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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
How much does, like, for muscle retention or strength? Like, obviously, drinking once or twice a week. I've seen some people say, yeah, the research says you can have a fever week, it's all good. Then you've got Andrew Heberman who says, you have one drink, you're gonna be on the verge of bloody destruction. Where
Speaker 2:does it land? So I'm I'm cautious to say my exact thoughts on Andrew Heumann, especially in front of so many people, that might think, I'm a very nice person, but then when I start talking about people who I think put out terrible information online, I am less pleasant. Think in terms of muscle, one of the big things that alcohol can do is it can disrupt sleep and we know that sleep is one of the most important things that we can do for our health in general but also for muscle health. So if you're disrupting sleep with alcohol, what it can do is it can actually kind of inhibit our ability to build and maintain muscle long term. By no means it's not going to suddenly destroy it, but it's not the best for us, as I think a lot of people know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, For sure. For sure. When it comes to sleep, Ben, you say well, if someone comes to you now and these are like black and white questions and says, look, I'm training sometimes if my protein's high. Or maybe they do training once a week or whatever, but their sleep is low. Are they going to see a big difference from going from, say, five hours to, like, eight hours in a or is it so variable that some people are Okay on the five or six, but some people
Speaker 3:really need?
Speaker 2:That's a very tough question to answer, and it's because there's so much difference between people. But I would say if you have, let's say, the classic is the twins experiment. If you've got a pair of twins, so genetically they're the same and all else being equal, the one who manages to get more better quality sleep is probably going to have more muscle than the one that has less. And I would say it's not going to be like suddenly somebody looks like they're on steroids if they go from having like five hour sleep to eight hour sleep. That's not the case.
Speaker 2:But I would say recovery is going to be better. You're probably going to feel better going into your training sessions. You're probably going to be able to train a little bit harder and get the benefit out of it that way.
Speaker 1:I see. I see. I have enough. That's my little questions to get started. Everyone else, if you do have any questions, leave them in the box and catch up and all that, of course.
Speaker 1:Zaza can come shortly. No worries. No one wants to show face this week, Richie. Everyone's maybe gonna steps in, hopefully, but probably not. But, yeah, are you you are we gonna do a a deck?
Speaker 1:Are we gonna do q and a? What do you wanna start? What's the
Speaker 2:So I I've got the the second part of the deck that I fit I started with last time. Gonna go through that, and then I'd like to kinda get as much time on q and a as we can at the end.
Speaker 1:Sounds good. Sounds good. People have been waiting for this, actually, needing to know what to do next.
Speaker 2:Happy to hear. Shall I shall I share my deck, sir? Are we ready to go?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. K.
Speaker 2:Let me see. Where has this gone now?
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:You should be able to see that now. Is that right? Yeah. All good now. Fantastic.
Speaker 2:And let's go with slideshow. Okay. Perfect. Alright. So, just the same presentation.
Speaker 2:This is me again, Richie Kirwan. And what we're going to talk about today, obviously last week, or sorry, week, last time we had the presentation, we were talking more about why muscle is important. Okay? And we covered that. We talked about it from a perspective of our cardiometabolic health, so our heart health, our risk of diabetes, our risk of osteoporosis, And then we also spoke about it from a more quality of life perspective, just being able to kind of do all of the things that we find are very, very important for us and to be able to do them well long into our older age.
Speaker 2:But what I want to talk about today is I want to talk about why we lose muscle more specifically, why we lose it as we get older and why we lose it as we lose weight, which I covered a little bit last week. And then I want to talk about the big one, which is how can we actually increase that muscle and strength? What are the things that we need to do to make that happen? So just on why we lose muscle as age, the big one, and for everyone, it is inactivity. And I'm just going to touch on this just because I think this group might appreciate it.
Speaker 2:One thing that I hear a lot about from, let's say, women going through menopause is that a lot of them tend to notice a bit of an increase in weight and they want to know why that's happening and, you know, is it because of hormones exclusively? Yeah, it is because of hormones. That plays a role, but not necessarily in the way that people think. So one thing that often happens around menopause is women start experiencing hot flushes. And those hot flushes can lead to major problems with sleep.
Speaker 2:So we're back to the sleep question again. And when sleep is impacted, it does tend to impact every other aspect of our lives. One of those aspects specifically is, two of those aspects specifically, are the amount of exercise that we do. So when we get poor sleep, we're less likely to get lots of steps in, we're less likely to do exercise of any form, and we're less likely to kind of do it more intensely. So what happens around menopause is we see a drop in activity.
Speaker 2:Step counts go down, and the amount of exercise hours that people do goes down. And then on top of that as well, we know that lack of sleep really, really impacts our appetite. So when people have a really poor night's sleep the night before, the next day, their hunger tends to be up and they tend to have cravings for very, very, let's say, comforting foods that can tend to be high calories, so high fat, high carbohydrates, and we seek those out over the more healthy foods that, know, things like fruit and vegetables and stuff like that. So it's kind of a double whammy there and that's one of the reasons that we see weight gain. But that brings us back to this inactivity.
Speaker 2:Inactivity is the number one cause of muscle loss, okay? Your muscles have a job to do, and that job is to move you around. And your muscles are fantastic tissues because what they're able to do is they're able to adapt to the amount of exercise you do. So if you start lifting heavy things, your muscles get stronger. Or if you start doing a lot of endurance running, your muscles get better at doing that.
Speaker 2:But if you do nothing, your muscles are like, well, there's no point in maintaining myself. There's no point in being strong. There's no point in being big. So I'm just going to chill out and disappear for a bit. And that tends to happen.
Speaker 2:So inactivity, the number one cause. But there are other things that contribute to it. So as we get older, insulin resistance or the body's ability to handle sugar as it comes into our body, insulin resistance tends to increase. So we're not as well able to use sugar. Our body isn't as sensitive to insulin as it used to be.
Speaker 2:And when our body isn't as sensitive to insulin, we know that that also affects our ability to build muscle because very, very insulin sensitive muscles, they are able to grow a little bit better than muscles that are insulin resistant. So insulin resistance is one and that happens as we get older. It happens with inactivity. It happens with excess food consumption. So all of the things that tend to kind of come together as people get a little bit older.
Speaker 2:Another reason is hormonal changes. Now, if we're speaking from a male perspective, we know that from your 30s onwards, or almost from your mid 20s onwards, testosterone production starts to kind of gradually go down. But it's a far worse situation in women because around the time of menopause, around perimenopause, get this massive fluctuation in the female hormones of progesterone and specifically estrogen or estrogen. But then once you get into menopause, you get this massive drop in estrogen. Estrogen, which was particularly high for a while, has dropped down considerably.
