CrossFit, F45 or Lifting: What Builds Muscle After 40?

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Measurable progress is a huge pro when it comes to progressive overload, because as you're doing these different training blocks, you could be pushing a certain amount of weight one week, and then the next week you could be like, holy cow, I increased my weight by 2.5 pounds or 5 pounds. That's measurable progress.

Yo, what is going on, you guys? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. I'm your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to episode 141.

In today's episode, I want to talk about the pros and the cons of progressive overload. I've talked about that concept many, many times on this podcast. But today I'm comparing it to Orangetheory, F45 and CrossFit for the main purpose of muscle growth, building more muscle.

So many of you women listening to this podcast, and inside of WarriorBabe, come to WarriorBabe or listen to this podcast or follow me because you want your body to change. You want your body composition to change. You want to look more toned. Ladies, the word toned. What toned means is that you show more of the muscle that you have, or build a little bit more muscle on your body, and you decrease the body fat around that muscle. You're making the muscle you have more apparent, or you're building more to get to that look. That's what toned means. It means making more of your muscle mass visible. Women love that word.

But in order to get toned, you need to build muscle. It's not about getting obsessed with losing weight, because, as I've talked about many times before, then you lose muscle mass along with that process. In order to be toned and to have more muscle mass, you need to decrease the body fat around it, like I just said. Just so we're clear on that. In order to be toned, you can't get sidetracked. Like I've said in previous podcasts, you can't get obsessed with the number on the scale. You're changing your overall body composition and your appearance, so your number one progress tracker for that is progress photos. So that's what toned means.

I also want to give a shout out to one of our incredible coaches on the WarriorBabe VIP coaching team, who Slack DM'd me inside our company channels. She was like, Nikkiey, I know you're looking for another podcast topic, so here's an idea, because I hear this all the time with the babes that I coach. I'm like, this is such a great idea, and I think it's worth bringing to the podcast. So shout out, Lauren B. Thank you so much. Appreciate you.

So let's dive into this concept. You probably already know I'm going to favor progressive overload here, but I'm going to tell you why. I'm going to break down the pros and cons of progressive overload, and the pros and cons of F45, Orangetheory and CrossFit, for the purpose of what I just talked about, you wanting to be more toned, for the purpose of muscle growth.

Because I believe for everybody following me, or who's a WarriorBabe and wants to be coached by one of our coaches, the overarching goal on the physical side is to have a more aesthetically muscular build. We also dive into so many other things that will make you more confident along your journey, not just the physical, but the whole of you as a human. But that's neither here nor there. Muscle growth is the most important thing you want from any type of training you're doing, if that is your goal, if that's the outcome you're seeking: to be more toned, to feel good, to be tighter, to be leaner, to be more defined. Whatever words you associate with your goal, the overall thing is muscle growth.

All right, let's get into it, because I'm kind of repeating all the things. The reason I do that is because I want to drill it home. That's the outcome, and the thing you need to focus on, which I'm going to talk about today and have delved into in many, many episodes, is progressive overload.

Not to completely diss Orangetheory, F45 and CrossFit. There's a way you can marry them into your routine. When you come into WarriorBabe, if you're doing these things, we want to make it a sustainable and durable lifestyle for you. It's about dialing those things down and dialing up the progressive overload, but marrying in F45 or CrossFit or Orangetheory when you want to, for some of the pros I'm going to talk about, while keeping 80% of your training protocol focused on progressive overload.

So stay with me here, because I want to get into why progressive overload is so important for the overall outcome of building more muscle. First and foremost, it's because it's optimizing your body, your training, the protocols, everything, for hypertrophy. I can never say this word. Even as a fitness person, you guys, I can never say this word. I'm just going to say it how I say it, broken into syllables. Hypertrophy. Hypertrophy. Hope that gave you guys a good laugh.

So it optimizes for that. Progressive overload is specifically designed to increase muscle size and muscle mass by continuously increasing the weight or the resistance, or changing up the sets, the reps, the tempo, or adjusting your rest periods. By doing all of that, you're adjusting time under tension. You're adjusting resistance. You're adjusting what's happening to the muscle fibers of your body, and that leads to you building more muscle. That leads to muscle hypertrophy. Progressive overload is specifically designed to do that.

