Weights and Plates Podcast - #102 - THE REAL REASON YOU’RE NOT STRONGER

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Consistency, recovery, and lifestyle — that’s what really makes or breaks your strength gains. In this episode, Robert Santana breaks down why most lifters stall out after the “newbie gains” phase, the truth about diminishing returns, and the five rules every lifter needs to keep progressing. From balancing training with work, kids, and travel, to why sleep, food, and environment matter more than complicated programming, Robert shares hard-hitting lessons learned from decades of coaching. If you’ve ever asked yourself, “Why am I not making progress?” — this episode is your answer. Subscribe for more episodes of Weights & Plates where we cut through the noise and get real about strength training, nutrition, and long-term progress. https://weightsandplates.com/online-coaching/ Follow Weights & Plates YouTube: https://youtube.com/@weights_and_plates?si=ebAS8sRtzsPmFQf- Instagram: @the_robert_santana  Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/weightsandplates  Web: https://weightsandplates.com 

Welcome to the weights and plates podcast. I am Robert Santana, and I am your host. Welcome back. It's been a few weeks. Lots of things been going on, lots of changes. As you can see, I'm in a new studio, and I like what I have here, so hopefully you do too. But let's hop on a topic today. I have this topic in my mind that I've been wanting to.

talk to you guys about. And I've talked to you about it before, but I'd like to put another spin on it today. The issue of consistency comes up quite a bit when I'm working with clients or just even talking to people, talking to the general public. And one of the problems that we run into as coaches is you'll have people that have made newbie gains. They've experienced the novice effect and all the wonders of it. And they've gotten to a point. And they want coaching. And you identify very early on that the limiting factor is the person's lifestyle. And you may have a discussion about it and you may even understand it. But then time and time again, things get in the way. You have kids, you have a job, you travel, you have other physical activities that you like to do that put

demands on your body. It's hard to eat enough on your work schedule, lots of different things, or your metabolic furnace. I get those people that have that problem. It's just a lot. Eating food is physically daunting task. It's physically demanding to eat that much food. And I know some of you are laughing there saying, oh, not for me. It's not. But for some people, eating four, five, six, seven thousand calories is work. You know, it's a lot of work. They're chewing all day. They find out that the eating is actually the challenging part of this whole lifting body composition and strength deal. But, you know, it has come to my attention over the years that people just love to major in the minors. By that I mean that I'll recommend our five basic exercises, add five pounds.

You know, if I'm lucky, we'll get somebody from the Gen Pop that's not a hardcore enthusiast that'll adopt this. Do pretty good for a while. Get the novice effect. Great. When they become intermediates, they get to a point where progress stalls. And they think they need something complicated. They think they need more exercises or isolation exercises or my favorite hypertrophy. And the reality is that the longer you do something and the more you try to push the needle of progress, the better you try to become, the more demanding it is on your time for less of a reward. Let me repeat that. The longer you do something and continue to try to improve at it, the longer. it takes to improve and the smaller the improvements are. We call that a point of diminishing

returns. Now, that starts to happen after about your first year of training. The second year can be pretty steady depending on what you're doing outside the gym and how you're structuring your programming. But things really start to slow down and those frequent and predictable PRs stop happening. And you can say this with anything, you know, pick a skill that requires a lot of practice. You get very rapid gains. Outside of lifting, people use the term the honeymoon phase. So you get that. And then things get hard. And improving requires more out of the person that's trying to improve. So I want to talk about what I see in our world and try to give you some tips to A, keep yourself in check and B, try to get the most out of lifting in the context of whatever

craziness you have to deal with. I feel like I talk about this a lot, but I feel like I don't talk about it enough either. The first thing I see is I have an intermediate that's been training for a while, and this person may have some decent numbers, you know, on all the lifts, but wants to get stronger and can't make progress. And then there's some sort of lifestyle thing that's getting in the way. Either he has a job that eats into his time. He has a family that eats into his time, or he has travel requirements, either for personal or business, that eats into his time. He has a his time or doing another activity. These are the most common things that I hear from people. So maybe the person's running, maybe the person's hiking a lot, maybe the person's biking or

