Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 448 - How To Build Bigger Legs

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

Today the crew is talkin all about legs and how to build them. Mark Bell and Nsima Inyang take general questions from Andrew Zaragoza and go in depth on how you can start training for bigger legs right now. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ 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

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Piedmontese Beef. And Seema, you work with a lot of clients, definitely have, some have different goals, some have, they want to gain strength, some want to lean down. But can you tell me why, for most people, getting more protein in is important? So, I mean, something that not only do people struggle with, I struggle with a lot is getting really hungry during a diet. It's the biggest thing. It's like people are dieting and they're like, I want to eat more. I need more food. But, you know, one of the reasons why protein is

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And if you're bulking, well, you can just have more meat. It's pretty amazing. You guys got to check it out yeah you guys got to get satiated today by by eating a higher quality cut of beef and the best way in our opinion to do that is by heading over to piedmontese.com that's p-i-e-d-m-o-n-t-e-s-e.com at checkout enter promo code power project for 25 off your order and if your order is 99 or more you get free two-day shipping. All right, gentlemen. So it looks like things are locking down again.

Oh, my God. Like, wait, like everywhere? Because I know Sac, we're in purple, but is this everywhere? I mean, that's everywhere for me. Like, I don't really know what's going on outside of Sac right now, but for us, yeah. It's such a bummer because, yeah, I think, I don't know if I mentioned this on air, like I was planning on going to our son's next doctor's appointment, which is a schedule for later today.

When we scheduled it, they're like, oh, we've opened back up. We're good to go. So like, you know, your husband can come in and, you know, I can listen to this heartbeat for the first time and all that good stuff since then they kind of tightened to tighten things up so i won't be able to go again but yeah it's obviously for us the the biggest bummer and for people listening is like gyms you know tighten things up or even shutting down completely what do you know what it's like in sacramento and sum? Well, yeah. In Sac right now, gyms are closed. Certain places downtown are closed.

I know that places that are choosing not to close just aren't like, I mean, my jujitsu school just chose not to close this time. And a lot of other jujitsu schools are the same way. So, yeah, I feel like businesses are just, they hear it, but some just are like, nah, we're not going to do that again. Yeah. I like that. I think that more people should do that. Yeah, for reals. So I guess with, with some of that in mind, I'm sure people this time around, you know, they kind of, I don't want to say learn their lesson, but they kind of got the shock of like, Oh crap, this one thing that I counted on is no longer there.

So let me get some home equipment and stuff. So hopefully this time around, they're a little bit more prepared. So it's like some people who maybe went into quarantine and came out a little bit less betterest than they were on the way in, maybe they can maintain this time around. And one of the things that I had questions for you guys, you know, I have, I don't know, I'm pretty, I'm still pretty slender, you know, but my legs aren't terrible, but I definitely would like to have some Encema quads. So I wanted to focus on how can me and other people develop a little bit better looking legs? I think maybe let's first off kind of talk about stuff that builds your legs that is outside the gym, you know, because you got to keep in mind with Nsema,

you know, he played a sport where they literally, you can't use your hands, you know, you can only kind of use your legs to get around and your feet. And not everyone that plays soccer necessarily is going to have big legs because different people respond. Yeah. Right. Different people respond differently, but most soccer players, uh, at least have good legs. They might not have like real, real muscular or, uh, big legs, but I would probably say that, uh, probably depend on your position and your role on the team and stuff like that too. And obviously genetics play into it. But I think a lot of times when somebody sees somebody with like big calves or big legs, I think they just think about what the

person does now. And they think, okay, the guy said he does leg press and these different things. But I think it would be a good idea to at least have some understanding of the person's background. That doesn't mean that you have to go and take up soccer necessarily, but is there something that you could do that could mimic some of that? Could you drag a sled? And when you drag the sled, it represents two minutes of straight work or something like that. Are there things that you could implement into your own training? We see this with collegiate-style wrestlers and stuff. They have huge necks and traps. And then people are like, how did you build up your neck and your traps?

And it's like, well, I wrestled for 10 years. And so sometimes it's hard just to know or say kind of where you know somebody kind of ended up with their original groundwork well mark i mean your legs are pretty freaking massive like um and you you did all of it through lifting like yeah you did wrestling too and stuff but um and your your legs grew like they're huge so um i guess if we're going to start this off since everybody's at home, cause I think, yeah, we'll do home stuff. And then the gym stuff how should individuals tackle their legs right now? If they're, if they're still really trying to build them.

And I even wonder like, is this the time to focus on trying to build a lot of muscle on your legs? Or, I mean, is this the time just to keep working on them? I think, you know, one thing that comes to mind is a hill. You know, if you have a hill, walking a hill, I think can build your calves and your hamstrings tremendously, obviously sprinting a hill. But keep in mind, if you haven't run in a long time, you got to be really, really cautious. I know like people like Ben Pekulski, he obviously built up his legs through just torturing himself with weights. But he also was a big fan of like riding a bike, you know, just a regular stationary bike in the gym and, you know, building up a lot of, I don't know, just getting this crazy burn in his legs. So for outside stuff, I would say, I mean, you have options with like lunges. If you have a weighted vest or dumbbell or a kettlebell, you could hold that and you can

do like lunges. You can do like goblet squats and things of that nature. And then you also have things like just running uphill and again, a sled, you know, get yourself a sled i i think that most of the companies are kind of back to normal in terms of uh them being able to provide equipment for you so um walking forwards and backwards with a sled is it's freaking amazing and if you can't get a sled or don't can't afford one or whatever maybe you can push something up down the street you know that one sled that you guys got in the gym and i think andrew you must have used it too at this point but it's the one um with the three it's like one head and then you you can push for the two it's like electronic the tank but the new tank

right right you take i think online that's like maybe okay i know like not everybody has 700 or 800 to spend but if you think about like what you get, the compact type of sled you get, and the ability that you have with that sled, if, if you guys do get a sled and you have some money, Christmas is coming around. Maybe you get, you can ask your baby mama or your sugar mama for, for $700. Um, you should get that. Cause that is one hell of a machine. It torched me. Great point. You can push it, you can pull it,ched me great point you can push it you can pull it you know it has attachments to where you can like you know bench press it basically or uh pull it or you can um you know set up a k uh like a rope on there you can pull it into you and and all kinds of

different stuff so it's that's a great option yeah it's super compact too i know they were obviously going for that with the design and the marketing behind it. But man, when I saw that, I'm like, oh my goodness. I had a feeling we would get one inside the gym. But I'm like, even with that, it would be so cool to have here to just push that thing around the block or something to help. Because there's no hills where I'm currently at. Obviously, I can probably go find some. But for me, that's actually where I'm currently at. Obviously I can probably go find some, but, um,

for me, like, that's actually what I recommended my nephew. Um, he just kind of started like, Hey, like, you know, the, the, the question mark, you know, like, so I'm, you know, kind of getting, kind of getting interested in, in some lifting and stuff. And, you know, he, he did exactly what I did at the very start. It was like, well, running sucks. So I think I'm supposed to do that. And, uh, he, he has access to kind of like a, like a, an overpass we'll call it. And I'm like, Hey, instead of like running your face off till it sucks, let me just go up and down that hill. You can walk it. You can try to jog it if you want, which is careful. I'm like, but when you're on that incline, not only is it going to help build your legs, but you're actually going to burn way more calories than if you were to just like run for a long time.

