover, the more
you want to consider whether youneed a three or four day split
as a result. Now, it could goboth directions. A three day
(24:22):
split gives you extra timebetween sessions, but it's also
longer, right? And you may getmore beat up doing it that way,
in which case splitting it intofour or five days allows you to
spread that fatigue out over theweek and recover better. So
that's going to beindividualized. The other thing
is your personal schedule andwhether you enjoy it and it
(24:43):
makes it's consistent. Right? Ifyour schedule doesn't allow for
four or five days, because youknow, you work a full time job,
you have a family you have allthese obligations. Then three
days it is or maybe every otherday where it's kind of a shifted
schedule, right or maybe everythird day, whatever makes sense,
three days is great. Forbeginners, it's time efficient,
(25:06):
it stimulates all the big musclegroups multiple times per week,
it helps with your workcapacity. And your it helps it
gives you enough frequency tobecome better at the lifts to
develop skill. So I said thatalready, but barn on beginners,
three days, four or five days iswhat you want when you are
intermediate, or advanced. Sothat could be as soon as three
(25:26):
to six months after you starttraining, if you do it the right
way. Definitely, if you're ayear or two into training,
you're probably up to a four orfive day split at this point.
Because then you can get morefrequency and volume for muscle
mass and hypertrophy. Right. Solike the bodybuilding type
stuff.
Also, the training sessionswon't be as long because when
(25:47):
you're an intermediate trainer,you're you're lifting much
heavier and you need more restperiods. And your sessions
generally go up to like an hourand a half. So splitting into
four or five days allows you toget that back down to maybe an
hour. But again, it's going todepend on can your schedule
accommodate that some peoplewould rather have long sessions
where they have the commute timebuilt in than shorter sessions.
(26:09):
Now the long story short is thebest program is the one you can
stick with that you can enjoy.
And that meets your lifestylesand goals, lifestyle and goals.
But let me give you an examplefrom my personal experience over
the last two years, I startedwith a three day split, when I
was a beginner. Then I moved toa four day, a four day split,
that I moved to a four dayconjugate style program. Then I
moved to a five day bodybuilderspower building program. Then I
(26:32):
tried a six day bodybuildingprogram, I went back to a four
day conjugate program. And nowbecause I'm in a fat loss phase,
and I want to get more sleep,I'm back to a three day program.
But it's not a beginner program.
It's more of an advancedprogram. There you go. Alright,
question for Question four isfrom Jay W. She asks, What are
(26:54):
your recommended pre and postworkout nutrition strategies?
All right, always love thisquestion. Because it can get
complicated and it doesn't needto be. I'm trying to, I'm gonna
try to simplify the guidelinesas much as possible. And if you
want a book about a really goodbook about flexible dieting and
macros, that covers the researchbehind a lot of this flexible
(27:16):
dieting by Alan Aragon isfantastic. He came out with it,
I think lat just last year. Andhe summarizes all the research
really succinctly. So here wego, I'm going to talk about
protein, carbs and fats,protein, consume protein up to
two hours before and two hoursafter your workout. That's
(27:37):
pretty broad, right? So you geta lot of flexibility, consume
some protein up to two hoursbefore up to two hours after.
And this will maximize muscleprotein synthesis. If you're
eating enough protein, you'reprobably going to be eating four
or five times a day anyway. Soif you're working out that day,
make two of those times twohours before and up to two hours
(27:58):
after. And I would say somewherelike 25, or 30 grams of protein
at each of those is in theballpark for most people, you
know, if you're much larger,it's going to be higher. So
that's that's protein, simple.
Carbs. You You generally wantcarbs in your blood from a meal
consumed up to two hours beforethe workout or a small amount,
30 minutes before your workout.
