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Adam welcomes Dr. Jeremy Loenneke, Asst. Professor at Ole’ Miss. They discuss his recent findings that challenge long held beliefs about strength training. Does getting stronger help you live longer? And if not, what’s the point of it all?
Now listened to in 100 countries, The InForm Fitness Podcast with Adam Zickerman is a presentation of InForm Fitness Studios, specializing in safe, efficient, High Intensity strength training.
Adam discusses the latest findings in the areas of exercise, nutrition and recovery with leading experts and scientists. We aim to debunk the popular misconceptions and urban myths that are so prevalent in the fields of health and fitness and to replace those sacred cows with scientific-based, up-to-the-minute information on a variety of subjects. The topics covered include exercise protocols and techniques, nutrition, sleep, recovery, the role of genetics in the response to exercise, and much more.
Inform_Loenneke1_Sept30.mp3
Arlene [00:00:01] The Inform Fitness podcast with Adam Zickerman and co-host Mike Rogers is a presentation of Infom Fitness Studios, a small family of personal training facilities specializing in safe efficient high intensity strength training. On our bi monthly podcast Adam and Mike discuss the latest findings in the areas of exercise nutrition and recovery with leading experts and scientists. We aim to debunk the popular misconceptions and the urban myths that are so prevalent in the fields of health and fitness. And to replace those sacred cows with scientific based up to the minute information on a variety of subjects. We'll cover exercise protocols and techniques nutrition sleep recovery the role of genetics in the response to exercise and much more.
Arlene [00:01:00] On this episode Adam welcomes Dr. Jeremy Loenneke, assistant professor at Ole Miss. They discuss his recent findings that challenge long held beliefs about strength training. Does getting stronger help you live longer and if not what's the point of it all?
Jeremy [00:01:15] If doing resistance exercise isn't really associated with all cause mortality, then being strong is. How do we reconcile those two things? Because they seem very related and they are very related. But that analysis is actually quite different.
Adam [00:01:32] Today we have with us Dr. Jeremy Loenneke assistant professor at the University of Mississippi Ole Miss. Dr. Loenneke graduated with a PHD in exercise physiology from the University of Oklahoma. He had previously earned his master's degree in nutrition and exercise science from Southeast Missouri State University. Dr. Loenneke is a member of the American College of Sports Medicine and American Physiological Society. He also serves as a peer reviewer for several journals including the Sports Medicine AGE, Medicine & Science and Sports and Exercise and the Journal of Applied Physiology. On this episode we are going to go into strength and all cause mortality and we're going to be getting into also is muscle hypertrophy or increase in muscle size leading to or causing muscle strength. Jeremy welcome.
Jeremy [00:02:25] Thanks for having me.
Adam [00:02:26] I was really intrigued by your talk that you gave at the Rec Conference and you titled it Only the Strong Survive... Fact or Fiction. And as scientists, I was a former scientist. You're a current scientist and you know we are always questioning our dogma and you're not doing your job if you're not constantly questioning your current belief system. This talk, Only the Strong Survive certainly did that and that's why one of the reasons to have you on. I want you to talk about this thing you talked about which was it had to do with strength and all cause mortality. What prompted this conversation and this talk.
Jeremy [00:03:06] Yeah I think that we've done a little bit of cross sectional population level statistics on some of these studies. There's a database in the United States called InHains. And it's freely accessible to anyone and it's useful if you have some population level questions and we and others have been interested in this idea of strength and its relationship with all forms of different types of health as well as all cause mortality. And if you look at the literature some of the things that you see, there's relationships in other words the stronger you are the less likely you are to die. I think that's an interesting topic and I think it means different things than what a lot people think it means. So I thought it would be a useful kind of topic to discuss for people who are interested in strength training because I think that resistance exercise and exercise in general is very useful but I don't know that that literature necessarily can substantiate the importance of resistance exercise. But if you look at some of the data particularly the ones the study that we did we found just as other people have found that those who are strong tend to be less likely to die prematurely. The other thing that we found though is that most of the people who are strong aren't participating in exercise. So that's why I don't think that you can use that as a reason why people should exercise because those two things aren't really the same thing the analysis is a little bit different. And I think that one of the things that we've thrown around is trying to figure out how to explain some of that data. So if doing resistance exercise isn't really associated with all cause mortality but being strong is. How do we reconcile those two things because they seem very related and they are very related but that analysis is actually quite different.
