Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess what, Mango? What's that will? Are we going to
Speaker 2: do a history lesson? I know you love going back
Speaker 2: in time. We're going to nineteen sixty. We're talking about
Speaker 2: John F. Kennedy. Now, this was just weeks before his inauguration.
Speaker 2: He actually wrote an article for Sports Illustrated and the
Speaker 2: headline was the soft American. Now. In this article, he
Speaker 2: called physical vigor one of the country's most important resources,
Speaker 2: and he actually lamented the decline of physical fitness among
Speaker 2: all of America's youth.
Speaker 1: First of all, I didn't know he wrote for magazines
Speaker 1: that I didn't previously say. But I mean, what was
Speaker 1: this like a splashy way of introducing new health policy
Speaker 1: or was he just trying to check in on how
Speaker 1: many chin ups every kid could do?
Speaker 2: I mean it kind of was like he did talk
Speaker 2: about plans to expand new physical education programs in schools,
Speaker 2: which he later did, and that was through the President's
Speaker 2: Council on Physical Fitness. I don't know if you remember
Speaker 2: these tests. It was always the pull ups that just
Speaker 2: killed me. I just I couldn't do it. And so
Speaker 2: ultimately couldn't get whatever that ultimate star was when you
Speaker 2: passed the test. But what JFK was really talking about
Speaker 2: was the Cold War. He actually argued that in order
Speaker 2: to take on the threat of communism, Americans needed to
Speaker 2: get stronger.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: I did doing more push ups to save democracy.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what they're there for. And it is
Speaker 2: funny in retrospect to to look at all this, but
Speaker 2: it's also interesting to see how things like politics and
Speaker 2: cultural attitudes, even media and celebrities, these can all influence
Speaker 2: the way we think about physical strength, and believe it
Speaker 2: or not, that's been the case of the United States
Speaker 2: for hundreds of years. So today on the show, Maria
Speaker 2: is speaking with author Casey Johnston got a new book
Speaker 2: called A Physical Education. Now it's this blend of science,
Speaker 2: reporting and memoir, you know, the kind of thing we
Speaker 2: love around here, and I can't wait to hear what
Speaker 2: she has to say about the history of strength training
Speaker 2: and how to get stronger and how getting stronger changed
Speaker 2: her life. So let's die down.
Speaker 4: So Casey, thank you so much for coming on. We're
Speaker 4: very excited to have you on part time genius. I've
Speaker 4: been reading your work for a long time. I am
Speaker 4: an amateur jym goer, I would say, And at the
Speaker 4: end of this interview, I think I'd like to do
Speaker 4: a little bit of pep talking to people who don't
Speaker 4: know or feel like they don't know what to do
Speaker 4: in a gym. But I want to get started at
Speaker 4: the beginning. And I'm talking chronologically because one of the
Speaker 4: most fascinating parts of your book to me was how
Speaker 4: weightlifting and gyms became a thing.
Speaker 3: And I'd never even thought about this, but it actually.
Speaker 4: Came from some very specific fields of thought that had
Speaker 4: a lot of political and religious context. So let's go
Speaker 4: back to the nineteenth century. Tell me about the Turner movement.
Speaker 5: I mean, we can trace physical training in one form
Speaker 5: another all the way back like humans have maybe always
Speaker 5: done it, and a common starting point for our modern
Speaker 5: training is like Greeks and Romans, you know. So it's
Speaker 5: like it goes back. But the place that we can
Speaker 5: situate the modern conception of a gym as a sort
Speaker 5: of community center for exercise and physical fitness began with
Speaker 5: the Turners, which were a sort of cultural group in
Speaker 5: Germany in the early eighteen hundreds, started by one man
Speaker 5: who ran a center. It's an outdoor plaza called it turnplots,
Speaker 5: this turn terminology sort of referring broadly to gymnastics, but
Speaker 5: they also use dumbells and weights to train with. And
Speaker 5: some of the Turners immigrated to the United States and
Speaker 5: they brought that with them. They started what were called
Speaker 5: Turner halls or turnbarne and they pursued physical fitness, not
Speaker 5: as like this sort of competitive elitist thing, but they
Speaker 5: saw it as a public health contribution to sort of
Speaker 5: help raise the floor of physical capability for their community.
Speaker 5: They didn't like the sort of American conception of competition.
Speaker 5: This was about this. It had a much more socialist approach.
