Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How to Avoid and Break Through Plateaus

Episode Date: November 6, 2015

In this podcast I talk about what it takes to keep making gains after the "newbie phase" and how to avoid getting stuck in a rut and more! ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS VIDEO: The Definitive Guide to Effective Meal Planning: http://www.muscleforlife.com/healthy-meal-planning-tips/ The Definitive Guide to Mobility Exercises: http://www.muscleforlife.com/mobility-exercises/ The Best Way to Gain Muscle Without Getting Fat: http://www.muscleforlife.com/the-best-way-to-gain-muscle-not-fat/ How to Prevent Overtraining With the Deload Week: http://www.muscleforlife.com/deload-week/ How Training to Failure Can Help You Build More Muscle: http://www.muscleforlife.com/training-to-failure/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

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I hope you enjoy it, and let's get to the show. Good day. This is Mike from Muscle for Life. Thanks for checking out the podcast. And in this episode, I want to talk about what to do to prevent plateaus. And by plateaus, I'm going to be specifically talking about weightlifting plateaus. I've talked about, I've written about it and I've talked about in previous podcasts what to do if you're not losing weight. So that's, you know, one form of plateaus.

And in this episode, I want to talk about when you're trying to gain weight or gain strength and muscle over time, what to do to prevent plateaus, what to do if you hit a plateau. And then next week, I'll get back on the supplement series, which we'll talk about. I'll do whey protein next week. But I've been getting, you know, I get questions about this quite frequently. So I thought I'd make about, you know, about what to do with weightlifting plateaus. I get asked about that quite frequently. So I thought it'd be a good podcast a good podcast episode and a timely episode just because for some reason, uh, certain types of questions just come in waves certain for whatever reason. So then I go, okay, that's a good, this might be a good time to talk about that. Um, so let's talk about that. So the first thing that you need to know about progressing in your weightlifting, uh, over

time, which also obviously correlates to progressing in your muscle building and strength building is you don't take your first six months, uh, ish as a, a good benchmark to compare the rest of, you know, your, your time after don't, don't try to, you know, compare those two things because newbie gains, you know, as new gains or whatever, they're, they're real. Like you will progress much faster, uh, in your first six months of weightlifting than you will in your next six months of weightlifting. And that's because the body is just hyper responsive to weight training in the beginning. And this is especially true if you are following a well designed program that has you do a lot of heavy compound weightlifting, you're going to gain a lot of strength and you're going to gain a lot of muscle in your first six

months or so, regardless of really what you're doing with your diet. So whether you're cutting, whether you're bulking, whether you're really not even paying attention to your diet, if you're just like kind of eating enough protein and getting in some cow, like if you're just swinging it, you can still do well in the beginning. That swinging it, you can, you can still do well, um, in the beginning that changes though, you know, six to eight months or so. I mean, I've seen probably newbie gains personally seen maybe as long as 10 months where things seem to still just be progressing abnormally fast, but that's, you know, I'd say most people probably by the six month mark, you're going to see everything start slowing down. And what a lot of people think, they think that's a lot of people think that worries them. They

think that, you know, is their body adapting? Does the training not work anymore? Do they need to follow a new program? Blah, blah, blah. And no, not at all. I mean, that is just the way it goes. You're going to see that you're not going to be adding weight to the bar every week. You might still be gaining reps every week or two, but you're not going to be adding weight to the bar every week. You might still be gaining reps every week or two, but you're not going to be adding weight to the bar every week. And you're not going to be seeing just the muscle gain really, uh, that you, that you saw in the first six months, uh, in, in, in, you know, going forward. Um, and to put it in overall perspective, you should be looking, if you're a guy and you're new to weightlifting, you know, you should be looking to gain somewhere around 20 pounds of muscle in your first year. You might gain a little bit more. You might gain a little

bit less depending on your genetics and depending on what you're doing with your diet. Like if you start out, if you're quite overweight and you start out cutting for your, let's say, you know, you lose a lot of weight. So you have to cut for six months, seven months to get into a good body fat range. Then you are going to gain less muscle. You still will gain muscle, but you're going to gain less muscle in that time than somebody who started out relatively lean and was able to just be in a surplus for all that time. How much more, uh, the latter person can, can, can gain again, it's, it's hard to just throw numbers out there because it really just depends on the person's body, um, and, and how well they respond to weightlifting and, and people do respond very differently to weightlifting. And people do respond very differently to

weightlifting. This is one of these things that's kind of on my list of, I don't know if it really makes for an article, but it will make for a good section of an article once I find where to put it. And that is just, I have a couple studies that I've just saved that just kind of illustrates how differently people can respond to the same diets and same weight training programs where you can have, you know, one person can gain 50, 75, even a hundred percent more muscle in the same time doing the same thing as somebody else. And that is purely genetic. That is out there. I mean, there is a reason why take professional bodybuilders and professional, you know, power lifters and strong men and all these guys like, yeah, of course there's a ton of drugs involved in fit, you know, these fitness models and all these guys. Like, yeah, of course there's a ton of drugs involved and these fitness models and all these guys.

Absolutely, of course. I mean, you take someone now that is as big as Arnold was at his peak, and that person now claims that they're natural. No, you cannot achieve. Arnold had outstanding genetics, and he was on drugs for a long time. Uh, apparently he started as a teenager. He doesn't, I mean, obviously he talked about being on steroids, but he never himself said when he started. Um, but apparently it was like 13 or 14 or something like that. So, you know, you're looking at, at, at a lot, a lot of years of training and drugs.

And remember that Arnold had all the big anabolics that the guys are on now. Arnold had as well. He didn't have all the GH and insulin abuse. I mean, that's kind of new. And, you know, the cycles that today's bodybuilders are on, they might be a bit more aggressive than Arnold's time, but it's not like Arnold had, all he had was test and nothing else. No, he had all the big drugs that the guys are on today. So you have these guys that when they look like Arnold, when you see a picture of one of natty bodybuilder a, and you have Arnold here and you're like,

they look, you know, more or less the same, or maybe even the natty bodybuilder is bigger bullshit. It's impossible to achieve that naturally, but that's a, that's a different rant. My point with that though, is that, so with these guys that are so big, uh, and so strong is yes, there's drugs involved, but they have outstanding genetics as well. Outstanding genetics. These are hyper responders to weightlifting and it's rare. You know, I've, I've worked now personally with thousands of people because I've stayed in touch with so many people through email and through social media. So I've been able to see, you know, just a lot, a lot of different people and how they progress. And, you know, everybody, if you follow the fundamentals, if you emphasize heavy compound

weightlifting, if you give your body enough time to recover, if you know what you're doing with your diet, you can dramatically change your body and dramatically improve your body. But some people can just do it faster than others. And that's why, you know, I post these success stories every week because, you know, it's just people find it motivating. It's cool to just show and say, hey, look what this person was able to do. Look what this person was able to do. But you'll see a lot of variation. You'll see someone, one guy's or one girl's one-year transformation can be very impressive. And another person's can be, you know, solid and admirable but not as impressive.

