Mark Bell's Power Project - Eugene Teo - How to Shred Aggressively, Ditch the Barbell, and Optimize Your Training! MBPP Ep. 756

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Eugene Teo is a bodybuilder and has spent over a decade in the industry of training, coaching and helping those around him. He has worked with athletes across a dozen different sports, along with countless 'everyday' athletes in the pursuit of improving their health, physique, performance and life. Follow Eugene on IG: https://www.instagram.com/coacheugeneteo/ Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really does work): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ 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 ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast

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They help you perform better. You don't get cramps during workouts. And I mean, with the diets, you need good electrolytes. So Andrew, how can they check it out? Yes, that's over at markbellslingshot.com. And at checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT10 to save 10% off your entire order. Links to them down in the description

as well as the podcast show notes. Yes, you can shoot it in your veins or I'd say... Oh, no. Fake Natty. I'd say go with half.

See how you feel. Half. Go half. You can't half this. It's just, you do it all. You said you were sensitive so I want, I don want anything to happen i think he could do the whole thing but it's up to him what's the dose in the whole thing a lot so of the actual kratom this one

thing one's quite sure yeah no no so they have kratom capsules too. You see that? This one thing is equivalent to like eight capsules. How much is in a capsule? 750 milligrams. Is it in a capsule? 750 grams. It's like 6.6 grams. Okay, alright.

I can do that. Are we going? Yeah, we're going. Eugene is a G. He's got it. Real Gs go with half. Down the old hatch. Mind bullet to the face.

And down the hatch. Let's see what the reaction is. That's not tasty. It starts off like, oh, this is delicious. And it's like, no, that's like licking a butt crack. Oh, my goodness. Butt crack's tastier.

Did that go in? Yes, it did. And yes, butt crack is tastier. How quickly does it take to kick in? Eight seconds. It takes maybe about, what, ten minutes? Yeah, it'll creep in. You'll just notice.

You'll see me in ten minutes just sort of start drooling. I'll start twitching. I'll start foaming in the mouth. I'll take a bite out of your arm. I'll be like, ah, shit, not again. He's got rabies. You might notice that you don't even feel your peck anymore. Oh, disassociating.

Okay. In the healthiest way. So I said to you when you walked in, I talked to you about the iced coffee that I got in Australia. What the hell's going on with that? They throw ice cream in the coffee? Look, that's actually news to me. I've seen it once, actually.

Oh, you have seen it, though. I'm not making it up. I have seen it. No, you're not making it up, but it's not something that I really... Did I mess up and order the wrong thing? You might have. You might have. But maybe the story...

Maybe I was just being fat. Maybe I was just like, hey, throw some ice cream in there, too. They probably gave you the up and down look. Yeah, he's an ice cream boy. He's an ice cream boy. Exactly. They knew who they were dealing with. But no, I'm too much of a coffee snob to go down that route.

Like for me, I just like it pure. Did you have temple coffee today? Yeah. Well, I saw the black and white cups. That's very snobby. Temple coffee is disgusting. What is wrong with you? What do you drink? You see, this is the thing.

You know coffee. And for some reason reason people that know coffee love temple and i taste temple coffee and i'm like the fuck do you guys see in this i hear yeah coffee i'll say coffee snobs but it's just like oh that tastes like acid that's so good i don't get it yeah when it punches you in the face there's some people oh yeah that burns fuck yeah i'm like There's some people, oh yeah, that burns. Fuck yeah. I'm like, that's not good. Well, what do you drink in statement? Do you have like Starbucks? I like Phil's. I see.

He put me in the basic bitch category immediately. It's like, you like Starbucks. Let me read. I like Phil's. Pumpkin spice.

I usually drink black coffee, but temple coffee for some reason I could never get behind it. And I tried because all the coffee people love it. But I was just like, I can't do it.

What's your coffee order? That's where we're going to start. Well, if I go anywhere, I'll just see what they have and I'll ask them for what the strongest coffee they have is. That's just black. And then I'll try that. And then I'll just, if it's a coffee shop I go to, I'll just go down the list of what I haven't had.

But Temple Coffee, I haven't had a coffee that I'm like, mmm, delicious. At Philz, right, Philz Coffee, I've had all of their different medium, dark, whatever. I've liked them all. But Temple, I don't know why. Have you had Philz before? I haven't. I haven't even heard of Philz. Is that another chain or is that like a one-off place?

Okay. Yeah, Philz is amazing. It lists out the coffee and then it has descriptions of the coffee as if the coffee is like wine. Oh, for sure, like tasting notes. Yeah. Citrus, blueberry, chocolate, yeah. Yeah, there you go. And so they have a lot of combinations of that. They probably have, what, 40 different coffees on the list and then you can –

They have like a secret menu type thing. Yeah, you can like mix and match them. And then they're really smart because in all their coffee they use heavy cream and if you just get their coffee kind of like straight up the way they normally sell it it's with heavy cream and honey now you're having a goddamn party yeah yeah that's really really go that route yeah all right i've got to check that out then phil's okay there's one really close to here so okay yeah it's down i can't do another coffee today you're gonna kill me man you got me on this cradom you got me shooting everything up he said that when he was younger he used to do 16 shots of coffee a day wow not every single most

days most days of espresso yeah yeah it wouldn't be like i wouldn't get 16 orders it would be um the triple or a quad shot i would get because I really like coffee. I like the flavor of coffee. I don't like a, what do you call it, like the Americano. I don't like that because it's too watered down. I like all those different snobby wine pastes. I think espresso is a great way to go for a lot of people, especially people that have a hard time drinking coffee

without putting a bunch of stuff in there, a bunch of extra calories. For sure. So yeah, I would do that, but an espresso is so small. So you've got to get three or four of them to make it actually last a bit more than a couple of seconds. So you can sip on it, you know.

But I'll do maybe between three to five of those in a day of these triple the quad shots. And I'm a small human. So it's like, that's a lot of caffeine to put into a small human. And somehow I didn't die from that. But that should have been a red flag of like, yeah, you're probably, something's amiss

if you can take that much caffeine and not burst into flames as a small Asian man. That doesn't make sense. When you start dealing with grams of coffee, then you know you're in trouble. So you're probably taking at least a gram every day. Possibly, yeah. And then now, like if I have one shot,

it could lead me astray. I'll go down this dark vortex where I don't sleep for a couple of days. It's crazy. Have you ever been to Italy before? Yes. Yes.

Italy is kind of cool because they have like these espresso bars and you like sit there and you like sip espresso like while you're at like this bar but it's the second that you're

not drinking they want you the hell out of there. Yeah. But you just sit there and you kind of like just talk trash and make fun of people that

are walking by. It's kind of fun. Yeah. I do enjoy that. I do enjoy that. Very much like people watching over in Italy. All those motorcycles zipping around. Yeah, the little Vespas. Yeah, that stuff terrifies me.

I had to teach myself how to ride a bike when I was a kid because I just didn't learn. Well, I learned it in, I remember in high school, we had like a school camp and you had to go mountain biking. I was like, I can ride a bike, although I couldn't. So that just went really badly and after that i was like i was scarred like i got to show how to ride a bike now so i started learning how to ride a bike but i've never like been confident on a bike even now even now like i can ride it maybe i wouldn't i wouldn't get i wouldn't get on a bike these days i'm gonna kill myself did you guys see the president of the united states

falling on a bike no no i gotta find it he wiped out he totally biffed it and he was at a stop too he was like getting ready for a pose smiling and he's just old just tipped over you'll see it it. It's a very Biden type of thing. Where are you from in Australia? Where did you grow up? Melbourne. So down the bottom there. And that's where you're still at?

Yeah, still based there. I've just lived there my whole life, grew up there, and I love it there. I've tried. I've spent a little bit of time in Sydney. I travel around Australia a fair bit, but Melbourne's always just been home.

It just feels comfortable there. And the more I travel now, the more I realize just how good the city actually really is. Because you take it for granted we don't have the perspective of the rest of the world. And then you go to other cities, you're like, wow, this city is really bland. Or this city is really, I'm going to get shot probably. This is like, you don't cross that street, are you going to get stabbed in the neck or something like that um or there's there's no greenery or things just little things and never appreciated that and but now i'm like oh melbourne does you know have a really good vibe it's got a really good culture it's got a good amount of just variety to it it's safe it's clean it's still not

perfect and i think i don't think i don't think anyway it's perfect per per se but I do come to respect how lucky I am being in Melbourne and growing up there as well compared to a lot of other places that we've been to all over the world we talk about that quite a bit on the show this is like our job kind of ridiculous

we're very grateful growing up in Australia my perception from never going there is that people seem to really care about fitness there i think um is that actually like is that the case like coming to america seeing food plates how people are here is it different here substantially as far as the health perspective yeah i'd say um it's it's lot easier. It's a lot more accessible to be in the fitness, not in the industry, but just to be fit. Like things open up earlier.

Like I know over here, when we first got to New York a few weeks ago, we were trying to just find a place to get a good breakfast in the morning. Nowhere opens until like 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. And it's like, that's weird. That's weird. You can get a coffee, but you can't like get a proper breakfast or 11 a.m and it's like that's weird that's weird you can get a coffee but you can't like get a proper breakfast or something like that in the morning but in melbourne you're gonna have everyone everything open at like 7 a.m at the latest some places like

where katrina's from she's it's open up like at 5 a.m yeah because everyone's out and about they're all exercising they're all doing stuff and they're all outdoors even though it does get very cold in winter there's just very much of this culture of being healthy fit and active california's fucking lazy yeah 10 a.m for breakfast well california new york yeah it's all like yes yeah it's it's it's weird it's weird for shell shock for us is the weather in australia similar i mean it's a huge country but is it yes i mean it depends on where you're at like Like in Melbourne, it doesn't snow anywhere in terms of the cities, but it does get pretty cold. I'd say it's, yeah, it is probably similar to kind of California.

California is probably a bit sunnier, a little bit warmer, a little bit more consistent. We have like big ups and downs. I think actually probably the closest would be probably to New York minus the cold depths of snow that comes in winter. But yeah, where it is very transient. One day it'll be hot, one day it'll be cold. It'll be raining, cloudy.

You get a big mix. I was watching one of your videos recently and you were talking about hamstrings and how to kind of get the hamstrings to open up a bit. And we've talked a lot on this show about, you know, stretching versus not stretching versus, you know, activation versus dynamic stretches versus doing myofascial release and this program and that program. And I liked a lot of the stuff that you had to say. I tried what you were talking about and you were like, some people might be able to do, you know, what you showed obviously was like next level. I wasn't able to even do that.

But I was able to do a scaled down version of it. What video is this? And I'm just trying to move my hip, just a hip flexor exercise. Oh, the park pulse. Yeah, I'm on the ground and I just kind of lean back on my hands and then just kind of move my foot off the ground, I guess you'd say, with my leg extended out straight. I did like four reps. And I just got this crazy cramp in the hip flexor. And that calmed down.

And then I got a cramp in my stomach. And I like rolled over. I'm like, I'm getting my ass kicked. I haven't even tried anything yet. Yeah. Where did you come up with some of these ideas? How have you kind of stumbled upon some of this information? Yeah, I mean, that was not me coming up.

That was stolen, completely stolen. I mean, 99% of what I do is plagiarized. People got to realize that's the fitness industry. It's not like deceptive plagiarism. You learn. But it's you learn.

Something like the pike pulse, that comes from, from my lens, it comes from gymnasts. But a lot of martial artists use it as well. Like they train their hip flexors or doing that leg lift.

They'll use it a lot in like judo warmups. They use it a lot in gymnastics. Olympic lifting. Olympic lifting as well. Yeah, they do a lot in judo warm-ups. They use it a lot in gymnastics as well. Olympic lifting. Olympic lifting as well, yeah. They push the weight a lot of times. Yeah.

But yeah, specifically that pike pulse, I first heard about it from Coach Christopher Sommer, who was the Team USA gymnastics coach many, many years ago. And he was talking about this, like, what is this exercise? And then he was talking about how humbling it is. It looks like nothing. You're sitting there lifting your leg off the ground. How hard can that really be?

But then when you look at it from the physiology perspective, like, oh, this is why biomechanically it's so fucking hard. I can swear, right? Yeah. Okay. Oh, I can't remember. But it's fucking hard. And then you realize, oh, this is why it is so hard.

And then one thing is you're putting your body into a very, very short position in terms of the muscle length where you're not going to have a lot of strength and you are going to have a heightened sensitivity to that crampy sensation which is not the goal but it can happen a lot of the time um but i started to unpack it more and then like i've been through every single type of myofascial fascial stretch release therapy thing and i've had varying levels of success with it and what i started to realize um over time was that all of these things have improved flexibility mobility um not much is actually happening on a tissue level and most of the research does actually show that way like most of what we do and like stretching mobility soft tissue you're not actually changing much of the tissue in terms of quality or its texture or its length like there may be with extended stretching for a long period of time, you are going to get some change to the

tissue length from stretching that has been shown, but it's very minimal. But really the way that a lot of these stretching things work is nervous system. It's all the brain. Like your brain is down-regulating its feedback to say like, hey, stop going to that position. And we've got to work, okay, why are you tight in the first place? Has your muscle become so bound up and knotted up and tight? Actually, it doesn't just happen like that. And if anything, it's more the brain saying, I don't trust your ability to go there for whatever reason.

So I'm going to create restrictions in your movement, which you'll sense as hamstring tightness or whatever. And then I'll restore that if I gain that confidence and awareness and whatever else it may be. Like something like the pike pulse, that hip flexor work, that works via more reciprocal inhibition where in order to contract the agonist like your bicep, your tricep has to relax. The same deal for the hip flexor hamstring. When you flex your hip flexor, your hamstring has to relax. So you have to feel the hamstring where the hamstring will loosen up. And for many people, you could ask like, why is the hamstring so tight, the hamstring will loosen up. And for many people, you've got to ask,

why is the hamstring so tight? Is it because I'm not stretching the hamstring enough or is it because it's tight for a reason, because they're pulled in a certain position all the time, because their body senses whatever instability or weakness, in inverted commas, in that area? And how can we restore that? What's the missing link?

And don't look at it from a tissue perspective of the hip flexor or the hamstring. Look at it more so from a neurological perspective of what does your brain not have good awareness, good control over? And then how can we restore that? Yeah. What are some core principles? Like, for example, you know, we're talking about individuals who when they gain muscle over time, they become stiff, they become tight. So for you, you're large, like you have a lot of muscle.

People can see it on your IG. You've been training for a long time, but what within your training have you maintained so that you have good range of motion so that you don't get too stiff? Or are you stiff in certain areas? Do you feel like, cause like with your training, you do a lot of different things. So how do you structure that for yourself? And what are you like? Yeah. What do you do in terms of practice that helps you maintain good mobility, good movement while you're continuing to improve your physique? Yeah. Well,

first of all, thank you for saying I have muscle. Everybody knows that. I'll look at it. I'll look at myself. Yeah. These are leftovers, you know,

um, it's leftovers from being bigger at another time or leftovers from everybody else i mean like literally that but you know what people don't realize is that video there is i'm 66 kilos or 140 pounds i got it's for me that's not natty the thing is like um i've got really good muscle bellies, proportions, structure. I was made to do bodybuilding. Like not to be Mr. Olympia because I don't have the height for that. But I have that physique that's just very pleasing to the eye.

