Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 339: Alcohol and Fitness with Jordan Lips

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

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Welcome in everybody to another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host Danny Matranga. And in today's episode, we'll be discussing alcohol, how it affects your fitness, your health, your recovery, your training, your performance, and more with my good friend Jordan Lips, who's a very accomplished coach who knows quite a bit about training, nutrition, and physiology. Someone who I love talking shop with. This is an episode that aired about a year and a half ago, but because I've been feeling a little under the weather lately, instead of pushing through and recording with a sinus infection, I'm going to treat you to audio that's a little bit easier to deal with. Enjoy the episode with Jordan Lips.

This podcast has some awesome partners, and one of my favorite, of course, is Legion Athletics. Legion is my go-to supplement manufacturer for what I like to call my big rock supplements. This would be my protein powder, my pre-training formula, my post-training formula and creatine, and my kind of ancillary vitamins and micronutrient protection. So why do I like Legion so much? What sets them apart? It's quite simple. Legion uses all natural ingredients. All the formulas include natural coloring and natural sweeteners. No artificial sweeteners, just stevia. And every single formulation, be it a pre-workout or a vitamin, contains clinically effective dosages of ingredients shown to work in humans in clinical

research supported by robust trials. No filler, just legit ingredients in each and every formulation proven to work. The whey protein isolate is so light, it's fantastic, it mixes in water, it tastes amazing, and I drink it every day even as somebody who's lactose intolerant. That's just how high quality this whey protein is. And it's sourced from Irish dairy cows that are raised well, eat their natural diet and packaged in climate friendly packaging. I love their plant protein too. For those of you who like something that's a little on the thicker side and you aren't a fan of animal products. you who like something that's a little on the thicker side and you aren't a fan of animal products. Also, I love Legion's pre-workout, but specifically the pre-workout that does not contain caffeine. That would be their Stem Free Pulse. I'm a huge, huge fan of beta alanine and

L-citrulline, but I don't like taking in wildly high amounts of caffeine. So if you are somebody who likes pre-workout with caffeine, you can try Pulse. Or if you like it without caffeine because you maybe want to enjoy your morning coffee or monitor your caffeine consumption, try the Pulse Stim Free. My favorite flavors there for sure are the New Grape and the amazing, amazing Tropical Punch. Recharge, five grams each and every day. I take it on the days I train as well as the days I do not because Recharge also contains L-carnitine, which can help with promoting muscle recovery and decreasing soreness, as well as some ingredients to help with creatine utilization. And of course, my favorite supplements for my ancillary micronutrient health are Legion's Multivitamin and Legion's Greens Powder. Not only do these two products contain a ton of high-quality vitamins and minerals, they also contain unique adaptogens like KSM-66 ashwagandha and reishi mushroom, which I like to take each and every day to promote my health.

If you want to cover all your bases with a high-quality protein, creatine, post-workout, or the ancillary micronutrient health stuff like greens, powders, and multivitamin, I encourage you to go over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code DANNY. That'll save you 20% on your first order and you'll rack up points that you can use the same way as cash every time you use the code and you'll also be supporting the show. Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. Today I'm sitting down with my good friend and fellow fitness professional, Jordan Lips. We're going to discuss a few things that we've changed our minds on over the course of the last several years,

ranging from supplementation to training to nutrition. I think discussions like this are important because so many people act as though they've had it right the entire time and that they're impervious to making mistakes. And when you hear fitness professionals, coaches, and trainers admit that they're imperfect, I think it really levels the playing field and sets us all up for success. You can kind of learn a little bit about how we've changed the way in which we think about things, the criteria by which we judge whether or not something's worth doing. And I really think this will help you on your fitness journey. So sit back, enjoy the talk today with coach Jordan Lips. Jordan, how you doing, man? Doing great, man. How's it going? Nice studio.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I am in the new studio for those of you who probably will get this on some kind of video, now that I'm getting in the habit of recording the podcast since I spent $140 on a webcam. So you guys might get to see my obviously motivational poster, or it's not a poster. It's actually a, what do they call those? It's a canvas artwork. So I am not above hanging cheesy motivational canvas art in my workspace. I should have outgrown this phase of my life, but as the poster says, you know, you can't change

the cards you're dealt, change how you play your hand. No, but the new studio is dope. It's good to see you, man. We were due to riff on something and we were chatting off air about what made the most sense. And I really love the idea of just sharing through the lens of two people who have coached for a long time, who have trained themselves for a long time, who've probably made mistakes in prescription for their clients and for themselves. Things that we've just pivoted off of, changed our mind about, things that we're maybe even embarrassed that we used to

believe about supplementation, about training, about nutrition. And I just think it makes for a not to be, uh, you know, one of those people that uses these canned phrases, but it makes for an honest, authentic, and kind of fun conversation that you guys should be able to learn quite a bit from. So, uh, you ready, Jay? Oh, I'm ready, man. Let's do it. Cool. So I think we should start with supplements. And I think that supplements probably opens the door for some of the more egregious and maybe funny mistakes or things that we used to believe. But what is something or a supplement in particular that you had a particular belief, identity built around or that you used that you no longer engage with or have changed on? Yeah, well, I think the broad, the broad answer is just the over emphasis

and the idea of how beneficial these things are. I think we can pick individual things, I'm sure we will. But definitely, like, growing up as a kid with my own training, like, I still remember, like, some of the happiest moments was like getting a little bit of money and like going into like gnc or like or even better was like the obscure non-corporate non-chain supplement store that had like blackstone labs and like a whole bunch of like weird creepy marketing but you were like oh this shit's good and like had either the same shit or like a 1,3-dimethyl like band substance in it or something. And so definitely just very generally, the overemphasis on the importance of supplementation.

And we could go down the list of BCAAs and L-glutamine and protein powder. And I think maybe the one that I would pick would be the one that actually had an impact on myself was like an obsession with the casing before bed. OK. And the thought that like I would literally like do casing before bed. There was a period of time where I was like prepping for a really like rinky dink mom and pop sort of like bodybuilding comp back when I was really young. Oh, gosh, I thought you were going to say Chippendale and or s8 but okay it is something

like that it was something of like a pageant slash bodybuilding show in college and aren't they all somewhat yeah well that's fair yeah i was like waking up in the middle of the night drinking casein shake because of this idea that like because casein is a slow digesting protein that it would like drip this beneficial muscle protein synthesis, synthetic response throughout the night. And you'd get all these great benefits. And I don't think, and again, funny thing about this discussion on supplements is like, yeah, we can laugh about like a whole bunch of dumb shit we did, but like, I actually think this topic, this umbrella doesn't have a big downside outside of like, no, no, I think that so much content is created by well-intentioned fitness professionals and influencers designed to like bash supplementation and bash supplements that don't have like a really robust body of evidence.