(28:20):
So let me explain if you if youhave breakfast, and then you
train it 10. And you know, ifyou had breakfast at eight, and
you train at 10, and yourbreakfast had a deep amount of
carbs in it, you're good. If youwake up early, and the first
thing you do is work out, wellthen give yourself a 30 minute
buffer and have a simple carblike fruit, banana, I love
bananas because they addpotassium which is excellent
(28:42):
electrolyte. So fruit orsomething like rice. Okay, 30
minutes prior, give yourself alittle time to start digesting
and then hit the gym. Okay, andthis can be as little as 10 to
20 grams just to get somethingin your system to help you with
your performance. Because whenyou work out when you strength
train, you start to draw on yourglycolytic tank on your
(29:02):
glycogen. And if you don't havethat tank filled, like if the
last time you ate was dinner thenight before, in your tank is
half full, you're going todeplete it much more quickly and
you're going to start to feellike you can't lift as much. And
the whole goal of strengthtraining is lifting the heaviest
weight we can for progressiveoverload. So if it's a long
(29:23):
workout, or if you can't consumecarbs before your workout, try
to consume them during theworkout. So this could be
something like highly branchedcyclic dextran or it could be
fruit. The bodybuilders way backin the day would have like pop
tarts and gummy bears I don'trecommend that. But you know,
the dextrin or fruit would worksomething that's easy on the
(29:44):
stomach and digest prettyquickly and then just get your
the your next carbs at your nextmeal within a few hours. So I
know I talked a lot about thecarbs but just to simplify, have
carbs up to two hours before Thecloser you are to workout make
it simpler carbs that digestquickly. If you can't consume
(30:04):
before consumed during, and alsoconsume carbs within a few hours
after you workout, it could justbe your next meal. Or if it's a
very intense training sessionlike CrossFit or a lot of
movement, you want to consume itsooner than that to refill your
glycogen. That's it. Fats easy,limited or no fats at all,
because they slow digestion ofprotein, carbs, and they have no
(30:26):
benefit at all for energy orhypertrophy or strength during
strength training. So don'tworry about fats, I mean, worry
about them in the sense that tryto keep keep them low to
minimal, low to non existent. Sohere's what I do. I work out in
the morning, early in themorning, I give myself about
half an hour, 45 minutes, I wakeup, I have a banana and a way
(30:48):
shake, I get some work done. Ormaybe I read and relax. And then
I go for my training session.
After my training session,within 45 minutes, I have a way
shake with some highly branchedcyclic dextran. Or now that I'm
in a fat loss phase, I can'teven afford those carbs. So I
just go jump right intobreakfast. All right. Hope that
helped. That is it for our firstq&a episode. If you found this
(31:10):
helpful or valuable, let me knowplease by leaving a five star
review at Apple or Spotify, Ioften read these reviews on the
show. And I would be happy togive you a shout out if you
want. And again, thanks forlistening and stay strong.
Thanks for listening to theshow. Before you go, I have a
quick favorite ask. If you enjoythe podcast. Let me know by
(31:33):
leaving a five star review inApple podcasts and telling
others about the show. Thanksagain for joining me Philip Pape
in this episode of Wits &Weights. I'll see you next time
and stay strong.
Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast, where we
discuss getting strong andhealthy with strength training
and sustainable nutrition. I'myour host, Philip Pape. And in
each episode, we examinestrategies to help you achieve
physical self mastery through ahealthy skepticism of the
fitness industry, and acommitment to consistent
nutrition and training forsustainable results.
(00:31):
Welcome to another episode ofWits & Weights. This is the
first ever q&a episode for theshow. And if you find it
helpful, the best thing youcould do for me is to let others
know and submit a rating andreview on Apple or Spotify. So
people can more easily find it.
That's the way to do it. Spreadthe word spread the love, I
really appreciate it. And I'mgrateful for that. If you don't
(00:54):
know me, my name is Philip Pape.
And I help high achievers usetheir wits to build their best
body reclaim their time andbecome their most capable,
confident selves in the gym, andin life, so they can show up and
make an impact. Today I'manswering for training related
questions from followers of ourFacebook group, and plan to
(01:16):
answer more in the future fromthat group as well as on
Instagram. You can find thegroup linked in the show notes
or just search for Wits &Weights, and you can find me on
IG at Wits & Weights. Alright,let's jump into today's four
questions. Question. One is fromChristina M. She asks, What
(01:38):
would a solid strength trainingprotocol for women over 40 look
like? Alright, I'm going tospend the most time on this
question today. And then theremaining questions are also
training related. What I want tostart with is just the basic
principles of strength trainingthat apply to everyone. And then
add on the considerations forwomen over 40. So the most
(02:01):
important thing about trainingis that you get the right
balance of intensity, volume andfrequency. So intensity, what we
mean by that is the weight onthe bar, the load on the bar,
not how much your you know,heart rate is going and how hard
the workout feels. But reallythe weight on the bar, we also
(02:21):
want to have progressiveoverload. And that is simply
increasing your volume overtime, usually in the form of
increasing your weight on thebar over time or your intensity.