playing some sort of recreational team sport, basketball, volleyball, baseball, hockey. You know, there's a long list of them, right? Well, we'll start lifting and I will start trying to apply the stress recovery adaptation cycle. If I have a person who's not sleeping enough, I can't train that person like somebody who is. So an 18 to 25-year-old man who's living in mom's basement drinking his gallon of milk a day and eating a full well-balanced diet on top of it can be put on an aggressive lifting program, something like Texas method, for example. And he could recover from it and he'll get maybe another six to nine months of steady but slower progress beyond his novice linear progression, where he's making

gains, you know, every other, every workout or every other workout. But if I have, even the person of the same age, 18 to 25 year old man who's not sleeping enough or is not eating enough, because maybe he's staying up late studying or he's partying one or the other. You know, they both, they both have negative effects on recovery for different reasons, but the recovery part of the equation is being interrupted. So what am I to do? Well, I'm not going to put the second guy on the same program as the first guy. I'm going to have to start training this guy more like a 70-year-old because he's probably recovering at the pace of a 70-year-old, but he still wants to make progress. So I'll try to do that.

And some version of that will work to a point. It's very hard to out-train bad recovery. You can get away with it a little bit if you're an intermediate, but eventually it catches up to you. And that's why I'm talking about that in this episode. We'll get things moving. We'll get into PR territory. We might hit a few PRs or we might approach PRs. And then a tweak happens, or the bar doesn't come off the floor on a deadlift, or they miss reps on a squat.

Like, things just stop cooperating once they start reaching their previous threshold. So what do you think happens next? I get the famous question of why am I not making progress with a metaphorical finger wagget at me. Because programming is the only thing in the world that could possibly explain why a human being is not making progress. progress, despite the fact that, let's say, person A, is sleeping four to six hours a day and doing nothing about that. Now, I've had people like that that have made steady progress over time. It's very, very, very slow. You know, some guys can do it. You know, I had a guy who poor sleep, probably excessive alcohol consumption by my standards. I wouldn't say he was a

full-blown alcoholic, but he was drinking more than a couple of drinks fairly often. And I think that was hindering his recovery, four hours of sleep, a couple days a week where he's drinking more than two drinks in a night. And he was struggling with what I would consider, you know, light weights for a man his size. So I took the approach that I just told you. I just found ways to plan for high intensity days where the weight is heavy further out. So maybe if he was sleeping eight hours and not drinking at all, he might be able to make steady weekly progress on the deadlift, whereas the lack of sleep and drinking puts him on a deadlift one week, rack pull one week, AB program, so a bi-weekly deadlift progression, much earlier on than I would

expect. And, you know, as I get to know this guy, you know, I can figure that out. Okay, this is not poor genetics. The recovery necessary is not there. So that happens. Other times, There's too many things interfering with recovery. So person B might be, let's say, a 35-year-old. So now you have, I wouldn't say, age in the most extreme sense of it, against this guy. He's not 75, but he's 35. He's not 18 to 25. So 35 is different than 18 to 25.

70 is even more different. But let's say now have a 35-year-old man who works long days, has children, maybe has small children that interrupt his sleep. So maybe he's in the bed for eight hours. but he's constantly being woken up, maybe only getting four or five hours of, you know, uninterrupted sleep. And he's also trying to, let's say, play basketball, ride a bike, run.

He's doing something else, right? So you have a situation where this person has multiple things interfering with his recovery. We're going to say this guy is eating. We're not going to give him a total F here. The fucker's eating, but he's trying to do everything at once. He wants to be the master of everything, but then what do they say?

He wants to be the jack of all trades, but then he's the master of none. What I will see happen with this particular guy is he won't make progress. He'll approach his previous PRs, get stuck, tweak something, something will interrupt it, or he'll leave just as it's getting heavy, and then we'll have to reset. At some point, he'll look me in the eye and say, why am I not making progress? And I'll look at him and say, well, because you're fucking this thing up, man. You know, we can't out-train a shitty lifestyle. You know, they used to say you can't out train a bad diet.