And I think it's important to remember that so much of us learn by failing or by trying. And we're way ahead of the data in the literature and the research on this stuff because marketers just need the sniff of one study. If you can find one study that shows even a remotely significant effect. I don't even know if they need that, but sometimes that'd be nice. Please just let there be at least one empirical data set that we could reference before we put this in a capsule and put it on a shelf. But that's all you need. And then it kind of just goes out into the universe for people like you and I to try. And casein is absolutely one I used to just slam back. And I remember, it's probably been seven, eight years since I've had a casein shake. But the thickness

of a casein shake, for those of you who have not had it, is a entirely different experience than a whey isolate shake. Yeah, in fact, I actually think on the scheme of things, it's not actually that slow digesting in comparison, especially if you consider like if that was the goal that maybe a mixed meal might actually be slightly better for this. if that was the goal that maybe a mixed meal might actually be slightly better for this i don't want to go too deep without just googling but i actually recall at some point being like well actually in the scheme of like comparing to other protein sources actually not all that like comparing it to whey it's much more slow digesting um but there's just no really good research that this is beneficial beyond just having enough protein and getting your your really really basic blocks of protein distribution down um don't need to be sipping casein before bed i mean i don't think it's a horrible idea it's like not like a terrible idea

it's not again like no big downside no big miss here but like definitely not something that uh should be in the something you're putting at the top of the list yeah and like i in the same way that i used to be a casein shake drinker who was really adamant about the idea that if I got the slowest digesting protein immediately before bed, I would get that anabolic trickling effect, if you will, of like, I mean, the marketing around it was so brilliant. Like casein takes up to eight hours to digest. So if you have it before bed or one study shows that casein can take upwards of eight hours to digest, probably in a mixed meal that contains fat. If you drink it before bed, you're feeding your muscles all night long. And the flip side of that is whey protein isolate gets into your bloodstream in an incredibly fast time frame.

And you want to have that immediately post-workout. I used to slam, slam a protein shake post-workout. I even remember being like so dedicated to it. I would have it during my last exercise because I had this notion that like, well, if you're supposed to have it post-workout, having it immediately during your last set is like even better than post-workout. And then when I found some of the protein research from Kevin Tipton, when I was taking exercise physiology in high school, I actually think Kevin Tipton passed away recently. Um, he, he had determined that a pre-workout feeding was actually slightly better at enhancing

circulating amino acid availability post-workout than a post-workout feeding because obviously it's already there. And so then instead of changing and pivoting off of having a post-workout shake, I just started having two shakes and slamming back a scoop and a half pre-workout and a scoop and a half post-workout and having like a four hour window of never ending liquid shits after every training session. But, you know, those are, those are like examples of funny things. I think protein, like those are kind of innocuous. Like, have you ever dabbled with, um, you know, like, have you ever dabbled with anything outside of the, the, the protein or amino acid sphere supplementally? Maybe you had good

intentions. Maybe you even knew like even knew like odds are this probably isn't gonna work but i'm gonna send it on this or i i want this to work so i'm gonna send it on this the amount of tribulus or like or like test booster this or like tribulus is a big one like or zma i thought like zma was gonna like boost rock my test one thing i'll say about zma is if i take zma i have crazy dreams. It makes no sense why that might be. I don't know what that is, but like maybe there's something going on there, but like I would, I gave up on it actually doing something. And I'm like, yo, fuck it. Let's take it. Let's roll the dice on the dreams tonight. Let's pop a couple of ZMA. Do you take zinc and

magnesium separately? Do you get a similar effect? Do you even supplement with those things on occasion? Those are like two. Funny enough, we're having this conversation. I'm a big shill for fucking Legion wearing this shirt. So I'll take the multivitamin, but other than that, that will be my only supplemental form of those. Yeah. Those are the two free form minerals I take on their own because I can't, and I've never been able to do this. My stomach has always been extremely sensitive to multivitamins. If I take like a full dosage of even a high quality, like Legion's multivitamin is very high quality. If I take a Kirkland multivitamin, I'm like keeling over in pain.

But I can take like two to three capsules of the Legion multi with food. And then before bed, I take 200 milligrams of magnesium bisglycinate and about 15 milligrams of zinc picolinate. And I don't dream for shit. Are you getting those from Thorne? I get those from Pure Encapsulations. I'm too cheap to get them from Thorne, but Thorne's really, really good. But I can't say for sure whether or not they affect my dreams because I took a

two-year hiatus from dreaming because I was consuming so much cannabis, which like, if, if for those of you who don't consume a ton of cannabis, like if you use it and, and this is a big reason why I've really leveled off. Like I, I drew the conclusion that I wasn't dreaming because I wasn't getting into my deepest REM sleep because of the amount I was consuming. When you smoke, you just don't dream. And so the last couple of weeks I've had some crazy dreams. It's like all of my dreams are coming back online, but I was taking zinc and magnesium free form before bed. So there must be some special shit when they're bound together into ZMA because you are not the first person that I've heard that from. I definitely made

the mistake with Tribulus and horny goat weed and diaspartic acid. And let's see what else. I remember all three of those I took after absolutely just mainlining Jack 3D to the point where I got what was then known on the bodybuilding MISC forums as STEMDIC, which was inability to get or maintain an erection due to just massively high levels of 1,3-dimethylamylamine. So if you use that much amphetamine even when i was like 18 years old i had every reason in the world to have a fully functioning reproductive system after like two bottles of triple scooping that shit it's just completely shut off and i remember explicitly thinking the best way to fix this is with more supplements. And I remember like having a girl over and being like, I need to perform in this moment. So I slammed like four tribulus,

multiple horny go eat capsules, D-aspartic acid. And I even remember taking at the time L-arginine and muscle farms assault because it didn't. It did not contain that 1,3-dimethylamylamine, but it did contain pump-promoting products. And so I was slamming pre-workout and supplements thinking it would work. Nothing. It wasn't until I ran out of that bottle. And I swear, maybe three, four days after I ran out of that bottle and I swear like four, maybe three, four days after I ran out of that bottle, all of that shit hit my system at one time, whatever effect it does have. Um, it might have an effect at like obscenely high dosages because I was ripping through that shit. Like it was somehow going to undo the problem. And I laughed so much at that version of myself because I remember I wasn't in any way,

shape or form in a position to really read the research, but I was in a position where I could Google and find consensus about a product. And I knew that the consensus on those products was very spotty, but I still wanted it to work so badly that i ended up taking pretty much every over the counter test booster there is i'm trying to think of like one uh the only other thing i've ever really had the balls to fuck with was osterine which is like osterine is like the lamest sarm of all the sarms so it's like you, it's if you look at the SARMs and you go on like SARMs.com and you like and you go to go to SARMs.com and then sort products by level of pussiness. So Osterine is at the top. It's like the Anovar of SARMs.

And I remember fucking buying Osterine from i'm not even gonna say the manufacturer because the manufacturer is a lawyer who calls himself a doctor a jurist doctor and so we'll just leave it at that but one of the like sketchier figures in the fitness space. And I was probably 20, 21. And I was like, I'm not going to do steroids, but Osterine is natty. And Lord knows what was actually in those capsules. But I got instantaneously hit by intense, intense alopecia areata, just literally huge holes in my hair, just falling out. And I remember- Really must be working. I remember thinking to myself, one, you knew this was a bad idea. Two, you knew this was a

far from reputable source. But I had done, and I still do this to this day, I had sold myself the dream. It's like I do this sometimes when I want to buy a piece of technology. I'm like, I'm going to watch reviews on this piece of technology until I'm convinced to buy it. And I had convinced myself that taking this over the counter SARM was a good idea. It did literally nothing for my gains. It just gave me like really bad skin irritation and my hair fell out and it all came back. I think I took like maybe seven to nine days worth of the stuff before I threw the whole thing away. And it came with, this is the best part. It came with an over the counter PCT and the, and the name of the product was PCT.