Speaker 2:And estrogen in women is an anabolic hormone. And what I mean by anabolic is it actually helps women to build and maintain muscle mass. And a lot of the kind of the symptoms that come with menopause are due to that loss of estrogen, which is such a powerful hormone in women. So we get muscle loss that way. Another one is chronic inflammation.
Speaker 2:So as we get older, we tend to become more inflamed and that's oftentimes down to a little bit of an increase in body weight, which means extra body fat and body fat when it gets to higher levels, becomes a little bit what we call pro inflammatory. So we get a slightly higher inflammatory state in the body that also reduces muscle mass. And one thing that can happen in some people is as they get particularly older, is their appetite tends to wane a bit and that leads to weight loss. And if you're not eating as much, you're going to lose weight. And like we discussed in last presentation that we did, when you lose weight, if you're not exercising, you're going to lose muscle.
Speaker 2:Simple as that. It just happens that way. So that can happen with older people too, and then back to the poor sleep, which we discussed earlier. You don't want really, really poor sleep. It's not great for your muscle.
Speaker 2:If you can manage to get better sleep, it's going to put you in a better position to build muscle and hold onto muscle as well. Just on the poor sleep one, there's a fantastic study that was done on this recently. And what they did was they got a group of people and they split them in two and they got one group and they intentionally put them on five hours of sleep a night or five and a half and then the other group was on eight and a half hours. Now how they did that I don't know. It sounds like absolute torture to me, But what they did is they put both of them on the same weight loss diet, so the exact same type of calories.
Speaker 2:And what they found was in the group that was on only five and a half hours of sleep, they actually lost more of their weight as muscle than the group that was getting eight and a half hours sleep. So if you're able to get more sleep, it makes sure that when you're losing weight, you're actually maintaining it a little bit better if you're getting adequate sleep, which not a lot of people are, unfortunately. And then another big one is chronic stress and anxiety. So stress itself can contribute to a loss or lower levels of muscle or a poor ability to build muscle over time. And that's partially through the action of things like cortisol but chronic stress.
Speaker 2:So like I mean chronic, so it's stuff that you're getting every day and it's kind of wearing you down, that can have negative impacts on your muscle mass as well. And what we call all of these is as we get older, this entire, let's say umbrella term is used, it's called anabolic resistance. So it's kind of a lower ability of your body to build muscle, okay? When it's stimulated with the normal things that we would stimulate it with, which are exercise and protein. So what's antibiotic resistance?
Speaker 2:An older body basically doesn't react the same way as a younger body does to normal signals for muscle growth. What are those signals? And the number one signal for muscle growth is exercise. It is without a shadow of a doubt the most important thing you can do to hold on to muscle, but it's not the only one. And the next one then after that is protein.
Speaker 2:So you have two main ways of stimulating muscle growth: exercise, specifically resistance exercise, and protein after somebody has exercised. So you need to get that exercise in somehow, and then protein will help along with that after that. Now, think if we remember this from last week, so these were the two people who were the same age, very, very similar weight, but they had very, very different types of muscles. So if we look here, this muscle on the right hand side is much fuller. There's a healthier looking muscle, less body fat around it.
Speaker 2:This one, less healthy. It's got much more body fat around it and body fat actually infiltrating inside in it as well. And what was the big difference between these two people? Well, it was down to activity. So if we look at this guy over here who's got the less healthy muscle, their daily steps, they were about three thousand one hundred.
Speaker 2:And then their level of moderate to intense physical activity was twenty two minutes a week. So that was the amount of moderate to intense activity that they were doing on a weekly basis. If we go over to this guy, what we see is that daily steps were about 12,000 daily steps. So they were moving a lot and regularly. And they're moderate to intense physical activity, so whatever that might be, so it could be on a bike or jogging or maybe doing weights or whatever they were doing, but they were doing one hundred and thirty minutes a week, so considerably more than this person.
Speaker 2:So the big thing that was causing the difference in muscle quality between these two people was physical activity. And I just want to give an example of this. This was a very cool experiment that was done a few years back. And what happens if you just walk less? Okay, so in this experiment, they got people who were there.
Speaker 2:They were an average of 72 years old. And they reduced their steps by 76%. So they reduced their steps intentionally. They just said, look, we need you to walk less. And they were doing about an average of 1,400 steps a day.
Speaker 2:And what we see over here was the number of steps that they did. This is what they were doing beforehand. Were getting around 6,000, and they got it down to 1,400. And they did this for just two weeks. So the only thing they did with these people is they got one group of them to walk less.
Speaker 2:And what they found after just two weeks was that their insulin sensitivity, their ability to again use glucose, use insulin, was down by 43%. Their markers of inflammation increased by 25%. Their muscle growth signals, okay, so that's their ability to actually build muscle, dropped by 26%. And the size of their leg muscles decreased by four percent just by walking less, Okay? And I'm just going to point out again, 1,400 steps.
Speaker 2:I will say this. Have some bad days here where I'm kind of stuck working from home, and my step count is not much higher than that. So it's not impossible to have a step count that low. And I've got a few clients, you know, they're barely getting twice that even when they're trying. So that's something just to be very, very aware of.
Speaker 2:And then this is another one I want to show you about. And this is a really, really cool one. And this applies to older people. So we thought when it comes to muscle loss, as people get older, that it was this very, very gradual decline. And what it turns out is it's not actually a gradual decline.
Speaker 2:And what we see is when people get older, they often have more health issues and they end up in hospital a little bit more frequently. And what happens is we get them going to a hospital. And so this would be one of those times where they're in hospital. And in hospital you're generally lying in bed for a few days or a week or something like that. And what happens there is that this is where we see the big drops in muscle mass.
Speaker 2:So muscle mass drops down and it doesn't fully recover afterwards because people aren't going to the gym to try and rebuild that muscle. So we get these drops in muscle, and this is called the catabolic crisis. Catabolic means breakdown of muscle. So as people kind of regularly go to hospital, they lose more muscle more regularly, or if they get sick, they lose muscle more quickly and they never build it back up. And it just puts them on a constant decline, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:So the important stuff, what can we actually do to preserve muscle? Can we prevent that muscle loss somehow? And thankfully, there are a few things we can do. So let's look at what evidence we have. This is kind of, this is a tough graph to look at, but basically what I'm going to show you here is this is the speed at which somebody's muscle fires.
