Modern Wisdom - #173 - What Is The Fitness Menopause?

Episode Date: May 21, 2020

Today I am joined by Jonny & Yusef from PropaneFitness. The Fitness Menopause is a concept we've been talking about for a while. It describes the transition from bro (or chick) lifting to a more rounded fitness regime as you leave your 20's or 30's behind and start to fully indulge your true exercising passions. Expect to learn why you might lowkey hate the exercise routine you're following, the story behind each of our journeys through TFM, why you have to serve your time doing brolifting first, why girls who are dancers should change their training immediately, and much more... Sponsor: Shop Eleiko’s full range at https://www.shop.eleiko.com (enter code MW15 for 15% off everything) Extra Stuff: Check out Jonny & Yusef's site - https://propanefitness.com/ Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello my friends, welcome back to Modern Wisdom. Today I am joined by Johnny and you say from propanefitness.com and we are discussing the fitness menopause. This is a concept which I came up with about two or three years ago when I started doing CrossFit and I realized that I'd never really liked bodybuilding all that much. I'd just kind of fallen into it and this is a common theme I'm seeing with many bros and what's a female bro, bro lifter, like a chick lifter, brunnet, anyway, chicks, chick lifters, bros and chicks

that pivot from doing a classic bodybuilding style split, push pull legs or five part body split. And then they get towards the 20s or 30s and they think, oh, hang on a second, I never actually really enjoyed this. And they start to do yoga or fighting or Brazilian jujitsu or crossfit or pilates or any one of a million other athletic pursuits.

And the goal of today is to try and red pill you that your training regime might not be quite what you want out of an exercise routine. If very well, maybe you may love bodybuilding, you may absolutely adore doing push-pull legs, but hopefully today will give you some food for thought and potentially open your eyes to a world of exercise which you haven't considered before. But for now, it's time for the fitness menopause with Johnny and Yusuf. And joined by Johnny and you, Seth from propanefitness.com. Hello. So good to see you. You did some boxing. I was just enjoying the effect.

You liked it. You liked it. You liked it. I liked it. Today we are talking about the fitness menopause. It's something that we've dropped on podcasts for the last couple of years and we keep getting questions about it. And I was recently on a camera conversations podcast and Red Pill, a bunch of his audience,

by teaching them what the fitness menopause is. So we thought we'd have a good discussion about it today. I'll start off, I'll try and give a broad definition so everyone knows what we're talking about and then we'll we'll take it from there. So fitness menopause was something that I'd identified within myself toward my late 20s when I'd been doing bro liftinglift-in fitness stuff, bodybuilding for a while, and realized, as I became chronically aware of my own mortality as I approached 30, realized that I was getting out of breath,

going up a big hill, and I was kind of a little bit bored of just doing, you know, chest Mondays and chest Tuesdays and chest Wednesdays and curls and stuff like that, and training purely for aesthetics, and I was just disenchanted. I kind of lost my love with training. Certainly lost the motivation to do it without really grinding myself to get out of bed

and go to the gym. So then just started trying to do different things. Went into Thai boxing and normal boxing, started doing yoga, then got into CrossFit. And the fitness menopause describes a period, I think, in a lot of fitness people's lives, who perhaps have just entered into the world of training by doing bodybuilding or brostial lifting from just the age of teens or early 20s or whatever, and then never tried anything else. And as they approach their late 20s, they think, oh, hang on, this maybe isn't fulfilling me in quite the way that I thought.

Only think about that as a definition. You reckon that's about right? I mean, that's about right. It applies to a very specific subsection of people. And are we millennials? Are we technically 84 till 96? Okay, so I think in that case then, millennials tend to fall into this bracket quite well

because there was this surge of the popularity of weightlifting, bodybuilding, that kind of stuff, kind of coinciding with like, teen nations rise and fall and then bodybuilding.com and all of these like like simply shredded, remember that? Yeah, yeah. The shredded, the cheese is Christ. So all of those kind of things. And so most 18 to 22 year old guys got swept up in this. And usually it was the only kind of physical activity

they did apart from maybe five aside, which is the other like most popular young male activity. I've heard. So yeah, I think most people will have gone through a few years of that. And Johnny and I always say that the minimum entry requirements to even consider having been in the fitness men that pause have gone through it is you have to have done three to five years of pec deck and leg press. That's just how I think like anyone like, you know when you feel like you're one of these people who did something before it was cool.

So I think we all did fitness before it was cool. And now as loads of people wanted to do fitness because it's a bit cool. So people are getting into the strengths sports and starting. And you just think like you're just missing real, real fitness. You have the induction. You haven't had like the like have you ever spent weeks trying to improve your hammer kill? For example, because you were read an article on TN Asian that spoke about how it's like attacked the biceps slightly differently. And you felt like that was what your life was missing. Did you practice two kilogram Arnold press just so that you could really get the form down? Yeah, so you're totally right. Here's my reasoning for why I think people fall into bodybuilding.

Timings, one of them. So definitely, if you're anyone probably now in 2020 between the age of 26 and 34, probably you'll have been seen this rise, TNation, bodybuilding.com, muscle and fitness stuff like that. If you know who's Zizzis. If you know who's Zizzis. If you know who's Zizzis, yeah, that's the certificate. If you know who's Zizzis, this will all completely make sense to you. And you'll just be starting out there nodding along. If you don't know who's Zizzis, this will be like, why?

I quite like to go Google him. Yeah, so here's my reasoning. Timing's one of them. But my other reason, and this is why I think the front end of the bodybuilding and fitness training, that kind of fitness training funnel continues to get good traffic in the front end, is that it's the type of training with the lowest mechanical barriers to entry and the lowest amount of skill requirement of any physical sport on the planet. Like, I can take anyone who's listening,

I can take your mum into the gym tomorrow, teacher a supernated bicep curl, to probably within about 80% of the compliance and proficiency that I can do it in after 15 years of training. And you can increase her back weight, get her a sick taper. Um, get a jack, get your mum jacked

so that she looks real mean when she's walking the dog. But yeah, the barriers to entry to doing bodybuilding are so, so low. And people don't like doing stuff that they suck at. You know, like think about weightlifting. The snatch is essentially an impossible movement. It's completely ridiculous. Physically, and some people just do that. And another one, all their life, you know, clock of just as variations of snatching clean and jerk. And he's like, that he's in his 40s and he's still massive. But you get my point.

Like people don't like doing stuff that's challenging mechanically because they feel silly. Whereas you can go into a gym tomorrow and get externalized rewards, socialised rewards. Don't really need to worry about what the internalised gains are. I can't really touch my toes anymore and maybe my shoulder aches a bit. But look at that, I've gained an inch on my chest. Well, we've all been involved in a big guy in the gym. You're like 19, big guy in the

gym who's been strutting around working up to a big set of incline dumbbell press. He comes up and goes like, yeah, he's turned off for dumbbells for his please. And you have to pick up the dumbbell and give it to him. And then you watch him go, S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S just set his own rules. No one's checking his form on his inclined dumbbell press, it's like, well, I lifted the biggest dumbbells in the gym, mate. So that's like the entry level, isn't it? The way you can even set your own rules for range of motion and everything else. Powerlifting's kind of the next level up, but it still is very much unfortunately like the sport for non-athletes. And it's why it's got the reputation, like at least at the beginning and kind of

low intermediate level, is that it's just got the reputation of like people who were never any good at any other sport or athletic activity. And just wildly athletic, is it? Well, no, and it allows people to justify being fat, not being able to touch their toes, like all of the kind of things that would normally just not fly in another sport. But instead, it's too much. Too much can be. In the front. In the front. Yeah. During training.