And I was like, yeah, we got, we got this guys. Yeah, we're good. So I think with supplements, there's so much of why I've changed my opinion is because I've dabbled with them and they've fucked me up. Do you have any that have a relatively substantive amount of research supporting their utilization? substantive amount of research supporting their utilization but maybe within the last three to five years um some of the newer literature or just some of what you've grown to expect it to be able to do you've kind of steered away caffeine for being totally honest i think uh it's a good one i think that at least as a counter argument i've switched to non-stim legions non-stim free use code j lips not code danny that danny guy and and listen let's just be totally real like non-stim pre still has something that it has alpha gpc which is a nootropic which gives you something of a focused feel and i'm not comparing caffeine to nothing. I'm just saying from comparing a stim pre-workout to a non-stim pre-workout, my workouts are legitimately identical.

And if you were to pose a dichotomous either or scenario, I would rather take alpha GPC before workout or hypertrophy session than caffeine. And that's a personal opinion. And I think the only time I might change that opinion, if I was training like really early in the morning, if I'm training at any other time during the day for a couple of reasons, confounding variables. So I'd just rather have caffeine for maybe work purposes. I tend to more highly value that you could flip that.

And you could say nootropic benefits, you know, might benefit more of like a focus during work thing, but the caffeine is like caffeine and creatine are the two best performance enhancing supplements that exist um but for a 60 minute hypertrophy session the recommended dose for caffeine is just fucking through the roof i know it's really absurd when you look at the effective dosage requirement for caffeine on a per kilogram basis you're like bro that's like three scoops of pre-workout really crazy so the benefit that i've seen both from a not od on caffeine and ability to work out in the afternoon if i want to or in the evening if i want to um not that alpha gp

probably is benign in terms of like effect on sleep it's probably not benign um but that i've like dialed back how important that is. And I've really, really preferred. And I push on my not push on my page, but it's rare that I'll recommend the stem pre-workout. I'm like, dude, you everyone listening to this podcast is either already having too much caffeine or if you introduced a pre-workout into your life,

you'd now be drinking too much caffeine. It's such a great point. It's really a great point. I think that people have become so conditioned to habitual caffeine consumption that we can assume that most people, to your point, are consuming more than they should be. And I'd go so far as to say that they're getting nothing from it besides feeling untired. Like it's, you like the warm beverage in the morning, you like the coffee, but the likelihood that your adenosine receptors in the brain are even remotely receptive to it

at this point. Like I remember the first time I took pre-workout was like literally doing heroin or speed. It was like, oh my God. And then within two weeks, you become desensitized to that amount of caffeine and you either need to have more or you just have diminishing marginal returns in the sensation side of caffeine and you either need to have more or you just have

diminishing marginal returns in the sensation side of things where you're just like you know i could drink pre-workout and take a nap yeah and knowing what caffeine can do to enhance people's anxiety and what it can do to just like generally create irritability and dependence like i think that's a really good point. And like, I do, I do half and half. Like if I'm going to caffeinate a training session, that's early, I'll do one scoop of pre-workout, like 150 milligrams of caffeine, two cups of coffee. Or if I want to enjoy caffeine, it's, it's become espresso shots, not full-blown coffees. And finding ways to enjoy smaller dosages and be more sensible about when I time the dosages makes caffeine a better drug for me to interact with. And I call it a

drug because it is a drug. I really think it's a drug. And I know that a lot of people get up in arms about how we classify these things, but it's an addictive chemical that, you know, directly works on your brain. So, uh, I'm pretty sure that's about as a one criterion for qualifying a drug as you could get. Um, I probably go through three bottles of stim free pre-workout for every one stim pre-workout because I just would rather either one have less caffeine overall or enjoy it in different forms. And to be totally fair, some people have posed this with BCAAs where you have somebody who's taking BCAAs and they put their BCAAs in the jug of water and they get on a treadmill and after the workout and they're drinking it because they think it's helpful and they're feeling good about stuff.

And then somebody comes along and shits all over their BCAA usage and they feel all down. Like here, here was something that they were taking that was making them, you know, placebo or not, it was like aiding to their overall good feeling and motivation towards things. When it comes to pre-workout for me, like I view it as like a, an obligation to train now. And so when I like take that scoop and I put it in the water, I mix it up. And I, the minute that I drink it, I'm like, well, you just took something exogenously. That's going to give you a benefit. Don't be a fucking bum.

Go work out now. You must go work out now. So to me, like that's, it's real purpose. It signifies like you must go train now. Like if I didn't have any pre-workout and I just had to like get myself up off the couch and I could go later, I could, you know, I could wait another 10 minutes. Like I might do that, but I'm like, did you make the pre-workout and you drink it? Like, you know, that you'll start to feel like, okay, I have a responsibility to use this artificial energy, which I'm probably

not even getting. There's probably a big element of it. That's placebo, but fuck me up, man. I love placebo effect. Like, let's go. So it's a great point. It's a great point. You know, I, it's funny because you said that so much more eloquently, but this has been something that I've seen on the internet from the NELC boys who are essentially just like childish college age provocateurs and they're very popular and they had Elon Musk on their podcast. No way.

And they were talking to Elon Musk about their workout habits. And Elon was saying like, oh yeah, I really don't like working out. And this dude saying like, oh, yeah, I really don't like working out. And this dude goes like, oh, well, you got to do what I do, bro. You got to just put pre-workout in a bottle by your bed. And then when you wake up, just fucking slam that shit. And then you have no other choice.

And I was like, well, essentially, you're right, because if not, you're going to sit there and the beta alanine tingles will migrate to uncomfortable places in your body. And I love the ritualistic, like going into a training session is something that if you want to train for a long time has to become semi ritualized. Like it's it becomes harder and harder as your motivation to train fades and you've trained for a long time to just be excited about it. So having rituals and routines and things that kind of look when the pre-workout is, is coming out of the shelf, getting mixed in the bottle and hitting my lips, it's, it's go time. And I might gain zero motivation from at any point in that process, but it is an additional layer of obligation because if I don't, I will

feel physically uncomfortable from the beta alanine, which might, again, for a 60-minute hypertrophy workout, might not even be something that I particularly need. But if for no other reason than it makes me tingle and work out, I'm all over it. I can't think of anything from the supplement side of things on my end that's as evidence-based as caffeine that I have reduced my consumption of with such a principled, evidence-based way. But I would say indirectly, it would be omega-3. And that isn't because of any of the evidence I've seen on omega-3. It's got a lot more to do with how potent whole food-based omega-3 options are at supplying the body with omega-3 and how much I enjoy eating those. So knowing that I love salmon and I'll probably get sushi four nights a week, which I know

is just in this economy, it's just terrible. Us California liberal elites, I go down to the Whole Foods three minutes from my house and my woke little Prius, I don't drive a Prius, and I just get my salmon sushi four nights a week. And to take an Omega-3 at that point would almost certainly be overkill unless I was explicitly trying to dabble with some of those higher ranges that you see people postulate could be good for cardioprotective, neuroprotective. I've even seen people claim that two to three grams could be potentially hypertrophic. Long story short, I have found that omega-3 is a fantastic supplement for the general

population with a ton of good evidence. Probably worth taking if you don't eat a lot of fatty cold water fish or algae or wherever else you get it. But if you like salmon and you're in a place in your life where you can afford to have it a couple nights a week, that's one that a supplement that you could probably save money on. Yep. I agree with that.