But you could of course,increase it through other means,
such as volume, and sets andreps. The next thing which is
critical, so critical is goodform. I've seen people jump into
(02:42):
a training program and start toprogressively overload, but
they're using poor form. And onone hand, it leads to a chance
of injury. But on the otherhand, it also prevents you from
properly and efficiently liftingthe weight, and then actually
getting the benefits ofprogressive overload. And before
long, you're at too heavy of aweight. It doesn't feel safe, it
doesn't feel effective, becauseyou never dialed in form from
(03:03):
the beginning. And then finally,I'm just going to mention this
right up front. If you areunsure about a lot of this, even
if you go the DIY method, andyou've done everything you can
to read and listen and watchvideos, and you're still
uncomfortable with it. Pleaseget a coach get a trainer. Okay,
not just me. I'm not even apersonal trainer. I'm a
nutrition coach. But I provideoversight and form checks and I
(03:25):
refer people to trainers, butjust find any trainer you can
who seems to know what they'retalking about when it comes to
the big movements like squatsand deadlifts. So that's that's
the basics. Now, what is ourgoal? Our goal when we strength
train, at least for me and myclients is strength, first and
foremost, as a beginner, andsize. So building muscle. And
(03:49):
for women, this may be expressedin terms of getting lean getting
tone, you're definitely notgoing to get bulky. I think we
know that we've put that myth tobed a while ago. building
muscles the only way to improveyour body composition and get
lean we know that and if youwant to hear me go on and on
about that check out some of myother more recent episodes. But
if our goal is strength andsize, we basically need to apply
(04:13):
a few principles to our muscleswhen we're working out and then
pick our program and protocolaccordingly. The first is
mechanical tension. So simplythe load that we place on our
muscles from lifting heavyweights, is going to put tension
on the muscle to stimulate it togrow. Somewhat related to that
(04:35):
is activating the most amount ofmuscle fibers as possible. The
more muscle fibers we activatenot only muscle groups, but
actually the different sizefibers within a single muscle.
Muscle belly we call it is goingto maximize your growth Okay,
and we get that from bigmovements generally Big full
(04:58):
body movements or compoundmovement.
the next principle isprogressive overload, which I
already mentioned before. Butnow we understand the reason we
use progressive overload is toincrease that mechanical tension
over time. Because every timeyou do that, you then stress the
muscles, you take the time torecover, and then your muscles
(05:18):
adapt, and now you're able tolift a heavier weight. And so
you don't want to keep liftingthe same weight because that
will not further stress yourmuscles and they just won't grow
anymore. You've probably heardlike muscles grow, when you're
recovering or muscles grow whileyou're asleep, they don't grow
in the gym, that's where thatcomes from.
Okay, as far as movements toaccomplish this, we can simplify
(05:39):
it into three generalcategories, pushing, pulling,
and squatting. So for pushing,we have the benchpress and the
overhead press. So bench presseslaying flat on your back, and
pressing and then the overheadpress is standing. The pulling
movements would be deadlift, androws. So the deadlift is just
(06:02):
picking something off theground, and rows are going to be
bent, usually bent over andpulling something back in a
rowing movement to work you'reback. And by the way, beginners
don't really have to use rose,in my opinion, you can
incorporate those a littlelater. And then the squat, okay,
so the squat is the mother ofall lifts, in my opinion,
because it works, the largestmuscle groups, quads, the hips,
(06:25):
the glutes, the hamstrings, thecalves, and it even uses your
stabilizers like your core, andyou're back. So it's kind of a
full body movement. And when youtalk about wanting to build
bigger biceps or tighter back orbigger glutes, I say, well,
first, you got to get thefoundation, squat, deadlift, and
pressing, I mean, the pressingdoesn't even really contribute
to the lower body. But thesquats and deadlifts definitely
(06:49):
do. And they contribute to thecore and everything else. So
those are the basic basicmovements that you want. In a
beginner program. You don't needbarbell curls, you don't you
don't even need like chins andpull ups until you get a little
bit a little bit in like a fewmonths in. You don't need
isolation movements, you don'tneed machines, you don't need
(07:10):
cables, all that you don't needthose, okay, for a basic
program. So what is the protocollook like now? Okay, and I
really hope this I know, this isa long answer to a question in
the q&a segment. But I thinkthis is important. So the
program should allow you toworkout three to five days a
week, okay? Two days would be ifyou're significantly older, and
(07:32):
you've never lifted like 70Plus, but everybody else should
be able to work out at leastthree to five days a week. And I
one of the later questions ofthe four questions. Today, I'm
going to talk about thedifference between three and
four or five day splits, andwhich one's more beneficial? So
stay tuned for that question. So35 workouts per week, I liked
(07:53):
the advice by Mike Matthews ofLegion athletics, in terms of
how many sets to do and he likesto say nine to 12 Hard sets per
major muscle group, okay, perweek, which basically comes out
to be nine to 12 sets ofsomething per workout, or to
make it really easy three orfour movements with like three
(08:15):
or four sets. Fair enough. Sothree or four movements, three
or four sets, you're not goingto do seven movements or eight
different machines or anythinglike that, I can do cardio, none
of that three to five movements.
