Weights and Plates Podcast - #35 - Hydration, Halting Deadlifts, and... Booze

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

After a detour to discuss the merits of halting deadlifts, Coach Robert and Trent explain the basics of hydration and fluid intake and why it matters for lifters in the gym specifically.   If you're an early morning trainee, there's a good chance you are rolling into the gym not hydrated as well as you could be, and possibly with low blood sugar too. If this is you, it's important to understand that hydration isn't just a function of water intake, it's also dependent on sufficient electrolytes and sufficent glucose, which both help with water intake into your tissues. Moreover, trying to train with low blood sugar will negatively impact your training, affecting your balance and ability to get through hard sets.    Likewise, alcohol can impact your training and particularly your ability to control your technique, since alcohol is a stressor on the nervous system.   Coach Robert and Coach Trent explain some simple ways you can stay on top of your hydration, improve your morning workouts with a dextrose protein shake, and avoid technique problems by planning your alcohol intake around training.   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.jonesbarbellclub.com

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. Yo, what's going on? Not much, man. I'm tired of drinking coffee. It's 5.49 in Arizona. It looks like it's almost 9 over where you're at. Yeah, if you're drinking coffee now, what is the half-life of caffeine? Isn't it like 8 hours or something like that? Oh, shit. It's something like that. Yeah, you're not going to clear that out of your system until like 3 a.m. Well, fortunately, I'm adhd so it has the opposite effect on me okay there we go well you can i say in healthy individuals about five hours but it can vary you know can vary yeah i believe that man i believe that well luckily i also um i

heard you rattling around back there where i know you keep your whiskey too so yeah you know it's a little uppers and downers. Right there. Yeah. There we go. There we go. So I am not a hypocritical dietitian by any measure. I get it right 95% of the time. I get a break here and there, you know? Yeah. So I have, I know we're going to talk about that a little bit today, but I have something that's completely unrelated to our topic that I wanted to ask you. You're not going to sound like LifeLock or something right now, are you? LifeLock. You sound like one of those podcasts, you know, where they're like, but first.

But first, yeah. All right. So, no. Yeah. All right. So, you know how I've talked about in the past, there's different exercises, like accessory exercises that come into Vogue. They come in and out of Vogue.

Yeah. Like face pulls. Yes. I've noticed lately on the, maybe it's just me, but I feel like it's a trend. I've noticed like in the starting strength world on Instagram, all of a sudden I see everybody doing halting deadlifts. And I'm like, I haven't seen a halting deadlift in years. Well, I never really saw one there'd be maybe it wasn't it was a minority of us that even tried them because for a while people were like well what's the difference you might as well just finish it if you're going that

high you know right well that yeah that's kind of that's kind of my thing i'm like yeah so that's what i wanted to ask you is uh halting halting deadlifts. Do you use those? Do you ever program those for people? Like I programmed them off a deficit to make it even longer. Okay. Because I found the deficit deadlifts are extremely effective at working the floor. But if I want to follow Rip's line of thinking that, you know,

you want to eliminate the lockout position to exclusively challenge the lifter off the floor. Then I combine those two concepts, okay, the halting deadlift, but then add another inch and a half of distance at the bottom. And I've found that people that have had do those, they start to get better kinesthetic awareness of the quads at the bottom, because it's usually the issue with new lifters. They open their hips, not their knees. That's where halting has become useful, in my opinion, you know. Okay.

All right. So, yeah, that's what I was going to ask next is, like, so who are these people that you're programming them for? So, okay, so you're using them to fix the bottom, the leg drive off of the floor, basically. Yeah, precisely. So I'm sure there's people that are going to disagree with me on this, and I really don't care. But after doing this for as long as I have, you know, granted, I'm sure there's people that are going to disagree with me on this, and I really don't care. But after doing this for as long as I have, granted, I'm not a 1,000-pound deadlifter, but all that is relative.

I've pushed my deadlift up for 10 years. I am of the position that if you're fucking up off the floor, it's technical or you're overtrained because it should be easy off the floor. You should always be able to break more off the floor than you can lock out. And the reason why is because there's more muscle mass involved. You know, your knees are bent, your hips are bent. So you're using your knee extensors and your hip extensors to get that bar moving. By the time it gets to your knees, all you're left with is your hips. You don't have that extra quad to help you out at the lockout position. And if you do, you're pitching it, right?

So then you get a red light. It doesn't count. So every time, so when I'm doing, the beauty of doing reps, so I, you know, people who follow me know that I've been doing tens lately. The beauty of doing reps is you're liable to move that bar half an inch forward at some point if you're doing tens, you know? And one rep might be harder than the one that's after it. So that's one of the things I learned with reps. So in my head, if I ever have a hard rep off the floor, I immediately assume it's not over midfoot and I straighten my legs out more. And then the next one comes right up and it might get harder at lockout, but it'll come right up. And then the one after that will come right up.

So basically the bar should come right off the floor about eight out of 10 times. The other two times is a, you're overtrained and you're probably squatting too much or deadlifting too much or not eating enough or a variety of things. It's a recovery issue. Usually when there's a recovery issue, the deadlift is the one lift that will always let you know by simply not moving, the bar not moving. In terms of technical reasons, it's usually that the bar is forward. That's why it's hard to move off the floor. The other reason is because you're not engaging your quads. And sometimes that's just a body awareness issue. It's foreign to a lot of people that the bar's on the floor and I have my arms around it and I'm bent over. So I just got to unbend myself or become more vertical to pick it up. That's true. Your

hips are going to open a little bit, but at the very bottom, your knees open more than your hips because you're basically in a quarter squat position, but your hips are pretty much fully flexed for a lot of us. If you have long arms, you're going to be less flexed at the hips than somebody with short arms, like a mutual friend of ours who may or may not be listening. So if you have to reach further down, you're going to be in more hip flexion than if you don't. But your knees are practically extended in the bottom position of a deadlift. You're in like an eighth to a quarter of a squat, right? So you should see those straighten out earlier.

