Barbell Shrugged - How to Get Jacked and Stay Lean w/ Bryan Boorstein, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #605

Episode Date: September 1, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: How much strength work do you need for hypertrophy Big lifts vs. Accessories for optimizing physique Strategies for getting lean and keeping muscle The role of weight training in a caloric deficit  Why walking is the secret to fat loss Get in touch with Bryan Boorstein IG: @bryanboorstein website: www.evolvedtrainingsystems.com Owner/Founder @evolvedtrainingsystems @paragontrainingmethods Podcast Eat Train Prosper @eat.train.prosper Bachelor of Science JMU, 2006 CrossFit Games Coach, CF-2, CF-Mobility 3X CrossFit Regional Athlete  24 Years Training; 13+ Years Coaching Featured on ESPN Radio + Numerous Podcasts   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Mentorship Application: https://bit.ly/DDMentorshipApp   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/shrugged to Save 5%

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, we are talking to the best man at my wedding, Brian Borstein. We're talking about how to get jacked. Brian is one of my favorite humans on this planet to talk about just getting super jacked, super shredded. He's probably one of the best brains in this world. That's why we were business partners and owned a gym together. That's why we still hang out. That's why we have literally had thousands of hours of conversations about

lifting weights, getting lean, getting strong, and how to optimize muscle growth over the past 12 years of being friends all the way up to that dude standing up there and being the best man at my wedding. That's how much weightlifting, I guess, means to us is that if being being the best man at my wedding that's how much weightlifting i guess means to us is that if i have the best conversations with you over the longest period of time there's a good chance that weightlifting will allow you to become the best man at my wedding and be the best man at his so super cool stuff uh brian is a wealth of knowledge and i highly recommend anybody get up, go follow him at Brian Borstein, and make sure you enjoy the show. Send us a screenshot, tag us on Instagram at Andrew Farner. But before we get into the show, I want to thank our friends over at BiOptimizers. When I talk about blood sugar, a lot of people

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That's SwingSesh, S-W-I-N-G-S-E-S-H, SwingSesh.com. Make sure you use the code SHRUGGED at checkout. Let's get into the show welcome to barbell shrugged i'm anna's barner doug larson brian borstein if there's two human beings on this planet well travis mash is at a convention or something like that some super spreader event mass is breathing all over delta variants on people talking about he's got the vaccine so he's good um he's on the show today which is super depressing because right now brian borstein

doug larson there's two people on this planet that i've talked about lifting weights the most in my life like probably of all of the thousands of hours that i've talked about lifting weights you guys are responsible for like 99 of those conversations that's a lot of hours it I've talked about lifting weights, you guys are responsible for like 99% of those conversations. That's a lot of hours. It'll be a great day. Dude, what's going on in your life? I feel like Brian's got to have at least well over half of that. Like how long were you guys business partners at the gym? It wasn't even the business partner part. I mean, that was a large part of it. But dude, college when we really didn didn't know anything but also knew what we were doing, and out of college. The best conversations were, like, when I got into CrossFit

and Brian was still doing bodybuilding stuff. And those, like, endless – Did you have conflict back then where you were like, I got this new cool way to train, and Brian was like, what the fuck are you talking about? Yeah, totally. There's actually, like, a cool – Is this a new way to train?

There's a really cool story about it so like literally andrews found crossfit a month before i moved to san diego so he we had this bet uh you've probably heard about this story but we had this bet that he didn't think i could do 18 rounds of cindy like legit rounds of cindy where he's judging me and uh so we bet 20 bucks on it and i just did it and then i left for San Diego. I got like exactly 18 rounds. And then in San Diego, Andrew spent the next three years sending me CrossFit workouts to do. And it wasn't until like 2009 that I finally was like, fine, I'll try this shit.

And like he had me do Fran inside like a power rack and a 24 hour fitness. Then I did Grace with metal plates. And I did, I feel like i did one more too probably because you weren't snatching at that point it wasn't it wasn't i feel like until regionals or sectionals in 2010 you were like oh there's like a thing like people are playing sports again i get it yeah i mean our whole was like, once you finally got me to go to East village, the only reason you got me there was because they had open gym and you were like, dude, you can just do your bodybuilding shit first. And then we'll just do CrossFit as our

cardio. And then that just worked out perfectly. Cause I was like, Oh, I hate cardio anyway. Yeah. I actually think it's super cool that the thing that you started out doing and then, um, and, and what you're doing now are like relatively the same things just at a significantly more advanced level and deeper understanding of all of it, which is really cool because I see all your stuff and some, some internet human put up the Michael Jackson popcorn thing the other day, as if you and I were going to get in like a real fight,

uh, on the internet. Um. But it was like, I'm super interested in talking to you today about, in general, hypertrophy. And kind of like, some of the things that I feel like hypertrophy really misses, which is like what I what I really was kind of getting at, even though the internet's like the worst place in the world to talk about it. But like what, going from, even if we weren't to get into like, I think the like overtraining, like super high intensity, heart rate, beat down every single day, I think we can all agree like that none of us really believe in that anymore but your training has taken like a much more and i don't want to speak for you but it appears that your training being purely hypertrophy focused um has really veered away

from a lot of the like functional movement side of things and that's really where I want to start on, on this. Cause we have a lot of things to talk about, but I I'd love to just dig into like what, what, what I was thinking about when I wrote that, that post to you yesterday of like, when did like functional training squats, deadlifts, press bench press. Well, we never really bench press, but but strict press, like the big five movements that you could probably do. And it's not even the power cleans become something that you decided you're not doing. Yeah, I think it was actually like a super gradual process. I don't think it was just a moment where I was like, oh, well, that's stupid.

I'm not doing that anymore. I think it all came out of the understanding of something that is inherent in all lifts, all exercises, all sets, all reps. And that is that every single one of those little units has a certain amount of stimulus that it provides, and it has a certain amount of fatigue that it provides. And those numbers, obviously we don't exactly know what they are, but we can kind of feel it. Like you can tell after you do a bunch of deadlifts, even with perfect form, that that was pretty fatiguing. Then you can also tell that when you do deadlifts with a rounded back and you're turning into a question mark, that that was really, really fatiguing, but you got less stimulus where,

where you wanted it. You got a ton of stimulus in your low back, right? So for me, this whole process of slowly moving out of those movements was really a result of understanding that for me, they weren't necessarily the best movements. I think there are people that can back squat that have really, really good leverages for back squat and they can sit down and they can stand up and they look like an Asian Olympic lifter all the time when they back squat. So that is a very effective movement for them to train their quads. Um, for somebody who's built like me, who has longer legs, shorter torso, um, I don't even high bar squat very well at all. And so the only way that I can really squat without it beating my body down is to low bar squat. And then a low bar squat is essentially more of a hip

dominant, glute dominant movement. So in my pursuit of looking to, to build my quads, the back squat in its rawest form is just not like the most effective movement for that objective. Totally. The, the thing that I responded to in your post was that, and the line of thinking about it was in the transferability of strength, like a squat and a deadlift, even if you have bad levers, even if you have a like anatomically not perfect asian you don't look like lou when you squat um the full body-ness of it like this is also something that when i when people like shouldn't train till failure they're like well if you're squatting can you tell me what part you're failing on like what what piece is because most of the time it's just your abs like that midline yeah like likely that's the thing so

