The Secret To Aging Strong: Why Muscle Is Your Best Health Investment

Introduction and guest background 0:00

This is doctor talks. Real talk from real doctors. Only issues that matter to you most. I am so excited about this interview. Welcome, doctor Shannon Richie, who is a former physical therapist and the founder of Lo fitness. She educates on how and why to build muscle in a sustainable, science based way that is uniquely and particularly perfect for people struggling, especially women with hormone dysfunction, thyroid issues. Even so, let's dig in. I am so excited. Thank you. Thank you so much, Doctor Shannon Ritchey, for participating in this summit.

I just admire you are such a wealth of knowledge and your your area of expertise is invaluable for women. So I know we're going to dig into so much incredible information today, but thank you for being here. Well, thank you for having me. I feel the exact same way about you. So I'm really honored to be here. I love it. Tell me, tell our listeners, our viewers, a little bit about your background and how you ended up in the field of fitness, because I know it was a little bit of, a unique journey and just your path to fitness.

Yeah. I am a former physical therapist. I went to physical therapy school practice for a few years and then sort of pivoted to fitness, during the Covid times. Now, I had been teaching fitness for years and years and years before that. I've been teaching fitness and personal training for about 15 years. So I had a background in fitness that has really evolved as I've learned and educated myself. It started with, you know, beat yourself up kind of exercise. More is better. The boot camps, the, you know, sometimes exercising twice a day, burning as many calories as possible, but also trying to weight, lift and build muscle and do all the things that I was learning that were important from my physical therapy classes in school, but also kind of having some fitness, conditioning, fitness, world conditioning, which is like, no, you need to work hard or you need to sweat, you need to burn a lot of calories or else your workout is not effective.

So that type of exercise quickly burned me out. I was 24 years old over exercising and developed chronic pain across my whole body. Low back, hips, shoulders, wrists, you name it. Everything hurt all the time I was getting treated. I was going to physical therapists and different specialists constantly weekly. And that went on for really years before I finally decided, okay, I think it's actually my workouts that are breaking down my body. It's not that there's something wrong with my body, it's that my workouts are hurting me.

And so I dove into biomechanics. I dove into neurology a little bit more. I dove into the physics of exercise and learned all I could because I was like, there's gotta be a way where you can see the results that you want to see. Because I was not the only one struggling with this. I had so many patients who were struggling with the same. See the results that you want to see, while not tearing your body up. So that's how I developed fitness and the founder of Level Fitness. And so that's where we are today.

And now I work out for less time than I ever have. I have no chronic pain, and I have seen better body recomposition results from this method than when I was working out for sometimes hours a day. I love that because as someone that serves women right, especially women as we age and I know we're speaking. So I mean, of course we're speaking to men to today. But like my my people are women. They're women going through hormonal shifts, perimenopause, menopause, just these big changes, hormonally speaking, that make us vulnerable to all of these conditions.

And so many of them are over working out, or they can't work out because they are in pain or fatigue. That's a big one for my people. Post-workout fatigue. And so you advocating kind of pioneering

Why muscle loss matters with age 4:07

that journey is so empowering and so needed. I'm a big fan of of low myself. So love it, love it, love it, love it. Thank you for the work that you do. Yeah, yeah. I want to highlight a couple things today in this conversation. I want people to leave here with some really valuable information and just concrete, steps that they can take and concrete data that they can rely on. But a big thing I want to highlight today is sarcopenia, which is like age related muscle mass. And I think people women, I think especially we don't think so much about muscle mass as we age and, you know, on average after the age of 30, even and I even think it starts probably in our mid 20s, but data shows we lose 3 to 8% of our muscle mass every decade after 30. And this accelerates even more substantially if we don't do anything about it.

It can be up to 10%, which is crazy. I mean, muscle mass. I know we've talked about the work of Doctor Gabrielle Lyon, but it is, quote, right, the organ of longevity. It's our ticket to live healthier, longer. Sure. Does that really correlate with your clinical findings, what you've seen in practice with women especially? Yes, absolutely. I think that women don't focus on it until they really start to notice the differences. And by that point, they've lost significant amounts of muscle mass. Usually when they start to notice is when they're like, okay, I'm maybe mid 30s, mid 40s, 50s, maybe even.

