Weights and Plates Podcast - #47 - Struggling to Get Bigger/Leaner? Strength Is Your Limiting Factor

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

An impromptu training discussion leads to a whole episode about why strength is limiting factor for the vast majority of people trying to get bigger and look more muscular.   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. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon. This is early for us because I have to train tonight. This is early for us because I have to train tonight. Yeah, tell me what's going on with your training, man. You're telling me that Baker's arm program is like destroying you right now. Well, I was N-D-T-P, not doing the program, from the standpoint that, I mean, when you get to an advanced level, you're never really doing a template to begin with. You know, you kind of modify to your own needs. That is the goal of a template, you know? And I talked to Andy and he said that there's a lot of assumptions there when he writes those.

And one of those assumptions is that you're not quite as advanced as I am. Right. Yeah. Because, you know, most people that buy a DIY template are usually less advanced than they think they are, not as proficient as they think they are, and not as strong as they think they are. Yes, definitely. That's a fair assumption to make when trying to sell something to a mass audience. Or you might get guys like me that buy it, and you're going to tailor it. But there was one area where I was not doing the program and where there was good rationale, but I also had good rationale for not doing it from a logistical standpoint. So he had it set up as a four-day split.

So you did arms, which was what, biceps and triceps, which included a close grip bench. So there was one compound movement in there on Monday. Let's just call it Monday. So day one. And then you're supposed to do quote unquote legs on day two, where he gives you kind of free reign to program that however you want. Yeah, sure. For me, for me, it was just squat, you know, because, you know, my squats been going up, my legs have been growing from doing that. So I don't, I don't really care to do a traditional leg day. Yeah.

Right. Um, then day three is supposed to be two days after day two, three days after day one, and that's chest, triceps, and shoulders. Well, I've been on a three-day split forever now. I didn't want to go to the gym the fourth day. It's an hour away from my house. I liked having a couple days where I wasn't, you know, doing anything except maybe hiking. And I decided to do, you know, combined legs for me, which is squat with the arm day, which that was fine, that worked out okay. But then I was doing chest, shoulders, and triceps on Wednesday, which was 48 hours later. And, you know, for a novice, that might

be fine, even for an early intermediate. You know, I don't even know if it'd be fine then. But as I ran through the program once, 15 weeks, I ran through a program twice, another 15 weeks. I've done this 30 weeks in a row. This would be week 31. Now I've modified it, you know. And halfway through the second run at this, I recognized, you know, I started identifying things that were specific to me. Number one, my bicep work and my rows continued progressing fairly linearly like an early intermediate. Every week I'm adding weight. My second time starting it, I started off where I finished the first time without a problem and added to that. So clearly

there's some novice effect going on here because, you know, unlike most young men that fucked around in the gym, I didn't really focus on curls and part of that was and i've talked about this in other episodes you know the the jumps on those dumbbells were rather large and since i wasn't uh genetically gifted with big strong biceps i didn't get very far so i'm like sitting here around with you, the mid-20s, 25s, 30s. 30s were a big deal, right? Right, yeah. And the guys with big arms were doing 50s, you know?

And there was just no path to that. And in terms of the barbell curls, I never even thought to load an Olympic bar because I'm like, we have these shorter bars here. This must be the one you're supposed to use. Those went up by 10. Right, right. So, you know, the problem was— The sort of fixed weight bars. Yep, yep. Right, right.

So, you know, the problem was— The sort of fixed weight bars, yep, yep. Yeah, the problem there was I couldn't leapfrog to a decent amount of weight like Andy could, you know, when he was talking to us. He said that, you know, he went up in quarters. That one, I probably would have quit lifting if that was my option, you know. Right. Smaller guy, I didn't have that build. So, I just neglected—I'm like, fuck curls, you know. And I'd feel a ton of work in my forearms, you know.

So, I'm just like, you know, maybe my biceps just don't grow, I have weak biceps, it's that and the other, you know, at one point, you know, later on after the strength train, I thought maybe it's because I had long forearms, which certainly makes, you know, the leverage situation change, you know, it's less advantageous, but, you know, and running it the first time, this current program I'm on, I discovered that my hands were the weak link, and that's when I did the grippers, and then my curls just kind of skyrocketed. My rows also skyrocketed. That was another lift I didn't improve at. So I could, and part of that's just the way it's taught. So I could do heavy chins because I swam in high school. So I had strong triceps. So tricep exercises tended

to progress. Lat exercises, as long as it was vertical pulling, tended to progress. And once I started training the press, I, you know, I pressed 205 within a year and a half of doing starting strength. You know, I was already able to press over 135 just on my own doing it wrong, starting from a dead pause and all sorts of other things, you know? Right. So like overhead strength and overhead pulling, like a lat pull down, chin up, never been a problem. Horizontal, now where the lats are shortened, you know, and I don't get that full stretch, tended to be harder and I could never really progress those. And then I was getting a lot of information from bodybuilders.

So, you know, you have to do it ultra strict and not let another joint even move a centimeter during the movement, which dare move those hips, you know? Yep. So, like, I try to do them, like, unnecessarily strict, and I try to get, like, an extreme retraction of the scapula, which, by the way, this stuff has its place, but it's supplementary, right? And I just didn't really understand that the, whether these guys know it or not, I have a theory that they default to these ultra-strict variations because every, because they get so strong at the more compound variants, right? Right. So, you know, typically the guy who's telling you to be ultra strict, and I'm not talking about the physical therapist, corrective exercise, 150-pound, six-foot guy.

Not that guy. I'm talking about the big jacked fucking bodybuilder that's probably on a bunch of drugs who can probably barbell row 405 for reps. Yeah, right, right. Or maybe more, you know, maybe more. Like, typically the guys that are recommending ultra strict variants have a history of training less strict variants, you know? Right. Yeah, I know where you're going with this. Yeah, and it took me a long time to figure that out so like my rows never progressed because you know i do the cable one same thing with the same same problem i had with arms my biceps or my forearms would get tired and i wouldn't really get anywhere with cable rows even though you can progress those a little bit better they have those plates you can slide down right um and then i do dumbbell rows which my other

friend liked and you know he had he grew arms better than me but you know he wanted to get even bigger and he was doing 100 pound dumbbells like him and i were like lifting pretty much the same on everything but where he would really shine was with the fucking curls and the freaking rows and in the shrugs too he can shrug a lot and like i just could not i couldn't understand i'm like you're doing 100 pound dumbbells you know we're 19 20 years old and uh you're telling me that you feel it in your lats i don't feel that shit in my lats at all typically if i think back now i couldn't explain it then but thinking back now i'd feel it my brachioradialis usually you know but i wasn't making the right connections i was understanding what was going on so i just would say well fuck these i wouldn't