Like if you were to match the distance, I mean, but it's so powerful to do that. Yeah, website is twerkfitness.com, not twerk. Twerk Fitness. Although there should be a Twerk Fitness. There definitely is, right? There has to be and it's called the m1 sled or something right i believe so yeah people will see it right on the site and there's a bunch of different resistance uh on there there's like um one resistance

variable is uh you could put some weight on there another Another resistance variable is you could have it set to the point where when you go to push into it, it gives back whatever you push into it. And then there's another resistance variable, which is just straight resistance. And there's like three different degrees of that. So it's a real beast of a piece of equipment. But I think whenever we're talking about, you know, trying to like build anything, trying to get anything bigger, one of the, one of the first places we have to start. And we had Mike Isra tell on yesterday or a couple of days ago,

and he was absolutely fantastic in pointing out that, you know, the form, the technique, the full range of motion, these are critical things. So I think the first thing that you want to look into is, you know, the form, the technique, the full range of motion, these are critical things. So I think the first thing that you want to look into is, you know, how can I not necessarily lift more weight, but how can I get better at these exercises? Because if you can only squat down, you know, looking at Ben Pekulski again, I mean, his legs were massive. He's got legendary legs in the bodybuilding community. Tom Platz is another person that had just crazy, crazy quads. And if you look at the way that these guys could squat, they could have their feet inside their shoulder width, have their feet pointed completely straight forward, and they can drop their butt right on the ground with picture perfect form and technique. And so if you can't do that,

it doesn't mean that you can't grow big legs, but you are limited. So the more range of motion that you're able to build, the better that you're able to move, the better execution that you'll have. And when you have better execution, you'll be able to work the legs better. If you end up kind of doing a power lifting squat, you can still be working the legs.

Great. You can still be working the hamstrings, the glutes. You can be getting a lot of the legs, but maybe you're not able to focus as much in on building the thickness of the quad. And maybe the weights are kind of sitting in your lower back a little bit more. So I would say really try to learn how to do the movement. And I think one of the first movements that we have to start with is a squat. Yeah. Is that going to be one of those things where just if you want to get better at it, you just keep kind of hammering down on it? Or is it like you said in the beginning, like, is it something outside of that?

You know, so is it like, I don't know, focusing on stretching way more, which, of course, is going to be part of the answer. But, you know, is that just one of those things where, OK, you want to get better at squatting, then just do it every day. I think doing the movement often is a great idea. You know, in my book, Jack and Tan, I outlined a whole thing about practice. People don't really practice lifting weights. They just kind of lift them and they try to lift them heavier. But there was never really much regard to practicing it. And in every other sport that you can think of, there's not a sport that you would be able to drum up where there's not some sort of practice involved or a skill. Like, you know, there's like, okay, now we're

going to work on skills and drills, right? And they say drillers make killers, right? When you do the drill over and over again, and you learn how to do it correctly, um, then you will become a quote unquote master of it, or you will at some point learn to master it. Um, and maybe you'll never really master or conquer it completely, but you'll at least get close. But I think the activation, being able to activate the correct muscles is huge. And we talk a lot about like recovery and we talk a lot about all these other things. But if I was to if somebody is like, man, my lower back just can't recover from my workouts, from my squats, even if they were squatting three times a week, I would point to their technique. And I would say, you know, OK, there's two things at play here that I think would be at play. Number one is you could be using a little bit too much weight, but number two is I'm guaranteeing you that the form

is probably off. And every time that you do a squat is different than every time someone like Nsema does a squat, who's able to have excellent form and range of motion. You look at like Ed Cohn, Ed Cohn was able to continually build his squat because he was a master of the squat. Meanwhile, all the rest of us are trying as hard as we can to get stronger, but we're not really executing it the right way. We're too impressed with ourselves and we're too impressed with piling more weight on the bar and we continue to do it incorrectly. So I go into the gym and I say, oh, Andrew, man, my back and my knees, everything's kind of stiff and sore. It's because I didn't really work the muscles the way they needed to be worked. I kind of overdid it and lifted improperly. You know, real quick, man, let's talk about somebody because Mike

Ezratel was talking a lot about full ROM yesterday, right? And he even made like a brand out of it. It's like full ROM. He's got like really cool t-shirts and stuff and that's dope. But I do this every so now, every now and then. Let's talk about somebody it's this like full rom he's got like really cool t-shirts and stuff and that's dope but i do this every so now every every now and then let's talk about somebody who's been doing full rom for a minute who we've trained with who we talk shit about you guys know who i'm about to mention absolutely who who is it drum roll please mike o'hearn mike o'hearn whenever he trained with mike o'he, what the hell do we see? We see him doing leg presses, bringing his knees all the way up to his fucking shoulders. We see him squatting all the way down so his anus touches the dirt.

Mike O'Hearn has been doing this for years. And you see the muscularity. You see the development. You see the weight control. You see how he can do full ROM with heavy ass weights these aren't little weights he's doing full rom with he's using like weights that people would use in competition and doing full rom i mean what what what little correlation connection there yeah it was funny i i've thought for the longest time and sema just never made a sound, you know, like ever while training.

And that was the first time I ever heard you like let out a, it was a training with Michael Hurd. Cause you, he was, he looked at you and he just got all excited. You know, he's like, Oh, I can't wait to break this guy down.

And that, that was, uh, yeah, he's insane. Like the, uh, the leg press,

you guys were going all the way down to where it would just would stop. And then you would pause and then he's like okay now go and you're like like oh my god that looks terrible it was tough but i mean mark you got more to say on this i know you do yeah mike is is uh is a master when it comes to this kind of stuff he knows how to he knows how to lift the weight properly. And when you watch him do it, you're like, damn, like, okay, that's, he's right. That's how the lift is supposed to be done. And then you try to mimic it and you're like, oh shit,

I got to use a lot less weight than him for some reason. But you know, a good example of this is when Mike does a shoulder raises, he does shoulder raises all the way to the point where he brings his arm past, you know, being even with his like ears or eyes and brings it all the way up overhead to the point where he takes both the dumbbells and kind of pushes them together with his palms facing each other. I've never really seen anybody do a movement like that.

And he does that with like 40 pounds. That's really, that's really, that's really, really heavy. Yeah. It's insane. Like to do do with 15s or something's cool but you try to go any higher than like 20 you're like oh that kind of hurts um but you know some people would would look at a movement like that and they would say you know oh you're gonna the shoulder doesn't work that way you can't do it like that and um

you need to use a lot less weight or whatever the case is, or they'll say you're going to damage your shoulder from doing something like that. But Mike doesn't listen to anybody else other than himself, other than his own kind of like intuition and instincts and his instincts kind of always lean towards, how do I make this exercise like just really, really tough? How do I make it harder? Within reason, you know, he's not trying to add a bunch of bands or chains to the way to the way or he's not trying to have some just insanely harmful setup going on to where, you know, it's going to injure something.

But for the most part, he's just trying to look at how do I optimize this exercise? And most of the time he's done it through most time he's done it through, um, most of the time he's done it through full range of motion and he's not really a big, he's not really a huge drop set guy, you know, he doesn't. And also he's not really huge on like failure. Like you'll, you'll push to kind of your end degree here and there throughout the workout. Um, but it's not excruciating, you know, he just kind of touches upon it, but I think that he feels like, look, the full range of motion is bad enough. And the fact that we're, we're doing these exercises with this amount of range of motion is,

is bad enough. And Seema, do you think that, um, you have to, you, do you think that you, cause people talk about the squat being the King. Do you think that you have to squat to get big legs? No, I don't think you have to. But I think that if you can, it'd be a great idea to learn that movement and build that movement over time. But if you can't squat, there's so many other movements that are great for the quads and the hamstrings. I think the squat is good for overall glutes, quads, hamstrings, getting everything going at the samestrings. I think the squat is good for overall glute squats. Hamstring is getting everything going at the same time. Yeah. But as far as like, let me just start like outside the gym right now during COVID, you know, you talked about hills and stuff. I think that if someone were to find a way to maybe, I've mentioned the kettlebell before. I think the kettlebell is great.

Maybe get two kettlebells or if you can't afford getting two kettlebells um i did i did see that origin usa which is jaco willing company they have this um it's like a leather kettlebell that you could fill with up to 40 pounds yeah it's really cool is it like is it a bulgarian bag no no no it's just a leather it's literally just a leather shaped kettlebell that you can open up fill with with sand. You could fill with lead pellets from like Home Depot. You could fill it up, up to like 40 something pounds. Um, and it's great. Uh, uh, but it allows you, you know, with that, at least outside of this, you know, you could do, if you can't squat for some reason, let's say your, your knees are wonky or I don't know, for some reason you just can't do that. Um, well, if you can't squat that you wouldn't be able to lunge.