Adam [00:05:02] Well doesn't resistance training make you stronger.
Jeremy [00:05:05] Yeah exactly. And that's why we spent several hours trying to figure out how to make sense of that. In other words if you look at those studies those who are strong are less likely to die. And we know that lifting weights gets you stronger. So it would seem intuitive that you could just connect those two dots. I guess the point is is that when you look at the people included in that study as well as other studies the majority of them are not actually lifting weights. The majority of them are not actually exercising. Meaning that those who are the strongest seem like they have something innately different about them. And in fact it's not necessarily those who are the strongest. If you look at a lot of those studies a lot of it comes down to just not being the weakest. So as long as you're not the weakest category you tend to have a similar risk.
Adam [00:05:57] Wow. So we are exercising I mean you not obviously saying don't exercise or maybe you are I don't know. I mean are you looking at maybe as a group of people that are exercising and they're all cause mortality.
Jeremy [00:06:12] I think that there's some really what you need is a randomized controlled trial. Right. And that would be the perfect way to answer this question. But the issue is is that that's almost impossible to do over a long period of time. We'd have to recruit people when they're in their early 20s. We'd split them up into different groups and we'd study them for the rest of their life. So that's not very feasible. But we do have studies in older people. What they suggest is that resistance exercise, aerobic exercise being physically active. It does seem like it has health benefits but reducing your risk of all cause mortality or premature all cause mortality probably isn't one of them. So I think that we just have to move away from what variable we're discussing. So I do think it's true that people who are strong probably are less likely to die but that's not an effective exercise because they weren't exercising it couldn't be. So what it probably tells us is that there's something different about those people and that sets maybe their baseline risk for a lot of different conditions but exercise and being active across their whole lifespan will help them maintain whatever risk that they have. In other words if they're in the highest category when they're in their 20s or 30s in order to stay there it probably is important to exercise. So I think that's how we can kind of connect those two dots.
Adam [00:07:40] Yeah I talk to clients that I notice that they have the innate strength that we're talking about here and I always say to them you have a gift. Let's preserve that gift.
Jeremy [00:07:49] Exactly. And I fully realize that whenever I try to explain this it sounds not intuitive and like it doesn't make any sense but I just think it's important that we point out that the reason why exercise can't explain that. Is because those people were not exercising. So it just tells us that there's something different about them.
Adam [00:08:14] It's a point that you know needs to be made. And the truth hurts right? You know you're not a businessman you're not running a business right. So here I am running a business and like do I want people to know that right. I mean telling them that their strength training may not be associated with a longer life just because they're doing it.
Jeremy [00:08:33] But it probably is associated with perhaps a better life.
Adam [00:08:36] Exactly. So as Rhonda Patrick likes to say when I listen to her and Dr. Peter Attia when I listen to his podcast they talk about the difference between lifespan and health span. I don't know if it's their ideas but you know they talk about health bent and that's to me more important.
Jeremy [00:08:56] I agree. I think it's a good point and I think that the way I think about resistance exercise I view it as a way for people as almost a way to stay active for a longer period of time. And one of the things that has a lot of evidence behind it and I don't fully understand the mechanism behind it is when people lift weights or when they exercise particularly lift weights they seem to be at a lower risk of injury. And I think that the utility of that is whenever time you get injured you become inactive and when you become inactive there's a lot of negative things that start to mount up. So if you exercise you get hurt less. You can stay active for a longer period of time. And I think that that's one of the benefits of exercising over the whole lifespan. So if you know if I'm in my thirties lifting weights right now I may help me just to prevent injury which would make me immobilized and it may help me when I do fall or if I do fall that I don't get hurt. So there is some good data behind that.
Adam [00:10:02] Sure. Let's get into another thought or belief if you will that we've all had for a long time. I certainly have and that is you know when you strength train your muscles get bigger. When muscles get bigger we call that hypertrophy by the way muscular hypertrophy. When muscles get bigger they don't necessarily get stronger because they're getting bigger. In other words we all thought that hey listen, if your muscles get bigger you're naturally getting stronger. Besides looking better I guess that was our clue that we are getting stronger that we're getting bigger. But the research you've been doing is actually not necessarily showing that,.
Jeremy [00:10:51] Correct, and that's something that we've become really interested in the past few years because it is counter to what we teach in the classroom. It's counter to what a lot of the literature suggests and it's counter to what a lot of people currently think.
