We’re all on our own journey and we’re all running our own race. And if there’s benefits to understanding where we are compared to other people, that’s okay. Every workout matters. Let’s zoom back in on today because that will give you the outcome that you’re actually ultimately looking for from your search and your quest. 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 wellbeing I’m Amy Hudson.

I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My cohosts are Brian Sagan, cofounder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidencebased strength training. And now for today’s episode. Upbeat music) We’ve got a QA episode for you today. So this question came in from a listener and I assume that this is probably a client at one of our exercise coach studios. They’re asking the question How does my muscle size and strength increase compared to others? Is the question. So, Dr. Fisher, I know there’s a lot of angles we could answer this question from, and there’s some kind of elements of the question itself to kind of unpack first before we kind of get to your final answer of this question.

So, where would you like to start in talking about the answer to this question? How do I compare to others? Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely there’s definitely a number of things that we can kind of broach on this. It’s worth clarifying that this is a longasked question. There’s a lot of research around the idea of what’s called social comparison theory, that people do evaluate themselves against other people. I read in a book, I’m trying to think of the name of the book, but I read in a book more recently that they talk about mimetic desire and our kind of intention to copy other people. I know there’s and our desire to be compared to other people. And there was a narrative around the idea that we compare ourselves to people like us, rather than to people that aren’t like us. So I might compare myself to my neighbors, rather than to Chris Hemsworth. And Chris, if you’re listening to this, then maybe we should compare each other. But for the moment, we can stay separate. And we compare ourselves to the people around us because we’re maybe in the same socioeconomic group or educational group or so on and so forth.

So there’s kind of a lot to, a lot within this concept. But I guess probably the first thing to unpack is maybe why we’re asking that question to begin with. Why are we comparing ourselves to someone else? And within that, something that we should consider is that we’re only comparing limited objective or subjective metrics. So the question that was posed muscle strength and muscle size, well, there are only two outcome measures from strength training. So, and while they’re observable in muscle size, perhaps, or identifiable and quantifiable based on the exerbotics devices in muscle strength, they’re still only two. You know, the question wasn’t posed, how does my blood glucose Compare?” or How does my blood cholesterol compare?” or How does my functional capacity compare?” and so forth. So there’s kind of a lot of things going on there that we can think about. Yeah, you only have to look at a group of teenagers, Dr. Fisher, to understand the desire to compare yourself to one another and to fit in with one another, right? You wanna fit in a favorable spot within your metric of choice is what you’re saying. Yeah, absolutely. Of course. Of course.

And of course, we all, to some extent, want to fit in or better the people around us. You know, there’s maybe a competitive element. And with that, there’s kind of a couple of things that we can talk about. So it can, you know, that social comparison can drive motivation. It can be a really positive thing. We could look at somebody who is on the same journey as us or who is further ahead on their journey. And we say, well, maybe who was further ahead on their journey. Um, and we say, well, maybe they’ve increased their strength to this point, or maybe they’ve lost 20 pounds or wherever it might be.

And we might look at that and think that that’s motivating. I’m on the same journey they’re on, but they’re just a bit further ahead. And now I can see how to get there. And that’s fantastic. But there’s also the idea that it can lower selfesteem It can create feelings of inadequacy. It might be demoralizing. We might look at somebody whose muscle size or muscle strength or body composition, and we might think, oh, I can never get to where they’re at. I can never lose 20 pounds. I can never get my muscles that big or so forth. So, and for that reason, comparison with other people has to be, we have to be really careful with it. I think that if there’s a positive to be taken from it, then it’s okay. But we should be really careful about the negative implications of kind of that comparison. Yeah, like if you know yourself, and if you have history of being the type of person that becomes easily discouraged or judging yourself because of the way that you compare to others in your own mind, even sometimes, perhaps you know, is this question even worth? Looking into it all, you know that’s kind of what I think.