Speaker 4: But of course here in the United States, we don't
Speaker 4: like socialism, but we do like Protestant work ethic. So
Speaker 4: then it seems like once the Turners came here there
Speaker 4: was this other kind of field of thought about why
Speaker 4: working out and gaining strength was act actually sort of
Speaker 4: in line with Christian values, right, So how did that
Speaker 4: get involved?
Speaker 5: There was the YMCA associations. Young Men's Christian Association was
Speaker 5: a concept that existed relatively early in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 5: It did not initially have a gym component at all.
Speaker 5: It was just sort of a gathering place for young
Speaker 5: Christian men and they saw what the turners were doing
Speaker 5: and were like, we want that. We literally want this
Speaker 5: concept of like a physical training center because there was
Speaker 5: this growing assertion that Christians were not physically robust enough,
Speaker 5: especially the men, so they wanted to buff them up
Speaker 5: quote unquote in service to God. I mean, this all
Speaker 5: becomes like a way of keeping them focused on their
Speaker 5: physical perfectibility, keeping them at work in service of God.
Speaker 5: So they were like, this is a type of pressure
Speaker 5: we can put on them to be physically fit. So
Speaker 5: that became the muscular Christianity movement, and.
Speaker 4: That's an actual term. That was an actual term, was
Speaker 4: muscular Christianity.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it doesn't have it's I mean, there's not a
Speaker 5: lot of really formal study about a lot of this stuff,
Speaker 5: but it's like a it's conceptually doesn't have a strong
Speaker 5: beginning or end or like a very particular leader. But
Speaker 5: it became a sort of dovetail of these two cultures
Speaker 5: and that sort of snowballed into Eventually we had physical
Speaker 5: fitness tests and exams for military organizations, then paramilitary organizations,
Speaker 5: fascists adopted these physical training programs that made them really
Speaker 5: fall out of favor among socialists and that crowd, or
Speaker 5: it became distasteful, sort of in the way it is
Speaker 5: now where people maybe assume a conservatism or a fixation
Speaker 5: on aesthetics if you participate in this thing. In a
Speaker 5: similar way, they kind of assumed you were a fascist
Speaker 5: of you if you trained physically in this way back
Speaker 5: during the World Wars, because the Italian Army was doing it,
Speaker 5: the German Army was doing it. I've started to say
Speaker 5: these things are these are tools, neutral tools, but they
Speaker 5: develop these associations based on who's using them and how
Speaker 5: they're using them.
Speaker 4: So when you step into a gym and pick up
Speaker 4: a barbelle, you're actually engaging with this incredible history and
Speaker 4: social political context that I think most people just don't
Speaker 4: even think about.
Speaker 3: We take it for granted.
Speaker 4: But I guess my other question is, you know, there's
Speaker 4: this idea of bodybuilding. We think about someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Speaker 4: who became such a cultural icon.
Speaker 3: Where did bodybuilding come from?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean an interesting thing is that bodybuilding the
Speaker 5: YMCA sort of coined that term. They brought that into
Speaker 5: the picture of physical training. But there's like a more
Speaker 5: modern route of bodybuilding as like a pure esthetic pursuit.
Speaker 5: The aesthetic version is the seventies. There are bodybuilders in
Speaker 5: the fifties who are maybe a little bit more oriented
Speaker 5: around these like feats of gymnastic might, throwing each other
Speaker 5: in the air, tumbling and stuff. But they also had
Speaker 5: a particular esthetic that was documented in magazines, and then
Speaker 5: eventually it became more about just the look of these people.
Speaker 5: I think that it's sort of ebbed and flowed over
Speaker 5: the years. But if you go to a certain very
Speaker 5: intense corner of TikTok, there are people who are intensely
Speaker 5: pursuing bodybuilding.
Speaker 4: Of course, of course, but it's so interesting to think
Speaker 4: that over the years people have gone into this for
Speaker 4: all of these different reasons and with all of these
Speaker 4: different goals, whether it's esthetic or military. And yet here
Speaker 4: we are trying to figure out, well, should I pick
Speaker 4: up those dumbbells or not? And we'll talk more about that,
Speaker 4: but first we have to take a quick break. We'll
Speaker 4: be back with Casey Johnston in just a moment. Welcome
Speaker 4: back to Part Time Genius. We're talking with Casey Johnston,
Speaker 4: author of a physical education and.
Speaker 3: I want to talk a little bit, Casey.
