SHAWN STEVENSON: Welcome to the Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert Shawn Stevenson, and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. On this episode, we're gonna be talking about the number one key, the number one fitness and functionality key to aging gracefully burning, fat, and staying fit for a lifetime. And today you're going to hear from six of the world leading experts in longevity in fitness, in functionality specifically tied to extending your lifespan and your health span. And up first, we've got one of the icons. One of my role models, this gentleman is over 70 years old, and he's one of the fittest people I've ever met. All right? He's running circles around people that are decades younger, and he wasn't just born this way. Shout out to Lady Gaga. 

He developed through trial and error, trial and success, some of these insights, and to be able to learn from somebody like him is absolutely priceless. And he's a New York Times bestselling author and founder of one of the most popular fitness, nutrition, and lifestyle websites in the world. Mark's Daily Apple. I'm talking about the one and only Mark Sisen in this segment from our conversation we had together, he's gonna be sharing the often overlooked, dare I say, secret impact. That your muscle has on keeping your vital organs like your heart and your lungs youthful. He's gonna be sharing at what age he advocates for you to start making fitness your number one job and more. Check out this first segment and see if you can identify again, we're looking at what is the number one key to aging gracefully and burning fat and being fit for a lifetime. See if you can pinpoint what exactly that number one key is and enjoy this first segment from the one and only Mark Sisson. 

MARK SISSON: The muscle mass thing, people don't quite grasp, like why would muscle mass be so integral to longevity? I know old people who are skinny and they've, you know, they've lived a long time and they don't appear to have much muscle mass. Well, muscle mass, that part of the equation combined with strength and power is what causes the rest of the organs in the body to have a reason to keep up with the muscles. So it's, it's a little bizarre, but you, the, the brain says, I'm gonna go to the gym and I'm gonna lift weights. And I'm gonna do curls, or I'm gonna do squats, and then the signal goes to the body to build these muscles up to get stronger, to keep up with the amount of work that the brain is choosing to do.

But in the process, the body is trying to figure out how best to utilize all of the organs to achieve this goal. So when you say, I'm gonna lift a heavy leg, dig, the heart goes, I, I guess I gotta beat faster to keep up with the demands that this clown is putting on me right now in the gym. So the heart has to beat stronger. Or if you say, I'm gonna go for a, a hike or whatever, the heart has to beat stronger. If you are doing intervals, if you're doing high intensity intervals, the lungs have to breathe deeply. And so they have to inspire and they'd have to take in oxygen to provide that oxygen to help fuel the muscles to do the work that you're choosing to do.

The liver has to process fuel more efficiently. And so by choosing to do the work and by choosing to use muscle mass and muscle strength as sort of a focal point, everything else comes into play here. And you get this complete individual that is now not just strong and able to move around the world and do the things that, that people who are older want to do, travel the world and have access to memories, but is also in a situation where you get up in the middle of the night to take a leak and you trip.

And if you're strong, you trip and you laugh it off and you walk over and you do when you go back to sleep. But if you're, if you don't have the muscle mass. If you don't have the balance, if you don't, if you haven't worked all these systems, the typical sad scenario is that the old person gets up in the middle of the night trips, falls, breaks a hip. The hip breaks by the way, because it's, the bone is not strong enough. The bone density has been compromised because the person didn't do enough weightbearing activity to cause the body to want to build stronger bones. You know, you, you gotta dig that if that, if you don't go to the gym and you don't do this work, the body goes, Hey, don't need to build muscle.

Don't need the heart to beat that fast. Don't need the lungs to, to breathe in that much. Don't need the bones to be that strong. Why would I waste valuable resources building strong bones if we're not gonna do anything with it? So now the person winds up with a broken hip in the hospital. And the sad trajectory is, is typically they get pneumonia in the hospital and they can't cough well enough to, you know, to, to get rid of the sputum.

And, and then the, the heart can't beat enough to keep up with the demands of the infection because you've only been working at 10% of capacity for the last 15 years. And so you die of congestive heart failure, of die of pneumonia, you die. And it, and ultimately people die of the, you know, basically organ failure. People don't die of old age, they die of whatever organ says, I'm out, whatever, whatever organ taps out first. So longevity is really this sort of game we play of how to maintain muscle mass, how to maintain aerobic capacity, how to maintain liver strength. We call it vital capacity of the different organs and vital reserve. And if you, if you understand this basic concept, then it makes sense that you would go to the gym and do squats once a week and do pull-ups and, and do some, a little bit of sprinting. Sorry for the long-winded explanation. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh, this is fantastic. I mean, because you know, our culture is so focused just on the aesthetic part of it. 

MARK SISSON: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And not really looking at the fact that, and it, we should have known this decades ago and I think our ancestors did. That muscle is really an endocrine organ and it's releasing all of this chemistry. And now we know things like Mykines for example, that when you mentioned somebody, you know, going in and falling ill with the pneumonia. And we think about how our muscle even influences our immune system, you know, the list goes on and on and on. And the coolest thing about it is that this is something that we can create. 

MARK SISSON: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Like we actually can make more of it and we can maintain it and care for it, but it becomes even more in a sense, important as we age.

MARK SISSON: Yes. Yeah. No, it, it like, it becomes your number one job as you age. I would think anyone over the age of 45 would, would be well served to consider fitness and health job number one. And you know, you hear these stories about all these people who spent their prime years from 25 to 50 building a business and making a lot of money and sacrificing their health and sacrificing their relationships with their family. And I'm like, dude, life is about enjoyment in, in the moment. And the number of people who, you know, you ask them if you could, like people spend a lot of their lives making money and losing their health. And then they're like, I would give out all my money to have my health back. Well, that's not necessary.

And that's so, so you should really think of your health as job number one after the age of 45. And, and that means when somebody says, well, I can't, I can't get to the gym every day because I just don't have the time. I'm working too hard. No job number one is to get to the gym or go outside and walk and make your business calls while you're walking or do micro workouts throughout the day where you drop and do 50 air squats or 20 pushups every once in a while or do a plank for two minutes. All that stuff counts. But if you. Cast it all aside and say, I'll wait till later to do that. Sometimes I'm, I'm not gonna say it's too late because we see a lot of people turn around at age 50 and 55 and, and start to get healthy again. But, but the, the good news is, I know you know this as a, as a former, you know, athlete, you can coast on the, the years that you spent working out between the age of 20 and 45. You can coast, you have to do the work, but you can coast for, for the next several decades, right? So, but health has to be, it has to be job number one. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Alright, I hope that you enjoyed that first segment. We've got so much more goodness in store for you now, did you identify what that number one key is? And hopefully you did that. Number one key is building and maintaining, protecting at all cost our valuable muscle tissue. And in our next segment, you're gonna be hearing from one of the world leading experts in muscle, specifically muscle centric medicine. And she's going to be sharing why muscle is the organ of longevity. I'm talking about New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. She's gonna be sharing why building, maintaining and protecting our muscle is absolutely critical to longevity and healthy aging. She's gonna be sharing nutrition tips to build and maintain your valuable muscle tissue and much more. Enjoy this next segment from the one and only Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. 

