The Hidden Muscle Loss Problem No One Talks About (It Starts Earlier Than You Think)

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:00]I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about sarcopenia.

[00:00:02]>> All right.

[00:00:03]>> I think that people um don't really see it coming, but let's like when they're when they're about to be diagnosed with sarcopenia. What is sarcopenia and why is it dangerous?

[00:00:15]>> Yeah, great question, especially with the aging population. Sarcopenia is classically understood to be age related loss of muscle, which is fundamentally wrong. Um because people just think that their muscles are withering away, you know, going from a grape to a raisin.

[00:00:28]The reality is that the muscular force production, your muscular strength is what's actually being compromised. In fact, over the age of 50, you lose strength three times faster than you lose muscle size. Right. But to your point, this starts early. We start losing our ability to produce force in around the middle of the third decade of life. Um, if there's no sort of outside intervening force. And so the issue of sarcopenia, which is probably better called dipopenia, reduction of force, >> is a neurological event. the nerves that supply your muscle fibers, especially your fast twitch type two uh muscle fibers that produce a lot of force, a lot of power, they start to die.

[00:01:06]>> And what happens when they die is that the muscle that they would otherwise connect to, that muscle is either going to shrivel up and also die or it gets reinervated by a nearby uh motor neuron.

[00:01:17]And unfortunately, most of those motor neurons are type one slow twitch. And so what you see in older individuals who've been diagnosed with sarcopenia is that they've lost a lot of their type two high threshold high force producing muscle fibers and even if they're like runners like mast's level endurance athletes you still see that same loss >> really.

[00:01:37]>> Yeah. So like running isn't enough and definitively walking isn't enough. So you're like why do people surprised?

[00:01:44]Well, it started way earlier than they thought, right? And then there were no mitigating factors.

[00:01:49]>> And some of them may have been running and doing the doing >> I'm active, I do Pilates, bar, whatever, right? And it's like all of that's well and good, you know, all that's well and good, but they're the what they should have been doing in order to prevent this loss is actually resistance training, specifically resistance training that is relatively heavy based on their current strength level. Right? So, it can't just be the pink dumbbells unless the pink dumbbells are heavy for you, right? No shade to the pink dumbbells. Some people need them. That's that's all well and good. It just has to be relatively challenging. And so what that does is it gives the nervous system a signal to say look these muscles. I need them.

[00:02:24]>> You need to keep them keep those fibers.

[00:02:26]>> And we see a a big-time slowing of that decline. Like we can't beat father time.

[00:02:31]It time is undefeated, right? But as far as the actual strength loss, it seems to be going down far slower in individuals who lift weights compared to those who who don't. uh so much so that like you might not notice a decline until somebody's in their 60s or 70s and that decline is a relative decline. They're like well I can't lift this much anymore but I'm still functionally independent.

[00:02:54]I can do everything I want to do.

[00:02:55]Sarcopenia is not coming for me. You what you would want somebody to do earlier on in life is to build um their sort of physiological or physical 401k.

[00:03:05]Make all those deposits earlier on and then you can withdraw as you need later on in life. Same thing we see in bone mass, right? For osteopenia, osteoporosis.

[00:03:13]You want people to have a high level of bone mineral density in their 30s such that by the time they're 60 or 70, well, look, you started from a higher place, right? And so, yeah, it does seem to be a surprise that it's generally this sort of dual hit thing where yeah, there was some age related loss that happened because we weren't really lifting weights and then somebody gets sick >> and so then there's a period of excessive disuse where that's accelerated, right? And so and then they kind of I can't get out of bed uh as as quickly or as you know briskly as I once was or I can't quite do all the things I need to do around the house as much. And so yeah it's uh that the diagnosis of sarcopenia continues to increase and I think some of that's age related and other is environmentally related people just not lifting >> if someone's psychopenic right now.

[00:03:57]>> Yep.