Speaker 2:It's basically a measure of muscle power. And we've got three different groups of people here. So this gray bar we'll just look at these three here. This gray bar here is people who are untrained. They don't do any type of exercise at all.
Speaker 2:They're in their 68 to 78 year old category. The white bar is people who do endurance training, okay? So that can be running or cycling. And what we see here is that they're able to use their muscles better. Their muscles are more powerful.
Speaker 2:They're able to generate force faster, which is a good thing. And then if we look at these people over here, this bar, this is the strength training group. So these are people who have done either endurance over here or strength training for all their life, okay, masters athletes. And we can see that there's this very, very solid increase in our ability to use our muscle. So strength training is clearly very, very potent and very, very effective at getting people to be able to use their muscle effectively and quickly, which is what we want to do as we get older.
Speaker 2:So lifelong exercises, they've got stronger muscles, and strength training is better than long distance running or cycling, better than that endurance training. So what is resistance training? Okay, what does that actually look like? So that can be anything. And I want to really kind of get this across to people.
Speaker 2:You need to start at where your level is. And if your level is nothing, that's absolutely fine because that means that anything you do is better than that. So for some people that can be just getting people to walk up and down the stairs a bit more regularly. And that's a form of resistance exercise because you're resisting against gravity walking up the stairs. But the idea is to continuously move forward and to continuously try and get better.
Speaker 2:So if we're starting with just climbing stairs a few times a day, you can build up the amount of time that we do that. Then we can move on to things like body weight exercises. So that can be things like doing body weight squats, where you just do squats at home with your own body weight, or you know, you get a backpack and you weigh it down with some cans or you put a few bottles of water in there and you make it heavier and then you do some body weight squats like that at home. So keeping it very, very simple if you can, and just maybe doing an entire body weight circuit, if you can at home, a couple of times a week. That's another thing that you can do.
Speaker 2:The only issue with body weight is it can be difficult to progress. And with strength training, it's really, really important to be able to progress and to kind of keep challenging yourself, to keep trying building that strength and building that muscle. So one thing that we can do if body weight isn't that easy to progress is we can do things like resistance bands. And resistance bands, again, they're relatively cheap. You can buy a whole set and they've all got different resistances and you can start with a light resistance and then you can build it up.
Speaker 2:You can learn to do different exercises at home and build up your strength with that over time. And they can be really, really, really useful. But again, they've got their limitations. There's only so far you can go with resistance bands. So then maybe somebody could buy a small set of weights at home and then they can use those weights for a whole host of different exercises at home and maybe then they get to the point where it's like, okay, I've done this, I've progressed really, really far, I want to go even further, maybe I can go to the gym and try it out.
Speaker 2:And I'm a big fan of this stepwise process. And I'm not saying that you need to go to the gym, not at all. Like you could actually get a great workout with body weight exercise at home. I will say it's tough to make it harder. It really, really is, but it can be done.
Speaker 2:But if you wanted to start, you might get to the point where it's like, wow, I really enjoy this. And this is something I find with a lot of people that I work with is that some people are very resistant to doing any form of exercise at all. But once you get them into it and once you kind of You can make a game out of it and say, right, I'm going to do this many repetitions this week or this many pushups or this many bodyweight squats, and then the next week or next month I'm going to try and do better. You can do that. And when you turn it into a game like that, you see people like, I want to challenge myself even more.
Speaker 2:Let's go to the gym. Let's try it out, if that's a possibility for some people. So it's very, very much a gradual stepwise process. Start where you are, but be willing to build up and go a little bit further over time because you are going to get stronger. And that's this whole concept of what we call progressive overload.
Speaker 2:It's just getting people to push themselves a little bit harder so that they're constantly challenging their muscles. So I want to just talk about what a strength training routine could look like. So the current guidelines in The UK state that you should do at least two days a week of strengthening exercises, whatever they may be. And I think two days a week is a fantastic place to start. If you want, you could build it up to three days.
Speaker 2:You could even build it up to four days. It very, very much depends on how much time you have available and what you can do and where you can go. But two to four times a week is a really, really good place to start. If you're doing this in a gym, I really recommend doing four to six different exercises per session. And I really recommend doing a full body session.
Speaker 2:And what I mean by that is sometimes you'll hear people talking about, I'm going to have an arm day or a back day or I'm going to have a leg day. Don't complicate it like that. Just do a little bit of everything. So work your arms, work your legs, work your chest and your back, work everything on the one day. And that might mean you're only doing one different type of exercise per body part, but that's absolutely fine.
Speaker 2:The only way to figure out what exercise you do is to get a little bit of maybe coaching from somebody. And that might be with a PT in the gym or something like that or learning online. And then this is a question that comes up a lot, is repetitions and sets. I say eight to 12 repetitions, it's very commonly spoken about. I think it's a good place to use.
Speaker 2:A good place to go is kind of a sweet medium spot because it means the weights are relatively heavy, but they're not so heavy that they might cause joint pain or muscle pain. And they're doable. And then three to four sets. What I mean by sets is like a round of lifting your weights for eight to 12 repetitions. So you lift for eight to 12 repetitions, you'll take a break, maybe two minutes or something, and then you'll do it again, that's another set.
Speaker 2:So three to four sets, eight to 12 reps is kind of a very, very good evidence based plan for building muscle. And you want that combination, like I said, of upper and lower body. You want to get it all. I'm just going to tell a story about this lady here that you'll see in the bottom of the picture. I can't remember for the life of me her name, but there's a very interesting story about her.
Speaker 2:She was working in The US and she worked all her life as a real estate agent, so as a realtor. And she noticed after she retired that she was having difficulty with stairs, and she was kind of, one, she was getting tired climbing stairs, and she was kind of getting out of breath and stuff like that, because she realized she wasn't exercising anymore. She wasn't walking around as much. So she was concerned about that, and she took the initiative to join a gym. And just by coincidence, she joined what we call a power lifting gym where they kind of lift very, very heavy weights like that.
Speaker 2:And she got into it. And what she found is that she had a real knack for it. And this woman actually became a world champion power lifter in her weight category, which was the over-70s weight category for powerlifting. So she became an absolute sensation well into her life. She had not done any really formal exercise before this, but it was just the fact that she realized that now that she was retired, she was losing strength and she was losing power.
