The Nick Bare Podcast - Archive - Layne Norton | Read Studies, Not Books

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

In this episode, Nick sits down with Layne Norton and discusses all the nuances of modern-day health research. They dive into the distinction between bro-science versus hypothesis-centered research, how to approach reading a medical study instead of self-help books, and Layne shares a number of stories of his fitness journey throughout the years. They also cover their entrepreneurial experiences and love for body building. Layne drops a ton of scientific knowledge so bring a pen and paper! Layne Norton, Ph.D., is a scientist, pro natural bodybuilder, raw elite powerlifter, and physique coach, among other things. He received his BS in Biochemistry, and his PhD in Nutritional Sciences. He is a current IPF and USAPL world and national record-holder in squat (668 lb. at 93 kg), and a USAPL national record-holder in deadlift (711 lb. at 93 kg). Layne's Resources: How to read research guide: https://biolayne.com/reps/how-to-read-research-a-biolayne-guide/ REPS Research Review: https://biolayne.com/reps/ Carbon Diet Coach App: http://www.joincarbon.com Coaching: http://www.biolayne.com/coaching Educational courses: https://cleanhealth.edu.au/category/online-courses/layne-norton/ Our Books: https://biolaynestore.com/collections/accessories More Resources: BPN Website - Supplements and Apparel: www.bpnsupps.com Nick’s Website: www.nickbare.com Nick’s Instagram: @nickbarefitness Nick’s Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/barelifenutrition Follow Us On Social Media: Instagram: @thebareperformancepodcast Facebook: The Bare Performance Podcast

Welcome back to another powerful episode of the podcast. I'm your host, Nick Baer, founder and CEO of Bear Performance Nutrition. Every week, we bring you insightful stories, knowledge, and inspiration to help you reach your full potential in life, fitness, and business. If you enjoy the message we're promoting in this podcast, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review on the platform you're listening to. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes. that embody the go one more mindset.

All right, guys, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today we have Lane Norton on the show. Lane, welcome. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I was telling the team here earlier, this is full circle, because when I started getting into fitness, I was in college. So I graduated high school 2009, went to college, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Western PA, study nutrition,

I fell in love with training, bodybuilding, powerlifting, the supplement space, and I found you on bodybuilding.com back in the day. And I remember seeing you on all these forums. And it's now full circle to see you still crushing it and crushing even more and leading the fitness and nutrition space as an innovator as a pioneer, but sticking to the data as things change and the landscape develops. So I just got to say, like, it's been cool to see over the last 10 plus years, you stick to what you do and educate people and lead from the front.

Yeah, we were kind of talking about this earlier. You know, in a position now trying to figure out, what do I really like doing and what am I good at? And I've kind of come to the opinion that I view myself basically as, a science communicator, right? Like a medium between, here's what research says, but not everybody has the capability to be able to break that down and understand it. So I'm going to look at this and give you my best opinion of what it is. And I think one of the people, one of the things people also appreciate me, I think one of the things people also appreciate about me is I'm willing to

change my position on things if I see enough evidence. And I think people have seen that. And it gives them a little bit more trust that when I say something or I plant my flag pretty hard, oh, Lanefield's pretty sure about this. And he, you know, he wouldn't be so strongly opinionated on it if there wasn't quite a bit of data to back it up. So I love doing that stuff. And, you know, even though I've always done a lot of content and did a lot of content for like bodybillity.com and various magazines, it's funny. Like people will say, now who only followed me for a few years, like, what did you do? I'm like, oh, all the magazines and those. supermarket aisles, I pretty much wrote for all of them, you know.

But I'm super grateful for that experience cutting my teeth and bodybuilding because it really taught me a lot. So, yeah, it's cool to be able to reach more people now and that general population, but I'm very grateful for where I started to. Yeah, it's very interesting where you see there's a lot of people that will plant their flag on a hill and they're willing to die on that hill no matter what comes out, what changes. and that is one thing I noticed with your content is that you'll plant that flag, but if there's evidence to prove that that flag shouldn't be there, you're willing to accept the reality of it, which many people are not.

Yeah, and I think a lot of that gets down to, especially in nutrition and exercise. Now, people will kind of find something that they like or that works for them or that they have a preference for, and they'll get really tribal about it and almost make it like part of their identity, right? So I was somebody really known for flexible dieting, if it fits your macros. But you never saw flexible dieting or macro guru or anything like that in my bio because that's just a tool.

That's not who I am. And I think, you know, if you're somebody who you put whatever, low carb fasting, whatever, you put that in your bio, you make that a part of who you are. And an identifier. Yes. then you're almost like by admitting that that thing may not be superior, you're almost like destroying your own identity.

So I think it's really important. I always tell people, you know, this may be uncouth these days, but, you know, kind of a saying I've adopted from rap is, you know, you can date your hypothesis, but don't make that whole housewife, you know, because the divorce is going to be a pain in the ass, you know, like if you are so married to your hypothesis or whatever your belief is, how are you going to then go back on that? So that's also why when I put out my information,

you hear a lot of words like probably may, you know, just things to kind of soften the language just a little bit to make people realize, like, hey, yeah, this is what I think, but I'm also willing to change my opinion if new data comes along. And I think that's super important. When you were publishing a lot of articles and you were in the forums in bodybladder.com back in 2011, 2012, 2013, what was the goal then? What did you want to accomplish in that timeframe?

It's funny. You look back on some of the things you did and there honestly was no game plan. I just enjoyed doing that, but I did a lot of the right things. without even realizing it. So I started posting on the bodybuilding.com forums back in 2002. And this is when it was like, just to date myself, this was when it was a message board where there was no organization. It was just like literally a page of threads.

And if you posted in December and it's now March, you've got to scroll all the way back up and find your thread and just see if anybody replied to it. So I kind of got their reputation as somebody who knew what they were. were talking about. And I had a couple of guys who wrote for the site who were also posting on the forums who reached out to me and said, hey, you should send an inquiry about like writing for the main site. And I was like, oh, they won't want me. And, you know, I'm thinking bodybillian.com is like this huge enterprise at the time. It's, you know, Ryan DeLuca is running it out of his garage.

So I inquired about becoming a writer And it kind of told my background I'm doing a degree in biochemistry I've competed I've done pretty well for the competitions I've done And they're like yeah we'd love to have you So I just started writing And it's so funny

I never took like creative writing classes Nothing like that I just learned through experience And I do think I had a little bit of a knack for it So I just started putting out articles, and I kept posting on the forums, and it kind of built me a following. And so when the transition where social media became a thing, where Facebook and Instagram became a thing, I had a nice little kind of jumpstart to those platforms because I already had, you know, a few thousand people who were following me on these different message boards and through the magazines. And then I also collaborated with people, again, not really realizing I was doing the right things. now we know like okay if you want to build a following what do you have to do you got to put out good content

it's got to be consistent uh you need to collaborate with people who you can provide value to and they can provide value to you but at the time like that wasn't even a thought because nobody even knew what social media was going to be right a lot of people were like oh this thing is stupid it's for kids whatever now it's like if you have a business you better have a social media presence So I just kind of honestly, there was no game plan, nothing like that. I remember when I first started writing for Bodybuilding.com, I got a $25 store credit for every thousand word article I wrote. And I thought I was being shit.

Yeah, I really did. And as a college student, you know, because I'm so poor, I can't hardly afford anything. And so I could write two articles and get 50 bucks worth of supplements, you know, and have my protein and creatine at least taken care of. and then they were gracious enough to really support me a lot. So I do like, I'm no longer really affiliated with BodyBillion.com, but I have a lot of a love for them

and the DeLuccas for like how much support they showed. And one of the big turning points, I would guess like if I had to put like a needle in something, say things started to change here in my career is in 2007 when I was in grad school, I had a guy reach out to me and said, you know, I want to make a new pumping,

iron. So he was a director. I want to make a new pumping iron. But I want somebody who's drug-free in it because I want to show this other side. And I was like, yeah, sure, I'd love to be part of it. And I think he thought I was going to be somebody to talk a lot of trash on guys who, you know, use steroids. So I think he was really surprised. And I was like, oh, no, it's personal choice. I just, you know, I've never felt compelled to do that. So I compete drug-free, but I don't got a problem with somebody who competes non-tested. So at the same time he was trying to secure funding from bodybillity.com for this movie. So

bodybillian.com said, well, you're going to go interview lane. Why don't you put together just like a short three minute promo that we can throw up on his web page at bodyblit.com. And, you know, if we like it, maybe we'll, we'll fund your, your project. Is that the inside the life of a natural pro? Yeah. So that's, I remember that video. So it didn't even start as it was going to be a series. So he did the promo. He came out and filmed me. And Bodybuilding.com liked it so much. They said, well, let's make it a six-part series. And then the series did so well, they said, well, let's make it 12. And then we did 18. And then 24. I think we ended up with over 40 episodes. And at one point, the episode, the first

episode where I did my first powerlifting meet, I think it was, that they followed, that had almost as many views as Jay Cutler's posing routine from the Olympia. And there were the two top videos on bodybuilding.com, like hundreds of thousands of views. So I went to the Olympia that year to cover it for bodybuilding.com, and I think this is 2009. And not only did I have a lot of people stopping me, a couple of the competitors in the Olympia were stopping me and talking to me and asking me questions. And I'm like, this feels different, you know. But just being willing to put out all that content for basically no income and build the platform,

I didn't realize that what I was doing at the time was one of the right things to do, but it ended up being the right thing to do. But honestly, I didn't really have a game plan. I just loved doing content. I loved seeing people consume the content and then have them say things like, wow, this really helped me. Thank you so much. Like that, that to me is just so rewarding.

That's like when I started creating content, there wasn't necessarily a strategy. It was just, I was just documented. my life. I was documenting me being in the military, coming in and out of the field, building a business, training what I was eating. I was just putting it out there. And well, that's really unique to be in the military and also, you know, building a business at the same time. I think it was, I was probably one of the first people that was documenting being in the military on YouTube. And I started doing this in like 2014. And now people see what's been built. And they're like, how did you do it? Like, what was the strategy?

