EFR 500: Why Resistance Training is the Most Effective Form of Exercise for Health and Longevity with Sal Di Stefano

Chase:

Sal every time you come on the show, every time I connect with you, I'm just ready just to sit back and enjoy the ride, because you're just a wealth of knowledge and experience and no doubt with your new book, the resistance training revolution, you've kind of poured it all into one medium. Did you get all out that you wanted in this book? Have you finally found an outlet for everything that you know?

Sal: Yeah, I mean, there's, there's a lot more that I have to say. But I made the book specifically focused on trying to get people to adopt a form of exercise that has now been proven through study, but also that I've seen through experience, to be the most effective form of exercise for all of the health problems that we tend to run into in modern societies, everything from obesity to diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer's, loss of mobility, hormone issues, we're seeing that quite a bit now, in men and women. And I'm trying to change the stigma that surrounds this particular form of exercise, because at the moment, it still is not considered the first line of defense when it comes to activity. But that attitude needs to change because we're missing out or we've done a lot of damage by not explaining this to people in the right way.

Chase: I agree. I agree and we were talking beforehand and you mentioned a very, very alarming new statistic that kind of alarms me, but also kind of doesn't given latest trends and that is obesity is now the majority of America at least. Can you can you touch on that? And why is that actually something we should we should care about?

Sal: Yeah, I mean, it's a big problem, because obesity, really, it turns into many, many different chronic health issues quite often, right? So you can just be obese but just being obese also does reduce mobility, it does reduce quality of life, it does increase inflammation, which can contribute to just not feeling great and not feeling yourself but it's also very strongly connected to heart disease and diabetes, and Alzheimer's, dementia, cancer, pretty much any chronic health issue that you can think of obesity improves or increases the odds that you'll get one of those chronic health issues. Or if you have one, it'll just get much worse. And this is a big problem. It's not just a problem for the individual. Obviously, if this is you, and you're struggling with this, this is reducing your quality of life and making life just much more challenging unnecessarily but also, for society at large. This actually believe it or not, of all the things that we tend to talk about that we need to worry about as a society, believe it or not, our poor health actually is one of the number one things that can threaten to bankrupt society. If you look at the cost of health care, and the cost of health care for people who have poor health, preventable, poor health, it's an astronomical percentage of our of our, our time and money. And it's only growing, right. So if it continues down this path, it will be astronomical, it will be unaffordable but besides that, there are lots of things that we don't even consider, for example, the reduction in productivity that it causes, we're just not as productive as people. And that has, you know, wide ranging implications. We're not as innovative, right? We don't innovate as well. When we look at the market, right? The market being all the products and services that are presented to us; when you live a life that is not healthy, our demands for products tend to be a little bit different and that's where the money attention and innovation tends to go. So if you go to the grocery store, for example, and you look at all the food that's in there, and then you look at all the money that goes into not just producing the food, but that goes into innovating for that food, right? The vast majority of it goes to foods that don't do us really any good, aside from the fact that they're hyper palatable maybe in you know, inexpensive but so much research and development is geared there, right? You look at the decisions that we make with other purchases, if we're unhealthy, we don't feel as good, we tend to feel more negative so we're going to drink more or smoke more or consume more, you know, pornography or foods that aren't good for us, we're going to spend more time on medicating ourselves and so that's where the money and innovation and attention goes to. So it's like our resources, larger, larger percentage of our resources now get dedicated to not just treating these many of these preventable illnesses, but even just to, you know, servicing our desires and wants that oftentimes are influenced by our health. So it's a big issue, you know, think about it this way, right? And I'll paint a perfect ideal picture, which of course wouldn't exist but let's just imagine, let's just imagine for a second that everybody in America were healthy, both physically and mentally. What would that look like? Right? What would that look like with your interactions with people? What would our innovation look like? What would products look like? How would people treat their family and their friends and their kids? Right? So it's a big deal, it's a big deal to be healthy and for people who have improved their health and made lifelong changes, they'll tell you, it changes everything and it really does, it really does change everything, not just because you're healthy, but rather than even the journey towards getting to that place. So absolutely, definitely, it definitely is a big deal and now the segment of the industry that is best suited to solve this problem is the fitness and health industry. Unfortunately, it's done a terrible job up until now, it really hasn't done a great job. Partially because the segment of the fitness and health industry that gets all the attention is the entertainment, you know, fitness and health segment 

Chase: the glamorous side of it. 

Sal: And they just don't do anything right. Everything they do is incorrect, ineffective, produces more problems. So that's part of it. The other part of it is the scientific community really has looked at the approach wrong, they looked at it wrong, they haven't considered what truly is effective. Everything is very mechanistic for them and so we've been told this kind of false paradigm of how we can solve obesity and it's obviously false, because it's failing, you know, something like 90% of I mean, again, we don't have a weight loss problem. We have a keep weight off problem.

Chase: Yeah, seriously.