And genetics, it's not that all of those cases are just genetics because, you know, program compliance matters a lot. And that's something I'm going to be talking about, very relevant to not getting stuck in ruts and what to do if you get stuck in a rut is, you know, in the beginning again, it can be, you can kind of set yourself up for a bit of a fall because if you are doing some basic things right in your training and in your diet, you can be a bit sloppy in the beginning and still make good progress. And if you then take that as a, oh, well, you know, maybe that's just, maybe I don't have to watch my calories so closely or maybe I can skip some workouts here and there, or maybe I don't really have to push myself as

hard in my workouts and I can continue making progress. If you let those ideas, you know, take hold, then that becomes a problem in, in, after your newbie gains are, are, are exhausted. And I've seen that many times. I've seen it personally with friends of mine, even that responded very well in the beginning and got more and more just YOLO about diet and about, you know, training would skip workouts, or sometimes they just wouldn't feel like deadlifting. So they just wouldn't deadlift or they didn't sleep as much as they wanted to. So they're not going to push themselves as hard as they normally would, uh, to, to really gain that, you know, gain reps or gain weight on the put weight on the bar and so forth. Um, and, and in the beginning it worked and then later it, it, things stopped working

and then body composition wasn't really changing anymore and they weren't really getting any more strength. They didn't understand like why they didn't change anything. Well, yeah, I mean, that's kind of the problem is in the beginning you don't need to be as on the ball as you do later. So, uh, that's kind of, I'm gonna use that as a segue into the real, you know, meat of this podcast, which is how do you prevent, uh, getting stuck? Because in the, in the grand scheme of things, if you're a guy and you're starting out with a normal physique, or maybe you're overweight, whatever the point is, let's say you have a normal or less than normal amount of lean mass, which is really what we're talking, really what it all kind of comes down to is that the look that you want requires a certain amount of muscle, uh, in

certain areas of your body and it requires a certain body fat percentage. That's it. I mean, that's in that require that, that also applies to, to women as well. Uh, women are more indoctrinated into the school of just starve yourself and be as skinny as possible. And that's just kind of a, you know, the culture of women's fashion is all in, like, if you're into fashion, you probably have an eating disorder type of thing. And, you know, whatever that whole shit, although it is nice to see though, that I think, um, being healthy and being fit is definitely becoming more of a thing now, uh, with women. Um, we're seeing that that's being promoted more to women is that it's not about being super skinny. It's about being strong.

It's about being fit. It's about being lean, athletic, healthy. Even look at athletic wear, companies like Lululemon that are exploding because it's just, I think, working out and being, I wouldn't say muscular, but having a healthy, muscular, athletic-looking body is becoming more popular. And that's good for just, you know, the overall mental and physical health of people and especially women, because they've been hit with the really the worst advice. I mean, the standard advice for guys is to do way too much weightlifting and do shitty workouts, but at least it is kind of geared in that direction of like, you should be building muscle, you should be building strength, but it's

just not, you know, the, the standard mainstream ways of going about it don't work all that well. Whereas women's main, the mainstream advice has been starve yourself down to nothing in terms of, uh, time that it takes to build the amount of physique and you want to look like, um, let's say you wanted to look like me, uh, not to hold myself as some high example, but, um, I know that a lot of guys generally aspire to a physique similar to mine where you're muscular, but you don't look like a bodybuilder and you kind of stay leaning around and whatever you can probably assume if you have good genetics, three to four years of work. If your genetics are maybe not so great, maybe it's five or six years. Some people would say that it would take 10 years to have my type of body. And I don't think that's an exaggeration.

It does not take 10 years to go from a normal type of body to a fitness model type of body. Um, I would say three to five years is probably a good, uh, guess because if you can, you're going to gain about 20 pounds of muscle in your first year. If you do everything right, you're going to gain about half of that. Another 10 pounds in your second year, you're going to gain about half of that and a five pounds in your third year and maybe another five pounds in your fourth year. And you can assume that it's going to take anywhere from probably 30 to 45 pounds of lean mass is what you're going to have to game to have the look that you want. And then you have to get your body fat percentage under 10%, which depending on if you do everything right, that's not really a big deal because you are, when you're cutting

and bulking, you're kind of just staying in the 10 to 15, 16, 17% range. You're never letting yourself get over 20. So you're not, you're not having to do these five, six month cuts. Um, but I mean, that's just the realistic, I'm just telling you straight up, whether you do my program or anyone else's program, anyone that tells you that if you can go from normal to, you know, shredded fitness model in a year, bullshit, bullshit. Yeah. If you do a lot of drugs, you can, that's the only way. I don't care how good your genetics are. I don't care how good the training program is diet, everything bullshit. Um, so that's for guys, for girls, it really depends on what you want. Uh, you know, I've worked with a lot, a lot of women and the, the sweet spot seems to be for most women about 10

to 15 pounds of lean mass gained and bought a body fat percentage, maybe around 18%. Now, some women like to have more muscle. So, so in some cases it's maybe upwards of 20 or 25 pounds. Um, but that really depends on the look that you want. But if you just want to be lean, uh, toned, you want to have muscle definition, you want to have, you know, legs with lines, you want to have the flat kind of stomach. Maybe you don't want crazy abs, but you want a little bit of abs. You want toned arms. You want a good butt, you know, just that, that, uh, the, the type of girl that would be on, on a fitness magazine, not necessarily like a women's weightlifting magazine, but more just looks fit. That's about 10 to 15 pounds of, of muscle. Uh, and then a body fat percentage of

probably about 17 or 18% is kind of, that's where a lot of women seem to be happiest. Um, and then a body fat percentage of probably about 17 or 18% is kind of that's where a lot of women seem to be happiest. And to do that is a year, year and a half, probably two years would be on the longer end. So, you know, that is just what it is. And the purpose of this podcast, and I want to talk about not getting stuck in a rut, is just so you can progress. So you can make it there basically because once you're there, once you have the body that you want, maintaining it almost goes back to it's similar to in the beginning where you can be a bit more lax with things.

