Dr. Darren Candow

So when you put all these things in your toolbox, you're now having a greater comprehensive plan to improve health.

So you said weight training was the hammer.

Hammer.

I like to consider if you were to choose one modality of exercise, weight training is a little bit superior to cardio.

You get pretty much all the same benefits of cardiovascular exercise, and then you get more with obviously an increase in lean tissue mass and performance.

Weight training, if done effectively, can actually improve mitochondrial health.

You can improve VO2 max if done correctly, and you don't need a lot of it.

So I think we've switched from just doing cardio to now incorporating weight training to be effective.

Yeah, I think one of the biggest myths is that you always need to lift heavy to put on muscle mass.

And world-renowned researchers in this area have clearly shown now that lighter weights perform to a lot of effort, almost to fatigue.

If done correctly, you can get the same increases in muscle mass as then compared to lifting heavy weights.

However, if your goal is just to get stronger, lifting heavy is always there.

So I think this is a cool thing for people.

Some days, if you have a little bit of soreness or you don't have a lot of energy, you can lift lighter weights, but just to fatigue.

Whereas other days you come in Monday, you've had your coffee, whichever it is, you're ready to go.

You can lift heavy.

So I think there's not one concrete way.

There's a little bit of variety here as well.

Yeah, I think the benefits there is that cardiovascular exercise will make you live longer and healthier.

But the downfall with cardiovascular exercise, it doesn't stimulate strength or the muscle skeletal system as much as we'd hope.