Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 727 - Mike Israetel: How to Gain Muscle & the Differences Between NATTY & ENHANCED Lifters

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

Dr. Mike Israetel is a Ph.D. in Sport Physiology, and training and nutrition expert, BJJ purple belt, competitive bodybuilder, as well as co-founder of one of the most successful training and nutrition coaching companies, Renaissance Periodization. Dr. Israetel has authored and co-authored many books on training, nutrition, and recovery. Follow Dr. Mike Israetel on IG: https://www.instagram.com/drmikeisraetel/ 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://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT 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://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your first 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 #MikeIsraetel #RPStrength #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

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Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Oh, there we go. Ooh, okay. Yeah, yeah, I guess, yeah. The closer the better. Dr. Mike, what are you a doctor of, sir? Let me check my University of Phoenix online diploma. Yeah?

I forget what they put on there. Oh. Because you pay the money, and I sort of was like, I don't care. You got to go to school a lot. Yeah, but I didn't really, you know. Write some sort of thesis. $199 to the PayPal account of University of Phoenix online and I went to school for real for real though sport physiology which is more or less the science of taking good athletes and

making them better I didn't mean to look at you when I said good athletes oh but I did mean to look at Mark when I said better athletes. This is going to be out all day long. I'm ready for it. Excellent. You've got to be on your toes. I guess it depends on what our definition of athlete is. Maybe for you, you really admire the guy that can't tie his shoes.

That's the athleticism in its own right. Yeah, the guy that has to stuff his feet into his shoes. Think about it. Most people tie their shoes. Well, think about it. Most people... Let's give her feet. Yeah. First of all. Second of all, most people tie their shoes just fine, right?

And you notice they're not struggling. So on the one hand, great. On the other hand, they're not getting a training effect. If it's difficult for you to tie your shoes, ostensibly you get better at doing it. Something must hypertrophy. Maybe it's lower back.

Maybe it's your desire to continue living like this. Guys, this is a fucking doctor and so he knows what he's talking about i i couldn't agree more real doctor let's get to the question that everyone's wondering though are you natty or not uh i'm joking where's my lawyer but how are you so i'm not this is a wild thing you're 250 pounds and i was curious like drug free but for today before we got on the mic last five minutes before we got on the mic i was curious like what your weight would be because you like what your weight would be if you weren't and you mentioned that you were 270 before anything yeah yeah how um whole milk and uh

a willingness to tell your digestive system that while it does get a say in what happens, it doesn't get all the say. Oh, I'm not hungry. Shut up, body. More food. Lifting weights. You know, watching cartoons in the morning, just like any American kid. God dang.

American. Yeah, no, it sucked, but like basically, when did I? Fuck it, I'll just talk about it, whatever. I was 27 when I hopped on and uh before then I had gotten up to well so my freshman year of high school I was I wrestled 103 I was like 5'2 or something yeah I was huge people feared me when they could spot me in the crowd and uh then I started lifting weights more or less the summer of my freshman to sophomore year. And I was, I wrestled 119 my sophomore year. Then I wrestled 135 junior

year. And then I wrestled 160 my senior year. And I kept lifting weight, kept lifting weights. And then my freshman year of college, I 180 sophomore year of college i was 200 junior year i was a significantly fatter but i felt still pretty sexy 220 did you wrestle in college too i didn't i just power lifted in college okay yep uh wrestled but it wasn't what you would call competitive wrestling more like cooperative wrestling on camera i didn't mean to look at you for a very long time when i said that or did i apartment wrestling right yeah you know like a barn apartment yeah alley that used to be from now you got only fans you can make a lot of money way also if you have a van properly rigged up with

like 3d cameras little mattress stinky mattress in the bottom of a um unmarked van that was much earlier in my childhood yeah i didn't mean to get into that so fast but in any case let me finish the actual story a lot of windows zero um yeah only god can see in there also satan anyway um 220 drug-free junior year pretty fat i got up to early in grad school i got up to 255 very drug-free and very fat and i was like i felt like shit so i got a little lighter and then over the course of my phd program i worked back up to 270 i remember weighing in at 280 in the evening drug-freefree. Fat, but strong. Yeah. And I had muscle.

I was probably like 30% body fat, which is a lot. But it's not like untrained. Yeah. And then I decided that I was going to make a nice relationship with chemical substances, that we started our romance when I was 27. And then I never got to 270 again, but I was a leaner version of every single body weight. So I came back down and then up, down and up. And right now I'm like 250.

And, you know, it looks pretty cool. Much, much leaner 250 than I have ever been. And you can breathe while talking to you on the mic. That's one, like you see a lot of guys are like, that's 250. And you're not that sweaty yet. Yeah this is california so you guys don't have humidity i may never sweat here yeah in michigan i just sweat all the fucking time damn it's a great place um so when you you made that switch and you got on some stuff you were you attempting to get leaner or did it just kind of just part of the process um the only reason i got onto stuff was to see how far my body could go and i began to

attempt to get leaner very shortly after getting on and it worked and i was like holy shit except i didn't really know anything about managing like more or less estrogen side effect and androgen side effect uh body water side effect body water. So I was bloated as all hell and messed up my first several bodybuilding shows, just have no idea about body water. Then I got with Broderick Chavez, farm coach basically. And after some trials and tribulations, we solved that problem. And then voila, striated glutes.

And then I post them on Instagram. They fucking banned me for that shit. Really? Yeah. So that's why you made that new account? Your glutes look great. Of course you can swear on it. I don't know.

This is a family podcast. PG-13. You folks look nice, you know? Glutes. Ha! How much did you weigh there? Don't post that, bro. We're going to get fucking canceled.

You want your YouTube canceled? No, we're good. How much did I weigh? The fuck if I know? What does it say? Does it say anything? Intima has good. I like the first comment. Gay. Oh, somebody I write? Fuck if I know. What does it say? Anything? And Tima has good. I like the first comment.

Gay. Oh, somebody commented that? Yeah. That's nice. You know, I'm not going to repeat that word. Let me see here. Real fast. So if that was from earlier, late last year, I must have weighed about 230 there.

Wow. Anywhere between 225 and 230. And you got on stage at that point too? So I got on stage. I weighed in at 225.4 and then I actually got on stage at 217 because my body stores a ton of water. Holy shit!

What the hell happened to his glutes? And are those your underwear? Yes. Digital rendering. You guys want to know a really crazy secret? I was naked in that picture. Don't tell anybody. And it is actually really funny how many people on Instagram will draw attention to that. And I always go with them to see how far they'll keep taking it.

But it turns out there was just one awkward remark. They're like, Dr. Mike, are you really naked? I'm like, yes. Do you want to know more? They're like, no, not really. I'm like, why'd you ask? You could have answered that question for yourself. God damn it.

Can't you see it's digital underwear? Yeah. Zoom in. Do you guys do a lot of this on Instagram? scroll scroll and you're like yes no yes i didn't even know you can do my eyes aren't that great no it's an eye thing it's not a pervert thing no of course not that's what i tell myself yeah zoom in and check it out a little further investigation investigation i i guess i'm like a law enforcement officer in some sense in my own head. But the law is people's butt cracks I want to see on Instagram.

I'm enforcing it. I don't know. I had nothing after that. So having this doctor science-y background stuff, how much of the science are you able to utilize in your own training and in assisting other people? to utilize in your own training and in in assisting other people uh because like studies on uh like biomechanics and studies on like stuff related to squats and deadlifts and these various things um can sometimes be hard to extract information from from time to time due to like the way the study's done and due to the fact that people are just so different. So how do you, I guess, rely on some of that science to incorporate into the way that you might help people or even help yourself?

Great question. So there are different levels to science. There is basically a spectrum in science of basic all the way to applied. Like basic science kind of tells you how chemicals work and how structures work, how physics works. And all the way to a super applied science is like glute ham raise technique, two different ways. We study two subjects and figure out which one quote unquote works best. And I think that applied stuff is what most people sort of resonates with them as, oh, this is science for training. They read one, you know, PubMed article that's like answers a very, very specific question

about an exercise or something like that. But most of the science that we use at RP is more basic, maybe intermediate science of like, well, how do joints work? How do muscles work? How does muscle growth happen? Taking a look at all the training studies, or as many of them as we can find altogether, what can we tease apart as far as like generally what is good technique?

Like is it a good idea to go for the deep stretch? We look that up and there's like a dozen studies that say tension under a deep stretch for the muscle is more muscle growth promoting than just going through a partial range. So we look at that and we go, okay, it's probably a good idea. But we also know that there are pretty decent proxies in the gym that you can feel yourself that have been scientifically validated at least some extent to correlate to growth so you can be your own guide. So just like read science and go do shit. I can hope science works this time. You go, okay, like what are the downstream effects of training really hard?

Well, for example, if you're training your quads, if the muscle itself feels weak after training, if the muscle itself gets crampy or strained, you know, like when you really like overdo your quads, you're like, I can't, I don't know what's going on. Is my knee locked out or not? Soreness, pump, those are all pretty well mechanistically tied to muscle growth either as causes of it or as kind of symptoms of the process that made muscle grow. symptoms of the process that made muscle grow. So if someone, you know, if you see, if you derive a good exercise technique from science, you think, ah, this should work. If you try it and it feels like,

fuck, I'll happen to your quads, for example, you're like, nah, I guess science, you know, zigged when it should have zagged or something. But if you try it and you're like, holy shit, my quads, then you're probably onto something. You do that process enough and then you develop a set of general principles for technique, general principles for training frequency, exercise selection, et cetera, et cetera.

And all of a sudden you have the scientific principles of hypertrophy training available on Amazon. It's a book I wrote, a little book. A lot of selfies of my genitals in there, but if you can get through that part, you'll learn a lot. They're blurred. That's what the lawyers say we should say. Good. They're not always blurred. It's printer issue that's what it was it was difficult to blur them is it true that we need to like push harder all the time because like you know it's just it's it's i don't know it's just an interesting thing like uh i guess you know like do we need to do more reps

do we need more weight do we need like do more reps? Do we need more weight? Do we need like a different stimulus to grow? Or could somebody just kind of hang out in a certain area and continue to make progress, maybe look better? Can it get stronger doing similar weights? Or do you always have to do like either like more reps or more overall volume or more weight? I continue this progressive overload forever. Eventually I become God. That's why we're all here, right?

Really good question. So there's a couple ways to answer this, but I will say a good way to think about it is there is like all the stuff you're able to do. Here's your maximum ability to do anything in one day. Like how many reps of squats can you really do until you collapse or some shit like that? And down here is you sitting in a chair and not even going to

work out. The top maybe 10% of that effort spectrum is where gains happen. So if you get to the top 7% and then you just decide not to change anything for a while, it takes a while for you to get so much more able

that that top 7 dips into like the five, 92.5, 90, 88.5. You've talked about this before. So your capacity is continuing to kind of move. Hopefully. So if you are getting stronger, then you should be exiting. So for example, if 100 pounds is challenging to you, can you get stronger using it? Yes. Then you're 102.5 pounds strong.

Is 100 pounds still challenging? Yes, but marginally less so. Like how many months or weeks can you still train with 100 to get strong? Well, let's define strength as productive training in sets of three to six repetitions and then hypertrophy everything north of that. You know what I'm saying? When you're doing like sets of five with 100 and it's challenging, it's close to failure, absolutely you're getting stronger.

When it's sets of six, a few weeks later, hey, you got stronger, sets of six, right? When it sets of seven, eight, nine, 10, a few months later, is that the most efficient way to get stronger? No, because the reps are too high, the load isn't good enough. So to answer your question of, can I just keep doing the same thing and get stronger or get better at anything? The answer is absolutely yes, for some time. But eventually, absolutely yes for some time but eventually that curve leaves you and you got to like do cooler shit do more intense shit do elevate the stimulus so that you can continue to be challenged in that zone it's almost like asking a similar question of like if you're a musical artist and you make a certain kind of sound that people really like to hear can you just keep doing that formula yeah for a while until that shit isn't cool anymore.

And then you have to innovate. Like, like Madonna has been pretty good at like continuing to make herself more relevant. So you could say like, well, why don't you just stick to the formula? It works from the eighties. Madonna for a while it did, but then it didn't. So if people ask the question of, I'm trying to get Jack, can I just do one thing and not change it? The answer is yes.

Until the answer is no. And then you're not improving anymore. Can you imagine like you hire a coach and he's like oh you're not improving there's gonna be a fucking really difficult technical assignment for me to figure out how to make you better and he's like what have you been trying you're like nothing i'm doing the same shit for four years he's gonna be like holy fuck this is the easiest shit i've ever done yeah so you know uh but there is something there that some people have no problem going super fucking hard and they maybe get so nervous and anxious about like, am I really doing a good enough job? And to those people I say, like as long as you're getting some soreness, some pump for strength, like if you're really challenged, like if at some point in strength training, you get one or a few of these reps, you're going to continue to get stronger. strength training, you get one of a few of these reps, you're going to continue to get stronger. The pace can be different depending. And if you optimize, your pace can be this strong like this,

not optimize and just do a good job is like this, but you're still getting stronger over time. If you're not challenging yourself or if your recovery, food, et cetera, is bad enough, you will quite clearly see that you're not getting stronger. And then if you're no longer getting stronger, bigger, whatever, then clearly you have to do something else. But you can coast for a while on regular shit. And if you're an overthinker, bigger, whatever, then clearly you have to do something else. But you can coast for a while on regular shit. And if you're an overthinker, an overwarrior, just coast. Just do the right stuff for a while. And at some point, you may look back on a year and be like, what? I just got stronger this entire time.