take them serious i'm like maybe they just don't get heavy, you know. Now, fast forward, since I finally trained those damn hand grippers after having the first one for 15 years, I realized I was just hand grip strength. My grip strength and my forearms were the weak link. And wrist curls weren't going to help. I did try to do those when I was younger. Those weren't going to help. Those Captain of Crush grippers made rowing and curling immediately easy, and I've had this quasi novice effect that's still going on ever since. So for instance, last training cycle, I started, I ended phase one with a bicep curl of 92 and a half for three sets of eight. I started this

training cycle Monday with 95 for three sets of eight. I'm this training cycle Monday with 95 for three sets of eight. I'm already done being sore and I'll probably finish with like 100 to 102 and a half. I have a feeling this will be the last time I progress like that. Yeah. So all of this is relevant to your main question. Now, as I'm looking at this, I'm like my horizontal pulls are going up pretty linearly. I can probably run this program out again. You know, my curls are going up pretty linearly, I can run this program out again. However, my horizontal pushing and my pushing in general, my vertical pushing to my presses, my bench presses, my dumbbell bench presses, all that shit fell off a cliff after the first training cycle. And a lot of that was just relearning how to use

dumbbells. So I had a pretty good first training cycle, but I didn't really break any new ground. I mean, I didn't have a 90-pound dumbbell. I did have bench 90 for 10, which back in the day, that was four or five reps, you know? So that's just probably me transmuting strength acquired from years of bench pressing, you know, for strength the last 10 years, you know? So I don't know that that was like oh you legit pr'd you know i mean i did legit pr it's a pr but it's just you know more of transferring strength from other things i've done right yeah i'm not yeah i'm not hitting an earth-shattering pr every week for several months like i am with the curls so i recognize that i'm

like my bench has fallen off a cliff my shoulders are so tired from benching and my triceps are so tired from benching and doing triceps that my press is just pretty much stagnated. I think when I was heavier, I benched, I pressed 160 for 10. When I was cutting last year, it was at 151. And then since I started training like this, it's been around 145 for a set of 10. Yeah. So, you know, I'm just fatigued pressing. I didn't get weaker at pressing, but I'm just pressing fatigued now. The side laterals went up because I was going up half pound per arm.

Yeah, half pound per arm. So a quarter pound on each side of the dumbbell per arm. So that went up for six months straight. I don't think that's going to go up much more. I'm in the mid-20s now. It's pretty cool, you know. But the main point here is that I noticed that the mid-20s now. It's pretty cool, you know. But the main point here is that I noticed that the lift that I've been trained at and adapted to the most, the bench

press, you know, I've been doing it since I was 15. I've been doing it consistently since I was 18. That lift didn't do shit after that first phase. The incline went up quite a bit, though. Yeah. The incline's went up quite a bit, you know. I never really, I trained that on and off, you know. It wasn't a staple exercise. But that's went up. My. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, you know, I should probably do this as written and leave that, you know, what is it, 96 hours between or 72 hours between workouts instead of 48, you know? Yeah, right, right.

And I started doing that at the end. It made no difference, you know. It still sucked, you know. Like I was still getting stuck at the same place with the benching stuff and the press, you know. I was adding a pound per week. So it's hard to say whether I got stuck. But I was less tired pressing, So I didn't notice that. But, uh, in the end, I'm like, you know what?

I need to start approaching these pressing motions the same way that I approach, uh, the squat and the deadlift. Whereas, you know, when my squat started getting hard to do for a limit set, I do it two weeks later, you know, and I throw some volume in the week in between. Right. And then the deadlift, I rack pulled and deadlift. And eventually I couldn't rack pull and deadlift. So I just stopped rack pulling altogether because it was just kicking the shit out of me.

But then I deadlift every three weeks, you know. And it was kicking the shit out of me because you're supposed to pair the rack pull with a partial off the floor. I was doing a full deadlift off the floor, then rack pulling the next week. It's a lot of stress. So I just, no, I deadlift every three weeks. But with the bench, I'll just load a weight on and try to add every week forever. And then it just doesn't fucking move unless I just suddenly gain weight and the leverage changes. Then it'll skyrocket, you know.

But I'm just, you know, which I could do that. If I was powerlifting, you know, that would be a different story. But if I'm trying to add contractile tissue to my pecs, I need to make the fuckers grow, and they have to get stronger. You know, I can't just game the system and get fat. You know, my goal is to build muscle on them, right? Right. So I'm trying to troubleshoot this. I'm like, okay, this is week one, and I'm going to try this today.

I'm going to do a limit set of 10 on whatever the heavier variant is for this training program. But then next week, and then I'm going to do back offs. So I'll do lighter sets to accumulate the work. And then next week, I'm going to do probably 80, 85% of that probably, and then hit the same volume. And then the week after, I'll try to add to this week, because this is what I've done for the squat and the deadlift. I just need to do it probably with more volume. Right? yeah. So are you imagining that your volume weeks are going to be the same amount of volume

you're doing on the heavy weeks or more? Probably more. More, okay. Yeah, more. Are you thinking like, so on your heavy, so if you do a limit set of 10 on your heavy week and you do a back off, how many total reps are you trying to accumulate there?

Like what? I want 20 to 30 reps. Okay. 20 to 30. And then on the volume week, I want around 40. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So four sets one week, three sets one week. Yeah. And then heavy every other week. And hopefully that should help get me over the, over the top here. But in terms of my goals, I want a barbell bench 315 from a strength standpoint but i don't want to have to i don't have to gain a ton of weight for that you know it's not a heavy bench and i've pressed 225 without gaining a ton of weight right yeah yeah i'm recognizing here that yes i could get up to 190 and bench 315 probably i got 310 up i practically had 315 at that body weight um had i had clips on both sides of the fucking bar, I would have locked it out probably.

