Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 446 - Mike Israetel Round 2

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

Back again on the podcast, one of our favorite guests, Dr. Mike Israetel! Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! Mike is back to talk about training and explains why full range of motion is king. Dr. Mike Israetel is a Ph.D. in Sport Physiology, and training and nutrition expert, BJJ purple belt, competitive bodybuilder, as well as co-founder of one of the most successful training and nutrition coaching companies, Renaissance Periodization. Dr. Israetel has authored and co-authored many books on training, nutrition, and recovery. ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: https://drinklmnt.com/powerproject Purchase 3 boxes and receive one free, plus free shipping! No code required! ➢Freeze Sleeve: https://freezesleeve.com/ Use Code "POWER25" for 25% off plus FREE Shipping on all domestic orders! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

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We already recording Andrew. I am now. Oh, key. Okay. Dr. Mike, they should be connecting soon.

Oh, there he is. Is he shirtless? I don't see anything. I don't see anything either. I see him. You do. Wow. I see you guys. I see him. You do. Wow.

I see you guys. I see. There he is. Ah, well, he's a doctor, so things are gonna be different. Makes sense.

Hey, Mark, I like that you take my, uh, podcast appearance seriously enough to be in your fucking car. Hey, I made time for this. Hey, listen, you fat motherfucker.

You're not shaving your fucking head. If you're going to be in your car, then I don't have to shave at all. I don't know why I put on clothes. You didn't even shave your balls for this podcast. You have no idea if that's true. Disgraceful. And there's gray hairs coming in. That's fucked up. Why are you going to point that out?

Just because you're a crippled old man doesn't mean I'm not crippled. I'm not crippled. I could still squat 135 halfway down. Yeah, show me a cripple that can squat 135. You're overqualified. See? Hey, awesome having you on the show today. I'm super excited. I've been watching. I'm preaching that full range of motion.

And you got that. You got a whole team of doing full range of motion. So I just, I think it's fascinating because I know a lot of people want to do more weight and people get excited. And the main reason why people do more weight is just because they're, they're ego lifting and they want to throw on that extra plate. And so I wanted to dive into that a bunch today, because I think a lot of people are throwing on that extra plate and it's not always necessary. So what are some of your thoughts on it? throwing on that extra plate and it's not always necessary so what are some of your thoughts on it

well there's a couple ways you can uh go about this one is just go directly to the scientific research which is like limited because you know it's mostly on pencil neck undergrads but most of that research shows that full range of motion is better than partial range of motion for eliciting hypertrophy gains and also strength gains most of the time so on that note it's pretty one-sided there's one bullshit tricep study people bring up in the comments that they don't have the uh the training to understand what that actually implies but you know so there's some maybes there but generally speaking more full range of motion is usually best from what the science says on top of that the physiological and anatomical rationale of like knowing that what we know about the human

body and how muscles grow motor unit activation so for example if you like move your arm like this versus you move it like this versus you move it all the way some parts of your muscle never really turn on maximally if you're doing partials and And if you're doing full, then most of the muscle turns on and thus it grows more. And a couple other lines of reasoning would show us that even if we didn't have direct research, we would expect full range of motion to cause the best gains. Another pathway through that is tension generated during a stretch is really, really powerful. It has been shown in the lab to grow a lot of muscle. And if you don't squat all the way down and actually feel the tension on your quads while they're stretching,

I think it's difficult to make an assertion that you're getting that pathway checked off the list. So if you go down through it, both on the research end and the rationale end, full range of motion seems to be just generally, there's definitely situations in which it's not a good idea. But generally speaking, as like a first principle, it's a good idea to do large range of motion and then you have to have good reasons for not doing it my problem and i

go on a nice long rant about this or a short but very aggressive rant uh most people who try to excuse partial range of motion are just trying to am i allowed to swear in here i forgot what oh absolutely yep they're trying to fit their mouth anaconda style around as big of a pro bodybuilder cock as they can like ah like how can i suck maybe multiple pro bodybuilder dicks at the same time so i can be cool and they're like this fucking pro doesn't do full run let's see what do you think about that i'm like if you could have his balls and dick in your ass you probably would motherfucker like stop not hugging you're not thinking you're just doing some shit this jack motherfucker does and the thing is if you talk to that motherfucker you realize he's the stupidest person you've ever talked to he's no idea why he's

big well we all know pretty good genetics 20 years of training and a shitload of gear tons of food and then he's jacked and he's like i'd like to fucking do this because it feels better shut up i don't care what you think you're not thinking that's not i'm not thinking person i don't go to you for thinking i go to you for being like wow that guy's jacked next you know that's really that's really it so not hugging is taking the place of logic for most people which is why they just desperately try to justify partial rom and i'll take it to another level the reason they try to justify it is two factor one they want to use more weights

they don't have to feel bitch made because they're actually fucking weak so they want to be like yeah i can fucking handle the 70s like what the fuck does handle mean you mean lift through a four inch motion like well i can't do that like you know shit you can unwrap the shit's fine but number two is like in a lot of lifts full range fucking hard and i don't want any part of that to quote my friend mike zendelovich who you may know out in california is a very good power lifter he's like you know what is it down there at the bottom of the squat that i really want what is it down there that interests me nothing why would i go down that far and the thing is is that like shit fucking hurts man nobody wants to do full depth

hacks and squats and presses and this shit like stretches you it feels uncomfortable you might die down there so a lot of guys first of all want to lift big weights and feel manly and second of all they they don't want the pain of doing full rum and also they want to be like they're fucking not hugging favorite pro bodybuilders a fucking moron and then voila three fucking factors some bullshit science guy professor asshole with apparently grain as beard as you pointed out i was like you should do a full rama who the fuck am i and then that's why we have most people doing partials i love it you know okay i want to i want to ask on top of that mike because

a lot of guys aren't willing to use low enough weight uh to go full rama that I want to ask on top of that, Mike, because a lot of guys aren't willing to use low enough weight to go full run with it. They want to increase their weight faster, but not all the way. What would be the encouragement for an individual to lower that weight to 225, 235, get that full range of motion, even though it's uncomfortable, if they're able to squat slightly heavier weight with slightly less range of motion? Totally. So we know that volume is what really determines hypertrophy as long as weight's heavy enough to like provide some resistance. And then we can ask like, okay, are the guys lifting the most weight the biggest or the guys lifting the most volume the biggest?

Look at how bodybuilders train versus powerlifters. Powerlifters lift more weight than bodybuilders through a slightly smaller range of motion. And are they as big? No, bodybuilders are bigger. Why? Because they do more reps and they just do more sets. So if volume is calculated as the total amount of physical work you're doing, work is force times distance. If you lower your distance, you're doing less fucking work. you're doing work is force times distance if you lower your distance you're doing less fucking work like that's it so you can lift a lot of weight and that'll make you strong in that range of motion but it's not the best way to get big you get big doing full ranges of motion with the weight that you can honestly fucking do and the other thing i would say to the guys that are doing that is like

do you think you're fucking tricking anybody do Do you think you're tricking your body? Like, yeah, just going to throw on some plates, but they'll cut it halfway. Like, dude, you're the man. Oh my God, you just got 50 pounds stronger, right? Or did you actually just cut the fucking lift and you're lying to yourself? They don't fucking lie to themselves. So I just like to call people straight out. Like if you count someone's reps in the squat and they go halfway down, like, hey, count my reps, man.

I fucking lose track when I fucking lose my mind. You know what I'm saying? I'm like zero, zero, zero, zero. They're like, what are you doing? I mean, you haven't squatted yet, motherfucker. You've been going halfway down this entire time. Do I'm going to count partials? Half, one, 1.5.

There you go. There's your extra credit. So like a lot of times, you know, you could give a technical reason, like science and shit, like, well, partials and force curves. But like like at the end of the day the reason they're doing partials is not a technical reason it's just ego bullshit and trying to get away from the pain of two things physical pain of going low and the psychological pain of realizing you're not a 315 squatting type motherfucker you're not you're 225 type of squatting motherfucker that's just who you are so when people say like what kind of what kind weights are you doing in the squat? You have

to go a 425 and it doesn't feel nice. You want to be like, yeah, I fucking handled 405, but look at your fucking legs. You pussy motherfucker. They're not that big. And it makes sense. Nobody looks at you and goes, oh, there's a guy who can squat 405 for ups. They look at your legs and they know you're 225 squatting. There's nothing wrong with that. Because over time, five pounds here, 10 pounds there, you're going to have three 65 pounds squatting legs. And then people will believe you. The worst thing in the world is when someone like come to train with you or some shit and you look at their legs and you're like,

Oh, you respect, you know what I'm saying? I remember my first rodeo. And I remember when I didn't train legs and then you start loading up the weight and you're like, so I'm working up to four or five and a high bar squat. Did you want to?

And they're like, I'm going, I'm good. I'm good up to four or five. I'm like, no, you're not. Who the fuck are you lying to? And they're like, I'm good. I'm good. I'm good up to 405. I'm like, no, you're not. Who the fuck are you lying to?

Like you can't, your legs can't lie. So if you actually want to get jacked, don't lie to yourself. Use the weight that makes your legs bigger. Not the shit that makes your ego feel temporarily nice. Uh, and it's not even that nice.

Cause everyone who knows their shit knows your fucking bullshit artist. Can you imagine some guy goes to the gym? You two are in, and he's like loading up six plates and doing quarter squats and yelling yeah grandma in the corner and that 15 year old in the corner like oh my god this is the strongest person i've ever seen you two are just like rolling your eyes out of your head and who is that guy like who's respected he wants like oh my god that's semen mark bell like they see me lifting like yeah they think you're fucking suck and like you go

impress the 15 year old and it turns out doesn't even impress anybody. So like, it's a culture there. People just have to nut up and just do the shit that like is humbling as fuck, but it works. And if you want to lie to yourself, fucking lie to yourself, man, go for it. Just don't, you know, don't lie to the rest of us.

