Weights and Plates Podcast - #38 - Getting Fat to Get Strong? What to Do If You're a Skinny Fat Novice

Episode Date: October 15, 2022

The so-called "skinny fat" novice may have the toughest road to body recomposition of all trainees beginning their strength training journey. A skinny-fat person is a person of normal BMI and "normal" bodyweight for their height, but a high body fat percentage. This person usually looks normal in a t-shirt, but with their shirt off appears soft and undefined. Male skinny fat novices may complain of having man boobs, or a smooth stomach, with no visibl separation in the arm muscles.   The skinny fat novice often believes that they need to lose body fat to appear more muscular and look like they train. This is incorrect. Their problem is they are undermuscled, and need to build a significant amount of muscle mass to give shape to their body, spread their existing fat mass over a larger surface area, and lower their body fat percentage. Remember, body fat percentage is a ratio! If you drive lean mass up, without gaining body fat or only gaining a small amount of fat, then the percentage of fat goes down.   Here's the rub, though. Skinny fat novices aren't genetically predisposed to be lean and muscular -- otherwise they wouldn't be skinny fat at baseline. So, they need to do whatever they can to build muscle. The most efficient way to do this is by committing to a novice linear progression and driving their lifts up as high as possible in the first couple years of training. Increasing the lifts involves eating enough to support the training, which means, for most skinny fat novices, they'll have to gain weight too. And with any amount of weight gain, there will be some fat gain. The goal of barbell training is to make the muscle gain outpace the fat gain.   It's a long process, but it works. After 2-3 years of hard strength training, even the skinny fat novice will see big changes in the way they look -- bigger, more muscular, with a more athletic looking V-shaped frame. The arms, shoulders, and chest will fill out, making a smooth but flat stomach appear more trim and athletic.   At this point, some folks may need to do a dedicated cut to bring down their body fat percentage more. Other folks may decide they are happy with their body composition and continue getting stronger and building more muscle. Either way, it takes commitment and trust in the process to dedicate the 2-3 years necessary to make big body composition changes.   Gains come to the patient and the dedicated!   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. Howdy, howdy. What's up, man? Oh, things are good here in Tennessee. Man, things live in Tennessee. Just living life. Arizona's good. It's not hot, finally. We have this thing called foliage. Foliage. In Tennessee.

I think I remember this. The leaves, they change colors. Oh, yeah. I had that in Illinois. It's quite novel. Yeah. No, things are good here, man. You know, so i mentioned on the last episode that uh we had a baby he's now as of the time of this recording a little over three weeks old

so i took a week off of training and i'm back to it now sleep is a little bit challenged my eating was was definitely like not on point for a few weeks there. So I'm down. I'm so skinny, man. I'm up a little bit from where I was last week, but I think I hit like 185. Get out of here. That's small for you. That's small for me. Normally I hang around like 190, 195,

and I really feel those five to seven pounds there. Like I just feel fuller and stronger and all that stuff. But anyway, I'm slowly kind of eating my way back up. I'm not really in a hurry to get back up there cause I'm not training very hard right now, but I've settled on, uh, I've settled on a routine that seems to be working. Okay. Given my lack of recovery resources, I'm training, uh, four days a week doing one lift a day. So this is kind of a classic thing that I think you and I both recommend to people who are real short on time and recovery. Oh yeah. And, uh, I'm, I'm basically limiting myself to two sets, two work sets. Okay. So I'll squat for two sets. I'll press for two sets, bench for two sets, pull for one set, maybe two sets. Um, now there's a little bit of

exception there. I've kind of figured out, I really hate doing squats over three reps. So I'm just doing three by threes, but I might, I might throw some, I might throw some eights and stuff in there. So basically what I'm doing is like, it's just a really simple, like periodized program, right? So like eights, fives and threes. And, uh, I'll just cycle through those on all my lifts. Seem to be working pretty well. It's enough work to kind of get me back up to where I was pre-baby. And, you know, I don't know if I'm going to get any gains out of this, but I'm spending like 30 minutes max in the gym right now. And it's pretty good. I accidentally got stronger doing that when I opened the gym.

Yeah. It does work. Yeah. It's, I think it's interesting. Like we had, I think we are past this discussion. We've talked about it on this show before. I think the kind of our strength community is past this discussion now, but a few years ago, it was a de rigueur to talk about volume and how much volume you needed to progress. And, you know,

at the time I didn't have a whole lot of opinion because I, I, you know, I'm still a fairly new coach, but I was a really new coach then. And I've only, my experience has only been since then that you really don't need hardly any volume to, to grow. I mean, there's a time and a place for it. I don't, you know, it's not like I never prescribed 20 or 25 or even 30 work reps for somebody on a barbell lift, but I do do those things, but man, you got to make the weight go up. And if there's, this is what I wanted. This is why I'm bringing this up. We talked about bodybuilding for like two hours, this is why I'm bringing this up. We talked about bodybuilding for like two hours.

Yep. Bodybuilding. Bodybuilding. But like, listen, if the weight on the bar is not going up, you are fucking it up. Absolutely. Like the temptation for all this stuff is for you to end up just moving a bunch of lightweights

for a bunch of reps. That's what like, I've talked to some people since then, since that episode has come out about this. And I'm like'm like listen if the weight on the bar is not going up you're not doing it right. And he's like, well, I just do like 225 and I just try to drive my reps up. I just keep doing 225 and I do it for eights and I get up to like 10s or 12s. And I'm like, look, rep progression works, but only if rep progression leads to you moving more weight on the lower reps. Absolutely. So if you get your 225 from five reps to 10 reps, that's great.

your 225 from five reps to 10 reps, that's great. You better be doing your 250 or 255 that you used to do for three reps. Now it should be five reps or 275 that you could only do for two. Now you can do it for three or four. Right. And so on. And so like rep progression has to lead to weight progression. Yeah. So rant over. Yep. I just, it's, it's funny. I think a lot of people just think they can just let their foot off the gas and just like, they think that getting jacked is going to happen from just doing a bunch of reps of like light dumbbells or something. I really, I don't know. Like if you're, I think a proper bodybuilding workout and I'm not a bodybuilder i'm not ct fletcher but that shit is probably it looks a lot harder than lifting barbells to be frank if you're doing an actual no shit bodybuilding program like your arms should probably feel like they're going to explode

every workout and if you're not working that hard you're fucking it up exactly but that's uh not what we wanted to talk about today, right? We wanted to revisit something that we have covered in previous episodes, but we haven't really dedicated a full episode to, and that is the skinny fat novice. Are we just talking about skinny fat novices or just skinny fat people in general? Well, I find it hard to believe that you can become an intermediate or advanced lifter and still be skinny fat. I just, I just don't think that happens unless you're,

uh, I agree with that. Yeah. I think you've probably, if you, if you are doing intermediate training and you have to, because you, you stalled out on novice linear progression and you are skinny fat, that means that you screwed up novice linear progression. Not that you're actually an intermediate. Yeah, you've fucked something up or, you know, you're just not strong enough yet, you know. But typically, if you finish a novice linear progression, you're going to be much more muscular. And depending on your body dimensions, you know, long arms, long legs, et cetera, you might have some areas that lag. And that's the whole point.