Yeah. And I think you’re absolutely right. The word judgment’s really important. We should avoid any kind of judgment. Comparison should be purely for information purposes. It might be where do I compare to that person? But it’s just to be able to be aware of that information, not to make that kind of judgment, like you say. It’s to some extent about benchmarking where we are. Rather than judging our strength or our muscle size or so forth. If there’s a positive element to a competition, then that’s fine. If it’s negative, I think that we need to remember that we’re all very, very different individuals. We all start from a different place based on our genetics. We’re all walking a different journey based on our environment and our nutrition and our sleep and our socioeconomic group. And again, based on our genetics, when we start to look at the variability in adaptation, so inter individual differences, In adaptation to even the same strength training program, there’s very, very broad differences.

You know, at baseline, you know, we were talking before the podcast, and we have data that we’re looking to publish that’s on around 72000 clients from the exercise coach at baseline from a broad range of ages from 35 up to 84. And we know that even within each age category, so even within the age category of 35 to 39, some of the people within that age category are very strong, and some are much, much weaker. And that’s their baseline starting point, assuming that they haven’t done any exercise or assuming that their exercise background prior to that is the same.

And then we look at their strength change over time. And again, we have this long term data, we have two year data for strength change. And in fact, the first 12 months of it I’ve actually analyzed for variability. We know that, again, there’s huge variation in how much stronger somebody can get. Some people will increase strength very marginally, comparison to other people whose strength increases quite drastically. So, we’re all the way I often talk about this is that we’re all on our own journey and we’re all running our own race. And if there’s benefits to understanding where we are compared to other people, that’s okay.

But direct comparison. We should be very careful of. Right, okay, and I hear what you’re saying, and I think your message is coming through loud and clear. Just as a refresher to people, if they’re new to this podcast, can you give us a highlevel brief explanation? I’m just gonna kind of pick on one thing you said here is why some people do seem to progress faster than other people. Why might that be? Yeah, so there’s been so much talk in the last probably 10 years or so about genetic profiling and many people have done things like 23andMe or the other DNA testing kits that you can get. We now know that and so we now know that there are certain genes that predispose us to strength increases or to muscle size increases and so forth. And there’s a large range of genes, and some of them all come together for what I call what I talk about as being the perfect storm.

And some people have some genes that are favorable for them, but other genes that are not. Previously on the podcast, we’ve talked about myostatin. Which is, which prevents kind of muscle growth. It’s kind of a muscle growth inhibitor. And then you have what’s called Belgian blue cattle, which are myostatin deficient. And so these cattle look like bodybuilding cows, effectively. If anybody’s on YouTube now, you can pause the podcast and go onto Google and put in Belgian blue cattle, and you’ll see it looks like a bodybuilding cow. So we clearly know that there’s kind of genetic implications that we’re just predisposing to, that we’re born with, and that we really can’t do a lot about. And the easy way to kind of make that analogy is we don’t compare ourselves to elite athletes. You know, I don’t look at the, I never looked at, I’m going to age myself here, I never looked at Usain Bolt and his 95800 meter sprint and thought, well, where do I stand compared to Usain Bolt?

Usain Bolt was a, you know, a generational phenomenon. And many athletes are. You know, the line of NFL athletes or NBA athletes far surpass very good amateurs by leagues and leagues. It’s just not even comparable. So we should be aware of these kind of genetic differences. And then, of course, the journey that they’ve walked that supported them getting there. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, just, you know, what I’m hearing here in this answer is, you know, we want to compare ourselves. It’s natural to want to compare ourselves. Most people like to compare themselves to people like them, not an elite athlete, not a celebrity, but somebody maybe like me, similar age to me. We do have the ability to, we will have the ability to see some of those benchmarks. We have the data at the exercise coach studios to see kind of like cohorts of age groups to see how we compare that will be forthcoming, which is super exciting. But when we look at that data, we have to keep in mind certain things. We have to keep in mind the starting point that we’re coming in, our previous strength training history, our genetics.