It's fucking insulting. When, like when somebody is, is just starting out and they're trying to get, you know, used to the weights and stuff like that. Let's say they just have like, I don't know, they have crappy range of motion because they have poor mobility and stuff. What are some recommendations you give there? I saw in a few of your videos, uh, you recommend like Olympic lifting shoes and then you recommend maybe, uh, altering like the leg press so that you can. And then stuff like that yeah there's a ton of stuff that you can do number one is choosing a stance for your body that accommodates your like differential joint structures and anatomical positioning so like

super close stance squats are not for everyone because you have to have like relatively long torso and short femurs to be able to hit good depth like that. If you're working with someone who has longer legs, especially longer femurs and a shorter torso, you got to usually put their feet out wider. And yeah, you can look at someone's body and think, okay, okay, they got to go wider, but it's really just a matter of experimentation. So what you do as a beginner lifter is first of all, get somebody around you that knows the fuck they're doing, you know, like it just barely knows more than you is a good start. And then just play with your technique because a lot of people just want to get their technique going and just start piling on the weight. Take a few weeks, use some weight that's challenging, but like try closer stance, try a little wider stance, see if you can stay upright and go

a little deeper after a few sets really. And definitely a few sessions, you're going to be like, all right, like this stance right here, I feel like I can get pretty deep. Maybe you're just above parallel. Then you keep playing with the technique a little bit, but you can change your chest angle. You can change your hip angle a little bit. You can play with which way you point your toes. That'll get you another couple of inches i get your inches dick joke so so in any case once you get that like you're well on your way to maybe like breaking parallel and then what you can do is try to do some pause squatting which is a really awesome way to do two things one it gets you time at the bottom to actually actively stretch under load. So in a

pause squat where you like above parallel a little bit, you pause for two or three seconds, you'll notice as you're pausing, you actually start descending a little bit. It stretches the tissues out. And after your rep five, you're actually going significantly deeper and that's muscle memory. Your body's learning how to do that. First of all, second of all, when you do those pause squats, you'll notice that whatever kind of technique you have, when you pause, there'll be like more and less comfortable ways of pausing that deep. So for example, if you feed a point at this way, you do a couple of pause squats, you

notice like at the bottom, your knees are kind of, you guys ever like point your feet too straight and your knees are kind of like, nah, fam, this shit ain't working. And then you do this with your feet on the third rep and you're like, oh shit, that feels so much better. And you get another couple of inches deeper after multiple sets like that of just feeling it out. Dude, all of a sudden you're squatting significantly below parallel over time, putting more weight on the bar, continuing that feeling out process using pauses. You get deeper and deeper and deeper. In addition to that, you can do deep leg presses and deep lunges to physically stretch out the tissues and become more mobile. You can do deep high bar good mornings and stiff leg deadlifts to get the posterior chain a lot of flexibility.

And after a while, just doing another half inch more depth, another half inch more depth. After six months, eight months, 12 months, you're at a place where you're fucking squatting super deep. And people are like, oh my God, you're so gifted. Your ankle mobility, you're like, this doesn't have dick to do with it. A lot of it is just technique. First, good basic technique. And second of all, just settling in and finding your technique through shit like pauses and going a little lower, a little lower. Cause a lot of people are like, look at my squat. It sucks. It's like, I can't even get depth. And it's like, you're doing pretty well. Like, that's fine. You don't need to be like a full ROM hero right away. Like you're getting almost a parallel. Keep at it. Do some

pauses, sit down there, try to wiggle a little bit, get a little deeper. And if you add a half inch every month, after a while, you're well in the game. And it just takes time. I think a lot of people do this Instagram bullshit. You guys know those memes that these fitness pages put up, like how to fix your squat depth and 18 steps. And you're like, the fuck do people read this shit on their phones? This text is like this big, there's references and shit. And they're like, oh, this is like a one-step guide to me fixing my fucking life and squat depth in these 18 tips.

People just want to fix it. A lot of the shit takes practice. Can you imagine if you walked in to a gymnastics training center, like an elite elite center and you're like, Hey, I want to like be able to do an iron cross. They're going to be like, word up. Okay. We'll sign up. We'll see you here. It's going to be like, you know, a year before you do it. You're like, no, no, no, no, no. I need a hack. I need to do it now. Thanks for some people squatting deep. Shit takes time. You know, like how long did it take you guys to work your bench and deadlift out to the mature lift that it is now? It's not instant. I think a lot of people are like, I have a mobility problem. How do I fix it?

It's like you work on your mobility slowly but surely, figuring out your body, playing with stances, using heavy weight, doing pauses, being patient. And the shit takes some time. Mike, what about just going for it here and there? You're doing some sets and you are keeping full range and you're just, I don't know, you're getting fired up. You're getting excited and you want to maybe shorten the range of motion to, you know, sometimes like when bodybuilding techniques, sometimes you kind of like pump the reps and you don't do full range of motion. It's actually like something I, when I'm telling somebody kind of how to do a bodybuilding set, I'll oftentimes tell them like, Hey, it's kind of a partial range of motion. Almost looks like

a photo press. Uh, when it comes to like something like a bench press or a dumbbell bench, you'll see a lot of bodybuilders kind of keeping that tension on. Um, do you agree with kind of doing stuff like that here and there? Um, what are your thoughts on that on that no i think it's just fucking people get bored people's egos get in the way people get lazy um you know like here i can give you a pretty decent example you know say you're eating bodybuilding meals try to get in real good shape rice chicken bullshit boring bodybuilding food and then like you have this bright idea like dude let's go out fuck and get like burritos or fucking chicken tenders and someone's like yeah that's fucking sweet like that'll feel good a little fucking something different for the body

you know it increases your sodium a little bit you get a bit more of a pump the next day and you're like yeah man fuck chicken tender diet and it starts to be this meme and then guys are like man every time i have chicken tenders i had great workouts and like really where did that come from you just didn't want to fucking grind chicken and steak anymore but who the fuck gets more jack than everyone people who grind chicken and steak and like remember ronnie coleman after the 2002 olympian gnc show of strength which he did not win the gnC Show of Strength first time in a long time, he got pissed. He said he basically ran a relatively strict diet for that entire rest of the year. He was just like, I was just on my shit the entire time. There wasn't a time where I was free off in the wind doing whatever bullshit. And you're like, God, Sam, that's

humbling as fuck, right? The reality is that's how the shit needs to be done if you want it to be done optimally. And you can tell yourself, let's do some partials and have some fucking fun because look fuck it get the shit is fun man and it's time to let loose and do something for example i'm a big ass fucking fan of periodization and shit is in my fucking company name of course but like you know planning programming progression like i love a plan every now and again when i'm traveling with my friends and we get to a gym we just do like let's fucking hit chest and biceps we just pick some fun machines and yeah we do full range of motion and shit but like we just do weird shit and like drop sets and stupid bullshit can i justify that other than the fact that it's generally effective and fun as shit no but like i know it's fun as

shit so i think a lot of the guys that do the pump reps and shit gives you a cool pump and it feels different. It's something different. That's why people do it. Not because it's some magically effective thing. You're like, well, the fucking thing is constant tension. The constant don't get me fucking started or do get me started on constant tension. Bullshit.

Total bullshit. And people justify the shit because they're fucking bored and it sucks to have to do Tom Platt's like workouts all the fucking time. What's the research? What's the research say about like constant tension or partial range of motion reps very little direct research on it there's that one tricep study but i'd like to see that study replicated before we go off and the fucking tricep push down study one fucking yeah skull crusher study um but like uh as far as constant tension just on logic alone people are like well fucking constant tension you're like so what's good about constant tension like you're not letting the muscle rest i'm like uh so you do when you do five sets of 10 is it

better to just do 50 reps instead they're like no you'd get tired so what's the point of doing five by ten well your muscles rest so you can try harder i'm like uh what if you rest a little between each rep by locking it out doesn't that mean you get more reps per set like uh-huh does that mean you're faster to twitch muscle fibers actually do a larger proportion of work uh-huh does that mean they grow more uh-huh so back to constant tension why is that good like i don't know like yeah you don't know that was the answer all along so constant tension people say oh constant tension and it's what uh economist and philosopher thomas soul would call a notion it's not a hypothesis it's not a theory it's a notion just an idea people have in their heads they never even

checked with logic they're like oh god's tension bro like why and they can't even explain it i've never seen anyone explain it they're like well it fatigues the muscle like sweet so why don't you fatigue the muscle by doing constant tension for five or six reps, lock out rest for a little bit, and then keep going? You're like, okay, but that's not constant tension. You're like, yeah, but you can't more out of the muscle. You're like, yeah. So what the fuck were you saying about constant tension? What's wrong with resting between reps? What magic shit happens that if you rest between reps, your muscles don't grow anymore? If anything, it's the other way around. If you do a full lockout and rest between

reps you can get more reps and your muscles get that much more fucked because when they think they're done they rested just long enough to be able to earn themselves another rep and guys will you'll do mutually contradictory shit like it you cause tension all the time like uh then i do forced reps too and like drop drop sets and paused reps and shit like uh so you just do everything they're like well yeah, yeah, man. You've got to book an attack from multiple angles. It's like, sweet. Again, a lot of these guys,

fine people, maybe. Some of them are not. There's not a lot of thinking going on. It's just a lot of like, fucking, just let's do shit. I don't know. Nsema, you're a high-level jiu-jitsu practitioner, so your eyes have been opened to this already. There's two a high-level jiu-jitsu practitioner, so your eyes have been opened to this already.

There's two types of people in jiu-jitsu that you can learn from and one type of people you want to learn from. There's the John Danaher side of the spectrum where motherfuckers thought of everything, and there's the just really good Brazilian guy who's just fucking good. And he's like, oh, now you do this. And you're like, why? He's like, you do, do, do, do.

And you're like, I got you. That doesn't make any sense. And I know it works for you because you're wildly athletic and you've been doing this before but you actually you're the worst coach of all time you can't say that to him because he's gonna fuck you up because he's a black belt and also it's not polite you know what i'm talking about though and it's just like people like hey do you like what's his name seminar you're like no one fucking like that guy guy's a fucking idiot like putting one world like yeah by doing this to people you know what i'm saying like so a lot of times people like yeah we think about what bodybuilder guy thinks of this and that i'm like i don't think the guy thinks much i'm sorry it's not a thing what is full range of motion to you can you like describe

that i mean i think i have a good idea but just for the listeners like are you talking about always locking the elbows and the bench press? You're talking about always locking the knees, those types of things. That's a really good question. So like, to me, full range of motion isn't like a dogmatic or religious concept. It's a concept of, it's like a spectrum concept where there's like, if you do this, that's very low on the full range of motion spectrum. If you do this, it's better. So like, I'm not one of these type of guys that'll look at a guy who touches his, uh, the bar to his chest every time and go slightly short of lockout and then back and be like, fuck it, idiot, pussy. He should be locking it out. Like, no, that looks good. Like that's like a 98% on a test or something. It's

not a hundred or whatever. But then again, there's some nuance there, right? Like if you lock out, then maybe it transfers force away from the chest. Maybe now it's more of a tricep exercise. Maybe the triceps become the limiting factor. So maybe locking out a hundred percent isn't a good idea when you're doing chest presses. I have all the time in the world for nuance. There's a very big difference though, between benching mostly full range and getting a big stretch at the bottom and almost coming up to lock out versus like guys that will get on the bench just be like that shit like no that no inadmissible that's just stupid right like it's the difference between like like a high-level chef was supposed to use paprika but he used like black pepper and you're like damn interesting wine he's got a good fucking reason for it even though it's

outside of the realm but if like you watch me cook and I'm like, oatmeal, salt, and you're like, why? Like, don't ask me why I'm a fucking idiot. I can't cook anything. This is a random guess that I promise. I don't even justify it. So it's one of those where like full range of motion isn't an absolute concept, but if you're cutting your range of motion, I'd like to know why. So here's another one, right? If you go deep on the leg press, so deep that your hips round out from under you. And now you're hurting in your lower back. It's too fucking deep because it's hurting you. Right. But if you go partially on the leg press and I'm like, have you tried going deeper? They're like, uh, do you feel it more or less in your quads? If you go deeper, they're like more, they're like, but you're not going deeper because they're like, cause I can't use as much weight. Shitty dog shit reason. Right.