And they all of a sudden think my metabolism is completely slow. Yeah, I am doing all the same things that I used to do, and yet I'm gaining all this weight. And what we find is that a big reason for that is because they have slowly lost lean mass, and this happens really slow. It's a trickle effect. And so by the time you've noticed the changes, you've already lost significant amounts of mass. So if you can start building muscle mass as early as possible, you were going to set yourself up to avoid such a harsh change in such a harsh reality.

That sometimes happens in your 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. And a lot of people think, oh, well, I'm active. You know, I work out, I go to bootcamp classes, I go to XYZ, or I go to Pilates and so many I can tell you firsthand, so many fitness modalities are lacking the scientific principles of hypertrophy, or lacking the scientific principles of building muscle. So yes, you're moving your body. Amazing. Yes, you might be challenging your muscles. Amazing. Yes, you're challenging your cardiovascular health. Amazing.

But are you doing the right things to actually at least maintain, if not build, muscle? Are you eating in ways that are allowing you to at least maintain, hopefully build muscle? And the answer for most people is no, because I've been in the fitness industry for 15 years, I know what's out there, and I know that the majority of fitness modalities out there are just not following the science. So I really do think that we can talk about the principles of hypertrophy. And you can ask yourself, okay, am I doing all of those things?

And if not, let's shift to doing those ASAP because it's never too late. But it's also never too early. I couldn't agree more. And I want to dig into those principles and the kind of the framework I want to look at it from. Just to emphasize the importance of starting early is and this applies for men and women, but women start to lose testosterone, particularly at about 25, which impacts a lot in terms of our quality of life, like our energy, our endurance, our libido. But it impacts our ability to more easily and readily build and maintain muscle mass.

And it continues to decline as we age. Right. And my practice is filled with women. In fact, it is the exception, not the rule, for a woman to come in and see me and have a great level of testosterone. And I think people of all ages, yeah, I'm starting in their 20s, so, you know, the earlier we can adopt this mindset and this value, the more of an impact, the quicker the impact and the easier it will be to maintain. But talk to me a little bit about the principles of hypertrophy, because I know we've had this conversation before and it isn't information that's readily available or put in packaged in a way that's usable and understandable for people.

Yes, absolutely. So I like to think of it as a framework. So I like to think of it as the reps framework reps. And this is a way that you can remember what's important. And I get a lot of questions outside of this, like, okay, what about this or what about this or what about this? If you just go back to these basic four things and ask

The reps framework for hypertrophy 8:49

yourself, does my routine check these four boxes? You will see results as far as muscle mass. Now it might not be overnight. Muscle mass does take a good amount of time to build, so you have to be patient. I like to say setting a goal of building 5 pounds of muscle within a year is a great goal. That's going to happen slowly. It's not going to be an overnight change. You're not going to bulk up overnight. But if you are applying these four things, you will see change. So reps the R and rep stands for repetitions.

This is very important and something that a lot of women get wrong. Training close to failure in 30 reps or less. If you are doing more than 30 reps, if you're using really light weights and doing more than 30 reps, you may be building endurance, but you are not physically changing the muscle. You are not physically changing the shape or the size or the mass of the muscle. So doing 30 reps or less and approaching muscular failure. Muscular failure means go ahead. You have to tell me what to tell people, what a rep is in case they don't.

Yes, yes, of course a rep is like one bicep curl. That's a rep. Let's say you're doing, you know, three sets of ten repetitions. So you're doing ten bicep curls, three sets of that. So three different times. So that's a rep. So you want to make sure that you're doing less than 30 reps. Approaching muscular failure. Muscular failure means you are physically unable to complete another rep despite your best efforts. Like you, you physically cannot lift the weight again. That's muscular failure. Studies show you don't have to get all the way to muscular failure, and you probably don't want to get all the way to muscular failure all the time because it takes longer to recover.

