Women Recover Differently: Strength Training, Sleep & Recovery Explained

[00:00:00]There is still a fear, I believe, in most females who maybe aren't in the know of doing lower rep sets, heavier weight, right?

[00:00:11]>> Getting bulky?

[00:00:13]>> [laughter] >> I mean >> That's the one of the fears, right?

[00:00:15]>> Yeah.

[00:00:16]>> Yeah. It's a total fear, yeah. Part of it also as we have to look at like our our somatotype, right? So, if you are more inclined to build muscle, a mesomorphic, of course, it's not going to take much to actually put that lean mass on. But, it is incredibly difficult to put on and keep lean mass when you get to your mid-30s onwards as women.

[00:00:38]For men, it hits, you know, maybe in your mid-50s onwards. And it is an inherent change in metabolism, in hormone profile, and we're becoming more and more anabolically resistant to both protein and resistance training itself.

[00:00:53]So, we have to mix it up if we want to keep progressing.

[00:00:55]>> It's so interesting because if I basically apply that, you know, it's it's kind of giving people what they absolutely need by and also giving them what they kind of want so you can gain their trust and then work them into the lower rep sets. I'm going to be honest with you, in the last 20 years, I I think I may have come across one female client that was like all in to do whatever I say. And and even if you show them the data, I mean, it's irrelevant.

[00:01:22]They are just have such a great fear of getting, as you said, bulky. I think now we're transitioning a little bit and people are just more aware of the science and more aware of the information and I don't I think it serves everyone. You don't have to do sets of 12 or 15 or just burn out sets to get what you need.

[00:01:42]>> Correct. And that's the big thing. It's like women who are who grew up in the, you know, were hit with the '90s of calories in, calories out, the toning, >> Mhm.

[00:01:51]>> and maybe like the firm aerobic workout with weights back in the day, they're very much afraid of lifting things heavier and so we have to phase them into it and go, "Okay, well, we want to learn how you move first. What do you like?" So, it becomes a safe environment and I often tell women, you know, it's it's a right to lift heavy and it's a journey. It might take you a year to be able to lift a good heavy three or four properly. So, don't expect to be able to go from one day lifting a 50 kilo deadlift to 2 weeks later doing 100 kilos because that's setting you up for injury, for fear, and just completely hating the gym.

[00:02:30]>> I picked up on you said that the female has a longer period to fatigue. Is that correct?

[00:02:36]>> Correct. Yeah.

[00:02:38]>> But that's within sets and I'm sorry to interrupt within sets in the workout, not necessarily between workouts.

[00:02:44]>> Right. So, if we're looking at 5 by 5 and normally we what we might say a 5 by 5 on the 2 or 3 minute, right?

[00:02:51]And we're seeing more and more that when women hit that 2 minute or 2 minute 10, then that would be optimal to start it again and not wait the full 3 minutes because we're seeing a lot of women who are waiting the full 3 minutes in a 5 by 5 set and their heart rate's too low, they've lost the warmth, their joints start to hurt. So, the next five they're not able to lift the weight, you know, they're not able to increase the weight.

[00:03:16]So, they're having a real difficult time progressing. But if we shorten that recovery between the sets, they're able to nail it. But when we're talking about recovery day-to-day, we see that we need more as we get older. Both men and women need more cuz the body is is less resilient and needs a little bit more time to repair.

[00:03:34]>> So many questions, but would that also fall into the realm of sleep as well?

[00:03:39]Do women traditionally need more sleep?

[00:03:41]>> It's not necessarily more sleep. We see that there's a circadian rhythm difference between men and women. So, men's circadian rhythm is a little bit longer than women's. So, the melatonin rise and subsequent peak is different.

[00:03:54]So, if we're seeing women who are trying to stay up with their male partner and watch TV or connect and they're getting to bed later than 10, they have a really difficult time getting into deep slow wave sleep because they've missed the onset rise of melatonin. And a lot of women wake up between 3:00 and 4:00 and can't get back to sleep, and that's because they've hit that melatonin peak and they haven't really gotten into our slow wave sleep. So, it's interrupting the sleep architecture. So, if we're able to get to bed consistently between 9:00 and 10:00 and then wake up consistently when we need to and we keep that across the week, then we see that the sleep phases end up being really sound, women start to sleep better, and if they're having problems sleeping, we have to look at the sleep hygiene prior to. But, I always tell people regardless of gender or sex, we have to really nail sleep because you cannot get any kind of body composition change or any increase in stress resilience if you are not adequately sleeping.

[00:04:53]>> That means you're getting 8 hours?

[00:04:56]>> Between 7:00 and 8:00, yeah.

[00:04:58]>> 7:00 and 8:00 with consistency, same time, same patterns.

[00:05:01]>> Exactly, yeah.

[00:05:03]>> Understood. Understood. Is there a more optimal time for a female to train as opposed to a male or is it very specific to the person?

[00:05:12]>> Well, we have what's ideal, right? And then we have what's reality. So, when I'm talking about ideal, we're looking at the research and we see that for women who want to mobilize more abdominal fat and get more strength, then we tend to see that earlier morning exercise sessions and strength training sessions is the way to go.

[00:05:32]If you're someone who's trying to work more on a metabolic control, then it's in the evening. For men, it doesn't matter. But, that's optimizing. We first need people just to be consistent and progressive.

[00:05:55]>> Mhm.