Just hop on and go to 212s. Yeah. The way my muscles like attach to my body, it just looks nice. It's always going to look. So I'm going to look a lot bigger than I actually am. Like the first reaction people always have is like, oh my you're so small I'm like yeah I am you're like thanks yeah like what yeah it's a big come down for a lot of people it's like yeah it is what it is like I know the angles you know I know the angle remember lighting I'm

very good at that kind of stuff um but the go to the question of training wise yeah I have I've gone through many different iterations of training over the years where I've realized like some things when I was like heavily into powerlifting, heavily into even bodybuilding many, many years ago when I was competing, um, I had a lot of restrictions in movement. I wasn't doing, doing too well. And now that's very different. And I wouldn't say it's because I'm a lot smaller as to why that I am more mobile. I'd say that, um, if I cared to put on that amount of size

again, I could do that and maintain mobility or even improve it. Because if you look at, it's always, I don't like to always go to anecdotal evidence, say, look at these authority figures or whatever, but it is helpful. And there are so many people out there, even like a Ronny Coleman, okay? He's a bajillion kilos in his prime, he could do the splits. It wasn't a perfect split, of course, but you see so many examples of these incredibly muscle-bound people, but they can still achieve feats of strength or feats of mobility and flexibility. And you've got to think, okay, what's really going on there? Is this whole muscle-bound thing a case where you have too much muscle, you actually can't

scratch your ass because your lat's in the way? Honestly, it doesn't happen like that. Maybe if you're running Coleman, it might at that point. Yeah, it your lat's in the way. Honestly, it doesn't happen like that. Like maybe if you're Ronnie Coleman, it might at that point. Yeah, it's crazy. I didn't know that. Like you've actually really analyzed that. Is that really a split?

It actually isn't really a split. Look how his left knee is bent. Yeah. It's actually, he's stretching out his right hamstring. It's Ronnie Coleman. We'll just give him the nod. For sure.

Ronnie, that is clearly a split. Yeah. Regardless, it is still impressive. Yeah. You know, it is still an impressive position to be in given the muscle size and it kind of shows you guys that like yeah being muscle bound isn't necessarily going to be like the default if you build more muscle mass you know and you've got to ask um

yeah what is missing in some people when they do build muscle they do build strength what are the gaps in their programming what are the gaps in the exercises that they choose that then leads them to eventually become muscle-bound or they're tight? And that's where we've got to unpack all the way to the start and say, okay, what causes not even the muscle stuff, but what caused you to be tight in the first place? What causes your average gen pop person who weighs a whopping 70 kilos, 150 pounds, what causes that regular Joe to be tight and stiff?

And how does that then translate to someone like us who's got more muscle mass? Because it's the exact same process. People don't realize that, but it is the exact same thing where it is all governed by the nervous system. The reason why your desk worker has poor posture or whatever, it's because their nervous system hasn't been challenged to go to these different positions all the time

yeah it's the whole move it or lose it kind of thing and the same move it or lose it kind of thing plays out with people who are very muscular very strong just because you have muscle mass doesn't mean that you have acquired all the neurological skill set over all the different planes of motion and if you look at like how we train it's very sagittal plane. In this case, front, front. We never go into the rotational. We never go into the transverse planes at all.

And from a muscular perspective, that's huge. We're missing out on a lot of muscles, a lot of the rotator groups around the hips, around the shoulders. But also looking at it just from the overall movement, joint motion as well, we're skipping over so much stuff. And it's not just that we're skipping stuff, it's that we're also overemphasizing certain things so much where we're getting very, very, very good in different positions,

in different ranges of motion. So, of course, your brain is going to really learn how to keep you in that mid-range. Like if you look at most of the exercise that we do in the gym, it keeps us um we do the big compound lifts help build muscle build strength which are very good for us very good for a whole host of reasons but they still have gaps they still have gaps and we need to look at it saying okay what is it from a plane of motion maybe it is getting out of that sagittal

plane and more into transverse or more into the frontal plane as well but it's also looking at it from the perspective of um are we actually going into those plans other plans of motion and challenging them and trying to gain strength and mobility and mastery in those positions so i've identified that for myself and said okay here's how i can fix that and it's quite simple you know a lot of it's simple like a big one that i um that i've been working with the last few months that's on the top of my mind because i've been teaching it more in seminars on my traveling tour is like,

say the shoulders, okay? Like the shoulder complex. A lot of people have issues with their overhead shoulder flexion position, right? And when you really look at it, you got to say, okay, how often do we really go into this overhead flex position in our training?

And you say, well, yeah, we do. Like if you do- Or just in life. In life as well. And we say, well, yeah, we do. Or just in life. In life as well. And we say, yeah, we do that in, say, a pull-up. We're down here. We do this in the overhead press. Okay, like a thing that you can go, we do go there. But the real question is, are we actually in those positions?

Are we being challenged to pull our shoulder back into flexion? And we're not. In overhead press, you're pressing a barbell, the weight's pulling you straight down. It's not pulling you in this horizontal-ish whatever plane where you've got to work on pulling back. In a pull-up, okay, you're not being pulled back into that flexed position or into the extended position. We've got to pull in the flexion. So technically what happens is, yes, in training, we train our shoulders. We train the upper back muscles.

We passively go into a shoulder flex position by a chin-up or by an overhead press. But we're never actively being pulled into this extended position where we have to work into flexion for the shoulders. And that's where we've got to look at just putting in an exercise, as maybe like a a face down trap three raise or whatever it is or a cable raise or even a face pull you know all these same exercises um because they're challenging you to actually go into the flexion position under load and if you look at like that's a huge gap for a lot of people that's why like face pulls and exercise hey they're a cool exercise because it it covers that gap but then you look at it from the perspective of okay okay, we have a face pull being a cool exercise

you can do, but then how often, how balanced is that in someone's routine versus the overhead pressing versus their bench pressing versus their pull-ups versus their rows? There's a huge disparity in the amount of volume and time they dedicate towards this face pull, shoulder flexion position, upper back stuff versus all the mid-range stuff. So for one thing, yeah, there's going to be changes in muscle size, but also just neurological awareness, okay, where biasing one thing more, your body's going to get very, very good at that. And it will over time potentially restrict the range of other areas just from a pure safety thing. Doesn't mean you can't build muscle, doesn't mean you can't build strength, but there's a good chance it's going to have some gaps there.

So a thing that I say is, okay, what are those gaps? How can I fix them with what exercise or what positions? And then how can I make sure that as I get better at my bench press or as I get better at my pull-ups that I can maintain that? And it's surprisingly simple because it's understanding just like, yeah, let's do some face pulls. Great. But then people are like, well, let's do some face pulls. Great. But then for people like,

well, I already do face pulls. Why does my posture suck so much? And that could be like the whole programming thing. Who knows? It's a very, very long conversation there. Yeah. I think a big part of what you're saying is if you're going to do something like a bench press,

if somebody has a decent amount of strength on a bench press, they're going to do many, many sets. They're going to do a lot of warm-up sets. And by the time they get to their top sets, if they're a strength athlete and they do like a five-by-five, they just spend an awful amount of time doing an exercise that is just working, you know, I know it works other parts of your body,

but mainly the front part of your body and only in kind of one direction. And it's like how many face pulls, you know know do i need to do to kind of offset that yeah and what i've been thinking about a little bit more i mean the answer would be like a lot right a lot a lot of fucking reps uh and other exercises right to kind of offset it yeah but um what i've been thinking about a lot more is like wow if we just if we just like run and we jump and we throw like running jumping throwing skipping all these things from just that have been around forever a lot of these things can help solve a lot of issues you know especially something like throwing you're pulling the arm back yeah for sure and there's like an eccentric concentric component to it um even just throwing a med ball you you know, just doing stuff that's more sport

related, I think can really help a lot of people just to kind of think about, there's a lot of deceleration that happens, a lot of explosiveness. And I think for most of us, like we want to like look good, we want to be in shape and all that, but we want to be able to like move well too, you know, be able to snap into something. That's the thing. The question I have for you is, able to snap into something that's the thing the question i have for you is would you hate yourself if you walked into a gym and met yourself now when you were younger like when you were going after the heavier weights you'd be like fuck this guy like the guy that's telling you not to use the barbell and the guy who's telling you no you got to do this exercise and you're over there bench pressing yeah would you be like this guy doesn't know what he's talking about leave me alone bro

i can very much see how in that context you could yeah be like fuck off guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Leave me alone, bro. I can very much see how in that context you could, yeah, be like, fuck off, I don't listen to you. Me personally, as like Eugene, I actually be open to that because my whole career, my whole everything, I'm always ready to be proven wrong and to be taught something. I like that. No matter who it is, I'd be like, yeah, cool. Like you've got no muscle mass.

I'll still listen to you. I'll still want to hear what you have to say um so but i do very much understand how i could very easily how or other people could be like yeah you got no fucking idea what you're talking about i'm gonna listen to you you know how how dare you say this because i've got my context of i'm so jacked and you're not or i've achieved all this and you haven't why should i listen to you kind of thing um so yeah it's it's a bit it's a bit it's a bit it's a little bit of both i'm just thinking about how like we would receive you know somebody telling us to train our feet and you gotta train your tibialis and like all this especially like maybe five years ago we would be like uh i don't think so yeah well i mean for me like yeah five

years ago i was taught i was teaching people that fit teaching people about tibialis and stuff and i was because i was excited about i think I think this is cool. This is interesting shit. And as much as I was like a bodybuilder, I was just more fascinated by the human body, seeing what it's capable of and how can I get as much as I can out of it in any avenue because I don't want to be just a bodybuilder. I want to be able to live a long life, be mobile,

be able to move, be able to do a lot of things beyond bodybuilding. And I think that's where a lot of people kind of get caught up in the gym is they just gym. And that's a big thing. So what you said is like for sure, like a lot of these mobility or postural things,

I think it's in essence actually is a very, very simple concept. It's not necessarily easy, but it's just we don't move enough. It is this whole crisis. We don't move enough. And like even for me or even for all of us who like we train, we train five days a week. What do you mean I don't move enough and like even for me or even for all of us who like we train and we train five days a week what do you mean i don't move enough i do my cardio every single day i do my steps do 10 000 steps and i lift weights every single day i follow a really good program but it's still not enough in terms of not more volume but again like it's

those gaps it's those gaps it's like hey like you do jujitsu like that's multi-plan it's putting into positions you'll never experience in the weight room. Same as Calisthenics, same as CrossFit. They're doing all these different positions that we never really go to. And I would say like, that's exciting to me. That's exciting. That's where like, yeah, five, 10 years ago, had me today come back to me five, 10 years ago, and I was a lot bigger, more muscular, stronger, I would listen because I've been like, yeah, I want to learn how to, I'm excited. But all those opportunities to be able to do shit beyond the gym. Unfortunately, many people just identify as I'm a gym guy. I lift weights and they get the ego. It's like, who are you to tell me when I've been doing this for so long, I'm so strong. I was

like, well, yeah, but you can't scratch your ass out cramping up in your lat. You feel like you're going to pop your disc when you wipe your ass. It's not good. Yeah. But you know, I've been there as well where, you know, you feel like shit and then always want to find something better. I always want to improve that. I'm really curious about like your training career over the years. Like you kind of talked about that. You were focused on bodybuilding, you're focused on strength. What did your training career look like from when you were a kid? Did you start this really young? Did your parents get you into fitness or how did it start for you and how did it progress to where you are right now yeah so when i when i was um when i was a kid i was always fascinated because i'm as you can see i'm a small asian man i've always been the shortest

i even not um like i started school like when i was a kid um like four three years old or whatever i started a year much younger than all the kids in my class like my kids put me into some kind of my parents were in some kind of accelerated program where I could just start school earlier. Don't know why. But I was significantly younger than most of the kids there by a year, if not a year and a half to two years. And so already I was set up to be like genetically, I'm a small structured person, but even then

by having that actual age disparity as well, I've always been a small diminutive kind of person so for me it's always been like yeah i want to be able to do what these big fit kids do i want to be able to play sports or whatever i don't want to be the bottom of the rung but i always was the bottom of the rung and i was a poor performer um not necessarily from lack of effort but just because like especially in those developmental years between like 5 to 15 or so a year or two years makes a huge difference because the kids are developing so much. So I'm always going to be the weakest, smaller person. So I was always saying, I want to get stronger.

I want to get bigger. I didn't know what bodybuilding was obviously, but I was always into like exercising. Like I remember when I was like 10, 11 years old, I was just doing push-ups, sit-ups in my gym or in my home, not my gym, just at home. And as soon as I could in high school I um I started going to the gym so when I was like 13 14 I started um training at the

school gym and just trying to put on size and I needed to for the sport as well like I had to put on like something in the vicinity of maybe 10 to 15 pounds or so just to meet the minimum standards to be able to do because I was doing rowing at the time, to be able to actually fit into the constraints for the sport to do that. And I was like, fuck, okay. So I've got to build muscle. All the other kids who are older than me, they're working on their fitness. They're working on their performance. I'm like, I've just got to build. And it's always been the thing I've been chasing. And then when I got out of high school, it was still very much, that was what I was doing. I was like, I want to be bigger. And then I learned what bodybuilding was. I was like was like ah bodybuilding is a sport and it's open to everybody

it's not just arnold schwarzenegger kind of thing anybody can do bodybuilding because there's always local shows as well and then i found a local bodybuilding coach and i started working towards that and um that's where um i just got exposed to a lot of different varieties of styles of training. Like he was very, he put me through a lot of like Mike Mensah heavy duty stuff. So I remember very early on, I was doing all the four strips, the eccentrics, the negatives, like the painful shit, which is completely unnecessary. Like now I know like, oh, that was just fucking dumb. But hey, it worked as well.

But I had to go through a lot of processes through that. I'm just learning how to push myself and train to build muscle mass. And we did a lot of powerlifting style stuff as well. Why do you feel it was unnecessary? Like the Mark Mensah absolute intensity, from what I know now in terms of the muscle physiology, how muscle building occurs, and also like the whole,

like you guys had Mark Isbertol on recently, the whole stimulus fatigue ratio. At some point, you are going to be creating that imbalance where you are creating so much more fatigue for a small amount of stimulus. And that's one thing that actually Mike Menzies himself would say in his heavy duty manual. It was like, there are two things that you're going to get from training. One of them is guaranteed and one of them is, meh, maybe. So one thing you're definitely going to get from training is you're going to get fatigue to some degree. You're going to use up resources. You're going to generate fatigue.

The other thing that you might get but might not is stimulus. Here's the first guy who said it. And then he was, that's why he was so big on pushing to failure to make sure that you were getting that stimulus. But what we know now from a lot of literature and a lot of science is that you don't need to be going to that point to create the stimulus and that's been a huge thing for me over the past probably five to ten-ish years or so of coming to terms with that because and i think a lot of people can learn from that because a lot of us we go to the gym and we start

training and we we start chasing the wrong thing we chase training and we start chasing the wrong thing. We chase the pump. We chase feeling tired. We chase feeling sore. We chase those last reps like, I'm really killing myself and pushing to that point. And what we should be looking for is that we should be chasing a stimulus. But most people don't understand what the stimulus really is. They think the stimulus is that failure point.

They think stimulus is you screaming and yelling and like really getting that burn or whatever. And it actually isn't. Like those things sometimes come along to play with it, but they're not necessary for the muscle building. They're not necessary for many things, honestly. Like pushing to a complete failure point like that where you want to like puke and die,

that's important for its own rights of maybe improving your conditioning and tolerance to that pain or that hydrin buildup, that lactic acid, inverted commas, buildup. Maybe mental. Mental as well. It's a huge thing as well. Building up that tolerance, that's important for that. But if we're looking at it purely from the perspective of building strength or building

muscle mass as two very nuanced goals, you don't need to train to those failure points. You've got to grind out every once in a while. You're going to do a one rep max test every once in a while. But as a powerlifter, as important as a one rep max test is, how often would you really be doing that? It's not a max. Yeah. You would hardly ever be doing a complete grindy out rep. You'd go into the gym nine times out of 10 knowing that what you've got to do today, and it's going to be hard, but you know you can probably do it. And it may be a little bit of an overreach every once in a while but most of the time you're

just going to get in do the work and just progressively push that every single time and they're going to be hard sessions absolutely but it's not going to be to the point where you're screaming yelling tom platt style like just destroying yourself it's not necessary not that doesn't work but it's not necessary the Not that it doesn't work, but it's not necessary. The tricky thing to navigate is there are so many people like a Tom Platz or like so many other people in the industry who glorify that and say, this is what you got to do. And of course, they look the way that they do. People are like, that's the answer. That's all they have as their context because they don't understand necessarily the muscle physiology

or they don't understand the biochemistry or things about the mechanism of how we actually build muscle, how we build strength. So their only context is, oh, Tom Platz completely obliterates himself on a leg extension to a point where it's no longer a leg extension. It's just him sort of like bopping his body. I don't know if you've seen that video. It's hilarious. But they're like, but that's what they think you're meant to be doing.

