Weights and Plates Podcast - #5 - Your Back Is Never Off the Clock

Episode Date: June 26, 2021

Robert and Trent discuss the role of the back and the trunk musculature in lifting weights and in developing a good physique. As Robert says to all his clients, "your back is never off the clock!" The back and trunk (or core as many people are fond of calling it nowadays) comprise a large part of the body's muscle mass, and are perhaps the most important and least understood of the body's levers.   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com

Welcome back to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana, along with my co-host Trent Jones. Hello, hello. Today we're going to pick up, you know, where we left off. We're kind of trying to build these topics on top of each other. And there's just a few things that are on my mind that I kind of want to address that pertain to training since we really hit on diet very hard last week. As some of you know, Trent and I are barbell coaches, so we have a bias towards barbell-based exercises and barbell training. And I wanted to take some time to talk about where the biggest distinction is in terms of training benefit, because there's lots of ways that you could make your muscles contract without a barbell. And there's some utility there, and we

can certainly discuss that as well, but really just want to hit on why the barbell is essentially giving you more bang for your buck in terms of strength training. Yeah. I'm still waiting for, you know, how in the matrix, they just like, like shove that Jack into Keanu Reeves head. And then he's like, I know Kung Fu. I'm still waiting for that to like, just do that. And then I can just, you know, squat 600. Oh, that'd be awesome. But until then. Yeah. Right. Yeah. can just, you know, squat 600. Oh, that'd be awesome. But until then, yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, maybe, maybe Elon Musk will come up with something while he's wasting everyone else's money. But, um, until that point, the best way to get there is to lift barbells. At least that's what I think, uh, is, is to lift barbells. Uh, and I agree. I

have a strong bias. Um, and I And I think we've got a pretty good rationale for it too. So I think we'll dive into that today. So, you know, I'll hit it from a macro perspective first, you know, for some of our listeners that have read Starting Strength or are on the website, hopefully have gathered that the barbell allows you to lift the most weight through the longest effective range of motion using the most muscle mass. Those are the three criteria that we're drilled with at Starting Strength Seminars and that we teach new people that are getting involved. So, you know, I know some people kind of sit on there and just, you know, chatter on the boards and have fun with

that. And, you know, certainly it was one of them. And then you have people that actually read the book, but those are the three criteria. Most muscle mass. But bro, no. Leg press, man. I can leg press like 900. Well, what did Rip say years back? Leg press is like masturbation, except when I'm masturbating, I'm not under the impression that I'm making anybody cum but me. The classic Rip quote. Oh my goodness. yeah right if you're offended by that you probably shouldn't be on this podcast anyway but uh yeah that's a classic quote that's good yeah we got to drop that like right up at the top of the podcast that way you know go ahead and sign off now yeah just weed them out yeah but you know that i when i first read that i just laughed

because it was vulgar and funny. And then I thought back. I'm like, oh, he's talking about those fucking guys that, you know, put like every single plate on it and then scream and grunt so that everybody in the gym looks and watches them, you know, leg press 8, 9, 10, 15 plates, depending on the brand. Yeah. Yeah. And they lower the sled sled like you know four inches like they might as well just be doing like calf raises you know yeah yeah but that but but ridiculous as that example is yeah um it does goes to show you that if you've ever done a leg press heavy and then if you've ever done a barbell squat heavy like we're talking about where you

actually squat all the way down until you hit depth which we would define as your hip crease being below the top of your kneecap if you've actually done both of those things heavy then you know that a barbell squat is far harder than a leg press to execute. And so you know intuitively, if you've done both of those things, that one is not the same as the other. And that's what we're going to talk about today, is some of the mechanics of these lifts and why we prefer them and why doing a barbell squat is so damn hard compared to something like a leg press. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's really what I wanted to hit on. A leg press, by the way, has utility and it can be useful. Yeah. You know, we can kind of start there because sometimes we have to start there with some clients. So let's just kind of, you know, the cat out of the bag and address this leg press issue right away. And then we'll kind of segue into what we like to talk about, which is barbells. So the

leg press, typically a traditional leg press is a 40, you know, it's a 45 degree sled. You sit on it and it has like a chair that's angled, you know, 45 degrees. And you push the sled up, you go down, you go back up. You know, I'm assuming most people on here have used one before or seen one before. There's some where you just sit straight up with your torso perpendicular to the floor and you push it straight out. I don't find that to be as useful. I mean, obviously, your muscles are contracting and relaxing, so you could probably progress that in some way and get value out of it. But, you know, the one where you're, you know, laying down 45 degrees tends to work pretty well. And it's typically plate loaded, which is why we said that these guys put 15 plates

on it and, you know, show off to everybody in the gym who doesn't care. Actually, one of my dieticians, Juliet, she dated a guy once that had her sit on top of it. Sorry, had to sell you out there because it's too funny. Once you use up all the plates in the gym, then you have to have a couple girls sit on top of each of the pegs. When we bring her on here, we got to give her shit about that. But that was before I knew her when, you know, she was the cashier at 24 Hour Fitness. Okay. Yeah. So we can, yeah, you showed her the light. Yeah. But so the leg press is good for people who cannot squat below parallel. And there are, this demographic tends to be older individuals who are deconditioned in that position.

You've got to figure most people have been programmed to think that squatting down that low for anything is bad. Or they're too lazy to squat down that low unless they've been taught to do so. And I think this is a function of modern society. We tend to have jobs where we're sitting all day or possibly standing all day. And we're not really spending time in that position. Whereas in some East Asian cultures, people, you know, squat down and eat real deep, you know? Have you seen those pictures? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And they just kind of sit in that position. That's normal. You know, little infant kids can,

when they're able to stand, at least, they can squat in that position quite easy. And then it seems that as people get older, I tend to see difficulty achieving that range of motion when you're 75 and deconditioned and never really participated in a sport, certainly never lifted. You might only get down a quarter of the way before you start losing your balance. Or we get morbidly obese people who just can't support their weight in that position. So the most common thing I hear about squats is, oh, I'm just not mobile enough. And usually it's a just not strong enough is the real answer. Right, right. So how do you address that?

Well, you can't train a range of motion that the body can't get into. So it's not like I can tell these guys, well, we're just going to have you squat that deep, you know. Right, yeah. And we'll just have to get you stronger down there. Well, they can't get that deep. So what do you do this is where a leg press can be very useful much like a lat pull down can be very useful for chin-ups if you haven't seen my video on that please watch it um i send it to everybody but when you have somebody sit on the leg press we're not going to have them point their

toes forward go down two inches with 15 plates and say that okay you just leg press that's going to get you good at squatting that's not how it works. The way that we teach the leg press is the foot position is similar to the squat. The toes are pointed out 30 degrees, heels roughly about shoulder width apart, and you're going to go down and up with the knees out so that you can achieve a lower range of motion and hit those hip extensors that are involved in the bottom of the squat, your adductors, your glutes, and to an extent, your hamstrings. And then, of course, because it's a leg press, you're hitting your quads primarily, just

like in a squat, you're hitting your quads primarily. And that's usually where you feel sore the first day when you squat. But yeah, so it's very useful for that. I also have had situations where I had a friend and a client once who had surgery on her hip. And before she had surgery on her hip, it hurt to squat. And, you know, she's also not very coordinated. So, you know, we had a – there's always – she needed constant reinforcement of technique, which when you're having a nagging injury like that, it's not worth it online. You know, maybe in person would have been better, but, you know, I was managing her online at that point.

Right. And most importantly, you know, she wanted bigger quads and bigger ass, you know, maybe in person would have been better, but, you know, I was managing her online at that point. Right. And most importantly, you know, she wanted bigger quads and bigger ass, you know, so bigger glutes. Glutes. Yeah. But the glute max. You know, she's sitting there, she can't squat heavy because she's got a bad hip and she's not really getting any gains in muscle mass because she can't squat heavy. So, you know, I threw her on a leg press. I had her do heavy sets of 10 and added weight to it. And her legs got bigger. Her ass got bigger.

And she got the results she wanted. Eventually, she got the surgery. Now she's squatting heavy. She doesn't have to leg press anymore. But for a period of time, she can leg press without much pain. But she would squat and get a lot of pain. So, you know, the point is there's a practical use for the leg press and, you know, we're not anti-leg press per se, you know, but.

