Three Questions with Meghann Koppele Duffy

Three Questions To Make Weight Training Make Sense

• Meghann • Episode 16

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In this episode of Three Questions, I share the three questions I wish more people would ask before picking up a weight: What are you training for? How are you warming up? Are you training in a way that actually works for you—or just following what you’ve been told?

I break down how hypertrophy, strength, and endurance aren’t just buzzwords but choices that should align with what you want from your body, whether that’s looking a certain way, living without pain, or being agile enough to handle what life throws at you. You’ll also hear why I think your last rep shouldn’t be your sloppiest rep, what Tiger Woods’ warmup routine can teach you about your own, and why sensory input might be the missing link in your strength program.

Whether you’re a trainer, a movement professional, or just someone wanting to feel stronger and move better, this episode will give you practical, no-nonsense tools to rethink how you approach weight training—so it fits your goals, your nervous system, and your real life.

Resources mentioned:
Episode 11: Pilates vs Weight Training
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Meghann Koppele Duffy: Welcome to Three Questions where critical thinking is king, and my opinions and research are only here to support your learning and hopefully deeper understanding. Hey, I'm your host Meghann, and I am so honored you clicked on Three Questions today to dig into weight training. I really enjoy doing the episode about Pilates and weight training, and so I wanted to kind of expand on that and do a separate episode for each because I really love them both, and I felt like in that short episode, we kind of didn't get to

explore the nuances of each. So I have three amazing questions, or at least I think they're amazing to hopefully foster some critical thinking to help you decide how you would like to approach weight training for yourself or your clients, or maybe not approach weight training for yourself and clients.

So let's get right into it. Question one. I'm gonna ask you guys today, what are you training for? Question two, how are you warming up? Or maybe a better way to say it is what is available to you when you're training. And the last question we'll dig into is, are you training based off what you like or what a trainer is telling you to do?

Now, there is no judgment in any of these questions or any of these answers, so let's just kind of dig right into it. What are you training for? Are you training for what's called hypertrophy, strength, neuromuscular control, sensory motor control, or maybe endurance? Now let's talk about what each is, because right now they're just words.

So hypertrophy is actual muscle growth. So some of you, I think you need to be honest. Are you working out to look a particular way? Are you trying to build muscles in your arms, your abs, your glutes? Are you looking to increase the muscle size? Okay, now me judging people for that is a waste of time. Your goals are your goals.

I know in my twenties my goals are very different than in my forties, but if you told me that I should be focusing on something else in my twenties, I would've told you to take a long walk off a short pier. Okay, number two, strength. Do you want to be physically stronger, move more load, be able to pick up the giant Poland Spring water bottles without asking your husband, wife, or kids?

Do you want to be able to lift things around your house? Do you want to be stronger for your sport? What about endurance? Do you want to be able to do something for longer? Have more endurance in those muscles so that it's not just lifting something once? Maybe I'm in a job where I have to hold a camera.

I've gotta keep my body in a specific position for a long time. Maybe you need more endurance, cardiovascular endurance, which is different than weight training, so we're not gonna talk about that here. Okay. The last two are interesting. We'll see neuromuscular control and sensory motor control. Now there's, they sound like fancy words, but to me, I think there's too much focus on neuromuscular control, people focusing on the motor output.

That's what the fitness industry is focused on. I taught like that for probably at this point, more than half of my career. I've been teaching movement and Pilates specifically since the year 2001, so a long time. Okay. I started in college teaching. I taught like a Billy Blanks Tae Bo class, and I taught Pilates and I loved it.

Okay, so I've been teaching for a long time and seen a lot of the trends. Some of you have been teaching twice as long as me. Glad you're still here. So focusing on the motor output. Do it this way. Focus and visualize your muscles actually moving, which I know sounds great in theory and visualization works, but it's not the way you think it is.

How movement works is sensory drives motor. Our brain takes in all the information. So I, let me keep it simple. If I said to you, come here. And you're over there. How do you know how to come here? You know how to come towards me because visually you know where I am. Then based off spatial awareness, you'll notice how close to come to me.

