Weights and Plates Podcast - 105 Andy Baker Why Youre Still Weak And How To Fix It

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

In this episode of the Weights & Plates Podcast, Robert Santana sits down with Andy Baker — owner of Baker Personal Training and co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training. They dive into how strength coaching has evolved, what most lifters get wrong about programming, and why results matter more than methods. Andy shares lessons from nearly two decades of coaching everyone from competitive powerlifters to everyday clients, emphasizing practicality, consistency, and efficiency. The two also discuss the connection between strength and hypertrophy, the misconceptions spread by social media fitness culture, and why good diet and smart training will always beat shortcuts. It's an honest, no-nonsense conversation about what really drives long-term progress in the gym. 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. I am your host. And today I am joined by a special guest. He is the owner of Baker Personal Training and the owner of the website, Andy Baker.com. And also the co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Sports, the third edition. Welcome, Andy. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. Good to be back. Yeah, we had you, what, a couple years ago? We did a couple. Well, we did one long-ass episode. So we broke in it too. Right. We wanted to do some more, and I don't know what happened.

You know, shit just got crazy. You know, time flies. Yeah, man. So let's, you know, let's just go over some quick introductions here. You know, I kind of introduced, you know, some of the things you've done. Tell us a little bit about your background and we'll start there. You don't quite have to go into crazy detail like last time, but we got some new listeners to the show that may not know who you are. And we'll kind of build from there.

I have a few themes I want to touch on. But, yeah, let's just start there. Okay. You know, a strength coach, personal trainer, since, well, I guess since around 2005, time frame, opened my facility here in Kingwood, just north of the Houston area, around 2007, end of 2007, early 2008. So going on, how many years is that now? A bunch of years of running the gym and training clients from all walks of life, train, you know, train, you know, train. sport athletes, high school, college kids, train people, you know, just regular moms and dads trying to get stronger, get in shape, and train, you know, people, older people all the way

up into their 80s. That's one of the things I guess I'm known for, you know, is my work with kind of the senior population with, you know, with the barbell, the barbell methodology. So, still doing a lot of that, you know, every day here locally and then also branched in, you know, many years to go branch into the online side of things and train a lot of competitive power lifters and, you know, people interested in physique, power building, you know, that sort of thing. So, you know, stay in busy on both ends. Very good, man. So how did you kind of fall into all this? Oh, I mean, I always wanted to do it. I mean, that was never since I was 13 and I first touched

a weight. I mean, that was, I was addicted to it. there was, I never really considered doing anything else in terms of a career, except for my brief little interlude that I had in the, in the Marine Corps for four years from, from 2003 to, from 03 to 2007. But other than that, you know, it's always been in gyms, you know, as a kid in college, going through college and everything else. And then, you know, as soon as I got out of the military, it was immediately into, you know, back into that world and opened my gym, you know, less than a year after I left the service. So it's, it's a lot of. So it's, you know, it's, just been a passion of mine and I'm lucky enough to be able to get to do for a living

what I'm passionate about. You know, I myself have done some competitive lifting and that sort of thing. But, you know, I've really loved just from day one, I've really loved teaching others. You know, that's always been kind of my passion. And so I always knew I wanted to open up a gym. So as soon as the first opportunity presented itself, I did. And, you know, that's what I've been doing. And I was lucky enough very early in my career to get introduced to Mark, to Mark Ripatopi. kind of through our mutual association with CrossFit is kind of how I found him. You know, way back in the day, back in like the 05, 06 kind of days, is when I first got introduced to him.

Formerly, you know, really, you met with him and started collaborating with him like 2008 time. And that was just kind of a good timing thing for me, you know, with Ripeto was just he had already written starting strength and he had already written the first edition of practical, I think the first and second edition of practical programming by that point. But there wasn't, at that time, there just wasn't a lot of gyms that were putting that into practice other than his gym up in Wichita Falls. So when I opened my place, it was kind of a barbell based training facility from day one. And, you know, that's kind of the model I was using. I was with my novices. I was doing a lot of the, you know, the starting strength, you know, linear progression and then moving people into things like heavy light medium and the Texas method.

and all that. So it was a good opportunity for both me and Mark because as you know, when you have a concept or a methodology or a program, you know, the more people do it, the more you learn. And having another coach also implement your own stuff, you know, in a different facility with different people and all that kind of stuff. You just, you know, I learned a ton of course. And then, but he also, I think, you know, he was asking, you know, bouncing ideas off of me and me off of him and that kind of thing because it just expanded the amount of people that were doing that type of programming. And so I was, and I was doing it, I think one of the, one of the important things is I was doing

it with a lot of just kind of regular people. And I think that was one is they, not everybody there was, I was training some power lifters and things like that, but I wasn't, that wasn't my exclusive focus working with like competitive lifters. It was just kind of like normal average everyday people. And so, um, I think there was a lot to be learned and gained from that. And so just the more we talked and the more we shared, he kind of came to the conclusion. He's like, you know, we need to do an updated third edition of practical programming.

And then he contacted me and he's like, I want you to help me co-author it. So, you know, and then that was kind of the springboard for me getting into the, you know, online coaching and kind of getting my name, you know, out there in front of the masses of, you know, once that book came out. And then, of course, several years later doing the kind of the refined version of that. With the barbell prescription with Sully, you know, it targeted towards a, you know, an older population, a 40 plus population. So this is interesting, man. So you mentioned that you were, you know, you dabbled with competitive athletes. You've competed yourself. You're obviously a real strong guy.

And if you guys want to hear all about that, you know, go to the other episode we did a while back. We really don't like that. But you mentioned how you coached regular people. Now, this is pretty interesting because that's what kind of drew me in. When I went to Rips Gym in 2013, that was the first time I met him, up until that point, I had this idea on my head. And this is going to tie back to what I really want to hit later. I had this idea in my head that if somebody lifted weights and was strong, they were like this jacked fucking bodybuilder dude, right? Right.

And I remember walking in there and seeing like all walks of life doing it and moving a spectrum of weights. I'd never seen that before. It was like, I'm like, huh? I'm like, that guy's not jacked. What's going on here? And, you know, I have asked me for that now, you know? Yeah. But I thought it was cool because prior to that, when I got out of college in 2010,

I just finished my master's and got my dietetics registration done. I was working at a global gym, commercial gym, for those of you who have not seen dodgeball. Because apparently a lot of people don't know that term. I'm learning. Yeah, we're getting old. Yeah, yeah. That's what the problem is, is a lot of the people that are. They're like, what's a Globo gem?

Yeah. Which gym is that? I've literally had that question, bro. Yeah. So if you haven't seen Dodgeball, you need to watch Dodgeball people. Anyhow, when I was there, this was like during the corrective exercise wave where personal trainers were trying to be physical therapists. Yes. And I had already started to understand because I had a professor in college.

At the time, he was one of those master's only people that they treated like a third world citizen. But he was a good coach. And he did a lot of weightlifting. strong man and powerlifting. And he was the first person to tell me, you don't need to do, you don't need to do curls. You need to get more chins, you know. And he taught me at a low bar squat with a thumbless grip, all those things. And I believed him because I had noticed in my own training that these core lifts were producing growth in the muscles that primarily moved them, right?

So when I left that job, I made the decision. I'm like, well, people don't believe this stuff works. whether it does or not, I think it does, but I don't want any part of this shit. So I checked out. I was like a clinic diet at the time. And then I found Rip on YouTube, his old press video from 2008 at CrossFit, where he says you can leg press, but that's gay. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, this is my kind of guy, you know.

Yeah. Started doing the lift, started making progress, got hurt, learned how to unfuck my form because apparently you can't look at a picture of a squat and do it. Right. So then I get there. And that's when I saw that. And I'm like, whoa, what's going on here? Like this old guy's doing it, this lady's doing it. And then one of our colleagues from Chicago, one of the coaches from Dave, Abdu Muly was there.