But I wasn't – I was doing bench once a week for a few sets. I just got fat, and the body fat helped the weight go up. Right, yeah. That was as simple as that. Like there was no programming wizardry there, and I could never replicate it again either, even when I was fat. Like when I tried to rerun that up it just didn't happen it was just mostly my body was used to being small i had this novel change in leverage all of a sudden because during covet i just gained some weight yep yeah and the fucking thing

skyrocketed but now i'm like okay i've gotten every one of these lifts to move irrespective of whether i'm 190 or 170, except the bench. So something's got to change there. So I also recognize I've been performing that lift the longest. So I really have to start looking at my program a little more critically, treat it the same as the other lifts, and start spreading out those PR days. And I think I'll get it over the top. So I want that 315, but then I also want to hit those 100-pound dumbbells for 8 to 10 reps. I really want to do that. And that's another combined 20 pounds I need to put on it. You know, it might take some time. It might not. You know, I think that I'm training kind of fucked up. I think I'm stronger than I am because I kept hitting 90, no problem, but I kept trying to do it for three or four sets of 10, and that wasn't happening. I could get one or two sets of 10.

sets of 10 and that wasn't happening i could get one or two sets of 10 right yeah it kind of strikes me that and i think this is basically what you were saying earlier is that you know because you have done so much limit work right not necessarily with compound lifts but even with your your uh you know with your dumbbell work and stuff like that that your systemic fatigue from these lifts is very high and so you're kind of artificially limited in the, the, the strength that you can express because of just the residual systemic fatigue from these lifts. And that's part of what being advanced is like, you know, when you're, um, you know, when you're an intermediate, certainly when you're a novice, but even when you're like in, in the early to middle intermediate phases of training, you know, you do a bunch of,

you know, you do, you do some dumbbell work, you do some accessory work, you know, accessory in a more traditional sense where you're thinking of the barbell compound lifts as your main stuff. And then accessories would be variants of that. Um, you know, curls, rows, stuff like that. You know, they can be fatiguing in the moment and maybe the day after, but they're not like, they don't wreck you for like multiple days, like a deadlift would. Right. But then you get to be advanced and yeah,

those fucking bicep curls can wreck you for like multiple days. Oh, fuck. Yeah. I mean, Andy covers this too in his little writeup that he gives with his programs. And he talks about how the elbows become sensitive. So he likes to rotate out the exercises.

So you don't push the same movement for too long because it can start to irritate the tendons, you know? Right. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the problem with single joint. Yeah. And it makes sense. Well, you know, I've noticed that even in my own training that, uh, you know, I, this, this time around my little simple linear progression I've been running, uh, I decided to seated press everything. And I've run my seated press up to 155 for three sets of eight. And man, it just smokes my, every muscle in my torso.

Yeah. And it's like, it's not even that heavy in the moment. Like, you know, the last three reps are challenging, but it's not crazy heavy, but man, it just wrecks me because it's just the amount of stabilization. And I'm not, you know, I'm just mainly out of laziness. I'm not using any sort of thing to anchor my feet. I'm just, I got my feet on the floor. That's it. I'm just sitting up straight, squeezing my abs.

I just recently learned that if you get on your toes, it's easier to stabilize. You, okay. You like, yeah. You like get on the ball of your foot, basically push your ball of your foot. I had to figure, I figured that out when I was doing dumbbells yeah i think that's kind of what i do yeah if i think about it it's kind of what i don't lift my heels way off the ground but i i am pushing through kind of the ball of my foot to and i got my feet out wide to kind of help me stabilize a little bit i ran i ran those miserable fuckers this is back before i started doing all this isolation stuff i ran those miserable fuckers up to 192 and a half for a single it's fucking hard man seated seated press yeah oh yeah yeah yeah it was fucking hard but so my my goal is i want to hit

185 for maybe fives i think i think i might be able to do that yeah 185s for fives but you know we'll see it's it's fucking hard yeah it's uh definitely wrecks you but yeah you know the thing is it's just you know i'm doing so little work, but at the same time, my residual fatigue day-to-day is high from those. Yeah. Well, keep us posted on how that goes. I'm curious to see if that's going to make the difference on your bench. I hope so, man.

It might steal some ideas from you if that's the case. I hope so. I don't want to fucking... I want to keep getting bigger. I'd like to, you know, in the next few years, settle into like 180, you know, 185. Yeah. But well, I'm, I'm in a similar boat, you know, I I've, I've benched 320, uh, but I did that at a body weight of about 200 pounds. And, uh, at 190, I am nowhere close to touching that right now. So, um, yeah, I'd, I'd like to be able to move three wheels again. It kills me, man.

I got the pecs. My pecs respond to training very easily. You know, I have decent-sized pecs. Shoulders are plenty strong, obviously. I think triceps are the weak link, for sure. And I think those upper back muscles, those stabilizers, are weak, and I think that's where the compound rowing can be useful. Yeah, sure. I mean, think about it. it's having a strict yeah i thought about this i'm like if i'm doing a strict barbell

row i'm not going to get far past 135 and that you know it has a purpose to do it that way but when i'm trying to stabilize that shoulder girdle um with you know two three hundred pounds in my hands pushing the other way you know that's you're not going to get much out with, you know, two, 300 pounds in my hands pushing the other way, you know, that's, you're not going to get much out of super, you know, extreme isolation for that purpose. Right. But if I can barbell row 315, 365, you know, with straps allowing for a hip hinge, I think that's going to transfer, you know, using a bench grip. Um, so, you know, I got those up to like two 31, uh, for a set of 10, which was nice. And that's when I started to use straps. Um, yeah, I think, I think I originally heard, um, this has been a few years, but I think it was, uh, Matt Reynolds who originally would say that if you're doing a barbell row and I think he was

assuming a row from the floor. So like a pen lay row, uh, that, that the kind of the goal was to get your eights up even with your bench press. And yeah, that makes sense. You know, like, I don't know if he was, I can't remember off the top of my head if he meant like for your three sets of five bench press, but let's just say that. Yeah. So if you're bench pressing, you know, two 25 for three sets of five and you start barbell rowing off the floor and you can do one 65, well, you want to move that one 65 up to 225 at least and then then yeah which which makes sense right it's the antagonist movement to the bench press so um if you can row 225 235 245 you're going to have a much more stable uh upper back

the issue i kept running into with any type of rowing was the subjectivity of the technique unless you're talking to a bodybuilder that says do it 100% strict with lightweight yeah right yes uh sure you know it's like okay for what purpose oh you have massive traps and you're just trying to work your mid traps and get maybe a quarter inch out of them by doing that okay that makes sense for you you're a contest bodybuilder sure that has massive traps that can deadlift 700 and uh you know needs to fucking isolate that area can probably barbell row 500 you know right just throwing numbers out there right four or five hundred pounds i don't know if i've seen anybody who can barbell row 500 but i think andy did 405 right for a few reps probably i wouldn't put it past him. I remember we were talking about Ronnie