Like a competition. You see people that clearly do not need, like, intra-work-hour, intra-competition, haribode burgos and stuff. And then they go out from McDonald's at the end of the, having done nine reps that day for the competition. So I'm going to defend powerlifting here. I feel like people will be expecting me to. I completely agree with that until you reach like national level, especially like national level in the US and then international level. 100%. When you bump into a Polish bloke who's

pulling like 410 with like next variations. What's happened there is that you're actually, yeah, that's someone who is an athlete and as you've put them into a sport, well often when you look at it, like when you look at their background, it's like, so like Tom Martin, you look at his background and you're like, ah, yeah, 100-metre sprinter. Yeah, of course, of course. But like people who like fell out of, I think the people who tend to like get like, like, we're doing rugby at a really high level,

stop playing rugby and then they're like, oh, well, I'll lift weight, so I might as well just do that. And then before they know it, they're like, podiuming at a national level. They can't really figure out why. The years. Like, where's the competition going? This thing, it's a good point about the low-end level

on powerlifting, but being honest, like watch a shite Sunday league football team play, you know, you're not exactly gonna be watching fucking Christiana or an aldol go at it. So you're right at the bottom end of that, but at least those football players aren't just picking the ball up and running with it and saying, oh, well, mate, this is actually a little bit better

for my peck development. So it doesn't really matter. So, yeah, I think that's why the two main reasons are path of least resistance, that it's kind of quite well known and easy to do and easily accessible and you can get a membership at some big corporate gym for like 15 pounds a month, which is phenomenal, right? Like, you know, the fact that you can get 24 hour gym memberships in a city for 15 quidamont is just insane. It's insane.

But they're going in there to do, you know, what do you think a typical bodybuilding program consists of? Maybe 25 movements, like 25 main movements. Yeah. Five days a week. Five exercises such as. Yeah. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, five days a week. Five exercises such. Yeah, something like that.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's, I just think that like, people who are starting the fitness journey now, it's just shit for them, like it was way better. Back when no one really knew what the crack was. And there was, there was the going up. When you get going up, you're without making any progress. But like in the back of your mind, like I remember spending 40 quid on search workout fuel from TNation,

pretty, pretty confident that it was bullshit. But there's that thing in the back of your mind of like, yeah, but what if it is the type of carbohydrate in there? Like what if it is the fact that it is loose, it is loose and rich, and this is gonna be the thing for me. This is gonna be like, when everyone's gonna make a fuck if you're seeing the progress, Johnny's This is going to be like, when everyone's going to make a fuck

if you're seeing the progress, Johnny's made it because of surgery or car fuel. Remember thinking like, oh, it's got sick leg dextrins and maybe that's exactly what, and then you look it up and it's like, it's the main component in Fibri's spray. You're like, I remember reading, I remember secretly,

like, is it anthocyanin, ingredient in AGO 3G, when you look at like some blueberry yoghets and they've got anthocyanin and you're like, came it, like maybe it's not that, when like my onken yoghets also has a bit of it in, like it's probably not that special. But then you look over and you're mum's eating some and just got like striations and a bicep

and you're like, separation between a bicep and try to set me on. Can I have some of that? Mum, how long have you been eating that blueberry yogurt from? Oh, I don't know. For a fork and muscle. Are you burning or clean in your room?

Yeah. So, okay, so that's why I think people fall into kind of, let's say this path of least resistance. And here's the question that I want most people that are listening to try and answer. And it is, if you're doing a bodybuilding program, or if most of your training career has been spent doing bodybuilding, typical bros-style training as a guy or a girl, do you like bodybuilding, style training is a guy or a girl, do you like bodybuilding or do you like exercising? Because those are not the same thing. Yeah, so I've got quite strong views on this, which is that everybody wants to be a body

builder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weight. No, my thought is that everyone has. Johnny's lost it. It's one of the ancient axioms, isn't it, of like written in stone by Ron Coleman, PhD. Ron Coleman. Ah, so the reality is that everyone has bodybuilding goals. There is such a small percentage of the world. And they're like a weird kind of like fetish group, aren't they? Like feeders and that kind of thing that don't want less fat and more muscle. So they, yeah, they're like 0.01% of people that have this weird fetish, what have like an inverse bodybuilding goal.

But still a bodybuilding goal. So it's okay. I mean, let me rephrase, let me rephrase the way that I put it. Do you like bodybuilding training or do you like exercise? So I think that probably most people, I think the number of people who like exercise probably don't like it because it's exercise. If you're doing me like they don't, no one likes bodybuilding necessarily, no one really likes even like the more modern stuff,

like other people get really obsessed with certain aspects of powerlifting, certain aspects of crossfit. They just like what they think it's going to do for them or what they kind of get out of it. So they get a little bit of props on social media, people share their new lift, they hit a new fran time. And I, my experience has been throughout fitness, like I desperately wanted abs because I was convinced that that was going to improve my life. Got it. And I was like, hmm, no, no, no, and then I desperately wanted a 300 kilo deadlift because I was like, well,

that means I win. If I go three, no, no, no, got it have got it or something. Okay. And then like the goals just kind of drift past and you know, well, I could get lean again, but doesn't really do much for me. Like I could add ten kilos to my deadlift, but like that'd be a proper fath. That's maybe what fueled the fitness menopause for you is that you have to, you have to hit all these big achievements. And then you're like, didn't really, yeah. Well, so I think that people go, people attach onto a mode of exercise

because they believe that the outcome of it will be a huge deal for them. And to be honest, it is, like I think that probably what I've gained from fitness is a big deal. But you kind of hit these milestones and then you think, all right, well, I'm kind of done with bodybuilding now.

Like I've done it, I've taken a progress for it, I'm really happy. Maybe I should start doing something that's competitive. Maybe I'll get it a triathlon or... I think there's a good point to be made there about the fact that you kind of do need to pay your dues if you've got this unticked box with regards to physical development in some other area.

It is a good idea to tick that first. It's that Navale-Rava-Cantism where he says it is far easier to achieve your material desires than to recount them. And it's like I would not be bothered about being lean because I've been lean. The not bothered about being lean just because I gave up. Oh yeah, because you'd always have that like sense back. You would have psych if I'm single digit body fat?

Yeah, so like Johnny definitely takes that box hard in that like, you know, you went to, you competed at worlds and then, you know, then realized that actually like, placing at worlds and winning worlds is so much more effort compared to getting there. Like because the curve of curve of return on investment, suddenly, people that don't know what is world jump in. It's just the top, it's just the highest level in IPF. But honestly, which is what? What's IPF?