[00:03:58]>> Can they get back to it? Can they like once you've lost those motor neurons is there anything you can do? Well, the motor neurons can't come back. Yeah. But we can strengthen what you still have and preserve further loss. So, reducing the burden of disease and then further, you know, we have data up until people in their 90s showing they get their muscles grow and they get stronger. So, the actual functional uh capacity seems to increase marketkedly. Now, to your your question of can you like reverse it, it really depends why somebody has sarcopenia. If it's purely age related, just age- related disuse, uh, for example, >> that has a easy it's easier to come back from that than if somebody has that layered on top of like a chronic medical condition that prevents them from exercising, uh, for example, or they have to take a medication that actually interferes with exercise related adaptations. So, if they're have an autoimmune disease that, you know, they have to take prennazone or something like that. It's not to say that one you should stop your prennazone or two, if you're in that population, well, just give up. you know, it's just the degree of effect that exercise is going to have, you know, >> cuz you just can't do as much.

[00:05:00]>> You generally speaking, you don't respond as well. Uh, not doesn't mean you have no response though, right? So, 10 out of 10 would recommend resistance training.

[00:05:08]>> So, for people who look, I hear this all the time. I don't like going to the gym.

[00:05:12]>> Sure.

[00:05:12]>> I don't like like resistance training is not fun for me.

[00:05:15]>> Sure.

[00:05:16]>> What do they do?

[00:05:17]>> Ideally, you know, when exploring fitness with clients or patients, I generally ask them like, what do you like to do? you know, what would you like to do uh physical activity wise, exercise-wise? And you know, they usually give you some ideas, but I hear that all all the time. I don't want to go to the gym, right? One, I don't I don't want to pay for it. I don't want to go there. I don't want to deal with all these Chads. You know, no offense to people listening to this name, Chad. So, what should I do? Can I do this at home?

[00:05:39]Yes, you can find ways to stress the muscularkeeletal system at home. The issues are as follows. One, if you don't have equipment, you're going to be really restricted on what you can and can't do. And that's complicated by if you already have like relatively low strength levels, potentially low mobility levels, then trying to get you to do these restricted movements because you don't have machines, you don't have dumbbells, you don't have whatever is going to be even harder, right? Like I can tell you to do squats at home or split squats, but can I tell that to my, you know, 74 year old mother?

[00:06:14]>> Yeah. like doesn't mean that she can't do it, but probably would be better off with a leg press, >> right? Or at least access to that. It it it makes it more accessible.

[00:06:24]>> So, >> it's easier to do.

[00:06:26]>> Yeah. But I will say this, I don't let don't let perfect be the, you know, get in the way of doing something because anything's better than nothing. Even we we have this new emerging area of research in exercise where they're looking at uh what are called exercise snacks. It's like 30 seconds to 1 minute of just activity.

[00:06:41]>> Pretty big effect. the biggest effects on exercise happen from zero to something rather than like something to wow, I'm training like an elite athlete, you know, right now.

[00:06:49]>> I spend a lot of time talking to my patients about like the atomic habits model, right? Like just do something that's so easy you can't ignore. It doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be even long. Like just start it. Y and and then after a week or two you can add to it, right? Once it becomes just so easy. But just trying to be like I'm going to go from sitting on my couch to the gym every three times a week. It's not feasible for most people to do that successfully and maintain it.

[00:07:14]>> Yeah. Yeah. Uh you know, ideally in a perfect world, a person gets introduced to exercise in a way that they enjoy.

[00:07:20]They get bit by the fitness bug. Now they're like, well, not only do I know this is good for me, but I like it.

[00:07:25]>> Yeah.

[00:07:25]>> And you get hooked. And that's my one of my roles is like, let me identify uh you know, particular fitness kink that you like, and let's let's get you into it.

[00:07:34]Um >> I like that fitness kink.

[00:07:35]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. PG show. Um, so sometimes sometimes with people at home, you know, if they're again very I can't, I just won't, you know, whether it's I don't want to go in there and I want people to see me like this or they self-conscious or they just don't want to do it. All all fine. If you think about an individual with sarcopenia problem with the uh muscle quality, how much strength do you have? One of the diagnostic uh tests, functional test is sit to stand.