Speaker 2:That worried her. And now she's a world champion power lifter. So you can start at absolutely any age. I'm not saying you need to get into power lifting or become a world champion. Let's keep our expectations relatively realistic.
Speaker 2:But you can start at any age and I think that this one was a fantastic example of that. Now, the other thing that you can do besides exercise is protein and protein plays a very, very important role. So the only thing is with protein, things happen as we get older and our body doesn't necessarily use it as much. Okay? So we do know that when people are younger, okay?
Speaker 2:So we've got here a younger person. If you give them about 20 grams of protein, okay? So let's say a scoop of protein powder or something like that, if you give them 20 of protein, you do a really, really good job of stimulating muscle growth, Okay? If you give that same amount of protein to an older person, you don't stimulate muscle growth as well, unfortunately. And what we see is that you actually need to give them almost twice as much protein to get the same muscle growth effect.
Speaker 2:And that's because of that anabolic resistance that I mentioned earlier. So we know that older adults and this is considerably older they tend to need more than twice as much protein as younger adults to kind of stimulate muscle growth. Now, this is not me saying that like, oh, everybody, you need to get double the amount of protein right now. No, but if you are particularly older, getting more protein is probably a good idea because your body does not use it as effectively, unfortunately. Just to give people a bit of an idea of how much we eat.
Speaker 2:Now, is using US data, but it's not dissimilar from The UK. So what we've got here is this is time throughout the day and this is muscle protein synthesis. All I want you guys to look at is this blue line here. So every time you see this blue line spiking up, that's more muscle growth from somebody eating protein. So what happens here is somebody wakes up and they have their breakfast and the breakfast is at 07:00 in the morning and it's 12 grams of protein because if you think about it, breakfast is usually a low protein meal.
Speaker 2:People have a slice of toast or some cereal or something like that, maybe a little bit of milk. And you get this little bump in muscle growth right here. And then it goes down again. And then we have our lunch and lunch is 20 grams of protein, so it might be a sandwich. And then we get this bigger bump in muscle protein synthesis because they've eaten more protein and then it goes down again.
Speaker 2:And then we have our dinner at 06:30 and dinner is always the biggest meal of the day, usually in The UK anyway, and you usually have the most protein. And then we get this nice big spike in muscle protein synthesis and muscle growth. This is what we want. We want to see a nice big jump like that. So that's a good growth response, but we only get it at one meal.
Speaker 2:That's what most people get. So that means let's change things up. So instead of having a small amount of protein at breakfast, let's have a bigger amount, same at lunch and same at dinner. And what we're doing is we're getting this big jump in muscle growth three times a day, which means that we're more likely to build that muscle over time. So we get that good growth response three times a day.
Speaker 2:Now, I'm not going to go into this in too much detail. But basically, what this says is this red line, if you just look at the red line, is what happens to your muscle growth if you just eat protein. But the black line and the gray area, this is what happens if you exercise first and then have the same amount of protein. So what this is basically saying is when you exercise, you use protein more effectively and it stimulates more muscle growth. So you want to do your resistance exercise and you want to have your protein.
Speaker 2:And I'm not saying have your protein the second you finish your exercise, but for hours and even for a couple of days after exercise, your body will use protein better to build more muscle over time. Okay? This was actually a publication that my research group did looking at protein intake over time. And what we saw is that in older people, you get a better increase in muscle mass and strength when you give them protein along with their resistance exercise. So protein with resistance exercise is a fantastic combination.
Speaker 2:Generally, we want to go for higher quality proteins. And higher quality proteins are things like dairy protein is a fantastic protein. The protein powders that you get, like whey protein, again, is another fantastic protein that I'd highly recommend people try. And then we've also got meat, eggs, dairy. They're fantastic proteins as well.
Speaker 2:And then we've got so I don't want to call these lower quality proteins, but vegetable proteins and soy proteins tend to be a little bit lower in quality, but that doesn't mean they're useless. It just means we probably need to eat a little bit more to get the same benefit out of them, and it is very, very possible to build muscle using these vegetarian proteins or vegan proteins as well. So I don't want to discourage anybody from eating these proteins at all. I think that they're absolutely fantastic and they've got other health benefits as well. Now I'm going to touch on these very, very briefly.
Speaker 2:What other supplements can we take that might help with building muscle? Okay? And the first one that I would like to recommend is creatine, okay? A lot of people are a little bit scared about it because it sounds a bit scary, but we know that our body produces it for one thing and we also find it in things like meat and seafood. It improves our muscle strength.
Speaker 2:So it helps improve muscle power. And that means that we're able to exercise a little bit better. And it does that even without exercise. But with exercise, it improves it even more. Then we recommend about five grams of that daily.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that's like you'll usually get it with a little scoop in the pack and five grams is loads for your daily needs. It also potentially improves brain function. I don't want to overemphasize that, but it can be really, really good as well for brain function. The next one is vitamin D. And the reason I'm recommending that is because in The UK, people tend to not get very much sun in the first place, but we also tend to not be out in the sun quite regularly.
Speaker 2:I'm sure a lot of people got burnt last week, but that's not ideal, let's say. So vitamin D can be useful and it can help improve muscle strength and performance even without exercise if somebody is deficient in vitamin D. And it's very important that 'll only see these benefits if somebody is actually deficient. If you're getting enough already, you're doing okay. And then the last one is what we call long chain omega-3s.
Speaker 2:So the type of fats that we get in fish or fish oils, and they can help improve muscle growth in older people over time, but only again when they're used in combination with resistance exercise, but they can be a useful addition, okay? You do tend to need higher doses. I would say maybe not as high as we have here for four grams a day. Four grams a day would be a lot of pills, but something maybe half of that would be appropriate for most people. And that's still a couple of pills at least.
Speaker 2:So you can choose how you age and we can do that by being active. That is by far the most important thing to do to look after your muscles. Getting thirty to forty grams of high quality protein three times a day regularly is a really, really good way of kind of accentuating the effect of exercise. Get some creatine, get some vitamin D and get some of those fish oils into you as well. Okay?
Speaker 2:Don't need to overcomplicate it all that much. So that's it. That's the presentation. And, hopefully, we've got, some questions that we can answer as well. I'm just going to stop sharing now.
Speaker 2:There we go.
Speaker 1:No. Very interesting, Richie. Appreciate that.