Why would I make things overcomplicated? Whereas if at some point, month eight, you stop getting stronger, it's time to overcomplicate. Which actually like – you see this kind of comment on social media a lot. Like you throw some science at a motherfucker like, hey, like try this. And inevitably some asshole is like, fucking overcomplicate, bro. Just fucking lift and eat. I want to say like, oh, I understand you're stupid. But other people may be more intelligent and can actually consume this content.

It's like seeing like technical analysis of military like Russia versus Ukraine. Fuck that. Just nuke them all. Like, hey, thanks a lot, Jim. You're the man. Kindly see yourself the fuck out of this conversation yeah but um at the end at the same time you know we don't have to over complicate everything if it works great but to those people that say like fuck that just eat and lift or whatever like true until it's not enough like can you imagine like not like like take someone like big rami right and he's like hey

like i wonder what kind of peaking protocol i should use with drugs and training and food and all stuff can you imagine telling him like don't over fuck complicated bro just eat and lift he's like no shit motherfucker i'm 345 at eight percent body fat you didn't think i would do that shit already like to win the olympia you gotta do a little bit more than just do shit so i think like tldr use as much science as you need to continue to progress. And if you're not progressing anymore, maybe you're not working hard enough. Science can help you figure that out. Or maybe you're just not nuanced and complicated enough, which sucks if you're dumb and you can't figure that shit out.

Hire a coach. But if you're sufficiently intelligent, yeah, some science. Sprinkle down that shit. You know, hard work and basics. Sprinkle some science on it and then you continue to get better. On the idea of getting stronger, you made a video that – I've never made any videos. You haven't.

This one, I don't know why it's on the line. But you made this video about naturals having to get stronger. So when I saw that, I was curious, like, does the extent that they can continue making progress, is it different from individuals who are on gear? Do they not have to worry about getting stronger as much as naturals do? Because I want to mention something that I noticed when I started focusing on strength training. From the time I was 13 to about 22, none of my training was focused on strength. I was just increasing volume because I also did sports at the time. Like I wasn't focusing on increasing the strength of my squat, deadlift, et cetera. After I did my first few shows in my

off season, I was like, okay, I'm bored. Let me get some power lifting and let me get stronger. And noticed the big progression into like, it was like that year. I started gaining muscle. I started getting, it was like newbie gains again. And I put on quite a bit of weight because I was getting stronger. And then I was like, oh, so all this stuff is easier because now I'm getting stronger and I'm getting bigger. And that was a big – it's like a key unlocked for me. But do you think that individuals who are on gear, is that not as much of a concern? I think it's as much of a concern. But individuals who get on gear have another variable to play with.

as much of a concern, but individuals who get on gear have another variable to play with and they can pay less attention to their training quality and training design and still make gains by either riding out however much gear has gone for them or incrementally increasing the gear when they reach problem areas. So someone's like, yeah, man, I really can't get my lower back to pop out. Trend goes from 500 to 700 next prep. Like, I did it. I'm like, okay um but underlying mechanisms are still the same you know if you are drug using or drug free your ability to get

stronger over time in sets of 5 to 30 repetitions is the the easily the best correlate in the real world to show you that you're getting more muscular yeah and if you think you've gotten more muscular but your lifts haven't gone up for reps, it strains the imagination as to what really actually happened. You guys ever like, see, this is more me talking shit. Like some bodybuilder will post on Instagram, and it's like a before and after or a side-by-side, and they're like, I didn't get any stronger this off-season,

but I felt like I'm bringing more quality. And you're looking at the picture like, and you're like, motherfucker, are you out of your mind? Or one of those like, I don't know which stronger this off season, but I felt like I'm bringing more quality. And you're looking at the picture like, it was a minute out. And you're like, motherfucker, are you out of your mind? Or one of those like, I don't know which one's the better picture. Did you get weaker? That sucks. So if you track your reps and sets and how strong you are for reps, both seeking to increase the strength a little bit over time and using the strength as a barometer of am I doing a good job is a swell idea for everyone, drug-free or not.

A lot of the nanny people will say, we've just got to focus on strength. There's all that other shit like pump work doesn't work. That's actually bullshit. Pump work works for everyone. It's been vetted actually exclusively in naturals. Can you explain pump work, by the way, for those? So any kind of muscle growth training that results in a temporary

self-swelling response for the muscles, a.k., aka the pump, the only reason to be alive maybe or it's like coming or something. It's like coming. Look at my pump. So I have a shitty Arnold impression. It's great. I mean it's shitty. So the pump actually – back in the day, they used to say that it was nothing. It was just blood.

It was irrelevant. And especially in the last five years, they've been – What is wrong with us? Why do we say stuff is irrelevant? It seems so obvious that it does something. Your arms swell up. They get bigger right there on the spot. Oh, that doesn't do anything.

Well, so I would categorize – I would go even further. There are two ways to say it. You could say, well, it's not really – there's no evidence that the pump makes you more jacked, which was true in the 90s. There was no evidence for it. But not having evidence for something is very different than there being evidence against it. So you see the pump doesn't do anything and my retort was like, how do you know that? They're like, well, it's just self-swelling. I'm like, how do you know that's not mechanistically tied to growth?

They'd be like, what's mechanistically mean, you fucking nerd asshole? Then I would get punched in the face. I would tied to growth. They'd be like, what's mechanistically mean, you fucking nerd asshole? And then I would get punched in the face. I would begin to cry. And then I would do curls so that I never got hit in the face again. And my face got bigger, so now it's hard to punch. Your face is very muscular. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you. That was a compliment. So the pump has been shown in numerous studies that is self-swelling to actually be a trigger of hypertrophy. It actually grows muscle for you to get a pump. And also – I fucking knew it. Yeah, yeah.

The metabolites, like all that, you know, the painful burn stuff in the muscles that actually causes a pump, the metabolites themselves also grow muscle. And the production of tension over multiple repetitions through a large range of motion also causes a pump, and that tension also hypertrophies you. So not only is the pump actually causative of muscle growth it's an excellent correlate of muscle growth you say try to figure a way out well how does that not apply well hold on a second so off season guys get huge ass pumps right they also grow a lot pre-contest worse pumps that's not an accident that's not by accident so having a pre-swollen cell already tons of glycogen in it being fresh you guys know how if you're super fatigued you actually can't get that great of a pump but if you're fucking post deload you're

like oh my fucking god so all that stuff adds up and it turns out the pump actually works so you know if you're getting really great pumps that's a probably pretty good sign that everything's going well in your life but if you're not getting great pumps it's terrible and if you're drug-free training that makes you progressively stronger while utilizing tension metabolites and things that result in a pump are all really great things to use. Same thing for guys on gear.

But again, the confounding factor is guys on gear can sometimes get away with real dumb shit just because they can just keep upping the dose. And they're like, how come pro? And a lot of times people try to learn from that and they're learning from a mistake. So say, well, man, pro bodybuilders don't use full ROM. How come they're fucking big? You're like, well, it's two things. One, how do you know that if they didn't use a mistake. So say, well, man, pro bodybuilders don't use full ROM. How come they're fucking big?

You're like, well, it's two things. One, how do you know that if they didn't use full ROM, they'd be bigger? The second thing, this is going to be mean. This is a mean comment. Not all, but a significant fraction of high-level bodybuilders, they're the kind of people that you take advice from on anything. And it's easy to fanboy the fuck out of these people you never met them never talked to them but you meet and talk to these motherfuckers

and you're like holy shit you have no idea what's going on i mean like in your personal life as well as lifting and you say like you know what's the rationale for you doing curls like this or like that like you know i'm saying man she's getting after it you're ah, let me write that down. Einstein, Newton, that guy. Mount Rushmore of science right here. A lot of times before looking up to people, maybe look if they have a modicum of intelligence. Because

they can't give you their genetics. I can't look at someone's bicep peaks and be like, I can has? You can ask. Maybe you can touch it. Maybe they'll let you rub your face on it ideally oh yes they'll let you touch everything for a price and bodybuilding of course but if you actually want to learn stuff from people maybe like maybe try to see some youtube videos of theirs if they sound like they've thought shit through now some people are not very verbally oriented or even

communicative but they could have a very decent philosophy of training Maybe at some point someone sort of gets that out of them. Or if you look at their training, you follow them on social media, maybe try to see if you can discern some kind of structure or pattern. If you can't discern a pattern, maybe there's not a pattern. And then maybe like when you ask the guy,

like, so what do you think about best tricep exercises? Whatever dumb shit comes out of his mouth is not an intelligent assessment of the world. It's just like, well, I feel like X, Y, xyz like i could have fucking told you that thanks for nothing and then you ask why is that guy jacked 15 years of lifting amazing genetics he was that guy in high school that you were like how old are you kidding 38 fuck you have a mustache we're in freshman year of high school that's probably you guys huh that was in sema for sure i did not and sema got checked for his birth certificate yeah when

i was 16 playing soccer the parents on the other team were like i want that kid's birth certificate you know you're a nigerian when he was also a medical doctor at the time you guys know that one yeah no you talking about the black kid who's like uh he had a clinic no no i was i was referencing nothing specific i just – I've never met a single Nigerian that wasn't an exceptional athlete, medical doctor or computer engineer. Yeah. Maybe chemical systems engineer or something. Yeah. It's in the culture.

Doctor, lawyer, engineer. Unbelievable. Actually, I was in the hospital once and I had a doctor who was Nigerian. I was like, can I ask you like sort of a personal question? She's like, Jesus Christ. She didn't say that. She was like, yes. I was like, what's it like if you're a Nigerian family and you decide not to go to school, like

to college? And she literally did the same thing you just did. She's like, that's not a thing that happens. I was like, well, well, like pretend. And she's like, there would be a 30 person extended family sit down intervention to make sure you went to school. She thought I was asking a different question. That's what happened to me. You went to school and they're like, shut up. Yeah. What she thought I was asking was what if they go for a non-stem degree so she's like if you try to like major in english they will still sit down with you and be like are you sure about this no no art no philosophy no nothing like that that doesn't bring home the bacon no it's not a real degree unbelievable yeah i love it but a quick add-on question to that is because like um do you think that when i mentioned that i wasn't focusing Unbelievable. I love it. doing that along with all of the bodybuilding work. And my rationale for that was because I

can move so much more volume with these movements that it was beneficial. Do you think that is something necessary for natural athletes to do or can they just focus on maybe progressing some machine movements, et cetera? They don't need to do big compounds to get a breakthrough in their training. I would put a lot of money in my entire professional reputation on the fact that you don't need compound movements to progress. There we go. But for some people that works really well.

And if you're one of those, so for me, like I never grew better than barbell rows, standing overhead presses, high bar squats, good morning, stiff leg adducts, all that stuff is fucking amazing. And when people like, um, say, well, you know, that stuff, I don't feel my hamstrings doing a stiff leg adducts. I'm like, shut the fuck up. What are you nuts? But like, not, maybe not everyone does.

So I think if you find movements that work well for you, work well for your body, and then you push them shits hard over time, adding a rep here and there, five pounds here and there, and after a while you either jacked or it turns out you had shitty genetics the whole time, then you cry a lot. But you can cry a lot anyway.

Yeah, that was kind of a similar question that I had. So I like to focus on just chasing the pump sometimes because time's limited um i train uh like i get a lot of my training ideas from my buddy doug brignoli which i know you just recently crossed paths with eye lasers but is is there like a i guess is it a mistake to just like go in and chase the pump like more often than i don't know trying to I'm going to go deadlift or something. Like, you know, I don't want to really do the big three right now. So I'm just focusing on more of the hypertrophy stuff and then like, yeah, just getting after the pump.

Yeah. So like if you're consistently getting really good pumps, you will probably continue to hypertrophy for some time. Which you may find at some point is pump is subjective and you may find that like, I'm getting good pumps but maybe i could get great pumps if i pushed harder yeah and then you have to ask yourself the question of how much harder and you don't actually know until you start referencing your performance to an objective standard but so how much harder can i do these pull-ups well how many pull-ups can i do if gone to my head 12 okay well i've been doing six that's six reps in reserve let's look the old scientific literature oh turns out i'm a fucking idiot i haven't been going hard enough and then you think you're getting pumps and you go and fucking do a set of 11 in the pull-ups and you're like holy lats okay now i'm really getting pumps and then so by

referencing yourself to objective standards of strength if you find that your training is not going great and you're not making progress that's the real fucking easy way because for example if you're barbell bent rowing 185 for sets of 10 and your bodybuilding coaches like or whatever your tiktok influencer fans are like you need a you need a bigger back you suck and you're like oh no commentator you like their comment you rearrange your whole life to get a bigger back you should be curious as to to see your barbell row go from 185 for 10 to like hopefully higher than that because if someone says how do you know your back is growing you know i'm saying pictures can lights different you're trying to get set up with 24-hour fitness but the 85 year old chinese man knocked your camera down

because you're in a fucking public locker room fucking guy people's dicks on the shit you have to get rid of you know the pictures you guys don guys know what I'm talking about. I know what you're talking about. It's a Tuesday night. Yeah. So at some point, you don't want to not be sure that you're spending. Because also here's another problem. You're in an off-season phase. You'll get a little fatter as well as muscular. And the fat obscures the muscle. So someone's like, are you gaining muscle?