Now, it doesn't mean you have to be. I wouldn't really say that I'm lax. You know, I lift four days a week. I dropped in my arms day cause I felt my arms were just getting too big, especially my biceps were getting too big for my shoulders. And when, like, especially when I have a bicep pump, they just looked ridiculously big in my opinion compared to my shoulders and compared to my physique. So for proportion reasons, I've just dropped, uh, my, my, I don't do any direct exercise. I don't do any bicep or tricep training

my, my, I don't do any direct exercise. I don't do any bicep or tricep training directly. Now, of course my biceps, I do, I deadlift heavy. I row heavy. I do, you know, heavy weighted pull-ups. I do a lot of just pulling in general. So that's enough to keep my biceps. Like they're not shrinking. I'm just not trying to make them bigger. Um, and my triceps, obviously I'm doing a lot of heavy pressing. So again, they're not shrinking, but I just kind of want to have my arms where they're at right now. So I lift four days a week. I do about an hour, hour and a half of hit cardio a week. Um, I'm, I'm strict on my diet in that I know my calories, I keep them in a range. So a tight range, I would say there are about 27, 2,800 calories a day. I'd say, let's say 26 to 2,800 calories a day, depending on, you know, like eat a little bit

less in the days I don't do cardio, eat a little bit more on the days I do. And I'm, and I'm following a general type of meal plan, but I don't know my calories down to the exact calorie. Whereas if I were cutting that's, and that's because I'm eating different foods. It depends what I want to cook. It depends what I'm, you know, if I'm doing a meal prep on the, on the weekend, uh, my portions, you know, I'm not going to weigh my portions every day cause I don't need to. Um, and, and so that's, that's one of the, uh, benefits of, of when you're maintaining, uh, is you, again, it's not an excuse to be sloppy, but like if, when I, I was cutting a little bit, you know, a few weeks for, for a photo shoot for a cover of,

uh, I'm, I'm launching a second edition of my cookbook, The Shredded Chef, which I'm excited about. And I won't go too much into it here, but it's like a bunch of new content. Basically what I've done with Bigger Leaner Stronger, Thinner Leaner Stronger, is I've sold a lot of books and I've gotten a lot of good feedback from people. And it's perfect for updating the books. There's no reason not to. So now I get to go back through each of my books and just, you know,

all this feedback I've collected up. Whenever people have good ideas, I make a note. I have just a text document in my Dropbox for, you know, changes to make. And so whenever people say things that are, you know, hey, I like that and that makes sense, it goes in the document. And then once a year or so, maybe sometimes twice a year, I go through and then we just update things. And so it's been a good process. So I'm doing that for the cookbook, um, which means new content, um, new recipes. Like I have a lot of great feedback on the recipes, recipes that people really like recipes that people, you know, either didn't like so much

or felt were, would be better replaced by other things. Um, and so that's what I've done basically. So I was cutting for a couple of weeks for the photo shoot for the cover and blah, blah, blah. And, uh, so when I'm cutting though, I just keep it simple and I just go, I do, you know, I'm very like exact on, I just do whatever I do exactly what I tell everybody to do. I make a meal plan and I weigh everything and I measure everything and I cheat the same foods every day. Of course it's foods I like, so it's not a big deal, but that's where I get precise. But when I'm coming back into maintenance mode, I don't need to weigh my vegetables. I just don't because, you know, even if I'm like 40 calories over, whatever, it's not a big deal.

And I can just use the scale and use the mirror and use my how I do in my workouts to kind of gauge am I eating too much? Am I not eating enough? And just kind of knowing my body and knowing how it responds. So don't save that though, for when you get to where you want to be, uh, until you get there, you want to be very strict, even on your bulks. Um, you want to make sure, and I mean, I can jump right into this would be, this would be a first tip to not get stuck in a rut is, um, with your diet, you have to keep it on point and it needs to be on point seven days a week. This is, I mean, the most common mistake that people make with their diets, people that know what they're doing,

that know better, basically that understand calories in calories out. They understand, you know, energy balance, they understand macronutrient, uh, profiles, understand, you know, the difference between protein carbs and fats in the body and how to balance these things is there'll be good during the week and the weekend comes and it all goes to shit. And it goes to shit in different ways. Some people, it goes to shit. Like the guy I work out with, uh, it goes to shit for him because he just starts, he just eats everything on the weekend and he, he's into, he's into watching football. And so, you know, Friday night they already start, um, I think they're like super into smoking meat and doing the whole barbecue thing. So like Friday night, they already start. I think they're super into smoking meat and doing the whole barbecue thing. So Friday night, that already begins the prep of that. So they have this feast

on Sunday and he likes to drink beer. So basically what happens is he's in a deficit during the week because he's in this place where he's probably 16% and he has good genetics and he could look really good. And he kind of wants to, so he wants to get down to the eight, nine, 10% range. Um, but at the same time, he really likes his weekend routine. So he's in this weird place where he's like, hasn't fully committed to one thing or another. And he's like finding, well, he can just go hard on the weekends and then be in a deficit during the week. And then he keeps on telling himself that he's leaning up. I don't really know if he is. It's a hard to say. I don't see visually too much of a difference. Uh, so you'd have to

see, I'd have to see if he's, if you were taking measurements, like a waist measurement and a caliper reading, then we'd actually know maybe he's losing a little bit of fat over time, but it's not, he's not cutting. So, um, that is one way to make a, make a mistake in your diet. And the reason why that is bad because you're treading water. Like you have to look at your, your goal over to, to reach that physique that you want. You have to gain a lot of muscle and you have to, you have to get your body fat low. Gaining the muscles, what takes the time and a lot of the work. I mean, losing fat is very simple. You just regulate your food intake, get in the gym, do your thing, keep pushing. It's fast is my point.

You lose fat a lot faster than you gain muscle. So gaining muscle, that's that long stretch and that's a lot of work and it really requires to be on point with your diet. And what my, what my buddy is doing is counterproductive for that because you're not going to gain shit for muscle when you're in a calorie deficit. So he's spending five days of his week, you know, really not, not, not building much muscle at all because he's, his newbie gains are gone. Uh, he's over a year into, into lifting and he's actually done great so far, but now he's gotten into this weird complacent place. But, um, and then on the weekend, yeah, you have a surplus on the weekend. So your body gets to, you know, actually, you know, being a, maybe a positive protein

synthesis type of situation for a couple of days, but then it goes back. It's just, you don't ever get into a groove, uh, which is really what you want when you're bulking is you want to be in that slight surplus and you really get into a groove. Anyone that has done it correctly has experienced that after a couple of weeks. Um, maybe even after the first 7 to 10 days, your glycogen levels are full in your body and you're now strong in the gym. You're gaining reps. You're gaining weight. You're adding weight to the bar every week, and it becomes this positive feedback loop almost type of situation. That's what you want to be doing.

So when you have to lose fat, you really want it to be as fast as possible. You want to get rid of, you want to get down to your target body fat percentage as quickly as possible without losing muscle, without losing a bunch of strength. So you can get back to bulking when this is when you need to be gaining muscle. And again, that is your goal. And your first, if you're a guy, your first, minimally your first three years, your primary goal is to gain muscle. It's not to look super shredded and look aesthetic and all that shit. That is for when you have the muscle that you need for a girl, let's say your first one to two years again, is you need to build that foundation. And you're not going to do that if you're dicking around in your cuts and dragging them out because you're overeating two days a week and being in a deficit five days a week.

overeating two days a week and being in a deficit five days a week. So that's that side of it. The other side of it is a lot of guys that have trouble gaining weight. They have trouble eating enough food. It's not so much that they can't gain weight or that their metabolism. Yes, you can have a faster metabolism. But what I've seen with a lot of guys is that it's more related to appetite. Like they'll eat 2,500 calories in a day and feel stuffed. And I've run into that so many times where guys like I eat so much food, I just can't gain weight. And then when it comes down to it though, like they're eating, you know, two and 2,500, 3,000 calories a day. That's not so much food. I can eat that in one meal easily and just be like, yeah, I feel, I feel pretty full. That was a good meal. I guess for me that when I start to feel like, God, I just can't, I'm just force feeding myself is about 4,000 to 4,500 calories a day.