I was just saying like, if someone doesn't like to do in gym squats, lunges suck for people, but I think lunges are great. There are a bunch of things like Romanian deadlifts, hamstring curls that you can like, you can actually makeshift a hamstring curl in your garage. If you at least have like a bench or something, but there's a lot of stuff you can do to get big legs and you don't have to squat but i just think it's good if you do yeah i agree i think that uh the squat is um kind of the you know the the staple exercise you know and then once you have a

foundation for that then you can kind of veer. And you see a lot of professional bodybuilders, they really won't, a lot of them won't necessarily barbell squat. But part of that, there's many reasons on why they won't barbell squat. One reason is kind of the thickening of the waist can happen. A lot of them have a belief that it can kind of thicken up their waist, waistline a little bit too much there's people that have different theories on that um but one thing i would say is that a squat with a barbell on your back is just really taxing you know you can go through you can go through a leg press workout and you can have a good amount of weight and leg press and end up with a lot of stimulation but not end up with a ton of annihilation but But if you do a real hard squat workout,

you know, you're, you're pretty dead and it makes it hard to get through the other exercises. So a squat really can really pull from you. For me personally, more recently, I've been utilizing a squat as a second or third movement after I leg press or after I belt squat. And the reason is, is that I want to go into it fairly fatigued. So I just automatically have to use less weight anyway. And that brings us back to the whole full range of motion thing. If you really work on range of motion and you work on trying to go as low as you can within reason and not, you know, making sure you're not going to hurt yourself, that will reduce the weight greatly, but it will also increase the stimulus. You know, we're trying to, in this episode,

we're mainly talking about kind of building the legs, not necessarily strengthening the legs. And they are a little bit different. They do have a lot of crossover, but in this case of trying to build the legs, when we move weight further, we end up adding volume to our work, to our workout. And a lot of times when people are trying to do full range or even just trying to do squats period, they end up using too much weight. And because

they use too much weight, they don't go low enough or they don't have the correct form. And once again, they're cutting back on their volume because the distance that they're moving is not as far as it should be per set per rep. So thinking about both somebody who's already been in the gym for a couple of years and somebody who's listening that maybe might just be starting and we can attack both of them, but how many times per week should somebody be training legs if they plan on, you know, or sorry, if the goal is to try to build some size with their, uh, their lower regions. I think twice a week is a great place to start. And, uh, you could, if you've been training for a while and you've already been doing once or

twice a week, you can start to see what it looks like with a little bit more frequency because frequency, you know, can be a way to increase the overall volume, the overall work that you're doing. But you want to, you know, your legs, they, they do take a, they do take a toll on you. And so you might want to kind of keep some of that in mind every five days isn't a bad way of doing it. I know a lot of bodybuilders have a split where they go kind of go two days on one day off type of deal. And so something like that might work. And then the legs kind of cycle around each time. What do you think in SEMA? Well, first off, I think that the, the, the general wanting of individuals when it comes to doing a leg day is to do as little as possible. You know, so I feel a little something.

Yeah. My quads are feeling a little something, my butts and my hamster are feeling a little something, but it's not, it really isn't that much. Right. So they'll, they'll try to do that once a week and they'll move it. I'm not saying that you need to kill yourself or you need to be limping out the gym or you, you can't walk up your stairs, but, um But you really need to be at a place where you've done some good work on your legs after that training session. Maybe it takes two or three days to recover. And then like you said, maybe you hit it every five days,

but you have to get good workouts in. We have to not skimp on leg day. That's one thing that a lot of people do just because you're right, it hurts, Mark. You know, like when you're doing a lot of squats or a lot of leg squats or a lot of leg pressing or a lot of movements for your quads and your hamstrings, it hurts. But I think the cool thing about legs is that if you allow yourself to get to a point where you do enough volume and

you get used to it, it still hurts, but it's not a pain that you're now scared of, I'll say. Yeah, it's not a pain that you're scared of. You're willing to go into the gym to do that because with everything you do in the gym, you've adapted to the stimulus. You've adapted to the burn and the pain of your legs. So don't skimp on it and hit it twice a week. I like what you said there about kind of getting used to that pain. I actually think that when you're training your legs, this is an opportunity for you to expand your mind, for your mind to grow and for you to teach yourself that you, you know, you can do it. You can get through that next rep.

I'm not saying the entire workout needs to be, you know, full blast, gritting your teeth, screaming or anything of that nature. But I do think that it's important that when you feel that burn in your legs and you feel that urge to stop, that you tell yourself that you're okay, you know, and, and whether you decide to do another rep or whatever would kind of depend on whatever style protocol you're following. And, and you want to, I still think it's important to follow the principles of, uh, going to a technical limit. You know, I think that that's, you know, I think CrossFit, you know, really brought in some different things and technical limit type stuff has been around for a while. I think language like that has maybe even

come from like the military, but CrossFit kind of brought in like the no rep thing. And I really liked that a lot because it's like, yeah, dude, like you did a rep, but not really. You didn't do it the way it was supposed to be done. And so keeping that in mind, you can keep a really strong intensity for your workout. And there's a lot of, a lot of, you know, intensity that can be brought to the gym every single time you train, but you want to make sure that you don't go beyond this technical limit and technical limit would be

referring to, let's say you're doing a squat, you go to go downward in the squat and you, you know, break parallel and you decide, you know, you're going to come back up. Technical limit would be if you did a couple of reps and on like rep seven, you're supposed to do a set of 10, rep seven, butt shoots up first and you're kind of curling over in the low back a little bit. Well, now you have a decision to make. I would say that you could go for one more rep if you really wanted to, but if it's going to kind of look like a train wreck, your knees are going to cave in and that's kind of all you got left. I would discontinue the set and live to do another set because you're, again, you're going to get, you want to get in good quality work. Not every rep has to kill you. A forgotten element of the

gym is that the gym is supposed to make you feel better than the, than the way you felt when you came in. The gym is like a nice big cup of coffee with some kratom, a pat on the back and a hug kind of all wrapped into one. And you should feel like, you know, that you did work hard, but you should also, you should feel accomplished, but you should also feel like, wow, that, damn, that just felt really good. I feel better. I'm in a better mood. So in my opinion, I think that's what really good. I feel better. I'm in a better mood. So in my opinion, I think that's what the gym should do to you. And in accordance to that, that would mean that you're not killing yourself on every single exercise, every single set, maybe until you get to a point where you can handle that and have it still be fun.

Yeah. After we had Mike Isertal on, my views on drop sets might have changed a little bit. He didn't say that you shouldn't do them ever, but obviously he was not still get that full range of motion and to keep adding more reps to the set without getting hurt, I still think I'm going to do them. I still like them. But what are your guys' thoughts on drop sets and once you get to that technical limit, dropping the weights so that way you can maintain your form and keep the set

going. Drop sets are great. I think what Dr. Mike was referring to is the fact that in the grand scheme of things, you sometimes could be shooting yourself in the foot because you could have just done a set of 30 on leg press that doesn't allow you to really do a very good set again, you know? And there's some people that believe in like, just, Hey, leave it all on the table, do like one good, tough, hard set. And there's a lot of great research that supports that style of training. And there's a lot of great research that, that shows, you know, one or two, you know, really good sets. But I think there's even more uh information um you know talking about doing a little bit more than that and so the idea of drop sets is this is so you want to

try to make all your reps very challenging and so how do we do that so let's just use the leg press easy example you got five plates on there and you got two guys you know kind of watching you and you do a set of five and the five reps are really difficult. First two or three are not that bad, but rep four and five is pretty difficult. Well, now maybe the guys pull, you know, a plate off of his, off of a side and you try to do another five reps. Now they pull another plate off the side and do not, and you do a total of 15 reps and all 15 reps were a challenge. As your strength started to decrease, they started to pull a little bit of weight off. You know, you could also, I think

Mike's thing on like a drop set is that he's seeing people kind of be sloppy with some of this stuff. And he's like, why don't you just do the exercise the right way, you idiot? And why don't you just, you know, load up an appropriate weight that you could use for 15 reps, not really damage yourself so much because not every rep needs to kill you. You know, when you do a set of 10, how many reps are really, really brutal? The answer actually should be none of them. That should be the answer because you should be able to make it through pretty cleanly unscathed. It can get intense if it's the last set, the last rep, then it can be intense.