What about training? Because I think that this is probably the behavior that it can be, it's, it's probably the most rational in that we have the most, like nutrition's just too social, too emotional supplements are like, so ideological. We cling to these things. We have a belief in them, but training's a lot more cut and dry and a lot more scientific. Is there anything that you've changed your mind on recently with regards to how you either program for yourself or how you program for your clients? Yeah. Um, there's two that come to mind. One is a, I guess a longer conversation, but we could start with like generally lower overall volume with a general closer to failure.

And I know that there's still research that comes out that's like, you don't need to go all the way to failure. But I think that there's some issues that I have with that just by application to the average person. There's at least a couple of practical issues. And so I think just general on the spectrum, I think we need to acknowledge that, hey, if you're going to do less sets,

that to equate for stimulus, you would have to do harder sets or different exercises or, you know, makeup for that lack of number of sets elsewhere. And I think on that, you know, those inversely correlated variables of sets and intensity, I would just have been trending towards more of on the low to moderate size volume in terms of number of sets per muscle group per week, or even days per week or whatever. And then just generally tipping a

little bit closer to failure on average for, again, I think at least physiologically, we could have a good discussion, whether that's figuratively or you mean you now that that you could equate for stimulus this way. Or at worst, you would be notably more efficient for the population that I'm trying to work with, which I also fall into, which is I want to be really I want to be strong, healthy in the one percent of population for health. But I'm not looking to be my most jacked at the cost of other things in my life. for health, but I'm not looking to be my most jacked at the cost of other things in my life. And so given all of that, I, you know, we looked at this like Schoenfeld research and a lot of this, like 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per week is like, and when we talk about the nutrition one, we're going to talk a little bit about something that's like, that is what you, if you just look at any fitness influencer and you ask them, you're going to get a 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per

week. To me, that was like, there's a lot of issues with that as a recommendation. Um, just by the nature of like, at least a couple of questions of like, Hey, if we're, if we're going to do that 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per week, like does a set of leg extensions count the same as a set of squats or leg presses, right? Do you have to, do you have to like add a, a, a check mark, like on a leg press? Well, that's glutes and that's quad. So that's one. Totally. So you have, if you have, does pull do pull-ups count for biceps and then you have muscles with different divisions. Like, you know, are we, you know, do I need 10 sets for lats or do I need 10 sets for each division

of the lat or do I need, or, or what if I'm doing a pec fly and a dumbbell press? They're like entirely different resistance profiles. They're like entirely different resistance profiles. They're with entirely different hypertrophic benefits and recovery requirements. And yes, I understand the idea of giving a really broad and 10 to 20 is purposefully broad, right? Where it's like, depending on how you're measuring this, what exercises you're doing, you know, it could be 20.

Like you could say I'm doing 20 sets of lats if you count every row and every pole for lats, because they all work lats in some way, shape or form. Okay. Maybe we get to that like 12 to 18 set range. And so I got a little bit of an issue with that. I do think that as somebody who has an issue with it, I should also have a, I think by requirement, I should also have a different alternative way to look at it. Um, and so I think that it just depends on how you're quantifying it. I think most people should start with like, you know, focusing mostly on the big compound lifts and counting those to some degree for biceps and triceps. And once you do that, I think somewhere

in that like eight to 15 sets per muscle group per week, like right now in my group, we're probably doing four, four sets of direct bicep work, 12 to 16 sets of back work, which obviously back is multiple muscle groups, but they're all hitting bicep to some degree. And so that four sets of direct bicep work yeah 12 to 16 sets of back work which obviously back is multiple muscle groups but they're all hitting bicep to some degree and so that four sets per week might turn into in the aggregate in that eight to ten set per week range um and so that's something i've changed my mind on with this like whatever just not to drag this on any longer but like a little bit less quantity a little bit more quality and then maybe just a small little asterisk is like this uh i i've tried to challenge this idea of stimulus to fatigue ratio. Not we need to go too deep into that, but like this,

this idea that like, that like taking a leg extension to like two RAR or zero RAR is going to be exponentially more fatiguing to go all the way to failure on a leg extension. Like just not so sure that I just think it's very movement dependent how we kind of go about classifying like what is fatiguing at failure right now my group are doing rep uh like like intentional partial rep match lateral raises where like in week one you go to full range of motion failure and every week after that you are beyond failure and there's nothing overly systemically fatiguing about that where people are like oh my, my God, I I'm systemically past my ability to recover. It's a fucking lateral raise.

And what might be best for those movements might be actually closer and beyond failure. That's a discussion for another day. But definitely just like lower volume, a little bit closer to failure on average. What's going on, guys? Taking a break from this episode to tell you a little bit about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method. More specifically, our app-based training. We partnered with Train Heroic to bring app-based training to you

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drink element t.com slash coach danny get your sample pack today completely for free just pay shipping back to the show it's such a good point and like i think you really hit on something phenomenal there which is like a lot of this stuff is obviously movement specific. And like, you would find this out very quickly by either training a lot of people in person, training a lot of people online or training a lot on your own. You're going to find out very quickly that the RIR scale or the RPE scale, whichever way you want to quantify the difficulty of your sets. Um, it can be pretty easy to standardize what failure is for each lift. But if somebody says

RPE 10 split squats or RPE 10 leg extensions, get in line. There's going to be a fucking line and a half behind the leg extension. Cause it's way easier to go to failure on and i don't care how many people want to dress up their hellacious set of leg extensions by throwing their head back and screaming and all of the tacky performative bullshit you see on the internet the truth is the more musculature involved the more complex the movement tends to be the more daunting and fatiguing it is to take that thing to failure and if you choose to take that thing to failure to act as though that would simply be one set for the quads in the same way that a leg extension to failure would be is like have you ever fucking trained like have you ever felt what your ass cheeks feel like after that because i think they should get a little bit of a check box you know

like at that i think that's a really good point and kind of sticking with not necessarily like i like the idea that like i think up to 10 sets for novices is probably where you ought to be and then between 10 and 20 sets for intermediates to advanced lifters, ultimately where you're going to end up, you just can't stay at 10 sets forever unless you're insanely good with exercise selection. Um, I think you eventually start encroaching upon 16, 18, 20 sets when you put specialization blocks together, because you're trying to allocate volume. You're trying to overreach. But one paradigm that shifted for me a lot was the notion of a

hypertrophy rep range. And this was from mostly a change in the evidence, but also an absence of evidence that I came across coincidentally when doing a project my junior year in college, where I was asked to basically write a presentation on repetition range variations. And it's very easy to, you know, when you talk about what repetition ranges are best for what, strength is really cut and dry, especially like speed strength and strength speed, whether you're trying to develop maximal strength or maximal power. It's probably better to do that in a way where it's entirely anaerobic and fatigue isn't really going to be a problem. So we're talking less than six reps in most instances. If you're trying to train somebody to be explosive and twitchy, you want three to five box jumps, three to five depth jumps.

