Mark Bell's Power Project - Stan Efferding's Best Muscle Building and Nutrition Tips

Starting point is 00:00:00 Here's the thing as we go back to bodybuilding. Everything works, nothing works forever. You build up too much fatigue on a particular movement, then you're going to start overreaching and have a decline in performance or whatever. You definitely want to not just recover, but supercompensate and actually build muscle tissue and strength over time.

Starting point is 00:00:15 Also very quickly dispel the myth that there is even such a thing as a vegan diet. Millions and millions and millions of animals die for growing vegetables as well. I don't want to say vegetables are bad. I'm cautious about the whole good food, bad food conversation, because I don't want people to demonize certain things

Starting point is 00:00:34 that may be unnecessary and give them more options. Red meat is the only superfood, not kale or pomegranate or acai berry or however you pronounce that stuff it's the only one where you can not only survive but thrive there's not a reference to dr mitt launer's research with respect to environment and you can also very quickly dispel the myth that there is even such a thing as a vegan diet millions and millions and millions of animals die for growing vegetables as well so So those are difficult challenges.

Starting point is 00:01:06 People present to me, I have vegan clients, and they present to me if they have health problems, sometimes I have to try and navigate just how far they're willing to go to remedy those health problems, which I think are caused by the deficiency in the diet. And we have to have those discussions. Look, you're not saving lives, okay?

Starting point is 00:01:28 Rabbits and foxes and birds, they're animals too. And you're not saving the environment. And we look at arable land and methane production and with respect to Mitlauner's research. So there have been times I've engaged into those conversations, but only with people who are kind of willing to take a broader look at it. Folks who are dogmatic or religious about their choice and our virtue signaling.

Starting point is 00:01:54 It's really not worth the cost of the voice. I talk about that. Your thoughts here with the carbs in regards to carbs. Yeah. with the carbs in regards to carbs. Yeah, you know, I talked about this, I think, first on Mike Mutzel's podcast where I discussed the fact that, you know, you can get to the top of the Empire State Building

Starting point is 00:02:15 taking the stairs, but the elevator's probably a little faster, a little better idea. And then subsequently that on Paul Saladino's podcast, and I kind of went over the muscle physiology as we know it now, as compared to the way we used to think it. Again, as Sean said, specifically for that 1% of the population that's looking for optimum performance, anaerobic training in particular, I think that the carbohydrates have demonstrated to provide

Starting point is 00:02:46 the benefit of enabling you to get one more rep or do one more set, maybe give you a little more stamina and endurance in the gym for an anaerobic workout. And we see that there seems to be an equivalent benefit from getting fat adapted in terms of endurance. We're hard, it's hard, we's hard pressed to see the advantage of carbohydrates there, except for maybe in that given event over probably 90 minutes with every 15-minute periodic intake of carbs, salt, and water, as the ISSN recommends. But with respect to muscle physiology for that 1% of the population, the way that Brad Schoenfeld describes it in his book, Hypertrophy, what we see now is that we used

Starting point is 00:03:31 to think the carbohydrates were stored in the muscle as one thing. And they would do that by grinding up the muscle and looking at the carbohydrate glycogen depletion for any given workout. And they said, well, you're only depleting 40% your glycogen. So how could it be that big a deal? Well, apparently carbohydrates are stored in different locations. The sarcoplasm is one in particular that it seems to be the last filled and the first depleted. And in the muscle, the sarcoplasm, those carbohydrates seem to trigger the calcium channel that is responsible for firing. That's the tropamine, tropomyosin channel that allows for the cross bridging for the actinomyosin contractions. So for those who study muscle physiology, that'll be very familiar and probably somewhat rudimentary but uh that's depleted first

Starting point is 00:04:25 and so that might just like creatine might give you in the creatine phosphate system one more rep by renewing that that first 10 seconds the first 30 seconds these having these an abundance of carbohydrates available might help there's also another component to that and i think that's partly that some hyper some of hypertrophy isn't just the muscle fiber it's the fluid and in the sarcoplasm as well and some of the hypertrophy benefits that are derived probably as much as 20% potentially could be from the the fluid expansion and the compression of the cells provides a hypertrophy benefit,

Starting point is 00:05:05 which you can obtain from more carbs, which obviously hold three parts water and then sodium, so there could be a muscle breakdown benefit. It's small, and it might help with adding one more rep, five more pounds, one more set throughout the workout, and the cumulative effect of that over time. This wouldn't be anything you'd see immediately, although in powerlifting, we do find that the fuller we are, we used to intentionally try and get ourselves as loaded as possible right before a meet with some carb and

Starting point is 00:05:35 salt loading, particularly after weigh-ins, would help with some of that compressive force with the muscles. So there's a benefit there. I also found that when you look at most of the diet literature, we talked about how important the carnivore diet can be or an elimination diet might be for initial intervention for things like diabetes, for obesity, digestion issues, we talked about the FODMAP menu and a whole host of other disorders that people present, and a whole host of other disorders that people present, often I see present on your website as well. It seems that people, like we said, six out of seven people go on a diet, lose weight.

Starting point is 00:06:17 The vast majority of them gain it back within a certain period of time, one to three years, up to probably 90%. It seems like when they go off the diet, they tend to migrate back towards a balance of proteins, fats, and carbs. We also see pretty good literature to suggest that like a 40% carbohydrate... I hate to put a number on it. I will say that 30% or north of protein seems to be the most beneficial macronutrient that everybody should include.