Quads are doing most of the work to break the bar off the floor. Now, when you put a couple mats under your feet, you're now extending that part of the range of motion. Just like if you grip it real wide, you're extending the top part of the range of motion. It finishes further up your hips near your hip pointers versus further down, you know, for most people, right? So snatch grip deadlift adds range of motion at the top. Deficit deadlift adds range of motion at the bottom. Deficit halting places all the emphasis at the bottom. So I typically use that for the early intermediate who, you know, prematurely ended his deadlift linear progression because of these technical issues, you know. And I find that combining those two concepts and prescribing the halting off of a one and a half inch deficit, which is two horse stall mats, tends to teach the lifter

how to engage the quads in addition to the hips. You know, one of the things that confused me as a lifter, so, you know, I'd been squatting since I was 18 years old and I would periodically deadlift. I didn't understand the purpose of the lift. My low back would get sore because I was probably doing it wrong when I was younger. So I thought it was a low back exercise because I'm bending over, and bending over means your back is somehow working, even though your hips are what's moving. But as a young kid, I'm like, well, I'm bending over, and I feel it in my back. My back's doing the work.

Now, it is a back exercise, but your back's not doing any dynamic work. It's doing isometric work. Exactly, yeah. In the physiology field or biomechanics field, you might say isotonic work. Your back is not doing any isotonic work. It's doing isometric work. So, or in the physiology field or biomechanics field, you might say isotonic work. Your back is not doing any isotonic work. It is doing isometric work. So, it's maintaining the position of your spine. That's what your back muscles are doing. What's moving are your hips and knees, just like on a squat. However, on the squat, your knees move a lot more than on deadlift. Hips may move the same depending on how you're built.

You have an itty bitty torso and long femurs. You'll probably have similar range of motion if your arms are short too, you know? Yeah, my wife, when she sets up with like, you know, the standard prescription setup with like shins one inch for the bar, her hips are above her shoulders. Oh, shit. So what do you do? Yeah. That's in flats or lifting shoes? That's in, well, that's in flats or lifting shoes. That's in, that's in, well, it's in flats even a little bit. Holy shit.

Um, so yeah, what I do is I have her pull in flats and then I also have her move the bar out intentionally away from the shins more like inch and a half, two inches. And, um, and I have her frog stance cause she can do,

she can pull that off. Okay. So all the above gets her, her back to be like one degree of angle above her hips. Oh, yeah. And so, but what she knows is she's learned basically off the floor that she is going to be slightly forward

of midfoot off the floor. So she knows how to basically engage her lats. And as soon as she gets that leg drive off the floor to correct a little bit and pull that bar back into the shins, and she's able to get back over the midfoot pretty quickly. It's better than putting your fucking hands between her legs. Fuck that. Right. Acknowledge that as a, you know, as an acceptable method of lifting here. No, no. So yeah. Okay. Well, cool. I know no i i'm i'm glad to uh that's that's interesting because i have not used haltings i generally so if i have someone who's doing what

you're describing where they are well if they're forward if the bar is forward or they're midfoot we just got to fix that that positioning issue and so that's that's usually that that's yeah we use just some cues and some usually we'll give them some visual cues to fix that like the issue i'm describing and you've i know you seen this, we've all seen this, when it's time to pull the bar up, their hips start to open, their shins go forward, and the bar goes forward. Exactly, right. There was a guy at the last seminar that I audited who was doing this. It was actually kind of impressive. He pulled like 405 for five like this.

Oh, yeah. The bar would kick out like, you know, a couple inches every single rep. But that was a thing, you know, he was basically just hinging at the hips only to get the bar moving. And so, but see, the way that I deal with that problem when that comes into play now is I will do like pause deadlifts because I want them to feel that bar on their shin as they drive off the floor. And so that's been my solution is basically to have them do a pause deadlift where they're stopping a little bit before the knee, because if they have attempted to hinge the bar off the floor with just their back, then they're going to feel their shoulders behind the, you know, basically behind the bar

and they're going to be out of position. So we'll kind of work on like just a couple of, of, um, positional cues, right? Shoulders in front of the bar and pausing the deadlift. And so that gives them, that gives them time to think about where they are and then they can correct. And then they know to, they know what the feeling should be midway through the rep on the subsequent rep. Right. Um, but I can see that I can see the advantage of haltings right if you're just trying to get somebody to to just get a strong leg drive off the floor because the pause deadlift doesn't require necessarily as strong of a no push off the floor you know so yeah that's useful i might i might uh might have to give those a try i like again i like them with a deficit i

think it works better that way sure sure because sure. Because man, when I was big on deficits years ago, and I still prescribe them. I mean, I haven't done it on my, like basically, I don't know if you remember in the Gray Book, which for those of you who aren't familiar, Practical Programming for Strength Training, third edition, he talks about how once you become an advanced lifter, assistance exercises become less useful and you're basically just doing the main lifts. Remember that? Right. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's where I've ended up. You know, I don't really do assistance work. I do for my bench because upper body is a different animal. But for squat and deadlift, I just squat and deadlift. I do one set of RDLs.

