Mikkipedia | Transcript: Do Women Need to Train Differently? Strength and Menopause with Dr Tony Boutagy

November 11, 2026 • 80 Minutes

Do Women Need to Train Differently? Strength and Menopause with Dr Tony Boutagy

Hey everyone, it's Mikki here, you're listening to Mikkipedia and this week on the podcast I speak to Dr. Tony Boutagy about cutting through noise in exercise science, particularly when it comes to training women and really just the rise of the unqualified coach.

Tony talks about the growing trend towards sex-specific training recommendations, exploring what the research actually tells us about differences in muscle fibre types, fat oxidation, strength adaptations and responses to interval training, and why these differences don't necessarily warrant different training programmes.

We also discuss what matters for women navigating menopause, the importance of resistance training for bone and muscle health, and how little training is actually needed to build and maintain strength.

Tony shares practical recommendations for endurance athletes, considerations for those using GLP-1 medications, and why meeting people where they are is essential for long-term success.

We also tackle the dangers of over-interpreting research, and why evidence-based practice matters more than ever in an increasingly complicated health and fitness landscape.

So, really enjoyed this conversation with Tony, just a frank conversation really.

And, you know, he's got such a...

He's got such a wealth of information in all of these areas that we chatted about, and I really enjoy hearing how he frames it.

So, Tony is a strength coach and an exercise physiologist based in Sydney, Australia.

His undergrad degree was in human movement, and he holds a PhD in exercise and sports science from Charles Darwin University in far north Australia.

So, his coaching career has spanned close to 30 years, and he has written over 70,000 training programmes across a wide range of disciplines.

So, he's got a wide range of populations, including the general public, athletes, Olympians, special populations, and those needing rehabilitation from injuries.

He's also been involved in education since 1999, and he has his own educational programmes, in addition to holding various educational positions at several universities in exercise science, physiotherapy, and personal training.

You can find Tony over on...

And I will pop a link to his website and also his Instagram feed where he shares super practical information for us.

And I'll also...

This isn't Tony's first time on Mikkipedia.

Those long-time listeners will know I've had Tony on a couple of times now, so I'll pop links to those episodes in the show notes as well.

All right, guys, before we crack on into the interview, I would like to remind you that the best way to support Mikkipedia is to hit the subscribe button

wherever you're listening to this.

And leave a comment.

And leave a five-star review.

That increases the visibility of Mikkipedia and it makes literally thousands of other podcasts out there.

So, more people get to hear from experts that I have on the show, like Dr. Tony Boutagy.

All right, guys, enjoy this conversation.

Chat type thing.

I love your music of your podcast.

I've always loved it.

Have you?

Do you know, you could have used it yourself.

I think that we just...

I think it's...

You can...

Not that you need it because you've obviously got your own music, but I like it too, thankfully, because it's been close to six years at this point.

Oh, has it?

It's great.

I think it has.

Amazing, isn't it?

Time flies.

It is.

It does.

Now, Tony, firstly, so nice to see your face.

It's been possibly just over a year since...

Or maybe even more since you were last on Mikkipedia.

Can't remember.

I have a feeling it's definitely over a year.

Time flies, right?

Right.

That's crazy.

Right.

I was just in a WhatsApp chat with a couple of friends of mine who are in adjacent industries to ours.

And we were talking about just the rise of the coach out there.

And not necessarily exercise coach or even nutrition coach, but I'm thinking cortisol coach, menopause coach, ADHD coach.

I think that's also a thing.

And this...

I don't know, mental health coach.

I don't know.

And it's like, are people in this space?

It feels like these people have almost this overconfidence in knowledge, but very little

sort of behind a certification.

Because, you know, people can get certifications from everywhere at this point.

I think the idea of a coach is great.

If you have expertise in a subject and combined with a lot of experience,

you can help other people navigate the challenges of menopause, of growing older, of mindset.

But you're right.

The issue is not in the coach.

It is in, well, I like this.

So I went through it.

This worked for me.

And I'm now going to be a coach.

And the issue with this, because social media is the world, that if you've got a big following or you sound compelling,

people will think that you must know what you're talking about when in actual fact,

you might not have the necessary training to really understand the complexities of what somebody is going through.

A hundred percent agree.

And I feel like if people see that someone is certified in a certain area and they don't understand,

I guess, what the certification process might necessarily look like,

then this person is afforded this level of expertise that they may not have.

Like, I know so many people in this space.

And it's not that I don't like these people.

It's not a character assassination on them.

But there's just nothing behind this really base level of knowledge that is all well and good if things are going well.

But if there is something that goes wrong, that's when the rubber should really hit the road and things can fall apart.

It's consumer protection, isn't it?

This is not character assassination, as you said.

Well, how does the public know whether this person is really skilled to walk me through the complexities of whatever I'm facing?

Now, sometimes the complexities is not terribly difficult.

Personal training for the general public, it's my field, but it's not terribly complex.

Understanding bone fractures, risks of fall, training when you're on 16 different medications,

and their interactions with nutrition.

And you think, well, I've read that this was good for inflammation and aging.

You should take this.

It's like, right, but they're already on a blood thinner.

And that's where the consumer has to be protected.

Yeah, 100%.

And I've got a lot of thoughts in my mind, actually, well before I come to the set of questions that I sort of sent you through.

I was listening to another podcast this morning.

Doctors were just discussing people on GLP-1s.

I mean, it's their specialty.

And then one of their listener questions was someone was getting pushback from friends of theirs because they were taking a GLP-1.

And the pushback was, you're supporting Big Pharma.

Yet the person giving pushback was taking like a peptide bought from a Medispa company.

You know, clearly that's not, you know, because it's some sort of black market peptide, then they're not in support of Big Pharma.

Or be it this person who was.

You know, getting the pushback, they had a BMI of 45 and had PMOS.

So, you know, if there was any, if any time there was a clinical case for a medication that would help support them, surely this would be it.

But isn't it crazy the perceptions that are out there?

We all have blind spots.

And I think we look into a situation like that as outsiders and go, right, there's a blind spot there.

But we all have them.

We've got cognitive biases.

We see the world in one way.

And we forget that other.

People come to it from a different background and perspective.

I think as I get older, the younger, brasher me would have said, are you kidding?

Look at what you're saying as to now, you might consider this.

Yeah.

It's just, I think there's a lot of overwhelm of information, or at least there's just so much information out there that we could all be experts in a particular.

Or feel like we're an expert in some particular area.

And you must get this with your clients too, like who might come to you and they've already diagnosed themselves with something.

And they've decided to take this sort of course of action, which feels very well informed because the information is out there for them to grab.

But in fact, they don't really have a sense of, they just don't have that background knowledge to actually make good decisions around it.

It must be so hard.

I just think when, I don't know.

I don't know anything about cars.

I don't know anything about my tax and accounting.

I just rely on the people doing my car and doing my accounts that they're real experts.

And the same must be of our clients and the public who are bombarded with information.

But the thing is, you don't go to social media and follow an accountant who tells you everything of how to do your accounts.

We just trust them.