So if you're like, look, if I lock out on the bench, transfer the shit to my triceps i get less of a pec pump less of a disruption my pecs get less sore my elbows hurt dude you sold me fuck full range of motion go as full as you can while getting the good shit for your pecs and not the bad shit for your joints but the reasoning has to be there if there's no fucking reasoning and it's clearly obviously fucking lying to yourself then you know especially when guys like for squats they make up a ton of reasons weightlifters the world over over 70 years have been dunking high bar squats and they're fine and you're like yeah man it doesn't agree with my knees shut the fuck up don't call yourself an athlete you just don't know how to lift weights you're a guy that just does this and you think you know things like go train with weightlifters they'll't know how to lift weights. You're a guy that just does this and you think

you know things like go train with weightlifters. They'll show you how to do real weightlifting and then you can come back and apply to bodybuilding. So it's one of those things. If you have a good reason, I'm all fucking ears. The problem is most people don't have a good reason. I have no reason other than not hugging, which is probably not a reason. I really like how you clarified first off when we first started talking about full range of motion and Mark asked that question, you clarified that it could take six, eight to 12 months to be able to get to doing like a squat that deep. Because a lot of people immediately, once they see it, they're going to try to squat that low. And then immediately they're either they can't get there with their hips or their knees are hurting down there. And they're like, I just don't have the mobility.

But you clarified it takes a while to gain that mobility. Totally. And then also. And the more the merrier, as long as it's feeling good for the muscles and feeling okay for the joints. You know, you start at whatever. It's like, it's like speaking French. It's not like if you can't speak French perfectly, shut the fuck up and never speak French.

Although I guess some French people do think that. But like, you know, like apparently if you go to France and you fuck it up, they're like, do not speak our language right but like in reality it's like look wherever you whatever french you know fine just try to learn and do a little better and over time you speak really good french same with like full range of motion work on it a little bit make sure you're feeling it in the muscles a lot and then the joints a little keep going and over time you'll get to more of a range of motion which is great like i'm not looking at motherfuckers doing leg presses and they're going significantly below peril but not like as deep as they could and like oh these fucking idiots i'm like dude

that's a pretty fucking good leg press and if they ask me like how can i get better like oh i have tons of ideas but you're doing a great job it's a partial credit sort of thing it's not either or and it takes time to get to you know and, and I think that brings us, it's not actually totally different. It's on the same vein. For example, you know, someone can load up a, uh, a chest supported row and they could load up five plates and row that shit. Right. Um, but they're not feeling it in their back. They start feeling them, their bicep. They start having to use a lot of body English to bring it back. I'm curious. Um, do you have the same exact thoughts when you see individuals do that type of stuff? And then also what, what are some things within training

that you'd say, that's just fun shit, like drop sets, maybe loading up a lot of weight and just rocking with it. Um, and then what actually does make sense. So, so within bodybuilding, what are some things that you see a lot of people do, but you're like, ah, that's just fun. It's not really that effective. And then what are some other things that you're like, okay, no, that, that is legitimate. Like some people go to failure too often, but you know, there is a place for failure towards maybe the end of a set or an end of a workout. Can we clarify some of that stuff? Yeah, totally. So I think that, you know, we can term something called a mind muscle connection and in real training that doesn't mean like you feel your bicep it means one of two things usually both

some measure both one it during heavy sets you feel a disruptive tension a high degree of tension in your actual bicep or whatever muscle you're training so if you're doing machine rows you feel it in your back like oh shit like someone could be like do you feel it in your back. Like, Oh shit. Like someone could be like, do you feel that in your back? You're like, yes. Right. And then for higher rep sets, you feel a distinct burn in your back or whatever muscle you're doing. Can you imagine doing chest presses? And someone's like, you got to burn. You're like, yep, my triceps are on fire. They're like, what about your pecs? Like, nope. Like, are we confident that the pecs are being overloaded the most? Like, no, they're not even a limiting factor. That's not really a chest press. You can call it that,

but it really is just a tricep press at that point. So the mind-muscle connection is super important to not sacrifice for some other shit. So if you have a movement you're doing with full range of motion, but it reduces the perception of tension to the target muscle or it reduces the burn, then maybe you should limit your range of motion

to whatever gives you the most of that. Funny enough, most of the time when you do true full ROM or fuller ROM, you get gnarly fucking mind muscle connection anyway. So the two dovetail a ton. Like imagine doing your, you know, chest flies and open up like fucking crazy at the bottom. You squeeze at the top. Like, tell me you're not getting a pump and a burn. Get the fuck out of here.

Like, no, I feel it more like this. No, you fucking don't. You just want to use more weight because like we've had tons of people train with us and when we do the full range of motion shit they look at us like dude my chest is broken like no fucking shit like there's no mind muscle connection problem so for sure a lot of times when guys are doing that like load up five plates like you said on the row machine like a lot of times like you know putting in work like do you feel your back like i don't really feel much of anything i'm just trying to survive you should just moving weight around it's cool for strong man it's fine for power lifting

it's not bodybuilding anymore you got to be able to feel some shit tension to the target muscle or burn uh in the target muscle and then after a few sets you should have a robust pump in the muscle at your trainings you don't have a pump at all let's say you're doing rows and you're doing like, like fucking, you know, pigeon dance row where you like just flail around. Someone's like, you got a pump on your upper back. Like, I got a pump on my lower back and my glutes. It's like, Hey, I can tell you what you're training right now. And it's not your upper back. Cause why the fuck doesn't it have a pump? You know, it's like doing curls wrong. Someone's like, do you have a bicep pump? You're like, I have a huge forearm pump. It's like, what do you think you're really training

at that point? It's a hint. It's not your biceps. So there's definitely that factor and you have to remain true to that before your motion definitely usually helps. And that's one of the exceptions. If you really do have a lift on which the tension and the burn are maximized at a range of motion that is not full or fuller, that's probably a range of motion that is not full or fuller, that's probably a good idea to stay away from full or fuller, right? Like then you have a really good argument and it makes some sense. But as for the fun shit versus effective shit, the good thing, there's like a really wide berth of what's effective in bodybuilding.

And here, really here it is. Make sure that the target muscle is being stimulated. Number one, number two, that it is the limiting factor in the set. So for example, if you are doing pull downs without any straps or chalk, and the reason you get 18 reps and not 22 is that you're can't hold the bar anymore. Your forearms give out and someone's like feeling in your lats, right? You're like, honestly, the reason I quit was because I couldn't hold the bar anymore. Like the lats are not the limiting factor. That means they're actually quite far away from failure as a muscle. And most of the best hypertrophy is seen close to failure, right? Within three or four reps away from fail. So you have to make sure the muscle target muscle

is actually the limiting factor. So the muscle is being stimulated. The muscle, the target muscle is limiting factor. and you are, generally speaking, training it hard where you're going relatively close to failure. If you hit all three, there's a lot of right answers to that shit. So if you're doing giant sets or drop sets or mile reps, if you're doing them usually non-randomly, which means you do them every week, you progress through them so that you know you're doing a little more each time and you're keeping track, that's the best way to do them. And there's a lot of shit that's just good. People are like, well, when did I do supersets? When should I do my reps? When do I

do dropsets? When straight sets? I'm like, is it targeting the muscle? Is the muscle limiting factor? Is it like fatiguing you when you're getting close to failure? And afterwards you're like, fuck, that really did some shit. Because if that's the answer, there's a lot of right answers there. So if someone like does a lot of dropsets, my reps, whatever, I'm like, fuck, that really did some shit. Because if that's the answer, there's a lot of right answers there. So if someone does a lot of drop sets, my reps, whatever, I'm like, hey, that's great. As long as they can checklist those items and progress logically. And that progress logically is probably an important point because a lot of times people get so into the fun fuckery of lifting, they don't know if they're progressing. And a lot of times, bodybuilding and hypertrophy is complicated. There's a lot of factors coming in. Like in

powerlifting, you can tell if you're fucking progressing just because everyone knows what they bench squat, deadlift. And then someone's like, hey, are you getting stronger? It's not a fucking mystery. You're like, yes. When's your last PR? You're like, I don't know. So when you said you were getting stronger, you're just fucking lying. Like, yes, I haven't gotten stronger in years.

For bodybuilding, a lot of guys do a different machine every time or a different range of motion every time or different... They did you know, they did straight sets last week. Now they're doing drop sets. You ask them like, Hey, it's like, are you getting stronger for reps? And they can't actually give you a reliable answer, which is why consistency is a really good idea. Like, dude, I'll do all the fun shit you want, except do the same kind of fun shit and just progress a little bit each week or each session. And then you can tell like, dude, over the last two months, these like drop sets on leg press, I went from doing 500, 400, 300 for sets of 10, 10, 10

to 550, 450, 350 for 12, 12, 12. Like some shit had to have happened. Like my 99 problems, but training progression is not one of them because in bodybuilding too is high volume. It's really easy to trick yourself into thinking you're working harder and harder, but really because the shit is so hard, it's easy to start coddling yourself. I'll tell you this. So for example, you're doing skull crusher, super heavy or JM presses. You get to a point if you have strong triceps where like, yeah, 135 feels like it gets you a good pump and shit. But what you need is like 185 and 190 and 195. That's what really makes your triceps grow the most. You don't want to do that

shit. It feels fucking weird. It takes 15 minutes to warm up for it. You got to put on elbow sleeves. You're like, why the fuck am I doing this? Like, let me just train a little easier and justify it with some weird shit. But that's not the way to really make those fucking gains. The way to guarantee gains is to do shit that works and make sure you do a little bit harder every single time or on average then there's no like it's like a quick jujitsu analogy if you roll with different guys all the time and you don't keep track of points or anything in your head at least or like what sweeps you're getting like i you know like someone's like are you getting better you're like i can't feel good how do you know you're getting better like you roll against the same

good guys in your crew and you're starting to fucking sub more people you're giving the black belts problems it's the same guys and you're going up against you trying the same sweep same sweep same sweep you start getting it then you're like oh yeah no i am getting better this is fucking sweet that you don't have to ask yourself like man maybe i've just been lying to myself and going and shitting on blue belts and white belts and pretending i'm getting better. Same idea. There's got to be some kind of like, a lot of guys want to get real fancy and do all kinds of weird shit. They don't want that, like the oppression of a fucking plan. And it is oppressive.