I understand that. And there, I mean, that those are just, it's just, you're always full and it just is what it is though. I mean, you got to do it. You got to do to gain that weight and gain that strength. And over time, that means eating more food, just like how when you're cutting over time, you have to reduce your calorie intake. It's inevitable. When you're dieting to gain weight, bulking, you will have to increase your calorie intake over time. I guarantee you.

And if you're doing it right, by the end of your bulk, you're going to be pretty sick of eating. I mean, it just is what it is. It doesn't matter if you're eating all these delicious foods. It gets old. I mean, you know how that is. It becomes like an embarrassment of riches type of situation where you're just, there's just such an overabundance of food. And when you do, you know, you, yeah,

sure. You can eat the, this, that eat whatever. And you, but when you have to, as it becomes, uh, it just becomes burdensome. It becomes tedious. Um, so the mistake that a lot of guys make though, and this is usually a guy thing, I don't really see it very, very often with, with girls is just not eating enough. And especially even on weekends where, you know, my, my brother-in-law I've told this story before, or he had that problem where one, he just, his appetite wasn't high enough to, to, he had to force himself to eat enough to gain weight basically. Um, and then on the weekends though, he would, um, sleep in and just really wouldn't end up eating that much in the weekend. It was the opposite just because if he was just hanging out with people doing things,

whatever, he wasn't really thinking about eating. So he might wake up, this is when he was younger. He might wake up at 11 and just eat a quick little thing, go and leave, do shit all day and then go eat dinner. But not eat that big of a dinner, just kind of eat a quick little thing, go and leave, do shit all day and then go eat dinner. But not eat that big of a dinner, just kind of eat a whatever. And then really that's it. So by the end of the day, maybe he'll have eaten like 60 grams of protein and some carbs and fat, just not a lot of calories. And you know, he would do that Saturday, do that Sunday. And, and then he, he would come out some weekends, two pounds lighter from Friday to Monday, he would weigh two pounds less and he would be losing muscle. Some of that was, was muscle loss for sure.

And obviously his body's holding less glycogen and less water, but he was in this kind of cycle where it's the reverse of what my friend is running into, where he would gain a little bit of weight, uh, during the week. And then he would come back like Friday, he'd be up maybe a pound, let's say eating enough food strength going up, doing well. And then one of those, one of these like, uh, Spartan type of, uh, aesthetic weekends would come. And then he would, he would be right back to the, to the weight that he was the previous Monday. Uh, so that's also a common dietary mistake that will stick you in a rut. And the solution is very simple. It's, you just have to stay on top of just like how you stay on top of your weightlifting,

where you're, you're recording all of your work. You are really pushing yourself to beat last week's numbers, even if it's just by one rep. Uh, and you're being diligent in that way with your training. You have to be like that with your diet. Uh, again, it's, it's not a big, it's not a, it's not a, something that requires a lot of time or a lot of thought. It's just, and this is why I always recommend people to just stick to meal plans. It is the best way to do it because then you don't have to think about it. You just eat your food. You plan it out in advance. You know, okay, this is where your calories need to be for this week, every day. These are the foods that you're going to eat to get there. And then you don't have to think about it. You can

just make the food, eat it done as opposed to the added. I mean, it comes down to, uh, you know, the, the research that's out there on willpower that just shows the more decisions you have to make, the more it drains in your willpower and the more likely you are to just stop bothering with it basically. So when every day, if you're trying to just do it on the fly and you're having to log things and you're my fitness pal, and you then let's say you weren't really paying attention and now your protein is low and your carbs are high or your fats are too high and your carbs. So then you're like, Oh, well I wanted to eat this. Now I can't because to make hit my macros, I have to eat the, what, what can I eat to eat that? And then there's a point where

you're just like, ah, fuck it, whatever. I'm just going to eat whatever. And so that's why I recommend meal plan, meal plan, meal plan, just work it out in advance, eat the same foods. You can make options, of course. You could say, okay, I have three options here for breakfast, three options here for lunch, three options for dinner. They all fit my numbers. And I have some snacks thrown in. And then you can, it's at least you've pared down your decisions. It's not just who, how am I going to do this? It's, do I want a, B or C? Oh, I'm feeling B. Good. There you go. Lunch comes a, B or C. I'm going to do a, uh, or, or some people, they get even more methodical about it and they just go a week. One is just a meal, a for, for each of their options, week two meal, B week, week three meal,

C, and they just rinse and repeat like that. It's up to you. Keeps your numbers where they need to be. And it doesn't require that you figure things out on the fly because that's where I see that people just fall off the horse. I mean, I should probably clarify what really is being stuck and what isn't. horse. I mean, I should probably clarify what really is, you know, being stuck and what isn't. I would say, I mean, personally, in my experience with my, you know, what I've done with my body, I would consider myself stuck if I'm not gaining at least reps for probably on anything for, let's say three weeks. So that means that, you know, if I'm benching 275 for, and I get 4, 4, 4, and the next week I get 4, 4, 4, and the next week I get

4, 4, 4, or maybe I get, you know, 4, 4, 3, then I'm going to start looking at, all right, what's going on. But if it's one week that, you know, if you, if I got 4, 4, 4 in the next week, 4, 4, 4, I don't necessarily assume that I'm stuck. Uh, because you know, you'll find that, and this is just really anecdotal. um, but you'll probably find that your progress in terms of gaining strength and gaining, and with that comes size. Cause that is the number one goal as a natural weightlifter, you are going to have to get strong.

If you want to have the amount of muscle that I was talking about, like, if you want to get to that point, you are going to get strong. I mean, that's just the way it is. Like you're going to have to get to a point where you are dead to get strong. I mean, that's just the way it is. Like you're going to have to get to a point where you are deadlifting, squatting, bench and overhead, pressing large amounts of weights to gain that much muscle efficiently. If you don't want to spend 10 years doing it, that's just the way it is. So, you know, you're going to find that it's likely that you're going to find that your progress is going to come in spurts where you're going to go for maybe a

couple of weeks, might even be three weeks where you don't really, nothing changes. Then all of a sudden everything just clicks and you go from like, let's say in that example, 275, 444, where then all of a sudden everything clicks and I go 275 for six and I add, you know, 10 pounds to the bar. Now I'm at 285, 444. And then now I'm rolling on that. And I've just, I've experienced that many times. And I've seen that with many people that I've worked with where some people progress very linearly. It would just be like one week would be four, four, four. The next week might be like five, four, four. The next week might be five, five, four. And then the next week they finally hit six, move up and wait and carry on that happens. But it's also very common for it to be the other way where it's just things remain