Coleman doing bent rows at 500, 495. Well, there you go. Yeah, there you go. If you're doing a bunch, if your compounds are real heavy, sure, it makes sense. You know, it makes sense. Go do, you know, 135 pound row, super strict, you know, like I saw a guy who, you know, he deadlifted 500 for 15 or something for 20. And then his barbell row was like, in his video like I saw a guy who, you know, he deadlifted 500 for 15 or something for 20. And then his barbell roll is like, in his video, at least was 145 done super, super strict. But I'm like, that guy's fucking massive. First of all, I'm like, second of all, he's really fucking strong. I'm like, I guarantee, you know, I don't even have to guarantee you, I know for a fact that fucker trained real heavy on the you know bigger compound movements

that kind of recruit multiple joints you know yeah so this is the kind of trend that i see is these guys have this foundation and they've trained heavy in the past and then now they're getting beat up from that so they're having to do more strict super slow traditional bodybuilding stuff and then promoting that as the way that they and and almost suggesting that they would have done it that way if they knew better but but no, they wouldn't have. They would have figured out that, hey, I can't, I can't go any further. So I'm going to fucking cheat this a little bit, cheat this quote unquote, and lift more weight, you know? on the show, right? When we had him on is that when you're bodybuilding, the goal is not to move in a certain amount of weight on the bar. That's not, that's not the goal. The goal is to build muscle mass. And yes, you will buy, you know, you will have to make the weight on the bar go up in order to build muscle mass, but it's not the goal in itself. Like, like it would be for powerlifting,

right? Where the goal is you know i'll take i'll take that a step further it should be if you're a novice bodybuilder oh you're just starting out yeah absolutely but but where i was going with this is what andy's pointed out that like you know an experienced bodybuilder can take a 25 pound dumbbell and work up a massive pump and and figure out and can figure out can manipulate a movement you know whether it's a dumbbell extension or something could figure out a way to manipulate a movement, you know, whether it's a dumbbell extension or something, could figure out a way to manipulate that movement to create a massive pump and actually do something stimulative to build more muscle mass, right? Yeah, a novice cannot. That's

my point. No, a novice, yeah, exactly. A novice cannot, but that's the thing, but it's also a matter of goals, right? Those guys are not trying to get stronger per se. Getting stronger would be an artifact of their main goal, which is to build more muscle mass in the right places. And so they're just working with a different set of criteria or a different goal set than the people we talk to are, right? When you're a novice, the goal is to get strong. Whether you want to build muscle or put weight on the bar, it doesn't matter. Your goal is still to get strong. Whether you want to build muscle or put weight on the bar, it doesn't matter. Your goal is still to get strong. So you're helping me formulate my position on this and articulate it better as we talk about this. So most of the people that hire us are not ever going to be reasonably competitive at bodybuilding. It's fair to say that.

Yeah, I can say almost zero that I ever work with. And by competitive, you're not going to place high in a bodybuilding. It's fair to say that. Oh, no. Yeah. I can say almost zero that I work with. Right. Yeah. And by competitive, you're not going to place high in a bodybuilding show. You're not going to win. You know, you probably don't have the genetics for it, you know. Right. Yeah. All those things. Right. So bodybuilders and by bodybuilders, I don't mean you've competed in a show and placed 30th or you're competing in a local show with, you know, some mediocre contestants that are kind of on par with you, you know. That's not who we're talking to, you know. When I'm talking about bodybuilders that are naturally jacked, have the right skin, have the right muscle insertions, all those things, right? Right.

Out the gate, they look like mini versions of what their steroided up trained self is going to look like years from now, right? Right. Out the gate, they look like mini versions of what their steroided up trained self is going to look like years from now, right? Yes. Just out the gate. Those guys, guess what? They are not limited by strength. Let me repeat that. Gifted bodybuilders, you know, and I'm talking about, we can go to the top 50, right? Top 100, you know? Sure. People who are gifted for bodybuilding, who have genetics for bodybuilding, are not limited by strength. They are strong on the first day they walk in the gym. You know, their baseline is what's going to take you one to two years to accomplish. In some cases, more. I know a guy who claims, you know, he could be

bullshitting, but I know these guys exist, so I don't think he is bullshitting. He was a minor league catcher before his hip got bad. He's probably telling the truth. His first deadlift was 485, and he probably did it all sorts of fucked up because guess what? When I was training with him, it wasn't ideal. It wasn't as efficient as we teach it. It got the job done. He pulled 750, you know?

Yeah. So, you know, I don't think he's lying. Just based on his size, his structure, his athleticism, he had two fake hips and the fucker could still jump up real fucking high. Probably not something you should be doing with the fake hip, but either way, my point is this guy was a gifted athlete, very muscular, and day one, 485 deadlift. His brother, same thing, had a big fucking deadlift right out the gate. And he was the first person I actually talked to about this. I said something online about this topic, phrased differently. I hadn't thought about it as deeply as I have by now.

This was seven years ago. His brother's like, oh, I trained for hypertrophy when I first started training. And I knew what to respond to that with. I was like, so what was your baseline deadlift? Oh, I hit like 365 for 10 or something. Right. And I'm like, dude, you didn't need to train for strength. You were already strong. So let's hammer this point home for everybody listening. Bodybuilders, the guys giving you advice, telling you to do things super strict, super isolated, don't worry about strength. Those

guys, their baseline is what's going to take you five years to accomplish strength wise. They have the luxury of telling you that strength doesn't matter because it didn't matter for them. They weren't limited by it. You are limited by strength. Your first deadlift was 185. In some cases was 135. Okay. His first deadlift was 365 by 10. His brother's first deadlift was 485 for a single, okay? That's not you. So we have to take that into consideration when evaluating this advice.

The guys giving this advice have never had a strength problem, so they've never had to think about strength. They could jump right into that shit and immediately benefit, whereas the rest of us can't even hold our back in place. Right. Yep. You know, this makes me, this makes me think about, you know, in the guitar world, in the guitar community, everybody, when they play guitar, at some point or another is going to get obsessed with playing fast with speed. And I think there's

an analogy, a good analogy to athleticism here, because speed on the guitar is a combination of technique. You can have more efficient technique and play faster, but at some level you have to have a, a baseline of just explosiveness. You could say, you know, an ability to move your, your pick, you know, which is essentially a micro-movement of your wrist, very fast across the strings in order to create speedy passages. And a lot of the guys that are out there, they can play blazingly fast. They will say all this advice like, oh man, you got to play it real slow and make sure you can hit every note super clean and then you just bump it up like a few beats per minute, a little bit faster tempo.