So let's dive in deeper today and really talk about this connection with muscle and longevity. 

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Yeah, I can't, I can't wait. And I really appreciate this conversation because what we're hearing right now is that. In terms of longevity, we should reduce our protein intake. And that seems to be the overarching narrative. And what is so surprising to me as a trained geriatrician, and for people that don't know what that is, that's specializing in individuals over the age of 65 and end of life. Part of my job is managing individuals in nursing homes. And part of my job as a fellow was looking at their brain health, running a brain clinic at Wash U that is no small task as a geriatric fellow. And one of the things that we always look at is strength, capacity, and activities of daily living. 

When we think about that, arguably we think about skeletal muscle. So right now the conversation is geared towards longevity, which by the way, is not defined. When we talk about longevity, specifically as individuals talk about reducing dietary protein, are we talking about reducing longevity by six years? Are we talking about living six hours longer? There is no hard endpoint in this nebulous concept of longevity. When we think about survivability, you have to think about skeletal muscle. And skeletal muscle in an aging population is critical. It is the pinnacle. It's not the peripheral discussion. It's not, you know, we should eat this. Maybe our carbohydrates are too high. It's none of that. Skeletal muscle is an endocrine organ. It is our body armor. You have to protect it as you age. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Okay. You just said something that really jumped out at me. You said body armor. 

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So I've been thinking about this from a evolutionary perspective. Like why would we have the capacity to, to build and put muscle on our foot? 

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Muscle is the amino acid reservoir. Every time you are not eating your tissues, your brain, your liver, your kidneys, all require amino acids, a steady state of amino acids in a facet state. The place you're gonna get that skeletal muscle. The body is constantly going over a process of turnover. It's not, you know, you don't stimulate muscle and that tissue stops being active. This is a constant process. Skeletal muscle is really what is going to maintain you in times of fasting. It's going to maintain you in times of injury, illness. We know at cancer, we know that survivability of cancer is increased with the amount of skeletal muscle you have. I mean, these are really big factors and we're totally avoiding the fact that skeletal muscle is the primary organ system of protection. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So this is looking at what's happening internally. What about externally? 

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know, like if I think about it when, you know that when there was a time I'm conjuring up images of the, you know, swords and shields and these kind of things. And so when you said body armor, that really jumped out as like literally kind of like a protective mechanism. Yeah. Like why am I able to, to grow these pecs to maybe protect my heart or something like that? 

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Yeah. Well I think that the concept of skeletal muscle is really all encompassing. We can never say, I mean, listen, take out the bodybuilding community, which perhaps is a bit at that cusp end of intensity in terms of skeletal muscle. But the body was designed for movement. And right now we have an opportunity to not move, but we are a human machine. The human machine was designed for hard physical labor. Does that protect us? It definitely protects us in a multitude of ways. Balance, strength, flexibility, survivability. If you go back to the times of swords, I'm sure the guy that had the most well conditioned muscle was the individual that was gonna survive. I mean, I, of course wasn't these, it's just my perspective. I wasn't around during that time. 

But when we think about survivability, skeletal muscle, while not easy to put on, requires time and attention and dietary changes, right? You can't eat the way you did in your youth when you are primed for anabolic growth. That does transition, which we will definitely talk about. And that goes to the point of why protein restriction is so dangerous for an aging population. Because as we age, as we think about protecting our body, our body armor, that amino acid reservoir, and there's so many things that we're gonna talk about as it relates to skeletal muscle. Number one, the fact that it allows us to aid in protein turnover, which is ongoing, but also skeletal muscle there. There's so many things, skeletal muscle is one of the primary sites of insulin resistance, and we cannot go one day without hearing about insulin resistance. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, it's epidemic. Absolute epidemic. 

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: And we think about it as it relates to obesity, but insulin resistance. There is evidence that insulin resistance begins in healthy 20 year olds that are sedentary. A decade before we're seeing changes in liver abnormalities. A decade before we're seeing changes in triglyceride levels. Blood glucose, insulin, insulin resistance of skeletal muscle is one of the primary defects of, I don't wanna say all, but nearly all the diseases that we're seeing. Heart disease, cancer, obesity. Skeletal muscle needs to be our focus as opposed to looking at the periphery, which is adiposity. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This brings us back to, you mentioned cancer earlier. 

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And being a protective mechanism there. So I was just wondering in my mind like, what are all the pieces? 

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That could make that possible. I'm sure that, of course, insulin is gonna be one of those factors. 

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Well, obesity is a known risk factor for cancer, right? And cancer is very broad. Cancer is a disease of the genome. There are multiple different kinds of cancer, but the things that we can do something about really relate to getting our body composition in check. Not only that, not just that skeletal muscle is going to protect you with cancer. Cachexia, which is, you know, cancer can be a very highly catabolic state and we've seen, you know, individuals who are going through chemo or have cancer. You know, in a clinic when someone has rapid weight loss, I mean, one of the things that you think is cancer.

It is a highly catabolic state. It destroys skeletal muscle and an individual's survivability is going to be better if they have healthier skeletal muscle. I also wanna mention something else, not just that skeletal muscle is protective from the mechanical aspect, from the amino acid reservoir. But exercise, exercise is, I don't wanna say, you know, broadly anti-cancer, but it definitely can interface with the immune system and it can definitely help protect against certain kinds of cancers. Exercising skeletal muscle increases natural killer cells. It increases an interface with the immune system and with the inflammation in the body, it counterbalances inflammatory mechanisms in the body.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's so powerful and it's so simple. 

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: It's so simple. And you know what we really need to do is how do we bridge the gap between fitness professionals and medical professionals right now? When we think about skeletal muscle, oftentimes we think about physical fitness. Physical fitness is incredibly important, and the way I think that we think about it is a bit simplified because we really need to bring it into an interface of medicine. Movement is medicine, muscle is medicine. Do we have an obesity crisis? Yes. But what we really have is a muscle crisis. So with the longevity conversation, the idea of number one, reducing diet. So I, I wanna just put that out there. Number one, the idea of reducing dietary protein to protect against longevity is essentially saying muscle doesn't matter. But we know that skeletal muscle improves all survivability. And by the way, anyone who has ever worked in a nursing home will tell you how important muscle is. I was reading this morning, you know, I was rereading one of my favorite papers. And with an in a, a female who perhaps isn't the healthiest, falls and breaks a hip, she has a 50% chance of never walking again.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Wow. 