kind of stuck. And then due to whatever, I mean, obviously there's a lot of neuromuscular things that are involved in weightlifting. That's when, when we talk about strength, really what, I mean, you have the amount of muscle fiber and you have how forcefully can it, can it contract. And this is also where there's some genetics that come into play where some people's muscles are very effective. They're just very efficient. They're, uh, they're, this is obviously related to the nervous system, the, the electrical impulses that are being sent to the muscles, uh, and how the muscles respond. Some people's muscles just respond better to those impulses than others, which is why you can have some guys and some girls that are pretty skinny that are like freakishly strong, where you'd never think that that person would be able

to put three plates up on bench and just rep it like it's nothing or pull 450 or squat 400 or whatever. And then you'll have guys that, you know, they could have much bigger muscles, but their muscles just don't work as well. And, you know, they could not be just as strong or less strong. Anyway, the point is that you, you may find that your progression is very linear and you may find that it comes in spurts. But I would say if you're, if nothing has really changed in, uh, in, in your workouts in probably three to four weeks, then that's when I personally would start to, I wouldn't necessarily say, Oh, I'm stuck in a rut, but I would know that if I don't, there's probably something I need to change. There's probably something going on. And if I don't do that, then I will probably

end up in a rut. And also keep in mind that if you're following a well-designed weightlifting program, it's going to involve a lot of heavy compound movements. And those are really, and you're going to be starting your workouts with those movements too. And those are really where you want to see progress. Like in my programs, bigger than you're stronger, thinner than you're stronger. You're always starting your workouts with some heavy compound movement, whether it be a squat or a deadlift or overhead press or bench press. And those are the exercises where it's most important that you progress. Um, and you're going to find that sometimes you're going to progress in those first movements, those first

exercises, and then the following exercises, which tend to be a bit more isolation type of work to, for building a really like, you know, a physique and bringing out proportions and whatever, um, you are going to progress there, but you may find that you are progressing well on your, on your compounds and the other movements are kind of stuck. And that's also why my program will rotate through some, some, uh, phases in the program. You will actually start with something like a barbell row over a deadlift. And that's, that's intentional, but the vast majority of your, of your, uh, training is going to be, your workouts are going to be starting with those heavy compound movements. And it's most important that you see progress on those. Um, I wouldn't say that you should expect

everything else to stay stuck, but like your third or fourth exercise, uh, it's going to be hard to, to, to move up on that exercise when it's in that third or fourth position. Uh, really, I mean, the exercises, the exercise, um, that's in the pole position for your workouts, that's obviously where you have your most energy, your freshest, you're able to give it the most. And so like when you do heavy, a few sets of heavy deadlifts and a few sets of heavy rows, and then you're down to your pull-ups, let's say, uh, don't be surprised if your pull-ups don't change with it in that order for the next 68 weeks or whatever you're doing. And, uh, because you know, you're going to be gassed. You may, you may be able to make progress on all three exercises, but you know, those first,

especially if you're moving up and, uh, reps and weight on the first two exercises, don't be surprised that third exercise, you're just kind of clinging, you're hanging on to just maintain the same performance, you know, over the course of several weeks. And that's fine. That's normal. But the, the, the, when, when it's a red flag is when nothing's progressing, you're not moving anywhere on your first exercise or your second exercise or your third exercise, and particularly on those heavy compound lifts. Now, I should also mention that you can expect to hit plateaus. In the overall scheme of things, over the next few years, whatever it takes, it's not always going to just be, you know, you just keep on making gains every week,

and you keep on adding reps, and you keep on adding weight, and you never have to really dig in and see what's going on, never have to change anything, you're going to hit plateaus. Just expect it to happen. So don't think that it's a sign that you need to change things dramatically or that things aren't working. It's just part of the game. So one of the common things that I see that starts holding people back in progressing

in their weightlifting workouts is technique or mobility. So in the beginning, you can also get away with sloppy form. You can have mobility issues where, you know, maybe really I see it probably that's most common in deadlifting and squatting where if somebody's ankles aren't quite flexible enough or hip flexors are, that's a common issue. I've run into that myself. You know, certain muscle muscles that can be tight. Like if your quads, I've run into this issue, my right quad tends to be tighter than my left quad. And I need, you know, I've, I have to get it massaged and foam roll it. And cause it also like where the quad, it kind of attaches to the top. You have that IT band area of the TFL and tightness there. What can happen is, I mean, your body has instincts to prevent injury, of course. And if things aren't quite moving and working the way that they should,

you can, you're just not able to apply maximum torque in your, in maximum power in your, in your lifts. And that, when you start, once you get over those newbie gains and you really have to start grinding, uh, that can hold you back in and of itself where your body just doesn't allow. It's not, you know, the muscles are capable of applying more force and you could actually get a couple more reps, but technique is not, uh, allowing it. So, I mean, obviously the, the way to, to get around that or to, to handle or fix or solve that is learn proper form and be very strict on proper form, even if that means going down in weight. I had to do that years and years ago when I finally learned how to do things correctly. I had gotten up on my squats to four plates. Now, it's hard to say that's a squat because it was a joke.

It was a half squat. it was a joke. It was a half squat. And when I finally learned like, okay, this is stupid. Then I had to drop to 225, 235, maybe something like that. I don't remember just to, just to be able to squat to parallel. And you know, to me, like I didn't really care. It's not like that was a big ego blow. Uh, I was working out at the time at a gym, even with like nobody in it. So I just didn't know. So, um, you know, if that means that if you know that like your deadlift form is out or your squat form is out or bench or overhead press or whatever, then you just need to fix it. And if that means dropping in weight, it might feel like you're moving backwards, but you're not because you're not going to, if you keep on going,

uh, trying to, to, to push heavier or pull heavier or squat heavier with bad form, you're eventually going to either get completely stuck because your body's not going to let you go any further or you're going to get hurt. And usually those things go hand in hand where people get stuck. And then like there's a couple of guys in the gym that I work out with now. And one of them is deadlift form is terrible. He may even hear this. So, you know, I've told you like he gets real rounded in his back. And that's an example of, it's just, it's too heavy. He should be, he should probably be taking at least 50 pounds off the bar and really getting strict about form and building his strength properly because the deadlift, when you compromise your form like that, you're taking a

movement that is a, it's an effective strength, whole body strength movement when it's done the way that it's supposed to be done. But when you change that and you do it incorrectly, now you're excluding different muscle groups that would normally have to come up, you know, and you're placing undue amounts of strain on other muscle groups that shouldn't have to actually support that much of the load. Or if they were being placed under that much load, they should normally have the support of these other muscle groups. And all in all, you would have to be much stronger to be able to do that. Like my four plate squat, half squat, pathetic squat. Normally