You're like, I hope. Some shit's happening underneath there. But if you reference to a standard, 185 for 10 is my best bent row. And then it's a few months later, 195 for 10, a few months later, 205 for 10. And someone's like, Hey, is your back bigger? Like, well, gee whiz, you know, unless I'm getting unbelievable neural adaptations after years of knowing how to do barbell rows anyway, the only way to get stronger in a barbell row is just fucking put on more muscle. And because I'm now doing 215 for sets of 10 instead of 185, I'm all the way there. So to answer your question directly, pump work is totally fucking baller, but if it ever like not, or works not so great for you, or instead of 185, I'm all the way there. So to answer your question directly, pump work is totally fucking baller.

But if it ever works not so great for you or if you feel like, am I really doing what I can in the gym to get my best possible effort, then I would start still train for pump, but reference your reps and sets. Because a set of 15 will get you a baller bicep pump. A set of 16 with the same weight next week

could give you a slightly better pump, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Is it wise to try to select stuff that allows you to like lift more weight? As far as bodybuilding stuff? Yeah, as far as bodybuilding. Yeah. So at the end of the day, you want to make sure

that the target muscle or muscles are being stimulated and there are limiting factor. And there are ways in which muscle stimulation and adding weight work very well together. And there are ways in which muscle stimulation and adding weight work very well together and there are ways in which you could sort of take a little off tangent side road and then you're not in a freeway anymore you're on that service drive and everyone's going 80 and you're going 55 you know what the fuck am i doing you pull off hills have eyes you die because you know the crazy people kill you so in any case if we say okay I'm going to be doing pull-ups. I'm going to be doing a full range of motion all the way up and down.

And pull-ups allow me to put a shitload of tension through my lats because I'm doing like sets of five to ten. It might even use some weight. And then the answer is, you know, am I trying to put as much force to the muscle as possible? The answer to that is yes because we're targeting the muscle properly and we're going through a full range of motion. because we're targeting the muscle properly and we're going through a full range of motion. However, if you subvert those two things in chasing for the max numbers, then all of a sudden you're not really training

that muscle anymore as much as you could be using other muscles and differences in the movement to make up for it. To say, oh man, I can really lift a lot if I do deadlifts from a rack position instead of from a low position. Okay, like does your glutes work more? Well, they actually work less

because they don't get a stretch. So they grow less. So why the fuck are you doing that? Well, they actually work less because they don't get a stretch. So they grow less. So, why the fuck are you doing that? Well, you can lift a lot of weight by distributing the effort between a ton of muscles

and lowering the range of motion. And then you actually get less stimulus, but you get to look cooler. As usual, the girl in the gym sees you rack pulling and she's like, I need

to be on your fucking dick right now. Every minute of my life has been pointless up until this moment. I finally discovered my purpose. That happens a lot with backpacks. All the time. Yeah, it does.

That's a good reason to use them. Yeah. Like, yeah, I didn't want to use rack pulls, but your boy got horny, you know what I'm saying? These gym girls. Yeah. And really just over-accentuate

the thrusting aspect of it. So they know. So they know. Let the weight slam down on the rack so that they hear it, and then just, you know. Before I do my rack pull pull I like to turn to whoever it is I'm trying to seduce and I go watch this

yeah with the eyebrow pump like that that was pretty good yeah oh yeah like kind of the rock but like double eyebrow I'm like the rock if he was like significantly worse at everything than he is shorter less jacked I can't do all the faces the rock

faces how does he do it but you're probably stronger than the rock but nearly identical I'm not stronger than the rock I would say you are you have more training volume than him

Mike you are better range you're charitable it's like telling a race walker they're faster than someone you're like over time you get places

that are further away and you're great I'm the race walking equivalent of bodybuilding that's what I am you guys have a shitty guest on your podcast And you're great. I'm the race walking equivalent of bodybuilding. That's what I am. You guys have a shitty guest on your podcast. Well, actually, no, I think we can reliably say,

this is the second time I'm saying this, but you probably do have the most muscular face off of anyone we've had on the podcast. Yeah. I'm trying to think of, do we have more muscular jawlines? Oh, now he's flexing he's biting down oh my god yeah that's i'm proud of that hmm i want to ask kind of on on this you know when we as we're talking about compounds one thing that you'll see a lot of that oh the lifts yes yes

oh yeah we'll get to those we'll get to those other compounds but um you know a lot of people are like they you just mentioned that you don't have to do compound movements to continue to get as much as it hurts my soul to say that scientifically i have to say that's correct and and that's great because you know a lot of people for example don't like to bench press right i'm sorry what some people some people don't like they'd rather come back come back please mike he's like i'm out but you know it as far as like growing a chest right um would you would it be good for like for some individuals and to do dumbbell benching and flies etc and just progress those movements over time to be able to achieve the same size for their chest or a big size for their chest.

Stop. Stop. Look, I have rights. I'm not to be touched randomly. This was just like kind of a me too moment that just happened. Do it again. It was hotter when he didn't have permission, to be honest. Because Mr. Olympia, Jay Cutler, like swears by the bench press. He loves it. I love the bench press. He loves it.

I love the bench press. Yeah. To me, the bench press is one of the best chest exercises I've ever done. The thing is, for every single person, your anatomy is slightly different.

You're built a little differently. Muscular insertions, muscle shape is different. Fiber type is different. Blah, blah, all the way down the line. Also, technique will be a little different.

Some people are like, I don't get anything out of the bench. You teach them how to arch and attract and they're like, holy shit, my pecs. You never knew how to bench press, sir.

You just went to football camp and they taught you how to bench so do you guys remember the towel bench from football that's like when you when you don't play soccer oh yeah that's right are you even american i didn't play football either don't tell anyone when i was in school in the south one of the most like pertinent questions the deep philosophical relevance that you could ask someone hey man where'd you play your high school football at like i'm sorry what i didn't and you never want to say you just make some shit up the accent was so good i just went straight to college bro it's like wow my favorite thing is like old white dudes that see me it's always always on a i'm not i haven't gone a week without missing it some old white guys like you should play on my football team young man like

what the fuck i didn't even play yeah hold on okay and see mom i'm with you 99 listen if they say that recently can you imagine you on like a pop warner team i'm sorry i've never played football like, you see that white kid right there that weighs 57 pounds? Just run and pretend he's not there. He's going to Mr. Potato Head out of the way and you'll be the fucking man. God damn. Yeah. What was your original question?

Yes. Yes. Okay. So everyone's different and you do a certain exercise. And it's going to give you some proxies of how stimulative it is. For example, do you feel the tension of the target muscle? Some people are like, I bench and I feel it on my shoulders, not my pecs. That's a fucking problem.

So do you get a burn with higher reps or do you get the profound tension with lower reps? Does that exercise for the number of sets you have to do it give you a good pump? You get on a machine press and you're like, I've done 10 sets and nothing's fucking happening in my body. You do a set of bench and you're like, holy fucking shit. Is the muscle significantly weak afterwards? Is it perturbed? Does it get sore? If someone could do a set of bench and their shoulders get sore and their elbows get sore and you're like pecs, they're like, nope, I got nothing.

Someone else could do bench press and it lights up their pecs and everything else is great. So those proxies and then those are on the top, that's stimulus. And then we do a little equation. We do a divide and we do are on the top. That's stimulus. And then we know the equation. We do a divide and we do fatigue on the bottom. Right. How much fatigue? How much is it beating up your joints? How much like psychological effort does it take you?

So for example, if you can get on a machine press and just like calmly knock out sets of 10 and you get super fucking pumped and sore. Yeah. Getting a fucking arch of retraction and fucking nose torque. You fucking do all that shit and you feel like totally drained and they're like how are your pecs like i don't know i can't fucking tell then that's a lot of fatigue for not a whole lot of stimulus so if you can maximize the stimulus minimize the fatigue some exercises for any one person will do that better than others and usually

we all have like a top five or ten exercises that are in the running for that best stimulus to fatigue ratio yeah they're not always going to be the same because you encounter staleness. I mean, you can bench for six months straight and someone's like, benching, like, I'm like done benching for a while. My elbows are starting to feel weird. My pecs aren't responding anymore. You switch to dumbbells or machine and now it's fresh and now it feels good. So you rotate through that top five or 10 best SFR stimulus to fatigue ratio exercises

and that's where you go for, for your really good training. Someone might rank the bench press 15 out of the running. They basically never do it. Someone might rank dumbbell press number one on average and everything in between. And for, as your body changes and you get more jacked, et cetera,

that shifts and some lifts come up and some lifts come down. So if you can just relatively objectively, and at least honestly tell yourself, okay, I know I love the bench press, but it's no longer working for me, at least for the time now, as well as let's say something else, dumbbell press. For a while, just do some dumbbell presses until maybe the bench press feels less stale. Try it again. See if you can alter your technique to feel it more. And if it goes, great. If not, you have tons of other exercise to choose from.

I'm a huge, huge, it's the opposite of fan. Hater, right? You have fans and haters. Enemy is too personal. I was going to use enemy, but that's a big punch. I'm a big hater on people who are always looking for the one optimal exercise. It's like in jujitsu, looking for the one optimal sweep.

Like, yeah, what if he gets wise to that? Shuts your dumb ass down. What are you going to do? You're like, I don't know anything else. Like, you're an idiot. You should have had the top two or three, right? So I'm not a big fan of people being like, what's better, hack squat or leg press? Well, try both.

See which one gives you more stimulus. Like if your quads are super pumped and your knees feel great on the leg press but not the hack squat, you just got your answer. And then do leg pressing for a while until you maybe get tired of it, and then try hack squatting, but really try to use a good technique that maximizes stimulus, reduces the fatigue, and then go from there. And so you can have a few exercises in your rotation all the time that are your best heavy hitters, use them. You don't necessarily have to say, well, it's barbell compounds for me, and it's all machines.

It's always going to be a mix. And you're a big fan of full range of motion, but you've also mentioned that you also like to use context. And it doesn't mean that you do full range of motion on everything all the time. But a lot of your workouts, that's something that you're emphasizing. What about kind of like the difference between like a full range of motion in something like a hack squat versus doing like a partial range of motion in a hack squat where you're like literally just kind of chasing the pump because you can get like a certain amount of tension on the muscle uh inner well at least i can on some movements with a shorter range of motion so kind of what are your thoughts there like this constant muscle tension some people

argue like i'd rather have constant muscle tension than to go full range i would ask them what the point of constant muscle tension is why is that better. I would ask them what the point of constant muscle tension is. Why is that better? Maybe somebody would say just to get a pump maybe more effectively or faster. One thing that I argue against sometimes is my own background, which is powerlifting. Sure. Deadlifting, squatting, bench pressing. Fucking traitor. Yeah, I know. All those movements are amazing, but they all take a lot of time.

Sure. I might do 10, especially when I was stronger, I might do like, I don't know, 8 or 10 sets. And then just being older and it taking more time for me to warm up, I'm like, that's an hour-long process of like getting to that bench press. you know, hop on a machine and get a really good pump and kind of find a repetition range of motion that just floods the area with tons of blood. I know there's like two different objectives there. No, no, that's okay. Yeah, yeah. So I think that if your range of motion that you've chosen

is the one that gives you the best pump by like an obvious long shot, I would be remiss to tell you it's not going to work. I would say I think that's really great. What I would do though is I would come to the gym with you and try to get you to do super range of motion, hack squats, et cetera, and see if you didn't get an even better pump. So Jared Feather and I, he's one of my colleagues at RPE. Sounds like a fake name. I love Jared Feather.

It's absolutely a fake name. Right? Jared Feather. Bro, pull Jared Feather up, man. I've seen him, but it's just... His physique. He's so easy. I've got a hotkey for that one.

Jared shit. A locator to tell him where he is at all times. So Jared Feather and I have a pretty decent record of introducing lifters to range of motion and even more range of motion than they thought. Making them cry. And it was almost never, maybe never, where they're like, yeah, man, like, I know. Fucking shorter arm worked better for me. Better pump.

Usually they're like, holy fucking shit. What is the point of this? Oh, yeah, this is him recently. Duh. I think this is what all of us feel like we're going to grow up to be. Say that again? Well, it's a part of the sport, Mark.

What are we supposed to wear? Oh, you wanted nudity. No, I just, I want to be able to. What's with all this underwear business? No, I just want to be able to issue guys like underwear that I personally purchase. It's a thing. It's a weird, I don't know. I can give you old underwear of mine that's, we'll say you've been through a lot.

Oh, let's go. A lot of squat workouts. That's good stuff. You could say squat workouts if you like to keep it vanilla. Okay. It's a lot of chocolate though. Oh. Don't eat it.

You could eat it. Why is this guy so jacked? Full range of motion so jared feather is god's gift to bodybuilding genetics he was a student of mine a time that he was sitting in the front row and i looked down at him i was like ah motherfucker look at them delts cap to shit so he's amazing genetics he's brilliant he's the best student ever had as a professor he i don't know if he's ever missed a single question or point

you're a professor he's a professor he's the natty professor I'm the natty professor that's what's up Eddie Murphy that's actually how you look great

black people really don't age I guess they don't brother they don't you know all that shit about like some of them can't play basketball

you know what I mean shut up bro I had that it's a bit windy in here and the sun is in his eyes gone. Some of them can't play basketball, though. You know what I mean? Shut up, bro. I had that. It's a bit windy in here. The sun is in his eyes. There's a lot of sun. Jada Pinkett Smith? What about her?