You know, it's all covered in the books. Yeah, sure. Weak points do start to surface as you become more advanced. For instance, as I've talked about in previous episodes, I have problems with biceps and forearms. I tend to be weaker in those areas, relatively speaking, but they grew from me getting my chins up. You know, they just didn't have as much of a delta as, you know, muscles like my traps and, you know, my quads and, you know, larger muscle groups. But some guys, their arms will grow just fine on a linear progression. So I think a lot of this has to do with just the mechanics of the movement

and your leverage, you know, and your segment lengths. And genetics, man. Of course, and genetics. You know, we all know those guys with bowling ball calves that did you know jack shit to get them yeah yeah so um yeah so the so the skinny fat novice let's kind of describe what that is i'm going to take a stab at it and see see if you agree so i think of this i think of a skinny fat person as someone who looks fairly normal in terms of body size and body composition when they've got a t-shirt on, but they take their t-shirt off and they have a lot of visible body fat, or you could call it just not much muscle mass. In other words, they might have a little bit of a man boob situation going on. I'm not talking about rolls of fat, right? This is somebody who looks fairly normal, fairly average, like fairly normal body weight for their height, but they're soft

looking. There's no definition in their shoulders. There's no definition in their chest. There's no definition in their stomach or their legs. So yeah, to sum that up, I would say someone who is of a normal body weight for their height and their frame, but a high body fat percentage. So, in other words, you have a normal BMI and a high fat percentage if you were to hop into Dexa or do a skinfold test or whatever. Yeah, there you go. You know, that's irrespective of the limitations behind body composition assessments. Yeah, right. But, you know, the reason that that is the case, and to put some numbers to it, let's say you're 5'10 and you're 150 pounds and you're 30% body fat, you know?

I've seen it, you know? Or 185 and 30% body fat. Exactly. You know, yeah. My girlfriend had the best combination of skinny fat because her regional distribution was in all the right places. She was skinny fat with visible abs. So she was 5'4", and she was 100, and actually she didn't get a body fat test when I met

her. She was 106. But when she was 98 pounds, she was 25, just out of the PhD, and she did a study, they did a dex on her. At 98 pounds, she was 28% body fat, and she had visible abs, you know? Yeah. You know, she stores her body fat in her lower body, you know, glutes, quads, you know? And then it, like, spreads out a little bit on her arms, you know,

but not to the point where you'd think, ooh, fat arms, you know and then it like spreads out a little bit on her arms you know but not to the point where you'd think oh fat arms you know she just has smooth smooth normal looking arms so right she never felt like she was fat or squishy or any of that because she stored it in the right damn places so regional distribution plays a role in this shit right but absolutely what was interesting about her was when she started training with me, she was 5'4", 106, probably still high body fat. You know, she marathon ran at the time and she said that her calves grew from that because she was so under muscled. So she at least understood that muscle mass was her problem, you know? And she gained 15 pounds and her fat percentage went down to 20%,

which was interesting because it wasn't a problem of too much fatness. It was not enough muscle mass, you know? Right. Yeah, exactly. And that's, yeah. And I think that's like the hallmark of the skinny fat person, right? Is that they basically have a muscle problem, not a body fat problem. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because skinny lean guys have visible everything. They're typically, you know, same guy, 5'9", or 5'10", 150 pounds with 9% body fat has a different problem, you know? Right. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, these guys don't tend to be as neurotic because they're lean, you know? And leanness has been overpromoted over the last 20 to 30 years.

So, you know, they're willing to gain weight because they just are sick of being smaller than everybody, you know? And they'll say, I don't care if I get fat, you know, they're willing to gain weight because they just are sick of being smaller than everybody, you know. And they'll say, I don't care if I get fat, you know, because they've never had a problem with being fat. And they're, you know, correctly confident that they'll lose it, you know. Skinny fat guy comes to my mind typically kind of how you describe, but most common complaints I get, you know, little man boobs, you know. So fat on the pecs, fat on the stomach, no visible definition elsewhere, you know. Right. Yeah. And sometimes these guys will run the LP, you know, their quads will grow, their traps will grow, you know.

And then their bench and their press will just kind of lag behind for whatever reason and they'll kind of hit intermediate a little early there. And, you know, it just takes them a little early there and uh you know it just takes them a little longer to catch up up top but uh at the end of the day if those numbers keep going up over a long enough timeline you know those you know pecs solidify the fat spreads out you know for like well muscle doesn't burn fat well no it doesn't but you know if you put a large dense mass under a less dense mass it's going to spread it out, you know, like bag of potatoes versus, you know, a pillow, you know, looks very different, you know. during that novice phase is the traps get bigger and the back gets bigger, the lats get bigger, and you get this V shape that starts to form. And these are guys that, like I said, in a t-shirt,

they look kind of normal. It's when they take the t-shirt off, they look real soft. And these folks, if they commit to doing a honest to God LP, they come out of that a year later and all of a sudden they've got some shoulders on them they've got some traps and they've got some back size and they've created this sort of wedge now at that point they probably you know they probably don't have a ton of definition but like you said yeah they're filling out in the chest and the arms but they've built that sort of frame you know that you can you can then start to chisel, if you will. Yeah. You know, it just takes time, you know, and why that is, you know, a lot of it's just genetic, you know, some people are going to store fat in different places than others. And the fixation on the fat makes them impatient with the muscle because they can't see the muscle. And

they think the only mechanism to make muscle visible is to lose as much body fat as possible. And then I remind them that they're going to weigh 130 pounds if they do that. And I'm like, do you want to weigh 130 pounds? Most of the time they don't. Yeah, you look like a cancer patient at that point. Exactly. One of our coaches did that way back when. I don't think he listens to us, but I think you know who I'm talking about.

I can take a wild guess. Yeah, he said he did it, and he to us, but I think, you know, I'm talking about, I take a wild guess. Yeah. He did. You know, he said he did it and he's like, oh yeah, he's like, I gave myself an eating disorder, you know, getting down 130 pounds, but no man wants to have a body weight of 130. Well, some do, but not people that kind of gravitate towards this type of activity. That is not a healthy impulse. If you have that impulse, you may need to get some therapy and some professional help. Absolutely. And at the end of the day, you have to train over a long enough timeline to build muscle. And if you think that you're just going to run in here and fix your skinny fat problem in three months with, you know, this new template, you know, it doesn't work that way. You'll look better than you did in three to six months. And then you'll look better than that three to six months after that. And you'll

occasionally have to scale the calories back. Sure. You might have to be, you know, the skinny fat person has it hard because you're probably going to have to be a little bit softer than you want to be in the first couple of years until things start to catch up. Now, you know, I'm not saying that you need to have like a big belly or become legitimately obese. You know, nobody's suggesting that, you know, you might go into the overweight category, which is, you know, bullshit. Objectively, it's bullshit. If you go look at the numbers on how they came up with these categories it's bullshit you're talking about the overweight bmi yeah bmi yeah so you know you might you know let's say if you're 160 and skinny fat you know i might push you to 190 185 and uh you may not have definition you know very much in the first year you're going to

broaden up you're going to look like you train in clothes that's typically going to happen in the first year but you know if you want washboard abs and, you know, fitness model physique, not going to happen in a year, man, you don't have enough muscle mass and getting you down lean enough to see all of those muscles is also not going to make you look like that because you're going to be 130 pounds, you know? Right. Exactly. So you're stuck between a rock and a hard place and you have to go through this long, drawn out phase where not a whole lot is hard place, and you have to go through this long, drawn-out phase where not a whole lot is happening. And we all have to go through versions of that in our training.

