365 ‒ Training for longevity: A roundtable on building strength, preventing injury, meeting protein needs, guidance for women and youth athletes, and more | Gabrielle Lyon, Mike Boyle, Jeff Cavaliere

Personal career journeys and philosophies of each guest that shaped their approaches to strength, conditioning, and lifelong health [A: 3:30, V: 1:17]

• This is our second version of a roundtable
• [The first one focused on longevity, episode #333]
• Unlike the first one where Peter had interviewed the 3 guests multiple times, the guests today have never been on the podcast

The “non-bio” version of who each guest is

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 

• Gabrielle is a fellowship trained physician in geriatrics and nutritional sciences
• She did her fellowship at WashU, and at the time she was very reluctant to do geriatrics because it can be an arduous and sad experience
• But she was fascinated by the nutritional research side
• There was a moment we were working on a study looking at body composition and brain function and she really took to one of the participants
  • She imaged her brain, and at her mid 50s she looked like the beginning of an Alzheimer’s brain
  • And in that moment, muscle-centric medicine, which is the concept that Gabrielle practiced and founded

⇒ Muscle-centric medicine: skeletal muscle is the focal point of all our health and wellness

• Gabrielle is the author of a New York Times bestseller called Forever Strong [the accompanying playbook will be published in 2026]
• She continues to do research and work within the space 
• She has a medical practice and sees patients
• She just submitted a paper on the relationship between sexual function and muscle mass

Michael Boyle

• Mike is a coach, this is his 43rd year coaching
• He was lucky enough to bounce right out of college and into a coaching job
• He started out as an athletic trainer
• He invented training for the NFL Combine in the ‘80s
• He worked in the NHL for the Boston Bruins from ‘90-’99 while he worked at BU [Boston University]
  • Strength coaches were part-timers at that point in time
  • He worked at BU for 30+ years
• He opened one of the first for-profit businesses around strength and conditioning in 1997
• In 2012, he left BU and jumped over to the Red Soc for 2 years, where he was able to get a world series ring in 2 years
• He realized that was not very conductive with being a good father, a good husband ‒ so he left pro sports
• Currently, he coaches his son and his friends who play college lacrosse
• He still works as a personal trainer and as a strength conditioning coach
• More than anything, he’s a practitioner
• He sees patients that range from age 11 to 80
  • He doesn’t take kids until they are 11 because we really don’t want the min the gym before that
  • His oldest client right now is 89 ‒ that’s his son’s pediatrician
  • He has a couple of 3 generation families all training in the same space

Jeff Cavaliere

• Jeff is a physical therapist by trade
• He moved out of the clinic at an early stage, got a great opportunity to work in that role for the New York Mets
  • Which was a dream come true for him because he was a die-hard Met fan growing up
• From there, he piggybacked into how could he continue this education of athletes on a broader platform
• He was well aware of the power of the internet at that time, so he started a YouTube channel 
• Now it’s not just about training athletes and empowering athletes, but empowering people who want to be more athletic, feel more athletic, move more athletically in daily life
• Beyond having to maintain a certain level of consistency (because he wants to practice what he preaches), he has two young boys (twins)
  • He started late; he’s 40
  • He wants to make sure he can keep up with them when they’re ready to have him run and play
• He has a lot of motivation to keep doing what he’s doing and stay in shape
• He believes that requires having an understanding of injury, training around injuries
  • Because no matter what, as we get older, things do start to break down and you have to have strategies to be able to push through that and train around that
• And that’s where his big strength is as a PT to provide that background to help people do that more readily

Why so few people engage in resistance training despite its proven health benefits [A: 8:30, V: 6:58]

Do we have a sense of what percentage of people in the United States do not practice resistance training? 

Gabrielle Lyon

• We know that 50% of Americans are not training or doing any kind of exercise
• Probably 70% in total do not meet the criteria for both activities

Mike Boyle

• It’s lower than 30% when you’re talking about resistance training
• 20% of people belong to a gym
• Home gym stats aren’t very good in terms of people

“The home gym person who actually has one and uses it is probably more unicorn than we think they are.”‒ Mike Boyle

• If you start looking at that number: 20% have a membership, 50% of those people use it

Which now brings us down to only 10% of people in the United States are actually in a gym 

• Then you look at that and say what percentage of them are resistance training? 
• Maybe now we’re down to 5% because you see a lot more hamster wheel people who are just walking on a treadmill or walking on a stair climber or whatever it is

Mike thinks the numbers of people resistance training are pretty low (maybe 5%) 

Jeff Cavaliere

• We have digital statistics that actually show people who have signed up to train with our programs, let’s say either be at home or at the gym

The percentage of people that make it through our programs is only 20% 

• And that’s twice the industry standard for digital (which is usually 10% or so)
  • Those are people who showed the commitment, made a purchase, put their hard-earned dollars behind it, have everything they need in terms of the tools and sets and reps and what’s supposed to be done and only 10% will finish a program

“I think there’s a lot more of a desire to do things, but the ability to actually follow through is where, I think, we’re having the hardest time.”‒ Jeff Cavaliere

Peter points out

• Gabrielle’s stat is 70% of 50
• The reciprocal of that is 30% of 50 (or 15%)
• Peter has never been shy about his thesis, which is of all the pillars that we have to embark on improving our health, whether it be changing our nutrition, improving our sleep, taking the medications and supplements, that can be actually quite important

Peter doesn’t see any evidence that anything trumps exercise 

• Purely from an actual lifespan perspective and from the standpoint of reducing the risk of chronic disease
• When you then layer in the benefits it has on quality of life, it’s just a no-brainer

What do you think explains the disconnect between the fact that we have this incredible tool that will lengthen your life, improve the quality of your life, make you look and feel better, and yet 5%, 10%, at most 15% of people engage in it? What are the barriers? 