So there's the International Parliaments Federation, which is often seen as being like the best one to be in because the rules are the most strict, they've got stringent drug testing and all that sort of stuff. I think they're technically the most strict on depth and what you can and can't do in the bench press and all sorts of stuff. And there's the GBPF and there's the EPF,

which is the European Parliaments Federation. So if you place it nationals, you go to Europeans, if you do a right Europeans, you can sometimes be selected for worlds. So that happens to me. And you've got GB, Singler, T-Shirts, all that stuff. The whole thing. To be honest, I think it's because Tom Martin couldn't do it that year, like seriously. But at least I'm honest about that. I think I get really riled up by people who, I'm going to offend some people here, I get

really riled up by people, you've got people who are legit, like really strong, been training a long time, there should be a world and then you've got people who get to worlds because of sort of an administrative process that where a box needed to be, like someone need to fill a form in so you've got to worlds. and like, I just don't think they're the same thing personally, but anyway, um, so like, that's your opinion. I can hear your tip towing around the issue that you're trying to get to. So the reason is, the reason is I watched Tony Cliff in the GBF Facebook group say something like, I can't remember exactly what he did, but it was something like, everyone's like, everyone's a paper champion

these days or everyone's got like a, everyone's got a medal and everyone's been the Europeans because of like, they competed where there's only two people in the way class and he really, really, like, people got really offended. And I can see why they got offended because he's, he is like, discrediting a lot of people. But the reason why I don't really like sort of say, I went in the world is because I honestly, I don't really feel like I deserve to be there because I think I went there because Tom Martin,

like if Tom Martin had gone, he'd have probably meddled, whereas I didn't. So like you have the singlet from that year and not Tom Martin. That's true, that's true. Say it however you want. I don't think Tom Martin actually has that singlet from that year and not Tom Martin. That's true. That's true. Say it however you want. I don't think Tom Martin actually has that singlet at all. Not the first one.

But they've considered getting it framed. Or is it framed? Yeah, you told me. No, I have it. So I have my European one. And then I have when SPD, we're at Realize, like, oh, we should really put some money into this. And it stopped just being like a union jack.

Like I am done with a sing it and it started being like a fool that you couldn't buy. It's just in my draw. Dude, you should do it. So I told you this story. Sonny Webster had his from I think the Commonwealth and the Olympics. So fair enough.

Framed with like a special bracketed light, downloading it. And like, fuck it, man, I think, you know, I think if I'd been the Olympics, I'd do that too. I just don't see the highest. You have made it to the peak of the sport that you chose to put most of your fitness career into. I think. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. I see why you think that. That's not my thing. We just do a little aside, just about Tom Martin, just because he... Can we explain who he is briefly, please?

Yes, I've brought his name about 20 times. He's a guy who he went a bit viral, like a good few years ago now, probably six, seven years ago, because 83 kilos, he deadlifted 340. And everyone was... Yeah. 340 kilograms. Yeah. So I think it's a good, the heaviest thing you've ever moved in your life, ever.

Probably the heaviest, like a single object that isn't like a car you've ever seen in your life, heavier than that. Think like small cow. And so, and he didn't look like a lifter. He was like, came straight out sprinting and just happened to have a freak deadlift, like obviously a lot of training as well. And then people were commenting being like, this isn't real or these on drugs or whatever. And then he started to go up a weight class, competed against Johnny, there's a great video on Instagram of him on the podium doing a

like a juddery deadlift and then puts it down and the camera just pans to Johnny and he's just going. a juddery deadlift and then puts it down and the camera just pans to Johnny and he's just going. Because I just come off, so I just come off the platform after having tried to pull 300 kilos and farted at nationalists. So like, it didn't even touch because he like, I think you've heard it because you started behind me, but no one else heard it. Thank God. Why did, I mean, what happened there? Did that mean that you lost your bracing tension or what? Yeah. You put a little bit of fart came out.

You put a belt on. You're trying to create all this like intra-dominal pressure. How much fart was there? Just enough to just, just hit the edge on. And you're like, ah, you need to say, you don't want to hit anything to do much, sadly. What's it called, turtle head? Like, you don't want that. Prairie dogging. You don't need to be a max said what's it called turtle head like you don't want that very dogging you don't need to be very dogging yeah so I just missed 300 and then Tom comes in house his go his turn and so this guy like he he he's kind of sprinting menopause probably probably at the top

of his game regionally with that. Founder he hadade, a... What do they call it? A penchant? Partial. For deadlifting. Went up a weight class. Hit very good levels in the IPF. Got sick of all of the the bollocks around that. Got loads of drug accusations. Left the IPF. Went up like two more wake classes, and just got absolutely huge and increased as deadlift by like a hundred kilos. Then started competing in a non-tested federation. Yeah. And I'm not going to make any sense.

I'm going to make any sense. He's never come out and said like, I've started taking drugs now, but it's quite clear when you leave a tested federation and go and compete in a non-tested federation. And all you left to go up? It's fairly. Usually as well. Yeah. It's in, he's squatting, I think, over 400, now. He put his pull 420.

Tom's show up, man. He's the most impressive things he's ever seen and do. One was at that competition where he comes out, no hype at all. Not even barely even a facial expression misses like a 270 squat in the bottom. So it goes all the way down, tries to drive up, can't even budge, like hard lines, some good try. Third attempt comes out exactly the same weight and smokes it. So I'm just going to try this one. A lot of caffeine that you've had in between the legs. And then on the video on Instagram, we're passing out mid squat and like mid rep and you

still nearly locks it out. Like that's that's why people say when you said powerlifting sort of full of people who aren't very athletic, like there's a video of Tom cleaning 180, like it's nothing. Oh yeah. So yeah, what what I'm saying is like at the beginning an intermediate level like the the barriers to entry are very low and then as you approach the top the curve flatten so quickly and to then go from even at like And then as you approach the top, the curve flattens so quickly and to then go from even at like world level, as you said, to go from attending worlds to placing at worlds, it comes like a five-year-old insurmountable task. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that's, that's I think a nice little bit of framing. So I think again, for the people

that are listening, my main question is, do you enjoy a bodybuilding style of training? Do you enjoy chest on a Monday and legs on a cheese day and shoulders on a wedding day and blah, blah, blah, five sets of fucking 10 to 14 or whatever it might be and I'll deem you warm ups and I'll deem you external rotations and all that. Everyone loves that. Half 21, two cute, every part of us. Like, it's not what you enjoy, you do enjoy exercise because especially for a lot of guys that are listening, but play girls. Like, is that what you enjoy? You do enjoy exercise because especially for a lot of guys that are listening, but some girls as well, you'll have done a bunch of sports at school,

probably after school clubs, something like that. Maybe you played football or rugby or cricket or, you know, America, baseball, American football, whatever it might be. And then you get to college or uni and realize that there's distractions of drinking and partying and getting in relationships and stuff like that.

And then you think, well, I need something which is flexible in terms of time, doesn't have very many barriers to entry and bolsters my confidence in a very socialized way rather than in an achievement sized way. And I just think what it leads a lot of people to do is get to their mid to late 20s and think, fucking hell, I haven't really actually indulged my desires in terms of a physical output for a very, very long time. The type, the domain that I've been operating within hasn't actually made me feel that much better at all.

I've looked jacked to do whatever, but now I'm going to try. I wonder what yoga is like. I wonder what fighting is like. I wonder what Brazilian jujitsu is like. I wonder what CrossFit is like. And then inevitably what you see when people pivot and make that transition is that because it's, firstly because it's novelty effect, but secondly because they perhaps genuinely have found something that they enjoy as a sport or as an athletic pursuit. The compliance goes up. And when the compliance

goes up, the training volume goes up and when the training volume goes up, the condition and the progress increases, so you actually realize that perhaps stopping doing a bodybuilding program, which you low-key hate might be one of the best things you could do for your bodybuilding goals by switching to something else. Now, there's a couple of caveats. If you want to keep on making growth and gains, you need to make sure that whatever you're choosing to do has some form of loading. It also needs to have some form of progressive overload in there, also needs to have some form of intensity. No one's getting jacked doing yoga unless it's a very specific type of yoga, which is like a lot of power yoga with, you know, Yin yoga isn't getting anyone jacked.

