Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 567 - DITCH THE BARBELL PART 2: DOUG BRIGNOLE IS BACK!

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

Doug Brignole is BACK on Mark Bell's Power Project live and in person!! Last time he was on, he opened our eyes to the physics of resistance exercise and were were so impressed, we had to invite him in studio. Doug Brignole is a veteran competitive bodybuilder, biomechanics expert, author and public speaker. Throughout his 40+ year competitive career he has won numerous bodybuilding titles, including 1982 Mr. America and 1986 Mr. Universe. Buy Doug's book, "The Physics of Resistance Exercise" here: https://amzn.to/2QAYUiK Special Offer on Doug's True Bodybuilding Program that covers all the in's and out's of Bodybuilding including the entire Brig20 for Power Project listeners here: https://smarttraining-365.teachable.com/p/true-bodybuilding Use the ONE TIME PURCHASE option and use code: MARKBELL&ST365 for 30% off!!!! Subscribe to Doug's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh_8DNqrT_rJ2NbNHUNrTxA More info on Doug: https://dougbrignole.com/ His Online Training Certification Program: https://smarttraining365.com/ Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off the Power Project Panel! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use ode "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢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

What's up, Power Project Familia? We always talk about getting your blood work done and understanding what's going on underneath the hood. And we finally have partnered with the company Merrick Health that we've partnered and made the Power Project Panel. We've had Derek for more plates, more dates, and a bunch of our experts go through and pick the 26 different labs

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power project for 101 off of that panel it's invaluable you guys need to head over there right now speaking of live we are live now no way way. We are live. You feel that, Doug? I'm feeling it. We're live. The vibe. The vibe. We got you some cold brew. It's electric.

We got you some nitro coffee. Here we go. Ready to be launched into outer space. Last time you were on the show, you caused quite a stir. Sorry about that. I don't know what you're trying to do. You're making a lot of enemies out there. I'm frustrating a lot of people who want to believe that the Holy Grail is still the Holy Grail.

Right. So what do you think are some of the things that are some misinterpretations of, like, a lot of times the stuff that you're communicating about, you're oftentimes saying that some of these exercises might not be as effective for the particular result that someone's looking for. For example, something like the squat, which people hate to have the squat attack. They feel like you're attacking their family or something like that. But your whole point is that there's nothing really wrong with the squat. But if you're trying to utilize the squat to be the most efficient thing to grow your quads, you might want to learn more information about it so you can dissect and you can pick better exercises. There might be a better way.

There might be more efficient exercises to get the result that you're looking for to grow your quads. Is that kind of right? Well, I kind of on the right track. Yes. Look, here's the here's I guess you could say the misunderstanding is that people think that what I'm teaching, which is biomechanics, is an excuse to train light, is an excuse to use less weight. And so I say, no, no, no. Physics is physics. You can use physics to magnify load or you can use physics to minimize load.

The same biomechanics that I teach in my book about how to maximize muscle load for muscle growth can be used to maximize muscle load for muscle growth can be used to minimize muscle load to maximize output in other words a power lifter can use the same principles but in reverse so i'm not trying to find a way to train lighter but if your objective is to load the quads then you would be wise to understand how to maximize the physics so that you don't have to use as much weight you can use less weight and get more load and you know strain your skeleton strain your spine far less than you're doing with a conventional exercise i think a great place to start then would be we were just

doing some sissy squats in the gym with the slant board um and didn't obviously it's a sissy squat so i didn't feel any spinal load felt great contraction and great feeling in the quads. Can you explain why that sissy squat, I'm only using 150 pounds or whatever, why it's more beneficial for direct quad hypertrophy than doing something like a squat or a leg press or even a hack squat? Absolutely. So the basic physics principle is that a pendulum, which is hanging vertically, is parallel to resistance, gravity. So it's neutral. It's a zero lever.

If you take that pendulum and you swing it up so that it's horizontal, it's a maximum lever. 100% of the available resistance will be loading onto that muscle. If it's somewhere between vertical and horizontal, it will load the muscle with a percentage between zero and 100%. To make things simple, I just say a 45 degree lever is a 50% active lever. Okay. So if you're doing a regular squat, your lower leg, which is the lever being operated by your quadricep only tilts from the neutral vertical position by about 30 degrees, which means you're only getting about 30% of the available resistance, which is your body weight plus the weight on your back. Okay.

If you're doing a sissy squat and you allow that lower leg to get horizontal, now you're using a 100% lever. So to put some numbers to it, I usually say if you're a 200 pound guy, got 200 pounds on your back, 400 divided by two legs, and you can do the math of the magnifier of the length of your lower leg and all that you're getting about 950 pounds of load

per quadricep but if you do a 60 squat you weigh 200 pounds no additional weight you'll load each your quadriceps with 1200 pounds of resistance that is more stimulation for growth period doesn't matter that you're not using as much weight on your back. What matters is what the quadriceps is experiencing. So when we're doing the cable squat, that cable is perpendicular to your lower leg, and you're getting 100% of the weight you're using, and you're loading more quadriceps with less weight and nothing on your spine. So if your objective is to load the muscle, and it should be, right?

If your objective is not lifting the most amount of weight you can lift, but instead getting the most amount of growth, you should be using the mechanics that makes you magnify the resistance more, not minimize it more. I think this sounds incredible for people that are just starting out or for older folks that want to load the muscles, you know, rather than just, you know, go in there and just learn how to squat just for the sake of squatting and squatting more weight. a squat can, you know, people have built a great body off of squatting and a lot of other exercises and maybe a lot of other things, too. So it's hard to identify what exactly is causing what. Right. But some people would say, hey, you know, squat, bench, deadlift, bent over row, military

press. Those are kind of the fundamental exercises that everyone's done for a long time and they can help build some mass. What are your thoughts on that? And like you're saying 30, you know, it's only working 30% of the quad muscle. No, I didn't say that. 30% of the weight you're using is loading the quad muscle. What percentage of the quad muscle is getting utilized in a regular squat or does that depend on the whole muscle? it's all or nothing. When a muscle contracts, it contracts all or nothing. Now, but you are hitting on something different here. And that is when you're activating the hip extensors at the same time as you are in a squat, you're deactivating the hip

flexors, part of which is the quadricep, which is the rectus femoris. So now you have a neurological conflict in addition to the mechanical conflict. So you're not getting optimum quadricep, which is the rectus femoris. So now you have a neurological conflict in addition to the mechanical conflict. So you're not getting optimum quadricep stimulation with a barbell squat. You're just not. And then what about, what are your thoughts on like a squat, just kind of building overall body strength? Let's just say that you are going to do a body weight squat. Great.

Okay. Because the cost is low. There's nothing on your spine. Okay. You're working your cardiovascular system.'s nothing on your spine. Okay. You're working your cardiovascular system. You're working your glutes. You're working your quads. You're working your balance. You're working your athleticism, all good stuff. Once you start to increase the weight, once you start to go 200, 300, 400 pounds on your spine, the cost goes up. Then you have to start saying, am I getting a commensurate benefit to the quadricep? And the

answer is no. You're getting a dimin commensurate benefit to the quadricep? And the answer is no. You're getting a diminishing percentage of benefit to the quadricep as you're getting an increased cost. What if you're not necessarily concerned about the quad and you're just like trying just to get big? You don't care that it works your back and your traps and your butt. You're actually excited that it does all those different things because you're trying to get kind of bang for your buck, so to speak. that it does all those different things because you're trying to get kind of bang for your buck, so to speak. Well, again, you know, you are getting quadricep and glute and erector spinae and athleticism and all that. That's true. If you want to do only one exercise, the squat is fine.

But if you want maximum quad development and maximum glute development and maximum erector spinae development, you would do better by doing three different exercises and you'd get more mass more size more growth So this is the thing this is where I find it funny when I look at the YouTube comments Especially after the last episode we did and we've had other guests on we've talked about this stuff people think People want to be on either one side or the other I like to marry things people want to be on either one side or the other. I like to marry things, right?

So I bought your book and I've been using a lot of movements from the book, but I've still been squatting. I've still been doing a lot of like deep knee flexion squats, et cetera, while still adding in a lot of this work because there's, I feel like, I don't even feel like I know that if you're someone who likes to squat and progress that, and like,

if you're a powerlifter, that's your sport, but let's say you're an athlete that likes squatting okay you can squat but then you can also add in sissy squats etc and all these other movements and i do understand that the squat is somewhat of a taxing movement so you need to be careful with how much you load it so it doesn't take too much away from other movements that you do but there should be no reason depending on the intention of the lifter if the intention of the lifter is like i just want to maximally load my quads and nothing else. I don't care what movements I do.

Sissy squat. Right. But if an athlete wants to progress other movements, get for the squat, get all these other muscles working while also using movements that will massively activate the quads. There should be no reason why we can't just add all these into a decent program.

I don't disagree. Exactly. No, I mean, look, if you're trying and this is common, right? You get a guy who says, I want to be big, but I also enjoy the process of squatting. I enjoy the camaraderie. I enjoy, you know, the feeling of the weight on my back.

Great. I'm not saying that you're going to distract from the gains you got from the sissy squat because you added squats. No, that's not going to distract from the gains you got from the sissy squat because you added squats. No, that's not going to happen. It's just more of. If you're just comparing the two, one versus the other, you're going to get more quad with the sissy squat, period. But if you're not talking about just quad development and you don't mind doing more work and you enjoy doing more work, you can absolutely marry them so i have a question about this then people in bodybuilding who are focused on maximizing attention on specific muscle groups and needing growth what are they doing wrong wait is this in training this is a departure from the squat question this

is a departure from the squat question now we're like now we're not talking about power lifters right who care about squat bench deadlift and the strength of these movements but they also do want to get big over time too but now we're talking specifically about powerlifters who care about squat, bench, deadlift, and the strength of these movements, but they also do want to get big over time too. But now we're talking specifically about bodybuilders whose intention is making each muscle group as absolutely big as possible. When you see people training, what are they not thinking about? What are they doing wrong when they approach their training for hypertrophy purposes? Okay, and they're doing multiple things wrong. Let's hear it, yeah. The first thing they're doing wrong is they're conflating how much weight they're lifting with how much load they're getting on the muscle.

And they're not the same thing. Okay, so in order to understand that the amount of muscle load a muscle is getting might be more, even though you're using less weight, you have to understand a little bit of physics. And some people just can't wrap their head around physics, right? It's complicated. Well, a little bit. I mean, look, you know that a longer lever is going to magnify something more than a shorter lever. If you've got a sledgehammer with a three-foot handle, it's going to be a lot harder to lift than one that's got a two-foot handle, right?

So that's physics, right? Bottom line. I'll give you another one. I wanted to bring a scale here. I had the scale made, but it was just going one. I wanted to bring a scale here. I had the scale made, but it was just going to be too heavy to bring and it wasn't going to show enough. But basically what I have is two six inch levers coming off a pivot, right? So, and each one has a basket underneath there. So what I was going to show was a 30 degree lever on this side and a

horizontal lever on this side, one quarter of the weight that's here is here. So four times more here. This lever, limb, lower leg, requires four times more weight to get the same amount of load as this lever does at horizontal. That's physics, right? So if you think that squatting 200 pounds or 300 pounds is going to give you more quadricep load just because it looks more challenging, feels more challenging than a sissy squat. That's a mistake. Plain and simple. That's a mistake.

