Kim Vopni (00:01.34)
Welcome JJ. I have been waiting a long time for this conversation. Thank you so much for making the time for my community You are somebody who I reference a lot a lot of people in my community are in their 60s 70s 80s and many people think that Well, I'm too old for that or I can't do that anymore and you are the person who I always refer to you afterwards as a Example of what is possible. So thank you so much for everything you do and for joining me today
JJ Virgin (00:24.144)
Yeah.
JJ Virgin (00:29.65)
I I never want to hear that term, I'm too old for that, forget that. I think I never thought about it before, but then all of sudden when you get to the age where you could say I'm too old for that, then you're like, okay, we're never saying that.
Kim Vopni (00:32.434)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.
Kim Vopni (00:42.29)
No, yes, exactly. And I was just, I was traveling and I watched the people who are still able to hoist their suitcases up in the overhead bin and those who aren't and I always want to be the one who can handle my own bag.
JJ Virgin (00:51.352)
Yeah.
JJ Virgin (00:55.66)
I will tell you, Kim, one of the times that really just made me think this is what I've got to do is we were in Greece, we were in Santorini, and you know, have you been to Santorini? So it's all these hills and literally you can't go anywhere. Like we went to dinner, people were taking these donkeys down this thing. We're like, we're not doing that. It was like a stair training exercise to get down to this dock to get to this restaurant.
Kim Vopni (01:08.383)
No.
JJ Virgin (01:25.07)
and back up again, I was like, I found out why people probably took the donkey, there was donkey poop all over the thing. you know, I just looked at that whole thing and similarly, like you're traveling in trains, et cetera, and I don't wanna not be able to do that. Like, it's like it seems to me a shame that people live their whole life to be able to go and do all these amazing things, but then when they can go do all these amazing things, they can't.
Kim Vopni (01:50.483)
Exactly. Exactly. I was just in Croatia and the amount of stairs I was in Dubrovnik and it sounds similar to Greece. I remarked at how many stairs and how many of the population that just, they just climbed the stairs and sidebar climbing the stairs is really good for your glutes and it's really good for your pelvic floor as well. So yeah. Yeah.
JJ Virgin (02:09.814)
Yeah. Yay. Well, it's been one of my exercises when all else fails and I'm traveling, I can always climb the stairs in the hotel. So that's one I've always kept out there or cruise ships or anything else. you know, when you look at the blue zones, they always try to extrapolate it to the diet. I think the only thing you can say is that they're not eating processed foods. If you look at what's really going on, shoot, they all are active and a lot of those blue zones are hills.
Kim Vopni (02:36.576)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. 1,000%, 1,000%. So you have been in this fitness wellness industry for decades. Can you tell me a little bit about how you got started and what would you say has kept you in shape but also passionate about staying in the industry as well?
JJ Virgin (02:39.298)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (02:56.758)
I've literally been in this industry before there was an industry. Like, I mean, there really wasn't. I did help create personal training, but there really wasn't an industry, which is really funny. How I got into it, I realized the other day, is because when I was growing up, I was always the tallest kid in class, not just girl in class, but kid in class. And in elementary school, that meant I always ended up on the boys team because there weren't enough boys.
Kim Vopni (02:59.616)
You probably created it.
JJ Virgin (03:25.998)
to play on the boys' team. So I always was on the boys' team, so I was used to being very athletic. And I also was doing acrobatics at the time. And so, I mean, that's as close to weight training, because back then we used to think, first of all, girls would never lift weights, but kids couldn't lift weights because it was going to make, stunt their growth, which we now know is absolutely ridiculous. And I remember thinking back then, well, I'm doing like all this bars and pull-ups and push-ups, what's the difference, right? So then I go off to high school.
And I was teaching dance now in my dance studio. I was running track, but I also was working out with the high school football team because the girls did not have a gym and the boys had this amazing gym and I was used to working out with the boys because I've been doing it my whole life, right? And so when you look at it, first thing I started doing in dance class was teaching calisthenics because back then we didn't have anything else that was jazzercise.
and there was calisthenics with Jack LaLanne. That's what I say, really. And we had figure salons. You probably don't even know what that is. What is a figure salon? A figure salon, I still remember it was down at the plaza in El Cerrito. We had a figure salon and it was where women would go in and they had light weights and they had the like shaker thing that you could put.
Kim Vopni (04:24.832)
Jane Fonda.
Kim Vopni (04:33.024)
I haven't even, yeah, I haven't heard that term before.
Kim Vopni (04:47.306)
Yeah.
JJ Virgin (04:49.579)
Okay, now funniest thing is I was in Korea a couple summers ago and we were in this amazing gym and what's cool in Korea is that first of all, everyone's fit. It's wild. Like I think we saw one person who was overweight the entire time. Like everybody's fit and you go to the gym and it's all ages. They're all in there. They're wearing PE clothes. I was like, what is going on? Like they're wearing adults wearing PE clothes, but they had that thing. They had the shaker thing and I'm...
and my friend and I were there and we're like, this is funny, let's try it. What we discovered was it actually is amazing. It's like a lymph drain. Yeah, I was like, this is great, I bought one.
Kim Vopni (05:25.844)
Yeah, it's like the vibration platforms kind of.
You
JJ Virgin (05:32.782)
because if you're sore at all, man, it's fantastic. So anyway, but that's what the figure salons were. So literally, I taught dance all through high school. And then when I went off to college, all the aerobics started. Do remember the movie Perfect? And the health clubs started. And there was a little aerobics studio down in the village near UCLA where I was going to college. And so I started taking classes at this.