When you do get all the way to muscular failure, but you want to get close a few reps shy of muscular failure, you know you're close to muscular failure when your velocity significantly decreases, so your rep speed significantly decreases. Let's say you could curl a weight like, let's go back to the bicep curl so you could curl away up for two seconds, down for two seconds towards the end of your set. It might take you four seconds to lift that weight, because your muscles are fatiguing so much that they're losing the capacity to generate force.

And so your rep speed is slowing. A lot of people mistake failure as the burn shaking, overall fatigue, getting bored, being uncomfortable. None of that matters. What matters is that decrease in velocity. Now this can sometimes come with a burn. This is sometimes can come with the shake or a tremble. But if you don't have that decrease in velocity, you're not providing a strong enough stimulus to elicit muscle growth. So that's the first, and I think the most kind of earth shattering concept for so many people, because we'll go to these group fitness classes.

And I used to teach all sorts of group fitness classes, even with weights, thinking that that because we were lifting weights, that means we were building muscle. But, you know, we were doing, you know, squats for like four minutes on end. Well, that's a lot of reps. And science just shows that it's not enough load to trigger the muscle growth to trigger protein synthesis. So that's the R reps E is exercise selection. So choosing an exercise that biases one muscle group at a time, the less fancy the better.

So we're not working arms and legs and core all at the same time. Because when you do that, you spread out your effort so much that none of those muscle groups can get to failure. None of those muscle groups are getting a very strong stimulus. So when we can separate our glutes and our arms and our abs and work all of them separately using separate, really simple exercises, we can approach muscular failure in those exercises and therefore provide the stimulus required for muscle growth. So that's E exercise selection.

P is protein, something I'm sure you speak to quite a bit. And this is I'm not formally trained in nutrition. So I try to keep this really simple, but just say 0.75 to 1g of protein per ideal pound of body weight per day. And this was something that personally I was doing all the right things. I was training close to failure, I was recovering enough, etc. and I just was not eating enough protein and I wasn't seeing the results that I wanted. And when I started tracking it, I found I was eating about half the amount of protein than what was recommended for muscle growth.

So I was like, okay, as soon as I started doing that, my results in my body composition completely changed. So that's the P protein. And then the S in the reps framework is structure. This is again something that's very important and something that if you're like a ClassPass girl I love group fitness. But if you're going to different group fitness classes, it can be difficult to structure your routine so that you're not overworking muscle groups. We want to think about working each muscle group in your body about two ish times per week.

On nonconsecutive days, muscles need about 48 hours of recovery in between, so that they have the time to build and repair back stronger before you stress them again. So if you're going to apply this class on Monday, that's working. Glutes, abs and arms. And then Tuesday you're turning around and going to an orange theory class or whatever that's working glutes, abs and arms. You're hitting the same muscle groups over and over, not allowing for enough recovery, and therefore you won't see the same results.

So having structure in your week is really important, and I recommend taking at least two days off lifting per week where you're doing just kind of some light activity, like I'll just go on a walk or a hike. Of course I'll keep my body moving, but I do take dedicated time off lifting. And I find that that allows me to really stay consistent, allows me to avoid injury, allows me to feel fully recovered before the next week so that I can really stay consistent. So that's the rep's framework. Again, if you're just applying those four things.

So repetitions, exercise selection, protein and structure, most people 99% of the people are going to see results following that framework. I love that. And that was so powerful for me the first time you shared it with me. It really truly is. And I want to share a couple facts. And then I want you to speak to this idea that you slightly hinted at earlier about, hey, you know, this concept of if I lift weights, I'm going to be big and bulky, and I want a feminine physique and I don't want to get really bulky.

But, you know, I think what sometimes we as women can lose sight of is there is this physiological foundation of as we go through these hormonal changes, for example, postmenopausal women tend to lose about 15 to 30% of their muscle strength, right? Which then train right. Isn't that crazy? 15 to 30% of their strength. And then postmenopausal women lose up to 1.5% of a lean mass every year. Right. And I assume that has to do with the loss of testosterone and even some estrogen. But I'm here to say women lose testosterone long before menopause, so who knows if that's like the time stamp data can be gathered at.