But the other thing that people make mistakes in bodybuilding is that there's, well, there's 16 principles, in fact, that optimize an exercise to a particular muscle. optimize uh an exercise to a particular muscle one of them of course is you know full range of motion alignment um early phase loading the avoidance of neurological conflicts all of these things um act like a checklist right so if let's just say you're analyzing an exercise and of the 16 six are not in compliance well that's going to be less than optimal. Not as bad as when there was 10 out of compliance, but you can actually find the ones that have the least departure from compliance and say, well, then that one is the most productive exercise. The problem is that we've been lulled into thinking that you need constant variety. You need to work the muscle from every angle. No, a a delta only has one side delta

only has one angle right that's all it does right so early phase load that full range of motion don't rotate the joint you know opposite position loading make sure that the muscle is directly opposite the line of force boom you've got your best exercise just because you're not side lateraling as much as you would overhead press does not mean the deltoid is underloaded that's an interesting way of looking at it when you started to learn some of this stuff was it kind of tough for you to like implement it or believe it were you kind of like i don't know about this like it sounds this sounds different this sounds unconventional but maybe i should give it a try well first of all let me just say it wasn't like i heard it from someone, right?

I mean, I discovered this, right? I remember the first time I was 16 years old, the first time I discovered that if I raise the pulley from the ground level up to my hip level and I do a sideways with it, it's heavier at the beginning and it's easier. I can actually hold it here. I can't hold a dumbbell if I'm doing the same way, right? So you learn, you go, and I've never cared about impressing people with how much weight I was lifting. So I didn't have to have this emotional like, oh, my God, I have to leave this exercise that, you know, all my buddies pat me on the back for.

Right? That's the problem is there's an emotional attachment that some people have to these exercises but for the wrong reason. It's not because it's most efficient, even though they might think it is. And as you said, it's because they're doing a lot of things. They look good. They're big, right? And so they assume that their favorite exercise is the one that's responsible for all this growth. But it may not very well be true.

And they might have habits that, you know, extend all day long to help their body be bigger, you know, and they could even be using, they could be performance enhanced. They could be getting their sleep in. They could be eating properly. And then they're telling you about the squats that they do. And they're more invested in that exercise. In other words, they just say that you think that squats is the king of quad exercises. So you're going to do 20 sets of squats.

And oh, by the way, you might do three or four sets of leg extensions. Well, you're not going to get the growth of the leg extension because you're not invested into it. So, Doug, we actually had a pretty cool question from the live chat. Let me pull it up here. Where to go? Where to go? From Sam.

Samuel, how does Doug train adductors, hip flexors without squats? Well, the adductor works because it's part of hip extension. If you look at anatomy, you can see that, you know, and by the way, part of the reason why adductors work during squat is because of hip extension. So you can get, you know, adductors by moving your legs in and out on a machine, but that's not its primary function. Its primary function is to push the femur down. So you're going to get that with a hip extension machine. Now I realize that everyone has a hip extension machine and that is a little bit of a problem. It is by far the best way to work the glutes for a number of reasons. First of all, it's one leg at a time, which means you avoid bilateral deficit. For those that don't

know what that is, that just means there's a little bit of a weakening on each side when both sides are working at the same time. You're also not putting anything on your spine. You're also getting the entire femur length magnification. So when you're working your glutes and your adductors by way of hip extension. Andrew, can you pull up a hip extension machine on a picture? Yeah. So your femur is going, pushing downward by way of the glutes and the adductors, but it's pushing downward against the femur, excuse me, the tibia, which is doubling under it. So it's actually shortening the length of that glute moment arm. So you're getting half the magnification you would get if you were able to apply the resistance right at the end of the femur, which is what you do when you do a glute machine.

You put that roller right at the end of the femur, you get full magnification, you get continuous tension, right? So you have resistance at the beginning, resistance at the end, and you get a much longer range of motion than you would get from a squat. You can bring that leg all the way up here. You're not going to bring your leg all the way up here when you're squatting. And then when you push it down, you can squeeze that glute against an opposing resistance instead of just ending up with zero. So for all these reasons,

that machine, hip extension machine, is best for both the glutes and the adductors as compared to a squat. So this would be the greatest booty builder. Yes. Yeah. I mean, look, it's ironic that most gyms don't have one because most gyms have a leg extension a leg chrome machine and even a hip thrust right and and a leg extension leg chrome machine is the exact same principle loading the end of the lever that is operated by your target muscle so what are your thoughts on a hip thrust you mean like a glute bridge yeah yeah so the problem with a glute bridge let's just say you're going to do it on the floor. Okay?

You can see that the amount of hip range of motion you're getting is very small. Right? You're not bringing your femur all the way up to your chest, right? If you're on the floor, you're only going to come basically to a 90-degree angle from your torso, if that. Right? It's also end-phase loaded. Muscles are stronger in the early phase right so when you come up you get a lot of contraction so it feels like it's effective but what is more effective is to early phase loaded and lighter phase and loaded okay so that's

one of the problem the other problem is you put a barbell on your lap right and that's not so great on your on your on your hip bones. And then what you may have noticed is some people, as they raise up, they actually push the bar down onto their femurs, right? Why are they doing that? Because subconsciously, they're shortening the lever. It makes them feel stronger because it feels easier because they're shortening the lever, right? So you're fooling yourself with that. Plus, then you say, okay, I'm going to put my back on this this bench which is going to help me get more range of motion in the hip okay

well now for all these people that are worried about leg extensions shearing your knee they don't worry about shearing the knee when you do a side plank which they should and they don't worry about sharing the spine when you've got one end holding the bridge up on your shoulders and then the rest of it trying to come down toward the ground, right? So it's not the greatest thing for your back. Certainly not comfortable to get in and out of. Certainly not as effective as the unilateral hip machine, which allows you to have nothing on your back in a perfectly comfortable position, one leg at a time.

By the way, another thing that happens, some of you have noticed, is you get a hamstring cramp when you do this. And why does that happen? Well, it happens for one of two reasons. It happens either because if the ground was slick, your feet would probably slide forward. Right? That means that you're actually activating your quadricep, right? Because of the friction force, right?

Activation of the quadricep deactivates the hamstring. The hamstring wants to participate in hip extension, but now can't because you've shut it off. That could be the hamstring cramping or it could be the fact that you're overshortening the hamstring because the knee is bent and the hip is extending. So you're getting active insufficiency. A major thing I noticed on that particular exercise is people don't finish the exercise either. They don't contract all the way through. particular exercises, people don't finish the exercise either. They don't contract all the way through.

So they go to push the barbell up with their hips, and you see them kind of get close to the end range of motion, but they usually don't get there because they're usually using too much weight. I've seen this exercise go from years and years ago. It was a rehab exercise, and it looked like it was a pretty good one for people with lower back issues and to get some blood into the hamstrings and the butt. It's better than nothing. Yeah. people with lower back issues and to get some blood into the hamstrings and it's better than nothing.

Yeah. And it's, um, it's body weight, you know, rather than, but it turned into like people trying to use three plates on it. Well,

again, it's the conflation. It's the idea that I'm going to do something that looks impressive, but, and if I do that multi-hip machine, no one's going to pay any attention to me. No one's going to stand by there and do that was rad. No,

but they're going to do that. If you got 315 or 405 on a glued bridge. So just real quick, because I tried to simulate the hip hinge machine with the cable. And so my foot went from here to here. I did as best I could. The range of motion. That was Saturday. I'm still extremely sore from doing that. So my question for you is, and this just goes along with anybody that discovers something new.

That was the first time I did that. So now I'm like telling everybody, this is the one you got to do because I'm so sore. So are people that try this, are they getting sore because they're just activating new muscles that they maybe haven't? Or is it just because it's working better than anything they've ever done? It is true that anything new will make you sore. So that can't be ignored. And I'm not here to create some fantasy thing. I mean, I'll admit that sometimes something feels like it's working,

even though it's not, for the wrong reason. But what's happening, probably in your case, is that you're using a range of motion that you had not experienced before. You were doing now full range of motion. Your hip was probably bending somewhere between 110 110 degrees right and a hip a glute bridge maybe will give you like maybe 90 degrees maybe 80 degrees maybe 70 degrees depending on your your form but you're getting full range of motion and you're doing it unilaterally yes so you're not having to you know deal with uh the bilateral deficit and you're also you know also getting a more natural resistance curve

to the muscle, something that it is more suited to adapt to. Now, you were explaining to me before the show, there's a good way and a bad way to do that. Not necessarily a bad way, but if you're too close to the pulley, and by the way, for those of you that don't know, you wrap a strap around your femur just above your knee, and you have the D-ring above it. So you connect your cable to the D-ring, and then you push that femur down and back. If you're too close to it, then when you extend your leg down,

that thing's going to want to slide up your leg, and it's not going to feel very comfortable, plus you're not going to get much resistance. So you have to stand back away from the pulley so you get a little less resistance at the beginning. And it's the resistance. So you have to stand back away from the pulley. So you get a little less resistance at the beginning, but more. Yeah. So when you extend, you still have some perpendicularness to your femur, and then you're going to get kind of the best range of motion, given that you don't have, you know, a circular pulley. That's what I was actually going to ask you next. So if somebody doesn't have a multi-hit machine, they would use, so they would wrap that around their knee, right? And then they would kind of simulate a multi-hit machine.

That would be the best way to do that. There's a product for you. A strap that goes around the femur with a D-ring, because you can't find that. Build that ass up. You know, yeah. The same thing as the Velcro strap with the D-ring for the ankle. Right. That's your job.

Make a little larger one. Yeah. Make it so that it goes around the femur, and that's yours. I'm not going to take that. You're about to create such that i wouldn't let me stop my state well yeah fat asses we're about to create a bunch of this is great yeah that that's what the uh the um i guess the the attachment we'll call is just like the big ass whatever yeah yeah oh sorry Oh, sorry. Fat, fat ass. Fat ass.

Is that P H A T? P H A T. Big ass hip circle. Yeah. Um, are like, are you, in your opinion, are some of these exercises worthless or are they still doing something?

You mean the conventional, just any exercises, just like, Oh, stuff. You see people in the gym. I mean, if people are grabbing ahold of some weights and moving around,

uh, and they're not going to hurt themselves, are they still getting any benefits? Yes, they definitely are. Look, you know, my Mo and I joke about this,

uh, Mo Larby, my partner in smart training, three 65, we talk about is better than eating potato chips on a couch, right? So anything is better than nothing, right? But those of us that invest a lot of energy into this stuff,

we want to make sure that we're getting the biggest bang for the buck, the biggest reward for the investment, right? So if I explain to you that you're going to get this house, but you're going to pay three times more for it than you could have, you know, you're going to pay attention because it's money, right? But sometimes you don't pay attention when it's money right but sometimes sometimes you don't pay attention when it's just you know energy well i don't want to waste my energy either you know i think one thing i think one thing that might bother some people and the the big aspect of

working out is enjoyment right so when when mark is mentioning a useless exercise like i i don't do them because i like i don't them enjoyable, but a lot of people like barbell curls, right? They like the barbell bicep curl. I don't. Um, but they find that movement enjoyable. Like I want to load some load on this. Um, and that's something that gets people fired up to actually go and train. So some people, even though something might be optimal and the most efficient way to do

something, when they do it for long enough, they're bored and they're like, where's my new toy? So I get it. I get it. It's like, if, if I, I, if people could figure out how to add in a few of their new toys, right. So that they can enjoy their exercise, but still have things that are really good for the muscle, right. They can still be moving in the right direction because we know that a big part of training for a long time is training enjoyment. Right. And if you don't enjoy what you're doing, if you feel like a lot of people like bench press, right?

If you don't enjoy bench pressing, but you think you have to bench press for a big chest, it's like there's no reason to really do it, right? So we got to figure out. And you're happy to hear that you don't have to. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. You're happy to hear you don't have to bench press for a big chest. It's like there's no reason to really do it, right? So we got to figure out a way. And you're happy to hear that you don't have to. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? You're happy to hear you don't have to.