Kim Vopni (05:33.022)
awesome.
Kim Vopni (05:47.144)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (06:01.389)
Well, I went home for the summer, taught for Richard Simmons, came back to take classes again. The teacher didn't show up, so I started teaching there. And then they had a joint deal with studios in Japan, so they sent me there to teach classes. So that's, I mean, it just kind of happened. And then someone was like, can you come to my house? I don't want to have to travel to the studio. So all of a sudden I'm doing personal aerobics classes, which then I started adding in strength training.
Kim Vopni (06:17.204)
Hmm, cool.
JJ Virgin (06:28.941)
I'd been lifting weights in the gym since I was 16 and using my own body weight to do that. And one of my friends was a surgeon and he had surgical tubing. So he gave me that. And then I had someone build me a step box. So, I mean, a lot of the stuff that became things, I was like, here I was having people use a step box and there I was using surgical tubing. Never dawned on me to make a thing with that. So.
Kim Vopni (06:29.706)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (06:39.456)
Cool.
Kim Vopni (06:51.104)
Wow, I didn't know that whole history. That's amazing. so now muscle resistance training is a huge part of your life, a huge part of what you promote. And it's something that in my community is people are often told you can't lift anything over 10 pounds. You can't jump. You can't do this because they're trying to preserve the pelvic floor. But we're not considering the age-related muscle loss, the impact to the bone, the
Metabolic health all the other things and so my big thing is you know getting the pelvic floor optimized first so that we can do all the things when you talk about I guess when you think about health metrics, especially for women. What would you say is the most underrated?
JJ Virgin (07:39.032)
So here's what I think has just destroyed us. And it is using the scale, not a biomepidian scale, but a traditional scale, which I think those should only be used to weigh your suitcase. Other than that, these are the most useless things and they have done such a disservice to women. Because if you really wanna lose weight, the best thing you could possibly do is starve yourself and do a lot of like...
Kim Vopni (07:51.104)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (08:06.573)
cardio stuff, you'll lose a bunch of muscle and you'll lose a lot of weight and you'll devastate your metabolism. And you see this happening with diets. So you've got to instead focus on what that weight's made up of. And I'll tell you early on, you know, when I started personal training, I realized pretty quickly that people aren't going to have you come to their house and pay you a lot of money if you're making them worse. And what I saw, which was what I was being taught in graduate school was don't have anyone lift weights till they lose the weight wasn't working at all.
And so I started doing all the resistance training stuff. And boy, I had to overcome so much of this, I'm gonna get bigger type of stuff. But once people realized they were getting smaller, not bigger, know, tighter, and they could actually eat more and everything was improving, they got completely over it. And back then, what I would do is take their scale out of their house, I'd use skinfold calipers, tape measure, and I would do all of it that way to show them the progress.
And I'll tell you, changing your body composition is a little bit like watching grass grow, you know? It's like, it's slow, but it lasts, it sticks. I mean, the biggest thing you hear with weight loss is it's like 95 % failure rates, because we're focusing on weight loss instead of focusing first on putting on muscle, getting stronger, helping your body be better at burning off fat, improving your metabolic health so that everything fixes itself. Then you have the right habits in place. Then you never think about it again, which is a non-issue.
Kim Vopni (09:31.082)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (09:32.919)
But the way we approach it makes it a lifetime of despair, basically.
Kim Vopni (09:37.184)
Yeah, yeah, thousand percent. And what changes would you say with regards to women in particular, if anything, what changes as we age with regards to our capacity to put on muscle and lose fat?
JJ Virgin (09:56.332)
Well, here's the good news. The good news is we can put on muscle at any age. In your teens and 20s, it's when it's the easiest for any of us because of what's going on hormonally, but that doesn't mean you can't do it at any age. It just means as we get into, it's really 30 plus that you have to be a little bit more thoughtful on how you're doing it. With this one caveat, when estrogen helps you build muscle,
Everyone thinks testosterone. Testosterone, yes, but estrogen is really the big driver for women. It's anabolic. so, and thyroid's important there too. So, you know, if your hormones are going down, you're really gonna wanna optimize them to make it easier on you, because it's hard to build muscle without optimal hormone balance, right? But beyond that, it's really doing the work. And what drives me crazy right now is everyone trying to hack their way to
to building muscle. No, just go do the work. You have to do the work. But what's great is it doesn't take much. Like two days a week of 30 minutes done correctly, you can build muscle and basically once you get there, maintain and even still continue to build potentially. So it's not a big thing. It just has to be done right. And that's 75 % of putting on muscle is doing the work. 25 % of it's
know, eating to support that, and then of course hormone balance and sleep and all that.
Kim Vopni (11:23.636)
Right now in the sort of explosion in the conversation of menopause, is a subset with regards to bone health and lifting heavy and resistance training. The lift heavy component is, would say, you know, not everybody knows what lift heavy means because, you know, 10 pounds to you is light as a feather. 10 pounds to another person is, is very rigorous, very challenging. So.
Do you think that everybody needs to quote unquote lift heavy? If we think about Dr. Vonda Wright who says four sets, four reps where you know the the last rep is hard to get. So this is a very heavy weight. Do you think we all need that or do you think that we need more just ensuring we reach fatigue or some like close to failure with a couple of reps in reserve even if it was a lighter weight? Can we build muscle using both strategies?
