269-SYNCPodcast_CommercialFitness

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[00:00:57] Welcome friends to this episode of the Sync Your Life podcast. Today we’re diving into the phenomenon that is orange theory classes, F45 burn bootcamp and other commercialized fitness classes, including home programs and how they’re potentially harmful to women’s health. This isn’t the first time that I’ve covered the idea that cardio and high intensity exercise isn’t for the everyday.

[00:01:17] At least for female physiology, but I wanted to dig a little bit deeper as I’m seeing this creep up in my consults with women more and more. You see, for the last few decades, diet culture has encompassed this message that we should be burning a lot of calories and even eating less while doing so.

[00:01:31] You’ve likely heard the calories in, calories out model. And while we know that lessening calories and increasing movement is conducive for weight loss short term, And especially with men, it turns out that the more research we do on women, the more we learn that it can be quite counterproductive for women’s health.

[00:01:46] Namely, with our menstrual cycle health and our endocrine health as a whole. Thanks to pioneers in this space, like Dr. Stacey Sims and Dr. Laura Bryden, among others, we now know that under fueling and or over training can be detrimental to a woman’s health. In other words, too many women are not eating enough for their activity level, which later has ramifications on menstrual cycle irregularity, thyroid health, and so forth in many cases.

[00:02:10] Recently, I heard Dr. Stacey Sims dive deep on this subject with Andrew Huberman on the Huberman Lab podcast. So if you have three hours to listen to that, I highly recommend it. I studied under Sims by taking her courses while also undergoing my integrative health practitioner license. And to be honest, I simply can’t unlearn what I’ve learned.

[00:02:27] Everywhere I look, I see women kind of doing it backwards, and I want so badly to shout, hey, I know a better way. But perhaps now is a good point to pause here on the show and share my personal experience with this. Because you see, in my late 20s, once my chronic migraines were under control thanks to bioidentical progesterone, proper supplements, and stress management, I got really into fitness.

[00:02:47] I was introduced to a home fitness company and I fell in love with the programs. And eventually, I fell in love with proper nutrition. I went on to become a certified personal trainer and nutritionist because of it. And what started as a dominantly strength training and eating more, getting results program, and I was really optimizing my energy with something called P90X, it slowly became an obsession with exercise.

[00:03:08] Maybe not in the traditional sense, as I’ve definitely had friends who have exercised as much as two to three hours a day or more, but I became very addicted to the adrenaline boost that exercise gave me. The sweat, the endorphins, the power, the soreness, all of it. At this time, I was also teaching two bootcamp classes per day at my gym, and I was also training clients.

[00:03:27] So my activity level was very high. But the more I would do, the more I would crave. And I started to crave more cardio. And it’s almost like the fitness industry evolved with me, introducing shorter workouts with higher intensity, less rest and recovery, and all the Zone 2 and 3 cardio output. I was loving it, until one day when I was doing a 30 minute program that was intended to literally max you out, I nearly fainted, and my husband had to call the EMT.

[00:03:54] I wound up laying flat on the floor with my hands tingling and my heart racing for over an hour until I could calm down and walk with my legs wobbling. It was at this point that I had to schedule a visit with my functional medicine doctor and at that appointment we discussed my exercise patterns to which she recommended that I scale it back to three to four slower strength training workouts per week with a yoga day and one cardio day per week.

[00:04:17] Never maxing out. She recommended that I up my food intake, too, stating that, quote, no woman should be on a 1, 400 calorie diet with your activity level. When I told her that my nutrition plan allowed for one quarter of an avocado per day for healthy fats, She nearly fell out of her chair, explaining to me that hormones come from fat and protein and that without it, I am wreaking havoc on my body internally.

[00:04:40] Now, this was before I met Sims. This was before I went through my IHP. I was new to this knowledge and I had just been blindly following the fitness industry that I had fallen in love with so much. By upping my food and scaling back the cardio, my body corrected itself. My period became more regular, my energy became more stable, and I wasn’t as fatigued.

[00:05:00] I started to look around at my female gym clients, and I noticed that the ones struggling the most were the ones who were working the hardest, coming in for live Insanity classes four to five days a week, and trying to burn away the calories, but looking exhausted in the process. It was at this point in my journey that I was introduced to Sims and understanding female physiology when everything started to click for me.

[00:05:23] We, as women, have been sort of doing it backwards for decades. What looked like restriction should have looked like proper fuel. And what was overdoing the cardio should have looked like methodic strength training and mobility. Women are exhausting themselves by following this model of beating themselves into the ground.