And I certainly went through it myself. I've gone up many times. Now I'm kind of at a more normal weight when I'm lean, 175 pounds or less, and I'm pretty lean now. It used to be that I I get down to 155 and still didn't have any visible musculature, you know, my upper body at least. And, uh, much of it was just training, you know, I just wasn't training properly. I could get myself to gain or lose weight and, uh, you know, I can always do that, you know, but I just wasn't training properly. So, uh, yeah, you know, you just have to look at this as, you know,

you're signing up for, you know, for a few years of this shit, you know, at least probably two to four years, you know? Yeah, I think that sounds right to me. I've had this experience running people through novice and early intermediate training many times. Let's just call it the first year just to make it nice round numbers. First year you do your novice linear progression. You go through the, this advanced novice phase, early intermediate, whatever you want to call that. That takes about a year for most folks. And you're, like you said, you're going to broaden up,

you're going to gain the weight. You're going to, you're putting like you said, you're going to broaden up, you're going to gain the weight. You're going to, you're putting on a lot of muscle in that process. Um, typically it's going to be for the skinny fat folks, right? It's going to be a lot of muscle in the lower body and in the back. And it's going to take that, that next year, that second year to fill out the upper body. And we're going to do that by, you know, probably introducing a lot more accessory work on top of driving the barbell lifts up, um, to make those muscle groups grow. So year two, at some point early on in year two, your waist kind of stops growing, right? You've hit, you've hit that target body weight that you need to be. In my case, I'm, you know, five foot nine, five foot eight, five foot nine, somewhere in there. And, uh, in my case, I got up to about two 10 to 15. And, um, I don't know that I needed to be that heavy. I just wanted to try to compete

in the a hundred kilo weight class and, and, uh, strength lifting. I didn't get up to two 20. I just couldn't do it, but I got close. 215 is as good as I did, but I'd like look, I'd eat a light lunch and I'd be down to like 210 in a heartbeat. I just, my set point, I guess, was just lower than that. But you know, I probably, for me, the number, if I wasn't interested in competing was probably around 200, 205 for me. Okay. So you get up to that number and your waist is what it is at that point. Like I gained some body fat around the middle in the process of gaining all that muscle. What I think it really is though is, you know, yes, I gained a little bit of body fat, but it really is just that my abs and my spinal erectors got a lot thicker and it pushed my stomach out. So it made the existing fat look a little bit pudgier, you know, when you put on jeans or whatever. look a little bit pudgier, you know, when you put on jeans or whatever. But anyway, so my waist gets up to a certain point. It was probably 37, 36 at that point. And then you do that second year of training. And if you just eat it maintenance, if you just eat it maintenance and you just preserve

what you have and you keep growing your numbers, all of a sudden you look back after the end of year two and you're down an inch or two on your waist and your numbers are all up and you look good because all of a sudden everything else is filling out. And in that process, you've started to recomp. And then you get to year three and that's where you just have to make some decisions, right? You could, if you're happy with your body composition at that point, you could just keep training, hold your weight steady again for another year. And I bet that's going to happen again. You're going to lose another half an inch, inch off your waist. Now, for some people, if you're not happy at the beginning of year three with your body composition, you might have to do a cut at that point. But I've seen it many times that if you just keep

training for another year or two on top of that novice phase, then your waist goes down and your muscles get bigger and all your lifts go up. Is that consistent with what you've seen? Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Because what, you know, nobody ever suggests that you're just going to LP your body weight forever, that you're going to linearly gain weight forever and ever and ever. At some point, you have to stop gaining weight. You know, nobody's ever said that, you know? Yeah. Recomposition tends to happen if you're a fat guy and you run a linear progression and don't lose any weight.

You see the waistline go down, the shoulders get wider, the body changes. Okay, we all know that. Right. But what if you're a guy who has to gain weight to make good linear progress? Well, the same thing eventually happens. You know, eventually, you don't need to keep gaining weight because if you keep gaining Well, the same thing eventually happens. You know, eventually you don't need to keep gaining weight because if you keep gaining weight, you're going to get fatter and fatter. Nobody wants you to keep going up to your 300 pounds to get the bar to keep moving. Eventually the bar won't move with more weight gain. We've all

acknowledged this, you know, nobody's disputed that. So what happens is you tend to, you know, you settle in to, you know, you settle into a body weight and, you know, you just train there for a while, lose a few pounds, maybe go up and down, you know, a few pounds, 5, 10 pounds, maybe 15. And your lifts keep going up and you end up building muscle mass, losing body fat. And, you know, it kind of lines up with the bodybuilder's bulk cut mentality. You know, you gain weight, you know, when you're building muscle. You lose weight when you're cutting fat. But maybe you don't need to do it quite as drastic as they do, you know. I think, yeah, what I'm describing is there's really no dedicated cutting happening. Like you're never consciously.

Yeah. Happens involuntarily, especially when you reset a training cycle, you're not as hungry. When the volume goes up, the intensity goes down, you lose the hunger. Exactly. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it is, yeah, it's just a reaction to that. I think also in that process, I mean, I know it happened for me. I learned how to eat better. I learned how to pick more high-quality foods.

I stopped eating. I ate a lot less processed food that second year of training versus the first year. eating, I ate a lot less processed food that second year of training versus the first year. And all of those decisions probably netted out to, you know, a little bit lower calorie, you know, just less dense food, higher quality food, more fiber. And, um, yeah, you know, yeah, you lose a few pounds here or there, you get hungry towards the heavier end of the cycle, and then you, you know, drive your weight up a little bit. Yeah. So I think there's little micro, you know, bulks and cuts happening, but it's not conscious. I never sat down and like, okay, I'm going on a cut now. No, no, it's usually, you know, I don't feel like eating as much,

you know, because you restart a training cycle, then you kind of start out, you're not eating as much, you lose a few pounds and, you know, it gets heavier, you get hungrier, you gain a few pounds, you know, and that's kind of where it stays. That number is going to be different for everybody. And at least what's happened for me, the number has always been around the same, to be honest, except when I'm much fatter, the bench gets easier. You know, it's just how it's been.

Yeah. Part of it is I don't know. Yeah, it's mechanics. I rely on leverage. I'm experimenting right now. so the verdict on my personal bench is not out yet. But my other lifts tend to go up when I'm about 185. And honestly, looking back throughout my history, dating back to when I was 19 years old, I always noticed it got easier to lift around 185. Then beyond that, I would just gain body fat and it wasn't necessarily much easier. This time has been quite unusual. My squat and my deadlift have gotten to new PRs at 170.

