Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Chris Barakat on the Science of Body Recomposition

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

Most people know newbies can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time, but can intermediate or advanced lifters accomplish a body recomposition? In other words, if you’re already fit, can you optimize your body composition by building muscle and losing fat simultaneously, or do you have to cycle through bulks and cuts? More importantly, how do you actually do a body recomp? Is there a difference between recomping and bulking or cutting, and what are the key factors and variables to adjust if you want to build muscle while burning fat? To help answer these questions, I tagged in my friend and scientist, Chris Barakat, who’s actually published research on this topic. If you’re not familiar with Chris, he’s a published scientist, educator, coach, and natural bodybuilder, and he’s a repeat guest on the podcast for good reason. His years of developing his book smarts along with his practical knowledge of gym know-how means he knows how to get results while also having something interesting to say, and I always learn something new in our chats. In this interview, Chris and I discuss . . . - What a recomp is, and whether more trained individuals can build muscle while losing fat - Who should aim for a recomp and how to do so (as both a beginner and more advanced trainee) - Common mistakes that prevent people from recomping - The signs you’re recomping effectively and how to track it - How to adjust your training volume and rep ranges while in a deficit and why - Strategies for advanced lifters to recomp - What to expect in terms of strength loss while cutting (and how to know when to make an adjustment) - And more . . . So, if you’re interested in learning about body recomposition in intermediate and advanced lifters, and the best ways to ensure you’re recomping effectively, listen to this podcast and let me know your thoughts! Timestamps 0:00 - Try Pulse today! Go to https://buylegion.com/pulse and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! 4:41 - How should body comp training look like for intermediate lifters? 26:22 - How should people approach recomp if they are no longer hyper responsive to training? 33:17 - What about rep ranges? 45:00 - What are your thoughts on traditional recomp methods? 52:28 - Why do people get stronger when they gain body weight? 59:58 -  Can muscles be more responsive with proper training? 1:01:53 - Where can we find you? Mentioned on the Show: Try Pulse today! Go to https://buylegion.com/pulse and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! Chris Barakat’s Website: https://schoolofgainz.com/ Chris Barakat’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christopher.barakat/ The Ultimate Guide to Body Recomposition (listen to the podcast for a special promo code!): https://www.schoolofgainz.com/digital-products/the-ultimate-guide-to-body-recomposition

Hello and welcome to a new episode of Muscle for Life. I am your host Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today to learn about body recomposition, to learn about building muscle and losing fat at the same time, and particularly in the context of experienced trainees. So most people know that if you are new to strength training, to resistance training, you can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. Many, many, many people do it, and that will always be the case, because in the beginning, your body is so hyper-responsive to training that the negative effects of a calorie deficit in terms of muscle building are too inconsequential compared to the hyper responsiveness of your body to the training. So if you are getting to put it

in very simple terms, let's say you are getting plus 10 to muscle building because you are brand new and you are getting minus three to muscle building because of the calorie deficit, you're still at a plus seven to muscle building. Now, after a couple of years of proper training, things change. Your body is not nearly as responsive to training anymore. So let's say you're down now to a plus two to muscle building. Zero is no training at all. You're training hard just to get to a plus two, just to gain relatively small amounts of muscle. Regardless of how hard you work, you just have to work really hard to continue gaining much of anything. And then the calorie deficit is a minus three, you are now at a minus one and you are not going to be able to gain muscle effectively. Now, that is why many people say

that experienced trainees can't gain muscle and lose fat at the same time under any circumstances, period. Is that true? No, not quite. There are certain scenarios where experienced trainees can accomplish body recomposition. And that's what today's episode is going to be about. It's going to be about the nuance of the topic of body composition, of the art and science of achieving body composition. And to break it all down for us, I have brought Chris Barakat back on the show, who has published research specifically on this topic. And in case you're not familiar with Chris, he is a published scientist. He is an educator, coach, and natural bodybuilder. And he's also a Legion athlete. He has been working with Legion for years now. He's a repeat guest on the podcast. And I always enjoy picking his brain about this stuff

because he has many years of book smarts, but he also has a lot of practical knowledge. He has done a lot of training himself. He has competed as a natural bodybuilder. He has coached many natural bodybuilders. He has coached many natural bodybuilders. He has also coached many gen pop people as I say, just everyday normal people who want to get into good shape. And so he knows how to take the theory that you find in published research and turn that into practical programs, practical fitness programs that work. Mr. Barakat. How's it going, Mike? How are you? Good, thanks. Thanks again for taking the time as always. I was looking forward to today's

discussion because a different take on the body recomp or at least maybe it's a 201 as opposed to a 101. So often when people talk about recomp, which for people listening, that's just gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time, body recomposition. Often it's in the context of people who are relatively new to training, or maybe they're very detrained and they're just getting back into it. And yes, there's no question that people who are new to strength training or people who took a long break or maybe people who have been doing some strength training for some period of time, but really not doing it correctly. And if any of those people start to train correctly in a calorie deficit, yes, they are going to build muscle and

lose fat at the same time. Okay, fine. What about more experienced trainees though? And that was the question obviously that we were talking about in our last discussion that made us want to schedule another one. And so I'll let you start wherever you want this. And then let's just get into body recomp in people who are not brand new or completely detrained, or we're lifting the Barbie weights for a bit. And now, and now we're finally squatting for the first time, you know? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So there's, there's a lot of different ways that we can kick this off. I mean, in regards to some of the literature, some of the things that I've covered in the past, those subjects, a lot of the times they're between the ages of 18 and 24. So even if they

are considered quote unquote trained, they might've been lifting for two years, three years, four years. And the type of training that they were doing does not necessarily mean it was hypertrophy bodybuilding focused, right? So some of the things that come to mind were some of the studies I reported on, like we worked with our volleyball team at the University of Tampa, and we saw insane recomp when looking at both groups we investigated on average, these girls like gained six pounds of lean mass while losing six pounds of fat mass simultaneously in a short period of time too. Right. But it's one of those things where it's like, yeah,