Speaker 4: You did such a great job in the book of
Speaker 4: breaking down some of the myths around the science of
Speaker 4: weight training and muscle, and a lot of this is
Speaker 4: stuff that I have seen perpetuated in the media for
Speaker 4: years and years and years. Especially as a female bodied person,
Speaker 4: we are fed all of this. One of the main
Speaker 4: myths that you broke down is that women cannot build
Speaker 4: muscle in the same way as men and therefore should
Speaker 4: maybe not exercise in the same way. And that's not
Speaker 4: actually true, So tell us about that, right.
Speaker 5: The sort of pseudoscience around this that I believed that
Speaker 5: was circulated and popular magazines and media was that women
Speaker 5: have more of this type of muscle fibers Type one
Speaker 5: they're called, that are quote unquote more suited to cardioactivity.
Speaker 5: They're long and lean, and so women should focus on
Speaker 5: that stuff, whereas men have more type two fibers, which
Speaker 5: are used for more powerful, strength oriented movements. So men
Speaker 5: should focus on lifting weights and never the twain shall meet.
Speaker 5: In actual fact, it's not anywhere near as divided as
Speaker 5: what I just said would make you think. On average,
Speaker 5: women have I believe the number was seven to twelve
Speaker 5: percent more type one muscle fibers than men by proportion,
Speaker 5: So that's like a very small difference. I think I
Speaker 5: compared it to a jar of jelly beans in the book,
Speaker 5: where it's like, if you have one hundred jelly beans
Speaker 5: and I have one hundred and seven jelly beans, I
Speaker 5: have seven percent more jelly beans than you, But like
Speaker 5: our two jars of jelly beans are probably virtually identical.
Speaker 5: That is not anywhere near enough of a difference to
Speaker 5: suggest that these two groups should train completely differently. And
Speaker 5: then there's lots of science around the fact that women
Speaker 5: who train the same as men might not gain as
Speaker 5: much muscle in the absolute, but they will gain twenty
Speaker 5: five percent just as men gain twenty five percent. So
Speaker 5: they are not maybe ending up as big as men are,
Speaker 5: but it's because their bodies are smaller. They might be
Speaker 5: starting with smaller muscles. But that doesn't mean that they
Speaker 5: shouldn't train for strength just because they can't end up
Speaker 5: as strong as a man. Just because a man can
Speaker 5: lift six hundred pounds and a woman can lift four
Speaker 5: hundred pounds at their absolute top of their ability, that
Speaker 5: doesn't mean that it's meaningless by any stretch. For a
Speaker 5: woman to learn to lift that weight. Because we still
Speaker 5: get the same type of growth and building those relationship
Speaker 5: with our bodies, building up her neurological responses to the stimulus,
Speaker 5: we get all of the same type of great results.
Speaker 3: So to speak out of it.
Speaker 4: Tell me a little bit more about this. You mentioned
Speaker 4: it just now briefly the neurological benefits as well. And
Speaker 4: I think this is again something that I have never
Speaker 4: really thought about. When I go to the gym, I'm
Speaker 4: dragging my muscles and my bones around and then I
Speaker 4: haul them out again. But my brain is actually doing
Speaker 4: something too. What is it doing?
Speaker 3: Why is it good for me? Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think that we have really underestimated the potential for this.
Speaker 5: In all kinds of exercise, we sort of think almost
Speaker 5: as one directional, where it's like your brain sends a
Speaker 5: signal to your muscles, and your muscles do what your
Speaker 5: brain says, but there is a response. There's sort of
Speaker 5: a back and forth between your body and your muscles.
Speaker 5: You're not just training this physical might of your muscles,
Speaker 5: You're training them neurologically to work together. There's more communication
Speaker 5: happening between your brain and your body in ways that
Speaker 5: we don't even fully understand yet. We're so focused on
Speaker 5: maintaining our brain function in the last maybe like twenty
Speaker 5: years or so with pseudoku, crosswords, all of these things.
Speaker 5: But it's like the stimulus of working out has a
Speaker 5: similar effect. Your brain is getting used, your neurological system
Speaker 5: is getting used when you exercise, and it's like a
Speaker 5: contrasting kind of stimulus too to like the pure brain
Speaker 5: activity of say doing a Pseudoka puzzle.
Speaker 4: That's really fascinating. I did also learn from your book
Speaker 4: recovery is important. Why shouldn't we just push to the max.
