Weights and Plates Podcast - #57 - Why You Should Probably Be Bulking

Episode Date: July 23, 2023

It's a common debate in the Starting Strength world and the world of lifting and aesthetics in general -- do you have to get fat to build muscle? Dr. Robert Santana and his co-host Trent Jones, SSC tackle this question and explain why, if you're a male looking to improve your physique, you probably need to bulk to gain muscle, drive your barbell lifts up, and later, cut body weight to lose the fat. So, to answer the question more directly: do you have to get fat? No, but you're gonna gain more fat than you want to, and there's going to be an uncomfortable period where you're fatter than you want to be. Just understand that's it's necessary to get strong, and getting strong is how you will eventually get the look that you want!   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. Hey, what's going on, man? Not much, man. Just hanging out. You know, I got a birthday tomorrow. Oh, no way. Yeah, another trip around the sun. Are you 40 yet? No, no, 39.

I'm not fucking 40, you know, like Kid Rock song. I knew you weren't. I just had to rib you a little bit there. But next year. Next year, I will be. You're going to be a master's athlete. I think I am in weightlifting. Oh, yeah, really?

It's normally 40 in anything like powerlifting and strengthlifting, right? Isn't 40 usually the cutoff? Yeah, well, you know, weightlifters, they jump and land. So, you know, they get old man joints earlier. That's true. Yeah, that's true. It's kind of like the NFL, right? Like if you were, you know, how many 30 year old running backs do you see in the NFL yeah I don't know not a whole lot not a whole lot not a whole lot you're pretty washed up by then generally well uh what the hell are we gonna talk about today I actually have no idea yeah I think you know I think we have a topic that will

work for this episode we're gonna to talk about bulking bulking bulking bro dude i'm on that perma bulk i just bulk and then i think about cutting and then i just keep bulking i just bulk that's right that's the only way to do it i mean i just cultivate mass just like the weight on the bar can only go up the weight on the bar can only go up, the weight on the scale can only go up. Yeah, I was reading about this guy. I had not heard of him before, but Pat Casey. Okay. Power lifter.

There's a few Pat Casey's out there. I should clarify. This is the power lifting Pat Casey. Is he in the blue book? Did Rip mention him? He might be. It's been a little while since I've read the blue book. I'm probably due for a reread. It's been a few years for me. But yeah, Pat Casey, there was a nice article

about him written by the one and only Marty Gallagher. He's basically the historian of strength. But yeah, he was a early powerlifter. So he was doing it back in the mid sixties when the sport was brand new. And I believe he was the first man to bench 600 pounds in 1965. I think that's where I was praying the bench press chapter. Okay. Yeah. So, um, basically, you know, as Marty Gallagher was talking about his, his training routine and, you know, this was all, you gotta remember, this is the early days of the sport. So all the sort of, you know, linear progression stuff that we take for granted, I think guys kind of knew, but it wasn't widely distributed. And a lot of guys were sort of on their own trying to figure

this stuff out and, you know, they kind of had to reinvent the wheel. So he was doing some sort of progression, but it's kind of wacky. He was doing like a lot of like really heavy, like lockout work, which is not a bad idea, really. And he would drop down, do a lot of volume, full range of motion. But the thing that caught my eye was he was six foot one, which is pretty tall for a power lifter, especially a 600 pound bencher. And he continually pushed his body weight up during his competitive career from about 260,

where apparently that's when he hit the 500 pound bench press mark is at a body weight of 260. And he pushed his body weight up over the years to 320. And that's when he benched 622. Whoa. Also squatted 800 raw.

So yeah, to do this, he would eat three or four solid meals. And on top of that, several quarts of milk a day mixed with protein powder. Yeah, that's how it's done. And it's pretty, it's really simple, right? The reason I've been thinking about this lately is, um, I run into a lot of guys who are just getting into strength training and they want to change their body. They want to get, they don't quite know it yet,

but they want to get bigger. Um, and I usually have to have the conversation about skinny fat and being under-muscled, which we've talked about ad nauseum on this show. But I think there's this breakdown where they don't really understand what it's going to take to gain muscle and to get bigger. And if you want to do it, you're going to have to do what Pat Casey did, right? Now you may not be going from 260 to 320. I'm not saying you want to do it, you're going to have to do what Pat Casey did, right? Now, you may not be going from 260 to 320. I'm not saying you need to put on 60 pounds from an already pretty stacked frame. No. But if you need to put on 25 pounds, which a lot of guys do, you're going to have to eat some damn food. Just watch out.