I'm terrible at spatial awareness. I'm sorry. I do. I am a bit of a close talker. I've learned to I, 'cause I have bad hearing, I have learned to read people's visual cues. If I'm too close or too loud, I can't monitor that. Auditorily. My friends love to draw this to people's attention and they think it's hysterical Anyway.

Also your brain will create a motor map based off the sensory environment and if the sensory environment shit, it's gonna base off previous experience. That's why pain is such a bitch, because unless we change that sensory environment or give your brain something to focus on, it's gonna go back on previous experience.

I've had clients that every time they look their eyes up into the right, they get an increase of pain in their shoulder. Now, one might say, oh, because when their eyes are moving, they can't differentiate them from their neck and it's pulling on their shoulder. Yes. And also they got in a very bad car accident.

Somebody rear-ended them and they looked up, which is why I always ask people, did you see the car coming? Because when we see the car coming, we tend to brace for impact rather than going limp. This is unfortunately why drunk drivers usually survive and the people they hit don't, okay. So if you're about to get in a car accident or there's gonna be impact you can't control go limp.

I'm not saying that's gonna save you, but you'll be at a better chance than if you brace for impact. Okay? So every time they look up to the right, they get a startle reflex. They get that pain signal again. So what we need to do is change that sensory environment, create safety. Usually I do like different proprioceptive cues at the shoulder so that the brain feels, when the eyes look up, the shoulder hasn't moved or changed, and it can help it reflexly stabilize to be out of pain.

Cool. Alright, so sensory motor control is what I like to focus on when I'm training. I am training for life. I want my brain and body to respond no matter the situation. I wanna be strong, I wanna be agile. I don't really care about hypertrophy at this point. Okay? I will admit I don't like things hanging and being flabby, but I had a, I had a large amount of skin cancer removed from my left shoulder, even a little bit into my deltoid.

So I am in the process of remapping that shoulder so it doesn't get in pain, and I don't get a frozen shoulder. Because of that, I haven't been moving as much load in my arms and I'm noticing things hanging. So I am lying if I don't care about how I look. Everybody does. But you have to pick your goals and you can get a little bit of both.

So let's stop judging people. Let's ask them or ask ourselves, what are our goals? So if you want hypertrophy, what the research shows is. Lifting about 60 to 80% of your one repetition max. So say your max, you can do once overhead is 30 pounds. Well, you do 60 to 80% of 60, uh, 30 pounds, and you do about, uh, oh gosh, it's like 12 to 15 repetitions.

10 to 15 repetitions. So what you need to do is increase your repetitions at that one repetition max. Okay? Where a strength the research shows greater than 80% of your one repetition max is the better way to build strength. But the research does show that doing the hypertrophy model can also build strength.

So you can build hypertrophy and strength, but here's some things to think about. I've said it before. It's a saying. My husband says, look like Tarzan. Play like Jane. I'm not making that a male female thing. Tarzan had a lot of hypertrophy, very muscular, very big chest and deltoids. Okay? Sometimes when you have high levels of hypertrophy, that affects your range of motion at your joints.

Which is why some guys who are real big can't bring their arm all the way down to their side without not moving from the shoulder joint. So their glenohumeral is going to be affected. But say they're in like a traumatic event or they have to lift something heavy and their arm is forced to move in a range of motion, they don't have neuromuscular control where they're gonna get injured.

I see this a lot in baseball now. I'll use Aaron Judge. Uh, my nephew, Anthony's favorite player. He is such a, he's so great. But with high levels of hypertrophy in his upper body. Sometimes when the ball hits the bat in a way that his hands and shoulders can't respond, it's gonna put a break on those joints and it's gonna cause him to overutilize his obliques in a way that can cause an oblique tear.

We're seeing a lot more oblique strains. So yes, this dude's got power, he's hitting home runs, but at what cost? Higher risk for injury. Giancarlo Stanton. What a player. And if I do say nicest glutes in the business, uh, touche Giancarlo, but because of that high resting muscle tone that is going to inhibit that integration of the upper and lower body.

Lower back injury, knee injuries. So when we're training, we wanna make sure that we're not building hypertrophy in a way that it's decreasing the safety and the mobility at joints. Okay. Why? Brian used to say, look like Tarzan played like Jane, the guys that were strong in the gym, how Brian explained it to me and it was his career ending injury, one of these tarzans fell on him on the line and Brian said to me.