I love drop sets. I utilize them a lot. I utilize them very, very often. And one of the reasons why I use them is for that exact reason of trying to keep the intensity of each rep high because I don't really do that much volume. If somebody trained with me, they'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about? You do a ton of volume, but I really don't. I don't do that many exercises normally. And I don't normally do that many sets. I'm like a two, a one to two set guy. I'm like, okay, I'm going to bust my ass on this one see how it goes

if i got a little bit more i might do one more set but if you really were to look at my workouts if i actually wrote them down there would be like four exercises in there um they do take me a lot of time because i just enjoy being in the gym and i like taking my time but that's some of my take on it what are you thinking sema yeah no i mean after talking to my idea on drop sets hasn't changed uh that's kind of how like i've approached it for years because like i'm someone who does like to do a lot of training volume and i'm trained with a lot of training volume for years but the the thing is is like drop sets lead you to high levels of fatigue within a set so just just an example here, let's say that

you are leg pressing. Let's say you're leg pressing with four plates, right? And each set, your goal is to maybe do five sets of 10, right? And the 10th rep on each set is kind of difficult. But let's say that on your second set, you do a drop set. So you do a set of 10, then you drop a plate, then you manage maybe eight reps, drop a plate, six reps, drop a plate, et cetera. If you were to try to do another set with five plates, your legs would be so jello because of the fatigue that you brought upon in that drop set that you probably wouldn't be able to do five sets and you might not even be able to do, um, close to that. And when we think about the idea of volume, right. Um, that, that four plates at 10 reps, if you, if you, if you calculate the total training volume, you're getting in more training volume, doing four sets of 10 and doing a set, then a drop set, and then attempting to do the remaining sets, but you won't be able to, cause your legs are jello, right? So I like drop sets, but I do drop sets at the end of sets towards the end of my workout. And the reason why I do it, not just at the beginning of my workout, but the end of

sets towards the end of my workout is because if I did a drop set with a leg press or whatever, at the beginning of my workout, all my other lifts now suffer. Like the lunges that I want to do suffer. The Bulgarian split squats that I want to do suffer because now my legs are shaking while I'm on the bench. Everything suffers because of the one drop set I did at the beginning of my workout. But if I choose to do a drop set with a movement at the end of my workout, it's now a burnout. I can still get the benefit and the feeling of the drop set without having, um, my, my, my workout suffered because of it. So that's how I've been. That's how I've used it. Cause I love them, but I just can't use them at the beginning. Yeah. That makes total sense. You can make yourself extremely weak. You can like kind of really weaken yourself

from, uh, doing a drop set. So it's something you should keep in mind. I love the, I love the fact that you said you don't, you don't start out with it. Now that also doesn't mean that you can't start out with it. It just means that it's probably not the best idea to start out with it all the time. Yeah. Um, go ahead. Yeah, no, that's such a key thing right there. It's like, just because you don't start out with it on one workout doesn't mean that on another workout, you can't use it at the beginning. You know, like I think the big, the big concept here is trying to progress your training week to week. And you need to see like, okay, the workout that I did drop sets in the beginning,

let's use, let's look at that one workout and try next week to do more with that workout. Right. Um, and another workout, if you don't do drop sets at the beginning, look at that workout as its own thing and try to do more in terms of that workout next week, you can still progress that way. There's no reason why you can't. So if we were just to have like a whiteboard and we were to add up a bunch of numbers, um, and let's say in SEMA and I were working out together. Let's just say we're both, uh, we can both squat 500 pounds. We start to work out off with a leg extensions. Right. And let's say we do four sets of 25. We do a hundred reps of leg extensions, right? We're trying to get like a pump. We're trying to like body build. We're like, Hey,

this is the way you build big legs, right? Well, we may have reduced, not may have, we have reduced the overall output of what we're going to be able to do when it comes to the squat. Now, I don't know what the science says. I don't know what the research says when you're pre-exhausted and you have some pre-fatigue. I personally think that some pre-fatigue is great and it can be utilized often and it can help because in the case of bodybuilding, in the case of trying to get hypertrophy, we're trying to get a pump and to continue that pump. However, it's not just about that workout, as Nsema just pointed out, you want to be able to have continued progress over time. workout, as Nsema just pointed out, you want to be able to have continued progress over time.

So if we train like this week in and week out, where we always do these leg extensions for 100 reps before we do our squats, it's going to be very difficult. We're going to be squatting 275 or something. Our legs are going to be shaking. We're going to be dying. We're going to be laughing at ourselves. We're going to be like, what the fuck? And the next week, probably won't be able to really progress because we're really zapping our energy. We're destroying our muscular system. Our central nervous system is trying to fire because we're trying to lift more weight. And now the two things are kind of colliding and we're just ending up with kind of a disastrous workout. Again, I'm not saying that you can't work out that way. I'm just saying that I think that those workouts are a little short-sighted sometimes. And you want to think of the overall picture. Strength does not always have to be at the forefront for you to get bigger, but it is a

good idea to revisit, okay, I'm going to work on getting stronger. Like that should happen a couple times a year where you're like, you know what? I think my squats down a little bit. That sucks. It didn't feel very good. Like, I think I'm gonna bring it back up again. And then you work on it or your deadlift or whatever it might be. So I think that's a great point. And SEMA is like, you need to try to make sure that you're going to be able to make progress. And then on top of that, one way to make sure that you're making progress is to write shit down. And rather than starting out with the four sets of 25 of the leg extension, maybe if you wanted to get like a little pre-fatigue going, maybe do three sets of 10 of it just to get a warm up. Knees are warmed up. Quads are warmed up. They have a little bit more of a pump. Maybe it

pulls a tiny bit off the top set, but now we're still able to have a great workout with a four or five and go back and forth and do sets of that. You know, the really big thing that I hope people take away from what we did with our podcast with Mike. And then what we're talking about with here is like we mentioned, Mike O'Hearn too. If you want to start really doing these movements at their full range, I think Mike mentioned something that Mike Isertel mentioned something that was really key

is that everybody has a individual range of motion, which you can build over time. So if you're not able to squat that low, squat to where you can comfortably without pain, and then just slowly over time, inch it down from there. And I like how he said he used six, eight to 12 months until you potentially get a full range of motion. Think about that. He didn't say after about a month of squatting, you're going to be able to get to a full range of motion with that movement. He said after six, eight or 12 months, that is a lot of patience. That is a lot of consistency. That is a lot of frustration. That is a kick to the balls. Like that's tough. But to be able to like, like Michael Hearn doing lateral raises, freaking starting here, going all the way up here with 40 pounds, that, that, that, like, I can't do 40. I could probably do 15 or 20. That takes a long time to build doing those types of movements, moving the muscle throughout its full range. Just give it time though. Be okay with

being the guy in the gym that isn't doing presses or whatever with the hundred and something pounds. Be okay with dropping yourself back to 50 or 75 or 60 or whatever so that you can build from there but build with quality yeah mark you had said uh something about kind of looking at the the big picture um so with that in mind you know the focus is on trying to build size build legs can somebody do like super sets and still have enough focus on trying to build legs as opposed to like, nope, you know what I'm going to build. So right now it's, I'm going to leg press as opposed to like, maybe I'm going to do leg extensions and like hamstring curls because you know, it's probably about time I get out of this gym. Yeah. Doing a antagonistic work is amazing. So, you know,

pairing up a hamstring dominant movement with a quad dominant movement is amazing. So, you know, pairing up a hamstring dominant movement with a quad dominant movement is amazing. They sometimes will run into each other pretty hard though, where you'll get to a point where sometimes the lower back is involved. So if you were to try to do like stiff leg deadlifts in between your squats, I don't think that'd be a good idea because your lower back will be blown up. Um, but some sort of leg curl I think is reasonable in between most of, uh, your quad exercises. And then also if it's an isolation movement for the quads, if something like a, uh, something like a leg extension, um, or maybe even a hack squat where the focus is really