But if they eventually went to that point where they learned about some of the muscle physiology, some of the stimulus stuff, some of the biochemistry and how muscle building, strength building occurs neurologically and within the muscle tissue itself, they'll realize, ah, yeah, that is overkill. That is not necessary. And you can make a lot of progress without going to those points. But of course,

you have those nerdy conversations with a lot of people. They're like, shut the fuck up. I don't care. You're a fucking nerd. You know, Tom Platz looks like he does. You look like you do. I'm going to go with Tom Platz.

Yeah, this is the stuff. Looks like he's just giving it to someone. Yeah, there we go. He just played that first part. He's just like, whoa,

whoa, he's still going. He's still going and he would do that on every single exercise. He's starting to get an erection too. Yeah.

Getting a little awkward. Hey, yo, Tom. I got to go work out. And then you take the average person. Those are some wheels though.

Yeah, I mean, you see his legs, you're like, yeah, that's what it takes to build those legs. And then, awkward hey yo tom i gotta go work out and you take the average person wheels though yeah i mean you see his legs you're like yeah that's what it takes to build those legs and then but then the smarter you get the more savvy you get which only comes through experience and time and obviously nerding out and some of this stuff on a um on the very nerdy level you realize that ah like his legs look the way they do um not because of he had to go to that point all the time. And going to that point is probably going to be counterproductive for most of us. He's an anomaly.

And just because he did it doesn't mean that we all have to follow suit. And this is the hard part about, especially in social media. You're trying to find like the, almost like the minimum effective dosage in some way, right? That's what we should be doing. And then progressing that over time. And we shouldn't be saying like saying that's what the goal is and the Tom Platt thing is the goal

because it shouldn't be the goal. The goal is not to get tired. The goal is to do what we can to stimulate muscle building, maybe go a little bit beyond that just to make sure we really stimulate muscle building and get out, recover, rest and then make sure you can come back tomorrow and do it again and progressively do that. You do a session like that, how frequently are you going to be able to train?

Probably not very. Unless if you are Tom Platz or you're on a ton of gear. But even then, a lot of guys on a ton of gear doesn't really make a big difference in terms of them being able to perform again and again and again. That's why they wind up broken. And when it comes down to really succeeding in anything, whether it's bodybuilding, powerlifting, jiu-jitsu, anything,

the one common denominator above all else is just time. The longer you can do it and staying injury-free and progressing that, the better. And this is a big part of it. People are looking at all these. I think this is kind of interesting for me is people are so focused on recovery tactics, cryotherapy, the massage, the red light therapy,

the laser therapy, all these different ideas. And they're all incredible. They're all, you know, a lot of these things haven't got a lot of research about backing them, but no one's talking about the most fundamental thing of just saying, hang on, instead of trying to recover first, why don't we look at what you're doing in the gym first? So you don't, maybe you don't need to have as much recovery shit. Like you're trying to make up for a really shitty training program or a really shitty idea on what it takes to actually build muscle mass. You can't outcry a poor training program. You need to make sure that you're doing things

intelligently to stimulate what you want and create some fatigue, but don't dig yourself into a deep, deep, deep, deep, deep ditch that you have to then try to pull yourself out of through every single type of recovery modality there and trying to find that silver bullet. The silver bullet to success really is smart programming and being focusing on your volume, your intensity, your frequency, your just your overall recovery in that perspective and managing that. That's the most important thing. But it's not sexy to sell that. It's sexy to sell cryotherapy or saunas or whatever else is out there. But and again, like not to bash those things. Those things have a ton of benefits, and I love to use those kinds of things.

But they should be the little extras on top after you're focused on the big rocks that are just, hey, are you managing your volume appropriately? Are you thinking about linearly progressing that? Or are you just going in and throwing everything at yourself and being a Tom Platz in the gym every single session? Unfortunately, that's where most people live. They just live in that intensity zone. And when you look at the other side of this is, um, when did most of us start training? When did you start training? Yeah. When I was a kid.

Yeah. Like you're young. 13. Yeah. How about yourself? It's 13. Yeah. Like 13, 14. And the thing is we've got no idea what we're fucking doing. And we can accept that. But for the first, like, say, even 10 years, so from 13 to 23, okay, you can do dumb fucking shit. You can do the stupidest shit, and you'll get results. And you'll get quick results. One thing, because of the age that we're in, like with 13 to 23, you're going to develop very quickly. But also because we're still newbies.

Like, we're in those newbie game phases. So you're going to make incredible progress. And what that does is it creates this idea you must oh this is this is what i'm doing is correct and it creates this belief is identity that yes i know what i'm doing and there's a very hard to tell 23 year old guy hey what you're doing is probably not good because you're like i've got 10 years of history of experience you can't tell me based on your science and your research that you know what you're talking about i've got 10 years of history of experience. You can't tell me based on your science and your research that you know what you're talking about.

I've got 10 years of putting on 50 pounds of muscle mass. Fuck you. And that's a hard thing to navigate because you're dealing with somebody's identity of what they know has worked for them. Trying to tear that down or not tear it down, but trying to break through that to help them understand that, hey, what you've done so far has worked,

but to take you to the next level, you've got to do something different and maybe a little bit more savvy. It's hard. Most people get stuck in this phase of always being in their beginner-intermediate zone. You can train for 30 fucking years and you'll still be a beginner. And people don't like to accept that. Yeah.

You see that a lot in bodybuilding, with the individuals who have competed year after year, after year, after year, and they look the same. They don't look much different. And there does come a point where your gains do slow down massively,

but you can be making a lot of the same mistakes, training way too hard, not recovering from session to session. It can be tough. But when you were talking about some of the forced rep aspects, I noticed that there was a, there was a time a few years ago that you got the opportunity to do a lot with John Meadows. And John Meadows, he actually, I mean,

I don't know the deepest aspects of his training programs because I haven't purchased them, but by seeing his videos, he did do some things with forced reps. He did do some things with different tactics that, I mean, like go on a failure quite a bit. So what did you take away from John Meadows in terms of his training style and some of the things that he did that was beneficial? Cause he was extremely intelligent when it came to training. Um, so how did he use those tactics differently than the way that bros use those tactics? Yeah. He was methodical about how he put it in. Yeah. Like some of the hardest work I've ever done, I've been training with John, like him and I just killing ourselves in it. Um um and a lot of what people see with those sessions

i think oh that's how we always train but we'll do a session like that like some of these intense youtube stuff whatever that will happen maybe one set out of one workout out of a whole four-week block i'd also like to point out there's a factor that it still may be unnecessary, but you may be choosing to do it, and it's just better to have the knowledge, right? Because you just want to bro out sometimes. Well, that's a big part, and that's a big part that I think is, that honestly disqualifies everything I've just said, which is like, hey, what do you enjoy? You know, the big part is like, hey, if you enjoy that and you love that,

that keeps you happy and motivated, keep doing it. You know, maybe you might want to tone back on it, and maybe over time, you might want to learn something a little bit, maybe more optimal or whatever. But honestly, the most optimal thing is what you enjoy. And if you love that feeling, fuck yeah, knock yourself out. As long as you understand that maybe it is hindering you long term, that's cool. You know, we do a lot of things that hinder ourselves all the time. Why not?

You know, it's just part of living. It's just, you're on your own journey. But yeah, John was extremely methodical. As much as we saw a lot of the intense stuff, and I've's just part of living. You're on your own journey. But yeah, John was extremely methodical. As much as we saw a lot of the intense stuff and I've done a lot of intense stuff with him, it was very, very infrequent. And I still do push those points of complete failure and even beyond failure sometimes, but it will be more of a mental test for sure. It'll be because I love it. It'll be because I also want to know where my limit is. How do I know? From the research we say, hey, anywhere between one to five reps close to failure

is going to stimulate muscle building. It's going to be an effective set. But how do you really know where that is if you've never gone to that point where your eyeball wants to pop out of the skull by the last rep? We've got to find that point every once in a while and we've got to keep going back there every once in a while to recondition ourselves because we forget. We've got to find that point every once in a while. And we've got to keep going back there every once in a while to recondition ourselves because we forget, you know, we get soft where

we forget what that really is and what it really is like to push to your limits. That's why I think it is still something that I do use, but a lot less frequently than what I used to do many years ago. Um, cause I still think it's an essential part of training, but it shouldn't be the mainstay of our training. It's just a small tool that trickles in. Yeah. No, I, I, I know it's the same thing. Like when I was younger, I did a lot of stuff to failure, but I learned partially because I worked with Alberto Nunez a bit and I learned his style of programming. So, I mean, I, I learned not to head there that often and what happened, I was able to actually gain quite a bit more muscle because I wasn't fatiguing myself way too much every single session. But it is very simple for people to get stuck in because

it feels good. Like you think you're doing a lot of work, but you realize that when you're going to failure so often, you're doing those workouts like that so often, you are limiting yourself on the total amount of volume that you could be able to do in that session if you just took a few reps off. Absolutely. It makes a big difference. Absolutely. And that's what it really is. So being smart about that. But you tell that to a 21-year-old kid who all they know is,

I'm going to be hardcore and scream and yell, pump my chest. It's a very hard thing. It's a very hard sell. I hope that it does change and it gets easier. But it's no longer, honestly, at that point, it's no longer about how much science do you know or how effective you are as a communicator. I think it's more about the communication. It's more about how can you disarm somebody

and get through their ego without just tearing them down and being a dick. It takes a very, very particular skill set of conversational skills and communication skills to be able to help somebody in that aspect. And that's what I've had to learn a lot through my years of teaching or even coaching when I was a PT as well, is 99% of that is just communication

and helping somebody actually be able to get over the line and understand and apply what you're doing and enjoy it. Not just because you've got a gun to the head saying, you've got to fucking do this or not. It takes a different kind of skill set. We don't really see much. Why have you discontinued using barbells on a lot of exercises? Bang, just straight to it.

For me, a big part of it is preference, and a big part of it is also the knowledge around, is there something that could be a bit more comfortable for maybe your wrist or shoulder elbow position by having more freely moving parts parts in like a handle or whatever that's why i prefer to use them over barbells um like if i'm doing a deadlift i'm probably still gonna use a barber like that's what i'm gonna use i use a straight bar for a lot of deadlifting stuff but if we're looking at say like the bench press for example we need to do a pressing motion if i was a power

lifter obviously i'm going to use a bench press but for any other goal all we need to do a pressing motion. If I was a power lifter, obviously I'm going to use a bench press. But for any other goal, all we need to do is apply some kind of mechanical tension to my pressing muscles. And I'm going to use something that's the most comfortable, that requires a lot less, honestly, technique to be thinking about. Like a bench press can be a very technical exercise. As much as you say, I was just pressing it by your chest, chest it can be very technical especially when you get to the realms of like pushing a heavy heavy weight and the amount of stimulus you may get from having to from using a

barbell versus dumbbells the amount of um fatigue you end up occurring on that neurologically but also maybe locally in the tissues themselves because the positions you're forced into on a straight bar versus dumbbells or something that's a bit more freely, like even a Swiss bar, maybe a bit more joint friendly per se, that can help you get more stimulus with less fatigue, whether it's local in the joints or systemically. Now I am kind of, I flip-flop a little bit because I say things like that, where I say, I personally avoid barbells, and I think for a lot of people, they are overusing and overemphasizing barbells. But I also always make sure that I emphasize now, because I didn't in the past, but say, you know

what? The fact is, yes, there's going to be more joint stress and joint strain from a barbell versus a dumbbell because of how you're fixed in a certain plane. But is that bad? No. Okay, it is just a quality. And the body can adapt. But is that bad? No. Okay, it is just the quality and the body can adapt. The human body is resilient. But yes, there might be something less optimal from the alignment and the joint forces going from a barbell to a dumbbell or gymnastics rings or whatever it is. But the reality is we can adapt. And as long as you're smart about your volume, your intensity, your load management, your recovery, there's no reason why you can't just do barbells for the rest of your life and make a ton of progress for whatever goal.

But it really just does come down to the preference and I guess where you're at in your journey as well. Maybe as you get more advanced, you need to be more mindful of things like fatigue and stimulus. It could also be preference based on maybe you've had a history of injuries from being probably not as mindful of your volume intensity all that kind of stuff so now you need to be a bit more prudent around managing the exercise around that the big reason why i why people see me as the anti-barbell guy is because i'm not necessarily anti-barbell but i want people to be thinking deeper about the fact that barbells are definitely probably overemphasized.

For some reason, there are this golden thing, everyone has to do a barbell squat, everyone has to do a barbell bench press. And I think that's cool. Now, I think it's a cool thing. I love those exercises. I love them to death. That was what I used a lot when I was growing up as well.

It's something I have a deep emotional attachment to. But it doesn't mean that everyone has to do it. And the reality is that the flip side to this is if we pushed out the idea that everybody has to barbell squat, barbell deadlift, barbell bench press, they're the king, the big three exercises. That's something that a lot of gym goers will connect with. But what about the people who really need our help, which is the gen pop, which is the people who aren't gym goers will connect with. But what about the people who really need our help, which is the gen pop, which is the people who aren't gym goers, people who don't have the strength, the mobility, the awareness to be able to do those exercises.

You're telling them they have to do a barbell squat or that should be the thing they work towards. Otherwise, they're a failure and they're not where they need to be with their training. That's very limiting and it creates barriers. So this is where, this is why I say I flip-flop because me also saying, or getting the message across that, Hey, maybe barbells aren't the best thing all the time. That can also create a barrier. This is honestly an internal battle that I have in my head the entire time of the communication, because I want people to be thinking that yes, barbells are cool, but they're

not the be all and end all. But I also don't want to fearmonger around exercise. I don't want to say, Hey, barbells going to trash your elbows and trash your shoulders because they're not necessarily going to do that. It's more the lack of recovery and the load management is going to fuck that up more than anything else. It's a very tricky thing to navigate. And I definitely go on either extreme occasionally, which is I'm learning to communicate that more effectively. But my big thing is trying to shift away the focus from, yeah, saying this is what you must do all the time and saying, no. Unless if you're a powerlifter or unless you're a barbell athlete who has to use those certain exercises, you don't need to use a barbell for the adaptation of getting stronger, building muscle mass, getting more powerful, speed, performance or whatever. Unfortunately, people think that's what you have to do.

I don't want to get the other thing i like about just some of that notion is um when you use dumbbells it it uh has it has its limitations in the sense that like you can only like grab so much weight you know and then therefore um you're most likely going to use a higher rep scheme and we've talked about this on the show before where something like dragging a sled, you know, you could do like thousands of reps. But if you told me, hey, go in the gym and do a thousand leg curls or something like that, it would be insane. It would be brutal. But some exercises really lend themselves to kind of a higher rep range. lend themselves to kind of a higher rep range and a person can most likely be safer for longer uh maybe not wear themselves out quite as much by just simply choosing uh to utilize exercises where you're using more kettlebells and more dumbbells and things like that that's usually

that's a big thing that i really um that i love to talk about is um focusing on don't don't think about the exercise determining what you're going to get in terms of stronger, bigger, whatever. You should be asking yourself that. The fact is you can do like, say for cardio, okay? Say I want to improve my cardiovascular fitness and I want to improve my conditioning. You typically think of going for a run, pushing a sled, maybe some kind of kettlebell complex or whatever. You wouldn't think of doing, because you can do thousands of reps of that. You wouldn't think of necessarily doing thousands of reps on a deadlift or thousands of reps on a biceps curl okay but the reality is you actually could if you wanted to and there's no reason why you can't create a cardio

based program using biceps and triceps and that's it and that's going to actually be applicable for some people based on injuries and based on what they have available. But what I tell people to do now is just focus on what adaptation do you want? Power, strength, muscle building, they're the big things. And then that will then dictate a certain rep range or intensity scheme that you've got to then default towards, like higher reps for more conditioning, lower reps for more neurological strength gains, and somewhere in between for muscle building. And then say, okay, now that you've got the adaptation you want okay, now that you've got the adaptation you want, and now that you've got the rep range intensity scheme you should be playing with and the failure points you might be working towards as well, what exercise makes the most

logical sense? And there's going to be many times where a barbell is the best choice for that. Especially powerlifting, especially like raw maximal hang on to a heavyweight strength, barbell is going to be the best tool. Because yeah, dumbbell, impractical. But there's going to be just as many occasions where a barbell is not the best choice. Or it's not the only choice. And the reason why I'm so outspoken about this

is because the industry, in my eyes, is so emphasized in saying, no, the barbell is the thing. The barbell, they choose exercise first, not adaptation. We should be flipping around saying, you want adaptation. What's the adaptation you want? What's the rep scheme or whatever that then predicates? And then what are the available options you have? And then you can choose whatever the fuck you want.