But yeah, my point is, I just think a lot more people than realize it would be significantly happier doing a different type of sport. I think the car that I've been through the initial phase. Why do they need to do that? Why do they need to go through the initial phase? Everyone has to gain a basic level of muscle mass and strength and there's like 99% of people who I see who are untrained, like most of their problems could be fixed by just getting a body weight squat and a body weight. But you know, like just hitting basic targets with even like rehab injury type stuff. You know when you see, we talked about this on other podcasts, I think, when you see girls wearing ugg boots and they're like they've got like valgus knee and their hips just ah and they just look really like floppy and and and they're always complaining of hip issues and

and you're like if you just could squat 60 kilos so much of your life would be sorted out. Yeah. Clamichelles twice a week. Yeah. Clam shells twice a week. Those things with the bands and yeah, I think it's like it's just it's just general gaining general body awareness and what it feels like to push yourself physically. I think it's really easy to gain experience with that with like a barbell or machine-based resistance training. So something that I saw when I did CrossFit for, and like six months, was there's people in there

who clearly found CrossFit off the, like Eucharist, like found it off the back of having spent a lot of time doing bodybuilding based training. And a lot of it, like someone gives you a dumbbell, like no problem. I've seen a dumbbell before, done a lot of shit with the dumbbells fine. Like the more sort of, and kind of the base layer,

like with Mazda's hierarchy and CrossFit is sorted, like they can give you a barbell, they can give you, they can say, Chris, jump onto that and you're fine. But if it, what you want to, I just love, like the concept of being given a dumbbell and be like, I'm familiar with one of these. Right, and how this works. Well, that's just how I felt about, like if the concept of being given a dumbbell, and be like, I'm familiar with one of these. I know how this works.

Well, that's just how I felt about, like, if it was across a workout where, like, Tim stands up and goes, barbell here, dumbbell there, and I'm like, I can do that. It's a lot of it. But if it's like, run, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, great, yeah, come on, come on, come on, mate. I didn't fucking slide up for this.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, oh, the sun, rub that out, mate. Just rub that, that, that, you know? Yeah. But yeah,. Oh, I'm spying it up. Oh, my son, rub that out, mate. Just rub that line out. But yeah, so I think when people, you also see the person who's like, it's a first cross-foot session, they've maybe never trained before. And the idea of doing like a push press,

if I say to either of you, do a push press, you're like, yeah, fine. I may, I've done push press. You've said, on the eye bodybuilder, shoulder spec, such a cut, yeah. Like, we've all done a push press. So like you put that and we've also all like taken a set

to failure, don't like push that self physically beyond where we thought and I think you do push pressed 110. That's my. That's what he's love. There you go. So someone gives you a barbell with one turn on and you're like, I, I, I, firstly, I kind of know what I'm capable of here. Secondly, I know what it feels like to miss.

Thirdly, I know sort of, I have a few technique cues in my mind. Give someone who's never touched a barbell before and say, push press that. They're like, that's a push press, what's a barbell? How do I do it? Can I do it with a mixed grip?

Yeah. Yeah. There's something about watching someone who's moved a lot of barbells around. There's a certain grip. Yeah. You know, there's something about watching someone who's moved a lot of our bells around. There's a certain kind of grace. Yeah. Like, you never see this. Do you know what I mean?

I think it's big. Honestly, man, like a big part of that just comes from doing athletics as a kid. But again, with that, like if there's people listening who did some form, you know, especially with girls, fucking tons of girls at my school were doing like, as a kid. But again, with that, like, if there's people listening who did some form, you know, especially with girls, fucking tons of girls at my school were doing like, dance or other kind of like, dance associated outputs. And you think like, your, your proprioception,

your ability to understand where your body is in space and how to move it from A to B, is so much more advanced than a fucking donkey kickback. Like, why, why are you doing like three kilo tricep extensions? Like this? It's the real regression, isn't it? Yeah, when you've got tons and tons of biomechanical control, just sat latent in your brain.

So is that, I wonder if that's just people like compartmentalizing there, because yeah, like to have a background in dance Like the amount of proprioception you need like I'm yeah, I've done gymnastics for years And I still look at the dancers and think bloody hell that's the whole mother level So yeah, it like if you can cross over those skills and I like I'm so grateful that I had a background in gymnastics Because I see so many people at my age or even five ten years grateful that I had a background in gymnastics, because I see so many people at my age, or even five, 10 years younger, that are like, oh, I wish I did a bit more of that stuff when I was younger and it's really hard now and they feel really creaky. And to have just had some lower level

gymnastics skill when you're younger, just means that, yeah, you pick up any new skills so easily except anything with a ball. I'm terrible at it. You are positive. anything with a ball. I'm terrible. You are a bastard. Everything with a ball. But I mean, with the Frisbee. It just anything like that. Bad with the Frisbee, a thr... Eh. Yeah, that's, again, that's another really good point though. Like, think about what your athletic base is,

especially go back to guys, a lot of guys might have done, like you say, football or rugby or something, as a kid. Like, you have a really solid, aerobic base, really solid. You'll understand how to run, you'll understand how to cut and change direction. And like, you know, even just going from that to just doing five Ks is probably not maximizing what you're, what you're capable at doing. You know, obstacle racing or something like that would actually be maximizing your fitness inheritance, I suppose, obstacle racing or something like that would actually be maximizing your fitness

inheritance, I suppose, a little bit better. I think, yeah. I don't know. I'd say I just think, why do you, why do you both give us a 30,000-foot view of your fitness careers and how the, how the men oppose here? I think that would be interesting. Okay. Go for it, Johnny. All right.

15, 16, fat kid, start getting bullied. I was like, right, well, I'm not having that. So started, started, watched a rocky film, started running, realized running wasn't the answer. Read a couple of copies of mental health, mental fitness, started doing loads of kills, like loads of kills, and like press ups, all that sort of stuff. Then Jim sort of stuff. Then Jim progressively

worked his way through, like, that's when I met you stuff for the first time when he was doing like squats three times a week and drinking a gallon of milk a day. I think just yeah, lots of that stuff. So like, I remember the first time trying to create in, and all that sort of stuff, just in this desperate attempt to get lean for the first time, got lean for the first time, then realised actually like being strong and training. So then like did my first bulk ever and realised that gaining weight and gaining strength was actually more exciting than losing weight and losing strength. So did like 13, 13 blocks of 531 hit first ever like firing a pound deadlift, squat a 200 kilos the first time with UCF in... Where were we?

Ashington? It was a not. No, Kenton. Kenton, Kenton, Jim. And then like that with security cameras and cages around the security cameras. Yeah, I squat a 200 kilos in the corner, Jim. And that kind of became an addiction. So I got into, did my first piloting competition because you suggested I did. And it literally went like first competition,

first squat I ever did set a regional record. Second squat I did broke my own regional record. One that competition went to nationals came third when Europeans went to world. They were like my first. Might be something to this. Yeah, so. They were like my first something to this. Yeah, so like there was like my first six pilots in competition. So I said this is quite fun. This I can't get like the GB kit and all this is mint. But then a year 25, 25, yeah, 20, yeah, we 20, 15, I went to world so 25. Yeah. 20, yeah, you're 2015 I went to world so 25. Yeah. And then kind of after that, trying to juggle it around like

propane taking off and like doing more work in the business and you've kind of scratched that edge so it starts to become less and less interesting. And probably go back a year was when that came to a head and I was just like, man, like I just cannot motivate myself to, so I moved up a wake class as well. So for the first time in my life, about two years ago, stopped being lean all the time.