JJ Virgin (12:20.875)
Well, what's interesting is actually that first strategy is much more of a strength gain than a muscle gain. So first let's unpack these three different things. There's muscle hypertrophy, how much your muscle grows in size. Women will say, I don't want that, but they want muscle tone. Well, muscle tone is muscle hypertrophy. So you do want it. Then, and for muscle hypertrophy, gosh, when I was in grad school, it was, you need to work between eight and 12 reps, maybe 15.
Kim Vopni (12:38.836)
Yep.
JJ Virgin (12:50.029)
Now we know it's like six to 30. There's a broad range, but what you need to do, you need sufficient volume and you need to get close to failure. You don't have to get there. You talked about one or two reps in reserve. What women tend to do is not push themselves enough. And so you really do need to push yourself enough to build strength. And as we age, starting around age 30, we start to lose muscle and they say it's like up to 1 % a year, three to 8 % per decade, but two to three times.
twice as much strength loss and three times as much power loss. So for strength, strength is the heaviest weight you can handle one time, right? And power is how fast you can move that load. So I am not a proponent of training for strength until you've got a good foundation of training for hypertrophy. I think it's risky. And there's only certain exercises I think we should do for strength because the last thing you want to do is getting injured.
Like I would never do, you know, the heaviest way to get handle as a squat for four reps. To me, that's a risky thing. I could do it as a leg press, but I wouldn't do it as a squat, right? Or an overhead press, things that are just really compressive. So personally, my progression is, I'd rather have you start with getting that good foundation. Start with body weight and technique. Technique is the most important thing you can possibly get down. Do compound movements.
that mimic what you do in life. That's why I love a squat, because in life we squat. Deadlift and life we deadlift. So what are these things we can do that are gonna hit your upper body pushing and upper body pulling and hip and thigh hinging that mimic normal life so that we can throw the thing in the overhead, that kind of stuff. Then, once you get that good foundation, that's probably at least three months, maybe six, and you're progressing and adding volume. You're gonna get to a point where,
you kind of can't really progress that much. Maybe it's six months, right? That's where then I like to start to roll in some max days, some strength days. And I really love Andy Galpin's five by five, where he's like, okay, let's do five exercises, five sets, five reps, hard, you know? And I'll roll that in like maybe once a week, once every two weeks, I will go super hard.
Kim Vopni (14:59.85)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (15:07.671)
but it'll trash me. And so then I'll go do something else. I might do some power stuff the next time I go in. I also really love to incorporate in power. I think this is probably the most important thing. I feel like when we're hitting people, and I tell people lift heavy, but when I think heavy, I think, you know, is more than what you're used to. So your body adapts and gets stronger. That could be, if you're not comfortable, do a set of repetitions of 20 or 30, right? You just need to get to a point where you really,
Kim Vopni (15:09.535)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (15:27.626)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (15:37.198)
You'll know when you're getting to the point where you're getting to one or two reps in reserve, where you're getting close to failure, because you're going to slow way down and your form is going to start to go. So I say work with a faster pace and when you start to just really start to grind it out, that's when you quit. I really love incorporating some power moves and that can be things like medicine ball throws. It can be
Kim Vopni (15:45.504)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (16:03.885)
things like kettlebell swings that can be jumping, all the things that are gonna do more speed and more load for really taxing the bones. And then I love power plate for pulling in more of the nervous system. So there's a lot of ways we can vary. I've been focusing a lot on unilateral movements here as well, like, you know, instead of doing a double leg deadlift, I do a single leg Romanian deadlift. So things like that, but...
Kim Vopni (16:31.134)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (16:34.141)
I think this whole idea, like I tell people lift heavy, I don't mean do one repetition. I mean like do the heaviest weight you can handle in good form for what you're training for. Start first with hypertrophy, build your base, then you can add the strength and power.
Kim Vopni (16:51.328)
Yeah, if I think back to when I first got into fitness, was back in the days of the 80s. I was 15. was the, you know, you'd have the leggings and the leg warmers and the up the butt, the up the butt body suits.
JJ Virgin (17:02.153)
yeah. The up the butt thing. my God. I used to wear that around. So I was at UCLA then. I literally walk around in the up the butt leotard thing. I was like, what on earth was in leotard? my God. Thank God there was no social media back then. That's all I have to say.
Kim Vopni (17:13.992)
I know, I know, I did it too. Yeah, no kidding. So at that time though, was very much, it was, as you say, was aerobics and we did, you know, we did literally did aerobics classes and that was it. And you wouldn't, you wouldn't go, I did go onto the weight machines every once in a while, but it was, you know.
12 to 15 repetitions and it wasn't necessarily stopping because I couldn't do anymore. It was stopping because I got to the number 15. Therefore I am done. And that just that's such a thing of now as you say women don't they're not comfortable. They don't even know what it really truly means to push yourself and to get to that point where you might have a couple reps in reserve but that it's hard and we just we haven't been accustomed to doing hard things.
JJ Virgin (17:40.759)
Yeah.
JJ Virgin (17:57.546)
Right. And boy, when you do hard things in the gym, then you do hard things in life. And the more you do, the more you can do. So it's like you just got to push yourself. I literally, you know, and every single time you go to the gym, it's not going to be your hardest workout. Some days you just, it's like you showed up and you you get a badge for that. But, you know, but the days you're in there and you're just feeling great, push it. And it doesn't mean you have to push every single exercise. A lot of times you'll push your first three heaviest.