you need much stronger legs to put, you know, four plates on the bar. I I've, I haven't even, I mean, I haven't really pushed myself on a one rep max recently, but the most I've back squatted even recently was probably 365 for a few reps. So maybe my one rep is up there. I have to look on a calculator. So that's learning form on mobility. I've written quite a bit about it. Go to muscleforlife.com and search mobility, and you'll see some stuff I've put together for upper body mobility, lower body mobility. I've put kind of a body mobility, lower body mobility. I've put kind

of a definitive guide to mobility together. And in terms of book projects, that's probably the project I'm really going to be looking at next year is something related to mobility and breaking it down, kind of like how bigger than you're stronger, thinner than you're stronger. Break everything down to a simple program that you can follow that gets results. Do something similar for mobility just because it's needed. There's a lot of stuff out there in mobility, but it's very complicated and it's kind of overwhelming and you don't really know what should you be doing? How can you boil it down to 10 or 15 minutes that you could do a few days a week and get, let's say, 80% of the benefits out of it that

are relevant to people like you and me that we're not professional athletes. We just, we lift weights. We want to be athletic. But you know, we don't have super specialized needs per se. So the next thing to keep in mind in terms of getting stuck in ruts and preventing it and getting out of it is there's a point where you're going to start, I would say overtraining is a bit of an extreme word because when you really are overtrained, you mean you have very low energy levels, your sleep is all messed up, you don't want to be in the gym, sex drive plummets, blah, blah, blah. And so you can gradually get there. But I've found that a lot of people, they push themselves more and more where they start getting into that overtraining type of zone. And that is just counterproductive. And that's usually just,

and I understand people that are wanting to work very hard. They, you know, like anything, they figure, you know, oh, you want to make a lot of money? Cool. Then, you know, the first thing you're going to have to accept is you're gonna have to work a lot of hours. There's no way around it. So they figure, apply that mentality to fitness. You want to have a great body? A lot of hours. Yes, a lot of hours, but it's over a longer period of time. It's counterproductive. Well, you know, in terms of making money, it's definitely not counterproductive. Let's say to work a hundred hours a week, you know, whether you can do it or not is irrelevant, but it's not counterproductive. If you're working on

things that make any sense, working a hundred hours a week, you are going to make a lot more money eventually than the guy that's doing or the girl that's doing 30 hours a week. Uh, if you're, if everything else were comparable, obviously working out though, you know, and this is where obviously no one could ever work out a hundred hours a week. Uh, but I'll run into a lot of people that, you know, they're trying to do two hour weightlifting workouts. They're trying to do an hour of cardio a day. They're taking no days off during the week. I mean, it's admirable in terms of work ethic, but it's counterproductive in the longterm because your body simply doesn't have time to recover when you do all that. And again, as I was talking about way earlier in the podcast, I mean, yeah, you have people on Instagram, you have these guys

that are super huge, super shredded. And these girls that look awesome that do that, where they're in the gym, they say, Oh no rest days, rest days or pussies, two hours a day, this, that, or whatever. Yeah. Well just realize that when you have drugs that, you know, dramatically elevate protein synthesis rates and you have GH that dramatically improves recovery and you know, um, it's a, it's a different game. So for, for the rest of us, just know that you really don't need to be doing more than let's say five to six hours of weightlifting a week. Um, and two hours of cardio a week, regardless of what you're trying to do. And that would be like max for cutting. If you were bulking, you'd probably reduce that cardio by quite a bit. Actually. I mean, generally cardio is not when you're bulking, you want to do, um, it's not that you shouldn't do any cardio, but you want to do as little as possible, really, just to maximize your progression and your strength.

So like when I'm bulking, I usually would do about an hour a week, maybe even less actually. I'd say maybe 45 minutes. I'd do like two, you know, 20-something minute HIIT cardio sessions. Just one because I enjoy it, but also there's, there are insulin sensitivity benefits like cardio. It kind of works just in a dose dependent manner where the more cardio you do up to a point, I mean, too much is a problem, but the more cardio you do, the better your insulin sensitivity is going to be just overall. And that's one of the things you really want to preserve when you're bulking is you want your body. Cause as your insulin sensitivity

gets worse, you are going to gain fat faster. And I've written about this. I'll link an article down below in the description if you want to check it out. And I don't remember the name of it, or I would say it in the podcast. So you're gonna have to go to YouTube and you have to look in the description. I know the URL, ironically. Anyways, I know my little short code for the URL, at least when I'm like answering people's questions and expands out into the URL. But you want to be maintaining as high of an insulin sensitivity as possible when you're bulking.

And one of the ways to do that is to do some cardio, but you don't want to do so much that it becomes counterproductive. But so you're looking at even when you're bulking, maybe six hours of weightlifting weight, maybe a little bit more and less cardio. So all in all, though, you're looking at anywhere from four to seven hours of exercise a week. You don't need to be doing more than that. And you might be able, depending on your genetics and situation, whatever, you might be able to get away with a little bit more. But it's much more likely that once you go beyond those thresholds, it's just going to become more of a problem than a help. So the answer to this one is simple. It is every, let's say,

eight to 10 weeks or so, you want to take a deload week, which you can just go to muscleforlife.com and search for deload. You can see how to do this. Or just take a week off the weights. I would say you should try both and see which you like more, which makes your body feel better when you come back at it. Personally, what I like to do is, and I'm going to have to do this next week. It's been a couple months and I'm just feeling, I noticed it actually in my sleep. Like I sleep about six hours a night on average. And maybe I do six and a half, maybe seven on the weekends. I don't really set an alarm, but I tend to wake up at the same time anyway. So what I'll notice it that I but I tend to wake up at the same time anyway.

So what I'll notice it that I'm just a little bit tired in the mornings where normally I wake up, I'm good to go. And it'll take me 10 minutes or so to feel that as I start to, I'm not over-trained, but as my body, because there's a systemic fatigue that accumulates with weightlifting, especially heavy weightlifting and heavy compound weightlifting, puts a lot of stress in the nervous system and this accumulates. And so every once in a while, you just have to give your body a break. So that's, it's simple. It's just don't try to go for six months straight without taking a week off, unless you're brand new to weightlifting and you're in a calorie surplus. Maybe you can do that. But most people you'll find that if you just take a week off, um, or you do what I do, which I didn't say. So what I like to do is I'll take off. I normally train Tuesday through Friday.

So I'm doing four days a week right now. And I do a few cardio sessions at night. And so what I'll do is I'll probably start my next week. I'll probably, what I'll do is an upper lower. I'll probably just, uh, train on Thursday and Friday. Sometimes I'll start on Wednesday, but really usually I find that if I take off, so I'm gonna take off Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So I give myself a good five day, just no weightlifting for five days.

