Episode 394: Andrew Coates on Simplifying Strength Training and Cardio + Avoiding Overcomplication

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Speaker 1 You are a very strong version.

Speaker 2 What would you say the top two things that you can like, can you talk about if someone comes for fat loss what are the top two things that you would tell people to do that maybe besides strength training what would you say I'd still say strength training it's the most important thing

Speaker 2 okay damn but you have we've already talked about it we've what do you think about all these people constantly about the overuse of tracking

Speaker 1 I think A lot of tracking stuff isn't necessarily going to be very accurate. So let's say you're doing body fat testing.
There is a ton of error built into every type of body fat testing metric.

Speaker 1 Plus, I'm also not really particularly concerned with what is your exact body fat in a moment in time. I care more about where you're trending.
It's like the scale.

Speaker 1 People get really freaked out about the scale. It's actually very valuable information.
Just don't weigh yourself once every three months.

Speaker 1 Weigh yourself on a very regular basis and just watch where it's going. You're going to get fluctuation, but look for the trend line.
That's useful data, right? I think that's helpful.

Speaker 1 I think progress photos, same time of day, same lighting, same outfit, compared over time, you can really see changes. Those things are actually quite useful.
I like that kind of tracking.

Speaker 1 I don't personally use any like tracking devices. I think there's some really good ones.
My friend Joel Jameson has something called Morpheus, which is heart rate variability stuff.

Speaker 1 And I mean, I know Joel, I know his expertise. I do believe it's the best product on the market there.
He was just on Peter Attia's podcast talking about it. So he's got credibility in that space.

Speaker 1 Some of the other measures of heart rate variability, which can see whether you're rested, recovered, and prepared.

Speaker 2 I mean more things like the glucose monitoring, the sleep tracking, all these tracking.

Speaker 1 Glucose monitoring daily is nonsense. It's complete nonsense.
It's totally unnecessary.

Speaker 1 I think for a person who has like generally like active good metabolic health, the obsession with what's going on with your blood sugar on a transient daily basis, you're completely looking in the wrong direction.

Speaker 1 Yes, do we want to like make sure that like you have good blood work over time? Sure. But if you're trying to like alter your blood glucose regulation on a daily basis, that doesn't matter at all.

Speaker 1 What matters is calories in, calories out.

Speaker 2 And people don't like to hear that.

Speaker 1 They don't like to hear that. No.

Speaker 1 So I think what happens is a lot of people are looking for complicated ways to feel like they're doing productive shit when it detracts from go get your ass in the gym, go lift weights, find a system and parameters that actually get you to eat the right amount of calories to your goals, get lots of protein in your diet, and stop complicating the process.

Speaker 1 I think people create a lot of friction, and I think that they do a lot of things that makes them feel like they're productive.

Speaker 1 That's distracting at best and interfering with doing useful things at worst. I agree.

Speaker 2 Number one, exercise, biggest bang for your buck exercise.

Speaker 1 So I sometimes challenge questions because I know people look for the simple answer, but it completely depends on someone's circumstance. I could say, here, go to this resistance-based routine.

Speaker 1 The person doesn't have access to that particular routine or that space.

Speaker 2 I say they have access.

Speaker 1 So I think... Again, it depends on how many times a week can they go to the gym.
What do they like, right?

Speaker 1 So if I say, go work out four times a week, would I love to see most people under optimal circumstances go lift weights for four one-hour workouts a week. I'd love that.

Speaker 1 If we can get a person to probably about 90 to 120 minutes of cardiovascular activity a week, I'd love that. How, what pace? You can vary it.
I think you mix in a good volume.

Speaker 1 Zone two is now very popular. It's very trendy.
People are talking about it. Zone two.
People are saying zone two. That's the thing, right? It's, that's what we're, what's being branded around now.

Speaker 1 It's really just low-intensity, steady-state cardio. Why does that matter?

Speaker 1 Well, you can, on one hand, it's not as time-efficient as HIIT training, but I mean, sometimes people have the time, but they don't have the recovery capacity.