Right.

hopefully today we can provide a framework of evaluating whether something is more likely to

be correct than all the kind of opinions and even slop that's out there? 100%. And I really like

that analogy to the sort of the finance perspective as well, right? Because I don't know anything

about investment, for example. And I immediately just think, well, I've never been trained in it,

so why would I know about it? Yet, of course, everyone eats. So everyone feels like they're

some sort of, they've got that sort of base knowledge. Albeit what I will say is I have

started following a lot of these sort of mum and dad investor type pages on Facebook. Man,

you learn a lot and from podcasts, but I would by no means think that I'm an expert in it.

But yeah, I guess it's what you do with that information in your context. And I think

that's the thing. Yeah. I can remember when I was

I give a lot of leeway to content creators in their 20s because I think, well, we didn't have

this in our 20s. But if I was around in my 20s now, I would be insufferable. And I can remember

talking about something to do with medicine with a friend who is a doctor. And he goes,

Tony, that doesn't happen in Australia. That's a different law. It's like, oh, I learned that

on something I had seen from an American doctor. And those rules,

didn't apply here. I didn't know. I just was young and 20. And I think this is part of the

problem. I'm sure there's great content creators in their 20s. But in another 20 or 30 years of

doing one subject, you're going to realize that world is really big and really complex. And

it's often beyond what we understand when we're in our 20s.

It is interesting, isn't it? With the years of experience and working with people in different,

different contexts and having to consider what we think of as rules or guidelines within that

person's own sort of lived experience, that is where you get that level of understanding and

knowledge. And you can't fake that. You can't just, you can't fast forward that either. That

is actually just time spent doing things. Right. Absolutely.

Yeah. Nice one, Tony. So one last thing before we crack on into the conversation,

had enjoyed a lovely glass of red wine last night. And as,

as Hubster was getting down the wine glasses, I said, Hey, put that wine glass on the scales.

Right. Yeah. And I'm like, I want to see how much your usual pour is compared to what is deemed a

standard pour. And actually, actually, so he normally pours about a hundred mils.

Okay. So he's a light hand. He is a light, I mean, it is, it is, let's, I will be very

transparent. It is multi,

there's multiple pours. Yes, of course. Now more envious, I could not be that you had a tipple last

night. I, I find, and I don't know if your listeners are the same, but the best intervention

I can do for my sleep is to bring eating and drinking as far away from going to bed as possible

because I can't dissipate the heat. I just cannot get rid of it. And I, if I go to bed at, I'm up at

four. So if I go to bed at eight, I know that's, I know I go to bed at eight.

I love it.

But if I eat at six with my friends, then I don't sleep well because I'm just too hot. And if I eat

at four or five and drink then, then I sleep better. So it's just this dissipation of heat.

So, I mean, again, another solid case for day drinking in Tony's example.

I do my best writing. So I, Saturdays, Sundays, it's my PhD days. I'm doing a second PhD and,

uh, and I spent all day in this library.

Just writing. And with a little bit of alcohol, I write a lot better.

I'm sure. I don't, I'm going to say, I don't doubt it. And I shouldn't say that because it

sounds like, well, cause you're so shit. So something's got to be better. This is not what

I mean at all. Um, but okay. So now I'm curious. Well, one, I'm sounds ridiculous. And, um, so

Barry, as you know, does edit the podcast. He'll be going, oh my God, don't even, you should not

have mentioned that because that makes me slightly envious that you're doing a PhD. Like,

oh, I'm sick.

Second PhD, man, I'd love it. What is it on?

It's in a different field. It's in ancient history, which is my second love. And, uh, I, I think one,

I've always wanted to do it, but, but to my aging mother, she has dementia and just seeing that and

its impact on the family. I just want to really push my brain in a different, completely different.

It's not like learning more physiology, which I love. It has to be something quite different and

learning and writing in a different discipline is very challenging.

And that's what I decided to do for the next, however long it takes me.

I mean, that is amazing, Tony. I had no idea. Like I applaud you to go down that path because

as you and I both know, a PhD is, of course you need a level of intellect, but actually you need

that tenacity and that perseverance to really stick at it. When the last thing that you want to be doing

is, is answering one particular question and the series of questions for years on end, like well

done. Right. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so to get into what we want to talk about today. So I,

I think I sent you a post. So part of this will of course be about me because I'm

quite selfish in that regard. Why we do podcasts. That's why we do podcasts. Um, and, and sort of

chat a little bit about strength training, um, and running, but of course, you know, you're very

outspoken. Um, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,

on social media about just like training modalities for, uh, people at different life

stages and, and how different or otherwise that they need to be, um, or not. So, I mean, let's

just cut straight to the chase really Tony and start there. So if we strip away all of the noise

on social media, do men and women actually need to train differently? The short answer is no.

Sex doesn't dictate your sets and your reps and your exercise selection and your training

or anything like that. The individual needs do. If you had two females sitting together in a room

and one was 30 and one was 60 and one had not been training and the other had been training for 30

years, those individual goals and needs and background drive the particulars and not a male

sitting next to them. Who's again, 30 and 60 with a different training experience. It's one's

background. It's one's training goals.

Okay. So there, you know, there are physiological differences obviously between men and women,

but should these not drive training decisions or track? Yeah. Yeah. Training or programming

decisions, I suppose. It's a really great question because the new thought of training

should be sex specific. And, and it's actually even more emotional than that.

Yeah. sex is the third until you're out and things are tomatoing and plastic or something like

that. And no, everyone who's trained male or female has had found things that have worked for them,

things that haven't things that they got injured with those that reached a plateau and they just

couldn't get past it. And the coach would always problem solve. Where have you been? Where do you

want to go? What else is going on in your life? And they take all of that and then put a solution

together. Oh, you've completely missed this and you've been doing too much with that. And maybe

you need to sleep a bit more. On and on in the last several years, an emotional perspective from

your perspective is inherited back into the experience of women and men and there's a lot that is not

has come about, that is the reason why you have plateaued or you didn't get the results you wanted

is because you followed a program that was written by men, based on studies by men, and you as a

female got the leftovers. And you were working against your physiology because females have

different physiology. So there's this really emotional drive. And I think a lot of people

really relate to that going, yeah, I couldn't lose weight. And yes, my injuries occurred. And

no one gave me the solution. And here is the answer. It is because you are following the wrong

program. And when we strip away that and look at the actual question, it's based on sex differences.

Now, there's two things that can't coexist together, of course. You can't know that

there's sex differences and have no studies on women. So those two

things are opposite. So we know that there's sex differences in fuel use, in muscle fiber type.

There's disputed differences, which we can talk about. But you are either then basing a program

on physiological differences, or you're basing a program on the way sets and reps and exercises

and programs have been delivered to males and females and looked at an outcome. And there has

been studies on that. And I think that's a really important thing to look at. And I think that's

that have compared males and females. Let's just take resistance training. Endurance training goes

back decades. But males and females were really robustly tested in the early 1970s. By the 1980s,

there were position stands that were able to compare males and female outcomes when they're

given programs to look at the differences and to give recommendations and conclusions. And in 1989,

the conclusion of the NSCA, which is the governing body, said that males and females respond similarly

and respond differently. And that's a really important thing to look at. And I think that's

a really important thing to look at. And therefore should follow the same kinds of programs if you

want to improve strength and power and muscle mass and bone. That was revised and then revised again.