My bench and my press, I'm training them, you know, high rep, high volume bodybuilding stuff. So I don't know where the hell they're at, but my press held on to most of it. So I think I lost nine pounds off my 10 rep best on the press on the bench. I lost much more. So, you know, something has definitely shifted here, but I guarantee if I gained 10 pounds right now, it would all get easier again. I mean, the press and the bench press would for sure. The squat and the deadlift would be probably about the same.

Yeah, that's pretty much my experience as well. I've noticed that I'm just as strong. I've noticed that I'm just as strong. So over the years, you know, as I kind of hit some PR, some big PRs at 215 or two, really, it's really more like 210. I wasn't 215 for very long, but I was 210 for a little while. And I was doing, I did probably two meets at that weight. And then the next meet, I was probably like a little over 200.

And then the next meet after that, I was down into the 190. So I was in the lower 90 kilo weight class. But yeah, I've noticed that I really wasn't much stronger at 210, 215 than I was at 200 to 205. And then, you know, fast forward two years after that, I'm, I'm, was just as strong at 190 to 195 as I was, as I was previously at 200 to 205. Now I've noticed, because the last few years of my life have mostly been, it's been a whole lot of maintenance in the way that we've described and a few good little strength runs here and there just because of life and work and business and all that stuff. But yeah, I've noticed that I am within spitting distance of my best numbers when I'm around 195, let's call it 190, 195. And if I get down in the

one eighties, I really start to fall off hard. That's where I'm at right now. I'm like, you know, one 88 maybe. And I feel weak. I just feel like deflated a little bit. I know that if I push my weight back up to 195, I'm going to be good. Yeah, most likely. Yeah. So you just know over time. Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to figure it out because, you know, you get these bros who are not necessarily fat. They're usually lean, you know, and they've done all this benching, and they can produce a pretty big bench, you know.

And I noticed myself when I worked with a guy who was volume obsessed my bench was the one thing that did pretty damn good and i've never been able to replicate anything like that again because i've never benched that much that often so now yeah i'm experimenting with more volume on that particular lift so i've had the same experience with my press and bench press by by the way. So my press has, has hung on pretty good. You know, my most recent training cycle kind of accepting the last couple of months. Cause you know, when around the baby, um, my most recent training cycle, I hit, uh, two Oh five for five. And I had previously done that for three sets of five. That was my PR two or five for three

sets of five. And I didn't, I didn't go up and I didn't hit any like heavy singles or anything like that, but I hit two 25 for one. Okay. And, um, my best, my PR was, is two 42 for one for a single. And so, you know, so give or take, I was within 90, 95% of my best on the press during that, during that time period. My bench press in the other hand was way down. My best bench is 320 for a single. And I was only able to do like, you know, 295 for a single at that point. So I've had the same, same thing. I'm not quite sure why that is, why the, you know, why the bench, I think it, well, I think in my case, it's that is why the you know why the day i think it well i think in my case it's that i i like the press i'm good at it so i do it up more often yeah that makes sense but um yeah no i don't i you know the bench the press i don't have to do much it goes up right for some reason

you know the bench i just i'm trying a different approach now but but, uh, yeah, my squat deadlift, I just think I've just been doing it so damn long and, you know, my body's gotten used to it. I mean, I just squatted 365 for nine yesterday, almost, almost got my 10. I'm gonna, I dropped, drop some volume to see if it gets a little easier next week, but, uh. Yeah. See if you can get one more cut at it next week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, man, I mean, pretty skinny fat guys, at some point, you know, they're going to get to the point we're talking about. And they're probably not going to be, you know, 225 pound animals, you know? No. But, you know, they'll probably be on the lighter side, but they'll get leaner and leaner.

And every time they cut back down, they're going to be leaner and leaner. That's just what happens, you know, gain muscle over time. It just takes a long time. So, you know. Yeah. What we're, what we're talking about, what we just talked about there is that basically the, like, if you look at this from a real big picture perspective, basically what we did throughout our training careers is we got to a certain weight that maximized our results lifting in the first couple years of training. So you gain the weight that you need to to drive your linear progression up as high as you can. And then you keep going maybe a little bit with your weight gain into that early intermediate period if needed, right? Some folks need that, right? But you hit that point, which is different for each of you,

like we said. And then from then on, what we've been describing is we have slowly over years lost weight from there and gotten just as strong as we were at the heavier body weight and then beyond. And then only very recently in the last, you know, for me, the last like 18 months have I lost weight and not gotten stronger than I was at the heavier body weight. But that's, that's, you know, that's a function of my, you know, I just don't train as hard as I used to. That's why. Um, but that, that's what we're talking about. That's how it happens. That's where the recomposition happens is that you get lighter

and then you lift at the same level you did at the heavier body weight. That's where the muscle is gained and the recomposition happens. But at some point, they're going to have to put on body fat and deal with it. Yes.

Nobody wants to tell you that, but it's just going to happen. You've tried it the other way. It hasn't worked. I tried it the other way. It didn't really work. I recently had some recomposition happen because I started training my arms, which I never really trained in isolation. I just pressed, benched, and did chin-ups, and that got me to a point uh you know so i added in curls and more rows and more pull more vertical pulling you know not necessarily just chin-ups but also uh you know pull downs close grip pull downs wide grip pull down it's a variation of stuff a lot a lot more pulling and you know in terms of sorry a lot more vertical and horizontal pulling

and uh you know bicep curls tricep extensions a couple things happened my triceps inflated immediately which makes sense because i was a swimmer in high school for three years and did a lot of tricep isolation back then and continued it you know into my early college years and you know i built some muscle on my triceps that way uh they responded you know because yeah i was using them so much when i started training this way all my triceps that way. They responded, you know, because I was using them so much. When I started training this way, all my tricep work was bench and press. And, you know, you hit it on the proximal end when you finish a chin up chest to bar, obviously. But mostly it was, you know, bench, press and press was working my triceps. And then, you know, I started this arm

program and I was really doing it for biceps because I've never been able to really grow my biceps. And I talked about this in the last episode that, you know, the grippers helped a lot. They were instrumental. But also, I think that my biceps are strong from all the chinning and, you know, I'm just making progress on them slowly and steadily. They have grown, you know. But what happened first before I saw any progress in my biceps is my triceps basically regained what had been lost from not doing that kind of work anymore. So I had rapid progression there and slow progression with the biceps and obviously the forearms because I never really trained those muscles. I would just get frustrated with curls and I would stop. And a lot of it was, again, it was microloading. You know, I talked about this last week. It was just, it wasn't microloading back then. Right. And I

wasn't doing an activity that really forced a lot of volume upon them like I did for my triceps. I swam. So even if I could microload in the weight room, I was swimming. So I was engaging my triceps a lot, you know. I didn't have that on my biceps. So there were guys I knew that wrestled and they, you know, forearms, biceps would develop because there's a lot of pulling and grappling there, you know? So you're going to use those muscles, you know, for lots and lots and lots and lots of muscle contractions in a sport like wrestling. You're not in a sport like swimming. So, you know, from a training perspective, you know, not having really pushed my elbow flexors and having long forearms.