I always hated playing next to this guy because he had terrible balance, and I said, say more. I wanted to know what Brian meant about balance. He said he was always falling over his feet, couldn't adjust as much. I. And I do believe it's because of that hypertrophy. So our joints don't have as much give, our proprioceptors aren't giving our brain that information.

So when things come fast or in a direction, you do not have sensory motor control or neuromuscular control, you will either fall or get injured. Okay? So just keep in mind, hypertrophy is a great goal, but is it? It is, is it making your balance worse? Is it making your proprioception worse? Is your visual system having to do more because you can't actually rotate your spine or shoulders effectively?

These are questions I'm asking. I'm not telling you. I'm asking you. Now, when it comes to endurance, the research does show lighter load more reps. Okay? But here's the thing, I hate that shit. As soon as somebody tells me 15 to 20 reps, I'm already annoyed. I lose focus about midway, not because I'm mentally weak, but maybe I am, but it's the neuro focus.

Okay? So when we're doing endurance training, maybe not give breaks In the exercise, give sensory breaks. So if you notice the client's eyes are fixed, they're using their eyes to help gaze stabilize and stabilize their spine. Maybe at rep eight you ask them to blink or do an eye movement to help the eyes gaze stabilize for longer.

Okay. If they're focusing on proprioceptive cue in their hand or not changing the distance between their ribbon pelvis, right? What is the sensory cue they're focusing on? Give them a sensory break. I do this with neuro clients. With neuro clients, especially MS. Or stroke. They're always the neurologists.

Yeah. I'm calling you out and some PTs, some not. The PTs who are listening to this, you guys are part of the solution. I love you and thank you for being here. I. But you know the PTs I'm talking about, well, they're just too weak to do it. Bullshit. I've worked with people who are completely bedridden and done everything people told them to do, and when I simply changed the sensory input and a asked them not to move their arm, but asked their spouse to hold their hand and move their spouse's hand, they completely moved again to the point where the husband said, what the hell did you just do?

And I had to take a moment and go, what the hell did I just do? Because it shocked me. This woman could not move any of her four limbs. But with the right sensory intervention, she moved as if she was moving for years. So it's not weakness. Her bot, her brain was almost deaf to the sensory inputs others were giving.

When I spoke her language, she got it there. And if you're interested in learning more, oh, how funny. I'm wearing my neuro studio shirt today. Check out our Advanced Neuro Techniques course. I teach you how to assess and do this. It's not magic. And it is not just randomly doing eye exercises or using muscle testing.

No disrespect to that. This is a level deeper, okay, I'm going off topic. So if the person wants to build endurance work in those sensory breaks. So if a client always lifts their head during a squat, 'cause everybody tells 'em to look up, which is so fricking stupid. Anyway, I'm gonna ask them maybe at their mid rep is to move their head.

Or move their fingers so their brain is not dull to the sensory input. Okay? Now I could argue, guys, you could do that with hypertrophy, strength and endurance, any of those. Focus on the sensory input. Give sensory breaks. You're gonna get a better motor output. So if you're listening to this and everybody's telling you to do this type of exercise, figure out what your goals are.

There's chatGPT. Now ask them, write them. These are my goals. What is the best way to achieve that for somebody who is super focused or has trouble with focus, or who has a bad foot? Now that is not gonna replace a trainer because we still need people to help us to identify when there are sensory gaps.

Okay? I call myself a translator, not a dictator, but if you're so nervous to get started, just do something. And if you hate it, I'm skipping to question three right now. Are you training based off what you like or what a trainer is telling you to do? I'm gonna tell you guys a secret. We as trainers tend to teach how we like to move and learn, and we think that everybody feels the same.

I need the somatic professionals to hear this. I know it works well for you. It does not work well for about the other 50% of the population. And no, we don't want to learn it that way. That doesn't, that's not comfortable to our brain. And I wanna all the people who poo pooh somatics, just because you don't like it doesn't mean that another 20% or 30% of the population, it could be the thing that changes the game for them.

So if somebody's learning style doesn't match yours, I have two rules for my students. I make all my students give their clients a one to three. One are like those clients where you could have the flu, a broken foot, and diarrhea, but you would never cancel a session 'cause it's always enjoyable. And even if the worst session, they love it.

