Red Pill: Exercise

Luckily, it looks like the tide is turning a bit with this one. Mainstream fitness advice can still be pretty bad but it isn’t as bad as it was even 10 years ago. That being said, this should give you some groundwork and hopefully knock out any remaining misconceptions you may still hold.

Lift Weights

For years, mainstream health and fitness demonized lifting weights. They said it would make athletes “muscle bound,” women “bulked up she-hulks,” and “too dangerous” for older populations. It's pretty baffling to think that doing the things that the human body was meant to do would be harmful in any way but that’s just the state of mainstream media.

Everyone needs to be getting stronger or at least maintain strength. It’s so important that you build muscle or maintain muscle mass that it’s going to be the only thing I’m going to discuss in the article (I’ll discuss other “movement” in the Lifestyle section). This doesn’t mean that some fitness in the realm of endurance or cardiovascular training should be totally neglected, but if you aren’t getting stronger, you’re setting yourself up for failure in everything.

How much muscle you have will determine: - How well you age - How well your brain functions - How strong your bones are - How well you utilize the food you eat - How well you handle diseases - And of course, how good you look!

I’m going to touch on these topics a little bit but first, I’m going to get the obvious stuff out of the way. If you lift weights, you will look better (male or female), lose weight more easily, and have a better body composition generally. This goes for everyone. Young, old, male, female, black, white, disabled, etc. Unless there is some crazy outlier condition I’m unaware of that will make your eyeballs explode if you pick up a weight, you should be doing it.

Now onto the less obvious stuff...

Maybe you don’t care about looking muscular, or being strong and more useful generally. That’s fine but it’s everything else that lifting weights does that makes it magic.

Better Illness Outcomes

Amino acids are proteins or the building blocks of your body. Your body has ways of storing carbs (as glycogen in the muscles and liver), and fat (as body fat and visceral fat). The only way that your body can store protein, to any significant degree, is through muscle tissue.

If you get sick or injured, muscle is the tissue that your body relies on for amino acids. In several studies, cancer outcomes improve the greater muscle mass the patient has 1, 2, 3.

If you have dementia or Alzheimer's in your family history, strength training is also associated with better cognitive function and brain health 1, 2, 3.

Lifting Weights and Aging

The major issue you’ll run into as you get older is sarcopenia (loss of muscle mass) and osteoporosis (loss of bone mass/density). Getting ahead of this while you're young or preventing this as you get older are going to be critical in not only living a longer life but having a better quality of life.

Who cares if you live until you’re 100 years old if the last 20 years of your life you can’t do anything? With more muscle mass and stronger bones, you can still do the things you love and a fall won’t be fatal (and will be less likely generally). Being spoon-fed in a nursing home doesn’t sound like the way I want to live the final years of my life.

The application:

Ok, so you’ve been convinced that being stronger, living a higher quality of life, having better cancer survivability, and looking good is for you. Good choice!

I personally like going to the gym but I know a lot of people don’t. That’s ok, there is still a lot you can do with some simple weights at home, a kettlebell, or even bodyweight training (though, bodyweight would be my last choice because you can’t get the stimulus you can from weights). Pick 3 days a week to train. Do something you like and go from there. Maybe that’s just doing rounds of 10 bodyweight squats, 10 pushups, 10 crunches, and 10 towel rows. Make sure you’re working up a sweat and push yourself. If you’re casually just going through the motions, you won’t get anywhere and won’t build any real muscle.

Let me stress that again (it’s that important): you need to push your body! Bodybuilders call this “intensity.” When you do resistance training, you're creating a stress on your body that your body has to adapt to. If you're just doing comfortable things all the time, your body will not get the adequate signals to adapt. You won’t build or maintain muscle that way and you won’t get the results you want. Train as hard as you can handle and push yourself a little each time.

Here are some free options you can use as well as some books from trusted strength resources and good places to start:

Bodyweight Training

Here are a couple of great resources setup by Reddit. Reddit is fairly poisonous but these guides are a great starting point for bodyweight training. I would recommend staying away from the rest of Reddit though...

Routine for people who are not overly out of shape and want to build muscle and get stronger Simple routine if you very out of shape, short on time, or older

Kettlebell Training

I have some fondness for kettlebell training as well. During the great quarantine of 2020, most of my training was with bands and kettlebells when I was forced to train from home. It’s not too expensive to get into (you only need one or two kettlebells to get started), you can do it anywhere, and it’s a great way to move under load. If you want a good option to increase “functional strength” and build muscle, kettlebells are great.

You can get kettlebells anywhere but I like Kettlebell Kings and Dragon Door kettlebells best. It’s hard to go wrong with kettlebells. I would suggest you don’t buy any plastic ones or ones covered in a ceramic coat. A good kettlebell will last you forever and you can resell the better quality ones for about what you paid for them.

There is only one resource I recommend for kettlebell training and that’s Pavel Tsatsouline. He has a great book on the basics of kettlebell training called Enter the Kettlebell but there is also a free video on youtube that spells out the entire book.

Gym Training/Barbell Training

Moving your body under load with a barbell or dumbbell is great. There is really nothing else like it. You could use the machines at the gym, but you’ll only be getting stronger at moving that machine. If you move load with a barbell or dumbbell, you’re strengthening a whole host of muscles that will be more useful in everyday life. If nothing else, you should start with the basic movements with barbells and dumbbells and start adding machines and cables in after you have the fundamental movement patterns down.

For beginners:

If you want a simple, easy, and free strength program to follow for beginners, Stronglifts 5X5 will work great. If you want a great beginners routine by a legend in the strength training community, Mark Rippetoe, you should fork up the cash on Starting Strength. It’s a great resource to dive into and be able to refer back to whenever you need it.

For females:

I actually feel that women should do Starting Strength or Stronglifts but I’m going to give an alternative if you’re looking for something more specific you're female (and building up that booty). Strong Curves by Brett Contreras is probably the holy bible for women and strength training, especially if they're looking to build up a more “feminine” physique. It has many foundational movements in it while putting emphasis on the aspects of the female physique that are considered more desirable. Definitely a great resource!

For older populations (over ~40):

My father actually turned me on to this one. The Barbell Prescription by Jonathan M Sullivan MD and Andy Baker. This book goes into not only how to train but why it is crucial for older populations to train (in much more detail than I outlined above). If you’re worried about training because you’re “too old,” pick up this book and learn why you are wrong. (this is also a great book to pick up if you’re looking to get your parents of grandparents to start lifting weights).

That’s the Red Pill on exercise. Pick something and start doing it as soon as you can. Before you know it, you’ll look and feel 1000 times better.