they have resistance training experience, but maybe they're really just doing the typical full body strength and conditioning type workouts. Maybe they're doing more power-based training. So yeah, they could be familiar with a barbell back squat or a bench press, but they've never really trained like bodybuilders necessarily. So, and just for people wondering, can you just give a little bit more information on what that looks like? If people aren't familiar, okay, what does that mean? Strength and conditioning type of training versus bodybuilding hypertrophy? Yeah. So the strength and conditioning type of workouts for people listening right now, that is what you would kind of see in like a highlight reel. If you see like professional

basketball players, like resistance training, or you see sometimes even like mixed martial artists are doing resistance training and you see these different athletes in different sports, they are doing weightlifting exercises, but you generally see them train in a particular style. They're usually doing full body workouts. They're usually not pushing close to failure. And a lot of time they're trying to move the weight they're lifting with maximal velocity. And they're very focused on power output rather than taking a muscle to concentric failure. And that bar velocity is super, super slow and you're getting maximal motor unit recruitment and maximal muscle activation. And some of those things are

really key to maximize muscle growth rather than maximize strength or power, right? So yeah, it's just those typical workouts that you see in a highlight reel. Even I feel like people doing battle ropes and all that stuff, like you see those videos and kind of would just consider that your standard like strength and conditioning workout, so to speak. And then it obviously depends on who the strength and conditioning coach is, what sports are you looking at, so on and so forth. Yeah. And in an ideal scenario, you might not be doing hypertrophy bodybuilding per se, but if you're doing proper strength training, there is going to be hypertrophy. You're going to be pushing close to failure in certain exercises. And so it's kind of a random comment,

but I've just seen a lot of what you might call s and c but it's more like i guess you could say power like p and c but without significantly improving strength you're actually missing out on a lot of power like i get training specificity training for explosive quick movements because that's what you need to do and if all you did was grind through heavy strength training reps, you're going to get stronger, but you're not necessarily going to get all of the explosiveness out of that. You know, some athletes, and you know, I accept this that, and coaches will say that you can have a weird situation where somebody is getting stronger, but they're not

getting faster. They even are getting a little bit slower because they're training too slowly. It's all grinding heavy strength training. So I get the need for lighter weights and just moving as explosively as you can to just train your body to be able to do that, train your muscle and your nervous system to do that. But it's just interesting that there seems to be a lot of focus on that stuff. And this is maybe too much of a generalization, but I'm just thinking of what I've seen, you know, just going through my head, a lot of focus on that, less focus on just traditional strength training in addition to that. But yeah, if you look at a lot of the literature that, that are on like collegiate athletes, there's a lot in rugby players or NCAA football

players. A lot of those studies demonstrate recomp too. And a lot of their strength training, it's kind of, I want to say it's pretty simple where a lot of the equipment availability that especially these older studies had access to and these universities had access to, you're just doing barbell work. Like you're doing bench press. It's like a rip a toe, like they got starting strength and that's it. Yeah, exactly. You're doing overhead press, bench press, a bent over row, you're doing a squat, you're doing a deadlift. And that might be it. And you might be doing five by fives or three by eight or whatever it may be. But again, you're not training like a bodybuilder. You're not on

a typical bodybuilding split. And that type of training is way different. And I share that just because you can take someone that has experience with weight training and weight lifting, but if they haven't done hypertrophy focused or bodybuilding focused things, they can still be like, I don't want to say true, true noobs, but they can still be so far away from their genetic potential when it comes to their muscle building that they can respond very quickly and very well to a more bodybuilding focused training plan. Yep. Yeah. And that's a good point because if, if somebody doesn't understand what you just laid out and if they just were to read the abstract of a study and not understand when they see like, oh, resistance trained two or three years and look at this crazy recomp effect that they may not understand that that doesn't

necessarily apply to them because yeah, they only have two or three years of resistance training, but they've been doing proper strength slash hypertrophy training for two or three years. And then they try to do the same thing and they don't get the same results and maybe get confused, you know? Sure. Yeah. One thing I'll kind of shift the conversation super quick and just share something that I think a lot of people potentially miss out on, or they potentially make a mistake doing when it comes to improving their body composition as a whole. I think males and females are sometimes hyper-focused on fat loss, and therefore they're also hyper-focused

on being in a relatively significant calorie deficit, call it 250 to 500 calories per day. And I think that kind of shoots them in the foot in regards to how much progress they can make over a larger period of time. So I'll give two examples. Let's say we have a male that's 18 to 20% body fat, and I don't want to say completely untrained, but hasn't ever maximized their muscle building potential. Maybe they've trained on and off for quite a long period of time. I think that individual would be way better off eating really close to theoretical maintenance and focus more on increasing their performance in the gym and building muscle so that their body fat percent comes down without it being so focused on fat loss.

So like, let's just say you take somebody, I'll put some numbers out there. You have a male that's like 155-ish pounds, or let's even say they're 165 pounds, but they're 18% body fat and their average height. That person probably has a lot of muscle building potential. We kind of spoke about it last time. We were like, a lot of men can build like 20 to 35-ish pounds of muscle compared to like their pre-lifting physique, right? So again, that person that is 18 to 20% body fat right now, I would rather them do everything they can to gain 10 pounds of lean mass rather than do everything they can to lose

10 pounds of fat mass right now, because their body composition is going to significantly improve even if they're not losing a ton of fat mass simultaneously. So like if they gained six pounds of lean mass and also gained two and a half pounds of fat mass, that's fine. Their body fat percent still went down. And most importantly, their strength is better, their physique looks better, and they look more aesthetic. So I think that's where a lot of people go wrong. Same thing with females. Females are generally hyper-focused on the scale weight. They think that their goal physique and their ideal physique is going to be at a specific number. And that weight is usually really wrong. So even if they're looking at social media and they have inspiration from certain

people, they're probably guessing what that person weighs incorrectly. And, or even if the person shares their weight, let's just give them the benefit of the doubt and say, they're sharing their real weight. Weight can vary a lot, even can vary a lot. And I get it if somebody is doing a little bit of due diligence. They're like, okay, I'm about the same height as this girl and we have a similar build, but that still doesn't necessarily mean that 135 pounds or whatever the number is on hers is going to look the way that you want it to look on you. I mean, my body weight, for example, has often confused people. It's always been probably people would guess me. Even I remember I was at a theme park and one of the booths was they guess your weight,