It doesn't really matter that much. But you look at a lot of PTs on the gym floor. You look at a lot of coaches. You look at a lot of people writing programs and just influencers are saying they're going backwards saying barbell bench press is what you've got to do and they just misapply it and then it gets overdone and then that creates a barrier

to a lot of people who can't do those exercises or feel like they have to even though they might not enjoy it or might not just be well suited at the current time for it and that's where you run into a lot of problems people think they have to do these exercises so much that they feel like they have to do them with lots of pain. Their elbow hurts, their shoulder hurts, their knee hurts,

and they're like, no, I still got to do my squats. I mean, I remember when I was coaching a lot of people, I would say, hey, you know, it would probably be a great idea next week if you just didn't squat. And they were like, what? I mean mean you're you're training very hard you need some time off your knee is like actually getting swollen

like let's maybe just think of something like come in and do some like leg curls and do some other movements for a little while for sure for sure and it's not like you're gonna get weaker overnight yeah but we had that fear and the fear just comes from um where our current knowledge set is like where our current understanding experienced knowledge is really out and that's where that's why i'm so big in education is that i try to be non-prescriptive and saying here's what you must do i say here are the concepts that underlie the principles that underlie it all hopefully that will then build their knowledge base then be able to make the right decision for themselves because most of the people who come to you like in the past when you were coaching and whatnot

all they know is squat got me huge if i don't squat i'm fucked because they don't understand again what's going on underneath like what is it really the squat that made you so big or is it apply mechanical tension to muscles in a movement pattern that's what got you big and strong squat is a convenient way to do that with Squat is a convenient way to do that. The barbell is a convenient way to do that. But it's not the only way. It's not the only way. But yeah, this is where a lot of the challenge comes from is trying to educate that and bring that up to people

in a helpful way. I like it. I think it's great because you have a lot of folks that they might say something like, I really want to lose weight. And then their method to lose weight is to go run. Yeah. But they didn't really, they didn't, I don't know, they didn't really think of like the real intent and exactly, you know, what the best way to go about that is.

Because for, not for everybody, would that be a good decision? Yeah, absolutely. I think running is a huge one. It's one of the things I want to talk about a lot is, you know, running is a horrible choice for a lot of people. Just even taking out the technique side of it, where it is surprisingly technical, but just the impact, the amount of volume you might need to do to improve, like whatever, like even just for cardiovascular fitness, the amount of volume you might need to do on that creates a lot of impact. And maybe you better accrue more volume using something less impactful,

maybe like an air bike, maybe like a sled, where you can get the same amount of volume, if not more volume, with less of that stress on the joints. Not because joint stress is bad, but because we care about pushing up that volume. Like time and time again, another one of these unifying things, apart from like training for a longer time, that's going to help you succeed more, is just if you can accrue more volume okay if we can take your identical twin and we put them through three times the amount of volume and they don't burst into flames we know they're going to be a better version of you and that's the denominator so we should be choosing the exercises based on what's going to allow you to do the most

volume that's going to help drive the adaptation the most with the least impact on recovery demands and there will be times we'll say running may not be the best choice. If you want to challenge your heart and your lungs, you can do a bajillion different things that may be less impactful and that can help you accrue that volume that you really need. You know, I've seen you recently, I've seen you like in Vibrance and I was curious, how long have you been, you know, wearing those types of like those shoes? And then also how long have you been kind of focused on improving your feet? Has that been something that you got on a long time ago

and you're already on top of it? Yeah. I used to get ridiculed so much. Like literally about, it's been maybe, what are we now? It would have been about 10, 15 years ago. Like around 2010-h or so within the first few years of being a trainer i started looking really deep into the feet i started looking really deep into like being barefoot and it just it just felt good as well to be

barefoot not necessarily the vibrance person but just being barefoot in general and they were just a good option for it um and yeah i used to get ridiculed people say you're focusing on this on this minutia um like i said i know you guys do a lot of uh the mouth taping as well yeah i used to get ridiculed so much for caring about breathing caring about nasal breathing caring about doing that a while about 10 years ago like i i i brought out my own i don't have any here nasal strips i started making my own just because um i thought i'm using them anyway might as well put my brand name on them why not so i ordered a hundred thousand units of them um back in 2011 or so 2012 um and i was getting so really good i was like this helps me sleep helps me breathe,

helps me perform, helps me, gives me a boner in the morning by having a mouth tape. These are things that people, like it's working for me, and just because it works for you doesn't mean it's the one thing, of course. Let's just back up a second and talk about this boner. And Seem, I know you've been diving into this a lot, not just boners, uh the nitric oxide like i think you might know how to explain it a little bit well i mean like when you breathe you don't

produce nitric oxide when you're breathing through your mouth like it only happens when you're breathing through your nose and that helps with a lot of different functions in the body cell like cellular repair getting oxygen to the muscles it's easier and it's better when it happens through the nose now imagine if you're snoring at night and you're not getting any of that production. No boners for you. I mean, I wouldn't say you won't, like you absolutely won't get a boner, but breathing through your nose at night helps with a lot of other aspects in terms of recovery while you're asleep. It makes a big difference, which is why like we like the mouth taping, which is why we focus so much on nasal breathing in general. And it's, it's something

cool because I think more people are, are becoming aware of how big of a difference breathing makes for them. And I'm really curious because you understood this in 2011. I just started understanding this in like 2016, 2015. So why, we were just talking about feet, but let's like feet and breathing. What got you on this train so early? My brother. So I'm the youngest of three. My brother's a dentist. And he's not just the average dentist, but he's a...

Ah, this is exciting. Yeah. He's a TMJ specialist. So it's's all about jaw it's all about improving jaw pain neck pain and also a lot of postural stuff he's done some fucking crazy ass shit to people especially like in kids when you're developing a lot where like let's take that that forward head posture kind of shit that we see a lot oh it's because your back is so weak it's like well is it because your rhomboids are weak or your chest is so tight? Or maybe this position here, the head jutting forward

is the most efficient position for you to be able to breathe and align your airways through your mouth because maybe your jaw hasn't developed properly because you weren't breastfed as a kid. You were formula fed instead which is a different suckling motion on a bottle as opposed to a nipple which creates a change

in development of your jaw, which predicates you to not have a chin. There's no chin, motherfuckers. And that is why you have this posture. It's a very, very different conversation. And it completely blows up a lot of what we talk about when it comes to, oh, your bad posture is because you haven't done enough face pulls.

And this is like, it kind of counters what I said before in a way, but it doesn't count. It just looks a layer deeper in saying, neurologically, why has your body decided to put you in this forward head position? Is it really because you sit at your desk too much? I'm sure that plays into it. Is it because your back is so weak? I'm sure that plays into it as well. We're not discounting those things, but maybe one of the other things you're not paying attention to is yeah your breathing mechanics like how is your body best aligned to be able to breathe because of maybe it's a sinus issue maybe you have your turbinates are inflamed all the time from allergies and that predisposes you to then be more in a forehead position maybe it's your actual jaw development

that your jaw isn't like, yeah, wide enough to allow for your teeth to grow properly, creates a lot of impaction there. So he really like, he was big on, he is still big on that. And it's very, it's mind boggling to see some of the before and afters he can create, especially in kids, because they're still growing, but in their posture, just from giving them different dental splint devices that help to realign their jaw. And what it does is it improves the development of their jaw,

which naturally pulls them into that ideal posture, in inverted commas, because they can now breathe more comfortably. And no amount of face pulls, no amount of chest work or chest stretching was going to fix that kid, per se, because it's a breath thing. And the breathing is number one, because if you don't breathe, you fucking die. So like, who cares how strong your back is? If your body still can't breathe,

it's going to push your head way forward to align that airway more comfortably to let you breathe through your mouth because you can't through your nose for whatever developmental reason that may be. And that was just like, that was mind boggling to me. And then the more I looked at it with people, the more I realized how many people struggle to breathe through their nose.

They struggle because it could be a deviated septum. It could be something in terms of allergies and inflammation. They could just have smaller sinuses in general, just from birth. One of the biggest things people say is like their allergies, like they just can't breathe through their nose. Allergies is huge as well. And all these things can have just as much of an impact on the posture as training your back and having a two to one push pull ratio whatever people talk about like those

things that they're sexy sales things um but it's not really not always going to be really fixing the real problem yeah and that's where i look to say what's really going to fix a problem and like what helped me a lot again doesn't mean that's going to be for everybody but what helped me a lot was looking at lands of breathing looking at mouth taping looking at just simple inexpensive things like that did you go down the route of the hard gum the thalium gum like the thalium that's super hard that like you really have to chew it did you did you fuck with that no okay this is build up the jaw those masses are gonna get some jaw steps going. Okay.

Fair enough. I did not, I have not heard of that. No. I'm going to get some of that later. Use some jaw, wear some jaw size or something. The jaw size shit was funny.

I don't, I've never messed with that. I've never messed with that. Do you remember that? Yeah. I've seen it before. Yeah. Yeah.

Pat Prochek family, I hope you guys are enjoying this bite. Did you know that cocaine increases your dopamine levels by two and a half times above baseline? Okay. Why is this important? Why is this important, Antima bite. Did you know that cocaine increases your dopamine levels by two and a half times above baseline? Okay. Why is this important? Why is this important, Antima? Because, you know, a really cool thing that we learned from Andrew Huberman is that getting yourself into cold water or cold water exposure, like the cold plunge, does the same thing. Two and a half times above baseline and you have those sustained dopamine levels for up to four or five hours after cold exposure.

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I keep saying it. I'm going to keep saying it till I'm blue in the face and not blue from the cold, blue from holding my breath. This has been the absolute best thing I've ever done for my mental health. I just, like I said, I can't say it enough. So again, thecoldplunge.com, promo code POWERPROJECT. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Let's get back to this podcast. No, the phallium gum it's

like the super hard gum that some people use that if they're trying to let's say that they didn't do a lot of hard chewing when they were younger or they do find that their jaws small they'll get this gum it's called phallium gum on amazon and it's really hard and you chew it and you can it made a difference for me it took a long time but i was like chewing that every fucking day incessantly um so it was pretty interesting yeah but some people go down that route too it's it's a deep rabbit hole i mean the whole it's um well that would probably like it'd be a um a lot of his early work my brother um he's changed a lot and like developed a lot more since then but it was like a lot of the western a price stuff whereas he would go to those and he'd say like they have these atypical diets but all the more traditional ancestral diets

hashtag liver king let's go let's go chew on some fucking sticks or something um bones um but then it would then create yet more chewing, better jaw development and whatever. It was fascinating. Yeah. Did you, did you like when you were going down that rabbit hole of starting to focus on nasal breathing? And for some people, this can be such a frustrating topic, especially if they've never heard it before.

And especially if they breathe through their mouth a lot, because it does take time to change that. And it's very annoying. It's very annoying. So for you, did you start doing that because you had an issue or you just started doing that because your brother told you this is super important so you're like let me just staple this for myself um make sure i actually can't remember specifically um i think i have suffered a lot from allergies nothing horrendous but just

annoying where like i also would snore a little bit as well and my brother observed he's like hey you're snoring i remember when i um this is before i made my own but i had i found nasal strips in the um in the bathroom and and i thought that he'd got them for me but he was like no you got them i don't remember that i don't know so i don't even know where it really started or why it started but i do know that when i was younger i even now i suffer a lot from allergies and i do i do suffer a lot from allergies and I do suffer a lot from like mouth breathing versus nasal breathing. It's a default thing sometimes, especially when I travel and teach so much, it's pretty much impossible to be nasal breathing when you're talking. You have to breathe through your mouth. If you spend an eight hour day, 12 hour day,

even a three hour podcast, you know, and you're talking, that's a lot of mouth breathing. And that's a lot of the habit of your brain learning how to position yourself to mouth breathe more effectively. It doesn't mean that we've got to stop talking, of course, but this may mean that we may be doing things such as when we're sleeping where we can reset things and sort of bring your body back to that balance or whatever it may be. But yeah, I can't remember specifically what it was that really triggered it for me, whether it was, because Ian, like he thinks that I started nasal stripping. I swear I got it from you, Damien.

I don't know. I can't remember. But it was a big thing. I remember the first time I started like mouth taping and like using nasal strips at night. I was like, holy fuck. The next morning, just rock hard. Yes. I was like, this is.

And then the more like I got into like thinking, like I'm trying to understand like nitric oxide or whatever. It was fascinating because I mean, how many guys when they again you wouldn't know natural um but how many guys on steroids got super high testosterone and they can't get their dick hard and how does it happen it's like and so well yeah they try to take more testosterone is that going to give them a harder dick not necessarily because if anything the more steroids you take the harder it's going to be for you to get your dick rock hard because your blood gets thicker.

And then your blood can't get down to its microcapillaries around your dick. And you can't get it back. And then you look at, like, what is Varga? What is Cialis? These aren't testosterone pills to give your heart a dick. They're vasodilators. Like, ah, this kind of makes a fair bit of sense now

as to how this all works. It's why, like, a lot of bodybuilders take, like, Cialis or Varga pre-workout for the pumps, for the blood flow. It's like, oh, this is fascinating. It's,

it's, it's cool. A little like side, side benefit to nasal breathing for the, maybe nitric oxide production. I don't know. Um, because yeah,

like I'm, yeah, it's, it's just fascinating. Yeah. Do you, uh, mess with it in training too?

Cialis or nasal breathing? Boners now. Boners. Do you mess with, uh with nasal breathing while you're training? Yeah. Between sets, as much as I can. When I'm warming up, I do as well. I even use it just as a, like when I'm warming up, like doing some kind of basic

cardio-based warm-up, I'll try nasal breathing through that because it creates more resistance to my airway, so my respiratory muscles have to work a bit harder. As I'm going under load, it helps to get them stronger and more robust and helps to warm them up as well. So when I actually do my hard sits in the gym,

I'm more ready to go to bring more oxygen in and transport nutrients around and push out the waste. There was, and there are still times now where I dabble a lot with wearing nasal strip when I'm training. Like just help with that in my rest periods. But you don't even need to do that. Like all you do.

So this is actually, this is from, um, dentists and the TMJ specialist. It's called the coddles maneuver. If you just put your hand on your cheekbone and you pull it out to the side like that, you better breathe through your nose better. So you can just do that between sets.

And that's, that's if you're wearing a nasal, a nasal strip. And for a lot of people that helps them realize, oh, this is what it feels like to actually breathe through the nose properly is pulling my nasal passageways open to create less resistance there. I also find nasal breathing, I use it a ton for teaching people about bracing.