like are you really over training your abs should you not be fit going to failure um but like do you feel what was the exercise that you were doing it's like sled something but it was like a more hip dominant sled or more quad dominant sled movement right the hack squat is basically i don't know what the exact piece of machinery is. Um, so hack squats. Um, and what I wrote was basically along the lines of you are likely getting more activation in your quads to specifically grow that musculature. However, if you're not doing some form of full body functional squatting, deadlifting type movements, aren't you leaving a lot of just like the pure muscle building that goes on by, in a way, prioritizing like an accessory movement over the thing that I feel like is

like universally known as the best way to grow strength? Yeah. I mean, I think the simple answer is that it comes back to that stimulus to fatigue ratio, that, that if my, if I'm doing a back squat and my midline is the thing that fails first, then I'm not actually able to train my quads where I want them to be. So when you say, you know, like train to failure, it's failure of what? So when you're doing a back squat, as you referenced, you could essentially call failure the point where technically you're no longer staying as erect as you were on the first rep. So if there's any sort of hip shift back or knee drive back, then now you've shifted out

of your primary target muscles. And so now you're essentially working beyond failure by incorporating your hips and stuff like that, right? But if you wear like that, that slope is slippery because then you could do the next rep and there's a little more hip and then the next rep and there's a little more hip and suddenly you've done seven more reps and by the end it looks nothing like it did in the beginning totally um but for for my machine specifically i wouldn't call that like an accessory or an isolation movement i think it really just this, this

difference in viewpoint stems from, I think the different methodologies in which we ascribe to, like I would use a back squat and I do intend to use a back squat in a period of time where I'm doing a strength focused cycle. I also intend to do the same thing for a deadlift right now. I'm not like leaving my midline untrained. I do things like stiff, like a deadlifts and RDLs and good mornings where there's really like a good morning is, is going to work a lot of the same musculature, at least in the midline and the glutes and things like that, that you would get by putting a bar on your back for the back squat. Um, so I think that I train all of these movement patterns that would be hit by the back squat, but I train them in a manner that allows me to put the stimulus where I want it instead

of taking the full body stimulus, which is then going to take me deeper into this fatigue hole and attenuate the amount of volume that I can actually achieve because I'm choosing these movements that cause more fatigue. Yeah. Do you feel like, are you the biggest you've ever been right now? As far as muscle mass goes, this dude's mad little like john cena right now dude's smaller than cena cena's the smallest dude in hollywood so uh yeah i hope everybody gets that joke and has seen a picture of him lately at like he is small pounds because brian and i text each other when we see him we're like look

at that little dude uh doug it's a good. And so body fat is an interesting thing. And especially the way that I distribute body fat is interesting because I hold very little body fat in my upper body. It pretty much all gathers in my like low back and my glutes and my hamstrings. So when I take pictures of myself or look at myself in the mirror, it's really difficult for me to tell much of a difference between like 205 and 190 pounds. Like I'm more or less look the same and I have to get pretty extreme below that to see a difference, uh, in most cases. So to, to put some context to it, when I did the physique show as when Anders and I owned the gym, I did a physique show in 2015 and I was 179 pounds on stage. That's the smallest I've been in my adult life. And, uh, I was pretty

lean, but the thing is at that time, because it was a men's physique show. And I just, I did an awful, awful prep. Like I hired a coach who did enhanced people and it just, the whole thing went backwards. But, um, by the end of that prep, I couldn't even back squat more than two 25 for a triple. Like I had no legs, I had no hormone function. So I was 179 pounds with zero legs. Cause I didn't train legs basically leading up to it at all. And then now I'm. So that's my physique. So you're going to to wear board shorts like you can't see your quads anyway? Correct. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You're not judged on it.

So I didn't train legs really leading up to it. Like I would do half-assed legs probably as part of cardio. Like I'd superset like walking lunges with GHG sit-ups or something like that. But now I'm 187 pounds and I would say I'm as lean or leaner than I was when I was 179 pounds. And I also have

legs. So there's more weight being held there. So I would say, I mean, all things considered, like, yes, my physique is probably the most muscular it is now. And I'm not the strongest that I've ever been now. Gotcha. Yeah. My, my, uh, curiosity was, I wonder if, if you're doing mostly assistance work, like say you just did leg extensions, leg curls, that type of thing. If you've already been really big, is it easy to put on muscle mass using assistance work and single joint exercises, et cetera. But if you, if you need to gain more ground, do you think there's more value in having the big compound movements as a part of your program? Yeah, for sure. And I think this is where you guys and I are both going to agree completely and maybe even

answer some of the miscommunication potentially between Anders and I or the disagreement, right? High level arguing going on out here. So here's the thing, right? I 100% believe in everything that you're saying about the utility of compound movements and the importance of developing like motor patterns where multiple body parts are all working together and things like that. I believe this is the way for novices without question. I believe that this is the way for intermediates all the way up through

the advanced intermediate stage. And then I don't think it's until you even get into like the early advanced stage that you even need to worry about adding in any sort of isolation or accessory movements. Um, the seven main movements that I did literally for the first, like five years that I trained until basically I met Anders was I just did, uh, bench, a bench press variation. I don't like barbells, Anders knows those dumbbells, but a bench press variation, an overhead press variation, a pull up a row, a squat, a deadlift and a dip. And that was seven movement patterns. And that's literally all I did for, for years and years and years. And that built a base that allowed me to then kind of step into this next stage of training. With that said, I have one other thing that I think is important. And that

is that if somebody is novice or intermediate, and they're very just wildly not built to back squat or deadlift or any of these movements that put their body in a compromised position and don't allow them to necessarily move in a manner that would be conducive to their goals, then that's where I think there might be utility in using something like a leg press or a hack squat, because those aren't isolation movements. Like that is not like doing a leg extension or a leg curl. I mean, taking a set of hack squats to, to basically failure until you're like shaking in the middle of the rep,

trying to stand up, I think is actually more painful than a back squat because you can't compensate. Like when you get stuck there, you're just like, oh shit, like I'm in this thing or unless I get out of it, you know, in a back squat, like you can always shift your hips back, change your torso position, dump the bar. Like there's a lot of things you can do, but in a hack squat, you can truly take that shit to the hardest point. And, uh, it's not easy. It's not like a leg extension or leg curl in any way. Yeah. I think that there's, uh, the reason I even said something about your post was you, you also made a post a couple of days ago, uh, which everybody go follow Brian Borstein coach. Cause he got his account hacked and, uh, coming back. Um,

can't believe you got hacked. I feel like I want to get hacked now. Just like I want to have that story. Don't hack me, please, if you're listening. It was because you were talking about an ab experiment. And I was like, well, of course you're doing, like you're prioritizing specific movements. And when you put yourself on a machine, now you don't have to stabilize your midline and in doing that it's like it obviously makes sense um without doing

without doing the big lifts you're not getting the midline work that you'd normally get um and then in the second post uh it was it was talking about like setting a pr and i was like it i don't even think like squatting or deadlifting or doing those specific movements as like a PR idea, but as like an overall maintaining full body strength was really the reason why I did it. I was like, well, yes, you may have set like a two rep PR and gotten 12 instead of 10 this week and you're getting stronger, but couldn't you have like, in a way hacked the system. So it's by adding in just some like 85% back squats and, and having like a full, uh, like a functional movement where you're, you're actually incorporating your midline.