right? And if they're off by a certain amount, then you win a prize. And this person's a professional weight guesser, basically, right? And so I was quite lean at the time, which throws people off even more. Because when you're lean and you have some muscle, there's that visual illusion where you look bigger than it's kind of a weird anybody who is like, I mean, you've experienced it many times where it almost looks like you're getting bigger as you're getting leaner, but you're not, right? And so I weighed no more than this was years ago. So I can say

it was probably no more than 185, 189 pounds, something like that. Pretty lean, probably 7% or so, maybe 8%. And she guessed it was over 200 was her guess. It was, I think 205 or something like that. Right. So I won the prize. And, but I'll say that, that my weight as people will consistently guess me at least 10 pounds heavier than I am. And that's not because I don't have any legs. I don't have much in the way of calves. However, however, I will say I've been training calves five days a week. I finally broke down. I was like, I fucked these little bastards and I'm trying, I'm training them every day. I'm going to do three sets, uh, five days a week. And I'm going was like i these little bastards and i'm training them every day i'm gonna do three sets uh five days a week and i'm gonna throw in a little bit of rest pause just for some extra volume and that's what i'm gonna do and they've been growing but but it's

not because i have no legs it's probably one of the reasons is i have very small bones like yeah my my and you don't really you can't see that and if you don't know what you're looking at it can be it can throw you off so all that is to say for for people listening keep that. And if you don't know what you're looking at, it can be, it can throw you off. So all that is to say for, for people listening, keep that in mind when you're looking at other people and their weight and try and correlating that with body composition that may map nicely to your physique, but it may not. Sure. Yeah. Like I'll just use random contextual numbers to, to kind of paint a picture for some listeners, especially if there's some females listening. Let's say there's a female that comes to you and they're 150 pounds and they say that they want to lose 20 pounds.

If they took that 150 pound physique and they lost 20 pounds of pure fat mass and didn't lose any lean mass or gain any lean mass, they probably wouldn't love what their physique looks like at 130. Even though they lost that 20 pounds, they're not going to have the shape and the aesthetic that they want, right? So like they would be way better off being 145 pounds, but maybe they dropped, you know, 15 pounds of fat mass and gained five pounds of lean mass, whatever it is. Yeah. So a lot of people just, they put too much value in their skill weight and they're usually uninformed in terms of like what a realistic skill weight should be and like what is actually best for them. It's funny because I've over the

years, I, when I first started coaching, I kind of worked with 50% gen pop, 50% competitors. And then as I continue coaching, I started working with really just competitors and I stopped coaching GenPop. And now I have a handful of GenPop clients and it's like a nice refresher and reminder of like... Yeah, you're relearning. You're like, oh yeah, right. This is the real world.

This is where people are actually at. Yeah, yeah. But I feel like ReComp is relatively simple and it's almost to be expected if you really get your ducks in a row and you are that beginner intermediate and you're so far away from your muscle building potential. Like I feel like if you start doing things the right way, you should almost expect that. So again, for a lot of people eating closer to theoretical maintenance rather than just like diving into a deficit, I think is really advantageous. And what would be the counter argument? What would be your counter argument

to that? Because there are people listening who now I guarantee you are wondering, like let's say they're just getting into this. Okay. They were initially thinking, I'm going to lose some fat. I'm going to start in a deficit, but now they might be questioning, well, should I just eat maintenance? So that's going to come down to what your current body fat percent is. So like I'll say, like if you're over 20% for a guy, sure, let's get into a deficit. And you still have plenty of muscle to build, let's get into the deficit. If you're over 38, 40% for a female, let's get into that deficit. And you still have a, 40% for a female, let's get into that deficit. And you still have a lot of muscle building potential to tap into. But if you really haven't

crushed the resistance training program for four to six months consecutively and really progressed, you have so much muscle building potential to do. Just consider doing that for those four to six months, eating close to theoretical maintenance, your body comp will improve overall. And then down the road, get into a deficit and really, really focus on fat loss. I think you're going to have better long-term success if you focus on building sustainable habits and getting into a good routine. And I just think it's more realistic to do that when you are closer to maintenance, because now you don't have those psychological and physiological cues kicking in of like, oh, I'm hungry, I'm fatigued, I'm tired. So what are going to be some of the things that inhibit somebody getting in all of their workouts on a weekly basis?

It's going to be if they're dragging ass and they're tired because they're not necessarily eating as much and feeling themselves super well, that can hinder them actually getting into the gym. And then what can also hinder them from falling off their diet, feeling like they're really hungry and they're not satiated. And you know what? Screw it. I don't want to be in this episode. I'm going to just start eating a bunch of the things that I kind of know I shouldn't

be eating or that don't fit my current plan. But I just have these psychological and physiological cues that I'm not used to. So I think so many people would really benefit if they just focused on resistance training, ate at theoretical maintenance-ish, focused on getting three to five protein feedings per day with good boluses each time, get in their fruits and vegetables, develop those habits. And then once that is kind of second nature and routine, going into a moderate deficit is going to feel easy. Like if everything else is kind of flowing really, really well, it's going to be less drastic and it's not going to be this zero to a hundred thing. It's just going to be like,

all right, I'm keeping everything the same, except I'm making these minor changes where I'm just reducing the portion sizes of the food that I've already been eating for the last four to six months. So I think there's just so much potential on the table that people kind of miss out on by saying, I need to lose fat, so I must enter a deficit. And I'm just like, be patient with yourself, develop better habits now, and then you can get into the deficit later. I think it'll serve you really well. And then last quick thing I'll say is if you're performing better in the gym, calories are higher, your ability to build muscle is going to be greater. So maybe if you were in a deficit, you could have recomped. And I'll just use random numbers. Let's

just say somebody lost six pounds of fat and gained three pounds of lean mass. Now, rather than losing six pounds of fat, maybe you only lost one pound of fat or zero pounds of fat, but you gained seven pounds of lean mass instead. And again, that's going to really impact your physique and how you do look down the road when you do shed more body fat. So yeah, I'll just add, I'll add to that just based on my experience, you know, working with and hearing from so many people over the years, there are some people who seem to, they derive the most motivation from fat loss because they don't like, and they've tried and failed multiple times before. And so successfully