Speaker 2:I'm sure people learn from me. Whilst we start and I've got
Speaker 1:a few questions. And then, Zaza, you're on screen, so you're always getting the privilege of giving your questions in. When it comes to speaking to members and stuff who are audio bait only for a while, What is your opinion on if someone can do body weight, is there a limit to how many reps you would recommend they go? Or is it Okay as long as they go to near failure? And how long can they really realistically be doing that for, for example, body weight squats?
Speaker 1:Maybe they can do 10 today is quite hard. But then in a month's time, 20 is hard, and then 30 is hard. Is there like a ceiling you would say on that before we go on?
Speaker 2:No, so that's a really good point, and what you've mentioned already there is that getting close to failure. So we know that you build muscle with a small amount of repetitions or a lot of repetitions as long as you are getting close to failure. And that part is what's really, really important. So if you can do 10 repetitions of a push up and that's getting you close to failure, like on that tenth rep you're like, oh, and you fall down, like that's a good indicator that you're getting to it. But you are going to get stronger over time and it might get to a point where you're doing 20 reps, 30 reps and 40 reps and then that gets hard to do from a time perspective and just from kind of a boredom perspective as well.
Speaker 2:People get a little bit bored with it. Now, how can you increase the weight? You could put a backpack on. You could have somebody put a weight on your back, but then you need somebody else to do that for you. So there are ways around it, but the most important thing, like you said, is getting close to failure, if you can.
Speaker 1:Okay. And is it so theoretically, and there's a question here as well, it ties in by Meredith about steps. So getting all your steps in once versus breaking it up. What about doing three sets of press ups in the morning, and then you're doing the body weight squats later on after work? I think it's called exercise snacks, I've seen.
Speaker 1:Would you recommend that if they can't get the thirty, forty minutes in a row in? And is there a difference?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So with steps, okay, like, get your steps in when you can. Okay? When it comes to the resistance exercise think of it like this. If you said to me, like, let's say you get to 10, you do 10 reps and that's when you get to failure.
Speaker 2:Okay? Then you could have somebody say, well, what if I do two now and I'll do two in half an hour's time and two a little bit later? That's not the same. And the reason for that is you need to get to failure. And if you do two reps now, you're not going to get near to failure.
Speaker 2:It's those last couple of reps where your muscles are really kind of trying as hard as possible to work that gives the signal for your muscles to grow more. So now, you could do a set to failure now, and then a set to failure in a half an hour's time, and then a set to failure two hours later or something like that. As long as you get those multiple sets to failure in, then you're Okay. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:So you kind of yeah, yeah. So you don't need to. I think a lot of people struggle with the mindset of, I need to set aside sixty minutes or forty five minutes to do a workout. It's
Speaker 2:Absolutely not.
Speaker 1:That's cool. That's cool. Zaza, you want to ask your question now?
Speaker 4:Sure. Hi Scott, hi Richie, thank you for this evening. I actually have a couple of questions. First of all, I'm taking all the supplements that you recommended, so I'm happy about that. And can I just validate that you're recommending that you try and have an even amount of protein at each meal So if you
Speaker 2:the most important thing with protein is to get your total protein in, okay, so the total amount of protein that you need in a day? That is by far the most important thing. The easiest way to do that is to distribute it throughout the day relatively evenly. It doesn't need to be even. If you like had a small breakfast but then you made up for it with a larger lunch and a larger dinner, that's absolutely fine.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I tend to try and get at least 20 grams in breakfast, but I generally get 20 to 30. So I'm getting a good protein rich breakfast and then slightly higher at sort of 40 for my other two meals. And then I make up a little bit with snacks. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Fantastic.
Speaker 4:Okay. So that's good. Thank you. And then my other question was about inflammation. So is there a threshold of BMI threshold or body fat percentage or something below which we know inflammation drops significantly?
Speaker 4:So I'm always wondering what is the measure of inflammation? I mean, I know being obese or overweight, there is definitely inflammation. But how do we measure that? Is it a blood test? Is it just a scan?
Speaker 4:What is it?
Speaker 2:So how do we measure the inflammation itself?
Speaker 4:Yeah, in the body. So
Speaker 2:it depends. There's actually quite a number of ways. So normally what we're measuring is some sort of an inflammatory marker, and there's a lot of different inflammatory markers in the body. The most common one that we use as a marker of what we call systemic inflammation is one called HSCRP or high sensitivity C reactive protein. That's kind of clinically the one that's used most regularly.
Speaker 2:There's not necessarily a cutoff for it. Now, there is a cutoff for it clinically if you get tested, but not a cutoff for saying, all right, this is being caused by your excess adiposity. But I want to get back to what you were asking about the amount of body fat. Like, is there an amount of body fat where we say, right, this is causing excess inflammation? And answer to that is no, because it seems to actually be quite individual.
Speaker 2:And what we say is that there seems to be what's called, there's a theory called personal fat threshold. And it means that some people are actually quite effectively able to build fat and gather a lot of fat without having necessarily the negative consequences of that excess body fat. So some people can actually hold onto a lot of body fat and it's not negatively affecting their health that much. Whereas other people, when their body fat gets just a little bit higher than, let's say, than lean, that's when they start having major problems, and that can lead to diabetes and high blood pressure. And to give a very, very well known example of this in scientific terms is people from South Asia, so from the Indian Subcontinent, so people from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, we know that genetically, they've got a very, very low personal fat threshold.
Speaker 2:So even if they have a small amount of body fat, like so for example, a little bit of a belly, that can very, very significantly or seriously negatively impact their health. And part of that is related to inflammation. So it is a very, very personal thing. Some people can hold on to more, some people not so much.
Speaker 4:And so is it a blood test?
Speaker 2:So you can do a blood test to tell you if you have high levels of inflammation. And again, like I said, HS, the high sensitivity C reactive protein, is one that can tell you if somebody has high levels.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Great. Thank you. Do
Speaker 2:we do it? Sorry. I didn't see the let me see if I can see the chat here. Or maybe somebody can throw a chat question at me. Oh, there we go.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Carolyn's going about, is it better to take vitamin D with K2 to help with absorption?
Speaker 2:So this is a really, really common one. And you'll hear a lot of people talking about vitamin D and, vitamin K2. And so K2 doesn't help with the absorption of vitamin D. A lot of people say that you need to take it with vitamin D because vitamin D, one of its main roles is to help with absorption of calcium. And they say that if you take vitamin D, it could potentially lead to calcification of your arteries, which is kind of what happens as you get heart disease.