You're actually building full body strength. Um, that was like really, I would say almost at like the heart of it was kind of like the two posts together of like admitting, yes, I don't do abs. And then yes, I just set a PR on this isolation or on a hack squat, which isn't necessarily like a full isolation movement, but the two together, like almost didn't align. If that makes sense. It was like, I don't have a midline, so I need to do an ab experiment. And then it was like i don't have a midline so i need to do an ab experiment and then it was like but i said a pr couldn't we have just put those two together of doing a back squat and hit the same pr yeah well i mean it again comes down to like the acute desire to target the quad so yeah like when i back squatted all the time in CrossFit days with you, like we

back squatted two times a week, we front squatted, we lunged, we did all these things. And I remember coming out of, of this thing and being like, man, like my upper body is yoked from whatever, all the gymnastics we did, but my legs just still, like, they don't look the part, like they're strong. You know, I squatted 405 for a triple, like they're strong, but they're just not like they're not big. So're just not like they, they're not big. So I'm doing something wrong. I'm missing something here. And I measured them and they were like 23 inches when I finished CrossFit before I started this hypertrophy training journey. And now just measured them last week and they're 25 inches, which is significant improvement, uh, at somebody that's been training for 20 years, 20 plus years. Right. Um, so I think

there's two, two answers to your question. One is that I very much think that there is utility in, in more of like this power building approach that a lot of people are taking where you start off with like, uh, a 90% single or 85% double on like a big lift or something like that. Like it's nothing super heavy, but you like, you feel some relatively heavy weight. And if anything, maybe it's like even a stimulation to the central nervous system before you get going. So you do something like that. You achieve what you're talking about, which is you feel, you feel the heavy weight, you do the real strength lift or whatever. And then you can go on and you can do your, your hack squats, back squats, stuff like that. Um, I think there's very, very much utility in that. And then

the other side of the coin would be like, what if I save those movements? Because I am here with the hypertrophy goal. Like what if I save my back squats for the period of time where I'm going to do a strength cycle because they are the best tool for that strength cycle. And then I really, I come in with like no anabolic resistance built up to the back squat. It's not something that's been in my program. I come in and basically every week I'm able to make neural adaptations and essentially make some real like fun progress on it over the course of like a five or six week strength cycle. That was also what I wanted to know is how much does your exercise selection depend upon the total caloric intake of the day and where your goals are over the next like three months or two months, whatever, however long you plan on continuing

staying in like a decent deficit. Yeah. So the deficit I think makes a huge impact on exercise selection for hypertrophy because we already know through, through, actually there's a number of different studies demonstrating this, but that the lengthened position of movements is significantly more damaging than the shortened position of movements, right? So like the bottom of an RDL, the bottom of a back squat, things like that. So if we're in a state where recovery is compromised because our calories are low, then I find it even more important to be very specific with exercise selection and limiting the amount of fatigue that's accumulated. When you're in a training period of time where you're in a caloric surplus or even at maintenance, then you're actually feeding the recovery and you can put your body

through a little bit more of these like damaging movements and still be able to recover fine in time. Yeah. So if your calories are really low, then you wouldn't do like dumbbell flies. You do like cable crossovers. Correct. That's a perfect example of it. Yeah. Yeah. So you're limiting muscle soreness because your calories are low, but when your calories are high, then you can actually intentionally add extra muscle soreness to potentially spur more growth. I wouldn't call it the soreness that's spurring it. Like that's kind of the misconception that like, we don't really need to be sore or even

necessarily want to be sore. I mean, it's maybe like a decent diagnostic tool. Like here's how I kind of look at soreness is if you're getting really, really, really sore, then we should look at soreness and be like, Hey, you're doing too much because you're really sore. Um, but I think that if you're following smart training that uses consistent movement selection, you really shouldn't be getting sore after a while because of the repeated bout effect. Like even if you take something like lunges, which are one of the most like sore inducing movements you can do the first time you do them, you're really sore. But if you lunge twice a week for a month, you're barely going to get sore at all by the end of that month. So a lot of times soreness is a result of exercise variation. Many times

that's just unnecessary. And I think that soreness is not an indicator that you've trained a muscle successfully. It just means that you've done something novel that is stimulating this damaging response to your body. Yeah. So you wouldn't go that direction necessarily. You wouldn't, because you have more calories, do things that intentionally make you more sore. But if your calories are low, you would do intent intentionally do things that make you have a stimulus, but don't make you sore. Yeah. So I think you're using soreness almost in place of stimulus. Um, because the movements that are from a lengthened position are in fact going to be more stimulative as well. So, so they do cause more soreness because

they're more damaging, but also because they're more stimulative. Um, I don't think that you should necessarily even take those movements out in a dieting phase. I just think you need to be aware of, of the ratio of which you're performing them. So in your example, like maybe I, in the off season, I would do like three sets of dumbbell flies and one or two sets of crossovers. Whereas in a dieting phase, it might turn into one set of dumbbell flies and three or four sets of crossovers or something like that. Same thing with RDLs. Like I actually, in the off season, I'll usually do two or three sets is usually enough of like a heavy RDL in the 300 pound range to, to kind of get things going. But in the, in the deficit that I'm in right now, I literally just work up to one

top set of like six to 10. And then I kind of move on to less damaging movements like leg curls. Yeah. Um, for this cut or how long you, how long are you, what are you trying to get to? Good question. Um, my goal is to get to about one 82 and my objective with that is to be able to determine whether I'm 10 pounds away from stage weight or not when I get there. Wait, 10 pounds, like 172 or, oh my gosh, what would you do at 172 pounds? I mean, I'd be like, you know, four or 5% body fat theoretically. So, um, no, I mean, I don't know, dude, like honestly, it's like a year of dieting after you've been in this game for 25 years. Well, a lot of the natural bodybuilders these days, like the whole 12 week diet thing is very much a, a, an enhanced approach. So like a lot of the natural bodybuilders,

they have to do these long preps cause they get up like 30 pounds over stage weight in the off season. And then, you know, you, you can't lose a pound a week when you start getting really, really lean. It's now half a pound a week or whatever. So you end up setting up these preps that are like 30 to 50 weeks long. Um, but no, my intention is not to diet the whole time. I actually want to get to one 82, take an assessment of where I'm at and then go back up into the low one nineties and hang out there for a few months and then potentially start the diet down to one 72 after that. Nice. Um, wait, so how do your calories look over, over a longer cut like that? If you're cutting for six to nine months, like you can't just go down, down, down forever. Like

you go down and then you ramp it back up and then you go down again. Like what are the phases look like? Yeah. I mean, that's very individual from what I've, what I've seen amongst other competitors and stuff, but the way that it tends to work best for me, are you guys familiar with like the refeed and the diet break data, like research this out there? Not the research. I mean, yeah, maybe not the specific studies you're talking about, but the idea of getting people down, slowly build them back up, bring them back down. Yeah.