Every time you play it, man, you'll get fast doing it that way and of course they can they can do that but the average person tries that and they play it at 100 beats per minute and they work it up to 120 beats per minute and they get to 130 beats per minute and then starts falling apart every time they can never they always have this plateau they can never get past it they don't have the baseline neuromuscular efficiency or explosiveness to make those fine motor movements very fast that all the guys who can play blazingly fast have it right and it's their only hope is to gain an efficient technique to to maximize what they've already got but they'll never get to that extra level of blazing fast. And I've seen that. And it's kind of funny, like you almost have to, I think the only way to know what it feels like for those guys who have that efficiency

is to sort of like, and purposely like, don't matter if you miss a whole bunch of notes, just play as sloppy as you need to, but just practice going as fast as they're going. Even if you blow a whole bunch of notes and then you'll'll feel, you get a sense of what it's like, of what they're feeling like, but they're doing it effortlessly. So it's kind of the same thing. All those guys' advice is wrong because they never had a problem of moving their hand fast enough to strike the note at the right speed. No. So they never had to figure that out. Yeah. Just like these guys that did not have to figure out how to deadlift 405,

like the majority of you listening to this podcast have, right? Yeah. And therein lies the problem, right? Some of them do train heavy when they start out. Then they get banged up because, you know,

we always say, oh, it's relative, you know. I remember when I first started lifting heavy, this oneed up because you know we always say oh it's relative you know i remember when i first started lifting heavy this one coach said hey you know you gotta remember they're 600 feels like you're 300 i'm like no no it doesn't no no no no that's that's a bunch of horse shit first of all uh i remember what 315 felt like the first time and i remember what 405 felt like the first time and i remember what 500 felt like the first time and i remember what 405 felt like the first time and i remember what 500 felt like the first time and i remember what 515 felt like the last time maxed out two years ago there's probably more in the tank there now but uh i'm telling you right now each one of those felt increasingly scarier

and heavier yes you know it was the the the the experience changed every time. And on the squat, this is even more profound because it's on my fucking back. So my 405 felt way different than my 315 did, and that felt way different than 255 did. And my 440 felt different than 405. And 405 for 5, way different than the first time I hit 315 for 5. Yes. I mean, it feels like 5-1 RM. So, you know, I try to imagine what 5-6 for five. Yes. I mean, it feels like five, one RM. So, you know, I try to imagine what five, six, 700 feels like.

I'll never know. But I've seen what it does to the guys that can do that. I've trained some guys that are that strong. Yeah. And they get fucking trashed. You can't pile it on, you know? So you take this into a bodybuilding context. You get these bros.

They'll come in, and maybe they started with compounds early on, you know, so you get so you take this into a bodybuilding context, you get these bros, they'll come in, and maybe they started with compounds early on, you know, and they skate their way up to, you know, four or 500 squat, you know, five, 600 deadlift, you know, there's a fraction of them that kind of go that path used to be more common back in the day. And then they start accumulating injuries, pains and shit. And then they, you know, logically make the decision to dial it down and focus on more isolated movements, slower tempo, more reps, et cetera, you name it. Things to make the lift harder without adding intensity, right? And this is all in response to the fact that they are so fucking strong. They're strong, right?

Strong. They can produce a lot of force against an external resistance. They respond to that by dialing it down. Then also they're trying to target certain muscles. I'm not ignoring that. So think that I'm ignoring that. There's a couple of purposes here, but they might do RDLs, which are partial usually. You don't touch the floor with them. To eliminate that isometric off the floor, they do them really slow. So they end up making a lightweight harder, similar to power lifters who will do a box squat with a pause you know or they might start doing good mornings they might start doing uh seated rows with a hip hinge i've seen that before there's a lot of things they start doing to not

fuck themselves up right and the whole fucking yourself up is happening not because they're doing barbell lifts because they're doing barbell lifts with excess of their body weight three three times their body weight you know typically yeah and, typically. And they can't handle the stress. Even with the drugs, they can't handle the fucking stress, right? So just pretend you're one of these guys. You don't need education to figure out, hey, this shit's beating me up. I gotta do something else. So they go and they, quote unquote, do something else. And that something else is super slow tempo, more isolated variants, more difficult variants, all of which results in lighter weight made harder, right? But that's not you. You know, that's not you. You who's, you know, 150 to 170

pound male, that's, you know, five, six to six foot, somewhere in that range, you know. And your baseline deadlift is, you know, 165 because you think it's heavy when you probably have 205 in there that day. And, you know, we need to get you to 405 because you're going to grow and get stronger at the same time, you know? Exactly. You know, don't ask the wrong questions. Like, well, you know, it doesn't matter. I don't care about strength. I just, you know, I just want, I want growth. And it's like, for you, both are equal because the guy that told you that there's a difference is lifting three to four times as

much as you and was lifting two to three times as much as you the first day he walked in the gym. So at the end of the day, I was talking to somebody about this the other day, and I said this in the episode with Andy, you get guys that are small and can lift a lot of weight. You don't get guys that are big struggling with very little weight. You're not going to see a 250-pound bodybuilder struggling with 135, even with a 10-second tempo. I'll even give you that. I'll give you the tempo. You're not going to see that. You're not going to see that. These guys that have large muscles and are large men are typically strong. They're not going to win a powerlifting meet for a variety of reasons. They may not win a powerlifting meet. They may not be able to

compete in Olympic weightlifting because a lot of them aren't that athletic, right? Right. Yep. But you're not going to see them struggling with a lightweight and saying, well, bro, I just got this big because strength doesn't matter. I just lifted lightweights. You're not going to see that. Yeah. It just does. That's the problem. It does not happen.

And, you know, I brought up Lamar Gann a few and uh you know i brought up lamar gan a few times you know he was uh pretty dense and but not huge you know he was a lightweight power lifter 132 pounds five and a low five feet five three or something like that maybe five two maybe yeah right yeah five foot to five three range something like that yeah you know 132 which still is not not a massive guy either he was muscular for his height but not a a massive guy. He pulled in the mid-sixes, squatted in the low-sixes, high-fives, I think, something like that, and benched in the threes. And if you saw him on the street, you'd know he's doing something, but you wouldn't say, God, that guy's so massive.

You're not going to get a presence from that guy if he's fully dressed walking around, right? Right. And people will cite these examples. Well, look, he's strong and he's not big, right? Okay. Well, there's leverage to consider because that's the next thing that comes out of these people's mouths. Exactly. Yeah. So where you can tease a lot of that out is if you start looking at strength on isolation movements, that's where you're going to see that big always wins. You're not going to see a tiny guy curling 70 pound dumbbells. You're not going to see it. You might see a small guy deadlifting 600 that you wouldn't expect to be doing it,. You're not going to see a tiny guy curling 70-pound dumbbells. You're not going to see it. You might see a small guy

deadlifting 600 that you wouldn't expect to be doing it, but you're not going to see a small guy curling 70 pounds with 11-inch arms. You're just not going to see it. Right, yes.

Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. Yeah, some of these small guys just have incredible leverage for certain lifts. Like Lamar Gant, this dude has crazy long arms, the longest arms I've ever seen on a guy.