So I think that's a big aspect of it. You can still put in things you like, but still figure out ways to put in things that are really going to load those muscles if that's your actual intention. So let me be clear here. Because I think there's a misunderstanding that's going on. The Brick 20 is not to suggest these work and those don't.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay? The BRIC-20 happens to be the exercise that rate the highest. But what I teach in my book is how to measure the efficiency of an exercise, period. And we're talking about degrees of good and degrees of bad, right? You can do whatever you want to do as long as you understand the degree of good and the degree of bad of each exercise i teach principles that's what i teach how to evaluate an exercise and once you know those

things you can say oh well i don't care if this gives me 20 less benefit and cost me 30 more energy it's fine i'm gonna do it but you know why you know that it's worth doing and here's why it's worth doing because 20 less benefit 30 more energy is no big deal to you but it's not about i don't i never say deadlift is is something you should not do but i do say here's the good here's the bad you decide yeah sometimes there's a time and place for each thing. Like you may want to do a complex with some kettlebells due to what it's going to do to like your heart rate. And you're not necessarily just after the muscle in those particular moments. And then there's like for me, there's like stages of my workout. Usually I start my workout with something heavier and I progress into more of kind of a bodybuilding style workout.

Sometimes I'll work out a little opposite of that. That way I can use less weight on the more compound exercises. But I almost always have like a finisher, you know, something where I'm trying to get my heart rate up and whether that's right or wrong, what it does, it allows me to kind of play in a bunch of different sandboxes during the workout. And it's been something that's been useful for me just to be able to train for 30 plus years. And so, you know, sometimes we are looking at like, Hey, what's the most optimal other times we might just be thinking, I would just really enjoy making it through the workout

for today. That would be a victory. Well, and Seema, so here's a thing that's right up your alley. So you grapple, right? So let's just say you're grappling with a guy for half an hour and you both get a good workout during the grappling right well none of those things you did were ideal for muscle building but the event was fun because you spent a lot of energy and you just feel exhilarated well kettlebell same thing right so there are a lot of exercises that are athletic challenging in non-specific ways. They're not the best thing for that muscle or this muscle, but they're fun and they make you overall strong and they make you enjoy your workouts. I'm all for that. Again, I've said it

so many times. I'm not telling people to not do those things. I'm just saying once you understand the physics, once you understand the principles that determine less and more, more energy and more magnification to the muscle load, once you understand those things and you choose to use it for the sake of muscle building, then you can narrow it down to the Brig 20. But you can use the same principles to say, well, how do I increase output? How do I increase my squat? How do I increase my bench press? If a horizontal lever magnifies the load the most and a vertical lever minimizes it the most, how do I incorporate that?

So it's the principles I'm teaching. I'm not saying this is how you eliminate power lifts. I don't know about Andrew and Seema, but the way that I use your information is for my own convenience. So you don't really love incline bench press. I actually suck at incline bench press. So I'm like,

you got to look at Doug Brignoli's research and his information. He says you don't need this exercise. Convenient, yeah. Let's talk about actually the chest real quick because the decline chest press or the decline dumbbell chest press, right, is the movement in the break 20

that is ideal for chest. And you don't see people decline chest pressing you barely ever see that so can we talk about that a little bit sure and uh how we can build some pig pecs okay well the first thing that we should talk about is why incline presses aren't good for the chest okay and when i say aren't good for the chest again it doesn't mean that doesn't work the chest at all it just works it minimally and the reason is because all muscles pull toward their origin right so this is undeniable if i give you one end of the rope and i tie the other end of something let's just say you're the middle chest you're holding on to that muscle fiber

and there's a heavy box over there and and i and i'm standing on the guy's chin right here let's say you're standing on the upper end, the top part of his sternum, right? And on the other end is the arm. You're going to pull that arm toward you. Right. I can't pull from the chin. There's no pectoral muscle on the chin, right? Well, when you're doing an incline, you're moving toward the chin.

You're not moving toward the highest part on the sternum. If you were, you'd be doing a flat press. And right now, Doug's doing a movement kind of coming across his body and going like kind of even with his eyes. And if you do that movement, you'll notice it's kind of hard to actually flex your pecs that way. It's damn impossible. If you think about like when you get up off of doing some maybe flat dumbbell presses or whatever exercise, your flies or whatever, when you get done and you go to do like a chest pose, you normally are pushing your hands together. Your hands are always lower than your clavicle. Right. If I say flex your chest as hard as you can, are you not going to do like a chest pose you normally are pushing your hands together your always hands are always lower than your clavicle right if i say flex your chest as hard as you can are you not going to do this i'm trying to push both my hands together with my hands up high and you

actually can't it doesn't feel like there's much there yeah and let me also say that this is not a deniable thing this is an absolute fact we evolved from quadrupeds even though some religious people out there might argue with that um we evolved we evolved from quadrupeds and we became primates which meant we started moving arms progressively downward but we never ever evolved to push our arms progressively upward in an incline angle or even an overhead angle. One of my endorsers of my book is a paleoanthropologist, and he corroborated that. And he goes, yeah, there was never, you know, basically they're forensic scientists. They look at the skeleton, they look at the musculature, and they say, what did this joint evolve to do?

You know, and then they connect the dots and they go, well, they had to forage and they had to do this. And so never did we ever have to do an incline angle so the idea that we would be moving our arms in an upward direction would only make sense if our arms were connected to our torso halfway between the highest and the lowest part of the pecs but they're not they're connected to the top part of the pecs so i've heard a lot of people talk about building the upper chest shelf or whatever it is can you even build a different part of your like how do i don't even understand what that well okay obviously if you talk to an anatomist or a paleoanthropologist or an orthopedic doctor they would say shelf right shelf we're talking fibers we're talking sternal fibers the highest sternal fibers on the sternum and then we're talking fibers. We're talking sternal fibers, the highest sternal fibers on the sternum.

And then we're talking about a small, the inner part of the clavicle right here. That feels good. Has the clavicular. Hey. Easy boy, easy. There's strong hands over here. Has the clavicular pectorals, right? So, again, all muscles pull toward their origin.

So if you move your arm toward the upper inner part of the clavicle, you're going to get more pectoral, more of that. But when you do this, that clavicle shifts over. So you're still moving toward the clavicular pectoral when you're doing a flat dumbbell press. In my book, I have a picture of a super lean woman and you can actually see her clavicle shift over. You can see her humerus move toward the clavicle, toward the clavicular fibers, more so than even the highest sternal fibers. So when you're doing it, look, I don't even do a flat press because even a flat is too few fibers. Once you get into a slight decline or a more extreme decline, you're moving toward a greater slight decline or a more extreme decline you're moving

toward a greater number of pectoral fibers so you're naturally activating more parts of the pack so we had one guy send us a picture of massive upper pack he said i never had this when i was doing inclines i got that doing declines yeah what about uh cable flies then well cable flies when you're talking about cables you're talking about a different direction of resistance and gravity which is just straight down so if you're talking about cables, you're talking about a different direction of resistance than gravity, which is just straight down. So if you're doing a cable fly, obviously there's a lot of variables here. What angle are you at relative to the cables? Right.

So one thing I think is so funny when we're talking about cables is, again, cables, you choose a direction of resistance. Right. When you're doing free weight, you have to angle your body relative to it. Right. resistance all right when you're doing free weight you have to angle your body relative to it right so if you see someone doing a bent over tricep kickback with cables they're just doing a push down right they change their body position but they also change the direction of resistance so when you see someone doing let's say a a decline bench cable fly i say why would you put a decline bench there why don't you just sit upright, put the cables a little higher, and go in a decline direction? You don't have to, the bench doesn't matter. Once you've got pulleys, you can

do whatever you want to do with your torso. Could we just put a couple of mats, maybe underneath, like a part of the bench press to make it like a decline, or does it need to be declined pretty aggressively? No, you can tilt, you can take a flat bench and put a box underneath, yeah. Now, now getting back to your question why is it not so commonly used in part it's because people don't understand the value of it but also in part because it's kind of hard to get in and out of that thing yeah right so if you if you tip a bench up and you have no place for your ankles you you might fall back you might have right so so um what we do is we have a couple of steps that we put on either side.

We put the weight on there. That way you don't have to come back with the weight or sit up with the weight, right? You get into your decline bench. You hook your ankles. You lie back. You pick up one. You pick up the other. You do your set.

You put that one down, this one down. You're done. Easy. But unless you have that set up, you're going to feel it's cumbersome, and you're going to say, oh, the hell, I'm going to do an incline because it's easier to get out of sometimes people don't feel that this is important but I think it's important to point out Doug is jacked he's in good shape and I always think that that is relevant you know a lot of times a lot of times we

hear from some people that aren't you know aren't very well built who are preaching stuff but they're not following the protocols. And it obviously is working for you and a lot of the people that you've helped. Yeah. Well, you know, again, I wish I would have discovered this stuff a long time ago. I mean, I train exclusively with this now, and I get great workouts, as good as a 61-year-old can. Any injuries? I have an old, funny left shoulder from overhead pressing years ago.

I had a knee surgery. I popped a patella tendon running in the rain. I slept and fell in the rain, so it wasn't through training. It's 95% good. I can't quite train as well with my left leg as i can with my right leg but but um and my calves you know somewhere along the way this is kind of a bizarre thing my inner head of both calves somehow tore but you think of a tear as being like a sudden thing this wasn't the case somewhere along the way maybe one fiber here one fiber there little by little so now if you look at my calves

you see that uh-huh yep whoa yeah the same thing happened in my tricep it's just a weird thing just tore i don't even remember it it didn't happen in a way that you noticed it right so doug i'm actually curious um how long have you been training with this specific like break 20 movements uh because like you said like you know, you realized how important physics was to lifting when you were 16. But in terms of developing this and then making it your primary training style, how long have you been doing that for yourself in your bodybuilding career? It wasn't a switch over. It wasn't like on this date. No, because it was a gradual discovery along the way. So, for example, let's just say I discovered that the middle trapezius does not

connect to the arms. You go, Oh, look at that. It starts in the middle of the spine. It goes to the outer edge of the, of the shoulder blades. And so when you're doing a rowing thing, the arm part of that has nothing to do with your middle trapezius. And yet without knowing it, you're doing it for the upper back. The biggest muscle of the upper back is the middle trapezius, right? So unless you're rowing and pulling your shoulders back, you're not getting maximum. So then you go, okay, well, then maximum trapezius involvement would be pretty much only scapular retraction.

I don't even need to move my arms, although I can. And if I do, I get starting to work some of the highest lat fibers also. And the resistance is coming from an angle laterally, both sides. But I was still doing T-bar row. Because, like everyone else, I had an emotional attachment. Kind of a hard time believing that it didn't. But the more I did it, the more I realized every time I do that T-bar row, I feel it in my rear deltoids. I don't feel it.

But every time I do this, I feel middle trapeze and no rear deltoids. I'm not trying to work rear deltoids. This thing, I'm trying to work middle trapeze. Maybe if you were to do something like a T-bar row, you have the rear delts in mind, and you use a lighter weight, and you are trying to pay attention to the rear delt rather than the lats, right? That isn't a bad rear deltoid exercise. It's not the best, but it's a very good one.

bad rear deltate exercise. It's not the best, but it's a very good one. And so to answer your question, it slowly evolved so that I finally evolved exclusively to the Brick 20 probably about three or four years ago. Okay. And this also makes me, a really cool thing I like about, first off, the Brick 20 and the things you've developed in the book is that if the individual's intention is to load the muscles as much as possible, a lot of actually almost all of these movements, they're very easy to do no matter if you are a new lifter or if you're someone who is older. Because, I mean, squats are great. I love squats.