And I was like, I'd gained quite a lot of weight and I was dealing with this other like. Tactically. So what? You'd tactically gained weight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't like myself. It wasn't like you'd gone to seed or something.

It's like you decided you wanted to move up a wake class. So I'd had four or five consecutive competitions in the 93s where my total hadn't moved. And I was having to aggressively weight cut for the competitions and all that sort of stuff. So moved up a weight class, hit bigger numbers. So hit like a 250 squat, 312 deadlift, 160 bench, ripped my adapter in the bottom of a squat.

And when that happened, I was like, fuck, name on. Like all this work. I got a video of that, don't we? Yeah, of my adapter, actually. Yeah, awful. I then had to chase Dexter, who was a puppy at the time, round and round about, with a torn hamstring an hour later, which I'm convinced was like the, that was it.

I remember. It was just reminding you. I still remember though, I remember limping out the house, Dex is slipping out his harness and then just like bang, you're like before you know it, you like got him in your arms, you're like, I just ripped my adept to him a minute ago, but it was fine there. But yeah, so that led to, I remember sat watching across the documentary, like the latest one that just came out at the time, I don't know what it would be. Redeemed in the dominant maybe, or road to the fittest. Yeah, and I was like, man, like,

because you were at the time where you'd been doing CrossFit for maybe two years or something at that point. So I did, what's the CrossFit workout? It's like 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, squat, bench, deadlift bench, cleaning jerk. Yeah, it was at regionals that year. I can't remember, but I know the one that it was. Like Cindy or no, Margaret. Whatever. Yeah, Joanne. Did that and how's that man? That was actually really good fun.

Then did six months across from it. Then I injured myself again, twice in the open. So I was doing 20 on 59,, 21, 159 with the dead lifts and handstand walks. And I just approached 140, like, it's just 140. How back can this be? You get like seven reps in and you're like, yeah, quite bad. Quite bad. Yeah. And I think, like Ding Mahams ran a little bit, did my wrist doing Cleveland Jirk. And now I'm cut, like honestly at the moment, I'm kind of just fitness is just like, these totally deprioritized for me.

It's a bit of a shame, but it does feel like what where I am at now is the thing that I'm aggressively chasing. So if I go back to like 19 year old me, I was aggressively chasing fitness, I was aggressively chasing being leaner, getting stronger because of what I thought I'd get from it. And now I think probably the same thing for me as business, and like other areas of personal

development and all that sort of stuff. Just because I think I know that if I put more effort into my fitness, what I'd go out of it's probably not what I maybe once expected. So that's kind of my journey. I think it's cool, Seth, what do you give us yours? So yeah, I think Matt, I think Matt Johnny in like the school gym at age of 16, I was doing all sorts of stupid stuff like all the like Pavel, Tatsuleen, and I can't even remember the name of the guy who was making you do like a thousand Hindu squats and Hindu press ups every day. It was called like a combat core conditioning or

something like that. I've got an image of Johnny trying a pre workout for the first time. It became as like a free sample in like a magazine and then had like two cables behind him. So holding on to the cables and doing like a loaded sprint and then stepping back and doing that again, then I discovered the strong lift 5x5 program. Did you do, sorry to interrupt, didn't you do like an ARM program that was like ARM's MX 5000 or something? Oh probably yeah, like all kinds of... Sure there's it because your original like transformation article, you were talking about doing like really high volume arm work. Oh yeah, I've basically done every like free ebook and like ridiculous program, but and like surprisingly none of it worked. One because I ate like an absolute pigeon. Then I bought some way and I had like one scoop it, or almost a scoop of it, once every day

that I was training and I was thinking, that'll be it, despite eating maybe 800 calories a day, started the strong lift 5x5 program, which that's when progress started to move up just because I was using a barbell doing some kind of progressive overload. Did the squats and milk program, which is where you take, so three times a week, you take your 10 rep marks with a squat, which there was no squat rack, so I had to just set up the bar onto like, um, do my horses, wasn't it? Yeah, school gym nothing. It's like get underneath it, like squeeze underneath and then start

my set. You do a set of 10, which is your 10 rep marks, and then you keep the bar on your back and you take 5 to 10 deep breaths and you do another rep and you keep doing that until you hit 20. And then you have a gallon of milk a day, so I was having a gallon of whole milk, 4.7 litres of whole milk every day, just sat in class. And I remember doing this and like throwing up raspberry way down my top while I had the bar in my back doing these like squats and being so out of breath and just like and like this was in a gym where again no squat rack you just have to like fashion together a bunch of kit.

So I must have just looked a bit mental. Then went to uni, got a coach based on Johnny's, in fact, this was sorry, before this, so I was 59 kilos, stayed around that weight, went to uni, gained 31 kilos over three months. So that is half my body weight. By basically drinking a pint of cream, a pint of double cream every night before bed, glasses of olive oil between meals, cheesecake in the blender, just like a quality weight. My lips didn't go up at all during that period. I was like, oh yeah, it's all muscle because I'm a t-shirt, I'm a fitting tighter. So did that hard mutant mass as well?

Okay, weight gain in it's like 2000 calories per serving. Lots of vomiting throughout this period, just from like, not from purging, but just from like being so full mechanically that if you make any sudden movements, it just comes out. I mean, if you carry in a really full pint across a busy bar and someone knocks into you, right, it goes all over the floor, yeah. And so after that, Gotlein, later on, started to gain more weight again. Did you write the whole Gotleet? Just because this is when we were setting up propane, we were like, oh, we need a transformation. And then I was like, I'll give it a go.

I'm probably like two weeks off being lean. You're at 90 kilos at the time. 90 kilos. And it turned out. I'm just sitting in the kitchen of my, like, uni accommodation with the two of us and Dan. And we're like, yeah, we'll start off at this website and then we all look to each other like one of us is going to have to get in shape for this and you're like oh look

and then you're like you're a rapid fat loss program you eating peppers and doing like high intensity interval training and what was the protein sp fast, yeah, like 700 calories a day of just protein. And yeah, I think I was just so deeply experimental and just wanting to just try anything for giggles. Later on, did a powerlifting competition, Johnny and I started going to different competitions, then hired a coach on Johnny's recommendation, who was Eric Helms, we've had him on the podcast multiple times now, got very lean, like silly lean by this point, like could see pancreas secreting in Selin, like would walk past the window and just see like,

like frustrations and fisculations in like, top of your chest and stuff, and like, you know, when you start to see like in your jaw as well, had that got pretty unwell with how lean I was, like just always run down, like super food anxious, super like just dysfunctional. Except that we're being ill erectile dysfunction, all the stuff that we've all of that. Yeah, like really wired all the time as well. Didn't an Olympic lifting competition,

did multiple powerlifting, like smashed the powerlifting competitions in that weight class, because I was just, I just wasn't a 74-keylor lifter. I was a 83-keylor lifter hiding in the weight class below, because I'd managed to eliminate all body fat.