And that dude did not look like he can put up what he could put up at the time. Dave can put up some numbers. Yeah, dude. I first met him there. And I'm like, oh, this guy's interesting. I'm like, what's up, dude? And he's just like, you know, this chubby guy, you know, fucking wrapped out like, I think five on the squat. And I'm like, me and my friend were like, what the fuck?

You know, like, new to us, you know? So over time, as I got to know Rip as I got to coach more people, I started to realize that prior to any of this coming out, or even prior to CrossFit, I'd say, most of the people in a weight room were people that were interlifting weights and tended to be good at it, you know? Yeah. And now we're starting to get, now we've started to get people in the last 10 years that are just run-of-the-mill people that want to learn how weight lift, right? Yeah. And people like us that have facilities that are designed for. that that aren't just come in and work out. It's, you know, come in and work out with a coach that, you know, it's made it so much more accessible. There's so many actual training facilities

now versus just gyms, you know, that has made our methodology accessible to normal people who, as you know, do need some help on the front end, you know, for sure. And maybe for an extended period of time in order to master this stuff. It's always hard to explain and maybe you can give your pitch, But when people ask me, oh, you're a powerlifting coach? Well, no, I'm not that, you know, I'm not a bodybuilding coach either. Right. I've competed in a couple of powerlifting meets, but I wouldn't even consider myself a power lifter. Yeah, I don't really either.

I'm similar. I have competed in powerlifting. I do not consider myself a power lifter. Yeah. So when they ask, you know, what do you do that? I'm like, well, I'm a strength coach. And they're like, oh, so you're powerlifting. Yeah.

We've basically, you know, what rip and the content we've all put out has done, we've found a market out of thin air. You know, that didn't exist before, right? Yes. So, yeah, we train normal people. Yeah, and that's, you know, I'll just say in terms of like my marketing here locally in Kingwood is I don't really, I'm one of those guys. I talk about, I don't really talk about the methodology that much. I don't talk about squats and deadlifts and all that kind of stuff because as familiar as that is to us and as familiar as that is to probably 100% of the people watching this podcast, it's, not, it's still not that familiar to the average person. Um, they, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and so, I kind of cringe when I see, like,

trainers and stuff, like, that do what we do, that put out content for their local gym that are like, let me show you the difference between a high bar and a low bar squat. And it's like, you're so far away right now from where the average person is at. And so just as kind of the way that I communicate to my perspective audience here locally is I just, I, I, I kind of talk about the benefits of it. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I kind of, and more in a general sense of what we do is that we focus on strength training for an older population. But I don't really talk that much about what we squat and we deadlift and we press and because they don't really, that doesn't really have any meaning to them.

Right. You know, not that. No, there are people that come to me specifically for those things and that's a little bit different demographic. But the average person that comes in, they're like,

well, I know I'm losing muscle as I get older and I know that I'm losing strength and I need to do something about that. but they don't come in with this idea in their head that they need to learn the low bar squat and the deadlift and press and the bench. They just come in. And so if I put them on the leg press on day one versus a low bar backs, they wouldn't know. They would think, okay, that's good. Like, they don't necessarily know the difference between any of that kind of stuff.

So I think there's still a lot of people out there that are, that don't know really what we do. And there are people that have, that still walk around with this kind of in their in their mind. maybe they heard somewhere, they read somewhere, oh, don't squat. It's bad for your knees or don't deadlift. It's bad for your back. So I don't even really talk about it that much. And when I get them in there for the first session. But I talk about more of the benefits of what we do and that you're going to get stronger.

You're going to build muscle. You're going to increase your mobility. You know, your body will start to recomp a little bit. You'll look better in your clothes, you know, that sort of thing. You know, and that's what resonates with people, not necessarily the strict methodology of what we do. It's kind of like, I always liken it to other industries. Like, if you hire somebody to do a job for you, if you hire somebody to come in your backyard and build a deck, you know, or whatever, you just want to know what the finished product is going to look like.

I don't care, you know, what do you use, you know, Ryobi tools or DeWalt tool? Like, I don't give a fuck. You know what I'm saying? And I feel like that's what a lot of coaches, they make that, like your customer cares about the end product. You know, I want to know that I have a good looking, you know, backyard now, that my deck looks good, that it's sturdy, that it's well built, that it was put together professionally with good material. But I don't care about how you do it. You know, I don't care about what type of tools that you use. And I think that's similar to us is our clients, at least in the beginning, most of them, don't really care about the tools that we use. And that's what the lifts are. That's the dead lifts and the squats and all that kind of stuff

are. That's just our, that's just our toolkit. There are others, and I find it more in the online coaching realm, you know, the online coaching clients come to me far more educated. You know, I'm meeting them kind of in the middle. Most of them have already trained under a bar for a while. I don't deal with any beginners, really, my online coaching. It's, you know, a lot of come to me already squatting 405s and are trying to get to five or they're already squatting 225 or 315 or whatever. They're just trying to get to that next level and they're stuck. You know, so that's, it's a, it's a really a different demographic, at least in my experience, between my in-person coaching practice and my online coaching practices.

I do the same thing or very similar, but it's two totally different demographics. And the marketing that I do, the terminology that I use for each is completely different. Yeah, I would agree with that. I've noticed in-person tends to trend more novice and older, at least it might. And online, it's more diverse. I get actually less older. So I'd say younger, but not necessarily super young. but like under 50, you know, at the gym, it can go up to 80.

So I've definitely noticed that. Yeah. You know, our friend Hari, Fafutis, he had a conversation with me once about marketing because he's down in Mexico. They don't know what starting strength is. Right. And he was saying similar things. He's like, dude, he's like, don't sell a process. Nobody's buying a process.

He's like, no, ultra niche, you know, like. Yeah, alternate. And they're going to, those people are going to go, like, what they did, like go get the book, you know, first and that sort of thing. Like, I mean, and it's not really an insult to them, but I can tell you, like, 90% of my personal training clients are, have not read starting strengths, nor would they. They're not, they're not going to. They're not, they're just not turn that way to pick up a big, thick text. Right.

That's, that's boring as fuck and read it to, I mean, it's boring as fuck if you're not, it's not to us because we're highly interested in that. Right. But for those people, they're not really interested in that. They just, it's like, man, I just, it's like, it's like, it's no different than me picking up, going back to the analogy, I don't want to pick up a book and read it cover to cover on woodworking and carpentry. I could and then probably do the deck myself, but it's like, no, I just want to hire somebody, you know? And it's, so that's true. That's kind of where our

clients are at. I picture Rip asking like specific questions when you hire somebody to do anything. Can you imagine going and working on Rip's house? Can you imagine the nightmare that it would be to be a contractor for Rip? Dude, he always asked him why this tool over that tool, why that's right? Yeah. Why are using that piece of shit. Yeah. What's that thing called? What's the proper term for that? Yeah. Oh, my God. I could not imagine that if I ever did work for RIP, part of the stipulation would be you have to go vacation in Canada or something for two weeks until I'm done. He's a funny guy, man. I know. I love him to death, but I would not want to be a contractor on his house. Fuck no, dude. I would want to work for him. I would not want to do a job for him. But I'll get him a call on the phone and shoot the shit, hang out, have beer. I feel the same way.

He contacted me, I don't know, 10, 12 years ago. And he's like, you know, in the rip voice, he's like, I need somebody to come down here and run this goddamn gym. He's like, I got, I'm out of time and I don't have time to mess with it. And, you know, Steph is overloaded with stuff or whatever. And he, I thought about it for about five minutes. And I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I know a guy out in Nevada named Nick Delgado that's looking for a job. And I said, let me put you in contact with him. So that's how, there's where.