What was the business plan? It's like, I wish I would have like planned it, but I was just chipping away at all these things. But that's what makes you an entrepreneur. Right. You know, the people who plan businesses out, they don't, the wiring in your mind. I mean, again, this is me maybe talking out of my ass a little bit. But I really think that entrepreneurs are kind of like the creative souls of the business, whereas people who can organize things, know how to set things up.

systematic, but they're not as creative, right? So you had that creative component. And so it's like Steve Jobs, one of his quotes, he said, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect the dots looking back. So it's kind of like you have to jump in with a little bit of faith that what you're doing is going to work out somehow. And then one of the other things I really liked about entrepreneurship, Mark Zuckerberg said. And they asked him like what mistakes entrepreneurs should try to avoid, like what common mistakes. And his response was, don't even bother trying because it's impossible to avoid them. Just be aware when they happen and learn from them. That's why I've been talking about this recently a lot. I prefer the title of founder

much more than CEO. You can put it, you can take a CEO and you can put him in any business and they build systems, right? Implement systems and work those systems. A founder, the entrepreneur, has to have that DNA, that root passion that takes it from idea to whatever it's going to take to turn it into a flower, a plant, whatever,

you know, make it grow, make it sprout. Yeah, I mean, the magic is in the doing, right? I tell people this all the time, whether it's exercise, nutrition, business, whatever, like you have to do at some point and I've found like I think I'm not a social media hater I think it actually is a great tool in some ways

but I think we've created a generation where there's so much focus on being perfect because of what is seen on social media that people are so scared to act and they just kind of aim aim and they never pull the trigger because it's like well what if I what if I make the wrong mistake

you're going to. It's going to happen. And that goes for whether you're getting ready for a bodybuilding show, a race, powerlifting meat, starting your own business. It is impossible to avoid mistakes. And even if you do all the right things, the chaos of the universe ensures that you are going to have some mistakes. And so the important part is just to learn from them. And I can honestly say that the best things in my life came out of the worst things of my life or the most trying times. And so it's like, if you don't let it break you and you're willing to pay attention to the lessons that are there, it's actually going to make you a much more robust person.

But it's, you know, it's getting through those really, really frustrating times where that's funny. I have people all the time say, man, you're just always so motivated. And I'm like, dude, I want to quit just like with whether it's business or lifting or like, there's so many times that I want to quit where I have that like impulse. but I just don't pay attention to it. Like I just realized that that's just a feeling and I don't have to give it bandwidth.

I think a lot of people just entertain their feelings too much. I think as you push any sort of boundary, when you ride that limit, it hurts. It's painful. It's very difficult. It's very challenging. And you're so invested. Yeah, and the option isn't to turn around or quit,

but it's like that's always living up here in the clouds of it'd be a lot easier tomorrow if I stop this today. However, I'm so invested, fuck it. We're going full send. Yeah, I mean, what is the phrasing of the, I don't know if it was general or admiral. So if you want to take the shore, burn the boats. You know, like if you, I understand when people say,

well, you know, I really want to do this, but I'm going to have this as a backup plan. It's like if you're already going in, with that is your mindset, like when it gets hard, it's going to be really, really difficult not to want to default to that, you know, easy backup plan.

So definitely. It's really tough because it's kind of like you don't want to be delusional, but you also almost have to have like a delusional confidence that it will work out. Because I tell people, just because you work hard,

just because you are resilient, it doesn't mean you're going to get what you want. That's not the way the world works. But it is the only way to get what you want. So it doesn't guarantee it, but it is the only way in terms of if you're trying to start something, grow something, you know, do something really unique and meaningful with your life. You've got to be resilient. You've got to work hard.

Those are just bare minimums. I like to describe it as ignorant sometimes. Like I was ignorant to the risks that I was taking early on. Yes. So many people want to weigh those risks. Like, well, I could take option A, but if I take option B, I am risking option B, I was ignorant to all the risks I was taking. You know, because you don't know what you don't know in the beginning. And if you try to know everything before you get started, you're never going to start in the first place.

Exactly. So a lot of that content you were putting out early on, it was there might not have been a strategy, but there was also ignorance to the risks that were associated with. Yeah. I mean, I had people, I think I started coaching people back in 2005, and that's really like where the business started was coaching people one-on-one for nutrition. So, you know, I started this before social media was really, I mean, we had MySpace, you know. And like by 2008, I was basically making a full-time living from it. And I had so many people who would tell me like, man, you're so brave.

that's so risky, especially people in academia would tell me this. And I kind of looked at it like, well, yeah, but you work for somebody else. They could just fire you or they could just lay you off. Like, I'm not going to fire me. And I trust my ability to go out and get it done because I know what I'm good at. But yeah, I think a lot of people have this idea that if I just get a steady job and get tenure or whatever it is, you know, I'll be, I'll be secure. And the reality is, like, you have to accept in the universe.

There is no real security. It's an illusion. It's like people who think that they're in control. You're not in control. Yeah, there's a few things you can control. But there is nothing to stop, I don't know, a plane falling out of the sky and landing on your building. Right? Like, probably not going to happen, but it could happen.

And it has happened. So I think people who really get hung up on safety, it's really. really tough to get beyond a certain point because, like you said, you have to take risks. But it can be helpful if you're ignorant to some of those risks. I agree. When you first started coaching and taking a science-based approach, was that a pioneered approach at that time back then? Because there was a – I mean, what's interesting from when you first started coaching until now is, from my perspective, back then it was either like the bro approach or was this science-based approach.

and this science-based approach really started challenging this bro-science approach. But now it's almost gotten even more out of control to where there's a million different approaches. It's not just the bros versus science anymore. It's out of control. But back then when you first got started, were people challenging your protocols based off of what was accepted? Absolutely. I would say I did a lot of the challenging, actually, when it came to this stuff. And I think that stemmed from, especially once I got to grad school,

and I had so many conversations with, I had a phenomenal PhD advisor, Don Lehman, owe him a lot. But being in those discussions with the other graduate students and him, and just how many times ideas I had turned out were just dead wrong, I just got used to having my beliefs crushed and being okay with that. And so I kind of became very skeptical of all claims. And so when somebody makes a really strong claim, my first, and it could be, I don't just do this with nutrition. I remember somebody, we did a Myers-Briggs test in our company. And I was like, I wonder if this is bullshit, though.

Like, what is this based on? Like, I immediately, my will start turning about, is this actually based in evidence? or is it's just somebody's, you know, feelings or whatever. So I think I would just look at the things that people would say, but you can't do this, you can't eat this, you can't do this. And I would be like, but why? Explain it to me. Like, well, what mechanism?

Okay, well, let's see if that's actually viable in, you know, a whole human. And one of the first things I took a pretty strong standabout was the idea that you had to eat clean, like to get lean. because, and this kind of started from a personal experience that I had, which was I would try to eat clean and then being in college, like invariably like the dudes would order pizza or whatever. And I find that like by restricting myself so much, I basically binge eat when I got exposed to something that wasn't on my meal plan.

And finally one day I was just kind of like, this seems really stupid and exhausting mentally and emotionally. Like I would always feel like really bad afterwards. you know, like guilty, like I did something really horrible. And I think a lot of people put ethical value on food, which is, you know, now blows my mind. But that I, like, I understand because I did the same thing. I thought almost like I was a bad person for cheating on my diet. So finally, I was like, okay, what if I just, you know, I had a couple slices of pizza,

but, like, tried to track the calories and stuff and, you know, just see if I, you know, if I can just hit my targets, my macro targets, if that would work. And I just found like I was able to manipulate my body composition, however I wanted doing that. And I kept track on my health markers. Everything was fine. And I'm like, huh. So I wanted this whole eat clean thing is like based in any kind of science, you know. And I started going through the studies.

And I'm like, oh, but when they control calories. Oh, when they equate calories between these groups. Oh, when they equate. And you just don't see any differences in much in like body composition, health markers, those sorts of things. Even right down to, I remember I came across the study very well controlled. They provided all the food to participants.

They had them on fat loss diets. Both diets were 1,700 calories. And one diet was over 100 grams of sucrose, table sugar, a day. Another diet was less than 10 grams of sugar. And I think it was a six or eight-week study, something like that. And all the food was provided to the participants, which really helps with, at any, adherence.

And basically they showed, like also calories, protein, carbs, fats were all equated. Just one group was getting a lot more sucrose than another group. Absolutely no, both groups lost fat, both groups lost weight. No difference in weight loss, fat loss, lean body mass, nothing. Even the health markers were very similar. They improved in every group. the only difference was the group having higher sugar, their improvement, so both groups still improved,

but their improvement in LDL cholesterol wasn't quite as good as the group that was having lower sugar, but that's also probably because the group that's having lower sugar had higher fiber, and we know fiber can reduce LDL cholesterol. And then I remember around that time too, the idea was, well, you can't have high fructose corn syrup. You like, it's lipogenic, you know. So the idea was high fructose corn syrup.

fructose corn syrup is way worse for you for fat loss, even outside of the calories it contains. So, of course, my mind gets going. I'm like, oh, I don't know. That's bullshit. So, and a lot of the studies people were using to justify the idea that this was, you know, bad outside of the energy it contained was like studies in rodents where they were feeding 70% of the calories from high fructose corn syrup. and I'm like, well, that's, like, who would ever get that much fructose?

And actually, and a lot of them, they were just feeding, like, pure fructose. So I was like, if you're feeding 70% of calories from fructose, I mean, you couldn't even get that even if you only ate high fructose corn syrup because high fructose corn syrup at most is 60% from fructose. And that's the other thing I looked at. I'm like, this stuff isn't that much different than sucrose. So, like, why is everybody making a big, big deal about this? Well, the study showed that, you know, consumption of high fructose corn syrup was very closely tied to obesity from sugar, sweetened beverages.