That's the only different exercise I do. Yeah, I was about to say, you do RDLs. I think that's the thing, right? Like, you know, and this is not coming from me. This is actually, I think Andy Baker has said this, you know, many times over the years that, you know, when you're an intermediate, your pool of exercises widens, and it opens up quite a bit. Yep. And it becomes large because in part, what's happening is that

you're trying to find the things that work for you, that move the needle, whether it's, you know, lifts that help you with a technical issue, like supplemental lifts to help you with a technical issue or ones that just help you overload a part of the movement that you struggle with. But then, yeah, as you get more advanced, you kind of filter through all that stuff and you figure out, you're like, yeah, RDLs help. Deficits, eh. Rack pulls, eh. You know, you might have one or two that you do and everything else is just kind of superfluous at that point because you've already gone through that filtering process yeah and deadlifts are a little different because as andy talked about earlier this year you brought

it up you can train deadlift strength without training the deadlift you know and that right that becomes more apparent as you become an advanced lifter so that's like the one lift where uh you know it broadens then it narrows then it broadens some more kind of, I think. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, well, and that's, that's the other part of this that we haven't really addressed is that, you know, haltings just like pause deadlifts or frankly, just light deadlifts or rack pulls or any other variant can be used to manage fatigue from pulling you know so if you so if you're pulling heavy off the floor you know once every two weeks let's say you need to do some deadlift work in between that you can't necessarily pull heavy again right so

you need to figure out some sort of lighter variant to manage your fatigue and so that can be people don't understand how absolutely fatiguing it is to overcome the inertia of a stationary bar on the floor. That's a whole different animal than performing a movement that starts eccentrically and is followed by a stretch reflex, you know? Yeah, that's right. That's why it's called the dead lift. Yeah, exactly. So eventually, you know, I'm doing it now, but I'm doing tens. If I start getting up to fives and the intensity gets high enough, no way I can do these weekly, you know?

It's just not going to happen. I think I was at every three to fourives and the intensity gets high enough, no way I can do these weekly, you know? It's just not going to happen. I think I was at every three to four weeks off the floor. And, you know, Rip has talked about people not even deadlifting at all for their whole training cycle, which I think, I thought was absurd. But I had this girl, I had this girl I trained and we didn't use it at all. You know, she'd done novice with me and she did intermediate and then she had exercise ADHD. She's listening. She knows who she is. She's a good friend of mine now. She needs to get her ass back. I miss her. But she got bored and, you know, she has a gym in her basement. She trains

clients and she's almost to hypertrophy. So I programmed a bunch of hypertrophy stuff. And about week eight, she's like, am I going to be able to deadlift? You know, like she didn't really, she wasn't really a strength enthusiast. She was a convert, you know, like I taught her how to use a barbell, peppered in some isolation stuff. And she bought in and she was a responder. You know, she developed, she built muscle fairly easily in her upper body. Lower body got bigger just from squatting more, you know, which shocked her. And then she had to kind of get used to clothing changes you know yeah but um it was all positive in the end you

know it was real helpful for her it was a good story i should you know i should uh reach out to her but um anyhow she's like i'm dreading asking you this but i'm gonna be able to deadlift because she knew it was gonna get hard again you know and then i'm like yeah we're about finished with these eights so since we're going to fives let's just you know or maybe we're doing fives and we're going to threes. It was pretty late in the game where intensity was just starting to get high through the deadlift. And she PR'd it by like 20 pounds, I think. Right. You know, so I'm like, rip that son of a bitch was right. You know? Well, I mean, you know, so I think the deadlift is like, it's technically pretty simple to execute compared to, especially compared to the squat and the press. Um, the bench is kind of that same way to me too. It's, it's, it's a pretty simple

lift once you get the hang of it. And that's the thing, like once you've been doing this for a while, like, you know, like your technique doesn't really move that much. Like form creep can still happen to anybody, but your error bars are real, real small small yeah i might have narrowed quite a bit yeah and so it's like you can go i mean you could easily go six eight weeks without pulling and like you're going to pull you're technically you're going to pull just fine right there's going to be no degradation and technique problem no and you know back to back to what you said about all things um i do the same thing with rdls not not for myself because i'm i'm lazy and i'm just trying to accumulate work.

But I'll have guys do deficit RDLs so they'll get the full range of motion of the deadlift with the RDL. So, you know, now they're basically making the deadlift continuous without bouncing the bar off the floor, you know? Yeah, sure. So I'll have them stand on like two to four mats. Usually two mats does it. That should get, you know, you should be able to get to the bottom of a deadlift with full-size plates on with two mats. Yeah, those are brutal deficit RDLs, which actually become full-range-of-motion deadlifts without stopping, you know? Yeah, sure. Now, are you having them bend their knees at the bottom? Just as much as they need to.

Yeah, that's good. I can see that being really useful. I tend to have people RDL. A few people can go all the way to the floor, and eventually they're going to get there, but usually I'll have them go to mid-shin or at least a little bit below the knee at first. Yeah. But I'll have them do a pretty stiff-legged RDL,

like just a little tiny bit of knee bend at the very extreme end of the range of motion yeah um but but generally i'm using them to as a hamstrings builder yeah yeah you know just a real long eccentric stretch but um yeah so anyway that's uh not at all what we wanted to talk about today no i thought it was an interesting question and i wanted to ask it uh ask you so should we just do a whole episode deadlift one day oh yeah we should we should do a whole episode on deadlift one day. Oh yeah. We should, we should do an episode on like deadlift variations and deadlift training. I think it'd be, I think it'd be interesting. I find a lot of people don't understand that when you are coming out or

just getting to the end of the starting strength, linear progression, the novice vanilla linear progression, like you see in the book, a lot of people don't understand that you accumulate a lot of fatigue and that means that you can't go heavy all the time and you have to start changing your programming. And, um, you know, the deadlift is a, that that's a big one. You know, people are like, why is it won't even break off the floor? It's glued. It's like, well, you're probably fried man. Exactly. From all the squats and presses that you just did. So anyway, so pivoting back to what we were going to talk about today, we wanted to talk about fluids, which, you know, honestly, now that I'm thinking about this, we probably should have done this like two months

ago. Because I know in my home state of Texas, it's been like 105 degrees like every day for the last two months until very recently. But yeah, we wanted to talk about fluids, fluid intake, electrolyte levels. And booze. And booze. We figured that these topics individually would be covered pretty quick. So we combine them. And since alcohol tends to relate to hydration for obvious reasons, we can mix that in too.