And the new position stand, which is now in its third iteration, came out recently and concluded

exactly the same. That is when males and females are given a good program, goal specific program,

they respond the same. So we should be leaning on the human data that has compared males and females

and not on sex differences. And if you wonder whether that's correct, you can speak to any

high performance coach who trains men and women and say, do you have a men's squad or a women's

squad? And they will politely smile and say, no, we just have goal specific programs. You do 200

meters, you do 800 meters. So we train to the goal, but not to your sex. And you mentioned

sort of fiber type differences, fuel.

Substrate use differences between men and women. And I'm, I'm, you know, you know, that I'm

interested in, in fuel substrate use and stuff thinking about, you know, training wise, but also

metabolic health wise, because that's an area that I've been sort of deep involved with throughout

my career. And I always, I understand that women are better fat burners than men, you know, like,

like as a, you know, if we had to, not that we do, but what we do, you know,

like general man versus women, women will burn more fat, but we are a product of our environment.

And this is the thing which I, which, which I do struggle with actually, because I hear that women

are more metabolically flexible. And that is like just a feature of us. And so we don't have to

worry as not, I don't know how it's often couched, but the cat, the thing is, is that women are

better fat burners than men, but we are only better in a particular environment that lends itself that

way. So, you know, I, I don't know, actually, I remember looking a couple of years ago at studies

on metabolic flexibility in women, particularly as we, as we get older and head into perimenopause

and menopause. And, um, I didn't see a lot in that training space, I suppose.

No, there's two follow on questions and this changes everything. What is your training status?

What kind of habitual training do you do and how fit are you? And what is your habitual diet?

That changes everything. And I get concerned when these physiological differences at rest in the

untrained are then used as some form of defense. Well, see, because you are a better fat burner

and because males have 51% fast twitch and females have 51% slow twitch, you're,

you're an endurance queen. You should be doing, you should be more sprint training

because you've already got the endurance. Like that's a really simplistic view of,

of how physiology works. And it's taking a small snippet of untrained people,

because if you take you versus a sprint, you versus completely untrained, you,

you will have different fiber types. This is an adaptation to training. And I get really

concerned when these, and they know what they're doing, right? They know this stuff,

but they take a very small area and then push it as a training rule. Would it not be better

to look at studies that compare males and females on the same program and then look at the training

outcomes? Now, if you give males and females aged match and they do the same endurance training and

men really respond well, or they don't, and women respond really well, they go, ah, well, now we've

got grounds to say, perhaps men need to do a little bit more base work because women, they

respond really quickly. This work has been done and there is no difference. And we can talk across

the different intensity domains.

It speaks to the point that women have been told that they are massively underrepresented

and they have been ignored. Well, how would we know that these outcomes are similar if they

haven't been studied? I guess my other question around this, Tony, is, you know, science has never

settled, right? Of course not. And equally, like how much, what studies would need to be done in

order to, I don't know, be...

I mean, you're very certain, but other people are very certain as well. So what studies still need to be

done to sort of, it's not even about convincing, but to sort of test that hypothesis and go, okay, I was

wrong.

Well, certainty is certainly a way of looking at it. I think it's better to phrase it as, what is

probabilistically correct? Because we need to do something. Who is more probable to be correct?

Based on what we've done.

Based on what we currently understand. And I think it's, if we just take one of the big advice,

and that is, let's follow the framework. Women have been underrepresented and they're following

advice from men, written by men and women get leftovers. I mean, that's virtually a quote.

And females have more slow twitch fiber. They've got more mitochondria and therefore they're built

for endurance and should do more sprint training. Well, let's have a look at how certain you are

on that statement.

Is that from a study or a meta-analysis that has compared males and females with the set

frequency, intensity, duration, or does that come from a biopsy of a liver in a mouse to show that

females have more mitochondria? It does. So yeah, you can be very certain in a different species

that females have more mitochondria, but in human studies, they've done this work.

Capillary density is the same.

Mitochondrial density is the same. Small differences in fiber type, which don't mean

anything. Your fuel metabolism changes, as we've just said, based on your training history and

your training status and what kind of training you're doing. And let's look at the studies that

compare. So I look at that database in humans and think there really isn't a difference that

would make me give you as a female versus age matched, same goals, a different program based

on sex.

And it's like, oh, I'm going to be aged on goal. Whereas somebody who else is certain, it's like,

well, right. But you're using a different species to make that claim.

Yeah. No, I guess it is a really contested area, isn't it? And I suppose-

Can I just say, Mikki, that it's not contested by anyone in the field. It's only contested

by people selling you something.

Social media.

Yeah. And that is, you can't trust any information that's out there because it's

written by men for men based on male data. You can follow my stuff because I am the scientist

who knows this. And that kind of wording is actually used in promos. Like I'm the sex

difference scientist. Okay. Well, why are you using a different species and ignoring all the

human data? And I think this is really important for the public to understand that there can't be

two views that are polar differences.

Yeah.

And that can be correct.

Yeah. Do you know, it's my, so I follow, do we follow Adam from Four Weeks to the Beach?

I do not.

Oh, you would like him. He's great.

I'm sure.

And he's very, and he's really, he's in the more sort of the diet and nutrition and training

side of things. And he's very, a lot of his clients are in that perimenopause, menopause

space. And he was recently on SIAT Fitness podcast with Jordan SIAT. And he was talking,

he was talking about, he was talking about, he was talking about, he was talking about,

and he got absolutely slammed talking about menopause because he's not a woman, a woman

going through menopause essentially. And, and if you follow, like he's a, he's sort

of like a gruff looking man, if you like, but he's got a lot of empathy and he, but

he's a straight talker too. Like he's not going to sugar coat anything, you know? And

so you'll see it in his content. And I think sometimes the person saying something,

I don't know, he was slammed because he's not a woman. And sometimes I wonder if some

of the pushback that you might get is because you're not a woman.

Oh, most certainly, but you just have to ignore those. That's not an argument. If you really

think that a coach or a muscle physiologist like myself is not allowed to comment on a

sex or a stage of life.

Yeah.

Because I am a male, not a female, and I have not gone through menopause, then you're also

welcome to not listen to what we have to say. And I'm happy with that. That that's, it's

not an argument. So we, I ignore those things, but if you come with a, a question, a legitimate

question, and that is what do I need to do differently going through menopause? We can

answer that. We can do it based on studies. We can do it based on physiology. We can also

do it based on my experience.

Yeah.

We can do it based on what we've done with people through the menopause transition, both

who used hormones and both that did not. And we've also got DEXs twice a year, every year

through that transition. Now there's not many people in the world who do that and have done

that so diversely across the disciplines, but if you don't care, cause you're a male,

that's also fine. That's okay.

Okay. So on that then, what should we do for a woman? I mean, people probably know, but

I just want to ask that question.

Yeah.

There is a woman in her forties or fifties. So let's actually, yeah. So, and I think actually

a lot of women who have gone beyond menopause now are like, what about me? Because a lot

of the argument is, well, argument, but you know, a lot of the discussion is around that

perimenopause time, but you know, if they just want to be strong, fit and healthy for

life, what are the training non-negotiables?