[00:07:59]>> Can you sit to stand without using your hands, getting out of a chair uh five times in, you know, less than 30 seconds, I believe. So that you could use that to train at home. Hey, get on on the couch or out of your chair. You got to do sit to stands.

[00:08:12]>> Mhm.

[00:08:12]>> You know, five sets of five, whatever.

[00:08:14]Don't use your hands. Take as much time as you need, but start there. You can do push-ups against the wall. You can do wall sits. You can do isometric type stuff. You can get some, you know, elastic bands. You can get some dumb. I mean, whatever you want, right? The the this is the world is your oyster here in the fitness world. I just think that if you put too many constraints on a person, meaning like look, I don't want to go to the gym. I don't want to get any equipment and I won't do these things. It's like, well, we're running out of options here relatively quickly.

[00:08:41]So, what I did with my dad, uh, my dad's in his 70s. He just had a knee replacement. Is I I was like, you should go, you need to go to the gym >> after you complete your PT, you have to go to the gym. And he's like, >> was he a gym goer before?

[00:08:51]>> No, >> no, >> no. In fact, I would my whole life when after I got into fitness, I was trying to get my dad into fitness. One, I want to hang out with my dad, but also I'm like, "Look, dude, you're getting older.

[00:09:00]Let's like let's help you out here, you know?" And he does things. He does a normal dad thing. Well, I mowed the grass today.

[00:09:05]>> Yeah.

[00:09:05]>> And I'm like, "Okay, well, >> a walk today.

[00:09:07]>> I went did a walk."

[00:09:09]>> Great. Love that energy. Love that for you. Keep doing it.

[00:09:12]>> But we need to make your muscles work hard. Relatively hard for you. Not the same as for me, but relatively hard for you. And so, when he got his first knee replacement, the way I got him into the gym was he sort of was self motivated.

[00:09:24]He's like, "Look, I don't I feel like I lost a step." And I'm like, "Yeah, you need to get stronger." And he's like, "Would you take me to the gym with you?"

[00:09:29]So that's how I kind of bridged that gap. There was no information gap for him anymore because I was tell Yeah, exactly. And he felt more comfortable just being with his son. Same thing this time >> he came in and you know, if people are gym goers at home, this may be meaningful to them. He uh after second knee replacement, he started his deadlift 135 pounds, which you know, it's one plate per side. Everyone was like already stoked. They're like, "Look, this guy's in his 70s. He's deadlifting. Hooray. That's great." I'm like, "Yeah, it's not heavy for him yet, though. It's just he's going through the motion." At the end of his progression before before he moved back, he was 295 for sets of five.

[00:10:06]>> It's amazing.

[00:10:07]>> Yeah. 70 75. Yeah, >> that's amazing.

[00:10:10]>> Right. And I'm like, well, now I know where I get it. I I thought it was all my hard work. Turns out maybe just genetically predisposed. But yeah, I I think that he was open to it and I leveraged that sort of uh uh where he was at in his behavior change process to take him to the gym. Not everyone's going to have that access. Not everyone's gonna have a son or or offspring that's willing to do that, but I just think people's aversion to going to the gym. I understand. I just would I would like to maybe push back on that a little bit. There's just so many options if you can do that and ultimately give your muscles a signal to give your nervous system a signal to stick around.

[00:10:45]harder to do at home. Not impossible, just harder.

[00:10:47]>> Yeah. Yeah. I definitely every time my parents are in town, I take them to the gym. Yeah.

[00:10:51]>> Um but they don't live with near me, which makes a little bit of a challenge.

[00:10:55]But I think um there there's a lot of fear there. And I think they just need to like I think it's helpful to have some help, right? But knowing that the gym community is pretty helpful.

[00:11:03]Totally. Like I've had people come up to me like, "Hey, that you might hurt yourself. Like be careful or whatever."

[00:11:07]And if you asked me even five years ago if I'd be a regular gym goer, I would have said no.

[00:11:11]>> Are you gym rat now?