So, yeah. So why do we even need to be hydrated in the first place? You know, what's the big deal about drinking a bunch of water? Because everybody says that, right? You got to be like, what did Tom Brady say? He's like, I drink, I'm the most hydrated athlete in the world. He drinks a gallon of water and almond milk every day. Well, if you're, so if you're in any type of sport with continuous movement or aerobic sport, and all sports are, you know, pretty much aerobic, even the quote unquote anaerobic ones. I mean,

football, they're doing a lot of hit, but you're, they're moving pretty continuously. It's not 10 reps and you stop, you know what I mean? Right. You're going to lose a lot of fluid. You're going to sweat a lot. You're going to have sweat losses. You got to replace that, right? And why? Because 70% of your muscles are water, you know, and you need water for other bodily functions. You know, your kidneys are constantly excreting substances. So without water, you will die. You can go without food for several days, but you can't go without water for, what is it, Trent, i think one day oh yeah i mean yeah i think it depends you know like where you are out in the desert you know you probably pretty fucked

after 24 hours of no water especially in the in the heat but i'd say like generally two to three days yeah they say generally a person can survive without water for two to three days yeah that's yeah sounds about right you know your brain is about 83% water. So when I say your muscles are 70%, 75%, your brain is about 83% water. Your kidneys are about 83%. Your heart is about three quarters as well. So most of the human body is full of water. You know, I think if I remember correctly, men, it's about 65%. Women, it's about 60, slightly less. it's about 65 percent women it's about 60 slightly less your blood is about 95 percent water you know so yeah you need this for a lot of shit to function you know essentially for vital function literally right and that's just in general right take a sedentary person you still need a lot of

water again you'll die if you go without it for three days. Now you add in activity. Now you're moving. If you're moving continuously, if it's hot out, you know, you're going to lose some of that water. You have to replace some of that water. Then you also need to replace the electrolytes with it. So electrolytes are kind of how they sound. They, you know, they conduct electricity by moving ions through the water. In the context of what we're talking about, without going deep into the chemistry, we're talking about sodium, we're talking about chloride, we're talking about potassium. Chloride typically comes with sodium, and that's what's called, that's what salt is. Salt is sodium chloride. Sodium helps pull water in. Carbohydrate also helps pull water in. That's why, you know, you hear people say, I feel so bloated because I eat all these carbs. You know,

That's why you hear people say, oh, I feel so bloated because I eat all these carbs. You know, carbohydrates store as glycogen and bring water in at a three-to-one ratio, right? So for every gram of carbohydrate you're storing as glycogen, you're bringing in three grams or mLs of water. So it could be very helpful in hydration. That's why Gatorade has sugar, sodium, and potassium in it. And all that helps maintain your fluid balance. If you're taking creatine supplements, you need even more because what creatine does is essentially hydrates the muscle more. So it deposits more water into your muscles. Remember, your muscles are 70% water. And that can help you crank out another couple

reps on a set, right? So you need more water for that. One of the symptoms of, you know, I won't even say full dehydration, but let's say you're not drinking enough water, you might start to feel dizzy during your lifts, you know. Your blood pressure might drop a little low because you also need water to help regulate your blood pressure. Water and electrolytes, that's why, you know, they say a high-s high sodium diet might be associated with high blood pressure and they say it might not and they say it might i mean they could jump around on this but clearly there's an acute response that we've observed if you you know load up on salt you could make your blood pressure grow up pretty fast if you know you want to measure that right is it going to lead to chronically high blood pressure no you adapt to it typically um it could Some people are what's called salt sensitive, which is very difficult to measure.

But the result is that, you know, their blood pressure goes up real easy because of salt intake and it comes down to lower levels because of salt intake going the other way. But when I was dieting years ago and I would press heavy, like high intensity, I'd get dizzy as I'm pushing up. And then I'd have to lower the bar because basically I'd start to black out and then I couldn't even contract my muscles anymore. So that sucked. And I didn't know that that's what it was until my schedule changed. I had to start training at night and suddenly I can press heavy, but my belt went up a notch because I've had more food in me, right? Yeah, yeah, sure. So I got more carbs in me. I have more liquid in me. I have more electrolytes in me. So I wasn't getting dizzy anymore and I haven't trained in the morning since. So I don't know if that would happen now. It's definitely more pronounced when I'm leaner,

but it has happened in six years and I'm as lean as I was then. I weigh a little bit more now, gain some muscle. Awesome. But yeah, I would get real dizzy because of blood pressure would drop. Your blood sugar can drop too. So, you know, people like to criticize intra-workout carbohydrates and say, oh, that's a waste because it's just gonna... You're not gonna use that when you train, right?

You're not gonna, you know, you don't use that when you train, right? Yeah, that's right. That's what they say, you know, that you're using glycogen. You're not gonna use those. You're not going to use those. You're not going to use sugar you just consumed. You know, that's generally true.

Unless you're running a marathon and you've depleted all of your muscle glycogen, you start sipping on Gatorade or dextrose and water, you know, you're not going to use blood glucose for energy. You know, again, the only time that's used is if you've depleted all of your glycogen stores and you start taking it in, like at the end of a race, they've, you know, it's been reported in the literature, but it makes sense. It makes sense. If you're running for 26 miles and you're on mile 24, 25, and you have nothing left

in your muscles, nothing left in your liver, you can pull it out of your bloodstream for a period of time. That's why those beverages and those tabs and all that shit became popular for endurance athletes. But lifting is not a glycogen-depleting activity. You do break some down, though, as you lift. So why the hell would you need to take carbohydrates during a workout? Well, this comes back to the hydration thing, right? This becomes more

important in the morning for many people versus afternoon trainees. So I find it really hard. There are probably plenty of people out there that would argue otherwise and acknowledge just different situations. But generally, I'd say it's hard to have a hydration problem if you train in the afternoon or the evening. Now, if you are fasting and you stop eating at 11 p.m. and don't eat again until, you know, 5 p.m., maybe a problem like that. If you work out in the sun all day and you're not drinking enough water, you can run into a problem like that. I certainly had guys come to the gym for that, but let's assume that you're a normal, you're on a conventional diet where you're eating meals peppered throughout the day and drinking,

and then you just go train. You're probably not going to have an issue. It's the morning lifter that has probably been on an eight to 12 hour fast overnight, probably didn't eat a huge meal before bed, goes in the gym at six, seven in the morning, and starts experiencing, you know, symptoms of low blood pressure, low blood sugar. Remember, yeah, you're not going to use those carbohydrates from a dextrose mix or Gatorade to perform the squat, to fuel the squat. The squat is going to use muscle glycogen stored in your legs and other muscles because the glycogen stored in your muscles is primarily stored for that reasons. Muscles are very selfish. So for those of you who don't know, you cannot release muscle glycogen into the bloodstream.