Absolutely. I actually, yeah, I program it all the time. I work with a lot of older gentlemen and I find it to be pretty useful for the, you know, intermediate, late intermediate, older, like, master's trainee. Sometimes, um, I've got a couple of guys who've got lower back issues that pack, that pop up from time to time. It's primarily due to stenosis in their, in their lower back. So it's not really anything they can do about, but, uh, you know, if, if every, every so often they'll, uh, something will get inflamed in their lower back and it will cause some nerve pain to radiate down their leg. And it's the typical sciatica type symptoms.

And so, you know, we've learned that if we just take some of the load off of their back for a little while and try to keep them training heavy around that, then usually in a couple of weeks, they're fine. They can go back to squatting and deadlifting as normal. So the leg press is great. And even for the guys who don't have back pain, it can be nice if you need a break from the heavy loading on the squat, then you can use a leg press to maintain the feel of moving some heavy weight while lowering the overall stress of the movement down. Because, you know, you talked about the muscles of, you know, the knee extensors, the quads that it hits primarily. And it somewhat hits the muscles of the hips. But it doesn't really require much of your back to do the movement because you're supported by the chair.

And so it can be a good movement when you want to intentionally take some of the stress out of off the back. So, yeah, we like the leg press, but it's generally not the right choice if you can do a unaided squat with your body weight. Generally, we're going to want to put a bar on your back instead and start loading that. and start loading that. And the nice thing about the barbell is that we can, you know, as long as you can get down into the bottom of a squat position and stand back up, then we can pretty much load you with whatever you need to start with. And so the barbell is nice in that way. If we got to start with a piece of PVC pipe and some little two and a half pound plates or like a broomstick, we can do that. And, you know, we can, we could also start you with 135 pounds or 185 pounds. So, you know, as, as long

as someone is able to get into the bottom position of a squat and then put a bar on their back, then we can, we can start them in a very wide range of weights of loads and then start progressing from there in their program and so that that's that's one of the features of the barbell that's great you know with a lot of machine movements um or even other movements like a dumbbell or something there's usually like a minimum threshold of weight that you need to be able to lift to do it like with the leg press you've got to be able to move the sled at minimum, which I don't know how much it weighs, but you know, I usually just assume that weighs something like 45, 60 pounds. It doesn't really matter. You got to use a number and stick to it.

Yeah, exactly. But with, like I said, with a barbell, we can start super light and we can make very fine, uh, small increments to it. And so it has, it has an advantage in accommodating a very large range of people, right? You can be 75 and do the barbell. You can be 15 and do the barbell and anywhere in between. Yeah. And, you know, let's talk about that because you mentioned that some people you put on the leg press because it takes load off the back. So this is where the key difference lies is in the roll the back. So on a leg press, you still have to keep your back in a good position because you can hurt your back on a

leg press easier than a squat if you don't know what you're doing. So we're not saying that leg press is safer on the back, but you're not in compression because the bar is not on your back, right? So this is where I find myself really spending a lot of time teaching some basic biomechanics to the layperson because I find that the vast majority of people, and they need to know this stuff, because the vast majority of people that I encounter that have not read our material or are not, you know, coaches or biomechanists or, you know, strength training enthusiasts and just trying to lift a, you know, get strong, look better, whatever the reason, have no idea what their back is supposed to be doing at any point in time, let alone what their back is actually doing at any point in time. And yesterday I told a new client, he brought

his 14-year-old boy in, a guy who was a little youth athlete, learned all the lifts really fast, as you would expect. And I was explaining to both of them, your back is never off the clock. And what I mean by that is every time you're lifting anything, you have to keep your back in position. And there are muscles responsible for keeping the back in position. Obviously, the muscles of the back. But what are the muscles of the back? So these are things that I never considered when I was just lifting and looking at bromags and trying to replicate movements. I was like, oh, well, I've got to do a row for upper back. And I think I can like do a good morning for lower back,

you know? Yeah, right. Yeah. So there's two muscles, upper back and lower back? Yeah, exactly. Is that how it goes? Yeah. I know the lats were there because I was a swimmer, you know? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I thought my traps were just those muscles by my neck, you know? I didn't realize that the damn thing is one of the longest muscles in the human body. It goes all the way down to your low back. Right, right. So when we're talking about the back, you know i didn't realize that the damn thing is one of the longest muscles in the human body goes all the way down to your low back right um so when we're talking about the back you know you have your traps you know they start at you know the base of your skull they go down uh somewhere around what t7 l1 area yeah yeah so they all the way up from like so c6 on the very top of the the cervical spine yep and then down to T12.

Yeah, I always thought it was like T12, but yeah, it probably varies in some people. But yeah, basically all the way down to the beginning of your lumbar spine. Yep, yep. And then it also spans out. So, you know, it doesn't just go straight down this little strip like your spinal erectors. So, we'll go back to those in a second. But your traps start, again, at the base of your neck, almost down to your low back. And they spread out wide, almost near the shoulders, like a diamond if you were to look at it on an anatomy chart. And those muscles have a

job. Then your lats start near your armpit. This is a big mass, goes all the way to your spine and then all the way down to your, basically almost to your tailbone, to the bottom of your low back almost. Yeah. So that's a long muscle right there, a big, long, giant muscle. Then you have your posterior deltoid, your external rotators. So you have rotator cuff muscles back there. And then you have your rhomboids. Then you have your spinal erectors, which go all the way down from the top of your spine to the bottom of your spine.

They kind of sit against the spinal column all the way down, long strip of muscles. So you have all these muscles back there, and they can all shorten and lengthen in different ways, but they all share one primary function, and that is keeping the spine in a single position. So these are, in other words, postural muscles. But there's other muscles that attach to the spine as well. You have your internal and external obliques. You have your abdominal muscles. The way that I like to think about muscles as an anatomy and physiology teaching assistant taught me years back, many years back, muscles pull. So they pull on bones and joints. And if a muscle is attached to a bone or joint, it's going to pull on it, depending on which direction you're trying to go.

If I bend my elbow, the bicep muscle is pulling on my elbow. And if I raise my arm straight up, my anterior deltoid is pulling on my arm. So that's an easy way to visualize this. So now you have all these muscles in your back, as well as your abs and obliques, that attach to the spine. So, their job is to pull on the spine and keep the spine in a position, right? You can, you know, accomplish that with a round back. You can accomplish that with a flat back. It depends on where you want your spine.

We want our spine in its normal anatomical position. Yeah. You know, it's called good posture, right? Quote, unquote. anatomical position yeah you know it's called good posture right quote unquote yeah which is you know the spine is kind of like a double s shape everyone's spine is going to look a little bit different but we all have some things in common we've got near where our our so our skull is sitting on top of the cervical part of spine the, the top part of the spine. But then as it goes down over our shoulders, that's the thoracic spine. It has a curve outward. I was about to say convex, but I can never remember the difference between convex and concave.

So it's the outer part of the curve, and then it curves inward with the lumbar spine, and then down to the SI joint where it joins with our pelvis. And so you kind of get this like nice smooth S shape. And everyone will exhibit a different amount of curvature. That's genetic. It's, you know, and also depends on how old you are and your sex and all that kind of stuff. But that is normal anatomical extension. And it's pretty cool.

