 one of the best ways to exercise for longevity is to lift weights. All right, let's talk about this. Who would have known? Yeah, you know, when we talk about longevity or should I say when longevity and exercise are talked about in mainstream news or even studies, what they typically talk about is cardiovascular activity, right? Just being active. Right. Well, we now have studies to support, well, we've known for a long time which is that strength training has profound effects on longevity and here's something even more interesting. New study came out comparing or showing the effects of resistance training on longevity. And by the way, these were everyday average people, whether they did body weight resistance training or gym type resistance training, they put that all together. So it's not like these are hardcore bodybuilders or whatever, they're just doing some form of strength training. And here's what they found that was different between the longevity benefits of strength training versus the longevity benefits of aerobic or cardiovascular training. Reduction in cancer risk. Oh, wow. Strength training had a significant reduction in cancer risk that we don't see, necessarily. There's this great book called Resistance Training Revolution. That's right. I heard that. Shut up. Yeah. Guys, the guy that wrote it's a little douchey, but I mean, he's spot on with some of the things that he talked about. Yeah, no, so check this out. This is what the study says that this is the largest study to compare the mortality outcomes of different types of exercise. Strength training based exercise had a 23% reduction in risk of premature death by any means and a 31% reduction in cancer related death. So it's vital when it comes to cancer. And again. What do they attribute that to? The muscle? The protective, well, yeah. But like in terms of the protective tissue around your organs, like what? That is a very good question. I don't know. I think it would be more metabolic related. Yeah. I would think so because building muscle is one of the most effective ways to improve insulin sensitivity. It's almost a guaranteed way to do so. Like they've done studies on the severely obese and they'll have them gain some muscle, not lose any weight and we'll see these great improvements in insulin sensitivity. In terms of balanced hormone profiles and everything else that comes with strength training. It could be, but also, you know, through the process of breaking muscle down and building it, the body does release a lot of these kind of hormetic compounds that if you looked at them at face value, for example, if you lifted weights and then studied someone's blood right afterwards, like, oh my God, that's damaging. Look at all the damage markers and inflammatory markers. But I think that that's part of the balance that keeps you healthy and living a long time. And that may be why it's anti-cancer. And too, if you think of the aerobic side of it, like inevitably you're gonna hit repetitive stress issues which are gonna come up. And on top of that, the oxidative stress. So those two factors alone would seem to kind of pull it down a bit versus like strength training gives you a bit more ability to continue moving and continue that movement pain-free. Yeah, good point. And then here's something else, and this is not what they said in the studies. This is my own speculation. And I had somebody very close to me who over a year and a half slowly died from cancer. And watching that and then researching it during that period and talking to cancer doctors, oftentimes what kills people is the treatment and their inability to continue to lose weight, their inability to continue to waste away. Well, let's say you go into, because it said cancer-related death. It didn't say cancer necessarily. Now that's probably a reduction in cancer, it has to be. But I wonder if there's a piece of that that says, hey, if you have an extra 20 pounds of muscle on your body and you do get cancer and you do get treatment and the treatment's successful, you're less likely to die from the muscle wasting or the body wasting effects of the treatment. Because if you've ever seen somebody go on cancer treatment, the atrophy, they lose tons of muscle, but if you have muscle and strength more than normal to begin with, there's more, you have more room to lose. More room to lose. So I wonder if that plays a role at all, but definitely there's a reduction in cancer as well. But very interesting. Now, do you predict that we're going to in the near future see doctors starting to recommend this? 100%. By the way- I go back and forth on that by the way. Why wouldn't they recommend it? Just because the risk factor, and we know that- The complexity maybe? Yes, you know, and because there's so many, there's so much red tape when it comes to the medical field and just like certifications, right? All the stuff that we learned in certifications, we've unlearned as we got more experience, right? It's like, oh wow, stopping my clients at 90 degrees on their squad or on their bench press was, yeah, the certification taught us that for safety reasons, but I know that for overall joint health, that's not ideal. In fact, I should train my clients through their fullest range of motion. And so my fear is that even though the studies are continuing to point in this direction, and I know you highlight them all the time, and I want to believe that we're going to move in this direction, I still have a little hesitancy to come out and say, oh yeah, real soon here, doctors are going to be saying that because I feel like, because of the red tape. Yeah, that's a good point. But by the way, I do want to also add that the combination of cardiovascular activity and strength training had the largest reduction of risk and mortality. So combining the two is probably your best bet when it comes to longevity. But you know, back to what you were saying, I think it's more of this. I think that cardiovascular activity on its face appears to be more simple and easy to apply, right? Because the belief is, oh, I'm going to go for a run. I just got to put on my shoes and go run lower barrier to entry. Yeah, like, oh, I'll just go run. That's not a problem at all. Now, part of that is true. There's a million and one different strength training exercises, and there's five different ways to do each one. So when some of it's true, but some of it's also false, there's a bit of a false belief that the simplicity of just getting up and run means that you're going to go do so, and it's going to be okay, and you're not going to hurt yourself, and it's not going to be a problem. And I think that's why people, they take for grant, or I should say they have a misunderstanding that, oh, I just go run and it's not a big deal. Running is a skill like anything, and I'm picking running because that's the most common one. If you just go and run, but you don't run well, you are going to hurt yourself. You are going to create problems for yourself. Whereas with strength training, the understanding is it's more complex. So you probably have a little bit more respect going into it. I better use the right exercises. I better learn the right technique. But there is, again, there's truth, too, because strength training programming is much more complex. The risks are a little different, though, right? The running, although I would say a majority of people that just start running, will encounter some sort of an injury. The injuries are typically minor and or