Sal: So 90% of anybody who gets fitter and loses weight gains back and then actually tends to gain back more on top of it. So obviously, we're failing but what I'm trying to do with the book, at least, is to start the conversation in the right direction and to say, look, this part of the formula, the exercise part of the formula, although I do talk about nutrition in the book as well, it's mainly focused on exercise, the exercise, part of the formula has been presented to wrong, and we need to change that. And if you do what I tell you in this book, your odds of success are far higher.

Chase: it's pretty well for me to hear somebody like yourself say we have failed, because if I'm incorrect my math here, but you've been what in the fitness industry for 20 years, 20 plus years. 

Sal: Yeah, we're probably closer to 25 years 

Chase: so pushing 25 years so one that has been doing your own thing, you've been crushing it with mind pump and everything that you're doing on your own you you've been a personal trainer, you've been in gyms, you've been in the thick of it, you had you have seen some things that have been working, but to hear you say that what we're failing is pretty profound. So I'm curious if you recognize that we have a problem and you're saying that we are failing America failing the world failing the human species how then do we create a solution? Is it at the micro level? Is it macro? Is it just large health promotion programs? Or do we just have to connect to the individual and it ripples out from there? What do you see working?

Sal: Yeah. So first off, I want to be clear, the trainers and coaches in the space that have been doing this for a long time that are experienced, that do this for the right reasons, because they care about the people they work with, they actually have a decent success rate, they're the ones making a pretty big impact. The problem is they're not the ones getting all the attention they're not the ones reaching the masses, right? The ones reaching the masses, or the trainers on the biggest loser, for example, or whatever word it's just their approaches are so wrong, that if you actually followed the advice that you saw on the show, you're you would 100% fail, you'd set yourself up for a worse situation than you're in now. So how do we solve this? We have to start by changing the conversation. That's number one. So change the conversation, then from there, then we can move from there, then we can move from once people get it, then, you know, it's like, okay, how do I do this? What are the methods? Because the way we've again, the way we've communicated, it has been wrong for so long. I'll explain what I mean. Right. So the fitness and health paradigm that we've been told, around obesity looks like this, okay in order to lose weight, you need to take in less calories than you burn, right? So if you're if you're taking in less calories than you're burning, your body needs to find those calories from somewhere because calories are energy. And the idea is that it takes it from body fat. So that's how you lose weight. Or to put it differently, you need to burn more calories than you take in right. Now that is true. That's totally true. You can't get around that it's a law of thermodynamics, right? So you can't burn body fat. If you already have excess energy, your body just won't do that, right? That's true. The problem is, because that's the, because we understand that they've created this paradigm with diet and exercise that looks like this it's eat less calories and then exercises value is all about how many calories you burn. So the value of exercise is, how many calories can you burn while you do this exercise, and we know this, you talk to the average person about exercise and that's what they know, oh, how many calories does that burn. That's how they sell programs. That's how they sell, you know, cardio machines, when you, you know, hop on an elliptical at the gym, and you do an hour on there, it'll actually lie to you, you know, it'll tell you burn something like 800 calories, by the way, nobody burns 800 calories doing an hour.

Chase: I wish I would like to know the name of that machine. So I could give that one a whirl.

Sal: Yeah, yeah, you're lucky if you burn about three or 400 calories. But that's because they that's what sells, right. And it's also this. And because of that, we've been doing the wrong forms of exercise. Now, here's the real value of exercise, it's not the calories that you burn. In fact, you should completely ignore that that's actually almost worthless and it's worth this for a couple different reasons. One, your body will learn to adapt to calorie burn, that's done manually. In fact, it actually slows its metabolism down to make up for it and studies are pretty clear on this. In fact, there are some remarkable studies that have been done on modern hunter gatherers, right? So there's the Hadza tribe, in northern Tanzania 

Chase: of course you know the tribe name, of course, you would know the name where they are, I love this.

Sal: So scientists actually went down there, and they said, let’s see how many calories they burn. Now, modern hunter gatherers, right hunter gatherers, so they don't have TVs, they don't have iPhones, they don't have grocery stores, they're moving all the time. They're moving, they're walking, they're running, the way that they hunt is they'll throw a spear at an animal, it hits the animal, and then they run it down until it literally becomes exhausted. This is, you know, the way humans probably always hunted as hunter gatherers, right because we can outlast or out trek, most animals, especially if they're wounded. So they went down there, they said, oh, these, these, this tribe must burn just tremendous amounts of calories. Let's run some sophisticated tests, and see what we find and what they found, was so shocking to them. At first, I thought that they messed up. What they found was that the people of the Hadza tribe burned not that many more calories in the average Westerner. In fact, it was roughly the same, really, right? And now you think like, wow, how is that possible? Like they're moving so much? Well, if you think about evolution, it makes perfect sense. It makes zero evolutionary sense for our bodies to burn 6000 calories a day, when we're hunter gatherers, when food is scarce, if that were the case, we would have gone extinct a long time ago. 

Chase: thank God, it doesn't right. Or else we could, you know, we never would have made it this far as a species.