Yeah. And, and what are the differences between an aged matched male? Because a lot of these

women, if they are partnered, they'll be going through it with somebody presumably of similar

age and do, do they therefore need to do very different things? It's a great question and

it's not a new question and there's great data on this, but it comes down to the adaptations.

Well, what are we trying to get from a training program? What's going on physiologically

through that transition and for the decades after, and what is training trying to do to

those, uh,

changes that are happening physiologically. Again, this is where a lot of the hormonal changes

are driven as this is why you need to do more strength training, as in heavy loaded strength

training, because you lose fast twitch fibers. We're both males and females lose fast twitch

fibers. So that's not sex specific. There's a hormonal change. This is true. Men only have a

slight decline in testosterone, same with females. But we understand that that's not really a key

driver anymore. That certainly was a key driver of what was going on muscular wise in the 1980s

and 1990s. But now with another 20 years of data, we know that that's not really a big deal. That's

not driving the sets and the reps and the exercise. And that again, is really comforting to know.

So what is the difference? Well, probably urgency, that if you've not lifted weights,

and you're in your 40s, just as an

arborist,

age, then we know that bone is more likely to be impacted negatively through that transition

compared to a male. But males still have bone issues, but not to the same

severity and speed that a female does through the transition. But luckily, the solution is

resistance training. And resistance training can cover a wide range of attributes that we want.

It can impact muscle mass.

It can impact muscle strength, impact muscle power. And a good program would be designed to hit all of

those three capacities. Plus, to use a phrase, bulletproof tendons or injury potential. And we'll

therefore look at adding balance and stability and tendon loading as well. Would that differ to a

male? Nope. Those programs could you a male and female could go in together age match and do

the same thing. Because it's the adaptations we want.

We want you to be able to recruit your muscle fibers and place a large amount of tension on them.

Yeah. Do you know, one thing which I know in a gym that really frustrates me is some gyms you

walk into in the equipment fits like a 90 kilo, six foot male, and not a 50 kilo, five foot three

women. And that's, that's the thing that like, grinds my gears, but which is a complete tangent

from that.

Definitely.

But that's, I suppose, a difference. And people just need to think more about the adjustable

features of equipment.

It's certainly getting better. I think, I think that has been a really legitimate and something

I've really struggled with as a coach of over 30 years is like the back pad is longer than the

torso and the legs on some of my clients, but it is getting better. I mean, adjustable back pads,

adjustable leg pads and up and down, and clearly free weights.

it doesn't matter but the machines we love machines machines gets rid of the balance

component we want a balanced component at times and at other times we don't want the brain thinking

of stabilizing and bracing and this and that and we just want the brain to think the muscle we're

trying to do to get more out of that so we'd love a combination of both but often the machines like

you're not going to fit on that yeah i exactly and i and i do really like a machine because

if for example because i often find myself in a gym after a harder run or a or it's the end of a

sort of a week if you like and it's and i've just finished a run so that run itself might not be

hard but there's fatigue and so i don't trust that my body is able to with i've been sort of like

turn on all of the the muscles and the tendons in a way that keeps me safe i suppose so exactly

yeah it's a real safety feature absolutely and as long as the brain is perceiving

injury

just like you've described you will absolutely have the brakes on how many muscle fibers will

be available to you in that session so tony if i think then sort of shift the conversation to

cardio like i really don't think and i think unless you are actually training for something

cardiovascular like a cyclist a triathlete like a runner like a swimmer do we even need to care

if we're doing zone 2 training do we have to think have i've got my 45 minutes of zone 2 like

a lot of people don't know that they're doing zone 2 training so i think it's a really good

thing to do and i think it's a really good thing to do and i think it's a really good thing to do

people are talking like this and i just i just think it's over complicating it like can you

not just get out and go for a run does it really matter how high your heart rate is or otherwise

like people do they don't mean to but they catastrophize these small details in their

training which is just so inconsequential to your goal and even and i dare i say it like i try you

know i train i'm currently training for a marathon and i've i've got specific intervals and stuff i'm

trying to hit and i'm wanting to do it i'm basing it on my body and i'm trying to hit it and i'm

pace um and effort actually more so than anything i'm basing it on my perceived effort but i could

go real into the weeds and go well my heart rate's too high or you know and i just i feel like there

are things that we over complicate that are so unnecessary for the general person wanting to

live a fitness lifestyle where do zones come from they come from athletes so they can control

intensity distribution across the week and not do too much and burn out or do too

too little and under adapt these were then taken into the fitness industry if you train every day

or you take your training seriously just understanding hard and easy is absolutely

good enough the issue we have of course is how do you define hard and easy but that's just a

simple conversation being able to talk during your running that's easy can you back up and do it

every day could you keep going great that's easy

love that because you can accumulate a lot of time training because a lot of time training

or training volume is a key driver of many of the adaptations that we're after

to promote marathon running or endurance or healthy aging cardiovascular wise but it does

something slightly different to when you really rev the engine and you go hard as long as you

understand i've got easy and i can talk and i've got hard where i want to stop and don't want to

keep going then that's probably what the

the

majority need for most of the time

yeah so i don't know that i'd be able and i mean i'll be honest i can't i mean i do intervals with

with running but if i like getting on a bike or something like i've only really learned in the

last few months how to get my cadence up on 85 and over yeah yeah uh who knew that if you just

lowered that level down that would actually work it takes a lot actually for my brain to really

click in and say i'm not going to be able to do this i'm going to be able to do this i'm going to

stay dialed into it and that does lift my heart right but but i i a lot of the conversation isn't

just about zones it's about hit and sit and getting that right and and i don't i'm not

confident that unless you've got about five people if i if i had five people around me

really telling me to absolutely go for it i don't think i'll ever be able to reach the intensities

that a sit session um is sort of set out to achieve i don't know like i probably i personally

right running sprinting is a skill in itself that is highly injurious yeah which means this idea of

women through the menopause transition when they're more likely to have tendon ruptures

kind of muscular tendon injury and telling them to do sprinting without giving really clear

caveats around it is just a recipe for disaster can you do it on a bike sure can you do it on an

assault bike sure absolutely what's your chance of injury

little can i tell you on an assault bike i want you to go 20 seconds all out so you can't do 25

seconds within a few you'll be able to understand what you need to do to do 20 seconds of work

really safely but i would never do it running unless you were a sprinter it's too skill oriented

and these are where we need coaches to read past all the headline grabs women should do this

perimenopausal should do that

okay how does that work for you in your life in your fitness with your background

and then firstly why would that be any different to a male as well and this is where the science

underneath it is really very shaky because the rules apply to both let's just look at that for

one second studies have looked at men and women aged matched across hit and sit and continuous

we'll rule that aside and have looked at training outcomes and they conclude a 20