I want to be squatting until I'm 80, 90 years old. I probably won't be squatting as much, squats i want to be squatting and so i'm 80 90 years old i probably won't be squatting as much but i want to be able to have the ability to right but if someone doesn't have that ability or they don't like it or they don't like it yeah right doing something like a sissy squat no load on your spine no load on your back it's it's it's quads and yeah you get some knee flexion out of it but if you can develop that knee flexion it's going to be good for your knees yeah right so it's less stress and you could still get a higher effect which is really good for longevity you know there there are a lot of people um someone asked me earlier they said you know do you think that more older people are using

your methods and i would say that's probably true but it's probably true for a very specific reason and that is that older people have either already gotten injured yeah um or older people are more in tune to what feels natural and what doesn't feel natural so um they're more receptive right whereas you get a guy who's 20 years old and all he wants to do is show off in the gym he's not going to be receptive he wants to you know he wants to do his you know over the chinning bar right so he wants people to go he wants to do the triple jumping rope he wants to jump up on the on the four foot five foot you know do we know anyone no i mean we know that there's a part of the male personality that says, hey, you can't be the only person who does it. I can do that, too.

Yes. Right. So we feel challenged when we see someone do something that we think, well, I can probably do that, too. But that's not it. Well, for me, it's not the point. Well, for me, it's not the point. And if it is the point for you, then you need to be able to separate what is muscle building and what is athletic or achievement or, you know, stunt. I think sometimes, you know, older folks may have been told by somebody that it would be a great idea for them to go to the gym and work on getting some resistance training to build some muscle mass, uh, because it can help them in their later years.

The stronger that they are going into, uh, whatever things are about to face, the better off they're going to be. And so I don't think they care in terms of like, they're just want to know like what's best, what's most efficient. And if you can get them to do some exercises that, uh,

are efficient and that don't hurt, I think they'd be all in. I think they'd be like, this is great. I get to do exercise that isn't super painful, that is challenging, but yet fun. And, you know, they're not going to get hurt. Weight bearing, weight bearing is important. But the question is, how much weight bearing is too much? You know, I do shrugs with cables. Well, I could with dumbbells too, but I don't like the dumbbells rubbing against my legs. So you can do, you know, 80 pound shrugs, 80 pounds on each side. And that's pushing down on your spine with 160 pounds is pulling down on your shoulder carriage,

right? But it's not on your spine and it's not 300 or 400 pounds. So I'm not getting no spinal loading. I'm not getting no weight bearing. I'm just getting a more efficient version of it so that I'm getting maximum muscle loading with what I'm doing. What about things like farmer's carries, like any sort of weighted carry? I know Stan Efferding is a big proponent of it. Just to get people to have a load-bearing exercise. Those are easy exercises for anybody to incorporate. Even something like a rack deadlift can be safe and can be fairly easy to learn.

What are your thoughts on those exercises? Well, let's just take the farmer carry. So let's just say you're holding a pair of 50-pound dumbbells and you're walking. Now, compare that to holding a pair of 50-pound dumbbells and shrugging. Okay, the same downward pushing on the spine, on the hips, right? Now, when you're walking, you're shifting the weight from the left side to the right side, so there's a little bit of coordination that's going on there. And some people really tout that as the real value of the farmer carry. And some people say, hey, I built my traps. Well, yeah, because it's kind of an isometric shrug, right?

You'd get better trap development with a dynamic shrug. So just do the whole thing, right? But if you look at the forearms and the upper arms, they're vertical. The lower legs are mostly vertical. The femurs are mostly vertical. Vertical limbs are neutral, right? So that means they're loading their corresponding muscle with the smallest possible percentage of the weight you're using. Now, people can tear a bicep doing a deadlift, even though that form is mostly vertical, right?

But if you take the amount of weight that's being deadlifted times the 12 to 1 ratio magnifier of the forearm, even a 2% angle is going to overload the bicep tendon, and that's why that's not. So you don't need too much a percentage from the vertical position to load a muscle. You can feel it in your deltoids if you're carrying 50-pound dumbbells, even with like a 10-degree angle to your arms. But is that the most efficient way to load the deltoids? No.

A more efficient way would be less weight, full range of motion. So every muscle that's participating in a farmer carry can be worked better, full range of motion with less weight, more muscle load with a different exercise. So is it a worthless exercise? No. There's some worth to it, but it's compromised, especially when you compare it to other alternatives i think actually the traps are a muscle group that all guys want to be able to build and many people aren't you're lucky sorry let's talk about the traps though how like for some for individuals who find it very hard to grow traps some people like wrestled and they're trapped just like this, just with no weight training, right?

But being a muscle group like that, what are the best ways for individuals to get the most out of their genetic potential for trap muscle gain? Well, look, I remember when I was growing up, I was 16, 17 years old at Bill Pearl's gym. And there was this one guy that had massive traps. And he said, what did you do? He goes, I did upright rows. Well, you know, upright rows has an incidental shrugging component to it. It's not the primary thing. It's an incidental.

The arm movement is the more primary. And incidentally, you're up. Okay, so therefore, if you get that kind of growth with an incidental shrug, you'd get more growth or at least as much with a deliberate shrug, right? So all you can do is say, what are the components of an ideal exercise? Full range of motion, opposite position loading, early phase loading, if that's available, right? So if you do a full range shrug with dumbbells or barbells, that's the best you can do. And if you don't grow from that, it's not because you're not doing something right. It's just because, look, my traps were always thin.

I'm ectomorphic. I mean, Frank Zane never had big traps, right? I mean, you look at some traps that are convex, and then you see some that are concave. Well, Frank Zane had concave calves, just like I do. I had good arms. I had good legs. But I didn't have good traps. So it's nothing you can do about it.

All you can do is optimize the chances of that muscle growing by doing everything possibly good, possibly correct, and then let that and your genetics take over. What are some stupid exercises? Like, can we just – Like real stupid. I know that you don't like to, like, fry, you know, what other people are doing necessarily, but what are some exercises where you're like, you know what, there's really just, I know you mentioned flat bench press and inclined bench press. Are there some exercises where you're just like, there's not a lot of great reasons for people to do some of these exercises? Well, getting back to degrees of good and degrees of bad, right? So when you say a stupid exercise, you mean one that's got a high degree of bad, right?

It's a one on that scale. Yeah. So if you were going to look at a bench press from the perspective of pectoral development, you would say it's not as good as a flat dumbbell press because a flat dumbbell press requires you to pull the arms toward the center, whereas a bench press, you're actually pushing laterally outwards, right? So you're not coming toward as much. So an inclined version is a farther departure from ideal right um but i would say things that are one-legged

like if a guy's doing a one-legged overhead press you know the overhead press is already not so productive and potentially impinging the shoulder and you're now doing it on one leg and of course we've all seen that guy that was doing a squat on a swiss ball right and of course he fell and he i don't i don't think he hurt himself but he could have right and if he had it could have been serious right he could have you know taken his knee and gone back the other way with it right he could have done anything with it and and then you say okay well that's the risk what's the upside well not much the more unstable an exercise is the less you're able to use significant weight and the better the the less good you can contract against like if you're trying to do a preacher curl not that you should

do it without the bench behind it right braces and supports are essential for a maximum muscle overloading so i would say anything that's really unstable is is really silly what about the uh the complete opposite like some of the machines where you're on a basically a track and you have nowhere else to go so since that's the complete opposite does that mean that they're good uh i wouldn't say that's good although although stability is generally a good thing um uh you know sometimes like the reason why i like dumbbell presses is because you do have to sort of coordinate that movement right if i had a machine that just allowed me to do one thing you know i'm going to get some pectoral stimulation but i'm not going to enjoy it as much and i'm probably not going to get as much athleticism and coordination from it as I would if I was using independent dumbbells.

You heard what we were saying. We responded to that thing, which non-Break20 exercises would be better for sports. And I said, well, you know, a barbell squat is not part of the Break20, but would be a good athletic exercise if you're a football player or a basketball player and you're simulating things like that, right? But a barbell bench press wouldn't be because life isn't a barbell if you're in the football field you're better off training with dumbbells than you are with a barbell because you're not going to hit a bar out there you're going to hit individual people so um that's why you can't lump all of it together you can't say all compounds are good or bad or all oxidations

are good or bad it all depends on everything has its own biomechanical profile. Absolutely. Oh, go ahead. I just wanted to ask because it was along the lines of something you mentioned in that video, actually, and this is for everybody here. Do you think that doing some of the more isolated movements, maybe even some of the break 20 movements, we're missing out on some of the mental stuff that we could be gaining? we're missing out on some of the mental stuff that we could be gaining as far as like you know some people sit like myself included will say like we're really not as happy we're not the same person unless we go lift and some of that is looking at a bar loaded with a couple of plates and being like i'm gonna squat that and i'm gonna get through it and you accomplish it and then

you're like dude i like fuck yeah like the rest of my day is going to be easy now so do you think with some of these iso movements we're missing out on some of that aspect of lifting heavy i jumped out of an airplane once that's that's not a good idea did you have a parachute i had a parachute okay that's um and and and then same thing when i got on the ground i said fuck man look what i did And I saw the other people. You could barely see them jumping out of the next plane. And you go, I can conquer the world. Right? Same thing, right?

If you squat 500 pounds, you go, I can conquer the world. Well, you know, I can understand that feeling. But that is separate from the actual muscle loading. separate from the actual muscle loading now if you're talking about doing a squat for the sake of uh gaining the athletic coordination that requires you to do that so that you can simulate that on the football field that's a real thing that's a benefit and there's no doubt about that even though you're getting less quadricep loading and glute loading than you could otherwise get with other exercises but but the idea that you're going to do something for the macho gratification um and i'm not going to discount that because people do what they do for their own reasons but it's important to identify

it for what it is and not think the reason i'm doing this is because it's the best muscle building exercise that's a different thing sorry just in regards to lifting heavy and stuff we had an amazing question on the the live chat and if you guys are watching please hit that like button if you guys love the uh info that we're hearing from doug brignoli today but from uh dill man it's a funny name um he's just asking and this is funny because like we just got our bone density scanned and stuff and then seem of course is like off the chart. He's a mutant. Ryan Soper, you'll meet him in a little bit. He's been powerlifting for many years. Same thing, he's got

crazy bone density. I haven't been lifting too heavy for that long. I had the least bone density out of the three of us but still pretty good. But Dil was asking, Dil, about building bone density if you're not necessarily going heavy as far as like the weights go do your

bones i know your muscles won't care will your bones care if you're not lifting a heavy number versus like the uh the resistance you know what i mean like so like if your levers are doing all the work and it's hard but do your bones care if you're not like doing a heavy farmer's carry like does that matter well here's the thing is let's just say i'm doing a cable sissy squat and i've got 50 pounds on each stack or 100 pounds on one stack that is you know a third of what i might squat with a barbell so you'd say i've got a third less bone stress is that third bone less bone stress going to result in significantly less bone density than three times or better yet, if I do a three, would I get significantly more bone density?

I think, and I can't answer that because that's sort of an orthopedic doctor question, right? I would guess not. I don't think that three times more load automatically gives you three times more bone density. load automatically gives you three times more bone density i think maybe 10 20 maybe 30 more bone density but not 200 or 300 more bone density and what's the upper limit of that so at what point does it start becoming not only damaging to the bone itself but to the stuff in between the bones the intervertebral discs. And knowing that the spine is curved, right, not from the front, but from the side, that's essentially a type of accordion, right?

So you push down on that and you can expect the curves to come out a little farther. And when they do, that means those discs are going to do this, close in on one side and open up on the other side, to do this, close in on one side and open up on the other side, potentially pushing out an intervertebral disc. So when you squat heavy, you know how important it is to maintain perfect form, to keep your back arched, right? You don't want that thing to go like this, you know, and especially at the worst possible time, right? Boom. But even if with perfect form, the question is, am I doing this? Am I really doing this for bone density? Your genetics play a huge role into your ethnicity matters a lot.