These research enthusiasts are going to turn around and tell you, you can't gain 25 pounds of lean mass in a year. So you need to be, you know, precise words for these people. Okay. Oh yeah. No, I didn't say lean mass, did I? Yeah. Yeah. You said muscular body weight. I said muscular body weight. And I didn't say in a year either. Yeah. Yeah. What I consider muscular body weight, that's not a technical term, right? Maybe I should make it one. TM. Yeah. TM. When I, when I think of muscular body weight, I think of a male, cause I think this is a little, this is different from, for females, right? So we have to, we have to specify here. This is for a male, it's gaining body weight,

which is probably going to be somewhere in the order of 60 to 80% muscle. Yep. And that's going to be governed by your age and your genetics and testosterone level. Yeah. And this is assuming that you're training hard. You're lifting heavy weights. You're driving your barbell lifts up. But yeah, I, you know, i like that example of pat casey because here's you know here's a young jacked guy who got up to a pretty damn big size i think i think most guys around would see 61260 and be like damn that guy's big and he was but to truly get stronger and to take his strength from like pretty pretty strength from pretty damn good to best in the world,

the guy had to add 60 more pounds to his frame. Okay? Well, keep in mind that he was probably 25% body fat. Yeah, there's some really cool pictures of the guy. There's one of them with him standing in front of a, of a bench with a whole bunch of plates loaded up. And yeah, I'd say the guy was probably somewhere between 20 and 25% body fat, just kind of eyeballing it. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's necessary for the sport that he was in. So, you know, there's a lot to unpack there because, you know, a lot of

our audience, we get people that are listening to that and they're like, well, I don't want to be a big fat guy benching 600. I just turned off everybody in the, yeah. And, you know, don't change the channel yet because, you know, we're going to bring this back to earth here in a second. Yeah. You know, number one, you're not going to be a big fat guy that benches 600. Most of you won't. You'll probably be a big fat guy, you know, benching 300. That might happen for a lot of you. And, you know, and it may not be worth it to get that fat, you know, it just depends on the person. But my point is for him to have benched over 600, you know, what did you say, 620, 640? Yeah, 622 is what it says in the article.

Yeah, for that guy to do that, he already had to have a decent genetic makeup that favors heavy bench pressing. And he was probably taking stuff too, let's be real. Yeah, mid-60s, yeah. Not that that diminishes anything, by the way. I think that, you know, if you haven't listened to it already, everybody needs to go on Starting Strength Radio and listen to Rip's episode on steroids from last week. That would have been when?

Today is the, oh, what's today, the 20th? So that would have been the 13th. Yeah, the 13th. No, the 14th. So July 14th. You need to go listen to that because he kind of hammers this to hell, and he has a lot more experience with this than I do, but at the end of the day, if you're in a sport and you're performing at the top 1%,

then the steroids aren't going to contribute that much to your performance. They're just not. You're going to do things that you can't do without them abso-fucking-lutely, you know? But the guys that are performing at the top 1% of any sport aren't doing that because of steroids. Steroids may give you the absolute raw result, you know? Right. You know, in the case of baseball with Barry Bonds, number of home runs, right? But I bet that number still would have been pretty fucking high without them.

Oh, yeah. He was already a power hitter before he got huge. Yeah. The foundation was there. You know, that's the same thing in lifting. I knew a guy once. This is just out of one data point. He was on a bunch of shit.

lifting. I knew a guy once, this is just out of one data point. He was on a bunch of shit. He was, you know, in top 10 in powerlifting at the time, um, for his weight class or, you know, I don't, whatever the hell he was doing. But when I met him, he was pulling 740 and, you know, he was, you know, on gear as they call it, he was on steroids. And, uh, they were all having a conversation one day about, you know, these people that don't take drugs, hating on people that take drugs. And then he brings up that, hey, I pulled 660 before I ever got on anything. So I did the math on that. What is that, a 12% improvement from taking steroids? It's not like the guy was a 300-pound deadlifter and went to being close to an 800-pound deadlifter just by taking a bunch of drugs.