Starting point is 00:06:42 Where you put fats and carbs, as we saw in the Diet FITS trial out of Stanford, a one-year trial on over 600 people, that where they put carbs and fats didn't seem to matter in terms of weight loss or insulin output. And we also see that in terms of these high glycemic versus low glycemic carbs. If you're in control for calories and protein, if you eat high glycemic or low glycemic carbs, it doesn't seem to affect weight loss. And so it's really, like you mentioned, it's really a choice. What's your preference? What can you sustain over time? And how do you feel on the diet? If you were to take the foods that are the most beneficial to humans, as far as things that have the most nutrients, we might call them superfoods, right? And we see a lot of these like kale or pomegranates, like the next superfood. Um, but they don't seem to ever give

Starting point is 00:07:30 us the results that we're looking for. If you had to rank a couple of foods, like maybe your, your top three foods that contain the most nutrients, it would be the most beneficial to the human being. What would they be? Gotcha. Four years ago, I did a video in Iceland with Hafthor Bjornsson. It's got like 7 million views now. It's probably the most comprehensive two-hour video on the vertical diet. And I said in there that red meat

Starting point is 00:07:56 is the only superfood, not kale or pomegranate or acai berry or however you pronounce that stuff. It's the only one where you can not only survive but thrive on. And I said it's really the foundation for the ultimate elimination diet. And there's a lot of folks out there who have significant autoimmune disorders or digestive distress, whether it's IBS or IBD or Crohn's or any of those digestive problems, who need an elimination diet and would go to a clinical registered dietician and get an elimination

Starting point is 00:08:33 diet as the prescription for remedying significant digestive distress. Sean deals with a lot of these folks, of course, and I think most famously Jordan Peterson and his daughter. And both of them said, look, I'm not recommending this for anybody else. I had some very significant autoimmune issues. And that would be the ultimate elimination diet. The least amount of food in terms of total food items that provides you the most bioavailable, micronutrient-dense, diverse source of food. And I put three things together if I'm going to start an elimination diet. And oftentimes, again, my co-author is an RDN PhD

Starting point is 00:09:15 who is a clinical nutritionist, and we often get clients who need this kind of intervention. And we go straight for the carnivore diet as the initial intervention. And it's red meat, whole eggs, and salmon. And even with the whole eggs, sometimes it might be the yolk and not even the white, because the avid and the whites might cause an allergy response that the yolks would not. And the salmon just for the omega-3s, because there's 200 times the amount of omega-3 in

Starting point is 00:09:37 salmon than there is in beef. But that would be my foundation. That would be the three foods I would start with initially, at least, until we could see if we could get some relief from the symptoms and then reintroduce. Beef. Power Project family, it is grilling season. Now, I really don't know much about grilling since I use an air fryer at home. My boy Andrew does though. So since it's grilling season, it's time to get your hands on some P. Monty's beef. We love those glizzies. We love that beef. Andrew, tell them more about it. Yeah, guys. So like you mentioned, they do have those glizzies.

Starting point is 00:10:08 Hey, yo! For those that don't know, that's just a hot dog, but it's an all-beef hot dog, and it's amazing. My favorite thing to smoke is their prime rib, though. And, you know, it's grilling season, so dust off those grills, dust off those smokers, and head over to cpbeef.com and at checkout, enter promo code POWER to save 25% off your order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Get your glizzy goblet on. Talking to Matt Wenning last week, he's big on that too.

Starting point is 00:10:34 Even what you said, kind of sprinkling in everything. Like everything. You can utilize every style that we just went over. Because I've tried the, you know, Dorian Yates style training. I still don't think I did it correct. Cause I just, I just wasn't, I felt so fatigued. Like my CNS, everything, it was like, I felt like I was powerlifting all over again, but worse. I'm just like, my body hurts, everything hurts. And then I just felt like I wasn't making progress. Um, but like John Meadows, who you brought up, i'm a big fan of him um he talked about i know fuad

Starting point is 00:11:06 abiyad i'm not sure if i said his name right but he was talking about john programmed him like two or two or three like super hard days and followed it with like pump days or like a super hard week and then followed it with like a pump week which nothing was taken to absolute failure just kind of push blood in there so i'm like the more people i talk to the more i'm like all right there's not one set way to really do anything yeah just kind of what works well a couple things on that note uh kind of way louis simmons trained powerlifters he would have a you know a max effort day and then he would have a speed day and so more fatigue less fatigue uh when i said that you want to work in all rep ranges maybe if you train legs twice that week you're only doing a heavy set of five on one of

Starting point is 00:11:51 those two workouts okay as opposed to both yeah and then you get more recovery for the heavy set of five for you know the subsequent workout when I was power lifting I would squat heavy one week deadlift heavy the next because they're pretty similar movements really so i was squatting heavy twice a month and people would would perceive that to be not sufficient but here's the thing as we go back to bodybuilding everything works nothing works forever you build up too much fatigue on a particular movement then you're going to start overreaching and have a decline in performance or whatever you know you definitely want to start overreaching and have a decline in performance or whatever.