And in addition to that, I just didn't get any accidental development beyond what I got from chinning. And then when I just started doing curls and grip work, they, you know, got bigger. So yeah, you know, that happens. And, you know, I was, I started doing this program lean and my arms and shoulders and traps, because, you know, I was doing other stuff too. I wasn't just doing arms, you know, I added arm work, but I was also doing a lot of rowing and stuff. So I just started seeing more definition in random areas that I wasn't thinking about. going from being the skinny fat novice to what you're talking about, where you're at, is, you know, I don't have any like scientific explanation here. Maybe you do. But I think that there's, you're just a different animal than you were when you were a novice. And what I mean by that is like, when you go and you train muscle groups that are just relatively under-trained relative to the rest of your body, right? Like your forearms. You think about it, like your insulin sensitivity is better. Your nutrient

partitioning is better. Like everything that you take in, including like your body's ability to, you know, do muscle protein synthesis, right? Is more efficient than it was when you first started training, right? So the, I think that's probably, that's, there's also something to that, right. So like you become more efficient at, you know, we've, we've, we talk about with, with doing accessory work and, um, picking like variant lifts as it's kind of like you get this novel stimulus, you get a little bit of a novice effect from doing something new that you've never done before. Yep. And, um, I think as a more advanced lifter

with a bunch of years of training under your belt, you're more efficient at sort of taking advantage of that novice effect. Of course. Of course, because I have better control over my body. My central nervous system's more adapted. I can stabilize myself better, you know? Sure, yeah, yeah.

You know, I wish that I knew about microloading when I was younger. I would have gotten a lot more out of things, you know? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I wish that I knew about microloading when I was younger. I would have gotten a lot more out of things, you know, but neither there nor now. But yeah, you know, when you're a brand new novice, you have no body awareness, you have poor neuromuscular efficiency and, you know, the five lifts are really all you need, you know? Then there's the whole question of diet, right? We probably need to dive into that since we didn't talk about diet at all in a couple weeks. Yeah.

But, you know, these skinny fat guys are worried about eating. And, you know, I give the same advice I give everybody. I approach it in a certain way. So, you know, you still have to train. Your training has demands. You need a lot of protein, probably more than somebody who's more advanced. What I've noticed is I tend to need more food when the intensity is high, you know? Right. Yeah, absolutely.

Whereas when you're a novice, you need more food all the time because you're always hitting a new PR, you know? So you have to eat a ton of protein because your body's not used to the stress. You're not adapted, you know? And you're applying more stress more often, right? You need a lot of carbs because of the insulin response. Obviously, you're going to deposit nutrients more effectively. You need it for energy. You need it to keep your blood sugar up so that you're not bonking during workouts. It helps you to stay hydrated. We've talked about this extensively. And if you're worried that you're going to store too much body fat, you have to watch your fat intake. And that doesn't mean go on a very low fat Ornish diet. That just means, you know, don't go, you know, eating pizza and, you know, 70-30 hamburger meat because it's easy and cheap, you know? Like, it's just not going to contribute to your overall goals of performing well in the gym so that that performance can transmute into muscle gain, right? Right. Okay. We got to talk about this. Go mad.

Yeah. Gallon of whole milk a day. Because, you know, this is what Rip's advice has become, right? It's just everybody should do go mad forever, right? Obviously. Did you see his recent clip? That was 10 years ago. Yeah, right? I know. Yeah, this is a poor guy. It's just people just can't, you know, can't stop shitting on him.

He didn't even make that up, first of all. That was an old tried and tested strategy to take in a bunch of calories to get strong. And there are reasons why it was popular. Number one, milk is cheap. Cheap. Well, maybe not today, but relatively. Used to be. Yeah, you used to be able to get a gallon of milk for $2, you know, probably less at some point, you know, especially in the 70s.

But you can get it for $2. So for $2, you can get 2,400 calories, 192 grams of carbohydrate, 128 grams of protein, and 128 grams of fat. So you're getting all three of your macros and a ton of calcium, of course, 128 grams of protein, and 128 grams of fat. So you're getting all three of your macros and a ton of calcium, of course, and potassium as well for $2. You know, it's cheaper than a weight gainer, you know? Right, right. Great for broke kids. Yeah. And if you're trying to eat 5,000 calories, it's 50% right there. I'm sure you can eat the remaining 2,400 from your diet, right? Yeah. But who needs to eat 5,000 calories, right? You know, a skinny, 6-foot, 140-pound male who's 18 to 25 can benefit from eating 5,000 calories.

Exactly. Sure, because any fat he gains is not going to make him look like a fat guy. He's probably going to have a better novice effect than somebody who starts out with some mass, you know? He's underweight, undernourished, he needs to eat, you know. That's who it's for. But virtually nobody else needs to do that. I mean, a gallon.

That's right, yeah. I could see an argument for a gallon of nonfat or low-fat milk because you're going to get a bunch of carbs and protein from it. But at that point, you're talking about 1,200 calories or what is it, you know, 1,600. I don't know what's a gram and a half per serving for non-fat but you know you're talking about under 2000 calories let's just use non-fat as the example it's 1200 calories mostly carbs and protein which is what you need to build muscle get stronger i'm not opposed to that for people who have trouble getting the calories in but uh the gallon of whole milk a day that is

reserved for a very narrow subset of the population. That's right. Yeah. Definitely not the skinny fat guy. You're just going to get pissed. You're going to get fatter. Yeah. So no, yeah, don't do gallon of whole milk a day.

And frankly, even if you are one of these underweight folks and you're not skinny fat, if you're over 30, you don't need to do it either. Right? No. You know, maybe a quart of milk a day for a little while. The other thing too, about the milk a day thing is that people don't realize that it's only for like a couple months. Yeah. It's not, if that, and you don't even like, you don't just like, you don't just sit down and like day one and like, okay, I'm gonna drink a gallon of milk today. No, that'd be retarded. I'm sure people have done it and tried to do it. But no, what you do is you start off with like, you know, a couple of pints a day and you work up to a quart a day and you do

half a gallon a day and then three fourths of a gallon, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Like you LP your milk up to a gallon a day. So your digestive system doesn't like explode. Mine didn't. And I mean, well, you know, you take the lactate and stuff like that. It helps a lot, but anyway. Yeah. So, so you, you titrate it up and then, so you're not even, you're probably not even doing the gallon milk a day for that long. Um, so anyway, I just wanted to cover that just because I seem to still get that question from people who are just discovering starting strength day. They're like, I don't know about that. They're like,

I don't know about the eating. Like, I don't want to do a gallon of milk a day. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Why would you do that? Nobody's saying you need to do, nobody's saying you need to do a gallon of milk a day. Yeah, please, please, no. Yeah, I think, but I do think, yeah, protein needs to be high.