The concept of progressive overload, which I've explained in many podcasts before, is increasing your weight over time. And you can play around with this in training blocks, which is what we do inside of WarriorBabe. In the first training block, we're always focusing on the basic stuff for you guys. But then you move into another one where, okay, we're going to focus on compound movements, for example squats, deadlifts, bench press or shoulder press.

Another pro of progressive overload is that it can be tailored specifically to what you individually want to work on and what your goals are for your physique. You can make it customizable. Customizable. Customizable. Guys, my words today. Little insert here, just to be completely transparent, because that's how I am: I got my period this morning. If you're still menstruating, maybe you can feel me on the days you get your period. I feel like I'm in a haze. It's here, and everything kind of slows down for me on those days, and words are sometimes really hard. My brain is usually going way faster than my mouth can keep up with. So if you feel that in the rest of this podcast, that is why. Give me grace for the words coming out of my mouth today. I say everything slows down, but my brain is still going.

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Anyway, so that is another pro. A lot of you guys follow programs that are out there, which may be a con, which I'm going to get to, but let's just keep it there. There's an example. My brain is 10 steps ahead of me.

Anyway, when you're doing compound exercises, for example if you move into a second phase at WarriorBabe, maybe your coach has you focus on those specific compound movements. Out of the gate, she might have you do three sets for the first week or two, then change it to four sets, and maybe five sets along the way. Or maybe she'll play around with rep ranges. Maybe you do three sets of six reps, then in one to two weeks you bump up to three sets of 10 reps, or you do that for four weeks, and then the next block is a different rep and set scheme.

Or let's say you're playing around with tempo. One block for four weeks is a 4-0-1-0 tempo. If you know what I'm saying, awesome. If not, think about a squat: you're lowering for four seconds, and then you come up for zero, you explode up. Usually that's written as a zero or an X. Then you pause at the top and come back down. It's different for every movement. Then maybe the next block is a quicker tempo. So there are so many different ways you can incorporate progressive overload to get the overall outcome of building more muscle. It's still weight over time. After doing a tempo at a slower pace, you may recognize that when you get to the faster pace, you can actually do a little more weight. Stay with me. That's a pro.

Another pro is measurable progress. Progressive overload gives you the ability to clearly track your strength improvements over time as you incrementally increase weights. Like I just said, one block you're doing tempo work, for example, and you're probably recognizing that you aren't pushing as much weight, because the time under tension is increased. You're slowing down the movement, so a 30-pounder is going to feel like 50 pounds, for example. Then the next block, if you change the tempo to be a little faster, you'll notice the time under tension is a little shorter.

Time under tension just means the time you're putting the muscle under the maximum resistance you're giving it. Think about lowering in a squat: that's time under tension. Even rising up out of the squat, that's time under tension. It's the amount of time you're working inside a set.

So measurable progress is a huge pro when it comes to progressive overload, because as you're doing these different training blocks, which could be four weeks, five weeks, six weeks, whatever your coach is designing for you, you could be pushing a certain amount of weight one week, and then the next week you could be like, holy cow, I increased my weight by 2.5 pounds or 5 pounds. That's measurable progress.

Measurable progress is also this: maybe at the beginning your goal is to do pull-ups. This is a very common goal for a lot of women. When you start a training block, that goal is in your mind, and right now you're only doing assisted pull-ups, using bands or the assisted machine with the little pad at the gym. Then, over months of doing specific strengthening work that helps you with the pull-up, you recognize six months later that you're no longer doing as many assisted pull-ups on the machine with the pad, or as many banded pull-ups. Now you have the ability to do bodyweight pull-ups. That's because you progressively overloaded over that period of time. So there's more measurable progress with progressive overload.

I mentioned that you can make it customizable. We're just going to roll with that. Customizable. There we go. For a lot of women who come to WarriorBabe, the reason we pride ourselves on taking a very personal approach is not just on the nutrition side of things. Let's say you come in with a goal you want to focus on, like building up your legs or your glutes or your shoulders. Okay, cool. Now we can target specific muscle groups with specific exercises according to your individual wants, needs and goals. A lot of people come in and want to build up the booty. Okay, cool. So instead of training legs once a week, maybe we train legs twice a week with a glute focus day as a third day.