And I'll still do one or two cardio sessions, but they're not super intense. 25 minutes of HIIT cardio. It's not like I'm beating the shit out of myself for an hour and a half every session or anything like that. So it's just kind of a chill out, relax type thing for the body. And then I'll do, I'll go do an upper body workout on Thursday and, uh, just go heavy, uh, just go right back into it and then do a lower body workout on Friday. And then the following week, just get

back to my normal thing. That's what I like to do. Um, but some people like to do three workouts in their deload week. And the fact that I'm going heavy kind of makes it not so much a deload because normally deloading is just go read the article and you'll see, but normally deloading is really where you're just doing really, uh, reduced intensity workouts. So you're taking like half your normal heavy weight and doing the same types of reps. And you're just moving through the movements and working on just form and explosive movements, but you're really not putting a lot of stress in the body. That's normally how you deload. Um, I do it a little bit differently just cause I've found it works for my body, but that's the, that's the simple solution for that is every eight to 10 weeks or so,

just, and if it's six weeks for you, then that's fine as well. I find people, um, especially people as they get older, they need to deload a bit more frequently and you know that's totally fine so every six weeks if it is then you just take a deload week or a week off and again don't think that that's moving backwards that you're not going to lose any muscle in a week you just keep your diet where it needs to be you're not going to lose strength you're going to come back either stronger or just where you left off and everything is going to be fine so another common issue that I see people running into into when the newbie gains are done is you have to, you really have to push yourself hard in your workouts where when you're new, you can maybe not be so focused on your

workouts and the strength that comes so easy that gaining reps is easy and adding weight to the bar is easy. But as you get more advanced, you, it takes that mental edge where you have to really, I mean, I even, and there's some research on this that shows that it works like before I'm doing a set, try to visualize getting my reps. Like, you know, if I, if I got four reps with that last week, I want to get five this week. I know I probably won't get six, but I want to get five. So I'm kind of seeing that that's my really that my focus for the next 30 seconds or whatever is I just want to move this thing five times. And you have to be willing to really push yourself. Now, of course, you walk a fine line between form and, you know,

performance where, uh, I've definitely aborted sets before where maybe I could have gotten that rep, but I would, you know, in a deadlift, I'd feel my back starting to round. And, um, you know, some people might say, oh, well, who cares? It's one rep. Okay. But I really don't want to get hurt. I don't, it's not worth it to me. So, um, if I can keep my form in, then I'm going to push and I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, pull as hard as I can and try to get that weight up. But there is a point where it's just too heavy. And then the back starts rounding or whatever and cut it out. Like I've had it with squatting where I get to the bottom and I really do try to explode up and I give it everything I have. And the bar moves like two inches and then starts moving down. Okay. I have to sit it down. I squat

in a squat rack. It's not a big deal. You just sit it down. Yes. It's annoying to strip and re-rack, but it just is what it is. And, um, so there's nothing wrong with, uh, with, with that. Now, what I've seen though, is people that will just give up on their sets that they could have gotten another rep and their form was good. Like, especially you'll see it where somebody, let's say it's squatting and they get to their last rep, like they're, they're, they're going, and then they explode out of the hole and then they just re-rack the weight. And you're like, what? There's no way that you couldn't have at least gotten one more, probably two more reps. And then they'll just be like, yeah, yeah, I know.

And, you know, I understand. It's hard. It's hard work. But just know that, like, that right there, he just missed out on progress. He really did. Like, he probably could have gotten two more reps and then added weight to the bar and then been on his way. But now maybe next week, maybe next week he will do it because he'd be like, I mean, okay, I gotta, I gotta get it now. But you, when you, when you do that a lot, right, it's kind of like cheating on your diet. When you cheat on your diet once, that's not a

big deal. But if you're cheating on every meal every day, or if you're cheating every day, where you're just going over, you know, instead of two tablespoons of peanut butter, you have three instead of, you know, uh, you add some butter to your vegetables that wasn't accounted for. And you do that kind of stuff. You know, that means over time that you can lose quite a bit less weight than you should have, or less fat than you should have. Same thing goes in your training. If you don't really push yourself every rep, every set that will add up over time to just less gains. And the people that I have seen that have done the best one for one, they don't make those mistakes with their diet. And they don't make this mistake in the gym. They work hard. They're like, if they, if they,

uh, every, they're not necessarily. And let me also clarify, you don't have to train to absolute failure every set. In fact, they don't recommend it. It's probably a bit too stressful on the body. Personally, what I do and what I recommend is you push until you know that your next rep is going to fail. And as you get more experience with weightlifting, you'll learn those areas. Like you'll learn that you'll learn your body. Like I know, um, with all my, my big lifts, that feeling where, okay, I got that rep,

but there's no way I'm getting another. And that's where I end my sets. I don't always just go to absolute failure because again, like that's a, I would say that's a training tool kind of like negatives, right. Or rest pause sets, but it's not something you do all the time. Um, so with, with that being said, so, you know, the people that do the best, the people that push to that limit, every set, they push to that limit so, you know, the people that do the best are the people that push to that limit. Every set they push to that limit where, you know, they don't just get off because

they go, well, that was hard. That was enough. Or they don't set, you know, they don't just decide on an arbitrary number. Like, well, I did five reps last week, so I'll just do five this week. Like, no, they're always trying to improve and that's what they go for. And that means that, you know, there's always the internal stuff you have to deal with too. If you're in a bad mood, uh, if you have your attention on other things, if you didn't quite sleep enough, you can always find excuses to not work as hard as you want in the gym. Just like I can find excuses, not work as hard as maybe you should in life. Um, so, you know, you just have to overcome that and you just have to say, you know, you don't give a shit for the next hour.

Nothing else matters. You're in here. This is what you're doing and this is how you're going to do it. And everything else that is in life that's on your mind that maybe could be a reason to, to not really be there doing what you're doing. You'll worry about that after the gym. So that's a bit of a skill that, you know, you just have to cultivate and you just cultivate it by doing it. It's just one of those things that becomes a habit. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Another good little tip for making sure that you don't get stuck in a rut is micro loading. So, um, in, in most, with most exercises, you're going to be able to, when, once you hit a top of a rep range, let's say you're doing four to six rep range rate, then or whatever, you're going to be able to add 10 pounds total. So you're going to add 10 pounds to the bar. You're going to increase your dumbbell weight by, you know, five pounds per dumbbell. And then

you're going to, that should knock your reps down by about two. And then you just keep on going and you rinse repeat, but there can definitely be times, especially as when you, when you be get become more advanced of a weightlifter where that's too much 10 pounds, like on the squat, like let's say you get six reps on your squat or you get 10 reps in your squat and you add 10 pounds and then you only get three or you only get, you know, six or seven. And that's not what you want. You want to be, let's say you want to be in that four to six range or eight, 10 range is more what I recommend for women. Uh, of course I do recommend some four to six work, but not as much as guys. Um, and you know, then what you can do is you can go up by, you can use two and a half pound plates. So you're going up by only five pounds instead of 10. And you might find that, uh, now when you do that, you can stick to your rep range and continue to make progress. Or you can even get micro like smaller plates where it would allow you to add a total of two and a half pounds. So one and a half pounds to the bar or even add two pounds. I don't know, actually know how granular they get. Um, uh, because it,