I lifted a lot of heavy weights, you know, during my power thing career. And I think my bone density was like three or four or something, I think. But yours was like seven or something like that. And there's African-Americans-americans have uh much higher uh bone density so you know your genetic potential on anything like you were mentioning the traps or uh bone density or any of these things it matters a lot and by the way i wonder i'm just thinking you know bone density has to do with calcium and vitamin d3 and you know that black skin does something with d3 the sunlight their white skin doesn't.

That's the reason why. We can stay out there longer. Yeah, apparently we were not getting enough D3, so our skin lightened up to allow more D3 to be absorbed. So maybe that's the reason, even from an evolutionary standpoint, how it is that there's a difference in bone density from ethnicity. Right.

But yeah, it's an interesting thing to research if you were curious about it. But yeah, I mean, obviously genetics and the activity that you do. right but yeah it's an interesting thing to to research if you were curious about it but yeah i mean obviously genetics and the activity that you do but you know i don't as i said i do my shrugs with you know 80 pounds per side that's 160 pounds of spine loading you know i'm doing you know 100 pounds sissy squats uh i think i'm getting enough loading to get the bone density basics you know am i, ultra bone dense? Probably not, but probably very bone dense, bone dense enough to not be at risk of, you

know, falling and breaking a hip or something. I like what you're saying. And like a lot of your message seems to be almost like a life message here. You know, there's people are, they have conflated and confused ideas about the success that they're getting and the result that it may give them towards their goal. And so I think, you know, somebody goes in and benches 315 or they squat 405.

They're super excited, super pumped. That's their marker. That's their way of checking their progress. So they're super excited about it. They previously squatted 365 and previously benched 275. And so they have these markers of success. They're like, I'm becoming more successful. And therefore, my improvement on the bench press is going to lead to my chest being bigger. My improvement on the squat is going to lead to my quads being bigger. But we've seen this time and time again in powerlifting where the results vary a lot depending again on someone's genetics. But we've seen Stan Efferding squat 900 pounds and he didn't have like huge quads.

So I think people need to kind of work their way backwards from their goal and work their way backwards from the, what is the end result that you're looking for? And then start to pile up a bunch of stuff that allows you to head in that direction with the least amount of like resistance from each day, not resistance from the gym, but the least amount of resistance in terms of how you get some of these things done. And that is the most efficient and the most fun. You got to kind of mix all those things, marry all those things together, and you'll have

a great recipe towards getting to where you want to go. Well, here's the thing is, as you said, there is no direct correlation between strength and size. So someone asked me, when was I the biggest? I said, 1991, age 31. Was that when you were the strongest? No, I hit my strength peak in my late 20s. In fact, I might have been lifting less heavy at 31 and still being bigger, right? So there isn't a direct correlation. And that's because, of course,

muscle also grows on intensity of training, intensity of fatigue and all that. So we're not talking about a one rep max. That's not going to build the most amount of muscle. You're going to get better with, you know, sets of six and sets of eight, right? But that's not going to build the most strength. You know, you're going to probably get better strength with threes and fours. So there isn't a correlation there, but the problem is that people want to have a marker. As you said, they want to say, what's the proof that I'm moving closer to my goal? And it's easy enough to say, well, the proof that I'm moving closer to my goal? And it's easy enough to say, well, my squat is this and my bench press is that.

It's easy enough. It's simplified. Right. Except that it doesn't work. Right. And by the way, neither does body weight. Right. I've been heavier and look smaller.

I've been smaller. I mean, when I went to California, I only weighed 184, but I looked huge. 184 is good for your height. And I was ripped. Yeah. And I won Mr. California, I only weighed 184, but I looked huge. 184 is good for your height. And I was ripped. Yeah. And I was ripped. So, yeah, it created the illusion, right? So, I mean, I was 205 and didn't look as good as I did at 196.

So, and I saw somebody post, you know, they were weighing 247 pounds, and their goal was to hit 250 in three weeks. And I thought, okay, well, this is not a judgment. This is no judgment, but it's like you're already overweight. You're not lean. You know, so what is 250? What is it that, you know, those are my worst pictures. He says you're worse. oh those are my worst pictures no well actually the picture on the right there that was uh age 50 or 51 i think but that one right there that one over there on the left that's that's 54 years old

right there yeah uh anyway so so so that's the point that's the point is that you know we we look for markers it's either a body weight marker or a amount of weight lifted marker and they're both very imprecise in terms of telling us how good we are if you're 247 and you're really over fat overweight you know gaining three more pounds is the wrong direction i would argue right uh you're you're. I mean, by the way, what are the odds that you're going to gain a pound of muscle a week in the next three weeks, right? So you know it's not, if you do gain three more pounds, it's not going to be muscle if any of it is muscle. And why are you chasing that goal? Isn't that not a really wise goal? Shouldn't you just be trying to

focus, but this is where it's arbitrary. How do you say I want to gain only lean muscle while I'm taking fat away and the scale isn't changing? You can't tell whether you're making any progress other than pictures or maybe an observer who knows. From a body transformation standpoint, what does cardiovascular training do for us? Well, I think you know that cardiovascular training doesn't do much for fat loss. And we've seen lots of experts. Calorie burning is calorie burning, right? So you can, and every time that we burn calories, we burn a mix of carbohydrate and fat, right? So if you do cardio, it's a higher percentage of fat and a lower percentage of glucose.

And if you're doing weight training, it's a higher percentage of glucose, glycogen, and a lower percentage. But I've tried it both ways. I get less lean when I do cardio. And the reason I get less lean is because I'm ectomorphic. And as soon as I start introducing endurance exercise, my body takes to it very well and learns how to start conserving fuel. So I might start off on a stationary bike at 120 beats a minute heart rate. And at that same intensity level, a month later, I'll be at 90. Yeah.

Right. So something's happening, right? I'm getting more fit. If I was a car, I'd be going from an eight-cylinder motor to a four-cylinder motor, learning how to become more fuel efficient. I don't want to be fuel efficient. I want to be fuel inefficient. Right? So you will be more fuel inefficient if you focus on resistance exercise and you spend your calorie burning like that.

And then you obviously modify the diet. Now, cardiovascular exercise has huge health components. Pushes down your LDL, pushes up your HDL, reduces your cardiovascular risk factor, increases your lung capacity, helps you go on a hike with your girlfriend so you don't make a fool of yourself when you get all this muscle,

but you can't survive an hour of hiking. Doug, I have a question. So we can come back to cardio, but I want to go back real quick to strength and size and what you mentioned about there not being necessarily a correlation with, can you say that again? Between muscle size and muscle strength. Muscle size and muscle strength. So my question is this, because you've heard of the idea of people doing like power building,

right? Where they have big compounds that they work with over time and then they also have accessory movements, smaller movements that are focused more on that specific muscle group. They also have accessory movements, smaller movements that are focused more on that specific muscle group. Now, what I noticed, and this could be just me totally, but what I noticed through my training through the years is that a lot of the beginning years of my training, I didn't really do a lot of compounds. I worked with a lot of dumbbells, cables, et cetera. And I got to a pretty big place without. I started adding in things like penalty rows more barbell movements and because with the barbell movements yes more muscles are involved but over time if you are

focusing on strength gain and let's say that you're not necessarily not everything is an rpe 10 right so it's not like you're training at the edge all the time but you are slowly increasing strength and increasing the amount of volume you're moving with these movements over time, I noticed that that actually had a positive benefit to my isolation work in the fact that my isolation work started getting stronger at a faster pace. Like, for example, a dumbbell row. After a certain point in time, you know, those five-pound increments, you're going to be chasing those small amounts of volume. Okay, I can move 12 reps this week, and next week i can move 13 with 80 85 whatever but as i started getting

stronger with these big compounds those movements also started gaining i could move more volume with those movements over time too faster so i'm wondering like this is totally anecdotal of course but seeing how that worked in synergy with me being able to now move more training volume. And in essence, if I'm able to move more training volume, I'm able to get bigger. It kind of makes me wonder, is there really no synergistic benefit of strength and size, especially for an athlete who isn't enhanced? It's a good question. Yeah? It's a good question. Yeah. It's a good question.

And as I always say, you know, if someone has a belief that something worked, we have to find the mechanism. We have to identify the why. We can't just say, well, it makes no sense, but that's okay. Right? We have to say, oh, that's because. Okay. So what I would say is that a muscle does what a muscle does.

A muscle's got a job. It's going to flex or extend that joint right there, and that's all it does. And when a muscle participates in a compound movement, it's only doing its job. It doesn't know or care what everybody else is doing. So if you were to analyze the amount of involvement of that particular muscle as a participant in that compound movement, you could actually quantify based on how much movement is being, how much weight is being moved based on the angle of the limbs being involved and all that. You can quantify how much load that muscle is getting. And then you can compare that

to the amount of load that muscle would get in an isolated exercise or in a particular isolated exercise. And so if you were to find that the participation in a compound movement is less loaded, then it makes no sense as to why that muscle would get bigger. So the only thing I would say is that maybe the exercise that you thought was isolated wasn't so isolated after all, and maybe there were some peripherally recruited muscles that are happening that weren't getting worked in that isolation exercise that are over here. And now they're assisting over here. So that's theoretical.

That's sort of like, but again, you'd have to figure out the mechanics. You'd have to be able to say just like an engineer right if you were building a bridge or a crane or a building you'd have to know where all the forces were and account for all of them you can't have something be mysterious right you have to know where they all are and why they're there so if that is true then we'd have to figure out why and then we could analyze it on an exercise-by-exercise basis rather than general categories. But I would say that there might also have been some other things happening in your life that maybe you were increasing your protein at the time. Or maybe you were a little older and your body was entering a different endocrine phase or something else.

Or maybe you were just more focused on sleeping more. So we'd have to make sure that we're talking apples and apples, that everything else was constant. And the only thing that was different was this method of training. And then we could say, okay, well, then let's look at the mechanics of each exercise and figure out what's going on. Gotcha. You just tried to spit COVID at me. I did. Damn.

You almost got me. I'm trying to get you out of the game. I moved my elbow quick enough to avoid any potential danger. Matrix that shit. So men typically have a little bit better neurological efficiency when it comes to being able to tap into their nervous system to be able to lift more weight. To kind of play devil's advocate off of what you said. A lot of times females perform better with higher reps and they can normally do higher reps that are closer to the one rep max.

A lot of that has to do with the fact that they're in a lot of circumstances neurologically inefficient. How does the central nervous system play into all this? Because men are certainly a lot bigger than women and they have a propensity to be quite a bit stronger than women in a lot of cases. And yet still sometimes women outlift them. Absolutely. Interesting. You know, I have to say, I don't know about that. I mean, I mean, I know about neurological triggers that compromise an exercise like reciprocal innervation and bilateral deficit, active insufficiency. But there might be something else that's going on neurologically that I'm not

aware of. I would say that you said something about men are more neurologically efficient. So maybe what happens is their muscle contracts harder and fatigues sooner because of that. Whereas a woman can't get as much contraction. Jessica told us earlier that she wasn't getting as much bicep contraction on some exercise until she started using elastic bands. So again, I would say that, you know, there's probably a difference in the way a male muscle contracts and fatigues versus the way a woman's muscles doesn't contract and doesn't fatigue that maybe allows her to lift a slightly heavier weight. I don't know. That's off the top of my head. that potentially by building yourself up to be stronger in some of these basic exercises, maybe you are tapping into the central nervous system,

and maybe you're just gaining more access to being able to put on more muscle mass over a period of time. Maybe it is a neurological thing. Maybe you're just connecting better. Much like you may do with your fitness. Like if I have really poor fitness and I go to go through a workout with you and I can't keep up, I can't really do the sets and the reps and the different things that you're doing. It's going to be hard for me to get a similar stimulus.