Adam [00:11:08] Currently think. But as I read in your paper from a historical context there used to be skepticism actually regarding muscle size and its contributing effects to muscle strength. I mean it wasn't automatically thought back in the day that getting a bigger muscle meant you're getting a stronger muscle but that eventually changed to what we're thinking now is that you know big muscle is a strong muscle.
Jeremy [00:11:37] Right. And I think it's important that we make sure that we're clear on what's being discussed. If we were to take one hundred people at a single time point and we were to measure how big their muscle is and then test how strong they are. The people who are bigger on average are going to be stronger. People who are smaller on average are going to be weaker. But that's a very different thing than what happens when an adult starts lifting weights. So our position is when people begin resistance training and they get stronger. Why is that? Not why they might be strong at baseline before they've never lifted a weight but when they lift weights and get stronger why is that? And I agree with you that early on up until about the 1970s it wasn't quite certain what muscle hypertrophy was doing or whether or not it was doing anything useful at all. Part of that is related to they didn't have good ways to measure it. Imaging a skeletal muscle didn't come along until the 70s especially the late 70s. So part of that skepticism certainly has to do with the technology that they had. But the story historically started to change with the publication of a paper by Fukunaga as well as a paper by Moratani and Moratani is the one that's the most popular one. And it's it's interesting because that particular study didn't even measure muscle growth. There was no imaging done in that study and that's the one that's commonly cited as the reason why when an individual starts lifting weights and they get stronger that's first student neural adaptations followed by large contributions from muscle hypertrophy. In other words muscle growth. So obviously there's some problems with that. If the study didn't even measure muscles growth.
Adam [00:13:32] So this idea that first couple days or the first couple of weeks I would say as you present is getting stronger that it's neural adaptations. And then after the neural adaptations kind of plateau any strength occurring after that point is due to muscle hypertrophy. That's what the thinking has been.
Jeremy [00:13:54] Correct. And I think to be fair we don't really have that nailed down. One of the things that we've really spent a lot of time testing is trying to manipulate muscle growth between different groups of people to see what effect that has on changes in strength and we haven't found any contributory or advantage to groups having a bigger change in muscle mass with respect to changes in strength. I think what it could be. I think it's you know neuro adaptations is one that is a go to. Neural adaptations meaning you have some sort of change in either the brain the spinal cord or even the motor unit itself. I think another potential mechanism there could be local level changes at the fiber. In other words changes that are occurring inside the muscle that aren't related to changes in muscle growth. And the reason why that we started to even think this because of course I was taught and I even taught that when you strength train and you get stronger it's neural adaptations followed by growth. That was kind of the go to growth.
Adam [00:15:03] I used to teach this too. And I've been saying forever that the growth that we're talking about first of all a lot of people make they say that you're building new muscle fibers which is erroneous. Right. So that the existing muscle fibers are getting thicker and they're getting thicker because they're building new myofibrils. Correct? Is that what you're about to say? When you get bigger you're building more myofibrils and that.
Jeremy [00:15:26] Yeah, and I think that's why it's confusing because you're looking at it and you're going it seemingly adding more actin-myosin. So why are you not getting stronger. The reason why we even started to question this is because we started to routinely see that these things were not related. We we started to continuously see groups that saw the same change in muscle size but different levels of strength. And then you know being taught underneath this paradigm I just try to explain it away. Well it's because of this but then you see it again and then you see it again and again and again. And at some point I think it's worth asking what why do we even think this in the first place. And that's where we started to go back through the literature and go you know there's there's never really been a study that has actually really demonstrated that muscle hypertrophy causes the change in muscle strength. There's there's no data to suggest that that's the case. You know we started to really. If you look at the literature how they determine the importance of muscle hypertrophy is the following scenario. They'll have a group of individuals lift weights they'll measure muscle size and muscle strength. Following exercise or following training. If the group saw an increase in muscle size and they saw an increase in muscle strength their conclusion is well it's neural mechanisms as well as hypertrophy because it was there, if muscle doesn't grow well then its neural adaptation. So I think it's pretty clear that that's not maybe the best design to determine cause and effect and that led us to some of our studies where we we try and create different groups. So one group we try to minimize muscle growth through study design another group we try to maximize muscle growth. And then what we do is which we can compare those two groups to see, does the group that has the greatest change in muscle size, do they see the greatest change in muscle strength? And we never find that to be the case. You know this is obviously a very difficult question to answer. And our study designs are not perfect either. We have a lot of limitations with our designs too but I think it goes to the point that we teach this concept as if it's really well founded and I think the larger point is that there's just nothing there.
