Barbell Shrugged - Training For Aesthetics w/Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash and Dr. Mike Lane #854

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

In this episode, Doug Larson, Dr. Mike Lane, and Coach Travis Mash break down the real-world science of training for aesthetics: getting leaner, building muscle, and looking better without losing sight of performance, health, and longevity. Mike opens with a wild DEXA scan story about breast implants and body composition testing, explaining how implants can skew lean mass and bone density numbers. The takeaway is simple: body composition tools are useful, but only when you understand what they are actually measuring. The crew then moves into the big rocks of physique change: nutrition, training volume, cardio, consistency, and choosing a style of training you can actually sustain. Travis shares how endurance work, reduced alcohol, better hydration, and family-wide nutrition habits helped him get leaner, while Doug and Mike explain why diet is usually the fastest lever for fat loss and lifting is the signal that helps preserve or build muscle. Whether you love bodybuilding, powerlifting, CrossFit, martial arts, climbing, or just want to look good and feel capable, the message is clear: train most days, eat mostly whole foods, and build habits you can repeat for years. Links: Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram

Drug family, Doug Larson here, and this week on Barb Bell Strug, we're talking about training for aesthetics, how to build a lean muscular physique while keeping your training focused on strength, performance, and long-term health. In this episode, we talk about why nutrition is the biggest driver of fat loss, how strength training helps to preserve muscle mass while you're in a caloric deficit, as well as, of course, how it helps to build muscle mass when you're in a caloric surplus. And most importantly, we discuss by finding a style of training that you genuinely enjoy, may be the single most important factor to your long-term success. So if you want to be leaner, stronger, more muscular, more confident,

and feel great in your own skin, this episode is for you. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Strug. I'm Doug Larsen here with Coach Travis Mash and Dr. Mike Lane. We're going to talk training for aesthetics today. And in the pre-show conversation, Mike Lane, you had a great story about doing Dexa scans on breast implants. Let's jump into that first.

And then we can roll into the rest of the real discussion here. Yeah, we go straight into the too long didn't read. So to contextualize it is part of teaching exercise physiology. We go through and teach body composition. And obviously, body composition is super important for a lot of different outcomes with health and obviously performance. Now, we're lucky enough here that for years we utilized a dexas scanner looking at lean body mass, fat mass, and bone mass. And obviously, bone mass is a big freaking deal with osteopenia, osteoporosis, especially in older female populations. Now, because of some rough combinations of events, I had someone near and dear to me who had to get a double mastectomy.

But after the double mastectomy, because of breast cancer, they wanted to obviously get implants to at least have some, you know, form based on how they were previously, which, you know, I was in the meeting helping support them through that. And I am a curious person by nature. And years ago, I had a student ask me before we did the body come. comp lab of, you know, if, because we take, say, take out all your piercings, because go figure. If you put that through a dexter scanner, it's metal, it's dense, it's going to show up his bone, or it's going to flag it's something completely different where the machine's like, that's not human. Whatever that is, that is way too dense to be normal human tissue.

So I was like, well, shoot, I mean, it's silicone, but it's there to replace body fat, and I don't know. So we're sitting there, they're going through, like, do you want, you know, this shape, this size, kind of like, how were you, you know, all the different measurements. And I was like, they brought in, of course, you know, the demos. And I was like, okay, obviously this is never going into human because we're all touching this with their bare hands. And, you know, you got to use good ACA technique, obviously in those situations.

And I was like, do you have some extras? I could just borrow? And they, of course, like, look at me. And the person I'm there with is like, he's an exercise physiology. He's a professor. Like, he's got a PhD in working out. Like, and they're like, yeah, we actually got to, you know, we show these for demos. Then, you know, at a certain point, we just throw them away.

And I was like, sounds great. So I grabbed five of them and brought them back to the lab. And we just did some piloting of just having them sit with the implants on their lap when they're in a bod pod, lay them on them. Like you kind of put them on a human whenever they did the dexas. So scan them once, set them on top, scan them again. And the wildest thing is they showed up mostly as lean mass because that's silicone plus the outer layer. is actually denser than typical, you know, what breast tissues normally is adipose. So here's the problem is if you have someone that has a number of different implants,

because obviously, you know, it's where you put it is what it becomes. So obviously people get butt implants. Maybe I should think about cath implants. And, you know, you can put them in all those locations. Now, when they measure bomenal density, typically they look at your hips. They look at your low back. And when you do it that way, you're fine. But if you're basing their bone mineral density off of their total body scan and they do have implants, it's going to make it look like if we put, let's say a really heavily endowed female is going to have like two to three pounds of implants put there.