It doesn't necessarily work that way now you know what I always the caveat I always like to give is when you people take steroids they get an appearance that cannot be achieved without it you know that part is true right you know your muscles are gonna be more dense because they're carrying more water you're gonna have more vascularity there are certain physical signs that are like are uh there are going to be physical signs that you're on steroids there are you know and some people like that look uh you know i have a friend that said steroids and a guy are like fake tits on a girl you know right yeah uh and you know he's like people can tell and i've asked a few females who are like that's a pretty a girl you know right yeah uh and you know he's like people can tell and i've asked a few females who are like that's a pretty good analogy you know yeah uh yeah you know some some

people like it and they know it's fake and they like it they're fine with it you know and then some people just don't like it you know but the point is when you get on drugs because i know that we have a lot of you know people that care about their physique listening to us when you get on drugs it's going to do things to your physical appearance that cannot be done with training. But I digress. We're talking about performance here. And on the topic of performance, you're not going to be in the top 1% simply by taking steroids. It doesn't work that way.

No, no. First of all, in traditional sports you know, regular traditional sports. There's no technique steroids. Steroids don't improve your technique. So, like you said, if Bonds was a power hitter, you know, he was a very gifted baseball player as it is, you know. So, he was going to perform at a much higher level than most people, hands down. And then you give him steroids, now he's going to do things that nobody else can do, right? And guess what?

At the time he was playing everybody was on fucking steroids so why was he the only one hitting 70 what 75 home runs yeah yeah what is 73 yeah i can't remember but 73 something like that it was the steroid era as they call it yeah so everybody was baseball yeah everybody was on steroids you know yeah um so you got to understand that like you know what that shit you know you're it's it enhances what's already there so if you're a mediocre athlete you'll probably be less mediocre on steroids if you're an elite top one percent athlete you're going to be even more elite you know yeah and it becomes you know it's part of this first of all sports are not healthy people

you know professional athletes are not healthy their bones or joints or connective tissues are shot to in on uh contact sports they have brain damage you know that is not healthy maybe their heart and lungs are pretty healthy from all the conditioning they have to do you know but their bodies beat to you know yeah um yeah so i you know if anything i'm with rip you know he made a comment saying the steroids probably reduce, you know, the number of injuries these guys get compared to playing, you know, these intense sports without it. You know, it allows them to do things they cannot do without it. That training is very demanding. You know what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely. The sport is very demanding. But, you know, this is not, you know, it's not what this episode's about. But it's an important part of the equation because, you know, the guy, yeah, the guy you're talking about, Casey, he was, you know, 300 plus pounds, benching 600. He grew, you know, he gained probably over 100 pounds through the course of his training career. We don't know where his baseline was, but we know that he gained 60 pounds to get from 500 to 600 or 600 plus, right? Right, yeah. 500 to 600 or 600 plus, right?

Right, yeah. But, you know, you've got to factor in that. I don't have a picture of him in front of me, but I'm guessing he had short arms, had big muscle bellies on his biceps and triceps. Big, big elbow joints. Yeah, big elbow joints. Elbows are huge. And big pecs, you know.

Yeah, giant pecs. And let's put any drug accusations aside, he probably had those things before he got on drugs, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. You just remember, this is mid-60s, and I don't know anything about the guy, right? I just read a couple articles about him. But, you know, this is mid-60s. I can imagine.