But who really knows if that's happening earlier? Because I think studies would likely show that it is if if we looked into them and then with that strength, with that lean muscle mass reduction, we see and experience an increase in fat. So muscle loss is scientifically proven to be accompanied by an increase in 20 to 40% in fat mass. So now we can see very clearly this metabolic shift. And so I want the next part of the conversation about oh my gosh. Well what if I get too bulky. What if, you know, overnight I look like the Hulk and I look, you know, not like myself anymore?

I want us to look to consider all of these things through the framework of there's a balance between fat and muscle, and they are heavily, heavily interrelated. So speak to a little bit of that if you can. Well, and I completely agree, and I think that that's something that is overlooked, that people, people who really focus on the fat piece of it. Whereas in reality, if we look at more the underlying cause, it's probably because of that slow drip and losing muscle over time that's causing an accumulation of fat.

And maybe not directly. I'm sure hormones and everything are so complex. So it's a comp. We work as a system, but yeah, that is one of the underlying reasons for this shift in body composition, at least from my studies. So I completely agree with that. Now, as far as getting bulky, I, I think that it is a valid concern. I understand, because I've heard from people, as much as I can say, muscle takes a long time to build, and it does.

Bulking fears, recovery, and workout fatigue 17:20

I have heard from anecdotally from people who say, okay, but like I've been lifting for a month or two months and I do physically feel bigger, my clothes are fitting tighter, like it feels like something's wrong with me. So I want to talk about this a little bit deeper. Number one, you may be building muscle mass but not losing fat mass. So fat mass typically happens from dietary changes. A lot of people think, oh, I'm going to exercise, I'm going to start lifting and I'm going to get all lean. Well, that is fitness marketing that has infiltrated our brains and told us that lifting weights makes you leaner.

Lifting weights itself might over time that the shift in metabolic changes, which happens from building lean mass, might contribute to a leaner physique. But it's mostly diet. It's mostly how you're eating. So if you are pairing diet with strength training, you can lose fat while gaining muscle at the same time. This is kind of that quote unquote toned. I don't love that word, but toned esthetic that people are looking for. And so if they're not losing fat mass from dietary changes and they're just building muscle, they may feel bigger overall.

So I do want to address that. That is a real thing. Number two, when you start strength training and you start stimulating your muscles correctly, you will likely have cell swelling that occurs. And this is just some temporary inflammation in the muscle. If you heard of like a pump like when you do or sometimes this happens after lifting session, you look in the mirror and you're like, oh my gosh, my arms look like physically bigger. Yeah, it's kind of this pump, right? So that can happen and that can stay in your system for sometimes days.

So people think like, oh, I've only been lifting two weeks and I already look huge. Well, you might just have some temporary cell swelling because studies show that significant muscle mass really takes a little longer than that. Maybe more like six weeks at least. Probably for most people. More like 8 to 12 weeks to see visible muscle mass differences. So it could be a little bit of cell swelling that you're feeling as well. But I think for most people it's okay. I want I have this esthetic goal and I think it's totally fine.

We don't need to shame people for having esthetic goals. But if you do have an esthetic goal, we do need to look closer at your diet and not just blaming exercise for making you feel bigger overall. Yeah, and I love the cell swelling conversation because I don't hear that anywhere else. And it is so true. Me personally, even like when I lift weights, I get puffy. You know, I don't like being puffy because I associate it with being inflamed. But, you know, you have to kind of shift that perspective a little bit and in part I think it is that reactive, inflammatory response that sort of is driving almost what's referred to as hormones or like challenging your body to the degree that we're making it stronger.

Right, right. And I did see a stat that postmenopausal women, it takes them 20 to 30% longer to recover from that post-workout inflammatory response. So I would say even menopausal, you might have a little bit longer potentially if cell swelling, if that is ultimately what you know is, is manifesting as this inflammatory response. So I thought that was really interesting too and empowering for people to know. Right? It totally is. And it goes to show the importance of structuring your routine so that you aren't overworking your body.

And causing unnecessary stress to your body that you're unable to recover from because you can't recover, then you won't see the benefits, right? It all happens. All of the magic happens in the recovery. So I think that's really important to point out is that as you age, your recovery might be different. You might, you know, have to adjust how you're exercising a little bit so that you are giving your body the proper stimulus, but not so much that you're unable to recover. Right? Yeah, absolutely.