Keeping it simple, I would usestraight sets across at first,
what does that mean, you'regoing to do say three sets of
five, or three sets of four, orthree sets of six, and just go
(08:36):
up in weight each time. Don'tmake it complicated with rep
ranges and RPE are IR if you'veheard all these terms, don't let
them you know, confused thebeginning phase, which we want
to keep very simple. You want togo heavy, what does that mean?
Heavy mean 75 to 85% of yourmax. Now you're not gonna know
(08:56):
what that is at the beginning.
So you just want to go withsomething that is achievable,
and then start going up fromthere. And you want to work in
the four to six rep range. Thereason we do that, and I like
five, it's right in the middlefive reps. The reason we do that
is it optimizes your volume itbalances, reps and sets, okay?
(09:20):
Or reps and weight. So if you gofour to six reps, you can lift
pretty heavy. If you were doinglike one rep, it would be way
too heavy and you probablywouldn't even have good form and
wouldn't give you enough volume.
If you're doing 20 reps, you'renot gonna have much weight and
you're gonna get fatigued reallyquickly and you're not going to
get the stimulus you need. Soaround five reps is ideal. Once
(09:40):
you start adding an accessorymovements, other movements, you
can go in higher rep ranges likesix to eight or eight to 10 at a
slightly lower weight. One ofthe important things we care
about in our program is stimulusto fatigue ratio. I think that's
I think Mike Israel, coined thatphrase And it's the idea that
you want the most musclestimulus, but you also want to
(10:01):
be able to recover. So alwayskeep that in mind, if you feel
like your training program isbeating you up, and you you come
sluggish to the gym every timeand you're doing everything
else, right? You know you'reeating, you're sleeping, and so
on, it may just be too muchstimulus. Conversely, if you
feel super fresh, and like youcould easily lift more weight,
and you probably shouldn't belifting more, you should be
lifting more. All right. Andthen finally, we're going to,
(10:24):
we're trying to work out soheavy that it feels like it's
one to three reps shy offailure. And as you get more
into training, you'll understandwhat that means. If you use sets
across and just go up in weighteach week, it'll keep you in
that range. And then we're goingto have decent rest periods
anywhere from two to fiveminutes between the movements.
(10:44):
Okay, so that was quite a bitthat could probably be a podcast
all to itself. But what are theconsiderations for people over
40 and women over 40? All right,and I say women and I say people
because a lot of it's the same,regardless of gender. The
differences for women that I'veseen, and that I think the
(11:04):
science or the evidence hasshown is women can generally
handle a little bit more volumeon average than men, which just
means that you might have to doa few extra reps, or take a
little bit less rest period, orhave do the movements more often
during the week. So with allthat sounds sounds like bad
news, right? Like you have to domore, but it also means that you
(11:24):
could recover more quickly. Sothat's the plus side of all of
that. And recovery is the nameof the game as we get old. So
I'm in my 40s. And I'm feeling Idon't feel like I was in my 20s
I couldn't work, do 90 minutesessions every day for six days
a week, no way. So let's talkabout the considerations to have
the most optimal workout andfeel your best but still make
(11:48):
progress. First, you're notgoing to like get something
they're not going to like this,but you've got to eat food,
you've got to eat enough. And ifyou really want to make gains in
the gym, you have to at leasteat at maintenance calories, but
more likely, you want to be in avery slight surplus. So
strengthen muscle gains and ofany meaningful amount, you're
not going to get them in a diet.