Speaker 2:Under normal conditions, if you're not taking a crazy excessive amount of vitamin D, that's not going to happen. And under normal conditions as well, you should be able to get enough vitamin K from your food if you're getting plenty of green leafy vegetables and if you're getting some fermented foods, and we also produce some in our gut as well. Generally, the people who are saying, you know, get the K2 with your vitamin D are usually selling some sort of a supplement, so just worth bearing that in mind.
Speaker 1:And then can you see that one? I'm hitting my protein goals and oh.
Speaker 2:You wanna come on?
Speaker 3:Hi, Scott. Thank you so much. Love your app, by the way.
Speaker 2:That's good.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. And thanks, Richard. Thanks for your time. What did I say? Sorry.
Speaker 3:I said I'm hitting my protein goals and nearly hitting my calories, which is great. I'm not hitting my steps. I am trying. I've got a treadmill here as well. I'm alone.
Speaker 3:I've got three kids. I mean, I'm sure you've heard it before, but, I am trying to do get my steps in. I'm trying to add a little bit of workouts, strength training as well, like, twice a week if I can. I'm losing weight, which is great. I'm really happy with the results.
Speaker 3:But because you mentioned this creatine, if I'm saying it right, and I've seen all this going on on, you know, in adverts and everything, I don't know anything about it. And I just saw that you said to add it in, but is it worth me adding it in when I'm not doing as much of, like, workouts and hitting the 10,000 steps a day? I've set my target at because I listened to your podcast, Scott, which were really great, very helpful. And I'm so I know you said it was like, if you can get 9,000, that would be great. So I'm trying to to get to there.
Speaker 3:So seven, eight, those are my goals, but I'm I'm just struggling to hit them. So is it good should I add the creatine as my roundabout question? Or I
Speaker 2:wouldn't. Because that's for muscle growth. It's for muscle strength. Muscle strength. And it can be really, really useful.
Speaker 2:So there's this kind of concept now that everybody should be taking creatine. I don't think with that. But I do think for people who are actively pursuing resistance exercise, it is beneficial because it allows you to train harder. But if that's something that you're not doing at the moment, just don't see the necessity for doing it right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Fair question. I think a lot of people have spoken about the cognitive benefits or they see in this cognitive Ben Richie on the the good old TikTok and stuff. So
Speaker 2:And one thing I'll say about the cognitive benefits is, so at the moment, the cognitive benefits we're seeing in the main, let's say, evidence for cognitive benefits are in people who have either serious cognitive decline or people who are seriously sleep deprived. So we see that it seems to help kind of improve cognitive function in people who are, have cognitive decline already or people who are sleep deprived, which is leading to cognitive decline, which is me in my natural state. So I'm really glad I take creatine every day and I'd hate to see myself and how I'd perform if I wasn't taking creatine. But yeah, in those circumstances, it seems to be beneficial. I don't want to overhype the cognitive decline.
Speaker 2:It's not going to suddenly turn everybody into an Albert Einstein. I really wish it did because I could do with some of that, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, there's a question here that you when when do you take your creatine? Are you got a magic ritual forever?
Speaker 2:You just
Speaker 1:scoop in your mouth?
Speaker 2:This is a good one. So you you will hear everybody saying different things about when you should take creatine. Take it before your workout, take it after your workout, it, you know, after you go, as soon as you wake up or just before you go to bed. Here's the beautiful thing about creatine. So creatine, it's something you take daily.
Speaker 2:And what it does is it actually, it builds up in your muscles. And what it does is we say it saturates your muscles. Eventually it builds up to a point where the level in your muscles doesn't increase anymore. And you just keep taking it and it stays at a nice high level in your muscles. That means it literally does not matter when you take it.
Speaker 2:It just matters that you take it regularly. And it doesn't even matter if you miss it a day or two or three days in a row or something like that, you forget to take it over the weekend. As long as you keep taking it relatively regularly, you are going to be getting enough of it. Because creatine, it takes a while to build up in your muscles. It also takes a while to go back down to normal levels.
Speaker 2:So do not stress about when to take creatine. The one thing I'll say about it is don't add it to a boiling hot drink, just because it tends to get broken down with heat. So if you make a fresh cup of coffee and you throw it into the coffee, it's not going to destroy it all, but it will break down some of it. So just take a little bit with a glass of water, knock it back. Bob's your uncle.
Speaker 2:Done.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned that consistency of taking it. How long of not taking it does it take for it to you have to kind of rebuild that build phase up. And there used to be, back in the day, the loading phase of creating. I don't know what you think if that's out the window now. But yeah, consistency part.
Speaker 2:So, like, in terms of, like, how long does it take to to get it up to so say you get it
Speaker 1:up after say you take creatine sixty days in every day, and you go in all day for two weeks. It's like, is that two weeks now? I'm back to base, and I gotta build back. Like, how long does it take to kind of go away? Oh, I've got room really.
Speaker 2:If you're taking five grams a day, generally the consensus is it takes about four weeks to build up. And we know that if you stop taking it, it takes between four to six weeks to go back to where it was beforehand. So, you know, like even if you take a week off, like you'll get back up. And I'm going to be very, very honest, you're probably not going to notice the difference, okay? The only people who will notice the difference with creatine really are the ones who are counting their reps and counting the weights that they're putting onto the bar.
Speaker 2:And when you start using it, you do notice, oh, got a little bit of extra oomph there. It's not going to turn anybody into Arnold Schwarzenegger by any means, but it does make a nice little difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nice. And I have
Speaker 2:a question for you on powders tablet form Of creatine. So if you take tablet form of creatine, you're going to be taking five bullets about that size to they are hefty tablets as well. You're going to be taking five of those. Same effect as if you take the powder. The only thing is, for some people, the tablets are more convenient.
Speaker 2:The tablets are more expensive. And I'm an absolute cheapskate, so I don't take those. So I take the powder. But if you find the powder to be less convenient because you have to mix it with water or whatever, the tablets might be useful. I'll tell you, this is how I take mine, and it might disgust a few people.
Speaker 2:I get the scoop, I pour it directly into my mouth, and I wash it down with a glass of water, and that's it. I don't even need to mix it into the water myself. And it's completely it tastes of nothing, absolutely tasteless, which is fantastic.
Speaker 1:That's old school, old school way. Because I've seen in so many ads now, speak to people, and they come across creatine for the first time in a sense of seriously considering it. And there's like, you know, back in the day, was like the different forms of creatine. And I think they're coming back full loop now on creatine for women, creatine, I don't know, all this stuff. Is there another form of creatine that you've seen that is just as good as monohydrate?