But if my fitness level is brought up, if I get more accustomed, if I have a little bit better conditioning, I know we just recently talked about cardio, how it's, you know, maybe not the best thing for aesthetics, but again,

maybe having a higher fitness level can just give us more access to be able to have more different variation in our fitness, our inner strength training. Well, I will say that my experience is opposite your experience. My experience was when I went from isolation exercises to adding an occasional compound exercise, I felt less good about it. I felt more, I felt like I was getting less of anything, really, from the compound. Less, it was more general, more broad, but less specific to any one participant. And then it didn't help my isolation exercise any better.

So I kept gravitating back toward the isolation. You know, just from a testimony standpoint, the isolation exercises that I have done, my experience, has been very gratifying from a muscle growth, a muscle stimulation, a muscle pump feeling while simultaneously allowing my joints to feel better than ever before no no joint strain no elbow strain shoulder strain back strain etc um and so i i i would have a hard time in my training justifying trying to add compound movements with heavier weight because i felt like it was moving farther away from but that's again that's because i've never cared about how

much i lifted i've only cared about how much I lifted. I've only cared about how I feel and how I look. What do you think would happen if you utilize some compound movements? Like, let's just say you started deadlifting every other week

and you just used weights that you could keep good form with and you still didn't care about how much weight you moved. Do you think they would have much benefit to you? I do think that the deadlift with semi-straight knees does activate the hamstrings in a way that nothing else quite does.

And the reason I say that is because you could possibly get something similar if you did that glute machine with a relatively straight knee. But typically we don't. We have the knee bent here and bent back there right so if you straighten that knee you would get hamstring elongation while it's hip extending yeah but on the other hand you're also not applying the force at the end of the of the tibia so i do feel that every once in a while i do some semi-straight leg deadlifts, either with body

weight or just, you know, 20 or 30 pound dumbbells, just because I feel something in my hamstrings that I don't otherwise feel. And I, and I kind of like it from a functional standpoint. I don't think it's going to make my hamstrings look any better, but I do feel that's probably a semi-necessary function to maintain. But having said that, i would never do you know a 200 pound or a 300 pound deadlift to get that feeling because i can get it with so much less i'm curious now since we're on the topic of hamstrings a movement that i've been adding in a lot recently has been nordic hamstring curls and i have been doing that for hamstring hypertrophy it was more so because um i do a lot of athletic work and nordic hamstring curls have been researched and when you get good at them to actually decrease hamstring injury risk um i've

noticed that i've been able to sprint with that in the past i sprinted once a long time ago it was like i pulled my hamstring did you really yeah it was like a year and a half ago but i was like let me see if i can still sprint because i played soccer and then the the first sprint I did was just like, peace out, bro. I'm out for a few months. So my hamstring pulled. And I've been sprinting recently and my hamstrings have been feeling great. Like that's not even close to happening. I feel bulletproof.

But from the physics aspect of the Nordic hamstring curl, can you like kind of explain that? Because it's difficult for a lot of people to progress. No, I know what it looks like. You know what it looks like. So here's what it is. It's obviously your torso is getting horizontal as the hamstring is elongating, as the knee is opening, right? That means it's early phase loaded, late phase unloaded.

You don't even get to the 90 degree bend and you're already at zero. Yeah. And you certainly don't keep going, right? So you don't keep going right so you don't get in a full contraction of the hamstring so you're working the basically stretch phase and you're working it with one weight body weight now you can add weight but you can't really subtract weight so um what happens when you run what happens when you sprint when you sprint you're loading that early phase right your foot is landing when your knee is almost straight. Boom! You're loading it with

full body weight and momentum. And so that would be the reason why there's a decreased injury rate is because you're strengthening it at its most vulnerable place. Are there any other movements other than the Nordic hamstring curl that could be very beneficial in working the hamstring at that phase? Well, I suppose you could do a seated leg curl uh and focus only on the first quarter of the range of motion okay so yeah there are some prime machines that you can actually focus on loading that range yeah higher you could also do a trx on your back where you put your heels on there now the problem with that again like this is is that you're using body weight so you can do

the math on it let's just say to make numbers easy you weigh 200 pounds you since most of your weight is going to be on your shoulders you let's just say a third of it is going to be in your heels and two-thirds is on your shoulders so a third of 200 pounds is whatever 80 something um and then and then you're going to magnify that times the length of the lower leg, right? And the hamstring is pulling on the tibia mostly parallel to it, which is a mechanical disadvantage. In the book, I actually did the math on it, and you could see that each of your hamstrings are loaded

with about 2,000 pounds of force when your knee is straight, and then some people do it with one leg at a time. So we're talking 4,500 pounds, and if the hamstring doesn't hold, boom, there go your tendons with your knee trying to go the other direction. So, you know, the Nordic version, you know, you can stop short of full extension if you want. You know, you can feel your way through that. And if you're not strong enough to go all the way to the bottom, then you stop soon enough. But I would still say, as is always the case, that, you know, whenever you have mechanical disadvantage, like in a preacher curl.

Yeah. When your arm is almost straight and your bicep is pulling mostly parallel, you have eight or nine times more force requirement of that tendon. So I have had someone say to me they tore their knee, their hamstring tendon, by doing a one-legged TRX. And the numbers explain why. Now, I have a question for you, too. As far as strengthening tendons, could a pre-tricurl with the amount of pressure done there, if someone uses it in a smart fashion, because people have torn their biceps on pre-tricurls, right? Frequently.

Frequently. Going too heavy. Yeah. But is there a benefit there if a person uses appropriate load for that tendon in terms of strengthening the tendon over time? I've never seen any research that shows tendons getting stronger because of resistance. Just like, I mean, yes, bone density does increase and muscles do increase, but I've never seen anything saying that tendons or ligaments increase significantly. Maybe they increase their thickness a tiny bit over time, assuming they weren't overwhelmed along the way. It was gradual, right?

Instead of a sunburn, you get a little bit of suntan along the way, right? gradual gradual right instead of a sunburn you get a little bit of suntan along the way right so too much is always bad but a little bit over time could cause some strengthening but but i've never read anything where it says it's a significant tendon and then you'd have to say why right when i can get all that i want from bicep development from doing you know a regular vertical standing dumbbell curl now you might say yeah but if I'm grappling, I'm at risk. If they're trying to give me an arm bar, I need to be able to pull out of the arm. All right, well, then you've got a reason why it might be worth trying to do that. But if that's not something that you're going to be challenged with on a regular basis,

I would say just avoid the risk. This is really cool, and I i'm gonna be done after this but this is why like um i've been really uh i've been really loving the work from atg and and ben patrick and those guys because they do a lot of work in those really deep positions but they're very very careful about gradual loading over time so they're they're very careful like you do not progress as quickly if you do you'll fuck yourself up yeah absolutely But I have noticed as I've been doing that very slowly over time, very carefully, even things like Nordics,

I've been progressing it slowly. That's a very high end, high risk injury movement. If you progress it too quickly, you could pull your hamstrings. People have done that, but by progressing it slowly, I've been able to gain levels of strength and positions that I never would

have had before. And that would explain why you have fewer hamstring injuries during a sprint if you've been doing that movement, because there is a strengthening in that vulnerable range of motion. Yeah. And you were talking about research, and somebody on the live chat had actually asked if there was any studies that would be able to prove

that the decline is better than a flat or an incline bench i think that's been done i think they did an emg study that that actually showed more fiber activation during a decline than an incline yeah have you found any other studies that would also support like some of the other brig 20 movements um look the first thing i'll say is a lot of times people like they talk about emg studies yeah as if the emg study is sort of the end all and what i always say is the emg study is is okay it's not the end all it can be flawed um for example someone will say well you know the emg study shows that you know uh tricep kickback has high tricep activation and i say well tricep kickback has high tricep activation. And I say, well, tricep activation or muscle activation isn't an on or off switch, right? There's degrees and quality of activation. So if you're getting, if I squeeze my hands together like this, I can get activation of my pecs.

And an EMG study says, oh, that's great. Let's use that to build the pecs. What about full range of motion? What about early phase loading? What about, you know, sets and reps? What about, so there's all kinds of things that contribute to muscle growth separate from an EMG study. But oftentimes an EMC study just basically corroborates

what we can easily predict if you just understand mechanics. Mechanics tells us that moving a limb in a direction where there's no muscle fibers means that muscle fiber can't possibly be reactivated right oh an emg study study proved that great you needed an emg study to know that yeah is there a uh it's gonna sound silly but is there a brig 24 uh diet nutrition oh my gosh no no, no. Look, my focus has been mechanics. I'm not a nutritionist. I'm not a biochemist. We were talking about it earlier. We were talking about just the huge discrepancy that exists between people that believe in vegan

and people that believe in carnivore and everything in between. I have a friend that i consult with frequently jeff feliciano some of you may know the name he was kind of the dan duchesne back in the you know 70s and 80s we met a long time ago when i was 17 years old he formulated nutrition products for weeder and he's been involved in in uh muhammad ali training school and just a lot of things but so he's kind of a biomechanics genius but and when we always exchange information and metabolical we talk about different books and um and and it's it's very very complex when it comes to nutrition it's very very complex and so to find a brick 20 version or to find a simplified version of anything in nutrition is really hard.

But I will say that I believe that neither extreme is correct. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if there's a, you know, a reason to be too extreme with your nutrition. You know, I personally have done like low carb diets and stuff like that.

And I found that it wasn't added benefit to be, you know, zero carb. And I think, again, people are conflating, you know, information along with the results that they're trying to get. It's like, what is it you're trying to go after? What is it you're trying to, you know, what's the end result that you're looking for? And if you're looking for, you know, being as lean being as lean as possible, we mentioned cardio earlier, like sometimes some of these things that people feel are going to lead to their best results are oftentimes things that really don't make a big difference, don't move the needle that much. And a lot of times people don't even know how to execute something that they're supposed to be following.

They may not be executing vegan very well or low-carb very well. We were talking about some people don't even know what carbs actually are. They'll say, well, I've cut out my carbs, but I'm still eating bananas. So you just basically cut out your potatoes and rice, right? There's different versions of vegan and keto because there's people that have keto and they have these weird keto snacks. And there's people that do vegan and they eat like vegan brownies. And it's like I don't think that's the point in the vegan diet. people that do vegan and they eat like vegan brownies and it's like i don't think that's the point in the vegan diet i think the point of most nutritional interventions are to get you to eat

whole foods that are natural from the earth and if you do that you'll probably you're most likely be in great shape no matter how much of that shit you eat so i was talking to felicia and i wanted to give you this quote he sent me which i think is brilliant in a way um and it sort of explains how complex that subject can be but it started off by by me saying you know look i saw this post where this guy's saying plants have been trying to kill us for millions of years you know and and and and you know and how could this be right and so right so so what he said and by the way Google Saladino, you'll see some feedback from people who say, well, it's too extreme. I mean, which is what Feliciano told me. He says, look, it is true that plants do have a mechanism that discourage animals from eating them.

Right. We know that we know there's foods that are very bitter, foods that are poisoned, foods that have thorns. You know, so there's all kinds of things. But this is what he said to me, which I thought was pretty brilliant. He says, each type of dieting approach has its rational do's and don'ts. If fats, if fast carbs, no fats. If slow reacting limited carbs, then moderate amounts of healthful fats. If lower carbs, then higher fat and moderate protein. If very low carbs, then higher protein, but not so high as to screw up calorie balance.

It's all about chronic circulating insulin and glucose levels pitched against exercise, meal portions, and macronutrient combination resulting in endocrine response. Can you send that to us? Yeah. I like that. Can you send that to us? Yeah. I like that. Can you send that? Then he says emotional stress counts significantly, of course, as does glycemic load and physical activity considerations. So that is the right answer.

But how do you act on that? That is, I mean, you're asking someone to be a biochemist every day when they're preparing a meal. Right? So he has told me repeatedly that the best overall is the Mediterranean approach. That's what he's told me. Nutrition's not complicated. Yeah.