And there was this mechanistic data in rats that showed if you fed them a ton of fructose, they had like these weird metabolic outcomes and they had higher rates of de novo lipogenesis and whatnot. So I started digging through the human research on this. And actually what got me thinking about was I was at a mixer at grad school. and one of the professors who actually did the research feeding a high amount of fructose to rats was having a conversation with another professor and the other professor was saying yeah this fructose stuff's really interesting

it looks like it might be one of the big causes obesity and the professor who had actually done the research on fructose showing that it caused these weird metabolic effects and rats he said oh it's just the energy and the other guy's like well what do you mean he's like well we just wanted to you know like in the study we were doing we overfed it like way beyond what you could ever get just to see if there was any kind of mechanism there

just to understand physiology better. But if you look at the studies where they feed physiological amounts, it's just the fact that it has, you know, high calories and not very satiating. And so I'm sitting here like, as somebody at the time who thought that high fructose corn syrup was like the devil, like you could never have it if you wanted to lose body fat, it's like, huh.

Okay. So I started digging through the human research and all this kind of stuff. And it turns out, and now we have dozens of meta-analyses to show that, you know, if you equate calories, high-fructose corn syrup doesn't appear to cause more fat gain or inhibit fat loss. Same thing for sucrose. The problem is, is that, you know, if somebody drinks a Coke, it's not like they go, oh, well, that was 40 grams of carbohydrates. So I'm going to reduce my pasta consumption tonight or whatever.

Like, people don't do that. They just drink it on top of whatever they're already eating. Right. So, yeah, that just got me challenging some of these things. and right down to like challenging the traditional peak week protocols. I was somebody that was like, hey, you know, muscles actually like 70% water. And if you cut water,

I've just seen it make people look worse, not better. And so I started questioning a lot of that. And now we actually have studies that come out to show that like cutting water doesn't actually remove subcontaneous water. It removes subcutaneous water and intracellular water and just basically flattens you out. So yeah, I think Part of me

I think I got on a role with questioning things where I was like, I don't believe anything that anybody says I want to examine it for myself And you're right at the time There was very much the bro science versus the science And I think what Made me a little bit different Was previously

You had your Jim Bros who were jacked Who people would believe And then you had scientists who basically like, well, I would listen to that guy. It doesn't even look like he lifts, right? But here's this guy who, me, I don't want to speak in the third person. I had, I was doing research that was directly tied to what I was talking about. I was competing in bodybuilding and doing well.

And I was coaching other people to do it. And I think that might have been what enabled me to get attention from more people is not just being the guy said, hey, this study says, but people go in, I mean, as bad as this sounds, because evidence should be evidence, but people are very visual,

and they look and go, yeah, but he's also really lean and muscular. It's funny that you mentioned the peak week article. So 2012, I decided, me and my brother, both, we were in college, we wanted to do a natural bodybuilding show. It was in Pittsburgh.

And up until this point, I was eating What's it, OCB? No, it's a natural NPC Eastern Championships Oh, okay, yep, I'm familiar with that show.

And up until this point, we were clean eaters And I remember I'll never forget this day I was sitting, I was standing in a Walmart with my mom

We were grocery shopping And we were in the Eggs aisle And I remember Turning my mom saying You know that you can't gain weight If you eat clean

If you just eat clean, you can never gain weight. And I will never forget saying this. This is before going to school. I went to school, I studied nutrition. And me and my brother decided we want to do this bodybuilding show. So because I was studying nutrition, I was like, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to my professors in the nutrition and dietetics department and ask them, how do I diet for this show? How do I get lean?

Went to these professors. And keep in mind, these professors are all 50 to 100. pounds overweight, just unhealthy, which blew my mind. And I asked the dean of this department, that, hey, I have like these 16 weeks. I want to diet down to get to compete at the show. And she said, oh, I can't, I can't help you do that. I can just help you with cardiovascular disease or diabetes, you know, nutrition for disease intervention. It's like, oh, shit, like, who's going to help me? So I went online and I remember finding that peak week article and I followed that

peak week article and all the people at the time online who were competing or people in my college who were also competing I remember them talking about taking diuretics and cutting out water and sodium prior to the show and because I read this peak week article

I was like I'm not doing that I'm gonna stay hydrated I'm gonna add sodium in I'm gonna track my macros that was the first time I implemented flexible dieting and we started tracking our macros, my brother and I, in over 16 weeks, I mean, we got diced, shredded. And from there on out, it helped me understand the principles and approach of nutrition and energy.

And, I mean, I saw the results, but it blew my mind that I could go to this nutrition department in a university and they had no clue where to steer me in the right direction. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like, you know, you can have an interesting. engineer who understands how a race car works, not necessarily going to be the best person to drive it, right? And I think it's people in academia, the skill set required, it's typically not an implementer skill set.

It's a systematic assessment, being able to look at data, being able to understand statistics. But when it comes to implement, there's usually not a lot of people with those same two skill sets because they're quite different. And one of the things I've always said is like you don't have to, I think education, I'm a big fan of education, I think it definitely helps.

But you don't have to be a PhD or a master's or even a bachelor's to be a good coach. You just have to pay, pardon me, you just have to pay attention. And I think working with a lot of clients, and I worked with from 2005, 2020, I probably worked with over 2,000 people. And if you just pay attention, you start to learn things. If you're not tied dogmatically to your beliefs, you can learn things.

I think does that experience, seeing people have success so many different ways, you start to get less and less dogmatic, and you realize that everything's just kind of a, tool. And I might use my screwdriver a lot more than I use my jackhammer, but I've still got my jackhammer if I need it, you know? And also, I have a very also different view of coaching than a lot of people do. I think a lot of coaching is just how you talk to people. Because, I mean, I've had people say, well, why would I hire you? Like, I know what to do. Like, there's YouTube videos out there about how to calculate your macros and do all this stuff. And I'm like, yeah, but that's not why you hire a coach.

You hire a coach because you'll be in your own head and do stupid stuff just like I do, which is why when I compete for powerlifting or bodybuilding, I have a coach because I have a really hard time being objective with myself. So I think part of being a great coach is just accountability and being able to do that in a way that the person you are coaching wants to make you proud. That is a really essential component to being a good coach. And so that's a very different skill set than, you know, I'm publishing papers and doing grant writing, right?

And yeah, it's interesting because my professor, who I actually consider very pragmatic and much more of an implementer than a lot of the people I saw in academia, because he would actually give, like, real recommendations rather than just speaking theoretically about this stuff. But he had a friend who was getting ready for a friend, photo shoot and he was like, you know, asking me questions, well, could I coach her, you know, like that sort of thing? And I'm thinking, oh, why would he wait? But it's because he knew that I had

that experience doing that. So I do think that the coaching experience I had, in addition to the academic experience I had, that those two things were really taught, taught me so much. Academics, how to think critically coaching how to be an implementer and how to talk to people and give people information in a way that still retains the scientific integrity but doesn't confuse the crap out of them. One of the things I saw you mention recently that I think can paint a picture for a lot of things that people are confused about in terms of nutrition is to stop reading books and start reading studies. And I thought that was an amazing point to me made is because there's all these books that are being published about the carnivore diet, about keto, about plant-based. And a lot of the

questions that me and the team get all the time is people are so confused now of who and what to follow that they're jumping from thing to thing to thing. What I'd love to kind of discuss is, you know, there's all these studies out there. And everyone who has a book is, is referencing studies. So it's okay, this person's saying this, but they're using this study. And this person's saying this, but it counteracts that study. What do you look for in a studies in a study that makes it valid? And you kind of talked about briefly with the sucrose and the rodents being dose dependent.

And I know recently you've been talking about these artificial sweetener studies that are out there as well. What should people look out for and avoid in these studies that people are using to push a certain narrative for? a book. So the first thing is you bring it up that's very important, which is books are just someone's opinion. And I always try to keep that in mind when I read self-help books, right? A lot of what you want to look for in terms of, because I don't think there's very few studies out there where I go, oh, that's a bad study, right?

Like, that's a bad study. It's more like, okay, here's the limitations, here's the strengths. is this person representing the outcome accurately? So a lot of that's on the mainstream media. I hate to be like, oh, mainstream media, social media influencers, just reading a headline and regurgitating it. And so I don't think there's that many, like,

there are bad studies out there. But I don't think that's the root of the problem. I think the root of the problem is people not contextually understand, where data ranks or study ranks in the hierarchy of evidence, right? I mean, I tell people, like a study will come out and they'll say, what do you think about this? I'll say, wake me up when there's 10 of these.

Because replication is the mother of all science. And you just, you can always, almost always, find a study that will support or refute whatever it is that you want. So a great example of this. is if you look at the incidence of smoking and adenocarsinoma, if you look at the weight of the evidence in terms of hazard ratios, which a hazard ratio is basically like, so a hazard ratio of, say, two means that there is a relative risk increase,

relative doubling of the risk increase, right? So if you're a risk for like adenocercinoma is 5%, just as a human, if you had a hazard ratio of two, now your risk is 10%. Makes sense? So there's this big meta-analysis of over 50 studies of smoking on a dental carcinoma. And the outcome, the overall summation,

is the weight of the evidence says it increases the risk of adenocarcinoma like six to seven-fold, right? But there's also two studies in that meta-analysis that were on the other side of the line that, like, you could argue actually that smoking had a preventative effect on adenocarcinoma. So if I'm writing a book and I want to, like, make smoking sound great or whatever it is, I can just cite those two studies and say, oh, you know, and everybody says smoking is bad for you,

but such and such showed that it reduced the risk of adenocarcinoma by 12%, or, you know, something like that. and without the context of the overall data, I mean, it means nothing. And so a great example of that. And, you know, I don't like to call people out. Yes, I do. Sorry. So when Paul Saladino was on Joe Rogan's podcast,

I did kind of a breakdown of some of his claims. And yes, he cited some research, but there was also like quite a bit of contrary evidence that was never even brought up. And so what I really try to do, what I'm talking about evidence is say, okay, here's the evidence for it, here's the evidence against it,

and here's where I think the balance says, right? Because it's very, I think it's very important that you give people the full context because otherwise people can get really dogmatic about things. So when it comes to viewing studies, it's very difficult because if people haven't had any training in this to go in and read a study, it can be very, very overwhelming.