(12:10):
Okay, if you're brand new, andyou're in a very slight diet,
and you've got all the otherthings up to snuff, right like
your your steps and your sleepand your stress and your macros
and everything, then yeah, maybeyou can get a little body read
composition going on. But it'snot going to be optimal. If you
want to focus on just the goalof getting stronger and
(12:31):
increasing your muscle mass.
Knowing that later, you canquickly lop the fat off, you
need eat enough. So that'sthat's an important part of
training for over 40.
Recovery, recovery is veryimportant. So as a beginner,
you're probably going to beworking out three days a week.
And that gives you a good amountof rest periods a rest time. But
as you get more advanced, youmight end up working out four or
(12:53):
five days a week. And so youreally have to manage the
programming style versus yourability to recover recovery in a
couple of ways. One is recoverybetween sets. So taking long
enough rest periods, right. Andif you feel like you're just
winded by set two or three, youmight just need to wait longer.
And then recovery in terms ofdon't not doing the same
(13:15):
movement too many times in aweek. Like if you're doing a
three times per week squattingprogram. But you've been doing
that for three months, you maybe too fatigued doing that and
need to back off on thefrequency or at least on the
load. All right. Here's anotherconsideration for women
specifically, I found that womensometimes can handle more sets
(13:37):
with fewer reps. So for exampleof a program is written with
three sets of five, and youstart to plateau. Like let's say
you're on your second month oftraining, the overhead press and
you just don't feel like it'sgoing up. Switch it to five sets
of three. So if you think aboutit, you should be able to lift
more weight for three reps thanfor five reps, or, yeah, more
(14:00):
weight for three reps than forfive reps. But now you're just
going to do a couple extra sets.
And because women again have abetter recovery ability and
ability to handle volume, thisactually works pretty well
sometimes because you can getthose extra couple sets. Whereas
a male trainer might, you know,might find that too fatiguing in
terms of volume that the waythat structured. So we'll let
you progress continue toprogress. So think of instead of
(14:23):
three sets of five, five sets ofthree as a way to continue
progressing, okay? sleep andstress so important when you're
over 40 They're alwaysimportant, but if you can get
that eight or even nine hours ofsleep, if you can manage your
stress or a cut things out ofyour life you don't need, you
(14:43):
can find time to yourself andyou can find time for self care
as much as possible. That'sgonna go a long way in how you
feel in the gym and your abilityto make gains. We talked about
food, we talked about recovery.
The only other thing I would sayis don't Don't go with the same
program too hard for too long.
If you're six or eight weeks inor even 10 weeks in, and you're
(15:05):
feeling just beat up, you cantake a D load. And a D load is
where you take a very light weekwhere you still have high
intensity, but you do many fewersets. And you might even notch
the intensity down a bit like to80% of what you were doing, just
for that week, cut out all theaccessory movement, and then
continue with your block thenext week. That's one approach.
(15:28):
The other approach is justswitch it up. If you're doing a
strength based program, switchto a bodybuilding program, you
know, those are ways to kind ofallow your body body to keep
recovering. So I hope Christinathat that answers your question
is a lot of information, go backand watch or listen to this
(15:49):
again. And of course, you canreach out to me with direct
questions. And if there'sfurther q&a from that q&a
Answer, I will clarify more inthe future. Hey, this is Philip
Pape. And if you feel likeyou've put in effort to improve
your health and fitness, butaren't getting results, I invite
you to apply for a one on onecoaching to make real progress
and get the body you desire.
(16:12):
We'll work together to figureout what's missing so you can
look better, perform better andfeel better. Just go to wits &
weights.com/coaching, to learnabout my program and apply
today. Now back to the episode.
All right, question two is fromSophia G. She asks another woman
over 40 Here I've been liftingwith progressive overload for a
(16:33):
year, I've not been able toprogress as much as I would
like. It's not that I don't wantto go heavier. I just don't feel
safe in doing one rep, let alonefour to six. What are my
options? So Sophia, thanks forthat question. Obviously, you
you've already gotten know someof the information that I just
shared about training andtraining for women over 40. But
the struggle I'm sensing here ismore on the safety and the
(16:57):
confidence in the gym. So I'mgoing to repeat what I said
earlier in the episode and thatis, if you don't have a coach
yet, consider getting a coacheven if it's just for one or two
sessions to teach you themovements and look at your form
and give you feedback. Okay, youknow, if it's not in your budget
to hire a personal trainerongoing, just just have one or
(17:17):
two sessions. If you can find astarting strength coach in your
area, go online and look thatup. I would highly recommend
someone like that. I mean, I'veworked with them myself. Such as
oh man, what's his name inConnecticut?