We all know those number ones. We love you. Number twos, our good clients. They keep us thinking, they keep us guessing, but they don't suck the energy outta the room and make us crazy. And then there's number threes, who, if we're being honest, we don't like you. It might not have anything to do with you. It might be us.

You might be too similar to us and all the things you're doing or things we hate about ourselves. Or maybe you're just an annoying person. I don't know. Uh, Willie Cosigned that one. Sorry. If you can hear him barking. Uh, another thing for Joe to take out. So here's what I want you to do. Don't force yourself to do kettlebells.

If you hate kettlebells, don't force yourself to do free weights if you like the machines. Yeah. There's also been studies that you can build strength and endurance and hypertrophy using the machines at the gym rather than free weights. Why I like free weights is I don't like linear movement. I like environments that are more like the real world because in certain sensory environments with the machines, we don't have that in real life.

Okay? So I prefer free weights. I like more rotation in my strength training. I hate linear movements. It bores me. I don't want to do it. And the best way to get stronger, the best way to build endurance, and the best way to get hypertrophy. Is doing the thing, being consistent. So if you freaking hate it, you ain't gonna be consistent and do it.

So no kettlebells are not better than weight training. Weight training's not better than kettlebells machines. Do what you like and find somebody that can help you fill sensory gaps. Here's what I mean. My job as a trainer or teacher, I kind of like to be called a teacher. But whatever is, when you're doing an exercise and I see a movement mistake that I don't like, I don't tell you, oh my God, you're doing this wrong.

You're slightly internally rotating your pelvis and your foot is what? Is this a test? Are we trying to prove how much we know? What I do is I give you a sensory focus. Maybe I have you touch something. Maybe I have you look at something so that your brain recognizes the mistake. I will say, put your hands here.

I'm touching my rib cage and my pelvis, and I'll say, can you try to move your leg without changing the distance between those points? And the client will be like, I don't think I can do it. I said, try it. Push more in your ribs. Push more in your pelvis. Get curious what helps helping them figure it out.

That creates more interest, that creates more neural focus that helps us with precision and repetition. So if you don't know what I mean by precision, go back to epi. The episode right before this, now what I talk about it in detail, it might change the way you look at movement. It might confuse you. I don't know, I can't control how you take this information in, but what I'm doing is I'm bringing awareness to the movement errors so that my client's cerebellum can create a new motor map.

Yeah. If you're a teacher or trainer right now and you over. Correct people. I am not mad at you. I love that you're paying attention. You actually care about your clients. That's fucking awesome. Pardon the my French. Some trainers don't give a shit. Just let people move. But what I am suggesting is you might be acting as your client's cerebellum, and if we're always telling people what they're doing wrong and not giving them opportunity to make mistakes, that cerebellum doesn't really kick in.

And a lot of people's cerebellum is very finicky. So if somebody's neurodivergent or on the spectrum, their cerebellum is trouble filtering. These are the people who look around a lot or move around a lot or move their head a lot. It's because they're trying to get sensory information. So rather than telling people to make eye contact or keep their head still, what if we say, okay, move your head and move your body with it.

Right? I worked with this awesome young man who had CP and I don't believe in what I call disability porn, which is just getting people to move and then clapping because they moved. That kid deserves more. I put on a head-mounted laser. His eyes and head wanted to move all over the place, so I said, good.

Follow them. I want you to keep watching that laser pointer. Then I ask him to do specific movements with the laser pointer, the integration in his system. It, this is when I get emotional it like I like wanna cry because of the huge difference in this kid. I see it in people all the time. It's not magic, it's just paying attention.

So what I want my teachers to hear, let your clients make mistakes. Ch give them awareness through different sensations, whether it's visual, vestibular, or you're probably more comfortable with proprioception. Touch base. Love it. Do it can use equipment. You can open chain the exercise with sensory and put at different spots of the foot.

If their squat is a mess, change it up. And if you're someone who's not a movement pro, love you. Thank you for being here. Is the two people who loved that Pilates versus weight training episode the most. Were one of my closest friends and my sister who are not movement pros. They're like, I actually felt like I learned something, which I can't tell you how much that means to me, especially a compliment for my sister.