So essentially a refeed is defined as a period of time that is like a week long or longer. So if you're just gonna like essentially, or no, no, that's a refeed is defined as a period of time that is like a week long or, or longer. So if you're just going to like essentially, or no, no, that's a diet break. So diet break is going to be a week or more longer. That's like, you're taking a break of your diet and you're going back up in calories. If you just do a refeed, that's a one or two day period where you increase your calories. Um, the research, the last two or three studies that have come out have all kind of progressed

from the prior and a lot of good, good scientists have done the work on these. And they've pretty much determined that refeeds and diet breaks are 100% mental, that there is absolutely zero physical benefit to, to doing any of these. But the mental side is obviously super important. So, uh, the way that I prefer to do it and that has worked really well for me through this cut. And then my prior one is that I like to go down at a moderate pace, uh, about a pound a week until it starts getting really hard. And then once I reach a point where it's just starting to kind of suck a little bit and I really have to dial it in, I'll take like a one or two week diet break and kind of go back up to maintenance and let my body kind of re-regulate itself. And maybe during that time I'll gain what looks like five pounds

because there's a bunch of glycogen and water and stuff like that. But in reality, it might be like one pound, two pounds, something like that. And then I'll get back into the diet and do another like six to 10 week grind of kind of going like a pound a week or slightly less than a pound a week. And then usually even within that second grind period, um, I'll have refeed days. So even though it's like six to 10 weeks with no diet break, there will be like periods of time where I'll have like one day or two days back to back where I'll take calories up to like 3,500 or something like that. Um, I think Doug's original question though, was like what my calories look like as well. And so like, they do obviously descend down. Like when I started at 200 pounds, I was losing weight, like a pound a week on 3000 calories a day, like just down, down, down, no big deal. And then I had to cut them to like 2,700 calories after a couple of weeks. And then

it's kind of been going pretty smoothly at 2,700 for a while. And then just recently I'm now down to like the 25 ish hundred calorie mark. So, and I'm 14 pounds down. So like one 86. Um, and I'm guessing that as I continue to lose body weight and like metabolic adaptations take place that they're going to have to continue to come down even more. Yeah. We actually weigh the same, which is super funny to me because you usually like five. So this morning it was 188. Yesterday it was 187. I think when I, when I texted you about talking about, uh, training and deficits, what have you noticed in your training? Uh, as far as like, like what, what shifts from kind of being in like one of those diet breaks or like giving

yourself enough calories? Like, um, have you noticed if you're still setting PRS in your hack squats, like what seems like a race you're training and, uh, and a deficit all the time, but that's, that's clearly not like, what have you noticed as far as like energy levels or how have you shifted your training to, to be able to be able to meet the caloric demands of where you're at? Yeah, totally. Good question. 100% of my training volume is lower. That's one of the things that has been a cornerstone of my training during deficits is that I do less work and I work closer to failure. So now I'm pretty much doing something like six to 10 sets a week for most body parts. And every set is pretty much to zero to one reps from failure. Like, like I

basically believe that I could maybe do another rep, but maybe not. And then I even will throw in some intensity techniques on isolation movements. Like with all the research coming out now that the lengthened position is, is much more important position for muscular growth, which also causes more damage by the way, as we discussed. Right. Um, but it's coming, they did a study on leg extensions. It was actually pretty wild. They took three, uh, three groups. One group did the full range of motion of the leg extension. One group did just the top half. And then one group did just the bottom half where you go from like the stretch position of the leg to like halfway up and then back down again. And at the end of the study, it was the group that did the bottom range of motion, the length and position that got better results than both the other groups, including the full range of motion group, which is crazy because most people look at a movement like a leg extension and they think that where the juice is, is at the top. Like, Oh, that's where it hurts. Right. That's where the juices. Um, so. Well, a lot of that kind of makes sense where it's like you're, you're overcoming the hardest part of the lift, which is going to require you

to recruit the most muscle fibers to get it. And then once it gets to the top, you're just really just flexing. Yeah. Yeah. No, totally. Like I, that's a hundred percent the logic as well. Yeah. So my training is lower volume. I do use a little bit more, uh, like intensity techniques. Like I'll do some, some cluster or rest pause sets, I guess you would call them where I'll rest like 15 seconds and then go again and then rest 15 seconds, go again. Because all of this is kind of my objective is to create the most stimulus with the least amount of, of time and energy fatigue so that I can, I can recover. So low volume is lower. Um, like I told Doug earlier, I do try to do less sets of the really damaging movements so that I can do slightly more sets of the less

damaging movements. Um, but kind of do like the, the craziest thing though, of the whole thing is, is regarding setting that PR is in the post, I wrote that I was stuck at eight reps for months. I wasn't getting stronger at all. It would be like I'd go in every week and it was like eight, then eight, then eight, then eight. And I was like, God, I'm never going to get stronger. This stupid diet, you know? So then I squat it. Oh, that was too good. Then I'd be so fatigued. I need to be in standup comedy.

Timing. Sorry, go ahead. No, you're good. So I took a week off from the gym and I didn't train at all, which I like to do like twice a year. And I came back. I want to talk about that later too. For sure.

Yeah. So I came back after that week off and I magically got 10 reps on that hack press. And I'd been stuck at eight for like three months, literally three months. And then I, uh, during that same week, I decided that I was going to change my leg training frequency because I had been training every four days because that's like what evidence-based says, like you need to train a muscle when it's recovered. Right. So I'm no longer sore anymore. Four days later, I trained my legs again, four days later, train my legs again. And, um, I just wasn't getting stronger. So I'm like, you know, fuck this. I'm going to, I'm going to go six days. I'm going to do quads every six days and hams every six days. So I'm training legs every three days, but different body parts. Right. And then I came back again for that next quad session and I got 12 reps. So I went from eight to 10 to 12 after not progressing for like three months and I'm still in it, like trying to figure it out. But I mean, it's gotta have something to do with recovery. Like it's gotta, it's gotta have something to do with being under recovered before. And that training legs every four days was too often. And that I need

to train legs less frequently to be able to realize adaptations or something like that. Yeah. Um, it's been really interesting kind of being in this process with you as well, not going through it together, but like in the cutting phase of it. And I'm like equally strong, but have no work capacity. It's really interesting doing it at this stage, like five years after the last time. So I, I weigh right now as much as I weighed actually competing in Olympic weightlifting, which really means though, last time I stepped on a platform, which actually means I was like 193, which was about my like normal, regular weight when we had the gym and we're, we're competing

with like super high intensity training all the time. And then competing and weightlifting at 87, which is like where I'm at now. And then the last time I competed at regionals was I weighed 185. My work capacity though right now is in the dumps. It's like, I'm like three exercises and I'm like, I'm pretty good. Like I don't have any ability to push in that 45 minute range. Like top end strength, I feel like is, is all there early, but you want to give me like a superset at the end of like some pull-ups and