Starting point is 00:12:28 You definitely want to not just recover, but super compensate and actually build muscle tissue and strength over time. So we'll do waves, just like Louie and Paul. We'll do waves of exercises. So I might pick, let's say, a hack squat. And that'll be my blast set. I'll do a warm-up on something, whether it's the aerodyne bike or some leg extensions or whatever but i'm going to dump everything into hack squat and that's probably the only one i'm

Starting point is 00:12:48 going to measure okay it's the only one doesn't mean anything because every every track week to week track week to week everything i do after that i'm pre-fatigued so you know right whatever extra major exercise you prioritize in the workout your performance is going to be best on that and everything else is going to be which is why we kind of like going from the blast exercise to a pump because i'm not really counting i'm i'm just mostly thinking about muscle muscle getting as close to muscle failure as i can and volumizing as much as i can right so now i'll jump on that hack squat and i'll progress it week week week week week uh maybe i start out two sets of eight reps with five plates on the side. And then the next week I do a set of eight reps with five plates on a side. And then I do a set of eight reps. I add a

Starting point is 00:13:33 sixth plate to one side, you know, or whatever, quarter each, whatever you want to do. And if I can't get the eighth rep, then next week I'll come back and try and do that again. As soon as I can get those two sets, now I'm adding weight maybe to the front end. And where I can just barely get eight reps on the first set, I know I'm not going to, maybe only six on the second set. Right. I stay there for a while until I get eight and eight. Okay.

Starting point is 00:13:54 And then I go up and wait again, either on the second set first, before I go, you know, add weight to the first set. But you can see there's some progression over time. Right. So I get two sets of eight reps, and that's my blast set at some state at point or depending on what your recoverability is maybe you do a third set there but i gotta be honest with you just like like dorian's high intensity you get past two sets this is what i say for people who like you to do four sets of four

Starting point is 00:14:17 different exercises for 16 sets like on chest you're saving yourself there's a lot of junk volume there and there's diminishing returns as we mentioned so i pick two exercises you generally three sets of each or if i do a brief warm-up i really dump my i could build an entire workout around those two sets everything else is just kind of volumizing potentially i say it's six sets for the day yeah but the real intensity i might only be able to handle two or three of those Okay before I you know have to have to do something. It's Maybe a little lighter or maybe focused on repetitions and pump. Yeah Now as soon as I stopped being able to progress that And that's gonna happen. It might happen in five weeks might happen in six weeks might happen in seven weeks

Starting point is 00:15:01 I'm gonna milk that as long as I can but as soon as I realize I'm not going anywhere with this, I pick a different exercise. And I wave that one. Whether it's a leg press or whether it's a... What's that one that everybody hates? The humbler? The pendulum squat. Oh, my God.

Starting point is 00:15:17 Yeah, that one will embarrass you. But same thing. You build that one exercise. I don't need to... I'll see people write down every set, every rep. But same thing, you build that one exercise. I'll see people write down every set, every rep. I was just going to ask you, how do you feel about people, every single thing they do in the gym, they're trying to progress? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:15:40 I'm worried about the primary exercise because I'm not pre-fatigued, and am I growing that? And when I drop off off on that I'm picking a new exercise I'm putting that one to the side in power lifting uh for instance I know I'm bouncing back and forth but that's what I did throughout my career uh if I want to progress the deadlift I can't deadlift every week you'll crush yourself and you just start getting weaker and so uh much like the Westside I would pick a couple of exercises that would carry over to increase my deadlift that were less fatiguing. The box squat, a camber bar, good morning.

Starting point is 00:16:12 Those would be my two. You still do those? I still do those and I'll build those up. And I might only deadlift it once every four or five weeks. If I do it any more often, it's going to be for repetitions just for the skill component. But I'm even cautious about what skill i'm really developing with a lighter weight because strength is specific and you need to be kind of 85 or north of that to really get the the skill component that you need for power lifting so i'm not a big fan of 50 loads loads and multiple repetitions. I'd rather do cluster sets with an 85% load than rep out until I'm near failure on a 50% load.

Starting point is 00:16:55 I just don't think it's very specific. Maybe too far off on the powerlifting. But again, I picked a couple of low fatigue movements that I can train every single week without draining my CNS or you know just over fatigue and CNS is an interesting thing you talk to Dr. Pat Davidson a PhD exercise phys and he's like it's really load it's really load which is why it's kind of nice if you can find an exercise like a leg press and put your feet in and down and maximize the knee angle you're you're using 60 percent of what you might be capable of should you have your feet high and wide right and it's just the load doesn't even matter which muscles are working at that point it's just the total gross poundage

Starting point is 00:17:37 that dictates your level of fatigue whether you want to call it cns whatever they don't really focus on that necessarily they just focus on how tired are you and what's your doms and can you recover and super compensate and so anywhere i can bring load down i benefit from a number of ways less fatigue less potential injury exposure uh which sounds contrary to the guy who grew up as a power lifter and every you know every week i went to the gym i just try and max out yeah yeah but that that's today we're supposed to be smarter than that uh and and us old timers you know we complain because people aren't lifting hard enough you know and hard is relative you know it doesn't always necessarily mean load your body doesn't know load you know hard is relative

Starting point is 00:18:19 how close to failure are you can you find a particular exercise especially in bodybuilding where you're exposing? That muscle and not recruiting three or four muscles to help you do more weight It might not necessarily benefit your weaknesses and tire you out. Does anybody need any supplements? I don't think so vitamin D is hard to get from food. And if you're in the absence of if you're in a Some place that's that's not very sunny, Seattle, where you just moved, that area where I lived for a long, long time, Alaska, you see this even in Russian and European countries. They have a lower vitamin D. There were some interventions in the UK where they supplemented vitamin D and it actually helped with insulin sensitivity, which was a problem. They had some actually children that were suffering from insulin