[00:11:12]>> I am. And I started going cuz my husband was going and so I went with him and I was like, "Look, I've always been a little nervous about going to the free weight section." He's like, "Come with me."

[00:11:19]>> And so we did it together and now we take our older son with us. Our younger son can't go to the weight section yet, but now he's into it. And it's become like a little bit of a game. Like, oh, how can we see ourselves progress, right?

[00:11:30]>> And um and so I just tell people like you would have asked me I would have been zero chance I'm going to be a gym goer and now I'm a gym go.

[00:11:37]>> How did you I know you're supposed to ask the questions. How did you end up getting into the like what was the final >> what brings you in the office today?

[00:11:45]What puts you in the gym for the first time?

[00:11:47]>> Well, I think I was doing like Pelaton.

[00:11:49]I was doing other stuff. I I'd gone to like gym classes. I always wanted to lose weight, right? But it became obvious to me after watching learning from people on social media and learning from colleagues that muscle mass was super important. And so I decided, well, you know, got to practice what I preach.

[00:12:05]>> Yeah. Right.

[00:12:06]>> Love that.

[00:12:07]>> Yeah.

[00:12:07]>> Fear of embarrassment. No, I'm just kidding.

[00:12:10]is but I think for some people having perfect form is concerning. So what does that mean? Is there a perfect form?

[00:12:17]>> No, that's a great question. Yeah. In fact, uh you look at survey data on uh people who are currently insufficiently active, which is a nice way of saying they don't go to the gym. If you ask them, hey, why don't you go to the gym?

[00:12:28]One of the biggest comments is going to be, I don't know time. And then this right behind that is fear of injury. and you ask them where they learned that fear of injury from, they say usually healthare professionals, which is unfortunate for us because most of the time doctors like you should exercise.

[00:12:41]And if you ask doctors about concern, >> that's the whole conversation though.

[00:12:44]You should exercise by >> Yeah. Exactly. Right. Sorry, we're we're on a clock here. By the way, I know I was late to the appointment and also you got to go because I got another person.

[00:12:51]Yeah. So, it's unfortunate. So, yeah, there's this fear of injury that does prevent a significant amount of people from exercising or at least doing certain exercises, right? And there's this idea that well if you do the exercise perfectly with the correct technique that it's less injurious right so that is a very interesting argument >> fine hypothesis. So then you have to define well what is perfect form and to date it's only been described once in the literature it's a 2009 paper and it's a it's a a circular argument. It's like, well, look, if you do the exercise with the correct range of motion, the correct velocity in a way that achieves the uh most optimal fitness adaptations, and uh does not produce injury, that's perfect form.

[00:13:32]>> And I'm like, >> that's vague.

[00:13:34]>> It seems like a tautology and also yeah, like uh very vague. So, >> doesn't make sense. So, then when we look at like how do uh injuries actually occur in the gym? What is the injury risk? And like how does perfect form or form in general tie into this? Well, all right. going to the gym, lifting weights, relatively safe. Two to four injuries per thousand participation hours. Compare that to like walking where like one cycling is like one and a half. So like it's relatively low. You compare that to things like football, rugby, soccer, you're, you know, up towards uh 30, 50, 60, 80 injuries per thousand participation hours. Okay? So relatively safe to lift lift weights.

[00:14:09]Most injuries are also not catastrophic.

[00:14:12]They resolve on their own within about 14 days without any medical care. So already people should be thinking well look maybe this injury thing shouldn't be as big of a concern and what that should also tell you because most injuries uh resolve that quickly don't require medical care and are not catastrophic that should give you an indication of what is the nature of most of these injuries. Are they a muscle tearing or a ligament you know snapping something like that? Well no they're overuse injuries >> chronic overuse injuries. And so then we keep going down this rabbit hole and we're like, would a form particular type of technique cause an overuse injury independently of how much exercise you're doing? Unlikely. It's kind of like uh rotating your tires here, right?