So there are so many amazing things you can do. And this is why I think it's so valid, not even a second thought, why it's so important to have a professional who knows all of these things in the back of their head when it comes to making a solid training program, a solid progressive overload protocol, so you know what it's going to look like for your specific goal. It's not just about having the goal and going in and doing whatever exercise or workout today.

A lot of you guys, and I've been there too, go in and do different exercises, different workouts, every single day and every single week, or you change up your workouts every two weeks or every four weeks. While you're still going to get results that way, there's so much more to doing it strategically and working your training program in a way that actually serves a purpose.

The last pro I want to mention, because I think it's going to blend well into the pros and mainly the cons of Orangetheory, F45 and CrossFit. Man, words are really hard today. With progressive overload, you have the ability to do controlled movements. When you can do controlled movements, you make sure you aren't going to injure yourself, because you're able to control yourself under the barbell or in whatever movement you're doing, control your lifting speed, and put an emphasis on your form.

So just pin that there. When you do progressive overload, you have a lot more control of the movement than you do in F45, Orangetheory or CrossFit, because those three forms of workouts or training protocols are more high-intensity interval classes. With strength training and progressive overload, you go into the gym and do your strength training workout for the day. You're doing a split: chest and back, or legs, or full body, whatever the protocol in your training plan calls for. When you're doing that, you have the ability to control the lifting speed and to put an emphasis on your form, and those two things will lower your risk of injury.

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Now let me blend in. So those are some of the pros: optimizing for hypertrophy, having measurable progress, customizing your training protocol and the blocks you follow if you have a specific goal in mind, and having control of your movements. When you're doing a squat, you're in control of that. When you're doing a deadlift, you're in control of that. When you're doing rear delt flies, you're in control of that. When you're doing a dumbbell chest press, you're in control of that. You're in control of your form. You're in control of your speed. Those are some of the pros.

One of the cons is that it can get very boring. Progressive overload can be so boring. I kind of pinned this in earlier: some of you go into the gym without a plan, because you want something different every day, or you want new workouts every two weeks because you get bored of the same exercises. I'll say this, and I've said it in so many episodes before: you have to get obsessed with doing the boring work, because of the pros I just mentioned.

When you're doing the boring work, the goal is to be able to increase the weight, but you have to do the same exercises in a training block of three, four, five or six weeks to allow your body to recognize the movement you're doing and get better at its form. Then you notice you can increase the weight, because the weight you've been lifting for the last three weeks is no longer a challenge. That's so exciting. It can get boring, but if you can get patient with doing the boring work, the outcome is so much more rewarding when you see, in four weeks or six weeks, and as you change between training blocks, how much stronger you're getting. So it's kind of a pro and a con.

For those of you who want different workouts every two weeks, it would be good for you to say, okay, I understand the outcome I'm going for. What is my goal? Okay, I want to build up more glutes. I want to build up more shoulder, more shoulder caps. What do I need to do to get there? You've got to progressive overload. You've got to do the same boring work time in and time out, week after week. But I'll tell you, if you can keep the patience, knowing that's still the outcome you want, you're going to be rewarded in so many ways in a shorter amount of time if you just do that type of work.

When I say that, where my head goes is that so many women come to WarriorBabe who have been trying to get to that goal, more shoulders, bigger glutes, nice toned glutes, a nice toned body, for five years, 10 years, 20 years, 25 years. And I'm like, okay, well, what are you doing? I'm trying to get into their world, and it's always that they've never consistently followed a strength training protocol built on the concept of progressive overload.

So when I say you can get there in a short amount of time, I mean that if you actually apply this and do it consistently over 12 months to 18 months to 24 months, you will get the result you're seeking. If you want more toned glutes or more toned shoulders and you do progressive overload consistently in that time frame, you will get there. A lot of women spend 25 years wanting this goal, but they're not using the right strategies. If you use the right strategies, you will get there faster.