losing fat, like for the first time, understanding how it works, keeping it off is extremely motivating to them. Whereas trying to get them to start around maintenance, I think you make a good argument for it, but I can just think of, and this maybe is more women than men, people over the years who, not that it would have been a problem per se, but starting in a fat loss phase, probably if we look at total satisfaction that they derive from their first six months, probably higher starting that way. And they understand that that means maybe less muscle gain, but you know, it's, it's been such a problem for them and they just want to get rid of the problem. And I do understand that. Yeah. I understand that too. I got both sides

of the story. I guess something that I would contribute some of the longer term success that I've seen from clients is by getting them to just be okay with, hey, for the first X amount of period, this is the primary goal is actually driving trim performance and gaining muscle rather than losing fat. And that doesn't mean that we're necessarily expecting scale weight to go up. That doesn't mean we're eating in a heavy surplus at all. That might just mean mean we're eating in a heavy surplus at all. That might just mean that we're eating sufficient protein and we're around this theoretical maintenance and we see what happens and we make adjustments as we go. And then going back to what you said about people being hyper-focused on fat loss, I think something that is probably underutilized is taking waist circumference measurements. Like I said, it's funny that I haven't worked

with Jen Pop in a while, for a while until recently. I had a client call earlier, so I'm thinking about this one particular guy, but he's 51 years old. He started with me at 162 pounds and part of his goal was losing fat and improving his body comp. We're only like seven weeks in and now he's 168. So he's gained

six pounds of scale weight, but his waist circumference is down an inch. So I'm like, okay, cool. Generally, like if somebody's goal was weight loss and fat loss, they would think that this is a disaster. But because we had one extra piece of data, which is the waist circumference measurement, it's able to put him at ease. And he's like, yeah, I don't look any fatter. And I just kind of feel fuller. My arms are filling up my shirts better and so on and so forth. Right. So it's important to have multiple tools to assess your body comp besides the scale, because that's just giving you your absolute mass. because that's just giving you your absolute mass. Yeah, waist circumference is something I've long recommended over calipers, over body fat scale, body fat percentage coming from a scale. I know some of those devices,

Grant Tinsley came on a couple months ago to talk about some of these devices. And some of them, he was surprised. Like, oh, these are actually quite good. But waist circumference is just an easy way to know if you're getting fatter or leaner, or if nothing much is changing. Because if you just take that measurement, how do you do? Do you have your clients take it every day and do an average or just take like

once a week? Because you're less likely with weight, as you know, you can have these wild fluctuations. That's less likely to occur with a waist circumference unless there's like some weird reason they're just, you know, they're constipated or very bloated or something like that, but otherwise pretty consistent. With scale weight, I have clients weigh in either three to seven days a week, depending on like, and then take, take the averages. Yeah. Yeah. There's psychological kind of fix with the scale. But with waist circumference, I only do it at most biweekly. And then sometimes it's as infrequent as every six to eight weeks.

So it depends on the client and what phase we're in. But that's fine. That makes sense. Yeah, because you're less likely to have an unlucky bad waist measurement. Like you can have an unlucky bad way and as everybody knows very easily and then think that you're five pounds up for the week when no not really it's just you ate a bunch of salt yesterday and a bunch of carbs and now you're holding a bunch of water you know yeah for sure so why don't we why don't we come back to

then so let's talk about now more experienced weightlifters. So I think you did a good job now laying out some scenarios related to, again, people who are hyper-responsive to training. But now let's talk about people who are no longer hyper-responsive to training. And if you want to talk about intermediate, and is there a big difference in your mind between the intermediate and more advanced and how should those people be thinking about recomp and what's possible, what's not? For sure. For sure. Once you are a late stage intermediate, that is when you're going to be most productive by doing lean bulks and pure cuts, so to speak. It's just one of those things you always should be training

in a way that at least if your goal is bodybuilding, I should say, your training shouldn't really change much. So whether you're bulking or cutting, it should stay relatively the same. You're just strong and then you're weak. That's... Yeah. The biggest thing I change for those that do need to focus on a fatless phase and have plenty of experience of their super late stage intermediates or advanced lifters is while they're in deficit, sometimes I actually reduce their overall training volume if that enables them to keep their performance high. So I really want to do everything possible to kind of keep their strength where it's at, right? So I would be okay with doing less volume to therefore accumulate less fatigue during that phase.

Because if our goal for that advanced lifter isn't to build muscle and it's truly to retain muscle, I think we're better off doing less volume at a very high quality, good intensity, and doing everything we can to maintain our strength rather than doing less volume at a very high quality, good intensity, and doing everything we can to maintain our strength rather than doing more volume and losing strength. Because the way I kind of view is that if you're doing a lot of volume and your performance starts going down, I feel like you're digging a larger ditch than you can recover from. You don't have those resources to recover as well. So that's kind of when muscle protein breakdown is going to outweigh muscle protein synthesis. So if we can't do anything to elevate muscle

protein synthesis, we're not using anabolics. You're already consuming a very adequate amount of protein. Eating more protein is not going to do anything for you. Then what's our next best bet? In my opinion, it's just reducing the amount of muscle protein you're breaking down by doing less volume. Because a lot of the research shows like if you want to retain muscle and strength, you really don't need to be doing nearly as much work as to gain. So that's the biggest thing that I change is reducing your training volume a bit in order to keep intensity high and try to preserve as much strength as possible. And what does that look like specifically? Yeah, it's good for people wondering how does that look practically? So let's say that I'm guessing a lot of people

listening are doing anywhere between 12 and probably 18 hard sets per major muscle group per week. And that's kind of their standard maintenance, maybe even kind of gaining amount of volume. What have you found works well in terms of cutting volume? And then you can also maybe speak to some intensities. So we're talking about now rep ranges, percentages of one rep max. Yeah. So what that generally looks like, let's just say somebody is doing three to four sets per exercise and their improvement season or gaining phase or whatever that may be on their compound lifts during a cut. I only do this to once they start noticing that their strength is, is just about to start to dip. I don't want to get to the point where they've already lost a ton of strength than like making this adjustment. I don't want to say it's too late, but you want to be proactive with it. So that would be like on my compounds rather than doing three to four working sets, I'm just doing two working sets. And then on my isolations, I probably keep volume the same