If you look at a spine, if you ever get the chance to look at a skeleton, you'll notice that the vertebrae that stack up one on top of another to create the spine, you'll notice that as they get down from the top down to the bottom where the lumbar spine is, they get bigger and they get thicker and they have

these little flanges on the back of them. These little bony protrusions on the back of them that join together and sit on top of each other. And they're known as the facet joints. And what's really cool is that in normal anatomical extension, where the bottom of our lower backs is kind of curved backwards and that reverse S shape, all of those vertebrae stack on top of each other and make this rigid column. So it's, it's when the back is in its normal, you know, neutral position or normal anatomical position, like it would be if you were standing up straight, it's a very strong joint in compression. I mean, it's a very strong bony segment in compression. It just naturally

wants to stack on top of each other. So it's really good at holding its position under load, which is backwards from what a lot of people think. You know, they think like if you bend over with a heavy weight on your back, you're just going to, it's going to snap in half. Yeah. You're going to shear your spine. So that's exactly where we're going to go next. Yeah. And that, that couldn't be further from the truth, but that, that curvature of the spine is really important because that's what gives it it's, it's, um, stability under load. It's not

just a straight rod. And if it was, we would have problems with leaning over and putting heavy weights on our back, but we don't. And that's because of this beautiful anatomy and the way that we've evolved. Well, more importantly than that, let's define bending over because I think that people tend to confuse that. It has been my experience that the common belief is bending over equals bad for your back. If your torso is facing the ground and you're standing up, that's bad for your back. So let's just talk's bad for your back. So, let's just talk about this for a second. There's bending over and then there's such a thing called hunching over or rounding your back, right? So, the proper terminology is there's hip flexion

and then there is spinal flexion. You have thoracic flexion, lumbar flexion, cervical flexion, but we'll just call it spinal flexion, right? And if you're flexing your hips, that means that your pelvis is pulling the spine into a position where the torso is facing down. But the spine can either do that in a flexed position or an extended position. We want it in an extended position. That is not the same thing. So all these stupid, senseless OSHA guidelines that, you know, say, lift with your legs, and they show the guy squatting in front of the box in a position that he can't possibly stand up from without becoming, or without his torso becoming more horizontal to the floor. But that's what they tell you, lift with your legs, not your back. Well,

you're always lifting with your legs, first of all. So let's talk about this. You know, bars on the floor or boxes on the floor, right? You got to bend over. Well, you're always lifting with your legs, first of all. So let's talk about this. Yeah. You know, bars on the floor or boxes on the floor, right? You got to bend over. Well, you're going to bend your hips, but you're going to keep your back extended. The curve or your spinal position does not change when you flex your hips. That is a different situation than if you hunch your back around your back to pick something up and then flex your hips. So we really need to hammer that distinction. Hip flexion in and of itself is a normal human movement. Your hips are designed to flex. It's why your pelvis has joints that allow you to bend over and stand up. If it was so bad, you wouldn't be able to do that. You have to do that to pick things up. You have to flex your hips. Sometimes you have to flex your

knees too, especially in a deadlift. You're flexing both your hips and your knees and a squat even more so. You're flexing both sometimes to a greater extent than the deadlift, depending on how you're built. If you have somebody with a short torso and long thighs, they're going to be very much flexed at the hips on the way down. Their knees are going to be very flexed too. So it's just important to understand the job of the spine. The spine does not take you from an erect position to a bent over position.

The hips do. Yeah, that's right. I don't think people people understand that they think bending over is all back oh that's the phrase you hear all back quote unquote i i'm thinking of uh i think there's a family guy skit that it's like peter's like uh he's like trying to pick up a box or something i can't remember what it is exactly but he's like yeah uh they're like make sure you use good technique. And he's like, yeah, bend over. He's like lift with my back and twist. Right. And yeah. So to be fair, you know, there are a lot of people who are, um, deconditioned, they're not training, they're not very strong and they do hurt their backs bending over by flexing their spine, you know, rounding over over and and trying to pick something up

and then twisting along with it like they're trying to pick up the the the lawnmower and put it in the back of the pickup truck or something right and they hurt their backs well um that that does happen a lot you hear you know stories about this well that's not what we're talking about though when we're lifting weights to your point no um we don't lift like that and there's a good reason why uh for safety and for function so i want to bring it back to those postural postural muscles you talked about so we got all these muscles all over our back um we get the upper back and the lower back the upper back oh no the mid back i mean well it. Oh, no, the mid-back. Well, mid-trap. Physical therapists, they love the mid-trap. The mid-trap. Can you flex your mid-trap? I mean, I guess the,

well, we'll explain trapezius function in a second because it has three functions, but yeah. Yeah, mid-trap. But, you know, so we've got these back muscles running all along our spine, and then we have our abdominal muscles on the front side of our body, the anterior part of our body. And they do allow us to flex our spine or extend our spine. But really, if you think about it, the only times we use that are in basic unloaded human movements. Like you're going to sit up out of bed in the morning. Well, yeah, you're going to do like a crunch or a sit up. You're going to flex your spine to get up and your abs are going to perform that function. But when we're moving around and we're walking upright or we're

running or we're bending over at the hips to properly pick up a box or a barbell or whatever, then those postural muscles, the muscles of the trunk are basically holding their position and holding the position of the spine and that is their their basic function along with the spine is just to hold it in normal anatomical extension and that's what we're talking about when we're we're doing lifts with a neutral flat back extended back however you want to say it that's what we're talking about when we're doing lifts with a neutral flat back, extended back, however you want to say it. That's what we're talking about when we're lifting is using these trunk muscles in an isometric, primarily isometric fashion, which is what they do in everyday life primarily, is they're there to support the spine and hold its position and reinforce it? Yeah. So let's define that real quick.

So isometric means that the muscles are producing force without changing length. So an easy practical way to demonstrate that is lift your arm up and just hold it there. Muscles contracting, but it's not getting shorter. It's not getting longer. It's obviously shortened for you to put it there. So that's not what I'm talking about. longer. It's obviously shortened for you to put it there, so that's not what I'm talking about. But if you hold your arm in that position, the anterior deltoids, the lateral deltoids,

and the posterior deltoids are contracting isometrically at that point in a more shortened position, but they're not getting shorter and they're not getting longer, right? Yeah. So now let's extrapolate that to your back. So before I go there, lifting the arm is concentric. That's an isotonic contraction because your arm is moving up to that position. So if you were to hold it in that position, now it's become an isometric muscle action in a semi-shortened position. I think you'd have to go all the way overhead to get it fully shortened. But the point is anytime a muscle is producing force but not moving per se, not changing length, not getting longer, not getting shorter, that is considered an isometric

contraction. When you're deadlifting, your biceps are contracting isometrically, even though they're completely lengthened, right? Anytime you're holding something with straight arms, you know, your biceps are contracting isometrically. So, you know, that's a good way to do it. Another example is push on a wall. You know, you might actually break through it if it's, you know, just a piece of drywall, but push on a brick wall and try to move a building that's isometric. So the back, just think about what you do on a given day, assuming you're not laying around on the couch all day. Let's say you have a normal job and you walk and go places. You know, your back is not, you know, you're not performing a crunch all day, an ab crunch,

and you're not, you know, doing a row all day or anything like that. And, you know, we'll talk about those functions in a second. But, you know, standing up, there are muscle contractions. You know, your legs are contracting, your back is contracting if you're standing and walking, but your back's not really changing length, you know? And if you have good posture, it's normal anatomical position. And all those muscles back there participate in that. So there was a time before I, you know, educated myself on these topics where I thought that the deadlift was just a lower back exercise because I was clearly doing it wrong. You know, and that's the only thing that got sore. So, I believe that I needed to row to build an quote-unquote upper back. I knew that. I knew doing pull-ups and pull-downs made my back wider because I was a swimmer. So, I had big,

wide lats from swimming. And if I did pull-downs or pull-ups, they would grow. So, I understood that, but I didn't really get much in the way of my mid know, my mid upper back. I wouldn't see much going on there in terms of muscle growth. Do you have a thought, Trent? Did you do face pulls too? I actually did those later in life when I knew better. So I knew they didn't matter, but they were fun. Yeah, there was a phase. I guess maybe that's past now, but there was a phase a few years ago. Well, I don't know, maybe it was like six or seven years ago where everybody was doing face pulls all of a sudden. That's about when I did it, few years ago. Well, I don't know. Maybe it was like six or seven years ago where everybody was doing face pulls all of a sudden. That's about when I did it, five years ago.

Yeah, I have no idea why, but it's just for some reason, we talked about these like little like persistent myths. They just kind of like, it's like fashion. They just rotate in and out. Well, face pulls were the big thing. I think it's just everybody in the gym.

You just see them do it. Anyway. I think in powerlifting, they believe it'll help uh with the bench in terms of retracting the scapula when you're lowering the bar but i don't know if there's any it didn't help mine i still flared like crazy yeah no but uh i mean maybe i can see it with like what do they call it like a road to the chest would probably be a better option if you wanted to, like, try and feel that out, you know,

get some kinesthetic awareness. Sure, yeah. That's not a face pull. No, grabbing a rope and a face pull is where you attach the rope to a cable machine. You pull the rope towards your face in the middle of the rope, and then the long parts of the rope go around your head, I think, if you're doing it. That's how I did it, you know.