Sal: That's right. That's right. It just, it would never happen. Because 6000 calories is hard to come by, when you don't have grocery stores and food available to you all over the place. Right. So it makes perfect sense. There was another study that was done with children in the Amazon they compared children from rural areas to children from modern areas. Now, the children from rural areas far more active, children from the monitoring areas for less active, right, and they looked at calorie burn, same thing, they found that they burn about the same amount of calories. And again, this is because our bodies learn to adapt. So someone might say, well, then what's the use of exercise? Well, there are other benefits to exercise, there are still health benefits but from a weight loss perspective if you're trying to just burn calories manually through exercise, you're completely wasting your time. And by the way, the data shows this, when they look at all the studies on you know, cardio workouts as the cornerstone of a weight loss routine, it produces no weight loss often or very little and if they combine it with diet, you tend to see half muscle, half fat loss and so which is a problem, right? If you lose 10 pounds and five pounds of it as muscle, five pounds of it as body fat, you're just a smaller, same body fat percentage version of yourself, but there's more to it, you now have a slower metabolism because you lost muscle, which by the way, is part of the important thing that we need to look at exercise, which is how does this exercise impact my body in a way that makes it adapt? And then what does that mean? What do these adaptations mean? Okay, so let me let me explain that for a second before I go a little further. Whenever you exercise, the reason why you become more fit or better at whatever you're doing, is because your body is trying to get better at this activity because it's a stress. If I go run, and I never run, and a quarter mile is hard for me, and I'm breathing hard, my lungs are burning, my body views this as a stress and now what it says is it says, okay, let's get better at this stress so that next time the same insult will no longer cause stress in my body. So you get more endurance, you run further, and you get better at that activity, your body's actually trying to get better at that activity so it doesn't stress you out as much. The adaptations that come from cardiovascular activity, which is the form of exercise we've been told to do, that's the form of exercise that the average person, if they want to lose weight, that's what they start, right? The average person says I need to lose 30 pounds so I'm going to watch my diet. I'm going to work out what is the workout look like? 

Chase: That is what everyone thinks they just immediately go I guess I should start running. I need to start prolonged walking. It's always cardio.

Sal: Right? Right. Treadmill or elliptical or swimming or biking, right? Even doctors in the past have prescribed this. Go do 30; how many times have we heard this? 30 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity, right? So this is the form of exercise everybody's doing now here's why it's so ineffective. Because the adaptations that cardiovascular exercise, elicit in the body are terrible for long term fat loss. Number one, because what your body's trying to do is to gain endurance, which requires little to no strength, okay, requires very little strength. Your evidence is looking at long distance runners, right long distance runners are very little muscle, not strong at all, tons of endurance, but very, very little strength. 

Chase: they are just lean machines, absolutely 

Sal: Your body needs very, very little strength to do so. And your body is trying to become more efficient and better at doing this cardiovascular activity. So it would be like if you had this AI smart car that adapted to your driving habits, if you drove this car for long distances at 30 miles an hour, every single day, the car would turn itself into this one cylinder engine vehicle or this electric engine vehicle with very little power to conserve as much energy as possible, right. And this is what we see, when people do like I said, they do cardio as their routine for fat loss, they lose muscle along with fat, they don't burn the muscle, it's because the body is paring muscle down, making you better at that cardio. So now you have a slower metabolism, you're not even leaner than you were before you're just lighter, which makes any further weight loss and especially fat loss more difficult and you're in this unsustainable kind of hamster wheel, right? Where, by the way, if you follow this formula, you've probably experienced this initial weight loss, and then plateau and then you're like, okay, I lost 10 pounds but now, I have to do more or less, in order to go any further and then if you can continue down that path now you're in a situation where you're like, okay, I lost 30 pounds, I am eating 1500 calories a day, running five days a week, that's not sustainable for the average person. So instead, what we need to do is ignore the calorie burn of exercise, forget that. Look at the adaptations. Look at the adaptations. Which form of exercise produces adaptations that are favorable, especially when we look at the context of modern life? Okay, well, that's easy it's resistance training, strength training, weightlifting, right. That form of exercise tells the body we need strength, we need muscle, the side effect of which is a much faster metabolism. So when we look at strength training, in combination with diet, what we tend to see is all fat loss, or fat loss with some muscle gain. So now you're leaner, but your metabolism is faster. Now, in a hunter gatherer situation, a fast metabolism is a detriment but in modern situation where there's food is everywhere where we're very sedentary a fast metabolism is an incredible buffer against the ills of modern life. Now it makes sense like if I could snap my fingers, and have everybody just their metabolism just burn 5000 calories a day, you would see a lot of the obesity epidemic solved. Well, that's what resistance training can provide but there's more to it right? Resistance training doesn't need to be done all the time to elicit these adaptations. In fact, for the average person about two days a week is plenty. Two days a week sets the wheels in motion for the body to build strength and build muscle even if you're advanced. Go ahead. 

Chase: What do you mean by average person there just too kind of paint the picture for the listener?

Sal: average person whose interests are to be generally lean, healthy, mobile and fit in a way that's sustainable. Okay. Not for a bodybuilder or high level athlete. There are different levels of training, but for the average person who just the average person that starts exercising or that picks up a diet

Chase: seeking general wellness, general healthy body composition to feel their best and be in it for the long haul, right? 