There's where, and now Nick is still there, and I think Nick's probably the perfect personality Nick is a saint dude for that. I know. I would, me and Rip working together like, I mean, I wrote a book with the guy. And that was, you know, that was an experience in and of itself. I bet, you know, I hear, I hear stories from articles. You know, and I mean, it was fun. And I, like I said, I'm not dogging on Rip. I mean, it's, I am forever grateful for the opportunities that he gave me. And I consider him a friend. But it was an experience writing a book with him. A lot of people don't know this, but Rip operates on a completely different schedule than the rest of the world. Oh, yeah. He doesn't get to work until noon. He trains at like 11 p.m. And then, you know, he does

like office work at like two in the three in the morning or whatever. And, you know, so he would call me, you know, at like 2 a.m. and be like, Baker, what's this shit about, you know, deficit deadlift? This is west side bullshit or whatever, you know, because I submit like a portion of the book to him and, you know, for him to review or whatever. He'd call me and I'd be like, what are you fucking talking about? It's like 1.30 in the morning. I've got to be at work at five. You know, so it was an experience right in the book, writing the book with him. You guys did good.

It's a good book. Yeah. There's a lot of behind the story, fun, fun stuff that went in to that. We talked about tools. Like, you know, these lifts are tools that we use. Right. Most of the average person that comes into us in person at least, they don't give a fuck about the tools. It's like, you know, my back hurts, my knee hurts.

I'm old. I'm trying to stave off muscle loss, whatever it is. And it's pretty straightforward. You know, as long as you're a competent coach, people typically follow you when they come for that. What I've noticed is online, you get, like you said, you get a much more educated audience and they will ask lots and lots of questions about the tools, the process. And in many cases, things that don't apply to their situation. Yes. That's what I've kind of realized.

One little sidebar there. Lately, I've gotten a couple clients that kind of found me in the wild. And I said, I didn't really go in deep into what we're doing. but I've noticed there's a I think there's a growing demographic of people probably in my age group or older I think we're the same age right how old are you? 43 I'm 41 okay so yeah people in our

I'm noticing people in our age group that have been doing gym stuff probably since teens 20s they're wanting to do to get more done with less and I have found that I'm now getting some of these people in person, some online where they just find me and they're like I don't want to spend two hours in the gym six day a week Can I get this done on less?

And it has been a much more pleasurable experience dealing with that than somebody who's completely bought into the more is better mainstream fitness. Yes. Doggma, have you noticed this too? Right. I think part of that is just how you talk about, you know, when you're on social media, you know, I do a little bit on Instagram and a lot on Twitter or X, whatever. And I think it kind of, some of your clients kind of mirror where you're at. And so, like, in your own life. And so, like, at our age, like, I'm 43.

I have three kids, two are teenagers. You know, one is 10. They're involved in stuff. I'm running what is essentially two businesses. You know, I have other hobbies and stuff outside of lifting at this point of my life. It's not the central focus. I mean, it's so important to me, but it's not the absolute central focus of my life that it was maybe 20 years ago.

And I think there is a need, like with people, like our age where you're just, you're just busy to. figure out how do I still do this thing that one I know is important, two, that I, that I enjoy, but how to, without spending my entire life in the gym and feeling like all my time outside of the gym has to be spent recovering from my workouts, you know, and I, and so that resonates with a lot of people that are in, you know, kind of our demographic that are just in this really, really busy season of life. You know, in your 40s, that's just, it's a busy season And because you have, you typically, if you have kids, they're younger, so you're very involved in their life.

Your parents, I'm dealing with that of your parents are getting older. So you're also becoming maybe a caretaker of your parents. Your neck deep in your career, you know, that kind of thing. You haven't reached that point where you kind of can take a step back from your career. Your kids are moved away or whatever. So I feel like younger than us, then, you know, they haven't reached that kind of critical mass of family career and all that kind of stuff. and then older than us where things start to slow down maybe potentially again. And so people kind of in that range where we're at, I don't know if you want to call it 35 to 55 or something like that,

there's a need for that kind of more expediency or more efficiency in the gym and just trying to get as much done as possible with as little time investment as possible. So, yeah, I definitely see a lot of that. Yeah, I think there's a growing market for minimalism. And the other thing, too, is generational. Like, people our age started lifting weights at higher numbers than probably people 20 years older than us. Yes. So I think you just have people that have been in weight rooms for the last 20 to 25 years, whereas if you went back 20 to 25 years, there were fewer of them, you know? Yeah, and social media.

I mean, social media is people our age are on social media. They're on TikTok and Instagram and X. And there's just, there's no shortage of fitness stuff on there. And there's all this stuff with, I mean, you're. seeing, you're also seeing like, I remember like a thing I saw, it was just like a little clip of, from Joe Rogan's show. And he was, I don't know who he was talking to, but he was basically saying, you know, 100 years ago, and he's like in his mid 50s or something.

And he was saying, a hundred years ago, guys like me didn't exist, you know, and that's, that's true because of all the stuff that we have now, our knowledge of nutrition, of training, of supplementation of TRT and peptides and all these other things that really are making a difference in terms of the aging process. And so more people are trying to get on board with that. You know, they're seeing that you can be like really, really jacked and really, really fit in your 40s and your 50s and stuff even because of the things that are available to us, the knowledge and stuff that we have. The flip side of that, there's probably there's more bad knowledge out there than ever. But if you know how to parse it down, there, there's more knowledge out there

than there ever has been for on all these fronts. Like I said, the training stuff, the nutrition stuff, you know, the supplementation in terms of like, you know, the number of guys that are on TRT now and all these different peptides and stuff, which are coming out now that, that a lot of them, you know, seem to be effective at various capacities and stuff. I'm not educated on that stuff yet, but I need to get into it, um, because it seems, it seems to be the real deal in a lot of cases. And, you know, it's just there, I think, so there's a belief maybe that it's possible. And I think that's a big, a big part of it is like our people really believe now that, you know, it is possible to, to achieve a higher, you know, higher level fitness, a higher level quality of life later into life.

And so people, like I said, they just want to get on board that train. And so that's why I think you're seeing that. Oh, absolutely. Um, So another good point. We talk about multi-year lifters here. So to review for the audience, you know, when we get a novice in, we focus on the five main lifts. The squat, the press, the bench press, the deadlift. I try to focus on the power clean, but I spend more time on the chin up. I do too.

Admittedly. Although, you know, this is what I've been saying lately. When I moved to three-bedroom house, so I was camping out at my gym for two years, a lot of people. Right. Nobody on the show knows this probably because I don't advertise this stuff, but I'm no longer doing that. So I don't have probably talking about it. But I was living in the spare office in my gym for two years. And I moved out of a house that was like an hour out of town in the country.

And then I was kind of trying to figure out my next move. So I moved probably 90% of those things by myself. I had some help with things that I literally could not move. But I went through the warehouse, up a ladder, and into an overhead storage space. in doing that, I learned the value of momentum from the hips specifically. And I didn't have any back pain the next day, which a lot of people complain to that after they, for reasons you and I understand. Right. But I really got to see the value of doing a more dynamic row, a power clean and things like that because it became a triple extension, I guess, became an animal movement.

So I've been trying to teach it more. But from a business personal training perspective, it is a time suck. You almost needed your own day for it. That's the only problem you do. But I'm much more committed now after that experience to teaching the old guy how to do. I don't expect big numbers, but just teaching them how to use his body that way because so you know, you do have to get something awkward off the floor and to chest level so you can walk with it. Yeah. I think it's valuable for that from a function.

It is. And I would say that I'm not, it's the reasons I don't do power cleans most of the time with people is not, it has nothing to do with it. I think it's a bad movement or even that it's uncoachable to people. Like it's not, I mean, if you know how to coach it, yes, it's time consuming, but it's not, it's not as complex as people make. It's certainly not as complex as the full Olympic lifts. You know, it doesn't have to be perfect on day one, just like none of the lifts have to be perfect on day one. There are some things that I have done in the past that speed it up. One of the things I got away from pretty early on actually was I got away from the five sets of three because a couple of things that I found. One, it's more rest time between sets. You have to rest. If you're going to do a triple of a movement. You have to take, you know, at least, you don't have to maybe rest as long as you would on squats, but it's still a two or three minute rest period in between. And what I always found is no matter who I was working with, that third rep always look like shit. Always. Like, like, very few people could do that third power clean. Good. And so I was like, okay, I just switched over to doing a lot of like time singles. In other words, 10 sets of one on a 30 second to 60 second clock. It's more productive. It's more, it gets some, it's a, you get a higher one, it doesn't require as much rest. So you get the, you get that, that portion of the workout done far faster. And you get more quality reps with less bad reps.