You're not supposed to talk about her. Is she going to cancel me? Whoa, bro. You don't know what it is, don't you? She has a beautiful head. I don't know why she's tripping. So for real, she's all pissed. I'm like, you are. She's hot.

Kim Pink Smith makes me uncomfortable. The first time I ever discovered her in the early 90s, I was like, how does such a perfect human being exist? And she's still flawless, girl. If you're out there, I'm married, but I'm saying if you get that time machine popping. Will Smith, please don't hit me in the face. I love your work. I told myself after the whole slapping incident that I would never watch Will Smith shit please don't hit me in the face. I love your work.

I told myself after the whole slapping incident that I would never watch Will Smith shit ever again. And then I was on a plane like a couple days ago to come to Northern California to hang out with you guys. And I was like scrolling through. And I was on a decent amount of THC. Yeah. So I can't be responsible for what happened next. But I absolutely watched a Will Smith movie. And of course I fucking cried because he's fucking amazing. Seven Pounds or Pursuit of Happiness?

So I don't get into that like real deep like Will Smith crying face movie type shit. I usually stay with the comedy, action, bad boys. Him crying though like when his dog dies. He's so good at it. And you can see all the emotions. In any case, Mr. Will Smith, I said I wouldn't watch your movies. But I found his apology pretty convincing, and I just love the guy. He can do no wrong in my eyes.

What if he trained with Joel Seidman? When I said no wrong, I mean almost no wrong. If I was on a comedy stage, and I knew for a fact that Will Smith had trained with Joel Seidman, I would say some nasty shit. I'd be like, hey, Will Smith, guess what? You a bitch.

All right. Let me ask this real quick. But then – Okay, hold on. Go ahead. Go ahead. As he came up to the stage, I would already have a very well-practiced jiu-jitsu setup. There we go.

Fucking – Oh, like a jiu-jitsu chop to the throat. Collar drag, deep half, back take. It's just toothpaste style shit. And he's wearing a suit suit so it would work perfectly but actually when i took his back yeah i instantly realized what i was doing it i'd get off like i can't hurt you mr smith you're my favorite actor oh god i would cry so you wouldn't make him shit his pants no but it would be like he knew i could have kind of shit yeah that's fair

but if he was trained by joel seedman you just have to go past 90 and he wouldn't be able to full slap i would snap him, but he wouldn't fall. He's like, I've been unstable my whole life thanks to Joel Seidman. I'm never stable. I'm like, oh shit. And then he slaps me and I cry. And then he does the whole get your wife's name out of my mouth. Where he's crying, but...

That was the weirdest part of that whole thing. We was clearly close to tears. It was emotional. That doesn't sound like a tough guy thing. I think she put a curse on him bro is that the candidate hypothesis of the day she put a curse

got emotional I wouldn't I usually I'd be like what but I'm feeling that because there's nothing else to explain that shit because he looked over at her and she was like

and he was like oh here we go again yeah it was the chef at a cruise ship last week now it's Chris Rock whatever oh man how many non-famous people It was the chef at a cruise ship last week. Now it's Chris Rock.

Whatever. Oh, man. How many non-famous people do you think he slapped for shit like that? Oh, there was a video of him. Really? A reporter came in for a kiss 10 or 12 years ago. If a guy comes in for a kiss, he's really coming out. It was just a little slap.

Get out of my face. Yeah. What would you have done if a man was your chick, let's be honest, you're quite good looking. If a man came in for a kiss, I wouldn't hit him. Right. You'd be like, sir, that's what the stiff on is for. Yeah, what are you doing? Yeah. I wouldn't need to hit him.

Plus, if he's, number one, I think I'd actually run. Because if he's bold enough to look at me and then try to come up and just kiss me. What if he's from another country? Sometimes they do that. He's Italian or something. So if it was one of those. I think it was though, right? What was he trying to do? He was trying to kiss him on the mouth. It looked like a mouth kiss.

Like a Lil Wayne and Birdman type of kiss. Do you guys remember that? They have a straight up kiss on the mouth. Can you please pull that up? I'm looking for it. I don't want to monopolize your show, but there are pictures of that shit. I mean, hey, listen. These are Atlanta rappers, man. It's 2022.

They're not even from Atlanta. How dare you? But Atlanta rappers have a tendency. No way. Apparently. Is there a video of this? ATL rappers. Of like.

They do some weird stuff. Hey, I'm next plane booked to Atlanta. Yeah. Yeah. Why not? Okay. We have to come back to the semen thing. Yes, yes.

I don't even know where we were. Will Smith. Doesn't matter. Wait a second. Hold on. I didn't know about this. Will Smith squatting

above parallel. Oh, yeah. I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember this. I remember this. This was a long time ago. That guy back there

is like, oh, shit, I'm in this picture. Yeah. This is real sus. Honestly, with that much talent. Maybe there's a miscommunication. Maybe they're just really trying to hear each other and they have to do it like.

I think it's great. Yeah. He's trying to whisper. I got everything that's all right answers to me as far as I can tell. There we go. That's 2022. Okay. One thing that you continue to mention.

It wasn't back then. Thank God it is now. Mark's like, what the fuck is going on on my show i love it okay it's a terrible mistake to bring me on no i love it um but one thing that you've continued to mention that i think is something that people should pay attention to is if you continue to like sometimes bring it back to if the athlete feels this if the individual feels it's working now you'll have individuals out there who are like, biomechanics, blah, blah. They're like, it doesn't matter how it feels. This isn't a biomechanically efficient movement to target this, this, or this.

And I'm just curious, how much legitimacy do you believe that has, especially when it comes to bodybuilding? Because there are a lot of movements that people are like, wow, this feels amazing. I feel a lot of progress at this movement i feel the muscle but biomechanically it's not efficient yeah what are your thoughts on that so the charitable answer if i'm being completely open-minded is i would give some credence to that because you can misinterpret cues you can think it's one muscle but it's really another um and sometimes when people say i feel it they don't even know what they're saying especially a newer lifter oh my god for sure newer lifters are people that

aren't you know so intelligent but have been doing a long time look i feel this like shut the fuck up man you don't know what you feel but um it can absolutely be taken too far or if you have someone be like look this variation tortures my biceps because I'm getting a pump, because my biceps fucking hurt when I do this. When I do this other variation that's biomechanically optimal, I don't feel as much. You have to understand that that person is bringing you a little bit more insight than biomechanics can in this context. Because when we say biomechanics, what do we mean?

We mean what's actually called diagrammatical biomechanics, where you draw a diagram, perhaps not so well perhaps in absence of some of the physics that you claim to know and then you draw a little stick figure diagram you're like i should work like this and in reality there is not even yet a holistic computer modeling software for all of biomechanics you would think it'd be a solved problem right cars can fucking drive by themselves but we can't we don't have a biomechanics you would think it'd be a solved problem right cars can fucking drive by themselves but we can't we don't have a biomechanics software that has integrated every single muscle and joint and tendon and connective tissue and let you play with lengthening and shortening the bones and get a 100 rendering of how it would work in real life it can get pretty close nowadays

but those guys that talk about biomechanics and use that software and as soon as you use that software you realize that small changes in position, small changes in anthropometry, how long someone's femurs are, et cetera, can cause really large changes in perceptively what kind of technique would work ideally for them. And biomechanics doesn't even take into account muscle fibers. Almost all biomechanics done by people who are in the muscle and fitness realm, they essentially assume that the muscle is like a single string variable, like a pulling equation. That's it.

Like if it was just one string tied to one place and another in one servo motor, that's as complicated as they would make the muscle. But muscles have shape. And when muscles move over other joints, they change shape and change lever arm. And that makes things really complicated. So you say, well, ideally, you should do this. But apparently, when he does this he says it feels it more

because your biomechanical analysis did not integrate the fact that their pecs have to slip over the rib cage and that changes a bunch of angles. So the real world is fucking complicated and what is the ultimate insight

from the real world top down is someone's like, dude, this fucking lights my pecs up. You go, okay, whatever assumptions I made about biomechanics must be partially wrong because the biomechanics good exercise is not lighting up their pecs like the real

fucking thing they're showing me. So one of two things, they're either fucking idiots and there's wrong and the muscle doesn't mean anything, which is bullshit. They might be idiots. Or my biomechanics analysis did not integrate every variable that it could and does not sufficiently explain the complexity of the system. The thing is, anyone who actually knows biomechanics will tell you this is all inference and heuristics.

This is like somewhere to get you to thinking a little bit more clearly about the problem. Biomechanics does not open and shut answer every single problem. You're not like, there's no way to read a biomechanics book and be like, I know how to do every exercise perfectly. That's not a thing. You may be able to rule out some real dumb shit or rule in some real smart shit,

but outside of that, that's a good part of the equation. Okay, biomechanically, my shit needs to be at least remotely sound. Like if you're training your triceps, but there's no extension at the elbow, someone could be like, wait, isn't the primary function of tricep to do this?

You're like, yeah, but don't worry about it. Then you fucked up your biomechanics. But outside of that, you have to use biomechanics as well as the feel of the muscle, the joint, et cetera, as well as how that reflects your numbers progression over the months. Like you start doing this tricep exercise, the biomechanics said it's probably going to work. Probably. Not for sure. It's not the best ever. Maybe it's a tool.

The exercise is amazing on your joints. It gives you gnarly fucking pumps, super crazy tricep tension. And then over the course of several weeks to several months, you've just been adding weight to those tricep exercises. And all of a sudden, your girlfriend's like, oh, my God, honey, your triceps are like so bad. And you're like, yeah, you fucking like them. And she's like, oh, my God. And then you know that you're really fucking probably things are working. But just biomechanics by itself is the beginning of a guess it is not the total answer and if you tell someone

hey look what you're feeling doesn't matter you should be telling him is like what you're feeling matters in the context of other shit going on like if you have a dispute like three or four other people and someone's crying and like they're apparently in the wrong at least talk to them see why they're crying yeah now they may still be a scumbag who started the whole thing but now they're crying they could still be wrong but i will at least hear from them so if someone's like well it doesn't matter what your muscles are feeling let's see let's see and if someone's like i feel the muscle better this way but biomechanically they're doing the movement super fucking wrong you're like i feel that maybe you're getting a good result this way let me let me work with you a little bit and get you to change the movement

pattern. And all of a sudden, if you're correct about your biomechanical assumptions, they'll be like, holy fuck, JK, this is even better. But if they're like, ah, this feels like shit, you could tell them, hey, listen, if you practice this new way, you might get a better mind muscle connection. It'll work out. But after a couple of weeks of due diligence, they're like, nah, man, my old method was just fucking better on my joints and it hit my muscles. You just have to step away as an intelligent person who knows some biomechanics and say, okay, whatever assumption matrix I have designed for biomechanics that did not map exactly onto reality, and that's okay. It was an educated guess and sometimes those are wrong. But if the people are really feeling a certain exercise a certain way and they can make progress with it, you have to respect that complex system is giving you an answer that is not something you calculated.

And then it's probably correct. I would bet more on it than I would bet on just biomechanics alone. But you don't have to because you can use fucking both. How's it going now? We like to look good in the gym and out of the gym. That's why you always see Mark and I and Andrew is stepping up on the short, short game, wearing shorts from Viore and clothes from Viore. Honestly, the number one compliment that I've seen that I've gotten and even Mark's gotten

is, damn, your butt looks good. That's because the clothes we wear make our booties look delicious. Andrew, how can they get it? You guys both have pretty big wagons. You guys can head over to Viore.com slash Power Project. That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash Power Project to receive 20% off the most amazing apparel

that looks so good inside and outside of the gym. It's going to make your ass look fat. And your ass will look fat. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. God damn it. That was a good one. That was a good one. It a good one make your ass look fat how do you actually train like do you um mindless bro shit dude i mostly just hit my head against

that's why my fucking skin is so big like uh for myself i like to like overload with a particular movement um not all the time but quite frequently overload on a particular movement. Not all the time, but quite frequently. Overload on a particular movement. And then the rest of the workout is just kind of chasing after the pump. That's like really powerlifting type shit. That's like the ghosts of powerlifting. Every single exercise I do is designed to continue to target that muscle, to stimulate it. And so every single exercise is to present sufficient tension for sufficient reps to give gnarly pump and burn, et cetera. So I approach all of my exercises probably somewhere between where you approach

them. You have like an overloading exercise where you go super fucking hard, super serious, and then you have like the scroll for phone, get out. My shit's probably somewhere between the two where I'm like very focused, calm, and I hit a certain rep goal. And then next week I beat it by a rep or I add five pounds. And then towards the last weeks of my accumulation, you know, week five or something before deload, it's like life and death, me trying to get the reps, but always with good technique. So I would say that's kind of where I fall on that. And you just, is it like quite simply just trying to send some sort of signal to your body, whether it's, you know, the weights, you know, if the weights are heavier, like obviously when the weights are heavier, the reps are going to be a little bit less. And as you progress through the workout, potentially maybe you're going higher reps because you're just accounting for some fatigue, that kind of thing.

Sure. So I generally tend to pick my exercises and rep ranges at the same time. So, for example, if I do squats for quads, I'll do sets of 5 to 10. Why? Because if you do sets of 12 to 15, my lower back fatigue limits my quads and they don't actually get a good stimulus. I just start throwing up a lot. It's a great exercise to overload. Like I've pointed this out when I used to do some CrossFit powerlifting seminars, I would ask people, you know, what's the most amount of weight somebody lifted in the room and someone's, you know, 300, 400, 500, there'll still be some hands up. And normally it was in a deadlift or in a squat.