I've always heard that one. The more I do this and the older I get, the more I realize the correct phrase is you can't untrain a shitty lifestyle. You can't. You could to a point, depending on how shitty it is. If you have one or two things that are fucking things up, sure, you can maybe work around that to a point. You're not going to get as strong as you possibly can. Most people won't. You know, this is covered in many different texts.

and many gurus agree on this. Most people will not reach advanced because lifestyle will inevitably get in the way. We are not pro power lifters or pro bodybuilders, right? But we can make significant progress from where we start if we keep showing up. So that's number one. So tip number one is no matter what you show up, always show up and always go for as much as you can that day. And that's not me saying max every day or squat every day or anything stupid.

like that. That's not what we're saying here. What I'm saying is show up. And if the lift calls for 405 for 5, you're going to warm up as though you're going to do that. And if you feel like dog shit, you should record those heavier warmups so that you can see whether they're in fact harder than they should be or you just feel like dog shit. Because sometimes you feel like dog shit and then you can still get the 405. But other times, you feel like dog shit and it looks like dog shit. And when that happens, you should stay there or go a little bit lighter if that warm up was in fact a pile of shit or if it looks good but it feels shitty you go up and then maybe you get that 405 then maybe 410 in two to three weeks the point is the single most important tip

that i can give anybody listening to this show or watching this show is to show up show up that's it we're done episode over no seriously though i get so many questions on these i won't even say secondary more like tertiary, quaternary variables that are less important in the overall scheme of things when the basic function of showing up and making an attempt are absent. There's other examples of this. You know, I have people that I've worked with that will show up, but then they'll only do the list they like. That's another situation. This is more of a not enough stress situation.

And then they'll complain that they're getting fat. And I'll say, well, you're going to gain some body fat when you're building muscle. We talk about this extensively in the show. I put it in all my content. It's on my reels. I've written about it extensively. You're going to gain some body fat, but you want to get the most out of that. And you don't get the most out of it by just squatting or squatting and benching and skipping the press and deadlift.

Or by skipping your chin-ups. You want to do all of it so that all of your muscles get stimulated. and they're all being progressively overloaded so that they grow with everything else. So if you gain body fat and all the muscles grew, then when you lose it, you have more muscle mass than you started. When you don't have this situation where maybe you have these huge legs because you squatted, but then there's not a whole lot going on up top because you haven't been deadlifting or you haven't been doing your chin-ups and then you're complaining that your arms aren't growing.

These are some of the things that we hear, right? So rule number one is show up. rule number two is do all of the main lifts at some point in a training week don't neglect any of them you know you should be squatting you should be bench pressing you should be pressing you should be deadlifting and you should be doing chin-ups pull-ups or pull-downs as long as you check off all those boxes i mean make a list for yourself each day if you need to if you're checking off all those boxes throughout the week you're going to have some pretty comprehensive muscle growth even if it's not that last three percent the bodybuilders love to talk about.

Bodybuilders love to talk about the last three percent because you have to understand these guys, you know, I talk about them probably more than I should, but let's be honest. In the fitness industry, the health and fitness industry, bodybuilders dominate the information for them, and they have for 50 years because they were the first ones to make this cool. You know, they marketed weightlifting in such a way that got. people into a weight room that got things started crossfit took it to another level and got people doing more compounds and now we got some hybrid of the tube but those were the two largest competitive outlets for people that lift weights in the last 50 years so a lot of information

has come from there the problem is there's been a lot of bad information there's been some good information obviously go lift weights do heavy compounds the old school bodybuilders and the cross fitters agree on this but then you got bad information like you need to go in and do 15 different exercises when you're not very strong and you're not very good at using your nervous system or that your central nervous system function isn't that important you know and they say oh don't do singles doubles and triples because it's all neuromuscular but isn't everything neuromuscular like what does that even mean right are they saying that because when you max out what's allowing you to lift more weight is that

you're recruiting more motor units and you don't need to recruit more motor units to build muscle. If that's what they're saying, that's false, first of all. Sure, you can build muscle in rep ranges where you use fewer motor units, but if you haven't exposed yourself to high enough intensities, you're never going to truly be very good at doing any rep range. I mean, you'll be able to do them. You'll get something out of it. That's what the novice effect is. But you're leaving weight on the table by doing 10 plus reps all the time and never experiencing something that's heavy. And I don't mean singles, doubles, and triples. I think there's a place for them. I half agree with the bodybuilders that you don't need to do those necessarily. You don't need to do