Another con of progressive overload is that it requires equipment. Access to weights and resistance machines is necessary, which may not always be convenient for everyone. But home gyms have become a big thing post-pandemic. So dumbbells, investing in equipment, if you have a space in your home, will give your body the solid resistance it needs. So equipment is necessary here.

Longer recovery times. If you're truly lifting heavy, challenging yourself and putting your body under the resistance it needs, it can require more recovery time between sessions, which can limit the frequency of your workouts. We'll keep it to that. But if you're doing four workouts a week and giving yourself ample time in between, you'll be fine. At the beginning of any new training block, you're incorporating new exercises. Guys, again, period brain. If you missed it, I shared earlier that I got my period this morning, and words are hard. Sentences are hard. My brain is moving faster than my words can keep up with.

So at the beginning of any new training block, you're incorporating exercises you maybe haven't done in a while, and you'll probably be more sore. But as you continue doing those same exercises, you'll notice that by the end of the training block, you probably aren't as sore. That's totally common and totally okay. But as you start a new block of progressive overload, you may recognize, okay, my body isn't fully recovered, so I'm going to wait an extra day before my next training session. Honestly, that happens very infrequently, but you may notice it.

Another con of progressive overload is that it doesn't put as much focus on cardio as those classes do. It can include some cardio. If you're pushing yourself, your heart rate gets up, and with time under tension, especially with tempo work, you can really get your heart rate elevated. But the primary focus of progressive overload is strength, so it neglects the cardiovascular side of things a little. But the goal here is muscle growth, so it's going to lean toward strength.

So those are some of its cons. It can get really boring because of the repetitive nature of doing the same routine over and over, which can be less engaging over time for some people. It requires equipment that provides resistance for your body. It can need longer recovery times between sessions. And it has less of a cardiovascular focus because its primary focus is strength. Those are the pros and cons of progressive overload.

As I get into the pros and cons of CrossFit, Orangetheory and F45, the high-intensity interval training programs, keep in mind the outcome you want, which is muscle growth. I'm talking about the pros and cons of these two types of training protocols for the purpose of muscle growth.

So let's talk about some of the pros of F45, Orangetheory and CrossFit. One of the biggest is variety. Variety, variety, variety. Woo, words. The diversity of the workouts. With CrossFit, every time you go into a class, it's something different. F45, it's something different. Orangetheory, it's something different. They offer a diverse range of workouts, so they're not as boring as progressive overload can be, and they keep exercise engaging for you.

Another pro is the community and support. As I mentioned, with progressive overload it's really you going into the workout on your own, unless you have a workout partner you're showing up with. Personally, I love that, a you-versus-you mentality where you're challenging yourself to your own capability. But a pro of the classes is that you have community there. They have a very strong community aspect that can provide motivation, push you through your workouts during class, and give you tons of support.

Now, I should say that with WarriorBabe, you have community as a backbone too. We have tons of community calls. We have a community call every Tuesday night, a community call on the first Monday of every month, biweekly community calls that we call power hours, and then biweekly huddles with your small group. There's so much community, because we recognize that community is a big thing when it comes to doing your workouts. You can lean on them, pop in, share what you're thinking and ask for support. But with these classes, you're getting it right then and there.

Another pro is that they combine cardiovascular and strength training. They combine elements of those two things, so they encompass a well-rounded approach. But then my brain's like, you can just add cardio in after strength training, which we do and recommend. But I'm talking about the pros of these. I'm not trying to hate on them. So those are mainly their pros: cardiovascular and strength training combined, a world of diversity, and the community and support aspect.

Let's dive into some of the cons. Like I said at the beginning of the podcast, if you love going to these classes for the reasons I just said, awesome. We will totally support you in doing that. I think that's what makes a really good coach. It's not saying no to something you enjoy. It's about making it work, and you trusting us that when you have this goal, there's a strategy that needs to be implemented and optimized. We tell our babes, you love CrossFit? Cool. Let's incorporate it once or twice a week and do progressive overload the other three days of the week. Or incorporate an Orangetheory class one week and an F45 class another week. But the majority, 80% of your training, should be progressive overload.