Cheese. And you know, Cody,Cody's is Cody and Nino's his
(17:37):
name in Connecticut. And hehelped me tremendously with my
squat, my deadlift and my pressall in one session. That's one.
The second option is if you'regoing to do the DIY route, I
want you to take video of yourlifts and watch them back and
compare them to either books orvideos about that show you
proper form. Okay, so this is askill, it's a skill for life,
(18:01):
and you're going to constantlyhave to tweak and get better.
But unless you get feedback,it's very hard to know where
your bad habits are. So use thevideo and check and watch
yourself. Also, you could uploadyour video to one of a number of
groups online that do formchecks, okay, like I do form
checks for my clients directly,for example. And if you had a
remote coach like that could bean affordable option. If you
(18:23):
can't afford a personal trainer,in person, or remote coach, and
I know a few I could recommendcould give you a form check and
tell you what cues to use to tobetter lift some resources.
Okay, I would definitely checkout starting strength, the book
and all their videos andresources on the proper and safe
and effective way to lift. Iwould go look at videos by
(18:44):
barbell logic on YouTube. Okay,barbell logic, and then and then
let's talk about actual safetyin the gym. You want to use a
spotter like another person hasa spotter or the pins and
spotter arms on a power rackwhen at a minimum when you're
squatting and when you'rebenching Okay, so when you
squat, you want to sit the pinsor the spotter arms, those are
(19:06):
the the pins or the arms that goacross the rack that can be used
as stops as safety stops. Youwant to go down into a full
squat and set those just belowthat point. So if you have to
bail on the squat, you're goingto bail forward, you're not
going to go backward like inCrossFit where you dump the bar
and everything clanks to theground and then you damage
equipment, you're going to justgently lean forward set the bar
(19:29):
on the spotter. That's how yousafely squat. I do that myself
in my home gym. benchpress iseven more important because
benchpress actually could bedangerous. If you don't have a
spotter spotter arms because youcould drop the bar on your chest
or neck and then not be able toget out of it. Pardon me. So
again, spotter arms, you wantthem set up at the height
between your neck and chest. Sothat if you fail the rep, you
(19:53):
can just gently set it down andthen like scooch out from under
it while it's just safelysitting on the spotter arms. So
that's important. And thenhere's the thing, you said, you
feel you don't feel safe doingeven one rep, let alone four to
six, there, there has to be aweight that's light enough,
where you do feel safe doingfour to six, it might be the
(20:15):
empty 45 pound Olympic bar, orit might be an empty women's
bar, or like even a 15 poundbar, if you can get that, um,
you could buy one yourself, ifit's a home gym, or a PVC pipe,
or a mop or broom handleseriously, and do your four to
six, your three sets of four tosix or whatever, with that
(20:37):
weight, you should be able to dosomething, right, and then go up
from there. So if it's a 15pound bar, and you're like,
Yeah, this is no problem, youknow, add five pounds on each
side and make it 25 pounds. Oh,now this is starting to feel a
little heavy, but it's not socrazy heavy that you feel
unsafe. So start there. And theneach session just add a little
bit of weight. This is where youmight need microplates you have
(21:01):
to buy those, just put them inyour gym bag, where you get like
quarter pound, half pound, threequarter one pound plates, so
that you can go up by two poundsinstead of five or 10. Okay, so
I hope all that helps. And youjust going to iterate through
that process and developing thatskill, watching videos, reading
books, doing form checks,working with coaches as needed,
reaching out to me reaching outto others in our group, you
(21:24):
know, slowly progressing overtime, you know, backing off a
little bit if you feel unsafe,and you need to rework and form
and then just keep going andyou're gonna get there. All
right. Question number three isfrom Alan, F. My man Alan, he
asks, does research show adifference between a three day
full body work? Three day fullbody strength training schedule,
(21:47):
versus breaking it up into fouror five days split? Like push
core pull calves legs, core fullbody? Okay. He's saying is there
a difference in effectivenessbetween three days full body?
And four or five day body partsplits? And the answer is, the
research suggests that there'snot a difference for strength or
size. But there is a differencebased on you as an individual.