And what you'll see is if you do even 15 singles, but like 10 or 15 singles is that each one gets a little better, a little better, a little better, a little better than the last one. And you have just enough time to kind of give some coaching cues in between singles. But they never run into that one where that like, that third rep. you know, if you're doing five sets of three, what I always notice is that the third rep on all those sets kind of sucks. That's five out of 15 reps that aren't very good. Right. You know, and so I just found that I got to hire a better, a better quality of movement by just doing the time singles. And so in the event that I do do them, which I still do when I work with certain athletes, you know, especially in the

summertime, I still work with volleyball players, which I use them for them. If I work with track and field athletes, I definitely use them with them. If I work with, you know, if I work with grapplers sometimes, that sort of thing, then I'll use them with them. I think there's value to those movements, but that's usually the way that I do them is as timed singles rather than the five sets of three type type protocol. And I just find it's, again, you only have with, you know, typically with an athlete or something on average, you got them for an hour twice a week. So you have to really say, Okay, what is going to be the best investment of my time? You know, and how much time of those, you almost kind of look at that is you have like eight,

you have like eight 15 minute blocks. What are you going to do with those eight 15 minute blocks every week? And how much time can you spend on this one lift that, especially for somebody that's not very strong where their absolute strength is not very high, or they lack a lot of muscle mass, how much time should you devote to a power clean? because in a lot of instances, and you know this too, if you don't power clean, if you, if you 1RM tested somebody on a power clean on day one, and let's say they did 75 pounds,

that's the most they could power clean in good form. And then you didn't power clean again for 12 weeks. And all you did was squat and deadlift. Their 1RM on the power clean is going to double without ever having trained it. That's true. Because the deadlift is going to raise their power clean 1RM without ever having actually trained to the power clean. And so there's a certain element of that with a novice that's very weak as their power production goes up just as a function of their absolute strength going up.

You know, and as you obviously, as you get stronger and certainly if you really want to get good at power cleans, not only do you have to train them, but you probably need to train them multiple times a week. Yeah. But, you know, at that point, you're saying, okay, I'm getting strong on the power clean in order to get strong on the power clean. I don't believe that power lifters need to power clean. I don't. I just don't see any evidence of it if I look in around in the elite. I know people make the argument about it,

but if you look around in the elite circles of power lifting everywhere, how many of them power clean regularly? Almost none. Almost none. I just don't see any actual evidence that they're a necessary thing in order to drive up a deadlift. I get the argument. I definitely understand the argument that a power clean is better than, say,

a dynamic effort deadlift because you can pull, you have to pull a power clean in order to rack it. You have to move it with maximal intention, with maximal volitional force. You have to try to do that because you have to rack it. And the rack tells you if you, you know, if you pop those hips as hard as you possibly could,

whereas a dynamic effort deadlift, you can't really measure it. But that does, that's not a deal breaker for me. I think it is for people that have a kind of an engineering brain. If they're like, oh, if you can't measure it, then it doesn't count. That's actually not true. Just because you can quantify it, and you actually can quantify it if you have the right equipment.

Right. I can watch somebody pull a fast submaximal deadlift and say, that was a fast deadlift. You know, and it still has, just because I can't quantify it by they're not racking, it doesn't mean that it doesn't work. You know, and so that's where I just feel like, you know, you know, for somebody, are they going to get more out of, you know, for a deadlift, they're going to do speed work on a deadlift. Are they going to get more out of pulling, you know, 315 or 365 fast on a deadlift or 195 on a power clean?

That's what I ran into. You know, that's kind of, that's my, that's my thought on that, you know, and it's so, you know, it just, it just is what it is on that. And so, but I still think the lift has value. I just, in the context of powerlifting specifically, I don't see it. The argument I like for it in a strength sport, power lifting or even pageantry if you're doing bodybuilding, is what I have noticed is when I push the front squat heavy in a lifter, it really strengthens our upper back or at least develops more body awareness in those muscles and you get less of that flexion on the squat. And I've seen deadlifts go up as much as 40 pounds just from training the front squat and pushing that heavy. Right. Now, do you need to clean?

I don't know. You know, I think that it's, if you want to put in the time and you're in like an offseason cycle and you're running up some Olympic lifts, I can see the value. You're constantly setting your back. You're doing more reps. You're being explicit. Sure, you know, but it is a time commitment. There's other things you can do. So I'm more on your side with this one.

But I do like, I do. I'm a big believer that you train the front squat. Yeah. Especially if you're one of these funky guys that has long legs, short torso, practically hinging a squat. Yeah. I think getting in that more upright position. Because what happens to those guys is you've probably seen many times. It gets heavy and they get that thoracic flexion out of the bottom.

And I've found that the front squad is very useful for that. But I haven't really pushed cleans and people that are more laid into the strength game or if they're just interested in. Well, I think with any assistance exercise, you really have to look at it is you say it's strengthening the back or strengthening the quads and all that kind of stuff. But what it's what it's it is, but it's building muscle. Yes, absolutely. In those areas, which is what the power clean really does. doesn't do, you know, that's, that's, that's, at least not to the degree that a front squat would, or the same thing like a, like, like, for the same reason, I like a, I really think like a paused,

like, like safety squat bar squat is really is, is great for the same reasons that a front squat is good, is that one, it's a little more biased towards the quads, it builds some quad mass in a population that if they've only been low bar squatting, maybe missing some of that, especially depending on their build, um, you know, and then that, that thoracic strength in the middle. back. You know, it's really, if you've safety bar squatted heavy, you know that that bar is trying to fold you up the whole time. And so not only do you have to squat the weight up, but you have to resist being folded up, your torso being folded up. So it's a lot of upper and mid back strength, for lack of a better term, it's a lot of core strength, you know, in the in the abdominals and

all that kind of stuff. And I always tell my lifters, part of the reason I really like putting a safety bar squat into the program on, say, like a light day squat or something like that. is because I feel like it's kind of a two for one. Like it will help your squat. And if you spend a lot of time training in a safety bar squat too, like when you go back to a barbell, it feels way more stable, you know, with having that bar on your back.

And then also I feel like it carries over to the deadlift, almost just like I feel like front squats are similar, that they carry over to both. You're getting kind of a two for one bang for your buck with those lifts in terms of, like if you're a power lifter and that's your goal, if the goal of the assistance work is to carry over to, the competitive lifts, I feel like things like front squats, you know, even a high bar, like a high bar, you know, pot deep, pause squat, a safety squat bar, all those things carry over pretty well

to both of those lifts for those reasons, you know, and so, dude, I'm a big fan of that transformer bar for that reason. Yeah. I have one at my gym and, like I said, I have a couple guys with weird builds and I'll set that thing all the way to gobble it and have them push it heavy. And I watched one guy in particular. I had three people that were like that long leg, short torso, very hinged over on their squat, two female, one male. The male put, like I said, 40 pounds on his deadlift. And this was like a guy who had been training for years.