So I actually published a guide called the How to Read Research Guide, which kind of is a 50-page e-book that kind of takes people through this, had a lot of great feedback. And now I actually have a monthly research review called Reps, which is research explained with practical summaries, where we take studies and we like make them more palatable

for the average person, because I really feel like that's something that a lot of people get value. you from. One of the first things we do is we look at the title and we go, okay, this sounds like something that people are going to be interested in because we want to talk about stuff people are interested in. And the first thing I read is the results. I don't read the introduction. I don't read the discussion. And I learned that from my PhD advisor because I want to go in and look at the data myself and say, okay, what do I think this data is telling me? And then I'm going to go read the

methods and say, okay, did they actually set it up correctly to test what they wanted to test? And then is the messaging that's being made by these people on social media, is it accurate based on what the results were and how they tested it? And then I'll go and I'll read the discussion, the introduction, and then I'll follow up with some of the studies that they cited in their paper just to get a more bigger overview of the context. So part of the problem is, like I said, you could find a study to validate anything you want or deny anything you want. The next thing is, do you remember with Thomas Sol? I'm not, no.

So he's an economist, and one of the things he says is when somebody makes a claim, he says, compared to what, at what cost and what hard evidence do you have? So I look at hard evidence as being multiple human randomized, control trials showing similar outcomes. So, for example, let's say you're somebody who you wanted to promote fasted cardio, right? So it's very easy to go in and find studies where you can show, oh, look, fasted cardio had a significantly greater rate of fat oxidation than people who were doing fed cardio. And this is why you should do fasted cardio because you'll lose more fat.

And people don't realize that fat oxidation is not the same thing as actual loss of body fat. It sounds the same. You say, oh, well, that's fat burning. But that's only one side of the fat loss equation. So how much fat you lose is a balance between how much fat you store and how much fat you burn. And the difference between the two is, let me back up. So fat oxidation is just one side of that equation. You're always burning and storing fat simultaneously.

People think about metabolism as like on and off switches, and it's not. It's more like dimmer switches. All the systems are tuned up and running. It's just how much emphasis is placed on in the area. So if you're doing fast and cardio, what the research shows is, yes, it will increase fat oxidation.

But that's not fat loss. So I actually care about, do I care about fat oxidation and burning more fat and using it as fuel, or do I care about how much body fat do they actually lose? So if you look at the human randomized control trials, where they have people do the same amount of cardio and eat the same amount of calories, they lose the exact same amount of body fat. And people will go, well, how could that be? Well, first off, even if we couldn't explain it, which I can, obviously there's something more

to this if we're seeing the exact same amount of fat loss in people when they're doing a human randomized control trial, right? But it turns out, body has amazing compensatory mechanisms. So you burn more fat while you're doing cardio. But since now you've burned more fat during cardio and you haven't eaten beforehand, what does that mean? Well, if you're going to equate calories for the day between a fed cardio and a non-fed cardio, the fasted cardio group is going to have to eat more proportionally throughout the rest of the day.

And guess what? That suppresses fat oxidation. whereas the group who ate before cardio, they're going to have to eat proportionally less the rest of the day and they'll have a greater rate of fat oxidation. So over 24 hours, it just ends up being null. So that's a case where if somebody didn't know any better

and know all that kind of background physiology, they could read a study about fasted cardio and fat oxidation and go, okay, well, this is what I need to do because it's better, right? same thing for some of these studies on our official sweeteners. You know, there's a lot of studies in rodents where they feed just insane doses of this stuff and they see weird outcomes. And I'm like, okay, but how much does that actually mean?

And if we look at, again, the human randomized control trials, if you're, let me back up again. So a lot of people will do this where they'll find animal studies with either high dose or unphysiological kind of design, and then they'll couple that with correlation data in humans. So this is a great example of this, because people who consume higher amounts of artificial sweeteners also have associations with obesity and type 2 diabetes. So it's so easy to say,

well, see, we saw this and this study, and then here it is in humans, but those aren't human randomized control trials. So let's look at what actually happens when we give people this stuff and they use it as it's supposed to be used. So there's now like several meta-analysis out there looking at when people are given this as part of a randomized control trial where either they're getting this or drinking water, for example, as opposed to artificially sweetened beverages, that either they lose the same amount of weight or what tends to happen more often than not is people in the, the group taking artificial sweeteners actually lose more weight than the group getting water.

So that was just published in a randomized control trial. Sorry, that was just published in a meta-analysis. And a meta-analysis is basically a study of studies. So in a meta-analysis, they will try to group a bunch of different studies in based on their inclusion criteria. So like, for example, inclusion criteria

could have been, they had to at least have one serving of artificial sweetener a day, versus something else. They had to be adults. They had to, you know, have X, Y, Z. So these are, and however many studies fit that bill, they'll try to synthesize them together

and come up with, okay, what does the overall data say? So a recent meta-analysis showed that, you know, compared to sugar-sweetened beverages, if you substitute artificially sweetened beverages or non-nutrative sweeteners, then you get significant body weight loss from that. And so this, I mean, this completely squashes people who say, well, don't drink diets,

soda, it's worse for you than regular soda. No, because based on the data, people who do that lose more body weight, lose more body fat, they improve their markers of health in terms of blood lipids and insulin sensitivity and whatnot, not because artificial sweeteners do anything magic, but because people are just eating less calories, and so those blood markers improve. And so, again, it's like, where do you want to put your weight on evidence? Do you want to put it on human randomized control trials that are actually assessing the outcome that you care about,

which is these biomarkers of health and fat loss? Or do you care about some animal study where they fed a huge amount of these and they saw something weird happen with their blood sugar? Like what? These two things are not equivalent in terms of evidence. And I think one of the things people have a real hard time with is weighing evidence, right?

So they might hear this weak correlation study or this unphysiological animal study as a citation and give it the same weight as a meta-analysis of 20 different trials and humans. And it's like, and all those things are not equivalent. Right. And so that's a really hard thing. So the one thing I'll say is like, first off, when it comes to like people giving you information and talking about these studies, listen to the language. they use, listen to the verbiage they use.

If they're using things like best, worst, always, never, that's a red flag. And if they're really like, if they're not giving you both sides, if they're not, if they're either like tearing down a study but they're not telling you the good things about the study, that's a red flag and vice versa. If they're only talking about the great aspects of the study

but not giving the limitations, that's a red flag too. And so like a great example of this is, a new study on non-nutrits of sweeteners just got published in cell, which showed that basically a long story, it was a two-week study where they gave physiological doses of non-nutrits of sweeteners and looked at what happened with, like, their response to oral glucose tolerance tests and the gut microbiome. And so the outcome of the study was there saw some changes in the gut microbiome,

and they saw some changes in the oral glucose tolerance test for people eating saccharine and sucralose. The first thing I said was, this is a really interesting study. It's great they did it in humans. It's great that they accounted for it. So they gave them sachets of these

artificial sweeteners, which do have some glucose as a filler. So they actually standardized for the glucose, even though it was like five grams, probably physiologically almost irrelevant. But they standardized for that, which I thought was great. And they,

And they also did a bunch of really great analyses, and they made sure that their study was adequately powered, which basically means that they had enough subjects in it to detect the differences they wanted to detect. So I said, hey, these are really good aspects to the study. And here's the limitations. And so, for example, one of them was they had them, the oral glucose tolerance test,

which is basically an oral glucose tolerance test is usually you give 75 grams of glucose and you monitor somebody's blood sugar and you watch how long it takes them to clear that and how high the amplitude is as well. And they showed that people who were taking in sucrose and saccharin had a little bit higher area under the curve

compared to people who weren't taking in artificial sweeteners. Their basal levels of insulin didn't change and their basal levels of blood glucose didn't change. Just this kind of meal response. Over two weeks. So one of the downsides was only two weeks. But every study has limitations.

And when people say, well, it was only two weeks. I always say money, money and money. Because if you have 120 people, that's a lot of people. And it's very hard to get really high quality, randomized control trials with a lot of people over a long period of time. So the, one of the things I pointed out was, well, their measurements were great,

but they had them, the subjects did the oral glucose tolerance test at home. It wasn't supervised by the researchers. And so they gave them instructions, you know, don't eat eight hours before this, do this, do this. One of the other unique aspects of the study was they did great care to make sure that people had not used non-nutrative sweeteners before they started this study, which I think is cool. it's kind of like having a huge washout

you know they've never been exposed but one of the points I brought up was they had 1,400 people or 1,300 people apply who said oh I've never used these things and out of that only 120 met the bill because non-nutritive sweeteners

are now so ubiquitous they're in so much stuff that you don't even realize right that's true and so one of the points I made was if they've if they really like they did great care looking at their food recalls and like finding stuff where they actually had them that if people haven't been exposed to them to me it's a high likelihood they were purposely avoiding them because they think they're bad so that introduces all kinds of issues in terms of especially

if they're doing these or glucose tolerance tests unsupervised people don't necessarily need money to to be motivated to like try to show things a lot of its belief systems And so my point was they really should have been supervising them. Now maybe it's a real effect, maybe it's not. This is the first study to show this, so we need more studies. And then the gut microbiome stuff, you know, people get really worried about that, but we don't know enough about the gut microbiome to know if these shifts in the gut microbiome are positive, negative, or neutral.