(22:12):
So you knew I was You knew I wasgoing to say it depends at some
point here, but I'm going tobreak it down exactly to give
you the decision tree to todecide that from. So two
research studies that came outjust in the past year two, one
is by ama evangelist at all in2021. And the conclusion was
that quote, resistance trainingtwice or four times per week has
(22:33):
similar effects on neuromuscularadaptation, provided weekly Set
volume is equal. Okay, so that'sneuro muscular adaptation. It
doesn't matter. The other studyPeterson at all in 2022, and
Brad Schoenfeld was on this. Andhe's, he's one of the
researchers that I reallyrespect out there. Quote, this
study did not show any benefitsfor split body resistance
(22:56):
training program compared tofull body resistance training
program on measures of maximaland explosive muscle strength,
and muscle mass. So again, theydidn't really find a difference.
What's the most important thing,Alan and everyone listening, as
we said before, progressiveoverload, okay, so whatever a
combination of intensity volume,and recovery allows for you as
(23:18):
an individual to get stronger,is the best program for you. But
there are some things toconsider. Okay. So the first one
is your training age and yourexperience, if you are beginner,
three days, full body, bar,none, I wouldn't even consider
anything else. And that'sbecause you get the best bang
for your buck in terms of thelifts in terms of your time,
(23:39):
it's time efficient, you're notgoing to have very long rest
periods, because you're new, andyou're gonna be able to recover
really quickly, within two daysto do all those movements again.
So you should be squatting everysession, you should be dead
lifting or pulling every sessionand doing some sort of press
every session, every session.
That's it, period. That's myopinion, no matter what age you
are, unless you're very, very,very old and have never lifted,
(23:59):
maybe it's two days a week,okay? Another factor is ability
to recover between sessions.
This is often tied to the firstthing, age and training
experience. So the older you arethe hardest to recover, the more
you want to consider whether youneed a three or four day split
as a result. Now, it could goboth directions. A three day
(24:22):
split gives you extra timebetween sessions, but it's also
longer, right? And you may getmore beat up doing it that way,
in which case splitting it intofour or five days allows you to
spread that fatigue out over theweek and recover better. So
that's going to beindividualized. The other thing
is your personal schedule andwhether you enjoy it and it
(24:43):
makes it's consistent. Right? Ifyour schedule doesn't allow for
four or five days, because youknow, you work a full time job,
you have a family you have allthese obligations. Then three
days it is or maybe every otherday where it's kind of a shifted
schedule, right or maybe everythird day, whatever makes sense,
three days is great. Forbeginners, it's time efficient,
(25:06):
it stimulates all the big musclegroups multiple times per week,
it helps with your workcapacity. And your it helps it
gives you enough frequency tobecome better at the lifts to
develop skill. So I said thatalready, but barn on beginners,
three days, four or five days iswhat you want when you are
intermediate, or advanced. Sothat could be as soon as three
(25:26):
to six months after you starttraining, if you do it the right
way. Definitely, if you're ayear or two into training,
you're probably up to a four orfive day split at this point.
Because then you can get morefrequency and volume for muscle
mass and hypertrophy. Right. Solike the bodybuilding type
stuff.
Also, the training sessionswon't be as long because when
(25:47):
you're an intermediate trainer,you're you're lifting much
heavier and you need more restperiods. And your sessions
generally go up to like an hourand a half. So splitting into
four or five days allows you toget that back down to maybe an
hour. But again, it's going todepend on can your schedule
accommodate that some peoplewould rather have long sessions
where they have the commute timebuilt in than shorter sessions.
(26:09):
Now the long story short is thebest program is the one you can
stick with that you can enjoy.
And that meets your lifestylesand goals, lifestyle and goals.
But let me give you an examplefrom my personal experience over
the last two years, I startedwith a three day split, when I
was a beginner. Then I moved toa four day, a four day split,
that I moved to a four dayconjugate style program. Then I
moved to a five day bodybuilderspower building program. Then I
(26:32):
tried a six day bodybuildingprogram, I went back to a four
day conjugate program. And nowbecause I'm in a fat loss phase,
and I want to get more sleep,I'm back to a three day program.
But it's not a beginner program.
It's more of an advancedprogram. There you go. Alright,
question for Question four isfrom Jay W. She asks, What are
(26:54):
your recommended pre and postworkout nutrition strategies?