Kim Vopni (18:03.188)
Yes.
Yes.
Kim Vopni (18:12.053)
Right.
Kim Vopni (18:15.998)
Yeah.
JJ Virgin (18:27.041)
biggest lifts, but I especially like to do that if I'm working on a machine. Now we know I love free weights and cables because they pull in more of your nervous system and your core, but you can build just as much muscle on a machine as you can free weights. So if you're going for strength, it's so much safer to use a machine for that. So if I'm gonna try to really push it out on a chest press, unless I have someone spotting me, I'm gonna do a seated chest press.
Kim Vopni (18:55.764)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and good place. I like machines for starting with newbies, with beginners or people who aren't necessarily comfortable. okay, so we follow those principles and we're doing resistance training. We're doing the work. There's the other part of the equation where we have to make sure that what we are consuming, what we are putting into our body gives our body the building blocks to make that work.
JJ Virgin (18:56.171)
Right? Because then I can really push it.
Kim Vopni (19:24.596)
Worthwhile basically and one of your famous sayings is eat protein first Why the emphasis on protein and why would we want to eat it first?
JJ Virgin (19:34.168)
Yeah, do know what's so funny? I was all the way up in a PhD program in exercise physics when I finally found a nutrition class. And it's kind of known, there's an exercise science department, there's a nutrition department. are like on the opposite ends of the campus. I'm like, why aren't they intertwined here? And it just was so clear to me that it wasn't necessarily me because I was in my 20s at the time, but with my women who were all 45.
Kim Vopni (19:43.316)
Wow.
Kim Vopni (19:47.346)
Yeah, yep.
Yep.
JJ Virgin (20:03.371)
that if the diet wasn't dialed in, this wasn't gonna work. And so when you really look at what happens, especially as we get 30 plus, we have to really focus on getting the protein we need in order to help us build muscle, to trigger something called muscle protein synthesis. So that's one piece of it, is eating protein to help build muscle. But there's another piece too. And when I look at most of the people that come into my world,
Kim Vopni (20:06.443)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (20:33.505)
they want to, well, they want to lose weight, but I teach them that what we want to do is lose fat, but what we want to do is put on muscle, lose fat, recomp. Once you explain it, they're like, yeah, I want that, right? But at first it's just lose weight. Now, if you want to do that, your best tool in your diet is protein. And the reason is when you eat protein first, you make better food choices, you're more satiated,
Kim Vopni (20:45.995)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (21:01.907)
and satisfied. You tend to have less cravings, but you're also not as hungry and you're making better food choices. But there's another piece too that's super cool. know, one thing that I've always said is you're not a body, you know, isn't a bank account. Well, your body is a bank account of sorts, but it's also a chemistry lab and a history book. And in that, mean, calories are different. You cannot look at the way your body metabolizes, digests, assimilates protein, the same as fat because
like 25 % of the calories your body uses to digest, absorb, assimilate protein are used in that process and basically nothing is used in the processing of fat. So if all you did, and it's like 5 % for carbs, if all you did was take some calories away from fat and carbs and move it over to protein, you wouldn't be as hungry, you'd be more satisfied and you'd also have bigger thermic effect to the food, which, you know, maybe, I don't know.
20, 30, 50 calories a day, but over time it makes a difference. So there's this hypothesis called the protein leverage hypothesis that they've now shown over and over. It started in locusts and now has been moved all the way into humans showing that we will overeat in an effort to get the essential amino acids we need from protein. it is why these snack foods fake us out with their umami flavoring, like nacho cheese Doritos, to make you think you're getting protein so you'll just chow down on it.
Kim Vopni (22:19.136)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (22:30.197)
If we just give our body what it's looking for first, then we shut down a lot of that stuff.
Kim Vopni (22:34.815)
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. With recommendations, if you look at what the RDA and sort of the generally accepted recommendations are, they're much lower than what I think you and I agree on in terms of how much protein. So if we think of per gram or sorry, per kilogram or per pound of body weight, how many grams of protein do you recommend?
JJ Virgin (23:02.337)
Yeah, so, you know, when you look at like what they're doing as minimum in order for you to not starve is very different than what you want for optimal. We know that if you are training, if you're stressed, if you're healing, you need more. And so basically anyone who, anyone here falls into those categories. So the kind of minimum is the 0.7 grams per one per pound of target body weight.
and then one gram, but the reality is when you look into like physique models, I have a buddy here in Tampa who runs the University of South Florida Physique Lab, and they will push this up higher than that. And right now we don't know what the like ceiling is for protein. Everyone thought there was some like, if you eat too much, it's gonna do something crazy. No one's been able to show any problems whatsoever. Kidney problems, nothing. If you have kidney issues, that's different.
Kim Vopni (23:56.641)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (23:58.946)
but if healthy, active, nothing. You your body will convert the excess over to glucose and then use it as fuel. So it's not an issue. So I would say it's 0.7 to one grams, but don't be afraid to go higher if you are in a caloric deficit and really training hard.
Kim Vopni (24:17.109)
Yeah, yeah, you mentioned, you know, recovery or surgery and something that I think you and I agree on is, well, I think we agree on a lot, but this also is training for surgery. So if somebody has some sort of surgery coming up, we need to train for that both from a diet perspective, our muscle perspective, because there's going to be a period of inactivity. So we need to have, it's almost like we need to build and put on more muscle to account for that time where we will be inactive and
You mentioned the healing effect of protein as well. So making sure we have the substrate to help our body rebuild the tissues or whatever we are recovering from.