Adam [00:17:52] Yeah, there's a lot to know. We still have a lot to know.
Jeremy [00:17:54] Absolutely.
Adam [00:17:54] Well I find very often that I have clients and I've been training people now for 20 years and my staff very often we see people getting stronger and stronger and stronger with no real noticeable hypertrophy. Some people get disappointed by that right. I mean quite honestly the reason some people work out is just to get bigger and stronger and then look better muscularly and they get very frustrated by that. And I just say Yeah but you're stronger. And strength is important not so much muscle hypertrophy. So I always explain it that way also that you know and I've always been like yeah I know he's supposed to be getting bigger when you're getting stronger. But in your case you're actually getting stronger but you're not necessarilygetting bigger. So whatever. You know like I rather you get stronger and not bigger than bigger and not stronger. Do you see that too I mean where people are getting stronger but they're not getting bigger.
Jeremy [00:18:54] Yeah and I think that's something that most people agree with is that it's possible to increase strength without seeing changes in muscle size. At least most people would agree with that early on. I think the discussion comes later which is what you're describing to which I completely agree with you in the sense of we see it all the time that these variables are dissociated. You may see greater changes in muscle growth in one condition but no greater strength or you may see no change in growth but large changes in strength. I think that that just contributes to this idea that maybe these things aren't related as much as we think they are.
Adam [00:19:27] All right. So they're not related. So again as practitioners you know we're training people to get stronger and we're exercising. Now I understand there's a lot coming out about the physiological benefits of strength training especially high intensity strength training where it has nothing to do with necessarily about strength but more about what we're taught about before health and our health span. The mere fact that you're reducing injury but it goes way beyond that the organ cross talk and all the things that can happen from what a muscle does when it's fatigued deeply and all things we're finding out about myokines and the such anti inflammatory responses cell apoptosis things like that. So I have plenty of reasons to believe still in strength training and high intensity strength training and exercise in general but it's not necessarily going to be about strength and preventing you from dying early.
Jeremy [00:20:22] Yeah I agree. And I don't necessarily know that it's about who gets the strongest either. That's obviously an outcome that it's easy to help monitor people keep them motivated. They can keep pushing to get stronger. But I think so much of it is just about participating in that activity. But I completely agree that resistance training certainly seems like it has a lot of health benefits. I don't know if it's resistance training plus who gets the strongest. But I do think it's the act of exercising is probably where you're getting most of those benefits.
Adam [00:20:53] In your paper you have a section that says a muscle growth is neither necessary sufficient or contributory to muscle strength. I found one of the things you looked at really interesting about people that did low weights for muscle growth when they stopped and they were retested for strength that even though they lost size muscle hypertrophy they got smaller but they didn't lose their strength necessarily from de-training.
Jeremy [00:21:20] Correct.
Adam [00:21:20] Can you get into that a little bit with me because I found that fascinating.
Jeremy [00:21:24] Yeah. And I think that that's ahh...
Adam [00:21:27] I don't even know if I said that right.
Jeremy [00:21:27] No, you're referring to the paper where they had people train for I think I want to say three or four months and then they de-trained them for six months.
Adam [00:21:38] And they're using light weights.
Jeremy [00:21:39] No. You're combining two studies now. Yeah, but I know the other one. What you're talking about. But the first one that I think is suggestive that maybe muscle growth is not that contributory. Again it doesn't rule it out but I think it's something to consider. They exercise people as you'd expect and they saw an increase in muscle size and strength. Now this particular group for the next six months following that initial training period they stopped training. So as you might expect if you stop training all the muscle growth that you gained is going to go back to baseline. So if you've gained five pounds of muscle exercising you're going to lose those five pounds of muscle. You're not going to go below baseline but you'll go back to where you were. What was interesting about this study though is that they had individuals come in and do the strength test every month. So based on a lot of our literature that would suggest that we view our in training as kind of a form of training. What they found was following de-training all the muscle that they gained was lost but all the strength that they gained was maintained almost completely. And I think that this at least raises the question if muscle hypertrophy. In other words if muscle growth was so important for the change in muscle strength with exercise when they de-trained how did a complete loss of that muscle not influence strength really at all. So I think that's one line of reasoning. I think the other study you were talking about was one from one of my former students looking at very low load exercise.