So one of the things that the researchers brought up was, oh, it seemed to shift them to gut microflora that produced more butyrate and, propionate, which those are two short-chain fatty acids that our gut microbes produce when they ferment soluble fiber. Well, buterate and propionate actually have studies to suggest that they have positive health outcomes. So it's kind of one of those things where I go, it's a really interesting study. Definitely requires more research. I don't know what it really means right now. and I go back to if we look at the long-term human outcome data, people don't get worse markers of insulin sensitivity

or blood sugar when they consume these things. They tend to get better, especially if they lose weight. So to me, this stuff with the oil glucose tolerance test is just completely secondary to the fact that, hey, we do have human outcome data showing that things actually can improve. So again, I'm not dismissing it, but I think it's important to people put it in the proper context. And the fact that these folks had never consumed this before,

this might just be a transitory response. This might be something where, yes, this happens for a couple of weeks. And then once people get accustomed to consuming these things, it doesn't happen anymore. So I know it's kind of a cop-out, but it's one of those things where we really need more data. But if you read the kind of headlines that are out there, it's like artificial sweeteners, induce type 2 diabetes,

and reduce insulin sensitivity. It's like these really like fear-based headlines. And if you go in and actually look at the data, it's like, yeah, it's not that scary. So again, somebody asked me the other day, like, hey, you know, if you get enough evidence about these artificial sweeteners that, you know, you think they're bad, but you change your opinion.

That's, of course I will. Of course I will. You know, like I changed my opinion on quite a few different things over the years. including like fasted cardio, LDL cholesterol, and some supplements out there. So,

yeah, I'll absolutely change my opinion, but I just don't think it's there yet. But there's going to be someone who takes this study and then turn it into a product and a book. Absolutely. It's just the narrative of the headline they're trying to push. Right.

Or they, you know, somebody's like, well, you know, we use monk fruit in our stuff or, you know, sweetener or whatever.

That's great, you know, but right now I'm not ready to say that, like there's also like this anti-artificial bias and I also think there's a real um maybe it comes from our Puritan heritage but it's like anything that tastes good it just has to be bad for you like you can't it can't possibly be good for you right because it's almost like a deep like shame guilt like we need to suffer for the things that are good for us yep and so it's like heaven forbid that there be

like an artificial sweetener that is not bad for you that tastes good and allows you to have a sweet taste. I've just had people say, well, if you have to have artificial sweeteners, then you're weak. I'm like, okay, well,

you know, you can run to your job. Does it make you weak to have a car? You know, like, it's just, I tend to take each compound, you know, based on its own merit. You know, Like if something appears to be safe to the literature, I don't care if it's artificial or natural.

I'm like, this is what the data says. As I say, you know, data is more important than your feelings. Do you think over the last, you know, two plus decades that you've been doing this, do you think they were moving in a more positive, educated direction? Or are marketing and advertising companies getting more effective and efficient than the scientific literature. Well, we're always behind that. So we hired some business consultants a while back to come into our business.

And they kind of looked over our portfolio and everything. And they said, well, your products are probably in the top 5% of products that are out there in terms of their quality. But you're only selling in like 0.1% because you have put so much emphasis on creating high quality products and services. whereas like now, and still our focus is on improving those because we're scientists. So we just look at the product and the business people come in and go, this is good enough right now to crush more money in marketing dollars, right?

And so we're just trying to get that balance where we're marketing, but like our ethos responsibly, but still doing an effective job. And that's a very fine line to walk. But as far as like whether or not it's getting better or worse, that is a tough question. I think overall things are better now than they were 20 years ago. Because 20 years ago, you just didn't have any access to information. It was just literally what you could find in the muscle magazines, right?

Or if you got a hankering to go and do a degree, you could read actual textbooks and you could read studies and whatnot. But there was very much like an ivory tower, high barrier to entry to get good information. because most of what was in the muscle magazines was pretty awful. And again, very confusing to people because, you know, I can remember, you know, no disrespect because I loved Flex Magazine growing up. But you'd read one article. It was like, this is why you need to be low carb. And the next article is like, why you need carbs.

And then there'd be, well, you only need one set to failure. And the next one's like, nope, volume is super important, you know. So that kind of mixed messaging is actually one of the things that drove me to do a PhD because I'm like, I want to figure it out for myself. And then once you get into it, of course, you realize there's actually, the more you know, the more you realize, I know very, very little. So I think now it's better because at least you can go out and you can find good evidence-based information.

The challenge is just wading through the slew of misinformation that exists out there. And we had a guy on our podcast, a wallback name Alan Levinovitz, and he's actually a professor of religious studies. but he did a book on kind of the naturalism fallacy and just kind of breaking down why naturalism has kind of become like a religion and not always evidence-based. In fact, it was really funny.

He talked about a story where he went to this tribe that had just like kind of started to modernize. I think it was in South America. And one of the people like talking to the tribe was like, oh, you must just like, this must be so hard for you and you must really hate this. And the leader of the tribe's like, what are you talking about? We have light.

This is great. Like, you know, screw naturalism. You know, this is great. We can actually see it at night if something's going to come for us. So I think people get really tribal about this stuff. And one of the things that Alan said that stuck with me is, it's really hard for people to pick out an actual expert. Because if you listen to how a real expert talks, they actually sound really unsure of themselves.

They say things like probably maybe suggests, you know, they sound really unsure and they might change their mind, right? As new data comes out. So who actually sounds like an expert is somebody who's probably the least likely to be an expert, which is somebody who is basically at the peak of Mount Stupid on the Dunning Kruger chart. If you remember Dunning Kruger? No, I'm not. Okay, so Dunning Kruger is basically, when you first start learning about a subject,

you are aware that you know nothing, right? And so Dunning Kruger plots your perceived knowledge versus your actual expertise. Interesting. Okay? So expertise on the horizontal graph, perceived knowledge on the Y axis. And what you find is people,

the highest point of their perceived knowledge, knowledge is about six months to a year after they've gotten into a subject. So they feel like they know more than people who are actually experts. And some people never come off that peak. They love the, it's like an entitlement and sense of superiority that gives them. I know a lot of people in that space. But as you begin to learn more and more, and I would say the peak of my Mount Stupid was, you know, the middle of undergrad school. When I'd been reading magazines, I knew what kind of worked for me or what I had experienced that it worked for me

and just felt like I'm like, I know all this stuff, I read these studies, whatever. And I got to grad school, I met my PhD advisor and then like within a week I had started to come off that Mount Stupid because I realized, wow, this guy knows he has forgotten more about this stuff than I have ever even fathomed that I could learn.

And so like over the next two, two years, you go into what's called the Valley of Despair, which is where you go, I just, I know nothing. In fact, I can remember giving my first presentation of my research data in 2008 at Experimental Biology, which is like a big scientific symposium for super nerds. And I got eviscerated by a professor that was there. And it was funny, my PhD advisor said, you know, you're actually not supposed to go that hard on grad students. He was kind of, he was kind of pissed. but it was good for me because I felt pretty confident

going into that talk and then he just was bringing up stuff that I'd never even thought about. What were you talking about? We were talking about, so my research on like looking at protein intake and protein quality

as it relates to the leucine content of the protein sources. So, lucine is the amino acid that I really focused on on my PhD. We know that it stimulates mTOR, it stimulates protein synthesis,

but I wanted to look at like lusine levels as part of complete protein sources, did it still have the same outcome in subjects? And so my research was feeding different sources of protein that varied in lusine contents and looking at the effects on muscle protein synthesis. And so I was showing my data, and I was talking about how it related to like

the current protein requirements and the protein recommendations. And this guy, I can't remember a lot of us specific points, but he just brought up so many things that I had never even thought about. And I couldn't reply to some of the questions he was asking me. And I kind of looked like an idiot, you know. But it was good for me because then, like, I went back and fortified myself and learned even more about the stuff he was bringing up.

And so with Dunning Kruger, you hit this peak. But then if you continue to learn, if you continue to keep your mind open and be open to the fact that you could be wrong. You go into the Valley of Despair, and then after a couple more years, you start to come, start to come out. And so in the Valley of Despair, you get to the point where your knowledge, your actual knowledge, is way higher than what you think it is. So if you think about how weird this is, you start out and you actually know very, very little,

but you think you know a lot. And then as you progress, you get to the point where, you start out. you're like, I know nothing, even though you know quite a bit. And then it starts going back up where you go, okay, I start to understand this stuff a little bit more. But even no matter how experienced you get, you will never be as confident in your perceived knowledge as you were at the peak of Mount Stupid. I mean, I can 100% relate to this as an entrepreneur and a business owner. Oh, yeah. Like when I first started much.

You make a little money and you're like, oh, I know how to do this thing. Oh, my gosh. It's ridiculous. Yeah. You have all the confidence in the world that you know every. And you tell yourself, there's nothing more that I can know based off where I'm at right now. And you get humbled very quickly. That is so spot on accurate.

Like the most accurate thing I've ever heard. Yeah, I know. And I think that people ask me about that. I'm like, well, just be aware. You know, it's like, just be open to the fact that what you believe could be wrong. Right. And I think when you're open to that, you know, it just, it makes things easier. Like I said, I'm not married to any hypothesis because one of the things I do when I give a,

I give seminars is I'll take a pen out and I'll, I'll say, I'll just drop it. I go, hmm, gravity. Worked again. But did you know that that's, I can't prove that? I can't prove it. Now, we accept it as true because we just have so much overwhelming data that we're pretty sure that if I drop this pin, it's going to go towards the ground at 9.8 meters per second squared. But if, I mean, there could be something that comes out.

Like, it would take a lot of evidence to convince me otherwise, but there could be, right? Like, maybe we'll, Earth changes its rotation. It's a little bit closer to the sun and all of a sudden gravity change. You know, who knows, right? But the point is, is like, there's different levels of data and there's different levels of confidence, you know. So when it comes to the physical sciences, if you only have one step, or it was in a certain population, whatever, you'd be very careful about how hard you plant your flag, right?

And so that's one of the things. I used to plant my flag super hard when I was young, early in grad school. And now the further and further I get out, and the more and more I see, I just go, yeah, I don't really know, maybe. I must say people during seminars, I'll say one of the reasons you'll know,

I know what I'm talking about is I'm willing to say the three magic words, I don't know. And a lot of people aren't willing to do that because they feel like if they're an expert, they should be able to have an answer to a question. And I just know what I know and I know what I don't know. I had a meeting with someone last night. It was in regards to business. And one of the things he was telling me, he's built a business much larger than the business I've built. But he says, you get to a point where you can't have generalists in your company anymore. You need specialists, you need experts. But the thing about generalists is they typically have a lot of confidence that they can do what they say they're going to do or they can take this business to the next level.