I think for most average sized males, a skinny fat male needs to be hitting 200 grams of protein a day. I think so for sure, and I'm not recommending that from an academic... Well, you know, technically, if you're looking at the AMDR, accepted macronutrient distribution range, the range is 10 to 35% of your daily calories, and that could come out to 200. Yeah, it could come out to that. Where I see people getting tripped calories, and that could come out to 200. per lean per pound of lean body mass you need. And it'll say something like, well, if you're 200, if you're 180 pound guy and you, you know, you're 30% body fat, well, you need to calculate your

lean body mass and then eat that many grams of protein. That's going to end up being like, you know, what would that be? 150, 140 grams of protein, something like that. No, that's not enough. That's not enough. I mean, we're trying to grow. We might, we might start there if it seems like a lot of food for you, but yeah, I'd like you to go up higher, but we got to go up from there. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, would you go much higher than 200 grams? What if, what if, I don't think so for a skinny fat person, because we're not talking about the person who's 6'3", 235. No, most people don't need to go up past 200. 250 is the most I've ever recommended. But keep in mind, too, bodybuilders are obsessed with protein because they're taking a bunch of drugs, which, what do anabolic steroids do? They increase protein synthesis. So, you

probably need more protein than that if you're on anabolic steroids since you are synthesizing at a higher rate. That's a different situation. But these are the guys who popularize these extremely high-protein diets where they're eating 300, 400, 500 grams. And I still don't think they need that much either, by the way. But they're going to need more than somebody who's got normal physiology because think about it. When you take testosterone, there's no feedback loops.

It's up all day, you know, whereas, you know, you and I have diurnal variations, you know? So, you know, again, they have an elevated rate of protein synthesis, so they're going to need more protein. It's only logical. But for the rest of us, we're going to overshoot. Maybe you don't need exactly 200. Maybe it is a lot. Maybe the academics are right. I don't know how they would be because 99% of nutrition science research, if you even want to call it that, is based on self-reported data. And the stuff and the studies that were conducted, inpatient, the inpatient feeding studies that were conducted and written up and published were not done on people who were training to get big and strong over a long period of time. They were done on prisoners, on people that were institutionalized for a variety of reasons, mental health facilities, and they're 50 years old. We don't have any fucking idea what somebody who's lifting progressively heavier weights

needs to eat in terms of protein. But what we do know and what we can agree with the academics on is that there is no tolerable upper limit for protein for healthy adults. The tolerable upper limits are set by the Institutes of Medicine, last I checked, and there isn't one for protein. So there's no upper limit that's going to cause harm. So if I tell you to eat 200 grams and all 200 of those grams aren't used to build new muscle, guess what? You're not pissing it out like, you know, your physiology professor is saying. That's an oversimplification. You're

not pissing it out. You're probably using it to make nails and hair and other proteins in the body, you know? Antibodies. Don't forget about antibodies. Antibodies, immunoglobulins. You know, there's a lot of things, you know, hemoglobin. There's a lot of things that proteins are used for besides building muscle. So, yeah, you're going to use all of it. It just may not all be used to build muscle, and a fraction of it may be used for energy because you took in too much.

But nothing is lost there and right you're better off overshooting than undershooting it's really hard to store it too so yeah you need to eat about yeah grams good i think the other thing too is that um when you are a novice lifter like we said you're not as efficient at taking protein and muscle and doing muscle protein synthesis, right? That, that process is not as efficient as it will be two, three years from now. So you need more in the input to get the more, as much muscle output as you can get. So, you know, again, so there's no reason not to, you know, to get at least 200 and maybe you overshoot a little bit, but who cares? It doesn't matter. Uh, fat. Um, what do you think the number is on fat? Because I think this is the, this is, this is hard. It is hard to eat a relatively low fat diet. Um, and again, we're not talking

about like something crazy. We're not talking about Ornish here. I'm just talking about a, I'm just talking about a low to moderate fat intake for a lifter. 75 grams, 60 grams. What's kind of your number, your go-to number that somebody gets down to? You know, since this varies, I say, you know, 100, give or take, you know, it's 900 fat calories, you know. 100 or less? Yeah, 100 or less is good for most. Some people need more, you know, but I find that a lot of guys do well with 100 or less. Yeah.

Larger guys will probably need more than that, you know. So, you know, the 250-pound dude that's listening to this, yeah, I understand. You need like 120, 130. I get it. We're not talking to you. Right, right. You're not skinny fat at that point, really. Yeah.

Most men tend to put more weight on than they want the further over 100 hundred they get. Now, remember all this is self-reported. So a hundred may actually be 150. And I don't know that, you know, I'm just telling you what I've talked to people about. Yeah. Fat is notoriously hard to track as we've talked about, but yeah, the biggest thing is that, you know, fat is going to be, protein is something that you can kind of like, you know, count in your head a little bit. I mean, you probably should log this when you're first starting just to, to get an idea of how much, you know, what types of things that do you eat and how many of them do you need to eat to add up to 200 every day? Fat on the other hand, I've man, in my experience, it just requires a lot more diligence because it adds up real fast and everything delicious has a lot of fat in it.

Okay. But 100 grams, under 100 grams, that's not onerous. You can do it. You just, again, you have to have a little bit of forethought. You just have to put a little bit of planning into it. It's very easy to do at home. Yeah. Yeah.

If you're not eating out, you're winning already. There you go. Yeah. That's you know. Yeah. If you're not eating out, you're winning already. There you go. Yeah. That's pretty easy. Yeah. There's plenty of substitutions you can do that are very easy that will up your protein and lower your fat in a heartbeat. Number one is if you eat or drink dairy, you can make some easy choices.

If you eat yogurt, let's say, go buy the 0% Fage or whatever Greek yogurt. That's like, so if you get the 0% stuff, there's like no fat in it, right? And there's also something like 20 grams of protein per cup. So you can easily have a 20 gram, you know, protein snack with zero fat in it. So if you've been eating, you know, if you've been eating yogurt already, you can make that one substitution from whatever you have been eating a full fat or partial, you know, fat yogurt to that. And bam, there you go. You've just cut your fat and upped your protein in one stroke. Um, same thing, you know, watch your milk intake. Whole milk is delicious. I buy, you know, we buy three gallons of raw whole milk every week. It's great.

We cook with it a lot and we also make other stuff with it, but you know, yeah, I can't drink that much milk because it's got a lot of fat in it. Yeah. Uh, same here. You know, I just small glasses. I get low fat milk and that seems to work. I don't gain weight on it. Uh, lost weight on it. It's fine. Um, I don't mind skin, but I like a little bit of fat in it, you know? Yeah, sure. Why not? Uh, I try to focus on fat quality, you know, like fatty fish is really good for you. Right. Grass fed beef is good for you. I know it tastes different. So not everybody likes it. Uh, you

know, they have the omega three eggs now. Um, there's lots of ways to get those omega-3s are anti-inflammatory for one you know they're good for hair skin and nails and generally the best uh the best fat source you know yeah absolutely what about you know do we need to worry about fiber intake of course vegetable intake things like that yeah fiber keep you full, but it also helps lower your cholesterol. It helps with gastric motility. So, you know, keeps things passing through, you know, things that aren't liquid. You know, I think you get my vibe here. So it keeps your gut real happy, keeps your heart real happy, keeps your appetite in a good place so that you're not hungry all the time wanting to eat crap.

If you eat low-fiber foods, let's say you're snacking on chips all day or eating bread and just pretty empty food sources that just simply provide energy calories. Yeah, right. You just never get full, and you can always keep eating. Think about commercially made cereal. You can eat a whole box easily. It's a black hole. Yeah, right, right. Yeah.

And a lot of that's just low protein, low fiber. So if you eat high protein, high fiber, you tend to be fuller. It's this last cut that I did was the easiest and I got the leanest I ever did. But I ate the most fiber I ever did this time. I was eating five servings of oatmeal for breakfast, which everybody laughs at me for them.