Speaker 1:Or like Dina's mentioning here, is that a form that maybe has less impact on the kidneys? Is the impact bad on the kidneys?
Speaker 2:Okay. So in terms of the best forms to take, I'm going to say flat out it is taking the plain old creatine monohydrate, which is both the most commonly available and the cheapest form. All the other forms, like, it has the most research on it, and I highly recommend that. Some people who take creatine may, and this is a very, very uncommon side effect, it is noted. Some people may get some stomach discomfort if they take it on an empty stomach.
Speaker 2:In that case, some of the other forms, like the ester form or the ethyl form or the HCL form may be better, but there's no conclusive evidence for it. As for the kidneys, all of them will have the same effect on the kidneys because it's the creatine component that have an effect on kidneys. If your kidneys are healthy, so if you have no issues with your estimated glomerular filtration rate, so if you have no issues with kidney health, there's no worries with creatine. If you have issues with your kidney health, yes, you should speak with a doctor before you do it, okay? Don't go on it.
Speaker 2:Another thing worth pointing out is if you take creatine, it will increase something called creatinine in your blood. And creatinine in general is a marker of poor kidney function. But, okay, if your creatinine is high because you're taking creatine, it's not a problem. It's only if for some reason your creatinine is high and you're not taking creatine, then there's a metabolic problem there, but they're not the same thing. So some people will, like it shows up on my blood test every time my creatinine is high, my doctor will ask me, he will say it to me and say, oh, it's okay, I'm taking creatine.
Speaker 2:And it's like, okay, no problem at all because my kidney function is absolutely fine. So just something for people to be aware of.
Speaker 1:Cool. Everyone says these things are tasteless, but I always taste them. Zazza, are you hands up?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's me again, sorry. The interesting thing about creatine and the creatinine levels because I recently had NHS blood tests and my creatinine's just above the NHS you know, the high threshold. So they said they want to retest me in a couple of weeks. But I'm wondering if that's because I'm taking creatine. I only started about three months ago.
Speaker 4:And I take a little scoop, it's just less than five grams I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's kind of a classic example. And like if they retest you and your creatinine is high with your EGFR, so your estimated glomerular filtration rate which is your kidney marker, if that's okay, then you're okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah, my GFR
Speaker 1:is low.
Speaker 2:It is low? Yeah. And have they brought that up with you?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I think they're looking at both of those. Basically said renal function is slightly out of whack. Need to keep watch on it. But I have not taken creatine.
Speaker 2:Okay, I would mention it to them that you are taking it and then see what they say from there.
Speaker 4:Okay. Thank you. Oh, sorry.
Speaker 1:I take alright. I don't know if I
Speaker 2:Just in Charlotte's comment on everybody says these things are tasteless. I can always taste them. Yeah. You might be what's called a super taster, Charlotte. So, yeah, I can't I can't make any promises.
Speaker 1:And, Richie, so you mentioned that strength training two to four times a week. And one I was interested in is this slide that you showed about steps. So traditionally, or like I don't know if that's the right word we say we want to do resistance training to maintain muscle mass. Right? But the steps one, they reduced it, and they saw the leg muscle of the leg go down.
Speaker 1:So how effective is steps? Does it go the other way as well? Or is that just the sweet spot that you just maintain that muscle mass that you're using? There's not a gain, in a sense, from the steps.
Speaker 2:So there is research in older populations where they have had them increase their step count. And just doing that, they've seen an increase in muscle. But this is with people with very, very low step counts. But going, like I said, going from very, very little activity to some activity is incredibly beneficial. And it will have a small effect.
Speaker 2:But obviously you want to keep, like I said, you want that progressive overload. You want to keep pushing and doing something a little bit more. But like to start out, if somebody is just increasing their step count, it can have a beneficial effect on muscle.
Speaker 1:Okay. Okay. And then how would you rank so if you couldn't do strength training, yeah? Or you could do classes, I don't know how many people here are doing going to the gym and doing classes or, like, you know, you got the traditional, like, body pumps or whatever. Like, they're not gonna give you the kind of maybe when I think about doing these classes, don't remember what I did and stuff.
Speaker 1:It's just hard for me to know what was doing. How effective are just these kind of circuit y training classes? Is it a limit to them because you're not really progressing? You're just kind of chilling up? What is it?
Speaker 2:It depends on the class. Now, people or some of the classes, they will have a great selection of weights, and you can kind of pick the weight that suits you best. The one thing I have observed is that some people will kind of get the easiest weight and they could be doing the class for a year or two years and they're still using the same weight they use at the start because it's comfortable to do. With resistance training, you have to embrace a certain level of discomfort. And that discomfort, that challenge is what allows you to progress and allows you to get stronger and allows you to develop that muscle size and muscle strength even more.
Speaker 2:So you can do classes like that. And I'll be honest, I've got some clients and they won't go to the gym at all, but they hate it, but they absolutely love going to a circuit class. And I'm down with that. Like if that gets them exercising, gets them more active, brilliant. Please do it.
Speaker 2:But remember to challenge yourself. Go a little bit harder. You absolutely can get better. And if you challenge yourself, you will. For sure.
Speaker 2:And yeah, so then on
Speaker 1:the homework, we touched it earlier. You can do body weight until it gets essentially too easy. Then you need to look at dumbbells or resistance bands. Where would you rank the difficulty of resistance band? If you had a budget, you had a small amount of budget and room, would you just go for the dumbbells?
Speaker 1:You go kettlebells? You're getting bands? What would be your little ideal micro setup for someone to be able to progress a bit, at least for six months, for example?
Speaker 2:If I had a small You can't
Speaker 1:spend too much money, got a small budget, you can buy a few things that will help you progress while you're I
Speaker 2:think resistance bands would be good. There is a learning curve with them, and you need to learn the exercises. So that's important. It would be good. And maybe a couple of heavier dumbbells.
Speaker 2:I will say, and they're not cheap, but if you can get some adjustable dumbbells, they're phenomenal. They're really, really good what you can do with adjustable dumbbells, but they are not cheap. That's the only problem with it. But I will say adjustable dumbbells are actually much better than getting loads and loads and loads of different increasing weight.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Facebook Marketplace was good just after COVID when everyone was on the my god. The shortage of weights was crazy. Then there was but,
Speaker 2:yeah.