Like you're like, okay, last week we did leg press for sets of 20. This week we do leg press again for sets of 20, except for 10 more pounds. You look at your log book, right? And you're like, I have to beat this. Fuck that. But that's that real shit that guarantees gains. You're like, man, let's just do leg extension. Let's do hack squat. I feel it more. Lie to yourself. Fuck that. 10 more fucking pounds this week. The week after 10 fucking more pounds. You're not going to want to do it. Your fatigue is crazy high. Fuck that. But that's the shit that guarantees you progress. So yeah, there's tons of the right answers to what works. Do similar shit for one month, two months, build it up like

crazy until you just can't anymore. Deload, pick some different shit, keep that shit and then go up again. Do you think a lot of this, a lot of the information that you had to research and the things that you've come across, do you think a lot of these things have been conflated by just meatheads just grinding it out in the gym and spending three hours in there and they end up kind of doing a little bit of everything? be very hard to tell what the hell works because this guy is saying, oh, I use partial range of motion and I do drop sets and I do, but they do such a wide variety of things. And they've also been lifting for so long that maybe at some point when they first learned how to lift, maybe they had a mentor and they were doing full range and things like that. So do you think that, you know, a lot of the bodybuilders or bodybuilding community maybe has conflated a lot of this information? And there's a couple of problems going on with there. First of all, you say, okay, the way these guys get big is they do partials and shit,

ego lifting. They train for three hours a day. Well, maybe they could have done the right shit and only trained for two hours a day and gotten the same results. Well, then what does that do for their longevity? A really good example is Dexter Jackson. Dexter Jackson is like a thousand years old or some shit. And he's still at it. Who knows

how old he is? Hey, Dex, what was Abraham Lincoln like? He's a pretty decent guy in real life. God damn, you are that old. But he's rocking it at the highest caliber. There's one constant in his training, if you see it. It's the least sexy training you've ever seen in your life. He's not yelling

at shit. He's not doing dumbass partials. He's doing pretty decent range of motion. Cont controlled, progressive. He doesn't overdo it. That's why he's still in one fucking piece. And a lot of times people try to bring out, I don't want to talk shit about anyone specific, but people bring up Dorian Yates. That's how you got to train. Dorian essentially ripped every single muscle off his body by the time he retired in 97. He fucking just destroyed himself. Now, maybe that's the price of victory, but maybe it's not. Jay Cutler never really went to failure, did decent range of motion the entire time, did multiple submaximal sets. Jay Cutler had like one injury his entire career. He like tore his bicep before his last Olympia and that was it. Like,

that's pretty fucking awesome. And right now Jay Cutler's healthy as shit walking around. So a lot of it is like, can you get super jacked doing kind of dumb shit? Yeah. You have to do more dumb shit. And here's another really big one. I got to mention this survivor bias. Survivor bias is a motherfucker. And it works in at least two ways I can think of in high level bodybuilding.

One, people who do dumb shit, you look at them and you're like, see, it works for them. But what about that? What about that one guy, Mike Powers or whatever? Who's that? He was an up-and-coming national level competitor. You never heard about him? Like, no. He tore both his pecs off his fucking bones because he fucking did the same dumb shit, but he didn't survive.

He didn't have the genetics with a sheer lot. So you're only looking at survivor pool. It's like looking at guys coming back from World War II and be like, see, war is not dangerous. All these guys came back. Yeah, but you're not counting the guys that never fucking came back a lot of times if you look at all the best pros you're already looking at a filtered sample of the people that survived the dumb shit you guys know the bulgarian lifting protocols right for weightlifting we're like like the funniest thing in the world is when is when people freely choose to do bulgarian in United States or Europe now. It's a

weeder program. It's designed to crush you. And if you don't get crushed, you win the Olympics once and then you die afterwards or whatever. Why would you do a weeder program for yourself? That's not a good idea. And a lot of times pro bodybuilders, what they do is basically weeder programs that they're surviving. So we think this is a good idea. It's a fine idea, but being that you only have one of yourself, maybe you could do smarter shit. Cause if you get out of the game, that's it for you. It's over.

You know what I mean? And just cause guys have survived it, that doesn't mean it's going to work for you. And another way that works, and sorry, we bring this up if it's not politically correct or whatever, but like gear, like drugs and bodybuilding.

Cause you read like some of it's legit. You read some of like gear like drugs and bodybuilding because you read like some of it's legit you read some of the shit the pros are taking like what's his name's taking eight grams a week and it's like see it didn't kill him like uh-huh and who did it kill but like i don't know like exactly because dead people don't fucking say anything like it could have killed five guys and there's one it's like fucking russian roulette one and six fucking you know like five and six die and he's the only one that made it you're like see it's fucking fine like is it really are you gonna load that bullet in your gun right and i think you know when eight grams a week you literally have to shoot yourself full bullets of testosterone because needles don't work

what about um i mean because you're hurting a bunch of people's feelings you know your typical gym bro that's trying to do the other half reps and stuff um and then you kind of you mentioned something about about it earlier but we didn't really dive into it but assisted reps um you know as far as like having somebody help you you know get that last couple of reps so that way you can really squeeze the muscle out uh what's your take on that? I think it's fine in context, but I think it has some downsides. So the upside is like at the end of a mesocycle, like last training session, you can use that kind of shit. If you have the same training partner doing like a eccentric accentuated reps where they help you some on the way up and they don't really help you on the way

down, you can really squeeze out eccentric reps on pull-ups or some, I've done some shit before. It does suffer from a tracking problem. So you have to address that somehow maybe you track other exercises and not that where you're like i'm going to do five sets of assisted shit i don't really know how big of a stimulus that is but i'm doing pull downs and bent rows and i'm tracking my strength with that so i know my fatigue i know my progress if you're doing four straps on everything the real question is and this is like where this is a really great way to abuse the concept guys would be like hit a fucking pr day in the incline four or five five like yeah there's a guy's hands on it the whole time how much did he help you and like well like i feel like he helped less than last week feel feel you're betting your progress on feel you know like

i wouldn't do that but he said it was all me, bro. It was, and he said it was, yeah. So I'll take his word for it. Yeah. So, so basically like, I think there's a context in which four steps can be good. You just have to be concerned with the downsides and not rely too heavily on them as your number one way of training or not get into the tracking part. Like if someone's like doing, like helping you with reps, like don't write that shit in your logbook. So, so here's, here's an example. If you've got eight reps by yourself and four with help, right. Eight reps by self,

four with help. Don't write 12 because then you don't know if that's 12 or is it really 10? So just make sure you note that and then take it with a grain of salt later. And then, and then you'll know. And then next week you're like, all right, I'm going make sure you note that and then take it with a grain of salt later. And then you'll know. And then next week, you're like, all right, I'm going to do nine by myself and then four with help. And then that's progressive overload. You know, if you're getting stronger, you're supplying more of a stimulus and you're good to go.

You know, I want to know if you can help some, because a lot of listeners are powerlifters, right? Their main goal is getting stronger. And even though they say their main goal is getting stronger, every guy that powerlifts also has the goal of looking big and jacked. But like you were talking about at the beginning of this podcast, when a lot of guys do that, they are also, when they're doing their bicep curls and their pulldowns and all of this, they're like, I want to use as heavy weight as possible to do that. So, you know, when a powerlifter looks at their strength gain,

you know, at the beginning of the training cycle, they were able to bench 315. At the end, they're able to do 325 or close to 325, right? I got stronger. But they use that same thing. And they do that when it comes to bodybuilding. So how can a powerlifter that is focused on gaining strength, but also he knows that he wants to gain muscle? How does he have to shift his look at his training when it comes to building muscle, um, so that he can do it successfully and not just look the same, but be stronger. Yeah, that's a great question. I think really he doesn't have to shift his mindset at all. He has to shift it less than he normally would. I think guys go from powerlifting mode on their core lifts to bodybuilding mode. Let's just

fucking rep it out and do partial reps, power lifting mode just do more reps and so power lifting mode means every rep looks the same it means you do a full range of motion or at least a predetermined range of motion and it means you slowly increase the load over time so like if you're doing lat pull downs do sets of 15 instead of sets of three to six, like you would for, you know, bench. And then each rep should look the same. You should do, you know, RPE or RIR, the two reps in reserve or whatever on average, and try to add like five pounds every other week to lat pull downs, keep the good technique. And that's it. So actually be more like a power lifter. I think bodybuilders would benefit greatly from standardizing and formalizing and training more like powerlifters now at the

same time if you really are interested in being jacked just for vanity's sake as a powerlifter because of course like we said the answer is definitely yes you don't want to win the bench meet you want to be that guy that sits in those stupid chairs they put up for powerlifting you know like the row of hotel chairs you want to be the guy with the lats poking out the people like fucking see this guy's lats like yeah woody bench who gives a shit look at his lats and like especially if you have like a like a decent looking girlfriend then she's super hot by powerlifting meet standard and then you're really winning at life you don't fucking know what i'm talking about so so you want to be the envy of other powerlifters which is not that hard uh but in any case if you really want muscular development and you're not using a lift to translate to actual powerlifting, like you want bigger lats

or some shit or biceps, then the mind-muscle connection stuff really can play a role. So for sure, standardize, for sure, do whatever reps, for sure, increase load, don't fuck yourself over on technique. But when you grip the bar for lat pulldowns, and you're like, yeah, this grip, I can do lots of weight, but I feel it in my biceps and shoulders. But if I do this other grip, I can't use as much weight, but I really get a great lat pump. Probably do that second one. Just be honest about what it is you're doing. Because if you're trying to grow your lats, yes, periodize and progress.

But the mind-muscle connection should be there. Versus if you're like, I need a pulling movement, which I can get maximally strong on. It doesn't really matter where you feel it you know what i mean let's uh let's shift gears a little bit and um can you tell us about you know what the research says in terms just worked out kind of a perinutrition type stuff i know people get uh really deep into it i personally have been using amino acids during training for, I don't know, 20 years or so. And I've utilized some carbohydrates during training and had some success with it. It quote unquote feels good.

I don't know what it's actually doing or what it's not doing, but it does feel like it helps me to kind of finish the workout with a little bit more oomph. And so I wanted to kind of get your thoughts on that. I've heard you talk about it in some ways that are really simple that I haven't heard other people talk about it. And I'm kind of saying, look, if you are eating carbohydrates throughout the day, it probably really doesn't matter that much. And so I'd love you to kind of expand upon some of that. Yeah, if you have multiple meals of if you have a nice high carbohydrate series of meals or even meal before training and you have a meal where else you could consume after protein and carbs i mean from a signaling process

perspective from an actually getting the muscle to grow and supplying the raw materials for it to grow you're really checking a whole lot of boxes. However, workouts that last longer or workouts, which push you psychologically, if you have a sweet during preferably one with some protein and carb, you can, first of all, just tastes to take meat can make you perform a little bit better. Uh, and second of all, if you do take in some protein and carbs during the longer workouts, it doesn't really do much for your first couple of sets or exercises. But like you said, it's that tail end ability to finish on a strong note, which actually does improve a bit. So if you're one of these situations where you do your, let's say you do squatting, benching, and then you do some lats and biceps if you have a protein and

carb shake with you you start sipping it halfway through the workout usually when you get you guys know like when you get to lats and biceps and your power after you look at your training partner like what are we still doing here and he's like i don't know let's just skip it or let's just you know what is it like mail it in right like we're gonna do lats but we're not to do lats, but we're not going to do like, I'm not going to try. Um, and then, you know, if you do have that carbohydrate shake with some protein in it and some fluids, a good hydration, maybe a little bit of salt, what ends up happening is, is you can just put that little extra exclamation mark on the lats and the biceps at the end and walk out of the gym. You're like, dude, we fucking, you know what I'm saying? We did

due diligence to that shit. We actually progressed. We actually did a good job. And that can add up over time. And especially guys that train with longer workouts, or, you know, sometimes you have the psychological energy to do a good workout anyway, but sometimes you don't. And, you know, that's where pre-workout comes in really handy. And in addition to that carbohydrate and protein blend, uh, that's fast digesting with plenty of fluid, start drinking it during a workout or sipping out at halfway through your workout, and it really can cap off the end of the workout really well. Because you figure like, yeah, okay, the beginning of the workout is more important anyway.