She's not mean at all, and I know she loves me, but her compliments are selective. Sorry, Kim, if you're listening to this now, but when you gimme a compliment, I know you mean it, so don't change. Anyway. So. What can you do with this information? How do you like to work out? Do you like to use lower reps? Do you get annoyed with multiple reps?

All right, increase the load. Do you hate lifting heavy things? Well, I still wanna challenge you with heavy things, but maybe don't worry about the load. Just increase your repetition. Or focus on complexity. So if you're doing an exercise, say you're doing a lunge, do your lunge, don't lose the plot with the lunge.

Maybe add spa or rotation in a visual target. I do this with athletes. I put a head mounted laser and I make them rotate and move that head mounted laser in different vectors. Okay, so I just did progressive overload by adding complexity with neurological systems. So anybody telling you you can just do progressive overload with increasing load or repetition is not staying abreast on new changes.

Not because they're terrible people, but they want to believe what they want to believe. And you know what I notice about these people? They're always angry on social media. They're always like pointing out how everybody else is wrong, and they're right. I think they're angry because you guys aren't listening to them.

They feel like their message isn't getting taken in. So if you come across someone that says something that jars you, ask them a question, engage with them because maybe your question could help them change the way they talk about it, because I get it. When I first started teaching this neuro stuff, I felt like I was always annoyed and I have to watch all my mentees go through this.

And it sucks because sometimes they kind of become assholes for like maybe six months to a year, but they have to because you have all this new knowledge and nobody's listening, but it's really because we're not communicating well. And if you have questions about that, I did a whole short episode about communication, so don't be mad at yourself if you're angry because people aren't listening or they're listening to other shit.

That's stupid. I get it. It sucks. But the common denominator when everybody around you is an ass, the common denominator is you. I self-reflect when I'm angry about something. Honestly, if I'm being honest, I don't even wanna say this out loud, but it's because I'm not doing a good job explaining it. I'm over-explaining, I'm not listening.

I'm pushing an agenda. Why am I pushing an agenda? 'cause I really believe in it. So cut yourself slack. And if you're pissed that I said that, well you, this podcast is not for you. You are not my people. Zen goodbye, right? Is, uh, what was that in, um, what was that? Project Runway with Heidi Klum. All right, so last but not least, this is my favorite question.

How are you warming up? What are you making available to your brain? Real quick story. When Brian and I travel and we go to the gym, Brian, and, sorry, Brian is my husband, if you're new to the podcast. Brian will finish his workout and I'm still warming up and he's like, I'll meet you by the pool. Alright, now Brian is a high level athlete.

He played division one football, tried to play professional, but got injured. I am not a high level athlete. I might not even be a low level athlete. I am a person who likes to move and play some sports. I never excelled at sports. Okay? So let's just call it what it is, however. Tiger Woods love him or hate him.

It's not about who he is as a person. When he re uh, most recently won the green jacket, the, uh, oh, was it US Open? I don't know. Master Masters. They have so many things. If you don't know Tiger Woods, he changed the game of golf. Dude, Google some of his shots and how he could put a curve on things. I saw a shot once.

He like, hit it this way, it went that way, but. He had some demons. He cheated on his wife and the world canceled him. They, as Dave Chappelle said, they took his shoes, meaning Nike. Now you don't have to like Tiger Woods as a person, but he didn't hurt me. He hurt his family. Okay? So his golf suffered. He had a lot of back injuries.

What's most interesting to me about Tiger Woods is because he was so. So superior to everybody else. He had to keep pushing the envelope and he got into Navy SEAL training, and if you look at pictures, he started getting jacked. He was working on hypertrophy, which tiger, if you're interested in my opinion.

I love that you push yourself with the, uh, the Navy SEAL training, but that hypertrophy took away some of the range of motion in your shoulders, and I believe your brain was protecting you, and with the level of speed and power you hit with, you were over mobilizing your spine because you could not mobilize your shoulders and integrate it with your lower body as well.

Okay? Then you got all these spinal surgeries. So when you need a surgery for something, we already know there's a brain mapping issue. Couple that with scars. This guy had a lot of disruptors. But here's my point. When Tiger won won the Masters, his most recent, after not playing well for a lot of years, somebody said to him, Hey Tiger, what time were you in the gym this morning?