just kind of laser focused in on the quads and it's an isolation movement taking the lower back out of it well then now you could probably have the freedom to do a hamstring exercise like a stiff leg deadlift just be careful like you know that you're not doing like say like step ups or lunges in between your squats because it could be reducing the strength that you have for those movements. Again, it doesn't mean you can't do that. It just means that you should be, have the awareness and understanding that if you're doing a Bulgarian split squat in between your regular squats, it's going to really kind of zap you, zap your energy that you have, you know, going into each set. Super sets are great and working the opposing muscle, um, can really shorten your workout up. I would say by 20 minutes, 30 minutes, sometimes

you can go, I mean, I've been doing that for a long time where I'll do like a belt squat. And in between that, you're just standing around, um, you know, encouraging the other people you're lifting with and stuff. And so why not take a few seconds and go, uh, you know, hit your, uh, hit your leg curls up. Yeah, no,

that's like what Mark said. There's amazing. I like, I like doing that with, with everything. Super. So your bicep with your tricep movement, super set your chest with your back moving on that workout saves you a lot of

time, allows you to keep things moving. Cause I don't like necessarily standing still. I don't like waiting that minute before my next set. It's super useful and you can still get the most out of your workout. I think it does hit harder on legs though. Like if you were to do a leg press and a hamstring curl, even though they're antagonistic, you'll still feel that. You'll still feel that, but it still can work. You know, I think if you were to try to think about what we're talking about here in very basic terms, you will decrease your strength. Excuse me.

You will decrease your strength as the workout continues to go on. Like, that's just a fact. Like, you're going to fatigue. You're going to get tired. You're going to get tired. But what if you trained systematically and what if you trained with a plan or an idea in mind of what the exercises are going to look like for that particular day? You either have hired a coach or you have written out what you're going to do. I think it's a great idea to try to work your way backwards. Think about your workout backwards and start to think about, okay, I'm finishing my workout with lunges. You know, I'm finishing my workout with some lunges. So,

what's that going to look like at the end? Do I want to like not be able to do any lunges or do I want to be able to, you know, just do some lunges just to kind of open up the hips and just to kind of have a cool down? Or am I going to do lunges with 40 pounds in each hand, you know, or with chains over my neck or something like that? I think if you can work your way from the back part to the front, I think you'd be better off because I think that you can start to align that with how you want to finish your workout and how you want to end up leaving the gym for the day. So reason why I'm bringing this up is if you were to do like leg press and you were to superset it with the belt squat, this is something I've done many times.

I really like it a lot. Go back and forth between the two. Well, I've messed that up a bunch of times to the point where I really clobbered myself. And as the workout progressed, you know, I'm doing like leg curls and I'm doing, you know, box squats. And by the workout progressed, you know, I'm doing like leg curls

and I'm doing, you know, box squats. And by the time I get to my lunges, I can barely lunge. My whole body is shaking and trembling. So the question here is, am I better off, you know, being able to hold 40 pounds in each hand at the end of the workout and lunge than I would be if I can barely do a lunge? And I think there's not really a right or wrong answer there because in the first example where I can barely do a lunge, I already crushed myself. I already got what I needed from the workout for that particular day. But also, I think that in most people's development, it is really critical and crucial that they build strength. And the only way you're going to build strength, strength takes a long time. It's not cultivated

overnight. It takes years. It sometimes takes decades. And so in the grand scheme of things, I like option two, where you're holding those 40-pound dumbbells. And for most of you guys that are listening that are kind of skinny or smaller, I think it's even more important that you train that way because you're not even going to be able to use nearly as much weight on those beginning supersets. And so you need to figure out a way to pick up where can you gain ground? You know, where can you, where can you bring a good amount of volume into your workout? And a lot of times it's going to be on the accessory stuff. That's more towards the end of the workout. Yeah. Is there any, stuff that's more towards the end of the workout. Yeah. Is there any, this is kind of a silly question, but is there any magic in anything, um, in all the people that you guys have both helped,

you know, develop stronger legs, uh, better looking legs, you know, uh, physique wise, is it a one size fits all, or is there something where like, Oh, this person got huge on a belt squat. This person just regular was a regular barbell squat. This guy over here was a leg press, or is there kind of almost like a one size fits all, which is essentially hard work, but you know what I mean? You know, it's like, Oh, is keto the answer? It's like, well, no, you know, maybe not, but you know, it can be. Um, so have you guys seen anything where it's like well no you know maybe not but you know it can be um so have you guys seen anything where it's like holy shit like that worked for this guy that definitely worked for this guy uh that sort of thing where it's like now it's like a staple when you guys

are giving advice on how to build bigger legs i think the staple that i would say and it kind of falls in line with the question that I don't, I think Mark mentioned this at the beginning of the podcast. It's like, do you think you can build big legs without squatting? I think the one thing that doesn't change is like, you need to work with what you've got, you need to work with what you're able to do. I've worked with people who have issues where they just can't squat right so we look at what can you do to get some stimulus in your quads and your hamstrings and your glutes in the gym and let's just go to fucking town with

those with those movements and you can build good legs you could build great legs um so i think that's the thing it's like just because you can't squat doesn't mean you don't have you you shouldn't do leg day right and i think even either even some um machines that you don't want to sleep on just because you only see like or you only see like chicks on instagram using like the smith machine the smith machine yo you do full range of motion squats on the Smith machine with your legs kind of close together and then see what the, like to tell me that you're not feeling something great there. But a lot of guys avoid the Smith because it's like,

Oh, it's too much assistance, you know, straight up and down. It's great for size. I'll tell you that. Right. So I think the big thing is just doing,

uh, using the movements you have at your disposal and really just focusing on progressing with them. Right. So I think the big thing is just doing, uh, using the movements you have at your disposal and really just focusing on progressing with them. Absolutely. I think, uh, the, the only thing that's constant amongst everybody is, uh, this idea of, of, of progression, you know, somebody that, um, somebody that has progressed over a period of time to squat, uh, you know, somebody that has progressed over a period of time to squat, you know, 405, efficiently, effectively ass to the floor. There are occasions where that person doesn't have that well of leg development because of maybe some of the other ways that they're training.

But for the most part, that person usually has pretty good legs. So just figuring out a way to make some progress. Most of the people that have great legs that you see in the gym, they're able to do heavy weight on some sort of leg movements. Maybe they're not the greatest squatter in the world, but they can leg press, they can hack squat. I would say all the, out of all my years of being around, I've seen all these different things work, all the way from belt squat, which is like a newer piece, to hack squat, leg presses, regular squats, lunges. They all seem to be great. I think bodybuilders tend to use the lunge

quite a bit, especially like a weighted lunge. Ronnie Coleman was like a big fan because it helps build up kind of the inner thigh, helps build up the adductors, helps build up the hamstrings, helps build up the glutes. And it's kind of just working the quad and hamstrings, just working your whole leg really efficiently and effectively. But I don't think there's like one exercise that you have to do or focus on. I think hitting the muscles from some different angles is critical. I would also say that one thing I have noticed that has been a common theme is that powerlifters sometimes have great legs and sometimes they don't because central nervous system training doesn't always equate to larger legs, doesn't always equate to a stimulus

and growth because some of these people can move the weight so fast. Look at the way, you know, Stan used to lower the weight pretty slowly to try to like, you know, be in the best position possible. So you figure he'd get some eccentric benefit for, you know, for that by building up the legs. But he would do the rep so quickly, and he would only do one rep, that he wasn't really getting a lot of hypertrophy. And so Stan doesn't have – Stan has amazing legs. His legs look fucking crazy, but he doesn't have really big or thick legs. And we've seen that from a lot of powerlifters.

Jeremy Avila – I mean, Jeremy Avila squatted 800 pounds. And his legs, you know, don't tell that full story. I mean, it's not like his legs look like shit. They look pretty good. They're just not, like, they're not real beefy. But if we had Jeremy working on

hack squat and working on belt squat and working on some leg press and some leg curls. We know that his legs would just blow up overnight because he's got great genetics and he's, um, he already has a good strength base. So really the only commonality is just, you know, the heart, the putting in the work, getting the work did, getting the work done and, uh, doing so with good intensity. And then also, um, you know, having some leaning towards trying to get some sort of progression of being able to move more weight.

