Lift Heavy Sh*t
Do you want to get stronger, burn fat, burn calories, prevent injuries, strengthen bones, protect memory, support healthy hormones, enhance mood, reduce stress, and prevent heart disease? Or maybe you want to prevent/treat/or reverse metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, and/or Type 2 diabetes?
Women get the most health benefits from doing both cardiovascular and strength training. Many women focus on cardiovascular training, but in truth, the body continues to burn more calories than normal for hours, up to 24, after a strength training session. Strength training offers many health benefits and is essential for optimal health; it is even more important as we age when maintaining muscle mass is more difficult due to the decline in hormones. Besides, strong is the new beautiful.
When considering strength training:
You don’t have to go to the gym. A lot of strength training can be done at home using body weight. Exercises like squats, planks, and lunges can get the job done. (The Power of the Squat, NYT)
Form is key, particularly while learning, to preventing injury. Learn with a trainer.
Strength train one to three times per week - in addition to aerobic training.
To build strength without bulk, lift heavier weight with fewer repetitions.
Simple equipment like medicine balls or kettlebells can expand your workout with minimal investment.
A few years ago, I had hip pain for years that I could not make sense of. It came. It went. It would wake me in the middle of the night, and I would wonder if I had bone cancer because it felt excruciating. Yoga didn’t seem to help and may have made it worse. Same with running. It was mysterious to me.
Me on the Lobster Claw on Mount Washington
Then, my 18-year-old son taught me to lift weights. He had been a competitive skier, so he knew his way around the weight room. I went to the YMCA and learned to deadlift, squat with a bar, and do a variety of exercises with free weights. I went to the gym once a week for 12 weeks, and the hip pain I’d had for years resolved. I went on to accomplish a hike I never thought I’d make – I carried a backpack with my skis, boots, and helmet into Tuckerman’s Ravine on Mount Washington. I didn’t ski the headwall, but I skied Lobster Claw and the Sherburne Trail. I’m confident weight lifting made that trip possible and fun. My legs and back had gained enough strength to handle the demands of the adventure.
I recently consulted with Shelby Downing, one of the first female high-level strength athletes and coaches in the 1990s and the owner of Stand Strong Performance in Farmington, ME. I asked her what she thinks women need to know about strength training. Here is her response:
“1. Unlike other areas of fitness, It is EASY to improve strength AND to maintain strength gains. Three days a week is great and will lead to faster results, but even once a week in the weight room will build strength. Once you build a solid strength base, once a week will maintain your base (this assumes that you are doing weighted multi-joint movements).
2. You are never too old to start lifting weights. I [Shelby] am currently working with a woman who is 72 years old. She literally and figuratively walks taller than she did 6 weeks ago. She started doing assisted (holding on) box squats (squatting down to a box) with a box that was 24" tall – now she is doing unassisted bodyweight squats. She is scheduled to progress to weighted squats next week!
3. One of the biggest challenges with lifting weights is that you get stronger whether you lift correctly or incorrectly. If you lift incorrectly, you just get stronger until you get hurt. The keys to not getting hurt in the weight room are smart progressions and a commitment to impeccable technique. Invest in hiring a professional to get started. Certifications from the American College of Sports Medicine and the National Strength and Conditioning Association are the most credible certifications in the industry. Many personal trainer certifications can be completed online in a weekend. Do your homework!
4. Even the most complicated weight training movements can be modified and broken down into parts that almost anyone can do. Be willing to start where you are and, before you know it, you will be squatting with a barbell or dumbbells. Babies learn to stand up by squatting.
5. When strength is the goal, you want to take 1-3 minutes of rest between worksets (it is ok to go faster while warming up). This makes it really convenient for 2-4 people to train together. The social aspect of lifting weights can be an added bonus. If time is a limiting factor, commit to learning the more complicated, multi-joint movements and then you do not need to do as many exercises to train the entire body.
6. Squatting is the same movement as sitting on the toilet, deadlifting is picking up a bag of groceries or a box – it does not get much more functional than that. If a trainer tells you they do not use these movements, it is probably because they do not know how to teach them. Find someone who does.”
The following day, Shelby added: “Let's talk about motor units. A motor unit is a single nerve cell and the muscle cells that it talks to. Some are small, for example, some motor units in your eyes are one nerve cell to one muscle cell. Some motor units are really big, from one nerve cell to 1000's of muscle cells (think quads & glutes). Your body uses the smallest motor unit possible to get the job done. So when you lift up your coffee cup in the morning, you are using small motor units in your biceps. If you want to get stronger, you need to use a big enough load to recruit the big motor units.” In other words, lift heavy sh*t.
I wish I lived closer to Farmington to train with Shelby or that my son was home long enough to give me a refresher. For now, I’m working on integrating bodyweight exercises from Dr. Stacy Sims’ book Roar. I’m starting where I am. In the next blog, I’ll share some of the high points from Roar, a valuable read that is changing the way I think about movement and nutrition.