like rows or something like that, just to like, there's just no, there's no gas after the half an hour mark. And it's really, really interesting to that. I used to be able to compete at a relatively, maybe slightly stronger, but work capacity is like, not even close. Do you make sure to go into these sessions with like a full glycogen stores? Or is that not like a concern of yours? Yeah, I don't really. i have like set times with my neighbors that i uh try to adhere to so like nutrition just kind of like i'm definitely significantly less it's also like we all train

outside and it's 105 degrees like every day so there's many factors into it it's just something i really notice a lot it's not like it was like cold in san diego when we were training in the summers it's just something i really notice on like. It's not like it was like cold in San Diego when we were training in the summers. It's just something I really noticed on like the work capacity. It's like, man, I get to that half an hour mark and I'm just absolutely smoked for whatever the second half of the workout is. Yeah. So I wonder how much of that could be attenuated by having like a, a pre-workout fuel ingestion of some sort, like topping off your glycogen levels, maybe even throwing some like, like a teaspoon of sodium in there so that you have some salt. I don't know.

I mean, it's maybe worth a try, but I mean, those are things. Not even really about my specific story, but do you notice that your work capacity starts to die towards the end where you get like one to maybe three really good exercises in before it's like, now I'm just out here looking pathetic. So I think that that's pathetic by the way, at the end of them, like I was doing kipping pull-ups the other day,

not butterflies. I want everyone to know I was doing like whatever the original gymnastics kipping, we're doing like some little EMOM thing. And I was like, I'm cheating for sure right now. I'm not doing the whole pull up. I can't do that.

I'm tired. I felt pathetic. So I think there's a couple of things to understand here. And the first is that I don't do anything that requires work capacity. I mean, I have not tested that in quite some time. Yeah. I mean, so, so to give, to give you like a frame of reference of what my training looks

like, I do 12 work sets in a session and it usually takes me 90 minutes. So like, of course, of course there's like, you know, there's ramp upsets and warm upsets and like to get to a heavy 600 pound hack squat i do a 200 300 400 what you're like answering emails and stuff in between working out i do yeah i do i do dms i do facebook group i do emails i do all the things i record my videos i put them on instagram um so i'm literally like 12 sets in 90 minutes i haven't sweat during a workout in years years years. And, um, well, then my work capacity dominates yours right now, for sure. And I feel pathetic. I, I, I walk, I walk a lot. That's, that's my thing is, is I walk, you know, between 10,000 steps a day. And yeah, I didn't realize that you,

you were doing like, uh, had that large of rest periods between sets to like extend them out that far yeah all the research has been pretty uh pretty clear that longer rest periods are better than shorter for hypertrophy and that if you take shorter rest periods you have to do more sets to make up for the decrease in performance that short rest periods cause so then you end up going down this rabbit hole of having to do a ton of volume with short rest periods and suddenly you're basically doing CrossFit again. Yeah, we're like kind of – I mean the program that we write is like the mix of all of it. It's like some of the breathing, some of the hypertrophy, and a lot of the big movements without being like the siloed into one specific one of them yeah for sure no i think you guys do a great job like it is like you do but you do have more sets like when

you're doing a 20 minute imam there's more sets and it's because you're doing it with short rest periods so you're having to make up for short rest with more sets like if you just did two really hard sets with like five minutes of rest in between, then that would probably be equivalent of like the four or five sets that are going on or whatever it is. Um, yeah,

it's interesting. It's like, uh, the, the total time is like such a factor for me right now that there's just no way. Like I do straight sets, uh,

assuming I'm training with somebody, but if I'm by myself, it's like, how quick can we get as much work done as possible and then get back to real life? Yeah, I mean, that's why I have to multitask, I think. Like, I gotta work while I work out. We got kids now, dude. Can't just kick it at the gym all day in the basement.

I want everyone to hear about how you've been tracking your macros. I think it's like really, really cool how you've been trying to do it on a subjective level for a long time. Just in a way like taking all of the education of the last two and a half decades of tracking macros, but making it with a more sustainable, like subjective way of kind of trying to hold yourself accountable. Yeah, no, that's awesome. I appreciate that. It's definitely been a process. And for full disclosure, where I am in my diet right now, I am having to track again. But this just started recently. So I made it all the way down into like the high one eighties before I reached a point where I was like, yeah, I just need to

start tracking. Cause I'm getting stuck for, for too long at a certain body weight. Um, but yeah, so for most of my time, like anytime that I'm not in like the depths of a diet, I basically track three variables on a daily basis. I have an Excel sheet and it has my body weight. So I weigh myself each morning just so, because body weight is a good measure of determining whether my subjective satiety signals are in fact accurate. Um, so I, I do body weight. I track protein grams roughly. So I don't like, you know, go into my fitness pal and like make sure that every bite of protein I do is, is written down for, but I'll keep like a running tally in my head throughout the day. And then I'll have like a general ballpark number of how much protein I had. And then, uh, the final signal I use is subjective satiety. And I rate it on three different levels. So there's overfed, uh, these get like a big red

highlighter in my Excel sheet to be like, dude, you ate too much. Um, overfed that I have underfed, which is a cool blue color. And then, uh, and then I have satisfied, which is just clear. And I would say that, uh, throughout my off season, I didn't track a single time. I went from October of 2020 and through April of 2021. And that was a hundred percent, the only way I tracked. And my goal was to add a third of a pound a month. No, a third of a pound a week, which would be just over a pound a month. That was my kind of lean gain approach was like, let's see how well I can do this without actually tracking anything. And it mostly manifested itself like really closely. Like I was right at about a third of

a pound a week when I went back and calculated the length of time and all that. So it was pretty cool. Yeah. Do you find that you have like a high set point and then kind of like a low set point? I know you're like at 187, something like that now. But I find that I have like a 198 high set point and like a 190 low. And if I want to go below that, I have to like really cut out a lot of cool stuff in life yeah yeah yes i mean i think my set point honestly is higher and it's mostly a result

of the fact that i i eat too much crap when left to my own volition um like like i literally you know i love baking right so when i when i'm not in, I do when I'm not in a dieting phase, I probably bake four times a week. And, and if I bake a brownie pan or like a banana cake, like that's not just one serving of like, Oh, I'll just have one dainty brownie and like, call it a day. Like that shit is going down. Right. So, so, so for me, like my set,

my set point is around like the high one nineties. And that allows me to have a couple, a few times a week, three or four times a week indulgences with really too much food. Like probably what most people would consider overfed. I can maintain the high one nineties being overfed more often than not. Um, but yeah, like where I am right now, I, I probably get one brownie, like one square of a brownie, like once a week, if I, if I scramble around my macros to fit it in, you know what I mean? It's depressing. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. Um, have you had people reach out to you or like try to implement the system and seen any success with that? Because I feel like there's like a, there's a real learning curve of being able to look just at a piece of meat and go, oh, that's like four ounces. Yeah.