All right, always love thisquestion. Because it can get
complicated and it doesn't needto be. I'm trying to, I'm gonna
try to simplify the guidelinesas much as possible. And if you
want a book about a really goodbook about flexible dieting and
macros, that covers the researchbehind a lot of this flexible
(27:16):
dieting by Alan Aragon isfantastic. He came out with it,
I think lat just last year. Andhe summarizes all the research
really succinctly. So here wego, I'm going to talk about
protein, carbs and fats,protein, consume protein up to
two hours before and two hoursafter your workout. That's
(27:37):
pretty broad, right? So you geta lot of flexibility, consume
some protein up to two hoursbefore up to two hours after.
And this will maximize muscleprotein synthesis. If you're
eating enough protein, you'reprobably going to be eating four
or five times a day anyway. Soif you're working out that day,
make two of those times twohours before and up to two hours
(27:58):
after. And I would say somewherelike 25, or 30 grams of protein
at each of those is in theballpark for most people, you
know, if you're much larger,it's going to be higher. So
that's that's protein, simple.
Carbs. You You generally wantcarbs in your blood from a meal
consumed up to two hours beforethe workout or a small amount,
30 minutes before your workout.
(28:20):
So let me explain if you if youhave breakfast, and then you
train it 10. And you know, ifyou had breakfast at eight, and
you train at 10, and yourbreakfast had a deep amount of
carbs in it, you're good. If youwake up early, and the first
thing you do is work out, wellthen give yourself a 30 minute
buffer and have a simple carblike fruit, banana, I love
bananas because they addpotassium which is excellent
(28:42):
electrolyte. So fruit orsomething like rice. Okay, 30
minutes prior, give yourself alittle time to start digesting
and then hit the gym. Okay, andthis can be as little as 10 to
20 grams just to get somethingin your system to help you with
your performance. Because whenyou work out when you strength
train, you start to draw on yourglycolytic tank on your
(29:02):
glycogen. And if you don't havethat tank filled, like if the
last time you ate was dinner thenight before, in your tank is
half full, you're going todeplete it much more quickly and
you're going to start to feellike you can't lift as much. And
the whole goal of strengthtraining is lifting the heaviest
weight we can for progressiveoverload. So if it's a long
(29:23):
workout, or if you can't consumecarbs before your workout, try
to consume them during theworkout. So this could be
something like highly branchedcyclic dextran or it could be
fruit. The bodybuilders way backin the day would have like pop
tarts and gummy bears I don'trecommend that. But you know,
the dextrin or fruit would worksomething that's easy on the
(29:44):
stomach and digest prettyquickly and then just get your
the your next carbs at your nextmeal within a few hours. So I
know I talked a lot about thecarbs but just to simplify, have
carbs up to two hours before Thecloser you are to workout make
it simpler carbs that digestquickly. If you can't consume
(30:04):
before consumed during, and alsoconsume carbs within a few hours
after you workout, it could justbe your next meal. Or if it's a
very intense training sessionlike CrossFit or a lot of
movement, you want to consume itsooner than that to refill your
glycogen. That's it. Fats easy,limited or no fats at all,
because they slow digestion ofprotein, carbs, and they have no
(30:26):
benefit at all for energy orhypertrophy or strength during
strength training. So don'tworry about fats, I mean, worry
about them in the sense that tryto keep keep them low to
minimal, low to non existent. Sohere's what I do. I work out in
the morning, early in themorning, I give myself about
half an hour, 45 minutes, I wakeup, I have a banana and a way
(30:48):
shake, I get some work done. Ormaybe I read and relax. And then
I go for my training session.
After my training session,within 45 minutes, I have a way
shake with some highly branchedcyclic dextran. Or now that I'm
in a fat loss phase, I can'teven afford those carbs. So I
just go jump right intobreakfast. All right. Hope that
helped. That is it for our firstq&a episode. If you found this
(31:10):
helpful or valuable, let me knowplease by leaving a five star
review at Apple or Spotify, Ioften read these reviews on the
show. And I would be happy togive you a shout out if you
want. And again, thanks forlistening and stay strong.
Thanks for listening to theshow. Before you go, I have a
quick favorite ask. If you enjoythe podcast. Let me know by
(31:33):
leaving a five star review inApple podcasts and telling
others about the show. Thanksagain for joining me Philip Pape
in this episode of Wits &Weights. I'll see you next time
and stay strong.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.