JJ Virgin (24:56.941)
Have you seen that study where they looked at, and this was like 20 men in their 20s, and they lost in one week, it was two or three pounds of muscle, I think it was three, and their insulin sensitivity went down nearly 40%. One week of bed rest, one week. It's frightening. That is why the last thing you ever want to do is bed rest.
Kim Vopni (25:15.466)
Wow.
Kim Vopni (25:19.137)
That's crazy.
Kim Vopni (25:24.79)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (25:25.005)
You always want to move whatever you can possibly get moving move or do an electrical muscle stem and You know throw in some essential aminos on top of what you're doing to make sure you have what you need because that is unbelievably Frightening that level you know and you think about how many people will break a hip and then they'll be on bed rest It's it's awful. So I know with when my son was in the hospital. I just got
Kim Vopni (25:39.391)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kim Vopni (25:48.64)
Yeah.
JJ Virgin (25:51.878)
Everything I could get moving I got moving as quickly as possible and though he had this crushed heel so that really took him out But I was like we've got other body parts. Let's get things going Yeah
Kim Vopni (25:54.976)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (25:58.721)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Wow. If you think about, so you mentioned that you were sort of like, were one of the, if not the first personal trainer and invented really that category in working one-on-one with women you've worked with, well, people really, athletes, moms, new moms, young people, rock stars, all the above.
JJ Virgin (26:21.067)
rock stars, I was going through it, was like, this is the weirdest group of people between like heavyweight boxing champions, models, news anchors. But what was great about all that is I had so many different challenges from the model, the person getting ready for a film who needed to lose a bunch of weight, but then gain a bunch of weight. Like, so we had to do things like that.
Kim Vopni (26:33.653)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (26:48.341)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (26:50.509)
So, and plus news anchors that got up crazy every morning or doctors working overnight shifts. So it's like you just learned how to do everything with weird eating schedules, circadian light disruption, et cetera.
Kim Vopni (26:56.278)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (27:07.701)
Yeah. So what have you seen, I guess, trend because you've been in the industry for a while, you would have seen some of those people now, even if you train them younger, maybe witnessing them as older people. What did you, what's different in the ones who have aged well versus the ones who haven't?
JJ Virgin (27:24.257)
You know, I think the most important thing we can look at here is that, and I'm very happy that this was the thing I emphasized from basically the beginning, when it wasn't popular, was that you've got to put on muscle. Because ideally, you start putting on muscle from the early stage possible, because it's going to be great for your bones. We should be really thinking about that in our teens,
But I say that with caution because then someone listening who's 60 or 70 goes, no, it's too late for me. It is never too late. This is what's super cool. When I was at USC in their doctoral program, we were working with master level athletes in their 90s and people coming in in their 90s. It's never too late. It's never too late, but you want to it immediately. Like get started because it is the difference with that muscle mass that's changed everything. And it's not just...
Kim Vopni (28:06.338)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (28:19.795)
that it's changed how functional they are. You that's what we tend to look and go, muscle, that's gonna help me, you know, travel better. I always call it crossfit, luggage crossfit, right? But what we now know is muscle is key for not just your metabolic health, know, cardiovascular health, it's huge for brain health. Like, if you look at it, if you had someone with cognitive decline, if you had someone with depression,
Kim Vopni (28:30.198)
Yeah.
JJ Virgin (28:46.783)
If you had someone with bipolar, the number one thing that is most effective for any of these things is actually exercise.
Kim Vopni (28:53.698)
In terms of, what was the other question I want here? I guess I want to come back to the aging powerfully. if I think about the, like as you were talking, I'm thinking about Train with Joan, who I think you probably know, do you know who that is? Okay, so this is,
JJ Virgin (29:15.905)
I don't.
Kim Vopni (29:19.33)
the daughter Michelle is a, is a bodybuilder. She has a very successful platform on Instagram. She trains between the U S and Mexico. mom in her, was her late sixties, early seventies was overweight. could argue obese, poor metabolic health and her daughter got her moving. so Joan now has over a million people on her platform because she has shown what is possible with, you know, taking this aging powerfully.
not settling not saying you're too late and she started doing resistance training and I don't know about her diet but I would assume given who her daughter is that she's got that dialed in as well but
JJ Virgin (29:50.556)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (29:57.41)
Yeah. By the way, bodybuilders tend to have it so dialed in with nutrition. I don't know why we don't pay attention to that meal.
Kim Vopni (30:01.46)
Yeah, the original body hackers, right? Yeah, yeah, they had some things figured out. I would argue, you know, sometimes I think the extremes are pretty challenging for the body, but they know, they know people always reference them being the original biohackers. But a point that you said earlier as well is that the term hack, like even biohackers, we're always looking, we just are like programmed to find...
JJ Virgin (30:13.495)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (30:26.188)
the fast way, the easy way, the quick way to do something. But we ultimately have to show up and we have to do the work.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's your, what do you, like if I think about what you do in a week, I want to know what you do when you're traveling. You mentioned stairs. that's all there is, we've got stairs. what would, when you're at home, what's your regular routine like?