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: I mean. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's nuts. 

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: That is insane. Do you understand that trickle down impact that's gonna have on her family, on herself, on her wellbeing, everything. So again, when we are talking about longevity and mTOR, we must phrase it in real life application. Skeletal muscle, nobody can argue, requires dietary protein. This is a non arguable fact. Whether you get your dietary protein from plants versus animals, one is obviously easier, the other is more difficult. Can it be done? It can absolutely be done. I will set the stage to tell you that the RDA, which we have known has not changed over the last 40 years as it relates to protein is 50% too low to maintain health and wellness.

So the RDA, and I'm setting this up for a very specific reason, the RDA set it 0.8 grams per kilogram based on nitrogen studies of 18-year-old men that was extrapolated from animal data that we know that in the literature there is not one study that doesn't show improvement in endpoints, whether it's body composition or biomarkers of nearly double, that higher protein always does better than baseline RDA. Okay? We have not changed that recommendation in the last 40 years? You mean to tell me that there has been no increase in knowledge of dietary protein in the last 30 to 40 years? That's not true. So we have to ask why is that not being addressed? So the literature clearly supports double the RDA for overall survivability, especially as it relates to an aging population. We are talking about survivability, longevity activities of daily living, you know, body composition protection against insulin resistance. How are you going to do that on a low protein diet if you do not have optimal muscle mass? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. I hope that you enjoyed that segment. Again, we've got so much more in store for you just to keep stacking so that we understand truly and deeply in multiple dimensions why, again, muscle is the organ of longevity. And keep in mind that, yes, strength training provides a signal for our muscles to grow, but our muscles are literally made from food. If we don't eat, we don't grow. And that means that muscle is truly made in the kitchen. So as Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is illuminating for us, we've gotta make sure that we're getting in adequate amounts of high quality protein.

We're not talking about ultra processed carb, we're talking about having high quality food that we're preparing ourselves more frequently. Of course, DoorDash is out here, heavy Uber Eats is out here heavy, but there's something really special about making our own food and having literally a hand in food preparation. Although this is something that we evolved doing right now, there is a resurgence of individuals of families who are more adamant and strategic about procuring and preparing their own food on a regular basis. Now there's a lot going on, there's a lot of changes, a lot of new insights that have taken place because in recent decades, even that act, that very healthful act of preparing our own foods.

Little did we know, in particular here in the United States, that our cookware specifically non-stick Teflon coated cookware was poisoning people when they were trying to prepare their meals for their family. One of the most notorious compounds used to make Teflon cookware is a chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA, and has been found repeatedly in peer reviewed studies to contribute to higher rates of infertility, liver disease, and a variety of cancers. For instance, a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute concluded that PFOA is a strong kidney carcinogen with risk increasing in tandem with levels of exposure. And keep in mind that only recently, we're talking about just 10 years ago, even though this was in circulation for decades, it was about 10 years ago, some regulation was really driving these companies, in particular DuPont, to pull this chemical and this chemical complex out of their cookware.

And of course, they reluctantly obliged after years of skating around regulation of deflecting the science. But with companies like that, what they tend to do is what they did, which is they replaced that chemical PFOA with another chemical called Gen X. Which was found to be of course years later, similarly toxic, according to a report from the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency. So the bottom line is how do we break free from this nonsense? How do we make sure that we're utilizing cookware that is not harming our health and harming the health of our family members? Cooking is supposed to be one of the most healthful things that we can do. And so for my family, for over a year now, we've been enjoying, even this morning when I was preparing breakfast, we've been using the real safe, beautiful non-stick cookware and one of my favorite gifts to give my family members and friends for, you know, birthdays and things like that.

And I'm talking about the incredible cookware From Our Place. It's non-toxic PFAS, free ceramic coated, and it has over 75,005 star reviews with their award winning cookware, pressure cookers and more. And definitely check out. By the way, they've got an incredible titanium pan options for you to check out too. Just head over to fromourplace.com/model, and you're going to get 10% off all of their cookware, all of their appliances when you use the code model at checkout. That's the key. You gotta remember that. Use the code model at checkout and you'll see an additional 10% off discount. Now this can be applied to some of their bundles that are already discounted. You'll get an additional 10% off on top of that. So go to fromourplace.com/model. That's F-R-O-M-O-U-R-P-L-A-C-E.com/model. Use the code model at checkout to get hooked up with 10% off. Plus you have their 100 day risk-free trial, free shipping free returns. Give this gift to yourself and the people that you care about. Head over to from our place.com/model. 

Now moving on in this compilation dedicated to the number one key to aging gracefully burning fat, and staying fit for a lifetime. We've got phenomenal research scientists and muscle building expert Alan Aragon. In this segment, he's gonna be sharing why muscle is the metabolic engine of the body, and he's gonna be answering the question, can you protect against or even stop? The muscle loss that's associated with aging. Enjoy this segment from the incredible Alan Aragon. 

ALAN ARAGON: We wanna be protective of lean body, mass muscle, specifically because you can look at muscle as the, the metabolic engine of the body. So the metabolic blast furnace of the body where all the fuels are used and partitioned and directed to where they need to go. And, you know, if we lose muscle tissue, then you can reduce your resting metabolic rate. You can get reduced functional capacity and a, just a reduced capability to metabolize incoming fuels from the diet. And so the importance of muscle and maintaining muscle mass. It just can't be overstated. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Now there's another, and, and there's, there is truth to this, but there's a huge caveat. You know, we get blasted with a lot of information around muscle loss, right, as, as just degeneration, as as we get into older age brackets. Yep. But there's a huge missing piece because yes, obviously that's, that's an aspect of, of this conversation. But the missing piece is, it doesn't have to happen that way that you think it happens because there's a lot of things that could be done to even build muscle later in life. 

ALAN ARAGON: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So can you talk about this whole paradigm? Should we be afraid of we're just gonna lose our muscle, it's the end of story, there's nothing we can do about it? Or is there something that we can do even in our fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties 

ALAN ARAGON: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: To actually support our muscle mass? 