[00:14:54]So you rotate your tires so you don't get a flat spot or overwear on on one spot. If you don't, yeah, they can wear out prematurely. And so that's what we're seeing here with these overuse injuries. people are doing too much without enough variety and they get that sort of overuse or bald spot early wear on their tires or on their body. That's the overuse injury. So ways that you can reduce the risk of overuse injury, more varied exercises. And then also making sure that you're doing the correct amount of training or exercise for the person. And the amount of exercise is not just how many days you go to the gym. It's how much stuff you're doing in those days and what kind of stuff.

[00:15:29]Right? So all of that is to say the training load or the amount of exercise that a person's doing is the primary factor that determines their injury risk as it goes up particularly outkicking their coverage what they can tolerate right now that is what increases injury risk primarily. Um, this form argument is kind of silly because it, you know, instead of thinking like, oh, you weren't doing too much, you were just doing it wrong.

[00:15:54]>> That would be get like an acute injury, right? Something catastrophic or whatever. We just don't see that. Uh, it is possible obviously to have an acute injury. Those are mostly accidents that happen in the gym >> like something falls on your foot.

[00:16:07]>> Yeah. And in fact, you look at people under the age of 18, 75% of their injuries are dropping weight on themselves. This goes down as people get older and older and older, but people can fall. people can, you know, other stuff can happen, but the majority are overuse injuries, which is a training load or exercise load related thing. So, the way I think about technique is that it should be somewhat repeatable. We look at elite athletes and how they lift. For example, there are variations in all dimensions, all three dimensions.

[00:16:31]Slight forward, twist, whatever. There's slightly different rep to rep, but they're mostly repeatable. Each rep looks somewhat similar, but not a carbon copy, but repeatable. That's criteria one. Criteria two, is the technique efficient? Mhm.

[00:16:44]>> How much extra energy are you putting into the implement to lift it versus uh other stuff that doesn't actually cause the weight to move? This would be like loss of balance. This would be like the bar or the dumbbell or whatever starting in the wrong place.

[00:16:56]>> Extra wasted energy. This is mostly for performance, not for injury risk reduction, but mostly for hey, can you lift the most weight for example? Yeah.

[00:17:03]So, it might not be important for for many folks, but for a person who competes in powerlifting, it's important for us.

[00:17:09]>> Sure. And then the third part, the last criteria is does it meet the points of performance that you've determined ahead of time. So for a squat, for example, how deep should you go? We're going to set an arbitrary standard of below parallel or two parallel or for another person above parallel. You're just setting up these arbitrary constraints, right, for how you do the exercise so that you can compare like to like. You can gauge your progress. You can make sure that you're doing it the same way each single time. That's the way I think about technique. It's the rep model. Is it repeatable? Is it efficient? Does it meet the points of performance? then it's probably good enough technique.

[00:17:40]Perfect. I don't know what that is.

[00:17:43]>> Well, isn't it variable based on anatomy a little bit too, right? Because your range of motion is limited by your anatomy to some degree.

[00:17:50]>> It's going to look different to your point. I can come up with a model for an exercise like this is the most efficient model of exercise, right?

[00:17:57]>> To build muscle the >> or lift the most weight, right?

[00:18:00]Efficient. It's the most efficient, right? So, in a squat, the uh bar, whether you held in the front or back or whatever, it would be over your center of balance, which is somewhere in the middle of your foot, right? And you wouldn't lose balance on the way down.

[00:18:12]And the amount of knee flexion and hip flexion would be carefully timed so the bar stayed in a vert vertical line on the way, like all these things, right?

[00:18:20]None of that has anything to do with injury risk, right? Because the human body is very adaptable. We can, if we're uh given a stressor at an appropriate dose, adapt to just about anything, >> just about anything, right? Where our muscles adapt by getting stronger and bigger. Our ligaments and tendons adapt by getting thicker and more resilient, right? Our bones adapt by getting more dense. There's even data in like 15-year-old weightlifterss where they get vertebral endplate thickening on their vertebrae. Yeah. And yeah, as an adaptive response, right, their anterior cruciate ligament gets thicker, hypertrophied, due to the force that they're forced to absorb. Uh, tennis players and their dominant serving arm grow longer, right, than their other non-dominant arm. And it's like these are all adaptive processes to better suit you for the task that you're doing, >> right?