The bar locked out of his kneecap. Yeah, yeah. So his range of motion was tiny. His range of motion on a deadlift from the floor was less than my rack pull. That's me rack pulling from, I'm not talking about a mid-shin rack pull, I'm talking about a rack pull for me

that's a little bit below the kneecap, okay? He had less range of motion on his full deadlift than I have in that. Like, just not fair. Um, but yeah, so it's, yeah, it makes a huge difference, right? Uh, when you have to, when that guy has to do a full range of motion exercise, uh, doing something else where he doesn't have the leverage. Yeah. Yeah. And, and this is hard. I noticed a lot of novices don't really understand this and that's, you know, it's fair, right? Like you really, I think coaches understand this better because we see a lot of different people doing the lifts and most novices out there are training for themselves. They're not really necessarily interested in coaching or, or, or not necessarily even training with other people.

And so, um, they only have themselves to compare to compare to. But when you see a large cross section of people, you can see how drastically leverage in anthropometry people's relative length of their body segments, their arms, legs, femurs, tibias, etc. How drastically that can impact their strength level, their ability to move weight. And yeah, that I, I have that conversation a lot with people who like maybe get frustrated with how one lift is going. And I'm like, man, you just got really shitty. Basically I have to nicely tell them, it's like, you got really shitty leverages for that lift, but you got good leverages for this lift, you know? And here's some other people you can kind of see how that bears out.

When you start isolating joint actions, you lose a lot of leverage because let's say you're just doing, if you're doing a bicep curl, your elbow joint's moving, your shoulder joint might move depending on how you're doing it. But either which way, you can't leverage other joint actions and other larger muscles to get that weight up if you're doing it pretty strict. And that's where you start to see the differences. But, you know, and that's where you start to really see that strength kind of matters. You know, when you've got a guy with 18-inch arms, 19-inch arms, whatever, 20-inch arms, you know, and he's curling 70 pounds. And then you look at the guys that have like, you know, 12 to 14-inch arms, right? You're not going to see them curling 70 pounds. then you look at the guys that have like you know 12 to 14 inch arms right you're not going to see them curling 70 pounds right yeah you know if you do take a

video of it if you're one of those guys send us a video we want to see it yeah and not because we're doubting you because we think it's fucking cool but it's i guess what i should say is before i say it's impossible it's less common that you're going to see a dude with small arms relatively speaking by bodybuilding standards right if you have like a guy with you know 11 12 13 inch arms it's probably i don't know if that's average but you know that's not a huge arm that's not a tiny arm you know you're just you're not going to see them curling 70s you know you're not going to see that right you're not going to see guys with small pecs and uh 11 inch arms you know we're going to see that, right? You're not going to see guys with small pecs and 11-inch arms, you know, we're going to bring arm size into it because triceps are involved here. You're not going to

see them repping out 120-pound dumbbells either, you know? So again, you got to pay attention to these things, like these big guys that are saying that, you know, strength and growth are different. It is for them. Make no mistake about it. But look at how much weight they are lifting. It's not anything, not just a squat or deadlift, just pick an exercise, right? Let's take the big ones out of it. Pick an isolation exercise. Those guys are curling 70-pound dumbbells, you know? Right. Are you curling 70-pound dumbbells? Do you think you're going to accomplish the growth that that person has accomplished with 30-pound dumbbells? You know, does that even make logical sense to you? So strength is always part of the equation. It's just, I think that a lot of these

guys that are promoting this, some of them are full of shit. Usually the skinny ones that are fake physical therapists, they're the ones that are usually full of shit. The big guys, I think, believe it because it has worked for them. And it has worked for them largely because, again, they are not limited by strength. But the people that are buying their products are. Most people that are in, you know, they don't really hire coaches, you know, they might if they're in a bodybuilding, you know, they hire coaches for a variety of reasons. I shouldn't say that, but I'd say the majority of people in this industry, consumers, are probably mediocre genetics, you know, for athletics and strength, you know, and then you get motor morons. They tend to be a little bit more realistic, you know, but, you know, in terms of growth, that is far more genetically influenced than strength in my experience. You can bust your ass for a decade and get really strong and get, you know, a little bit bigger, relatively speaking.

Right. And, you know, that's fine. You know, that also depends where you start. But, you know, just context, right? If your baseline deadlift is in the mid-hundreds, strength is growth. If your baseline deadlift is 500, that may not be the case, you know? Yeah. And you know, I, you're, you're saying this and I'm, I'm remembering back to a high school football again. I bring this up from time to time, but,

uh, I think this same analogy, you know, of muscle mass and strength we could make with um you know conditioning and athletic performance uh i remember i was a linebacker on defense and so we'd go through drills and you we'd do shuck drills a whole bunch of shuck drills so you know everybody lines up in a line do you know you're sitting in a two you're standing there in a two-point stance, and there's a guy five, six yards away from you, who's in a three-point stance. Coach blows the whistle. He fires off the line. He's coming to clobber your ass. You've got to put a shoulder in him, and it's whichever shoulder the coach is telling you, right shoulder, left shoulder. Put a shoulder in him and shuck him, right? You got to get your arm under there, put your shoulder in him and shuck him, right? And you got to do that from a two-point stance, basically. So it requires a lot of leg and posterior change strength because you've got to

stabilize the force of that guy ramming into you as you're putting a shoulder under him and trying to throw him off you. And I remember really struggling with that and I was you know what I was 5'8 165 170 pounds thereabouts at the time and I had these dudes the other guys that the starters in the middle linebacker was six foot 225 almost he wouldn't maybe not quite 225 he's probably 215 and the other two guys were 205 200 and so they've already got a huge weight advantage over me. They got 35 plus pounds on me. And then I just remember like getting so exhausted doing those shuck drills. And those guys never seem to have a problem. You know, I'm sure they got tired, but it didn't really show. And I was like,

my legs started like trembling. I, it just felt like I was so absolutely gassed from having to do those drills. And I, you know, I remember, I mean, I, we practice for three hours a day in the hot, hot Texas summers. Um, I would go after practice sometimes and run bleachers. You know, I would run bleachers after the weight room, you know, when we were in the off season. And so looking back now, I'm like, dude, I was in great shape. I was, my conditioning was very high. Um, there was no problem in my conditioning, but I was weak. You know, I, I talked about in a previous episode, my squatting, like, yeah, I half squatted three 15, which means that I actually really could squat two 25 for like some reps probably. You know, I can't remember what kind of set and rep schemes we did, but let's remember what kind of set and rep schemes

we did, but let's say three sets of five at 225. That's probably actually what my squat was. So I was just weak. And that manifested in me just getting gassed out on the field because I'm here competing. I'm competing with guys who are a lot bigger than me, who are way stronger than me. And I was working at basically damn near a hundred percent of my capacity to express strength, to express force on the field. And those guys are working at a lot less percentage of that. It's just every, every single athletic action was a lot smaller percentage of their total ability to produce force. And, uh, and so I felt like I was gassed. That wasn't the problem though. My conditioning was great. And, um, and so I felt like I was gassed. That wasn't the problem though.