Yeah. Oh, go ahead. No, no, you're good. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, like, you alluded to, or not alluded, you brought up the Smith machine. And that just made me really want to ask you guys, like, and this is going to be hard, especially after what you said, like, just do what you can. like, and this is going to be hard, especially after what you said, like just do what you can, but, um, are there any, um, I guess we can do like three do's and don'ts. Um, so like three movements that you really should be focusing on. And then three that you maybe saw on Instagram

that you should probably ignore. Um, I can't remember who it was. I think it was a high level bodybuilder. It might've been Ben Pekulski was talking about like uh almost like that inverted leg press like uh i think mark you were on his podcast when he was talking about it i don't remember if that was on air or not but i just remember looking at that not really understanding what it was but then when he talked about it i'm like oh shit maybe it is something that i you know maybe should look into or whatever so So, uh, if you guys, it was like really good. I think you unplugged. Oh, was he saying it was really good? I think so. I don't remember. I'm having a hard time remembering cause I don't even remember if it was on the podcast or not. But, um, are there, yeah, we can start with don'ts like three things that like, maybe, like I said, somebody saw, you you know a influencer doing on instagram that we

should probably ignore uh whether it be like um i don't know like banded hip threat whatever it may be um is there something in the gym that you guys found that is just not really effective for building legs the first thing that kind of comes to mind of like a don't and this is just a general don't not necessarily isolated to just legs is uh you know don't be in a rush just just fucking take your time you know you haven't squatted before or you haven't squatted that often you're not used to it and you go in the gym and you know you go to move around five plates and your knees shoot forward a lot as you go to descend you can't get your hips down at all just say just tell yourself look just i'm a white belt you know this you know don't beat yourself up over it but just say i i'm in

fucking kindergarten you know and and I don't have any problem, you know, playing with the crayons. I'm not ready for the pencils and shit like that. So I'm just going to throw some tens on the side instead of that 45. And I'm going to be patient with it. I'm going to make sure I like do the lift the right way. I've been preaching that forever. And as much as I say it, I still think that people don't hear it enough. Like just learn to do the lift the right way. When you learn how to do it the right way, then you can start to have your own creations and have some of your own variations. But whatever it is that you're going to do in the gym, I always think that you should have to

provide some good evidence on why you're doing it. It could be simple. It could be, you could say, I could say, dude, what are you doing with that giant set over there doing five different exercises in a row? Are you crazy? And you could say, yeah, I'm trying to build some mental fortitude. I'd go check. All right, good. Sounds great. You know, you're trying to like, you know, that potentially what you could be doing could be kind of working against your body in some ways. But if you're doing it for your mindset, then you're probably on to something. I know that O'Hearn is a big believer in that. So my main thing would just be, you know, if there's a don't, just, you know, really try to stick to that.

You know, stick to that discipline of not going too fast. Stick to that discipline of not going too fast because I think it's the worst thing that I see in fitness is people, they're trying to lose weight for this time period or I'm going to get in shape for this. And then it's always like, yeah, but then what are you going to do? Why are you getting in shape for that? Why not be in shape for life? Why not try to find a plan that fits into your lifestyle really well. And with all this stuff that we're talking about here, we have to understand that a lot of people can't afford to spend two or three hours in the gym. And so they need to get the most out of each workout. And because of that, and because you don't have time to just sit around and eat

protein all day and take a nap, you know, Michael Hearn comes home from his workout. He has about a hundred grams of protein in a shake. I think he usually like, um, he usually eats like an hour later and then he takes a nap. You know, people don't have time to do that kind of stuff, but Mike does. And it's, it's a living for him. It's what he, it's what he does. So you got to kind of just keep all that in mind. Don't try to go too fast. Just take your time. I think in line with that, don't try to go too fast is don't avoid smaller movements. You know, I think a lot of people avoid movements like the lunge or the Bulgarian split squat or even like the dumbbellL, because you can't load it up like you can a leg press. You can't load it up like you can a squat. You can't load it up like you can a barbell, a lot of barbell movements. And people think, oh, these movements are useless because

I can only lunge with 30 pounds each hand comfortably. You know, I can't lunge with 60 pounds. So why would I even do this? It's not, it's not's not useful don't avoid those movements get better with those movements with that weight and then increase because that'll actually make a big difference for your overall leg stability which then is actually going to have good carry over back into your squat because now you actually have those smaller muscles in your legs are stronger so you're going to be stronger in those other movements so i i see a lot of people avoid these accessory movements, these small movements because you can't, you don't load them up and that you're shooting yourself in the foot. When you do that, you're losing out on a lot of development. So far, some of the stuff that we

talked about here is we went over form. We talked about, you know, strength. So you want to be able to learn how to do the movement the right way. Once you have learned how to do the movement the correct way, that's when you're going to start to add reps or add sets or add weight. Most likely it would probably be weight. Once you got the form and technique down, once you feel like you know how to do the movement the right way, there's so much information on YouTube of form and technique. And then you can also record yourself and kind of make sure that things are looking okay. Check with a buddy, right way. There's so much information on YouTube of form and technique. And then you can also record yourself and kind of make sure that things are looking okay. Check with a buddy, check with

a training partner, check with somebody at your, at your gym. If the gym is shut down, you know, try to send some videos to a coach or somebody that will take a peek at it and say, yeah, that looks pretty good. And then you can, then you can start to, once you got the form down, you start to work on the strength. And another big part of this, once you got the form down, you start to work on the strength. And another big part of this whole thing is going to be your volume. And another big part of this will be your frequency. So like once we have our form down and once we're able to work on strengthening the body a little bit, then we can start to look into, you know, adding more volume or adding more days. But it's not a great idea to adding more volume or adding more days.

But it's not a great idea to add more days. It's not a good idea to get all fired up and be like, I'm going to train legs three times a week when you don't even really have the form yet. You don't have the technique. Unless you were going to really use light weights every time you trained, I don't think that would be in your best interest because I think you'd be be kind of, uh, wearing yourself out, but for the newer lifters, I think it's really important and crucial to, and Seema's point is when you, when you don't know how to squat four Oh five, let's say your best squad is like 300.

And let's say that for the workout you did, uh, you did, I don't know, three sets of six with 250, 265. Well, that just kind of represents a certain amount of work. And let's say you did a couple other movements and we're to add up all the weight that you did at the end of the workout. Well, the weight that you did at the end of the workout is going to be so much significantly less than that person that was able to squat 405 for a few reps and for a couple sets. So where can you make up any ground? How do you, you don't want to even try necessarily to compete with those people because they are just ahead of you. And we talked earlier about trying, you know, trying to, you know, or basically avoiding going too fast, but you can make up

some ground in your assistance training and you can make up some ground, um, in implementing, um, implementing a frequency, you know, once you do get the form and technique down and stuff like that. So your assistance exercises become really, really critical. And I think a lot of people tend to blow those off. If you are a newer lifter, that's kind of your only option because you're just not quite strong enough to get the volume necessary to create the stimulus needed for you to get bigger and stronger simultaneously as fast as that training partner that's already squatting like four plates. And so, you know, make sure you're getting that assistance work in, make sure you're really trying to master that and make sure you're really trying to get that because a lot of the bigger guys, a lot of the guys that are in better shape, they're going to, that's the one area that they're going to be sleeping on a little bit because they're going to be fatigued from their 405 squats.

Man, that's so powerful. I think that that's huge. One of the biggest things that people can take away from this podcast, because I just know if you and I are working out on something, obviously you're going to kill me and everything. But I know that like, okay, hey, towards the end, especially when you were doing burpees and stuff, like, okay, I know I can keep up with him on that. Like that's how I looked at it. But the way you put it is like yeah okay i'm not gonna squat 405 but maybe i can smoke them on lunges or something you know

or maybe i can make up some ground yeah could you do an extra set exactly i could say i could say yeah i'm good you could say i'm not i'm gonna do another set i could go what yeah and that that's an amazing feeling you know so i man man, that helped me out a ton. Because, yeah, I'll look at our boy Gavin when we train with him. He's a fucking lunatic. Dude, yeah. Gavin Murphy that we had on the podcast, and he trains with O'Hearn. He's like, I don't care that I weigh 170 or whatever.