You know, 200 workouts in, if you had pretty good ends of your workouts, it's going to matter. It's going to make a difference in hypertrophy and strength over time. You know, when it does come to... What kind of amount are we talking about you think that would make a make a difference i'm sure it depends on someone's size but for me personally i noticed that i don't need a lot of carbohydrates like uh 25 to 50 like usually usually does the trick yep for the average like lifting size male and something like a scoop

of protein, 25 grams, maybe even half that nobody's going to have scoop. Nobody listens to that shit. So scoop the protein and then 25 to 50 grams of carbs for a real hard workout. What you want to do is make sure it's in a roughly 8% solution, right?

So that basically means like if you have 80 grams total of protein plus carbs, you want that in like at least a liter of water right so it should be pretty diffuse it should feel like it's hydrating you what you don't want is like you guys you know people put a shitload of protein and carbs into like a mini shaker and they yeah they drink it and i need like to fucking i need a gallon of water to wash this down now that actually prevents it for through your muscles from the guy track and it might slow you down it might blow you up um what you want to do is have plenty of water along with that so it kind of tastes like almost diluted gatorade um hilariously enough the original gatorade formula the one that worked best for rehydration

was like half of the carbohydrate content and double the water as modern gatorade like modern gatorade is an entertainment drink. Like you drink it because it tastes good. You can think of who is going to market for Gatorade trucker. I think like people that go into gas stations, get a candy bar and a fucking Gatorade. It's like, what event are you getting ready for?

We just want sugar water. It tastes good. So if you have like Gatorade or whatever, dilute it by half, or if you put it in your own carbs, 8% solution, it's not going to taste amazing. It's going to taste like, like semi-sweet and then it actually hydrates you actually boost

performance so on and so forth so i wish it was kind of like you know what's the bodybuilding food that makes you most jacked like it's not fucking pizza so sometimes taste can can lie to you i know i know it sucks it's actually lucky charm cereal and sema so you're totally good to go it's even better than pizza as far as you're concerned. Dr. Reich, within the same vein of, I guess, getting bigger since we're talking about this, a lot of our listeners follow different styles of diet. There's some listeners that are keto, some listeners that do carnivore, some listeners that use carbohydrates or quite a bit of them along with fats and protein.

carbohydrates or quite a bit of them along with fats and protein. Now, if an individual is trying to gain muscle and let's say that protein is the same and calories are the same, but one individual chooses to utilize more carbohydrates, moderate fat, low fat, more carbohydrates, and another individual is like, I would like to be really high fat and low carbohydrate. What are, in the context of muscle gain, the advantages or disadvantages of both? So that our listeners, like if some are doing really high fat keto style diets, maybe they'll think about adding some carbohydrates into their diet for gaining muscle. Yeah. Carbohydrates potentiate the ability of the nervous system to work better so that you can push your muscles harder. So they improve your system to work better so that you can push your muscles harder. So they improve your ability to work out. Carbohydrates replenish your intramuscular stores of energy

called glycogen so that they make repeat workouts day after day after day, session after session, week after week better. Carbohydrates, when they fill up glycogen, glycogen has a direct link to your cells, muscle growing machinery. So when you're full with glycogen glycogen has a direct link to your cells muscle growing machinery so when you're full with glycogen you actually just sit around and grow more muscle than if you're glycogen depleted um in addition to that the insulin secreted along with any carbohydrates is wildly anti-catabolic it prevents muscle loss which we all go through periods of catabolism at various points during the day and if you can reduce that the net muscle gain is actually a thing and carbohydrates in non-insulin using natural athletes are a little bit anabolic too so over time that adds up so the argument for carbohydrate fueled massing

is twofold one it makes real good technical sense two there are not so many universals in bodybuilding practice because a lot of shit works if you do it real hard. High carbohydrate dieting, putting on more muscle is a damn near universal. Even stupid bro bodybuilders figure that shit out. And it's almost something that's never violated. something that's never violated um the number of people that got jacked jacked doing keto or carnivore i don't know off the top of my head uh and now can you get lean doing that shit fuck yeah can it be a really good part of a healthy sustainable diet absolutely is it going to make you maximally jacked probably not and carbs will be an advantage so that doesn't mean you have

to eat like that forever if you don't really like carbs all that much, just try eating some more of them and it'll help. And then if you go back to your lower carb lifestyle afterwards, do it after you've gained some muscle. So try higher carbs for 12 weeks, pound those weights, you get more jacked and then go back to lower carbs for a while. If that's the lifestyle that you like. But at the end of the day, almost everyone ever who's gotten really, really big has done so with a considerable amount of carbs. If you need inspiration on this matter, just Google Jay Cutler's diet. It is really obscene.

There's an interview with him during contest prep where they're like, what's your favorite cheat meal? He's like, I don't have a favorite cheat meal. If I could get a cheat meal, it would be to just skip a meal i hate eating i do it every waking second and he would have like he would diet on a thousand grams of carbs a day uh i mean that's just insane right i don't know what he masked on and he can't even imagine that shot but like that's what it took to get jay cutler big and every other big bodybuilder you've ever heard of, uh, pretty much did, did it on lots and lots and lots of carbs. I'll add to that as well.

Like just my, in my own experience, um, like, you know, I've been a proponent of a low carb lifestyle for a long time, just cause it helps me to, uh, stay away from overeating. Cause I just love carbs. And then once I start eating them i want more of them and the next thing you know it's like crap yeah i'm at the bottom of a fucking ben and jerry's uh bucket right but what i'll say is that even um even a minor amount of carbohydrates like even just uh just i don't know having a fucking potato and having rice like just having like i don't know maybe two servings and having rice like just having like I don't know maybe

two servings of carbohydrates a day um in reasonable amounts I mean I've I've had a lot of success I feel like uh with changes in my own body I'm just having like 100 to 200 carbs a day not getting big you know not getting huge but I am about 245 pounds so not small either and I think that a lot of people can really gain a lot from that so people that are doing keto and carnivore and stuff like that I think that you can switch you know switch some of your fat calories for a little bit of carbohydrates and yes you won't be officially carnivore maybe you won't be officially keto but you'll look a lot better and you won't look like a wet noodle. You'll actually be jacked and start to have some veins coming through your arms. Yeah, man, it just fucking works. And maybe a bit of advice for

folks that are interested in like sort of making that leap is don't just go to Ben and Jerry's. I mean, what am I saying? Of course, go to Ben and Jerry's. It's delicious. But on a serious note, like if you're straight up keto or carnivore and you're like, all right, I'm going to mass, I'm going to eat more carbs. Start with eating more greens and some more fruits. I mean, for the love of God, you're not going to zone out and just consume 500 grams of Swedish fish just because you had an apple. It's like, oh, that's fine. And then, you know, have some fruit, have some whole grains like oatmeal're like, oh, that's fine. And then have some fruit. Have some whole grains like oatmeal.

And yeah, look, carbs make you want more carbs unless you have barely flavored oatmeal. People are like, are you carb crazy? And I'm like, I don't know. I'm just kind of tired of eating oatmeal. So whole grain bread. And then eventually you can work up to brown rice and whole grain pasta. And then all of a sudden you're eating lots of carbs.

And someone's like, are you carb crazy now now like not really it's not really carbs that make you crazy it's super fucking amazing tasting foods which carbs just happen to be a big fucking part of you know like it's easy to eat two boxes of sugary cereal but if i'm like yeah hey eat the same amount of carbs and oranges you're like what that's like 900 oranges like yeah like but i eat three oranges i can't eat for another four hours like uh-huh like oh man it's not the carbs i guess so yeah tasty super fucking delicious foods are a motherfucker and carbs just happen to be involved in a lot of shit what's the deal with your bread pudding it's a very charitable way to describe what i eat because it almost assumes that there's a recipe

for it. So basically like I'm at the tail end of a diet, dieting for like 19 weeks at this point, I have like striations and veins in my ass, which you're not supposed to have. It's not, it's not. Yeah. Right. Like why? And my body is like waking me up at night and it's like, And my body is like waking me up at night and it's like, you're fucking up, eat. And like, I'm hungry 100% of the time that I'm awake. So because I get real preset macros, I got to try to crush that shit with food that is filling and nutritious, but doesn't send me down that rollercoaster of, oh my God, this is so amazing. I just want more of it.

Right. of oh my god this is so amazing i just want more of it right and my standard of what is good has dropped like you fucking wouldn't believe like i'm at a standard of eating where if i was like a standard of like i'm just gonna throw this off the rails fuck it masturbation wise i'm at like the 13 year old in 1998 standard where you find like a crumpled piece of porn art on the on the floor you're like this is amazing holy shit i'm not like a porn hub hd standard we're like oh yeah this isn't the fucking if this isn't a pay site i'm not even trying it like pathetic levels you guys remember i don't know and seeing you might be too young for this shit like the blurry cable where like

a nipple pops out and you're like this is the greatest day of my life i'm at that standard for food right now yeah i'm yeah. A hundred percent, right? Like that was, you know, that was. Scrambled porn. Scrambled porn. Amazing. But there was some kind of mystery about it too. It was like, it was the, it was the like, is it really going to happen?

Right. Yeah. And it's like, you know, now like Pornhub and shit's guaranteed. I don't want my shit guaranteed. I don't want the fucking, the chase. I don't know if it's really chase, but in any case. So what I end up doing is I make like casein pudding which people keep asking me the recipe motherfuckers is casein and water mixed together into a fucking sludge and then i have whole grain bread that's low calorie because

it's fucking low calorie and it's filling and it's not very good and i put the fucking pudding on the bread and it makes me less sad uh and if you try it and you're not dieting you're gonna be like this is the worst thing ever just like if you've had porn hub for forever and you look at scrambled cable porn you're gonna be like this is for stupid people and you're completely right but when you're starving man you'll do weird shit and that's where i am dude just give us the goddamn recipe, okay? I just did. Water, casein, bread.

Spread around. No, seriously. Okay, okay. Write this down. Now there's some cooking involved. And you have a degree in food science? Because I'm going to throw some terms you guys won't understand. Oh, he's not going for it.

No, there's no. That's the punchline, guys. There recipe i mean that i guess that that shows our iq right there we're all just like yes yes what is it go on please no no i don't know the secret um i we did uh go ahead i was gonna say we uh we got some questions from instagram but it's a little bit off topic so i they're good. Trust me. But Mark, if you had some more nutrition things, we can keep talking about that. Yeah. I got one more, kind of one more, uh, just kind of on, on the topic of a protein and you talked about, you know, shoving down like four oranges and there's a lot of carbohydrate type foods

that are fibrous that can help keep you full. Um, I found for myself like something like a baked potato uh keeps me more in line with uh not overeating than rice because if i combine rice with certain things and i just want to keep fucking eating like what um what's that oh just if i combine it with like meat or something like i just just, I just want to, you know, I just have a hard time with portion sizes. Right. But I noticed with increased protein and especially over a period of time, I've been consuming, you know, 300 and sometimes even 400 grams of protein. I've kind of settled more into a 300 gram range,

but after doing that for a few weeks and experimenting with protein leveraging, it has really helped me. it's helped control my hunger and uh has assisted me so i wanted to see you know what you've seen in the research in terms of uh just consuming a lot of protein and trying to uh utilize that as like a weapon or a tool to help keep overall calories managed. Yeah, that works really well. And it's really well vetted in the literature. Up to like a gram per pound for sure works, maybe a little bit higher. Much more than that. So you weigh in like 245.