I'm not a, you you know technician on face pulls and uh i mean you could probably fuck yourself up you got a lot of shoulder rotation going on there so you want to be careful and make sure again your back's never off the clock if you're doing them correctly your back's set in one position and not moving so that's this is the whole theme i'm going here if you're doing a bicep curl, it's the same thing. Your back is never off the clock when you're lifting weights. Yeah. So, yeah, back then I didn't understand why I couldn't see any growth in my mid-upper back. And, you know, I'd see it in my lower back because I squatted. And I was, you know, I got my squat up over 300 just fucking around in the gym.

And thankfully I have a video to prove it was deep enough, but it looked like shit, so it's irrelevant. It would have just counted in a powerlifting meet, which doesn't say much. Right, right. You know, I guess with honest judging, let's throw that qualifier in there. I squatted below parallel. I had a 315 squat before I started getting coached on this.

Yeah. So, you know, I saw that my low back muscles would develop, and as I'd lose weight, I'd see more definition down there. And my lats would get wider because I always did pull-ups because in swimming, those were important. And I swam, too, so that also developed the lats because, you know, you're doing a lot of reps, but against resistance, you know. It's different than, like, running, you know. That's why cyclists have big quads, you know, even though they don't lift. Swimmers have big, wide lats.

But, you know, this whole idea, I'm like, why is my mid-upper back always flat, even if I get skinny? And this is why I'm so big on deadlifts and presses, because then I started doing starting strength. And I'd already been doing overhead work at that point, and then I just learned how to do it better and more efficiently. But what really made a huge difference for me was a deadlift. And I read this board post by Rip.

It was probably on several websites that outlined his quotes where he's like, you know, fuck Barbell Rose. Fuck him. Get your deadlift up to 500. Then you can have your own opinion and you won't need mine. Right. And I don't know. That resonated with me.

You know, I talk to people like that myself, too. I think a lot of us do in some ways. That's why we're drawn to it. Some than others rip is a very special person i don't think any of us are quite that extreme but yeah we all appreciate him for it the guy will tell you how it is yeah but uh that resonated with me because then i saw this other post that to this day i cannot freaking find i don't know if it was a post or an article but he was saying it was just this was a more neutral tone he was like you don't see too many 400s and 500s in the gym anymore, like in terms of pounds on the bar. And then I thought about it. This was 2012, 2013, I want to say. And he

was right at that time. I think you're seeing more now, but back then that was accurate. And I remember thinking, I'm like, yeah, he's right. I can't do 400 anything, you know? Yeah, right. Yeah. And I think I read that article and I'm like, well, I don't know a guy who can pull 500 who doesn't look like he trains, even if he's like a smaller guy that can pull 500, he's still, you know, can still tell he does something, you know? Yeah. So, you know, at that point I'd already come to the conclusion that, you know, the guys that had big, you know, bigger, more developed upper bodies than I did were benching more, you know? So like,

I'm like, my one RMs are 10 RM, you know? So I need to fix that. So I thought to myself, I'm like, well, I want to pull 500 and I want to, you know, maybe squat four. And I wasn't as afraid of that because I was always confident with the squat. So in that, I didn't know what I was doing there, you know? So I first, I, you know, ran up the program, did it wrong, then got coaching, eventually figured out the fucking deadlift, which is why I love it so much because I put so much damn time into it and had to work through all these problems. Right. Yeah. I remember I got really lean in 2016.

I got down to like 11% body fat, which debunked the 10% myth, because at that point I'd been barbell training for three years, heavy. And, you know, I could see my abs. And I'm like, well, I'm not 10% body fat. I thought you had to be 10% body fat to see your abs. Well, that's bullshit. And it depends on, you know, body fat distribution above all else. You know, my girlfriend stays in the like what, 22, 23, you know, maybe gets down to like

19 if she, you know, diets, not even real hard diets, you know, she'll get to 19, but she never, you know, if she gains weight, she never puts on her stomach. So she always has visible abs that are heaviest or her lightest. Yep. So that's the one problem with that. But let's assume an even distribution, right, which is what I have. I put fat on everywhere, right? If you have bigger muscles, it shows at a higher body fat percentage, and I always try to explain this to people.

Remember when I was 18, 19, there was a bodybuilding.com forum, and I think this one guy was telling another guy, yeah, mass goes a long way, you know, in terms of like, you know, looking lean. And, you know, I believed him, I didn't get it. And then I got it when I got down. I mean, I was still too skinny. I was 165. But to give you a comparison there, in the past, before starting strength, before I started really pushing the deadlift and the overhead press, I would get down to like in the 150s. And I couldn't see, I couldn't see no visible abs, you know, I didn't have any visible deltoid muscles or my upper body just did not look defined. I just had pecs and that was about it.

And that's partially genetic because my dad has pecs. So even if I don't, I'm benching once a week now and I still have, you know, prominent pecs, but that's what would happen. I'd have pecs, a little bit of lats and that was it. And, you know, that was a lens that I was looking at things through back then, like how do I develop my physique? Well, the last time I got down, I was able to see abs, obviously pecs, shoulders were showing more, biceps were showing more. You know, it was much more developed. Then I noticed, I'm like, why is my fucking back still flat?

You know, I'm 11% body fat. I took a picture up on top of a mountain, still have it. I should do a comparison because I'm much higher body fat now. I'm like, what, 16, 17, something like that. And my back's more defined. So that was what was interesting. So I ended that cut. And part of what happened was programming. I had my deadlift tanked. I went into the cut with a 455 hitched deadlift. And then the first 20 pounds, I got it up to 475. Yeah, 475. And then the first 20 pounds, I got it up to 475. Yeah, 475. And then the second 20 pounds, it dropped to 440 because I changed coaches. He was a good guy, just programmed differently, and it just ended up my lift went down for whatever reason.

I lost 35 pounds off of it. Yeah. reason. I lost 35 pounds off of it. Yeah. So, you know, then I started eating and training and, uh, I pushed going, getting my deadlift from 440 to 500 and gaining 10 pounds of body weight, some of which was fat, uh, made all of my back muscles pop out more. And that's when it became abundantly clear to me, like everything I've been doing the last, the five years proceeding there, three years proceeding there. Well, it was only not even what year was that? 16. That was three years. Yeah. I've been training for only three years at that point. Not even what year was that? 16? That was three years. Yeah, I've been training for only three years at that point. So I'd gained fat and muscle probably,

and glycogen because I'd come off of a really aggressive calorie restriction. And then all of a sudden, I can see every back muscle and it became my best feature at that point. And I'm like, what the fuck? I didn't do any rows. I was chinning, but I wasn't, you know, I chinned more in the past. Like, I used to, I did every variation of row when I was younger and would see nothing back there. You know, I'd do dumbbell rows, barbell rows, T-bar rows, cable rows, wide grip cable rows, close grip cable rows, and then weighted chin-ups, all this crap, and then getting my deadlift up to 500 and gaining weight from being very lean to lean.

You know, I went from very lean to lean. I went from very lean to lean. I didn't get extremely lean. I didn't do that. Once I got to 11 and I'm like, well, I can see everything I need to see. I'm not going to fucking go bodybuilder here. I want to eat. Gaining 10 pounds, probably going to 15% probably,

and then my back got more defined because I pushed my deadlift up to 500, and that's without doing any type of rowing. So this is what got me thinking about all this stuff I'm talking about now. So I started thinking, what are the functions of the back? Well, the traps, you have the upper portion that you see between, you know, around your neck, that elevates the scapula, your shoulder blades, it elevates the shoulder blades, pushes them up. That's a shrug, right? Then you start going down and the traps are also

scapular retractors. So if you wanted to pinch your shoulder blades together, that is a function of the traps. You know, the physical therapy people call that the mid-traps. I don't know. It's one muscle as far as I'm concerned with three functions. You know, you could retract the scapula. You can elevate the scapula. And then you can also depress the scapula. You can push it down. So like when you start a pull-up or a pull-down, you're supposed to push your shoulder blades down before engaging your elbow flexors,

before bending your arms. So your shoulder blades go down, then your arms go back. Those are the isotonic movements of those muscles. So they lengthen and shorten. And so that is a function of those muscles. But it became abundantly clear to me after this experience that I had that those functions are secondary. And I've heard Rip talk about it before, but it's one thing to hear something and conceptually agree with it and another thing to experience it. And once I experienced it, it was like it really connected. I was like, okay, yeah, these muscles can shorten and lengthen. I can shrug.