That comes from your liver. So you also store glycogen in your liver. However, most of your muscle glycogen is stored in your muscles. I think it's like, what, 400? So it's 500 grams. So four-fifths is what, 80%? Yeah, right. So 80% of your glycogen in the human, 80% of the glycogen in the human body stored in the skeletal muscle, but you can't release it out of there. Once it's in there, it stays in there, and your muscles use it to feed themselves.

They say, fuck everybody else. The other 20% is in your liver, and you get a little bit in the kidney, a little bit in the fat stores, but mostly in your muscles and about a fifth in your liver. Your liver releases into your bloodstream. That's where your blood glucose comes from. So liver takes in sugar, releases sugar. It regulates your blood glucose. It keeps your glucose levels balanced. It's the regulator of your blood glucose. So what happens is when you sleep overnight for eight to 12 hours without any food, your liver is constantly releasing glucose into your bloodstream, but then it's not receiving any from food, right? So by the time you wake up, you're probably depleted of liver glycogen. Right. And I was going to say too, I think

the brain is a big user of glucose, right? Oh yeah, the brain eats all up. Yeah, you mentioned that earlier. So overnight, you know, your brain is still active even if your muscles aren't doing much. Yeah, it's the primary fuel. I had to yell at one of my members today. He's a physician, so he's a smart guy and understands the hard sciences. So, you know, I have to be on my toes when we're talking. But, you know, he's a keto guy, and he is reporting. It's so funny.

He gave me shit, right? So I was training my dog. I hope he's listening because once in a while, you know, it's hard to zing a doctor. They know everything. But once in a while, I get a good one in. And I was training my dog, and I was calculating the portions because I'm feeding raw food, not kibble. So I'm having to basically do a lot of manual calculating to figure out what she needs. And it's like, oh, 5% to 8% of body weight for puppies.

And then he's like, that puppy's too skinny. She wants more food. Then I'm like, well, dude, I'm following the calculation. Then he gives me shit. He's like, well, first he says, if you gravity feed them, they will eat until they're full. They will learn to get full and they won't overeat as adults. And I'm like, dude, this dog will eat like three or four pounds if I do that. And he's like, you'll figure it out, man.

Well, sure enough, she ate three pounds for a few days, and she did eventually calm down. There was diarrhea, there was puke the first day, but then when she caught up on her weight, she was fine. Yeah. Anyways, so this guy says, are you feeding the dog or feeding the paper? You know?

And I'm like, man, I'm being a fucking hypocrite. I make fun of people for, you know, using academic solutions that aren't working in practical problems, right? And then here I am doing that. So I'm like, all right. So I have gravity fed the dog. She threw up and had diarrhea the first day because she ate so damn much.

And then by day two or three, her portions got smaller and smaller. And then now she's at a healthy weight. And now I know how much to give her, which is cool. But fast forward, he's sitting there talking to me about, you know, he's getting dizzy, you know, and this, that, and the other. And I know why. I'm like, this guy's not eating enough carbs.

He's 66 years old, you know. He's eating a bunch of fat and probably a fairly decent amount of protein because he does supplement. And I understand the argument. He's sedentary all day. He's very sedentary and it's gotten worse because he needs a hip replacement, which he's getting. And when he comes in the gym, because he needs a hip replacement, his squats and deadlifts aren't that heavy, you know? So the only heavy stuff he's doing is bench and press and that's just, that's not a lot of activity, right? So I understand that he doesn't need three,

400 carbs or even 250 probably, right? But first, you know doesn't need 300, 400 carbs or even 250 probably, right? But first, you know, I'm like, my position on this is clear. I'm like, this was earlier today actually that I said this. So it's kind of cool that we decided on this topic. I basically said, you're not getting enough carbs. The brain alone eats up 130, which I know he knows because he's read all the textbooks, you know. And, you know, if you're feeling symptoms, it's clearly not enough, because one of the arguments he tried to make earlier was that, you know, oh, his levels are not low. And I'm like, what are you, addressing the paper or, you know,

addressing yourself, you know, your body? So. Got him. Yeah. Once in a while I get him. He'll probably argue with me about this tomorrow or not. It's all in fun. He's a good guy.

Good friend, too. Picks up whiskey for me when it's on sale near his house. So, yeah. So, you know, there's a lot of variability here. These numbers don't mean anything. They can mean one thing for one person, another thing for another person, right? But what I'm kind of getting at is in the context of lifting, if you're waking up early in the morning and you're not sufficiently hydrated and your blood sugar levels are not at a good place, then that's going to impact your training. It's not because your muscles can't contract, your muscles don't have glycogen to feed themselves.

It's because there's not enough sugar circulating through your blood and your whole body hydration status is not in equilibrium, right? Right, right. So you have non-muscular variables that are influencing your ability to fucking train. It's not all about your muscles contracting and relaxing or getting fueled, right? This fuel is used for others. There are other vital functions beyond muscle contractions, people, and they require these things, right? Right, right. And let's not forget, too, that people training in the morning are probably also drinking caffeine.