Sal: Yeah, the average, you know, 45 year old man or 50 year old man, he's not looking to get ripped, but he doesn't want to be fat, right doesn't want to have a belly, he just wants to be fit like, he wants to enjoy himself, probably doesn't want to spend a ton of time working out all the time, wants to enjoy the occasional beer, and slice of pizza, or whatever, or you know, birthday cake at their kid's birthday party. That is who I'm talking to. Also, you know, Chase, I trained people for a long time and I'll be very honest with you, the most we can hope for, for the average person in terms of exercise consistency, if we do a good job is about two or three days a week

Chase: I would agree. 

Sal: we're not going to get the average person to work out every day, it's not gonna happen, right? So we're looking at two or three days a week, what form of exercise in that context, produces the best results? Well, again, resistance training. So it's not uncommon, for example, for me to train someone properly, and get their metabolism to speed up by 500 calories a day. 500 calories a day, that's about an hour and an hour or an hour and a half of cardio. So imagine doing about an hour to an hour and a half of cardio, everyday, but you're not, you're just sitting there burning more calories. Muscle also looks good, right? If a woman for example, I say woman because women are afraid of gaining muscle but if the average woman gained 10 pounds of muscle and lost 10 pounds of fat, so their weight stayed the same, they would be much smaller, because body fat takes up much more space, it's not nearly as dense as muscle takes up about a third less space. So imagine that right? You actually would lose inches, but you weigh the same, right? But muscle is muscle is firm, sculpted tone gives you shape, and you're probably burning 5-600 700 more calories every single day. So rather than losing weight, and having to eat much less to maintain your lost weight, and you're eating more to maintain. I know that sounds too good to be true but that's exactly what happens when you take this approach, you know, the right way. Now, of course, the problem is nobody considers resistance training, at least not the general population. They don't consider resistance training as if, as a, you know, first line of defense when it comes to exercise, not even men, you know, the if the average man goes to the doctor, and the doctor says, you need to work out because your blood pressure is too high. They don't think I'm gonna go lift weights. In fact, I've talked to people like that, and they'll say you should do resistance training and they'll say, I don't want to get big and I'm not trying to I'm not trying to be a bodybuilder. 

Chase: take it easy. I'm not trying to you know, I'm not trying to step on stage anytime soon. People drastically overestimate what they think is gonna happen.

Sal: Absolutely. And especially women, women, just they think that they're going to work out and they're going to, you know, they're gonna look like a bodybuilder, that's not gonna happen, you know, you'll look, you'll look sculpted, you'll be tighter and again, you'll be in a position where what you've accomplished is much more maintainable. The other way, the old way, where it's like burn, burn, burn, burn, burn as many calories as possible that is a very unsustainable approach. It actually makes it harder as you continue, you know, it needs to be a solution to our obesity epidemic needs to be one that gets easier as you do it. Not harder. That doesn't make any sense. Well, if you do it the right way, with resistance, you set yourself up to where, and I would get this from clients all the time, six months into training, you know, they'd come to me and be like, this is really weird, Sal, I'm, I'm eating more and I'm just leaner. And you know, last week, I went on vacation, I came back, and I didn't gain any weight and I don't understand, like, what's going on? I'm like, well, you you've turned your body into a calorie burning machine, through the signals that we've sent it through the best form of exercise, you know, but there's so much more Chase. Like there are so many myths that surround resistance training. There's so many, you know, negative stereotypes and stigmas that now, we have evidence and scientific study to show that, you know, for decades, I've been in this game for a long time and for decades there were no studies on resistance training and health. It was all it was all cardiovascular activity. If you were a researcher and you wanted to study, even animal studies, right, because it's easy to get an animal to run on a hamster wheel, but you can't really get them to do some lift some weights.

Chase: I would love to see a gerbil, you know, repping out some deadlifts or something like leg press machine.

Sal: Yeah, but even human studies like if a researcher wanted to see how exercise affected Alzheimer's, or diabetes, it was cardiovascular activity. They didn't the only studies we had on resistance training were done on athletes to see how well they performed. Well, recently, over the last decade or so, studies are coming out and showing that resistance training not only is an effective way to improve your health and longevity, but it's actually the superior way to improve your health and longevity. Oh, it's superior and almost any, any way you can measure so like, well, we'll start with insulin sensitivity, right? Insulin resistance, that's a big problem, right? Insulin resistance means that your body is not reacting to insulin like it should so your body has to produce more and more insulin and then the end result is you obviously can lead the fat gain leads to a lot of inflammation, heart disease, and diabetes, obviously, is the disease that's associated with this. It also leads to dementia and Alzheimer's. You know, researchers call those diseases, type three diabetes, type three diabetes. So look at insulin resistance, for example. Okay? There's one way that will reliably always, almost always improve insulin sensitivity and that is to build muscle. In fact, even in obese people, if they just gain muscle lost no weight if they lose no weight at all, just gain some muscle, we see improvements in insulin sensitivity. That's because muscle is a very insulin sensitive tissue. Muscle is one of the parts of the body that stores sugar, and glycogen. So it's like you're increasing the size of the gas tank to be able to store these sugars that you're consuming, right 

Chase: and making my vehicle more efficient all along the way.