Powerlifting is brand new. It was not a— Brand new. You know, this is not a uh premier world sport or anything like that so you know i don't know that that guy didn't bench 500 natural and then maybe started taking some stuff late in his career to push himself to the next level right very well could probably probably you know there's a few things that happen you know you gain 60 pounds you do acquire more leverage to

lift more weight. Are you going to, you know, do a, what is it? 100? It's like a 20, 30% improvement? Are you going to get a 30% improvement in your bench press from gaining 60 pounds when your bench press is already 500? I don't know, maybe. Maybe not, you know, but... I'm not. I don't know, maybe, maybe not, you know, but. I'm not. I'm sure as hell I'm not. You know, if I, I think if I, what am I, 180-ish? I'm 177.

So let's just round it up for easy math. My bench, my best bench, probably right now, it's probably like 290 at this weight. You know, when I've hit over 300, I was 190 pounds. So, oh, that's some percentages right so for me gaining 15 or so pounds 15 no more like 20 pounds let's say i gained 20 pounds my bench went up 20 pounds so what's 20 out of 290 it's not even 10 you know right yeah and i mean i only did that for like what what, a year or two? I was that heavy. So, you know, it's not enough data for me to say what I can and can't do. I think if I gained 100 pounds, I'd see a pretty drastic improvement in my bench because I wouldn't be going down as far. I had more leverage, right?

Absolutely. But to go from 500 to 600, you know, you have to be a certain type of individual physically. Yeah. And you probably need chemical assistance to do that. And all that's fine and i'm only explaining this to add context to it because there are guys that have followed the linear progression and they ate six thousand calories and they show up here like i got so fat what the fuck you know and it's like well you have shitty muscle building genetics bro you know

what do you want me to tell you and your diet was absolute garbage most of these people don't eat right right so that's what and that's what i want to get to today right so yeah the first of all is just like i i what i'm trying to describe here and and you know i'm not trying to say that y'all need to be pat casey you don't need to you don't need to gain 60 pounds of body weight that's not what i'm saying here but we've talked to you before about how if you're under muscled you're going to have to put on muscle. And I think there's something about, there's some word magic that goes on here. Like when, we're pretty, we try to be careful with our words around this, right?

It's not just gaining weight, right? We want to put on muscle. Like, because we don't want you to just get fat. That serves no purpose, right? We want you to put on muscular body weight, but... But you're going to get fat by your standards. Right, but you're going to put on some body fat, right? But the reason, I think the thing is though, when we say muscular body weight, I think a lot of people that are new to lifting, in their head, they're like, oh, it's going to be

100% lean mass. I'm going to look freaking ripped. And it's like, no, it's not going to happen. And I think the other thing is like, I think people, they don't associate that with eating a large amount of calories. That's the other piece of this. And that's, that's what I wanted to talk about today. Right. Which is, I think people are like, oh, okay. So I need to gain some weight. Okay. And I D and it's going to be all like muscular body weight. It's going to be awesome. Um, I need to gain five to 10 pounds. And we're like, no, if you're six foot one 70, I see that a lot nowadays, everybody's like six feet tall and like one 70, maybe one 80. And that's like, no, no, no, no. You need to weigh like 205 to 225. That's

what a muscular frame is going to look like on you. I'm not even talking big. I'm just saying like a, a muscular looking dude. So you need to gain in the, you know, you need to gain 30 to 40 pounds, let's say. And so that means that your caloric intake is going to be significantly higher than what you're eating now and you're going to gain body fat and you're going to think you're fat if you're a skinny fat guy you're going to think you're fat sorry i'm just telling you how it is yep um and that's part of the equation you know we're going to get mike minningale on here at some point to talk about this because this guy has a pretty good story so he bought he did linear progression he was and he's six one i think okay six foot six one and he was about he was sub 200 i think when he went over to horn strength back in the day

it's probably eight years ago or so and he pushed his body weight up to 240 you know at 6162 okay yeah and you know he put on body and I want to put a caveat here. Mike, I would say he's one of these ectomesomorph types. You know, he tends to stay lean for the most part, you know, has a tight skin, you know, decent bodybuilder genetics, you know. But, you know, he's tall, so bodybuilders are short. But, yeah, he's just one, you know, he's one of these, like, ectomesomorph guys, small frame, but has nice muscle bellies that, you know he's one of these like ecto mesomorph guys small frame