I believe what we're seeing in social media now is a lot of people don't mean harm, but they are generalists that have so much confidence in what they're talking about that people buy into it so much. because like you said, if you have an expert that is trying to promote a product or a service and they say maybe could be, well, this guy's not even sure of himself, why am I going to trust him? You got, so other guy over here who was confident in the whole world, well, shit, yeah, I'm going to follow this guy. Yep. I think that's, I believe that's what we're seeing. Oh, for sure. And, you know, people appeal to their own tribes and people do become very tribal about these things.

That's one thing social media has definitely done. made people more tribal. You know, people just, I mean, you can literally sit in your information silo and never venture outside that if you want to. And you just think that this is the way the world works. But yeah, it's, it's, you mentioned generalists versus specialists. And it's interesting because, at least from a business perspective, when you're a smaller business, what you need is you need generalists.

You need people who can wear a lot of different hats. And then as you progress, you have to become more specialized in every area if you want to progress. Yeah. And that's the same thing with education. My background was in biochemistry, which is very broad. And then my Ph.D. was in nutrition science. But then my specific area of my wheelhouse was protein metabolism, you know, lean mass, that sort of thing.

Muscle metabolism. So, you know, I have a PhD in nutritional science. But if somebody says, you know, what do you think about, like, vitamin D for, my five-year-old, I'd be like, yeah, you should talk to a pediatric dietitian. It's just not my scope, right? Or if somebody says, well, I'm pregnant, like, you know, what should I be doing? I'm like, not my scope. Now, I could probably provide some general recommendations, right?

Like, I'm not completely ignorant. But again, it's like to actually be an expert in something, you have to narrow your focus so much. but one good thing is, you know, with coaching, you get a little bit more of a holistic view. But you're absolutely right. And I've seen on social media now, a lot of people really feel comfortable talking about diet when they have no background in it whatsoever, right?

And this goes down to like, I see people make these rounds. It's like, well, I'm going to try and make money in this thing. It didn't work. Okay. Now I'm going to go talk about nutrition. Now I'm going to go talk about being a success coach and being an entrepreneur. And it's like there is nothing easier to fake than being a nutrition expert or an entrepreneur expert or a success coach.

Like there's nothing easier to fake than that. One, everyone eats. So everyone has formed some opinion of nutrition. I always say like, you know, when I'm out, people ask what I do. Like if I'm meeting somebody I've never met before. sometimes I'm like oh man you know this is always going to work out weird

because when I say I've done a PhD nutrition people are either going to blitz me with a thousand questions or they're going to tell me their opinions about stuff or they're going to become really self-conscious about what they're eating for a dinner you know judge what you're eating and I'm like meanwhile I'm like yeah I'll take the fries thanks and so but if I was like a theoretical physicist

a theoretical astrophysicist I'm starting you know, they're probably not going to like tell me their opinions on string theory, you know? So I think because everybody eats, everybody puts food in their mouth and everybody forms some kinds of association between what they put in their mouth and what happens in their body. So I think that's easier. And of course, if you have a good physique, you literally need absolutely no background. And you can just say whatever you want. And there are people who will believe you and buy stuff from you.

Yeah. I mean, the same thing with, you know, being a successful entrepreneur or, you know, success coach. I mean, just go rent a Lambo for a couple hours, take a few pictures with it, you know, go to a private jet field, take a few pictures with a private jet. And I mean, unfortunately, like, I've looked at a lot of the kind of what's the recipe for getting, like, young males to buy stuff. it's literally just take a photo with a fancy car and have some women in it. I mean, it's so, it's kind of, when you think about what makes marketing work for people,

you go, God, we are just really dumb animals. You know what I mean? Well, the amount of business coaches that are out there that have never actually started a business, that's what blows my mind. I was talking to someone the other day and they were telling me about their business coach. And I knew this business coach.

I said, well, what business did he ever start? Well, not one, but he understands business. I'm like, no, don't give me that line. Yeah, I've, are you familiar with John Deloney? I'm not, no. So he's in the Dave Ramsey Network, and he's a mental health expert. And one of the things he said, he had me on his podcast. He said, one of the things I look for when I look at somebody who's an expert,

and John has two different doctorates. He said, I want somebody who has the, educational background, who's applied it to themselves, and who's helped other people with it. He's like, that's somebody I consider a true expert. And I think I don't want to be an elitist or an extremist and say that somebody can't be a good coach without having personally done it. On rare occasions, you do see that. And you've seen that in some sports with coaches who never actually like were successful

players themselves, that sort of thing. but I think if you can have all those things, it's typically a little bit better. And one of the things that was really important for me with coaching bodybuilders, because that's so extreme, it's very easy to tell somebody, hey, do this much exercise and eat this much food.

And then when you do it yourself, you realize how that physiologically and emotionally and mentally impacts you, especially getting ready for a bodybuilding show when, you know, I'll tell people, you cannot imagine the level of hunger. You really can't. Think about the hungriest you've ever been,

just imagine that staying with you for weeks. And at a certain point, it doesn't matter how much vegetables you eat, how much fiber you eat. You know, if you get lean enough, you are just going to be hungry 24-7 and you are going to be tired and have no libido

and like all these different things. So it was very important for me to know, at least to myself, I'm never going to ask somebody to do something that I haven't done or would not be willing to do myself. Right. And I think if you're just looking at things as X's and O's and don't understand how it affects a person, like on a personal level, I think it's easy to start throwing up protocols

that are just ridiculous. You know, and that's like a lot of the people who came to me had been from other coaches who were like, yeah, I was 80, 800 calories a day and doing two hours of cardio. And I was doing like, what? Do you have a job? Like, how is this even feasible for you, you know? How are you alive? Yeah, exactly.

And, but I think that a lot of those coaches were from background where they, they just didn't have experience doing them themselves. Or they just didn't care, which is even worse. And tying back into bodybuilding, one of the questions I do want to ask is in regards to building muscle naturally. because I mean if if you look at like mean my dad my brother my uncle my grandfather on the bear side of the family we are naturally bigger guys I put on size pretty easy and you look at someone else who's a hard gainer who could do the same program as me could eat the same nutrition as me and their body doesn't change at all and all the time the response is, well, genetics, genetics, genetics.

Well, what biomarkers can we see? Like, what evidence, what data can we actually pull from that shows our actual natural ability to build muscle and how much of it? Yeah, so there's no biomarker where you can look at right now that it's going to be like, okay, well, this person can build this much, right? But we do seem to think that, for example, satellite cell number seems to be a pretty big indicator of somebody's potential for a lean mass. So for those who are familiar, satellite cells are very unique.

Muscle cells are the only cells in our body that have multiple nucleuses. And satellite cells are these myonuclei or undifferentiated myonuclei that sit on the kind of the outside of a muscle fiber. And through exercise, possibly some supplementation, and then performance-enhancing drugs like steroids will cause us to fuse those satellite cells to the muscle fiber. Now, why is that important? Well, the research suggests, again, I'm using the word suggests because there's also some counter-research to it, but I think it makes sense, and I'm, until it's, until otherwise,

I think this most plausible explanation, there's what's called the myonuclear domain theory. which is basically each nuclei can control protein synthesis for a certain area of muscle. And so the more myonuclei you can donate to the muscle, the more overall protein synthesis you can have and the bigger that muscle can get. So it's kind of like, you know, they say like, this is a really bad explanation, but, you know, they say like fish will kind of grow to the size of their tank. Yeah. Right.

So if you put a fish that could get to, you know, two feet long, but you put them as a baby inside of a 10-gallon tank, they're never going to get that big, you know. So you think about donating myonuclei as you're expanding the size of that tank. And so your muscle cells have a greater potential for hypertrophy. So people who naturally have more satellite cells just genetically, probably have a greater potential for growth. You test for the amount of satellite cells you have?

That's a problem. You'd have to kind of do a muscle biopsy and something pretty invasive. Like biomarkers, like blood markers and stuff, I'm not aware of any. There might be some genetic testing that can be done because you can look at some things like, well, genetic testing is looking for polymorphisms. So there probably is some genetic testing that can be done looking at polymorphism. I'm not aware of the specific ones they look for, but you probably can.

And then, like, satellite cell fusion is influenced by things like several myogenic proteins and genes and whatnot. So this stuff all plays in together. In fact, an interesting thing that will, I think, help people understand myonuclear domain theory a little bit better, too, is they actually show that you've heard the concept of muscle memory. Yeah, yep.

So the idea that if you build up to a certain level of mass, and then let's say you take a year off, six months, whatever, you'll lose a lot of it. But the time it takes to regain it is much, much faster than the original time it took to build it. And that's something that people talked about for a long time as muscle memory. But we think the myonuclear domain theory is actually the physiological explanation of it.

that because as far as we understand right now, and again, there's one study in mice that might counteract this, but as far as we understand right now, once those satellite cells fuse, they don't unfuse. And so you have that, that potential is already set. And so when you come back to resistance training again, that's why it doesn't take as long because those mononuclear are already fused in the muscle. and it's also why like things like

anabolic steroids actually confer even if you only do one or two cycles they confer long-term benefits to hypertrophy so there was this wasn't in humans this was in I think it was in rats but they had

one group was natural and another group they gave antibiotic steroids to and of course the group that got anabolic steroids grew more muscle tissue right and then but the group that didn't get it

still grew muscle tissue but not as much then they had both groups stop resistance training and got them back down to where both were at their original lean mass and they started them resistance training again well the group

but neither group got animal steroids this time the group that got anabolic steroids previously hypertrophied significantly faster than the group that was natural. So the long-term benefit of that, or at least in terms of muscle hypertrophy, again, is probably due to the fact that they've shown that steroids and testosterone can cause fusion of myonuclei.