If you want to train somebody to be extremely good at squats, you still want like three to five squats. was at least when I got certified in 2013, you were going to find it usually listed as 6 to 12 or 8 to 12 reps, which I think is super reasonable for bodybuilding. That's probably where most of your volume is going to fall because of the stimulus to fatigue ratio. You can probably get the best stimulus with the most reasonable amount of fatigue somewhere in there. And I remember looking for research on 8 to 12 being the best,

and I simply just had a very difficult time finding it. And I remember going like, well, this is in every textbook, so it has to be somewhere. And I simply could not find it. And I went to the professor and I'm like, well, I'm having a hard time digging it. Oh, it's there. It's there. And it really wasn't there. And I learned that not only was it really never there, only that it has a lot more to do with eight to 12 reps is probably the most reasonable place to assess people in a lab for hypertrophy because you're like, do 10 hard reps. All right. Very nice. But a lot of your rep range, hypertrophic specific rep range work. I think the way I look at it now, knowing that there's a huge amount of evidence out there supporting muscle growth can essentially occur at any rep range so long as the training stimulus

is sufficiently close to failure and demanding enough of the tissue. But to try to do that with sub six reps is probably the worst for stimulus fatigue. So I like to think of the hypertrophy rep range now as like six to 20. And you could obviously do more than 20. I probably end every pull day with like 50 reps set of fucking hammer curls. But if you think of that rep range as six to 20, all of a sudden it gives you a lot more wiggle room. It gives you a lot better opportunity to program. And then when you are like, well, what do I do for six? And what do I do for 20? It's like, well, that's where having a library of exercises and making intelligent choices makes a ton of sense. So it's like, I would love a 20 rep set of lateral raises or tricep extensions, uh, where it's a very isolation based, low stability requirement,

high safety profile movement where I could maybe occasionally add in a drop set, where I could maybe occasionally add in a mechanical drop set even. And then six, seven, eight, nine, 10 reps, compound movements that I want to probably have a lot of load on that I'm probably going to emphasize the eccentric. If you work within that six to 20 rep range, it becomes really intuitive, I think, to pick which ones are closer to six and which ones are closer to 20 rep range, it becomes really intuitive, I think, to pick which ones are closer to six and which ones are closer to 20. And as you're learning, you'll figure out pretty quick that 20 reps and deadlifts don't go together.

But yeah, the rep range was something I was super tied to. I probably told hundreds of people like, no, no, no, more than 15 reps. That's endurance, bro. That's endurance. It's like, what the hell does that even mean? Like, that's not endurance. That's catching a pump. Endurance is like, endurance is just like doing circuit training or CrossFit. Like there has to be like a legitimate endurance demand, like high rep resistance training isn't quote unquote endurance. Um, so that So that's one that shifted a lot for me. You got any more?

On that note, actually, I would actually put myself, my thoughts on that would be that I've actually gone a little bit of a ping pong ball with this and was like, initially was in the camp of, oh, it's like one to five is strength and five to 10 is or five to 15 is hypertrophy and 15 to 30 is endurance. And there's always like that picture of like the continuum, like the two arrows. It's like more strength, more hypertrophy. And then, you know, all this research came out, famous study, you know, five to 30 reps all get equivalent hypertrophy. It brought, you know, same close to failure.

And then that was like a really big talking point. And I just remember like early on my podcast days, it was like only three years ago or so, like, um, so really flexing that when it came out and being like, wow, look at this freedom that we have. It's like totally, and it's not, it's not untrue. I won't go back on that. I think it's fantastic. I think that there's times and places to really flex the truth that is there, um, that you can get roughly equivalent, equivalent enough. I heard to me, but you know, if sets are taken close enough to failure at, you know, different the truth that is there um that you can get roughly equivalent equivalent enough hypertrophy but you know if sets are taken close enough to failure at you know different loading you know percentages right different rep ranges um and so i flex that super hard um and then again more recently i actually have come back to yeah but but like i just i know myself so when i'm making

content like i know i can see myself no longer saying that when I post stuff. So sometimes I'll get a question in a Q&A about rep ranges and where I would have used to like, or we just like, bam, 530 reps, close to failure, bam, you're good. I'm now just having seen a little bit of research on, I guess, two things. One is how much worse we are at assessing failure at higher rep ranges. So again, not a physiological issue, but more of like, yeah issue but more of like yeah just very hard to calibrate very hard failure north of right sometimes you're not actually at muscular failure there's like a our perception of pain because at those higher reps there's definitely more of a metabolite

build-up which gives you that like people think it's like lactic acid or the burn and so a lot of people stop then when they get to their own threshold for an ability to deal with that pain but actually muscularly that's not actually failure um it's just a hydrogen ion yeah it hurts in a different way that some people aren't going to be able to withstand and so that's one potential downside of going that high in reps and then the the other two might be that it is less time efficient. So if I can do it in 30, why wouldn't, if I could do it in seven, why not? Why do it in 30, which is a valid thing to just speak out there and have a discussion about like,

I'm with you there, brother. I'm with you there, especially with my own training. I take so many more sets to failure because I just don't have as much time. And I was a huge proponent of, duh, just keep it too short of failure. It's like, well, why, why, why take, why go to 26 reps? If I can do it in seven permitting that, you know, everything is equated. Their technique is the same and, you know, quality of movements there. And the third is like a little bit of emerging research that like, uh, there seems to be a little bit more systemic fatigue, actually, in higher rep ranges. But that's probably, in my opinion, like a perception of people having to have longer sets. And, you know, if I do a set of hack squats for like 12 reps, let's say, you know, for the first like six reps, I'm not going to step in.

I'm going through the motions, but like I'm like passive in my intent. Like I'm just like waiting to get to the reps that I have to kick into gear mentally. And that in and of itself, doing these lead-in reps, the reps that are just not hard. If you do a hard set of eight, they're all hard. Yeah, the last three to five are really hard. But even the first rep of an eight-rep set, you're like, all right, I'm in it, man. I'm in it. You're in it right away.