JJ Virgin (30:51.149)
When I'm at home, which is about one or two weeks a month, so I have a sunlit sauna that I get in in the morning. Our cold plunge broke, so I'm kind of hoping for the next one, not really. If I have a cold plunge, I only do it three days a week though. And I never do it after a workout. I actually do it before and I do contrast therapy. But since right now I don't have it, I don't have to deal with it.
Kim Vopni (31:03.714)
Mm.
too bad.
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (31:21.429)
So a couple days a week I meditate, but generally I get into the sauna and then I do red light. There's red light in the sauna, but then I do straight red light. So I've got this therapy from Ronnie Bonik for my eyes. So I've been doing that. And then I have breakfast and then I go to the gym usually. Or I go, once a week I go to a yoga class. I'll tell you the things that I wish I'd done way sooner in life is yoga.
One of my closest friends when I lived in the desert kept harping on it to me and I was like, yuck. And now I still think it's yuck, but I think it's one of the most important things that we can do. So when I'm home, I get to a yoga class every week. If I'm traveling and I can find one, I do too. I try to do that weekly because I think it's super important and it's the only way I'll do it. I'd like to say I would do it myself, but I won't. So there, I need someone to guide me through it.
Kim Vopni (31:59.576)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (32:10.742)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (32:16.833)
Yeah.
JJ Virgin (32:18.377)
I make sure that I get my steps in all throughout the day. I'm really careful about that. I've got a walking treadmill here and this is a standup desk. I've got a bunch of dogs, so dogs to walk. I have an office on the second floor, so I'm up and down that all the time. And then generally I do resistance training. I hit each body part two to three times a week. Some days I'll do, some weeks I'll split, upper one day, lower the next. Some days I'll do the full body. So generally I'm doing like split.
Kim Vopni (32:27.5)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (32:42.274)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (32:46.797)
twice a week and a full body once a week. One of those times each week is my max hardest heaviest and then I'll split some unilateral stuff and some power moves and things like that. I'll do that more at home because a lot of it looks very weird to do at the gym plus then I can use my power plate. And then I do HIIT training twice a week. I have a stair master, a Peloton and I have this rev bike where the pedals vibrate. That's crazy. I have a sprint. Yeah, wow. Yeah. And I have a sprint treadmill.
Kim Vopni (32:52.706)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (33:02.69)
Yep.
Kim Vopni (33:12.704)
No, I've tried that. Yeah.
JJ Virgin (33:16.223)
So I can play around plus I have an exciser and jumping things. So I mess around with all of that here. And sometimes I'll do HIIT functional training where I'll alternate between things like up, downs and jumps and things like that. So twice a week HIIT, I would do resistance training every day and just do that like in my happy space. So I have to force myself to do the other. I try to do one day a week of longer slow distance cardio.
Kim Vopni (33:32.034)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (33:39.116)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (33:45.996)
like it. I hate it. It's right there with yoga. I like doing hard stuff and throwing things around. So there's that, you know, some power training, I'll throw into my resistance training one day a week too. So I'm kind of rotating between hypertrophy, power and strength in my resistance training, which is what I think you do once you get advanced, because your body will adapt. So you got to keep changing it up.
and challenging it. Plus I do a lot of unilateral stuff so I throw balance in there as well. And then when I'm traveling, the cool thing about traveling is it forces you to get innovative. Now, I always have my, we always check what's available where I'm going so I know what I have with me. But I've also got this cool thing from TRX, they created these things called MyBands and it's bands but they have a thing that you can hold onto, a handle so it doesn't wreck your hands.
So I have those with me, so I'm never screwed, basically. And between those, my body and stairs, I can always do something. I can do Bulgarian squats and Copenhagen planks and all sorts of stuff. So I can figure in pushups and dips and things, squat jumps. So I can always make something work. And that's kind of my mantra is just move every single day.
Kim Vopni (34:43.521)
Yeah. Yeah.
JJ Virgin (35:09.321)
Some days it may be that I'm just gonna get a load of walking in and I'm just cool with that. It's like, okay, today I'll get 15, 16,000 steps and that'll just have to be what happens. I used to be way more hardcore and I've given myself a lot of grace, because I will tell you I prioritize sleep over everything else.
Kim Vopni (35:19.999)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (35:27.763)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Smart. What about...
JJ Virgin (35:29.961)
Yeah, and I use a lot of creatine for times on adjusting.
Kim Vopni (35:34.495)
Okay, well that was one of my questions, so I'll just go there now. Creatine, I know you have your own version, creatine hydrochloride, different from creatine monohydrate.
JJ Virgin (35:42.924)
Well, yeah, because I am, in fact, I've got a great study that they just did on this for menopause that's actually sitting right here. But I was using monohydrate when I first started to really double down on every woman should be on creatine, and I just got too much blowback on GI issues and bloating, et cetera. And fortunately, I met the formulator who created HCL.
And I was kind of like, I think this is just marketing, et cetera. And then I went to his plant in Nebraska and then I started using it myself. And I'm able to push, you know, the doses they say for brain of 10 to 20 grams of monohydrate are gonna trash your gut. There's no way, but you can do that. Basically about 15 % of my monohydrates absorbed. So the reason you're getting these GI issues in that.