My conditioning was great. And, um, I think, I think there's a lot of folks out there who are novices who are into other sports like cycling or running or, uh, uh, Brazilian jujitsu who are in the same boat. You know, if you're weak, it's just always going to feel like you're out of shape because you're having to work at such a high percentage of your one RM, so to speak, such a high intensity. So this holds not just for building muscle mass. It also just holds for general athletics, too. Yeah, there's a lot of people that are limited by strength. I think that's what rip has been touching on for a decade and a half yeah right almost two decades yeah rip rip talks about this all over starting strength right yeah and uh you know he was a power lifter that's going to come out and how he talks it's come out and how he

talks you know he's a power lifter heart. That's what he competed in. And we all kind of lean towards the things we like. I wouldn't consider myself a powerlifter. That's why you hear different things come out here. I was just a regular dude, not interested in competing in any of these fucking sports. I just want to look better and be healthy. And I see that in a lot of people I work with. I see that in a lot of people I talk to that aren't even consumers of this information. You know, they want to look better. They want to become more muscular, you know, and they want to do it in a healthy way. And I know he's of the position bodybuilding is 100 driven or 90 pick a high number driven by by genetics you know and i agree with them there are certain things in terms of being competitive your there are untrainable features of your body that will prohibit you from being highly competitive in that right right in that contest yeah and just to say that it's not not that bodybuilders don't work hard. That's not what that statement is.

It's just that, like, it's just like me saying, like, you know, oh, if I just work hard enough, I can play in the NBA. Like, dude, I'm 5'8", and I have a 20-inch vertical. Exactly. Like, it just doesn't matter what I do. It'll never happen. But you can get better at basketball, but you're not going to train like an NBA guy, you know? Yeah. And that's the point.

You have to have certain muscle shapes look better than others to these judges. Muscle insertions will make muscles appear differently depending on where they are. Skin elasticity will make the muscle look more defined irrespective of body fat. Then, of course, there's body fat deposits that's somewhat modifiable. You can lose fat, but guess what? When they lose fat, they don't have a little bit of loose skin like a lot of us get if we get that lean, you know? Yeah. They don't look super dehydrated. Then there's drug tolerance too, you know, just like with any type of drug, you know, when we're looking at medications, there's

responders, there's non-responders, and there's adverse responders, right? Yeah, right. They're taking steroids, you know, steroids are a, and there's adverse responders, right? Yeah, right. They're taking steroids. You know, steroids are a drug. And not every bodybuilder is going to be able to tolerate the amount of steroids that the rest of them are. So you have all these non-trainable factors to consider. But we're not bodybuilding coaches, just like Rip's not a bodybuilding coach. The reason bodybuilding is popular is because there are a lot of men that want bigger arms and chest, and there's a lot of women that want a bigger ass,

you know, or nicer legs, you know, pick your muscle, a flatter stomach, you know, people want to change the way they look. And bodybuilding is the extreme illustration of that, you know, the extreme. Yeah, bodybuilding is the extreme illustration of that, so people kind of gravitate towards it because, like, these guys train to look a certain way, right? But you got to dial it back down in a context, right? You can enjoy playing basketball, but no amount of basketball is going to get you into the NBA. Not to mention, you could enjoy playing basketball, but you don't necessarily want to be in the NBA. You're not going to turn it into your job, you know? Right. You know, dial down the NBA. You're not going to turn it into your job. You know, you're right.

You don't dial down the expectations. You might be very, very shitty and a motor moron and maybe get as good as a kid in elementary school through a lot of training, you know? Right, yeah. If you practice basketball enough, you know, you might be good as a fifth grader. Yeah, there's some 12-year-old kids

that would just destroy me for sure, yeah. Exactly, that's my point. You know, you might bust your ass to be competitive against a third grader, you know? Right. And that's fine if you enjoy the game of basketball that much. Well, it's the same thing with bodybuilding, right? Like a lot of you are going to bust your ass for a pretty mediocre result, you know? So you better really like this, you know? Like, I really like what I'm doing here. I'm learning a lot through the training, through educating people, through writing articles, through this podcast.

You know, I learn a lot. I've been doing this program, what, this week 31. I put an inch and a half on my arms and I get 10 pounds body weight. So some of that's fat, of course. But I've never, you know, that 14 and a half inches, not impressive. You know, bodybuilders have 20, 22-inch arms, you know. And I'm sure most of it, obviously, is tricep, but I think even more so with me, you know, I have a long forearm, so it does make curling hard, you know, big, long range of motion, but my biceps have grown

for the first time and I'm happy with it, you know, but I'm not under any impression that I'm going to have 18, 19 inch arms. It's just, I'm not under that impression. I know that I'm going to work very hard for a modest delta, you know, change, right inch arms. It's just, I'm not under that impression. I know that I'm going to work very hard for a modest Delta, you know, change, right? And that's a lot of people, right? So when you go into this, you know, I had a guy once, the expectations with this aesthetic shit is so off the charts. I've had multiple guys that are taller. They say, I want to train to look like The Rock, you know? And they're, you know, first of all, they're not Samoan, you know?

Yeah, right. Like, that dude's just like the face, man. Like, he just looks jacked just looking at his face before you even look at the body. Exactly. He's got the right cheekbones and the head. And it's like, okay, so I'm here to help you with your diet and your training. I can't change who your parents were, and I don't prescribe drugs. So what do you expect from me?

And you're long, you're thin. Not thin, but you're more on the slender side, whereas The Rock is Samoan. He's a big fucking dude. He probably has relatives that are 400 pounds. You can't train that, but make your expectations realistic. You know, if you're like a skinny fat guy who hasn't done anything, you know, we can probably put 20 pounds of muscle on you in like a five to 10 year period if you care enough to do that, you know, that's probably reasonable for a lot of men, you know? If you're a motor moron, it's going to be less. If you're built for marathons, good luck. You're going to train your

ass off to gain a few pounds of muscle mass, but you'll still be better off because you'll be stronger, you know? So, you know, just to kind of factor all that in, right? If you're having a hard time, remember, these guys that are super jacked, they didn't have a hard time. They went in and pulled 485 the first day, you know, I'm exaggerating, but I mean, I know one guy who did that, but, you know, again, he was almost a pro athlete. Sure. You know, you'll have guys that walk in and pull 315 the first day. Oh, yeah. 365, you'll have guys that walk in and pull 315 the first day. Oh yeah. 365. Yeah. I was about to say, yeah, I've seen that before, you know, and, uh, uh,

I've seen a guy who played college. Yeah. It was actually a baseball player. He was a catcher too. That's kind of funny. I hadn't thought about that, but I had a guy that I trained at the gym in Texas for a little while. Unfortunately, he didn't stick with it. I really wish he had, because I think he would have helped his shoulder a lot. But anyway, he was a catcher in college. And I don't even think he played D1 ball. I want to say he played like D2 maybe. But anyway, he came in the first day. Now, he was in his 40s and hadn't been active in a long time.