And if somebody were to see you doing that and think like, oh, satiated, that's good. Like overfed, I could make the spreadsheet. And if somebody were to see you doing that and think like, oh, satiated, that's good. Like overfed, I could make the spreadsheet. It's like very possibly like a fast track to not getting close to your goals at all. Have you had anybody kind of follow it that is less trained or less aware of what's going on with any success? I've had a number of people follow it that are very self-aware and they have had very, very good success with it. Like one dude has lost like 23 pounds over the last five months and looks like a shredded bodybuilder now, basically. He's like, I haven't tracked anything. But no, man, I mean, it's a hundred percent like, like even the whole issue around intuitive eating now like there's so much

almost politicizing of intuitive eating and stuff what is it political come on why wouldn't it why wouldn't it be about eating carbs too right um like i intuitively eat myself into a coma every night so yeah um but it's very possible but yeah no i agree. I think that you have to, the only reason I'm successful with it is because I tracked for 14 years diligently. Like I have even Excel sheets from like 2012 where I've been like tracking for years and years and like, um, yeah, I mean you, you have to have very good self-awareness around that. And then the other thing is, is like people get so fucking backwards with macros. Like everyone's like, oh, macros, I can play macro Tetris and I can fit this

in or that in, or I can eat half a brownie here. And like, man, that just creates this neuroticism that makes life so unenjoyable that, um, that if you just kind of almost set a meal plan and it doesn't have to be like a super duper strict meal plan, but if you just were like, you know, you had freedom to sub out proteins for proteins and starches for starches. And for the most part, you just kind of stuck to this like relatively free meal plan. I think you'd find a lot more success than just being like, fuck it. I'm going to fit everything in and I'm just going to have one bite of everything in the

world. Yeah. There's like a, I made that post the other day that you wrote back to of like, having like, if it fits your macros piece being like such a small piece of what you actually do. But if you could just eat the essential things, and then have fun with the non essential things, like just get to your minimums that you need for the day, be able to track that. So you know exactly what's going on. And then don't go over, but eat to the minimums. Like get, get, you know, 150 grams of protein a day in your body and have that be the thing that you lead with. And then

why don't you just, if you want to have some sloppy protein at the end, like that's fine. Like you can, you can have a little bit of fun. Do you think that tracking your macros is like really that cumbersome after, I mean, you did it for 14 years. It can't be that hard. No, it's not. It's more just about having to think about it. So I actually prefer to do it raw versus using an app I've never used, like on my fitness pal or chronometer or anything. Um, so I, I tend to do it in an Excel sheet, right? I literally write out the food item and then I write out the protein, carbs, calories in it and then i add them all up as i go um everybody that says it's hard doesn't realize how hard it was before computers like when you have to do it in a notebook and do the math every day like that's how we started doing it it's like does anybody know what is in chicken anyone doesn't anybody know like well

i remember the notebooks that we had of like trying to do the bad like i fuck i hope i carried the one correctly or i just ruined my whole day that's actually really funny and it makes me think about like the old days of like you know pre-steroid era that i romanticized super hard about yeah um i recommended mccollum's book to one of our clients the other day amazing i love I love it. He was like, do you have any good strength training books? I was like, actually, the thing I read the least about is the thing I talk about all day long. I don't have to read.

I have Brian on the show. Stop it. But I don't even know what you were asking me. What were we talking about? Tracking macros. Like people put up, how about this? I don't really think that if you're really motivated to get to your goals, tracking macros is like it's what you got to do.

Yeah, it's just part of the process. If you have real-life goals, go do it. Don't stop acting like your life is so hard. And it was a joke because we had real goals, and before you had spreadsheets to calculate it all for you, we would do it in notebooks and have to actually calculate it ourselves and try and figure out what you were actually eating um i the the question was kind of along the lines of like do you actually find it hard and yeah find it hard in that um going from your

subjective way of doing it to now being in an objective way of like knowing exactly what's going on. Have you found it at all? Like more difficult, more cumbersome, more stressful just because now you have like a real number to hit versus satiated. No. And it's because I basically eat the same things every day. Like I don't, I don't create a lot of diversity in what I put in my body. So it's really easy for me to be like, okay, I had two shakes with weighing Gatorade today. So that just copy and paste, throw that there. Like I had like, you

know, this chicken and this rice and these veggies and this potato and a bunch of fruit. And I just literally do a lot of copying and pasting with like, you know, changing values based on size and stuff like that. So, um, no, I don't really find it cumbersome. I think it does get cumbersome though, when I'm out away from home, because then I'm like, okay, I'm at this restaurant. I had seven bites of bread and half a tablespoon of butter. And like, there's oil on my chicken. Oh, and I don't want to forget about those Brussels sprouts that I ate. And like, suddenly I'm in my phone and I'm like writing everything down. So I don't forget to put it in my log. And in those situations, I'm just kind of like, ah, this sucks, you know? And so I'd almost rather not go

out a lot of times because it's just easier and cleaner to do it at home. Yeah. I find the eating out thing to be one. It's gross. Like even, even when you eat at like a nice restaurant, I just assume they've got margins. And the easiest way to do it is to get cheaper food and put more oil on it and put more butter on it and hide more BS. And then you have to go to the bathroom as soon as you get home. And that was your indicator that it probably wasn't ideal. I find that stuff so inflammatory in my gut it's it's brutal um i i i i think that eating out is just it's a really tricky way to do it do you have like a a place that you go because like i'm the same way i i have like five meals i eat like breakfast

i've eaten the same breakfast every day i think think for the last, like way too long, like, how do you, I guess when you are going out, like what, what's kind of the goals to stay on track and at the same time, like not overstress yourself that tomorrow you're going to weigh two pounds more from just canola oil on everything. Yeah, totally. Um, so the, one of the things that I do is, is I, I, I, I do eat less calories on the days where I know that I'm going to go out because I think that you have to account for there being more calories in what you eat out than what you actually think is in there. So I try to buffer that a little bit. Um, we don't have like necessarily like, uh, one or two places that we always go, but we do always go somewhere like Kim. It's always Kim

and I, like we don't really go out with the kids too much. Cause we got two of them and they're just a bad age. They're not ready for public yet. Right. But we always go to somewhere where I can either get like a half a chicken with mashed potatoes and veggies, or like a 12 ounce sirloin with mashed potatoes and veggies or something along those lines, you know? So it's, it's a relatively clean process. And then the difference between going out in the off season is that it's a guaranteed overfed in my log because there's going to be all the appetizers and the bread and the beer and all those things. But right now in this moment, like Kim and I have a date on Friday and we're going to a steakhouse. So that's literally it.