Starting point is 00:19:11 resistance. So in those instances where your vitamin D level is below, say, 30, I think is the measure of subclinical, vitamin D might be something that you would want to supplement. Magnesium is also hard to get from food. That might be something you want to supplement. We see pretty good results from magnesium in terms of vitamin D absorption, sleep benefit. You get past that and it's hard to say that you need supplements that you can't get from food. And one of the things I'm concerned about with respect to supplements, we saw this in theus pauling era with the mega dosing especially of antioxidants and you know vitamins a and e is that it actually was a toxicity created there was actually a decrease in in an increase in all-cause mortality and and i think it was the was it the physician study where

Starting point is 00:19:59 they they studied like 40 000 physicians and they put them on multivitamins it did not improve their health outcomes long-term. Although the author of the study said he still takes a multivitamin just because why not? What he got to lose. So not a big fan of supplements, particularly not megadosing in the absence of a deficiency that could be remedied from dietary interventions, absence of a deficiency that could be remedied from dietary interventions, mainly because like Dr. Baker mentioned, that food has so many more compounds that we're not even aware of the importance of them. And so getting a diverse diet with micro-nutrient dense, highly bioavailable,

Starting point is 00:20:37 easy to digest foods, and having sufficient hydrochloric acid. All those things I think would be better contributors than, than taking a supplement. And that's, you know, not to say that, that some people don't get some performance benefits from supplements, uh, such as creatine or, uh, there's a few that, that can provide you some performance benefit, but that's a small percentage of the population with that, that specific goal. Like, what is the main reason do you think, like you think like why like what are people looking at when they're concerned about cholesterol? Is it still is it still attached to heart disease? Yeah, but it's kind of hard because people don't distinguish between what raises cholesterol in the bloodstream and from cholesterol that you eat.

Starting point is 00:21:24 what raises cholesterol in the bloodstream and from cholesterol that you eat. So we could take a dive into that today to try and help people understand. And I'll keep it real simple, but I'll refer to the people who are experts in the industry. And there's also been, I say this without insulting anybody, but the low-carb community has probably the best way to describe it is kind of been LDL denialists for many years. But I'm seeing a gradual transition. And they tend to deflect from LDL as a causal factor and then look at all the other benefits

Starting point is 00:22:04 that they realize from their diet that lower their overall cardiovascular disease risk. And so tend to kind of dismiss LDL in light of the bigger picture. But I think it's still important to focus on. So we should dive into it. Low carb people are maybe dismissive because they're like, well, don't worry about it because you're not eating sugar and it's not going to be of any negative consequence. But it still might be, huh? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:22:27 I mean, and there's an overall risk that's – it's many things that go into cardiovascular disease risk, including obviously your – I wouldn't say BMI, but your body fat percentage. Yes. your exercise, your sleep, your total dietary pattern, blood markers that we can talk about today, triglycerides, type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance, all those things obviously influence your hazard ratio for mortality risk. And so if you can improve all of those things and your total risk comes down, it's easy to say, well, maybe this isn't as important, but it's also important. Why wouldn't we address it if it's possible? And we can talk about the ways to do that that still allow you to be low carb. And that, you know, that would be something that I think would allow people to get the benefits of their low carb diet,

Starting point is 00:23:25 all of the things that they've realized, which we can talk about some of the benefits are, but at the same time reduce their long term cardiovascular disease risk. It's still the number one killer, so we should pay attention to it. PowerProject family, your normal shoes are making you weak. This is why I partner with Vivo Barefoot Shoes because they have a wide toe box, they're flat and they're flexible. So with every single step you're taking, if you're taking a 10 minute walk outside

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Starting point is 00:24:06 Yes, that's over at vivo barefoot.com slash power project. And you guys will receive 15% off your order automatically. Again, vivo barefoot.com slash power project links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. We did have Gabrielle on. She did mention how, and he, I think he made a video using her clip, but she did mention how animal protein is superior to plant protein. So is that statement, is that false or is it superior in some ways?

Starting point is 00:24:32 Yeah, it depends on how you measure it in terms of the number of amino acids that it provides. But you look at, and Gabrielle Lyons, fantastic. She studied under Don Lehman. Don Lehman has himself said when the same thing that Simon just said is that – Simon says. The same thing that Simon says is – Don says that if you get enough protein, 20, probably 30 percent more than if say you needed 150 grams of protein to satisfy your requirements for the day, maybe you'd need to get 180 grams on a vegan diet. And that would be excluding, say, soy protein or a rice blend, because those would be kind of on an even par in terms of gram for gram, in terms of their ability to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. So you eat a little bit more simply because the absorption rate. Bioavailability is the word you hear all the time.

Starting point is 00:25:28 A little bit less. It doesn't seem to be a big problem. They seem to be able to meet those needs. Again, compliance is probably one of my biggest challenges to do a healthy vegan diet. You can do a shitty vegan diet. You can eat a lot of ultra processed foods. And so to do a healthy vegan diet. You can do a shitty vegan diet. You can eat a lot of ultra processed foods. And so to do a healthy vegan diet, I also have a little harder time like with guys that are trying to gain weight, who may have some digestive distress on top of that, depending on how much fiber generally is what the challenge is. And you titrate that over time, be very careful to try to build that up. But ultimately but ultimately becomes really difficult to eat the volume of food necessary just to maintain fuel workouts and grow that's another challenge that I have and so I probably have to end up throwing a lot

Starting point is 00:26:17 of white rice at those guys you know the foundation obviously is going to be your protein it's going to be your your-rich fruits and vegetables, et cetera. And then at some point, it's just I got to get the calories in order to meet my demands. How about sodium? I've been very curious about that because pre-jiu-jitsu, I'll take – so like right when I wake up, I take some sodium. So I take some electrolytes, so 1,000 milligrams. When I wake up, I take some sodium. So I take some electrolytes, a thousand milligrams, and then I'll take another shaker cup full of another thousand milligrams.