Sal: That's right. That's what that's what that's what building muscle will do. So when it comes to insulin sensitivity, build some muscle, just build some muscle that'll give you the by far the biggest bang for your buck. When we look at you know, I just mentioned Alzheimer's and diabetes you know, they did a study out of Sydney, Australia, where they studied the effects of moderate resistance training, I think it was like two or three days a week and to date, it's the only form of exercise that's been shown to halt the progression of the amyloid plaques that we know that can that are parts of what cause Alzheimer's. In fact, at the end of the study, there was even evidence that there might have been reversing. There is no form of exercise that's been shown to do that; none. They've shown slowing it down or improving other markers. This one actually showed holy crap resistance training might just be, you know, part of the holy grail of things that we can do to prevent this from happening. When you look at osteopenia, which is bone loss. Bone loss is now becoming a problem with people even in their 30s. We never saw this before 

Chase: and especially women. 

Sal: Yes. We never saw women in their 30s with osteopenia. We see it now. Right? Men almost never had osteopenia. We're starting to see that with men, right? Why? Because we're weak. We've lost muscle. Remember, muscle anchors on bone. If you build muscle, you build bone. No form of exercise has been shown to do this cardiovascular activity, in fact, in some cases has been shown to accelerate bone loss, probably through the loss of muscle. Some studies show a slight increase in lower extremity bone density, probably from the impact that you get from running. Resistance training reliably builds bone across the board. So any part of your body, that you train with resistance, you'll build and strengthen bone and it's so effective at doing so, you know, years ago, I had a client who she had, she was borderline osteoporosis. Her doctor had her on Fosamax that she was doing all these different things. Finally, she hired me and it the results were so they blew the doctor away so much that he actually did a case study on her notion because he couldn't, he couldn't believe what he saw. He'd been with her for years. And after I think it was six months of resistance training, he's like, this is insane, calls me up and says, I would love to quote you, in this case study because I've never seen anything like this, 

Chase: which is a whole other sad thing in and of itself that the medical community is that astonished when they hear what worked like wait, wait, you just you started strength training, you started going to the gym? What like that's, that's a whole other can of worms.

Sal: Yeah. Now keep in mind that was about 13 years ago. We have come a long way. Because studies now are showing just how impactful it is, you know, there are some studies now that show that and of all of the metrics that you can measure that will predict all cause mortalities one of the best metrics is a simple grip strength test. And that's it. So by testing your grip, they can more reliably predict your all cause mortality than almost any other metric. Just if you're getting weak, you don't if you're not strong, they can tell you with, with decent reliability, what your all cause mortality is, in fact, in the future, I predict that to be one of the keystone tests is interesting grip strength. There are other studies that show being able to get up off the floor without any help. That's also strength, right? So they're starting to see it. In fact, we just had a cardiologist on the podcast so a heart doctor cardio is in his name, cardiologist, right and he came on the show, because he said, the evidence is becoming overwhelming. The form of exercise I tell all my clients now to do or all my patients is resistance training. There are studies done a heart health that show that resistance training is superior for heart health, for visceral body fat, it's superior. So the goal of the book is to communicate this to the average person and to the fitness fanatic, and coach and trainer, so that we can get the ball moving, because again, you know, today, the average person when they think of exercise that they need to do for their health they don't think of barbells, dumbbells, machines, bands, or bodyweight exercise, they think of high intensity aerobic classes, or cycling or running or swimming, which by the way, all forms of exercise have some value. So I don't want to dissuade anybody from doing it but if you're like most people, you're really only going to ever make time for one form of exercise, you're probably only going to work out a couple days a week, if that's you, which is most people pick resistance training because there's there is no comparison in terms of the not just the results that you'll get in terms of your health, or even visually, but rather, also in terms of sustainability. It's very, very sustainable in comparison to other forms of exercise.

Chase: Sal I want to ask you, kind of a I guess we'll say a timely question, a hot topic question and you guys actually not that long ago, had a whole episode about it on Mind Pump, about part of this I really love and admire and respect and appreciate but the other part, I feel like we're doing like a backhanded disservice to humanity and that is this whole like self love body image thing, and that no matter how you look what body size, you are muscle mass, the body fat, like you are healthy. If you love yourself, then you are healthy. And you I think you guys and I'll make sure to link that down the show notes, you guys did a really great job, I think of addressing how dangerous of a statement that is. So I'm curious with this kind of being on the forefront of entertainment social media, maybe where we are, you know, as a, you know, country, which I think is great if you can get to love yourself and there's great power in that you can probably make endless changes to your life for personal and professional health reasons. But if you're not aware of what's going on with your body, and then you're doing it a disservice in the long run. So I think revolution is the key word here. So revolution in your book and the approach to strength training, kind of needs to match this new revolution in self love and accepting your body image. How would you propose we kind of blend those two?