Just go with that number. If that shows up as 80% muscle, then we're talking about it thinks that they've got 2.4 more pounds of muscle on them than they really do, which can be meaningful on a small build, especially someone they can. just went through cancer chemotherapy where they got sarcopenia they got loss of muscle mass and it's increasing their bone middle density and we're talking on some of the people who piloted it was seeing their bone metal density was 10% higher than it really is and so it's a wild situation where yeah you get to you get to play with implants which is cool you know it's definitely a little bit different and otherwise and you know my male students are like I can do this too like yeah we just got to lay them on top of you like we're not putting

these under the skin like we're just seeing like pre post houses change. And so, yeah, it turns out based upon our pilot data, that's what implants do. And, you know, it's like there's a lot of people that they get those implants over for aesthetics because of, you know, they want to look better in certain ways. Like, that's cool. I wish I was taller. I'm just not willing to break my legs to do that. And other folks, you know, they go through something catastrophic and they've got to go. And, you know, because of a breast cancer. Like, I mean, shoot, do you just want to have one side? Or, you know, if you've got to get both, like, you know, how much of your body image,

you know, how much of your self-esteem is wrapped up in how you're built and it's like, okay, you do what you got to do. So, yeah. So that's how you have implants. Yeah, never really thought deeply about how that would affect a dexas scan or any other body composition output. So summarizing there, if you do have breast implants and you go get a dexas scan, it's going to overestimate muscle mass and bone density.

The two things that you presumably want more of or to be in good quality is it's going to overestimate those two things. It's not really affecting your body fat percentage specifically other than it gives you a little bit more body weight. No, because it shows up mostly as lean. So what it's going to do is it's now it comes down to how you are in the first place. So if you're like an ultra lean female, you're a female that's like less than 20% body fat, the implants are going to be sitting at a, it's going to pretty much be about the same because you're adding about 80% lean, 20% fat. based upon our pilot stuff. But if you happen to be a, you know, 30, you know, percent higher body fat individual, it's going to actually make you look leaner than you are because it's going to put on more lean mass than you really have and just put on not as much fat mass at the same ratio.

And of course, it's adding in some bone. Mind you that's looking at the total body and it's looking at the trunk because that's, you know, the region you're going to see that if we're specifically talking breast implants. So what you're talking is like decision making. So when you're trying to just make a decision on diet, nutrition, or working out, it's going to give you false assumption. Yeah, it's giving you a false negative. Yeah. Or, you know, too much atrophy and or getting into osteopenia osteoporosis if you're going

off global. So you got to really do that regional, like look at the hips, look at the low back. And, you know, if you're there, you know, somebody listening has got to be a personal trainer that's had to work with somebody that's gone through breast cancer. and they had to have gone through all these steps. And it's like, you know, after the mastectomy, as much as it sucks, if you can run body comp on them, you know, BIA, something else. And then, because then they, first they usually get expanders put in,

depending on what type of tissue surgery they have. They literally fill them with saline until they get to the size they want. Then they do the swapping out. And you kind of want to do body cop around each of those because the real quick, abrupt changes, those are changes not based upon real differences in fat mass. real differences in lean mass, that instead is differences based upon literal matter being put in and pulled out of the human body. Right.

So, you know, if you're working with a 56-year-old woman and she's trying to, you know, increase her quality of life, increase her muscle mass, and you're like, oh, dude, look at that, man, we put on three pounds of, we're put on two pounds of muscle. It's like, you put on two pounds of what we call lean mass. Like, that's true, but that's not the same as two pounds of muscles in the first point. That's another big thing because skin is lean. Connective tissue is lean. You know, people start to think like, oh, man, I gained however much of lean mass. And it's like, your large intestine's hypertrophy if you're getting in more calories, which counts as lean mass. Just like, they actually, if you're not getting in as many calories.

And so people are like, I lost lean mass in my trunk. It's like, well, you maybe lost some skin because you lost some inches on your waist, which is cool. and that second, your gut doesn't have to be as big because you're not processing as many calories. So where it gets real quirky, you just got to make sure you stay on top of those things. Yeah. So if you don't have breast implants and then you go get breast implants

and you're diligent about getting your body composition done on a regular basis, all of a sudden you get your breast implants in and then you look leaner and more muscular than you actually are and vice versa. Like if you had them for a long time and then you remove them, all of a sudden you're going to feel like you can look at the numbers and go, oh my God, I got fatter also. No boobs and fatter.

Yeah. It's a rough day. Yeah. And that's where like you want to have measurements on your limbs. Like, you know, it's a good old fashion. And I know, you know, match is going to probably mimic me the second I do. But like, you know, the arm measurement's great because you've got like that cross section area. It's easy measure.