Speaker 1:And then on this this is more maybe like back in the role bodybuilding days. I used to watch videos of bodybuilders being like, someone would prefer barbells. Someone would prefer doing dumbbells. Someone would prefer doing unilateral one side at a time. Obviously,
Speaker 2:you get
Speaker 1:a bit more advanced with that. But do you see much of a benefit to someone saying in a home workout to be doing single leg glute bridges or single leg things versus just two at the same time on dumbbell versus barbell?
Speaker 2:I the the the reason single legs can be useful for home workouts is because if you have a limited amount of weights at home, if you do single legs, like the same weight will offer more resistance for a single leg than for doing a double leg. That's the only reason. I don't think people need to complicate things too much by doing like just, one arm specific exercise or one leg specific exercises. I honestly don't think that resistance training needs to be over complicated at all. And the simpler a routine you can do, the more likely you're to stick to it.
Speaker 2:And the more likely you stick to it, the more likely you're going to get benefits from it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And if anyone's got more questions, let me know. I've got one more myself. And when it comes to when we're talking about quality of life, how important do you think is doing some of the core exercises?
Speaker 1:And what exercises would you say give people the best bang for their buck in terms of not trying to get abs, but just to have that posture or kind of improve that area, lower back and stuff as well?
Speaker 2:So we have something called the posterior chain. And that's basically the set of muscles that run from the base of your spine all the way down your back, your glutes, your hamstrings. That's called the posterior chain. And working those muscles is incredibly beneficial as well as working the legs. So the front of the legs.
Speaker 2:So that can be doing things like we've got things like Romanian deadlifts, regular deadlifts. And they can be done in lots of different ways to make them comfortable with different types of bars and stuff like that or using them with dumbbells. Doing things like a leg press can be really, really beneficial for building the legs. Leg extensions can be really, really good as well. We talk about compound movements and that's where you generally lift a heavy weight and you're using multiple parts of your body to do the movement.
Speaker 2:So a deadlift is a classic example of a compound because you're using your glutes, and you're using your hamstrings, and you're using your lower back muscles, your upper back muscles, and the muscles around your arms. You're using lots of muscle mass together. They can be really great because you get more bang for your buck. But I don't think you need a huge amount of variety. But you just need to think of like, right, I want something that's going to work the back of my legs, the front of my legs.
Speaker 2:I want something that's going to work my back. I want something that's going to work the front of my arms, the back of my arms, and I want something that's going to work my chest. And there's loads and loads of different ones that can do that. And the only way you can kind of find out what ones there are is going in, doing them, or getting recommendations from other people, or looking at different programs and seeing. And to be honest, actually, you go online and use something like ChatGPT, what's a good alternative to a bench press?
Speaker 2:It might be a chest press machine or a dumbbell bench press. That's a great way to kind of learn different exercises that you can add to your routine.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And there's one more question here, Richie. And I've gone a bit over the time for you. And it's a good one as well. Is the length of time, you'd say, sticking to the same routine before changing up the exercises?
Speaker 1:Or is it ideal to do the same routine for as long as possible to keep progressing?
Speaker 2:So I would not recommend jumping routines. So that's basically and I see this a lot in younger people, younger guys, who are just trying to do everything to get as much muscle as possible. And see them changing to a different routine almost every month or something like that, which is ridiculous. I think if you're going to do a routine, stick with it for six months. Give yourself a chance to get to it.
Speaker 2:And then I will change things up myself. And one of the main reasons I change it up is one, it can be beneficial after you've gotten so used to a specific exercise to do a slight variation of that and just give your muscles a slightly newer challenge. But it doesn't need to be like a new challenge every week or a new challenge every month. And another reason for doing it is it just makes it a bit more interesting. Because if you're doing the exact same routine every day, to be honest, I can do the same routine.
Speaker 2:I can do it for six months. I can absolutely love it. But eventually, you will get to a point where it's like, ugh, I'm getting a little bored of this. I'd like to try new things. And this is going to sound absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 2:But sometimes I'll do my own programming where I'll write up a new routine for myself. And I'll secretly be typing stuff on the screen and be like, this is fun. I'm going to try this exercise. I'm going put this in here. And then you get to try it out new for the first week.
Speaker 2:You're like, this is new. I haven't done this exercise in a long time. I forgot how much I enjoy it, that kind of So it's almost just for novelty. But that novelty is important because it keeps you going back.
Speaker 1:But you think there is a difference in, say, now one week I've got access to a barbell. I've done some barbell squats. The next week, I've only got some dumbbells, and then maybe I've gotta do body weight another time because I'm away, and I wanna and I have to do 60 reps instead of I can do 10. Like, you know, it's essentially the same mechan you know, mechanical of the squats, but how how much difference really is there between that and that if they have to change because of circumstances?
Speaker 2:Like, how much difference is there in terms of its effect on muscle growth?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like you're saying, I stick to the same thing. But for some reason, you've got leg extension. You go to the gym, it's just not there. You can't be bothered.
Speaker 1:So you end up doing body weight squats, but you take it to failure. The quads are being worked there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely fine. It's absolutely Yeah. As long as you're still stimulating the same muscle, your body doesn't really care how you're doing it. The reason most people care is because if people are tracking their workouts and tracking the weights that they're using, usually they want to see kind of a bit of an improvement over time. And if you have to use a different machine, it's like, oh, I was really hoping I'd get to use my normal machine because it wants to see if I could beat my record from last week or something like that.
Speaker 2:But as long as you are challenging the muscle, your muscle doesn't care what exercise you're doing. It's just like, okay, I'm still getting worked out here. I'm still getting the intensity I need.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Those cover a lot of the questions that we've had, and I think everyone should re listen to this. When they get a chance, they know exactly what to do with training, Richie. I think you've nailed everything there. And yeah, we thank you for doing these talks.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. I hope to get you guys.
Speaker 2:Like I said, I'm always really, really happy with this group. The questions that you guys gave are absolutely fantastic. So really, really, really thank you for all the questions and for having me.
Speaker 1:No worries. I'm sure you'll be back soon. And we'll do another talk soon, no doubt. But everyone, thank you so much for tuning up. Any questions, you can follow Richie on Instagram.
Speaker 1:If you could send me the deck, maybe Richie, I can send that out in an email so people can actually see it all from start to finish, that'd be that'd be useful, and then everyone can have a read.
Speaker 2:Will do. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Nice one, everyone. Have a good night.
Speaker 4:Thanks, Thanks. Bye. Bye
Speaker 1:bye. Thank you, sir.