ALAN ARAGON: Yeah, for sure. Okay. So. At the general population, level 40 is kind of a treacherous turning point for the average person, sedentary person out there in the world who isn't really conscious about health and fitness and training. The average person in, in the general pop loses about half a percent a year of, of their lean body mass starting from the age 40. And at age 50, that can double and that can double yet again at 60 and up. And so it's this acceleration of lean body mass loss as people get older. And there's always this looming threat of sarcopenia when people reach their advanced ages like, like 60 and up sarcopenia really starts becoming a threat. The good news about that is. That it's all preventable. I mean, we all have to die at some point and we all kind of slow down at some point and we all lose the motivation to maintain the same degree of muscle mass as we have right now, you know, in our prime. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes, yes. 

ALAN ARAGON: And so, but the fact of the matter is there's research showing that people in their mid eighties can grow muscle. When if somebody's deconditioned for a number of decades and they're in their mid eighties, all you need to do is just start them on a progress progressive resistance training program. And their muscle reacts just like a young person's muscle would when you start them training at college. Now some people are a little bit more banged up by the time they're in older age. They, some people have some metabolic issues, some orthopedic issues that you would have to kind of tiptoe around when you're building that resistance training program. But nevertheless, it's literally never too late to wake muscle back up with training, get it stronger, cause muscle hypertrophy or gains in muscular size and function, it's there. There's no age at which it's too late to do that, even in people's eighties, nineties. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Alright, next up in this team up of experts that's dedicated to the number one key to aging gracefully burning fat, and staying fit for a lifetime. We've got the phenomenal Dr. Andrew Huberman. He has one of the top podcasts in the world and he's a research scientist outta Stanford University. Incredibly insightful. And this segment, from our conversation, he's gonna be sharing with you a major key specifically to brain longevity, alright? We don't wanna just have a fit functional body for a lifetime. We wanna make sure that we're keeping the lights on upstairs to go along with it. He's gonna be sharing how strength training makes you smarter and. Makes you more resilient against stress. Enjoy this next segment from the one and only Dr. Andrew Huberman. 

DR. ANDREW HUBERMAN: If you look at brain function and longevity, it's very clear that the body is informing the brain about the status of your entire being. Okay? And I, I truly mean that in the non mystical sense. When we do load-bearing exercise of any kind, it could even be air squats for some people. But if they're doing any kind of resistance training with weights or machines or body weight, there're actually hormones that are secreted from our bones. This is wild as thing called, like osteonectin is an example of one that are secreted, that go to the brain, that that enhance the survival and the function of neurons of nerve cells in the brain.

And at first when I heard this, I thought, this is crazy. The bones are making hormones, but it makes perfect sense. The skeleton is a very important system in our body. How does the. How do the areas of the brain that control movement, how do the areas of the brain that control learning, how do they know whether or not you are still moving or not? Well, they could know because your heart is beating, but maybe your heart's beating really fast because you're stressed out about something. The only way that your brain knows that your body is being used and that your brain needs to continue to adapt and to stay strong is if you're increasing the load on your skeleton.

And if you look at cognitive decline and loss of memory and things over time, and you look at bodily function and the loss of certain functions, what you find is that there are these weird things that are correlated with brain longevity. And some of them include, for instance, the ability to jump and land. Right? I was talking to my, my mother's in her, I'll, I'm sorry, mom. She's in her, she's in her mid, mid seventies now. And we were, we were talking about this because she said, you know, I want to stay healthy. I want to keep my brain healthy. And I said, well, can you jump up and land? And she said, what are you talking about?

That's crazy. And I said, can you jump up and land? I didn't want her to hurt herself. And we were talking about this, a lot of people as they age, get injuries, hip injuries that take them out of commission, the ability to jump, not huge distances, right? But to just to jump and land with and be stable doing that. Obviously you don't want people harming themselves. That's correlated with brain longevity and body longevity. What is it? Well, it's, it's not just about shuffling around. It's because the bones are taking that, that impact. So when we weight train, we, we provide load forces onto the bones. The bones send signals to the nervous system and to the brain.

And so there's brain longevity. So that's a kind of a, it's a roundabout, but very mechanistic way of answering your question, that indeed, when our body is strengthened, our brain gets better at the neuronal health level. Now, in terms of resilience, which I think and, and our capacity to deal with stress is an interesting one. I think there are several places where exercise carries over to an enhanced ability to deal with stress. First of all, is all the indirect stuff, like it improves our sleep, it reduces inflammation in the body, provided that exercise isn't too intense or too, too frequent. So there's all the indirect ways that it supports us and makes our us more capable.

But then there are the, the pain points of exercise, and those come in different forms. One of the less discussed pain points of exercise is the one where you don't want to exercise and you do it anyway. That's making yourself mentally stronger. And here I'm sort of paraphrasing in a, in a much less entertaining way than the great David Goggins, right? His whole, not his whole thing, he's about many things, but a lot of what David's about is about taking yourself from way back on your heels. Don't want to get out of bed, don't want to do something, and getting into that forward center of mass, that is a very valuable brain function to be able to take yourself from a place of, I don't want to do it at all.

It's the last thing I want to do, and I'm gonna lean into this, that carries over. And then the other one is the pain that you experience, healthy pain, during the exercise itself. The burning of your lungs, the burning of the lactic acid buildup, the, the straining under a rep or something like that. And there, your cognitive or your, your thoughts about what you're doing. I'm here because I, I chose to be. I might not want to be, but I chose to be. Those are two different things, right? I chose to be here. No one's forcing me to do this. I don't have a gun to my head. I'm doing this and this is going to benefit me. Over time that will change your relationship to effort. And the holy grail of life, I believe, is when effort feels good.

And, no one gets to be, in that state all the time. But I think that when we push ourselves physically, we get multiple opportunities to learn, to go from the, I don't want to, I don't want, I don't want to. I'm kind of, that's my voice in my own head. I don't want to, and then doing it anyway. And then you have to remember to reward yourself. And that reward should not be in the form of an external reward. This is very important. It's tempting to say, I'm gonna reward myself with the meal. I'm gonna, you can still enjoy all the things you enjoy, but the reward has to be one that you give yourself mentally, because when you start to give yourself external rewards, you're teaching your brain that rewards only come from the outside.