Thigh cross section area is difficult because everybody's, you know. It's so different. Yeah. But you want to have something where it's like, here's how big my arm is, here's how big my thigh is, because, you know, let's face it, you know, we know

leg lean mass is a really good indicator of quality, life, and functionality. And so, you know, if you're just looking at global measurements, you know, it can be misleading. In fact, one really good study I've got is a year-in-s study, but anecdote. We had a football player here years ago.

I had them both on the bod pot on the decks at the time. for his ACL, you know, playing college football as a wide receiver, you know, bad hit, or not bad hit, but, you know, hit in the knee, it happens. That dude was training so hard on his upper body because he couldn't do anything on that leg. His body comp didn't change. But when you looked at his Dexa, he lost four pounds of lean mass on his surgery leg. And then he gained four pounds. of lean mass from the waist up. So like the dude

legit got spring break ready. And if we only had a bob pod, we're like, dude, you're great. But if you look at him, you're like, that's the surgery leg because that's the one that is markedly smaller than that leg. And unless he wants to run in circles, he's probably not to be that good of a football player right. Yeah, he's going to do it based

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That's A-R-E-E-Lab.com. Now, back to the show. All right, so that's our first body composition tip of the day here with breast implants. For the rest of the show, start with you, Travis Mash. I know you got much leaner here in the last couple years. You spent a lot of time working on your body composition. The rest of the show is about, you know, getting lean and muscular and looking your best aesthetics. Right.

But we're like the first couple of like big rocks that moved in your world to get you leaner here just recently. I mean, definitely like I think we talked about like the endurance training I started doing, but that was the big one. It's like getting into like not just fitness, really it was Andy. Listen to him, VL2 Max. He's trying to implement all the different, you know, you know, types of training to improve my VL2 Max. So doing some, yes, I do some. I hate boring long walks or ruck walks, but I like doing the intent. I really like, you know, getting up into the higher intensity.

So I've been doing a lot of air dine where I like go 15 seconds all out. It's harder as I can go and then you, you know, you're chilling for a minute. But spending one day a week on that, like the, you know, we're going into the five, the heart rate, getting the heart rate up the fives. And then spend some time at least one or two days where it's the long intensity steady state. But then, you know, doing some just like tempo work as well. And so where you're in the threes and four, some and down to two. using ones. But really that, along with, of course, you have to do your diet, your nutrition.

Luckily, my whole family bought into that now. So we're all like, you know, definitely way more into like just drinking water, you know, no of the sugar stuff. That was a big change. Like, you know, not drinking like sodas or beer, really beer every night, dude, drinking. Like I haven't been drinking at all. And like, I bet the last three months, I've had maybe one drink. And so, It's been a big change. I helped my sleep. There's so many things. It's hard to pinpoint.

Like that's what that's the start of it. Yeah. I mean, yeah, those are obviously the kind of the three big categories. It sounds like your, your mind went straight to the conditioning stuff first. So that was a big change for you.

But. And I let her hear what you guys think about this. Like in my mind, like I almost separate diet and nutrition and training relative to the body comp. Like training for me, like lifting. weights, doing cardio, like I'm doing those for for strength performance, et cetera, reasons. Right. And then as far as body comp goes, whether I'm building muscle or losing body fat,

I'm going up or I'm going down, like really like most of my effort is going to go into diet for those changes specifically. And, and cardio is to have a better, better cardiovascular health, better conditioning for jihitsu, et cetera. I'm like, that's why I'm doing cardio. I'm not, I personally am not doing cardio to try to lose body fat. If I want to lose body fat, then I'm, I'm going to go alter my diet and like that's going to be a much faster um road to success in my experience uh and then i basically live weights all the time no matter what so it doesn't really change that much no because that's fun yeah yeah yeah 100 percent like i'm i really am mostly doing it for fun and then there's all the other downstream benefits but if i didn't love doing it then i wouldn't have done it basically my entire

life with almost no breaks at the end of the day i'm doing because i enjoy it but uh mike lane what do you think about that like how how um how much does diet play into body versus training in your mind. What's the kind of the split there? Ooh, now if we want to go kind of hot seat and you have to say a percentage, you know, it's one of those situations that I would, I would naturally give a greater percentage of credence to the diet, you know, to your nutrition, whereas we can make a straight up,

we can make strong men at both sides because the reality being is, you know, the good old you can out eat a bad diet. Like, it's one of those things. If you're pounding down 8,000 plus calories a day, like, that's going to be really hard to offset with enough exercise to really just make that sustainable in anyone's real life. And, you know, I joke with my students of, like, one of the leanest I got before I really got good with dietary discipline, breakfast was two Pop-Tarts and a protein shake. Lunch was two thick burgers, fries, and, like, the biggest soda I could have. And dinner every night was a Chinese buffet or a golden correct. And I did that for about a month.