Starting point is 00:26:50 And then post-workout, I'll have one of these big guys right here and it'll have two in it. So I'm, what is that? Four already? Yeah. I've gotten up to seven and I felt pretty damn good. And then I've had like six this week and then I would eat dinner and I'd have to run to the bathroom and I knew right away what was happening, right? Cause these

Starting point is 00:27:10 have magnesium in it. Um, I'm curious, uh, what are your thoughts and advice for a sodium intake for athletes, specifically jujitsu athletes? Yeah. Well, I'm glad you specified athletes. Cause when I talked about sodium previously, the medical community went ape shit, uh, well, I'm glad you specified athletes because when I talked about sodium previously, the medical community went apeshit as though I was making recommendations for sedentary, hypertensive, geriatric people. And they had some issue with the timing. Generally, well, always, athletes will need more sodium than the general population. It kind of depends on diet as well. I also mentioned that if you're not eating a lot of fast food or packaged food that you'll want to supplement the sodium back in. So I said salt your meals.

Starting point is 00:27:56 I'm not salting a McDonald's or a can of potato chips, but I will salt whole foods that you make at home, buy from the grocery store. Generally speaking, on average, you lose at least two grams of sodium per hour of training from sweat. Huge variability there. It's genetically determined. You might use up to, Lane Norton burns up five grams of sodium per hour of training and he trains two hours a day. So he's burned up 10 grams of sodium.

Starting point is 00:28:29 We might have talked about this last year, to be honest with you because i went through and i i spoke quite specifically about the fact that lane norton had made a very similar video subsequent to mine about how he oftentimes will use up to 10 grams of sodium on particular athletes because that matches their demand we like to weigh our athletes before and after training and for every this is consistent with the International Society of Sportsman nutritionist recommendations but we weigh them before and after training and for every kilo of battery two pounds of weight that they lose during training we replace that with about a 1.5 liters of water and then sodium and carbs with that dr. Sandra got, who's a PhD in thermal regulation and hydration, runs the Heat Institute and does most of the sweat testing on the NFL and hockey

Starting point is 00:29:14 players. I just spoke to her a few weeks ago. Matter of fact, she's been helpful for me over the years getting sweat test patches for a number of the athletes that I've worked with so she can actually determine what their actual sweat rate is. That can be important at a high level for some people. She's got a product called a Levelin and it's somewhere between 900 and 1500 milligrams of sodium that she'll add per liter of water post-workout based on what the individual's sweat rate was or how much they sweat out, along with carbohydrates for that. It helps with absorption. It helps replace some of the carbs that you burn. So she puts it all together into one drink. Now, that's a good recommendation along with salting your meals,

Starting point is 00:30:02 especially immediately post-workout if you're training a second bout that day. That's when it becomes really important to get that post-workout window satisfied. I like to put carbs in a post-workout window anyhow because they're absorbed much quicker and stored as glycogen and replenish your system. You don't necessarily have to, but they seem to minimize muscle breakdown so that can be helpful with that now pre-workout intra-workout I had always recommended say 500 milligrams per liter of water pre-workout it seems that some people may as you mentioned running to the bathroom some people with 500 milligrams per liter pre-workout maybe too much salt and they might end up running to the bathroom some people who tried to overdose the recommendations

Starting point is 00:30:53 you know one is good ten is better ended up you'll end up throwing up or either throwing up or having diarrhea it's not a more is better scenario the recommendation is let's put it in percentages, is somewhere between 1% and 2% sodium. So that's going to be about 100 or 200 milligrams of sodium per liter of water and about a 3% glucose solution. So it's about 30 grams of carbs per liter of water. That's the easiest to absorb. It sets it up so that your gut is able to absorb the salt and water and carbs together. They work collectively to transport the water as a vehicle. Somewhere in that range, so you're looking at half of an LMNT, wait, a quarter of an LMNT per liter

Starting point is 00:31:42 of water, because there's about a thousand milligrams of sodium in an LMNT. Or a liquid IV is only 500 milligrams, probably a half liquid IV per liter of water would be an example. And then 30 grams of dextrose. You put too much sugar in, like a lot of the Gatorades, et cetera, it can cause, stimulate the kidneys to release water. You end up overpeeing. It's what happened at my meet. So it it happened at Larry wheels meet when I worked with him some years later I was downing was it Pedialyte or Gatorade I think Gatorade really high in sugar not necessarily nearly as high in salt it's made for taste more than anything and too high in sugar too low in salt I started pissing

Starting point is 00:32:22 every five minutes and ended up dehydrating myself and cramping and that's when Mark and Jesse jumped in with nun tablets and got me rehydrated so there's definitely a benefit I I get extraordinary feedback that people who start to implement this have much more stamina endurance their performance improves there may be a lot of people that don't come to training sufficiently hydrated. And this protocol, it may just be the hydration more than the salt that are drinking sufficient water. But at those doses, it's very well tolerated.

Starting point is 00:32:58 Larger athletes can probably tolerate more and may need more. I'm always cautious about the salt concentration. That's the biggest problem with foods, packaged foods that are high in salt don't have any moisture, any water with them. So you're getting a lot of salt with no water. The salt concentration, the amount of salt diluted in the amount of water, can a really high salt intake with not enough fluid can have an adverse effect on the endothelial lining. That's a secondary concern. Or even potentially increase some cancers of the stomach, which we see in Japanese populations

Starting point is 00:33:40 who eat a ton of fish and tend to salt a lot of their food. They can, so cautious. not a more is better scenario. Use it as part of an athletic program responsibly, probably the bulk of it. Throughout training, I might also mention you want to try and sip. You're probably better off getting eight ounces every 20 minutes rather than gulping a huge amount of it. Especially if your bout exceeds an hour and a half. If it's a really long bout of training, you will and should have some weight loss during training. You're not trying to stave off all the weight loss.