Speaker 4: Why shouldn't we be lifting as much as we can
Speaker 4: every single day?
Speaker 5: This is something I was completely unaware of going into lifting,
Speaker 5: And when I was exercising for so long as a
Speaker 5: runner and my focus was entirely on doing as much
Speaker 5: exercise as I could, my understanding at that time was
Speaker 5: if I then ate too much food, I had just
Speaker 5: spent all this time running, burning all these calories, and
Speaker 5: it would be quote unquote wasting that workout in order
Speaker 5: to go then eat food. In learning about lifting, I
Speaker 5: learned it's sort of the opposite, is true, And especially
Speaker 5: in lifting, your muscles are actually built when you're resting,
Speaker 5: when you work out, you're doing all of this. We
Speaker 5: referred to it as muscle damage. You're shredding up the
Speaker 5: fibers in your muscles, so to speak. And then when
Speaker 5: you are not lifting, when you give yourself time to
Speaker 5: rest and you give yourself food, especially protein, but also
Speaker 5: you need carbs and fats, your body is repairing those
Speaker 5: muscles to be a little bit stronger than they were before.
Speaker 5: It's re fueling you and sort of restocking your muscles
Speaker 5: with energy, and that's what allows you to lift a
Speaker 5: little more weight the next time. And that's how you
Speaker 5: create progress. That's how you build muscle and especially build
Speaker 5: it back if you've lost it from say, dieting too
Speaker 5: much or too little activity for too long, that sort
Speaker 5: of thing.
Speaker 4: It makes so much sense when you say it right
Speaker 4: the science. It's very logical, but it's also kind of
Speaker 4: radical when you think about the messaging that especially women
Speaker 4: and girls are given. It's kind of a way to
Speaker 4: change how you see all of that and to question
Speaker 4: some of that messaging.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: I hadn't been aware when I was a runner how
Speaker 5: destructive that cycle was of like exercising and then not
Speaker 5: eating and trying to rest as little as possible. Those
Speaker 5: are all things that are all fighting each other in
Speaker 5: that circle where it's like the less you eat, the
Speaker 5: less prepared you are to work out, the more you
Speaker 5: work out, the less you're resting, the worse you're going
Speaker 5: to work out. And then I'm left trying to fight
Speaker 5: even more to try and keep doing what I think
Speaker 5: I'm supposed to be doing. In lifting, all of those
Speaker 5: things are oriented in a constructive cycle where the more
Speaker 5: you eat the better, the more way you can lift,
Speaker 5: the harder you can train. For me, with an adequate
Speaker 5: dose of training, I sleep better, for instance, and all
Speaker 5: of those things sort of feed off of each other
Speaker 5: and become a virtuous cycle. I think in the book
Speaker 5: I called it a reward reward reward, sort of like
Speaker 5: there's no punishment reward system. It felt like it was
Speaker 5: just all good stuff going in a circle.
Speaker 4: I was so compelled by your personal story that unfolded
Speaker 4: through this book. There was so much that I could
Speaker 4: relate to. I think there's a lot that a lot
Speaker 4: of people can relate to, And one of the things
Speaker 4: that I found most relatable was simply stepping into a
Speaker 4: gym and feeling.
Speaker 3: A little bit out of place and overwhelmed.
Speaker 4: I like that you actually let us go along with
Speaker 4: you as you made a fool of yourself frankly a
Speaker 4: few times, and had to learn the how to use
Speaker 4: equipment and how to interact with people. You struggled, you
Speaker 4: had a hard time. I think a lot of people do.
Speaker 4: What do you say to someone who wants to try lifting,
Speaker 4: wants to start going to the gym, but maybe feel
Speaker 4: self conscious or anxious about it.
Speaker 5: We're sort of encouraged to think of as, oh, it's simple,
Speaker 5: like you just start going to the gym, But the
Speaker 5: gym for somebody who is not great at dealing with
Speaker 5: new environments or hasn't been sort of socialized in a
Speaker 5: gym crowd in their whole life, it's a foreign environment
Speaker 5: which takes some time getting used to. A lot of
Speaker 5: times I find myself saying to people that when you
Speaker 5: started a new job or a new school, or we've
Speaker 5: had those experiences where it's not necessarily comfortable right away.
Speaker 5: You don't know anybody and you're like, where is everything?