it, in my gym, I just use the two and a half pounds if necessary. I use either the two and a half or five pounds. Um, and I have, I do have some fractional plates and I have used them before, but I've found that I haven't needed to use them at least recently. Uh, but it is a workable, it is very workable. So once you're hitting the top of that rep range that you don't, if, if you find that it's five pound or a 10 pound jump is just too much, it knocks your reps down too much, then just add less weight. And you'll find that in some periods, you'll maybe be able to go up in those 2.5 or maybe 5-pound increments. And then all of a sudden now, you can go up in 10-pound increments or 5-pound increments. So it's a good little tool to keep in mind. You can buy fractional plates from, I don't know, probably rogue sells

them or, um, if you just Google fractional weight plates, then, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a good little thing to have. Uh, you can even bring them yourself in your weight bag. Cause they're not, they don't weigh heavy. They don't, they're not heavy. They don't weigh a lot. You just bring them and use them and bring them home. Another simple little tip is, uh, sometimes if you're stuck in a, in a weight range to just add weight, especially if you're used as fractional, if you're just kind of stuck in a wet rep range, but your diet is good,

especially if it's on a certain exercise, you'll find that with some guys where they're making great progress on, sometimes it's strange. It can be making progress on everything but squat, like everything else, deadlift is going up, all upper body stuff is going up, squat is kind of stuck. That's usually a technique or mobility thing. But if you've already ruled that out, and obviously your diet is working because you're

gaining strength everywhere else, then sometimes just going up and wait and just seeing if it sticks basically. So adding, you know, maybe five pounds total to the bar and seeing, can you just get your four reps? Or even if you only get three reps, let's say you're trying to do four to six, you only get three. That's fine. Try the next week. Can you get four? Sometimes that enough is just to, just to, uh, to, to stimulate progress. It's, um, it's simple, but it can work. Another simple little technique is playing with rep ranges. So if you're stuck, if you're, let's say again, you're doing four to six, or if you're a girl, you're doing four to six, eight, 10 or whatever, and you're just not really making progress. And again, this is especially relevant to when a certain exercising exercise isn't progressing the way that it should, whereas a lot of other things are, because if everything is stuck, it's probably your diet. It's probably if you're not sleeping enough, you know, there's something basic that's out that's causing everything to be stuck. But when it's like I'm making progress here, I'm not making progress there, technique or mobility.

But if that's not the issue, then these little tips can be useful. And so what you can do is what I like to do is I'll periodize the training on that exercise, which means I'm going to do my warm-up and I'm going to start with a couple sets of heavy. I'm going to go two to three rep. So I'm going to add weight and then I'm going to do some four to six rep. And then I'm like a couple sets there. And then I'm going to do a couple sets of higher, like eight to 10 or 10 to 12 rep. And that also, and I've, this is, that's like kind of the basis of my beyond bigger, leaner, stronger program, which is recommended more for advanced weightlifters and periodize

all your training like that. But you can use that as a tool when like, again, let's say everything's moving, but your squad or everything's moving, but your deadlift, so your squats moving, your deadlift is not, and your form is good. You can try periodizing your training on that deadlift. So do your warmup, do a couple sets of heavyweight two to three rep, then do, or even give you one set. It can be warmup, one set of two to three rep, one set of four to six rep, one set of eight to 10 or 10 to 12 rep instead of three sets of, you know, four to six or, or whatever. Um, that can also be a great way to just stimulate. You just start gaining strength again. Um, and again, the, the, the stronger you get over time,

the bigger you're going to get. That is the, that is really what you need to be focusing on. So that's why if I'm recommending that when you're periodizing like this, that you include some very heavy stuff and you don't just do a bunch of high rep stuff. For instance, a lot of people, they think, Oh, I'll just do a bunch of high rep. And then they don't, you know, maybe they see a bit more of a pump, especially if it's on like a bench press where they start doing much higher up bench press, they're not getting stronger, but their chest looks more pumped, you know, on a day-to-day basis. So they think that's, that's great. And then they go back to their normal training and they found that it didn't really do much of

anything that they're kind of still stuck. So instead I recommend that you include some very heavy, some moderate, heavily heavy, moderately heavy, and, and some lighter work. All right. So I think I'm going to, I'm going to just, uh, I'm going to call that a wrap. I mean, there's more stuff that I could talk about, but I've already gone on quite a bit. I want to go on forever. I hope you found this helpful. And,, I mean, this is the basic outline of how you go from, you know, having a normal type of physique to having, you know, a very athletic or fitness type of physique. And if you keep your diet the way that, you know, on point, you really, really don't let it go astray. I mean, if you make a little mistake, everyone slips up here and there and that's fine. But if let's say 90% of your days are where they

need to be in terms of your, your eating and 90% of your workouts are where they need to be in terms of, you know, you have good technique, you don't have any mobility things holding you back. Your diet is allowing you to progress in your training, um, and you are pushing yourself hard in your workouts. And if you, if you are getting stuck, you're taking, you're being proactive about it. You're doing something. You're not just hoping that it gets better. Um, then, you know, that's really it. That's all you need to do. And then it's just patience. And it's not hard to be patient though, when you know what you're doing is working and you're seeing progress. Um, you know, I find that not just in the gym, but in life, in business or whatever, when,'re doing is working and you're seeing progress. I find that not just in the gym but in life, in business or whatever.

When something is working and it's producing good results, and I don't mind if it's going to take another year to really get it to where I want to be. And, of course, I'm always looking for ways to get there faster and make it more efficient, but some things just take time, and that's just the way it is. And building a great physique is one of those things. It takes time. There's no way around it. It's not a three month thing. It's not a six month thing. It's not even a year thing necessarily depends on where you're at. Again, if you're starting at a normal, you know, as a normal person, normal physique, it's as a guy, it's a few years as a

girl, it's a year or two. Um, but the good news is once you accept that, um, and you just go about doing it, you enjoy the process. Cause it's not like you just once you accept that, um, and you just go about doing it, you enjoy the process. Cause it's not like you just, you go from nothing to, oh, wow. In, you know, overnight there's, there's progress. So, you know, along the way, things are improving and people are noticing it and they're giving you compliments and you're feeling better about yourself and you're, you know, getting the look that you want.

And, uh, and then eventually it's, you know, then you get there, but you've already, once you're there, you've already kind of been there for a bit. It's just, there's a point where like everyone else is like, holy shit, you look amazing. But you yourself are just so nitpicky where you're like, yeah, but my shoulder's this, I could be a bit leaner, this, that, or whatever. Like you haven't quite gotten there yourself,

but you have to admit that like, all right, well, I'm kind of like 70% there and I'm pretty happy about that. So that's it, that's the whole process. And that's this podcast. I hope you liked it that. So, um, that's it. That's the whole process. And that's this podcast. I hope you liked it. And, uh, you know, let me know if you reach out to me on social media, um, and, or you can email me or you know how to get ahold of me if you, if you follow my work. So please do let me know and I'll see you next week.