He's like, I'm going to battle with the big boys. I don't give a shit. I'm going to give it my best go. And he'll, I don't give a shit. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to give it, give it my best go and he'll pull weights off, but he'll do extra sets, you know? Yeah. And, and while training with O'Hearn, he's, he gave him shit too. You know, like he, he always made fun of him or whatever. He just kept coming back. That's just the kind of guy he was or is a shout out to Gavin Murphy. Um, so I guess my, my last question that would kind of wrap everything up is we talked about training. We talked about volume.

We talked about everything inside the gym, outside of the gym, not even thinking about recovery, but like nutrition. Where should somebody's nutrition be as far as, you know, should they be at maintenance? Should they just say, hey, I'm going to start building, so I'm going to be in a surplus? Or should they even pay attention? What should somebody be focusing on as far as their nutrition when trying to build legs? For me personally, I like food choices. I think that's where everything starts. When you have good food choices, I think the quantities start to take care of themselves.

And so try to eat lean meats. You know, Piedmontese beef, we talk about it incessantly over here. Piedmontese beef is great. It's a really lean, tender meat and goes down nice and smooth. Most of the time when meat is lean, it's really dry. You know, you can also mess around with the chicken and turkey and egg whites and stuff, but that stuff is absolutely disgusting compared to Piedmontese beef. So, you know, try to, try to get in good amount of protein, I would say like one gram per pound at the minimum and 1.25, you know, maybe on the high end of grams of protein per pound of body weight.

You could do a similar thing with carbohydrates and then I would just let your fats kind of fall where they may. But again, it's in accordance to like the stuff that you're eating. If you're eating lean meats, you could still have some butter here and there. You could still have a little bit of olive oil here and there, but don't go way out of your way to eat a lot of fat. You can have an avocado every day. I think the fats, they just kind of, they'll take care of themselves. Make sure you feel good in your workouts. You know, use, don't, you know, don't worry so much about the exact foods that you're eating and the amounts that you're eating and don't get so caught up in that. Have a nice grocery list of food that makes sense.

Whole foods, lean meat, veggies, fruit, potatoes, rice, stuff like that. You should be good to go on that. I would say, you know, always go, always lean towards protein first, have protein be the priority. I would even say like eat your protein first. There's more and more research kind of showing what that does and how it helps you to digest carbohydrates better. So just kind of lean, lean towards that stuff and, you know, maybe eat, you know, three to three to four times a day, maybe even five if you need to, if you're hungry. But when we're trying to gain weight, we sometimes do need to

force the issue a little bit. And so starting to combine carbohydrates with your protein would be a good idea. So getting like, you know, a monster mash type thing, like a stand efforting type deal going where you're taking your ground beef and rice and kind of mixing them together or taking steak and chopping it up and eating it with rice or potatoes or something like that. Just real basic stuff. Making sure you're hitting that protein amount every day and make sure you have enough carbs to where your workouts feel good and you feel powerful and you feel strong. Can't forget about salt, the importance of salt and the importance of even some sugar here and there, like just a little jolt of sugar or a little jolt of carbohydrate before a workout can really keep your blood levels nice and stable.

I was working out yesterday with our buddy Mike, who we had on the show, Mike Frank, former police officer. And he just like bonked. He was just toast. And I didn't have any element in my backpack. But I did have a thing of honey because I just keep honey in my backpack for such occasions. And I have this like little individual thing of honey.

And it's like four grams of sugar. and it's like, uh, like four grams of sugar. Like it's nothing, you know, I gave it to him. He, uh, went from being pasty white to looking okay. And, uh, he was able to finish the workout, but salt and sometimes, um, just a little bit of carbohydrate can go a long way. So don't like, don't be scared of carbs and, and, uh think that they're gonna like make you fat and all that kind of stuff just but a little bit of carbs can go a long way and can help kind of push your workouts forward no i honestly found that so fucking funny like i just picture you like being like 70 or something and like you have your

backpack with you working out at gym you see some kid bonking like hey kid here's money just take this honey well it's funny because everybody is like what's that because like i don't know the packet it's in like kind of looks kind of weird and the way you fold it and the way you like take it like one of the older bodybuilder guys over there came over he's like he's like hey man he's like what is that and i was like i was like it's diana ball he his eyes lit up he's like really it's Diana ball. He, his eyes lit up. He's like, really? He's like, that's awesome. I was like, no, no, it's actually just honey.

He goes, no, what is it really? And I was like, it's honey. I was like, it's, you know, is that a new street name for a new steroid? Yeah. That's great. Cool. Yeah. That's all I had as far as questions if you guys have anything to add

um you guys can just cut me off but i love these episodes because they're they're so beneficial um i learned something from them every time because i just get to sit here and ask you guys a bunch of questions that i don't know why like i wouldn't ask you in passing, but because we're recording, I can be like, oh, what would people do? And it's really like, hey, guys, what should I do? So I really appreciate everything. Go ahead. I was going to say, I think kind of forcing stuff a little bit is a good idea. In general, in life in general, I'm not a huge fan know, forcing yourself to do shit that you don't want to do.

But I do think in the gym, I think it's a good idea to say, OK, I'm going to practice squatting for the next few weeks or even the next few months. And I'm just going to do three sets of 10 when I'm able to do three sets of 10 with a plate on each side. And I don't feel like I'm going to die. I have 90 seconds to two minutes rest in between sets. Once I'm able to complete that, I'm going to add fives to the side or whatever amount of weight it is that you want to add to the side. And you're going to have a progression and you're maybe going to try to work your way into, I don't know, squatting 185 pounds for three sets of 10 with good control, you know, showing that you have control over the weight, demonstrating to yourself that you know how to do the lift the right way. But like writing it down and really trying to, you know, maybe even write down a goal.

Like, what's the goal? What are you trying to do? You're trying to make your legs bigger. Well, have you ever measured your legs? You know, like, let's let's get a measurement going. Like, let's figure out like, what, what does this look like? Maybe, maybe you measure one leg and then maybe you measure around both legs. Maybe you want your ass to be bigger. You measure around your butt and you want to get some glute bridges and stuff like that in there too. But like, you know, have, have a goal, you know, have a, have an idea of, of what some of this is going

to look like, because if you just go in and you squat here or there, you squat every other week or whatever, it's going to, the progress is going to be, you could still make progress, but the progress be way slower. And it's not going to be, you don't have a target and without a target, you don't know what to aim at. And without knowing what to aim at, you're, you're floating around aimlessly. You don't know what you're doing. So get yourself a target, figure out, you know, you could even just, you can even just look at different people on Instagram and say, I want my legs to look like that guys. And then you can kind of figure out, Hey, well, what does that guy do? You know, what does that guy, and then you can

start to get excited about like, okay, well, you know, this guy, he loves doing weighted lunges, not, you know, you follow Corey Gregory or something, you do the mile lunge or whatever, whatever it is, find somebody that you admire, find somebody that you like. And within reason, you know, try to maybe mimic some of what they're doing. You know, it's not always a good idea if it's like a pro bodybuilder or something, because they've been at it for so long, you might just crush yourself, but you get what I'm saying over here, I think. And one thing I did want to mention too, because I was looking at our comments from the Mike Israetel video and some people were like, oh, now they want to talk about eating carbs or now

they're for eating carbs. No one here has ever been against eating carbs. I'm still in the party of just be careful about how many you eat, how much you eat. Because we were mentioning, yeah, add some carbs into your diet, but that doesn't mean that you need to be eating 500 per day and say that that's an excuse for you to get, I need 500 grams of carbs a day to get bigger. You probably don't trust me. Like you don't need, you do not need that many. Um, and it doesn't also give you an excuse to eat trash carbohydrates because you're bulking or trying to grow. Right. So that's all we're saying here. It's just like, add them in, but understand that you don't need an insane amount for growth. You don't need four or 500 grams of carbohydrates so you can gain muscle. But Jay Cutler ate a thousand.