them. The value that I see is in a young novice, or just a novice in general, they don't know how to move their body well. And somebody who's gifted and can come in and lift a lot of weight the first day does know how to move his body well at baseline he doesn't have to learn that see like the guy who deadlifts 365 405 495 at the start of his training career that guy probably has good neuromuscular function out the gate he doesn't need to develop that but the guy whose first deadlift is 135 or 155 he's terrified of it and he's struggling with it he doesn't need to worry about doing 50 exercises or avoiding heavy weights because a heavy weight for him is not that heavy he needs to learn how to use those motor units so doing five or less reps for somebody who's

that weak that objectively weak is going to be beneficial but sure okay you're the guy that you know in high school you bench press 315 you deadlifted 495 and it only took you a few months okay you probably don't strength is not your limiting factor but you are also on the right tail of the bell curve. And yes, for the power lifters listening, I know it's not that heavy. I know there's a guy that bench 795. I know there's a guy that pulled over 1,100, a couple guys. You know, we know these guys exist, but that's the right end of the bell curve. That's the right tail. That's not the norm. Most people are never going to come anywhere close to that and are going to have to work their asses off to lift a fraction of it, something that's not even remotely competitive.

You know, I've seen guys bust ass to go from 315 on the deadlift to 4.05 on the deadlift for a set of five, of course. I've seen it happen, and it's not unusual. It's more typical than a guy who accelerates his progress and pulls 600 in his first year. That's unusual. It happens, but it's unusual. And that's the thing. You know, if you spend enough time in an environment, things get normalized. the magic it's taken away. And I love this. You know, I would put myself closer to sport. I wouldn't consider myself a competitive lifter, but I'm competitive about my lifting. There's a difference. I don't care about posting a total in a powerlifting federation or trying to beat other power lifters, which is why I laugh when they come on my page. I don't do that. But I do want to beat the logbook. As Dante Trudell says, you know, I got to give homage where it belongs. But I do want to beat the logbook. My

That's what I care about. I want heavier weight than before. I'm trying to beat that guy. I'm trying to beat myself yesterday. I pulled 505 for five this year. I want to pull more than 505 for five. So yes, I am competitive. This is sport-like for me. But I don't do organized sports. I just don't. I'm not going to put a bunch of time and effort in to compete in a federation. I won't say never. If I was around a good, You know, a lot of that's based on the company you keep. If I had a lot of good people that wanted to do it, I'd probably hop in and, you know, do it. You know, I coach people and I love attending powerlifting meets. They're fun. But that's, that's not why I lift. I lift to beat the logbook, not to post total. And there's a huge difference there.

You know, there's a difference in doing that. When you're at a competition, you are now accountable to a date. And for those of you who have made it to intermediate training. especially those who have made it to advanced, you understand it's not Christmas in the gym every day. You can plan and get close, but you cannot predict when your body's going to be 100% and hit that PR. So now if you go to the meet and the PR is not there, now you have to game the scoring system so that you get the best combination of attempts on the three lifts to score the highest amount of points. It becomes more about points and not about PRs. It's about winning, right?

And PRs don't always mean you win because you may need to be a couple of weight classes higher to get a PR. You know, we've talked about this in other episodes. You may need to be a couple of weight classes higher where you're not going to be as competitive. So you may need to suppress your weight to win. And I know RIP doesn't like that. I personally don't like that. That's why I don't compete in competitions. I know for me to be my strongest, I have to weigh more and be a little bit fluffier because my bench press just does not cooperate when I'm smaller.

And as I learned this last training cycle, apparently, my deadlift response to size too. It seems to be holding up on the way down better than the other lifts, as you would expect. But to get it to move up to begin with, size was required. But at 215, I'm in the 220 weight class and I'm, you know, under the best of circumstances, maybe I can pull, you know, 585 if I can get all that to line up based on my fives. But that's not competitive for 220. You know, I think at 220 Ed Cohen pulled in. 904? It's funny, you know. But even at 181 or 183, whatever the weight class is today,

I haven't checked recently. I mean, even if I, let's say I maintain the deadlift, pull, you know, just under six on the deadlift and squat somewhere in the mid-fours. And then bench in the low threes, it's still not competitive. It's just not. The reality of the situation is I'm not a gifted lifter. It doesn't mean, competitions can't be fun. It's not something that I really care about. I did I started doing this to improve my body composition to get stronger and because I enjoy it. I didn't really, I was not a, I was not a power lifter. I wasn't, I didn't come up out of power lifting. You know, I didn't come up out of bodybuilding either. I learned a lot from bodybuilding, but I'd consider myself a gym guy that

took it further. You know, I was just a gym member like everybody else, but I took it further. I wanted what I was doing to work. So this comes back to the original topic here. when your lifestyle is the limiting factor, you have to take a look in the mirror and be honest about that. I can change your programming. I can give you diet advice, but I can't fix lifestyle. When I was coming up, I was like many of you. I was a gym guy. I had a gym membership. I looked at the photos, thought I could look like the guys, you know, they were in the photos, and believed all the nonsense about the supplements in the beginning. And I just can't Pept pushing myself to figure out how to make it work.