But the first rep of a set of 25, it's like the first 15 of those like i could be having a conversation with somebody and so i've kind of kind of had this mentality of like yes it's not this stupid continuum that's like super black and white yes 5 to 30 you can get equal than hypertrophy all of that said i'm probably still programming the vast majority of your work in the six to 12. And then I think the, maybe the benefit from the higher rep, maybe there's a joint, a joint benefit. That's like, maybe like, it's no, I'm not, I would love better research on this because I, part of me is a little skeptical of like, yes, you get lighter loads. In theory, you could make an argument of, oh, it's less weight on the joint. It's less weight, but it's more reps and it's equally close to failure. It's like

the stress is the stress on that joint equated or is it actually in an absolute sense because it's less load is it less maybe there is research i have not come across that but something people say that i'm like okay that that makes some sense and anecdotally i do believe that like if i'm doing like um whatever lateral raise cross cable extension even a bicep curl like maybe like when it's mega heavy um versus like it being a little bit lighter maybe there's like a little bit of a joint relief um but yeah you hit on something too like if whatever exercises you were liable to do 15 to 20 30 reps are almost assuredly going to be exercises with a pretty substantial range of motion like a lateral raise

like with these small seemingly more vulnerable joints that don't necessarily have the opportunity to disperse force across multiple joints. And so it's like, I don't know, man, like is a 12 rep set of tricep extensions. That's hard from reps three to 12 going to be quote unquote worse for your joints than a 30 rep set of cross body extensions where you reach the absolute end range position and you really squeeze the shit out of it i don't fucking know it probably feels better in the moment but to just kind of lead with oh it's better for your joints to lift light i don't necessarily know how there's probably other

just more important buckets to to look at if you're like joint friend if you're like trying to like not fuck your joints up like this is this is a relevant discussion but it's not like to me it's not like the biggest box in the world um you know the most i've seen i've seen myself programming lately is like is like in the 15 rep range but again the the time to flex this is for those who don't have a lot of load who are doing at home training with body weight, who don't own heavy dumbbells. This is a moment. Yeah.

This is when you lean into that. This is when you flex that. This is when you're like, this is when you talk your client up to still be excited. Oh my God, I'm not training with super heavy weights. Like, okay, great. You can mitigate the lack of loading, loadability, load capacity for just work really, really hard. And that actually gets you, if not exactly the same results enough, the same don't need to be you know down on ourselves because we only have dumbbells up

to 25 or something like that yeah i love that anything else in the training realm before we transition over to nutrition uh the the periodization stuff maybe but we don't need to go into that too much i mean uh yeah no let's talk about it. The most recent educational platform that I have assumed and been certified by, I guess, is N1 guys, Coach Cass, him and them and super smart, love Cass, like just like really appreciate his work in the industry, all this stuff. Like, and there's no way, this is literally no way, shape or form that I would say that I know more than Cass about probably anything. But yeah, that guy's essentially from the outside looking in, I haven't dabbled in as much of his

content as yours, but I do have the biomechanics certification, but you know, that dude is a missionary who's very clearly dedicated his life to essentially creating, uh, a greater opportunity for a bunch of nerds to learn as much as they can about building muscle by literally going on a lifelong pilgrimage. So there's just, there's, there's nobody like him. Yeah, I agree. And there's certainly a ton that I love that I've learned. I'm, I'm infinitely more, a better coach because of the whole experience, but the, just the idea that, um, to put it very bluntly, that if your goal is hypertrophy, I would recommend spending vast majority of your time

specifically training for hypertrophy. And I'm, um, I don't say that as if, you know, the N1 slash cast position would be to spend a lot of time not doing hypertrophy. I think that he would be like, yeah, you should spend most of the time doing hypertrophy i'm just not sold so much so on um how much uh potentiation there is available via some of these other pathways um especially when you apply it to a practical setting of like just regular people trying to get pretty jacked if you have like an extremely adherent individual like the idea of switching modalities like even relatively often it it just brings in a whole tracking error or just this potential error in trackability. And in a world where most people's one of their big issues is a lack of continuity,

a lack of keeping things most of the same so they can learn the movement and work hard and get better at it over time and get away from like, every week I do something different. Every workout, I do something different. Every program, I do something different. I think getting away from like every week i do something different every workout i do something different every program i do something different i think getting away from that is going to give people better results you know and then it maybe that hits a point in the curve where you have such an adherent client that's really fighting in the margins where maybe there's room for improvement just have taken one small step back with like you got to do a sarcoplasmic phase and then you have to do a systemic phase and then you have to go into mechanotransduction then you got to go into a neuro phase then you got to you know it is probably the case that uh i'm not

just i'm just not sold that that's something that is necessary i know necessary isn't the word that is relevant here it's like better or not um yeah it's just sure that that's the case does it turn an a into an a plus because if it does but that comes at the cost of, you know, a substantially larger amount of investment, um, it, it might not be worth it. Uh, which isn't to say that in theory, it doesn't make sense. And like a way that I've kind of, you know, let's call it made this a little bit more practical and approachable in my own training. And the training I do with my clients is I absolutely, especially when I work with athletes, you really do have to periodize quite tightly based on the needs of the athlete and what the athlete needs based on where they're

at in their competitive season. But for those who want to optimize their physique, it's my opinion that the ability to elicit myofibular hypertrophy through mechanical tension-based hypertrophy training, that could represent 60 to 65% of the volume that you do all year round, as it probably should based on what we know has the greatest likelihood to influence muscle growth. Occasionally adding in neurological or strength-based work to keep yourself strong so you can have greater volume, that doesn't necessarily have to go away or dominate seasons of your training. It can be injected sensibly here and there. It can operate as a mesocycle. I think a month here and there can be really

valuable for a strength block. And as for the metabolic stimulus that we get from that higher rep training, again, I don't know if I would dedicate an entire block to that so much as I might look to include one or two movements that elicit a metabolic specific effect at the end of my training. It's like, hey, I want to grow my delts. And I did some mechanical tension based work where it was like six to eight reps, pretty heavy. And I'd like to see if I can, you know, add another layer to this by getting a metabolic effect by making that last set, uh, drop set, triple drop set. I don't know. You know, like I think that how I think that all of those ways of

training to, to optimize the muscular response are brilliant, but whether or not I would weave an intricate, you know, macro cycle around oscillating between them, uh, versus maybe oscillating between nervous system, strength-based and hype and more mechanical tension-based, and then just intelligently dropping opportunities for metabolic stress along the way. That to me is more enjoyable. My clients tend to really like that. Don't know if it's better. Probably not. Maybe not. Just easier for me as a coach, a lot easier for my clients because then they don't end up with a block where they're like, oh, fuck, it's that block that I hate. And I'm'm gonna have six weeks of training i don't like so much

you know i thought it's just that like just like the interesting discussion that goes on in my brain is that like if you have a goal which is hypertrophy any time spent not doing that and pursuing an alternative goal in order to be valid would have to potentiate greater gains, greater benefits towards that goal than specifically training for that goal during that time. So, you know, you said it more enjoyable and clients really like it. I love that. I think there's something about, you know, right now in my group, we're doing one exercise, more pyramid style, style, more like top set, more strength, like intent. And I think that just, there's something in us that is enjoyable, that we like that. It's like, you know, whether it's better for hypertrophy or not, it's probably a net neutral, but it's an opportunity for you to like express that,

like part of you that's like, fuck, I want to move some weight. I want to feel like. On every client intake form I have, I ask the question, do you prefer a high rep set that leaves you with a vicious pump? Or do you prefer a high rep set that leaves you with a vicious pump? Or do you prefer a low rep set where you hit a PR and like 85% of people select the PR? There's something visceral about it. And that's just where I'm at, where it's just like, you know, it's like, someone's like, oh, it's really great for this. And I'm like, yeah, it's really great for that. But in order for it to end up making me more jacked, it would have to be – that benefit I'm getting would have to then potentiate a net greater gain in hypertrophy over the long term than had I just done more hypertrophy. And I just think it's an interesting discussion.

