We should all love the idea of our body burning more calories. Our body is now working harder to recover following that strength training workout.

Maybe weight loss is one of your goals. I think you should pay particular attention to that. This is hugely important.

If you’ve been strength training for a long time, you get an even greater response.

Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training. And now for today’s episode.

Welcome back to the Strength Changes Everything podcast. Today is episode one of a two -part episode series in which we are answering a listener question that came in. And by the way, if you’re a listener to this podcast, you can visit strengthchangeseverything . com and click the submit a question orange button at the top right section of the page with any questions you may have for the show. And the question that we are answering today is how long will it take for me to experience adaptations or how long do adaptations take? Now on this show, we talk a lot about the benefits of strength training.

There are many different benefits that one can expect to achieve from strength training. And we’re splitting this question into two parts. We’re splitting it into what are the immediate benefits of strength training? In other words, what can you expect to experience after just a single exercise session? And what are the longer -term benefits? And that’ll be the second episode in this two -part series to answer this question.

And as we know, when it comes to the adaptations we experience from strength training, you know, people, everyone has different results that matter most to them, right? We’ve talked before about how some people are motivated to exercise because of building muscle mass or bigger muscles and muscle size. Other people are motivated just to feel better and sleep better. And some people are wanting to lose weight. So no matter which adaptation is most important to you, you’re going to want to listen to these two episodes in order to understand what you should expect if you are consistent in your strength training workouts.

So Dr. Fisher is with me today. And Dr. Fisher, today’s episode is answering, you know, what adaptations or what are the immediate benefits of a single strength training session? So how many benefits, research -based benefits, are we going to be introducing today?

So first of all, I think this is a really important question. I think people should go into their workout with some understanding or expectations of how long an adaptation might take. But also, as you said, highlight the acute responses to just a single bout of exercise. And this might be their very first strength training workout ever, or it might be how their body responds to each individual workout throughout their training lifestyle. So I’ve been training for decades and I still should see these responses from each individual workout. So we’ll talk today about five or six different acute responses to a resistance training session.

Alright, perfect.

So what is the first one?

Yeah, so I think the first one that probably most people will not be aware of, but something that we’ve definitely talked about kind of touching upon in different episodes on the podcast, and we did a deep dive into it more recently, is myokines. So when we have forced contraction of muscle, a high effort contraction of muscle, that muscle sends these myokines or these signaling proteins to positively influence other parts of our body. So we’ve talked about the myokines as an endocrine system. So it receives and interprets chemical signals and it receives this mechanical tension as a signal and it sends off these signaling messages around the body, which can positively impact the brain and our organs and so forth. So to me, the first and probably the most important is the release of myokines.

Right. If you missed the myokines episode, It’s just a couple episodes back.

Just scroll back a little bit in the history and you can learn all about these magic mayakhyans that are released immediately following a strength training session that do so much for our body. So from there, we have a couple of different ones. So, um, there’s a lot of research and we should clarify all of these are, are research -based, they’re evidence -based, there’s research, the scientific papers that show these are the acute responses to a resistance training session. So there’s two that I’m going to kind of group together, and this is why I said five or six. There’s, there’s improved mood. and there’s enhanced cognitive function.

And the reason I’m grouping them together is there’s kind of enhanced blood flow to our brain and there’s enhanced, as we talked about myokines, one of the myokines we’ve talked about previously is brain -derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF. And that’s a signaling protein that goes to our brain and can enhance our brain’s function and our cognitive function. So, after we’ve finished a workout, the evidence says that people are in a better mood in the acute period after a workout, and they also have enhanced cognitive function immediately after a workout and for a time after that workout. So, our brain is functioning really well. So lots of people will think that going into maybe an exam, the best thing that we can do is cram and cram and cram. And actually one of the best things that we can do before a, maybe an interview or an exam or anything that’s going to put us in a, maybe a stressful position, uh, where we want to be able to recall information and rely on, uh, memory recall and processing and other elements of cognitive function.

is actually do a strength training workout. So don’t think, okay, I’ve got that big interview today, or I’ve got that big exam, I should miss my workout and cram. Don’t do that. Do the studying beforehand.

And then on the day, still get in in that morning and do that workout. Yes. You know, what I think about is many times in our studios, and I’m sure this is what you’re describing is the reason why we hear this, is that clients will come in and they will drag themselves through the door for their appointment and their strength training session with us. And they’ll admit to us, you know, I really don’t feel my best today. I’m stressed. I’m kind of tired.