When you give yourself internal rewards, and you can even make this a one minute meditation practice at the end of a particularly hard cold shower, or you get out, you just sit there and tell yourself, I, this is good for me. I chose to do this. This is benefiting me. Those messages, actually, I know it sounds a little hokey, but those messages actually help reinforce the whole process that you just forced yourself through.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Next up, in this compilation dedicated to the number one key to aging gracefully burning fat, and staying fit for a lifetime, we've got New York Times bestselling author and fitness icon. She's actually in the Fitness Hall of Fame. I'm talking about the amazing JJ Virgin. In this segment, she's gonna be sharing with you why you need to be focused on muscle first in particular. Again, if we're looking at weight loss, if we're looking at fat loss, we need to be focused on building muscle first. She's gonna be sharing why muscle is like metabolic Spanx or skims. All right? And this and much more. Enjoy this segment from the amazing JJ Virgin. 

JJ VIRGIN: Everything really is about holding onto our building muscle mass. And I look at it and go, all right, thirties, forties, fifties, this is like primo building years. And you look at people who are so focused on weight loss and they wanna lose weight fast. There's no way you're losing fat, primarily fat if you're losing weight fast, right? And ideally you're focused solely on muscle first. Like if you look at what I'm working on right now are norms, and what I haven't been able to really find, I don't think the research is there yet, is how much muscle do we wanna have? Like what is the ideal muscle mass for someone with when you looked at height and frame right? And really got the weight ideal that way.

And then if you looked at your weight and went, all right, I'm actually maybe 30 pounds overweight, but I'm five pounds under muscle, I would never focus on the fat loss first. I would solely focus on the muscle. Because if you're putting on muscle, you know, everyone wants a faster metabolism. It's like, well, as long as your thyroid's working well, the big controlling factor is always gonna be muscle. Put it on, right? And plus muscles like metabolic Spanx. It holds everything in tighter and boost your metabolism and improves insulin sensitivity. And it provides this little sink for when you're drink, you know, getting in some sugar, it's gonna go into your muscles, right? So it's just the perfect solution. But we have to, and I'll, I'll tell you a very funny story about this.

We, especially women, we have to look at weight differently. So I decided to, you know, really change my workout up. Like I'd gotten in a rud at the gym and I thought, you know what? I wanna see if I can put some muscle on. I'd been working out since I was a teenager with the football team 'cause there were no, like, I went to high school in Richmond, California. There were no gyms, right? I'm in the football team lot, like the little football team room with all the big dudes lifting weights. And so I literally have lifted weights my entire life. Even when I would have an injury, I would lift around the injury. So I've always worked out and I decided I'm gonna see where I can go with this.

So I went in and I really pushed it. And I started gaining weight, and then I had this whole mental thing going on of like, and my clothes are still fitting, right? Everything's fitting. If anything, it might be a little tighter around the arms. Well, that's okay, you know, but it's fitting. But it's like I'm seeing, having to do this mental game of, oh my gosh, I'm gaining weight. Holy smokes. It's muscle. This is what you want. You, you know, this whole like, bang. But, but women do that, right, so often. I had a gal, Vicki, when I owned a gym who wanted to lose 10 pounds, and we worked together and she dropped two clothing sizes. She looked amazing. She lost no weight. Now, instead of celebrating that, she'd actually, right? Yeah. Drop five pounds of fat, put on five pounds of muscle, and look like an entirely different person. She's, I was like, do you wanna look the same, like a small, fluffier version of yourself here? Right. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. 

JJ VIRGIN: It's just a mindset shift we have to get to. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I want to ask you about this because what I'm really hearing is instead of saying like, if we could change this metric, even in medicine, you know where, where a physician is saying, Hey, you really need to lose 30 pounds. Shifting it to saying you need to gain five pounds of muscle. What are the things that is gonna be entailed in gaining that five pounds of muscle so that we can start to shift this? Because I would imagine it's gonna help with the weight loss piece too, but what are some of the things we can do to add on that muscle?

JJ VIRGIN: So first of all, like the doctor's office should have a DEXA or an InBody, like forget ever stepping on a regular scale. Again, that is like looking at total cholesterol. It is a meaningless number. Right. I mean, if it's high, you're gonna go, gee, we need to pull it apart. But you could have it be normal and be sarcopenia, obese, not have enough muscle. So that's the first thing. So they have to be able to, to look at this. This has to be part, like to me, it's one of the biggest changes we can make in metabolic health quickly, because it will take us out of this diet mentality that sets everybody up to fail. Right? Even when I go on, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna go on a diet, and then I get into this, like, I haven't done it for years, but you immediately start to think of all the stuff you can't have, and then you wanna have it, right, 'cause that's just human nature. 

So we wanna put on five pounds of muscle. Now if someone is not working out at all, it's gonna be so much easier to start, right? It's kinda like cleaning a really dirty window. It looks amazing, and you just do a little bit. So there's an advantage to being out of shape because you're gonna see big changes quickly and you can do something called re comping where you can lose fat and put on muscle at the same time. But, let's assume most people have been doing something and now they're coming in. First thing they need to do is make sure that their, their whole diets focus protein first, and it's gonna help with blood sugar control. It's gonna help with satiety. You know, when you focus first on building your plate and building your day around protein and bumping your, your breakfast and dinner around protein.

You actually will start to get full and not overeat. We were just in Italy this summer and we went out to some restaurant to have steak Florentine and it was like this, it was like this big right? You know, and we eat this whole thing. We were so, I thought we're probably not gonna be to eat for a couple days. I mean, we had to go take this like three hour walk afterwards 'cause we were like, you know, wanted to go curl up in a fetal position, but when you eat protein, you're full. And so the first thing is to sit down and go, okay, let's design your diet based on what you really want your ideal body weight to be.

And if we could really do it, really be based on your, i, your, your muscle mouse, but you know, to keep it simple, at least 0.8 grams per pound of ideal body weight and then divide that over three meals. One of the challenges I think with intermittent fasting is you just simply can't get the protein you need in two meals. So, and I do believe we need to eat during the circadian rhythm, so I'm not a like lunch and dinner person. I think we need to eat earlier in the day. Probably two hours after waking is good. You know, cortisols come up, melatonins come back down. Pancreas can work. But focusing on that and then getting to the gym and start to focus on lifting heavy things. And people always say, how much weight should I lift? I go as much you can in good form until you can't and do it hard and do big movements. Don't focus on little, little vanity movements like bicep curls and tricep extensions. I never do them. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That would surprise the sh*t outta people because he got the can.

JJ VIRGIN: I know they're always like, Ooh, you must do, like go. No, I never do that. I do pullups, I do pushups, I do bent over rows. I do big stuff that is going to require my whole body. So there's stability in there too. Right. And you know, I might, if the end, if I want to throw a little bit in there, but usually I'm too tired.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. That's so much muscle recruitment that you're doing, you know, and that's again, it's getting back to how our bodies are really designed is a lot of things working together. 