just because those isolation movements aren't creating as much fatigue and they're not as demanding. So just as an example for doing, you know, an overhead press compound movement in my improvement phase, I'm doing three to four working sets. When I'm cutting, I might just be doing two working sets, like a top set and a back off. And then if I was doing three sets of laterals in my off season, I'm still going to do three sets of laterals on my cut. So that just looks like reducing your working sets on your compound lifts. So you're still getting reducing your working sets on your compound lifts. So you're still getting a great stimulus. You're training that muscle through that particular movement pattern, through that same range of motion. You're just not beating it into their

ground. Again, if you're not even expecting to grow, and we know from the data that retaining muscle is relatively easy, let's back off there and just get a great stimulus and kind of walk away. Right. Do you sometimes lack the energy and the motivation to get into the gym? Do you sometimes want to hit the snooze button instead of the squat rack? And are you sometimes just not able to give a hundred percent in your workouts? If so, my pre-workout pulse is for you. It is a 100% natural supplement that increases energy, improves mood and sharpens mental focus, increases strength and endurance, and reduces fatigue. And the reason it's so effective is simple. Every ingredient in pulse is backed by peer-reviewed

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And that is 6% cash back instead of the normal 3% cash back that you get from our reward program. And know that if you don't absolutely love Pulse, just let us know and we will give you a full refund on the spot. No forms, no return even is necessary. So you can't lose. Go to buylegion.com slash pulse, order now, use the coupon code muscle, save 20%, try pulse risk-free and see what you think. What about rep ranges? The reason I ask these questions is these are things that people have asked me many times over the years. And I guess it seems like it's a little bit counterintuitive what you just said. Okay. We might, we might work out a little bit less and our goal is to maintain our performance when cutting. Some people find that to be, well, I guess it just runs contrary to other advice out there,

which is still out there that emphasizes volume might even go up or like total reps might go up. So it's like, oh, well, when you're cutting, you want to increase the number of reps per set. And so maybe you're not increasing the number of sets, but you're just, you're spending more time in the gym, you're doing more reps, and you really want to focus on the pump and the burn, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. It's awesome that you mentioned that. There's actually a published research paper with two of my colleagues that are authors on there, and they actually recommended based on the data that you should potentially increase your volume while cutting. So my recommendation

is not quote unquote evidence-based based on peer-reviewed published literature. It's evidence-based based on my... Increased volume when cutting. Yeah. From what to what? I'm curious not to get off on a total tangent, but... That's a good question in terms of how they quantified it, but they essentially said... And from what baseline and the argument? Yeah, they essentially said increasing training volume could potentially mitigate the detriments of being in a deficit. Whereas the analogy I shared before, that doesn't make any sense because now I just see it as you're literally increasing muscle protein breakdown

while you have less resources coming in to recover from it. So I totally disagree with that. I just share that because you said my recommendation can be contradictory compared to what other people are saying out there. And it's actually contradictory compared to what's published in the literature. But again, if you look at evidence-based practice, you should be taking your anecdotal experience into consideration as well. So from what I've seen with myself and what I've seen with my clients, that approach actually works really well. And, you know, I remember reading something that Lyle McDonald wrote on this many years ago. He was making your argument essentially the same argument. And if I remember

correctly, he was advocating for no more than three strength training workouts per week when cutting and just kind of a minimal effective dose approach. And I've always liked Lyle's work. And if he were in the conversation, he probably would agree that, sure, you can train five days per week. But again, if we look at minimal effective dose, three strength training workouts per week, that's going to be plenty if they're well-designed to maintain all of the lean mass that you can maintain. And then you add in low intensity cardio, a lot of walking maybe, and you run your calorie deficit and you just wait

until you're lean enough. That was kind of the Lyle approach, at least at that time. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's interesting. When I look at some of the Lyle approach, at least at that time. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's interesting. When I, when I look at some of the literature on natural bodybuilders who contest prep, you often see them lose a ton of lean body mass in those case studies. And I think a reason for that is just because they're doing too much volume while they're prepping. And it was interesting. My last prep, I had, you know, DEXA data and muscle thickness data on what I was doing. And I barely lost any lean mass at all. I lost like two pounds of lean mass and that might not have been muscle, right?

It could have came from different tissue. Whereas some other people lost 14, 18 pounds of lean mass during their preps. And to me, that's crazy. I just think people were generally keeping their volume exactly the same. We're doing too much or again, maybe overdoing the cardio, whatever it may be. So those are all things that people need to take into consideration for sure. Yeah. I think of a guy, I haven't seen him in a bit. I wonder where he's been. He was a regular at my gym at the time I would go. He, natural bodybuilder. He, I mean,

I don't know him well enough to know, but he looked natural to me, which means he looked good, but not that good. That's, that's usually a sign that he's a natural bodybuilder. And his his contest prep was I mean, he was doing more volume, if we just look at hard sets, like hard volume, not like reps volume, you know, that that can not necessarily be as difficult, depending on how those sets are. But like true hard volume. I mean, he was doing at least 20 hard sets per major muscle group per week, at least 20. So maybe

even more and no, he wasn't doing any deadlifting. I don't believe he was barbell squatting. So he was staying away from compound movements, but a lot of volume and two hours of cardio per day, two hours of low intensity cardio per day. And it was rough. Like in the end, yeah, he got super shredded, but he was extremely weak. I remember he was sharing some,

he couldn't believe how much, like he lost half of his, like his strength was cut in half by the end of that cut on certain exercises in half. Like if I remember correctly, he was struggling. He told me he was struggling with like doing sets of six to eight with like 135 on the bench by the end of that. Yeah. So I would say that is a clear sign that he overdid it from a training volume perspective. Yeah, something I wanted to share with you real quick, Mike, in regards to advanced trainees that are potentially trying to recomp or a really smart way to get out of your fat