Yeah. Which is a diuretic, which will cause you to excrete free water, right? That's been debated as well because you're taking in water, but we're not going to get into that. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I just think about it like it makes you piss more you know you didn't drink that much coffee probably you know unless you're drinking like you know like mud water or something like you know so so yeah you better not be drinking folgers over there that's what i'm saying okay but uh But yeah, if you drink like a couple ounces of cold brew, right? Yeah, I mean that does have some fluid in it, but it's not going to displace what you pee out. No, no.

So when you consume sugar or carbohydrates during a workout, you're not doing so to fuel your muscles necessarily. during a workout, you're not doing so to fuel your muscles necessarily. You're doing so to keep your blood sugar levels up and to hydrate yourself because glucose and sodium share a transporter that help bring water into the intravascular space quickly. That's why electrolyte beverages like Gatorade will typically have carbohydrate in the form of a simple sugar along with sodium and potassium. Because of the way that it transports in the human body, you can pull more water in quickly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And there's another aspect of this too that I think is overlooked a lot of times. And I run into this with my older folks is that when we think about hydration,

right, it's like you said, it's not just the musculoskeletal system. There's also sort of these other soft tissues that are hydrated, right? So like the discs in your spine, those have fluid in them. And when you get dehydrated, they tend to lose height. And when they lose height, they're not able to do their job of cushioning the vertebra as well as they normally do. And then you can get all sorts of weird back tweaks that start to pop up too. Oh, yeah. Same with elbows, shoulders. I mean, yeah.

Yeah, exactly, right? And so, you know, if your spine's bugging you and you start to get a little sciatica pop up, an easy first thing to do is get on top of your hydration. Because as those discs, you know, if they are dehydrated, then they're not going to cushion as well. And you could possibly have some bony stuff that's pushing on the nerve root and lighting up various things in your back and down your leg. Very good point. Very common thing that I run into. Yeah. So, you know, we can't hammer this enough, but the main point here is don't think of fluid, electrolytes, and especially the sugar. Especially the sugar.

Don't think of this as something that you're putting into your muscles like, you know, a super steroid that's going to make you lift more because it's not going to do that. It's not going to do that. If you're well hydrated and you take in carbs when you work out, it won't make a bit of a difference. But if you're waking up in the morning and you're going to lift within an hour of waking up, then an electrolyte beverage can help. It could also help to eat more before bed too. I've never found the right dose for myself with this, so I still got to experiment. But when I was doing 60 grams of carbs in the morning, I think what was missing for me was the electrolytes looking back on it. I was doing 60 grams of carbs in the morning, I think what was missing for me was the electrolytes looking back on it. I was doing sugar and water and whey protein, but I probably needed more salt.

I needed to put a salt tab in there and maybe some potassium or maybe. So I was talking to Dr. Bradford earlier, and she likes to put salt tabs in water because she gets low blood pressure. Yeah. And one of the things she mentioned was that, you know, I knew this, but it's like one of those things like, oh, yeah, that's right. The low-sodium salt tends to have more potassium in it, or the salt substitutes do, too. We didn't talk about those, but she said the lower-sodium salt tabs tend to have more potassium. And it makes sense because that's how the salt substitutes work when, like, you get people that have kidney disease or high blood pressure. The Mrs. Dash stuff tends to be high in potassium.

So I would imagine if you're still wanting the sodium but not as much as table salt, they're going to probably up the potassium to make up the difference and still get that flavor. Yeah, so you could put a salt – I should have been putting salt tablets in there. I think that's what was missing. And I just – that's why I was telling her. I'm like, I laugh when people spend money on Pedialyte and Noon and all these expensive electrolyte powders, right? When you can just buy a big tub of dextrose and some salt tabs or even just put straight sodium chloride in there, you know? Right, yep. And it's going to save you a lot of money.

It's pretty cheap to make yourself a hydration beverage. It's going to save you a lot of money. It's pretty cheap to make yourself a hydration beverage. But either way, I think this is especially important for the morning trainee or somebody who doesn't eat very often throughout the day for whatever reason. Obviously, I would prefer you to have at least three meals a day, you know. But if you're in a situation, let's say you're a surgeon, you know, or an OR nurse, and you're just blocked out for many, many hours, right? And you're just not eating very often throughout the day.

You know, electrolytes and sugar could be helpful. After you get off work, if you're going to go lift in the afternoon, that could be helpful. And yes, your belt will go up a notch and that's fine. It's temporary. You're intentionally, quote unquote, bloating yourself. You're not really bloating yourself. You're just fuller, you know, but you're just trying to shove a bunch of water into your body so that you can train. And again, it's not helping you lift heavier via stronger muscle contractions or more muscle or

more gains or whatever you want to call it. It's making your other vital functions continue as normal, right? Because if you, like, let's say you go in and you're hungover, right? You're going to, you know it's gonna alter your it's gonna fuck with your brain and then your coordination goes off right like i've seen this many times where i get these college kids that you know they get drunk on the weekend and then monday morning rolls around and their form is all over the fucking place you know they're like oh a drink saturday i'm like well yeah that fucks with your central nervous system so right the technique aspect goes to hell like my cousin is a person I think of when I think of this.

Seven, eight years ago, I trained him when he was in college. And it's pretty cool because now he's pushing 30, and his baseline numbers turn heads at the commercial gym because he's not really committed to it and hasn't been for a while. But he'll go in and pull over four, squat over three, bench over two, and he's six foot and he's about a buck 85, so he looks more like a basketball player or a swimmer, you know? Right, yeah.

Because he killed himself when he was 19, 18, 19, 20, 21, just drinking a gallon of milk a day, eating pounds of beef and loaves of bread and pushing his weight up to 217 and getting strong, you know? He kept a lot of it because strength is the slowest to go away. But that's an aside. We can talk about that later. My point is he would get wasted on the weekends and kept all his calories up so the rest of his recovery was fine, but alcohol is a stressor.