[00:19:08]>> So, the the analogy I like to use for injury risk is you're overdrafting your account. You got 12 you got $1,000 in the account. You try to draft 1,200 out.

[00:19:16]Well, you can get an overdraft fee, which we call an injury. The technique thing has nothing to do with your balance and what you're trying to take out. It's, oh, you swipe the card with your left hand, not your right hand. You swipe the card wrong. And I'm like, well, that sounds silly.

[00:19:28]>> Yeah, >> it's just an overdraft fee. That's the best way I can kind of describe this.

[00:19:32]>> What about like deadlifts and RDL's? I think people worry a lot about injuring their backs.

[00:19:36]>> Totally. Average human is going to have a back injury at some point in their life, right? or low back pain, whether or not it's from an activity or, you know, happened uh with unknown cause or whether it's from trauma, right? We don't we don't know.

[00:19:49]>> When you look at the actual evidence on competitive powerliffters, right? So, powerlifting is a sport. We use that term sport charitably because I don't know how athletic we are, but it is an organized set of rules that people agree to participate in where you do the squat, bar on your back, squat down, bench press, everyone knows what that is, and deadlift picking a bar up from the from the ground. You have three attempts in each discipline to lift the most amount of weight. Um, heaviest total, best attempt between all three disciplines wins. There's weight classes, age classes, etc. When you look at data on powerliffters who have to do the deadlift, right, the injury risk is again two to four injuries per thousand participation hours and you compare that to CrossFit to bodybuilding to Olympic weightlifting where you don't actually have to do the deadlift in order to participate in the sport, it's the same injury rate. So, if deadlifts were uniquely injurious, you'd expect to see a spike in powerlifterss, especially in low back. But, as it turns out, just humans have a couple hot spots for injury anyway. Shoulders, knees, backs, >> like, and that doesn't seem to matter if you exercise or not. Those are just the most commonly injured or commonly reported areas of pain in in in humans.

[00:20:58]And so what I think happens is that most people especially as they age uh have had some incidence of low back pain >> from something whether it's from sport whether it's just from some unknown cause >> and so the area remains underdeveloped undertrained >> and now you have somebody like me saying you should deadlift you know yeah or some sort of hinge Romanian deadlift something like that sure dumbbells kettle bells barbell I don't care do something right and they're like I haven't done that before and I've been kind of restricting myself from anything that loads that area and then they get a little overzealous the first time that they go in. They do too much too many reps, too many sets at too high of a weight. So effectively they try to withdraw $1,200. They only had $1,000 in the account. that that's a general experience that when people uh report back pain from those specific uh types of exercise, it's not that the exercise itself is uniquely injurious outside of like loading the area, >> right? Which it's just that the dose was too high.

[00:21:59]>> Yeah.

[00:22:00]>> Um and further, I'd say I think the risk of not doing those exercises is actually higher of the risk from of doing them.

[00:22:07]Meaning like if you're unprepared to interact with your physical environment in a way where you have to bend over, pick something up, whether it's kids, groceries, something, I'd prefer to be prepared for that.

[00:22:17]>> Yeah. Well, and interesting. I don't know if you know Jordan, the other Jordan, Jordan, he does um he does his deadlifts with a rounded back, which is like antithetical to what people think about deadlifts. Um because he's like, I want flexibility and I want to be able to like lift my kid from the crib because it's sort of not exactly from it's actually almost a deficit. And he's f like it's it is a way to do it if you want to.

[00:22:39]>> Yeah. People say, "Oh, you can't live with a rounded back. You're gonna explode a disc or whatever." You know?

[00:22:44]It's like you could do it with no weight, right?

[00:22:47]>> You could just like bend over, round your back, and stand back up. And they're like, "Yeah." And I'm like, "Could you do with the PVC pipe?" And they're like, "Yeah." And I'm like, >> "Do you think you could do it with an empty barbell, you know, and your back would explode?" Like, "Well, yeah." And I'm like, "Okay." Okay. So, what you've told me then is the technique itself, the form itself, is not the injurious agent, it's the load.