but has nice muscle bellies that you know kind of protrude out anyhow he got he put the fat on you know he pushed his body weight up to 240. you know he lost his abs and his neck got really big and he got sleep apnea you know uh and we know we're not suggesting doing this he would not well we'll let him decide what he suggests because we've talked about this uh it's a temporary situation is what i think he would say because that's what him and i have talked about and we talk about this a lot because we both went through this you know we we pushed our weight up he went up to 240 i went up to 205 remember i'm 59 so he's got three to four inches on me yeah so if you scale that it's

comparable weight gain right and uh you know at the time i hated it because i was a skinny fat guy and i'm like oh you know i'm fucking i'm lifting all this weight and it's not even that much because i'm in a power lifting gym and there's guys you know doing sets of five with my max you know so i'm like i'm not even lifting that much and i'm chubby and this and that i can't see any definition i have to be so skinny to see all that bullshit, all the shit that I know you guys have thought of. Yeah. Right. And, you know, I just wrote it out. I tuned it out. I'm like, well, this is just emotional shit. Just sideline that and keep training, you know, and there'll be a time to lose the fat. Right.

So, you know, I lost the body fat later and pretty much each time I, you know, tried to build, I guess, I didn't have to gain as much weight to get stronger. Right. Yes. Yeah. And he said the same thing. You know, he trains at around 200 pounds now. It's really hard for him to get stronger because he squats over 600.

No, he squats almost 600, like 590 or something. And he deadlifts over 600. So, you know, we're looking at a guy who can he can triple body weight squat and deadlift you know yeah that's that's pretty impressive and i'm getting close to that myself if i can just recover here but um you know what i've what i will tell you is i took my in the first five years that i trained like this and i'd balked before where i gained a bunch of body weight lifted and, and then lost it. I did stupid things in the weight room, but I always try to add weight to the bar, especially on my big lifts.

So I did get something out of that, but then I would cut wrong and I'd do a bunch of cardio reps and just basically ensure that I lose a lot of that muscle, you know? So, you know, I'd done it like two or three times in my twenties. And then in my late twenties, I found starting strength, pushed up to 192 on my linear progression drank the gallon of milk then came down to 168 and then went up to 205 as an early intermediate and then dropped down to 163 i think was the lowest i saw i saw 162 161 but that was just like me taking a piss or something but yeah yeah, I went from 205 down to 162. I lost about 5% of my strength doing that. Then I went back up to, you know, for over a five-year period, I went, I slowly coasted up to 193 most of the time. Then, you know, I saw that 195, 197 a couple

times, you know. But basically the low to mid-190 190s and then i went back down to 168 i didn't have to go lower than that i was pretty ripped at 168 and then now i'm about 178 and what i've noticed again is that my bottom is getting higher so like my bottom limit to where i start looking really lean is going up you know i'm closer to 170 versus 160 in the past. Right. And when I'm, quote-unquote, bulk, I don't have to quite get to 200 anymore. Although that might change this time because, again, I'm starting from a higher bottom. But the point is when I was a novice, an early intermediate, it made a huge difference to gain all that weight. Nowadays, I don't know that it makes a difference. However, a good argument has been made by my fellow starting strength coach, Carl Raghavan, that I may not have gotten fat

enough to really see the benefits. And I want to talk about that as well. You know, there's a couple reasons that we lift more weight when we gain weight. Obviously, you're eating more calories. So you're in an anabolic environment. You're releasing more insulin. Your testosterone is probably higher up to a point. You know, there's a U-shaped curve there. At some point, you can get low from being too fat, you know? Right. But you're in an anabolic environment, so there's that.

But two, your leverage is changing. It's easier to squat when you're chubby. Absolutely. I've got a guy who's 6'3 right now. He's 220. You know, for him, that's heavy. He started at 130, 140, you know? Yeah, that's awesome. So he's totally an ectomorph. But he has a belly, and he understands.

And his squat cleaned up immediately once he got a belly. And I'm not saying go get a belly, because the thing is, when you lose it, it's easier to learn how to squat skinny once you've done it fat for a little bit. Yes. And I've learned that myself, you know? Because you just kind of, you get better spatial awareness, you know?