You know, alcohol fucks with your central nervous system. So your central nervous system coordinates movement. So what do you think is going to happen? You know, you take a complex movement like the squat, in his case, he's got weird ass anthropometry. He's got to bend way over because he's all femurs, you know? He's all over the place. And I'm like, you drank this weekend, didn't you? I could call it every single time. I knew what he drank. And then I saw it in other people too. And when the form just kind of like is unusually bad, first i asked did you drink over the weekend right so again like you're lifting weights but weight lifting is not does not just depend on your muscles and joints functioning right and your muscles and joints

don't just function because of you know how big they are or how dense they are there's other vital functions that are also working indirectly to ensure that you can do that right your central nervous system regulates how your muscles fire right um you're uh yeah you do you think about like have you ever seen somebody that's like severely dehydrated um like i don't know why this comes to mind but you ever see that show deadliest catch yeah right and so there's like these dudes on uh these you know huge commercial fishing vessels like crab you know fishing vessels out in the arctic sea so you know at like a calm day is like 10 foot waves yeah and so the the boat's just like going

like up and down like crazy well there was an episode i remember from years ago where i think it was a camera guy on the the discovery crew he was new had never worked this show before so he would just get this horrible seasickness and it it very quickly escalated from like he started throwing up to like basically dry heaving and he you know they give him some like Dramamine or whatever the, you know, normal stuff you'd take for that. He tries to like take like sips of water and he goes right back to dry heaving and like, they're like, well, we've got this suppository and he's like, give it to me. And, uh, but the thing was like, this guy got so badly dehydrated so quickly, uh, because of his, his nausea that he, he started having having like like he started seizing on the ground

he was having you know these these intense seizures and you see like the guy like they had to airlift him off the boat because um you know his like he lost control of his arms and his hands and but yeah so basically what's happening there right is that his he didn't have enough fluid content to for all the the normal central nervous system functioning all those those normal impulses start getting they start going haywire right well yeah and what enough fluid content to for all the the normal central nervous system functioning all those those normal impulses start getting they start going haywire right well yeah and without going into basic anatomy and physiology you need your sodium and potassium and chloride for all that electrical conductivity to happen which allows the muscles to contract yeah exactly so you can

see like in an extreme example this is what happens happens. So on a more, you know, sort of tame level, if you just disrupt those impulses, then, you know, because of alcohol intake or whatever, dehydration, then yeah, you're just your coordination is going to suffer first, right? You may not be seizing on the floor. I hope not. Yeah. But your coordination is certainly going to suffer. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So you need sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium for muscle contractions to occur, right? So it's not just water. If you drink too much water, not enough electrolytes, you can dilute your electrolytes and that will impact muscle function, right? Yeah. And I think that's what you're talking about in an extreme case.

You made me think of, do you ever see that documentary, Into the Canyon? No. Is this about, like, the Grand Canyon? Yeah. These guys hiked it long ways. They went across the whole thing, right? And it took them several months. Watch it. It's really cool. It's really cool because I always wondered, I'm like, can you hike that damn thing, you know? And they did it. And the first time they had to get airlifted out because they got hyponatremic. Their sodium levels were low. Yeah, yeah. So when they went back in, they were more – the guy had the balls to go back in.

So they went back in and they were more prepared and they finished it. They did the whole thing. And it took them – I forgot how many days, man. I think it was like three to six months, something like that, to do the whole thing. Wow. That's intense. It's really cool. They went all the way across the damn canyon they said it was cool because you see things that you aren't going to see in the pictures you know obviously i was about

to say yeah there's probably not very many people down there in some of the spots you get to some of it yeah i mean yeah it's an intense it's an intense hike just going down and back up you know they weren't there's all these warnings oh yeah the grand canyon that they're like you know you must be prepared like there's people that they have to rescue all the time they get down and you know they brought like an energy bar and like you know a one little water bottle and they're like that's no you're gonna die you need a pack it's live and i should see if christy wants to do it go rim to rim um that you could do but these guys went into the canyon from one end right the other, which is crazy. That's intense.

Um, and you, you, you can't do that. You have to be well prepared to camp and so you have to be a survivalist at that point. Uh, that's why those guys got pulled out the first run and then they had to go back a second time, better prepared. Uh, I don't remember why that happened. I know what happened to him. He was hyponatremic. I just can't remember the details.

I was watching it just because I was interested in the whole adventure, you know? Yeah. And then that happened in the beginning. I'm like, whoa, I thought they'd finished it. Then I'm like, oh, the guy went back. Awesome, you know? So, yeah, I watched it into the canyon. But then they were talking about how they're fighting them putting hotels and resorts there for fucking decades.

You know, they've been fighting that off. But it's pretty cool. there for fucking decades you know they've been fighting that off but it's pretty cool um anyways so so hyponutremia is something that you can get as well right like you said taking in too much water not enough electrolytes i mean this happens you know sadly it happens almost every year this time of year when football season starts up reason being you know it's like some kids get in their head that they need to drink like gallons of water in a day. They're out there sweating, sweating, sweating. Practices are three hours.

It's the end of August. It's fucking hot and humid. They take in all this water, but they've excreted all these salts with their sweat. That can go sideways real fast if you if you do that oh yeah but but typically this is you know it's not like it's uh it's it happens all the time it's just you know every year it seems like there's at least one one kid who dies because of this it's a very common occurrence yeah but they're generally drinking like you know multiple gallons of water i mean it's it's like absurd amounts yeah Yeah, yeah. So you got to take in the electrolytes with that.

So yeah, so that's how it works. I mean, not everything you take in is going to your muscles to make them contract harder or longer. You have vital functions. You have other organs that are indirectly contributing to your joints and connective tissues and muscles functioning correctly. And I hope we've kind of illustrated that point here. So yeah, taking in some intra-workout carbs won't do shit for your performance

if you're already well hydrated, right? If you're already well fed and your blood sugar levels are pretty normal for that workout, right? I mean, shit, a type 1 diabetic will tell you all about that. They have to take glucose tabs when they're exercising, and they have to check their sugar before they get in, you know? Yeah, right. The whole reason to take carbohydrates, specifically something like dextrose, during a workout is if you're at risk of low blood sugar or dehydration.