And it's actually, I think the, I'm going to get myself in trouble, It's actually, I think, the strongest argument against transgender athletes in terms of someone born and male competing as a female in a sport is that a lot of that satellite cell fusion takes place during puberty and when testosterone levels really start to get differentiated. And so it's unlikely you can unfuse them. And so that really likely confers a very long-term advantage, even if somebody now is, you know, is taking like hormone therapy that causes their testosterone levels to be back to that of a female. So this mononuclear domain theory is really interesting. And I think probably one of the biggest things that determines genetic potential. And then I do want to comment on genetic potential a little bit because a lot of people will ask me about this.

Well, how much muscle can I grow? How big could I get? You don't know. And again, it's like hard work consistently and consistency and resilience are going to be required to get what you want. And what I will say is there are no non-responders to strength training or hurt resistance training. Now they do show that some people

they may not respond at the volume that other people respond to and they probably need a greater dose of resistance training in order to get similar benefits. And of course there are going to be some people who long term are just going to have more lean mass but they haven't shown anybody who's completely resistant

to hypertrophy from resistance training. So it just depends on what you can get to And what I always tell people is like, listen, unless you're willing to put in 10 years worth of work, you're never really going to know what your potential is, right? Because I can remember when I first started in bodybuilding, I had horrible legs, like embarrassing to the point where I got made fun of on the forums

every time I posted my photos. Like, do you even train your legs? In a reality, I trained legs really, really hard, really hard. But I just didn't have like good quad insertions. I didn't have that nice sweep. You know, it was just going to be a grind. And so I remember about three years in hard training, I still did not have good legs.

And I kind of was at a point where I was like, maybe that this just isn't going to work out for me. This isn't, I'm not genetically, you know, equipped to grow legs. And I kind of had this epiphany. I'm like, you know what, I'm going to put in the work for a decade. And if at the end of a decade, I don't have it, I'll allow myself to quit this. But I'm going to train every single day like I can get there.

And by the time I got to doing my first pro show in natural bodybuilding, which was 2010, I'll still never forget. I was doing some posing practice with one of the judges from the organization. And I was saying, well, you know, I know my legs are a weakness, so I'm doing this to try and hide this. And she goes, I don't think your legs are weak. weakness. I was like, what? And then I went on to even like, you know, set a squat world record with the IPF, you know, years later. And I'll never forget. My coach was a guy named Ben Eskro, and he went with me to Finland for Worlds. And after I, funny thing, I actually coached Ben for

bodybuilding. He later coached me for powerlifting. And after the meet was over and I'd hit the world record. I went backstage and Ben is like sitting down and he's like pretty much crying. And we've been through a lot together as coach and client. And I'm like, hey man, we did it. Like, what's, what's up? He's like, how the, did you just do that? He's like, you were the kid that had skinny legs that everybody made fun of.

You just set a world record in the biggest powerlifting organization on the planet. How the fuck did you just do that? Hopefully I concur. Yeah. And, uh, um, I'm like, did the work. And I think a lot of people, and I'm going to tie this back into muscle potential.

A lot of people are willing to do the work if they know there's a guaranteed outcome. Right? It's like, yeah, I'll go to this job I don't like because I know I'm going to get a paycheck. Or I'll do X because I know I'm going to get Y. I'll study for the test because I know if I do the test and I get a good grade, I'll get my degree.

So they'll do the work. if they know the outcome is guaranteed. Where you really find people who have a different mindset is people who say, I'm going to do the work, even though I don't know if this is going to work out. But it's honestly the only way to find out, right? So when it comes to muscle potential, as I'll tell people, well, put in 10 years of really hard work consistently

and you'll find out, you know. And maybe one day we will have tests that can tell somebody, hey, you can do this, you can do that. We're not there yet. but what I'll tell people is like you never know unless you give it everything you have and if it's important to you

if it's something you're passionate about go all in and find out because yeah maybe it doesn't work out like just just having the passion and the drive and the hard work and consistency doesn't mean you're going to get what you want those are bare minimums

like to being to doing something really impressive and great with your life. Yeah, there's some, like, people who get lucky every once in a while who don't have good work ethic, but those are not the rule. There are the exception. Bare minimums to getting there. And then really, when you want to take it up a few notches, it's like, how do you deal with adversity? How do you deal with stepbacks? How do you deal with, you know, I've had multiple herniated discs and bulge discs and torn hip muscles and torn pectoral and, like, how do you deal with those things of adversity? Because, I mean, I've been to the point where

Not only have I been in such physical pain, but in such mental anguish from not being able to train the way I want to train that I've been like on the verge of tears in the gym, you know? And it's like being able to work through those frustrations. And I don't know you real well. We just met, right? You've got a successful business. I'm sure there were periods of time where you're like, this isn't going to work. I don't know how I'm going to do this. And part of that your mind starts to go, okay, I could, I could, I could, I could,

quit. And what I'll tell people is, if you're no longer passionate about something, like truly, no longer passionate about something, then it's not necessarily quitting. It's just, you know, you, you were, you weren't passionate about it anymore. Next chapter. Next chapter. Absolutely. People change. But you have to really be honest with yourself. Am I not passionate anymore? Am I just really frustrated, right? Am I still, if everything lined up correctly, would I still love this thing? And if the answer is yes, I feel like you got to kind of work through it or try to work through it. And the fortitude that builds and the confidence that builds in yourself from being able to do those things. That's why I say like, I know this was about muscle potential and I'm kind of going more philosophical.

Send it. Send it. But I always say like weightlifting taught me so much about life. And if all you get out of training is just a good physique or stronger, you really miss the lessons. because it taught me how to work through frustration. It taught me how to overcome obstacles. It taught me how to deal with, you know, feeling like I had lost hope or, you know, those sorts of things. And staying engaged and working through those.

And it just gave me so much more confidence to work through other things in my life. And so what I'll say is, like, for those out there who are wondering, oh, you know, I'm kind of into bodybuilding or powerlifting or just whatever. I want to develop a different physique, but I don't know if I'm any good, find out. Find out. There's only one way to find out.

You know, and the magic is in the doing. I saw something, even though they're a competitor of mine, I'm friendly with them. I saw something from Renaissance periodization. And it was a quote. And I love it. I've used it many times, which is the magic you're looking for is in the work you're attempting to avoid. Like, just go do. There's one, if there's one thing that's common that I've met from,

I've seen from people who are successful in almost anything. they don't have paralysis by analysis. They go and do. Like they don't, it's not that you go and just do stupid stuff because, you know, just flying off the handle isn't smart either. But I've seen a lot of people

who have tried to science or analyze their way out of hard work, there's no getting around it. Like, it just has to be the bare minimum. Yeah, it's funny. When I first started running, I mean, my first marathon was at 3.50s, My second marathon was at 415.

And I told myself, you know what? I'm just not a runner. I just wasn't born a runner. And then I actually put in the work. My last marathon was at 248. Wow. And you quickly realize you tell yourself in the beginning, oh, this just isn't me.

I just can't do this. I mean, so many people in terms of weight training and putting on weight, oh, my metabolism is so fast I just can't gain weight. And then I go watch where they're eating. I got some guys here at the office. watch what they eat. I can't gain weight. And it's like, yeah, you ate 4,500 calories on Wednesday, but then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you had like 1,200 calories a day. So it's like,

you're not doing what you have to do to get to where you want to be. Commit to it. When I, when I choose to do something, I commit and I obsess. And I obsess that whole way through. And then when I finally get it, it's not, oh, look what landed in my lap. It's, here's what happened. When you commit, go all in, obsess. Think about it, day in, day out. And then, boom, consistency over 10 years. It kind of pays off. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like the Nate Diaz

after the Connor McGregor fight when he just says, I'm not surprised motherfuckers. Like, he knows the kind of work he put in. Like, he's like, y'all might be shocked, but I'm not shocked. And I think that's, you know, Hollywood kind of makes it like, you can catch lightning in a bottle and do something you had no business doing just through sheer luck or whatever

and then think about like even like action movies it's always like okay well if we can get to this one spot and press this one button we'll just destroy everything and everything will be fine right and it's like yeah that's probably not how the world works right but same thing like when by the time like if you had told me 10 years ago, 15 years ago,

hey, you're going to squat this at World Championships 668 pounds when I end up squatting. You're going to squat this one day. I would have gone. I can't plot out the arc of how that's going to happen. I can't see that. I can't believe that.

Belief is built through experience. Or sorry, one of the most popular things to say these days is you've just got to have more confidence. You can read about confidence, you can talk about it. Why would you ever be confident if you had failed at a bunch of stuff? Like, confidence is built through experience and meeting some goals and establishing new goals and meeting those goals. And then working through frustration and setbacks of it.

That is what builds confidence. And so you have to do. Have you read Tim Graham? Grover's book called Winning. I haven't. So Tim Grover, he was a coach, or he was a trainer for like Kobe and Michael Jordan. And he talks about confidence in that way where you have to have your first win in life. And that first win could be, like you put up your first blog post on bodybuilder.com.

It could be you signed up for your first 5K and you finished it. That first win always builds a level of confidence. But in order to achieve that next win, you have to sacrifice more. with that sacrifice of time, money, energy, resources, and you get that next win, and you might have failed in between there, it builds more confidence. And over a lifetime where you get these wins

that with each additional win requires more sacrifice, but that confidence just grows greater and greater and greater. You get to a point where it's, all right, just bring on the next thing. Yeah. Just bring it on. I think one of the best things that can happen to somebody

is like a small failure pretty early. I think one of the worst things that can happen to somebody is just like have smooth sailing and then like they're in their 30s and they experienced their first failure and it's like they don't know how to handle it, you know. To the world's over. Yeah, exactly. Because I remember like, you know, some of my first failures. Like you said, like, I mean, I remember getting an F on an organic chemistry test and thinking

the world was ending. No. Like, you know, it's like it's just one test over the course of thousands I've taken in my life. But it was good because then I really like doubled down. out and studied harder and ended up getting an A on the next test. And A on the next test got to be in the class. Right? So it was like an example of small failure, work through it. Okay, didn't quite, I wanted an A in the class, obviously.