I can retract. I can depress. You know, I could do lat pulldowns and every type of row in the book, but that's not their main function. It's a secondary function. Their main job is to keep the spine in position because that is what you spend all day doing. You're not pinching your shoulder blades together all day long. You're just standing straight up or sitting straight up. Your back has to keep that spine in position, and it made sense to me. Then I was able to explain it better. So when you deadlift, you're grabbing a bar and picking it up off the floor, but you're also holding your back in position. So if your back can maintain position with 500 pounds trying to pull it the other way via your arms, then it's going to grow from that to a much greater extent than it will from doing a bunch of rows with a fraction of the weight or a bunch of shrugs with a big heavy weight.

I used to shrug, too, and I put a bunch of weight on, but my traps grew more from deadlifting. Shrugs work better now because, you know, I better control my traps and I pair that with some sort of pull. But I used to do all sorts of shrugs. Why are my traps growing? You know, but when I deadlifted, the whole damn thing got bigger. So this basically brings home the point of this episode. You cannot get that degree of isometric work from a machine. You can't because by design, a machine is stabilizing the weight for you. Yes, you have to hold certain positions, but not necessarily against the load. When you're sitting on a leg press, there's no load on your back. You obviously have to contract your abs and low back so that you don't wiggle around in the chair.

But when you're squatting, the bar is on your back. That's right. So it is your job now to do what the machine is doing for you. You have to balance yourself out. And by balance yourself out, I mean your back is contracting, your obliques are contracting, your abs are contracting. Your back is never off the clock. When you're pressing, your chest is up, your spine is in full extension the entire time, your abs are tight, because otherwise you push the bar forward and

you miss, or your back hurts because you're bending back too much. When you bench press, you know, you're keeping the elbows in line with the bar so you can push it straight back, and you're not like my dumb ass who gets to 315, my elbows kick back and the bar just stops. So, you know, people, my clients always say, oh, you have the best form. You know, I don't know that I do that or I don't. It looks fine in my opinion, but I will say my bench press form is still struggling when it gets past certain threshold. And, but anyways. We all have our gremlins for sure. Yeah. The bench is mine. Yeah. But the back is always on the clock. Go ahead. Yeah. No, that's, I love that saying it's, it's so true.

You know, this is, this is why in the starting strength model that we use to coach people, we start with building blocks and you listen to them at the beginning of this episode. We, we know because we've gone through all of these things. Practically, we know that if you want to get stronger, you've got to use the most weight you can. We know that if you want to get stronger, you've got to use the most weight you can. You've got to use the most muscle mass you can, and you've got to do it over an efficient range of motion. Right. And you've got to satisfy all three of those in order for this stuff to work. Those are just basic principles. is wrapped up in those, those three, um, those three criteria is that we want to train the body in normal human ranges of motion, like normal human movements, adding load to them is how you're

going to get results. And that's exactly what you just, you did when you chose, when you figured out I have to deadlift versus doing all these machine assisted rows, accessory rows with free weights. You know, it's, that's not a normal human movement. We don't sit there and row stuff off the ground all day, but we do bend over and pick stuff up. Yeah. That's a basic human movement. And it just so happens that if you do the basic human movements and you add load to them, not only can you do them heavier, they also, they have more effect. Yeah. And a part of that is again, those isometric actions. That's right. And, and I find, you know, even in, um, you know, so this is, this is an interesting little anecdote. Um, I took,

I had to take a bunch of weeks off of lifting because I moved, uh, across the country and, you know, we had all of our, our gym packed up. Well, we've unpacked it, got the rack set back up at home and I've been lifting now for three and a half weeks. And it's kind of funny. I haven't done any accessory work. I'm just doing real basic barbell exercises. Like I'm a novice again, I'm making much faster jumps and it's going to last, you know, I'm pretty much out of the novice phase again, but that's what I did. I went right back to novice programming for a few weeks. And I noticed after I bench press, I have an awesome bicep pump. Yeah. I get it after I press, but again, I have a flaring problem when I bench. it's kind of funny, like, why do my biceps always feel really pumped the day after I bench heavy?

And I was like, well, you think about it, they are agonist muscles, or sorry, antagonist muscles in the bench press. When you lower that heavy bench press, those biceps are working hand in hand with the triceps to handle the weight and control the descent of the weight and control your elbow position and your shoulder position as you're moving the weight, right? So, it just so happens when you analyze these movements at a micro level that, you know, these big observations hold true. Well, I remember reading an article by Starr years back. You may have read it too. He was telling the story of how he went to the Globo gym. I think this was later in life, probably fairly recently before he passed. And he said the guys were doing

a bunch of curls and stuff. And he basically gave them the speech, you know, you know, if you guys just do, you know, presses and cleaning jerks and, you know, deadlifts and I forgot what else and squats, obviously. Yeah. You know, you'll get a lot more growth than that, you know, and chin ups, I think, yeah, chin ups, presses. And then he talked about squats and deadlifts and I forgot what else and squats, obviously. Yeah. You know, you'll get a lot more growth than that, you know, and chin ups, I think, yeah, chin ups, presses. And then he talked about squats and deadlifts. And the thing that stuck out to me was like, presses, jerks, you know, like, how's that going to grow my, my arms, you know? Right. And, you know, I thought about it. I'm like, yeah, your elbow is flexing, but I don't feel like I'm doing much. I don't, you know, I don't get a pump from that while I was doing it wrong, first of all. But I think that last time I cut weight,

and remember, we're comparing this to previous times I cut weight. Being 165 at my height is not an impressive body weight, although most bodybuilders are in the lightweight class, which is 165, because there's not a lot of guys that can get naturally ripped at like, you know, 185, 195, 200 plus. You know, the higher that weight goes in bodybuilding without the use of drugs, the more rare that phenotype becomes. Yeah. I think when I, the biggest guy that I, I mean, we've all worked with guys that could be outliers, but they think bodybuilding is stupid. So I think that's also part of the reason they don't have good data points. Guys are that big, may not want to bodybuild, you know?

Right. But in terms of the guys who do bodybuild, the larger guys that are, you know, 185 plus, 200 plus, you know, relatively speaking, I don't consider that very large, but in the world of bodybuilding and the absence of steroids, that's considered a bigger guy because the biggest weight class is a 165. But anyways, when I was 165, I had the best arm development in relation to what I'd done before. And I attribute that to pressing because the biggest difference in my training, I squatted heavy before, I benched heavy before, and I did heavy pull-ups before. The two things that I changed with starting strength was some of those lifts got a little bit heavier. The squat got quite a bit heavier. I think I was in the low to mid threes probably on a good day, you know, if I trained it properly. I made 315 before the program.

After the program, like 365, you know, got just around 400, much heavier now, but just saw the 400. So yeah, my squat did go up. My press went up substantially and my deadlift went up substantially, which you would expect because I didn't train those lifts that much before. You know, I deadlift once a year and I'd, you know, alternate pressing with push pressing because, you know, muscle confusion and all that shit, you know, I stayed overhead. Even doing that stupid shit, I saw more deltoid development. But what I noticed was when I got down that low, I'm like, oh, my arms actually look cool. I'm pretty happy with this. You know, I wish they were a little bit bigger, but before like I would just get down, I wouldn't see any definition. So I didn't even have that. That's what was so frustrating.

I'm like, I'm skinny. I can't see anything. And I'm small, you know? Right. But, you know, that last time, you know, I was, I was about 10 to 15 pounds heavier than I'd been able to achieve before and much, much leaner and places where, you know, I thought, oh, I have a arm weak point, you know, my arms are my weak point, you know, and then I just, you know, I was just under training. I wasn't pressing enough. So getting my press up really developed my arm. So you're a hundred percent right there. But back to the original point, I think my back just got really developed because like I said, your back is never off the clock. It's always working. And when you're benching, all these exercises are back exercises.

Everything you do, if you're doing it correctly, even if you're on a machine, your back is not off the clock. You have to stabilize yourself. You have to stabilize yourself less. So this is the number one difference between barbell training or even certain types of dumbbell training that is different from machine-based training. You know, if you do the hierarchy, you're going to get the most stabilization effects from lifting a barbell because you're going to use more weight.