I don’t really want to be here, but I’m here. And we’ll celebrate the fact that they’re there and they will do their workout. And when they leave, they look back and they tell us, you know, I feel so much better. both physically and emotionally. And a lot of times people out there complain of brain fog. I mean, nobody likes that feeling of just their brain is mush or overwhelmed.

And so to have anything that you can do to improve that mental clarity and that focus or just feel better about your life and your ability to take on the day is like, who doesn’t want that?

Right.

And you’re saying that’s just on the other side of that 20 minutes during training session. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I love it. I love the way you praise that. I love the idea that people can walk out of a workout feeling like they’ve accomplished something, feeling a sense of mastery.

I mean, who wouldn’t? feel good? Who wouldn’t have an improved mood about that? And we all know that if I’m in a good mood and I smile, I pass that on to other people. So the world just becomes a better place for everybody.

Right. You know, so yeah, it’s, I think this is a great acute response to, uh, to strength training sessions.

Okay, so you just kind of lumped together an improved mood and enhanced cognitive function, you know, mental clarity, focus, and then we already talked about myokines. All right, what else? Okay, so the next one is a really undervalued and underdiscussed one, and this is called a reduced pain perception, which is exercise -induced hypoalgesia. And there’s an interesting phenomenon, and the mechanisms are not completely clear on this, so I’ll say that now before you put me on the spot. If somebody does a high effort strength training workout, it reduces their pain perception. So this is obviously particularly important for anybody who’s maybe got low back pain, chronic low back pain, or osteoarthritis we’ve talked about previously, or maybe fibromyalgia or other kind of comorbidities or clinical conditions which have an associated degree of pain.

Resistance training workouts have shown that within 15 minutes of that workout, there’s a lesser, there’s a muted response to pain. Now, we should clarify the way that’s assessed. It’s normally assessed through something called pain pressure threshold. And usually that is where you use a device that pushes on somebody’s skin. And it measures the amount of pressure applied before they report a certain value in pain or they report pain to be sort of unbearable or whatever it might be, whatever value the researchers are looking for. But it’s evidently reduced, or sorry, it’s evidently greater after a workout.

So a person can tolerate far more pain. or they have a reduced pain perception.

So it’s a really interesting phenomenon that I think obviously applies to, like I said, those clinical populations.

But I think it’s probably important for everybody, you know, anybody who might stub their toe or bang their elbow or anything like that, you know, it’s important to have, to be able to put in good place, like, our understanding of our body’s reaction to pain. Wow. That is really a cool one. I think, you know, a lot of people out there will, if they feel uncomfortable, if they feel kind of sore or there’s some kind of pain or dull pain or something that they’re experiencing, they actually may use that as an excuse to not exercise. And if you can just imagine, like, if I do my workout, I actually will probably, there’s a high likelihood that I’ll experience less pain or I won’t feel the effects of this pain so much. I can even say, I mean, as you’re describing this, I’ve had days where maybe I’ve been seated too long at a desk and hunched over my computer or working hard.

And so my neck and my shoulders are tight and sore. And then I go do my workout and I feel so much better.

I just don’t notice that pain anymore. That must be why that was, huh? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The next adaptation, and it’s an immediate, but it’s a prolonged adaptation, is elevated energy expenditure. So the research suggests that for 48 hours, so for two whole days after a high effort strength training workout, our body will burn more calories just in its normal activity.

Now, this is really important for two reasons. One, we should all love the idea of our body burning more calories. That’s great, right? This is not an excuse to go and eat that bag of potato chips or that donut or anything like that. But it’s just an understanding that our body is now working harder to recover to rebuild following that strength training workout. But the reason this is important is

we don’t get this adaptation from traditional cardiovascular or cardiorespiratory exercise. So if you go for a run, you might think, well, I went for a run for 30 minutes and my strength training session was only 20 minutes. So I burned more calories in my run. Well, in the actual 30 minute period compared to the 20 minute period, you maybe you did burn more calories you might not have but maybe you did but in the subsequent 48 hours you burn a higher number of calories following a resistance training workout than you will have done following a cardiovascular workout and in fact there’s even evidence to say that following a cardiorespiratory workout our energy expenditure actually drops as a kind of mechanism to preserve calories.