And that was when I was training for cheerleading nationals. And we're doing two-a-day practices. And I was lifting weights six days a week. So it's like, you know, a hot enough furnace burns all fuels. But for people that have a life, have work, have lifestyle responsibilities, the best lever to pull hands down initially is going to be that nutrition. Because you clean that diet up, you decrease the calories. And, like, you know, people will, some folks will denigrate.

the use of diet soda. Some people will denigrate, you know, it's like, oh, man, like you're drinking light beer. What's the point? It's just, it boils down to math. Are we burning more than we're taking in? Of course, there's a lot of nuance, a whole lot of things that go on there. But if you're going to go and instead drink zero calories of diet soda as opposed to 500 calories of Mountain Dew, congratulations. Yeah, no doubt. That over a week extrapolates to a pound. If at every everything else stays in that bubble. And so I'm a big proponent of which lever are they already pulling. And let's start pulling the other one.

Because we've all been around the guys that they train like absolute rock stars, like they get after it. And then it's chicken wings, pizza, beer. And then they're like, bro, I can't get lean. I'm like, and this is a bad joke. And this is an anecdote. But what I find is the guys that say they can't gain weight have no food near them and no plan to eat next.

the guys that can't lose weight typically are having that conversation with me while they're eating and it's just like I have an idea here you might not like it yeah but

I go along with that my uh when I was when I was a leanist when I was like fighting MMA I was competing weightlifting and MMA and yeah you're if I'm in my if anyone's in their 20s and they're training basically all day long

or like you know three four five six hours a day like I would go from weight from practice to kickboxing to jiu-jitsu and then to m-ma like I would do like four practices a day and yeah back then again I also ate fairly healthy in retrospect compared to most people I wasn't eating fast food everything whatever else but I was eating as much as I possibly could and it was hard for me it was hard for me to put on weight like yeah I had to I used to take uh you guys there I have those cans of coconut cream it's like it's like 800 calories per can like canned coconut coconut um it's not coconut cream it's not it's not about anyway but say it's like 50 or 60 grams

of fat and 800 calories and we used to like make these blender bombs where like we would have bananas and in blueberries and in some other good stuff but then on top of it's yeah peanut butter and a whole can of that coconut it was like 2,000 calories in a single shake and we would have that as a a single meal that's like again like 1,5002,000 calories as like one meal not not counting the other three or four or five meals and still as lean as can be muscular, you know, as a 195 pound man, 205, maybe at my biggest. And like, it was hard to get past 205, even though I'm having meals that are 2,000 calories. I'm just training all day long. I did the same exact thing. I know the summer that I really got into martial arts. I,

I stopped when I first started at App State. I mean, football drives your life. But then you finally figure it out, you get used to it. Then I went back and started a jihitsu. And then we started even messing with, um, what, oh, Capueta. Have you ever done Capuida? It's like the dance thing. Started doing that. Judo, like I got so into it. And I even did a kickboxing. It's the only time I ever did it, but I did dig boxing that summer.

But yeah, I could eat as much. I worked, I was working at the local telephone company. And they were, we were working for the, it was the engineering department, renumbering polls. They were like updating their records. So I was walking and walking. And so like, I can't imagine how many calories.

I was consuming and burning. I mean, it was just, I would eat like five hot dogs. You know, I mean, like, it was like a hot dog eating contest and still read and be like, but like you was lifting. You were working, lifting, running martial arts. And then I started doing that, do that kickboxing, train like three weeks. And then, well, let me say, tough man. It was a tough.

The old redneck get in the ring and throttle each other. But what a great summer that was, like. And that's one of those things. Like, it's all about the volume of work you're doing. If you're doing more work in general, you're burning more calories, which makes it easier to lose weight. And then at the same time, if you're just eating more calories, you're going to accidentally get in more protein.

You're going to accidentally probably hit all of your micronutrient goals as much as I don't want people to do it through Glyzy. And at the same time, because you're young, you're at that stage where your adaptability is super high, you know, you can eat not great, gain damn near just muscle, not really gain any appreciable fat. And at the same point, that's where contextually, all of us are at the stage now where if we really want to push gaining lean mass for losing fat mass,

recomposition is really hard. It's easier for us to do a slow cut or a slow bulk. Because let's face it, the faster your bulk, the faster it's going to jiggle and not so much flex as you want. And vice versa. And so that's one of those things like, you know, dependent on who's listening, it's all about where you're at. And if you're in your 30s and 40s,

and this is the start of your training montage, then I wouldn't even worry about trying to push your body weight one direction or the other. Just train and lean up the diet over time. And you'll probably gain lean mass and lose fat mass. Yeah, the scale won't change, but you'll look better, you'll feel better, and you'll perform better.