Speaker 5: I don't know. You have to kind of allow yourself
Speaker 5: to situate it in your mind like that, I think,
Speaker 5: and give yourself time, and I like to say separate
Speaker 5: the task of accomplishing a workout from getting used to
Speaker 5: a new place. You are allowed to get your feet
Speaker 5: wet first and just familiarize yourself. One of the pieces
Speaker 5: of advice I give people is to give yourself a
Speaker 5: session or two or as many as you want where
Speaker 5: you just sort of go to the gym and post
Speaker 5: up on a low stakes cardio machine where you can
Speaker 5: see the rest of the gym and just sort of
Speaker 5: observe see how people use the equipment, how do they
Speaker 5: ask each other for things, where do they stand when
Speaker 5: they do X, Y Z. That's not going to be
Speaker 5: the total cure all, but it's good to let yourself
Speaker 5: get familiar with, like where's the locker room? How do
Speaker 5: you check in and feel like you know it a
Speaker 5: little before you're trying to jump in and also complete
Speaker 5: a workout.
Speaker 3: You're allowed to take it a little.
Speaker 5: Slowly, And we don't really think of it that way,
Speaker 5: but I encourage thinking of it that way a little
Speaker 5: bit more.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that you don't have to do everything
Speaker 4: at once. That is really wonderful advice. Well, we have
Speaker 4: to take one more quick break, but we have so
Speaker 4: much more to talk about with Casey Johnston Don't Go Anywhere.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to Part time Genius Now, Casey. Before the break,
Speaker 4: we were talking about how people can kind of ease
Speaker 4: their way into lifting, ease their way into going to
Speaker 4: a gym because new environments can be intimidating. I think
Speaker 4: the other thing that a lot of people hesitate about
Speaker 4: is this fear of being judged or not being perceived
Speaker 4: as worthy of being there.
Speaker 3: And it's funny.
Speaker 4: I was at the gym last month and I was
Speaker 4: standing there doing dumbell curls using fifteen pound dumbbells, which
Speaker 4: for me was a lot.
Speaker 3: I was struggling.
Speaker 4: I got to like four reps and I could not
Speaker 4: keep going, and I looked to my left and there
Speaker 4: is a guy easily twice my size, super ripped. He's
Speaker 4: got these like, I think, forty forty five pound dumbells
Speaker 4: and he is just flipping them up and down like
Speaker 4: their toothpicks while carrying on a conversation with someone next
Speaker 4: to him. And I'm practically on the floor after doing
Speaker 4: my four reps with the fifteens, and in that moment,
Speaker 4: I felt so scrawny and weak and discouraged, and it
Speaker 4: was while reading your book that it kind of hit me.
Speaker 4: First of all, I was actually working hard that guy
Speaker 4: was not. He was not pushing himself. I was pushing
Speaker 4: myself to the breaking point. So who's tough now. But
Speaker 4: also it's this idea that everybody is on their own
Speaker 4: pathway you should not expect someone else's results.
Speaker 3: Is that sort of what you found in your own
Speaker 3: journey through all.
Speaker 5: Of this, yeah, one hundred percent. I mean you have
Speaker 5: to keep in mind that often who you're seeing at
Speaker 5: the gym are people who love going to the gym
Speaker 5: and go all of the time. You only live in
Speaker 5: that sort of beginner phase where you feel like you
Speaker 5: don't know what you're doing and you feel like you
Speaker 5: stick out like a sore thumb. Like that doesn't last
Speaker 5: very long. Eventually you're going to be one of those
Speaker 5: people where it's like your second living room. So that's
Speaker 5: important to keep in mind. But there is also this
Speaker 5: element of we're all working on what we need to
Speaker 5: work on. I mean, even as somebody who has a
Speaker 5: lot of experience, if you're going back after a long
Speaker 5: time or you're rehabbing an injury, the ways you use
Speaker 5: are going to be different than what you are capable
Speaker 5: of at your strongest. This is true of everybody, so
Speaker 5: it's very important to not compare yourself on just a
Speaker 5: sort of numbers point. There's also this element of when
Speaker 5: you are experienced at the gym, when you're one of
Speaker 5: these guys, you know, you can tell when somebody is
Speaker 5: working hard, and they respect the working hard. I think
Speaker 5: only jerks would really judge you based on how much
Speaker 5: weight you're lifting relative to how much they can lift.