Kim Vopni (36:27.233)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (36:39.497)
extracellular fluid retention as your body trying to get extreated, the HCl is 85 % absorbed. So you need a much lower dose to get the creatine in your tissues and so you don't have the side effects. I've been using it, I generally take a double dose each day just for training and keeping my stores up. But then when I'm time zone adjusting, I basically triple or quadruple it. So I double the dose again because
Kim Vopni (36:43.51)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (36:58.337)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (37:05.867)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (37:08.781)
There's really great research showing creatine helps with sleep deprivation. Well, I just use, I have a product called Sleep Candy. I use peak tea and caffeine, and then I use sheathein to help me with my tone zone adjusting plus lights. We're gonna start traveling with a Lux 10,000 Lux light to help us too, because sometimes you wake up in the morning in these places and the sunlight's not out yet, and you need to time zone adjust, and the biggest way to...
Kim Vopni (37:23.425)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (37:28.917)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (37:36.747)
get your circadian rhythm normalized through natural light, so these can mimic the natural light.
Kim Vopni (37:42.079)
Yeah, yeah, I found that just I was in Spain and I'm usually up between five and six and the sun is not up till eight, nine. So yeah.
JJ Virgin (37:49.774)
Yeah, problem. That's why they need it two in the morning. God, I was like, how do I don't understand how you guys go to dinner at 10 help me understand.
Kim Vopni (37:59.906)
I know, I I struggle with that a little bit. So that kind of leads to the next question I wanted to ask you is with regards to fasting for women. Is this something that you are in? was hot for a long time and then it started, even the big fasting people kind of came and said, well, maybe not for everybody, not all the time. The conversation around menopause started to explode. So where do you fall in the category of benefits of fasting for women?
JJ Virgin (38:27.373)
think it falls into a broader category of diet. Because there's elimination diets like virgin diet, carnivore. There's styles of diet like vegan or paleo. There's cloric restriction. There's intermittent fasting. It's like, what are you trying to accomplish? That's the biggest question I always ask when someone's doing something. What's the reason for this?
Kim Vopni (38:54.282)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (38:55.015)
If someone is insulin resistant or working on some detoxification stuff, hey, there might be some reason for it. If someone's really working on building muscle, depends, I wouldn't wanna go past an eight hour window of intermittent fasting for that. Here's the silly thing. I don't know what it was like when you were growing up, but when I was growing up, everybody intermittent fasted. They ate dinner, they stopped eating after that, they didn't eat before bed.
Kim Vopni (39:10.539)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (39:20.385)
true story. Yep.
JJ Virgin (39:23.681)
They got up in the morning, they ate breakfast like an hour or two after waking up, they had lunch, maybe a snack that was it. And so I remember when I was growing up, I'd have breakfast like at 7.30, we'd have dinner at 6.30, we had a 12, like that's how you ate. And maybe sometimes on the weekend, you would eat breakfast around nine, finish dinner by seven, you had a 10 hour. So I look at the cycle.
Kim Vopni (39:41.077)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (39:49.887)
Yeah, it's true. Good point.
JJ Virgin (39:50.83)
think we just had to create a diet to go back to normal eating. That's it. then, you know, if you look at it, so I kind of look at it go, why is someone doing it? If it's for weight loss and this helps you with caloric restriction, because it's just one way to do caloric restriction, great. You know, for me, it did not work for me. I do really well. Like I do better when I can eat before I work out. If I have to work out early, I do an amino collagen hit before I go to the gym.
Kim Vopni (39:54.335)
Totally.
JJ Virgin (40:21.269)
But if it works for you, like I don't think there's any hard or fast rules. I think the big thing is why are you doing it? You know, I do think that we should look at, hey, eat an hour or two after you wake up. Give your body time to get back online. Cortisol is coming up, pancreas is waking up, body can secrete insulin. Don't just get up and eat. Don't eat because someone told you you had to eat before you worked out. I don't buy it. The studies don't prove it. I don't get it. You know, see how you feel best.
Kim Vopni (40:27.169)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (40:35.563)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (40:50.677)
And then I think it's pretty clear, unless you're an athlete training and really trying to put on muscle, which is different, like when I've worked with pro athletes, it was different. We actually had to do an evening meal before bed. But most of us are not that. And if we wanted to do something for muscle mass, we could hit some essential aminos before bed. But I think for most of us, we're better off stopping eating two to four hours before bed, longer, better. And I think for most of us, we're better off having like,
you know, three meals, and that's it. So that we have this, you know, rest and digest in between and give our body time to like bring our blood sugar down, bring our insulin down, recover.
Kim Vopni (41:33.035)
Yeah, yeah. Do you have thoughts on protein sparing modified fast?
JJ Virgin (41:39.829)
I think that that can be a really great tool if someone is looking to like maybe do a little jumpstart, restart. I think this can be a great tool. So of all of the ones, that one makes the most sense to me.
Kim Vopni (41:47.745)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Kim Vopni (41:54.038)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I struggle especially with, I think about like the people who aren't eating and it could be the, nomad one meal a day, even the two meals a day. You also get to the point where you don't have a lot of volume and I am always thinking about poop from a pelvic health perspective. We have to poop and we have to poop well. And if we don't.
JJ Virgin (42:12.865)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (42:15.947)
first of all, have enough volume, and also if we're not consuming enough of the right foods to make us poop well, then that's gonna be a bit of a struggle. So I like how you reframed it back to, yeah, that was just normal eating back in the day. That's how I grew up too. We weren't allowed to snack.
JJ Virgin (42:28.587)
Yeah, don't know, the OMAD thing, I mean, it depends what you're doing it for. Like maybe someone's doing it to control an autoimmune disease or like, you have to look at what's your reason for doing this. But I think for most people, they're using these things because they think it's gonna help them with weight loss. And the studies have shown absolutely no difference between the caloric restriction and intermittent fasting on weight loss. So that's your reason.