Adam [00:23:16] Right. Right. Sorry.
Jeremy [00:23:17] So we had individuals train with very very lightweight. They did a lot of repetitions with very lightweight. And we compared it to traditional high load exercise. So following eight weeks of training the group that was training with very very light weight saw the same change in muscle mass as the group that was trained traditionally. And that's not unique. There's lots of people who see that. But they were training with such a lightweight. That the change in strength. In other words the change in strength in the movement of which they were training didn't change at all. And the group with training with a very light weight. However the high alert group saw large changes. The reason why this probably happens is because it follows along with the principle of specificity. In other words the group that was training very light every day they were coming in for the study. They were training at 15 percent of their max. So very light weight. So if the most that they could do is 100 pounds they were trained with 15 pounds every day. The other group was training with a heavyweight. So every day they were coming and working at around 70 percent. In other words that if max is a hundred. They were lifting at 70 pounds. By the time they get to the post test. Of course the group that's training with a heavy weight is going to be better at lifting a heavy weight. And that probably explains why the group training very light didn't see a change at least in isotonic strength.
Adam [00:24:43] But they got bigger.
Jeremy [00:24:44] Yes. So that gets to the idea that maybe that change in muscle mass is also not sufficient for a change in strength in other words having it doesn't guarantee that you'll also see a change in strength.
Adam [00:24:57] So maybe for those that want to get bigger should they be using. Well forget about strength for a second maybe those that want to get bigger see larger muscles. Maybe they should be doing lighter weights higher reps. Is that a conclusion that can be made?
Jeremy [00:25:13] I think so, I think with muscle hypertrophy, I wouldn't necessarily go at 15 percent if your goal is just to try to get a muscle as big as possible. I think what the literature would suggest is that really it's going to come down a lot of preference. So if you train at 30 percent of your max or even 15 percent but I probably wouldn't recommend going that low. If you're around 20 or 30 percent of your max up to 80 percent you're going to see the same change in muscle size. And I think that from a practitioners standpoint it's good because it allows people to have preference. They can do whatever they want. They don't absolutely have to train heavy. They don't absolutely have to train light.
Adam [00:25:51] Yeah it also depends on tolerance you know different people they just don't mentally for some reason handle the heavy weights too well it's you know for performance and safety they do better with lighter weights. So that's good to know. We'll wrap this up because, well time is up but I think we basically covered it. So the takeaway really is you could not worry so much about your muscle hypertrophy if you're working now and getting stronger and you're not getting as large as you'd like. Fret not. I mean you're still getting the benefits from exercise because in other words don't judge whether you're getting a benefit from exercise based on whether you're getting bigger or not especially you men out there and women. That's actually probably good news that you can get stronger without getting bigger. I mean they're always afraid of bulking up.
Jeremy [00:26:38] Yeah. I think highlighting the specificity component you asked earlier about if it's not muscle size and how are people getting stronger. It would probably be quite useful if we tried to better understand that specificity component. In other words because we know that this change in strength really is closely tied with specificity. In other words whatever you do the most of you're going to be better at. Very similar to that study the high load group was better at lifting heavy weights than a low load group. I think it would be useful to try and investigate mechanisms that might be able to explain that specificity component.
Adam [00:27:13] Yes you're right. All right well thank you very much. This has been very helpful and are you involved in any research right now exploring any particular questions?
Jeremy [00:27:21] Yeah we just finished a big study looking at you know some of these ideas of muscle size and strength again we were trying to correct some of the limitations that we've had previously in some of our designs and we're going to expound on that again in the next two years with some of my... I have another student he just finished his dissertation and another one is starting one. We're going to get at a lot of these questions. I'm very fortunate to have wonderful students and that makes all the difference you know sitting around talking with them throwing around ideas and then getting into the lab and actually testing some of these concepts through experimentation.
Adam [00:27:55] Fantastic. Great. We'll keep up the good work. I look forward to learning more about all of this. Thank you very much.
Jeremy [00:28:02] I appreciate you having me on.
Arlene [00:28:02] This has been the Inform Fitness Podcast with Adam Zickerman. For over 20 years Inform Fitness has been providing clients of all ages with customized personal training designed to build strength fast. Visit Inform Fitness dotcom for testimonials blogs and videos on the three pillars... Exercise, Nutrition and Recovery.