Because we know, again, breathing, bracing is so connected. But there are going to be anomalies. But it's very, very hard to not contract your diaphragm more forcefully when you nasally breathe. You can breathe through your mouth and go, take a big breath in and not create any change to your midsection in terms of bracing and that whole core stability thing. But if you breathe through your nose, it almost automatically, most people, creates that expansion that we want circumferentially. So I can try to teach somebody how to do the right bracing technique, the Vesalva maneuver, the clamping down or whatever. I can just say, hey, breathe through your nose for the next

mesocycle. Just make that your thing. Breathe through your nose to set up your brace before you squat and deadlift. And that would just teach them how to do these things more effectively. And then long-term, yeah, if you don't want to do it don't do it but it's a good cueing that helped to rewire that brain to learn how to do what it's meant to do for for bracing or for lifting but also yeah for the recovery thing because it makes it really more parasympathetic helps it calm you down between sets um so there's going to be tons of benefits to that as well and oh good real quick uh the feet aspect that we were talking about did you notice any difference for yourself when you started when you transferred to five rims did you do anything specifically to

strengthen your feet or did you just focus on that and over time what kind of change did you notice if any yeah so when i first started wearing vibrams from going from like your regular sneakers or whatever the first thing i got was incredibly incredible lower back pain oh and i was like this is fucked knee pain elbow um not elbow pain this'll be fucking weird knee pain hip pain lower back pain because i just went all in like i'm an all-in kind of guy you know the kratom straight back um how you feeling by the way with that i've got cotton mouth yeah okay okay yeah that happens for sure yeah The fuck is really in there? You're trying to get kicked out of the country or something.

I'm not going to be like back to Australia where you get into a drug just like, hey, what's this shit in your system? Do you need more liquid? No, I'm fine. Okay, good. It's a nice feeling. It's fun.

I like to feel something, you know. There you go. Like a true addict. But yeah, the first thing I noticed was like, oh my God, my lower back, my whatever, all these things are in pain. And now a lot of people would have that and be like, this is so bad for me.

But I was like, that's so cool. That's so interesting. What's happening? And who knows what's happening for sure anyway. But my thing was, oh, now my feet have to work so much harder and they can't because they're so weak because of so long being in these foot coffins. So it just took time for them to get stronger

because at the moment when I first did it, my feet weren't ready. I just didn't tolerate the volume well and the load management and other stuff that would compensate and they couldn't and it just felt weird for about a week and other stuff that would compensate. And they couldn't, and it just felt weird for about a week. And then eventually it caught up. Um, now I would do a lot of foot strengthening stuff, different, like just basic toe walking drills, or, uh, even just trying to create the short foot exercise because I'll get very flat feet. It's trying to create an arch in my foot, that kind of stuff I was trying to work on. And, um, I found some benefit to it. My feet shape has changed over time.

Like when I wear, like I've been wearing sneakers now, like regular, not Vibrance for a little while just being on the road because it's more fashionable. But I know that when I go back to wearing Vibrance, it'll feel weird. But because I noticed when I wear Vibrance for a while and go back to sneakers, they feel so restrictive because because my feet they get wider and smaller or whatever that they change dipping on the footwear that you wear and it's chronic and honestly how much of that is really a big issue i'm really not sure like years ago i was like yeah this is why we're fucked because you're jamming your foot into these sneakers. It's creating this, what do they call that? Where the toe points inwards. Bunions and whatever other issues.

And the reality is how much of that is really going to be the answer? I don't know. I mean, if you look at some of the best athletes in the world, they've got some fucked up feet. They've got some fucked up, ugly looking feet. I'm not good with athletes, but I know like, I'm pretty sure Usain know like i'm pretty sure you say in bolt i'm pretty sure one of those basketball players got ugly just weird misshapen

and yeah lebron was it okay i was like yeah this is some ugly feet um like i'm sure that they don't do any toe spreading i'm sure they don't do any footwork and they can still perform and they're probably i don't know but they're probably pain free they've got high performance levels yeah so and this is a huge thing is it's very sexy and it's very easy to say, your footwear is what's killing your gains. Your footwear is what's causing your lower back pain. Your shoes are killing you. And you've got to buy this new shoe

that I'm going to be releasing in a few weeks' time or whatever. And I think it helps some people, but it also isn't necessarily completely evidence-based, which is the issue I have with it. I love foot strength. I think it's important. I also think there's a big of there's a big pendulum switch where um pendulum swing in that direction where it's taken to the extreme which is limiting to some people because people

see oh that's the silver bullet that's gonna fix my issues i've got to get these shoes now and then it can create this psychological thing where oh my god i was wearing sneakers today i'm gonna be in pain now and i'm all fucked up now i'm gonna do i got knee pain i don't need shoes and it creates a whole complicated thing um and that's why like i saw some benefits but i also went down the extreme of saying when i was getting to the real foot stuff for a couple of years i was so obsessive with it it actually limited my progress how so because i was so hyper focused on my feet all the time and like creating a strong root and externally rotating that talk into into their own. I was squatting or whatever. It's that limit of actual squat ability because I was focusing on the wrong thing. Like when you

squat a heavy weight, what should you be thinking about? Should we be thinking about the tripod stance and things like that? Maybe to a degree, but if you focus on that too much, you're going to forget about fucking squatting. You're going to forget about pushing hard through the ground. Ideally, the one thing you focus on, in my opinion, and again, you probably can have a better qualified opinion on this, but when you're squatting heavyweight or challenging weight, you should be thinking about pushing hard through the ground, pushing like through that midfoot, just drive it up. You shouldn't be thinking about rotating outwards, spreading the floor, always 10 bajillion different cues, but I would. And if I deviated, I was like, yep,

that was wrong. Don't do that. It's bad for me. You're going to burst into flames and die. And that was where I saw a lot of regression overall because I was too hyper-focused on the one thing. And that, in my opinion, is a big danger on a lot of these sexy things that come out in the industry. It helps a lot of people. Absolutely helps a lot of people. So it's not discounting that. But there are many people as well who become hyper focused on that as the silver bullet because of their lack of knowledge or maybe even just their personality yeah and they go they dive headfirst into that and then it takes

away from what the real thing you're meant to be doing is just moving training progressively overloading you become too technically focused um and that was that was my personal thing again doesn't apply to everybody but that's why I'm also mindful of how I communicate things to people and say, this is going to be beneficial because it's not going to help everybody. And it's going to have a negative impact on a lot of people as well. When a lot of people are probably fine to have flat feet,

it's just not the posture. It's like, I've still got flat feet now. It doesn't affect me at all. It didn't affect me back then either. Psychologically, it did though, because I was told, told oh that's bad having you having flat feet is a dangerous thing it's going to cause these issues like is it okay i trust you and then i took it too far yeah you know it's i think the the feet and breathing are kind of two similar things in my mind because the transition takes a long time

for a lot of people if you've been an athlete who, when you're running or when you're doing cardiovascular work, that's the thing you do trying to switch the way you breathe over time. It's just frustrating. It's like, why the fuck am I going to do this? I'm already performing fine, breathing through my mouth, doing these things. There's really no reason to take the time to do it. The thing I, the thing I guess is, is kind of fucked with it is because it's not super evidence-based right and obviously anecdotal and of one when i started making the change from like focusing on nasal breathing during high cardiovascular exercise for me primarily jujitsu my it took me a while but then after about maybe eight months my gas tank went from here to here it's like super chill

during while doing sparring right um i don't get gassed. And I noticed that when my opponents are, I'm like, I'm still breathing through my nose. I'm still chill. I got them. But it took a while to transition. And it's trying to convince somebody that you're breathing or your nasal breathing. If you shift to that while you're doing something like jujitsu or cardio, you won't feel the benefits right now. But in the long term, you will. It's benefits right now, but in the longterm you will. It's the same thing I noticed with the feet. Like initially I wasn't noticing much. And initially I was making somewhat of a regression,

but over time it's like I walk differently. My feet are more active when I'm like not like usually. And I had flat feet too. I actually had surgery on my foot for soccer when I was younger. But like initially, like my feet weren't really doing much when I'm just standing around or when I'm doing jujitsu, it's like my toes weren't doing much, but now there's so much more awareness into what's happening there. The tendons are thicker, but it takes a while. And again, it's there's no evidence behind it, but for me, it's very interesting how much of a difference it's made for my performance.

And I'm someone who already does a lot of athletics that I'm just like, if individuals can just take a step into doing things more barefoot more often or using their feet in different ways, gen pop, know research, but I really think it could make a massive difference for how they move, how they feel, et cetera. So it's, it's a topic that like, I don't think it's sexy because it takes a long time. Like for some people, they'll be like, we fuck with vivos, right? But it's not just transitioning into some barefoot shoes. That's going to be your thing. It's doing more things barefoot or with that. And it's painful for many. It was painful for me in the beginning, but if you can work your way through that transition period, it could pay very big dividends in the long run. Yeah, I agree. I agree for sure. Like it's, it's for a lot of people can be very beneficial. Um, and it just comes down to, yeah, how we communicate that and how we let them know like the broad spectrum of it and also

um like one thing i guess with the nasal breathing um is like i found it helpful as well for like jujitsu like it helps you calm down and there is actually some evidence where like the more you nasally breathe like it does it's used a lot by um deep sea divers like the free divers for apnea training to help to improve their co2 tolerance so there's a lot by deep sea divers, like the free divers for apnea training to help improve their CO2 tolerance. So there's a lot of actual physiological mechanisms and reasons why it should be beneficial. People then take that to mean, okay, I should

always be nasal breathing. They were going to say, well, hang on, if you're sparring jiu-jitsu, you're doing a bit of drilling, even if it's hard drilling, yeah, probably just try nasal breathing as much as you can. But if you're in a comp, you're going to fucking mouth breathe. If you're pushing maximally, you got to fucking mouth breathe. But again, this is where a little bit of information can be a dangerous thing. Because people are like, oh, nasal breathing is the answer. And then they start

tanking their performance because they won't let themselves ever mouth breathe. They'll say, oh, even though I'm pushing hard, I've got to only nasally breathe. And then they're going to be so weak. They're going to get to a point where their body physiologically can't perform because they're forcing themselves to shut down the instinct of having to mouth breathe eventually because you need to. If you're pushing maximally close to your max threshold, you must mouth breathe. Even though like it's bad, it's like, well, it's about the context of it. Yeah, exactly. It's not bad.

There will come a point where you have to toggle it. There will come a point where you have to toggle it. But what I've noticed is like even rolling or in sparring with high-level individuals, I can stay calmer while nasal breathing. When the pace picks up, by the time they're already doing that, by the time I have to open my mouth, it's like I'm already ahead. So now I'm – but I'm still more relaxed than my opponent who's now gassed themselves out because once they started getting fatigue their immediate thing was to go from it's a you know what i mean so like yeah it's it's it's a problem because what we're talking about here is people that have the all or nothing mindset when it comes to applying something yeah so i want to fix my feet i'm going barefoot all the time i'm fucking running barefoot it's like like yeah let's the thing is it's not sexy because it's not fast the change that's going

to happen is going to take you months if not maybe a few years if you've been mouth breathing for your whole life there is some good information too on like that zone two cardio yeah the math tone method that's been around that guy's been talking about it from yeah since like the 70s yeah but no one really ever listened to him till more recently but that is kind of uh he didn't research nasal breathing but it was more like can you have a conversation yes while you're doing exercise and i think that that just is a really interesting thing like i i kind of i've never really you know done this for excessive periods of time, so I don't know how effective it would be. But if almost all of your training kind of was in that domain of being able to have kind of a conversation, because we were talking about, you know, easing way back on your lifting. Yes.

And so maybe it could be applied to lifting and maybe it would have a tremendous benefit or maybe it's just like a little, maybe it's a little too extreme. Well, honestly, just like anything, it's all about how far we take it. Like the Zone 2 cardio, it's so incredibly beneficial. Like let's say the goal was to improve your conditioning and your cardiovascular health and cardiovascular performance, aerobic performance. Zone 2 cardio is going to make up a humongous part of that because you know the physiological benefits of that. But if you only did that, then you're missing out all the other anaerobic and aerobic

power benefits the max threshold stuff so we've got to say okay it's very beneficial how can i sprinkle it in how do i periodize that in the plan that's all it is and it's just like all the mobility stuff from before it's about where's the gap how do we fill that gap how much do you really need and then how much can you afford to throw in before it starts taking away from other things that we're doing in terms of like max power output or force output or whatever it is.

Yeah, and that's where like nasal breathing, I think it's incredible because it helps relax you. Zone two cardio, incredible. If we go too extreme on it, which I've done, it's at the cost of your max power or your max exertion or your performance.

And then if we're really trying to drive adaptation in like jiu-jitsu or in bodybuilding or powerlifting, you need those max effort pushes where you're mouth breathing sometimes as well. And if we don't train that because we're obsessed about the zone two or obsessed about nasal breathing, it becomes very, I shouldn't say dangerous, but it has a negative impact despite you doing the right thing. And that's where a lot of people live. Unfortunately, they're doing what's right, but they don't have the complete picture

around how to fit it into a plan intelligently or how to appropriate that for their context. And then they go too far on one extreme and they start regressing. And even if it's not for performance, just for general gen pop people, you don't want them to regress. You want them to be able to always be coming back in the gym or exercising in some way and getting some meaningful change out of that to live a healthy life.

Like beyond our extreme goals because we are kind of an anomaly as lifters. People forget that. It's like we're an anomaly and most people who actually need this kind of stuff, they're getting too confused by all these extremes and by our niche. For you nowadays, what does your training look like with your goals? Because you do calisthenics. I saw you posted something about improving connective tissue with certain calisthenic-type movements. So what are your goals for yourself?

And how do you structure all of that since you've done so many things with training? Yeah, it's a mess. It's a fucking mess. And this is honestly one of the hardest things. The biggest challenge many things with training yeah it's a mess fucking mess and this is honestly one of the one of the hardest things the biggest challenge for me with training is there are so many things i want to do and there's not like i'm not a bodybuilder i'm not a power lifter like i'm not a jiu-jitsu guy i do all these things i i like to surf i want to swim i want to go deep sea diving i want to i want to sing i want to play guitars like fuck how do i bounce all this shit out yeah um so as best as i can i try to focus as much as i can on one thing and say okay next block is going to

be muscle building um for the next 12 weeks 12 weeks i thought i'm going to do like power lifting stuff and so let's say i'm doing a muscle building program which is what i was doing before i because i went on tour because now on tour i've been training much at all. But before I was on tour and when I come back home, it'll be pure like biasing towards muscle building. So I'll just do a typical maybe push-pull leg with some kind of higher frequency, like upper-lower or full-body kind of program. And then I'll still try to sprinkle in

a little bit of maintenance levels of conditioning work, maintenance levels of calisthenics to be able to maintain that joint mobility and integrity. Like a lot of the wrist strengthening stuff for handstands, it's quite arduous. And I can't excel at that if I'm doing bodybuilding stuff or muscle building stuff, but I'll come back to that again later on.

So my training is very dynamic because it changes. I'm using, I'm doing everything. And again, that's my challenge is I've got to make sure I give myself a set window saying next six to 12 weeks is going to be muscle building. So you're going to do this program. And yes, you want to get better at handstands or yes, you want to get better at jujitsu, but you can't focus on that right now. They're going to be on maintenance mode and you're going to do muscle building now and

it's coming. Delay that gratification. Don't try to do it all at once. If I've tried and you burst into flames, it's not good. It's not good. No one likes that. Yeah. Calories in, calories out. Where do you stand on some of this? Oh, fuck. This is going to be fun. Well, we've talked a lot about training and training. We actually kind of think on this podcast that training still isn't

talked about enough and your performance in the gym is a huge factor and it is where a lot of people struggle, but a lot of people really struggle with the food side of things. Where do you kind of stand on this? Look, you can't refute this idea of calories in, calories out. If you want to lose fat or if you want to build muscle, whatever it is, we're playing with the laws of thermodynamics. You need to adhere to the fact

that if you want to lose weight or if you want to lose fat, you need to, in some meaningful way, be in this calorie deficit. But not to refute what I just said, even though butt usually comes up with that. I think we hyper-focus on that. We oversimplify things and there's a lot of confusion around that. And this is where we kind of miss the forest for the trees because we're focusing on this minutiae. How do I best put this? Because it's a very complicated thing, in my opinion, but it can also be simplified in a way that helps to communicate the message appropriately. So here's an example. How many calories do you eat right now? Roughly? I've got no idea.