So it’s a really interesting, again, a really interesting phenomenon. But yeah, this idea of elevated energy expenditure is really important. Wow.

So you’re saying if one of my goals is to burn calories and to keep a healthy metabolic rate, and I have the choice between doing a cardio workout or a strength training workout, after that cardio session, my energy expenditure pretty much ceases right away. versus a strength training workout. After the strength training workout, I’m continuing to burn energy for up to 48 hours. Yeah, absolutely.

And this is actually, and we’ll kind of get into this when we talk about our chronic adaptations rather than just our acute responses, but if you’re new to resistance training, you absolutely get this response.

If you’ve been strength training for a long time, you get an even greater response. So people that have been training for six months will burn an even higher number of calories in the 48 hours after their workout compared to people that are just beginning strength training.

All right. Well, if you’re new to strength training and maybe weight loss is one of your goals, I think you should pay particular attention to that. be encouraged by this reality because this is hugely important. And the last one that we’ll talk about today is increased muscle protein synthesis. So typically we talk about for somewhere between three to six hours, potentially a bit longer than that, we have increased muscle protein synthesis. Now the reason this is important is, first of all, we have like a homeostasis within our body.

And that means that we have a natural kind of balance between anabolic or building mechanisms and catabolic and breaking down mechanisms. And that’s absolutely fine. That’s exactly how our body should be. But as we’ve talked about previously, as we age, we kind of…the seesaw, for want of a better term, tips, so we become a little bit more catabolic. Our bone breaks down a bit more than it rebuilds, and hence we can fall into osteoporosis. Our muscle breaks down more than it rebuilds, and hence we can fall into sarcopenia.

that doesn’t just happen in our 60s or 70s. It’s not like you suddenly hit 60 years old and you become sarcopenic. It’s a process. So what we actually see here is elevated muscle protein synthesis.

So instead of there being a balance or this favor of muscle protein breakdown, We’re tipping the balance the other way. So now there’s higher muscle protein synthesis. So one, we’re hanging onto the muscle that we’ve already got, but two, we’re actually helping to build more muscle or rebuild muscle that we may have lost. Wow.

So basically my strength training session is signaling my body to add muscle and strength and burn calories among other things.

It’s also signaling me to feel better.

and think better and function better in all of my physiological systems and in my organs.

I mean, it’s signaling a lot of good things that I want just from that one session alone. Is that right? Yeah. Every, every single session, uh, can, can produce these, these acute responses.

Oh my gosh. These are so great. So if you’re listening to this, I mean, I hope that you can latch on to at least one or two of these things to really inspire you. And I mean, Dr. Fisher, what would you say that a person listening to this episode should really glean and use this information in order to motivate them, you know, to work out? Yeah. So for me, the key, the key here is to never miss a workout.

You know, every single opportunity to work out is an opportunity to stimulate our body’s response in this way. Uh, you know, these are not chronic responses.

We don’t have enhanced mood for the next five years from a single workout.

This is something we need to keep doing with some degree of regularity. But as we can see from the elevated energy expenditure, every, you know, for up to 48 hours, it’s not something we need to do every day. It’s something just a couple times a week, and we can really kind of give our body that positive boost in things like cognitive function, or mood, or myokines, or pain perception, or energy expenditure, or muscle protein synthesis. So this is exactly what our body needs to really keep functioning optimally. Absolutely. So the next time, if you’re listening to this and you strength train, The next time you have that day where you just don’t feel like going in for your strength training workout, your little devil on your shoulder is trying to talk you out of it, or your lower self is trying to just say, let’s not do it today, I don’t want to do it today, or your motivation is in the tank, just keep in mind how amazing you can feel.

on the other side of that 20 minutes. You can tell yourself this is what we’re doing and this is why we are doing it. Latch on to these outcomes as your why for keeping up with your exercise habits, because it’s going to happen right away, which is amazing.

It doesn’t take months and months and months for you to get all these benefits.

You’re going to get it right away.

This is so exciting, Dr. Fisher. Thank you so much for explaining all of this. And I look forward to hearing more about the chronic or long term benefits of strength training in the next episode. Absolutely. All right. Well, we will see you next time on part two of this episode.

And until then, we hope you remember strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything . com. Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode.

Here’s to you and your best health.