[00:23:07]>> Not necessarily just the weight, but how many reps of that weight do you do? And how well prepared are you for the task that you're being asked to do? And then it kind of clicks for them. They're like, "Ah, shoot."

[00:23:16]>> So, you can do it. Just >> We're not a car.

[00:23:18]>> Just don't overdraft.

[00:23:20]>> Yeah. Don't overdraft. Well, look, again, we're not a car. We're not like brake pads that wear down. You got to replace them every now and again. You know, in fact, it'd be like you'd be driving around in a car and your tires would get thicker as you drive. That's how we respond to exercise. We get better at tolerating the things that we've been exposed to. But we just have to start with a moderate or conservative type of dose. And I think to Jordan, the other Jordan, OJ's sort of maybe don't use that if we're in LA. To to his uh point, yeah, like if he thinks he's going to be bending over with a rounded spine, do it do it rounded. I think when people on the internet see somebody deadlift with a cat back, you know, rounded back and they're like injury waiting to happen. Some of that's like aesthetic to them, they're like, I don't like the way that looks.

[00:24:03]>> Yeah.

[00:24:04]>> The other thing is like plenty of people deadlift like that, no pain. Other people deadlift perfectly, have pain, right? It it's more complicated than that. It just depends on how well you are prepared for that. From a coaching standpoint, I'm like, it's probably not the most efficient way to lift. And and to that I feel relatively confident outside of very unique cases. Constant uh Constantin I think he he recently passed away a few years ago. He held at the time one of the highest deadlifts ever done conventional so feet inside of his hands 900 and something pounds and deadlifted on purpose with a rounded back.

[00:24:37]>> Wow.

[00:24:37]>> And people were like what what do you do? Is your skeleton made of adamantium?

[00:24:41]Whatever. He goes he goes no it's an advantage for me. And I'm like oh interesting. So yeah, some people will find yeah will find different strategies to do the task. But the the premise remains humans are very adaptable.

[00:24:52]>> Don't let your knees go over your toes.

[00:24:53]Like what if you're a catcher?

[00:24:55]>> Well, there's that there's that uh that that YouTuber knees over toes.

[00:24:57]>> Yeah. It's like if you have to get into a position where your knees are over your toes for sport, for life, or whatever, you'd prefer to be prepared for it, right? If you have to pick something off the ground, you prefer to be prepared for it.

[00:25:08]>> So really, there's no like strict rules.

[00:25:10]It's about efficiency and and essentially just not overdrafting, not overdoing it.

[00:25:16]>> Yeah. I think the biggest takeaway is like making sure that the dose of training is well suited to you. So my goal if I put on like my personal trainer or strength coach hat is how do I get the person to do the most amount of exercise possible, right? The highest training load. Two biggest bottlenecks, time and the second one is what can they tolerate right now? Their physiological tolerance or recovery capacity. I can't outkick that second one.

[00:25:40]>> Mhm. Right. I can't out kick that second one because that's when I think injury risk starts to go up. Not because of how they're doing the exercise, but just the amount of exercise that they're doing.

[00:25:48]>> So, I think that's a nice way to frame it.

[00:25:50]>> Are weighted vests useful?

[00:25:51]>> First, I think all exercise is good.

[00:25:54]>> Big fan. You like it, I love it.

[00:25:56]Scratch, you know, fitness kink. Let's go. The thing with weighted vests are that they are built to be a replacement or supplement for resistance training, right? And so they would load the skeleton in such a way that prevents bone mineral density loss. They load the muscles or they force the muscles to work hard enough to prevent sarcopenia and increase strength and hypertrophy and these this that and the other when study doesn't do any of that.

[00:26:21]>> And we've had like pretty robust studies on this using far heavier weights than people would be otherwise wearing from either her uh particular weighted vest.