Again, I actually don't even feel like there's one true strong answer on either side. one true strong answer on either side. And so because I don't feel that I don't feel that there's a strong on either side, I feel like there's a bit of mental masturbation and intellectual flexing that goes on. And I'm a smidge bitters a little bit in the application of this by some of our peers a little bit. Both of us are, you and I both have group programs. We both do one-on-ones like in some ways we're competitors. And it's difficult to compete with the uh not difficult to compete sometimes i stick up my ass about people who talk about like fat loss programming um yeah and it's a real it's a real uh i don't like it doesn't i don't lose sleep over it but i just kind of think like there's there's a reason you're saying that there's you know you could provide maybe a mechanistic reasoning by why nothing makes me more physically ill than watching somebody try to justify the over complication

over complication of of fat loss fucking 70 percent of people are fucking fat and don't move okay they can lift weights in a way that's even somewhat tolerable so that they can hold on to some contractile tissue and then fucking get the food under control. If they're lifting, listen, if you're lifting, if you have a program that's four days a week or five days a week, decent volume, moderate volume, like, like not a crazy program. It's not like you look at this, you're like, wow, people are just going to die. That program is just fantastic for fat loss. It's a fat loss program you're gonna be fine you're you know this you know a lot of times what will happen is it's like oh we should do more work in

the short position it's like good for uh you know nutrient partitioning or it's easier to recover from and no first of all let me like a couple of things one every single person who is not in great shape will get all of those benefits from basically every training modality like you'll get neurologically stronger you'll get betterically stronger, you'll get better nutrient partitioning, you'll get better, like muscular endurance, you'll get all of these adaptations. And if your program is not death defying, then you don't need to be like, then people will still survive just fine. Now somebody might be like, Oh, they could do a little bit. It would be a little bit easier to recover from when they have less calories and they could retain just as much muscle with less training fatigue. Like I'm just not so

sure that that is an amount of micromanagement that is relevant in any way. It has not been something I've experienced with one-on-one clients that are like, oh, we're going to go do a bunch of short position work. And all of a sudden everyone crushes their deficit. It's like the success or failure when I, and I don't want to put such binary absolute terms on it because it's not the case but like whether or not you succeed in air quotes in accomplishing the goal that you had in your fat loss phase that's fuck all to whether or not you switched out a length position work for a short position exercise and this like i'm not it is what it is i focus on what i could do i'm proud of my group i love what i but I just, I get it sent to me by like, Hey,

is your program good for fat loss? Or should I go do this fat loss programming? And I'm like, this is just a, it's just really, it's like people. I believe, I don't know,

not to be too bitter. It's just like people hiding behind a little bit of a mechanism that they could spot. And then they get to use the words fat loss training and it's good for business. I couldn't agree more. I think it is a, uh,

you're reverse engineering a product based on some assertion you've made that is wildly irrelevant and won't matter at fucking all to people who aren't already heavily invested in their training. And you're ready for this. Those people aren't signing up for your fat loss program. Like there's just, you know, the people that need the most help with their body fat reduction need as much simplification as possible, not because they're incapable of learning and growing, but because it is substantially more challenging to make the right food decisions all day than it is to get bombarded with whatever level of educational outline needs to be, let's call it whatever level of rationalization we need to reach to tell somebody that

the preferential use of shortened position exercises will help them better manage fatigue and a deficit. Okay. That's fucking great. But guess what? But guess what? You could also like quite literally in five seconds with no thought be like, yeah, well, lengthened position exercises are generally better for muscle hypertrophy. So you could just do less exercises in the lengthened position. So how's that for recovery? Asshole. Now I have a fat loss program. That's really well said. And then it's really well said. And then there's an argument. There's, there's a very valid argument that I'm not, wouldn't propose i wouldn't stand behind of like in in in a reduced calorie state i don't

think we i'm not necessarily would say this 100 but like there'd be an argument of like you know calorie reduced state with like the biggest anabolic thing that you could do just to eat enough you're not doing you have the biggest catabolic stimulus you could give yourself is a calorie deficit you are now also reducing the training stimulus. And so I actually think that I wouldn't stand by that. I think both people will be fine because I'm actually not a big advocate about worrying about a ton of lean body mass lost in a fat loss phase. What I mean by that is I'm not, I wouldn't worry a ton about the small amounts of lean body that you'll lose if you're doing some resistance training and eating a half decent amount of protein.

And so this, this, this level of micromanagement to me just feels like a business choice. And it is a good one because it's real easy to, you know, it goes in the bucket of like somewhat preying on insecurities as if like, it's another notch in the, how I train has to do with my fat loss results benefit, which might steal bandwidth away from where it should be. Yeah. Yeah. So not, it isn't the end of the world. So discussion I've been having actually like very, very recently, as of this morning, I'm like, yeah, it's probably irrelevant. Um, I don't mind as long as people add context though. I'm thinking of one person in particular, this person adds some context and

I appreciate that. But if it's just like said blanketly, like this is your fat loss programming, got to do it this way. If you want to lose fat, it's like, fuck off. Yeah. You know, sometimes I wonder if just fitness being something that generally is attractive to people who are probably score relatively high on the personal responsibility spectrum and who are maybe a mildly above average intelligence. There's just this ridiculous tendency to over-intellectualize everything to the point where we're arguing about or talking about things that, you know, are so, so unimportant in the long run, uh sold them on the idea of doing more work in the shortened position. That's one of every 10,000 people who are looking to lose fat. And maybe that's the right business move to make money. Maybe it's just a way to position yourself as an intellectual in the space, which I think is hugely problematic in the fitness industry just because it just self-selects for semi-insecure men,

because that's what got almost everybody into the fitness industry in the first place is being like, I wish I was bigger and cooler. It's like, I don't know. I love being able to over-intellectualize things in a quote unquote safe space, but doing it in a way that's designed to make you money. And it's not necessarily always disingenuous, but oftentimes it's like, oh, you're really grasping at straws here. It's pretty easy to see through it the longer you've been into it. So let's wrap things up quickly here with something in the nutrition space that you've changed your mind about recently. I'll lead off. I'll keep it very simple.

And it has to do with saturated fat intake. I think that I was relatively susceptible to the notion that blood cholesterol and saturated fats were not something that I needed to worry about as a normal, healthy weight adult male. And, you know, there's all these dudes on the internet who get their panels run and yeah, their LDL is really high, but their HDL is good. And, you know, it's the right kind of meat. And, um, I was able to kind of justify eating what I would describe as high amounts of saturated fat and not be particularly concerned about it because of the intellectuals in the carnivore keto space who brought a very, very honest and real discussion about how we look at blood lipid panels. It's an honest discussion worth having. But if you look at the most long-term mechanistic randomized clinical trials about high levels

of saturated fat intake and high levels of cholesterol, not necessarily looking at the subparticles, just high levels of blood cholesterol, whether you got like bang on HDL through the roof and like low as LDL. I've just been a little bit more mindful recently of my saturated fat intake and just trying to be smart in the long run about how much red meat I'm eating and how much saturated fat I'm in taking. And I think for a good six to eight years, I was eating unlimited amounts ad nauseum, any even remote attempt at buffering or managing it. And that's something that I've changed a little bit on and gone from what I would say is like fitness industry fringe.