loss phase. This is what I did in 2021, where I was in a true deficit from May 1st, all the way through September, I was losing a bunch of fat, losing a bunch of fat. And with that, there came one point where I was now only a couple of weeks away from a show six weeks out. And I was behind. I was like, oh shit, I kind of look like I'm nine, 10 weeks out. So I really got to pick up the pace on this fat loss thing. So I made my deficit even greater, right? So with that, I lost lean mass while I was cutting. So the first competition of the season, I didn't love my look. It wasn't my best look to date and stuff like that. But what ended up happening thereafter was really, really

cool. What I started to do was on my training days, I started eating at my theoretical maintenance. And on my non-training days, I stayed in a moderate deficit. So from a weekly perspective, I stayed in a deficit, but at least I was eating way more on my training days. I literally bumped up four to 500 calories overnight. And what the data that I collected showed was over the next seven weeks, I still lost six pounds of fat mass, five and a half pounds of fat mass, and I regained three pounds of lean mass. So most of that is regaining muscle tissue that I lost, or it's just the fact that, okay, I was more glycogen depleted at the original scan, so to speak. But the way my physique

looked really, really improved. And I think that's a good way for advanced trainees or anybody who wants to kind of transition out of their cut, or they have a little bit more fat to lose at the tail end of the cut. Once you start having all of these negative symptoms kick in where just fatigue is higher, your irritability is higher, your mood is worse, your sleep is worse, but you still want to get a little bit leaner. All right, cool. Let's eat at theoretical maintenance on training days and only be in a deficit on your non-lifting days. I think it's a really practical way to extend the diet for a little bit longer while still kind of starting that reverse simultaneously in a weird way, right? That worked wonders for me. And I've been implementing that

with a lot of clients thereafter towards their tail end of fat loss phases. And it's just a really nice way to drive performance up in the gym. So that strength that they did lose while the pedal was on the gas a little bit harder, they start to regain that their fullness comes back. They have more muscle glycogen, they feel better and they still get leaner week by week. So it's just like, it's a win-win and it's something I'm definitely going to continue to explore and do with a lot of my clients and see how that kind of works. I've done that myself. In fact, in the first edition of a book I wrote, it's a sequel to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger,

Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. I wrote the sequel years ago and I've released the second edition. I revised it, but it's still in there. I shared that exact approach, calorie cycling, I guess you could call it. So I've done it myself and also experienced exactly what you experienced. So I was like, I'm still getting leaner, but I just feel better. And you could say, even if the weekly calorie deficit is the same, there's something a little bit different about this. And I also have done it. So I've done it cutting and I've also done it as a maintenance. Now it does require a bit, you have to pay attention more to how you're eating than maybe you would if you were

just kind of, you know, trying to eat around your theoretical maintenance every day. So some people, they don't want to take the extra time to do the meal planning and okay, what is your, for me, it was, I was training five days a week. So I was in a slight, actually, I was erring on the side of eating a little bit more than I was burning rather than a little bit less throughout the week, just to make sure that I wasn't accidentally just in a deficit, like five days a week, basically. And so I was basically like lean bulking, but really kind of just shooting for a five max 10% surplus, just enough to know that I wasn't in a deficit. And so I was doing that five days per week. And then I would be pretty aggressive with my deficit two days a week with the numbers

to try to reach just neutral energy balance by the end of the week. And some people, they don't want to do that because also that meant on the weekends, I wasn't going out to restaurants and just enjoying myself because I had to eat. I forget my number, but it was probably like 22, 2300 calories a day, Saturday and Sunday to kind of wipe out that surplus during the week. But I will say that it worked quite well for making almost what felt kind of like lean bulking progress without the fat gain. Now over time, I did gain a little bit of fat just because the numbers, obviously, they're going to work out one way or the other. And I did want to err on the side of maybe gaining a little bit of fat rather than losing. But I was able to do that for months,

make good progress in the gym with very little fat gain. I can't remember. I don't think I was taking measurements meticulously. However, if you're an experienced weightlifter and you are consistently gaining strength, it's a fair assumption that you are also gaining some muscle. I mean, where else is that strength coming from? You already know how to do the movements, right? And so then what is that? Well, theoretically, that's kind of a recomp. There's some element of, I mean, I guess maybe you couldn't say recomp. Maybe that's a little bit of a stretch. I'd have to try it in an actual deficit. I did it in a cut, but again, I'll say that it was interesting to make kind of lean bulkish gains without seeing

much of a change in my body fatness. Absolutely. Again, everyone, you know, the traditional definition of recomp will be gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time. But if you're gaining more muscle than you are fat and your body fat percent goes down, that's like a super successful lean bulk and or recomp ish. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, that's, that's awesome. What are your thoughts? Do you have any experience? So traditional recomp, we're talking about gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time. And maybe just to give specific numbers. So we're talking about a guy who has gained because training experience, as we said, can mean something, it cannot mean something kind of depends where they're at, right? So we're talking about a guy who has gained, we'll call it at least 20 pounds of muscle. He's gained at least 50, 60, maybe even 70% of his genetic potential. And a gal, same range, right? Not the same number, but the same range. And is there any scenario where you see a true recomp being possible for those people

or possible to enough of a degree that is worth pursuing or is it really just forget about it and either maintain, lean bulk or cut? Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's one of those things like, what did those people have to do to get to 70% of their muscle building potential? And like, how much can their training improve compared to what they've previously done?

Can you talk a little bit about that specifically then? Yeah. I almost feel like some people can reach 60 to 70% of their muscle building potential. I don't want to say like by accident, but just by doing weight training consistently. Persistence. by but just by doing weight training consistently persistence like just consistency and persistence but not necessarily crossing their t's and dotting their i's when it comes to how they're training and how they're approaching their nutrition so that kind of just falls on like this genetic spectrum of like how gifted ish are they and like how easy that come to them? But what I will say is those people still do have potential to recomp in my honest opinion, if their training is just further optimized and better and better. And sorry to interject, but I'm assuming that the improvement

in training is going to have to be fairly significant. It's not like, oh, well, you were doing your lat pulldowns like this, but you really should do them a little bit like this. It's not going to be that. No. Yeah. It's not going to be like doing a new exercise or something differently, but it's more so going to be improving your execution even further, improving your intensity and like honing in on that skill of learning how to train closer and closer to failure, stuff like that. I think that's going to be what's what moves training volume. I've seen that where people are, they've gotten quite far on a pretty low volume program and they've never once pushed

volume up to what would be considered a high volume. And so I've seen people work, you gotta work toward that. You can't just make the jump, but work into those higher volume that somebody like me, I would have not been able to get as far as they got on that low of a volume. I've seen that kind of scenario work out in their favor in terms of recomp.