I mean. We make it complicated, though. Yeah. But like you said, if you just eat natural whole foods and you avoid all the processed synthetic foods and you eat you know you avoid the extremes you know extreme too much protein too much fat too much simple sugar you're going to be fine exactly but i will send you that quote because it's just brilliantly complex and i thought it was so perfect for sort of like showing anybody who just says oh it's that simple just stop eating plants oh it's simple just stop eating animal products oh, it's that simple. Just stop eating plants.

Oh, it's simple. Just stop eating animal products. No, it's not that simple. Well, I saw somebody the other day that they had a shirt that said, eat more plants. And I wanted to like talk to that person and say, most of the food in the grocery store is from plants. 80%. Yeah. It started from plants.

And we're fat and we're heading in the wrong direction. Did you read Metabolical? I did not. Well, so what he says in there, it's not what's in the food. It's what's been done to it. Right. Right. So everything started as a plant.

Right. Right. And then we did stuff to it. Right. We converted it into this, into that. I mean, high fructose corn syrup was just corn. Right. Right.

It was okay when it was just corn. Right. Now it's plain old sugar or you look at the label and it says dehydrated beet juice right which is sugar right for your uh for your last show um what type of diet were you following um you know i i in my 20s i did zero fat dieting oh wow i did what Albert Beckles did. Chicken and rice, chicken and rice, chicken and rice. Albert Beckles shredded.

Can I ask you real quick how you felt when you did that? Terrible. Okay. Terrible, terrible, terrible. And there's a very good reason. Yeah. And that's because you're eating rice, which is high glycemic. You're spiking your insulin.

Your body won't release body fat with an insulin spike. And yet there's a calorie shortage. So it says, what the hell? You want me to give up some of the stored fuel, but you slammed the door. I can't get to it. Right? So you feel like shit. I mean, ultimately, I got ripped because of just how low my calories were and how stressed I was and all that.

But that was not the best way to go. So, but nevertheless, I pretty much stayed with the American Heart Association's recommendations, the food pyramid, which was basically carbs, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, right? At the very top, smallest possible amount of fat, right? That's what I was doing. And I thought, I'm exercising, I'll be healthy. One day, you know, I had to get spine surgery for a herniation. So I was doing the pre-op and the guy is in a cardiologist. He says, let's just do a calcium score while you're here because I see your father had heart disease. Yeah, great. So I had high plaque. I said, how the hell does that work? I've been eating low fat my whole life. Right? So I called Jeff Feliciano and he goes, you've been following low-fat my whole life. Right? So I called Jeff Feliciano.

And he goes, you've been following the American Art Association's recommendations, right? I go, yeah. He goes, first mistake. He says, 80% of the cholesterol that's floating around in your body, you made. You didn't eat it. How did you make it? Insulin. What raises insulin?

Carbs, starches, and more so in the absence of fat. What about overeating? Were you overeating? I mean, I know getting ready for the shows, you were not overeating, but were you trying to get big? So let me just finish this one thought. So then he said, go ahead and switch. Eliminate all your starches. Get your carbs only from vegetables and fruits and eat as much fat as you want. Avocados, olive oil, ghee, egg yolks, bread meat, salmon, coconut oil.

I did that, and my cholesterol went from 290 eating low-fat to 138 eating high-fat, low-carbs. So then I used that for my competition diet because I realized, now that I've got insulin out of out of the picture i'm not going to get let's just call it a false positive i'm not going to get a fat retention even though i'm in a calorie shortage right so now it's only calories right so once you've got the insulin thing out of the equation then all you can now you have to do is just bring down your quantity your portion sizes until you are in fat loss mode and you feel much better because you don't have an insulin rise blocking your fat loss and it worked just fine. I think nutrition can be

pretty simplified. I don't think people really need a lot of carbohydrate. Eat enough fat to where your hormones aren't compromised. Eat a gram of protein per pound of body weight. And voila, you're right there. You know, maybe you might need to make sure you get some of your micronutrients and electrolytes, make sure you get enough sleep. And it could really be that simple. But people get addicted to food. You know, it's hard.

People get addicted to the convenience of packaged food and things like that. And they find themselves binging on that or restricting too much and trying to be in a really low calorie and a deficit, and then they end up binging on some of those delicious foods that we all love. Right. You know, I'm lucky in the sense my – I was raised with – my father left when I was five. My mother raised us. My mother was a nurse in Chile, South America. And then all of a sudden she finds herself with a five-year-old boy and an 8-year-old boy, no husband.

And she spoke mostly Spanish. She's got to go to work. She starts housekeeping. So I grew up on a housekeeper's salary, you know, which was not much. He was making $3 an hour, $30 a day to raise two boys. And so we did not eat luxury foods we did not eat you know for the sake of comfort i mean we ate you know survival mode shake and bake salaberry steak and so as a result of that the good news is i grew up with no addiction to food whatsoever for me and i started working out at 14 14 years old i ate for one purpose physique health period

i was 14 years old i walked into the health food store and i said to the owner there i said teach me which he was tickled by it's like this 14 year old kid comes to teach me where do i start right i took wheat germ oil lecithin granules, whatever, you know, because I was experimenting and exploring. But I was passionate from the time I was four. And from that point forward, everything I've ever eaten has been for the purpose of being healthy. So I'm not addicted to anything. You mentioned training at Bill Pearl's gym. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Bill Pearl is the kind of creator of the five sets of five. Am I right with that? I don't think so. If it is true. Or maybe he made it popular. I don't know. If it is true, I don't know about it. You know, before Mr. Universe winner, I was 15 years old and I made a deal with him.

He let me scrub his showers, do janitorial work on the weekends in exchange for membership. But I was then as I am now, a free thinker. So I didn't take anybody's word for anything. I wanted to explore it. So Bill wanted me to do a lot of the compound movements. But actually, he was against bench press, too. But the point is that he was a great mentor, great father figure, great coach.

But the point is that he was a great mentor, great father figure, great coach. And he wrote the preface, I guess it's called, to the book and explains how I was just a kid when I came in there. And I learned a lot on my own without his help. Is he still alive? He is alive. He's about 92, I think now. Wow. I think I got my bills wrong. I think Bill bill star might have

been the five oh that that could be that could be that could be that could be by the way i never thought that five of five or eight of eight or ten or ten or any of that made any sense because it depends on the intensity of the set and the weight you're using well i mean i guess i think conceptually it can make sense because if you're working with a true five by five load right then that you're probably working within like an 80% range 70 to 80 percent which if you're working with that and that's the meat if you're good training for strength if you train but also because it's around 70 percent like 70 like you're also getting hypertrophy benefit yeah no I mean so you're getting strength benefits and you're getting high per se I would

almost think it'd be inverse I would almost think it'd be either 5 sets of 10 or 10 sets of 5. I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you can sort of do it either way, but the 25 reps, anywhere between like 16 to 25 reps, based off of this chart that a guy made, this Russian coach. It's called Prilipin's chart. That's where a lot of the strength training protocols have kind of come from. Eight sets of three, six sets of four, four sets of six, five sets of five, 10 sets of two, kind of all those protocols. They're all very similar in the overall amount of work that you get done.

And as Nseema's pointing out, it's done in like a specific percentage, done with like proper. The problem is people use too much weight they always use too much weight they're five by five looks like they're going to die and i was going to end the perception of and the perception of maximum effort is also not necessarily the same for everybody right what you perceive as maximum maybe somebody else's pussy weight but but but what i was going to say was you know, from the perspective of muscle building, which is the only perspective I've ever used, my goal has been to seek what is considered an optimally stimulating set,

and then parameters have to be assigned to that, what designates it as an optimally productive set, and then how many of those can i tolerate and can i push the envelope and how far can i push the envelope so with the goal of most muscle growth so what are the sets and reps look like well and that's why people say how many sets and reps and i go it's impossible to to give one yeah pad because literally it'll change from one person to the next and it'll change from person one year to the next year,

next month. And goals? Your goals are going to be different, right? Yeah, and day to day. This day I might be able to handle 12 sets. Next time I might be able to handle 16 sets. Do you just go by how you feel personally? Yeah, you have to. You kind of have to be intuitive and I think that's the difference between the champions and the non-champions.

The champions know how to adjust along the way. And the non-champions want a strict guideline. And they never waver from it. And the body never works that way. Every day is a little different. You know, if you're a pole vaulter, you'll notice that the pole vault is just a little different yeah you know um if you're a pole vaulter you'll notice that the pole vault is just a little different every time right because maybe the guy and usually these guys are very skilled they can shift their body weight shifting a certain direction they know how

to maneuver in if you're a guitarist you've seen the guy playing the guitar in the middle of the song he tightens one string because he's not like this right everything changes a little bit from one day to the next and you have to go with it you have to sense it and adjust with it i like that a lot um something i found to be really useful for me is when something does feel good to really stick with it and don't worry about the sets you mentioned doing 12 sets of something um i've had that happen many times in work. I'm like, this feels good. I'm just going to keep rolling with this.

I'm not even going to count. I'm not concerned about getting in X amount of exercises at a point. I'm like, this exercise feels great. I'm going to stick with this. And that's what we should go by. We should go by the feeling. Your body is talking to you every workout, right? But instead, you're looking at what's on the paper.

You're not even listening to your body right so i always tell people don't ignore what your body is saying right this day it doesn't feel strong go with it that day it does feel strong go with that listen to your body yeah but but my trainer said this is the program that i gotta follow so i gotta do that by the way speaking of listening to your body and not not outside parameters i wouldn't mind it if weight machines didn't have numbers they had letters oh because all you want to know is should i use one more or one less than last set or last week all right once you start getting into 100 pounds you start comparing what i really like to get to that

150 yeah right or you know and so or like you know i'm too away from the stack i gotta use the stack it's like no no no gotta use the stack no so i always say look if that stack was three times bigger you wouldn't even be thinking that right now i i want to i want to ask you about this because i feel like since you've been training for so long you probably have some good insight on how people can increase this um over the minute my training years i've slowly been able to increase my ability to work each muscle group to a higher extent like so more my muscle connection but also what i've noticed is that i am working with certain movements with significantly lighter load than i was years ago and feeling the same, like a great connection to that muscle. And now how can people develop that over time other than just, you know, you got to train for years, obviously, but is there ways within training? Like I personally, and this

is totally anecdotal. I like to slow things down. I like to stop at peak contractions and hold those contractions and go back to the beginning of the movement. I like doing that even though if this is the set's going to take longer, I have to move with a little bit less volume, but I feel a better connection. So are there ways through your training experience that you think people can increase their connection to all the specific muscle groups they have on their body? Well, it goes back to what I was saying before. You have to listen.

You have to pay attention to what your body is feeling and telling you, and you have to pay attention to what your body is feeling and telling you, and you have to stop using outside markers. The weight that, you know, whether it's more or less than your training partner is using, what that paper says, what I did last time. Listen to your body, right? And that goes back to what I was saying about a muscle can grow more using less weight. There's no direct correlation, right? You will get more muscle growth sometimes using less weight, there's no direct correlation, right? You will get more muscle growth sometimes using less weight because you're doing full range of motion, more deliberate contraction, no momentum, slower range of motion, more

time under tension, blah, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, I mean, the only hint is to stop trying to evaluate yourself by numbers that are not your own for that day. Every single day is unique. Don't worry about how much weight you're lifting. That's why I say if the weight sex had numbers, I'd be just as happy. In fact, sort of silly here, our pre-motion machine has kilos on the left and pounds on the right. Right?

Well, obviously, we in America, we use pounds. But because the kilos are easier to see i always just think 26.5 i'm not thinking how that reflects on my strength level whether that makes me a man or not whether it compares favorably with last workout or 26.5 that means the next time i'll do whatever the next, it's just a marker to me. And that's what I recommend to people. Just use markers to indicate more than or less than last time or based on how you feel. But chase the feeling.