JJ VIRGIN: Right. I love their, I'm trying to remember who said this, I think it might've been Paul Check of like our bodies weren't, you know, bolted to the floor. So like do things standing up, do things that require balance. So cables, free weights, body weight, do those things. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Alright. I hope that you enjoyed that segment with the incredible JJ Virgin. I. JJ is somebody who truly walks her talk. I've known her for years and she's somebody that I'm grateful to say that I've got to spend a lot of time with. And being in her sixties again when she takes off her jacket, 'cause she goes sleeveless a lot, a lot of sleeveless outfits, dresses, whatever. If we are out to eat, the jacket comes off you, you see it. Crowds start to gather round. Just impressed at how did this beautiful woman get so shredded? And you know, she's somebody who is never withholding her insights, her secrets.

She's always seeking to help. She's always checking in on myself and my wife. And she's just got a huge heart and just a truly a great person. And even most recently, we were out having dinner with some friends. And JJ really helped 'cause my wife was just like, I'm trying, you know, I'm trying to really focusing on the fitness, the longevity, and building, protecting my muscle. And JJs like, you gotta make sure that you're getting that adequate amount of protein in. And then, you know, my wife went with the obligatory, well it's just, you know, just all the reasons why it's not doable for her. And so JJ really helped my wife with her mindset around getting in adequate protein. Now you'd think maybe she listened to me, but no, that's not how it works.

Sometimes, especially in relationships and many people listening, know what I mean? There's a statement, you can't be a prophet in your own land. I get it. All right. But this is the benefit of having other voices and even a platform like this to share with our friends, with our family members because sometimes that proximity it, it blocks in a strange way, the ability for the information to be absorbed to make an impact, especially on initial impact. And this is not to say that people around us in our lives and family members and my wife, my amazing wife, alright, she's, I'm just gonna say, I'm gonna say the P word. She's perfect. She's perfect. And I know that having other voices like JJ to talk with her, to share her insights, to help her to get where she wants to be is priceless.

And so, again, I'm grateful to be able to share her insights with you. And by the way, one of the insights, one of the tips that she gave my wife was, you know, for years my wife has been doing intermittent fasting. And so again, just having that fasting window being too long, it's just blocking out her ability to get in the protein that she's targeting. So she doesn't necessarily want to "eat something in the morning." And so what she's been doing is having either, you know, adding some protein along with her coffee, whether that's some collagen protein, but what she's really been loving is like throughout the day, throughout the morning is she's been having the 100% grass fed bone broth protein from Paleo Valley, and in particular, they have a savory original version that's kind of like a bone broth, but it's very, very dense in proteins, in particular collagen.

Now, this has been affirmed in numerous studies to boost metabolism, to support healthy joints, tendons, and other tissues for healthy hair, skin and nails reducing cellulite. The list goes on and on, and so there's about 17 grams and a serving right there and just being able to sip on that throughout the day or in the morning. You know, it's one of the things that she found to be very helpful. But they also, by the way, that bone broth protein, they have a salted caramel version. They have a chocolate, they have a vanilla, so you could use it kind of the traditional way that you use a protein powder. But again, paleo Valley is in a league of their own.

It's grass fed, grass finished, 100% bone broth protein. There truly is nothing else like it. Head over to paleo valley.com/model and you're going to get 15% off their incredible bone broth protein plus all of their amazing snacks, their grass fed, grass finished meat sticks, super food bars, all their phenomenal supplements. And we keep their snacks here at the studio and at my house. By the way, we travel with them all the time. Incredible people, incredible dedication, and their standards are so high, and I just truly, I trust them. I appreciate them. And again, head over to paleovalley.com/model to get 15% off storewide. That's P-A-L-E-O-V-A-L-L-E y.com/model for 15% off. 

And now we're going to go to our final expert in this compilation, dedicated to the number one key to aging gracefully burning fat, and staying fit for a lifetime. This is with another one of those people who is truly an inspiration for me personally, but he's impacting the lives of millions of people. But every time that I've spent time with him, I've taken something away that I've added to my life and added to my fitness, to my longevity because he's done it all from being a literal world record holding powerlifter to transitioning into, because being a world record holding powerlifter at the level he was at, he had to be pretty heavy.

All right, so we're talking knocking on the door of around 300 pounds, right? So, and then getting incredibly lean and fit and getting into to sprinting and all kinds of different things. And in fact, he even ran the Boston Marathon. So I'm talking about my friend, and again, one of the most insightful people in this field, the amazing Mark Bell. He's gonna be sharing with you why strength is never a weakness. He's gonna be sharing some other overlooked ways that strength in building muscle leads to longevity. He's also gonna be sharing some insights on how to build our muscle long term. Alright, some tips on like, how do we do this? So we're gonna close this out with the one and only Mark Bell. 

MARK BELL: I've been doing this for so long and now to finally get confirmation. Yeah. From every single podcast that talks about anti-aging or reversing your age, or, trying to stay young and fit and healthy. So much of it comes back to muscle mass. So much of it comes back to strength. People hear me say all the time, I say strength is never a weakness, and weakness is never a strength. And I think that we should keep our eye on strength. Not necessarily, you don't have to necessarily bench press something that somebody else bench presses. 

However, pretty much every person should start to, every person that lifts and if you don't lift, you don't count. That's the saying of mine as well. Sorry for everybody that doesn't lift. You gotta get out there and lift. But when you're lifting, you should have an idea of like what kind of weights you can do on particular exercises. And so maybe it's normal for you to be able to bench press one plate for a couple of reps. Well, why don't we try to just keep that around for as long as we possibly can because that's gonna show us a sign of some sort of youthfulness that's gonna show us a sign that you are still sending your body a signal.

And if you just think about each thing that we're trying to do, all the biohacking, you know, getting some sunlight in the morning and, and cold plunging and all these different routines and all these things, what are we trying to do? We're trying to send a particular signal to the body. So with strength never being a weakness and weakness ever being a strength. I think we owe it to ourselves to try to keep a certain level of fitness, keep a certain level of strength, X amount of pushups, X amount of pull-ups. How you lift or how you exercise is kind of up to you. You, there's a lot of different things you can do. And I say lift, you know, if you don't lift, you don't count.

But some form of resistance, you know, if, if you're doing, rock climbing, it's like, I don't think you really need to spend a ton of time in the gym 'cause you have a, a different approach. But, you know, I learned so many, so many great things from power lifting and power lifting is, let's see what you can do for a one rep max. And a lot of people are scared to do things like that. A lot of people are scared to go out and just give it hell and just go and sprint as hard as they can. They're, they're fearful of trying like a heavy squat, and you should be because you can get hurt. And so there's really not, there's, I'm not encouraging people to go in the gym today and go and try a one rep max.