And I did. You know, for me, I had to get stronger. And as I've trained more people, I've realized a lot of people, their limiting factor is strength. And it's funny because the guys who say strength doesn't matter are strong. It's not their limiting factor. It hasn't been for a long time. Not in the traditional sense, I should say. No matter what, any time you drive muscle growth, that muscle is getting stronger.

It may not be in the traditional sense of singles, doubles, triples, sets of five. but a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle. And if those guys were to try to peak a lift, they'd probably PR it if they spent enough time on it. But that's just a whole other topic. So to bring it back, you can be on the best program in the world. And if you're not recovering, especially, I'm not talking about novices. Novices can improve on virtually anything.

But if you've been training for a while and you've seen the novice effect and you've gotten much stronger, but you're in this. area now where you're strong one week, you're not strong the next week, things are all over the place. There's probably a combination of factors that are within your control to an extent that need to be addressed. You know, like I mentioned, food and sleep, those are a couple. Alcohol consumption is one. And then some of you over-trained lifts you like. You want to do too much. You know, sometimes that's a problem. The point is you need to write it down and you need to be honest with yourself. And if you're working with a coach, all you can hold that guy accountable for is

giving you the best programming possible to move the needle. And how do you evaluate that? Well, if he can explain it to you in a way that is rational and not vague, that he probably knows what he's talking about, especially if it makes sense. I typically can tell you why I'm doing what I'm doing in very extensive detail if necessary. But even at the best of my efforts, If you aren't recovering, you're only going to go so far. And for some people who are much more honest about it, you know, I'm a 76-year-old who says, I'm on the decline, man. If I make any progress, I'm happy.

Okay, so he's got age going against him. He won't eat enough. He doesn't want to eat enough. But he acknowledges all these things and owns it. I have very busy parents with small children who acknowledge my sleep is interrupted. I will take whatever I could get just to help me not feel like shit in the process and that's what we do we tinker the program to make sure he can show up and if he gets too banged up we dial it down we're constantly throttling things up and down to make sure that

he doesn't hate the gym because that's number one for me what's rule number one people what did i say earlier show up i want to make sure that everybody that i work with shows up before anything else once you've shown up then make sure you check off the boxes of your main lifts and once you've done that, then we start thinking about how often should we be pushing these? That's number three, step number three. How often should we be pushing these lifts? Do we want to do these lifts three times a week and add weight to the bar every time? Or do we want to do them weekly? Or do we have to run it up every three weeks? You know, that reminds me of somebody I've been training for almost 12 years I've been training this person. And she started out as a young lady in her early 20s. You know,

she's now in her mid-30s, do the math. She attacked it pretty competitively in the first couple of years, did a few meets, you know, got the full experience. And then since then, so for the last 10 years, it's been mostly just showing up, keeping it entertaining, and then occasionally she gets bug up her ass and wants to PR. And we do that. And I can probably count on one hand how many times that's been done. But this is a good example, again, of somebody who's honest with themselves about what they

want what they should expect. She gives herself permission to go in under-recovered and tread water for a while. And it's okay because there are other priorities in her life. That is something she owns. And working with me keeps her accountable. And there's a lot of people like that. You know, one of the things about a coach is there's something about having to tell somebody that you're doing something, whether it's right or wrong, that drives you to keep showing up in doing the thing. It helps all of us, but some more than others. And I know I'm going to get the guys and say, I don't need any accountability. I'm accountable to myself. You know, that's true. That's true. And maybe for you, you'll see all your blind spots working with somebody.