And then at a certain point, have that look of like, okay, you know, I'm 210 to 21510 on a really good day. So, like, if I wanted to be like bodybuilding, like, let's get on stage, I probably need to be down in the 190s. Yeah. Probably 180s. Whereas, you know, and let's throw some toxicity because I didn't get a chance to do it earlier. But remember, the adult male starts at 200 pounds. So you at 195, you were not a man yet, Doug.

Yeah. Fluctuating between not quite a man and just barely over being a man. Yeah. Open down. Open down. Like what I was competing in that moment. Oh, man. Yeah.

It's the athlete. It's who you want to be. You know, if you want to be a jiu jitzy guy and you're not trying to be super heavyweight, it's kind of a who of you to be not ultra lean, but at least lean. Hell yes. Lean mass you got in your weight class, you know, and if skills identical, it's going to come down who's more powerful or who's stronger. I just like it looks like a, if you ever, if you ever been to a jihist to me,

it looks like a power to me. Those dudes are all jacked. Like, there's no drug testing. So I'm not, no inferences there. but like everyone is like yokes and I'm like I feel at home here so yeah I was looking for west side barbell shirts and there were a few back back when I was competing in MMA and weightlifting you know for weight lifting I want to be as big as possible so I could lift the most weight as possible and for MMA I want to be as small as possible so I'd be competing as other relatively

smaller people so I was competing at welterweight in MMA which is you weigh in at 170 and I was competing either 85 or 94, depending on kilos, depending on, you know, variety of factors, but, you know, 94 kilos is 207. So I would go from like 207 to 170 to 207 to 170. And like that that experience of for a couple of years, they're bouncing back and forth between these two extremes taught me a lot about how to eat to change my body composition. Because again, my training didn't change that much. I was still competing for two different sports. And so I was kind of required to do a lot of weightlifting and required to do a lot of mixed martial arts, wrestling, in Jiu-Jitsu, et cetera, plus conditioning, and that was always lifting weights.

And so all I was changing was my diet. And when I would lose weight, I would lose body fat and get super lean. And then when I would gain the weight back, I wouldn't gain that much body fat, I would just build my muscle mass back up. And I kind of stayed lean the whole time, which kind of gave me the belief over time, at least for me personally, with the amount of training I was doing and whatever genetics I've been blessed with, et cetera, that as long as you're lifting weights, you know, five, six days a week, if your calories are,

are over your surplus, then you're going to put on some muscle mass. And if your calories are below your surplus, you're going to lose body fat. It's like it's kind of win-win. Like, it didn't really matter if you're eating a little bit above or a little bit below. As long as you're gaining or losing weight, kind of a, you know, a comfortable, sustainable. You're not gaining four pounds a week, for week over week over week. As long as you're in that, that like, you know, half a pound to a pound, maybe, maybe more than that if you're coming like right out of a deficit or right out of a peak.

As long as it was like that slow pace, then regardless of the direction, as long as you're training, you're doing, or, you're doing, you are building muscle or you were losing body fat, the two things that you're kind of intending to do without really trying too hard. Yeah. And the one thing I want to hop on top of that is training itself, that muscle, you're turning on the pathways to build more, but you're shutting down the pathways to atrophy to get smaller. So hence, now the question is how much nutrients are we sending to the muscle?

Because worst case scenario, we're not getting smaller. Best case scenario, we're getting bigger. and that's what we've all seen that person, that they go on some crash diet. And this is where we can make comments about people using GLP-1s and stuff like that, where all they do is they cut the calories. And you see, like, literally, their neck shrink. Yeah.

You see, like, that loss of lean mass because your body has no reason to hold extra muscle. If your body accidentally gained muscle at the same rate that you gain fat mass, every 400-pound person you saw, like, I am not. starting anything that person. Like they're just yoked up because like go figure. Like you've got that much more tissue. And so, I mean, that's the reality of it. You've got to give your body a reason to have a muscle.

You got to give it a reason to keep the muscle. I feel like this JLP ones make them, they have a loss of energy too, so they just don't do anything hardly. You're taking less calories. And if your diet wasn't great in the first place, currently we talked about before, now you got a real risk of an inadequacy in one area or the other.