Speaker 1 So if you have no time and a lot of recovery capacity, you go short bursts of high-intensity stuff, interval-based. You go hard, you rest, you go hard, you go rest.

Speaker 1 Maybe it's some sort of sprint interval, a lot of treadle.

Speaker 1 I like things like pushing sleds or kettlebell swings, metabolic type stuff when it comes to, it's still sort of resistance-based, or you can sit on a bike and you can go at different intervals on the bike.

Speaker 1 I like things like incline walking on treadmills. I like air bikes.
All of those things work really well.

Speaker 1 And one of the big components is for most people, we could tell them what's quote optimal, but if they don't like it, they won't do it. It doesn't work.

Speaker 1 So someone, the best answer is to find something that you, at the very least, like

Speaker 1 hate the least, right? And if you can find something like, here's a trick that I use. I don't like doing cardio.
I find it boring. I'm distracted.
I can't listen to a podcast.

Speaker 1 If I'm driving, cooking, I listen to podcasts. I love it.
Like that habits backing. But what I figured out is I'll sit on a recumbent bike, the upright bikes, or I can walk on a treadmill.
It works.

Speaker 1 And I read a book I'm interested in.

Speaker 1 And I feel very very productive there's a seduction of that but I'm reading a book I'm interested in I'm doing cardio which I actually feel very good and I go and I vary my intensity sometimes I crank up the resistance a bit and I keep it steady for a slightly shorter duration and sometimes I'll sit on a little bit longer a slightly lower intensity and I can feel my heart rates up but I'm not like not out of breath and I'm able to actually enjoy the book and I actually have created this habit that I like and look forward to and because I like it look forward to I'm willing to do it what is that what's the habit the reading of the book while you're on the bike and reading a book while I'm sitting on a, on a bike.

Speaker 2 Right. So that is habit stacking, right? Like there's like you're compounding the habit so you actually will do the other thing.
Yep. Yeah.
I think that's a good point.

Speaker 2 So you're saying for weight loss, strength training is by far the best thing.

Speaker 2 You're still saying that, correct?

Speaker 1 I still think fundamentally, if I were forced to say to someone, I mean, it's a false dichotomy, but hey, you can only do this one thing, I would still say to them, lift weights.

Speaker 1 And there's several things that are going to happen is you're getting someone from inactive to active. They are going to burn more calories than they were not doing anything.

Speaker 1 And what tends to happen is we start to see people like make better choices in their other lifestyle behaviors when they lift weights, they have better energy, it's going to have a major effect on your energy, it's going to have a major effect on your mood.

Speaker 1 If your mood improves, you're probably going to be more motivated to get up and move. It's a ripple effect.
Totally.

Speaker 2 Basically, exercise is a ripple effect, but you can get that same thing from cardio. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Like for me personally, I don't get myself, my endorphins are not as activated with strength training as they are with cardio.

Speaker 2 And cardio to me is that, is that one catalyst that will propel everything else for me. I can do weights after that.
I can do all the things because my brain now has been activated.

Speaker 1 And I don't think most people should do strength training in isolation. I would really love.
And I was the guy, you know, the guy who lifted weights. It's all about being bulky.
I don't need cardio.

Speaker 1 I believe that. I genuinely subscribe to that, but

Speaker 1 it was something that was an identity preserving belief.

Speaker 1 And as I dug deeper and deeper into the science of strength conditioning, I, and as I got older, I'm realizing, no, I also need this conditioning component, this cardio component, and I feel better when I do it.

Speaker 1 And the old myth is that cardio will kill your gains.

Speaker 1 Nonsense, unless you're doing extreme levels of high volume or high intensity cardio in the absence of resistance training, in the absence of consuming enough protein and in calorie restriction.

Speaker 2 That's a really good point.