[00:26:30]I we're talking about 50% body weight people are wearing right for like eight hours a day. Uh, for example, this goes back to a research group out of Goththingberg, Sweden. Uh, are you familiar with the gravidostat theory?

[00:26:42]>> No.

[00:26:42]>> There's a bunch of theories about how we regulate body weight like humans. And so this gravitat theory is that look, the bones sense how much you weigh.

[00:26:50]>> Yes. I've heard the theory. I didn't know that was the name of it.

[00:26:52]>> Yeah. Yeah. And so then if you gain too much weight, the bones will start releasing this unknown chemical that causes you to eat less, move more, whatever. And this was thought because they implanted weights inside of a belly of a mouse of rats rather. And uh the rats who had the implanted weights lost the proportional amount of weight otherwise. So they were like, "All right, there's our rodent data. Let's translate this to humans. We're going to make humans wear weighted vests for eight hours a day, 12 hours a day, and see do they lose weight? Does their bone mineral density increase or whatever."

[00:27:22]So a number of studies have been done.

[00:27:24]None of that happens. Weighted vests can be useful for a few things. one, if you are trying to target a particular heart rate zone during some conditioning like walking, running, whatever, >> adding load certainly can do that. The problem is if it's not, you know, it's not a very structured program, most people when they add a weighted vest won't exercise for as long, >> right?

[00:27:43]>> And so, like, while the increased pace or the increased intensity of the certain exercise that you do is maybe good or maybe just, you know, different, you're going to do less of it. So, that's that's problem one, but doesn't always have to be a >> trade-off. Could be. Yeah. Potentially, >> potentially could be. That's thing one.

[00:27:59]Thing two, it's not heavy enough >> for people to generally use for resistance training as a resistance training replacement. On the other hand, if you were at stuck at home, it's co time and you're like, look, I got to find a way to exercise my legs in a way that's challenging to me. So, I'm like, all right, well, what if you did split squats with a 30 lb vest on? Mhm.

[00:28:20]>> Maybe that gets you somewhere near failure in the 10 to 15 or 10 to 20 rep range whereas normally without the vest you could have done 50.

[00:28:28]>> Right.

[00:28:28]>> Right. So >> faster >> potentially use potential use case there. Right. But it doesn't burn more calories really because again people will end up exercising for a shorter period of time or doing less total work.

[00:28:38]And to the extent that exercise has an effect on weight management anyway it's pretty modest. So like you can kind of put that to the side. Doesn't really increase bone mineral density.

[00:28:47]>> Although that's what people say. That's the That's the whole thing.

[00:28:50]>> The calorie thing.

[00:28:50]>> No, the bone mineral density.

[00:28:52]>> Oh, yeah. No. Like definitively no. Like hard no. And and and I say that relatively confidently because even like heavy resistance training, we think it does its best work when people do this early in life. Really maximizes that sort of mountaintop of bone mineral density, which is going to go down as you age. And then the secondary effect after you do early in life is later in life. It pre makes that decline slower.

[00:29:16]all way heavier than bone than than weighted vests. There's this thing it's called osteiogenic index. Uh basically refers to how much strain is placed on the bone to cause it to increase bone mineral density.

[00:29:29]>> Heavy resistance training very high plyometrics where you're landing high impact. Yep. Very very high. Weighted vest not high because it's not heavy enough is the problem.

[00:29:39]>> Because I noticed when I I don't I'm not good about wearing it because I just forget. But if I go for a walk, I have to come and take it off after my like one circle around the neighborhood because I and then I'll keep walking, but like I would not be able to continue as long as I normally would.

[00:29:52]>> Yeah. And so, you know, there are maybe some unique conditioning benefits to be had by working in different intensity ranges, right? Zone two versus zone 3, zone four. Mostly performance related, not health related, right? But for bone mineral density, yeah, I feel pretty confident in saying like it's not enough and I actually don't know if it's beneficial in in any real meaningful way. And my fear is that people will buy the the the weighted vest and then not do the stuff like lift weights, for example.

[00:30:22]>> If you like that clip with Dr. to Jordan Fagenbomb. Check out the full episode right