Sure, you can leg press more and you can squat, but you're also not loading your hips and back to the extent that you want to squat. We're failing the second criteria of using the most muscle mass. Exactly. But, you know, because, you know, I had a pompous professor, he was such a pompous prick, sit there and say, the difference is not even an order of magnitude. Your muscles are contracting and relaxing, essentially. And, you know, I always have to entertain the other side.

And I'm like, okay, why would he think that? And I'm like, okay, well, if I theoretically took a machine exercise, like a machine bicep curl and added a little bit of weight each time, it would grow. So to their credit, yes, if you overload a muscle over time, it will grow bigger. Will you be as functional? Probably not, you know, because we don't move in those types of situations. We don't have things stabilizing the items that we lift over us, or for us. But I thought about it, and I'm like, but I did all that stuff, and I did try to add, and I would bottom out rather quickly. So I don't know that I buy into that, you know, just from my own personal experience and training others, I see the same kind of difference. They

start doing this, and they start getting the changes, right? So why is that? And the conclusion that I arrived at, I'd say more recently in terms of being able to articulate it, and I've been explaining this to people more, and it's probably because i've been getting a lot of commercial gym type clients that really want to exercise but want the result of training and you know we could talk about that too but um i've had to explain that the reason you want to lift a barbell over a machine um is let's just say over a machine because it applies to dumbbells too but there's a hierarchy right so over a machine, because it applies to dumbbells too, but there's a hierarchy, right? So over a machine is because your back has to work way harder and produce more isometric force while you are lifting, even in a bicep curl, doing it with a barbell standing up,

you have to keep your back rigid, straight, and tight. You have to keep your abs engaged. When you're on a machine, you can completely relax your back like a dumbass and just move your arms up and down, right, and just isolate the bicep. completely relax your back like a dumbass and just move your arms up and down, right? And just isolate the bicep. So you're not going to challenge your back and your abs or your quote unquote core, you know, your postural muscles, the muscles that attach to your spine, whatever you want to call it, you are not going to work those muscles anywhere near to the same extent on a machine

or a dumbbell or with a kettlebell or with a band than you will with a barbell you're just not there's just there's no mechanism for them to have to contract contract that hard isometrically when that work is being done for them effectively right so when you hear when you hear the argument that you know free weights use the stabilizers more well that's what that means they're really talking about your back and your abs. And doing a bunch of ab work is not the same thing as having to keep your spine in position using your abs on a 400 or 500-pound squat or even a 300-pound squat or a 200-pound squat, right? Yeah. It's like, what, are you going to grab a plate? Okay, great. I'm flexing and extending my spine, which a lot of physical therapists advise against now because you're shortening and lengthening the spine and it can grind up on those joints especially with the extension part of it right um you know but

if let's say you want to do that you want to do 500 crunches like van dam first of all it's endurance so you're not gonna you know you'll build some muscle there because you know i'm also the position that the low back and back muscles and ab muscles have some type one muscle fibers in them because they have to hold you up all day. So there's some utility to doing endurance work there or doing high rep work there, per se. But also, they have to hold up a big heavy body. So you have to hit them heavy. That's how calves work, too. I think I talked about that last week.

You could do calves every day. But there's a mix of the two. But my point is, so, okay, I hand you a 45-pound plate. You do a bunch of crunches on the decline bench with all the other bros at the gym with your stringer on, cut down to your waist. That'll do something. You'll get a pump. I can see that for bodybuilding. You do a bunch of crunches.

You're pumped up all the time. In terms of just gross muscular development, increases in the size and density of the muscle fibers, you're going to get a lot more trying to hold your spine in position with 400 on top of it or 500 pulling down on it, you know? Somebody tell me how you're going to replicate that with a machine. Yeah, you just can't. And before you go, that's a whole lot of muscle mass we're talking about there. That's, you know, almost your entire torso working, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So I've had this experience with a lot of folks and I tell them to expect this. So when someone comes in, you know, the average person walks into my gym and, you know, the

average person is under-muscled and a little overweight. I'm going to exclude people who are really obese, but, you know you know, they're, they're definitely overweight, but they're also under muscled. So, you know, we talk about that and basically give them the, the, the, in a nutshell, what we talked about in the first few episodes of this podcast. And then I'm like, all right, look, we'll start training and I bet you your waist goes down. Okay. So they start training and they start building some muscle mass. Their metabolism goes way up and they start eating more protein. And what do you know, a few months later, the waist has gone down a little bit and then it starts stalling out and it maybe even goes up even as they're visibly looking better,

getting more muscle mass and, you know, losing some body fat. And, and a lot of times they're like, what's going on? Like, why is my waist getting bigger? And I'm like, well, dude, you think about it. Like when you walked in this gym, you know, I had you deadlift 95 pounds. Like today you just pulled 315. Like, like you've built some huge, you've built huge abs and spinal erectors. So your waist has gotten bigger because that's just pushed out. It's pushed everything out. Right. And it's, So your waist has gotten bigger because it's just pushed out.

It's pushed everything out, right? And it's, you know, my trunk is so much thicker now than it was, you know, in college before I had ever, you know, really sniffed barbell training. And that's purely as a result of the work that I've done on squats and deadlifts. Like, I can't tell you the last time I've done an ab accessory exercise. It's been years and I've, you know, I have very strong, huge muscle bellies and that's, um, yeah. And so that's our practical experience, but there you go. That's why it's because we're, we're doing work all the time with every lift. So I always tell people in the gym, I'm like every, they're like, do we do abs?

Sometimes I'll get that question. Like, so are we ever going to do abs? I'm like, you already have been everything we do is abs. Yeah. And then I question like, so are we ever going to do abs? I'm like, you already have been. Everything we do is abs. Yeah. And then I should add to that. I'm going to add yours next. It's like I'm going to tell them your back's never off the clock. So everything we do is back.

Everything is a back exercise. Yeah. And I think that misunderstanding coupled with just bad information from genetically gifted individuals and people on drugs, has resulted in people thinking they have to do a bunch of ab crunches and a bunch of rows to develop a back. And it just doesn't work that way. The back is responsible for keeping your spine in position. The abs are responsible for keeping your spine in position. And as a result, they can generate a whole lot of force, which is why you're going to get –

people have said to me in the past, like, okay, you don't have to do abs, you know, you're squatting and deadlifting. Okay, well, why? Explain it in a way that makes sense. Well, this is the way that makes sense. You're standing up right now, listening to this, or you're sitting in your car, listening to this. You're not folded over on the steering wheel. So, something is keeping you sitting up, right? Even if you're hunched over, you're still doing some work, right? So, those are your ab over, you're still doing some work, right? So those are your ab muscles, those are your back muscles, and your torso might weigh one, 200 pounds, depending on what you weigh, you know, if you're a three, 400 pound person, and you're still sitting

upright, guess what? Your back's still doing something, but it probably hurts because you're doing it wrong. But my point is, if those muscles have to hold you up all day, then, you know, it's logical to assume they can hold up a lot more than you, most likely. And they're designed to keep going. So, you know, I've fixed round backs by having people deadlift high reps, and I'm convinced that that was very effective because, again, you're holding position with a decent amount of weight over a reasonable number of reps. So if you do 10 reps with 365, right, you're going to work some of those type one motor units as well. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that's, that's, that's the, that's the big takeaway here as to why would you barbell train if I had to give a, why would you barbell train over doing, you know, easy stuff

like machines or dumbbells and by easy, I mean, technically easy, you know, cause this is the, this is a discussion I get into a lot lately is. Yeah want to yeah i do want to talk about that about dumbbells specifically because that's yeah i know people would be like well you could do all the same things with dumbbells and it's true you can squat with a dumbbell you can sort of deadlift with a dumbbell you can press you can bench with a dumbbell quite easily so why not those and you know you know, I say this, like, so I like dumbbell work for someone who is an intermediate or advanced barbell lifter. Right. And I like it because from time to time for joint health, it's important to take, take a little break from heavy loading. I would agree with, you know, so if you're a, if you're a 225 presser, then sometimes your shoulders and