Sal: Yeah, well, it's not about blending them. It's self love is an acceptance is a very good approach. It's just been twisted. It's been twisted to mean something else. So I have kids, okay, I have three children. I have two boys and a girl and I love them more than anything in this world. So how do I treat them? Well, let's say my daughter comes to me and says, hey, Dad, can I have a cookie? And I say, sure you can have a cookie. And she says, can I have cookies all day every day and nothing else? I'm saying no, no, you can't do that. Why? Because I love her right. Love is not easy. Love isn't always what feels good. So this is where they twist things. They confuse love with the feeling with good feeling. Like if that was the truth, then heroin addicts and crack addicts would be exhibiting lots of self love, right because they're just constantly trying to feel good. Real self love is hard. Now, when it comes to body image, we got to be very clear self image and body image are two different things. Don't confuse the two right? Self images, you know, am I worthy of dignity? Am I worthy of being healthy? Am I worthy of you know, learning from challenges? Am I a human? Am I you know, do I do I deserve a certain level of respect? You know, that kind of stuff, right? Body image is objective. I'm short, I'm tall, I'm fast, I'm slow, I'm good at basketball, I'm not good at basketball, I'm obese, or I'm under eating. You know, I'm not taking care of myself, because I'm drinking too much alcohol, like, you can be objective about your body image. But don't confuse that with your self image. The problem is when people look in the mirror, and they are, you know, they can see that they haven't been taken care of themselves. Now, they might think that they might think to themselves, I'm fat. But really what it is I haven't been taking care of myself properly, right? Problem is,

Chase: it's really getting to be able to rewrite that in that internal model of the internal narrative. 

Sal: totally. So the problem is, I look in the mirror and I say, I'm fat, therefore, I'm bad. Therefore, I'm worthless. Therefore, I'm disgusting. I'm not worthy of dignity or respect. That's the problem. Okay. So self love is not doing what feels good all the time. Self love is taking care of yourself, like somebody you care about, which means sometimes, not all the time. But sometimes you do things that are not easy. Like, why do I wake up every morning early to get to work? That's, that's hard, right? Why? Because, because it's a good thing to do. It gives me some a little bit of sense of purpose, and I get to earn a living so I can contribute to society, and you know, that kind of stuff, right? Why do I not indulge in alcohol all the time, even though it feels great to be drunk? Why don't I do that? Right? Well, I care about myself, I'm, I'm not going to, you know, destroy my health, just to chase this feeling of you know, of being drunk or whatever, right? So self love is tough. It's being honest. It's and by the way, it's okay because, and I want to be clear, I'm not judging anybody. There isn't a single person in this world that's perfect. There isn't a single person, this world that treats themselves like they love themselves all the time. We all treat ourselves bad at times, sometimes more than others but self love is being honest and saying I haven't been taking care of myself very well. I've been medicating with food. I've been eating my feelings. I haven't been treating myself like somebody that that deserves to be treated. Well, that's okay. accepting yourself is just saying, hey, it's alright I'm not perfect. I'll do better. It's not judging yourself. You're a bad person. You're stupid. You're disgusting. It's like, look, I've done some stupid stuff but I'm not a stupid person. I'm going to do better. I'm going to care for myself. That's the difference. So real self love is an amazing thing it'll lead to natural balance, because for the most part, it looks like eating healthy. Sometimes it looks like eating a pizza and drinking a beer. Right? Sometimes it looks like doing those things. Usually it looks like exercising, sometimes it looks like taking a day off, right? That's what real self love looks like. So, but what they've done is they've taken that they've twisted it. They've twisted it because it's an easy way to sell whatever the hell they are selling. Right? It's like, hey, loving yourself means being obese, loving yourself means poor health, loving yourself means trying to feel good all the time. You know, everything has to feel good all the time. Right? It's, uh, sounds good to somebody like Yeah; I just want to feel good medicate me. Let me feel good all the time. We know where that leads. Right. It's a turns into addiction. I think self love is amazing. I just, I just think that some people have been told, communicated that it's something else, or people want to believe it's something else because real self love takes a certain level of responsibility and it is not always easy. It's usually hard. You know, it's usually very, very challenging. I remember when I interviewed Bishop Baron a while ago, he's a bishop and I asked him about love and he says, Love is to will the good of the other as other. So in other words, not for your good not for anyone else but you want you want to will the good, he said love is action. It's not the feeling. Like think about this, like if you're married, if you've been married for a long time, you don't feel the feeling of love all the time. Sometimes you might not even like your spouse.

Chase: spoken like a true married person.

Sal: But if you if you love them, right, then you take those actions. You take those actions of love. That's why you don't just run away the first time you don't feel in love, you know, you sit down and you work things out and you say okay, this is this matters to me. Right. So, so it's totally different than the way that they're, they're advertising it.

Chase: well said thank you for that interpretation, man. I want to kind of play devil's advocate a little bit um, your book, no doubt has such a profound infrastructure for the newbie for the person has been doing this for a while but let's be honest, there are a million and one different workout books out there, there are a million different resources, what makes yours so different and you know why, why is now the time for it?