And Seema, please tell me something for me gotta work with me yeah gotta work with me you know it's interesting because i mean i used to track a lot when i was doing bodybuilding but nowadays there will be certain days where i know i'm in a deficit and there will be certain days when i can feel in the morning i need to eat more food that i'm in a surplus so probably anywhere between some days 22 to 2,400 calories. And then other days, 3,000 to 3,500 if I've been in a deficit for quite a few days. So it's dynamic. And I don't track anymore. I just have a mental understanding.

Yeah, and that's fine. So let's say like on average, let's say eating around 3,000-ish calories for sure. Let's say we wanted to get you like dick, skin, lean, shredded, which I mean you already are. So it's fuck. sure let's say we wanted to get you like dick skin lean shredded which i mean you already are so it's fuck let's say we want to get you like yeah like completely disgustingly shredded where i want to see like everyone see your heart beating yeah through through your through your chest there somehow magically um it's okay we've got to start putting you in a calorie deficit consistently so you might say you're eating 3000 on average. Let's bring you down to 2,900.

Let's bring you down to 2,800. Let's just gradually decrease things, right? And it might say the same for you as well, Mark. You might say, yeah, you're eating 3,000. Let's just gradually just bring things down. This is us adhering to the calories in calories, which we know works. And if you took an extreme approach and said to you,

well, instead, why don't we put you on 2,000 calories? Why don't I put you on 1,500? Why don't I do that on average? You did that recently. I did that recently. This is where I started going with it because if we do that, people are going to be like, that's bad. You're going to shut down your metabolism.

You're going to fuck yourself up. You're going to die. You're going to lose all your muscle. You're going to ruin your hormones. You're going to completely derail yourself. And it doesn't happen. It can happen. And it does happen in some people, but taking that fear and saying, we should never put you on 1400 calories. We should never put you on a thousand calories. That's focusing too much on calories and not what actually matters, which is slightly different, which is energy. Okay.

If I have you eating in a calorie deficit, if I have you eating a thousand calories a day, on paper, you are in a calorie deficit, but your body, your actual physical physiology is not in a deficit. We've created an energy deficit, but your body will make up for it in some way. Your body will get that extra 2000 calories that it needs to maintain itself from body fat, which would be great, and maybe from muscle mass, probably less likely, depending on how we're setting things up. But the other thing you can do,

you can also create metabolic adaptations, and we'll get this slowdown in your BMR. In some way, that's what's going to happen. But for all intents and purposes, if you have sufficient fuel, sufficient energy available on your body, there's no reason why I can't slash away 2000 calories from your diet overnight and your body can't just go to that energy on your system and use that. Now, there is a caveat to that. I would not do that to you. Definitely not. Because there is a

rate at which your body can pull energy from its system in terms of like the amount of, and that is dependent on the amount of fat that you have on your body. And there may be some physiological things like your mitochondrial density, how much mitochondria, because that's how, that's where your body is going to be burning up fat to use as a fuel, as a, as a fuel source. Um, so I think people freak out and they think we'll take this slow methodical approach and it actually doesn't always play out that way. Like what are the drawbacks to a slow methodical approach? If I put you on 2,900 calories instead of 3,000,

that's fucking hard to track. As if you're a robot, it's very, very hard to track. How easy is it for you to adhere to a deficit if I take away 2,000 fucking calories? Even if you fuck that up, you're still going to be in a deficit. So what we're really playing with here is um making sure that your body is in enough of a deficit where it's easy for you to track it but it's also um meeting the points where it's not going to create too much adaptation which is going to be dependent on how quickly can you physically

lose body fat my belief and my my opinions and my workings around this is, I believe we should always be trying to, if we're trying to lose fat, I'm taking that as a context, we should be trying to diet as hard as we physically can. Get as much fat as you can, do it as aggressively as possible, as quickly as possible. And I want to rip away as much as I can, and that's going to be different for different people. And this is where we come back to my example for myself personally. When I started dieting in December, I went from about 2,500 to 3,000 calories down to 1,000 overnight. Now, was it perfectly 1,000? Probably wasn't. I was probably inaccurately tracking a few things. But there was definitely a significant drop by

at least 1,000 if not maybe 2 maybe 2000-ish calories on average every single day. And that got me very lean to begin with. But then of course it stalled out. How long was the diet? That was the first iteration of it was four weeks. I did that. And I dropped maybe, it was about four or five kilos. So what's that? About maybe 10 to 15-ish pounds. And I got significantly leaner from doing that. People would say, okay, now you've plateaued out. You've got to go lower than that.

It's like, no, you don't. I've gotten leaner now, which means I've got less available fuel on my body, which means my body can't take as much energy from my body as readily. It won't do that. So what I need to do now is I need to eat more food. I've got to still be in a deficit to be able to lose fat, but I can still eat more food by doing that to make up for the loss of available energy on my body. Because there is still that rate of fat loss

that your body can achieve at a particular time. So the first five kilos or so that I dropped, I was eating a thousand calories. The next five kilos that I dropped, I was eating between 1500 to 2000 calories. But the next five kilos take a little bit longer to drop. It took a little bit longer. And that's it. Like as you get leaner, because you have less available fuel in your body, you can't diet as hard. But for most people who have got a lot more body fat,

diet fucking hard. Like take those, as long as it's within your preference, of course, but just why would you drag it out? Why would you drag out something over 16 weeks when it could take you four weeks instead? Yes, it's a bit tougher, but you know what? Like it's going to be tough anyway. And it's going to be easier for you to manage to go into a more aggressive diet. And then just, again, monitor your feedback and understand what you're really doing. I'm not doing a crash diet on a thousand calories for the sake of it.

I'm doing it because I've got available fuel. When I have less available fuel in my body, I can't diet as hard, so I won't diet as hard. So by the end of it, yeah, I was only in maybe a hundred calorie deficit by the very end of my diet. When I got really lean, I was like, yeah, I'm only really eating a hundred calories, maybe 200 calories below my needs. And that's harder to track, but it's only at the very end. At the very start, like assuming our body can pull the body fat off its system very easily, I don't feel a thing. Like I didn't suffer. I didn't suffer from eating so few calories.

And it kind of flies in the face of what is done traditionally. That's not why I do it. I do it from a physiological perspective of saying, yeah, I've got available fat. Let's do that. Now, what do most people do? The flip side of that is very, very, very different. People will diet very, very slow and they'll continually decrease their calories over time. So at the point when they're at their leanest, they're eating the fewest calories,

which makes perfect sense. Okay. Eventually you need to be, if you're like completely bodybuilder shredded, you need to be eating very few calories. But there's a big mismatch. When they're at their leanest and they have the fewest amount of available energy on their body, they're eating the fewest calories. So of course you're going to feel like shit. Of course your performance is going to go down. Of course you're going to potentially create more of these negative adaptations. Like one study that people bring up a lot when I talk about these aggressive diets is The Biggest Loser. There's a study done a few years ago on The Biggest Loser contestants, create more of these negative adaptations. Like one study that people bring up a lot when I talk about these aggressive diets is The Biggest Loser.

There's a study done a few years ago on The Biggest Loser contestants where they were showing that many years after they've lost a lot of weight, their basal metabolic rate had stayed down. Like, that tells you why you shouldn't do crash diets. And it's like, no, that's not what it's saying. It's saying that this is what's happened to those people.

We need to unpack why has that happened. And I don't know for sure, but one of my takes on it is like, yeah, that's not what it's saying. It's saying that this is what's happened to those people. We need to unpack why has that happened. And I don't know for sure, but one of my takes on it is like, yeah, they dieted too hard, but they also did a fuckload of training. And there was a big imbalance. They were throwing a lot of stressful insults on their system. And there's a big mismatch there where they're trying to push their body. And what we know in terms of adaptation now is, yeah, that's going to happen more aggressively. You're going to get more adaptations happening to your body more aggressively if you're mismatching

your training and your performance in your everyday lifestyle with your nutrition intake. But this is what we're doing with people's diets all the time is we progressively adapt people down to the point where they are very lean, they're eating very few calories, and they're doing a fuckload of training. Of course, that's going to be unsustainable. And of course, it's going to create these issues where they're going to get these adaptations. If they took a more methodical approach and said,

okay, when you're at your leanest, you have the least amount of available energy on your body. You need to support that by putting more food in. And as long as you are in a calorie deficit still at the end of the day, you will still get leaner. It will be much slower. It'll be much trickier. It will be much complex, much more complex. Good English, Eugene. So, but that's probably a smarter approach. So when I was at my leanest around March or so,

March or April or whatever it was, I was eating the highest amount of calories. My rate of fat loss was slow. I had to be so, so meticulous with things. But by that point, hey, I'm already fucking shredded. I'm already lean. Do I really need to go a bit further? I don't.

I can maintain this now. And that's a big deal. Whereas at the start, when I've got a lot of fat to lose, just push it hard. Push it hard because you've got the available fuel there. So it's not breaking any laws. It's just being more mindful

about what are we really manipulating here. We're manipulating not calories, we're manipulating energy, energy availability. Your body's got to get energy from somewhere and if it can't, it will create adaptations. So whenever we take away our energy

in terms of the energy on our body or energy from our food, we've got to make sure we're balancing that out in some way. Otherwise, your body will balance it out by decreasing hormone production, by decreasing immune system function, by decreasing all its regenerative recovery properties. And that's what we want to avoid. The other side to this is people say, if you eat a thousand calories and go back up to maintenance, you're going to be fucked. You're going to put all the weight back on.

I was like, well, it's not true. There's a difference that people forget between the deficit, there's a calorie surplus, and then there's maintenance. And maintenance may mean an extra thousand calories, depending how far you push things. But that thousand calories, if it is true maintenance, you shouldn't put on any weight, apart from maybe glycogen, fluid fluctuations, but there shouldn't be significant fat gain from that. And that's what I would do. So in between my aggressive dieting periods of four weeks or three to four weeks at a time, I would have a couple of weeks where I'd eat at maintenance and I wouldn't put on any body fat from that despite eating an extra 1500 calories because I'd go from eating a thousand up to 2500. I wouldn't put on any body fats. I'd feel great,

perform, I could handle more volume in the gym. Cool. And then I'll just drive it back down again. Yeah. So first off, what you're saying makes a lot of sense. Now it's the application aspect that people need. I want to use an example. There's this guy in our discord. His name is Bruce. He's, he's a bit overweight,

but he's choosing to do one meal a day. And then he, he's around for something. But for him currently, that is extremely sustainable. He's saying to do one meal a day and then he's around for something. But for him currently, that is extremely sustainable. He's saying, wow, like I can actually eat as much as I want real food in this one meal. I'm dropping weight. I don't feel hungry because he's adapted to that. And it's working for him right now because he has a lot of body fat on his frame.

Over time, it's going to adjust. He'll probably end up eating a little bit more food as he gets leaner, but it's going to be a while until that happens. Now, one thing with what you're talking about, I agree with it. But all of these other things you're probably doing to allow that thousand calories to actually work for you, it's like you're probably getting great sleep. I'm assuming that within that thousand calories, it's all real food. Because if you had a lot of foods that weren't satiating, then I don't, I'm actually curious of how you felt doing that over that period of time. Were you struggling because you were feeling hungry or what tactics were you using

to stave off hunger? Because that can work and that does work. It's just people need to have the right tactics around the food, their food choices, um, and what they're doing so that they don't feel the need to binge. Because the thing is, is like that, if you know what you're doing, that's going to work. But if you don't have things set up, you're going to, you're going to binge. You're not going to think the diet's working for a bit because you're feeling hungry all the time. So you just need a, what are you doing on the outside of the diet so that you're able to sustain it?

Yeah, for sure. That's a really big, a really big question, a really good question because the same things can apply to people doing a less aggressive diet as well. Okay, you get someone doing a sustainable 10% drop in their calories and decrease that over time. You've got to have the same conversations around, um, yeah, energy intake and potentially getting hunger and binging and all those kinds of things. So, and making sure your sleep is optimal and make sure your recovery and your training is managed well and your nutrient status as well. So for me personally, when I was

dieting, those things to me were pretty optimal in inverted commas, that they were in a good place. So I didn't feel a thing. I slashed away those calories and there was no physiological reason why I should feel hungry. Maybe an emotional thing. Absolutely. And that does play into a lot of people. For me personally, the reason why it fits well is because I don't have a lot of emotional attachment around that. Now that's not a good fit for a lot of people. Okay. So that's why I would not apply to some people. Explain that a little bit real quick though.

Well, I'm completely fine with just not eating certain foods and say, okay, I can't eat pizza anymore. Cool. Big deal. Take away that reference. Like some people,

it's a big emotional thing. They're like, I can't not have my nightly ice cream or whatever. For me, it's like, yeah, cool, whatever. You know, and's like, yeah, cool, whatever. And that's probably from a lot of years

of overdoing things in the bodybuilding world where I was just focused on obsessively like food is fuel, that kind of thing. So that's not going to apply to a lot of people, of course. And that's fair enough. But yeah, for me, I don't have those attachments to food. Obviously, I love, I'm a big foodie. Like we love going out to eat

and like enjoying and trying new things all the time. It's a big experience beyond that. So I do love food. I'm not like some rigid robot is like food is fuel all the time. But yeah, for me, like I'm okay with doing that. But you know what I would, I would tell anybody if they're going to start a diet, make sure you're in that mental state. Okay? Like even, I don't care if you're doing it hard or if you're doing it slow, you are going to fucking fail if you don't have your head screwed on right from an emotional standpoint.

Okay? And I don't care if you're 100 kilos overweight or 10 kilos overweight or just like trying to get a little bit leaner for summer or whatever, the exact same things apply to make a sustainable. You've got to make sure that your head's screwed on right and you're doing whatever necessary work it may be, whether it's a therapy thing for a lot of emotional eaters, to come to terms with that.

And it can just be a lot of just work outside of the constructs of just pure calories and nutrition and training or whatever. Because otherwise, no matter how slow, how quickly you do things, you're still going to fail because you haven't really addressed the big triggers there. And the same thing with, like, say, nutrient status. So of course, eating a thousand calories a day, it is pretty much impossible to get all the nutrients that your body needs from a vitamin RDI perspective. So that's where I would make sure I was having

multivitamin. And that's where eating a thousand calories a day is definitely not sustainable. That's why I said, okay, I'm going to do this for at most four weeks. I'm going to pull myself, I'm going to see the fat loss I need to see. And then I come back out of it and manipulate those things. So I have a methodical plan. Um, and, but for all intents and purposes, there's no reason why you should feel shit. And there's no reason why I should feel hungry. Let's take the emotional side out of it. Where does the hunger really come from? Okay. It's because your body has decided that you're lacking energy, but if you've got all this energy on there on your body as body fat, it shouldn't be lacking energy. Maybe it's lacking its ability to access

it because you're doing things too hard or because you're training way too much and too hard and your body can't access it quickly enough. So of course, you're going to feel like you shouldn't feel hungry. So what I would do when I decrease my calories so much, I said, okay, I can't train as hard. So I halved my volume. I probably more than half, like I was doing maybe 20, 30 sets per body part per week. I went down to maybe between five to 10 sets per body part per week, which is more than enough to maintain muscle mass. And in some contexts, it may even help you build muscle mass even doing so little. I changed my rep schemes up. it was less endurance high reps more lower strength like pure triples four um four rep maybe five reps at most great for maintenance of

muscle mass great for maybe building some strength as well not very taxing from a recovery perspective so there's no reason my body can't access enough fuel to be able to fuel that training um and then outside of that like i was there's no reason for me to be, there's no reason for me to be hungry. There's no reason for me to feel like shit because I've got enough energy on my body. If I went down to 500 calories or I went down to zero calories, I'm probably going to have issues

because there is, again, that rate at which your body can do things at. But again, if I was extremely obese, I'm not saying we should, but you, in theory, could go to zero calories and just fast because you've got all this body fat on your body. But we're playing a bit of a thing here where like if you could go completely zero calories, then maybe you can't feel any training because you do need some glucose, you need some glycogen coming in or some glycogen available to

be able to feel heart training. So we're going to play a bit of a push and pull there. But yeah, if we look at it and say, where does the hunger come from? What's the message that your body's receiving and sending out to give you hunger and cravings? Apart from the emotional side, which is a whole nother conversation that I'm not qualified to really give much advice on. But the hunger itself is coming

because your body can't get enough energy. So why is that? Is it because your training is mismatched? Is it because your diet is too aggressive? And it could be either one of those things. So why is that? Is it because your training is mismatched? Is it because your diet is too aggressive? And it could be either one of those things. So for me personally, I made sure that I didn't diet too aggressively. I dieted as aggressively as I feasibly could, given my current context, which is why over time the calories went higher as I dieted. And I made sure that I managed training appropriately. So I wasn't doing as much

jiu-jitsu. I wasn't doing as much endurance-based stuff. I was doing enough to maintain muscle mass, maintain strength, and just let the diet do its work. And were you doing cardio at that time? No. Not that cardio is bad, but there is probably a higher probability that I may start wasting tissue, muscle tissue, if I start doing a lot more cardio.