And it's like if all of us were required to only eat 40 grams of protein a day, we're all losing lean mass. Yeah. You know, like it's just the turnover, the loss of skin. I don't want to talk about loss of hair because that's going faster than it normally would. And, you know, your digestive system digesting itself. Like you have a certain amount of protein demands every day, regardless of how jack you want to be. and it's got to come from somewhere

and that's where like starvation long term enough starvation most people don't die of a lack of body fat they die of a lack of protein until like your heart can't repair itself anymore your diaphragm can't repair itself anymore and you essentially die a cardiac arrest which is just like

yeah boy we just have nothing with the happiest musculib conversations here gentlemen I just think it's funny how the paradigm sis you know like you started most of this I don't know about you guys you see Arnold and you start bodybuilding. You know, you get the Arnold Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding, and you start doing that.

And then all of a sudden, you fall in love with powerlifting. You start reading Powerlifting, USA, or you get into weightlifting. And then you start doing more of that type of training, so which is more geared around the list. And then you just do a little bodybuilding here and there. And then all of a sudden, you come back to the world of bodybuilding. You found that you really did love it in the first place. And like, you know, it's like, then you're all. there was a time where I wouldn't have gone into a bodybuilding gym.

I thought it was below me. And then now I love going into all the different machines where I might try something different. It's such a paradigm shift. It's like or a pendulum swing, you know. Swings this way, swings back. And so you got a sound amount of survivorship by us because all of us naturally found our way to the barbell because we were not naturally blessed long distance runners. I'd just like to go forever, you know, out to the woods.

Of course, Doug, you probably do that. I feel like him and Hinters are pretty darn good at that stuff. But, you know, and I think it's now you're thinking about, you know, both like the long game of life, which is when you're a kid and you're looking at high school athletes, you're playing college athletes, you're looking at them, they're more developed. Like, you know, I'm sure all of you guys had that thing when you saw like high schoolers when you were in like elementary school, like, my God, that's a full grown man. Yeah. And now I see high schoolers. I'm like, wait, are you in middle school or elementary school? like oh you're a senior

like this is like a doogie howser thing like you're a really smart 12 year old and like no it's just like that's it's all relative to and then you finally get to be you know whatever size and realize that I guess Diana ball really helped during Arnold Schwarzenegers time and you know but you you then have that

reality of like let's perform with this what we have and maybe we try to go into some more and then eventually drew me there as performance yeah you get to the point where it's like we all know how to deadlift we all know how to squat You know, at this point, if I want to get stronger, I simply need more muscle mass.

You know, like, you can only optimize the horsepower of a four-cylinder civic so far at a certain point. You need to get a bigger engine. And hence that becomes a struggle of my age. It's like, it's so funny. Like, even in my 40s, like, I can start training and I could get strong. I could get back to a 500 plus front squat in no time. I could get my back squat in the 600 in no time. Like I could deliver 700 in no time.

Not now. It's like putting on muscle now becomes, it's a challenge. But, you know, that's fun too. You know, like, you know, like getting a five pound PR and knowing how hard I had to work for that, it's just, you know, it's exciting. And knowing that I'm still stronger than most. And so that's, you know, you just got to be it. You just got to look at the bright side of things. Like completely dwell on, you know, when I was in my 30s and 40s, I'll lose my mind.

But like, you know, I'm leaner. So I start trying to compete at things now that I didn't then. So I'm definitely in better shape than I was in my 30s and 40s. So that's a win. I mean, as far as like the type of training that you do, you mentioned bodybuilding minute ago. Like obviously bodybuilders like that's their whole goal is to change how they look. Like they're, they are physique athletes.

And if you want to change your physique, you should study bodybuilding and how they do it because they're very good at it. That said, there's, you know, many different types of athletes have many great physiques. Like Crossroads have great physiques and, you know, at least, like the leaner power lifters, like in the, in the, in the, in the largest weight classes where where you can get as big as you want, like, bigger. I'm sorry. Shane Hammond is the absolute peak of humanity.

Yeah. Prime Shane, 19, you know, 90, whatever. I love that. Atlanta, Georgia. That's just. I just remember being a LTC with him. Well, I remember looking at the guy looking at Shane Hammond thinking, if I had to fight him, what would I do?

And I could not figure a solution. Like he was, I was thinking about, you know, you think, well, kick him in the knee but his knee is bigger than your quads you're so probably not going to work you're probably just going to get beating and so he was standing next to me at the arnold and i and i turned and looked right over the top of him home i didn't see him he said yeah the incredibly strong muscular all the thing but he's he's a short dude like shorter than i thought when i when i saw him in real life oh like top of nine five foot nine so but can dunk five foot nine weighing three 80 and can dunk how much power

yeah how much force times of velocity does that has to happen for that to get off the ground to a point at dunks imagine them hit you in football no chance talking about a freight train but

but back to the point yeah yes like you still you know in power the team you still get they still look pretty good and the cross really look amazing you look at gymnast I remember looking at a gymnast their upper bodies are like unbelievable.