Sal: It's different because I'm not selling the latest entertainment workout, I'm not selling the latest fun, exciting hype you up, workout, which those approaches, they don't last. If you work out because of the hype, excitement, motivation, at some point those die off, and then you're left, you know doing nothing. It's a book written about what actually works and not just because what I say in there is effective, but rather because I consider the challenges of being consistent and the challenges that the average person runs into, like I could have written a six day a week routine, right? But I did it because people are not going to do that long term, people are going to work out about two or three days a week. I could have written some flashy and creative new exercises. I could, you know, attached music to it and call it you know, Urban Cowboy hip hop or something like that, or whatever. I didn’t because I'm looking for, you know, long term sustainable success. I could have just said, you know, what diet, there's, you know, just eat this food or don't eat this food and there's your solution and come up with some, you know, weird thing. But I didn't understand instead I focus on the behaviors that lead to long term success. What you get from reading this book is the experience from someone who's actually trained and worked with people, and figured out how to make it work long term. That's what you get when you get this book. Not again, not fitness, entertainment, or media, but rather, okay, this is what actually works long term for most people. So that's what you'll get. So if you read it, and you apply it, your odds of long term success are going to be much higher.

Chase: Someone who has, like we said, we've been talking about this the whole time, but someone's been in it for such a long period of time online, in person, corporate gyms, your own thing I'm sure you've got your own kind of formula down but I'm curious, I've interviewed a lot of authors on the show and when it comes to writing a book with such immense amount of personal experience. Did it all come out the way that you thought? Did it all come out like it's in my head it's in my heart, I know this stuff, and I just need to get it out pen to paper? Or when you were writing it in something as specific as a fitness protocol for the human species did your own perspective change at all? Did you kind of have to go back and look stuff up? Did you scratch your head on some things that were kind of like, I can't explain why this is or isn't when it comes to strength training?

Sal: Sure. Well, there are two things. One, I don't think I'll ever be satisfied with anything that I just think that's the artists name. That's the bane of entrepreneurship but these are things I've been talking about for a long time. You know, as a, as a trainer of over two decades, one of the things that you learn the most is how to communicate the right information. Just this is what you learn. It's not so much the information, you know, like for example, you know, eating less calories we all know that, right? You got to eat less calories. So you know, here, reduce your calories by 500 calories and you'll lose weight. Right? We that's there's nothing controversial about that but it doesn't work, though, right? So what did I learn as a trainer? Well, I learned rather than telling people to cut their calories is I would have them change certain behaviors that tended to lose to cause reductions in calories. So to give an example, I would say things like, eat like you normally do but just when you eat, sit down to eat, and don't have your phone, computer or TV on just eat your food.

Chase: just more mindful eating 

Sal: Yeah, just that's it. I wouldn't even go even deeper than that. So just do that. And let's see what happens. Now, studies show that people eat about 15% less calories, when they're not distracted. And I know that and now that's more sustainable. Why is it more sustainable? Because telling someone to reduce something is challenging. If I tell someone eat less, and they got to figure that out, and they feel very restricted. If I say, just eat as you normally would just don't be distracted, like, well, I could do that. You know, it only takes me about 20 minutes to eat. Let me give that a shot. 

Chase: plus who doesn’t like hearing do instead of don’t? 

Sal: correct. Right. So that's just that's just one example. So these are things that I've been communicating for a long time. So what you get in the book is what I found to work, the way that I communicate things to work. I'll give you another example. I've say this one all the time. I could say to you, rather than working out to look good or working on eating a certain way to look good, you should work out and eat a certain way to be healthy. And that sounds good. Everybody, you know, would agree. Yeah, that's a good approach. But like, let's be honest, like the vast majority of us, we don't start working out and eating, right? Because we want to necessarily improve our health as the number one thing, which usually motivating us initially is I want to look better. That's the vast majority of us, right? So the way I would communicate it, because I'm like okay, I need to be able to communicate, you know why it's so important to focus on health over appearance, but it's not going to be effective, I got to think of a way to say it that's effective and of course, in a way that's honest, right, because you have to have to be true, otherwise, it won't work. So what I learned to say was, here's the deal, this is very true if you're healthy, you'll look good. Okay, health looks good. Right. Now, always working out and eating to look good, oftentimes leads to poor health, which then leads to poor looks. So if you exercise and eat to look good, then oftentimes, you'll end up in a situation where you don't look good, because your health suffers. But if you exercise and eat, to become healthier, you'll get healthier and then what will come along with that naturally, is you'll look good and the decisions you make to be healthy are often the right ones, the decisions you make just look good, or oftentimes the wrong ones. So essentially, what I'm telling people is if you want to look good, you got to train eat to be healthy, but it's more effective, right? The person hearing that is motivated by appearance, they hear that and they say, okay, that makes sense because I just want to look good. So it's okay, that's fine you just have to say it in a way that's, that's effective and that's, that's what, that's what the book is full of. So if you read it, I don't talk at this level that's, like super high, I'm talking directly to the average person. I tell a lot of stories, a lot of stories with clients. I do reference studies because I do know that people like to see evidence in order to support the things that I claims that I make. But I but I wrote it in a way that you know, most people can will read the book in a day, you know, they'll pick it up, they'll get into it, and it'll be finished in an entire day. In fact, that's what I get a lot of messages people say, oh, man, I picked it up and I read it all in one day and that's exactly what I want, like, effective, easy, get the point across. And is it going to make you, is it going to propel you to make the right kinds of changes?