So I did a little bit for maintenance. Yeah, I did still stay active, but I didn't try to arbitrarily increase my steps doing a lot more cardio. So I did a little bit for maintenance. I did still stay active, but I didn't try to arbitrarily increase my steps or add in more cardio. I said, you know what? I'm eating a thousand calories. That's below my BMR. Me just being in a coma, if I did nothing, I'm still going to drop weight

by having that. So there's no need to do extra conditioning or anything on top of that. So as long as I can just maintain whatever I'm doing, my body's still going to lose fat. Now, I would do some because I like doing it for sure. But yeah, that's the mistake people make is they take away calories and they do more work, which sounds correct.

And it is in theory kind of correct of calories in, calories out. But it does create a lot of issues when it's mismatched and it's too far, too much exercise, not enough food to fuel that. mismatched and it's too far, too much exercise, not enough food to fuel that. Ideally, it should be eat more and move more or eat less and do less. That's how you match them up. And then assuming that it's in the paradigm of surplus or deficit, you will lose fat or you will build muscle. I'm really digging this different approach than I've ever heard because you're right, starting period, just it kind of sucks yeah and then when you think about it like shit in in you know eight weeks 12 weeks whatever it's gonna be the hardest

like that's what I have to look forward to it's almost like a band-aid right let's just get the shitty low calorie side out of it and then build from there but um what I want some clarification on is like that thousand calories that was for a short period and how long was the whole diet and what was this for because I'm just thinking of like the, you know, it's father's day. So like the dad's like, oh, I just want to, you know, get in a little bit better shape. And it's like, oh wait, a thousand calories. That's what I'm doing. But it's like, what was the goal? And how long was the whole diet? The goal was for funsies. You're also in this space though. Yeah. I just wanted to get leaner. And like, that's how I approach dieting in general.

I was like, oh, I'm getting a bit extra body fat. I need to get the body fat off. What's the most logical way for me to go about doing that? And that was it. What was the other part of the question? Just how long was it? Oh yeah, the length. So all up, it was about 12-ish weeks, but it wasn't 12 weeks straight.

It was three to four week push, and then it was a couple of weeks off. Three to four week push, couple of weeks off. And each one of those pushes wasn't 12 weeks straight. It was three to four week push and then it was a couple of weeks off. Three to four week push, couple of weeks off. And each one of those pushes wasn't to a thousand calories. The first one was to a thousand calories. The next one was to about 1400.

The final one was around 18 to 2200 as I got leaner and leaner and leaner. So there'll be some, I've got to find some photos on my Instagram of you can see the progressions I made there through those time periods. And it was, yeah, I got leaner and then I, um, increased calories as I got leaner and it became a lot trickier. So that was, is that was, that was the first four weeks at 1200 calories. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like,

there's going to be fluid fluctuations there. Of course, it's not all body fat that came off there, but there is a considerable amount of body fat that came up. That was the first four weeks that freaked everybody out. And I'm like, well, like it's, it's an extreme response, but, and that would normally take you, yeah, probably about eight, 10, 12 weeks to achieve normally. Why drag it out if you don't have to? Some people want to, and that's fine. Some people preference wise, they want to take longer, completely fine. Do it slower. But many people are like, why not just push it? Why not? If your body physiologically can do it, if you set things up right with your training, nutrition, your recovery's on point, just fucking send it. You know, you have body fat on your body,

just push it. Why drag it out when you don't need to? And then, but obviously by the end, when I was very, very lean, I was eating a lot more food, the fat loss was slower. Like you can't avoid that. You know, I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here and say, I've got the, I've got the one secret to get you shredded for life and eat more calories and get shredded for life. It's not what I'm saying. We're planning the same things here. Like, Hey, I'm still dying for 12, 16 weeks all up eventually, but I'm doing it in a way that's more sustainable in my opinion. Also guys, remember, uh, Eugene, how much did you weigh when you started that diet? Uh, 76 kilos. 76 kilos. Yeah. And at my leanest point, I got to about 66. So about 10 kilos.

Cause I know some people, 25 pounds. Yeah. Some people are hearing the thousand calories and they're like maybe 200 pounds or 220. I'm gonna go a thousand calories. Just remember like that thousand calories for Eugene, maybe 1600 or 1800 for you because of your metabolic rate. So realize that. But I really want to try to understand too, again, you know, you probably had your sleep on point. I'm curious about like how you handled the type of food you ate. like, like what are tactics for people to be, what tactics can people use to be able to, um, make sure that they're, they're staving off hunger or they're, they're not, you know, because for me,

um, you know, fasting is very in fashion for some people, but that was a practice that helped me not to be food focused. Cause in the past I was very food focused. I had a large eating frequency and I ate a lot. And when I diet, dieting tended to be like I did a 40-week diet for a show and I had high eating frequency, but it was tough because I was very food focused. Now I can diet easily because I can eat one meal on certain days and feel fine. I don't eat as my frequency isn't as much. So I'm curious for you, what are tactics that people can use so that they can not be as food focused when going to such a large caloric deficit?

Yeah. And again, I would say like, what are the tactics we should use when we're dieting in general, whether it's large or small, because the same thing is going to apply to everybody. Absolutely. And this is something that

a buddy of mine, Luke Lehman, would call prepping to prep, where before you start a dieting phase, before you start a fat loss phase, or at least at the same time as you start a dieting phase, make sure you're doing whatever you can to make sure you're setting yourself up physiologically to get the success out of this. And that will qualify some people and that will disqualify some people. So I think a big thing to talk about as well is like, who is this approach and who is honestly dieting in general to an aggressive point or to a very lean point? Who is it probably not most applicable for? And it's going to be people who physically can't get a good sleep schedule. Okay. A lot of shift workers, okay. Very high stressed people in general. They may not be in a position where they physically can put their bodies under those rigors. It doesn't mean they're destined to be overweight and fat for life, but it means they've got

to be a bit more realistic about the expectations. And that's a huge thing. People don't have the right expectations set up. And then that's why they do things that are mismatched. They think, I can have it all. I can do it all. So I usually do it on Instagram. I can do this too.

And it's like, that's dumb. You can't do that shit because you don't have the lifestyle that I have. Like my job is to live, eat, train, sleep. You know, that's, that's, I can afford to push myself. Whereas if I had to take care of kids, okay, if I had to take care of a very busy swing shift, um, emergency services schedule, I can't do that. If I was a working mother, I can't do that. I can still get leaner, but I've got to be a little bit more intelligent and probably go a little bit more intelligent and probably go a little bit slower

and also just expect I'm not going to get as much of a result so the big tactics that I have for people is first of all just have some kind of mindful plan in place

like what are you actually going to be how long are you going to be doing this for like I set out knowing it's going to be four weeks max at this super low calories

and I expected to lose about five-ish kilos in that time. And I can do the math on that and say, okay, roughly that would equate to this much of a calorie deficit. That's what I should expect to be able to see. I think on average, like a good goal people should shoot for is at absolute most, as absolute most aggressive, is probably going to be about 1% of their body weight per week. And there's going to be wiggle room. Some people higher, some people lower. And there's going to be wiggle room. Some people higher, some people lower.

But that's going to be like a good takeaway. So try to shoot for that as a sustainable amount of fat loss. So if you saw in the first, again, not like taking away the whole glycogen fluid shifts, but if you saw a 3% drop in your body weight in a week, that tells you it's too hard. 1,000 calories is not good for you. You've got to go 1,500. And this is now a tangible thing. If you

were dieting and you felt easy, like, yes, it's easy, and you only came down 0.4% of your body weight. Like, okay, you know what? I could probably push a bit harder if I wanted to and just slash away more calories. That's one thing is like, set yourself up with like an idea of what you should be expecting to see each week. That's

one thing. And then adjust accordingly because a thousand calories luckily worked out kind of well for me but there's a lot of chances that they might not have worked i might have to adjust things on the fly which is why having a set goal of like one percent a week roughly on average is a good target i think when you start going above that it's probably when you start losing it a little bit too quickly but everybody's different And that's why like if I was a lot heavier and a lot more body fat, 1% is a much higher number than me at 60 kilos or whatever it is now. So that's another takeaway there. Another big thing is, yeah, tactic wise, a thousand calories, it's very hard to get your nutrients in. It's like on average, it was like 15 grams of fat a day.

Unless if you're eating table sugar, protein shakes, egg whites, and olive oil, it's like on average it was like 15 grams of fat a day unless if you're eating table sugar protein shakes egg whites and olive oil it's hard to get those macros to fit in you did 15 grams of fat a day yeah like which is which is fucking nothing it's like it's like maybe a meal at most of the moment isn't it it's unrealistic so what i would personally do is i would do a little bit of um macro cycling right i'd bunch up the carbs on one day or into one meal, bunch up more fats on other days to actually make it a feasible, practical plan. And that's going to be another qualifier as well. Like, yeah, like maybe in theory you could diet on a thousand calories, but practically speaking, it's impossible because if

you'd actually hit foods and nutrients and protein requirements, you're going to be blowing over and hitting 1200 instead. That's fine. They'll help you work out what it is for you. So yeah, there'll be some days where I'd be, or some meals as well, where I'd be going maybe 30 or 40 grams of fat, and then I'd be going zero for other days or negligible on other days. And there would be instances as well, where it's just impractical to be able to follow this without creating big issues in the practical aspect of, hey, this is super, super low calories. It's impossible to find nutrient dense foods that fit into this macro scenario that you need. But the big thing that helped a lot was the whole macro cycling where I would go,

yeah, certain days where I was training probably, higher carbs, less fat. Other days where I'm not training, higher fat, pretty much zero carbs, like some vegetables and that was it. And then doing my best to try to hit those protein needs as well. But again, I think people overstate how much protein you really need, even when dieting. And like I was eating about 0.82 grams per pound of body weight, which is not much. For me, that size is about 120, 140-ish grams on average of protein, which is really not that much protein. That's what I eat most of the time to be able to maintain and grow muscle mass.

I think people overeat it and it's not really helping them. Not necessarily hurting, but it is hurting in terms of how much carbs and fats you can then fit in because it's still calories. So I think for whatever reason, we obsess of too much protein and it can be problematic. The protein thing is actually quite interesting because not that obviously you know four cows uh four calories per gram right but when we we talked to alan aragon about this one thing that you'll see

anecdotally from a lot of people who do then tend to diet on high protein diets who count especially within bodybuilding is like maybe even towards the middle or end of their prep, they'll go like two grams per pound, right? And they'll find that they're not gaining extra weight if they only increase the protein amounts. Alan Aragon's talked about this on the show before where he – it's iffy but he was like you know individuals sometimes just increase protein within their diet um and it's almost like it doesn't metabolically make a difference in terms of their weight uh rate of loss like they'll continue to lose body fat increase their protein so they're more satiated yeah but it doesn't make a difference as if they increase carbohydrates or if they increased fat so protein's kind of weird in that way because

i mean a lot of people that diet notice that you know yeah um so i i would think that there would be a benefit of slightly higher protein for individuals who need the satiating benefit but still want to be able to have that fat loss benefit over time. Yeah, for sure. I tend to agree with that. I'm really not smart enough to understand all the complexities of it, but I've heard of that from him and from many other people as well. And it makes a lot of sense. It is physiologically very expensive and hard for your body to use protein as a fuel source. So that makes sense as to why increasing it may not have the same effects as increasing fat or carbohydrates. I personally haven't played with it myself to be able to say for sure what happens

and I haven't seen enough from clients, people I work with, to be able to say yes or no. But it definitely would be a strategy you can play with. So I think it makes perfect sense. There's a guy like Alan Aragon supporting it and a lot of other evidence-based people are supporting it as well. So yeah, knock yourself out. Maybe, let's say that it did slow down the rate of things.

Who cares? You know, if you're still moving towards where you want to move towards and it's sustainable for you, go for it. Did you eat more than once a day? Yeah. I was still having maybe three, maybe four meals a day.

They weren't, no, I call them meals. I call them meals but but we know they're not meals it's a light snack well what did you have i'm curious like what was it was bland it was very lean proteins like a chicken breast or like a fish kind of thing it was very very lean a bit of vegetables maybe a piece of fruit of like piece or whatever the equivalent is depending on a slice of an apple just the peel ever tried some like intermittent fasting and stuff yeah so i would do time-restricted feeding with that so i still try if i have like three or two meals a day some days seems like eating every other day would make sense yeah

with the program alternate day fasting that would be a great way because yeah if because all we care about is the average across the week if you're in this thousand calorie day thing so some people definitely tactic wise could do intermittent fasting they could do a one day 24 hour fast 36 hour fast alternate day day, day on, day off, whatever you want to call it. They're all strategies to help you adhere to the extreme diet you put yourself on. And that's fine. And then like a way that I would do that, which I've done with some people is saying, okay, we can do alternate day fasting. Just make the off days when you're training, fasting days. And then in ways you don't fast,

you can train, you can push hard and you have adequate food you're satiated and that mentally helps some people because yeah they can just get through it that way everyone's different but then for me this fit well and there were some days like because i i can very easily just forget to eat so there were days where i was like maybe maybe two meals a day i don't think i've went below two um but it's very easy for me to just forget to eat and that is also like a problematic thing because eating so few calories you for sure are risking muscle loss has that been a thing for you for like a long time like you could sometimes just forget to eat or is this it's um it's more just as i get busier with work yeah i keep myself preoccupied okay or like i'll be like playing

guitar and i'll just be lost in like six hours playing guitar like okay didn't eat i won't feel hunger because i was doing there'll be something else you know if just be lost in six hours of playing guitar. I'm like, okay, didn't eat. I won't feel hunger because I'll be doing something else. If I go out and go for a swim or diving or whatever, you don't eat. You can't practically do it. So another tactic, I guess, is good that you guys bring this up is keep yourself fucking busy. It could be work. It could be whatever, hobbies, family, who knows what.

And that applies again to aggressive diet and a regular casual diet. It's just find things to keep you occupied. Yeah, but yeah, I think probably part of it also was just for me bodybuilding where like that made me less emotionally attached to food. But yeah, I mean, you guys know, like if I even doing a podcast like this, you might get a bit hungry, but you're not thinking about food that much. I'm thinking about other shit. I got it. I could, when I was doing, when I do my workshops, I usually don't eat and that'll be like several days in a row, eight hour, 10 hour days. I don't eat and I'm doing active stuff, but I'm too engaged to be thinking about that. And when it comes like a break time, I'm physically not hungry because I'm so thinking about other stuff. And

that's why, that's a big reason why I lost a lot of muscle when I was on tour for so long, a few years ago is because I'd go like nine months on end and I'd be barely eating. I'd just be teaching and traveling and seeing the world and doing other shit. So I'm not thinking about training or eating so much. I just forget about it. Just to reiterate something with what you said, when you're doing these things, you still have those pumps of hunger during certain parts, but it passes and you continue to do what you need to do. You know, I think that's a really big deal, what you mentioned, because it's very, very easy for a lot of people to just get bored. And then they, you know, they're doing something, they're bored, they reach for something. Right.