Like, I'm not going to touch any bread. I'm not going to get a drink. I'm just going to get steak, potato and veggie. And then I'm going to overestimate all the fat that's in there by like 10 or 15%. And I'm going to just assume that that's right. Yeah. I feel like that's like one of the trickier things is like when you go out to do that it should like and it's also a mindset of playing the long game where it's like you just know that you're going to get some like the oils just keep it simple with just the the oils that are in the food that you're eating when you eat out you're likely just by putting a little bit of them in your body and you're actually probably getting a lot of them when you eat out, you're likely just by putting a little bit of them in your body and you're actually probably getting a lot of them when you eat, whatever it is like, um, should play

the long game and not get too hung up on what the scale says the next day. Like you're just not going to go eat out and wake up the next day and be super stoked that you lost two pounds. It's just, it's a really, really tricky thing eating out with all, all the stuff that goes into them. Yeah, absolutely. I don't expect any weight loss. And it's cool because I post my body weight every day on Instagram and people really appreciate when I'm like, went into today with no expectations, scales up two pounds, what are you going to do? And they're like, how are you so cool about that?

Because you just expect it. Yeah. I think that also gets into realistic expectations of fat loss. I think it was bill campbell put something up the other day that was just like look This shit's hard Like you're gonna be hungry Like you can you could be told all the time that you could go into a refeed and you can boost your metabolism by little 50 pound jumps a week and your food and all this stuff But at some point you have to eat a lot less than the amount of food that you're going to burn.

And if you do it a lot less, you're still only going to lose like two pounds a week. And that doesn't seem like a really big enough number to deal with all the hunger. Two pounds a week is a lot. That's like a thousand pounds. It's a ton, right? Yeah, that's a big number.

No, every diet. But it doesn't seem like a lot. You're like, can't, I've heard that you could lose like five. Well, maybe, I don't know. Like, yeah. If you cut out all your carbs and you just lose all the glycogen that's in your muscles. Week one, week one happiness. Well, all the keto studies, right? Like in the first week, everybody loses way more weight with keto, but then by like the 10th or 12th week, everyone's at the exact same place as long as you match calories. Yeah. Actually, I'd love to dig into that.

You just immediately reminded me of like all the absurd ways that we've eaten in the past. Like in comparing where you're at, not even necessarily in this deficit, but just how do you feel switching out of that intermittent fasting formula to, to more consistent meals throughout the day? Well, you know, what's interesting is I now have consistent calorie feedings throughout the day, but I don't have consistent meals throughout the day. I still don't eat until the, like after 12 PM. Um, so the first two or three things I put in my body every day are way in Gatorade shakes. So I have one of them pre-workout and I work out at eight 30 while I have another one. And then, uh, I'll usually have a third one at some point before noon. So I'll have like literally three scoops away and some

Gatorade powder. And that's all I put in my body until noon. And then I have one big meal and then I'll have like a small snack and then I'll have another big meal for dinner. So I'm still following a lot of the principles that I followed with intermittent fasting. But because I work out at 830 and I'm very aware that I don't perform well and that research basically shows that you don't want to go into like a strength training session fasted. I now have these whey Gatorade, and I do feel great with them, man. They're good. They're a huge, a huge, like kind of middle ground between fasting and eating

for me because they, they don't bog me down like food does. Like when I would eat in the morning, it would always make me feel sluggish and slow. And I would just kind of want to take a nap. And when I fasted, I had all this energy and I feel like I still get that energy with the, uh, the way in Gatorade the same way. Yeah. Um, if you were to even combine that going further back to when we were eating like three pounds of meat on the form in a day, um, having the carbohydrates and, and being, I can't believe we used to eat like that. I know it's unbelievable. You would throw like a pound of guac on like a pound of meat and we'd

put like a pound of cheese on there. We should have coined that shit like keto or something, made all the money. We should have, we should have made it something, the George Foreman keto diet. Yeah. Have you, you know, I guess in, in getting to your cut, I would imagine that you're relatively close to being similar to that and in the low caloric, um, state and having probably at least one gram of protein per pound of body weight. Um, it's just hard to eat a bunch of carbohydrates when you're at that low of a calorie count. Yeah. I, I tend to, uh, go with lower fat and to keep my carbs up. So most of my days now with like a 2,500 calorie goal are going to be about 200 protein, 300 carbs, and you know, 55 to 60 grams of fat. Yeah. That is kind of low.

Damn bro. That's a lot of chicken breast there's that just mainly shakes well i get 90 grams of protein from shakes which really helps because uh then i don't have to have any fat at all with it yeah and then uh usually i actually don't eat chicken breasts i usually have either really lean tri-tip like we have uh the whole foods here basically has them completely trimmed and there's like no fat in there at all so i'll i cook up tri-tips you know four pounds of those a week and then i i cook up a bunch of chicken thighs and the main difference is i just don't eat um any cheese or uh or perfect bars anymore cheese gets you dude that's it's too delicious i the the thing that i I'm really trying to do is just not eat the foods that perpetuate me wanting to eat more of that food. And cheese is one that you will not escape.

As soon as you have a piece of cheese, you're definitely having a second piece of cheese. Oh, it's amazing. It's like looking at a chip and a guacamole and going, yeah, I'll have one of those. Yeah, right. Might as well just get a spoon and eat the wholeole and going, yeah, I'll have one of those. Yeah. Right. Might as well just get a spoon and eat the whole thing. It's not possible. Some things you just literally was like, well, that's perfect. Yeah. Can't do it. Perfect food bar. Yeah. Right. You're definitely gonna have to until you don't feel good. Yeah. I had to stop ordering them, man.

I couldn't even like have, I couldn't have them around. Yeah. Oh dude. Tell me, when are you going to hit one 82? Are you, do you have like a timeline that you're trying to get there? Cause you've been at this for like three, four months now. April 26th is when it started. It's a great day in the history of the universe. Your birthday. That's right. It's a great day in history.

You got, you started to get, you started to get lean and I was born. Look at that. That's right, son. So, so yeah, so I guess I'm a great day to start things like life and getting jacked. Yeah, absolutely. I guess I'm 13 weeks in right now, but I took a two week diet break in June. So I'm really only been dieting for 11 weeks total. Yeah. Um, do you want to know what, go ahead. Sorry. I was just going to say, I think that it'll probably be about six weeks until I get to one 82, um, about four and a half pounds away. And as I get leaner, it just, it gets a little slower.

So I would guess right now that I would probably say like mid September, mid yeah. Mid September is probably a guess. I put on 17 pounds when Adelaide was born. And I told myself that I was going to lose 17 pounds when Anson was born. When you did it. I'm not there. Not even close. I got like six pounds to go. Oh, you wouldn't be at the same weight again. Yeah.