I hope somebody listening has tried this and has been successful because I tell people I eat five servings of me for them. I hope somebody listening has tried this and has been successful because I tell people I eat five servings of oatmeal for breakfast. They're like, how the hell are you not in the toilet all day? You know? It's not a big deal. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how many servings I eat. I'll have to measure it out, but I eat at least three every day. Yeah. I only know because I vowed not to measure anything when I did this cut. I'm just going to pour what I want and eat it and then just start taking stuff out if I get stuck. Right.

And that's what I did. I didn't monitor numbers. I didn't have a spreadsheet. I just knew I wanted a variety of food groups for each meal. I wanted a carb, a protein, a vegetable each meal. Yeah. And the amounts were dependent on how hungry I was. And at the time,

I'd been coming off of a higher calorie diet, so I was pretty hungry. So I started out with a lot of food. And I didn't measure anything. I'm like, if I just eat the same stuff every day and pour the same amount, then I just have to subtract things to adjust the calories. So, you know, I just dumped the oatmeal in until it was almost to the top. And then I put milk in it until all the oats were submerged. And I'd throw it in the microwave. Well, six, seven months of this shit. And I'm like, I wonder how much I'm eating right now. So I started like weighing everything that I was having and just doing everything exactly the same. Yeah.

And I'm like, holy shit, I'm eating five servings of oatmeal. I think my breakfast alone is 160 carbs in it. I'm still sticking to it because I frigging love it. That's the whole point, right? You know? Yeah, absolutely. You know, for people that struggle, a lot of people struggle with this protein thing, you're getting enough in because, you know, when you first start measuring it, you might have like, you know, you think you're eating one thing and you're eating like 120. I find that you can hide protein powders in a lot of different places, including oatmeal. So whenever I have a bowl of oatmeal, I almost

always take a scoop of whey protein and I throw it in there and mix it in. And I might put some honey or maple syrup or whatever in there just for flavor, sometimes berries, fruits, whatever. And yeah, it'll mix in just fine that's an extra 20 25 grams of protein bam right there easy enough easy enough easy right um you can do that with with yogurt too i mentioned the greek yogurt you can put i wouldn't put a whole scoop in a cup of greek yogurt maybe like a half scoop but uh you can easily add another 10 15 grams um just mix that in put some put some fruit, whatever, just to make it taste good. Yeah. Yeah. No, I've done that. So yeah. Okay. Well, there you go. Skinny fat.

Skinny fat guy. Just watch your fat intake and eat a bunch of protein and carbs and train. And yeah, that's the thing. The biggest thing is you just got to be patient. You know, I know it sucks. Everybody tells you that you're going to just completely look awesome in six months. You're not, it's not going to happen. It's going to take better. You're going to look better. Absolutely. You're going to, you're going to look better every year that you do this, but it's going to take years to get the body you want. Um, so might as well start today, right? You know, it's just, it's not happening. Uh, you know, if you don't start now, that's not going to happen, uh, later. So, you know, I don't know if this, if the data supports what I'm about to say, but you know, in general, it appears to be, and it's kind of makes sense with data and

other things that baseline, uh, lean mass is probably a good predictor of where you're going to end up, you know, with a lifetime of training. And I know that there's outliers, you know, that's, you have different body types. You have some guys are just under-trained, under-nourished mesomorphs that just start eating and training, and they get more ripped and more muscular by the week, you know? Right, right. You have them, and they're like, man, I started out skinny, I was 130 pounds. And then you look at the guy when he was skinny, and you're like, that just looks like a muscular guy who's underweight, you know right yes uh you know a skinny jacked guy you know that just

needs yes it's different from skinny fat you got skinny jacked guys where you know they say i just had trouble gaining weight and it's like uh yeah because you just didn't know how to eat and you weren't training then you did both and you blew up like a freaking you know like somebody put you on a bunch of shit you know and they weren't right you know? So no, that's not the thing. We're not talking about them, but in general, like, if you're not one of those guys, and you would know by now if you are or not, then, you know, your size at baseline is probably going to predict, you know, where you're going to end up later. You know, if you're a thick dude with thick wrists, big structure, muscle without touching a weight, you probably have the potential to be a really

big motherfucker you know but if you're a skinny fat guy you're probably gonna bust your ass to end up where the muscular guy was at baseline yep yep i think that makes sense you know i was trying to think about it while you're talking and i'm like okay so when i first started training i was definitely undernourished and underweight because I was vegetarian for a couple of years. Uh, so I was 155 pounds. I, I was kind of in that skinny fat category. I was more skinny than I was skinny fat, but I was a little bit skinny fat. Let's say that I was maybe, I was not north of 20% body fat, but let's just, let's just say I was 20% body fat. I was not north of 20% body fat, but let's just, let's just say I was 20% body fat. Okay. So 155 pounds. So 20 at 20% body fat, I would have been 125 pounds of lean mass.

And let's say today when I'm, you know, I'm usually hanging around one 95. Let's say that, you know, let's say that I'm, you know, 16% body fat. That's, you know let's say that i'm you know 16 body fat that's you know close enough 164 pounds of lean mass okay what did i say before 125 pounds so i've gained 35 pounds 35 a little little bit north of 35 pounds of lean mass over years yeah that sounds about right sounds about right i'm not a mesomorph but i'm, but I'm not an endomorph either. I'm somewhere in between. I actually have data since we're on that topic. When I started out, I was 165, and I was 17% body fat and underwater weighing. So let's times that by, what, 83%. So I had 136, about 135 pounds lean mass, which checks out because I got some more fat testing after high school.

And it came out to around there. And that's kind of where I stuck for many years. So I was like probably 130 to 135 pounds lean mass depending on the instrument you are using. Now, the underwater weighing is more generous than the DEXA. So I bet if I had gotten a DEXA back then, it would have put my fat percentage even higher. So, you know, since I've been measuring with DEXA in recent years, let's just call it 130, you know. When I was in high school, just from swimming and doing, you know, three months of weight workouts per year. You know, I was in the low 130s for lean mass. Now I'm about 170. I'd probably venture to say that I'm, I don't know,

12%. So that puts me at about 150. So I've gained about probably 20 pounds of lean mass over the course of 20 years, you know, which is pretty cool. Yeah. 24, I guess, you know, I started, uh, started lifting weights 24 years ago. I was 15. So there's puberty involved too, but I was lifting and swimming. I was lifting three months, you know, quarter of the year I was lifting, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, I was swimming for, you know, about a quarter of the year, but, uh, yeah, no, that's what I would have estimated too, without doing any math. I'm like, I probably gained 20 pounds lean mass in my lifetime. And that's where the math kind of lines up i should probably get i should get in a hydrostatic weighing thing just to doing apples to apples although the one we used

in swimming was the old school one where they just do it in a pool you know oh yeah just blow bubbles in the pool until you yeah now and now they're a little more sophisticated they have like you know a van and there's like a tank in there. And I mean, I can do it, but my guess is we'll end up around the same place. I have about 150 pounds of lean mass. I suspect that my upper body is under-trained and that there's more to be gained there. I think my shoulders and traps and all that, you know, definitely advanced along the years from pressing and deadlifting. But I think arms and chest, br bro, is probably under-trained. Yeah, sure, sure.