Speaker 2 I always, that's my concern because I love jogging on a treadmill for brain activation, for being for focus and for like kind of just like getting like kind of kick-starting my day right that allows me to do all these other things that i would otherwise not want to do as much right that's like like i said that's like my like trigger my catalyst but then i get concerned because of the fact that like so much out there is about the fact that it's basically breaking down all your muscle mass and you're not getting you're not getting the gains and you'll be flabby and you'll be skinny fat and all these things so you you're saying that that is not true and it to me i think those are all like fear-based myths that permeate.

Speaker 1 There are so many of them. Right.
And again, I,

Speaker 1 it comes, I keep feeling I'm repeating myself, but it's not the sexy answer.

Speaker 1 It's lift weights to preserve the muscle, eat enough protein so that way you're building, maintaining muscle mass, which I find helps get the calories in the range of what you need anyway, because calories are going to be the...

Speaker 1 the food that you eat is going to be the major lever that manipulates fat loss. Cardio then buffers that.
And it's the old adage, like like you can't out-train a bad diet.

Speaker 1 Technically, you can, just depends on how bad your diet is and how extreme your training is.

Speaker 1 I don't recommend that approach for most people.

Speaker 2 What about overexercising?

Speaker 2 Can you have the opposite return? Like, can you actually have diminishing returns if you overexercise?

Speaker 1 Absolutely. I mean, once you get into overexercising, you're probably also dealing with some sort of psychological shit that like, I'm not an expert in this stuff, but like orthorexia, right?

Speaker 1 Just an obsession with. Right.
And I probably could have used, used the wrong definition.

Speaker 1 I tend to think of it more as this concept of an over-obsession with, like, quote, healthy living to the point it becomes unhealthy, but overemphasis on exercising.

Speaker 1 And it's more on the exercise size versus the dietary restriction size. But yes, you can really overdo it.
You can do so much both muscle damage to

Speaker 1 by overdoing on resistance traits. So, this actually is a very important thing.

Speaker 1 A, if you in a very short, like, let's say someone is brand new to exercising and they go jump in and they do five or six intense one hour, one and a half hour workouts a week from having done nothing.

Speaker 1 They're totally deconditioned into very high intensity, a lot of training to failure.

Speaker 1 You can tip past a point where you do so much muscle damage that you could elevate a metabolic waste product of muscle damage called creatinine kinase, which is not to be misconfused with creatine.

Speaker 1 CK. And if your CK levels rise past a certain point, it can overwhelm your kidneys, which can cause, I mean, oversimplifying this, but it can cause organ failure, cascading organ failure.

Speaker 1 It's called rhabdomyolysis, and you can end up in the hospital for it.

Speaker 1 And not to demonize CrossFit, but rhabdomyelisis was actually pretty rare outside of like serious car accidents until CrossFit came around.

Speaker 1 And then because people were jumping in too much too heavily, like I said, not to demonize them, but it became more common. And you're having people dealing with rhabdomyelisis.

Speaker 1 And now I think there's a better understanding of it because it's kind of like naffled E, non-fatty, like, what is it, non-alcohol, fatty liver disease, right?

Speaker 1 And Peter Tia talks about this in his book. It's like, that was not a thing until a recent generation.
All of a sudden, we're starting to see this show up.

Speaker 1 And like now it's everywhere where you're seeing people who are in their 30s with significant liver damage who are not, it was not a result of alcohol.

Speaker 1 So it's kind of a more recent phenomenon because of the nature of the change of the world. So the acute risk of too much exercise could be something in extreme cases like rhabdomyelysis.

Speaker 1 On a more ongoing basis, well, you're just not recovering. So you're potentially like just doing more muscle damage and connective tissue damage over time than you're actually feeding, resting.

Speaker 1 You're just overdoing it to the point where you can actually have macro trauma that becomes micro-trauma of your joint tissue and you start having joint injuries. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I like that. Okay, Andrew, I think we're good.
Can you tell people where to find you besides Andrew Coates on Instagram?

Speaker 1 Yeah, Andrew Coates Fitness on Instagram. It's the hub.
My website, www.andrewcoatsfitness.com. Any articles that I get published on anything, I will share through both of those.