Starting point is 00:34:22 You don't want to be over consuming water during whatever exercise uh football practice soccer etc some of those sessions go well over an hour in pads lots of sweating you're better off drinking something 15 to 20 minutes in a in a six to eight ounce portion okay yeah i was actually surprised at the amount that you recommended for intra workout because like i you know I'll have days where I'm feeling a little, you know, tired from the morning workouts and stuff. And then, so I'll pound a bunch of electrolytes and I'm like, Oh, I feel better. Same thing. If I feel good off of four, then I'm going to have five and six and maybe I'll have two before or during my workout or whatever. But thankfully I never did that because I'm like, I just need to slow down. so the thought of taking even less of what I'm

Starting point is 00:35:09 already taking like I'm gonna definitely give that a shot because like I said I feel great like afterwards when I when I do kind of ramp up the electrolytes and the sodium but then when I do a little like probably like the one or two too many that's when it cleans me right out and like i said what was interesting though is like i did seven i was like oh my god like maybe i really do need this much and then kind of like what you're saying with the noon tablets earlier it's like well shit like this is gonna cost a lot but uh what i'm getting at is i did find my threshold and then even when i tapered back i still kind of had the same stomach reaction to it so that's

Starting point is 00:35:44 why i was like i gotta ask stan worth what the heck we need to do with sodium because – More isn't better. Yeah. And the nude tablets tasted great but I started feeling guilty about my $100 a month habit along with everything else that I do. I'm kind of a cheapskate at heart. So I ended up getting on Amazon and buying sodium chloride tablets. There's no taste benefit to them.

Starting point is 00:36:03 One of the interesting things that Sandra Goddik talks about is that she likes to have uh it should taste good and be cold she creates these slushy machines especially like for sports if it's hot out um the that can help cool the core um but for kids in particular who don't have a very good uh for adults she says you don't drink when you're thirsty but kids don't have a very good, uh, for adults, she says, you know, drink when you're thirsty, but kids don't have a very good, uh, sense of that and they can get dehydrated. Um, so she says it should be cold and taste good. They'll be more likely to drink more of it more often. Okay. And then what if you are peeing a lot? Uh, then I would think it was too much sugar. That would, that would cause you to start peeing too much. Okay. Cause I I'm on my, so this is going to be my second one of the day,

Starting point is 00:36:47 and I feel like I'm still – I could handle like another two. Yeah. Because I'm just – like I said, this morning was a really, really good session, like head to toe dripping in sweat. So that's why I was trying to ramp up a little bit more today. But, again, I don't want to have that GI issue later on in the day. Yeah. But there are some days where I'll have like one

Starting point is 00:37:05 and I'm like running to the bathroom to go pee and nothing's changed. You know, my diet's pretty much the same every single day. Just maybe I guess I hydrated more the day previously and now my body's like we're good. Yeah. You kind of, after a while you get a little better at not having to run and pee all the time.

Starting point is 00:37:22 Your body gets used to holding on to that water. There is an adjustment phase. It was interesting. One of your lifters yesterday came up to me and he was talking about, Stan, I get up like twice a night and pee. Is that a problem? I'm like, well, what's going on right now? A lot of times, you know, bodybuilders, powerlifters, strongmen, football players, et cetera,

Starting point is 00:37:38 they have to eat a lot of food and drink a lot of water throughout the day. And I know the conventional advice would be to you know cut off your water intake after 4 or 5 p.m. I know as an athlete you don't necessarily want to do that you know you want to stay hydrated and keep hydrated and you want to go to bed thirsty and so I said really the only alternative is the story I told you back when flex leader was making me drink two gallons of water a day which I think was too much and i i had this little uh this little uh uh what do you call those little plastic uh kitchen aid uh garbage cans next to my bed so i wouldn't have to get up take my c-pap off walk to the bathroom turn on the light what i would just do the whole

Starting point is 00:38:18 i'm telling you brother i'm telling you the time you get up two times a night, take off your CPAP, walk to the bathroom, turn on the light, it's so much easier. You just had a catheter installed, man. No, I'm not doing that. But my 92-year-old pops, again, I mentioned he lives with me. He has one of those because he can't get up on his walker in the middle of the night and walk all the way to the bathroom. So he's got one of those little plastic hospital bed type of things hanging there so he can go to the bathroom. And then when my 9-year-old son recently broke his leg, same kind of thing. He couldn't get up and walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night,

Starting point is 00:38:52 and I certainly didn't want to have to get up and carry him there every night. So he ended up with one of those little plastic bottles. And so that's what I told your lifter last night. I said, brother, you get one of them little plastic bottles, your problem's solved. I said, you hardly even have to turn over, depending. I mean, you could probably just lay right where you're at and hang it over into the can yeah no that's the answer yeah amazing power project family if you're trying to increase your muscle mass if you're trying to lose body

Starting point is 00:39:23 fat if you're trying to stick to nutrition plan if you're trying to get your muscle mass, if you're trying to lose body fat, if you're trying to stick to a nutrition plan, if you're trying to get fit, pretty much if there's anything you're trying to do for your health, we know that sleep is the biggest determining factor to help you get from point A to point B. That's why we've been sleeping on 8C mattresses for probably more than two years now. And the main reason is the technology behind the Pod Pro. Now, the Pod Pro is like the Tesla of beds. It will change its temperature based off of how you're sleeping during the night. And if you have a partner that's sleeping on the other side, they can have their own temperature settings. We all sleep hot here and I used to wake up in a puddle of my own sweat. That doesn't happen anymore because of the Eight Sleep mattress.