So I'd also say it's okay for us to change our answer too. You know, it's okay for us to change over time. I mean, I, I, I'm personally would never be a huge fan of consuming a lot of carbohydrates for myself, but that doesn't mean I have to, you know, push that belief out to everybody else. If I promote low carb lifestyle, it's only because I'm excited about it. And it's because it's something that's worked for me being a former fat guy. You know, you got to keep in mind, like I lost a hundred pounds. You know, I watched videos sometimes of some of the other guys that are still powerlifting and they're still pushing big weights around pretty good, but they're not really what they were. And I kind of, I kind of halfway admire it,

but I'm like, man, they're like, they're just really stuck. You know, I think if people were to try to do what I did, this is, I think this is way fucking harder. And I am kind of tooting my own horn, but I lost a hundred pounds and never gained a back. You know, try to think of who else has done, like, who else do you know that's done that? There, there are people, but there's not like a former power lifter kind of turned into a bodybuilder. Like the shit that I did was really, really difficult and a low carb lifestyle helped make it really easy for me, helped make it really simple. And so that's why I'm so pumped up about it, so excited about it. And even today, even nowadays, I don't eat a lot of carbs. I do eat them. But if I had a body cam, which might be a good idea, if I had a body cam and you could see all the food I ate in a day, you're going to see a potato come across the plate once a day. You might see some

intra-workout carbohydrates. A pack of honey. And a packet of honey. Yeah. That's about what you're going to see. I mean, there's not really much else there. So total grams of carbohydrates. I mean, it would be a different kind of day for me if I ate more than like 200 grams. I think yesterday after I worked out, I had a bunch of, a bunch of, uh, sushi. And so there's probably a good amount of carbs in there. I ate, I ate a pretty good amount of sushi. There's probably 150 carbs, but I didn't have my intro workout carbohydrates and I didn't eat carbs, uh, throughout the rest of the day. So, you know, I think it's one of the toughest things to do in life is to, is to kind of say like, Hey, yeah, I want to

change my answer. I want to add to, I want to add to that equation. So my views have changed a little bit about carbs. I do recognize their effectiveness where I think is before I had to kind of tell myself, ah, dude, like carbs aren't for you. I had to like have that dialogue in my head because I was fat before. Not that the carbs made me fat, but that was a dialogue in my head to help me head in the right direction. So that's kind of where I stand on some of that stuff. Gotcha. So honey, potatoes. Who are you, Paul Saladino? Yeah, right.

If you take anything away from today, yeah. Put honey packets in your backpack. Keep those. One thing I want to add is we didn't mention deadlifting, but there's a lot of powerlifters that have kind of lost weight or powerlifters that have, um, you know, kind of lost weight or powerlifters that have gotten into, uh, bodybuilding. And some of them were like, some people were pretty impressed with like their hamstring development. A lot of that had to do with a lot of the heavy, heavy deadlifting and stuff. So for me, uh, a lot of people are like, what have you been doing for

your hamstrings over the years? I'm like, well, I've been box squatting and deadlifting for all these years, which also gave me a giant ass. I don't do anything for my butt. I don't really do much for my calves. They've always just been big, playing football and just doing the different things that I did as a kid and also probably being heavy probably kind of led to some of that, but don't forget about the deadlift, you know, both sumo and conventional. They build up the legs tremendously. Bodybuilders have been using different types of, and different forms of deadlifting for many, many years to build up the glutes, the hammies, the low back,

all that stuff. Your ass on stage was phenomenal. It's heck of funny. Because when we were all watching the show, like we were just listening to people and they're like, oh, my God, his butt. Oh, my God, his ass. It's just like everyone was going off on your booty. Dude, I so I don't I forget what the hell they told me. I don't know what's going on.

I don't know anything about bodybuilding. That was very clear by my show. I just went up there and flexed. I didn't even really know what I was doing when it came to posing, but I went into this room and they were like, Oh, you need to get like this gloss on or this, or I need to get my tanning shit off of me. It was like all over my trunks or something weird. So they're like, Hey, go into this room. And I was like, okay. And it's all girls in there. And I was like, I was like, I can't,

I was like, I can't really go in there. Like, this is weird. You know, they're, they're like, some of them are changing and shit,

but they don't care. And, uh, I was like, well, that doesn't seem very respectful. Like I, I shouldn't go in there.

And then honey, like honey, he's like, get in there. He's like, you need to, you know, go do this thing or whatever.

And I walk in there and the girls, they go oh my god and i was like i'm like fuck i they're pissed that i'm in here you know and they're like your ass like your ass is amazing like what do you do for your ass i just fucking turned you know i'm orange but i turned beet red i start sweating and i'm like like this like i'm just totally like blushing i'm like this is amazing you're like we want to ask like yours that's amazing that's so good oh my gosh get in line ladies yeah um i'll just add uh those elevated uh trap bar deadlifts the uh oh yeah heel elevated trap bar deadlift yeah the what do we call it um

that it's basically like a it's basically like a sissy squat yeah the death trap that's what it was yeah and i hate those but they work they kill your quads yeah we gotta have an sema try those sometimes yeah brutal he'll he'll haven't done them he'll get he'll get a world record on them i had a joss uh settle gate do him one time and he he like never forgot it he's like i don't know don't think i'll ever try those again he's like that was horrible hell yeah well thank you everybody for checking out today's episode i hope you guys got a ton of value out of it the way i did if you did please share it with a friend uh also uh keep a lookout on markbell slingshot.com. Black Friday is coming up.

Yeah, I believe you have an opportunity to save up to 30% off on damn near the entire store. On top of that, you're going to have access to a bunch of freebies that we'll be sending out. Some really cool stuff. Make sure you're following at mbslingshot on Instagram. That's where you'll be able to find a lot of information. As well as there's an email list or a newsletter, um, that you can, uh, get on and you'll get, you guys will gain access to, um, everything like all the information, um, before anybody else. So please go over there and check that out. Also for markbell.com or yeah, markbell.com. We're going to have a super friend chat with, uh, Steph and Hayden bow.

Did I say that right? Hayden and Hayden and bow. Yeah. Um, they'll be on markbell.com. So, um, if you're not a member already, you can just head over to markbell.com and register for a free seven day trial. Again, this is happening on December 2nd. So just register before then. And you guys will gain access to this conversation. It's going to be a, an exclusive. You're not going to be able to gain access to it anywhere else. And then lastly, the multi-sport belt again at markbellslingshot.com was just dropped. Really just did every day. We're doing something awesome over at markbellslingshot.com. So make sure you guys frequent that website. Please make sure you follow the podcast at markbellspowerproject on Instagram at mbpowerproject on Twitter. I think I'm going to mess around with Parler.

I'm not sure, but it's at MB Power Project on there as well. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ. And shout out to Nseema for his brand new microphone. I'm really glad you made that purchase, dude. I'm happy. By the way, if anybody cares, that's a Samson Q2U. I recommend it for everybody that's a podcaster or somebody that's doing webinars it's

just the most amazing microphone on the planet uh but in sema where can people reach you yeah i didn't see my inyang on instagram and youtube i didn't see me inyang on twitter i think i made a parlor account a long time ago i just don't use it and um yeah mark i'm at mark smelly bell thank you guys so much for tuning in. You know, with your workouts, just, you know, always have an intent of the day. So with these leg workouts that you're doing, I think it's a good idea to start your workouts off heavy. And you can have the heaviness of the workout kind of taper off and bring the reps up as you as you transition into the end of the workout. So the beginning of the workout

might start out with anywhere between four to 10 reps. The middle of the workout, you might be at 10 to 12 reps towards the end of the workout, might be where you're getting in 15 to 20. Again, that has to do with your body's already fatiguing, you're getting a little bit tired, you can't use as much weight anyway. So you may as well get the most out of it and try to get the most amount of work in when you're fatigued by doing higher reps, you'll be getting a greater amount of volume. And just kind of general recommendation is to do three or four sets of each exercise. I think a good way to do it is kind of the old school way, which is kind of a light, medium, heavy approach. If you're getting into, you know, a squat, it's a little bit different

because there's a big warmup that has to happen in order for you to even get into your sets. And then you might want your sets to be similar. You might want to do, you know, four sets of six with 225 or something like that. But for a lot of the other exercises, especially ones that are like on selectorized machines and stuff like that, you know, you can quickly change the pins and make the adjustments. But the kind of light, medium, heavy thing has always worked really well for me. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you all later.