You got drug tested, because you just had such tight dealt separation. When it's like, everyone else comes off the platform, like the outer shape. And then there's use stuff when you like as soon as he tensions to pull the bar off the ground, there's like, like, chest just all smiles out full, full dry fucking peak. It's quite funny in that situation because in clothes, you don't look like you lift out of clothes. People are like, no way are you sent before kilos. It was a big dichotomy right? So then we're continuing to do

gymnastics like throughout that and that was kind of what initially got me into weightlifting in the first place like to condition for gymnastics. Then I had an ongoing disk issue which I remember Chris came to my house and brought like a gift package which was like an innocent smoothie. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Like a bunch of drugs. Valtaroll. Yeah. Valtaroll. Like that was lovely because I remember the pain was so bad that I couldn't walk. You were like you were tearing up because you were moving and was hitting so much. Just spent a few days just lying on the floor and like, if you have to go to the bathroom, you're like, oh no, it felt like such a journey, you could take like an hour to support yourself over. That culminated in getting ill in hospital with an infection, but then

got kind of, I think a disguitess or a, just worsening up the gytus lost function of my left leg for a bit. Because over about six months lost sensory motor function of the S1 dermatome of my left leg. Yeah, me too, mate. So it was like sort of like shuffling around for a few months. Like I couldn't extend my left foot. Thinking like, well, that's it, I've finally done it, like I've ignored all the pain signals, deadlifting, and it's because of myself. Well, it's actually, it's totally because of this like bravado attitude you see online of like, if you don't squat every day to a max, you're a pussy, and if you're in pain, it's, you know, you just got to train through it and all this stuff. And I just, like, there was literally, I've got a screenshot of like some marketing thing

from T Nation of a guy saying, I was taking this micro PA supplement and I gained 15 pounds of muscle even while I was so ill that I had to drag an oxygen canister around the gym with me. And you're like, if that's not irresponsible marketing. Remember the video that was like Sebastian Coasec gained 400 pounds on his leg press and dropped 25% body fat. And you're like, oh my god. That's what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. So did did that program bodybuilding? Well, I bodybuilder. I bodybuilder. That was developed out of a black ops bodybuilding, but I bodybuilder. I bodybuilder. That was developed out of a black ops bodybuilding project, remember? Really well produced.

You couldn't get away with that now. In the era of GDPR, there's no way. Excuse me. I mean, you got my quest data. The era is, yeah, GDPR and COVID and complaints and like, but you're supposed to be modernism at the time. Kids, kids today will never know. When you could watch a video like that and actually be legit convinced

that like this is all you needed was the iBodyBuilder program, like how nice life was when the Jack Jack 3D pre workout had illegal compounds in it, like literally had an amphetamine. One three done. I'm a lean. I believe it's the derivative of I'm fed them in or something. Yeah.

Oh, stuff. Do you remember the first time you took that? Yeah. What happened? Very itchy face. I also was, because I was taking a lot of no explode, no explode at the time.

That was my, no explode. No explode was my, was my boy, because I just thought that the more nitric oxide that I had in my body, the bigger I was. So I was just taking, and I'm like, I'm fucking artist, fuck me, fuck off. So I put two of it in, and it was actually, the taste is not too bad. It's like lemon and lime sort of.

It's lovely. Flavour, yeah, it's pretty, pretty easy to get down, definitely over-measured it. And I remember spending most of that training session just desperately scratching my face. Like, because you get the blood capillaries dilate, right? Is that correct? Is that correct? Is that why? I mean, like all of the effects of an unfettered mean, like there's always people talking about pill-willy from Jack, Jack 3D.

I think I got a seven rep PB, so I hit my three rep marks for Squat for ten. And then I was really unwell for a week after. I kind of stumbled home from gym. You know, when you start to see the tunnel vision start to kick in, you peripheral, and then I was like, oh, and I just went to bed and just ill for a few days. For a long time. I remember looking at the, because I think I'd gone by this point, I'd been take, I'd been, we'd been trying like, I know, explode in all these different pre-workouts, and I'd even gone off-piece. Cause this is back when in the good old days

when my protein, the way they worked was, you could just buy bags of individual supplements and sort of make you wrote things. It might protein. Yeah, like before they were releasing like the My Vegan bars, you know, when it was done properly. So I was already like mixing like, Argenine and caffeine and like, steering all up and like, necking it was done properly. So I was already mixing like arginine and caffeine and

stirring and all up and like necking it before the gym. So I'm looking at it. Yeah, tribbulous. All the stuff you could possibly get in your pre-workout. Looked at the tub. I'm sure it said no more than three scoops. I was like, well, I got a lot of coffee. I have a lot of stuff. I'll just try four. There's no way it's more caffeine than a normal pre-workout. Hit A. I think I got like you. It's just two thirty for six deadlift, which at the time was meant the way over similar to use of. Then went to the cinema. And it was also my high carb day. Went to the cinema, had two bags of wine gums, and then just got debilitating cramp in the cinema.

and then just got debilitating cramp in the cinema. So I remember like, I remember standing outside, I had to leave the cinema, standing outside the showing with my leg on a bin, trying to stretch out my hamstring. Like, in like, seething, like really bad pain and everyone's walking past down the house. I'm just like, you see no longer legs there? Yeah.

Yeah. I'm just looking for you. So, but is, is something that I can see that's a universal across both of yours, which is the part of the inflection point where you changed your training methodology occurred due to injuries of one kind or another. A disenchantment with training, a lack of novelty in the training that you were doing because you'd done a lot of it already. And then yes.

I think realising that like all that we've been doing was aggravating the injury and just continuing to ignore the fact that it was just making it worse and being like, why am I just pursuing loading my body with more and more weight with no particular endpoint? Because you can get away with it when you're aty, you're basically made of like, you're pursuing loading my body with more and more weight with no particular end point. Because you can get away with it when you're 18, you're just basically made of like, you're just throwing those packs of jelly, jelly drop in water. It is incredible. I remember being able to do like heavy, like I snatched and then deadlift to a max and then go to gymnastics that evening and then wake up the next day feeling absolutely fine, like just normal, no dorms or anything.

Now, like, I feel like I'm in hip-hop. Let's remember what I said to you in my definition. This is why the fitness menopause is such a robust concept because it is as you become chronically aware of your own mortality. Maybe you get injured once or twice, maybe your bounce back from the injury doesn't quite happen as quickly.

Maybe you realize that your fitness, like actual genuine cardiovascular fitness hasn't been cared for, apart from only in service of a cut for like a long time. Like for the only time that you ever get your heart rate up is in the months of May, June and a bit of July before the lads holiday, or like the girls trip away and stuff.

And yeah, I think there's and the same for me, right? All of the different categories that you guys identified there from training to just have externalized socialized rewards to then getting a little bit bored with it to then getting a little bit injured, to then trying a few things, to then finding something that I'm happy with, and then dialing my training back, and then actually finding a sense of fulfillment and pleasure where training becomes integrated into my life as opposed to being my life, which it was for quite a long time. And I think that it's actually part of a broader menopause, which occurs. But I need to, if saying menopause so much is triggering, I don't know whether menopause

is like a word that we really shouldn't be using, but it's the one that we've chosen. We are going to be in a bit of trouble. People know, I think people know what we mean. Good, don't they? Good, thank you. Voice of reason there. Yeah. I think it's part of a broader menopause that you go through again,

especially I think particularly for guys because we mature so much more slowly. There's so much latent maturity that should have occurred in men under the age of 25 and then it kind of like it's you know, when you pull a spring and it's starting to load up and load up and load up and then the thing holding the spring at the back, let's go and it goes, well, except for the fact that you can, I think you can make a fart joke to a man of any age. Yeah. It's still funny. Yeah, you've got latent, like old school grandfathered in jokes like that, haven't you? Yeah.