And it was, I attributed to that over anything else. When I started doing, when I started several years ago, I kind of transitioned my training away from just very strict, you know, strength training or powerlifting, you know, all the time, you know, types of programming that we would be familiar with, you know, heavy barbell stuff, higher frequency, low repetition range, everything. And I started really going back to some of my roots, just mainly out of curiosity, if nothing else, and just wanting to kind of switch things up as I got older. And I realized, like, once I had hit some numbers that I felt like I wasn't.

was never going to exceed. And I wasn't willing to put in the work to exceed those, those numbers on my barbell list. I was squatting 550. I'd bench 405. I had pulled 635. And the amount of time and effort and the injuries and stuff that had accumulated doing that, I just felt like at my age at the time, you know, late 30s, early 40s that I,

I probably wasn't going to beat those numbers again. And so I didn't need to train in a way that was killing myself under the barbell week in and week out because what for? You know, I could let those numbers slide a little bit. and still be pretty strong, way stronger than the, not elite by any means, but way stronger than the average guy. And so I started mixed up my training a little bit. I went back to some of my roots, back to my teen and early 20s years where I did a lot of bodybuilding focused training and started doing some stuff I hadn't done in years, you know, leg presses and leg extensions

and Smith machine squats, even, you know, just all that kind of stuff that I hesitated to even put on YouTube because I knew what the backlash, because I knew what the backlash was going to be. Oh my God, starting strength coaches. And I kept telling people, I'm not doing this because I'm coaching everybody to do this. I'm just doing it for myself because I wanted to, you know, I wanted to do something different. But I also wanted to go back. I wanted to go back to my roots of the bodybuilding type training, but with the knowledge that I have now, because I didn't have it then. And so when I went into the gym in my late teens and early 20s and did that sort of training, I had success, but not as much as I I would have had I understood some of the training principles and concepts that I understand now.

And so I wanted to do that. But one of the things I was surprised about was, you know, all those years of low bar squatting, I always joke with people. I didn't have good quad development. I just, I didn't. I had huge adductors and huge glutes. That was where all my power, it was, I was all ass and adductors. That's where I always tell people.

That's what low bar built up for me. And so I wanted to, you know, kind of get rid of that turn up leg of, you know, narrow above the knee, but huge up by the hip, you know, type of thing. Yeah. And so I started doing a lot of leg pressing and hack squats and, and leg extensions and all that kind of stuff. And I got away from some of the, some, the basic barbell stuff, including deadlifts. And I remember I went back to deadlifts and I was going to see, I hadn't deadlifted in

forever, like six or eight months. And I wanted to see, am I still good for a single at 500? Because I hadn't touched anything that heavy. Right. I see, am I still good for a single at 500? I did it for 10. I never I mean that was such a huge leap I even in my stride like when I was pulling 635 I don't think I could have deadlifted 500 for 10 um I didn't have the endurance to do it because I did everything with five reps and below you know for the most part but I was just but I could feel during the movement I could feel it was the explosion off of the floor that I didn't have those years of power lifting that I had now and that's your qua. You know, that's, that's, people don't realize that of that initial burst off the floor.

And I think a lot of, some of the starting strength lifts that I see, they've misinterpreted the hip high, you know, the hips high position. I always tell people don't squat your deadlifts. Right. Yeah. You still coach people to do that. But a lot of people, it's like a lot of things, they've taken that cue too far and you watch them deadlift. And it's essentially a stiff legged deadlift.

Yes. Their hips are way too high. They've got on the healed weightlifting shoes that push their ass a little bit further up. And so for certain builds, there's just no quad drive off the floor. And I think people really don't, they don't understand how much a well-developed explosive set of quads can contribute to a deadlift with that initial burst off the floor. And if you can put significant amounts more power off of the floor, how much easier does that make the hip extension, you know, and the lockout at the top? If you're pulling that bar off with, you know, 50% more speed off the floor, that's less strength that you need to lock that out.

If it's coming off the floor slow because you have no strength in the quads, that's just all that more power that you're going to, is going to be required by the hamstrings of glutes in the back in order to lock that thing out. So that was, again, it's one of those things. It kind of surprised me was how much of a role that played, but I could feel it while I was doing that set, the difference that that quad work made. absolutely i have i have a few motor morons that immediately have them front squat heavy and uh then when

i reset their deadlift it like takes off on the way back up um so yeah no this brings a good point so in in the book that you co-authored there's a statement in there that everybody kind of overlooks where rip says i don't know i'm pretty sure he wrote it because it was in the second edition too once once you finish your linear progression you are no longer a novice yeah and you have to decide what you want to do next. And that could be, you know, powerlifting. That could be bodybuilding. That could be weightlifting. That's why you gave various scenarios in there of different things people are doing. And that could also be that you're just doing some other activity, you know, you're hiking more, you're running, et cetera. And I think people get hung up because they finish. They're not as strong

as they want to be, but they don't fully comprehend that now to get as strong as they want to be, they're going to have to become specialists. Yes. Yeah, I tell people that all the time. And I think we made that pretty clear in the book, or at least I attempted to because that was a point I wanted to make is that, you know, we have, it's like, it's just like going to college. You have to declare a major at some point. The first two years, kind of everybody takes the same courses, right? Everybody takes your English, your history, your biology 101, your chemistry, one of everyone takes the same stuff. Jan Ed, right? Yeah. And then regardless of your major. And that's kind of the LP, right? Everyone's doing the same thing regardless of your ultimate goal,

because getting stronger in those basic lifts is going to help whatever goal that you have. And so the training of somebody who will eventually maybe become a bodybuilder or a power lifter or an Olympic weightlifter may not look that different in their first six weeks to six months worth of training, you know, as we would have them do it. But then beyond that, you know, once that novice phase runs its course, you have to declare a major, just like you do in college. You have to, and the further on you get, you know this. the further on you get, the more specialized you're going to get. But, you know, you get your undergrad degree and one thing, well, now you go to get your master's. Now, the focus is even narrower.

You go to get your PhD. It's even narrower than that. You know, and you're really focused on one thing. And that's kind of, you know, that's the elite athletes who are, you know, it's, that's, that's where, you know, kind of the, like, people shit on their term power building, right? Because you're kind of blending, bodybuilding and powerlifting. And I think for an elite, an elite powerlifter, it is true that that's, that's a bad terminology to use because literally anything that takes away from driving up your squat bench or deadlift should be out of your program. You just don't have room for it.

You don't have room for anything that doesn't directly contribute to those three lifts, you know, or bodybuilding. You know, but if you're highly specialized in bodybuilding, you should be, there's no reason to do a one rep max ever. You know, I mean, even if Ronnie Coleman did it for video or whatever. There's no reason to do it because at that level, everything should be focused just on the activities that are going to grow the muscle in the places where you need it the most. And so for an intermediate, the people that we work with that are maybe six months a year, year to half into their training, it's the same thing, though. You really have to declare what your goal is instead of just randomly picking a program. And people ask me, well, should I do Texas method or should I do heavy light medium or should I do a body part split or what should I? It's like, what's your goal? Tell me what your goal is.

You know, if you want to, if you want to further, and I even tell them, you know, at that point even, you want to focus on the press or the bench because it's hard, it's hard to split the two like we do and give them both fit. I still train them both, but it can be difficult in terms of the organization of a program to say I want to focus evenly on both because some people you're just going to need to get your bench up. You may need a lot more bench volume and frequency and that's just going to cut down on the amount of pressing. can do and the press will be relegated to the role of an assistance movement for the bench versus a primary movement. I wish I understood that years ago. Yeah. And so it's just, it's one of those things where you just have to, and then there's the individualization part. There's the, there's the declare your, your goals first, but then

also increasingly you have to individualize it for, based on your response to training and your individual needs. If you want, if your goal is to be a power lifter and you've got you know a huge deadlift but a poverty bench well your program is going to look different from the guy who's a huge bench presser but a shitty deadlifter so i wouldn't take those two guys necessarily and put them on the exact same program because maybe the guy that's a great natural bench or maybe he only needs to bench once a week maybe he's fine on on that frequency that was me i could always get by i could bench once a week and be fine i never needed two three four times bench you know that sort of thing um so it just it it just depends

ends on and then you know kind of paying it this is where people really don't this is where people really have a hard time programming for themselves is paying attention to their own response to training and really not being afraid to figure out you know what how do I respond to frequency how do I respond to to volume you know or high intensity some people do better on a lower intensity much higher volume program and some people do better on the opposite you know and it may even vary between the lifts. It may not be universal between all the lifts. You may need a lot more bench volume, but a lot less squat and deadlift volume, you know, based on the, based on the person. I've seen it. None of that is knowable at the front. That's the other important thing. None of that

is knowable. Even to me as the coach, I always tell people like, it's not knowable to me at the front end. I can't accurately predict exactly where this program is going to go. I can take the data that I have on you and make my best educated guess. And then we're going to, this program will evolve over time. And six weeks from now, six months from now, you know, six years from now, the program is going to keep evolving and look very different as I learn more about you and your response to training and what's happening, you know. And so that's, that's an important thing that I don't think people really understand and that you can never really learn if you just program hop all the time, you know, so. The way I've kind of seen it is the more novice you are,

the more general and predictable your training is. Oh, 100%. And the further you get away from that, the more unpredictable, the specific it becomes. And that's where people start to get weeded out is dealing with that unpredictability. Because I think they get wrapped up in the numbers, too. They see what is written in the book, like those examples you give or they're looking at the internet. Other guys are doing it. They're like, well, my LP only ended at 265.