It’s super interesting because I got the 23andMe done and I saw in my report that I do have more type 2 muscle fibers. It’ll actually say, you have more type 2 muscle fibers, which makes me a little bit more. Able to respond to strength training and see a little bit more power when I strength training than somebody with more type 1 muscle fibers that might be more suited to like long runs and distance running, which I’m not very good at. So that’s super, super interesting. And then, of course, other factors like we’ve talked about, you know, our nutrition and our consistency as we strength train and our fatigue levels and stress levels and all of these other factors that are at play.

You know? That’s so far kind of what I’m hearing you say. Yeah, absolutely. But I definitely think, and you’re 100 right, I too also have genes, there’s a gene, alfractin3 or ACTN3 that predisposes kind of, that’s a gene that predisposes you to increasing muscle strength and muscle size. Now I clearly don’t have all the other genes that help along the way, but, You know, we can look at those genetics. We can say, that’s why, maybe that’s why I’ve enjoyed resistance training all my life. Because I’ve been somewhat responsive to it compared to maybe other people that haven’t. But I think what’s really important in all of this is we should go back to some of the papers we’ve talked about previously, where we’ve said there’s no such thing as a non responder to resistance training. Everybody responds in some way. And we talked about a paper by Tyler Churchward Veen. We talked about it early in season two. Every single person within the study responded either by strength increase or by muscle size increase or by functional capacity increase or by change in body composition. So the idea of comparing ourselves to other people is okay, and we’ve talked through that.

But actually, what we should be doing is comparing ourselves to our past self and our intended self. And we know that there’s more in the act of resistance training than in the bigger picture benefits of resistance training. Every single resistance training workout is having a positive, acute response in blood cholesterol and mental well being and flexibility and muscle protein synthesis and metabolic expenditure. So it’s the act of engaging in strength training and the journey that’s making the difference. It’s not saying, well, I’ve lost that 10 pounds and that’s it. Now I’ve reached the end of my journey because that would be almost tragic to think that.

So remember that everybody is a responder in some way and the act of engaging in strength training, regardless of where your strength goes or your muscle size goes, is having incredible positive health benefits for you. I love that. I really like the phrase that you said is compare yourself not only to your past self but your intended self. I just love that because, again, it’s more meaningful for me to compare my strength gains and changes to myself. Previously, I am the best kind of comparison set that exists right? It’s where I compare to where I was before, stronger than yesterday.

But then also, you know, keeping in mind my intended self. So I think it’s the most helpful benchmark we can do and can be the most motivating, you know, when we even ask this question to start off. Because also, what if I decide, like, yep, I’m better than most people at my age, so I don’t have to try anymore? Right? Like you could do that too. Yeah. This whole conversation reminds me my mom had a lot of magnets on the fridge when I was growing up, and she had one that said, Your only job today is to try to be better than yesterday.

And I can remember when I was very young reading it and not really understanding what it meant. And as I grew up seeing the multiple layers in it, that being better than yesterday might be trying harder in something or being nicer to people or being kinder or learning something new and so forth. But I also remember the emphasis on try is to try. To be better than yesterday. So we’re not always going to have a better day than yesterday, but we could always try to have a better day than yesterday. I love that. And again, and that goes to your point every workout matters. So, you know, let’s zoom back in on today because that will give you the outcome that you’re actually ultimately looking for from your search and your quest. So I love that. Thank you for breaking this down for us, Dr. Fisher.

Do you have any final thoughts on this for the person asking this question or the general population? No, I wish them an and every person on their journey, whether it’s strength training, whether it’s the success that they want, but I also hope that they’re not disheartened by a lack of success and they can see benefits in the process. Exactly, every workout is a success. Well, we will see you next week on the podcast. If you do have a question for us, please go to the strengthchangeseverythingcom page and submit your question to us. We would love to answer it in a future episode. 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 StrengthChangesEverythingcom 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.