24 meta-analyses that looked at more than 126 studies that looked at men and women so that

answers the question in this specific field women haven't been studied well we've got 126 of them in

a meta-analysis compared evenly matched males and females and they found identical responses in

vo2 max change in threshold change in performance outcome change males and females respond the same

so it's sex agnostic but will you get something out of sprinting that you won't get from just

intensity work and the answer is maybe a little bit of muscle fiber recruitment but would you

really know the answer is no so can you do sprinting safely yep bike yeah assault bike i

love the assault bike but other than that you can just do high intensity interval training and still

reap most of the benefits yeah i like i remember listening to ronda patrick i believe um this is

years ago now and she was talking about how she was doing tabata tabata and you know tabata um

for people who are listening is that the you'll have to correct me if i'm wrong but is it 20

seconds with 10 seconds rest times four and that is it like times eight times eight times eight

times eight so it's your best 50 second effort yeah so yes let's call it just under a minute

that on one day after a good warm-up you do your best if it's you probably wouldn't do it running

because it's too much start stop and that deceleration becomes injury but what do you do

on a bike sure assault bike absolutely

i really do think for this on off on off work like a tabata now tabata is only four minutes

it's eight lots of them and you're meant to reach task failure at the end if you do them on a bike

or an assault bike because there's no risk of injury it's just so easy but it's your best 50

second power okay so that's what that's what that is i remember ronda saying she did like i don't

know five lots of them or something yeah which is not tabata yeah that's just yeah yeah that's what

it is and you know as try as i might i don't think i'm i don't have the skill to actually execute

properly a um sprint interval type training and of course i could train i'm sure i could

train myself to some extent but but there are just some things that you can you really teach

an old dog new tricks and i don't know i think that this dog is just a little bit too old yeah

but i think you're no exception i think you're the majority and let's ask ourselves what benefit

would we get from this versus other modalities that are safer and i think that's a good question

the point of sprinting is that you're going to preferentially use your fast twitch muscle fibers

can you get the same muscle fiber recruitment when you do a set of leg press or leg extensions

absolutely but this is also the problem when women have been told you've got to do max strength

lifting and you've got to do sprint training and then you start doing them on each day

monday is your weights training tuesday is your sprint training wednesday is your weight training

sprint you're doing the same muscle fibers every day there is no recovery there

and because it might be different to what you've done high rep training a lot of continuous

training when you do high intensity training you've got a fresh stimulus introduction to the

program you're going to get results for the next little while but two things will happen you'll

either burn out and get injured because you're doing the same muscle fibers every day recipe

for disaster or you will just hit a plateau and then you go well oh i thought i'd found the

solution like well it's a new program it's just something different

and that's the concern that i have that ultimately let's have this chat in three months once you've

found what you think is the best thing then let's talk when it's going to plateau but worse you could

get injured yeah you know i remember um this is related but a bit of a tangent like some of the

running coaches that i used to have conversations with when i was a more serious runner maybe

20 years ago now and they would set up programs so if i'm thinking about sort of age you know

for me as a young well 30 youngish adult right um i had the same program as someone else i knew who

was more of a master's athlete she was like 39 uh but her program was extended over 10 days

and my program was seven days you know and i really liked that as an approach and i think

it really spoke to the you know that recovery piece that you're talking about which is which

is really important right well aging changes the neurology there is less high threshold motor units

brain to muscle they they die the essentially the nervous system that's activating high threshold

threshold motor units or fast which muscle fibers they decay and die and that's why part of the

reason why there needs to be more protracted recovery after those activities that is reliant

on a lot of fast which muscle fibers there's also studies that have shown that the recovery from

muscle damage a lot of hitting the ground a lot of

centric actions or downhill running that that's also delayed in older individuals not just training

naive those people have been training for a long time and that speaks to the point that recovery

as we age from really high fast twitch activities max strength power sprinting

require longer recovery yeah okay well that and that is absolutely um uh

gels with my experience as well yeah um so tony if we switch gears if you're happy to um i sent you

that post about that um resistance training piece for strength endurance runners and you know i was

really interested to get your take on it because i'm trying to you know i've always been a fan of

the gym and i've never quite navigated how to fit training in and around my strength training in and

around my training but now i'm following a program and they sort of just do it for me and i'm trying to

and it's working really well although i believe that their sort of strength training beliefs may

be different from the posts that that i've sent you so i guess what well i guess my first question

is and i'll pop the review in the show notes for people who are interested who will be the runners

around us so like you know the paper that i'm discussing like what was your biggest takeaway

from it well firstly i think it applies to everyone because as we age or what we want to age

is to have both strength power muscle mass and endurance it's not an either or and this paper

is essentially answering that question but from an endurance perspective and it's talking about

trade-offs and the trade-offs essentially are if you do a certain type of weight training

you will build muscle mass and for those who already start with larger muscle mass males

that could be a problem for

weight it could be a problem for interference and it could be a problem for locomotion so if

you've got more mass around your calves for example you've got to swing that when you're

training and that changes your economy then the question is if you are a female and you've got

40 kilos of muscle mass versus 80 kilos of muscle mass and you both right because males and females

will respond the same for hypertrophy you do the same program you'll respond the same as me

given all individual differences

but you're starting at 40 kilos and i'm starting at 70 kilos so my five percent will be different

to your five percent in absolute terms that's a problem i go running up a hill i'm carrying more

mass so that's another consideration but if you are recreationally trained and of low mass then

you really kind of go after the weight training because the trade-offs are not great there's

really only positives but if you are a larger male there's more trade-offs

and that's what you've got to consider and you've got to probably be more selective with your

loading and maybe your frequency but i think the ultimate take-home is how do you distribute this

all in the week and how do you get the sets and reps that give you what you want which is

strength and tendon resilience and not interfere with too much mass or interfere with your quality

sessions and that's where the coach comes in yeah yeah and you know i do i i

struggle a little bit with in my brain because you know i'm i'm very i'm all about um muscle

preservation and strength relative strength and making sure that i'm robust and resilient as i

age within my frame right uh but of course i love running and right now i'm going through a block

of marathon running but soon after i'll switch back to my low slung training for my low slung

events um got a couple of them coming up next year and i guess you know i

i do want you know is what i'm trying to achieve with my running is that in competition to the

goals that i'm trying to achieve as a woman almost 50 who is still trying to be all those

things about health like you know with when it comes to strength like am i am i doing myself

a disservice because i'm not interested in building muscle like i'm like it's not really

the thing i'm going after i'm not going after building muscle at this point right and let's

be honest with you

of energy output with running building muscle is energy expensive so you would have to become

a full-time eater and a full-time recoverer to actually see some gains in muscle tissue

yeah of course but the gains in strength are largely neurological they're largely brain to

muscle and connective tissue is a different adaptation again you want tendon resilience

or tendon strength that protects your patella tendon and protects your achilles tendon

they are essentially strain driven that is you can develop strength working say between

four to six repetitions but maybe with a weight that you could do for eight

and that is enough strain to induce all the positive benefits we want for strength but also

for the tendon which is great now why did i say not eight reps why stop at six and this just

essentially has to do with knock-on fatigue when you are

training for endurance we have to be really mindful that what we do today how will it

impact what we do either that afternoon or what we're doing the next day and training to failure

won't give you extra benefits for strength power muscle mass quit clearly not pal different

topic but it won't give you any extra benefit but it will protract your recovery so we like

keeping reps in reserve and for runners i would typically work in the four to six rep range for

primary

muscles that we're going after, i.e. the lower limb, the gluteals, the quads, the hamstrings,

the calves. We do a weight four to six times that you could probably do for eight, but we stop short,

we don't sacrifice any benefit, and we don't have the fatigue knock on. The other thing we watch for

is too much marked eccentric work, either really kind of slowing down the eccentric or super

maximal eccentrics. We just want to keep the weight moving up, down, up, down, and not one,

two, three, four. Because again, eccentric actions also create muscle damage and protract

the recovery. That just simply means we get the best out of the weights in the four to six rep

range without the fatigue, and you'll try and distribute that at minimum of twice a week.