[00:05:40] And it’s resulting in higher rates of adrenal fatigue, belly fat in midlife, because remember, our bodies prioritize survival and they will hold on to the fat when they’re in fight or flight, menstrual cycle dysfunction, and more. So what is it that experts like Sims have to say on this topic?

[00:05:55] Well, don’t just take my word for it. In Sims interview with Huberman, they converse like this. Sims says, the other thing about going long and slow is that it also increases our already elevated baseline of cortisol. This is why women feel tired, but wired. We have an increase in our baseline cortisol. We can’t get into a parasympathetic drive. If we are doing a lot of 45 minute boot camp classes, Or 60 to 90 minute runs, depending on what you’re training for.

[00:06:18] That puts you smack in the middle of this moderate intensity zone that perpetuates you to go long and slow and put on belly fat. It’s not a strong enough stimulus to be that external stimulus we are looking for to change body comp and to improve fitness overall. We want to polarize our training. We need to go super hard from a cardiovascular standpoint.

[00:06:37] We want to do high intensity interval training, but not an F45 or an Orange Theory Type Boot Camp type class. Because that puts you in the modern gypsy. I’m talking about you doing one minute, maybe one minute thirty as your interval, as hard as you can for that one minute. One minute thirty, and then you are recovering for twice as long.

[00:06:54] Even better, doing sprint interval training where you are doing full gas of ten by twenty seconds on, and you’re having a minute off. When you go back to do those 20 seconds, you are neuromuscularly recovered. Your heart rates go down and you can hit it hard again because we are trying to get you up there on that rating of perceived exertion of 9 to 10.

[00:07:12] When you are hitting that for super high stimulus, the body is like, quote, I need to be able to overcome this stress. What do I need to do to overcome that stress? I need to have carbohydrates and glucose available. I need to be able to produce power and speed.

[00:07:23] I need to be able to regenerate quickly. We’re looking at the post exercise and recovery standpoint as we have a boost in growth hormone. We have a boost in antioxidant status and we have a boost in anti inflammatory status. Those three things are super important for perimenopause. We have increased systemic inflammation because our body is going through so much flux and we have additional cortisol.

[00:07:42] We have a greater predisposition to soft tissue injury because we have systemic inflammation. We need a growth hormone boost. As we are under more stress with these changes, we have a higher oxidation status. We want that antioxidant. We’re doing the work. We’re getting more bang for our buck for body composition.

[00:07:58] We’re also countering what’s happening in the body with these hormones. When we are looking at what we need to do, stay on that long, slow, moderate intensity stuff. You are polarizing. You are doing super high intensity, and then on other days, you’re doing slow. Like 80 year old people walking past you.

[00:08:14] You are time on the feet, enjoying and relaxing because when you were doing that super low intensity, it can help with the parasympathetic drop. We can activate our parasympathetic and have that relaxation. That helps. You have to focus on polarizing. So I bring this up for many reasons, friends, because I talk about this often here on the podcast, and obviously we launched the Sync Fitness program earlier this summer that is all about this polarized form of training, but there’s a reason for it, right?

[00:08:39] There’s tons of research behind this now, and we now know that too many women are burning the candle at both ends trying to sustain Zone 2 cardio in their workout classes, or even home programs. She goes on to say in a blog post, she says, For women, Zone 2 training is great for active recovery, a certain amount of base building for endurance athletes, and social exercise.

[00:08:59] Yes, there is merit in Zone 2, but if you’re planning the bulk of your exercise time for Zone 2 training to enhance mitochondria function and fatty acid utilization, you may want to revisit that concept. One final and very important point is that when you do train in Zone 2, really make it Zone 2. This is really one of the biggest problems I see.

[00:09:16] Women spending too much time going hard, or kind of hard, and not enough time going truly easy. When Zone 2 training enters the conversation, they think they need to spend hours doing this. But it very often becomes hours doing moderate intensity that is harder than zone two and is eventually Counterproductive and that it just makes them worn out without the training gains.

[00:09:36] End quote. I’ll make sure that I link up for you multiple resources so that you can dive deeper on your own. There’s plenty of research where this podcast comes from. So what should women be doing for exercise? I am NOT just about flagging the flaws. I also want to offer you the proper solution. Well, as we’ve said multiple times here on the show, strength training is queen for women of all ages.