And it's like, okay, well, those are good exercise. An overhead squat, while it's a great movement, maybe that's not the greatest exercise to. It's limited by your shoulders. Overload your quads, right? Yes. So if it's something, if it's a movement in which I can go heavy, if it's a movement in which the target muscle is still a limiting factor when I go heavy. And if it's a movement that when I go heavy, I feel a a movement in which the target muscle is still a limiting factor when I go heavy and if it's a movement that when I go heavy

I feel a shitload of tension in the muscle, it's safe for the joints because you're like, you know, one arm preacher bicep curl. You may not want to go super heavy because...

I like that part right there, the safety factor. I think sometimes we're not always thinking about that part. Yeah, that's all I think about. I'm Jewish, man.

I'm just anxious all the time. I could get height. Oh, God. Jews aren't allowed to make fun of themselves anymore? No. Are we going back to 2022? could get height. Oh, God. Jews aren't allowed to make fun of themselves anymore? No. Are we going back to 2022? This is a good one, Matt.

I was born injured, you know? Undiagnosed injury. They're like, ah, you're just Jewish. Pause real quick. You speak Russian. Are you also Russian? Yeah.

You are Russian. Okay. Like, you know, prior to this Ukraine thing, I was. Oh, now you're Jewish. Now you're Ukrainian. Yes.

I think my mom started telling people we were from generally Eastern Europe unless they ask. I actually haven't made any public statements. Can I make a statement about the Russia-Ukraine situation? The sooner Putin dies, the better this world will be. I can't fucking wait for that asshole to die. I'm in America for a reason because Russia blew ass and now it blows even more ass. Ukraine has a right to self-determination and it seems like a generally better place than Russia. And if you invade a place and you start fucking losing that war, don't bitch about it.

Fuck you, Putin. There's my view. There you go. I want to real quick go back to biomechanics again. So, you know, you kept saying if the muscle is tired, fatigued, and sore. This motherfucker is taking notes on shit. Why are you flexing? The whole time too.

I can't help it. Again, one of those things is with biomechanics, it taught me Mark's touching. Me too. Biomechanics taught me how to really flex like my lats and stuff because i'm taking all these different factors of my like anatomy and everything and

you know the physics of resistance all into account it's like oh i didn't even know i had a rear delt you know now that i know how to fucking you know sure do shit um and then again with like sissy squats you know like holy shit dude my quads are on fire. They have been on fire during regular squats too. But one of those things is a lot less weight and the other one's a lot more weight. It's a compound movement. So you can stay being a little weak bitch, but have big quads. Yes. So is there a problem with like, because from what I understand, muscles don't really necessarily

understand what's going on. They just are told like, oh, we got to move this shin bone this way. Yes. So it doesn't know that like, oh, you have two plates on your back versus you're just, you weigh 180 pounds and you're doing a bitch ass sissy squat. Right. Which I love by the way. They're my favorite.

I fucking love them. Is there an issue with like not moving that much weight? Like if the muscles are still tired, fatigued and sore, like is there an issue with like not moving that much weight like if the muscles are still tired fatigued and sore like is there a problem there good question so two answer two part answer to that one is you make a very excellent point that like the sensation the feeling part actually corroborates the biomechanical part like if doug bernoli says hey do sissy squats like this and i promise your quads will get torched if you did sissy squats like you said your quads didn't feel shit, you'd be like,

the fuck up out of here, bro. But it actually does torture quads. You're like, ah, we have the biomechanics side and we have the experience side. If they align, you know you're on to some shit. You know you're on the right stuff. But as far as if you're missing anything, so generally speaking, body systems that are unstable fail to generate their maximum amount of force that they can. So if you try to squat

standing on ice, that'd be kind of a cool, like, Lion King on ice, like powerlifting on ice. Bigger, faster, stronger on ice. Someone on TikTok actually did a squat on a thing of, like,

a big thing of ice somewhere in Alaska. That's some TikTok shit. That's the kind of shit like ice breaks and you fucking die, but it's on TikTok. So it was worth it. That'd be tough. It went viral. The least sad headline you could hear is TikTok influencer dies. You're like, maxed scroll. Amazing. I'm kidding.

I'm kidding, right? I'm kidding. You can't put too much force into it, otherwise you'll break the ice. Exactly. I was too strong for that ice, bro. That's why I'm dead. So if you put too much force into it. Otherwise, you'll break the ice. Exactly. I was too strong for that ice, bro. That's why I'm dead. So if you try to squat on ice, then your body will detect that you're unstable. And parts of your quads that your brain activates, it's like the nerve and the muscles, parts of your muscles that it innervates, that it connects to. It's called a motor unit. It won't activate the biggest, gnarliest, strongest motor units, the ones that grow the most when you train them. It'll activate

a bunch of them, but not all the super tip top, super growth responsive ones, because they get saved only for when you're really close to failure with a weight of super fucking heavy. And when you're stable enough to really just fucking push like crazy. So sissy squats can get you an absolutely great quad workout, but they'll probably leave some of your quads underdeveloped because having a full heel and toe on the platform, hack squat, leg press, Smith machine squat, regular squat, will probably get you to access and tap into and stimulate those super biggest, fastest motor units

that get you the most growth just a little bit better than sissy squats. So if you're training to just be regular jacks, you don't want to be some kind of freak or some shit like that. If you're in a rush, if you've had enough of this bullshit your whole life, your spine isn't fucking powder, and you're like, fuck that, then sissy squats are amazing. But if I had someone come up to me and say, can I get maximum quad development doing sissy squats? Even better example. Someone said, listen, I'm like taking second and third at nationals and they say my quads are too small just by a bit. But I like sissy squats.

I'd be like, uh-huh. Uh, have you met Mr. Regular Stable Squat or Light Presser Hack Squat? And they're like, yeah, I don't know. Fuck that. Shit is hard. And then it would be like, you have to do that shit. So, yes, largely it works, but I think there is something

a little bit missing, which is totally fine. We're not all trying to do the optimal thing all the fucking time. And there is no one exercise that's optimal anyway. But yes, CC squats are missing something

because your quads don't know what's going on, but their ability to produce force is smaller in an unstable environment. And CC squats are by definition less stable because you're on your fucking tippy toes doing this shit i'm not that athletic so as soon as i get on my tippy toes i start to fall there's another jewish joke there somewhere that was extremely well said um yeah because like when i am doing so i do i'm on a slant board um so i am you know fairly stable but I am more on my toes. But that's like kind of like a squat.

So is your heel on the slant board? Yes. And I'm holding a cable. So it's a cable sissy squat, technically, if we want to put a fucking term on it. Right out of Doug's book. Yes, exactly. That's where I learned it from. There you go.

Like personally, like he was here and he showed me. What else did he show you when he was here? He did change in front of me. So that was pretty cool. He's fucking jacked. I don't know how old he is, but he's fucking jacked. I don't care how old he is. Some of those old guys, they wear jockstrap.

I found that in Howard. That's what you used to use. I found that in Howard. That's what athletes did. For some reason, I'm like, why is that guy wearing a jockstrap? So real talk, this is how out of the loop I am. What does that have for? Movies, they were like, jockstrap. They made that joke. I'm like, what the fuck is a jockstrap so real talk this is this is how out of the loop i am anytime there was like what does that have for movies like they were like a jockstrap they made that joke i'm like what the fuck is a jockstrap it's like a place where your your dick hides or something i guess

so what the fuck happened to underwear what is a jockstrap doing to you that pause actually what is a jockstrap now like only mark knows because he's like fucking 100 but it's like it's like assless though why was it always that yeah wait are we really going to debate that clearly the merits are there just turn around well a jockstrap would normally hold like a cup but like i've seen like old powerlifting guys they change and i'm like why in sema looked up the jockstrap to try to learn shit i think he knows knows less now than he did and he's so excited i just don't get why you're why anybody is wearing this because it's got a little pocket for it's hot i know but then like it's hot like your ass cheeks are out see that's what i mean i never understood that part of it that's like yeah like yeah that's when

you're like i'm into sports like oh sports that's fun you guys get to wear that stuff like that's not why i'm in sports and it's like in in baseball like where it's like you're always fucking around like it was always the most prevalent there my just like dudes walking around and fucking my ideal place on this but why aren't you wearing regular underwear too that's what i mean i don't get it like it kills to wear that thing if you get your ass to hang out and it looks like a little bit sort of snm look why would you want to wear regular underwear? My ideal place on this earth is in a man's locker room just being there. You know, just the smells, the sights.

And without jock straps, it would be like a fucking boring as shit. It's like going to a business meeting. If I'm not seeing ass cheek, I'm out. That's true. That's true. Bye. No ass cheeks. No fun. Business meetings with ass cheeks? Well, business meetings are boring. I'm saying there's business and there's fun.

If there's no ass cheeks, then I'm at a fucking business. I might as well be at a business. So maybe we have a business meeting and we wear jock straps. Now no one's getting anything done at that point. But I want to quickly add in about the sissy squat that Andrew's mentioning. The sissy squat's an interesting movement because it's a movement that not many— For sissies. Must be acknowledged.

Not many people do it but when you start to do it it's a movement that if you do it consistently you'll progress pretty quickly like like you'll reach you'll for a lot of people who've come from a background of maybe doing squats and a lot of bigger movements you'll be able to do the stack fairly soon you know and it's like where's the progress from there if you're sufficiently strong sissy squats will no longer be a viable option for you. My grip would go before anything else would happen. Yeah. Or I would just cantilever forward and fall.

Yeah. But something like a properly positioned hack squat still lets you push through the heels and the toes. And at gee whiz angle wise, the bottom part, your degree of knee flexion is basically the same as it is in sissy squat. Yeah. But it's more stable. I'm telling you. They knew what they were doing when they invented the hack squat. What about the torturous

thing of the sissy squat where you hackenschmidt? John Hackenschmidt. What about the torturous thing of the sissy squat where you put your feet in those things and you squat down? What's that one? You put your feet in that

little stable metal thing. Oh, like an actual sissy squat. Oh, yes. Those are cool. Those fucking suck. Try doing that with a 45 pound plate.

You're going to cry. Honestly, those are the shit. I have one made by Arsenal Strength in my little RP gym that we have. And they'll fuck you

right into your ass. Which if you have a jockstrap on which is really i think why the jockstrap exists yeah i'm not trying to take your underwear off in the locker room other guys will see us you're starting to make a good point i'm gonna get it there it is this fucking thing would do a viral video go around a while ago about some guy doing something and he fucked himself up. Yeah, and his knee just went. Oh, wow.

You remember that? No, I don't want to fucking remember that. Yeah, that shit was. Those injury videos, man, honestly, like I'm good with like blood and shit. But if I see one, especially when you like to hear the snap. Or like the skinnier person on like a leg press and they like flamingo their feet, their knees the wrong way. Yeah, no thanks. I get a lot of shit for that because myself,

Jared, Charlie, and all of us at Team Full Rom, we do full lockouts when it feels fine. And every time we do it, there's 18 fucking trillion 15-year-olds like,

you don't want to do that, bro. My favorite is like, they're like, trust me, bro. I'm like, trust you, motherfucker. You don't even have an Instagram profile picture.

Who am I trusting? Here we go. Zero followers, zero likes, zero posts. I'm going, trust you, motherfucker. You don't even have an Instagram profile picture. Who am I trusting? Here we go. Zero followers, zero likes, zero posts. I'm going to trust you. Sounds good. I'm curious about this, man. We had Brad Schoenfeld on, and he came on and talked about – He was here or here?

Oh, no. We had him on Zoom. We had him on Zoom. And we started talking about aspects of like the mind-muscle connection. And then I asked him something, but he mentioned how as an individual gets more experience in training and they get better mind muscle connection over time they might actually be able to get away with utilizing lesser volumes while still being able to make progress because their mind muscle connection is better i want to ask how does that work because i've noticed that for myself like

with the like i can do lighter loads the lot of movements that I used to in the past do heavier loads with, get sore, great stimulus, great progression, and I'm not having to work with this heavy of load. Sure. How does that work for people so they can understand? Because most people just want to just keep working with heavier and heavier and heavier weight. But that might bite you in the ass at some point. Sure. I think there are two elements to it. One is by having a higher mind muscle connection and practicing that.

It's nothing like you get from the first time someone teaches you, you're like, I don't know, it feels like fucking the same. I'm actually weaker. Fuck this. You practice connecting with your muscle and all of a sudden you may be able to preferentially recruit that muscle to help that movement earlier. Because for example, like if you're doing, let say, a skull crusher or something, there's quite a bit of chest involvement, shoulder involvement, tricep involvement.