Then the next day, just to be sure, it's an easy session.

Yeah. Okay. Because I really like a 10 to 12 rep range, but that sounds like I'm

and could I achieve what you've just described with that? Or actually, I'm just curious,

could I get the same benefit by having the same perceived effort that I would have otherwise

gotten from four to six or no? You will adapt to whatever you give them. This is why we train.

If I give unexposed Mikki the 10 to 12, eight to 12 rep range, and you've never done it before,

you're going to be sore, your next day is going to be dreadful,

and you would-

Conclude, well, I'm not going to do weight training because my running sucks and I'm sore.

But the repeated bad effect tells us that the more often you do the same thing,

the body puts in all the adjustments in place physiologically so that you don't get the fatigue

and you don't get the damage and you don't get that protracted recovery. You've got to go through

that. Can you get the benefit in the 10 to 12 rep range that the four to six rep is giving you?

They are slightly different. You get more-

This is slightly contentious, but at least the body of data would suggest that the heavier loads

have more benefit for tendon. There's more tendon strain. That has been questioned recently,

but at least there's a strong signal for that being likely to be correct. Secondly,

if you don't want muscle, then doing two sets in the four to six rep range,

that's not enough training volume to drive muscle mass, but you get the neurological signals for

improving strength. It's a tick in the box for tendon resilience. It's a tick in the box for

strength. What you're probably missing is that volume, which means you could probably do that

more moderate rep range for ancillary exercises, but maybe not for your primary locomotive muscles

that you want to improve running. Let's say I do squats and I do Bulgarian split squats and I do

some sort of-

One-legged deadlift thing, and I've just told you exactly almost what I do almost every time I walk

into the gym. That's where I would do my four to six. Then when I hit a lat pull-down machine

or do a bent-over row or do some sort of overhead press, that's when I could still continue to do

my 10 to 12s. You could. That would be an option. I'm going to be slightly controversial and say for

runners- Go on.

Runners who don't live and breathe in the gym, I probably wouldn't do a squat

because the-

The amount of technique to get the most out of the squat is not- If I put you on a leg press,

it's the same thing. I give you a few warm-up sets and I get you to work with true effort,

but not to failure for six reps of a leg press. How much do you lift there versus doing the

comparable effort on six reps of a back squat? The answer is it's going to be an eighth.

It's going to be way off. I have two 50-kilogram ladies who are 70 years old. They can leg

press 250 kilos. Their best back squat is 50. By order of magnitude, it's hugely different.

There's lots of things going in. Am I going to hurt my back? Can I stand back up again?

What would I do if you're not there? All of those things, as we said before, put the brakes on.

Does that mean that the squats are terrible exercise? No, but it is individualized for you

as a runner. You've only got so much time in the weights room. I would spend it on a leg press.

I'd spend it on a leg extension. I'd spend it on a seated leg curl.

Absolutely on a hip thrust. Those things, the brain doesn't go, I'm going to put the brakes on.

You get the most out of them. There's also very little time there in eccentric actions or stretch

there that would make you sore into the next day. Do we like the Bulgarian split squat?

It's fine. Could you get more out of a single leg leg press? Yeah.

Okay. Now, this is good because I do actually use a leg press machine. I do like it, but again,

I'm on 15 reps. It tells me I need to load those plates up a bit more and take up. Yeah, I know.

I think, do you know what? It really speaks to that old volume. Volume is better. That's probably

what that speaks to. Volume will drive persistent fatigue, both in the session. Once you do 15 reps

of something, whatever else you do will be impaired. The goal of a runner is to

improve adaptations that will help you run and stop you from breaking down. We know what those

adaptations are. You're better to do that without the knock-on effect of fatigue by lifting heavier

loads. Look, I'm advocating heavy loads for females, but it's very context specific.

Yeah. No, I love it. You didn't have an opinion on my upper body stuff because it doesn't really

matter, does it? No, but the one thing I would be concerned with a runner is if you are,

hitting it with more volume, okay, that's not going to affect the fatigue of your lower body

running. Okay. Some people argue that your brain will perceive that effort and it's unpleasant and

everything else is worse. I think that's greatly overstated, but if you're doing 10, 12, 15 reps

in the upper body, you're more likely to increase muscle mass. Is that a problem? Probably not,

for a few grams. If it was for me, that's a problem.

Because now I add kilos that I have to carry with me. So it's based on the individual.

So basically, so for Hubster, he wouldn't want to be doing that, but I'm probably all right because

my potential to increase muscle mass, I mean, I just want to really preserve what I've got more

than anything else. Yeah. Yeah. But I probably would consider

doing some heavier work because the neurological signals are different between four to six,

10 to 12, 15 to 20. And it's the neurological signals that die as we age. And I do like the idea

of different velocities of contraction. So working with either fast intent or actually moving

quickly and mixing up the rep ranges because no one rep range has the monopoly across the

neuromuscular adaptations. And a good program would include a little bit of all of them.

Okay. That makes sense.

That makes total sense. And I guess if I were to have one more question,

a couple of warmup sets, then the two working sets, is that what you'd do?

Yeah, absolutely. This is where the coach comes in. There's a lot of talk about warmups and

are they necessary? And actually people argue about a lot of things. You put your coach's hat

on and it's load dependent. So if you're going to do a hip thrust or a leg press, and it's going to

be a hundred, 150, 200 kilos, you're going to go in straight to 200 kilos.

Then you might do a hundred, then you might do 150, and then you do your work set.

But the difference is the rep range. The rep range is my warmup sets are typically

three to four repetitions. You're not warming up the muscle. There's no way in a set of 10 that

your temperature of your quad increases. So you're doing it for the brain to go, oh, all right,

I finished my kids drop off and I've finished my work meeting. I'm now combining ankle, knee, hip,

and I'm...

Expressing force this direction. And I'm not on my phone and I'm not thinking, and I'm doing this.

Okay, now I'm going to add another 50 kilos. That's what I'm doing. And I'm all in. And then

off I go. So the warmup is your preparation for the task you're about to do. Weight training is

a cruel mistress. It demands your entire focus. You cannot go from a meeting from your phone to

whatever, and then do your work. You're leaving so many muscle fibers on the table if you're

multitasking. Okay. Now that makes perfect sense.

Yes. This is great. I'm getting so much info. Thank you, Tony. And this is one of the reasons

why I wanted to bring that sort of paper to you and just get us discussing it. Because I know that

you've worked with so many people over the years that you are like a perfect person to chat to

about the endurance piece as much, because I obviously know a ton of people in the strength

space, but not a lot of them are also well-versed in strength work for endurance, really.

And when people look at my program,

for endurance athletes, whether they're recreational or whether they're national

champions or Olympians, the programs are ridiculously simple. What adaptations am I

trying to increase to help their triathlon, their running, their swimming, you name it.