[00:09:55] Functional movements with progressive overload, making sure to include adequate rest between sets to fully engage proper power and strength. This is very different from the commercial fitness model of live classes and home exercise programs, which often try to condense the rest in order to get you burning more, leaving you gassed and not necessarily any stronger.

[00:10:15] Remember, most healthcare research out there has been done on men until the last decade or so, and now we know that strength training has ample benefit. Even the American Heart Association recently stated that, quote, resistance training not only can improve or maintain muscle mass and strength, but also has favorable physiological and clinical effects on cardiovascular disease and risk factors.

[00:10:34] End quote. Just 28 percent of U. S. adults and only 20 percent of women lift weights at least twice a week as recommended. That is crazy. 20 percent of women only. Moreover, the official physical activity guidelines should put more emphasis on promoting strength training. Currently, they’re recommending 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity every week.

[00:10:55] Along with activities that maintain or increase muscular strength and endurance at least twice a week. But as this statement from the AHA illustrates, emerging evidence is now showing the need for emphasizing the importance of resistance training for overall health and longevity. Remember friends, muscle is the key to longevity.

[00:11:13] So as you can see, we kind of have it backwards as women, thanks to diet culture philosophies. But as the science emerges and more and more women become aware, I’m hoping that we can do better. As I always say, when we know better, we can do better, and when we know the why, we can apply. I know the Orange Theory classes and competitive nature of the game is fun.

[00:11:32] Even Peloton rides are fun. I love them. The endorphins that you get from the cardio is exhilarating. The appeal of a shorter workout at a higher intensity to save time also seems appealing. But my friends, muscle is the key to longevity, like we said, and while cardio workouts might improve your VO2 max and have a place in our regimen, they shouldn’t be our regimen.

[00:11:51] Science tells us differently, and actually, our energy is telling us differently. The hundreds of consults that I’ve done with Dr. Page in the last several months tells me, you ladies know when your energy is off. We’ve gotta listen to it. Maybe what we’re doing isn’t working. My hope for you is that you consider what it might look like to focus on getting stronger in your workouts.

[00:12:11] If you use a heart rate monitor, please ignore the calorie burn and instead focus on the zones you’re training in and the worksheets that are associated with your progressive overload program. Your weights should be going up over time and your range of motion should be getting better. Those are the two metrics that we should focus on, along with making sure that we’re fueling enough.

[00:12:31] For those wondering, I do allocate additional calories to my existing 1, 800 calorie plan to compensate for exercise. So instead of saying, Oh, I burn 300 calories in my workout and then I stay at 1800 calories. I actually will add 300 or more calories to make it 2100 or more to make sure that I avoid LEA, which is low energy availability.

[00:12:52] This is the way my friends research tells us. So history tells us, so our energy is telling us. So the majority of women coming to me with check engine lights, flashing and low energy are those burning the candle in their workouts. We know better. And now that we know better, we can do better. As my good friend and sync trainer Kelsey Linsman says, We got to work smarter, friends, not harder.

[00:13:14] I hope this is helpful for you. I realize that it’s sort of the upside down, backwards approach to perhaps what you’ve been doing for years. But I’m here to tell you this is what the science shows us. Follow people like Dr. Stacy Sims. Like I said, I will link up for you in the show notes. All of the resources that I have on this topic.

[00:13:30] And if you have the three hours or so go listen to her on the Andrew Kuperman podcast, where she dives deep into all things, female physiology, including whether or not cold plunging is good for women. And if so, how to do it. She talks more about sauna. She talks more about type of training and fueling.

[00:13:44] There’s so much good content there. I wanted to bottle this down for you into just one simple concept, which is. Orangetheory classes, F45, burn boot camps, home fitness programs, they all might be fun, and they all might have a place in our overall regimen, but we really need to be smarter about this. We really need to say, do I have to be drenched in sweat?

[00:14:05] Do I have to be hitting zone 3 every day? Am I really too focused on the calorie burn, or am I actually getting stronger? And the real question you should be asking yourself every time you work out is, am I getting stronger? What is my energy? I’m here to help you reach that maximum energy, my friends. So I encourage you to listen to this again, take some notes, dive deeper into the research, but this is where it’s at.

[00:14:27] And this is where the future of fitness is heading. I can’t guarantee that commercial fitness will follow suit, but when you know better, you can do better. So without further ado, my friends, I’ll talk to you next week. Thanks again.