maybe your lower back just need a break from handling 225. And maybe you're doing volume work at 185 or 175. That's a lot of weight, especially if you're not a super heavy guy. So that same person could pick up the dumbbells and do some dumbbell work with higher reps for a few weeks and move, let's say the 65s or the 60 pound dumbbells. So now when that guy presses, he's got 120 in his hands or maybe 130 in his hands. And it's hard because it doesn't have the natural stability of a barbell where you know you're you you can you can move it through space easier because it's you know it's attached to itself you've got these free-floating you know chunks of of iron you've got to handle

in each hand that makes the lift harder subjectively but you're moving a lot less weight okay so that's that's looking at it from the, from one perspective of, of an advanced lifter that's doing dumbbells. That's good because the purpose was to lower the stress of that movement while still making it subjectively hard. So let's take it the other way around and look at someone who's novice, right? Who hasn't done the barbell training. You can't handle enough weight, right? You you can't do enough you can't do them heavy enough the trend it's all relative you know it's and so yeah we've got we've got a problem of it's not going to give you the same training effect as a barbell lift number one because you can't do

them heavy enough why can't you do them heavy enough because Why can't you do them heavy enough? Because you lack the trunk stability and the strength. It comes back to your back. Yeah, that's right. So, I don't let my guys lift the dumbbells until they're moving some pretty dang heavy weights. And for the reason that, A, it's not going to do them any good if they're lifting the light dumbbells. And B, to lift the heavy dumbbells, you've got to really pay attention to your technique. You can't, you can't, you don't want things to go south on a press with your dumbbell and, and, you know, rip up your, your shoulder. So you have to have a baseline level of strength to use them effectively anyway. Well, let's also remember too, dumbbells get in the way because the weight is literally right on you essentially. So, you know, the barbell, the weights are far enough away from you where the actual load is not going to touch you, you know the barbell the weights are far enough away from you where the actual load is not going to touch you you know rather than the bar the bar

is part of the load but the actual plates that you're loading on are not going to touch you with a dumbbell it's all compact so you can't even get into the exact same position on a press with a dumbbell as you can in a barbell because as the dumbbells get big get heavier they also get bigger and they're just rubbing up against your shoulder so you have to modify the position uh right the barbell is the most ergonomic uh strength training device that you could find because you can keep it right over your center of mass you can press right up against your body and not have all these um you don't you just got you don't have all this extra bulk on the yeah it's awkward it's just awkward in general everything about it gets harder so i mean you've got that problem and then you know realistically at some point they get so they get

so awkward to get in and out of the rack you know if you're going to do if you're going to press the hundreds let's say you got a really strong guy well those they're just so huge and awkward and like you know you can't rack them you can't hardly get them up to your shoulders safely you can't clean them you're gonna bang your get them up to your shoulders safely. You can't clean them. You're going to bang your frigging deltoid. That's right. Yeah. So they're, they're just impractical. So are they, you know, if you got, are they better than nothing? A hundred percent. Yes. Absolutely. Better than machines too. Much better than machines, but it's, it, there's just a lot of problems and limitations. The other

thing we didn't talk about is you can't, you can't load them very easily either. You know, limitations the other thing we didn't talk about is you can't you can't load them very easily either you know it's very expensive to have a full set of dumbbells and even then they're in five pound increments which means you have to take 10 pound jumps at a time you know i costed this when i opened the gym just i wasn't going to buy them i was curious and i went on rogue because they had the round ones i like right and not that the price varies from other companies, but I think to get a full set from I believe it was $500 to $200 and buy the fractionals that are like $2.50

I think up to $30 or maybe $50. After $50, they go up by $5. I want to say it was $2.50 to $200 it was like $15,000. Brand new. That stuff doesn't depreciate. If you're lucky enough to find a set that big that's used,

you're still going to spend close to $10,000 probably, you know? Yeah, well, and how much are you going to spend to rack them in your gym? Assuming you even have the space. I mean, it's a huge amount of space, but then you've got to build racks for them. And nobody's built anything to secure them onto

so you can unrack them. You have to do all this weird shit to get them into position so yeah they're not bad you know i love them but um they're not they're not as ergonomic as a barbell so barbell is very ergonomic and you can you can go heavier because of that you know so there's the ergonomics of it but they both challenge your back to a far greater extent than a machine um now this all comes back to context, right? So machines are popular because they don't require a lot of technical instruction. So for the person who, you know, doesn't really give a shit about, you know, moving correctly,

sadly, these people exist. I'm sure there's some of them listening right now. But, you know, if you just want to go in there and, you there and get a burn and do some weightlifting, then you're probably safer on a machine other than a Smith machine. The Smith machine is the biggest myth ever that that's safer. Stay far away. Do not mess around. There's nothing good. Yeah.

If you don't know what you're doing, you're probably more likely to hurt yourself on a Smith machine than using a free weight barbell. But, you know, like the machine curl or the lat pulldown or things like that, you know, like, you know, if you just want to go in there and exercise, I should say. So here's a good segue. If you want to exercise and just get a pump and you don't really care about, you know, achieving some defined goal in the weight room, you know, yeah, machines, you don't require you to think as much. You can go in there, use them and get the hell out. You know, you should still try to keep your back straight, but it's not as hard as, you know, when you're having to pick up a weight that's trying to push it out of position. So, you know, you get a lot of people that go to gyms because

they really just want to exercise, you know, but they want the results of training. And they've read about training programs that look more like exercise, you know, like we're just going to lift this till it feels hard, you know? Well, I don't want to get into that whole debate. So, you know, if you're one of these RPE people and you want to have that argument, I'm not going to entertain it. I don't care. But what I'm saying is there's a lot of training, quote unquote, training programs out there that are targeted at feel. Well, if it feels hard, then just go till it feels hard. Well, then how do you realistically progress? And who knows? How do you even know if it's actually hard? Maybe you just feel like shit and you're deciding that the lift itself feels hard when you can maybe

do six more reps instead of two more reps, right? But my whole point is that most gym members or people that go to the gym, they see a picture on a magazine of somebody who's very lean, defined, and muscular, and they want to look like that. And they have this idea in their head that they're just going to go exercise their way to that. So number one, what is exercise? Well, exercise, you're basically doing a physical activity with the goal of eliciting some sort of acute response, whether it's, I'm going to get my heart rate up today, or I'm going to sweat, or I'm going to get a pump, you know, or I just want to feel good when I get out, you know. But the key word being acute. Exercise is about acute. It's about what happens today.

Training, as you know, just like the word sounds, you are trying to get from point A to point B, and that's going to take a series of steps to get there. You might have to train for three, six, nine, 12 months, maybe 24, maybe 5 years. Or like me, I've been training for, what is it, 21, so 8 consecutive years now I've been training. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, every time I go in there, I'm trying to add. You know, I've had people say, well, why do we got to add? Well, you said you want to, you know, get bigger arms

or look more muscular or get stronger or look leaner, you know. Well, I just want to tone. Well, what is tone? Well, muscle tonus is basically the degree at which the muscle is contracted at rest without having to do anything, you know. And basically, that is a result of building muscle. So, you know, we're back to that again. So, I think people really don't understand that what they want to look like requires training, but they want to do exercise. They want to do 30 minutes of cardio, some circuit training with low technicality on the lifting exercises, and they don't want to spend more than an hour in the gym. And that's great for health, for overall health, but if you're trying to change your body composition, I'm sorry,

you have to stress your body more than you were previously able to. And sure, I could put you on a leg press and get some leg growth out of that. But you're not going to get that back and abdominal development without doing some sort of heavy barbell exercise. I just don't see it. And if you already have it like Christy does, great. But I encourage you to look at her pictures. If you dig through her Instagram, there's a four-way picture there. When I first met her, she was 100. This is my girlfriend, Christy. She was 105 pounds, and she was 5'3", and she was 28% body fat, but she had a flat stomach, you know?

Yeah. And she looked skinny. She appeared skinny. She was under-muscled, and that's what she has publicly said. She was under-muscled. Before I met her, we have a DEXA result. She was 96 pounds at the end of her PhD program in 2010. And she was 28% body fat at 96 pounds. She's always been a thin person. Then she marathon ran and swears to me that she gained muscle from

running. Because if you're that untrained and inactive, and she wasn't a total lazy ass. She walked places and stuff, but she just didn't like, she didn't like doing hard activity for the sake of doing hard activity. It's not her thing. Now she loves lifting, you know, things have changed. But back then,

you know, she, what'd she tell me? She joined the golf team in high school to get out of PE, you know, which I can't say I blame her. PE was kind of a joke,

but, you know, she started running and she said she saw some hypertrophy in her legs, you know, just from running a little bit, you know,

and I believe that. But anyways, we had her lift, she gained 15 pounds and then her abs popped out, you know, just from running a little bit, you know. And I believe that. But anyways, we had her lift. She gained 15 pounds, and then her abs popped out, you know. She got visible abs. A 15-pound weight gain on a woman who's 5'3 is a lot of body weight, you know, because the person gets more compact, right? So she gained 15 pounds. Her abdominals got more defined.