Because the thing is, you can keep doing something wrong and think that you're competent because nobody's there to tell you, hey, dude, you're fucking this up. You're not even close, dude. You're not even close. There's something about having somebody there to call you out in your bullshit that goes very far. And I brought this up in a previous episode, there's this old interview of Rip, Mark Ripatow, and Marty Gallagher back in 2012, where Marty tells Rip, you know, why, Rip asked Marty. Why, why wasn't I that strong? And he says, well, you did okay training in a vacuum, you know, but when you're squatting 600 pounds and everyone around you, squatting 315, that's a whole lot less incentive that you can't get on the big man platform unless you have at least seven squat, 700 pounds. Now, oh, I know, Many of you listening don't care about lifting monstrosities of weight, but you have goals, right? And if you're surrounded by people that are at or below your level, which is easy to do at a commercial gym, I mean, remember, most people don't press, most people don't deadlift. If they do squat, they're 10 inches high, and you might see a bunch of big bench presses, right? Overall, you move better than most of them.

If you've been coached by someone like me or you follow starting strength, you probably move better than most people. You're trying to squat to depth. You're showing up and deadlifting, hopefully most of the time. I know a lot of you skip them. If you're skipping your fucking dead lifts, you need to stop that shit. Do your dead lifts. Do your dead lifts. If you've been doing this a while and you're not too heavy in body weight, you're probably doing pull-ups and chin-ups.

So you are ahead of most of the people around you at a commercial gym. And for some of you, one of these steps might be to go to a competitive lifting gym and train like an athlete for a little bit. bit just to drag your game up you know when you see people benching your deadlift it puts things in a whole new perspective and you start pushing yourself in ways you might not have it definitely helped me when i'm getting ready to do a max squat attempt and i watch a guy do a set of five with it literally across from me he's facing me in the rack in front of me he was the owner of that gym and uh i was suddenly not scared of the weight anymore in another gym that i was at there were guys benching my squat and deadlift on a regular basis.

You know, I wouldn't consider myself one of them. I'm not willing to go all the way with power lifting, but I wanted to be in the environment because I wanted to take what I was doing as far as I needed to. And I knew that being around that helped. So if all else fails and you're having problems being motivated, find the nearest lifting gym. And yes, I know. The gym is a five-mile radius game. I'm a gym owner.

I understand this. Most people want a gym that's within, five miles of their home. But if you're trying to train and push the needle, convenience could take a back seat to being in the right environment. I used to drive an hour to get to the gym. Now, mind you, I was in my late 20s, early 30s. I do not have children, so I did not then, obviously. And I just had me to worry about it. I didn't even have dogs back then. I don't know if I'd make the drive now. I probably would. If I wanted to do something seriously, I want to find the person who's the best at it and spend time with that person. And if it's a group activity,

I want to spend time with those people because it drags your game up to see people at a much higher level than you. It makes you wonder what you're leaving behind. And we're all leaving something behind, myself included. I'm sure if I went to a lifting gym that would probably add a certain percentage to my lifts, most definitely. And I work pretty hard. You know, I'm pretty knowledgeable about what I do. I take a pretty simple approach and I have measurable PRs pretty much every year, most of the time. You know, maybe some years I don't make the PR, but then I'll make a larger PR down the line. So I think I have a good handle on this, but if I was in a gym where people are lifting a lot

more than me, it's going to change shit. So, you know, I encourage that. It's not a lifelong thing necessarily, but if you really want to improve your lifting, then put yourself in an environment where you're the little guy, you know, you're the littlest of little guys, you know, and that, I'm telling you, that will drag your game up. The camaraderie is great, too, you know, especially if you're cool with these people. You don't, don't want to get into arguments about programming and shit like that, you know, just listen to what people have to say, make your own judgment, do you. You know, I have several clients that work out

of powerlifting gyms have made friends, and they do it our way. And it's great. I did the same thing. I'm still friends with these guys. They were great. But I cannot stress enough how important the environment is. So fix your environment one way or another. You know, if you're training at home all the time by yourself too, I think it's great. You know, it's a convenience thing. I understand what people do it. You don't have to wait for things. You don't have fucking idiots doing silly shit or giving unsolicited advice, you know, and all sorts of other fuckery that happens in these gyms. So I am a pro home gym guy. But I've said it, before. Find a way to put yourself in the environment where somebody is bench pressing your