But I still got a pretty good outcome. So, and it's funny when, like, this is actually a great example of this. Like, even though things don't work out how you want necessarily or how you planned it, it can lead to some good things. So that year, even though I'd failed a test, my first test in organic chemistry, failed. At the end of the year, the professor for organic chemistry said, hey, Lane, would you, be interested in doing some research over the summer in my lab as an undergraduate? And I was like, yeah, but why would you want me? I got a beat. There was like 10 people who got A's in the class.

He said, yeah, but you ask a lot of questions. You're really engaged. And I saw you work through your setbacks. And that's really important. And so this was someone recognizing that just because somebody had good grades, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to have a good outcome. that how important working through those setbacks is. And so you're absolutely right. But one of the things I'll tell people who have very low confidence, because I was there, I was bullied really horribly growing up, had very low self-esteem, very low self-confidence.

I'm ADHD as well. So, and with ADHD, a lot of people have low self-esteem. So one of the first things that ever happened that sticks out in my mind, honestly, was when I was eight years old, I was playing baseball with the pitching machine, you know? Yep. And I used to just goof around. Like, I was just having fun.

You know, so I'm like picking four-leaf clovers in the outfield and like all this kind of stuff. And after practice one day, my mom says, hey, honey, you know, I want you to have fun playing baseball. But I also want you to work at it because we are paying $100 for you to be in this league. So if you don't like it, that's okay. We'll go put you in something else. And I was like, I don't want to stop playing baseball. So I just started, like, paying attention at practice and trying to do a little bit better and trying to get, like, actively trying to get better and work harder, right?

And so, at the end of the year, our team finished much higher than we thought we would. We didn't win the championship or anything, but we finished much higher. And our coach was a cool guy. He went and got, like, specific, like, you get your participation trophy, like, we all do. But he went out and got, like, extra trophies for individuals. So he had like a most valuable player, whatever. Well, when it came time to give out the most improved player, he called my name.

And I was like, what? And it was the first time I made the connection that I'm not just faded to something. I could work really hard at something and get better. And maybe even past people who were naturally more skilled than me. And then move out a few more years. I tried to make my middle school basketball team every year and got cut every year. And then the last year, eighth grade, I, the coach was like,

oh, would you want to be a, I, I made it to the last cut and then got cut in the last cut. And the coach was like, would you want to be a team manager, like, you know, equipment manager? And I'm like, sure. And I took that and I'm like, I am going to get on this team somehow. So after a couple weeks, I asked the coach, I'm like, hey coach, do you mind if I just like do some practicing, like when you guys are doing half court drills,

if I'm all over on the other side and do some drills. Like, yeah, sure, that's fine. And then when the team would run sprints, I was like, hey, coach, do you mind if I run the sprints with the team? Yeah, sure, that's fine. I still remember one day he's like, why is my equipment manager out hustling everyone on the team? And then pretty soon I started practicing with the team,

and I would like try to emulate some of the players from the other schools, like, you know, like practice squad and football. And then with like three games left in the season, coach walks into the classroom I was in and tosses me at Jersey and goes, here, you earn this. And so then actually put me in the game, I ended up scoring a couple points. And at the end of the game,

like talking to the team, it was the last game of the year. The coach said, if everyone on this team worked as hard as Lane, we would not lose a single game and we'd win the state championship. And so, again, it was like one of those things where I was like, okay, I had the small failure

of not making those teams, but I learned that I could become greater and work through that setback if I just kind of just like doggedly refuse to give up, right? Yeah. And yeah, so I just remembered those things and those things carried with me and even when I got to high school baseball,

trying out for high, I realized it's a really long explanation, but trying out for my high school baseball team, I always wanted to play second base because my favorite player was Ryan Sandberg growing up. And trying out of second base, the coach comes over to me and is like, Norton,

You were the, after a couple weeks, I can already tell you the hardest working person in this team. I want you on this team because I think you're a leader. But I'm telling you right now, if you try it in second base, you just don't have the skill set for it. But can you catch the ball? And I'm like, yeah, he's like, well, we got two people at first base trying out who can't catch the ball right now. And I've got this little second baseman's mitt. I've never played first base a day in my life. And I'm, and I saw, he's like, do you think you can play first?

I'm like, I'll damn well learn. so I went home every night and I would take a tennis ball up against a brick wall and I would toss it, practice short hops, practice my footwork at first base and made the team end up lettering like three years on varsity even though I had no like background at first base going into high school. So again, like all those lessons kind of led up to me developing some confidence in myself, then doing my first bodybuilding show,

then publishing like these different articles and whatnot. Like it all builds on itself. So I couldn't have done that if I just didn't start doing though. That's the real key. It's like we want to have, I think a lot of people want to like sit in self-help books and have this knowledge. But then they get paralyzed when it's time to do it. And it's like, I mean, even David Goggin says this in his book.

He's like, can you read whatever you want. It doesn't matter because when you're actually in the fire, that's where you learn. Yeah, one of the things my marathon coach said this past year that resonated with a lot of people was it's better to be consistently good than occasionally great. You see a lot of people out there that they don't want to do what it takes to get to that next step because that requires a daily discipline and they just want the big win. They want the job promotion. They want to win the Super Bowl.

They want to go to the league. They want these big things. but in order to get from point A to point B, they don't want what it takes to get there. And that's consistency. And that's what I have really prided myself in these last 10 years is there's never been anything I've done that's occasionally great. It's just been these small, consistently good wins.

100%. And that's like my competitive advantage. Up until this point, moving forward is like, just be consistently good every single day. You just said it. It's one of the reasons that, you know, I tell people I'm like, consistency is way better in perfection because perfection isn't sustainable, you know, like when it comes to diet or whatever. And I'm totally with you on the consistency component.

And one of the things I'll say to people is people talk about the will to win. I'm like, the will to win is a joke. Everybody's got the will to win. The will to do what it takes to be able to be. in the position to win is a totally different ballgame. And I tell people the reason success is really hard is because 99% of what makes up success sucks. It's monotonous, it's frustrating,

it's doing the same thing day in and day out, regardless of how you feel. I'll tell people, I'm like, people talk about motivation. I'm like, I am not always motivated. I'm not. I'm not always motivated to go to the gym, even though I love the gym. but I decide what have I committed to?

What is my goal? And it's very, my wife kind of calls me a robot, but like in a good way. If I decide something, I'm going to do something. I just do it. But I could be frustrated. I could have setbacks or whatever. But I know I'm still passionate about this. I have committed to whatever it is.

And so my feelings aren't part of the equation. it's what is my goal and what is it going to take to get there and then what does that look like on a daily basis? And like even more, John Deloney talks about this. You think about what you want to achieve, what does the person who achieves those things look like and then what are the actions you need to take to become that person? And when you start thinking about that,

you go, oh, does this person do that? Oh, probably not. this person, probably not, you know? So it really can reframe how you do things. And again,

like you said, consistency, because there has to be something, if you're running a marathon, you just can't start out sprinting, right? Like, and life is a marathon in a way.

It's a good, probably a good euphemism for life. And so there are places where you go, okay, I'm going to go a little bit harder here, and now I'm going to pull back here, you know,

based on your strengths and weaknesses. And life, very much like that. You know, like, but if you're, if you're somebody who you're just going to, I tell people, I'm like, anybody can be, like, really focused and committed and obsessed over, you know, 12 weeks. Like, I care more about the person who's going to be in it for 12 years. Yeah. And that's one of the things I tell people about, like, the fitness industry, especially.

The lifespan of people in the fitness industry is two years or less. I've been here for 20. And I hope, I plan to be here and another 20, you know. You're talking about old guy stuff. but, you know, but that is because it's the consistency. And people will say on like social media, like, oh, how'd you blow your social media up? I'm like, I didn't.

Like, yeah, I had a little boost. I started with like 10,000 followers, whatever. But there's never been a time where I blew up. Even like when I did the Rogan podcast in 2018, like that gave me like a nice 10, 15K boost, like in a week. But if I had just tried to write a, ride the coattails of that.

You know, like, I wouldn't be where I am today. But what it is today is it's consistently putting out good content. And every once in a while, somebody with a massive following, for whatever reason, shares your stuff, and that's great, gives you a nice boost, get you exposed to more people. But it's just that basic, monotonous consistency. That's really what makes the difference. And I think there's so many people who are selling shortcuts and hacks, and people get really frustrated because they feel like it should be easier than it really is.

Whereas when you can just embrace the idea that this is going to be hard and it's going to take a long time, but I'm going to do what it takes. It's actually kind of freeing, at least to me it is. It's a hard right over the easy wrong. That's where we always lean into. It's not as sexy as people make it seem. And as soon as you accept that it's not sexy, you just accept that it's just what you got to do.

Yeah, and I tell people like with nutrition, training, That tends to be the stuff that works. It's not really sexy. It's just, you know, we know this stuff. It's not a secret what works, right? It really isn't. But, you know, everybody kind of, I always want to, well, what's the secret?

Tell me the secret. You know, and you get, you know, YouTube ads and TikTok and Instagram that plays to that. I was like, oh, this one secret hack. You know, that's my favorite thing. I'm like, you know, I've been involved with very, very high-level academic research. I'm in touch with quite a few people in high-level academic research. So you tell me this dude living in his mom's basement discovered a secret that none of these people

with millions of dollars and billions of dollars of grant funding and equipment found. Interesting. Very interesting. Yeah, very interesting. Elaine, I appreciate the time today. I've been following you for a long time, like I said, the early bodybuilding. com days and all the respect for what you've done, how you've built your brand, and what you're building right now.

So I appreciate you. Oh, I appreciate you guys having me. It was a great conversation. Yeah, absolutely. All right, thanks, Sam. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Bear Performance Podcast.

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