So here are some of the cons of F45, Orangetheory and CrossFit. What I described as a pro of progressive overload, controlled movement, is a con for these classes, because they open up the floodgates for risk of injury. These high-intensity classes and complex movements, with CrossFit especially, like the jerks, throwing things over your head and whaling your body all over the place, can lead to a higher risk of injury, especially for beginners or for those with pre-existing conditions or injuries. I know a lot of women in the older demographic who go to CrossFit and have previous injuries that get rehashed and re-exacerbated, or worse, because there's less focus on your ability to pace and slow yourself down. These movements are very complex and you're doing them at high intensity. So the number one con is that there's so much room for injury. I've seen so many injuries from CrossFit, from Orangetheory, but mainly from CrossFit.

Another one, the flip side of a pro I gave for progressive overload, is less focus on individual muscle growth. I said you can customize programming with progressive overload. You cannot do that with these classes. These classes are made for a group of people to come in and all do the same thing together. While they do put an emphasis on strength training, they don't prioritize muscle hypertrophy as much as a dedicated program would, a specifically thought-through, strategic progressive overload plan where with this training block we're doing this, with the next block we're doing that, and you're building off previous blocks. It's much less individual, especially when it comes to building more muscle and wanting to put an emphasis on that specific thing.

So when your goal is building more muscle, I want to build more glutes, I want to build more shoulder cap, whatever you want to work on for yourself, the con of those classes is that they won't help you get there. While they incorporate strength training, they don't prioritize muscle growth. It's just a class that everyone comes into and does the same thing all together.

Another con, piggybacking off the risk of injury: first of all, these classes have a competitive atmosphere, and if you're a heck of a competitive person, it could lead you, or maybe you've seen other people in class do it, to compromise form for speed to keep up with others. With CrossFit, it's for time, you've got to do this and this. I did CrossFit with a group of friends last year, and I was blown away. I'm tenured in lifting, and I'm a very competitive person, and in this class I'm trying to deadlift as many reps as I possibly can in a set amount of time, and I wasn't paying attention to my form. That's not good when you think about alignment and the whole body as a whole.

If you're competitive and you're in this fast-paced environment competing against other people, you're totally compromising your form just so you can keep up, and you're speeding through the lifts. So, one, there's not much time under tension, and there's not much mind-muscle connection, because you're just trying to move the weight as fast as you possibly can.

And another thing, which boggles my mind when a lot of people want to keep these classes in play but don't want a membership with WarriorBabe or to hire a personal trainer: the cost, you guys. The membership fees for F45 classes, Orangetheory classes, and in particular CrossFit, are so much higher than a traditional gym membership. It may even be similar to what we offer at WarriorBabe. But again, I think of the goal and I'm like, how fast do you want to get to the goal? If you want to get there faster, progressive overload is the way to do it, because of everything I said.

So those are some of the cons of F45, CrossFit, Orangetheory, those types of classes. Bootcamps can even fall into that. Risk of injury, less focus on individual muscle growth, the pacing and competition in the room affecting your speed and form, and the cost.

So in summary of everything I just talked about: if your primary goal is muscle growth, if your primary goal is for your body to look more toned, more defined, slimmer, tighter, muscles popping, progressive overload lifting is generally more favorable, due to its primary focus on building muscle, hypertrophy, and the ability to specifically target muscle groups.

But if you're looking for tons of variety and something community-driven, and you don't mind a lesser focus on muscle hypertrophy, then programs like CrossFit, Orangetheory and F45 are totally more suitable for you. Just think about your goal. What is your goal? A lot of people want to be more toned. To be more toned, you need to emphasize muscle growth. So what you should be doing, your primary focus when it comes to exercise and training protocols, is progressive overload. Point blank, period, end of story.

All right, that's all I've got for today's episode, you guys. I hope you enjoyed it and that I broke that down a little bit. Thank you for bearing with me and giving me grace for my words, with getting my period today and my brain moving super fast while my words can't keep up. Thanks for giving me grace there. But yeah, the overarching goal: what is your goal? Build more muscle, get more toned. Progressive overload is your answer. All right, cool. Appreciate you guys. See you in the next episode. Peace out.

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