Yeah. But if you do keep yourself busy with something that you truly enjoy, that in and of itself is a habit to be able to maintain not just health for a long period of time, but any type of diet you're doing. maintain not just health for a long period of time, but any type of diet you're doing. But if you're not busy and you're not doing anything during your day, it's going to be very easy to just stuff some shit in your mouth. Yeah. You know, I think thinking out loud, one thing you mentioned before, you used fasting as a way to help to train away that attachment to food and always needing it. I think that actually could be something useful for some people, like not necessarily fasting, but having practice diets to train up your systems to be able to handle a more aggressive diet

or even just dieting in general, whether it's aggressive or a small long-term diet. Let's not look at I want to lose weight in 12 weeks and say I want to practice the art, the skill of losing fat and dieting for the next two weeks. I'm not going to drop a ton of body fat, but I just want to practice a bit of fasting or a bit of a calorie deficit.

And just so I get the skill set, because this is dieting is a skill. It's a skill set that we try to, we throw people into the deep and saying, next 20 weeks, calorie fucking deficit. You're going to drop some fat and get shredded. That's putting someone onto fucking advanced mode in the game.

Like maybe you've got to do a beginner tutorial. A couple of weeks, let's do a little bit of bit of yeah a practice run of a diet set the expectation and say where's what we're going to be getting out of it and play with that that's actually yeah i'm gonna write that down for later that sounds great yeah is there anything for um i'll say lighter guys because you said you were uh 140 i don't know how to convert kilos over. Roughly double it, but yeah. Okay, because I'm just thinking like if somebody is already fairly light and they want to get shredded

or they want to lose some body fat, what's something that you caution some of these athletes with? So, I mean, it does get to a point where it's just unhealthy. Like if you are like you can be light and have a lot of body fat on your body and that's where like technically speaking you are got a lot of body fat you should be able to lose a lot of fat but that would also mean if you'd be able to lose a lot of fat you're going to be in a big diet and a big deficit that would then mean it's

now impossible for you to feasibly get enough nutrients in, enough protein in. So no matter what the numbers say in terms of what you physically can do, it's impractical because it puts you into too steep of a restriction of food, which means restriction of fiber, a restriction of protein, amino acids, nutrients, and that's where it becomes problematic. And that's for a lot of women as well. Like a lot of women in theory, there's no reason why they can't do a diet like this, apart from the fact that they're lighter humans. So that means that their technical, like for me eating 1,000 calories, for them it may actually work out for the numbers to be 500 calories, you know,

which like there are diets out there that do that. There's some of those OptiFast limb shakes or whatever that they are there. But we know that for a woman or a man to be eating so few calories, it's going to be impossible to hit your protein needs to support training. It's going to be impossible to hit the basic nutrient needs for overall health. And even for three to four weeks, that may not be a good idea for some people, maybe too hard. So I would say just be mindful of the practicality.

Despite what numbers or despite what I may say, it may not be feasible for them because of what it really means they have to do. So it sounds to me like basically in a 12-week period, you got X amount of calories to play with no matter how you slice it. Yeah. And then I would prefer to take them away earlier than later. People take them away later. I was like, why do that?

Don't. Do it when you have the fat available in your body and make it come off faster. Helps with morale as well. You drop a ton of fat in the first few weeks, you're like, fuck yeah. I'll keep pushing even if it does suck a little bit. And then it increases as you get leaner

and start to suffer a bit more. In my opinion, that sounds a lot more sustainable. Did you guys have any other questions about diet? Because there is something I want to go for. Segway. Yeah. Your testosterone. Because, no, no.

This is really interesting because i like whenever we have uh some people that come on and and uh they you know their hormone talk starts i bring you up quite a bit because you've talked about where your testosterone levels are but you hold a lot of muscle on your frame and a lot of individuals a lot especially young guys are the belief that if you have a certain amount of testosterone um you're not like you're going to need a hop on TRT to build muscle. All right. Which, to be perfectly honest, I think is bullshit, especially when you're young. But for you, like hard to see.

But what number one, what were your levels at? Were you surprised by seeing that? Was it when you were really lean or something or like what? What is that to you? Unfortunately, I've never had like a test when I was very, very young to know like where my like real what is that to you? Unfortunately, I've never had like a test when I was very, very young to know like where my like real baseline is at. But on average, my testosterone

has always been on the lower end of normal, always. And it hasn't like definitely now hasn't impacted my ability to get stronger, to make progress. I am absolutely sure that if you take me as I am right now, and then you somehow magically increase my testosterone. magically, we know what that means. Even if it just went to the high end of normal, okay? I am absolutely confident that would improve everything in my life. Like my vitality would probably go up, I'd build muscle easier, for sure. I'm sure that would happen.

Okay, like, because we know, we know physiologically how testosterone works. Of course, it's going to help you. It's going to make a difference there. But does it mean that I'm at a humongous disadvantage right now? It doesn't matter. I don't have the competitive goal of being the biggest, strongest guy on earth. I'm able to maintain muscle mass. And there's no reason like testosterone does help.

But adding in more and more and more is always going to help. Again, we know that from a lot of people using a lot of gear. Upping the dose doesn't always make you lift the most. It's going to have diminishing returns. It's going to have a lot of side effects to it as well. So like I know like this is roughly normal for me, like this low end of normal-ish.

If it was like gutter ball low, then I'm probably going to feel like shit and I'm probably going to have a lot of issues as well. But for me with my physiology, this seems to be okay, or I can function and I can thrive. I don't want to say function, like I'm just keeping a head above water, but this is where it sits comfortably. Whether I'm in a surplus, whether I'm at maintenance, whether I'm dieting aggressively, it hovers around that kind of range. And everyone's going to be different. Like some people may feel like shit at this range

and they need to be higher. Some people may get over being lower. And this is where it's a very personal thing. That's why it's very hard to, I think, prescribe certain amounts or certain levels as being optimal. This is definitely not my wheelhouse, so I can't speak from that perspective to Gen Pop or anybody in general um as like what

the ideal hormonal status is um but for sure it's like i know for sure everyone's going to be different everyone's going to have different physiology around what makes them thrive and helps them feel okay as well but there's also we've got to look beyond the physiology okay i've just what are your test levels at it's also about what is your psychology around your test levels? Okay, like I'm indifferent. I could have seen a number there that was through the roof or I could have seen a number there that was guttural or low and I'm indifferent.

I'm like, cool, whatever. I care about how I feel. Some people, they see a number like that, psychologically placebo, oh, I've got to feel like shit now. Oh, I'm going to start like getting a libido,ido you know like how much of it is physiology physiological physiological how much of it is psychological yeah and that's a huge thing where i personally just based on my background best history best of my knowledge i am able for the most part to remain quite pragmatic and level headed around it all where it doesn't freak me out and that that's why I can personally afford to be at this lower test

without being so upset and freaked out about it. But I know a lot of other people would. And they say, oh my God, you cracked your hormones. No, that's not where it normally sits. But again, I do know that I probably would be better if I had higher testosterone. I might be more muscular. I might be able to handle more training volume.

Who knows? But for where I'm at now, I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. I'm progressing. I'm able to maintain my physique and make progress. I'm able to die more training volume who knows um but for where i'm at now like yeah i'm i'm fine i'm progressing i'm able to maintain my physique and make progress i'm able to die without suffering i'd have energy i've got a good got a good libido good performance in everyday life good energy levels i'm doing everything right there yeah um i'm good um yeah that's about it with with the levels so i think one thing big takeaway, is not obsessing over those numbers. If you're in the extremes, maybe something can be amiss, and blood work is something we can analyze and say,

okay, here's where there may be issues or non-issues or whatever. But again, a little bit of information can be a very dangerous thing. We see one number, we obsess over that number without understanding the context in which the number occurs and how the number can influence psychology and how that is a very big player where it is our perception on things that does play out to a lot of placebo effects, which we know is a real tangible thing. So the better that we can be equipped knowledge-wise to be able to handle that and navigate that, I think the better. And of course, I'm still going to do my best to optimize my

testosterone. I'm still going to care about resistance training. I'm still going to do my best to optimize my testosterone i'm still going to care about resistance training i'm still going to care about sleep and nutrition and making sure i don't do stupid things that would compromise my testosterone because i don't want to sit low for the sake of being low um you know i'd still like to see i'd love to see it higher be great to see it higher let's take some steroids now let's do it it'd be really interesting to know like you know if there is a correlation amongst people that are natural with muscle mass and testosterone. Like, it doesn't seem to really make a big difference. There's a lot of guys that are low that are jacked as fuck and vice versa.

Absolutely. I kind of have a theory, which I just, I think that to a certain extent, I mean, we're all very different, especially when you get into the chemistry of what's going on in our body for a million different reasons. But I kind of think in terms that would be said better than this, but I basically think that you kind of use it up. I think that it gets utilized, you know, like a little bit like carbohydrates. Now, it might sound like an asinine thing to say, but I think that your body is only going to produce the amounts that it needs. And each person I think reacts a little different to testosterone, estrogen, and all these different things. And I think based on all the stuff that you do in a day, all the way from stuff in the gym, to stuff in the bedroom, to the things that we watch and the

things that we, I mean, stress, we know like what stress can kind of change the hormones. And we know that there are certain things like that you can do that all of a sudden tells the body to produce more testosterone. So I kind of think in some weird way through the physical stuff that we do, through the stresses that we do, that testosterone is going up and down, up and down, and up and down but because every action has another reaction right all your other markers are moving up and down and we don't know what that is yet yeah and when we do i think we can put that into a super shot and we can all get really fucking jack but i don't think we know like how to stabilize the rest because i think that you could actually

make steroids i think you could make them very, very safe. For sure. If things filled in the cracks of all the other stuff you're producing and you didn't have these highs and lows all the time. So that's kind of my bro science version of it. I like it. I mean, I'm all for the bro science. I love that. But it's a really good way of putting things. I really do.

That resonates. What you got, Andrew? Anything else over there? No, I think we're all good. Let's see what I have. Oh, yeah. I already asked you about the diet for the lighter weight guys. But no, I mean, is that reverse dieting or is that something different about like cutting

out? Reverse dieting is a little different. Coming out of a diet? Yeah. Yeah. A little different than what he's laying out. Okay. But that whole thing, concept, I've never heard it.

It's sounds, it's got me a little excited. I'm not going to do it because when I get this excited, I'll be one of those guys that's just like, oh, he messed me up. I mean, everyone has different names for it. I mean, I know I recently saw Lane Norton. He calls it fat loss sprints. He did a post about it relatively recently. Martin McDonald from over in the UK, he calls it aggressive dieting

and he does a similar kind of concept where it's like you lose as much fat as you can as quickly as possible and then that will change. The leaner you get, you can't lose as much fat anymore so you can't diet as hard. So it's out there.

It's out there. And it does seem kind of counter to the mainstream but it actually is based on the exact same principles. It is still calories in, calories out. As you said, we have 12 weeks, X amount of calories, manipulate it however you want. And then it makes a lot of sense from a psychological and a physiological perspective to go fucking ham from the start

when you can afford to and then be a little more gentle to yourself when you're leaner. And then I would probably say that would probably preserve things like testosterone or whatever because you're leaner. And then I would probably say that would probably preserve things like testosterone or whatever, because you're going to get a lot less of that stress accumulation when you really need it, when you don't want it, sorry, at the end of the diet. Yeah.

This is, I guess, maybe one of the last questions. Who are some people, because you learn a lot from a lot of different people. That's what you've seen. And you teach a lot to a lot of different people. So who are some people that you really respect some of the things that they're putting out that you think they're putting out a lot of beneficial

things as far as it doesn't need to be bodybuilding, but just in general fitness, health, et cetera. Who are some people you pay attention to? Nutritionally, Dr. Ben House is a fucking smart dude. Ben House? Ben House. Yeah. I like it because he's a doctor. He's Dr. House. I love that show actually. Dr. Ben House, he's a fantastic dude around the whole nutrition space. I know a lot of the coaching kind of space and mindset. I love his work.

I also like Dr. Mark Israetal. He's a guy I've followed for a very, very long time. And I love a lot of what he puts out from the muscle building side of things. Let's say like the women's physiology, there'd be Victoria Felcar. She's up in Canada. She's been very quiet on social media the last few years, but there was a time when she was really pushing out a lot of really, really insightful content. She was, I may be misquoting it, but she was doing her PhD when I first met her on the use of performance enhancements or steroids in general for women. Not just for performance enhancing, like to make you better at sport,

but just the whole thing behind like how steroids impact women's physiology. And that could be anabolic steroids, but it could also be things like the contraceptive pill, which is technically a steroid hormone as well. And like some of the impact that that may have on different women's physiologies. She's a really, really cool person on that. Who else would there be? From a training perspective, I think there's a guy, Kas person on that um who else would there be um from training

perspective i think uh there's a guy casim hansen from over in colorado his n1 training oh yeah yeah yeah he brings up he brings up a lot of the um he's he comes around a lot because people talk about the optimal and the biomechanics the alignment but i think he's doing a lot of really good work and he's he's really really good at um like getting into the deep like nuances and nitpicking and saying this is like why this may be a little bit better than that i think yeah for sure for some people it may be overkill but for what he does and what he specializes in it's incredible work and he really knows how to push people hard and get an incredible result he's he's a he's a real savant when it comes to a lot of the physiology

stuff as well um i mentioned luke lehman as well he's um he's based in australia now he was from he was from texas um over at muscle nerds he's a really smart dude really smart guy there's a lot of really cool people that i just honestly i learned from like there's some names who i know are creators but there are um just i learned from every single person i can my students in my classes um, I'm technically above them in inverted commas, but I still want to learn from them. Even if it's just them saying, you know what, Eugene, you just talked about that dieting process. I don't understand it. I don't get it. That's a good thing for me to help me learn how to communicate it better, how to make it more

succinct. Even things like this, you've asked me a lot of really cool questions. This is going to help me learn to help to refine my process more. It's like, these are the stuff that you guys care about, people care about. So I want to get better at communicating that or maybe changing things up or different ideas. It's,

it's a constant process of learning from everybody. Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Absolutely. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. We sincerely appreciate it. Please make sure you guys hit that like button and drop us a comment down below on anything you guys heard today.

Let me know if you guys are going to try this diet approach that I personally have never really heard. So, yeah, I would like to know more. And please follow the podcast at MBProject on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. My Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where are you at? I'm Seema Inay on Instagram and YouTube. And it's me, Inay, on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where are you at? I'm Seema Inay on Instagram and YouTube. I'm Seema Inay on TikTok and Twitter. Eugene, Gunbar Method,

you guys have like tens of thousands of members and tons of programs. Yeah. So how can people check that out? And what is it? We didn't even get to really talk about it. Yeah, I thought it was going to be a big plug. I thought it was going to be a big plug

for me to be able to say, use my discount code for this program. I mean, I always tell people, I don't like to push things on people. I say, look, look at my content, look at my Instagram, like just coach you, look at my YouTube. If you enjoy that stuff, you'll probably enjoy the way that I approach training, the programs I have and the educational approach that I take. So again, Baru Method is my platform to be able to share my education in longer form content and all of my different programs and applications of all those principles. It is a pretty much complete all-in-one system of programming, programs, diet calculators,

things like the aggressive diet. It will tell you how to manipulate your calories according to your four to eight-week period. It has a diet tracker in there. It is just a big community of tens of thousands of people who are just working towards a variety of goals from different levels. At first, when I first launched it many years ago, it was an educational platform for coaches.

And then over time, it's evolved and become this programming, training, tracker platform thing where it brings in people from a variety of backgrounds. Like a lot of gen pop people are in there, a lot of very advanced high-level coaches and high-level athletes are in there as well, and it's great because they can all, you know, we're all the same human being.

We can all progress towards the same kind of thing. So yeah, it's a very complete system, in my opinion. Very biased opinion, of course. But I tell people, look, just find me on Instagram, find me on YouTube, follow that stuff. Don't even worry about Gambaro method right now. Just enjoy, if you want, what I put out and go from there. Nice.

Is it my turn? Yeah. Oh, I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.