Incredible. So, but like, I just like it all. That's the problem. Is it now I like being strong. I like looking good. So you're not going to dominate any of them. And that's all right. You know, with powerlifting, that is one of those that to really get to the upper

echelon, obviously you're doing the, in about every sport at a certain time, you understand you're not doing it for your health. If anything that you're doing is objectively bad for your health. I understand. You know, the edge cases. And when you look at, I mean, you look at high-level tennis pros, you look at high-level athletes that have a pretty good metabolic component in their sport. Like you're going to see people that are at least relatively lean, maybe not, you know,

completely diced up. But, you know, if there's not really a metabolic component, like shot putters, throwers, baseball players, it's like, there's not really an incentive to be super lean, to be really good at your sport. If anything, then we can get alignment where it's like, no, man, mass moves mass. You want to be bigger. Otherwise, you're going to get chuffed. Yeah, you're going to kill.

But, you know, the nice thing is, is there's something to be said about the aesthetic of like, if you see somebody that's obviously got muscle mass and as normal body fat lean, they typically look good regardless of frame. And like, we've all seen those people that, oh, maybe you might want to cut this just so we're clear. But whenever I was doing my PhD

and I was teaching a class for like senior level undergrads that are going to be pre, physical therapy schools, what most of them do. And we would do a body comp lab where we ran the Dexa. And one of the gals in the class was literally in the women of insert, you can figure out where I did my PhD program, swimsuit calendar. Like she was one of,

she was missed whatever month. And she was almost 40% body fat. How much? Almost 40%. Like upper 30s. And she's like, how is my body fat so high? I'm like, well, do you, like, do you like work out?

Do you do anything? No, I don't work out at all. I just like watch a class and hang out. I'm like, okay. Do you like watch what you eat or anything like that? Just like, no, I just eat whatever if you like. Then why do you think your body fat should be lower? And she's like, well, because I'm not fat.

And it's just like, and I at least had the wherewithal at that point to be like, you want the jet of lottery, man. Be careful. Yeah. You have got a frame and a way that your body stores body fat that is obviously aesthetically pleasing. Great answer. You know, we've all met those people that, like, they are the cold piece of butter in the center of the toes, just, like, right there. Central adiposity, the android, like, it's just all belly fat.

Like, they got veins sticking out of their arms, veins sticking out of their legs, and, like, they look like they're getting into the third trimester. Yeah. And then we've met those other folks that like whether they're high body fat low body fat because of the skeletal structure because of you know just the nature of how they won the genetic lottery it's like they're going to kind of look good no matter what body comp threat and she just happened to be one of those people and she was like you know obviously like she was in the swimsuit calendar like she was so she had big boobs that's going to be that's going to be strain as well so like Well, and it's, again, genetic lottery, whether or not you wanted or you didn't. And that's one of those things of like, if you're one of those people that just have got, you know, the difference between your chromium width and your Iliac crest width is zero. Like, you know, the only way you're going to get a V-taper is if you build some damn delts. Yeah.

And some lats that artificially makes you look a little broader. And it's not to be that much. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit better. Yeah. And, you know, so that's where like when we think about aesthetics, first just getting better shape. It'll probably make you look better.

and then then think about life like a bodybuilder yeah bodybuilders you know they go for the V-taper you know females obviously glute development is a big piece of what they're judged upon so you can kind of like successfully we need to get brett contraris on the show because that dude figured things out more than all of us and out of market it bulls all three of us glue guy winner yes but but i wasn't saying what got me uh you know when i was making decision to leave Colorado because my dad was sick and I knew I was going to go back to power lifting. Look at Ed Cone. There was an Iron Man where Ed Cone was compared to Dorian and he looked really good. Even his back, which we all know, Dorian's back to be the best of all time. And there was Ed and his back was of equal. It was amazing.

