Dr. Stacy Sims: Why Women Need Heavy Lifting (Not "Toning") After 40

[00:00:00]strength training. Okay, or you I think you used the term resistance training.

[00:00:04]And again, all these terms I think often get confusing for people. They say, "Oh, what what qualifies as, you know, when I'm holding my weight up in yoga or Pilates? Does Does that qualify? Do I need to go to the gym? I can't stand the gym." You know, all these kind of things. So, let's sort of unpick it.

[00:00:21]When you say resistance training and lifting heavy, what exactly do you mean by that?

[00:00:28]>> So, resistance training is the umbrella term of a push-pull against your body. Meaning that you are pushing or pulling a load that is heavier than just your body weight.

[00:00:41]And this is how we increase our overall strength or our power.

[00:00:45]When we're looking at lifting heavy or specific strength training, this is when we're getting in the nuts and bolts of how we do it.

[00:00:52]So, if we're looking at strength training, this could be anywhere from air squats and push-ups to tire flips and Olympic lifting.

[00:01:02]When we look at heavy lifting, this is the power end, where we're trying to really use central nervous system responses to increase our muscle capacity, meaning our ability to have a very strong muscle contraction, a fast muscle contraction, and a stimulus to build and keep our muscle itself and our bone.

[00:01:26]We look at the other end, which is more of what women are more comfortable doing in the 40 onward set. This is our higher reps, our lower loads, our Pilates or boot camp, that kind of stuff that fitness world will say tones muscle, but when we're looking at it from a physiological perspective, it's more of a metabolic stress. So, it means your muscle is working, it's learning how to use fuel, but it's not really getting the stimulus to become stronger from a nervous system standpoint. And it's really important to understand the distinct distinctive differences between those because when we're looking at perimenopause into postmenopause, the two really critical things that we need to remember so that we can age well and not get old is we need to be muscle-centric and strong.

[00:02:27]So, if we're looking at how estrogen really stimulates what we call the satellite cell or the stem cell of muscle, and now all of a sudden we don't have estrogen to do that. We need to find something else that's going to stimulate the stem cell of muscle to keep building muscle.

[00:02:46]We also see that estrogen is tightly tied to myosin, that muscle protein that I was talking about earlier.

[00:02:52]So, when we lose estrogen, myosin is kind of like, I don't know what to do."

[00:02:57]But if we have a a heavy load that comes in, then myosin's like, "Oh, okay, I need to bond to that other one really strongly cuz I have to lift this load."

[00:03:06]And then the other thing estrogen is tightly tied to where we store a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine.

[00:03:15]And acetylcholine is what helps the nerve jump what we call a a gap from where the nerve is conducted down to where it stimulates the muscle itself.

[00:03:30]So, it has to have a little jump, and acetylcholine is like the boat that allows that to happen.

[00:03:35]When we don't have a lot of estrogen, then the amount of acetylcholine that's there is reduced. So, we don't have the capacity to have a really fast nerve conduction coming over.

[00:03:46]So, when we're looking at that power-based end of lifting, the heavy lifting, it's that external load that is now going to tell the central nervous system, "Hey, you know what? We need more acetylcholine there."

[00:03:59]>> Yeah.

[00:03:59]>> Not only that, we need to have myosin bond to actin really heavily and strongly, and we need more muscle fibers in itself cuz we need more muscle to contract to lift this load.

[00:04:11]Whereas if we're at the other end where everyone's talking about strength training as in Pilates and boot camp and um more reps, less load, we don't have that same stimulus.

[00:04:23]We have uh a change in the muscle where we're using more carbohydrate and we're using more ATP, and we're having that metabolic response. But it's not going to benefit women who want to be able to be living independently when they get to be in their 80s and 90s or beyond because they will not have had the stimulus to create a very strong muscle-centric body.

[00:04:51]>> Yeah. There's so many interesting points there to unpick. Okay, the the the first one for me is you mentioned the phrase muscle toning, and for those of you who are just listening, um Stacy put toning in inverted commas as she was saying that to me. Okay, so I think this is important cuz I think we need to address often the elephant in the room, right? Yes, people want to improve their health and their hormonal profiles. But I think it's fair to say that vanity is also important >> Huge.

[00:05:27]>> to many people, right? And it's as if you can't really say that anymore, and I guess coming on from that then is what do you think of the phrase muscle toning?

[00:05:39]And are these changes or these um recommendations that you make around strength training and hits training, are they going to help women with their physique and losing belly fat as well as their hormonal profile and long-term health?

[00:06:00]>> It will do more for them in a shorter amount of time than if we're following the traditional fitness muscle toning type workouts. And I say muscle toning at with air quotes or inverted inverted quotes because it is a fitness phrase. It's not in physiology. It's not in any strength and conditioning journal. It has just become something that has gendered the language around strength training.

[00:06:32]So, I like to bring it into perspective where the strength training world is very very gendered and sexist. Because if you are a woman now who goes into a traditional gym, and you're very uncomfortable with your body composition, and you want to look to lose weight, but you don't necessarily want to say that.

[00:06:53]Unfortunately, you go to most of the gym chains who are out there, and there's gazillion of them.

[00:07:02]A woman will come in and they'll say, "Oh, here's the class schedule for all of our spin classes and our boot camp."

[00:07:08]But, they won't be directed to the weights.

[00:07:11]Whereas a guy will come in and might have the same thing where I want to change my body composition. I want to feel better about myself. And they'll say, "Okay, how much muscle do you want to gain? Here are the lifting platforms."

[00:07:24]So, we're already up against it as a woman walking into this situation of strength training and the gym.

[00:07:31]So, if we say muscle toning, that is a gendered language to make it seem like it's okay for women to be lifting lighter weights and they're doing strength training.

[00:07:40]But, it's not the same. It's more of a metabolic stress. But, if we're going to look at a metabolic stress, and we want to change our body composition, and we want to look good for summer, then we need to really put in the work. It doesn't mean spending 90 minutes doing a workout because that puts women's fully in a metabolic stress that is too easy to be hard to be zone two or recovery or relaxation or improve our parasympathetic and is way too easy to be hard enough to instigate any kind of adaptive change that we want for body composition and longevity.

[00:08:19]So, when I talk about muscle toning, I get very frustrated with that because it's such a gendered term that has no place in any of the conversations that's going to improve women's confidence and to break through this barrier of the sexism that exists in the strength training world.

[00:08:40]>> Yeah, I appreciate your clarity with that. As you were talking there, and I was reflecting on my own experience of working out as a man, and you know, I don't go to gyms now. I having said that, I I do a lot of body weight stuff. I do a lot of strength training in my garden, which we can talk about later for sure, but you're right, that phrase toning it doesn't do anything for me as a man.

[00:09:02]I'm like, yeah, whatever, you know, it it I do associate it as a female term, and it's it is incredible when you think about it. It It's just pure marketing. It's pure marketing, isn't it? It's pure marketing. Um and of course, you know, again, without being overly prejudicial to men v women, of course, it is designed to appeal to one sex more than another.