Speaker 5: Obviously those people exist, but I found there are way
Speaker 5: more people at the gym who just loved the gym
Speaker 5: and wanted to share that, especially with somebody who they
Speaker 5: could tell was motivated and excited about it in my
Speaker 5: own sort of reserved way, but also uncomfortable. They wanted
Speaker 5: to help me feel comfortable, and that was really a
Speaker 5: nice experience to have.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I absolutely loved the scenes in the book at Richie's
Speaker 4: the gym in Brooklyn, where you found this camaraderie with
Speaker 4: some older guys, you know, people you probably didn't encounter
Speaker 4: as much in your everyday life.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's so great, and I feel like while I
Speaker 5: did have these people who I ultimately felt were friendly
Speaker 5: to me and looking out for me, they would sort of,
Speaker 5: you know, if I asked to use the squat rack next,
Speaker 5: they would unload their weights and be so into it.
Speaker 5: Really helpful because there's a cliche of guy who leaves
Speaker 5: all his weights loaded on there, so you as somebody
Speaker 5: who can't lift one forty five pound plate or like
Speaker 5: trying to unload.
Speaker 3: All these plays yourself.
Speaker 5: But also what was important to me was that after
Speaker 5: having gone there for a few years and having some
Speaker 5: conversations with guys just sort of in passing where they're like,
Speaker 5: you have you been coming here for a few years,
Speaker 5: Like you look strong, You've changed, Like I can see
Speaker 5: that you've made a lot of progress. And I had
Speaker 5: the feeling at that point of one of the things
Speaker 5: that I really needed as somebody who felt really sort
Speaker 5: of hyper vigilant over people who are just waiting for
Speaker 5: me to make a mistake and like Russian and make
Speaker 5: me feel like I didn't know what I was doing.
Speaker 3: This gym was sort of.
Speaker 5: Correc to that in a very healing way where I
Speaker 5: could sense at that point that there were people there
Speaker 5: who did recognize that I was new, that I didn't
Speaker 5: know that I was doing, but they trusted me to
Speaker 5: have my own experience to find my way without needing
Speaker 5: to be like either coddled or have a lot of
Speaker 5: pressure on me, or that they needed to force me
Speaker 5: to have things happen a certain way. They ultimately gave
Speaker 5: me room to like do my own thing. And that's
Speaker 5: what I needed, was some room to find my own
Speaker 5: way and find my own relationship with this thing. And
Speaker 5: that was just an incredible gift to that. I don't
Speaker 5: even know if they were giving me or did it
Speaker 5: on purpose, but that was how it happened.
Speaker 4: I want to ask one last thing, which is injury. Right,
Speaker 4: People are fragile in some ways, people are fallible. What
Speaker 4: are some things people can do if they're afraid of
Speaker 4: getting hurt or injured? I mean, there's something a little
Speaker 4: more daunting about picking up a heavy piece of metal
Speaker 4: versus just hanging out on the StairMaster.
Speaker 3: For a while.
Speaker 5: I think the main thing that people don't know, and
Speaker 5: what I didn't know about lifting when I started, is
Speaker 5: that by design, the way that it is all structured
Speaker 5: is that you are doing what is an appropriate challenge
Speaker 5: for you where you are at right now. And as
Speaker 5: we were just saying, that can go up and down
Speaker 5: depending on did you take a long time off and
Speaker 5: you're coming back, are you injured? If you've never done
Speaker 5: it before, you start where you're comfortable and you build
Speaker 5: up from there, and that pace can go as slow
Speaker 5: as you want to. It can go pretty quickly if
Speaker 5: you're interested in progress, which I got really invested in
Speaker 5: that like feedback loop where I was like, I can't
Speaker 5: wait to get stronger. I can't believe that in like
Speaker 5: a couple of weeks I was able to add forty
Speaker 5: pounds to my squat or whatever like that was so
Speaker 5: interesting to me. But if what's interesting to you is
Speaker 5: that you add, you know, five pounds a week or
Speaker 5: five pounds a month, that's completely a fine way of
Speaker 5: pursuing it. You are allowed to have your own pace
Speaker 5: and your own relationship with it. We don't really say
Speaker 5: that enough, I don't think. And you can make there's
Speaker 5: a lot of low hanging fruit. It's almost like the
Speaker 5: less strong you are coming in, the more you stand
Speaker 5: to gain quickly. But yeah, I think fear of fear
Speaker 5: of injuries. You know, we get injured doing all kinds
Speaker 5: of things. I mean there's a sort of aphorism in
Speaker 5: lifting that it goes along the lines of If you
Speaker 5: think getting strong is dangerous, try being weak. Being weak
Speaker 5: is dangerous. And by that they mean when you are
Speaker 5: calcified from sitting all day and all of your muscles
Speaker 5: are atrophied and you're not used to moving around, you
Speaker 5: can get hurt just bending down to pick something up.