For sure. Yeah, and like just one thing I wanted to point out that you mentioned is when you were gaining strength while being in the surplus, you say that that should be a great sign that you are gaining muscle because where else is the strength coming from? You already know how to perform the movement pattern, the skills already there. And I totally agree with that. So on the flip side of that, it's like, if you are in a cut and you're losing a ton of strength, that's probably a good sign that you're actually losing muscle and you should make an adjustment. You shouldn't say like, oh, I'm cutting, so I'm going to lose strength and I'm just going to keep losing strength and be okay with it. You really want to mitigate how much strength you do lose. And then for that person of the example, you just gave the male or female that are maybe at 60 or 70% of their muscle building potential. If they can gain strength while they're in a deficit, to me, that is a good sign that they're potentially gaining muscle while losing fat, while cutting. Yeah, those are great points. If we can just, because again, these are things that

people have asked me about. So that strength point, very good point. What would be a successful cut? I mean, obviously we would like to lose no strength. In my experience, that has not been possible when I've had to cut for more than eight weeks and I've had to go from like pretty lean to very lean. And I've been able to retain a lot of strength, but ever since I've learned how to do things correctly and gain a fair amount of muscle, I have not been able to gain strength in a cut or retain strength for a long period. So what does that margin kind of look like? People ask this, so I think it's a good question to answer.

That's an awesome question. I'm going to share probably a different perspective here too. I think it's really, really hard not to lose strength on your free weight movements. If you're doing incline barbell, you're doing flat barbell, you're doing barbell back squats. I basically expect all of that to eventually dip if you're getting really, really lean because your leverages are changing quite a bit. So interestingly, when I'm cutting right now, I do so many machine-based movements that provide me with a lot of stability. So my force output can stay the same and my leverages don't really change much because I'm using a machine. Can you explain that leverage point just so people understand? For sure. So like, let's say you've lost 20 pounds on a cut

and you're used to squatting a certain way. Your center of mass now is a bit different. Like how much weight you have on the front side of your body and your lower abdomen region and how much weight you have on your glutes is different. So while you're performing this back squat, your ability and your need to maintain that center of mass to perform the movement and not top over is actually changing as you're cutting. So even though you're performing the same movement and you have the skill of performing the squat, neurological adaptations and the biomechanics of you squatting at 200 pounds is different than you squatting at 180 pounds. So even though it's

the same exercise, your body's kind of needs to acclimate to where you are in space while you're performing that movement. So the skill demand of that movement makes it more complicated. Same thing with like an incline barbell bench press, let's say. Which is where I always would lose the most strength when cutting. Yeah. I think some people don't take this into consideration and it's, it is small, but it makes a big difference as we're losing fat on our chest and on our back, we're kind of becoming slightly smaller this way. And if you're hyper focused on, okay, I need to touch my chest, so to speak, you actually might be performing like two more

inches of range of motion now than you previously were just based on how your body has actually changed. And with that said, if you're working through a larger range of motion, you're going to a more lengthened position on that movement, the muscles being stretched more, you're actually weaker in that very, very stretched position. So doing something like potentially decreasing your range of motion at the very, very end of the movement might help you retain strength on some of those free weight pressing movements, or just sticking to some machine-based movements where you have a ton of stability and your force output can stay really, really high because there's less skill demands for that movement pattern can actually be a really

good way to maintain your strength while cutting. It's a lot easier to do that. And just because this has also been often a follow-up question where people wonder, why do they just get stronger when they add body weight? As they get fatter, we just get stronger. Why is that? Yeah. A lot of people will say it's due to the leverages and movements fitting your body a little bit better. I always had a hard time processing that exactly. I get it on the bench, like, okay, you've now reduced the range of motion because you're fat. Like, okay, all right. I get that. I get that. But how does that carry over to the squat, to the deadlift,

to the overhead press? I don't quite get that. I honestly don't think that there's a good explanation for that either. If your skeletal muscle is what's contracting the load, contracting to actually move the load, that should be responsible for you, quote unquote, getting stronger. I think it's totally normal when you look at the powerlifting sport. Obviously, the heavier weight class people are lifting heavier loads. They also should have more muscle mass per inch of height, so to speak, right? They're heavier people. They're stronger people from an absolute perspective, but not necessarily from a relative

matched perspective. So yeah, I almost feel like, again, if people are focusing on those free weight movements that just require more skill, more stability, you can almost expect the strength detriments to be larger there. Whereas... And what's that range? What does that look like? What do you expect? You're working with a client and what's not a red flag, essentially? And at what point are you like, okay, this is a bit much?

I'm kind of thinking off the top right now. I'm using numbers that I would see. I would say if you're losing more than 15%, you need to reconsider what you're doing and how you're doing it. And do you mean 15% on the bar just to maintain your reps? Yeah, 15% of absolute load. To work in the rep range, whatever it is.

Okay, you could bench 225 for five, and then now it's 15%. Let's say it's 25% less, and that people keep their maximum loading in for as long as possible, even if they're losing reps. And then you can do more volume with back off work. So let's just say you were able to do 225 for five at your strongest, and it eventually drops off to four reps, and it eventually drops off to three reps. I would rather that individual do one set of 225 for those three reps, so to speak, and then do more back off work to accumulate volume and get more effective reps in, so to speak. But I think it's important if that skeletal muscle tissue is used to that absolute load of 225 pounds, I think it's great to continue to keep that signal in, even if it's for lower rep count,

and then get in your effective reps or your effective volume with back off weight. That would be fine. But I think there'd be better off doing that than not touching 225 and now only doing 215 and then eventually only doing 205. So even if your reps go down, try to keep those maximum

absolute heavier loads in, even if that means you're losing a few reps and then get more effective work on your lighter sets. I like that. I like that. I'm thinking in my cuts, so I can remember times where I was getting six with a weight and by the end of the cut, I was getting maybe three to four reps. But I totally agree with what you're saying. I think that's smart. And I guess I was just thinking, I guess I kind of accidentally done that. Or maybe by the end of the cut, I took five pounds off the bar. But I actually agree with your approach. Instead of doing that, do that set of three or maybe it's even two and just stay, stay acquainted with that heavy load and have a spotter, you know, push close to failure and, and then, and then back off.