Oh, we're out in front of this because we get the labs and you'll find out. And I've, I've gone back to the, you know, maybe the cardiologists were right about the cardiology stuff and maybe the bros were wrong about the cardiology stuff. Yeah. I was full blown keto for a long, like I did a keto experiment and I was like, Oh, I'll just do it for a couple months and i got in deep um and was like really starting to like consume some of the fringe content and my my my ldl was like 290 at some point uh it was wild wild high like very close to this like people and the funny part is like it's a point of you know it's one of those things where you're like uh contrarian to to sound cool and to you know polarizing and contrarian people were flexing how high they could make their cholesterol go because it didn't matter

because i'm you know whatever xyz other things um there's there's the problem is with all these things there's shreds of truth and so things you just said about like cdl is relevant some particles are relevant they are relevant but it is not making this not, it's not trumping the relevancy of, we see almost a linear scale of all cars of cardiac events and LDL cholesterol. It's like literally still linear correlation here. Um, even accounting for a lot of that stuff. And so, yeah, there's, I'm with you on that. I love that too. Totally something that maybe hasn't changed the way I've been eating, but certainly the way I've been communicating that if I look, not that I'm a doctor, but if I check a a client's labs it will be a discussion that i will

ask what their doctor's discussion has been with this stuff and that might be just a two cents that i would throw in for sure yeah i just got admittedly lazy about it and i just you know it was like easier to i heard good shit about yeah my fucking stuff's good don't worry about it it's like it is but it isn't and the people that are saying it is juxtaposed against the people that are saying isn't if i were to lean into that it would not be an evidence-based decision it would be an ideological one and so i i've really pivoted off of that. What about you? You have anything specific in the nutrition space that you've really changed on? Yeah. Protein requirements. And funny enough, the guys at Stronger by Science just reviewed the, I think

it's the Morton and colleagues paper that, that looks at, you know, like again, same thing with this, like 10 to 20 sets per muscle group a week. It's like this one study that was admittedly, as far as high quality goes, it's an unbelievable study. As far as I think it's a systematic review of meta-analyses. It's like talking about top of the pyramid stuff. Um, and came to this conclusion that, that if you, if we looked at, you know, benefits in terms of lean body mass accretion, that at roughly 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight, you low, we start to see a drop off. Above that, we start to see diminishing returns.

So it was almost like this, like get your clients to this spot because maybe you could encourage a smidge above that if they like it. But getting here is an evidence-based defensible position of like you're checking almost all the boxes, but below that number, you're missing out. And if you ask any fitness influencer

coach whatever that's the number they get point 1.6 grams per kg up to 2.2 grams per kg which is roughly 0.77 grams per pound up to one gram per pound um and me too that's what i say well i usually i usually you know for the longest time it's like 0.8 grams per pound to 1.2 grams per pound and for for a while i started to be a little bit skeptical of that just in my own viewing of like, um, just some anecdotes with clients. And recently, um, just this idea that I have some clients who are fucking super jacked and adhere really well and have made amazing strength and muscle gains unless, and there's been many years of that happening where the training stimulus, like if you had to correlate, which my, you know,

whatever, it's just one sample size here. Just totally my lived experience. But like you had to correlate which clients I think are like, have gotten more, have gained more muscle, have made more body composition changes. It won't scale linearly. It's like who eats more protein.

Yeah. There are, it'll be like, who's lifting harder, who's trainings in check, who's sleeping more, whose calories are in check genetic factors. And so recently the guys are stronger by science. We looked at that morton and colleagues paper and kind of just like

took out one study and was like uh just take out this one study that again you can't just fucking do that if you want but they were it was on the cusp of being an outlier and they they did like an all but one analysis where they were taking out each um study and kind of looking at if that changed the summation of the data and the trend line. And it just like, it's so funny because I watched on YouTube and they put a plot of all the studies. So they were basically on the, on the Y axis was like how much lean body mass gain and on the X axis was how much protein intake. And they plotted all the studies. And if you just look at that, it's not compelling. You look at the dots on the graph and you're like this doesn't look to

me like all of a sudden like i need to be super hard lined about a 1.6 gram per kg this looks like there's not a big drop off across the board here and then they took out this one study and it kind of reshaped that not that again not that you can just pluck out one study but in doing so taking out this one almost outlier it really looked like it was closer to this 1.2 grams per kg, where we see from there up is a big diminishing return. And from there down might be some missed gains. And I think that that's, we don't need to have a whole podcast on that, but I think that that's really encouraging for people who don't love a ton of protein and we're feeling really bad about it. I love that. And like, if you talk to anybody who works with clients on their nutrition and you're trying to identify common themes of

struggle, you probably run into eating enough protein, um, as being one of those common themes. And so if you're able to increase the acceptable range, particularly bringing the top end down a bit, um, gosh, it can really put a client in a position to feel like they're doing better from the jump. Because if you get somebody, like let's say they're a 150-pound female and you're like, I'd like you to eat a gram per pound of body weight, and they were eating 75 grams a day, that is a really big jump. But if you're like, I'd actually be totally cool if you could just get it to 100. And like, oh shit, okay, I can do that. And then maybe they can scale it up

from 100 to 125. And you could be like, do you feel any better? Do you feel any differently? Are you recovering differently? To me, this just expands the range of what's acceptable. It gives me less to be anxious about, gives my clients greater opportunity to succeed, which is phenomenal. And if you assume that not all proteins are created equal, some have more leucine than others, it's pretty sensible that if you were to eat, let's say you ate, instead of 0.7, you ate 0.55 from extremely leucine-rich foods and somebody else ate 0.9 from extremely leucine rich foods and somebody else 8.9 from extremely leucine devoid foods, it might seem equivalent, if not better gains, so to speak from the foods that are higher in leucine. So, you know, if you're eating protein of high quality and you're getting somewhere between, you know, a gram per pound of body weight all the way down to a little over half your body weight, slightly more, take a little bit of some stress off your plate. I know a lot of people who have a really hard time hitting those 0.7 thresholds just because of dietary preference and pattern.

That stuff's huge. I didn't watch that podcast. I listened to it. So, um, you know, I, I think that's great, man. And, and I think that's a good place to probably wrap it, huh? Sir. So where can they find you, buddy? Uh, Instagram's a good spot. Uh, podcast is a good spot. Um, yeah, that's about it. Jordan loves fitness on Instagram where optimal meets practical is my podcast. You can find everything. Instagram is a good spot. If you have a question, shoot me a DM, ask me a question. There's good. Yeah, guys, Jordan is one of the good guys. Somebody who I learned a lot from somebody I enjoy bantering with talking to, uh, you know, relationships in the fitness industry are oftentimes challenging to foster because it's such a competitive space, but, uh, Jordan's just one of the good dudes out there and i really encourage you

to follow him join his group programs uh you know join his coaching programs he's a guy that i really trust so uh give him a follow check out his pod and we'll be sure to catch up again soon man thank you sounds good thanks for having me you