Now, you know, some people shouldn't do this, you know, if you have kind of, you get better spatial awareness, you know. Now, you know, some people shouldn't do this, you know, if you have metabolic disease, probably not great to, you know, shoot your blood sugar up when you have diabetes to get fat, you know, like there's special circumstances where I wouldn't recommend this, but to kind of go back to Rip's point that you gain fat now, or you gain weight now, lose the fat later, you know, that's generally true. You know, different coaches have different ideas of what that looks like. And then you also got to individualize it to the lifter. And this is where you skinny fat guys need to pay attention because I'm talking to you. You know, I understand you don't want to bench 500 or squat 600 or deadlift 800. That's not what we're trying to do here. And that's fine. So you also probably don't need to

gain that much weight then, you know. But you're going to go through a period where you're not that defined. It's that in-between stage where, you know, when you grow your hair out, if you've ever grown your hair out from a buzz cut, there's that first period where it grows really fast and it goes from like, you know, almost nothing to, you know, you've got some hair now, you know. But then it gets to that place where it's not long and it's not short and you just want to cut it so fucking bad. Well, your body does that when you're trying to build muscle. You get to a point where you're not defined, you know, you're not ripped, but you're not, you know, super fat either. You know, you look like you train in clothes, but then when you take your shirt off, there's not really much definition going on. You just got the shape, you know, I should say. Yeah.

And you have to be able to endure that because usually that look, that's where you got the best leverage to train. And before you go on and say, well, that's leverage. That's not building muscle. It all works together, people. It's all part of the equation. And there's a lot of unanswered shit here. There's a lot of things we don't understand. right and there's a lot of unanswered here there's a lot of things we don't understand

every single person including that bodybuilder that told you you don't have to get fat including him you know who i'm talking about nobody's specific but they all say it right all the bodybuilding gurus say the same they're like oh you don't have to get fat all those guys have gotten fat when they bulk you know look at the at the champions. Look at Ronnie Coleman. Look at Lee Priest. Yeah, I was about to say Lee Priest. There's like pictures of him like peak bulk where he's like downing like six Big Macs and the dude's just a mountain of... And these guys are on a bunch of steroids too. Yeah.

And they still get fat, you know? Right. And, you know, when I say get fat, I mean, they lose their muscle definition and put on a little bit of a belly, you know? They do it even with all the drugs. So there is something about that that allows you to make progress in the long term. I don't know what that is. You know, I don't know what that is, but, you know, the research people are going to sit there and say that it makes no difference.

You'll gain the same lean mass either way. Well, first of all, there's no way to really measure lean mass. The DEXA does not directly measure lean mass. The underwater weighing does not directly measure lean mass. Right. And I don't think any of these instruments are very good for tracking long-term trends. I think that, you know, direct measurements like waist circumference, thigh circumference, you know, skin fold thickness, those things. Present body fat aside, just those measurements, those direct measurements, not the algorithms that you plug them into. I'm talking about the direct measurements.

I think those are going to tell you more than a body fat test. I think this percentage body fat is largely bullshit, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Especially when you're in the middle. You know, when you're on the extremes, yeah, a guy who who's like 40 body fat probably looks like he's 40 body fat a guy who's like five percent body fat probably looks like he's five percent body fat but i noticed that everything in between it could be all over the fucking place oh yeah yeah sure sure so you know i think those direct measurements are going to give you a pretty good indication of what the hell your body's doing but my point is that every single one of these guys, with few exceptions, like Franco Colombo, he was one of those mesomorph guys that just did not gain body fat when he was building muscle.

Frank Zane was an ectomesomorph, another guy that would just get more jacked when he gained weight. But most of these guys, as they would say, they called it smoothing out. They'd smooth out, they'd put on a belly, then they'd fucking cut, I mean, they would do a more extreme version of what we're talking about, they'd cut hard, take more drugs and get ready to get on stage. You know, that's how bodybuilding worked back then. And I think that's still how it works today. I'm oversimplifying, of course, but you know, the problem is they turn around, go on Instagram, post a picture of them, you know, contest ready, or maybe like, you know, the problem is they turn around, go on Instagram, post a picture of them, you know, contest ready or maybe like, you know, a few months out, you know, or they'll post pictures up where they're lean and vascular and then tell you, you don't have to gain that much fat.