deadlift. And don't come on here and say, oh, I've had deadlift 850, bro. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to the guy who's deadlifting in the threes or in the fours thinks it's hard and isn't really making progress. That guy can benefit from being around a guy who's benching in the fours for a set of five. And these gyms exist. These people are outliers in the grand scheme of things, but there's power lifting gyms in most major cities and sometimes not in major cities. I've trained it. I've found a lifting gym every time I've traveled. I have, you know, but I do this. I play for keeps when I do this, for the most part. You know, there are things I'm not willing to do. Obviously, you all know I'm not willing to take steroids and I'm not willing to stay

fat long term. I will gain body fat as much as I need to to make PRs, but once those PRs are made, I'm taking a break and dowling that fat down. I think there are benefits. that. I think staying too fat for too long can't have consequences. Not to mention, I happen to like being able to tie my shoes sitting down. I don't want to have to get a stool and shit just to get my leg higher and be able to breathe. It's kind of silly, but I'll do it for a period of time. If it gets me over the hump, you know, I've done it. It's not that I haven't done it. People who know me know I've done it. So what have we went over so far? Rule number one, show up. Rule number two, check off the boxes.

Get your main lifts, right? Rule number three, fix your environment. Fix your environment, however you need to do that. You know, I used to sit on boards. Before I had access to a real gym, I used to sit on boards, message boards, forums, the starting strength forums. And I just read that stuff and interact all the time. Watch other coaches' lifts that were doing what I wanted to be doing on social media

or on their training log thread on the forum. I did these things. You know, with how connected we are today, there are ways that you can be involved without physically going somewhere. Obviously, if you physically go somewhere, that is the next level. So I recommend it. It's a great experience. I'm glad I did it. I don't do it now.

My gym is not that type of gym. So I have a very different environment, but I have superior equipment. It's great. And I have some competitive weightlifters that also live there. And seeing them do their thing, and that some of the energy. energy transfers over, even though I'm not weightlifting competitively. It's not something I'm opposed to doing, but it's just not what I spent my time doing. So what else could you fuckers do?

Well, number four, and I mentioned this throughout this episode, take an inventory of what the fuck you are doing. Write things down. Yeah, number four, write things down. Because we are amazing at bullshitting ourselves. you will tell yourself that you are working so hard and you put all these fucking years in and guess what you're skipping workouts every week you're not eating enough you're not sleeping enough you know you're you're doing extra shit that's tiring you out so that you can't lift

you're skipping exercises you're not deadlifting like you're doing a bunch of shit you need to own that you need to own what you're doing i'm not saying that your lack of progress is entirely your fault. But what I'm saying is a percentage of it is your fault. And the extent of it can only be determined if you look in the fucking mirror and ask yourself what you're doing. And then what you do with that information next is going to make this thing go a lot better. Like I said, the people that are the best at this can be honest with themselves when they're fucking off and not making progress. They expect to not make progress. But fucking off and expecting to make progress, you're just going to drive yourself crazy and piss off your coach, you know?

Like I work with people of both of those categories, somebody who's intentionally not making progress because things in life are more important and all they want out of the gym is good attendance, maintenance of what they have, and relationship with their coach, obviously. People hire coaches they like, you know, and accountability, you know. And entertainment. They want to do things that keep them entertained. It goes back to, you know, helping them show up. But the expectations are well managed.

Other people hire a coach to be a magician. Like make this problem go away when half the problem are things that you are doing outside of the thing you hired me to help you do. It's not a right, wrong thing. I think that's the important thing. I mean, it's wrong in the sense of this isn't how you get stronger, you know, but it's not a value judgment on you. You know,

if other things in your life are more important, then you've got to dial these expectations in. If you want to have visible abs and have a beach body all the time, you're only going to go so far on the weight room. I talk about that all the time. And that's okay. You know, we work around that.

We figure out a way to keep you productive, as productive as we can. But you're not going to squat big heavy weights at 8% body fat. You're just not. You're just going to piss your back off trying to do it. Many have done it. Many have tried, you know? Keep that in mind.