Her back got more defined. And her shoulders got more defined, her arms. And she appeared comparable in clothing. So, she walked around in clothing, she didn't look much different than she was at 105, you know? Starts wearing sleeveless shirts, now she starts looking like, you know, she's, people would ask her, she did Pilates or something, and she's like, no, I'm powerlifting. What? You know? Well, yeah, you have to build muscle mass. And why did her abs get big? Because she deadlifted 250 or 245. She's OCD.

She's going to correct me and say, oh, it's 245. We're rounding up, okay? 245 is the official PR. But she's a 115-pound girl. That's usually where she settles now. She got up as high as 120, but she usually settles around 115. And she pulled 245. Her abs got bigger.

She didn't even lift a whole ton of weight. You know, she's not a competitive power lifter by her numbers, but if you find this four-way picture, I need to, like, pin it or something on my Instagram because it's a really good example because, yeah, she has good genetics. She doesn't put a lot of fat in her stomach, but it also gives us the opportunity to illustrate the hypertrophy that happens and the abdominal muscles with barbell training, And she's a good example of that. She went from flat stomach to, you know, some abs to more abs to ridiculous abs. And there was weight gain, weight gain, you know, and she just did five exercises, you know, squat, press, deadlift, bench press, and chin-ups. That's it.

Yep. Yep, exactly. And, you know, there's a lot of things too that play into the way your physique looks and that go beyond just like the abs. You know, things like when we're talking about those trunk muscles, your traps. Like if you have shape to your traps, like if you have traps, it creates a shape to your neck and to your shoulders. Otherwise, you just look kind of deflated and flat. You know, if you've got, if you've actually got some shoulder muscles, you know, you've got a contour to the edge of your shoulder to your arm, right? So muscle mass, it gives a shape and it, that's really what it looks youthful at the end of the day too right you know it's having shape and um and having it that's that's that's the it's the form um i'm trying to think of what the artistic term is i don't do visual art so i'm sure but you know you look at a statue like

you think about like what makes a statue beautiful of a of a of a form right versus one that's not it's like well what makes what is the form right We call it a form because it has a definable shape. So, that's what muscle mass does for us is it gives us our shape and definition. So, yeah, but you ain't going to get that. You're not going to get those traps. You're not going to get that exercising with light weights. It's just not going to happen. I mean, if you've never done anything, you'll see some initially, but if you're trying to get a dramatic change, then it's going to have to happen over time. And more importantly, let's think about if you're trying to move your lean mass or your fat-free mass, your muscle mass, whatever you want to call it, let's think about where the largest

muscle groups are, your back, and to that extent, your abs. Usually, they kind of work together. You usually don't work your abs without your back. I mean, extent, your abs. Usually, they kind of work together. You know, you usually don't work your abs without your back. I mean, you shouldn't at least. So, if you just look at your back, and by back, I mean your lats, your traps, your spinal erectors, your posterior deltoids and external rotators and all those muscles of the back that lead all the way up to your neck, that's a big slab of muscle right there. And all you got to do is get a big deadlift to develop it. That's a big chunk of your muscle. What do you want to say?

Like a third of all your body's muscle mass might be in your back, you know? Oh, at least. At least. And then you throw the abs in there, you know, that bumps that up, you know? So you're somewhere between a third and half of your muscle mass is on your back and your abs. And you work those muscles by doing exercises with heavy weight that require you to remain stable and preserve the spinal position. Then what's the next one down the line? Your legs, your thighs, your thigh muscles are a big chunk of your body's muscle mass, right?

Yes, yeah. Glutes, hamstrings, quads, all big, big muscle groups. Big, big muscle groups. So, you know, between squatting and deadlifting, you're probably working 75% of your muscle mass on those two exercises alone. And, you know, you press, you hit your arms, you know, and your shoulders and your back again, your back, these are all back exercises. So the assumption when we talk about this is back is included. But, you know, your press, you work your arms and your shoulders, your bench press really just hits your pecs. And then your chin-ups, you know, balance out the shoulder.

The chin-ups are the opposing range of motion to the press. So, you know, you're pressing, you're flexing the shoulders, extending the elbow. When you're doing a pull-up, you are flexing the elbow and extending the shoulder or chin-up. I like the chin-up because you hit the biceps too. So, you know, between all that, you're hitting everything. And sure, you know, you can do other stuff. Like, you know, if you curl, you're going to get more of a bicep pump. You'll see some additional growth there if you want to put in the time.

If you do a lot of calf raises and you want to, you know, do calves every single day, by all means, you'll see some growth there. lifts not only challenge the target muscle groups like your hips and knees and shoulders and arms and pecs but they uh are forcing your back to maintain position while you're doing all that heavy ass lifting so you know words of the great ronnie coleman everybody wants to be a bodybuilder but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weight that's right i was thinking about there's a meme somewhere of uh lavarar Burton, you know, from reading rainbow and he's like, and he's like pointing at his head. He's like, every exercise is a lower back exercise if you do it wrong enough. It's true. So yeah, I think in summation, if you do those four lifts,

you pretty much hit every muscle in your body and the only reason we really do other lifts is to get it's really only one of two reasons the only reason we do anything else is to develop a different aspect of a different physical skill like we might want to develop power in some people. And then at that point, that might be appropriate to do something like a power clean or clean and jerk or snatch or something like that. Right. But that's not strength. That's a different physical skill. Okay. So that comes into play. And I would say for most people, you know, that don't care about power that aren't athletes, then the only other reason we would not do those four main lifts

and we do something else is because you get to a point in your development as a lifter where you can't simply continue adding weight to those lifts every workout. And maybe you can't even do it every week or every month. And so there comes a point in time where for practical reasons, you might choose a lighter alternative to the barbell lifts for a workout or two in your program. But for the majority of people, the majority of the time, you're going to be doing these four lifts and that's all you need. And if you're training, training right if your focus is on getting the results and hitting goals then why would you why would you do a whole bunch of other stuff that's you know maybe won't even get you there probably won't if you can do these four lifts and get the results you want right yeah we're not doing it for the fun of it necessarily it it can be fun but that's not

that's not our primary motivation here. We're training for the result. And so that's why we stick with those four lifts. Yeah. And, you know, if you want to lift for fun, you can. I mean, it's free country so far as I know. Yeah. But don't confuse fun with outcome, you know.

Sometimes getting that outcome is not fun. Exactly. You know. Exactly. And that's, that's exactly, that's, that's what I'm talking about. You know, for someone who's been doing this like yourself for, for eight years, you know, you can't be in that mode of like push, push, push, push, push all the time for eight years. It's just like life happens. You got other stuff going on. Um, you know, you, you just, you can't do that forever. And so, yeah, it's totally okay. If you just take six weeks to kind of screw around to do some different lifts and, you know, just do a bunch of like bodybuilding type movements, nothing wrong with that. But you're also not under

the illusion that that's making you stronger. No, you're just having some fun, you know, taking a break. And if that's what keeps you mentally in the game long-term, great, awesome. But, um, but there, there's a clear hierarchy and that's, that's, I think what we're trying to get across today. Absolutely. All right, man, let's close it out. All right. Well, that concludes this episode of the weights and plates podcast. Please come join us again in a couple of weeks for the next one. one. And this is the part where I think you asked me, where can they find me? Yeah. Yeah. Well, tell us.

Tell us. Where do we find you on the social medias? On the social media world. Instagram, the underscore Robert underscore Santana or weights double underscore and the word double underscore plates. And then, of course, weights and plates.com. Excellent. Yep. Well, you know where to find me at marmalade underscore cream on Instagram. That's where I post all my stuff about lifting about my other gig, which is producing these

podcasts. So if you want to follow me there, you can see what I do. Yeah. Well, we'll see y'all in a couple weeks excellent you