And I think he said like four or 5:00 AM And they said, why? He goes, I had a warm up. And they're like, for four hours he said, yes. So my question to you is, if Tiger Woods needs four minutes to warm up, I think you, 'cause you ain't, tiger Woods need at least four minutes. And once I said that to Brian, he's like, well, it's a good point.

Now, what does warmup mean? A warmup isn't walking. Walking is one of the most complex things we do. Name a joint in your body or system in your body that's not working. Complex movement. Walking, I guess even running, although it becomes a spinal roof, Uhuh not even getting into that, uh, lifting. It can become complex movements.

So what I want you to think about your warmup is how can you show your brain what is available? Maybe you use Pilates with the four quadrant stability model. See how I just plug that there? To show your brain what's available. Maybe you use some yoga moves, maybe you do some passive mobility. But what I don't want you doing is just mobilizing joints.

If I can say something real quick. I see all these mobility trainings. They're not actually mobilizing the joint. They're saying people are talking about hip mobility and they're mobilizing their lower back, which is not a bad thing, but your brain is gonna couple those joints. So every time you try to move your hip, you're gonna move your lower back, which is okay.

But our brain needs to know that the lower back can and should stabilize when we're isolating the hip. Okay? Again, the hip is the second most mobile joint in the body after the glenohumeral. That's the ball and socket of your shoulder, and none of you are using it to his full ability. You're stealing from other small joints.

I said what? I said I'll leave it at that. So with your warmup, can you. Move your body around your limbs. Can you give yourself sensory input? I see a lot of people doing rotation now you're watching me on YouTube. You can see that my arm is actually moving. Maybe I'm hyper setting my elbow or moving my wrist.

If I wanted to mobilize my shoulder girdle around my arm, I need. To keep that arm still. How do I keep it still not a Jedi mind trick. Give it sensory information. Rest it on a table. Touch your humerus. Use a skin glide. Put a weight around it. I don't know. This podcast is about me telling you what to do.

You figure it out. Okay, so warm up. Show your brain what's available. Differentiate your joints. Tom Brady's another one. As a former New York Giants fan, currently an Eagles fan, I know it's very controversial. I'll tell you why I didn't choose to be a Giants fan. My dad was an obsessed Giants fan, Lawrence Taylor in particular, and as a season ticket holder, I never liked the giants.

I don't like their colors. I didn't like the shade of blue. I know it's America's colors, whatever, love America, but it never spoke to me. Okay. The Eagles love that green, and I prefer the newer green, not the Kelly Green. Brian disagrees with me. Brian's an Eagles fan. I've been to Eagles games. Those fans know how to have fun.

They crazy, but they know how to have fun. The Giants games are a little too buttoned up for Meghann. She likes to stay loose, play some music, have fun, and with all do.

I like the tush push. I like a good offensive line. The giants never focus on the offensive line. They're always focusing on the defensive line. I like an offensive line. Funny enough, I married one. Okay, and little tip, if you are attracted to athletes, don't date the quarterback. Don't date the cornerback,

the defensive star. Date the offensive linemen, they're team players. Nobody knows their name yet. They are doing the dirty work. Emmett Smith. All the best running backs. They have the best offensive line, right? The men behind the men. Okay. Just a little piece of advice. Okay? Um, if you, um, I also stay with rugby and I played scrum half as a rugby player, but.

What about the props? The people in, the people in the scrum, the people making things happen, not the people getting the tries date them. They don't need all the glory. They're there to do the work. Great people. I lost the plot. Okay, let me get back. So currently, yes, I am an Eagles fan. I don't even know how I got to this conversation.

How'd I get there? I don't know. I'm gonna jump ship and go back to the warmup and maybe I'll find my place. Probably not, but this is what happens when you have a very busy brain. Okay? So when you're warming up, how can you give your brain the necessary information so it can do what it do? You should be warming up even for a walk, even if it's a quick, what I call DMA, daily movement activator.

Okay. I also want you to think about what are you training for? Are you training for looks and appearance? That is okay. That is your prerogative. Okay. Are you training for function? I'm training for life. I'm training for sensory motor control and strength. Do I, would I like a little more muscle tone? Sure.