Mind, you're not going to sleep four hours a day with an infant and hit earth-shattering PRs. I've seen guys, PRs get cut almost in half when they've had kids. The hormones get fucked up, testosterone drops, they're not sleeping, and weights that are almost 50% of their previous max, and mind you, these men I'm thinking of, they're still young. So it's not like the person's 65 and over the hill. You might have somebody that PR'd in their early 30s, then they're mid-30s, they have a

child and they can't even come anywhere close to that. I've seen this happen. I've seen this happen. And at that point, we're just trying to keep this person in the wait room. If they need TRT, they get on TRT, we deal with it that way, if that's the problem. But we're just trying to keep this person in the wait room until the little kid can allow them to sleep. Or I get guys that travel routinely for work. One guy can think of right now, I've had him for years. And all we've been focusing on is attendance. And part of that is when he travels, I advise him to find a gym. He's usually pretty good about this.

You know, full transparency, he's usually pretty good about this. But there was a period there where there was entire weeks missed. And he didn't like that. I didn't like that. Nobody likes the way they feel when they do that. So, you know, now I'm seeing all these different gyms on his feed, you know, because he's trying to make sure he gets in. It's going to be a crazy schedule for the foreseeable future.

So I can't say, hey, dude, get a new job, especially if you're fucking getting paid a bunch of money. So that brings us, you know, brings us to rule number five. Rule number five is manage your fucking expectations. Manage your fucking expectations. You can't get away with fucking murder here and still make progress. Your progress is your responsibility. And coaching is not always programming. I shouldn't even say coaching because the DIY crowd runs into the same problem.

You see all these questions on social media and the boards. Programming is often not the limiting factor. you know some people overdo it some people underdo it for sure there are people who have trouble showing up there's people who want to do too much of course i've seen it all but for those of you who are taking a modest approach which i think many people who listen to me are it's usually the case of the other things aren't in line and sometimes not enough stress sometimes too much stress sure you know i help with that you know people hire me and i reworked their program and they didn't realize they can do all the stuff I'm having them do

or they don't realize that they didn't have to do as much as they were doing. Typically on the lower body, they're doing too much. On the upper body, they're not doing enough. Or if it's a fitness client with no strength training exposure, too much of everything because they were told they need 30 exercises and 10 sets and all these fabulous things.

But manage your fucking expectations, people. If there's anything you can take from this long rambling on this episode is manage your fucking expectations. You can only do so much. Your body has its own economy. You know, you have so many resources that you could use for alternative means. And beyond a certain point,

everything falls apart and you're struggling just for mediocrity. And nothing is getting exceptionally better. So if you want something to get exceptionally better, then you have to focus on it at the expense of other things. So other things stay mediocre. The one thing gets better, right? You know, you may need to do that for a while. Or you may already be doing that just now with lifting.

And then your lifting is going to shit because you're becoming awesome over here. And that's okay. Just show up, you know, go back to the other rules or things you can do. And train like a 70-year-old man, you know, do very little volume and try to add infrequently to your PRs. And that, you know, that could work. And, of course, if you need specific help with that, you can hire me. I'm always happy to help. I enjoy it.

to enjoy helping people get better structure into their program. That's like one of the first things I see people get out of coaching is things are structured a lot cleaner. But then the second thing is just learning yourself. And that's the thing. People get out of coaching. Things are structured much cleaner. And people start learning about themselves. And then at some point, things either get better or they level off.

But anytime you want to keep getting better, you have to pile more resources into the thing you're trying to get better at. And there is a point of diminishing returns. and you better really love it if you're going to go there. But usually when people go there, they know they love it. I mean, that's why I do it. They absolutely love it. It's fun. I think I've hammered this to high hell.

I'm getting kind of tired. It's late over here. It's my first time in the studio. So there was a lot more setup involved than usual. So you guys get to see all the fun part of me yelling at you and bullshit with you. But, you know, there was a lot of setup involved this time. Hopefully next time I can just turn it on and go. But I'm so far pretty happy with how things look in here.

I hope you all. to when it airs, but I think we've reached a good time to close out. Thank you for tuning in to the Waits and Plates Podcast. You can find me at Waits and Plates.com, where we offer online coaching. I offer diet coaching, strength coaching, or a combination of the two. I also have a few ladies that work under me that offer those services as well. So you have options. If you're at Metro Phoenix, you can find me at Waits and Plates Gym between 32nd, 40th Street,

and Broadway, just south of Sky Harbor Airport in the South Mountain Village. And if you're on social media land where most of my content airs, you can find me on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana or at YouTube.com slash at weights underscore and underscore plates. It's been a fun one. I look forward to seeing you soon and I look forward to the comments, both from the haters and from my avid fans. Thank you and keep tuning in.

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