But yeah, I think it's a part of that as well, because it was at the same time that I made that switch to CrossFit that I was like, well, I'm going to play around with a little bit myself development. And maybe I'm going to question whether I should deprogram the way that I use alcohol. And maybe I should see if I can start working on my sleep

routine. Maybe I should do this podcast and start reading and do a bunch of other things. So I think it all is part of a wider change that people go through in their lives. But I genuinely believe that by looking at different ways to integrate fitness into your life, you can potentially service some of those other changes. You know, if you start to now train for something which is genuinely internally enjoyable to you, which has objective measures of performance, which I think is a really big thing, like if

all that you're doing is subjective measures of progress, i.e. aesthetics and bodybuilding, you're never ever going to actually know if you're making progress. And that's one of the reasons that I think people have anxiety about the training, that they never actually know if they're better. You know, it's like, I'm actually like, well, I mean, do my delts look a bit better than last year, but maybe my glutes are a bit more down and blah, blah.

Like, it's one of the most depressing things about bodybuilding as a sport, but like even if you're a professional bodybuilder, yeah, you can go by measurements, but really like the way that it's ultimately judged is by a subjective panel of judges. Perfect. And there are Mr. Olympias that have been busting themselves for ages to try it and they'll just never win because the judges don't happen to like their physique and you like.

Well, I prefer a physique that's got a little bit more traps. You're like, what the fuck does that mean? Yeah. I'm like, what do you mean by that? Whereas again, if you've got CrossFit, this is one of the definitely one of the things that you can say about CrossFit, powerlifting, weightlifting, 100 kilos is 100 kilos.

Like it's always going to be 100 kilos. And if you lift it 10 times last week and then 11 times this week, you have made definitively by definition you have made progress. Yeah, the thing that is good about, so the thing that's a challenge about most strength sports, most barbell based sports, probably not including strongman is you are trying to improve such a narrow range of things that it's quite easy to have, like especially once you've been training for three, four years, it's quite easy to have like six months years where you maybe don't make any progress at

all. I think my bench stalled for like four years, like out of the reps done, so it's actually nothing, like objectively nothing, and you think, well, it's just this broad playing of things you could improve on. It's, I think, mentally, it's easier. What it also, it's why you start slacklining, Chris, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. I mean, that's a perfect example of something that is for no gain other than, I think it's quite fun. And so if you got you got to do it with me. And it's it's real challenging. But like, I'm not doing it because I think it's going to improve my glute gains. I'm not going to lie and say that it is there's not a little bit of me that wants to be good at it so that I can

show off. I'm aware that that's probably in there. That's why we do anything. Yeah But I genuinely like that Slacklining for people that don't know slacklining. It's kind of like less weird What's that thing these are doing the circus? Tight rope tight rope. It's like less weird tight rope, isn't it? But you could eat a flat piece of material that you can stand on and walk along and kind of the real good people can go like this. But a bit, a bit, a bit, a bit, a bit, a bit, a bit, a bit, a wheel from side to side.

But that, with a podcast on, in the sunshine for an hour, is for me, what, like, beautiful way to spend an afternoon, especially if it's a rest day from more heavy, heavily loaded training. But if you told 21-year-old Chris that my idea of a good Sunday afternoon would be to go and listen to a couple of fellas talk in a room in a pair of wireless headphones and stand on a flat piece of material in between two trees in the park next to my house. I'd have been very, very disappointed. I guess that shows how our preferences and stuff. I think most people get into it to begin with because they just want to be more attractive and more impressive. They want to impress their mates

or impress their bodybuilding, do you mean? Yeah, or just fitness in general. Most people it's because they want to improve how they look and they want to improve how they look to be more impressive. But I think once you've, like that we've all entered the phase at which, like it actually stops being impressive and starts being a bit weird. So how much do you lift, mate? 300. Well, how much do you get there?

How much of it? How much of it? How much of the how to sacrifice to get there when you see someone that is that lean? You know that they can't have that much else going on in their life. So this is the bizarre thing about what signaling does. Signalling in any form tells you a lot more than just that one signal is. So, okay, what are the second, third, fourth order effects back upstream from whatever I'm

seeing in front of me? Like this particular person who's unbelievably lean, strong, big, whatever it might be, they have to have some deficiencies elsewhere or they have to have some side effectures, say, not necessarily deficiencies, because there's been some sacrifices that have had to be made for that. And yeah, as your preferences change across time, I think it, the other thing as well is, Jim Bros especially, they select or they identify a very particular type of caricaturistic, a caricature that girls don't actually find all that attractive.

Like, if you gave a lad that was just a normal fella who was confident because he'd worked on being socially capable and a guy who was much more reserved didn't have any of the social capabilities but did 531 for a couple of years, the guy that is able to laugh and joke and go on with people in a group is gonna be significantly more popular socially

and also significantly better with the opposite sex. And the same, I think, goes for girls as well. Yeah, that's a good point. Like, in terms of attractiveness, like, from selecting for the things that you're training for, but even within that as well. So we've just posted an Instagram post of the attributes that people typically train for in terms of so that men typically train for when they're wanting to look better is biceps, abs,

shoulders, triceps. Whereas the attributes that women on average prefer physically in men are glutes back and legs. So it's silly somewhere. Yeah, I'll try and find the citation, but it's it basically says that like we we are optimizing for the wrong thing. If you're if you're training to to look better for the opposite sex, like the things that you think are important are not the things that people find attractive in you. Yeah, I was saying this to Becker the other day, we're just walking dexterized to have this realization of like, you can tell a lot about someone by how much they barbell row.

You can't like meet someone with a huge barbell row and like that person, very patient, wasn't an accident. Well, definitely wasn't an accident. Isn't doing it really for any kind of approval, because who brags about the bar bar row? You can't see the effect of a bar bar row in the mirror. It is pure, just like, I am in the pursuit of self-improvement here.

And that's all I'm after. I just want to slightly improve my bar bar row over time. And I still think they're very gentle to make improve my barbell row over time. And I don't think they're very just making more a track. Well, exactly. Yeah, I just don't think there are very many other exercises. You can say that off. Maybe a dumb, but so any rowing movement, chin up, probably as well. But even that's a bit, a bit more bicep. Yeah, a bit more showing deadlifts. I don't know. I think like that's the most way you can move isn't it on an

exercise pretty much. Yeah. lifts. I don't know. I think that's the most way you can move isn't it on an exercise pretty much. So when people are doing like three-inch rack pulls, they're like, come on this. Yeah, what's going on here? Start with. Look at that. So yeah, I think that's a part of a broader change that people have where they start to remember that they used to do art as a kid. Maybe I'm going to go and take an art class. Maybe I'm going to start doing it into the language, or I'll reap it up the guitar, I haven't played that in however many years. And to some of the listeners who are older than we are, this might just sound like we're

going, yes mate, that's what getting fucking older is. Whereas to us, we're like, oh, my body's changing and my injuries aren't going away as quickly. And it's like, yeah, welcome, like, oh, my body's changing and my injuries aren't going away as quickly and it's, yeah, well, the voyage in Motherfucker. Well, I would quite like if there's anyone listening who is over the age of 35, 40 and thinks that we're just spouting absolute obvious truisms, then please call in and let us know. But everything's obvious to someone, isn't it?

Like, if we would genuinely put it out, like, ground breaking information here, then that's quite something. I think fitness manopause is fairly groundbreaking. I think when you map, I think when you start to map, man, I hope that we've readpilled the shit out of some people today. I hope that there's some listeners who will go away and think, I'm actually going to try a different form of training because I don't feel that engaged with my bros style split anymore. I don't really feel like it's benefiting me across the board. I'm sick of having my progress judged purely subjectively by myself.

