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we are officially in week one of our group coaching program and questions about exercise naturally arise. So, we had to get into some exercise science education right away, and wanted to share it with you, too:
Nutritional balance - what, when, how much you eat - is the main driver for fat loss (if that's a goal), not exercise.
And medium intensity steady state cardio in particular such as running, rowing, biking, swimming, etc. (you know, that cardio that is harder than walking but less difficult than sprinting), is the least important activity for women unless you're competing in one of those modalities.
Most women need to focus on (1) progressive strength training and (2) a ton of walking outside throughout the day, regardless of health and fitness goals.
Think of cardio like your side piece while building muscle is your main squeeze, especially if you're over age 35 and want to avoid sarcopenia.
And I don't know who needs to hear this but if you've lifted anything over 5 reps, you know strength training is a form of cardio 😂 You can get quite breathless moving heavy things around putting them down.
We also received the question: beyond typical cardio, what about group classes that market themselves as weight lifting?
The truth is that just because your group exercise class or YouTube workout includes dumbbells doesn’t mean you’re strength training with a progressive overload focus that actually builds type 2 muscle fiber.
We can't tell you how many women come to us in their 30's and 40's, putting in all this blood, sweat and tears doing these hard core, high intensity classes and either seeing minimal results or, in some cases, weight gain.
Let's dive deeper into why this can happen, especially to women:
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