Mike, I’m going to start with you because you’ve been at this the longest 

Mike Boyle

• The biggest barrier is just life
  • Lifestyle, kids, jobs, people thinking
• You really have to commit to [the time to do it}
  • Is it getting there early? 
  • Is it going there after work? 
  • Whatever it is, it’s adding hours to your day
• In some ways, that’s economic
  • People don’t have the economic freedom to say, “Hey, I can devote.” 
  • That’s why he laughs sometimes when he hears people talking about hours per week of exercise and hours per week of cardio
  • If he can get someone to do 2 hours a week

Mike thinks 75 hard minutes a week is a realistic amount of time to spend training 

• But even 150 minutes, some of the guidelines are crazy
• And then there’s a lack of awareness
  • You don’t know you’re losing the battle until it’s too late
• This is what he sees in his business
  • People come in at 50, or thank God they got here now at 55 because the end for them was going to be bad
• Mike has been following Peter for a while, and he’s getting the message out in a way that it hasn’t gotten ot before
• Before the message was geeky or nichey, but it wasn’t this, “Hey, this is really good for you and this is going to make you live longer and live better. It’s a double bonus.”
  • You want to live longer, but who wants a long, shitty life? 
• Mike and Jeff have talked about this, and Mike has experienced 50 to 65

“I’ve experienced 50 to 65 and trust me, it’s not fun. The decline is rapid and the decline is significant.”‒ Mike Boyle

If you don’t wake up by the time you’re 50, you’re going to be in real trouble by the time you’re 65 

Gabrielle, how much of a difference do you see between men and women who are new to resistance training in terms of barriers to entry? 

“There’s nothing more important for maintaining health and wellness than taking care of muscle health.”‒ Gabrielle Lyon

• Whether it’s strength training, mobility resistance ‒  skeletal muscle health is really what we’re talking about 

Part of the disconnect from men versus women or people in general is cultural 

• We live in a society of comfort
• It’s very easy to take the escalator or take an elevator
• When it comes to nutrition, we all have to eat, but we don’t all have to move
  • You literally could sit at home, order groceries from Amazon Prime everything, and never had to take more than 300 steps
• For women, typically strength and strength training has not been the focus, even just from a standpoint of walking to the gym (you’re starting to see it more)
• Gabrielle feels like we are on the precipice of women recognizing the importance of strength and muscle, especially with new conversations around menopause and more potent conversations 
• People are busy
• The other aspect of that is there are self-imposed limitations
  • A woman would look at a 40 pound weight and go, “I can’t lift that.”
  • But she would look at her 40 pound toddler and go, “I’m going to lift that and then I’m going to carry my groceries. I’ve got it.” 

Gabrielle makes the point, “That’s really where I think that we can change the disconnect is re-educating the importance of muscle and then also changing the cultural conversation.” 

Peter notices that Gabrielle is really fit. Has resistance training always been something you have enjoyed? 

• She grew up doing it
• By the time she was 5, she was riding 10 miles on a bike
• Yes, she has always trained

“With the conversation around children, if we teach them good habits now, then we don’t have to have them spend a lifetime outgrowing old habits.”‒ Gabrielle Lyon

• Peter is in the same boat (he’s always trained), and he suspects that true for this group

One of the challenges Peter has when talking to patients who are more representative of the “real world” is that people don’t enjoy the feeling of lifting weights 

• People say it hurts and they don’t like it
• Peter can appreciate the honesty, but he can’t relate
  • It’s hard when you can’t relate to what your patient is saying
• He can relate when they complain about having to watch what they eat because that’s a struggle he has

Do you think that that’s a function of having started early? 

Or do you think that there are literally just, just as we have people with different eye colors and different heights, there are truly differences in genetic hard-wiring that would speak to an individual’s appetite for that kind of discomfort? 

Jeff Cavaliere

• Jeff thinks it’s the latter
• There are some people who are more inclined to enjoy that type of stress
• For him, it doesn’t matter how much he runs, he does not enjoy the stress of running
  • He doesn’t enjoy the feeling he gets in his lungs when he’s sucking for air
• He’ll do it because he knows he has to, but there’s no enjoyability about that
• Training hard and lifting weights and pushing himself to the utmost level of effort, that’s always been something he actually enjoys

Anyone can learn to enjoy training hard and lifting weights, and you can get better at it 

• Just like he can learn the discipline to continue to push and run when he doesn’t want to
• After doing it for a while, when you start to see results, the results actually might become motivating enough to go like, “Well, there is a trade-off here. I’m seeing the trade-off.”

Often what’s stopping people is the perceived level of what they’re going to have to do is usually bigger than what they have to do 

Jeff has mentioned before that you can build a great body on 6 exercises

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