If you ate much more than 300, if you went to like 350, 400, 450, it's not as reliable. You would get like an anti-hunger effect. But up to about 250 to 300 in your case grams of protein a day, yeah, that'll be way, way way uh big anti-hunger effect versus if you try like 200 or 150 a day so consistent high protein feedings are definitely a really good way and and the texture and stuff matters and the digestion speed so you want things like casein protein things like eggs and egg whites things like meats

if you just do whey protein and stuff that tends to digest so quickly that you're just fucking hungry right after it also has like an insulin boosting thing which can sort of zap all the nutrients out of your blood and all of a sudden you're like fuck i feel like i haven't eaten shit so keeping protein high and keeping mostly from slower digesting animal sources is a really good good fucking policy you know so a lot of the ifp pros and shit they eat like inordinate amounts of protein like we're talking about guys your size eating 400 450 grams of protein a day they say like all the drugs let me process all that and that's really sure that's the case because feed efficiency also goes up so it kind of counterbalances i'm not sure what's behind that other than maybe just overkill. Because you tell a guy protein is good and he's very sweet.

I'll just eat double what the fucking recommendation is. So I'm not sure if there's a real place for that, although potentially there is. But definitely like a gram per pound to a gram, like 1.25 grams per pound per day is really, really good. Anti-hunger strategy. If you're not doing that, you could be highly benefiting because a lot of people that do keto, low carb, et cetera, If you're not doing that, you could be highly benefiting because a lot of people that do keto, low-carb, etc., they'll try to get into this magical state of ketosis by eating super high fat and a low amount of protein because it keeps me away from generating glycolytic elements and stuff. It keeps me truly in ketosis. It's not really that magical about being truly in ketosis.

For most people, I would just recommend for those people to cut their fats a little bit, raise their proteins quite a bit, and all of a sudden they get a better anti-hunger feel, and they're still mostly in ketosis most of the time. Since we're talking about protein, I'm curious. You made a video on meal timing recently, which was awesome, by the way. If you guys haven't checked it out, you have a whole series that's pretty damn great of lectures. But I'm wondering for individuals who are like, I don't like to space out my meals during the day. I like to eat two meals a day. Some people eat all their calories in one meal each day. But when we're talking specifically about protein and muscle growth, there have been, like, I think there's research that shows advantages to even protein feedings during the day versus a big bowl of protein once a day. But you can't store protein, correct?

No, not in the way you can store fat and carbs. And I'm curious, do you think the difference is that substantial? Where if a person like they like, they still eat the same amount of protein, but they like doing it in lower feedings versus even feedings during the day. Is it substantial enough for this person to try to change their lifestyle? If they're like, yeah, if they're not trying to head towards the stage that's what i'm wondering like do you think it's something that people should still try to do if they don't really if they're still getting the same amount of protein yes good question so it depends on like also how interested you are maximizing your physical fitness and your sport participation

and things like that but i would say like if you're eating two to three times per day uh is it worth it to bump to four to five times per day if you're headed for the stage yes if you're headed for trying to maximize remotely maximize your athletic performance and muscularity yes you're just a regular dude it's just trying to be healthy and fit just doesn't want to be a fat piece of shit goes to the gym four times a day or times a day four times a week and just is like just wants to be fit and fit just doesn't want to be a fat piece of shit goes to the gym four times a day or a hundred times a day four times a week and just is like just wants to be fit and healthy do two or three portion feedings it's totally fine it'll get you like 90 all the shit you want uh but if you're like oh like you know my last jiu-jitsu tournament i took third i really want to take first like four or five meals per day because you want to be able to

have done everything that's at least obviously beneficial uh before you consign to being like, I'm just a second and third place type of motherfucker. Like, yeah, you know, like maybe you can try a little harder. But on the other end, one protein feeding per day, you're giving up a lot, you know, and if you're involved in a fitness lifestyle and you're making sort of like any other attempt to increase your muscularity through weight training and the proper diet for the love of god you can do better than one uh and i think at that point like at least two or three like three you can fucking eat protein three times and it's this you can have two big meals a day but then have a tiny meal of protein only like for example you wake up in the morning have a casein protein shake 75 grams of casein then for lunch

have your normal big lunch meal and then have your normal big dinner that's three meals three spreading uh boluses of protein you're super fucking well underway that if you like literally have one meal a day with all protein carbs and fats in it uh i don't think you've tried you're not trying um and yeah you are definitely trading off something significant. And if you call yourself, if you call what you're doing an attempt at the fitness lifestyle, I don't know, color me crazy. Uh,

but I don't think, I think there's, there's more wiggle room there. It's kind of like, you know, if you're saying like, you're really interested in health, but you drink like, you know,

two bottles of vodka every other day, someone could be like, yeah, you, you you you ever drink by maybe drinking less vodka like no it's okay like yeah it's not but maybe if you could drink like two or three shots of vodka every other day like no okay fine that's fine right like it's plenty of healthy russians that do that but two or three bottles every other couple of days it's like i feel like you're not really interested in health and you're just going to drink vodka one way or the other which again is totally fine yeah for myself uh i was doing a lot of fasting for a while and then i've ditched that and i was eating breakfast and then uh i switched to just having like a protein shake just because i just

i just didn't feel like eating in the morning and i was like this is a good this is a good way of keeping it simple and making sure that i am getting protein because you can't really store protein the way that you can store fat and carbohydrates as you mentioned and it's a way for me to keep my size and i don't know keep everything going the way that i want it to and then usually i work out at like 10 o'clock and then i have my intra workout stuff and post workout, I start eating and it seems to be working, working well. So anyone that's looking for, you know, some, something to try, you might want to just try a protein, protein shake in the morning.

Real simple, easy. They taste good. That's a good way of doing it. Yeah, I totally agree. A lot of times that's the way I eat. It's like in the morning I don't really eat much, but I will have a protein shake and it starts me off pretty well. What you got, Andrew? tricks or some of these hacks or better known as the anabolic diet by, uh, made popular by your buddy, Greg Doucette. Um, what, what, yeah. And so I, I followed his diet. Well, actually it was for my buddy Remington James, cause he has a recipe book and I followed that for a photo shoot and I did, I did okay. I did pretty good. Um, but then I started following the RP diet with the RP

diet app and I instantly noticed that I couldn't have any more of my little tricks. You know, I couldn't have any of the like the big, you know, anabolic ice cream shakes in the blender with the xanthan gum. I couldn't have a lot of like fake sugars and all these weird oddball things because the app forced me to have whole foods. If we're talking about just getting in more protein, staying in a caloric deficit or at maintenance, is there anything in your opinion really wrong with some of these other different types of diets that maybe not necessarily have whole foods in them,

but they're more of like a kind of like if it fits your macros type of thing? That's totally cool. The RP diet is going to be getting more advanced and incorporating more if i if i am approach if people want that so it's updates are coming where it's a bit more flexible and then eventually very flexible okay one of the things about the rp diet is like we actually want to inculcate habits for people to eat like decent fucking whole food shit because that not just gets you in shape but builds healthy habits you can use the rest of your life and keeps you healthy um because like you can eat all that weird shit and there's totally a place for it but like that's not

really building a diet you're like you're not eating xanthan gum for the rest of your fucking life you know uh you can i guess but you know like that that stuff is really great for like if you're deep in the hole when you need some shit to fill you up that doesn't have a lot of calories and you need something sweet. And all those recipes are awesome for that. But once you return back to relatively normal eating, it's good to be able to just put together basic meals that are healthy and have really great ingredients and check all the boxes. So there's nothing wrong at all with all those other diets. Those other diets are just a little bit more temporary than something like the RPp diet which is a bit more of a lifestyle or at least sets you up for more lifestyle yeah that's definitely what i noticed right away too i was just like wow like i

i didn't realize i wasn't eating you know like normal foods like at all period you know but i was i was hitting my my macros you know almost every single day and i was i was having success but you're right. I guess maybe that would be a really good temporary solution. But we do have some questions from Instagram. Don't worry. I won't give you anything too low hanging fruit. Feel free.

Yeah. Our buddy, Josh Settleidge, he's a jujitsu practitioner as well. He rolls with Nsema. And he's just curious if any of your workouts have any intentional carry over into jujitsu from what you're doing right now with your bodybuilding. Zero. I love it.

You know, okay. I hopefully I, you can expand on that, but, um, I love it when I guess I see individuals or I see people post this workout is specific for jujitsu, etc. And it's some weird ass movement that's very hard to progress. And it's just like, you just wonder why. Now, my question to you, adding on to Josh's question is for those jujitsu practitioners do you think there's any need to add in specific things into your training outside of getting stronger and potentially getting bigger um that you know is special for

the martial art or should they just train like i mean there's going to be some back-offs because of fatigue but should they just train like everybody else in a sense in a sense absolutely so a good resource if you guys want to have my show chad wesley smith the juggernaut he's put out a ton of great shit about jiu-jitsu how to train for it and it's so funny because you look through his videos and he has like some instagram previews from his youtube content and he's like the four pillars of jiu-jitsu lifting and you're like whoa it's gonna be advanced and he's like pulling squatting pressing rowing you're like saying shit but and then you realize you're like the carries you can do some carries and stuff but like at the end of the day it's mostly what is it that you're

lifting weights for in jujitsu it's to get strong because strong is inconvenient that's it you want to become inconvenient for people they want to do things to your body and you're too strong to let them and when you do things to their body you're strong enough to do things to their body that they don't want you put you this way so you take two guys and they have the same technical skill like same belt rank and you know they're roughly the same technically. One guy say, dude, in the last like a couple of years, he's been doing all this functional stuff, like weird vice gripping. He does pull ups with like a gi roll down the shit, you know?

And like, he does a lot of core work, functional stability shit. Like you're going to roll with him. Like, yeah, I'll take a shot at the title. Fine. But then another guy, you're like, Hey, that guy's like, you know, also a purple belt or whatever. Like, okay, sweet sweet like he's been doing a lot of power lifting he's like pulled 600 bench 400 and squad of like 585 after grass i'd be like yo fuck that guy i don't want to roll with that guy like that's a lot of guy to roll with you know and you're like even see me you competed against chad like that's not fun no you're like i just hope he doesn't kill me or eat me or whatever and you are that guy too where you're posting crazy numbers and you're super high skilled

nobody wants to roll with you you probably have trouble getting super fights because they're gonna fuck that guy i don't know so at the end of the day i mean you see to think about this way can you imagine someone like brian shaw at a mid-level blue belt skill level would you roll with that guy i fuck that fuck that you couldn't i don't know what you could do to him he could pretzel your ass up because like when a guy pulls 1100 man there's a lot of jiu-jitsu just goes down the window like one of my instructors said if you like pin someone straight to the ground like over under topside pin he's like oh don't be down there there's not a lot of jiu-jitsu down there it's like literally just jiu-jitsu runs out when you're like someone's on your face you're

like i can't use my body so you know the the idea of strength training for jiu-jitsu is to become inconveniently strong and in just core basic pushing pulling movements that uh then your technique takes over and you use this new cool strong body in a way that's jiu-jitsu specific. But fundamentally, jiu-jitsu specific weight training, there are a couple places where, yeah, you can do some specificity. But for the most part, you just want to get brutally strong at the main compound movements. That's it. If you could watch a guy like – and there's some movements like – here's an example, a more specific movement that still works. You know the ab rollout thing, like the ab roller.