If you don't have a good mind-muscle connection, you can end up using a lot of chest and shoulder to propel the movement and someone's like, hey, how are your triceps? Good. I felt something. But if you really feel it out, a lot of times the fraction of the total force produced by the movement that your triceps are doing is higher because you're activating them volitionally more than you would. And then you just get more high quality work because they're on more of the time. The second way that happens is a good mind muscle connection can subtly influence your

technique so that you use better technique. So for example, if you're really connected to your pecs and you know when they're on, if you bench and your shoulder blades are out like this, you're like, yeah, okay, I can feel my pecs and you know when they're on if you bench and your shoulder blades are out like this you're like yeah okay i can feel my pecs but let's say one day you slightly let your scapulae drop back and now you get the stretch like holy shit and you look it up and then after a while you're arching and tracking your power lifter and it destroys your fucking pecs every time and someone would be like well do you know like who's that biomechanically better you're like i don't fucking know all i can tell you is when i do it this way my pecs are on fire and if you have no mind muscle

connection that whole like i feel my pecs working properly that's not even a thing you can say because someone could be like how you're you imagine like someone does a world record squat and they walk off the platform you're like how'd your quads feel they're like what i don't what i don't know yeah i got the fucking squat that's all i give a shit about but uh you know if you can actually feel the pecs working and better technique than mind muscle connection is a really cool tool especially if you know actually feel the pecs working in better technique, then mind-muscle connection is a really cool tool, especially if you know the technique decently to start with. Having a mind-muscle connection can reinforce where that good technique groove is. It's like if you're driving a race car or some shit and, yeah, you can see the road.

But every time you get off the track a little, the bumper strip thing does that. You're like, oop, too far. Yeah. And that's what Mind Muscle Connection can help you do in training if you sort of know how to read the sounds of the prairie or whatever. A lot of bodybuilding stuff, we were talking about how maybe some bodybuilders aren't the smartest maybe to follow all the way through on a lot of the different things that they do. But I always find it really interesting.

Can I open this one? Yeah, absolutely. I always find it interesting that so many things seem to go back to bodybuilding. Somebody talks about a diet and they're like, oh, you can do this diet. You can do that diet. You can do a keto diet or you can do if it fits your macros. But ultimately when people are trying to get in shape, it comes down to you got to kind of follow a bodybuilding style diet when someone's trying to get like shredded.

And same thing with stuff in the gym. You know, somebody might say, oh, I like doing kettlebell. I like doing full body. I like doing these things. But again, it kind of seems like if you're trying for hypertrophy and you're trying to be well built and you're trying to maximize your time in doing that, then kettlebell snatches and some of these movements, while they might have a lot of utility, they might be great movements, they might kind of overload the whole body.

You're hearing more people kind of get into full body workouts and things of that nature. But if you're trying to be jacked, I think a lot of times it starts to narrate the information back to bodybuilding. That's super well put. I completely agree. And I'll add something on if it's okay.

Absolutely. No. Next subject. I think a lot of people are interested in having their physique look a certain way. Yeah. And they say a lot of things that are sometimes also true that they have as goals. Like I want to be more athletic, et cetera. I want to have fun.

And sometimes they say things like that that are not true at all. And they actually just want a really nice body. So, you know, if you had some kind of magic pill that just gave you a shredded let's let's set a standard here fellas brad pitt and fight club the ultimate physique to ever walk the earth flex wheeler never heard of him brad pitt 155 pounds cigarette addict do you guys know that's the thing like the brad pitt fight club body like, I want to look like that. Like, no, you don't. Heroin's a hell of a drug, fellas. JK.

If you could have a magic pill that just gave you an amazing body, a lot of people would be like, yeah, the gym. Fuck that. Because that's really what they want. And if you have a lifting technique for them that helps them maximize how their body looks, a lot of the, what they said about how strong they wanted to get or whatever turns out to be maybe not as true as they said before, they just really want to look good naked. Oh, there it is. So they really just want to look good naked. And how do you end up doing that? Who's the best, awkward way to say it, who are the people that have made the most serious attempt to look a certain way naked in the world? Bodybuilders. And they're gonna they're gonna know a lot of stuff because at the end of the day you can say well i just do crossfit or i just do kettlebells but like yeah you kind of want to look fucking legit and then whatever way you do crossfit and kettlebells maybe can be

modified or supplemented by some bodybuilding stuff including some dieting from bodybuilding and then you get to looking like you actually wanted to look. That's like, you know, RP, the whole company we have or whatever. That's one of our big philosophies is meeting people where they are and being honest with them. Like, do you want to look better? They're like, yes. Like, sweet. Here's a program and here's how to change it, et cetera. We're not trying to be like, you're going to have health and strength and don't worry about how you look.

Like, no, I know you're worried about how you look, but we can help with that shit. So I think a lot of that stuff comes back with bodybuilding being effective because at the end of the day people can say like well i'm just into kettlebells i don't care about how i look please sure you do and when you look great mark thank you yeah as strange to just say on tv um cable this is cable access television when it comes to some like general bodybuilding principles what do those look like when we're talking about like you know how to hypertrophy a muscle what's the rep and set and exercise amount scheme ish sure so basically specificity is king and you want to make sure that the exercise you're doing are for the muscles that you want to grow

you would think this is a totally obvious but people are like, fuck, just do sets of 20 in the squat and your whole body grows. Like, right, except for not your upper body. They're like, no, man, it grows too. You're like, word up. Not that much based on your squat. The fuck does that work? And then you look at Olympic weightlifters and they don't do bench press and you're like,

yes, they have small pecs. No surprise. So first specificity, and then you have to get into overload of how do we challenge the muscles. Basically you have to take muscles and load them. Something like a five RM all the way to a 30 RM seems to be the most effective loading range. You move through a decent range of motion.

We'll say mostly full range of motion and you do enough sets that it is a challenge. And then when you have done enough sets and you go home and you spend a couple of days recovering, when you are recovered again, you go back and you re-stimulate that way. And if you say, okay, I only do two or three sets for my back per session.

Maybe you can do your back every day or every other day. If you do eight to 10 sets, maybe it's twice a week or something. Stimulate with heavy loading close to failure for exercises that train the target muscle until it is a la tired

as the French say. I speak fluent French, by the way. Can you guys tell? Yeah. I know other French words like Paris. That's Paris, by the way.

And j'ai beaucoup. Oh, whatever that meant. Yeah. My French isn't that good. Yeah. What was that? What did you say? Don't worry about it.

You wouldn't understand. I wouldn't because I don't speak French. It's quite a no-no. Whoa. Okay, Nigerian, good at everything person. There's always a Nigerian. Yeah, seriously. All my Frenchmen, you know what I just said.

Fucked up, man. Everything you think you're good at, there's always a Nigerian person that's good at it. And he plays. He's like an NFL O-line. Fuck this. And so they realized I was just saying gibberish. Anyway, let's continue.

That was pure gibberish. Maybe you're so smart that you just made up the French language independently. You're like, oh, I can derive linguistic principles on the fly. If somebody had to do it, it'd be a Nigerian guy. Anyway, drop that word. So in any case, you train close to failure because it challenges the musculature and you train with multiple sets of 5 to 30 repetitions in exercises that seem to target your muscles well and leave your joints the fuck alone to the extent that you'd like them to be

left alone you do that in a session rest session paradigm when you hit the shit you recover how do you know if you're recovered first of all you probably shouldn't be sore anymore and also you should be able to perform at or above standard so if you typically hack squat let's say 400 for sets of 10 and you're like man i don't know if my legs are recovered time to find out warm up do a set of 10 if you're like oh fuck that was no problem you're recovered at least as strong as you used to be maybe a little stronger but if you want to train legs let's say you were training legs monday thursday you used to be, maybe a little stronger. But if you want to train legs, let's say you were training legs Monday, Thursday, you switched to Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but you didn't switch anything else. You come in to train legs on Wednesday and you are weaker than you used to be.

And the question is, how are you supposed to progressively overload if you are sequentially weaker every time you show up? The answer is either you did too much in that session or you didn't give yourself enough time to rest, which also opens up like these bodybuilding principles open up a huge plethora of ways in which you could be successful by doing different things. Someone could say, well, I like to train my legs

three times a week with four sets each time. And someone could say, well, I do six each time, but I do it twice a week. There is no wrong answer there. And a lot of individual variation mapped over that says that there's tons of right answers. And so as long as the principles are not violated, the super general ones,

like are you recovered before you train? Are you stimulating the muscle effectively? If you're doing those things, the way in which they get done could be quite different. And that way searching for a program that's exactly this program, that's the best program, is already a fucking stupid search.

It's like searching the optimal way to get from San Francisco to Sacramento. Well, like, what are the traffic conditions like? Is there, like, a cow dead in the road or whatever kind of farm shit you motherfuckers have out here? Three to four sets, three to four exercises-ish. So there's actually landmarks for how many sets. There are no landmarks for how many exercises.

So it generally seems to be that anywhere between three and 12 sets per session per muscle is something like optimal. But if you're new to an exercise, it's probably like two or three sets. Just imagine like doing hack squats for the first time and someone's like, we're going to do six sets and after two sets you can't walk. You're like, what more are we trying to achieve

here? And the answer is any more, just more damage and it's less growth. So when you, a new variation or a very good one, set two to three sets. And then after a while you get used to it, you need more sets and it's less growth. So when you, a new variation or a very good one, set two to three sets. And then after a while you get used to it, you need more sets to do the same thing. All the way up to about 12 sets.

They've shown that anything north of 12 to 15 sets per muscle in one session, what happens is you get so tired towards the end of that, that your muscles are no longer recruiting themselves. Your brain can't recruit your muscles. And that's called junk volume. Like if you started doing laterals with the 30s, set 15, you're doing them with the 5s,

you could ask us the question, okay, are the 5s really heavy enough to stimulate the fibers that I want? And the answer is, of course, fucking not. So what are they giving me? Maybe some metabolite stuff, but by then you may be so tired that you're not even getting a burn. You're just going through the motions, and that's a bad idea. So I like to think that

anyone who claims to need more than 10 sets per muscle group per session i'd like to train with them to make sure their technique doesn't suck because with good technique and proper loading and taking every set relatively close to failure holy shit you do anywhere between five and seven working sets you're most of the time fucking golden gotcha so, Oh, you did 20 sets for quads in one session. Yeah, sure. You did. You call them sets,

but they were just bullshit or easy or such terrible technique that you need more sets to do the same job, which is where partial range of motion fails. Again, you do quarter squats. You can do a bunch of sets. You're like, Oh,

your quads pumped. You're like, no, but my hips are going to die. You do some full squats, your quads come off the bone and your hips feel fine. So three to 10 sets, roughly three to 12 sets per session. And how you split that up between exercises is a bit

more of a nuanced thing. The reality is you can just do one exercise per muscle and get 95% of the growth you ever were going to get. But some exercises get stale and sometimes muscles have like distinctly different actions. So for example, your quadriceps, they can extend the knee and they can also flex the hip with just one of them. So if you have some kind of hip flexion work or work at a different angle to get the parts of your quads that don't just do knee extension, then you can do two exercises or something. Hamstrings, there's the hip hinge component and there's the knee flexion component. You can do some kind of leg curl and some kind of hip hinge,

like a stiff leg deadlift, but you don't need to do them in the same session. So like when I train hamstrings, I have two hamstring days or two leg days per week. One of them I do leg curls. The other I do like stiff leg deadlifts or good mornings or hip hinge. And then within the week,

both parts get hit and you're totally golden. That's like lifetime, permanent infinity growth. So you don't need to do 18 different exercises every time you come to the gym. Unless there's a girl you like and she's doing a machine. It looks like you're doing. And she just got there right when you finished your last set. But you're like, I'm staying for a little while. You start, you know what I'm saying, talking to her.

Yeah, man. How long have you been in the gym? She's like, at all in my life or today? And you're like, fuck, I already fucked this up. She's like, at all in my life or today? And you're like, fuck, I already fucked this up. How does somebody understand if a muscle that they're training is truly a stubborn body part? Because sometimes people will say, oh, my biceps are lagging.

And it's just like, how long have you been training? You know what I mean? It's like, do you really know if that's actually a lagging body part? When individuals train longer, they can have a better telltale sign. So how do people know if it's actually a lagging body part. When individuals train longer, they can have a better telltale sign. So how do people know if it's actually lagging? So the correct answer is you've done a really high level of due diligence to the muscle and it still hasn't responded as well as your other muscles. And then you can ask the sub-question of what is due diligence? Well, multiple years of training relatively intelligently.

So you see someone that says, my biceps are like super non-responsive, but then they're curling like this or some shit. And you're like, ah, well, you try training them. You may really like what happens. What you're doing is not training. But if someone has, you know, several years of relatively intelligent training, hard training, pushing themselves,

their rate of gains is going to be quite slow compared to other muscles. Like their pecs are way bigger, much stronger, biceps are meh. And then you can say like, yeah, my biceps are lagging, both physically as far as visual analysis. Like they fucking, they're small and everyone makes fun of you. You tell people you lift weights and they're like, oh, okay. Because your biceps are small.

It doesn't matter what else is big really. Because what do people say when you flex your muscle to do this, right? They don't like, you show them quad striations. You don't pull up at the fucking mat. Weirdo. Your soccer days are over, sir. Put your legs away. So as long as you put in the good work and then, you know, like people say like, oh, my biceps aren't responsive or they're lagging.

It's all relative. Lagging compared to what? They may grow slower than your other muscles. It's unlikely that they just stop growing after three years. It's just a slow go. And then you can say, well, you know, it's almost like a self-answering problem. Okay, problem, my biceps aren't growing.