Yes. Everything. And I'm like, well, dude, you didn't pick the right parents. to tell you. The longer, the longer I have done this, the more the more right RIP was in the first two editions of practical programming, if you read them, there's very little example programs and almost no numbers in terms of weight on the bar. Everything is generic.

It may say five by five, but it doesn't have any weight associated with it. And he did that for a reason. RIP had been around long enough to know, and he told me this when we wrote it. He said, I don't want to put program specific program examples in there because then everybody is going to read it like a cookbook. He said they're going to not read the text. They're not going to try to understand it. They're going to try to replicate those programming examples. And he was right.

But he said that's what people want. That's what people are demanding is to have more examples because the first two editions really didn't have much in terms of programming examples. and people wanted to see them. And I think the examples are better if you know and can discipline yourself to not just try to follow it like a cookbook and know that your, you know, your numbers may end differently than somebody else's. And we went to painstaking detail in that almost every program example that is in that book is preceded by the words, this is only an example program. You know, this is just a sample. This is not a prescription for any one person. And he was right about that is because that's how people follow it.

And to some extent, I get it. If you don't know, if you don't have any background in this stuff, you don't have context, what else are you going to do other than follow the program? But like you said, the numbers especially is where people can really get hung up on because, oh, well, so-and-so he ended his LP at 315 and I'm Peter and out at 275. Oh, well, then that's where you're ending up at. You know, it doesn't determine, it doesn't determine where you're ultimately going to end up at, but that's just where you're ending up at now, you know. This concept that individual results vary has been lost.

Yeah. I'd almost argue that a more advanced person might end their LP sooner than a less advanced person because an advanced lifter that's getting stronger pretty fast cannot squat nine sets per week heavy. No. only somebody that's a only a woman or maybe an older person will not three sets but somebody who has very little

neurological drive can do that type of frequency for very long I mean a really strong explosive lifter is not going to be able to go in there and squat heavy three days a week if you see an advanced lifter

that's squatting three days a week at least two of those are lighter submaximal workouts You know, nobody that's very few. I don't say nobody because somebody will point out somewhere where I'm wrong. But, you know, you could almost make the argument that a more advanced guy could end sooner because of the fact that he's just going to fatigue himself way faster. And somebody that's, you know, a really low-t type of guy with not a lot of neurological efficiency could potentially, I don't mean low-tie, like he's, I just, I mean literally like doesn't have a lot of neurological efficiency there could arguably, make that type of programming work longer going one and two pound jumps. I mean, imagine

taking a really strong advanced lifter and having them squat three days a week and going up by like two pound, two and a half, five pound increments. I mean, you would just kill them. You'd wreck them. It's craziness, man. So I could see a scenario. So that's, it's important for people like, where are you in the LP? That's why I always told people, wait, go way back to my days on the starting strength forums when I was running the programming forum like don't get into that thing of I have to milk the LP for every last ounce of progress and run myself into the ground where you know I can't I can't function outside of the gym because the LP has made me so beat up and so sore you don't have to do that to yourself you can you can transition to an intermediate program when the LP

comes to its natural end. You do not have to eke out every single pound of progress out of that, you know, because half the time we reset these people a little bit anyway when we get them on an intermediate program because volume changes, per session volumes change, and rep ranges maybe change that new exercise. So you kind of reset them anyway. So it's like we're going to, we're going to reset you 5, 10% on all these lifts anyway. So what's, you don't have to get, it's not that critical that you get from 205 to 2.11 and a half, you know. Yeah, I have to explain to these guys that, well, number one, what one guy does may not necessarily be what another guy does. And this is even worse when it comes to clients who come to me for body composition goals.

And we'll, that's where I kind of want to go next. But when it comes to the lifting, like I just had a guy, you know, his press went up to like 1.30, I think, before his first reset. But then his bench was like 145, 150. And it taught me something that I was kind of already arriving at the conclusion of. of these upper body lifts, especially the bench press for some reason, especially for these guys that aren't very muscular, don't have a lot of neural drive. It gets to that advanced status much faster than a squat lift. Like I've noticed like with the squat. Real fast.

Yeah, I've steadily increased those. But man, I have been quicker to put guys on the four time a week bench than I used to because they just spin their wheels forever. And for me especially, two times didn't work, three times didn't work. When I tried to train it the way I trained the squat in the deadlift three times a week, that's, didn't work. Then I'm like, all right, four times a week doing these fine undulations, fewer sets across, assistance exercises. That seemed to work. But I've noticed with these novices that just, again, shitty body composition, shitty neural drive, motor morons, that bench press gets advanced quick. And this is a point that I have to make to the bodybuilding crowd, not bodybuilders,

but the people that are doing bodybuilding. I want to make this distinction here before we hop on this topic. So you mentioned, you know, when you're no longer novice, if you're specializing, in bodybuilding, you have to structure your training to feed into that. So you don't want to be doing a bunch of powerlifting specific training if your goal is to compete in a bodybuilding show and you're a contest bodybuilder. That is very different than you who is watching this, who is doing bodybuilding, doing bodybuilding. And you're benching, you know, 155 for like, you know, five, six, eight sets of 10, right? That guy. You're not a contest bodybuilder, just because doing bodybuilding. That's not, that's not who Andy's talking about here. We're talking about,

you know, Jay Cutler, Ronnie Coleman, who by the way, Jay Cutler benched 405 for 10 or whatever he did in that video. And he inclined 405 for 10. Yes, that's right. Incline bench. I know. And Jay Collar used to say, he used to say, I never believed in training heavy. And yeah, and be like, bro, you just incline 405 for 10. Like, that's heavy. So this is the problem I have, these bodybuilders are these influences now. Like these, the worst is the, the, the, the city bodybuilders that never make it quite that far in their Instagram and they have big followings. They'll sit there and like downplay the role of intensity when their audience, majority of them

are weak novices that haven't really trained, right? Right. And they're like, oh, you don't have to go heavy. And they're, you know, squating, close stance squat with a tempo with, you know, 405, 500 pounds, you know, whatever weight is or bench pressing in the threes and fours for reps. Well, yeah, that's not heavy for you. It's almost like they're half out of touch and half they're just straight up grifting, you other. Well, there's a fun, what they don't understand is they say, well, I do sets of 10 to 12 on

everything, so I'm not training heavy. But you're doing sets of 10 to 12 with 405, 500. That is fundamentally different. Like a set of 10 is not the same for everybody. You know, a set of 10 with, you know, 165 on the bench is not the same as a set of 10 as 405 on the bench. Like, I don't care. You can say, oh, as a percentage of 1RM, it's the same. That doesn't like, that. absolute load on the on the on the on the on the bar matters and so you can say you know you know you look at j colors program or whoever we're talking about and you see everything they did was you know 10 to 10 to 12 reps 12 to 15 reps but they were they were doing that 12 to 15 reps with a shit ton of weight way more than the average guy could do for a triple right and they're doing it and not only doing

it for a set of 10 but set of 10 with no lockout you know just continuous tension on the pecs, which if you've never done, that's actually way harder. You know, you never take a break and you never release that tension off the muscle. Now, you could argue whether that's effective or not, you know, whatever, but it is harder to do. It's like doing a, if you've seen a guy do a 20 rep set of leg presses and never quite lock out and never break that tempo, that is really, really fucking hard. Like that will have, that is intense pain in the, in the quads. And so like that type of lifting, like it, it, it, it, does.