However, what I am encouraging someone to do, learn the skillset of a squat, and then maybe over a period of time you just say like, let me see what I can hit and still have my form be just dead on. I'll have somebody else watch it, I'll record it. I want to make sure that the technique is really there. So I'm not gonna put on three plates when I barely made two plates look pretty good, right? We see that a lot with people and they end up doing these reps that are just atrocious. So you want to try to, when you're working on your strength and just even working on yourself in general, you wanna make sure that your reps always look really clean, that your reps always look really good.

Something that I share with people often is that your. Last rep of your last set should look like the first rep of your first set. So that's a really practical thing. So if you do three sets of 10 of something, your 30th rep, your last rep of your last set should look a little bit similar. Now okay, there's gonna be a little wiggle. You got some fatigue. I totally understand. And I'm not saying that you have to train that carefully all the time, but that's about what it should be. So now when you go to do a bench press, or now when you go to do a squat, you don't have to be fearful that you're gonna get hurt because you're doing with textbook technique. And kind of back to the sprinting and stuff too, you'll hear people say, ah, you know, I think everybody knows sprinting's the best, hands down. There's not even, it's not even close. It's just not even remotely close. There is nothing like sprinting. There's nothing that mimics a sprint, but if you can sprint, you can probably fight.

If you can sprint, you can probably get away. You can sprint, you can just, you have access to so many things. If you can sprint, you can probably jump. And if you're really good at sprinting, you probably can run pretty far too. Like someone like Usain Bolt, who probably never really trained to run longer distances, I'm sure him running eight miles or something is, even though he'd probably hate it, it's not just like his thing that he likes, he would probably still be, be pretty damn good at it.

So get, try to figure out a way for your body to sprint. You know, if you're listening to this and you're 50 years old and you're like, well, my knee's in my back and I don't, can you sprint on airdyne bike? You might say, no. Can you sprint on an elliptical? Can you, can you sprint with a curl? Can you sprint with an overhead press? Like maybe you can figure out like a certain amount of weight, maybe 40 pound dumbbells, pretty heavy to you. Again, with good technique and good form. Maybe you can bring the weight to here and maybe you can figure out a way to like press it overhead. I think that that. Some of those things I just mentioned right there.

I think those are more of the key to our health and our longevity more so even just, even something like jumping down from something. I don't know if peop other people did this in school, but I remember like jumping down from the back of the bus in school in case there was an emergency or whatever that would destroy most adults now to jump down like that. But I remember being excited about that. Now I'm sure I would probably shuffle over to the edge and I'd probably look down and be like, Hmm, I might be going to my butt and then, and then go down. So your ability to jump, your ability to sprint, these things are, they're so crucial because of the signal that it sends to your body. It's showing a sign that you're still youthful. Even something like getting on the ground. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. 

MARK BELL: If you say, Hey man, get on the ground and, and do some of these exercise with me. If I circle around and I, I move around a bunch like a cat trying to like, you know, get comfortable on the ground, that tells you immediately that I'm in pain. But I was like, okay, and I just pop right down to the ground. It tells you something a little different. So I just wanted to mention all that. And I know it is a little long-winded, but I wanted to mention all that because I think in the era that we're in right now, people think they have to be muscular.

I don't agree with that. I don't think so. I don't believe so. Even though I'm muscular, this is what I like to do. And what you like to do is actually in a different category of things because what you like to do is massively important to your life as well. And massively important to your health as well. I just worked out yesterday with Mike o Hern. He's 253 pounds. He's probably like 55 years old. I don't necessarily agree with him staying, you know, above 240 or something like that, all the way into his late fifties and sixties and stuff. But if he really enjoys that, if he really likes to do that, I could see the argument of like, I gotta kind of back off of that and say, I think he's probably healthier doing what he really enjoys as long. It's not as long. It's not clearly to his detriment. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. I love that you're talking about the signals giving our body these particular signals, whether it's being able to spend time on the floor, whether it's being able to jump off of something. And here's the thing, a lot of times we lose these capacities because we stopped doing them, right. I was just thinking about my youngest son, we were walking somewhere. 

MARK BELL: How old is he? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: He's 12. And so we were walking and he, he climbed up on something just to jump off of it, right? And that's what we do. But then we stopped doing that stuff because we get the idea in our head usually. It's before any type of injury happens. We just stop doing the thing and then we get to a place years later that, oh, I shouldn't do that thing. 

MARK BELL: Remember when your son was seven, right? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh man. He, he didn't even just, he didn't walk to another room. He ran. 

MARK BELL: My daughter jumped all the time. Yeah, my son ran all the time. And so I think that might be hard to like start to figure out how to microdose that right into our own lives when you're 45 years old. But just can you start to think about that? Can you start to look at that a little bit and say, every time I park my car, I'm gonna make it a goal to like literally get outta the car as quick as I can. It sounds like so silly or so foolish. When I get up from the dinner table, I'm not gonna use my hands. I don't want people trying stuff and doing stuff that they're, they're going to hurt themselves, but maybe it's something that you work yourself towards. A friend of mine, Joel Green, he actually will just, he's 57 years old, and he will actually just sprint down the street randomly.

And when he was on my podcast, he was wearing like, nice shoes and he was, he was dressed nicely. And I, I was like, even in those shoes, you know, he's like, it doesn't matter, man. I just take off just like a little kid. He's like, because again, that's the difference between a young body and an old body. So the inputs that we give ourselves, they, it can't just be, the gym's not enough. This is what I'm trying to basically say here. Going and doing a lifting session and broing out and just getting like muscular that might have some benefits and it might chew up more glucose and it might help us to be able to eat more and to be more lax with a diet or something like that. It could help us manage our body weight. Like there's a lot of cool things that it can do but it can't really mimic that youthfulness that we're looking for. And so therefore, I think you need other strategies. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. The youthfulness is associated with moving quickly, right? We think of growing old as slowing down, right. But are you proactively doing things to stay. Quick to stay fleet of foot. Right. And so I love also, you guys have been sharing some content around just like jump rope for example. You know, and this, these are things, again, these are like, they can be in the background of our awareness, but my wife told me, because this is one of the things that we do often, but she told me when she was in Kenya, a little girl, that they would jump rope.