If you watch a guy ab roll with like 135 for a set of 10, that guy can sit up into guard and fucking jam you down faster than you can blink because he's got so much core strength that you're like, dude, that's going to be a tough roll. Like shit like that. So even when you do the fancier looking lifts, you got to progress and just get fucking inconveniently strong on them shits. Because a lot of times jiu-jitsu guys will have a great base of technique and then they get into lifting and they trust the wrong people. All of a sudden they're doing BOSU ball bullshit and one leg balancing shit. And I'm like, what do you think that's getting you? It's funny. You watch Gordon Ryan and his crew who are the best in the world.

How do they train? They train like bodybuilders. They just get really big, really strong muscles. The rest of the shit technique handles. You never see Gordon Ryan doing BOSU ball shit. He does bench presses in rows. That makes him really annoying because you just can't move him like you want to.

At the end of the day, that's absolutely the case, man. You know the community super well. The layers of bullshit of resistance training for jiu-jitsu are like infinite it's like dante's levels of hell there's just a new layer of like people making shit up like well what you want is like shut the fuck up which and i love i'm not even that good at jiu-jitsu i love rolling like other people's new gyms and just like inconveniently stack passing and toothpasteing the fuck out of people

and then i got guys legit asked me like so do you think like your muscles like help you in jiu-jitsu gyms and just like inconveniently stack passing and toothpasteing the fuck out of people and i got guys legit asked me like so do you think like your muscles like help you in jiu-jitsu i'm like dude i just rolled through you and you're a four straight brown belt what do you think man did i do anything crazy technical that i trick you they're like no like like there why couldn't you triangle me because i'm too strong to triangle and i'm too physically big right so if you were bigger and stronger wouldn't that be nice and they they're like, yeah, but I need to be specific to jujitsu. Like I get the fuck out of my face or let's just roll again. And maybe I'll beat your ass again. And then maybe you can learn, maybe not. You know, one thing though, that does also,

I guess, um, come into play from what you were talking about at the beginning of our whole conversation when it comes to weightlifting, I think, uh, jujitsu individuals would get a great benefit from doing full range of motion. Cause I see a jujitsu individuals would get a great benefit from doing full range of motion. Cause I see some jujitsu people lift, right. And they do partial ranges. But like,

if you think about the nature of the sport, you're being put in so many weird positions, you got to push from here. So you want to press from there. Right. So I think that's one thing that you talked about that is going to be so that can be one of the biggest things that helps jujitsu guys lift. Totally.

I mean, like full range, bent rows, pull ups, deep ass squats, lunges where you somehow like put the knee below the ground or like elevated, like you're going to be in positions where people put you in them. You don't want to be in them shits. You're going to want to be strong in all the worst possible positions. Like skull crushers. People do them like right here when i lay on your ass you're going to be skull crushing beyond your face if you're strong from here you get the party started if you if i put you down here like oh shit i've never been here before you're getting smeared and then what

like there's zero excuse for partial range of motion lifting as applied to jiu-jitsu people still do it because they're fucking into egotistical because full range of motion is hard. And because their coach says like, Oh, it's okay. Like we're going to make it functional or whatever. Great.

And I hope you're in it as someone like word Ryan, who's stronger than you and more technical pulls your asshole out of your mouth. And then you can go back and just do more BOSU ball shit and say like these using drugs. That's why. Oh no. It's a pretty sweet submission if you've never seen yeah I was gonna say is that legal

maybe oh yeah at ADCC there you go Mr. Shellshock asks if you're ever gonna have any jujitsu strength and conditioning templates exactly to Nseema's point we have what's called the simplified templates at RP, the simplified training templates. And it's like a four day program of pushing,

pulling, squatting, et cetera. That's the jiu-jitsu templates. Just use them shits. They're cheap, they're basic, and they're going to take you 90% of the way. Are we eventually going to have a more detailed product uh maybe uh but like not for a while but the good thing is you don't need that shit nine times out of ten just our basic templates will cover you fuck our p fuck buying our shit go get it anywhere else to juggernaut method 2.0 like fucking for love god and sema offers coaching fucking hire him just hire somebody not fucking imbecilic and do compound basics any Any fucking powerlifting program is a great start. Just do that shit.

I think, and that's part of the thing, like no offense to the question asked, right? You're asking a very legit question, but like you don't need a jujitsu specific fucking template. Like you may need it if you're like up in the upper crust of getting to be a world champ, but then you don't need a template.

You need a coach, you need a higher end seaman. He needs to take you the rest of the way with a personalized program. Because up until then, you could just use really basic templates to just get fucking cock strong. Because if you hire a seaman, you hire someone like Chad Wesley Smith, and you come to them already squatting, benching, deadlifting, and pulling up raw, legit numbers, they're going to be like, dude, our job is easy as fuck. I'm just going to manage your fatigue, find out what lifts work best.

That's easy. Can you imagine inheriting? And I'm sure you've done this. You inherit a good grappler. You're like, all right, well, let's get you to train with weights. And he benches 115 for a set of five. And you're like, you have no idea how weak you are. How the fuck are you this good? And on the bright side is like, if he actually buys in for a few years, he's going to get way better because he's going to get way stronger. But on the downside, and I'm sure you've been in this situation, a guy will hire you like

six weeks before Worlds. And he's like, I need strength and conditioning. And you're like, uh-huh. And he's like, here's my numbers. And you're like, I don't know what we're going to do in six weeks that's not just going to hurt your body. Just continue to smoke cigarettes or whatever you do for your current strength and conditioning program.

Hit me up after Worlds. It will take one year to actually make you strong i've been in a situation before where i've worked with some pretty high level guys and i'm like holy fuck are we getting out of a deficit here you know so just the basics man you know i do want to mention something real quick the guy who asked the first question josh settled settledge he's a very strong grappler um very strong guy he's a blue belt but he works with a lot of like top level competitors if you guys check out his instagram so check josh's instagram out because he has a lot of great jujitsu content but he also works with a lot of grapplers which is awesome but dr

mike what i wanted to ask you also um since we're kind of on this topic is you personally and i think chad made a great video about this um on his youtube i made a video about me talking shit not you talking shit but like a but like a lot of grapplers, they're like, you know, how do I balance jujitsu and lifting? I think honestly, the big idea of that video that Chad made is you just need to figure out your hierarchy of importance. Like, are you someone who's doing jujitsu as a hobby, but you're focused on bodybuilding?

Well, there are ways to do this. And you also made a video about this. And, you know, I think you're a great example because bodybuilding is your thing, right? But you also love training jujitsu. So for yourself, focusing on getting bigger, focusing on putting on as much muscle as possible, how do you change up your training of jujitsu so you can still get the most out of your training in the gym? Yeah, I just made a big change, actually. So what I used to do is typically train three or four days a week in jujitsu. And that training was,

I have a coach, Josh Vogel in Philadelphia, uh, his Instagram is the sloth, uh, the sloth report. So really Josh is like a mystery of, uh, he's taken my back so many times in three seconds that I'm like, I don't know anything I'll roll with it. I'll like, I'll like shit out a couple black belts and i'm like i'm the man and i'll roll with josh who weighs 150 pounds and i'm like score zero points and i'm like i don't know anything people like do you you do you later someone asked that day like you do jiu-jitsu right like roll with josh i'm like no i don't i used to think i did but anyway josh is my coach so he sets the plan for me and then i come and roll I do like basically like four, three or four sessions of five or six live roles doing executing certain specific plans.

I used to do that up until several months ago. And then several months ago, I made the decision to like focus quite a bit more bodybuilding. So now I've taken my jujitsu training for the foreseeable future down to two sessions a week, still four to six roles each time, but I'm not trying as hard in those roles. They're a little bit more technical, a little less because I need to save myself. So that's how I'm adjusting. And then if I get closer to bodybuilding competitions or the peaks of mass gaining, I'll go into that two easy roles or easy sessions per week range. And if I'm away from that or have different priorities away from bodybuilding, then I'll go back up to three or four rolling sessions of harder jujitsu. I won't be doing

that second thing for a while now because I'm really trying to put it into bodybuilding. But I think between those two extremes, many grapplers can find where they want to be. It's just like you said, it's a matter of figuring out your priorities, your hierarchy of importance, and understanding fundamentally the MRV concepts, maximum recovery volume. You can only do so much. And where you put your training, where you put your recovery is up to you and it's not infinite. So I think a lot of guys, they power lift six days a week and they're like, I'm starting to do jujitsu. I'm going to add four sessions. You're like, no, you're not. And two weeks later, he won't be adding shift. You'll be

peeling yourself off the ground. So it's a matter of understanding your limits and then working within them and sometimes doing more of one thing, sometimes more of the other. You know, even to add onto that, if you have enough self-discipline for this, I definitely don't. But if you're someone who's focused on strength training and bodybuilding and you do want to do jujitsu four or five days a week, for some reason, then maybe you just only do the technique that your professor has you teaching. Maybe you just drill. Yeah. If you, you can drill without getting yourself, you know, beat up after class and then you can have a great training session the next

day. You just can't do six live roles and expect to get the most out of it, you know, in terms of your, in terms of your gym training. Yeah. And there's other ways to hack that process where, I can't believe I said hack, I take that back. Um for example, you can deny rules with killers because there's killers at your school and they're like, you want to roll? You're like, I'm good. Some days you take them up on it, some days you don't when you're trying to conserve your shit. Or, and this is even a better move because it's egotistically less obvious, but it works, is set yourself a goal that's minimum energy expenditure and don't let yourself get crazy. So for example, you roll against a killer. You're like, my goal is to start on deep half and either sweep or get to closed guard. And

after that, I'm going to restart a deep half. I'm not trying to pass. I'm not trying to submit. If I get pancaked and he's on top of side control i let him get a sub i restart like what do you really want to do when he passes side control when he's squashing you you're like fuck this i'm benching this dumb motherfucker off me it's on oh you went to pan ams fuck you you know like you know because you know like it's there's a temptation there to just fucking rock it out if you can resist that and keep the roles limited technical to what it is you want you end up exerting a tenth of the energy you get a great session because you're really just training like a very specific thing getting much better at it with a really good guy it's just not a psycho

ego role if you wanted to have pure psycho ego roles with everyone first of all your time in jiu-jitsu will be much shorter as a healthy practitioner than it otherwise would be and second of all say goodbye to balancing anything with bodybuilding or powerlifting or any of that shit cool that's all we got from instagram all right yeah dr mike thank you so much for your time man it's always always awesome to have you on the show and uh appreciate what you're pumping out on that youtube channel can you plug that for us? Dude, thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure. Renaissance Periodization on YouTube. If you can't spell it, fuck it, that sucks. Neither can I.