And I'm like, I mean, of course he was pale and white. So he needed tan. black and white look pretty good but yeah he's super white and pasty Irishman but but that made me like super intrigued that you know with with powerlifting you could still be jacked and I remember my first WPO like lately too in the last couple weeks I've really kind of gone down that you know then this I don't know the looking at my old the past so kind of get into the nostalgia of things and I remember being in Orlando at the first pro meet and when the west side barbedo guys got there and they all look like comic book characters

they were so jacked and obviously on tons of solar bodybuilders but whatever i just remember thinking this is so awesome it looked like i was at a hotel with a bunch of comic book characters look like ninja turtles so they all had the bigger stomachs but writ you know you got chug vogalpool who is writ writ but he's still got a big stomach so you know like uh they built so much hyperjury in the abdominal region that you know they got a still got a squat thousand pounds and so it was just they looked so cool to me and I'm like this whereas weight lifting you know you can look I've seen plenty of weight lifters that look like they don't even work out their legs you got something going on but otherwise they look like

they don't even work out and then they're going to you know snatch 180 kilos or something crazy but not in power lifting looked apart so that was cool but that also lends itself into the whole Yeah, people that are on the beach and you're like, oh, damn, like that person's jacked or that person's put together. And then you put a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants on a lot of people and you can't really tell. Yeah. Traps upper back, you can't really hide. Yeah. You know, forums, if you're wearing short sleeves, you know, those will stick out.

Caves are genetic, okay? That's the only reason I don't have calves. It's genetic. That's what I'd like to believe. Not a lack of training intensity for decades. I've lately been, you know what? my wife gave me the best compliment she told me the other day my calves looked like they're growing i almost cried i was so happy yes i've been working on my calves so hard like we're all in the

same boots the trade my cats my whole life the only time i the only time i had one big looking cab was when i broke my foot i broke i broke one foot and so i was cast it up on one leg and then i did plyometric hops all day every day for like six months and then my my left calf got much bigger for a period of time and then i went away oh that was the only to my cap was I got bigger. That goes right back to the volume comment. You do more volume. Muscles grow is what it is.

They do. It's so boring because it's like, bach, it's all you're doing when you're doing a cap raise. You're moving like, what, three or four inches? Like, you know,

good job on everybody being mature enough to talk about how there's other things you only move three or four inches that you have a good time with. So, with also hopefully high repetition. Now, when we think about the aesthetic side of things,

and yeah, You think about like all those different types of strength power athletes, especially if it's absolute. And yet, get as much muscle as you can. But then there is something to be said about. There's a reason why people want to get a swimmer's build. They want to get a rock climbers build, you know, things along those lines. And, you know, it's a not only training in the sport, but then training for the sport. Turns out how good you are at pull-ups is going to be slightly correlative to how good you are at swimming.

Because if you've got a bigger, stronger back, that's your main form of propulsion. Exactly. And what's that do? Naturally makes you look broader up top. And then, of course, the people that make it to that high level of sport, narrower hips in both long distance running and swimming is an advantage. It's like broader hips is an advantage in strength sports. And for things like being alignment and otherwise,

because you literally have got a bigger axis to which you can rotate from and create torque. Sure. So that's what you'd be able to brace, you know, to take on, in transfer energy. Yeah, you look at, you brought up Shane Hannam. you look at Ed Cohen like first off I haven't met Shane but I've met Ed incredibly

just he is everything every says he's just an awesome human being but the dude I swear his a chromium width is like two and a half feet and his hands are like

exactly and like his form is like a damn two by four it's like yeah dude you have the skeleton that is designed for insane poundages it's like it's like God put together the perfect power that you know

you're just dead lip lock out of his knees. Of course, you would say that would hurt his bench, did it? I mean, he benched his 550 raw, so I don't know that it hurt it much. Brog rib cage as well. So, I mean, there's a bunch of pieces, a bunch of pieces to that puzzle. Yeah. So.

Yeah. All right, fellas, we got to wrap it up. Yo, big picture. If you want to, uh, just for a, a generally healthy person that wants to live a long time and, and you're not competing in a sport, but you just want to be lean and, uh, and feel good and have energy, et cetera. broad strokes, just find some type of training that you enjoy enough where you could do it most days of the week for many years in a row. And that could be rock climbing.

It could be powerlifting. Whatever it is for you, just make sure that you're training very consistently. And then, you know, 80% of what you each, be meat and vegetables, like healthy whole foods. You can do those two very broad ideas, you know, for again, many weeks in a row, many months in a row, many years in a row, then more than likely you'll be fairly lean and muscular and healthy for your whole entire life. Um, well said. Coach Travis Mass. Where can people find you? Mashel League.com. Get me on Instagram and Matchel League performance.

Beautiful. Dr. Mike Lane. Yeah, Mike Lane, PhD on Instagram and wandering the woods. Right on. I am Doug Larson on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. We are barbell shrug to barbell underscore shrug. And if you want to work with Dr. Mike Lane, Coach Travis Mash, Dr. Andy Gappin, and the whole team at now Biomolecular Athlete. And go to Biomolecular Athlete.

And go to Biomoleclete. Friends, we'll see you guys next week. Thank you.