Chase: How did you or did you incorporate kind of where we are in the world now the last 12 to 15 months, has changed for many people how we can strength train. And by that I mean access to gyms, access to equipment, costs for getting things you know, nobody wants to pay $100 for a 20 pound dumbbell because of supply and demand going on. It's smoothing out now. But how did you address that in terms of everybody, no matter where you are what you have access to being able to reap the benefits of strength training, no matter what they can do?

Sal: Yeah, well actually didn't change anything. I started writing the book before the pandemic happened and when the pandemic happened, obviously gyms closed down, like you said, equipment got expensive but it didn't change anything for me, because I knew that if I was going to convince the average person to exercise in this way, it had to be in a way that I had to put as little barriers in front of them as possible. Okay, and going to a gym is a barrier. It just says for a lot of people, the most popular workout programs in the world are ones that require no equipment, it's usually a video that you watch on your computer screen, right? So the workouts that I provide people, the first workout that so there's three different types of workouts. The first one is just your bodyweight and resistance bands. That's it. So anybody could do that at home, in a hotel room, you don't need only piece of equipment you need is a resistance bands, which are very inexpensive but then I also give people a dumbbells only at home version. So if you have dumbbells, you could do this at home and then the third version is a well equipped home gym where you have a barbell, and dumbbells but no cables or anything like that. So I did give people options with the workouts but I do explain in there, you know, because here's the deal with resistance training. It's extremely customizable. It's the most customizable form of exercise.

Chase: I would not disagree.

Sal: I mean, it's the form of exercise that they do in rehab, right? I can train anybody with resistance training. So I explain what resistance training is. It's not just using resistance. You can work out with dumbbells in a way that makes it cardio. Resistance training is like straight sets, rest, it's in a way that that elicits strength and muscle. And I give you the most effective exercises, which are basic compound movements, squats and presses and rows, and overhead presses and lunges. I mean, that's it, like, do those exercises, practice them, actually I talk about that to practice those exercises don't treat them like a workout but rather like skills that you're learning, practice them, and then you'll get the results that I talked about.

Chase: This has been amazing. So I'm kind of getting towards the end. I just want to Thanks again for coming on the show always a pleasure, wealth of knowledge. You know your shit man, and this book is definitely going to have a profound effect on so many people to help them dip their toe and dip their whole foot and just reap the benefits that is waiting on the other side of strength training, I can attest to it, you can attest to it. And so now hopefully, this is just a new way to deliver a whole message. Well, before we get to the final question, I want to ask for the person who is going to pick up this book, and they definitely should, again, we'll all be linked down in the show notes for everybody and you kind of alluded to it earlier but how would you really define success for the person who goes through this book, but actually applies and adheres to a strength training routine? Like, what is the universal marker for success that they can walk away with?

Sal: Oh, man, you feel better, you move better you're, you know, healthy, lean. So you don't you don't need to get shredded or anything like that you're just a healthy, lean but most importantly, it's something that you enjoy, and that's sustainable, something that you can do forever because it has to be done forever in order for you to continue to reap the benefits. That's true success, like, did someone pick this up apply the things I talked about and then were they able to do to keep doing it for the rest of the life?

Chase: Well said, wouldn't disagree with you there, man. So getting to the final question, and I was telling you earlier, I don't know if I started asking this, since you've been back on the show, but it's been a minute. So whether it's new or a new answer Ever Forward brother, it's all the things we've been talking about. It's bringing attention and awareness to how we move, how we eat, how we think quality of our relationships, just any little thing that we can improve and or even just maintain, to improve every day to just get 1% better to put one foot forward to live a life ever Ford as I say, what does that mean to you? So how would you say you live a life ever forward?

Sal: Its you know daily taking that 40,000 foot view of everything and asking the questions. Why? What is meaningful? What's the bigger picture? I think that's very important, because sometimes we can get lost in the day to day, you know minutiae of things and I think when you take that big view, it puts things in perspective and provides a little bit of purpose and meaning behind you know, all the challenges.

Chase: Who wouldn't want more or a purpose and meaning, right, so I love that answer, man. Well, Sal, again, my pleasure brother, thank you so much all of your information and the book will be down in the show notes and video for everybody but real quick before we sign off, where can they connect with you right now to learn more? Where can they get the book?

Sal: So you can go to theresistancetrainingrevolution.com or you can find the book anywhere they sell books, so Amazon Barnes and Nobles, Target, anywhere you can buy a book, you can find me on my podcast Mind Pump, or if you want to find me personally on Instagram @mindpumpsal

Chase: Beautiful man, Thank you so much. Welcome back anytime. Good to see you again. 

Sal: Thanks, brother. Appreciate it.