So I kind of held him back a little bit. But he pulled 365 pretty easily. For five. For five. For five, right. And I was like, you got more in the tank, but I'm not gonna let you go any higher, because I don't want you to, like, get crazy sore. That's how I wrecked them. Yeah, right, yeah, because otherwise, yeah, he would have probably quit the next day. Yeah, so there you go. You know, the guy was probably 42. Yeah, so there you have it. We're not even talking pro baseball player here, yeah. My first three months of training, I squatted 315, and it was probably reasonable depth. And, you know, I've never had a problem with lower body. You know, I told you I put miles on a dyno, you know, those BMX-style bikes.

Yeah. You know, I did. You know, that's what all the kids had, so they were cool, but I never actually used it for tricks. I would just ride distances with it, so lots of full range of motion, knee extension, flexion, you know? Right. But then if you look at my dad, he's just a taller, larger version of myself. You know, he's got naturally big pecs, big quads, you know, well-developed calves, big back, you know, he's got thicker wrists than me. You know, I think I got my mother's side of the family with the, you know, upper extremities into my arms. But, you know, if you look at his quads, you look at mine, I'm just like a smaller version, you know? So extremities into my arms. But, you know, if you look at his quads, you look at

mine, I'm just like a smaller version, you know? So it's no surprise that I responded well to squatting, to leg pressing, to things like that, you know, the lat stuff, you know? Like, it's not a surprise. You look at him, you look at me, you know? So, you know, that plays a big role in it, but like I get guys that, you know, they'll get to the mid twos and start struggling, you know, and they can't, you know, they can't get into the threes and the linear progression, you know, they'll get to the mid twos and start struggling, you know, and they can't, you know, they can't get into the threes and the linear progression, you know? And I'm not, I'm not even gifted, you know? Right. What I'm saying is that, like, you could look better with strength training.

Absolutely. But don't confuse it with bodybuilding. That's something different. Bodybuilding is a competitive sport. That's like saying if you squat, you're going to be a power lifter, which a lot of people don't want to do either. You know? Yeah. So just because you lift weights doesn't mean you need to train like a bodybuilder, eat like a bodybuilder, do drugs like a bodybuilder.

You know, those guys are competitive. If you are simply one of these people that wants to look better, wants to be stronger, and wants this to become more manageable over time, then don't approach it that way. You know, you're going to look better from lifting. But if you use an extreme example as your reference range, you're chasing ghosts, man. You know, you're chasing ghosts, or you're going to have to do shit that we can't really do for you. You know, we don't fucking promote drugs here. And even then, it may not get you the size you want. You know, I know a guy on drugs who was, you know, they were just talking about the role of genetics. One guy says, i know guys are on a bunch of i'm barely taking it this guy was 220 and ripped he was just on trt at that point you know he wasn't taking anything extra yeah and then the

other guy was 198 and no matter how many drugs he took he stayed at 198 and then his total kept going up but the big takeaway here was he pulled 660 before ever taking a drug. And then he pulled 740 with drugs, you know, it's like a 10 to 15% delta. So, you know, they understood that's what I loved about training powerlifters. They talked about this more bodybuilders tend to pretend it's not happening, you know, that's just how I look, man. Right? Right. Yeah. Yeah, they don't want to show you behind the curtain. But yeah, no, i just learned that the

genetics really play a role in that so yeah when you're training more more likely than not you're limited by strength and just like rip says with all these other things you know his focus has always been more sport related for me i'm thinking about the guy that goes in the weight room because he wants bigger arms or the girl wants bigger glutes you know or they want to change some part of their body through strength training you can do. You're just not going to like double or triple it in size. You might, you know, there's outliers for sure that pull that off. They're just under trained mesomorphs as they call them. I was going to say, that's great. Yeah. There's a guy, uh, someone recently introduced me to who, um, this guy is a runner. He's a competitive runner. And, uh, he, he showed

me the Instagram account for Ryanyan hall so he has the u.s record for the fastest marathon time which is i'm looking at his instagram account right now he's got a list on there two minutes or two hours four minutes 58 seconds um i i don't know how insane that is that sounds really freaking fast but this is for a marathon anyway. But so this guy retired for, he was a professional runner. Um, I I'm guessing injuries forced him to retire at some point. If you look at his Instagram feed since his retirement, the dude has gotten really into lifting weights, compound lifts, and like, you know, some like strong man style training and stuff. And he is freaking jacked. He looks like aed he looks like a he looks like a uh like a crossfit games competitor now and he was like basically you know cocaine skinny in his professional

running days he's got a lot of like back-to-back photos you can see him like today versus you know his professional running career um yeah so you know it goes that way too and now he's jacked yeah oh he's super jacked, right? Well, think about it. Strongmen have a lot of endurance too. Yes, oh, absolutely, yeah. And they're humongous. So it's not always very black and white.

These are generally people fall into these categories, but you get guys like that that are outliers for certain sports. Like strongmen are a great example. They have a lot of endurance. Yes. And they're huge, you know, and they're muscular and they're tall. Eddie Hall, who, uh, who is a world strongest man winner. And, uh, you know, he, he pulled 500 kilos in a squat in a deadlift suit and straps. Uh, he was, uh, he was a Olympic bound teenage, uh, national swimming champion swimmer. Yeah.

Yeah. And he swam extremely fast, you know, uh, I think it wasmer. Yeah. Yeah. And he swam extremely fast, you know, uh, I think it was a sprinter. I think it was like 50, a hundred meter kind of guy, but, uh, yeah. Yeah. So there you go. And then he's a 425 pound, uh, bloat Lord winning the world's strongest man lifted 1100. Yeah. And squatted seven 60 for eight. Yeah. Right. Asked to grass with a pause on the last rep. Yeah. That's insane. So this is hilarious. We started this episode and we were going to talk about rate of perceived exertion or RPE and we took a complete left-hand turn. So, but that's good. Yeah. That's what we're all here for. We'll talk about that next time. Yeah. Next time. All right. Well, let's, let's close it up.

Yeah, so thank you again 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 here in Metro Phoenix, south of the airport, Sky Harbor Airport, or on Instagram at weights double underscore and plates. Yeah, absolutely. You need to go see Santana if you live in the Phoenix area,

even if it's just for like a form check, you know, we all need it. We all need an extra set of eyes on our lifts. So, well, you know where to find me in the meantime, you can email me for online coaching, jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. And you can follow my lifting exploits and my other exploits on Instagram

at marmalade underscore cream. All right, we'll talk to you again in a couple weeks. Bye.