Eugene Teo: Afraid Lifting Will Make You Bulky? What Every Woman Over 50 Gets Wrong | EP#175

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:00)
She's 48 She's done the same thing she's always done, which is probably yoga, Pilates. She's hearing, oh, she has to lift weights. She has to feed the muscle she's trying to build, but she's afraid to get bulky.

**Eugene Teo** (0:13)
You should be more afraid of osteoporosis than you should be that getting bulky.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:17)
Eugene Teo, I watch you training more than 150,000 people, the programs that you run, giving sports nutrition advice, strength training advice.

**Eugene Teo** (0:28)
It always starts with curiosity and exploration. Can you jump on this bike and show me how hard you can push for the next five minutes? Let's see how far you can get.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:35)
I love your attitude of curiosity. You're not telling women what to do. You're not wagging your finger. You're saying, what are you still capable of? How do you help her transition from curious to curious about hard things?

**Eugene Teo** (0:48)
I actually don't. If you're doing a deadlift or a squat and you're doing the exact same weight for six months straight, boredom is going to kick in and you're going to be like, why don't I just go a little bit heavier? Strength is how much you can lift and power is how quickly you can lift.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (1:03)
It translates to not falling, being able to get up and then being able to not fall because you're quick enough.

**Eugene Teo** (1:09)
Exactly. You're 48 and you might think you're at the end of it, or what's the point, but hopefully, you're going to be here till 100

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (1:15)
Watch it.

**Eugene Teo** (1:16)
48 is not old in my book.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (1:18)
Watch it, Eugene.
I just want to take the time to thank you all for being here with us at The Dr Vonda Podcast. You are smart, you are curious, you are generous, and you have turned this sleepy podcast into consistently ranking in the top five, six, seven of all medicine podcasts across the world. We are currently in the top 100 of all health and wellness podcasts across the world, and I'm thankful. I want you to keep sharing with everybody you love, with everybody who needs to hear our guests, and I want you to subscribe. Every single month, more than 135,000 people listen to this podcast, and we have educated millions of people over time.
I want you to subscribe so you never miss an episode. I want you to follow this podcast on all the platforms, and if you want to see the videos, you need to subscribe to my YouTube channel. Thanks for being here on The Dr Vonda Podcast. The best is yet to come. Listen, I am so excited today on The Dr Vonda Show to have Eugene Teo all the way from Down Under in Australia. It just shows that the Internet does more than just spread propaganda. It can build like-mindedness amongst people who have never met in person and yet know each other's work. And Eugene, that's the way it is with you. I watch you training more than 150,000 people in your various gyms, the programs that you run, giving sports nutrition advice, strength training advice.
I watch you teaching your daughter who's now almost three because we can talk about that. My husband and I have a blended family of six children and I think it begins with the parents, right? It begins with the parents. But I can also appreciate what you're doing with your own mother, turning her into, as you say, an athletic weapon because my own 86-year-old parents live with us and it's really critical to me what you're doing with her.
So let's dive right in if you don't mind.

**Eugene Teo** (3:40)
Absolutely. I'm keen for it.
Do your parents train? I mean, I guess that they do now with you, of course.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (3:47)
Well, let me tell you, my father, since I cannot remember a day in his life when he's an endurance athlete. So my mother and I, when I was a little girl, would often say, where's dad? It was before the Internet and cell phones. Where's dad? We'd have to look on the map on the wall to see that he was on the yellow route just to see where he was. Now, my mother, who is 86, is of the generation of women who were never taught to exercise or didn't exercise, right? But my poor mother lives with me, right? So whether I say it to her directly or she gets it vicariously, one day, so she is 86 and she's either very, very healthy or very, very not healthy. So she was recovering from an illness and I looked outside and I see her going around our pool, because we live in Florida, everybody's got a pool, and she's doing this. She's walking, she's doing this. I'm like, what is this woman having her hands?