Yeah. I think that'll be really beneficial for people to like fight to maintain those heavy loads, even if reps drop down and then they can do more work with lighter loads or their back offsets. I think that's a really good approach to take. And a tip that I've always shared, and I think you'll agree with it, is for advanced weightlifters even, when you start your cut, keep trying to make progress. Don't go into a cutting mentality and think that you're just going to be weak now and you can't build muscle anyway. So why bother? No, push for progress. Train with the same mental intensity that you would train in a lean bulk, even if you have reduced your volume a little bit or whatever, but push. Yeah, I totally agree. And another thing that's related to that is when you are cutting,

even if your total calories are coming down, your total carbohydrates are coming down, something I think is really beneficial is to keep your pre-workout meal and post-workout meal and intra-workout meal, keep that nutritional intake relatively the same as your improvement season or off-season. I think if somebody is eating 80 grams of carbs pre-workout and post-workout in their off-season and overnight they drop it to 40, the likelihood of them seeing a performance detriment is going to be higher. Whereas if you can reduce your calories from the meals furthest away from the workout window, it's a lot more practical and logical to sustain performance and still keep recovery as

good as possible. Don't just say, oh, I'm in a deficit. So it doesn't matter where I pull my calories from. Like if you're, if you're trying to optimize. Yeah. It's going to suck anyway, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Then you're just thrown in the towel like too soon. Like you're not even fighting for it. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point. You have to, you have to run in a few minutes, but one last scenario I wanted to just bring up for recomp. And this is something I did experience myself and I've seen it in other people is, is where you've had maybe high quality, but imbalanced training. So in my case, for the first seven years of weightlifting, I did a bunch of upper body, like very little lower body. And and I gained maybe 2025 pounds of muscle, I had a big chest, it didn't quite

look the way like I did, I didn't really do any incline or it was kind of lopsided a little bit like very bottom heavy, but I had a bigger chest, I had some arms, I had an upper body 2025 pounds of muscle gain. And and it was a little bit of fat. Let's just call it 20, right? But still, 20 pounds of muscle gain, you're now definitely an intermediate weightlifter. But I don't know if I had done a single set. I don't think I had done a single set of a barbell back squat, for example, like a free

barbell back squat. I had done it on a Smith machine once every two months, maybe. So then when I learned some things about training and about dieting, I started in a deficit because I was probably 18% body fat and this was also me just kind of like scratching my own itch. I wanted to have abs and see what that looks like. And so that was motivating. And I gained a lot of strength, which you'd expect with movements that are new, but it was a lot in my

lower body, even in my upper body by fixing some of my training, but particularly in my lower body. So would you agree that that is also a specialized case of where you can have someone who has just really neglected a muscle group and it really has not grown nearly as much as everything else. And now they start to train that muscle group correctly, even though, and they are an experienced weightlifter and maybe they're in a deficit cutting, but that muscle group is very responsive because it really didn't get proper training. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I was kind of in a similar situation when I first started weightlifting. I was primarily focused on upper body. And there was a time period where I was weight training a lot when I was way, way younger. And I just simply wasn't eating enough. So I

wasn't maximizing my muscle building potential. And then once I just started dialing things in, even though I've been training for three years, I had tremendous progress. I started training lower body, started eating enough protein, started eating enough total calories. And like three years into my training, I put on 15 pounds of lean mass rather than, you know, a lot of people say, Oh, that, that, yeah, I should have acquired that my first three years, but I was doing so many things wrong that I had a huge growth spurt three years down the road. So yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's just something for people to think with if there's a muscle group that they know they've neglected and they're going to be cutting, it might not be unreasonable to almost treat that as a specialization opportunity to maintain the muscle groups you've

trained adequately and train that maybe it's one or two smaller muscle groups or whatever and try to make try to make some progress during your cut because you might be able to again if those muscle groups have been neglected yeah yeah absolutely awesome well um we are running down to to the wire here so but we But we did get to cover everything that I thought that it would be great to hear from you on. And so, again, I appreciate you taking the time. Why don't we just wrap up with where people can find you, find your work. You mentioned you're now coaching GenPop. Does that mean that you are taking on clients? Do you want people to reach out to you? Well, yeah. One thing I'll mention is

you can find me and my team at schoolofgains.com. Gains is spelled with a Z. And then specific to body recomposition material, few years back in 2019, Jeff Nippert and I co-wrote a book and you can find that on my website as well. It's the ultimate guide to body recomposition. So a lot of the stuff we talked about today, you can tell it's very nuanced and context specific. And within that text,

we kind of paint different scenarios. Okay. You have a female, she's this height, this weight has been lifting for X amount of time. We have a male that's this height, this weight has been lifting X amount of time, how we are approaching their nutrition and why, and how can that be manipulated over time? So if you're looking for and why, and how can that be manipulated over time? So if you're looking for a resource, you guys can definitely check that out. And yeah, you can, you can find me again at school of gains.com. I'm also on Instagram.

I haven't been super active on there, but still on there. That's just my full name at Christopher dot Erica. And, um, like Mike, if you're cool with it, can I leave i leave like a little uh discount code for these listeners sure yeah yeah yeah so i'll use code muscle and that would save you 20 off the ultimate guide to body recomp so you guys can check that out at schoolgames.com and feel free to dm me if you have any questions or shoot me an email at chris at competitivebreed.com and uh yeah look forward to hearing from you guys. Mike, it's always a pleasure chatting with you. I appreciate you having me on. And I look forward

to the next one, man. Same brother. And that email just so people is that competitivebreed.com? Yes, chris at competitive. Awesome. All right. Well, thanks again. I look forward to the next one as well. Likewise. Thanks so much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself.

I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.