But if I don't, eh, okay. This brings me back to the offensive line. I knew I had a point, I dunno if this was my original point, but if you look at offensive linemen, that was our wedding party. They just look like big ass dudes. Not high resting muscle tone. Although my husband had high resting muscle tone in his chest and his shoulders, but dude had a lot of shoulder injuries.

Just saying They are so agile, such good balance. These dudes were, are so light on their feet. Shout out to Williamson, one of Brian's buddies. What a great dancer. Very light on his feet. Doesn't look like he's light on his feet. No offense, Mike. Okay. So just because you have hyper treat doesn't mean you're strong.

I don't care if I'm good at the gym. I wanna be good at life. Those are my goals. What are yours? Mix it up based off what your brain likes. If you want to do higher repetition, maybe don't focus so much on increasing load. Increase load as it becomes easier. They always say, those last few reps should be challenging, but I don't want you losing precision if you don't.

What I mean, know what I mean? Go back to the previous episode. If your last rep is shitty, I want you to pause, reframe your sensory focus. Remember I said people need a break in sensory? Your last rep should be your best rep, not the sloppiest rep ish. That is crucial. If you take nothing from this episode, do not push through for one more rep because you wanna be mentally tough.

That's what your brain's gonna remember. If we wanna talk neuroplasticity, let's talk work on precision. Make sure your last repetition is as precise as the first one, meaning same pathway, same sensory input. Cool. And last but certainly not least, if you don't like what you're doing, change it. If you don't like weight training, go do yoga and Pilates.

I think doing a little bit of everything in variety is the spice of life. I do Pilates and yoga. I actually am not doing yoga right now because my shoulder needed more time with a lot of the exercises. But when I'm doing yoga, I'm not listening to the teacher about alignment. I am giving sensory information about parts I don't wanna move.

Like in Warrior two, they're always like, get in position and then move your knee. Screw that. Get your leg in position and move around it. That is hard in Pilates. What should be moving? What shouldn't be? How can we get sensory information? So the Pilates and yoga, could you be your warmup for weight training?

Cool. Or you might hate yoga and Pilates. I'm cool with that. You don't gotta love what I love, but maybe think about how ways you can warm up to get the most out of your weight training session. Cool. Show your brain what's available. Do not assume it can differentiate your glenohumeral. That's the ball in the socket guys and your AC joint.

That's where your, your a chromium process, your shoulder blade attaches to your clavicle. It is very close to your shoulder joint. And when you get a rotator cuff tear, that's usually the problem. This shit ain't easy. So maybe a warmup exercise to differentiate. And before I let you go, I remember what my point was.

It was Tom Brady. So I'm about to give Tom Brady a compliment. Now, as both a former Giants fan and an Eagles fan, we don't love the Patriots, but you've gotta give that man respect where respect is given. Put respect on his name. Tom Brady is the goat. He was a six round draft pick and he has nine Super Bowls.

Okay, Patrick Mahomes is my favorite quarterback. But you gotta give Brady credit. But the interesting thing about Brady is his trainer, who, he calls it muscle pliability, he just put a sexy word on it. Tom Brady does a significant warmup. He mobilizes all different joints in his body. And Tom, I'd even up the ante for you, if you can add a sensory approach to that to make sure you are doing what you're actually intended to do and bring awareness.

Dude, I bet you could have played till you were 60. All right. Today's episode a little longer, but I had a lot to say and I hope you feel like you have some questions to think about about weight training. Do it, have fun. And if you're worried about bone density, well move load. A weighted vest is not going to build bone density as much as moving weight.

There is some research about it. I will do another episode about a weighted vest, but the weighted vest is more about sensory information about where your body is. Adding five more pounds to your body doesn't make a difference in the bone building. And what cracks me up about the weighted vest, the people saying a weighted vest are the same people who are telling you to lose weight, and that's why you're in pain in your knees.

So weight does not always indicate how your brain senses load and responds to it. So think of the weighted vest as helping your brain know where your body is in space rather than adding a few pounds to load your bones more. So thank you guys so much. Please send me your questions. I'm sure there sure there's gonna be follow-up questions or a need for clarification.

That is why I'm here for a discussion to have some fun and pick something up today. Light and heavy.