And I had no idea. This is the first time she told me, I've known her for 20 years and she told me that she used to jump rope when she was a kid. For me, people would do double dutch, you know? The, the girls in the neighborhood, whatever. And these were all like fast twitch, quick, quick, off the ground. And these are things, there's, even today, there's jump ropes that don't connect. You don't even have to have the whole rope to jump over. You could just do the action. And do a jumping motion that feels comfortable for you. 

MARK BELL: It's great for people to do. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know, and so it's just like, where can I get this input, send this signal for youth and. Also we know today, and you've talked a lot about this, is that muscle is the organ of longevity. And so you're not saying that we gotta walk around with a honking amount of muscle, but adding some muscle to your frame is gonna help you to age better. And so having you here, I want to talk about training, I want to talk about how do we most efficiently build some muscle, right?

MARK BELL: So I love, I love this kind of. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Lemme know. 

MARK BELL: I love this kind of stuff because I love, you know, we can get like philosophical when we talk about all kinds of different things, but it's great to just give people straight answers. And so there's many ways to get muscle. You know, some people get it from, they wrestled in high school and they got a big neck and, and they got. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's not Leroy. 

MARK BELL: They got, yeah, they got, yeah, they got big arms. I have a friend, that used to work for us. He had these massive biceps, they're just amazing looking biceps and he got it from sprinting. It's like, you know, sprinters have nice shoulders, nice arms and stuff. This guy had like 19 inch arms and looked crazy. So sometimes people get hypertrophy from like particular sports, but the easiest way to get it specifically is to go to the gym and do some resistance training. And it's pretty simple. You want maybe to utilize two to three exercises, um, two to three sets per exercise. Now, as you start to do this more often, you might want to do a little bit more than that. 

Two to three exercises, two to three sets, two to three body parts. Maybe, maybe per week. Maybe as you get more advanced, maybe it's two or three body parts per session, depending on how you want to do your split. And it's just kind of old school. Joe Weeder style set to 10. Something that I've found to be super effective over the years is to do three sets of 10 and go light medium heavy. So you, you're gonna do incline bench press and you have a little experience with it. So you, you know how to do the form and stuff and just grab whatever you consider to be light. You know, each person can be a little different. Whatever weight you consider to be like, kind of a joke, wait like that you can, do, you want to get that first set in because that is where you do a diagnostic.

And you do an analyzation of yourself, where am I today? Like, what's, and and sure enough, you pick the weight up and you move it around and you're like, oh my God, there's like something going on in my wrist or something like, I don't know. That's strange. And so what do you do from there? Well, you're going to now audible and you're not gonna go as heavy on the next two sets. You can kind of. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Or you change your position. 

MARK BELL: Yeah, yeah. Right. You change your position. You're like, oh, well, a barbell doesn't feel good today, so maybe I'll try dumbbell. Right. And that's where you can kind of make these audibles as you go, and you'll, you'll know how to do that a lot more as you move forward. But something like three sets of 10 light, medium heavy, chest as the example you did incline bench. Now maybe you do, it'd be nice to do maybe some pushups or some dips, two to three sets, 10 reps. Then move on to maybe like a cable crossover or something like that. Two to three sets of 10.

That's a great chess workout. Now, depending on how advanced you are, you might need to make it harder. You might need to put your feet up on a box for the pushups. If you are less advanced, you might have to do your pushups off your knees or use my invention, the slingshot, which assists you in bench press, pushups, and dips. But that's kind of the basics of it right there. Two to three sets, two reps is a great start. How often do you need to train? What kind of frequency? That's always a really interesting question, but I just to flat out answer it, I would say just two to three times a week. Something that I've found that might be of interest to people is that if you give yourself something that's too low, I like to aim low. 

I think aiming low is, is crucial. I was talking earlier about sprints. The best way to do a sprint is to just go out and like jog real lightly. Go as slow as you can and then speed up, speed up, speed up. So you want to kind of ramp yourself up into it. So you're doing it in a safe fashion, right? If we kind of take the same approach to weights, we're gonna kind of ramp ourselves up into these things, slow and controlled. And so, you know, the way to get, the way to gain muscle mass, the. Over time is you're going to increase the intensity of the things that you're doing.

You're going to be brushing up against, what I would call like a functional failure, like you're, you're, you're no longer able to do a technical limit, they call it. You're no longer able to execute the exercise with good form and precision any longer. And, that gives you an idea of when to kind of discontinue the exercise. But what the point I was trying to make about sometimes something's too low is that if I just said, Hey, I, you know, Shawn, I want you to do a 10 minute walk. You know, once a day you might do it here and there, but it's like, there's like nothing to it. You're like, I don't know what the point in this is.

So I do think it's great to aim low, but I. You still need stuff to stimulate you. So if you're in the gym and you're doing like these two to three sets, light, medium heavy, and you wanna ramp it up a little bit more, go for it. Like, you're already at the gym, you're already there. You already spent the time to get yourself there and all these things. And so, that's where it might be a good idea to just say, this feels good. I like doing this instead of the three sets that someone recommended, I'm gonna do five. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Okay. Now you mentioned with the frequency, so are we talking two to three sessions per week on a certain body part, ideally? 

MARK BELL: Yeah, I think so. The, the, some people will say like on the smaller body parts that, maybe two or three times a week would be appropriate for those smaller body parts. And some people say on, you know, legs or, or chest or back or something like that, that maybe you only need to do it like once a week. The way I like to look at it is I personally like to do something almost every single day. But I don't really recommend that to people that are new. I think people that are new, I think there's a lot of great things they could do. I mean, you could get an app and follow along with an app, you could get a trainer, something like that. But to commit to a trainer or to commit to this new time commitment out of nowhere is a tough investment for people sometimes.

So while I enjoy exercising every day and I like to spread things out quite a bit because I exercise so often, I don't even really think about that question anymore. But for people that are newer, that are trying to like grow, let's say their shoulders, they want their shoulders to be a little wider. They want their back to be a little stronger, a little wider. You're probably looking at like two or three times a week for those particular body parts and maybe other body parts where you're like, ah, I think my legs and my calves, or I think this or that, like, looks decent. I'm not gonna worry about it as much. Maybe only one time a week for those body parts. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that this was filled to the brim with insights and inspiration and that's what it's all about. And of course, knowledge is not power. Knowledge is potential power. It's the application. So take something that inspired you today and put it into action and one of those actions can be inspiring others around you. Inspiring and supporting community transformation and community longevity. So share this with the people that you care about. Of course, you could share this out on social media with your friends and family and followers over there. 

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We've got some amazing masterclasses and world class guests coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to the model health show.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions videos for each episode. And if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome and I appreciate that so much and take care, I promise, to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.