And once you look at tendon resilience and strength, improving that capacity of that muscle

to express force and to resist fatigue and injury prevention,

the programs are very simple. They're very low volume. There's a reduced,

it's called a dose response to sets. The more you do, the less you get out of it. So if we just want

a minimum dose to increase strength a little bit, we typically do one or two sets and we move on.

A few warm-up sets get you there and then one or two sets and we're on. We're absolutely not doing

three, four, five sets per exercise and then multiple exercises for the same thing.

It's going to give you so little for what you get out with the knock-on effect of fatigue,

impacting negatively everything else you do in the week. So that doesn't make sense. So we need

to realize this is the program designed for somebody just wanting to increase muscle mass

and not doing any other cardio. Or are they a runner, endurance athlete, that we're doing

weight training to help that. Very different context. Yeah. And then I guess my last question

with that is, even if my weight training is geared towards assisting my running, be it marathon,

be it the ultra marathon stuff, which I...

I love doing in our multi-stage stuff, am I doing myself a disservice from not training in a

different way because of how important it is for strength work? Am I slowly degrading my muscle

over time because I'm not doing other stuff, I suppose? There's other bigger enemies and they're

often available energy as the large one. And that is an endurance athlete, you will know that it's

very easy to be within the day or just full stop in low energy.

That's the enemy of muscle mass. Even if you're lifting two days a week, even if your protein is

there, if you're sitting in daily energy expenditure that is massively exceeding your

input, there's nothing you can do to your muscle mass. You will absolutely penalize that. And

that's a problem. And once we understand the energy demands of training with what we're trying

to accomplish to perhaps stay weight stable, then you are absolutely not compromising. I would say

that they're complimentary because your quality of muscle,

stays high, even though your main training is very oxidative, slow-twitch oriented.

Yeah. And I have a conversation about muscle mass with my friends. We talk a lot about it and I've

got a lot of friends who don't really love strength. I enjoy being in a gym and I enjoy

lifting weights and I find it fun. Whereas they do not enjoy it and it's quite a task for them.

They're very fit and they're out in the mountains and they're

hiking and whatnot and doing some stuff. And energy availability is no concern.

Tony, I'm curious. I sometimes wonder how much we have almost over-indexed on protein,

over-indexed on strength training for you to be truly healthy until you're in your 80s.

And how much just living a life that is active,

and that you're outside and you're moving and you're eating well. I don't know. Do you have

any thoughts on stuff like that? That's quite a big question, but I'm...

It's an important question because weight training is not everyone's cup of tea.

And the same stretch, believe it or not, some people don't like doing

aerobic and cardiovascular training.

Who are these crazy people?

Right. And this is where minimum dose comes in. And we often confuse the advice that's given to

experts. Now, I don't know if you've heard of it. I don't know if you've heard of it. I don't know

I'm a cyclist, which means that when we think about what's a good training program, we think,

well, what is Tadej Pogacar doing? Let's just do what he's doing. And in the muscle world,

we think, well, what are bodybuilders doing? These are not the right questions to ask.

They are, what is... If I don't like weight training, what's the minimum dose I need to do

to either preserve muscle, don't want to grow any more muscle, but I don't want to go downward. So

the minimum to maintain it, or to give me slow...

Growth over the many years, but not megadosing. So kind of a minimalist approach. Minimum dose,

minimalist approach, and then a maximalist approach. I want to grow as much muscle as

my genetic ceiling will let me. They are very different frequencies, volumes, splits, you name

it. They are so different. And for most people, training, if you want to maintain, you do one

session total body a week. That will maintain you. If you do two sessions, total body, and you do,

two sets per muscle group, eight to 10 repetitions, and you push, you pull, you push, you pull,

you leg press, you eight for everything, then you will have this slow increase going upwards.

And then clearly, the more you do, the more you get within reason. You add another day,

you add more sets, you add more exercises. And that's for somebody who wants to maximize that.

And you need to decide where you fit, but there'll only be those three. You have to choose which

those three are. And the same rule applies to cardio. For those people who don't know,

people who never want to do it, well, okay, you're going to devote 10 minutes at the end

of your weights, and you're going to do kind of some interval training just for 10 minutes.

What about like, if you never want to even step into a gym?

There's no way around it. Muscle will decay. And you can't get what weight training does by

mimicking hard exercise outside. Muscle adaptations are muscle specific. That is,

running up a hill or hiking.

We use different fibers to what you're doing in a hip thrust, to a squat, to a Bulgarian squat.

And we create adaptation, not at a muscular level, but at a muscle fiber level. And that's

really important to understand because people will say, I don't like the gym, but I'm really

active outdoors. How are you working your gluteus medius? How are you working your soleus? You

can't. You have to do that in a gym. So use minimum dose. Okay, I'm hearing you. So press

up somewhere in your house is not going to cut it.

Oh, I'll tell you. I'll tell you a good news story. I'm a twin. I think you knew that. And

she has just gone on this health journey this year and she has lost 17 kilos. She's now stabilized at

this really great place for her. And she's just started in the gym, maybe about 10 weeks ago at

this point. And it took her, she was always, her job is quite physical and she would always get

10,000 steps because she has dogs and she walks them, et cetera. But I then sort of,

and I, when we begun together, I said, Hey, look, you don't, I don't know what you think about this,

but I said, you don't need to worry about the gym right now. Let's not even think about

that because she was quite overwhelmed at that. Just the idea. And she's like, I don't think I'll

ever get into the gym. So I just said, no problem, no problem. Let's, you know, so she just got

started on her journey. And then at about six or eight weeks. And I said, you know, laws, I think

you will need to start doing strength training at some point, if we really want to make sure that

you, um, you just are protecting, you know,

using your muscle, you're building some strength and you're, you're not just losing a lot of what

you've got in terms of muscle mass. And so we're sort of targeting fatness more, um, not with the

goal of looking ripped, but just to protect the muscle. And so she started with, with the press

ups on the wall and the squats, et cetera. And then about six weeks after that, she got into

the gym with a friend of hers, and now she's going three times a week. And she said it is

the best thing for her mental health. Absolutely. And she also said that she, at the start, she's

like, I'll never, she was very determined. She'd never go to a gym and now she absolutely loves it.

So people can change too. I think that experience is the experience of the majority, not the

minority. And that's also the sequence I would do. We, we, as trainers think let's do it all. Let's

do it all now. Let's do it based on studies that did it all now. Whereas in reality, you, it's a

journey. That's the word you use.

And that journey for many people starts with just becoming more regular with their activity

and dialing in their nutrition and then adding new behavior upon new behavior that 12 weeks ago

would seem absolutely foreign to go to the gym. And then, all right, my identity has changed and

yeah, I can do that. You're at it. Yeah, it's, it is, it's so great. And I just think I,

because obviously I see a lot of people in my programs who are at the place that she was at

and they're beginning with me for that eight weeks. And of course I encourage them to, we talk

a lot about the importance of strength training, but I totally understand why some of them go

through my entire program first time without really embarking on it. And I have a lot of

empathy for them because there's a lot of change initially. So, and I guess this is, you know,

obviously strength is extremely important and I, my hope for them is that they get onto it and they

do do it eventually, but everyone's got their own pace, right?

Absolutely.