Just Google RP Strength YouTube. We're just putting out like four or five high level content videos every week. I've got so many videos in store. So many pre-recorded, we're going to be doing this shit for years. Tons of content, tons of series on fatigue, training, diet,

everything. We're pushing YouTube big and it's, it's great. Come join the party. My shitty jokes, deadpan humor, awful attempts at shaving and haircuts. And,

uh, all that stuff is there. And, um, yeah. Awesome, man. I've been loving the content. Really appreciate your time today. Thanks for having me.

It's always a pleasure. Thank you, Doc. Have a good rest of your day. Yo, that was good. It's always it's always fun, man. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah. Somebody was hoping that he had a little

bit more secretary jokes the cock but he the anaconda just all of the above that's great yeah he came with jokes yeah yeah um there was one more question but i just didn't want to you know take his time up with it it was in regards to uh developing bigger traps but the guy can't do shoulder or he can't do shrugs for some weird reason oh so would it just be like a compound movement or something yeah i mean mark like honestly like over the years i don't think i focus on uh you know shrugs to get traps it was just a lot of getting strong with squatting getting strong with the dead lifting oddly enoughly enough, because those movements, you have to, you know, you have to get very strong there. Mark, I mean, I know you know a lot about that.

Yeah, absolutely. Just powerlifting in general, just, you know, handling more weight will get you used to that. And then, you know, statically, your traps are involved in a lot of movements, bench pressing being one of them. involved in a lot of movements um bench pressing being one of them i think heavy bench pressing is what helped build up my traps a lot um along with the heavy squats obviously having that weight on your back and then deadlifts as well um any back movement that you do a row um you don't really need to do shrugs necessarily um there there are there are variations of shrugs that you could probably do that might hurt less if pain is kind of an issue for you you might want to try them on an incline bench either facing

the normal way that you would utilize an incline bench or you can face the other way and you can try shrugs either one of those ways would work well and might be something you might be able to mix into your routine but um i personally never had to uh focus on them directly but every every person is so different that uh maybe that wouldn't be the case for you you can also try some one arm uh shrugs with like a cable or one arm uh just holding a dumbbell and you'll find that you get a way better stretch in the trap using one dumbbell as opposed to two. And then you also have things like farmer's carries, yoke walks, all those things will get your traps massive. Yeah. I'm so happy you mentioned that. I was literally like, I was like,

please mention farmer's walks. Please mention farmer's walks. Just grab the heaviest dumbbells you can manage, hold them at your side, stay tight and walk 30 paces, 30 paces back. Ooh, your chops are going to burn and you don't need to shrug. So they're awesome, too. Yeah, I really, you know, I think, you know, as Nsema pointed out, you know, it's not not anything needs to be, you know, trained, you know, really direct. I think I think it's better use of your time to get them indirectly with movements like that, you know, uh, bench squat, deadlift, bent over rows, seated rows, all those kinds of movements, probably not a lot of

great reasons to waste your time doing a bunch of shrugs anyway. So it's fine that you can't find that you can't do them. Awesome. Having a mic on the show again, um, fantastic information, uh, talking about intra-workout carbohydrates, pre-workout stuff, post-workout stuff, um, tackled a lot of that stuff on range of motion. I really just wanted to get that dialogue. Like that's the whole reason why we had him on i just i wanted that same dialogue delivered to our audience because we could tell people to go over to renaissance periodization youtube channel and i don't know if they would have an opportunity to see it with all the great content that he has over there but he said it all here today i think that's huge and i'm i'm

learning from him and i i'm getting inspired and excited. Uh, cause I, I just, I love this shit. I love training and I love learning. And, uh, his style of training is much different than, uh, stuff that I've messed around with before. And to be totally honest, when it comes to bodybuilding, I literally don't know what I'm doing. I'm, I'm very, very new to it. I'm very green and i'm trying to learn and absorb and just have a white belt mentality and just uh keep absorbing information that i feel is useful and have the wisdom to uh put it to work so uh amazing uh information from dr mike yeah his youtube channel is gold it really is yeah he's funny on instagram too he talked about somebody asked him a question about being a vegan and he talked about how if you're he's like if you're

vegan and he's like you're trying to get in in the amount of protein that you need to be jacked he's like how is it possible that you don't turn into a human volcano and just sit on the toilet all fucking day just blasting shit out your ass all day i was like that is the that is the million dollar question because how do you eat mainly vegetables and just not have your stomach in knots all day long you know i think like with that was, I was talking to a group of people, uh, or with a group of people, like there was a lot of individuals in the group that were vegan and plant-based and I was literally the only person who was meat-based. Everyone was talking about health. And I was like, uh, I was just like, let's in the back of my head. I'm like, okay,

I think everyone's just going to need a little bit of time to try it so that they can experience it for a few months. And then they'll come back to eating some meat um i think that's just what's going to happen that's what ends up really happening with a lot of them i'm surprised they don't look at you and and just be like okay well and seamless the healthiest maybe we should maybe we should fucking talk to him just to get some insight you know it's because there are also some jacked vegans in there they're like there there are some like decently looking vegans. They didn't look insane, but they were like, they looked fit. Right.

But how long were they vegan for though? I think, uh, the, the main guy, he's been vegan for like a year and a half. Okay. So that's, it's been, it's been a decent amount of time, but it was just like, you know, I, the way I was, I was like, you know what? No one in here is doing anything wrong. But if you just want to add a little bit of meat or try this, give it a shot. Yeah.

It's also really, really great when you like, when somebody says they want to cut meat out because it's so bad and then you, but you inform them like, no, actually, if you do this and then, you know, keep your calories in check, like it's actually really healthy. Like what? Like, you know, it's like a celebration for them celebration for them like no i've been told that it's bad my whole life no you're good well i think there's a couple things going on when people turn vegan so number one is there's and there's a lot of research that shows us that just a change in diet period has a massive effect on you. An example of that is, you know, me recommending some carbs to

Ron Penna, who hasn't eaten carbs in a really long time. And he started utilizing some, about 200 grams of carbohydrates post-workout. And he's just, he went through the roof. He loved it. He gained muscle. He felt really good, but that lasted for about three weeks. And then the results kind of died off. And now he's back to lowering his uh carbohydrates again because the the impact is seen simply just from the change so just any change in your nutrition uh will most likely you know if it's a change uh where the goal is to either gain muscle or lose fat is at least halfway headed in that direction. You would probably get some of that result. Um, the other thing is, I think when people say that they're

going to cut out meat, I think they're cutting out maybe some, uh, they're cutting out bad habits and that's, they're not mentioning that they're not mentioning like, what do you mean by like, you know, if you ask them, you went a couple of questions deep on them and said, what do you mean by like you know if you ask them you went a couple questions deep on them and said what do you mean by cutting out meat what specifically like where is meat in your diet like where do you where do you get your meat from where you know currently or in the past where have you gotten your meat from they're like oh i roll through mcdonald's you know usually every day you know coming from work or i go to chipotle and And so it's not really just meat. They're eating meat with a bunch of other stuff. And they're making a lot of bad food choices in general. And they

have just in general have bad habits. So if you switch from one diet to another, you're already seeing improvement. But if you switch from really not having a diet at all, like you just don't have any discipline at all in your nutrition. And now you're like, I'm going to get rid of meat, but you got rid of meat. And you also got rid of a bunch of bad habits in favor of some other foods. I think that's perfectly fine. And I actually think that will be helpful. And I think that is a great thing to explore and a great thing to try. I think where people get caught up and where they get mixed up is whenever somebody jumps into keto or whenever somebody jumps into veganism or any of these things, they eat the Franken foods. They eat these weird foods that are, you know, designed by some of our friends. We know some people that make delicious foods that are this way that give you

a snack and those things are supposed to be eaten occasionally. But these weird foods that they make for vegans, vegan brownies and stuff, that's not the reason to be vegan. The reason to be gluten-free isn't to have a gluten-free donut or gluten-free cake or gluten-free pasta. The reason to be gluten-free is to not eat any fucking pasta and not have gluten-free bread. You just don't eat fucking bread anymore. Like those are now, if you want it on occasion and there's reasons for you to be gluten free or there's reasons for you to abstain from meat, uh, then yes, you have,

uh, one of those weird, uh, vegetable burgers that tastes like meat. Um, that, that makes sense. But I don't really think that, you know, somebody turning vegan or any of those things, I don't, I don't necessarily think they're bad. I think it's a, I think it's good. And I think it's a positive step, you know, in somebody's journey and maybe they'll learn more about themselves. Yeah. It's not, it's not wrong. It's not bad. It's healthier than the standard American diet. Yeah. You know, Mark, real quick, I don't know how many you have, but I'm curious to know if this is happening to you. I think Jessica told me that you said it might be happening to you, too. I've found that because it's winter or like as it got colder, I don't like I don't necessarily want to fast as much.

I feel the need and the want to just eat a little bit more often. Um, and it's like, I naturally, like every winter this happens. I'm like, yeah, it happens. It's happening again. How are you feeling? Do you feel this or you just not really? No, I think there's something to it. I think there's definitely something to like circadian rhythm, you know?

Um, if you think about it makes sense you know lights are out earlier you know you have less sunlight and it's getting colder and if we were you know around thousands of years ago we would have to be storing up you know we'd have to be building up our calories now because we're like hey like it's kind of cold out and it's kind of dark but it's about to be really fucking cold out and really fucking kind of dark but it's about to be really fucking cold out and really fucking dark and so it would make sense that you would start to eat more we probably would have started eating more even a little bit earlier maybe even a few weeks ago when you still had like um you know berries around and shit like that but yeah i i find that myself

and i find that certain times a year bring brings along certain kinds of cravings and it's probably more environmental than anything like uh this time of year you know you start thinking about thanksgiving and you start thinking about christmas and so everything is based around like family and food um and then in the summertime for me like i'm always thinking of like uh i always want to drink like fucking orange juice and shit like that, or, or have like fruit or fruit juice. Um, and I never do, but I just, for whatever reason, I kind of, I crave just sweeter drinks and things of that nature, uh, when it's colder out, I crave, you know, you know, just good home cooked meals and staying inside with family and just eating the crap out of food all day. Yeah. All right, man, you want to take us on out of here, Andrew?

I will. Yep. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Huge shout out and thank you to FreeSleeve for sponsoring today's episode. Links down in the description below. Code POWER25 gets you 25% off your order and free domestic shipping. Please make sure you're following the podcast at MarkBowlesPowerProject on Instagram, at MBPowerProject on Twitter, which they just announced they have Twitter stories now, so more places to catch the podcast. It's weird. All social medias are all turning into the exact Twitter stories now. So more places to catch the podcast. It's weird. All social medias are all turning into the exact same platform now.

They're also getting rooms like, you know. Rooms? Yeah, they're going to get. Yeah. Oh, OK. Well, I'll figure that one out later. My Instagram is at I am Andrew Z. And Seema, where are you at?

And Seema Nyang on Instagram and YouTube. And Seema Nyang on Twitter. Mark? I'm at Mark Spilly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch y'all later.