does matter how much. So if you, like you said, you've got this guy that's, that's doing, you know, that can bench 1.45 for three sets of five on the bench. So when he comes and says, I want to do, I want to do hypertrophy now. Yeah. Because he's tired of stalling out. You know, my answer is, well, we're just going to keep doing what we're doing. Because until you're benching at a minimum, 225 for a set of five, it probably, none of this other stuff's really going to matter. You know, we can change the rep range. We could change the rest periods or whatever it is that you think you need to do, none of that's going to matter if your five rep max on a bench is 1.45, you know, so, and even 225, probably not enough to, like you said, if you really wanted

to get in competitive bodybuilding, people go, oh, bodybuilders aren't strong. Well, yeah, they are. The fuck they are, man. Yeah, they actually, yeah, they usually are. And they're not, you know, and you take any of those guys that have that much muscle mass and put them on a 12 or an eight week, you know, kind of peaking cycle for powerlifting. Most of them are going to walk into any powerlifting meat and completely dominate because once they convert all that muscle into being more neurologically efficient for a heavy one rep max and train the skill of one rep maxing, which is a skill in and of itself, they're going to, that much muscle is going to be very, very easily converted into a very large powerlifting total. And, you know, I have a hard time convincing people of that

sometimes that like the power lift, going back to the power lifting crowd, so kind of a corollary here is like you've got the delusional wannabe bodybuilder that wants to get jacked but is very weak and you've got the delusional powerlifter who wants to lift huge numbers but has no muscle mass right and it's like you can like a lot of these methodologies these the heavy singles or the speed work or the high frequency that kind of stuff that is there to train neurological efficiency all those methodologies are there to take whatever amount of muscle that you have and make it operate better towards that one rep max. But if you don't have a lot of muscle, you can only get, unless you're a freak, right, you know, who's that guy? What's his name? Lamar or whatever his name was.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, unless you're that guy or there's some others. I mean, certainly you look at what John Hack just did at 198, you know, I mean, it's insane, insane. But look at the amount of muscle he has. Yeah. He's not, he is not. Now, he cuts weight and all that kind of stuff. So he was not in any way, shape, or form 198 when he walked on the platform. Right. But if, but that's, that it makes the point. John Hack does not look like the average 198 lifter. No. The average 198 lifter looks like a bill from accounting, right? He doesn't, you know, you know what, these guys are delusional about what, how much weight they can lift with the lack of muscle that they have. Um, and that, and that, You know, there's a whole other thing of how do you, well, then how do you build? If you don't have the strength, how do you build the muscle? If you don't have the muscle, how do you build the strength? And, you know, there's- They go hand in hand. You know, there's- They do.

One feeds the other. There's a tight correlation between muscle mass and strength. And this is right. These, the social media crowd has created this dichotomy between strength and hypertrophy when they're, right? They're intertwined, you know. They're very much intertwined. It's nuanced, you know, you're talking definitions here, right? Like how you defund.

One feeds the other. Yeah. I always tell people there's, there's, if you look at strength, there's, there's really, there's three components of that, one of which is the technical skill to do the lift. So take that one out of there. You know, how well intellectually do you understand how to use good mechanics and good leverage to lift the most weight. So there's, that's a skill-based thing.

Okay. So let's take that out. Let's assume that somebody knows how to do the lift, you know, relatively optimally. But then other than that, you have muscle mass and neurological efficiency. those are the only two levers to pull. Right. That's it. It's all of your,

I always tell people, all of your training, all of it, every single rep that you do in the weight room is one of those two things. You're pulling one of those levers. So what are you doing? And,

you know, and that's, I think, I only came to that realization, not that many years ago, maybe five years ago. When I was, you know,

when I finally, it just kind of, it was, it's one of those extremely simple things, but was kind of a revolution, a revelation to me of every program that I write, every prescription that I give to a client, it's only one of those two levers. Whatever I'm prescribing to them has to accomplish one of those two goals.

And otherwise, what are you doing? You're just putting something on the paper. So spinning your wheels. Right. And let's be real. Most people that hire a coach suck at this. You know, we don't get the elite coming after us. You might get one here and there.

And some people are just recruits. rooting them because that's what they do. Right. Right. Yeah. Most people that hire a trainer suck at lifting. And they consume some of this content. They think that the neuromuscular component is unimportant because their favorite, favorite bodybuilder or fitness influencer told them that, well, you know, it's just all neuromuscular.

You don't need that. Right. When for that person, for these motor morons that we mostly train. Yeah. They need to become more neuromuscularly efficient in order to, in order to even do a productive hypertrophy workout. Yes. Hypertrophy workout, you know? I hate that name because anything that gets heavier, it gets you bigger, you know?

Right. Yeah. No, it's like, that's what I'm saying is it's like that time spent on the front end to get your lifts up to a range where you could then transfer over to set to aid or sets. And a lot of people don't even understand why so many pro bodybuilders. Here's the other thing that never really gets discussed. They people, they look at pro bodybuilders or even, not even the pros, but just the guys who are on heavy. doses of gear, which is everybody, one, if people don't know that, that's literally every pro. And also, basically every amateur that, you know, at the NPC level, you cannot get to that

level in this day and age without pretty heavy gear use. No. People don't understand when you're on that much gear that there is a reason why a lot of those guys do eight reps, 10 reps, 12 reps on a lot of their lifts. And one of that is because if they train heavy all the time on that, much gear, they will rupture the fuck out of every tendon in their body. It's true. They don't understand the speed at which the tendons do not keep up with the pace

of the strength of the muscle. And so doing a max effort set of tend does not put the same strain on that musk, called the musculositendo unit as a heavy triple does. Right. And so part of it is a safety issue. And people never talk about that. And I don't know why, but I've heard almost every good. bodybuilding coach, you know, I've heard conversation when them say that is we're not going to,

we're not going to, and especially when you get pre-contest and you start getting really dried out, carbon intake is going down and you start losing some of that water and stuff, you're not going to take a guy with that much muscle mass and on that much gear who is maybe capable of pulling a triple at 700 pounds, you're not going to have him do that. Fuck. Because the risk of detaching that hamstring from the bone is extremely high because unlike the natural athlete who spent years working up to that. And so the strength of the connective tissue was built at roughly the same pace as the

strength of the muscle. And a really, really heavy gear user, the strength of the muscle, because of all the gear, gets much stronger, faster. And the tendons do not have time to keep pace with that. And so it's actually crazy to me that, like, Ronnie Coleman at the peak of his career was doing these one rep maxes. And he didn't do that very often. No.

That was a lot of that was for video, but still, like the risk of a, the risk of a tendon rupture or something for him at that stage of his career was extremely high. Well, you heard recently, he's like, I think I could have done four, but I said I was going to do two. Yeah. You know, and it's like people, so people don't understand when you talk about tension on a muscle and I don't want to get too much.

When you talk about mechanical tension, there's two, there's two layers to that. there's the mechanical tension at the level of the sarcomere at the at the muscle fiber itself which is which reaches its peak when the weight of when the weight of the movement slows to nearly zero is when it's going to reach its peak so that's when you hit failure at roughly any range so that can be the last couple of reps of a set of 10 a set of 12 or a set of five that's a different level that's a different type of tension than the tension on the entire structure of the lifter from extremely heavy weight. So a set of three, a max effort triple, is much more tension on that musculos tendon tendon unit than a max effort set of 10 is going to be. And so for those guys that are on really, really heavy gear use, it's a much, much safer protocol to train at a higher rep range or the risk of tendon ruptures is extremely high.