I fight again. I'm not doing calves either. I am now, but I wasn't before. So I could probably eke out another five, I think, maybe. Maybe 10 if my squat and deadlift. I mean, I'm 37. If I can stay intact and not get hurt and train into my 40s, I mean, I can gain another 10 pounds of it.

It'd be pretty cool. I don't think it's unheard of. That'd be what? That'd put me at 30 pounds of lean mass? I mean, that checks out. What I have read once, and I know a lot of people don't like him, but it's hard to argue with the stuff he puts out there because it tends to make sense and be reasonably accurate. Lyle McDonald, he wrote an article a while back on bodyrecomposition.com about how

much muscle mass somebody can gain. You know, there's plenty of shit out there on this and nobody knows the real answer. And I think a lot of the genetic outliers don't even lift, you know, like there's just really muscular, strong dudes that just don't go in the weight room, you know? So I don't know that we'll ever have the data, but I think we have a lot of anecdote and a lot of experimental data on guys and observational data on guys that do this. And he was predicting around 40 pounds is probably the upper limit of the amount of lean mass that a drug-free lifter can gain, assuming that he's put in about 5 to 10 years of serious training, meaning no injuries, no interruptions, perfect diet, perfect sleep schedule. You're a dedicated lifter that has had a perfect run for 5 to 10 years. You might put on 40 pounds of lean mass. And I'm looking at that and I'm like, yeah, that's, it's kind of,

that's kind of hard to argue with. Cause if you kind of think about it like novice effect first year, you know, under the best of circumstances, he brings this up and you and I have seen this and really high responders that, you know, 20 to 25 pounds of lean mass in the first year of training is not unusual if you have a decent set of genetics and you're training correctly and recovering. I would agree with that. You know, I'd say that my high responders have probably done that. You know, I've seen guys put on 40 pounds and become more defined while they're doing

it. So they've basically skewed the weight gain towards muscle mass. It's, you know, a lot of that's genetic too. So I believe them that, yeah, 20 to 25 pounds in year one, then he says, you cut that in half for year two and year three. And by year four and year five, it becomes less and less measurable because it gets smaller and smaller. And I'm like, yeah, that's accurate, because we have, you know, negative feedback loops. If we gain muscle, our body adapts to not have us gain more because muscle's metabolically expensive and essentially high maintenance without going into all the biology.

So your body doesn't want to keep putting on more and more muscle. So the longer you do this, the harder it is to gain more, the more work you're putting in to gain more. And nobody's really disagreed with this. You know, even the academics and the bro scientists and the steroid guys, you know, have all pretty much admitted that eventually you'd stop growing in a meaningful way. And, you know, you look at guys that, you know, are in physique sports competitively. And again, drugs aside, they take drugs okay. The drugs work until, you know, they don't. They have to work. The drugs will allow them to gain more muscle, but eventually they have to work hard in conjunction with those drugs to max out those gains, you know?

And it's the same concept with performance sports, right? The drugs give these people a boost, but then they have to keep working hard to push the envelope because, remember, they're all on drugs, you know? And they're competing against each other. So what differentiates one from the other? Obviously, genetics is part of it, but, you know, they have to train. Yeah, Yeah. What you need to think about if you are a skinny fat lifter is... First of all, you have to really like doing this. That's number one. Yeah. I was going to say, I think if you find something that you enjoy about this process,

You know, I think if you find something that you enjoy about this process, if you can learn to love the process of training, then you will last, you will go the distance that it takes to make the changes that you want, right? If you, you know, just try to like white knuckle your way through two years of strength training, it's just not going to happen. You won't get to the end of LP if you're just trying to white knuckle yourself through it. Um, eventually everyone that, that is successful with this stuff, they fall in love with the process. Um, now some people strength training, I think for them is a little bit more like taking medicine. They know it's good for them, but I think even then, you know, what keeps them coming back to the barbell is that they find some aspect of the process that they like. Um, some people love the thrill of, of hitting, you know, what keeps them coming back to the barbell is that they find some aspect of the process that they like. Some people love the thrill of hitting, you know, heavy singles and doubles and like the big weights that pay off is in the big weights you get to lift at the end of

the training cycle. I'm kind of like that. I enjoy that. That's why I was drawn to competition for a while. It's fun to do that because you have a, you have a date on the calendar that drives you towards it. Uh, nowadays it's more about, I enjoy, I enjoy the process of seeing if, how I can manipulate my programming to get, to eke out a little bit more results on a pretty minimal training. Right. But, but there's still some aspect of the process that I enjoy, and that's why I keep training. That's why I keep coming back. I'm not in it for the results. The results are nice to have, but that's not the reason that I train. It doesn't get me in the gym. And I think that's true for most people. I don't think looking at the results and being like, man, you know, 15% body fat at this body weight. That's what gets me in the gym every day.

It's just not going to sustain you. So see if you can find something about the process of lifting to fall in love with. And, you know, sometimes you just do it for long enough. It's kind of like brushing your teeth. Like you just can't imagine not doing it anymore. That's right. That's what it has to become. Yeah, right.

I can't write a program for myself if it doesn't have a squat in it. I just can't do it. Even if it would like, even if Andy Baker writes me a program and there's no squat in it and he's got all the reasons for it, I just don't know that I could do it. I would, I'd have to make him add a squat just because I can't imagine not squatting. Yeah, I feel guilty not squatting. I always have. Yeah. So anyway, I hope we cleared up some misinformation for you, or at least some, some, uh,

misinformation. Gosh, I don't know. I hope we cleared up some, some misunderstandings out there about how this stuff works. Misconceptions. Misconceptions. That's what I was looking for. Yeah. All right. Let's close out. Thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. You can find the gym at weights underscore underscore and underscore underscore plates. That's two underscores, no, four total. Yeah. If you weren't counting. Still can't get one. That's two underscores. No, four total. Yeah.

If you weren't counting. Still can't get one. Pisses me off. Yeah. Someday. Someday. I keep checking. Maybe on the next, whatever the next Instagram is.

Oh, God, it's TikTok. That's what it is. Oh, we're going to air this on Rumble. Yeah. Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah. So if you haven't joined Rumble, then you need to get on that because we're going to

start putting our podcast up there. We are probably just going to post just the audio for a little while. But ultimately, we are looking at getting a little video set up and posting our video podcast on there. So, you can listen to our sultry voices and our faces as well. Yeah, that's coming. And for your friends who won't listen because we're not on YouTube, we're going to be on there too. So we're giving you some options. One of my best friends and former client and longtime starting strength follower, even

before me, he was a couple years ahead of me, has not listened to the podcast, not because he doesn't like to hear me talk. He loves my content, but because he only does YouTube. And does youtube and i'm like oh shit that's how this all started yeah yeah i'm sorry it's such shit audio quality really is you just need to make fun of them for that uh but yeah we we will be on youtube if you want to listen to us there so uh yeah go check us out there um you can always find me at marmalade underscore cream on Instagram. And you can send me an email if you have a question at jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. All right, we'll talk to you again in a couple weeks. you