Not even for the people. There is something that's very important for people that are not even for the people. Yeah. There is something a bit like that. So that's very important for people that are at the fall side of the curve, at the end of the curve. There are also people who are pre this curve and should not assume that they've hit the fitness menopause.

If you've been training less than two, three years, you are nowhere near the fitness menopause. And if anything, if you don't lift weights and you're doing other stuff, you will always benefit from getting, you'll still get a lot of the, like the low hanging fruit from lifting weights just for a bit, just basic level competence, and then you can do whatever you like. Well, that's coming from a proper doctor.

I mean, not a doctor. Not your doctor. We are not your doctor. We are not, we are not your doctor. But he is a doctor. And yeah, what was it that you said before that a lot of the biomechanical problems and health problems that you get would be fixed if someone could do a body weight squat and a pushup? Oh, in terms of soft tissue, niggly injuries and like all that kind of stuff, absolutely.

But there is also just a pure mortality improvement, like all cause mortality. One of the biggest factors is grip strength. And yes, that's correlation, and it might be the people who are dying have weaker grip and so on. But if you improve your grip strength, if you improve your total muscle mass,

there are so many metabolic cardiovascular and just overall mortality improvements and reduction in risk that you can get from that. Plus, you look better, you feel better. It's a no-brainer to lift weights for a bit and just get basic levels of strength. I bought a rolling thunder. Have I told you about this? Do you know what rolling thunder is? No. So it's a spinning handle, it's. I think of fat grips. Yeah. Everyone who's going through fitness medicals knows what a fat grip is. That's another thing. So I think of a fat grip. So it's a handle that that comes down and clips onto a lifting pin that you plate load

and then you so that you got you got plates, a pin and a handle that spins, there's wide and you have to pick that up and get it up to a certain height. Now that is one of the most, it's got the weirdest strength curve. So I can do like set to five, set to 10 with 50 kilos, but I cannot make 60 kilos, leave the floor at all. And it's just grip. It's like pinch and it's cool grip. Why are you trying to improve your grip? Because because why not? It's just something I'm not right. I was like, I saw that. I was pretty good. I want to know what I could do on that and then learn to hold a lot harder than you think. Did you get retargeted with the discount at some point and a pixel? It was actually Martin Birkhan. So he's someone who's just being right the whole time

and still is right. But he started working on his grip. So yeah, I think he couldn't deadlift or something or he had maybe had golf as elbow or something, like something happens, or he was like, I'm gonna work on my grip. And he's gone full, deep-end with it. Like he's competing in iron mind, competitions and things with it.

So iron mind are the people who make the proper lifting straps straps like if anyone's seen a set of blue lifting straps. So you know what I mean? Yeah, they're great. They're like I've got some rated are like that you know that you would they'd never snap. They did put it up. Yeah. And then if you all got a captain of crush as well, a cock. No, have you used one? Have you used one Chris? No, I don't I do not need to do more forearm work.

Yeah, that's true. These are grips really impressive, actually, Chris. Yeah, if you were taking a test, you'll grip. But there's like, there's crush, there's pinch, and there's support, three aspects of grip. And I've really got deep on grip, I'm new. Yeah, by accident though. Chris has got turgid, turgid and turgid,

doesn't he? Football. Full lean and striated. So a captain of crushes, like one of those old school grip trainers, it's like, looks like that and you squeeze it together. And by checking it, there's five different difficulties. I was like, I'll go for a three like that, but I can barely move it, like it's so, they're clearly not just made for like one to five difficulty for general population, it's like, I think number five, like two people in the world have ever closed it or something. Well, number five is just a solid object, isn't it? It's just a bit of metal.

It's a box. Yeah, yeah, it's the metal box. What's this for? So, I think the world record rolling Thunder Lift is like 1, 21, 30 kilos. And you hear that and you think, doesn't sound that bad. That was literally what I thought as I was like,

I wonder what I, I wonder what I could do 100 kilos, not even close, not even half of that lift. I can even budge off the ground. And you're like, you can do lift. Well, you're like, what can I improve? Like, I'm honestly going to try and hypertrophy my forearm. Like, you know, who's that made for? Like if, if you are a, you've been to world's powerlifting, like, and you've got, and your deadlift is your strongest movement.

Yeah. And you still can't like the guy that can't get half the world record in that. It's people who are doing like five by five with 300 isn't it? It's it's the, it's when you, when you think you're strong, like you're strongest out your mates, you go a part of the competition, you're like, not that strong. And then you win a power in competition, you know, pretty strong. And then you go to worlds and you just stand the entrance and you just go.

And then you see there's a fellow with a checkered shirt who walks in and cut off gene shorts and high military boots on. But that's the thing. That's what you expect. But none of them are like that. That's the finished things on Johnny. Can you talk to us about the Chinese lady at Finland? Oh, Jesus.

Yep. Okay. So warm up room. Well, so like there's like Lane Norton, Christoph was bicky, like Ray Williams, all these like, people you've seen on Instagram, warming up in this room. And in the corner is it, is it an old Chinese lady

wearing like bandages, like medical bandages round her knees, doing tempo squats with 170. And she must have been like, she must have been 60 odd kilos, but it was just like straight line, straight line. Just grooving, just controlling. Like, yeah. And like when you've got like Polish world champions, like, what's that? You know, like, you're like, who are you? And no one really, she wasn't competing. What's that? You know, like, who are you? And no one really, she wasn't competing.

She was just in the warm up room getting a session. Jesus Christ. But yeah, none of them are, none of them are that, they're all just like totally unassuming. Like you see them afterwards, sort of in the finished supermarket buying, some like weird cheese and a sausage or something.

And like, they all just look like completely normal people. But on a platform, monsters. Would you not think that's the most interesting thing about people that do these physical pursuits. It's that you could see them out at the supermarket, just think, ah, he's a normal. He's just a normal fellow. Yeah, it's like, you know, the people who have done MMA but don't have caulifloweria, Yeah, it's like, you know, the people who have done MMA, but don't have caulifloweria, you're the really dangerous bastards. Because I can identify someone who's done BJJ for 10 years

because they've got the ears. But like if you're one of the people who's managed to protect his ears, you're just a nuclear warhead, a complete lethal weapon just walking around. It's a very fight club. It is very fight club. It is very fight club. It is very fight club. Look, we've done it.

Fitness Manipur's will see if anyone's been read-pilled by that. Let's know if any of those points resonate with you. I know that they do. They either do resonate with you or you're lying to yourself about the fact that you don't think they resonate with you or you're... Just one trained lug enough.

Yeah, just what's the... OK, so final thing, how long does someone need to do a push-pull-leg split before they're with you or your girl. Just not trained. Not trained. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah night, you want to be really like, you want to be asleep. Thursday night, you want to be like, no, no, I can't go out tonight because tomorrow, like I need an early night. Why? Well, it's like six, it's the sixth wave of the three

week of five through one. What do you mean? Why do I need an early night? If that's how you start thinking and you start and you're going into the gym terrified, and if you miss the rep, you're devastated, sitting in that phase of time for at least a couple of years, then you're like, do something else. Fitness Matters Club. Gentlemen, thank you very much. It's been Robbin Fitness.com slash podcast. Well, not slash modern wisdom.

Unbelievable. Get it wrong every time. Sorry. ProPMFIT.com slash modern wisdom. Good. That's well, that's for people who want to do online coaching or you can go to forward slash calculator if you want some macros. I love it, man.

Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you very much. I'll get you on again soon. But for now, bye for now. Bye bye. Bye bye.