So that's just a little aside as to some insight as to why. a lot of those guys train that way. You know, and I think half of them don't even know why they train that way. No, I think, yeah. They have a coach that tells that the coach knows, and the coach knows to keep them out of those, that kind of, that real heavy shit. But people don't know, when guys get on lots of gear,

when you talk about, like, when you, like a natural lifter, as he progresses in weight, even a really genetically gifted, you know, natural lifter, he's going up, say, on his squats once a week. He's adding a two and a half pound plate or a, five pound plate or something on a weekly basis. Those guys on really heavy gears, they're going up by plates and quarters. You talked about that last time.

It doesn't go up 135 to 140 to one, it goes up 135 to 185 to 285 to 225 to 275 to 315. They're going up by plates and quarters. And I think a lot of people don't know how, how that works with really heavy gear use. And you have to be careful about getting carried away with the numbers when you're doing that or you get hurt. But the natural lifter, especially the less genetically gifted natural lifter, has to get stronger on these lifts. Yeah. You know, or he's never going to have the

potential to develop muscle mass. And those muscular guys that are competitive for that, they also start out strong. You know, they have good neuromuscular efficiency going in. They know how to use their muscles in that way. They have big big benches when they start. They have big benches when they start. You know, like, there's a guy that you're loading plates on. You're getting shocked. They're like, what are you shocked for? It's their first time in the gym. That was. our friend Carl Schutt said that to me. He's like, I don't know what my first bench was. They put a bunch of plates on him. My friend was like, holy shit. He's like, I think it was 3.15. Yeah. I mean, that was. I just saw an interview the other day with Ed Cohn when he was a teenager.

He didn't even know what a deadlift was. He went into the gym to train and his whoever he was with a friend or whoever training partner said, we're going to deadlift. They shot at his as a teenager, his very first deadlift on day one was 435. These guys. That was his starting point. Yeah. Yeah. These guys skipped that step. They don't have to develop neural drive. They have it, you know? Right. So, you know, the other way I explain it is the average person that comes to us that we're talking to right now, they're limited by strength. A gifted bodybuilder or power lifter is not, you know, they're strong out the gate. They don't have to deal with these fucking problems. You have a different thing. And the gear will take care of the rest. Yeah, absolutely. So that's the other thing. I just shared a

story on Instagram that 1996 study that I'd forgotten about where they supplemented high dose testosterone, which they just, they define that as 600 milligrams. These guys, these gear heads take way more than that sometimes. Yeah. But that would consider that high. That's triple what. Yeah, that's a high dose. Yeah, that's triple the upper limit of TRT in my.

Right. Yeah. So they found that the guys who took the 600 milligrams of testosterone and did nothing gained more muscle than the guys who strength trained. And obviously doing both had the best effect. But people don't understand that either on the hyperchurchase. side. You know, these skinny guys, they watch certain people on YouTube that are talking about hypertrophy this, do all these exercises, and they're only focused on what the training does and not

understanding that there are other factors other than your weightlifting program that are going to influence, A, how your muscles even look and B, how big they're going to get. Right. And we haven't even touched on diet, which is, yeah, the other thing that guys are totally delusional about in the, they're delusional about it in the strength world, and they're even more delusional about it in the bodybuilding you know small bee bodybuilding world of the level of consistency that it takes to eat

like a high level body and here's what I always tell them is look everybody bitches online they say oh well yeah drugs and genetics and all that okay yes both of those are absolutely true in the elite levels the best guys are gifted you know with the best genetics

they take the most drugs but even with that present if you look at how those guys eat they are consuming far more food at a higher frequency and of a higher quality than what the average guy is doing and they're doing it consistently seven days a week month after month year after year and they all fucking hate it and if they didn't need to do it they wouldn't this is what i always tell people if you ask any bodybuilder what is the hardest part about it's not the cardio it's not the two hours of cardio a day it's not the lifting it's the diet.

But you, your non-genetically gifted, non-steroided-up ass thinks that you can operate with neither the genetics nor the drugs and also skip the diet part and get even a fraction of the result that these guys are going to get. So if you don't have the genetics and you don't have the gear, which you can't do anything about genetics, and I understand that the regular bill from accounting doesn't need to be on a bunch of gear. No. You know, I highly advise against that.

I don't care if they do, but I highly advise against it. but you can't skip the diet part when you're talking about building that muscle and building the strength because it's if those guys have the the advantages that you don't and yet they still do that because it's necessary because even with the genetics and even with the drugs they still couldn't reach those levels that they reach without that without that diet part and if you want even a fraction of the results that those guys get you can't skip that step and just eat two or three meals a day of whatever you want and expect to grow a bunch of muscle mass because there's a pathway forward with the diet. We know what it is. We know how we know how they all

eat. And these people are jumping around from all these different fad diets and all this type of stuff, you know, trying to find the secret sauce. And, you know, it's, uh, it, there, there's, like you said, there's a, there's a formula there on the diet. And if you look at the best strength athletes in the world, the reason you're seeing these guys nowadays where we used to always think that back in the like say the 90s, even though there were exceptions like Kerwaski and Kowalski and Kohn and all that that weren't fat. But the big fat guys were typically the strongest guys, right? And we'd always say, you know, well, mass moves mass. One thing that's become clear in modern day powerlifting is that it's not necessarily mass that moves mass. It's muscle that moves mass. And these guys are,

have gotten the old days of the guys that just went to old country buffet three times a day and got you know and got fat yeah that helped because all those calories were helping them add muscle but they're also sitting at 30% body fat the newer generation of lifters are eating the strength athletes i mean are eating like the bodybuilders did they've adopted that style of eating and the body compositions you're seeing guys now that are lifting these massive amounts of weight that aren't big fat guys. They look like a John Hack. You know, they look like somebody who could in 12 weeks could step on stage if they wanted to peel down a little bit, you know, and that's because of the nutrition side of it. They have figured out, well, what do the bodybuilders do better than

everybody else that's build a lot of muscle? And what are they doing that we're not? And it's like, wow, they're eating six or seven meals a day of very high quality nutritious food. And we're going to Golden Corral three times a day, which can work. That's kind of bludgeoning, but it's not the way to do it. Um, you know, and I think that's, that's another thing that these guys need to get real with on their, how much muscle they want to build is what are you willing to commit time wise to your nutrition, you know, and it's a pain in the ass. I mean, it is. I mean, I eat four meals a day. And I, the reason I, I, I don't do five or six anymore is strictly because it's a pain in the ass. It's, yeah, you know, five or six is better. Yeah. It is. It's just, it's just, it's just, unless it's your life,

It's too much, it's too hard to do, you know, sustainably, you know, so. I'd like to dive into that in another episode, man, because I have a lot of questions there. Me personally, every time I've went up, I've ended up at like 20 to 25% body fat because that is just where the weight moves. And then I take it off. You know, a lot of guys never take it off. But that's a much longer conversation. All right, man, well, I'm going to close out. Why don't you tell people where they can find you?

Yeah, best place, two best places are just go directly to my website to, uh, Andy Baker.com. And that's all my services and stuff. I have a blog on there. I still, I'm old school. I still somewhat keep the blog updated. I like writing articles. I like that long form, you know, written content.

So you can read articles there. And then plus all the programs and services and all that kind of stuff. And if you want to hit me up on social media, I pretty much, I still post on Instagram a little bit. But it's been taken over by the turnip head, you know, 18-year-old kids now. and I just can't do it. So mostly I'm on Twitter and or, you know, X now, and I'm at Baker Barbell. So if you want to find me on Twitter and X,

that's where that's where 90% of my social media content is at these days. Cool. Well, you can find me at weights and plates.com. If you're local in Metro Phoenix, we have weights and plates, Jim just south of Sky Harbor Airport. I'm on Instagram at V underscore Robert underscore Santana, where I put lots of reels, trolling bodybuilders and providing good information too.

We're also on YouTube.com slash at weights underscore and underscore plates. Thank you for tuning in and we'll definitely finish up this conversation.