Kim Vopni (42:36.939)
Sure, therapeutically.
Kim Vopni (42:41.653)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Kim Vopni (42:52.245)
Yeah. Yeah.
JJ Virgin (42:54.657)
You gotta just find what works best for you and ensure that you're getting in the protein that you need and the fiber you need.
Kim Vopni (43:00.193)
Yeah, 1000%. Before we wrap up, I want to come to, I participate in your business Mastermind, which is transformational, I absolutely love it. I had an opportunity to sit at table with you and we had a discussion about vaginal estrogen. I would love for you to share what you took away from that conversation and how it changed your life.
JJ Virgin (43:23.411)
First of all, I would love to shout your work from the rooftops. I can't believe, thank God we sat next to each other at that dinner and then I had you on my podcast. I felt like it was a vaginal therapy session, I must say. But the reality is, how is it that I got to the age of 62 as an exercise scientist where, yes, we learned pelvic floor, but really not, right? It really wasn't...
Emphasize and I look at a lot of the stuff Kim that we were taught in school and I'm hoping now they're not teaching the same stuff because if anything I think it made it worse not better Like I think it was almost anti pelvic floor work in a lot of ways what we were taught like belly button to spine I'm like, you know, okay. Hello, you know Just silly stuff that now you're looking at going what where did that come from? But the fact that
Kim Vopni (44:09.663)
Yes. Yeah, yeah, Yep.
JJ Virgin (44:19.295)
I've had multiple UTIs and not once, no one has ever told me about vaginal estrogen, ever. And I'm like, how is it that I've had all these doctors prescribe all of these meds to me and never said, try vaginal estrogen? Why? Like, how could that be? And another frustrating thing, and you know, all my friends are functional integrative practitioners. So if they don't have this information,
Kim Vopni (44:25.525)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (44:36.341)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (44:45.057)
Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (44:49.005)
then we're in big trouble. Then you look at it and go, okay, I've had two babies and a hysterectomy and never was I recommended you should see a pelvic floor therapist. Never once. And moreover, there's nothing, you know, like there's no thing out there saying, hey, here's some warning signs that you might have some issues. I think that a lot of these things just...
Kim Vopni (44:51.285)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (44:57.525)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (45:01.717)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
JJ Virgin (45:14.509)
there's so many women walking around out there that have no idea that they might have an issue. And it just like, once I heard that, like you don't know what you started here. Like I was like, okay. I'm interviewing another pelvic, I've now just said, I'm gonna bring all the pelvic floor therapists on. Everyone needs to learn. Everyone, you know, let's get all this information out there. I'm glad that you are out there doing this work because this is like, especially what you told me like.
Kim Vopni (45:31.563)
Nice.
JJ Virgin (45:43.19)
other countries this is normal. And you know, how is it, there has to be some kind of really cool partnership between both personal trainers and pelvic floor therapists, chiropractors and pelvic floor therapists, OBGYNs and pelvic floor therapists. Like all of those people should be referring to the pelvic floor therapist. And I don't understand, they're not.
Kim Vopni (45:56.897)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (46:04.193)
thousand percent. Yeah. I have a professional training course and that was a big intention when we created the course. It's back in 2013 now, but it was to bridge that
relationship and conversation between the fitness industry and the pelvic floor PTs because a lot of people, well, first of all, not very many people knew or even still know about pelvic floor PT, but they would go and be working out with personal trainers. And so we're teaching the trainers how to screen for incontinence, how to screen for prolapse, what phase of life are people in, are they using hormone therapy, and you're referring on to the pelvic floor PT and that person knows you then have the knowledge that they can kind of work together. But the other thing that just as a final wrap up,
JJ Virgin (46:41.995)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (46:45.693)
everything that we talked about here from resistance training, muscle, frailty, protein, creatine. The pelvic floor is skeletal muscle with type 1 and type 2 muscle fibers and it's prone to the same age-related muscle loss and power loss as the rest of our body. And when we apply fitness principles to the pelvic floor
and basically everything that we just talked about here and you shared also establishing the foundation and then building upon it. The pelvic floor is the ultimate foundation and when we are ignoring that aspect, it's a real, I think, threat to our longevity. So I'm so grateful for the work that you have been doing for, like you created, I think you really truly did create this industry.
JJ Virgin (47:32.363)
I helped create an industry.
Kim Vopni (47:35.189)
You helped create industry, but you have helped also fuel it and keep it going. And honored to call you my friend. Thank you so much for sharing everything that you did with us today. Where can people find more?
JJ Virgin (47:43.928)
Thank you. At JJVirgin.com, I also do have a protein challenge we created that literally just takes you, I like to focus on one thing at a time because I find then people don't get overwhelmed, they get the thing done. So we created a seven day eat protein first challenge just to help people focus just on that, get that dialed in. I would say before you ever look at a caloric restriction diet, you gotta make sure that you're eating that protein first. I'd also say make sure you're lifting weight. So that's at JJVirgin.com forward slash.
Kim Vopni (47:55.841)
Yeah.
JJ Virgin (48:12.909)
protein first.
Kim Vopni (48:14.39)
Amazing, I'll have all the links down below. Thank you so much again and yeah, everybody check out JJ's site, go check, take that challenge and we'll see you in January. Thanks.
JJ Virgin (48:27.19)
Yay.