Ultimately chase the feeling. I think a really good thing to ask here is because so many people aren't getting gym memberships because while things are going on with gyms where potentially they might close at some point again let's hope not let's not say the word by the way this is youtube if we use the word the dreaded c we already said it once we did once all right let's not say it again let's not say it again when i launch the attack yeah we don't need youtube coming on us um so with that being said people are making their own gyms in their garage and a majority of people like um you know they're like i need to get a

stack of dumbbells i need to get myself a squat rack and this and that but in your suggestion if someone is they they have limited space and they want to focus on just muscle loading yeah what are the machines that you would suggest that they would get that would give them the most bang for their buck well that's what we did my training partner and i built a garage gym and it's wonderful i mean it's is is it as perfect as i'd like it to be well if i could have a leg extension and a seat let it curl leg curl machine in there i would add it there's not enough room for it but we do cable leg extensions and cable leg curls and they're close enough and we have a we built a bench that's elevated so that when your leg goes up and down it doesn't hit the ground enough and we have a we built a bench that's elevated so that when your

leg goes up and down it doesn't hit the ground right but we have a free motion machine or a tough stuff also makes a good double adjustable cable machine which gives you a lot of variation and then we have a tough stuff multi-hip machine and we have an adjustable decline bench and we have a couple of seats with and seat backs and a set of dumbbells from two and a half to 60. We're happy as can be. We do the whole body. Abs, lower back, biceps, triceps, deltoids, everything. Wow.

And just curious, too. I mean, people are going to wonder, like, what ends up being the price range for a majority of these? Like, how much would they end up spending for the whole setup? You know, a double adjustable pulley machine, which kind of should be the centerpiece of a home gym because it offers so many options. I mean, you can literally do 12 exercises on that machine. Free motion tends to be a little expensive. Tough stuff is a little more economical. I think they run

around thirty five hundred dollars um but you can get the same effect by getting four individual pulleys that are adjustable up and down and place them along the wall at certain distances so on this one you use a and b on that one you use a and c on this one you use A and C. On this one, you use D and C. So you can, you know, the width that you need and then the height that you select. And those are $100 a piece if you just get the plate-loaded version. Oh, wow. Yeah, I think Titan Fitness makes one that's really easy. You just wall mount it. Yeah, so you just wall mount $400 pulleys, and you've got all your widths.

The Multi-Up machine is fantastic. We actually use it for side raises, too. Yeah. We built up the seat side raises, too. Yeah. We built up the seat so you're at the right height, and then you get on the other side of it, you do the other side. And that's a fantastic exercise. And so we got two exercises, but that thing cost us $3,500. The decline bench cost us about $350.

And then dumbbells are kind of expensive now because they're at a premium. Hard to get, but that's kind of all you need. I'd say, you know, for $8,000, $9,000, you could have a great home gym. One of the, uh, the comments on our last episode that we had, uh, we had you on that got a little bit of attention, but I'm curious to ask, cause I want people to kind of understand what's going on. But, um, the question was basically

like okay if these are the most optimal movements and you know Doug's winning bodybuilding shows how come he wasn't talking about this years ago and I know you had just mentioned that you kind of started doing break 20 movements about three four years ago so before that I mean were you just doing like the traditional like compound movements and that sort of thing and and then again also um why has it been so long to start like to write the book and be more um you know seen when it comes to the break the break okay yeah good questions but as i said the last three or four years i've been using exclusively break 20 exercises i didn't start calling them break 20 until a year ago. In fact, there's no mention of the Brick 20 in the book, even though the ones that are Brick 20 are named as the best one or two in each of the chapters for the muscle group.

But the story is very simple. I started at 14 years old with a home barbell set, those plastic cement-filled plates, and it came with one of those handbooks. Upright rows, barbell curls, bench press, barbell squat, just like everything else, right? And then I was at 14. At 15, I went to Bill Pearl's gym. But I was always analytical, and I was discovering. I would have never thought that I was learning biomechanics. I didn't even know the word. I just knew that, for example, if I was doing a barbell wrist curl and the bench was flat that I was sitting on,

I could feel too much tension at the bottom and not enough at the top. At 15 years old, I knew to raise up the backside of that bench and angle the bench like this. Now, all of a sudden, it took away resistance from the bottom, and I added it to the top. I manipulated the resistance curve at 15 years old, not even knowing there was such a thing as a resistance curve or a strength curve. I just knew it was more comfortable. So these ideas started slowly catching on, and I never, ever thought there would ever be a market for it. All I cared about was just my own enjoyment of my workouts. That's all. And then in 19, excuse me, 2005, I had, I owned a gym in Pasadena from 1984 to 1995 for 11 years and I couldn't keep it open. Too many

other gyms came into town. It became too competitive. I did personal training for about 10 years. And then one of my clients wanted me to explore lumber, mahogany exportation out of Nicaragua with him. So I moved to Nicaragua and lived there for two years exporting mahogany. And I left the fitness industry because I thought, you know, the people who are making money in the fitness industry are the people who are lying. The infomercial makers, the people who are selling hype, nonsense products, the people who really want to tell the truth aren't getting compensated well.

It's time for me to change industries. During the two years in Nicaragua, I started thinking about, well, maybe there's a market for someone who wants to tell the truth. Maybe it'll catch on. So it was just a thought. I came back and I started writing for Iron Man magazine. I wrote an article called The Case Against Overhead Presses. And I explained the five things, components that made it a compromise movement,

three of which were risk related and two of which were lack of benefit related. And John Bailick loved the article so much. He says, can you write more articles for us? So I said, yeah. So I started to do that and I started getting more and more positive feedback, which started making me feel like I actually did have knowledge that people wanted. And so then I thought, well, maybe I'll start thinking about a book. So I started writing out what later ended up becoming the 16 factors that determine biomechanical efficiencies, because I had to get my table of contents in order. So what are the principles, right?

I figured there have to be principles that are either in compliance with or in violation of to determine what is better than what. And so it took me seven years to write the book. And during those seven years, I was still learning. During that seven years, I realized, you know, I don't need to do the T-bar row anymore at all. So, you know, it was such a gradual process. So, you know, it was such a gradual process. That's why you didn't hear about this before, because I didn't know about all of it until at the very least until I started writing the book, which was like 2009, 2010. And then, you know, I started learning because as you're writing it, you say, well, what about this? What about that? You ask the naysayer questions right what if someone asked me this well then you find reciprocal innovation you find uh activism you find bilateral you find all these things along the way i mean i literally went to school for seven years while i was researching the book

then when the book came out it took me another two years well i finished writing it two years to get it published that was nine years after I set out writing it. So that's the reason why you're just now hearing about all this stuff is because it's been slowly coming to light. And that's why now you can't say, well, who's won Mr. Universe yet using the Break20? Well, give it time. Yeah, that is kind of the follow-up question. It's like, well, who has he shown or who's doing this or who has he coached? That's Juan shows and this and that. And I'll tell you, you know, I'm 61 now.

I can't do what I used to be able to do at 30. I wish that I could do that. I wish that I could prove with my own body that I could develop that kind of muscle. But you just, you literally, your body just does not respond the same at 60 years old. It just doesn't. Well, I mean, just straight up, like I can personally say like again i don't only do the movements that you talked about in the book but i bought the book because i knew from what you're talking about like if i can get a lot out of these movements what's the most i can get if i can figure out how to do this efficiently but also marry in the things

that i enjoy progressing as far as my athleticism i will make progress and i have made progress like there is no reason anyone shouldn't add these in, you know, along like you could do just those or you could do those along with your powerlifting routine as your, as your bodybuilder accessory movement. So you can get the most out of mechanical tension. Like there's no reason you can't do that.

So that's why I'm just like, you're being too logical though. Like, yeah, but I'm also, I'm also saying, you know, in this book,

this isn't like these are 20 exercises to do only do these don't yeah that's not what this is about this is how do we evaluate exercises right oh by the way that'll lead you to these 20 right but by the way it'll also help you evaluate the ones that you are wondering about yeah yeah i fucking love it yeah uh what can you tell us about the Smart Training 365 website? Is that where you coach people or is that just like more of a one-way street? People just can gain this knowledge. Well, the Smart Training 365 is sort of the digital version of the book in expanded form. So there are a lot of people that don't like to read, right? So a lot of people like videos.

So there's lots of videos on the Smart Training 365 video website. And there's also a certification exam. So you studied the book digitally and then you take quizzes along the way and then you get certified. You get biomechanics certified. And I think every trainer should be biomechanics certified or at least biomechanics educated. You know, I took ACSM certification years ago. They didn't even mention the word. Right.

I mean, it's probably changed now. But if you're a trainer and you're dealing with resistance exercise, you have to know that your forearm is a lever. You have to know when it's maximized, when it's minimized, where the risks are, what a joint is supposed to do when it's not supposed to do, what alignment is. Otherwise, you know, you're not knowledgeable enough to be a trainer, frankly. Yeah. And then so running that website, there's going to be somebody out there that thinks that you do everything by yourself. And then there's going to be another subsection of people that are thinking you have an entire

team behind you. How did you meet the one and only Mo Larby and what's your guys' partnership? Well, Mo has become a great friend of mine. He bought the book and like so many people said, holy shit, this stuff makes so much sense. How could we not have seen this before? Right? So he contacted me and he said, can you come up and do a seminar up here in Canada?

And that's when this thing happened. Coco. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So that was kind of off. And so then he said,

well, what if I just do like a digital training certification? And I said, great. So we started working on the exam questions and all that and then it started off that he was just going to do the certification in canada but i said hey if it's digital might as well be worldwide so that became that and then basically what we decided was that you know i'm a nerd i'm just a science nerd i i don't like the commercial end of anything um and so i don't

do well with digital or or tech and i don't do well with you know video making and video editing and he does very well with that that's sort of his talent so that's what happened is is mo just became my partner now my other half in terms of the promotion of these principles. That's all. We're 50-50 partners. I am the one who does the information, the content, but he's the one who helps me get the word out. Nice. That's sick. Yeah, and then I got to figure out exactly how to do it,

but Mo actually just hit me up, and he's going to offer everybody a 30% off discount off of, what's it called, The true bodybuilding program. Okay, great. That's one of our videos. Yeah. We'll,

we'll put that in the description as well as the promo code. So make sure if you guys are interested in more of that stuff to, to definitely take advantage. Yeah. He, you know what he does too, is he, he asks the question,

the harder questions. So you may have seen the interviews we do. He doesn't softball me. He asked the questions that the naysayers going to ask. Right. And that's good. We want those questions, right? We want to address those. We don't want to pretend they're not there. And what he does is he says, look, Doug, your focus here is on mechanics and your focus personally has been bodybuilding, but not everybody is a bodybuilder, right? So that information can be applied toward the trainer who's helping a 93-year-old do rehab.

So let's do that. Let's provide these people with information that's useful to them. So that's what has led me and us now to a program that is usable by everyone for every application, whether it's John Gaglione in powerlifting or whether it's, you know, someone doing, you know, physical therapy for someone who's been injured because it's the same physics. It's the same biomechanical principles. Just understanding them helps you understand what is appropriate for this person or for that person.

Amazing. Andrew, want to take us on out of here? I will. Let me see. Where am I? Here we go. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Sincerely appreciate it.

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please follow the podcast at Mark Bell's power project on Instagram at MB power project on Tik TOK and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at, I am Andrew Z and SEMA. Where are you at? I didn't see my in Yang on Instagram and YouTube. I didn't see my yin Yang on Tik TOK and Twitter. Doug, where are you at? I'm at Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube. I'm at Seema Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter. Doug, where are you at along with that new TikTok?

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