And and listening to your body right. That's the thing I think our society is so much I mean, I think even especially in the workout community. Right. Like push through, go harder, suck it up. You know, and I think we need to be encouraging people, especially women, to absolutely be doing the opposite. I totally agree, because studies show a lot of times you're getting those cues because you're kind of trudging through your workout and it sucks and you're like, I don't want to do this anymore. And you're getting these cues from fitness professionals or whatever, like no pain, no gain, like keep going.

And studies show that when you dislike your workout and when you make yourself do it anyway, you're much less likely to see results from that workout. Probably because it's just harder to stay consistent, period. So if you are doing workouts that feel really good in your body, you're listening to your body. You're adjusting, modifying, changing so that things feel really good. Things don't feel like they're clashing in your body. You're more likely to stay consistent with that type of routine, and you're more likely to see long term benefit.

So I think that that's a shift that we really need to make. That's one thing that drove me crazy about the fitness industry is like the no pain, no gain thing. And I really do think that we need to get away from that and rewire our brains. And if you were an athlete, or even if you've just been in the fitness industry as a consumer for a long period of time, you're going to have troubles rewiring your brain. But it's one of those things that once you open your eyes, you really cannot go back. You're like, how did I exercise like that?

For years and years and years? So it really is a major shift. Yeah. And you know, the other piece to all of this is also like the longevity, the lifespan, the quality of life as we age, the risk reduction for pretty much early death, all cause cause mortality as we age. Can you speak a little bit to that as well? And I definitely have some facets that I want to add to for sure. Yeah. Well, I think about this is something that maybe not a lot of people think about because we tend to be short, short sighted when it comes to like our future.

I think about myself as a 90 year old, and I think I don't want I want to be able to get up and down out of a chair by myself without an assistive device. I want to feel strong so that if I trip and fall, I have strong bones, I have strong muscles. I can get up off the floor by myself, and I'm not at risk of breaking a bone because falls can be of the top reasons why people die in the world. Because you get a hip fracture. It's not the fall itself necessarily mean. Sometimes it is. Sometimes you get a bleed and then that ultimately kills you.

But a lot of times it's just that you fall, you break your hip, and then you're immobilized in a bed for however length of time and you're losing more and more muscle. As that goes on and your functionality decreases, you increase your risk of things like pneumonia and other other diseases and illnesses. And that's what ultimately a completely ruins your independence and B can lead to death. So if we think about, okay, I got to start building my muscles and my bones now so that when I'm in, you know, that last chapter of my life, I'm independent for as long as I can be. Is it?

I truly think like, it's so sad when you live, you know, 15 years and you have to have somebody help you up out of a chair every single time you stand up. So for me, that's so motivating as far as like building the muscle now, because I do understand that it takes years and years and years to build a significant amount of muscle and bone mass. So I think start as early as possible. Yeah. And I mean medically speaking, even going back to the fall thing, I mean, studies show we're trained in medicine.

Look, if if you fall falls are responsible for like 90, 95% of hip fractures. If you fracture your hip with a fall, you are 5 to 8 times more likely to die within a year. Wow. Yeah. I believe in, like, absolutely. And thinking about like, you know, I totally agree where if we think about the exercises we need to be able to do now to set ourselves up for success later on, like it's all those functional movements, you know, like squatting, standing up from the floor like farmers carry. There's so much data now coming out about farmers carries about especially women like women should be able to carry what is it, 70% of their body weight in their hands for at least a minute, so that when you're 80, you can open a jar?

Wow. Right. Because of grip strength? Of grip strength. Totally. Absolutely. And you know, there are other studies. There's Jama, which is kind of like, the the gold standard of medical studies. Right. Jama came out with a study that said people with low muscle mass, low muscle strength had a 50% increase in early death compared to those with normal like average or more muscle strength. Wow. Direct correlation. Right? Like we're over here treating all these people with these medications to prevent illnesses.