Are you doing all the right shit to try to get them to grow? Yes. Problem, my biceps are growing. Are you doing all the right shit to get them to just keep looping back? And at the end of the day, if you keep looping back and doing the intelligent stuff and sometimes you look a bit of uh kind of more complex problem analysis where you're like okay these exercises aren't doing the shit let me try some really different ones bicep curls to where you stretch behind and stuff like that and if all that still results in slower bicep growth then you know

yeah you're probably just genetically going to have a more difficult time. That doesn't mean they're going to be small. Some muscles grow steadily and slowly, but eventually get quite large. So I wouldn't know anything about that because I've never successfully grew any muscle. Do you get any body work done, like massage therapy or anything like that?

You and I have a very different understanding of what body work means. It involves the hands, lotion, a private room, and another person. Absolutely nothing in common with massage after that. The body is touched. Ooh, the body. Parts of the body.

What's the address of this place? I'll let you know right after. You don't want too many people running there right now. We get right after a live off air. Good. I never get massages unless I'm like on vacation with my wife and then we get massages together. And then every single masseuse assumes that I am impermeable and I can't feel pain and also simultaneously want to feel something.

So they try to bash my shit in. The whole like, like, yeah, we were in Thailand and this woman climbs onto my back with begins to step on me. And I was like, you know, I can also feel pain. I know it doesn't look like it,

but I'm not into pain and it doesn't do shit for me. What do you think that pain comes from? Cause like in listening to someone like Kelly Sturette, like he is kind of a believer that you should be able to put pressure on some of these muscles, even when the muscle is pretty jacked and it shouldn't necessarily hurt. So is that like. That's like 50% of my jujitsu game gone, if that was true. Is there some deformity in the tissue for some. What the fuck are you saying to me?

Were you saying I'm deformed? Yes. Without looking at my head? You're very deformed. Yeah. Now, jujitsu is a little different. I mean, you're putting knees and elbows in certain areas. But I'm talking about if someone's digging in on your forearm, bicep.

That's what a calf slicer is. It's literally a jiu-jitsu machine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's not really a way you get used to that. Somebody can slice your shit. So with all due respect to Mr. Stratton, it is not clear to me that a resistance to tactile pain is some indicator of a healthy muscle or something like that. Maybe it's just, you got used to being massaged and now you're, you're sort of tactile pain response is smaller.

That's cool. But like, um, I've looked deeply into literature on massage and, uh, when they factor out the fact that massage is a subcomponent of a bigger category called compassionate touch it sounds exactly as sexual as it is by the way human beings like to be touched i don't have to tell you fellas that nope a lot of levels if we were closer a lot of elbow stuff so um and it turns out that's for many people very relaxing and the relaxation is like a super drug that makes everything better if you can stay more relaxed throughout the day especially if you can find time in the evening to relax if you're good night's sleep oh my god i'm unbelievable probably the way sauna works best is if you think

sauna is relaxing like a bunch of russians they get in there and they're like this is the fucking awesomest shit i fucking hate the sauna i'm like we're in a room oh nobody's wearing a jockstrap which is bullshit but actually they're usually naked at that point no i like the mystery i don't see your fucking dick i could have told you that it's like one of those it's like dude lingerie yeah yeah yeah i get it yeah exactly have like a nut hanging out but not everything yeah i wonder what the other nut looks like then you start maybe they just have a mono nut holla one night at a time mono nut they're like what's the other one look like they're like i lost it in the war Maybe they just have a mononut. Holla. One nut at a time. Mononut. They're like, what's the other one look like?

They're like, I lost it in the war. You're like, I'm so sorry. Oh, my God. You know, actually, for individuals who have had one of their nuts removed, the one nut actually gets bigger. Oh, wow. Yo. He's like, finally, I'm alone. Yeah.

Time to conquer. Yeah, it's a cyclops kind of thing. That's really sweet. That's how it works. Do you think, like, if you're in the hookup culture, when you you have just one nut, like you don't have to tell these hoes shit. When you're with them and they're like, ooh, and they grab for it, do you think there's ever a time where they – do you think they're like, okay, don't make eye contact with them because shit's going to get weird? Or do they look at you and you're like, yeah, I have one nut. Yeah, it's just one.

You'll be the 50th person to fucking ask me. Just fucking stop drawing attention to it. Anyway, where was I have one now. Yeah, it's just one. You'll be the 50th person to fucking ask me. Just fucking stop drawing attention to it. Anyway, where was I? Massage. If it relaxes you, it is an incredibly healing experience that will absolutely boost your ability to perform in sport. It'll get you better hypertrophy, et cetera, et cetera. If it is not relaxing, it is probably not negative. So when I go to the massage place with my wife, I actually tell them, like, super, super light, easy touch.

And it's often a language barrier barrier and it's difficult to communicate. And so I start being a little bitch and I go, ow, when they do a normal massage. Because to me, even a normal massage is painful as fuck. And so I tell them not to and then they just like sort of light touch and they do the oils and the rocks and that's nice. So if a massage for you, if you have some sort of medical dysfunction with your musculature, there may be a medical sport massage really hard that could maybe do something to scar tissue perhaps. That's an open question because they've done simulations of how much force it would take to actually change your scar tissue and it would be like enough force to puncture your skin by a factor of 10. There may be no massage you can get that changes the muscles at a physical level. But if it feels nice for you, if it helps you modulate pain, great.

But don't expect it to do that. And I think the number one ingredient for good massage is if it's relaxing. And if you get the same relaxation from someone rubbing your feet, rubbing your hands, rubbing anything else, your shoulders and semen, not what you thought it was. What about something different than regular massage?

There's different techniques like active release therapy. There's people that are doing stuff to fascia. I don't know what's true and what's not. I don't know if there's any evidence of any of these things. The best hypothesis so far on that stuff is it is perceptual neuromodulation. When someone touches you hard and it hurts your nervous system changes its activity to sort of move the spectrum move the line on how you

perceive pain and then all of a sudden that quad that used to hurt now you got active release on it it doesn't detect pain as much and then you're able to do your stuff and sometimes with especially old injuries and stuff the the injury is fine. The scar tissue is real strong. But your pain modulation is still fucked up. So you're still like you touch it. You're like, oh, my quad. Oh, fuck, I'm hurt.

You guys ever have clients that are like, I'm getting hurt? You're like, no, you're not. Shut the fuck up. So for them, some therapy like that may be effective. But the best candid hypothesis now is that it's neural. It's not something physically happening to your muscle tissue that's different. I don't think anybody can change your muscle tissue by just massaging it outside of doing some muscle damage. People get bruises and stuff like that.

But then that's like more like training. What's scar tissue? It's when you've made a lot of bad decisions in your life. You can't fall asleep because you just keep thinking about them. You guys remember that song Scar Tissue by the – I don't. No. Those white people that did lots of drugs. What's that band called? Nirvana, Scar Tissue, by the... I don't. No. Those white people that did lots of drugs.

What's that band called? Scar Tissue. Oh, well, there are a lot of them. Red Hot Chili Peppers. I like Red Hot Chili Peppers, actually. Apparently not enough, because you don't even know the name. I know, I know. Scar Tissue is a specific kind of tissue in the body

that is formed after an injury. And it's only evolutionarily designed to do one thing. It is not designed to function. It is designed to hold things together. And that's a great thing if you're just trying to survive and replicate for a few more years and then cash out. But if you're trying to continue to be a high-level athlete for another 10 years, scar tissue can, first of all, it doesn't generate force. And second of all, it can be generate force, and second of all, it can be positioned in such a way

that pulls at other structures uncomfortably, reduces your range of motion. It can pull at other structures and cause pain, and it can also, if it's not sort of in the right spot, that scar tissue can be a weak point that can hurt again. So there's some scar tissue that's absolutely normal, and thank fucking God we get it,

because otherwise it wouldn't recover at all, but improperly some scar tissue it's absolutely normal and thank fucking god we get it because otherwise he wouldn't recover at all but improperly positioned scar tissue too much scar tissue scar tissue interfering with stuff is something that a very good sports medicine

doctor can look into and recommend a variety of therapies to maybe get that situation a little bit sorted but it's usually not required

in normal training so something fucking has to be wrong with you like people ask me the number one, number one reason I don't get massages, my body is fucking 100% fine. I don't have chronic pain.

I'm fucking beautiful in my own skin to myself when I look in the mirror, which is often, possibly all the time. And I don't need, it's like a, to me, in order for me to go pay money, again,

I'm Jewish. Oh, that's like a thousand dollars. In order for me to get my money out of'm jewish oh that's like a thousand dollars in order for me to get my money out of continually being invested and go get a massage it has to be a good reason for me to do that yeah and if it's not a um airport massage korean massage you guys familiar with that again not a lot of massaging going on airport massage you know by the airport the places by the airport they know you're in and out real quick you're just catching that two-hour layover

but send me all the addresses. Absolutely. Every time I'll just dump them in our permanent little drop box for, yeah. Are you in that, you in that link? I think so. Excellent.

So in any case, there has to be a good reason for doing something. And that's actually another thing that while I'm on here, fuck it, I'll say ice, heat, contrast, all this other stuff.

If you can't cogently explain why you're doing it and why not doing it it'd be worse than doing it i'm curious to your logic a lot of people are like doing contrast my gosh was i getting you like you know like recovery like how i don't know and the answer is sometimes it doesn't do shit yeah um and it does have subtle nuanced effects but most of them are to temporarily improve your recovery at the expense of your ability to adapt so you're ready to play faster but you don't get as many gains from that training so all those modalities good cryotherapy heat ice etc ibuprofen the you guys ever seen the compression pants? People put them on and they like massage and shit. I've seen those.

They work. I've never used those before. Right? So what they do is like when you train your legs super fucking hard, let's say you're doing soccer practice at the super high level, and you have practice today and super light practice tomorrow and then a game, important game. Practice today was hard as fuck.

Normally your legs are like, oh, well, do some hypertrophy. Why not? And because the overload from soccer practice was super intense, you have edema. Like there's a ton of fluid in your legs and that fluid is brought in with like components of your immune system that go and fucking heal you and make you better. But it turns out they're much easier for them to heal you than to make you better. So a lot of that immune response is to actually improve. But that's like, you know, if you have a skyscraper and a thunderstorm or something and you break a window, you could say, well, let's take the time to replace how the windows even are, make them thicker.

Jesus, that's a two-week job. If you just replace the window, it's a one-day job maybe. So if you're in a situation in which you have to just be recovered, not better, at a muscular level, it's good to go in there and put on the Normatec compression pants and they actually take all that immune fluid or a lot of it and just push it right the fuck out. So it's like your body is getting to work on itself. And it's like, JK, time to go. The office building shut the lights down.

So the workers are like, we're fucking off. And then you actually feel super good. You guys know that like post tons of running or post lifting, you're tight as fuck and you feel swollen. You're like, someone's like, can you play soccer? Like I used to be able to a day ago, but I feel tight. The tightness just never happens. You wake up the next day and you feel swollen. You're like – someone's like, can you play soccer? Like I used to be able to a day ago but I feel tight. The tightness just never happens. You wake up the next day and you feel pretty fucking good. If you do that after every session of soccer, you will adapt much less.

Your legs will not get as muscular. They won't get as endurance, et cetera. But you'll be able to play real soon. So a lot of those techniques we get from people like elite soccer players after practice at like Manchester United or whatever, they walk into a fucking giant cryotherapy chamber and they do that why because they have to be fucking ready in two days to play the highest possible level but if you are a lifter and you're doing that all the time you're actually fucking your adaptation and you don't want to do that so the best thing you can do almost ever and the best thing you do to get more jacked after you're done training it's not ice heat whatever whatever it's sit the fuck down in a comfy chair and have lots of super nutritious food and relax and that's how you grow yeah

now that makes a lot of sense like for example we we use cold plunges um but i would never cold plunge after a lifting session right because you're like gonna cancel out some of the adaptations exactly you know what i mean like i'll space that out to maybe the next morning or something like that. But I have found personally, because I do so much activity, I have found like, it's weird. I'll hop into the cold plunge in the morning and maybe it's just like right

after, but I will feel, then I know feeling is relative, right? For sure. It could be valid. Yeah. But over time,

like I will like feel certain things just kind of get better fairly quickly. You know what I mean? So it's an interesting thing. It's something that you need to do. There's a time and a place for it. You can't just think that's going to be magical recovery. But I do think that there are certain benefits to some of these modalities like ice and heat. I saw it quite a bit.

I do understand, though, like it is causing extra fatigue but it is something that helps me sleep deeply and that might be worth it and and you know so that's do you like being in the sauna i i would say initially when i started sounding a few years ago it was difficult but i knew it was going to be something that i had to get used to um now i do enjoy it but it doesn't change the fact that after like 30 minutes, it's difficult. Yeah, sure. And that's what I was actually going to ask you. Do you think that, like for example, someone finds massages painful and somebody digging into their muscles painful.

Like when I started using mobility tools a few years ago, like the Supernova from Kelly Stratton, those things, it hurt rolling my hamstring on it. But I was like, okay, let me just slowly get myself used to this. Now, not like massages. It takes a lot for an individual really to be able to, I'm not trying to look for pain, but I don't feel pain when they're really digging into certain muscle groups. Different pain modulation. Because I've adapted to it. But you know, so I'm wondering, do you think it's beneficial for athletes to adapt and get used to that? Yes.

Or is it not necessary or helpful? Yes. If in attempting to train, they experience pain that interferes with their ability to train. And something like a foam roller can reduce their pain modulation such that they can train productively, assuming there's no underlying like, well, you actually should be hurt because you're quads on one fucking tendon or one little string. Yeah. If they're actually fine and it's a pain issue, which is a lot of injuries are just pain issues, if the modulation from the foam roller

can over time make that better, it's absolutely a fucking great idea. But on the other hand, there's lots of people that are like, what does the foam roller do for me? It's like, do you have a reason to use it? Like, no, then don't fucking use it. Yeah.