Speaker 5: Like injury happens all around us. It's not reserved for
Speaker 5: the gym. The gym can be very help Lifting weight specifically,
Speaker 5: can be very helpful in preventing injury from all of
Speaker 5: these little tasks that we have to do day in
Speaker 5: and day out. And I think, I say in the book,
Speaker 5: I had underestimated how very much physical labor it is
Speaker 5: being an adult in the world, like carrying big boxes
Speaker 5: of cat litter or dog food, like all these kinds
Speaker 5: of things that we have to do, picking up laundry
Speaker 5: from the floor. Even just a modest amount of strength training,
Speaker 5: not just in the sense of building strength, but building
Speaker 5: that physical capability of moving your body in the safest
Speaker 5: possible way, can be so helpful for preventing injury in
Speaker 5: all of these other aspects of life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that forty pound bag of cat litter that you
Speaker 4: wrote about, I that was.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I related to.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it really is motivating when you are trying
Speaker 4: to haul that bag of litter back from the store,
Speaker 4: or even just carrying it out of the closet down
Speaker 4: the hall to the litter box. One of my many
Speaker 4: million dollar ideas is a super lightweight cat litter for
Speaker 4: older people or people with disabilities, because it just seems
Speaker 4: crazy to me that we have like artificial intelligence and
Speaker 4: we don't have hat litter.
Speaker 5: See, there is like a light a light cat litter.
Speaker 5: I forget what brand it is. Yeah, but it's sort
Speaker 5: of like aerated in some way that it is lighter,
Speaker 5: but so much more expensive, which was my problem. I
Speaker 5: wanted the economy box of regular litter. I was never
Speaker 5: going to spend like ten dollars for fifteen pounds of
Speaker 5: write this fancy litter. I could not do that. I
Speaker 5: had to do the heavy stuff.
Speaker 4: So you had to go to the gym and get
Speaker 4: super buffs so you could take care of your cats.
Speaker 4: That you did it all for your cats. All right, Casey,
Speaker 4: thank you so much for this conversation. Can you tell
Speaker 4: folks where they can find you on the internet if
Speaker 4: they'd like to learn more about your work and buy
Speaker 4: your fantastic book.
Speaker 5: Sure, my book is available from all the booksellers you
Speaker 5: can possibly think of. My newsletter is called She's a
Speaker 5: Beast at She'sobeast dot Co. That is a nominally strength
Speaker 5: themed newsletter, although it covers lots of health tech different
Speaker 5: topics like that. I'm Casey Johnston on Blue Sky and
Speaker 5: swoll Woman swol Woman on Instagram.
Speaker 4: Fantastic and we'll have links to all of that in
Speaker 4: the show notes so everyone can keep up with you
Speaker 4: and begin or continue their own strength training journey.
Speaker 3: Casey, thank you so much. I really really enjoyed this.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Casey is so fascinating, even for someone like me who
Speaker 1: hates going to the gym.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, I remember in college every time
Speaker 2: you pretended you were going to work out and then
Speaker 2: you played basketball instead, and you'd always say you were
Speaker 2: going to start lifting on Monday, but it was never Monday,
Speaker 2: and so so I don't think you ever had to.
Speaker 1: I know, but you hearing Casey talk actually, you know,
Speaker 1: makes me inspired. So look on gym on Monday.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Well that does it for today's episode, A very big
Speaker 1: thank you to Casey Johnston. You can find her new book,
Speaker 1: a Physical Education at your local bookstores, library, or wherever
Speaker 1: else you get books. And you can find us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at parton Genius and right here in your podcast feeds,
Speaker 1: so be sure to subscribe. We will be back next
Speaker 1: week with the brand new episode and in the me
Speaker 1: time from Will, Dylan, Gabe, Mary and myself, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production
Speaker 1: of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and Me Mongas Chatikler and research by our good
Speaker 1: pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced
Speaker 1: by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell
Speaker 1: and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay,
Speaker 1: Trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shoory. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.