But things like weight training, coming up with a sustainable way to build muscle mass can reduce your risk of early death by 50%.

Longevity, strength, and sustainable training 26:18

That's empowering. So empowering. And it's something muscle mass is one of the things that you just cannot like. There's no shortcut. You can't buy. Yeah. You can't buy it. There's no shortcut. It's just consistency and loading your muscles. Progressive overload, recovering properly. And all of that is really needs to be a lifestyle change for people. I think that's one of the things that drives me crazy about these, like fitness challenges, is that they're so unsustainable and people burn themselves out or injure themselves and then have to take weeks off, and then they're so discouraged.

And that's like, let's. This is why I'm a big believer in gentle consistency, right? Just be consistent with something that you can sustain that doesn't wreck your body. Because this is this needs to be a lifestyle, because this loss of muscle and loss of bone, loss of metabolic function is a serious thing. And we cannot out medicate our way past, you know, low lean mass as we get older. So I think it's really important to start ASAP. Right. And I couldn't agree more about the sustainability factor.

Right. If it's if it's day in, day out, week over week to build muscle mass, it's not going to get done in a six week challenge. It's not going to get done. And something you can marathon and then stop and you know, the big issue I see with my people, people with hormonal issues is they get tired post workouts, they overdo it. And there there has to be that balance where people can effectively exercise effectively, build muscle mass and not make themselves feel sick. Flu like, need a nap later in the day.

That's like the gold standard for me. I tell people your number one thing that you can't do if you're going to work out is you can't feel more tired later that day. You have feel as energetic or more energetic as you would have had you not worked out, or you've overdone it and now your body is shoving you into too hard of a recovery, right? And I think that's where the rep framework really comes in. Nowhere in that framework is I am exhausted after my workout, or I sweat a bunch, or I burned a lot of calories.

A lot of times you'll do a lifting session, and especially if you're applying that framework, you'll do a lifting session and you won't burn that many calories and you might not even break a sweat. But you have stimulated a cascade of effects that will have such a better effect on your body, and it's going to leave you with more energy throughout the day, and it's going to be routine that you're more likely to come back to knowing that it's not going to completely smash you. Yeah. Could you put like a pin and you've kind of alluded to that even in this, in this last conversation, but put a pin in a few key highlights of people who maybe are going through these hormonal changes, who are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, needing to build muscle mass.

What are some strategic ways during a workout that they can not overtax their body, or things that they can tune into so that they don't end up doing that? Yes. So first, I think it's important to talk about something called systemic stress versus peripheral stress. So systemic stress is stress. That's all over your body. This is what we've been conditioned to believe is important in a workout. This is overall fatigue. You feel like you got hit by a train afterwards. It feels very satisfying when you're done.

So people chase that right. But it's not necessarily the driver of muscle mass. And in fact, it can get in the way of building muscle. So there's systemic fatigue. And then on the other hand there's peripheral fatigue. So peripheral fatigue is more at the level of the muscle. That's what we're looking for when we're looking at when we're doing a strength training session. So we're looking for fatigue at the level of the muscle. This can come with a little bit of systemic fatigue all over fatigue.

But we want to kind of limit systemic fatigue because when you're overall systemically fatigued you have less ability to recruit muscle fibers. So your quality of workout goes down as your systemic fatigue goes up. So this is counterintuitive to so many people. They think, oh, I'm working really hard. That must mean it's more effective. Well not necessarily, especially when it comes to muscle growth. So when you're in a workout and let's say you're trying to limit that systemic fatigue. So you can have really strong, really effective lifts.

If you feel your heart rate has really risen or your overall fatigued, pause, take a break and literally rest for a couple of minutes and I encourage my classes to pause the video and do this all the time. And I do this when I workout. Just pause, take a rest, because then when you go back and you do your next set of exercises, you're fresh. You're more able to recruit a higher percentage of the muscles. So your muscle recruitment increases, improves your quality of lift, improves your quality of movement improves, and therefore you're stimulating a better, cascade of events to occur and you'll see better results.