Okay. Or use it creatively. Insert it into yourself. Something that I find really interesting, it would be interesting to see if independently they would study heat and or cold along with just being alone with yourself for X amount of minutes. Because people are just...

With yourself and God or no God involved? With yourself and a bottle of lube and a butt plug. God's always there, by the way. If you were to do that for 10 minutes, because I think that one of the greatest things you can do is just, as you mentioned, just fucking relax. Now, a cold plunge is not relaxing when you first do it a couple times, and same with the sauna, but you do get used to it,

and it is an opportunity, and especially the cold plunge. You're not going to really be fucking around with the phone. I know that cold has a particular therapy to it but i'm just saying i wonder in comparison to like recovery over a long time yeah i i would kind of i would kind of guess that the results would be similar so i'll tell you this like all the research on massage they really can't tell compassionate touch and like sport massage apart as far as recovery like if someone who is friends with you comes over a little little bit of college hangout. And this goes with like PT as well, right?

Like there's, it just takes time for injuries to fix. So we don't know like if the TKEs I'm having you do are fixing your knee or if it was just a six weeks that passed by. Sure. And you know, there's more and less intelligent ways to get at that problem. But like if somebody comes over and just gives you a back rub, on the average, for the average person that is just as recovery promoting as someone with a white outfit on who is a massage specialist, blah, blah, blah,

unless there's a specific injury or no susceptible area they're trying to take care of, like I'm always pain – I've got too much pain in my traps, the bar really hurts, and they can really get at your traps, do the same thing that a foam roller does um so yeah there is validity to it but man it's hard to beat just relaxing and a lot of the thing about the cold plunge stuff you're not relaxed during but after there's a huge wave of relaxation because you're like oh you really appreciate the fuck out of life when you're not like in a fucking cold thing of water it's fucking that's true yeah that's true i moved from russia once i don't have to repeat that shit i love that you're not like in a fucking cold thing of water. Just fuck that. That's true. Yeah. That's true. I moved from Russia once.

I don't have to repeat that shit. I love that you're drinking my favorite zero sugar soda. A&W. It's American. That's my shit, dude. I love that. So what does your diet look like right now? It's mostly root beer.

Yeah. Same. Same, same. Dude, we're like twins. Root beer diet. Bald head. Protein bars. Yeah.

Yeah. Got some protein bars here. At this point, you just get calories in, huh? Yeah, you know. So I keep track of my macros, and I do need 4,300 calories to gain weight per day. And so mostly it comes from healthy whole foods, but if I'm on the go like I am now, I'll do protein bars and stuff like that. You're not big enough?

No one's ever big enough, sir. Although I will say, like, the last I'm on a new massing phase now. The last one I ended, I lost a significant amount of ability to, like, touch my own neck. Because my biceps grew. It's physically impossible for me to do that.

So wait, right now you're not faking it. You just literally can't touch Damn, man! Got in the head and I have to crawl to get to do that. So wait, right now you're not faking it. You just literally can't touch. Damn, man. Got my head. I'd have to crawl to get to my neck. Also on pull downs, I go up to here. My shoulders are so big now that I sort of blood choke myself on top. So I have to do slightly wide grip pull ups or pull downs because I'll do here. Oh, man, I'm like starting to pass out.

What if somebody mounted you and then they try to get your arms above your head like they physically wouldn't be able to get your arms? Well, yeah, or I would choke real fast. So it's a huge battle there. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's weird.

Being big sucks. He's choked out by his own pecs and shoulders. Like, yeah, I think he lost himself that time. I'm curious about something because I DM'd you the other day asking you a

question because there's a friend of mine. You did? But this is actually- Which account? Because I swear, straight up never saw that show. It was your new one

because I didn't even know you had a new account until recently. Then I followed the new one that I DMed the new one. But don't worry about it. You don't need to answer it now. No, no. Pause.

I will. He's going to answer. Oh, I'm just seeing this, bro. Just seeing this. Been busy. I want to say this because I don't want to name any names here because this is something

I think a lot of people can benefit from. A lot of young guys, because of what's going on on social media now, a lot of young guys are starting to hop on stuff. They're starting to do stuff based off of advice they see on people on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. You also see a lot of bodybuilders just getting themselves fucked up because of a lot of different factors. So a friend of mine who has really good genetics for bodybuilding worked with somebody in the past. And this person, because they saw that he had great genetics, they started just blasting with a bunch of shit. They didn't care about his later outcomes. It kind of messed with him a little bit.

And it was because they're like, well, let's throw the fucking kitchen sink at this kid and he'll probably grow. And it'll look like a great before and after but a lot of these compounds are if done unsafely are fucking dangerous so my question to you is if an individual is interested in getting into bodybuilding getting into the hat side of bodybuilding number one how can they make sure that they have longevity intact because this individual that was working with him said you're young you have nothing to worry about those were the exact words you have nothing to worry about here like your body will be fine since you're young you can damage yourself and not have to notice until you're 45 and you're gonna die fucking tomorrow right so how can the people how can

they make sure that longevity is if they're looking at somebody or they're getting advice from somebody how can they make sure that their, their longevity is in play? And then secondly, who are some people that on the enhanced side of things are responsible to help people out? Because there's so many, so many people who are like, Oh yeah,

I coach these people. They just throw a fuck ton of drugs at kids. Yeah. Yeah. So Broderick Chavez, team evil GSP, there's Joe Jeffrey and at the physique collective. And,

um, those are probably my top two guys for knowing shit. And they have tons of podcasts, tons of articles, tons of videos about what is called the safer use model. Like if you don't want to die, die, but you want to roll the dice a little bit, here's how you're going to do it. And they have dosage ranges, compounds to probably take, compounds to probably not take unless you really need to, how to use ancillary drugs, how not to use them. Like anti-estrusions are really bad for your health, so don't use them either at all or almost ever, et cetera. What kind of blood work to get, what to look at in your blood work, what kind of adjustments to make if things are not where they're supposed to be. So that all is out there. One really great proponent of it is John Jewett.

He's an IFB pro, super sharp guy, actually has a master's degree in nutrition and he has like a J3 university or whatever. Super cheap. You sign up and you get to learn all the stuff in a really slow, steady way. And you get to learn all this stuff in a really slow, steady way. And so if you just collect, you know, take a few days for yourself to read all these guys' shit, the next time you want to coach and you're like, hey, what would a plan look like for me? And he's like, we start with a base of trend and then we sprinkle D-ball powder into the trend. You inject that too. You're going to be like, oh, shit, this is really different. And probably I also know why it's wrong because these guys don't say, hey, just do it this way.

These guys say here is what the goal is here's what the limiting factors are and here's how this attends to making your goals as good as possible minimizing limiting factors so if you look at a cycle design different drugs that violate like three of those principles with references as to why that's a bad idea then you're like oh fuck this guy's just fucking wrong yeah because they're absolutely and seeming to your point there is a lot, there are a lot of coaches in pro bodybuilding who want their guys to do as well as possible under them now. And that means they could be rushing them into a lot of gear. And there's guys taking unbelievable amounts. And, of course, the retort is like, well, let's just fucking what it takes.

Well, maybe. But maybe try the safer use model and see if you can get pretty fucking jacked. Uh, so like I've off season never been on more than 1.4 grams of gear, which like I'm five, six and two 50 and I have like veins in my abs right now. Like that's pretty neat. You know,

like there's guys who took way more shit and got much smaller than me. How did I do it? Well, I gave it a chance. Could I have just gone into psychodoses? Sure. I would have never handled it mentally because my anxiety would be too high. But if I could, I would just be like, well, I guess that's what it takes.

And I could be a little bit bigger and a little bit leaner. But try the stuff that's good for your health. Try taking time to grow. And if that works and you get super jacked, then at some point you may have to make the choice of, ooh, I'm going to have to do some shit that's not good. Or not make that choice and just be super jacked, then at some point you may have to make the choice of, ooh, I'm going to have to do some shit that's not good or not make that choice and just be super jacked and happy about it without ever having to take crazy risks. So try that easy road, good road for your health first and then at some point you can make marginal tradeoffs of like, well, I took third place. I need to take first.

Trend gets put in. It gets increased, blah, blah. trend gets put in it gets increased blah blah but if you start with 900 migs of trend you may you may have achieved almost all of that with much less gear and with your health as well so and another thing is like um get a second opinion in general have somebody else look at some shit and also realize that shit takes time uh some guys want to be amazing right now. And that's just not, it's not in the cards. And it's not even in the cards for people who take boatloads of gear. Like, you'll see guys take a ton of gear and they're actually a bit more jacked year after year.

Seven years later, they're the most jacked. Like, okay, so even taking all the fucking gear in the world didn't make them maximally jacked after one year. So what the fuck am I doing with it? Yeah. And if you're younger, you also have more time in the sport, more time to get situated, more time to grow. Another thing is maybe you have like some semblance of a hazy idea of what your life

could look like after the sport. You know, at some point I'll turn 42 and I'll no longer be bodybuilding. And like maybe that's it for my life. But maybe like that's when a lot of good stuff in life begins is you have some money. Your family situation is more stable. And you can do a lot of shit.

And you're smarter than you've ever been. And you know a lot about the world, et cetera. You have a good paying job. And if at that point when you're in your early 40s, all that shit you did in the gear catches up to you and you fucking croak, fuck. But if when you were 27, know pretty sharp people around you could have seen that shit coming so when you start on your enhanced journey and say i want to get fucking jacked think about okay great that'll be a cool thing to do for a couple of decades what are you going to do after yeah if the answer is i won't be healthy enough to do anything maybe you fucking

roll the dice wrong maybe you should have thought that shit through but a lot of people don't think shit through they're just like fucking i need to be the best bodybuilder ever now. Word up. You will pay for that shit. There's so much more stuff to get to, but we're going to let you get on out of here. Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Sure thing. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Please like today's

episode on YouTube. Drop us a comment down below and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already and follow the podcast at MB Power Project on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, all over the place my instagram tiktok and twitter is at i am andrew z and sema where you at go join the discord the links in the description that chat and sema ending on instagram youtube and sema yin yang on tiktok and twitter twitter dr mike where can people find you i was going to be impressed that fast you said that and you fucked it up i did uh i'm on instagram that's no fun dr mike israel i'm also on tiktok um oh yeah it's the same shit as youtube we just repost it youtube that's where to find me youtube renaissance periodization if you

can't spell that you're like everyone else so just type in some batshit shitty version of my last name spelling dr mike muscle growth hypertrophy type it into the old youtube search bar you get channel and subscribe to the channel. And then you will start receiving pictures of my genitals very shortly in the mail. We actually send them in regular mail. We put an envelope of pictures. We don't do email. Is it harder to like track that way or like?

Okay. Sorry. It's easy to track. Which is a more genuine experience. Because for years we've all been receiving like dick pics on our phones and it's like, yeah, but if you get an envelope

of physical pictures, I mean, that's a serious, somebody cares about you. I was surprised it was a sticker. That's what really knocked my socks off.

I was like, wow, that's an extra special touch. You want to put the pictures in places where you like seeing them. Yeah, that's great. Good question.

Go hands free. I got to ask this before we go. The tattoo on the left shoulder, when did you get that and what did it stem from? Oh, there's also a tattoo on the right shoulder. Oh, is that? Yeah. I thought it was an S for smelly, right? So that's a tattoo.

As soon as I saw the Bigger, Stronger, Faster movie, I was like, that's it. I have a new hero. I knew it. A new future father figure. God damn it. Thank you for asking that question. Yeah. It was in my early 20s.

Okay. They are both references to books by the author Ayn Rand. And because if I had a religion, the closest thing to that would be capitalism. Okay. Yes. And some of your viewers will get triggered at that. But I will remind them I am infinitely more capable of understanding that system and defending it than they are of attacking it. I'm just kidding.

I'm not kidding at all. So, voila. I guess that's controversial. It's not controversial. It's not that controversial. What's the book? So, this one is, it's actually the cover art for Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal. Okay.

cover art for capitalism the unknown ideal okay um and then um this one is kind of intersects a bunch of her books to be completely honest but um atlas shrugged would be the direct reference but uh the idea is like it's not just the tattoos aren't for the books it's for what the books represent and really it's not anything mystical it's, if you want to be a good person, you should be capable at doing things. You should be self-reliant. And you should never hurt other people and try to produce as much valuable content as possible. Oh, we need the government to help us.

Sometimes. But I would say only marginally and as little as possible. We're not smart enough. Well, I mean, some of us are. Definitely not. Damn. I need the government to do everything for me. I don't even make my own sticker pictures

that I sent to people to put on their refrigerators. That was made in China. I don't care where it's made. Can you imagine just being like a regular Chinese person who jobs makes these people naked and ugly? This guy's definitely Jewish. Mr. Winky's not that long. That's why the joke is funny.

He grows though. I tell people that. I sure's not that long. That's why the joke is funny. He grows though. I tell people that. I sure do say that. He's being shy again today. Are you a shore or a grower? You're like, ha ha. Anyway. Neither.

Thank you so much for your time today. Of course. Really appreciate it. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for having me, guys. It's an honor. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness.

Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.