chronic pain is what you would get more likely, like in the knees or the hips, like their shins are probably most common with that, where the risk of really hurting like your back or something, doing a deadlift or a squat improper is a much higher risk, where you could actually really hurt something. That's why I'm worried about it never going that way, because, yeah, you're right, running can hurt you. I mean, if you have poor mechanics, which most people do have, but what are we talking about? Shinsplants, bursitis, chronic knee pain. We're not talking about breaking your back or we're not talking about... Yeah, but don't you see this sort of wedge in between all that in terms of the tonal machine or one of these other... They try to figure out how to add resistance training in one setting that's like... They try to simplify it for your everyday average person, more so maybe that's like sort of the bridge into resistance training, where doctors will get behind that. Yeah, I mean, again, we're thinking about like complex, barbell exercise, like the average person's like, there's some very basic exercises you could do. And also the data doesn't back the feeling that you have. Like if you look at the data, running creates more injuries per person than strength training. And I don't think it's because of the potential, rather I think it's the way it's treated. People tend to, you take the average person who's like, I'm gonna try some strength training. They place more thought and caution on, I gotta do this exercise right, let me look it up, let me make sure I'm doing the right technique, let me do it slow and careful. Whereas the average person goes, I'm gonna go run, I'm just gonna run until I get tired. Yeah, part of that though is because the risk is higher. Because the risk of doing a deadlift or a squat is wrong. I think it's the complexity that does it. They just don't know. People think they know with running. Yeah, but I mean, the complexity of it on a movement like that, there's a higher risk of hurting yourself more than there is if you're going out in time. Potentially. Yeah, potentially. But it doesn't end up without running. You're right, statistically you're right. I mean, we know what the, I mean, it's the reason why we are constantly kind of harping people about going out and running. It's not because we're anti-running, it's just that people think that that's a great form of exercise. My fear again though is that the doctors, when you bring up a good point is maybe that's not squatting and deadlifting, maybe it becomes a thing where doctors start to promote walking lunges. Yeah, body weight squats or a push-up off the camera. Right, right, let's do, maybe it looks like this really basic body weight type of- That's the direction it's going. And I think the doctors will promote it when the studies become, and they are already doing this, the studies are starting to become overwhelming. The evidence is becoming overwhelming. And doctors rely on the fact that science has to feel somewhat settled and somewhat established before they start, and they take a little longer, right? The fitness industry and the health industries always on the cutting edge. So we were the ones that were saying things like, eh, you know, butter is probably better than margarine, and doctors were still following the old guidelines until the evidence became so overwhelming that they started to reverse kind of what they said. I think that we're probably 10 years away from strength training being, the reason why I titled the Resistance Training Revolution that, because I feel like it's coming anyway. I feel like there's going to be a revolution of the way people understand and apply strength training. It's not going to be the, oh, that's just what bodybuilders do, or oh, don't do that, it'll get too big. I think the average person, we're pretty close to the point where the average person be like, oh yeah, that's a great way to exercise for longevity. That is interesting. I was just thinking about that in terms of like, you know, your clinical settings and you have these studies conducted where, you know, the gym setting, we have like clients that we've pulled data from and you know, stuck with them for a really long period of time. By the hundreds, by the thousands, we have all of this data, but it's obviously not used by scientific community because it's anecdotal, whereas, and this is where we kind of start to formulate our own opinions, like I didn't really see that happen within my clients. No, and also part of the reason, by the way, I don't blame like the studies and stuff and say, oh, they were biased. It was, it's harder to study strength training than it is cardiovascular training. First of all, animal studies, you can put a rat on a treadmill, but you get a rat to lift weights, you gotta get real creative to figure that out, right? I wanna see that. You know, getting people, even studying humans, right? Okay, if we're gonna have them do resistance training, well, now we need to have a structure. We need to make sure, but if we just have them run on a treadmill, it's easy to apply. So most of the studies done on strength training, up until relatively, maybe the last 10 years, were all done on athletics. So we knew it was great for athletics. There wasn't a lot of health studies. There were some, but not much. Now, we're seeing lots of studies start to come out. We're starting to see that weakness as a predictor of all cause and more doubt, mortality, better than your ability to run on a treadmill, even they're showing. So, fascinating. So what tips it over? You know, what is, what's gonna need to happen? More studies like this, I mean, this just came out. More stuff like this is what's gonna tip it over. Oprah needs to take this and run with it. Yeah, I know. She usually like starts it all. Yeah, and then, you know, in celebrities, talking more about traditional strength training always helps, right? You know, give them credit. No, I know. I'm just thinking of like our generation growing up. It was always like somebody influential that was like, this is the way we all need to do it. Well, when we were growing up, if you saw anybody in media that was like healthy, they didn't lift weights. Like, oh, that health person. They were a runner, a marathon runner. If I thought about lifting weights with popular media, it was Arnold, Sylvester Stallone. His bodybuilders are like athletes. That was all you had. That was it. But now it's starting to change a little. There's still a stigma, right? But it's starting to change a little bit. So that's all pretty cool. That's a good point. I'm trying to think of besides like the Arnold and Sylvester, like back in like the 80s and stuff like, who was like, dude, what were the body types besides that, right? Even pictures. That or like the Cindy Crawford model. You know, the Jazzercisors, I guess. Yeah, that's a good point. Even right now, if you were, if media was to create like this avatar of this healthy, long-living person, they would show them doing yoga, running. And maybe that's it, swimming or something like that. Yeah, everything is super zen, you know, that they promote for longevity. They wouldn't show strength training, even though strength training is profoundly beneficial for longevity, which is kind of, you know, but again, I think it's starting to change. So good stuff. Anyway, I want to tell you guys a hilarious story about my baby son. He's turning out to be a little, little tyrant.