So it sounds so counterintuitive. Again, we have to rewire our brains. But I think that's my biggest tip. And then a second great tip. And this again sounds counterintuitive, is if you're someone that is prone to a lot of systemic fatigue, you get very tired from workouts. And you maybe you're a patient of McCall's and you're trying to build muscle, but you're trying not to overtax your system. Sounds counterintuitive, but lift heavier for fewer reps. So we talked about you can lift anywhere from six reps all the way up to 30 reps.

As long as you're approaching muscular failure, you can see muscle growth. However, once we get in that higher rep range. So let's say like 15 ish all the way up to 30 reps, systemic fatigue starts to climb. Climb up again. So you start to see more systemic fatigue as you get into those higher reps. So if you can keep your reps lower, we can still simulate the same amount of muscle growth, but you have less overall systemic fatigue. So this is why I say choose simple exercises and take those exercises as close to failure and maybe try some heavier weight and lower reps.

So maybe try like six to 12 or 15 reps. I like to stay in like the 10 to 15. That's the sweet spot for me. But you can you can oscillate within those rep ranges and see what feels best for you. And then my final recommendation is to choose more. I don't want to stay isolated left because I don't like that you can't isolate any muscle group. It's impossible. But more simple lifts. A lot of people suggest compound lifts, while compound lifts work, for sure, but they can be very systemically stressful.

So like a squat, an overhead press, a deadlift. Those exercises absolutely work. There's lots of studies to back them up. However, they can be stressful on your system, so if you choose more simple exercises, you can still stimulate the same amount of muscle growth. Studies show that single joint exercises and compound lifts can stimulate the exact same amount of muscle growth, so you just choose which ones you like. So choose a more isolated lift and take that close to failure and you'll see less systemic stress.

So for example, instead of doing a squat, let's say you're trying to train your glutes instead of doing this. Why you could do a hip thrust A hip thrust is really supported. You're still targeting your glutes. It's still going to be functional. You'll have. And studies show that you'll have functional transference when even in these more isolated lifts, it's the same amount of functional transference. So those are kind of my tips. So just to summarize, taking breaks, lifting a little heavier for a little less reps and then choosing exercises that are more simple and targeted and supportive.

I love that, and I just don't think people are going to find this information anywhere else. So thank you. Yay! I'm so good. I know I love it, it's so in line with people, you know, with hormonal dysfunction. So thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for sharing all of this with us today. I wanted to also just close with, you know, one. I want you to let everyone know where they can find you out in the world. And two, I also just wanted you to share a little bit about like in the confines of airflow, your fitness program, what particular programs kind of levels, resources would you suggest or recommend for people maybe who are going through hormonal shifts, changes, lower level hormones, that kind of thing?

Yes. So you can follow me on Instagram. I love educating on Instagram. It's Doctor Shannon, DPT Avila fitness.com. We have a that's even low fitness.com. We have a two week free trial. And then if you're a patient of McCall's or if you're someone who wants to start exercising like this within of, well, we really have each week as a new track. So there's new classes every single week. And anyone can be on the do those same classes and they're very structured. So you're working muscle groups two times a week.

They're 35 minutes. So they're not super long. They're not going to systemically stress you out. So if you are someone who you're like, okay, I want to apply these things to limit my systemic stress. I would just take the class but apply the things that I just said. So you'll hear us in class cueing. Here's how to get close to failure. Here's what it looks like to get close to failure, because we're doing it with you. So we're showing you what it looks like. I'll say take a break if you need to pause the video.

Now, if you're puffing and you're on a breath, pause the video. Now take a break. I'll say, if you want to lift a little heavier and stop your set sooner than I do, great. Do it so you can really make those adjustments for yourself, and you'll learn over time. And you'll you'll start to learn which exercises you like, which rep schemes you like. And it's really empowering because then you can take that information forward and apply it really for the rest of your life. Absolutely. Well thank you.

Thank you so much for being here today. It was absolutely lovely. I know that people are leaving here so much more empowered, with so much valuable insight and information that they that I don't hear anywhere else. So I appreciated. That's my goal. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your wellbeing. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website w ww dot.

Doctor Talksport.com. Stay connected. Stay healthy and join us next time on Doctor Talks. Real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.