If I get to 180, it'll be about 17 pounds. I live at like 197-ish when I'm not really focused, just kind of like trying not to go to bed in a coma every night. Exactly, yeah. Like that's really like the overfedness. Yeah, mainly just I think that's really like the overfedness. Um, yeah, mainly just, I think there's just like a, I was very unskilled with baby one, which was plus 17 now being much more skilled and understanding things. It's a, it's easier to, to go the opposite way. It's kind of

a fun little, fun little thing. So when do you think you're going to get to your weight? Is it going to be about six weeks as well? The goal is, uh, like October. I don't even know how many weeks away that is about five. It's a little, it's a little slower, but yeah, that's, that's good. It's nice to take it slow. Um, yeah, there could be like super calorie dumps that we could do, but I also don't even know if that's like an effective way to get to the thing that you want. The slow way is much better, much more

aesthetically aligned. Um, like not eating for four days. Sure. You might do it, but it's like, who cares? You're not, you're going to wake up the next day and just not be there. So, um, yeah, if I had like one, one 80, one 81 mid October, it'd be pretty sweet. It'd be cool. Is your, uh, is your hope to be able to sustain that or are you going to kind of turn around and come back up again um well there's uh i feel like mentally i feel like i can hang out here's the thing that always happens is like i'm really bad at staying – this is another skill level that I just – I feel like in being an athlete for our whole lives or whatever, you're like always in like a I'm trying to get super strong gaining phase or I'm preparing for competition and need to get leaner and faster

and those pieces. So, um, the idea of just hanging out at maintenance for like months and months is super, that's almost more cumbersome than looking at the next four months and going, yeah, I'm just going to lose 15 pounds. Like that, that seems easy because I've practiced that significantly more. Um, or I've practiced eating a lot consistently more. What I very rarely have practiced ever in my life is just hanging out at 185. It's really hard. Yeah. Like it, and then 185, then you, it's like, oh, well, 187, that's not bad. I still look good. And then like, oh, one night you could just, it's almost like you just like you, you allow yourself to just slowly, slowly get to it. And then when I was

one day, I was like 195 and you're like, Oh, I'm fat again. Come on. But like hanging out at maintenance, when you have an ability to eat as much food as somebody that's been lifting weights and training for a really long time, I feel like it's one of the harder skills in this whole thing because you're so used to either eating to get strong or eating for a competition. And I would say if I could just stay between the 185 and 190 number, I think that that's like a really healthy number as I get older. But I'm also like not too concerned about 195. I just, I don't know. Yeah. I really like gotten there. No, it's a really weird thing. Cause the reason I ask is because

I also find it really hard to do maintenance. Um, and I almost feel like when I go through a period where I try to maintain, I almost have to keep the mindset that I'm dieting because I have to restrict myself from things that I actually want. It feels like you're playing defense. Yeah, yeah, totally. Totally. So I don't know if that's like a sustainable way to even live. Like I almost like this model better where I spend nine months slowly going up, but that I understand that like, it's going to go up. And then I take three months and I knock it all off. And then I take another nine months and build it back up. And then at least I have nine months out of every year where I'm literally living content. I'm eating the things

I want. And like, it's just going up slowly. And then as soon as it gets to a point where like your number is 195 or my number is 198 or whatever it is where I'm like, Oh, I'm fat again. Then I got to go back down. Yeah. I have found that to be like a real, and it's, it's a problem for everybody, right? Like if, if somebody comes to us or anybody on this call, it's like, I need to lose 20 pounds. You go, cool. You've got a goal. We've got a date. We know we can get there. This is the plan. Get ready to get a little bit hungry, get ready to walk a little bit more in the mornings. Like there's, there's like a very clear thing thing but the idea of just staying at maintenance forever it's so scary sounds really hard i'm like ah 196 ah no what do i do now should i should i go into a diet for two weeks and get down like i think that that really

is and once you start filling your body up there's like just more water being stored like there's there's there's so many different layers to it that um it that that really is like the thing that i struggle with the most i i don't really have a problem um at all getting to a place that i need to be on a specific day or some sort of competition or whatever that is and then spending the rest of time trying to get strong and lift all the weights and have all the energy. It's, it's the idea of like maintaining one 85 forever. It's the periodization of life.

Yeah. Forever is hard though. Um, dude, where can people find you now that you're back on the internet? So for the moment, first off, you were like,

you were like you were like you went almost like daily on a post when you got hacked and i was like oh my god borstein went all in he is he is an influencer now heads up there's like five posts in five days yeah you got your account back you were you were so ready to attack the internet well i need I need a man. It was, it was just like, it was one of those things where like, I needed to feel like I was doing something that was moving me forward because just sitting there, like having a pity party about the fact that some Russian stole my Instagram account was not very effective for anybody. So actually like going on the gram and like reaching out to people to post, to try to get me followers and making content and just kind of doing the

things that I usually do so that it didn't feel like it wasn't business as usual. That actually really helped because by the end of like a week, I actually felt like my new account was my account. I just had less followers and no swipe up option. But, but now I got it back. So everything's cool.

The world is right. The Russians did not win. Was it Russia? Is Russia after you and Trump all at the same time dude they it was the same guy too i knew there was politics in this this conversation that's great i can't believe it was russia was it really yeah dude he's been communicating with me on whatsapp since day one so uh so we've been communicating and then you you'll never believe this like your your friend, it's my friend, I guess. So, so, so I wrote him, I wrote him yesterday when I got my account back and I was like, Hey dude, thanks for playing.

That was so fun. He wrote back today and he was like, he was like, I'm not playing, you know, give me money. I give you your account back. And I'm like, bro, I have my account. And he goes, you've got my account? And I'm like, it's my account. And he goes, and I was like, he was like, all right, well, if you ever need some good hacking, you know where to find me or something like that.

So like I have a skillset. Right, right, right. So anyway, my new Instagram account is, my current Instagram account is at Brian Borstein coach. But as soon as the internet world's release at Brian Borstein, cause there's a two week lag period after it gets changed, then I can change it back to at Brian Borstein and it'll all will be right with the world. Um,

I am also a podcaster. You've been on the podcast. It's exciting. We do a eat, train, prosper with, uh, Aaron Straker. He's been on the podcast. It's exciting. We do a eat, train, prosper with Aaron Straker. He's been on barbell shrug before. And, uh, on eat, train, prosper. We talk a lot about dorky hypertrophy. So if you want to talk about the benefits of short rest periods or getting really, really sore or getting out of breath, we're not your podcast. If you want to

talk about taking really long rest periods. I would disagree with that too. I feel like your training knowledge, people should just listen to you. Even if they don't, uh, they would learn something. Even if they were a hundred percent dedicated to CrossFit, they would, they would learn a lot. Well, that's awesome. I appreciate that. That's super cool. So yeah, eat, Train, Prosper. We're on all the major providers. And then EvolvedTrainingSystems.com, ParagonTrainingMethods.com. Paragon Training Methods is going to be a little more female-based. Evolved Training Systems is kind of like my lab. I get to try out new ideas and have people tell me what they think of them, which is super cool. And I'm really, really happy to have that opportunity. So come do some evolved training systems and, uh, and, uh, let's experiment together. Yeah. Doug Larson. Right on. Find me on Instagram. I haven't been hacked yet. Not that one. We did lose an account a couple of years ago. We lost a barbell business account, had 10,000 plus people on it and never,

ever got it back. So good for you for getting your account back. That's fantastic. Thanks dude. Yeah. it was quite a relief. I had a number of people in the space reach out to me and tell me they've had similar things happen to themselves. And most of them ended up getting them back as well. Super interesting because I, when it happened to you, I was like, man, I wonder what I would do. What if I would just quit or if I would go all in, if I would try, like, I don't know.

Yeah. There was definitely a part of me that was like, fuck it. We're going to the mall dives and I'm just buying a hot on the water. I'm never. Yeah. Uh, I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner.

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