The question of ideal versus what you're going to do. Everyone in the field understands that

your consistency with an exercise habit is everything, which is a slightly separate

question to saying, well, what physical attributes are going to detrain when you're losing weight

and you will lose muscle tissue, which means you will lose resting metabolic rate and your

ability to move around and carry things because it's already declining as we age anyway,

but calorie deficit will expedite that. And that's where we explain the importance of resistance

training at some stage. Of course we have a preference. You just do everything all at once,

but that's not everyone's reality. And you meet the person where they're at

and prescribe the program that they look at and go, yeah, I can do that. That's workable in my day

and I can buy in. Then we can have the conversation about resistance training.

Yeah. Tony, off the cuff, are you seeing a lot of GLP?

Yeah.

Ones in your work with your clients or adjacent to your clients or anything?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And any comments, thoughts, anything you want to share with the listeners about?

I am of the belief that these are really valuable tools in the right place, i.e. where many people

have tried lifestyle interventions and have worked with dietitians and have tried it on their own

and found over the long term that

the food noise and their appetite and their desire to eat was too great and they might lose

weight and then rebound back again. And in other words, it's not first attempt. It is I've tried

and I've tried and I've tried. And in those instances, the newer generation seem to be

working better. I have clients who use the available doctor prescription second generation,

but most of my clients have already moved to third generation great market and find that even better.

And obviously, this is all done with other people other than me because I'm not a medico. But

it's been a great tool that we did not have in our toolbox.

Yeah. So the gray market in Australia is because it's not that I don't know if it's not talked

about, but I just don't think it's as accessible here in New Zealand. I know actually a friend of

mine said a friend of hers shipped in a bunch of peptides from China. I don't know what it's like

in Australia.

It all comes from China, but it's just the compounding pharmacists who batch test them

and then make them.

Yeah. It's changing the game, I feel, for our industry. And probably I might have even started

the podcast up with this, but my brain has even forgotten what we discussed. But I feel like

there's a bit of a lag, actually, in terms of people are seeing these as a magic bullet,

which of course...

Because everything is. And you see any of my content, I'm very supportive of GLPs. I think

they are, in fact, so helpful for so many people. But I feel like for some, they'll latch onto it

like a magic bullet, knowing that they need the support of diet and of exercise, et cetera.

But knowing is different from knowing. And in a couple of years' time, there's going to be some

sort of, I don't know, shift.

Yeah.

And we have complementary roles in this. And your work is to provide a framework for healthy

eating. Mine is to anticipate what will happen from a muscle and bone perspective because of

the lower energy intake, but also lower protein intake. And that's where we kind of double down

on the resistance training. And because appetite changes, we'll probably use more protein drinks

around training just to... I saw you have it. So I know that you have it. So I know that you have it.

I know that you have it. So I know that you have it. So I know that you have it. So I know that you have it.

Because I don't know what will happen the rest of the day. And I don't pretend I know anything

about nutrition. But in terms of the weight training, I usually get people three times a week

to make sure that they're chronically stimulating muscle. And with that protein interaction,

that's really the best we can do. And yeah, sometimes we still even see loss of muscle when

people have lost a lot of weight. And it's just surprising. I can't give them any more weight

training.

But sometimes the loss of mass is so great. I mean, I've seen the loss of 70 kilos in one

individual.

Wow. And I guess the thing is, it's not all muscle is bad. Not all muscle loss is bad. There is that

the muscle that...

How much muscle do you need if you're... I have seen in one individual 120 kilos of lean mass.

Whoa. Holy moly.

Yeah. Well, if you think about it, if someone weighs 200 kilos and they're 50% body fat,

they've still got 100 kilos of muscle mass.

Yeah. Good point.

And not many people are 50%. So let's say 40% and there's your 110, 120 kilos.

Your knees don't need that.

No, 100%. And I think also just that low energy availability with these drugs. We don't talk

often enough about how important carbohydrate is for energy. If you have no energy to get in and

do your workouts, this is where I'm finding myself recommending foods and beverages that I would not

always recommend. I wouldn't recommend a usual usually, but they're almost like functional

products.

They're contact specific and intra-training carbohydrate is a game changer for people on

GLPs. No question. And my clients bring, they squeeze their own orange juice so that they know

they're doing it well and they bring it in like a 150 mil and they just drink it. And their work

output is, I'm not going to exaggerate, it's 50% better.

Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's, and I think this is, that's, I'm pleased that we're

just chatting about it. So people listening, if they're in the...

In this situation and they haven't discussed or thought about that, they're like, oh, actually,

maybe I'll try that because yeah, it's totally worth it. And, and I think the things that people

misunderstand about GLPs is that you're still not, you're not after like accelerated fat loss.

You know, you don't want to lose weight as quickly as possible, even though that

appears to happen. Like that's not the goal. The goal is to lose weight and, and, and find ways

and find and change your behaviors. You can keep it off medication or not. It's not

a race to the bottom. Couldn't agree. Yeah. Yeah. Nice one, Tony. So now I guess I'm looking

at the time. Our time is sort of coming up. Obviously you've got a PhD that you're writing

right now, but, but tell the listeners just sort of what's, what you've got going on in terms of

how they may be able to work with you or from a practitioner perspective or from a client

perspective, if you're still got a lot of that going on, that would be really helpful. And of

course your podcast. Yeah, it's a great,

uh, diverse work schedule that I have. I still coach three days a week, all day. So Tuesday,

Wednesday, Thursday, I am on the tools from morning to night. And then the other four days

in the week, uh, weekends are overrated. I, yeah, I'm, I'm doing a completely different field,

but I have the podcast stronger with time where I try and bring people who social media have no,

never heard of because they're usually leading in the field and often don't know what social,

so I interview these people and try and bring, uh, them and give them a platform because I think

they need to be heard. Uh, I run my own courses designed mainly for personal trainers and general

public individuals on everything from fat loss to menopause to, uh, resistance training program

design. And I do a lot of academic writing, some meta-analyses reviews, um, those kinds of things

as well. Uh, we're editing a book on personal training, which you are involved in as well.

Right. A matter of fact, do you know what? I forgot about that. I cannot wait. That'll be

great. It's exciting. And, uh, and just wrapping up a major review, uh, with an all-star team of

writers on resistance training for women across the lifespan, uh, that looks at bone and muscle

and strength and power, menopause transition, older individuals, adolescence, menopause,

I think I said menopause and the menstrual cycle. So who's who in each field is contributing that

section and that,

it's going to be all wrapped up by the, hopefully by the end of this month.

Amazing. And then of course it goes to peer review and then it will be published.

Yeah, that's right.

Cannot wait. Tony, thank you so much for your time. Um, I always enjoy chatting to you. You're

such a wealth of information and for the information that you're putting out there,

just adding some clarity. Um, it's really well appreciated. So thanks so much.

Thanks, Mikki.

Alrighty. Hopefully you enjoyed that. As I said, I always enjoy chatting to Tony. It's like catching

up with a mate and he really has a great perspective on all things in this field. So I'm

always curious as to sort of hear what he's working on and, and how he's updated any of his

sort of thinking as, you know, new science emerges as he does. So, um, that's it from me this week,

guys. Hit me up over on Instagram and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.

Bye.

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All right, guys, you have the best week.

See you later.