Starting point is 00:40:00 And I've been getting the best sleep of my life. Now, if you don't want to replace your mattress, you can just get the Pod Pro cover, and you can put that over your current mattress to get all the benefits of Eight Sleep. But if you also need to replace your old nasty mattress, you can get the Pod Pro cover and the Eight Sleep mattress. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, you guys got to head over to eightsleep.com slash powerproject, and you guys will automatically receive $150 off of your order. Again, eightsleep.com slash power project links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. But you don't want to lose your intensity. So maybe you got to cut back on volume. Okay. Because once you start lightening

Starting point is 00:40:35 loads, you're going to lose muscle. But if you can keep your intensity and hopefully as much strength as possible, I want to lose as little strength as possible going into a show everybody's talking about ronnie's you know oh he lifted those weeks weight six weeks before the olympia that's when he was his strongest yeah if he had ever lifted any heavier weight than that six months or eight months before the olympia he'd have shown those videos yeah he was his strongest six weeks before the olympia right you know probably had a the largest cycle yeah uh but that that's the point you want to maintain strength as long as you can going into a show because that is a pretty good measure that's what we do with

Starting point is 00:41:20 nadia as well so i don't want you to lose any strength now does that mean you have to go from six sets to four? I'd rather you do that. Than to do six sets of a lighter weight, I'd rather you do four sets of the heavier weight. Okay, that's interesting. To me, that's the stimulus that matters. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:41:35 Mechanical tension, intensity, are more important than volume. Okay, okay. Before I ask you a couple questions on that Olympia competitor you were you coach um i just wanted to ask about the concentric portion of movements because i hear milos too i listened to a lot of podcasts with him and he talked about you know training people like regan grimes and he sometimes is huge on ascent down and up being super slow and controlled but then you know

Starting point is 00:42:07 other people like mike isertel are more so like just the eccentric and the transition of the weight and then explode john meadows was like that too he was kind of some movements especially he would super fast up and as long as you control the eccentric, you're good. Perfect. Perfect explanation. That's what the research suggests as well. I said under, what do we call that pace? Two to five seconds. As long as it's under control. As long as you're not completely relaxing. As long as you're controlling it.

Starting point is 00:42:35 One, two or one, two, three. I don't think anywhere in two to five seconds is any different. Because the intensity is going to be the driver of that. If you do one more rep because you move the weight a little bit faster, so you have less time under tension, pretty equivocal. And then on the way up though, it should still be explosive always. Yeah. Because eventually that speed is going to slow down as you get, you know, the closer you get to, to momentary failure,

Starting point is 00:43:02 then you've got maximal muscle fiber recruitment. And then you notice that some of those muscle fibers start to drop off. Right. And that's when you go from this to this. You know, once the speed slows down, you're pretty good idea. You've gotten maximum muscle fiber recruitment. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Sweet. Thank you. And then going into the diet, sweet thank you and then going into the diet vertical diet um i've tried it multiple times i did it all through high school still eat monster mash on my plan i'm on today and um i just think it's interesting how i don't want to say you go against everything a typical meathead bodybuilding coach does but you know i know you're not a huge fan of like egg whites or just plain chicken and stuff like that things that are more nutrient dense so red meats whole eggs even things like like everything basically everything on your on your plan has a purpose

Starting point is 00:43:56 and you can you can explain why it's going to do this this or that that's why i'm super interested in it so i guess it's like even when you're coaching an Olympia competitor is it there's no put like do you ever have them eat like typical bodybuilding foods like chicken or egg whites or do you stick to the same principles just manipulate the calories calories are king macros I want to get about a gram of protein per pound of body weight. Generally speaking, you want to have sufficient fats so that you're not compromising hormones, sleep or fat-soluble vitamin absorption. I would say that's at a minimum 15% of total calories.

Starting point is 00:44:41 So I usually start at 30% of total calories or thereabouts 25% of total calories is fats. The rest are carbs. Those fuel performance. They're very important for that dynamic, you know, that lifting stimulus, okay? All reduce fats and keep the carbs in because again, the carbs fueling performance and performance being the primary driver of lean mass retention or gain There's some good evidence that you can gain muscle in a right in the cut

Starting point is 00:45:15 If you're sufficiently fueled and if you know slept trained Adequately with enough intensity you can actually gain muscle in a calorie deficit even as an experienced lifter even if it's modest particularly if there's performance enhancing drugs involved it's not a time to sleep on on the potential to gain muscle and so that's why we've learned long ago you don't come in and start doing cable crossovers for sets of 20 with light weights to rip up yeah that was pretty obvious calories your king macros I just talked you through what the macros are now we get into micronutrients and if you over restrict things like egg whites tilapia and broccoli with a scoop of peanut

Starting point is 00:46:01 butter which is I just gave you a pretty typical guru bikini girl diet. Then we see a whole host of things happening. At a time at which your body is demanding, you're demanding so much of your body. You're utilizing so many more micronutrients than, say, even a sedentary person. You have a much higher demand, particularly for women.