You know, it can be very helpful for those two purposes because if you've trained with low blood sugar, it's not pleasant. You can't have your best performance. If you're low blood sugar, you're going to get dizzy. If you have low blood pressure, you're going to get dizzy. If you're starting to get mild dehydration, you're going to get cramps. You're not going to be able to contract your muscles as well. You're going to get dizzy because you're probably going to get low blood pressure too.

So all of these things, yeah, it's not necessarily your, you know, your guns flexing, you know, and extending. It's, you know, other vital functions that can interfere with your ability to contract and relax your muscles and load your joints effectively, right? So, you know, it's just context dependent. If you're well fed, you go in there nice and full, you know, your belt's up a notch, you know, you're probably fine. You don't need to, you know, pour dextrose into your protein shake or anything like that. But if you wake up in the morning and you're not a big eater, you're probably going to want to have some, you know, water, carbohydrate, sodium, potassium, chloride, right? So easiest way to do it is water, dextrose, and a salt tablet or low salt tablet. So you get some potassium too. That's cheap. You know, you can buy dextrose in large quantities.

It's pretty cheap. Why dextrose over just table sugar? Somebody's probably asking that right now. Well, table sugar is sucrose. Sucrose is a disaccharide. So di, you know, two, saccharide, sugar. So it has two sugars. And one of those sugars is fructose. Remember, fructose gets metabolized in the liver. So it doesn't really hit your bloodstream. It's not glucose. It's a complete different sugar, right? So it's only 50% glucose. Dextrose is 100% glucose. It's just another name for it. It has to do with the biochemistry nomenclature aspect of it.

But that's why I prefer dextrose over just throwing sugar in there. You know, high fructose corn syrup is 55% fructose, 45% glucose. But again, fructose- Yeah, it's not actually that high. Yeah, fructose, 45% glucose. But again, fructose- Yeah, it's not actually that high. Yeah, fructose metabolizes slow and your liver pretty much eats all of it. So it's not gonna really hit your bloodstream and help you in that way.

If you're trying to raise your blood glucose during a workout, dextrose is the superior sugar that you wanna have in your intra-workout beverage. And typically mix that with probably a low salt tablet so that you want to have in your intra-workout beverage. You know, typically mix that with probably a low-salt tablet so that you get all of it and then just drink plenty of water. You know? Yeah. If you just woke

up, you probably, you know, a couple liters would probably be good or at least a liter, you know? Liter, liter and a half, something like that. The old recommendation is one milliliter per calorie. So, you know, 2,000 calorie diet, 2 liters, 3,000 calorie diet, two liters, 3,000 calorie diet, three liters per day, right? Probably want to have a third of that during a workout, maybe

quarter of that during a workout. During a weight workout, you're not sweating a lot, but if you're up in the morning, again, you've probably lost some fluid overnight, you know, just sleeping and you've burned up all your liver glycogen. So you need the sugar. So that's the big thing. That's where that's where that becomes useful. You know, if you haven burned up all your liver glycogen, so you need the sugar. So that's the big thing. That's where that becomes useful. If you haven't eaten all day and you've got to go lift, yeah, you want to have a meal, obviously, carbs, protein, fat, but then you also want to make sure you're getting fluid and electrolytes and sugar so that you can go in the gym and hit the ground running.

Very good. Very good. Yeah, so there you go. Go drink some water. Go drink some water. Yeah, so I think, uh, in a future episode, we need to talk about alcohol in a different context, you know, more of a diet context, I think, because, um, gosh, you know, we've, we've kind of danced around it. We've, we've mentioned alcohol many times and we're talking about your macros and

dieting and, um, and compliance, but, uh, it is a huge deal I find with people who are struggling to lose weight. You know, they're out drinking Thursday, Friday, Saturday night. And that's, you know, there's a whole bunch of problems that come along with that, both from the alcohol itself and from the behaviors that alcohol that tends to follow when you drink alcohol. But we'll save that for another episode. Uh, for now let's close out. Yeah, that went longer than I thought it would. You think of that hydration is such a simple concept and it kind of is, but you can talk about it for a whole hour, which is pretty cool. Well, you can, cause you, you're about to finish a PhD in this stuff.

I guess so. Yeah. Hopefully don't jinx me. don't like to talk about that because it's not done yet, you know? Okay, yeah, that's right. All right, yeah. Anyways, let's close out. I think our next nutrition episode, we'll go ahead and talk about alcohol as a dedicated topic. It's the fourth macro. It's not really a macro, but it does contain calories per gram or ml. So it kind of acts as a macro in terms of contributing calories.

So we'll go into that next time. So anyways, let's close out. So thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com, www.weightsandplates.com. Trent made fun of me for that one day. Or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. Or you can find the gym at Weights double underscore and plates or south of the airport here in Phoenix if you're local.

We're 35th and Broadway, south of Sky Harbor Airport. Come check us out. Yeah, it's a cool gym. I need to get down there sometime. Hell yeah, you do, man. Hurry up and get that kid already. All right, yeah, I'll have to us out. Yeah, it's a cool gym. I need to get down there sometime. Hell yeah, you do, man. Hurry up. We have that kid already. All right. Yeah. I'll have to fly down. Yeah. And then we'll do some halting deadlifts together. Fuck yeah. Off the deficit. All right. Well, yeah, you know where to find me. Jonesbarbellclub.com. No www. You don't have to do that anymore. Thanks to the wonders of the modern internet. Just jonesbarbellclub.com.

You can also find me on Instagram at marmalade underscore cream. All right. We'll talk to you again in a couple weeks. you