Starting point is 00:46:24 Iron, of course, is very commonly a deficiency. That's why the red meat's in there. Now you can get, like with Nadia, we started at New York Steak and then we went to a top sirloin. Then we went to a, you know, a grass-fed sirloin tip. And those are just leaner and leaner meats. Eventually you get to a Piedmontese beef, you know, that's got less than two grams of fat in it. But it has all the iron and it has the creatine and the carnitine and the zinc and the B12 and to a much greater degree as a percentage than say a chicken breast. Um, so even, even equating for calories, now I'm getting a more micronutrient dense product.

Starting point is 00:46:59 And if you want to take a, a multivitamin, take a multivitamin, but there's something to be said for the constitution of food and these cofactors, the way they work together that aid in absorption and prevent deficiencies and surpluses that might otherwise, like when you supplement vitamin E and vitamin A, we found know it was actually counterproductive and so I like to get them from foods especially with women you keep the yolk in there because it's got the biotin that's for skin hair and nails and the choline is great for the liver now I might decrease the total fat load by doing an egg egg white blend but I would never completely take the yolk out because it's value in terms of micronutrients. Um, potassium is another huge one for energy for, uh, and so I would stick with, you know,

Starting point is 00:47:51 the potato as twice the potassium of a banana fruit. Um, a lot of these guru diet coaches will tell women to take fruit out. They'll tell them to take red meat out. They'll tell them to take dairy out, um, where they get in a thousand milligrams of calcium from, you know know and this is a woman who's training for a show and a significant calorie deficit and one of the things we know in particular about women is they often suffer from the female triad and one of those things is osteoporosis uh along with uh you know amenorrhea cessation of the menstrual period um and uh iron deficiency and oftentimes now a suppression of of thyroid function which is very common with weight loss anyhow um so you're gonna need to get sufficient sleep iodine you know another micronutrient that i purposely put in there either whether it's iodized salt

Starting point is 00:48:36 i know people yeah they love to talk about the the micronutrients in in pink salt but you'd need to consume a hell of a lot of pink salt to get any meaningful micronutrient value from that that you could get in spades from all the foods that i just mentioned that's not the source that you'd go to i put in cranberry juice just because it's very rich in in iodine but if calories become a concern at some point then back to iodized salt stimulate the thyroid now we don't got you know hair falling out which is very common in these pre-contest diets. So yeah, I'm pretty specific about what I recommend. And then the rest of it's really digestion. I, I have steered towards introducing people towards a low FODMAP menu so they can see which foods

Starting point is 00:49:21 cause them, uh, it might be less likely to cause them bloating. It's not a prescription for everyone, but for those people with IBS, it's very individualistic. It's just my experience that whether bulking or in a significant calorie deficit pre-contest, that lots of high FODMAP foods can cause a significant amount of distention and gastric distress and bloating and that kind of thing. And so those are, you know, short-term interventions to accomplish a particular goal.

Starting point is 00:49:57 But generally speaking, you know, I don't like to demonize any foods in particular. I got to be careful going full Monty on just animal products. I don't want to demonize foods. Best diets are the ones you'll follow. There's plenty of those foods that people tolerate very well. Again, I said it's, even with respect to the FODMAP menu, it's individualistic. Not everybody has these digestive issues. It's dose dependent. A certain amount of training is hormetic. Too much could certainly be injurious. Same thing could be true of any vegetable fruit grain etc and some of that may be actually beneficial in small amounts we talk about sulforaphanes and broccoli etc etc i just don't like the idea of mega dosing and i think that a lot of the studies

Starting point is 00:50:38 suggest that there's more of a positive benefit to fruit than vegetables uh when you look at some of the epidemiology anyhow uh some cautious how it it's prepared matters and it can be cumulative in nature and so i am i am cautious because that you know is how it affects me but with respect to and we know so very little about this i hate to bring it up but the gut microbiome and its potential need for fiber, prebiotics in particular, so that it doesn't start eating away at your own mucosal layer. And so I got to be cautious and suggest that fiber in one form or another, and that's why in the vertical diet I do recommend both probiotics and prebiotics. And I put in low FODMAP prebiotics, such as potato and carrots in

Starting point is 00:51:30 particular, and some spinach and those kinds of things, and yogurt for probiotics and calcium. But I'm just cautious. I can't go full Paul Saladino here. And God love you, Paul. I love Paul. I've been on his show. Uh, but sometimes some claims that are made that might be beneficial for, as I was mentioning earlier, a small portion of the population who has these, uh, uh, issues. And I'm going to be very careful what term you use. You can't say dysbiosis or, uh, leaky gut because it's not scientific terms necessarily, but if people do have celiac disease, IBS, Crohn's, you know, any of those types of problems, you've got to go with a, you know, kind of a low residue diet that has less adverse impact on the large colon.

Starting point is 00:52:19 So I'm just, I think there's enough evidence out there, even if it's epidemiological in nature and probably is more about the healthy user bias that these populations who tend to eat sufficient vegetables. It also tends to offset any potential downside of eating too much meat. It's a primarily meat-based diet with sufficient vegetables as opposed to a vegetable-based diet. We see equivalent outcomes in healthy populations when you get rid of the healthy user bias. I think that was the Whole Foods shoppers who you would presume to be generally healthy individuals, exercised more, didn't smoke, weighed less, where they weighed in in terms of meat consumption versus vegetable consumption, they had equivalent health outcomes. And so I'm just cautious.

Starting point is 00:53:06 I don't want to say vegetables are bad. I'm cautious about the whole good food, bad food conversation because I don't want people to demonize certain things that may be unnecessary and give them more options.

Mark Bell's Power Project - Stan Efferding's Best Muscle Building and Nutrition Tips

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