And it's like, really? Well, why the fuck did you do it? You know? Right. And maybe if they're not later in their career, it's because they're so advanced, it's not going to really do much for them at that point. You know, they kind of, you know, you become more efficient under efficient under the bar or you know they're using machines and other shit too but you become more efficient lifting weights you don't it doesn't help you as much the longer you're in the game and you kind of settle into your weights just like in a weight class sport right

you know eventually you settle into a weight class and you compete at that weight class the same kind of thing but my point is you're going to have to grow and you're not going to be beach ready if you're really trying to do this. There's going to be periods of time where you're not going to, you know, be super defined. But if you stick with it long enough, and by long enough, I don't mean 12 weeks, academic semester, a little research program, training program for a research study, I'm talking two to five years, you know? Yeah, it's years. It's years.

It's years. And, you know, you're going to gain weight, you're going to lose weight, you know, in that time, and you're going to get stronger. But if you get past the first three to five years, you're going to see, you know, the fruits of your labor. And, you know, you're not going to, most of you probably aren't going to gain 30 or 40 pounds of lean mass, but you're going to visually look more like the way you want to look if you manage to pull that off. Right. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's to your earlier point, it's abundantly clear to me that,

you know, I can still press, let's see, I've got to do an intensity press tomorrow. Um, and I'll be going for, I got to double check my log book, but I believe it's 185 for top set of five. And, uh, as my body weight right now is 180 roughly. Um, I'm actually lower than I thought we, we, we had this discussion the other day. I hopped on a scale at a globo gym when I was traveling recently. And, um, I, I just kind of assumed I was like 185, maybe trending up a little bit because I've, you know, I've been trying to, to eat more. And then I stepped on the scale is like 179, like, Oh fuck. Yeah. But it explains a lot, right? It explains why my squat and bench have fallen so much from my peak. But, um, but yeah, no, it's abundantly clear to me that the fact that I can do, you know, I'm, I'm pressing at body weight and I'll now be above body weight for a set of five. I can only do that because I pressed, you know, 205 for three sets of five when I weighed 205, you know, the, there's, there's some sort of central nervous system, uh, adaptation and, you know, probably some muscular,

like remodeling that happened in that process that when I drop, you know, 25 pounds of body weight, I can still press at body weight, you know? Um, so yeah, there's definitely something to it, even if we don't have a good explanation for it. But yeah, so, you know, I, what I see when I'm, when I'm interacting with guys and it's generally the person that's starting, uh, that's new to strength training, either brand new or somebody who's been in it maybe for a few months, let's say like six to 12 months. And they've been trying and they just, they haven't really, they don't have a good idea. They don't have a good vision of what, you know, what a muscular body transformation is going to look like. Right. Right. I see a lot of guys who are six feet tall, like I said, and a lot of them are somewhere around 170 pounds,

plus or minus 10 pounds. You know, every once in a while you find a guy who's skinnier, you know, he's like a 140, 150 at that body weight. It's very skinny, but I'd say the average guy is six foot, 170 pounds. Uh, the guys who are a little bit shorter than that, I see a lot of like five foot eight to five foot 10 guys who were 150 to one 65. Yeah. Um, I, you know, the, the real tall guys, I see less of them, uh, cause they're smaller percent of the population, but the guys are like six, four and above. I see a lot of guys that are tall and they're like 200 pounds, six, four, 200, let's say. Um, so, so that's a baseline of a lot of guys that I'm seeing. And I would say the average age of these people that I'm talking about is, you know, between 20 and 50 to put a, you know,

so they're not old, um, but they're not necessarily like young teenagers either. Right. That are still going through puberty. Right. These are adult males. So, I mean, the way that I, I think about it just in rough numbers, rough numbers, because everyone's going to be different, right? Is that six foot guy who weighs 170 pounds, he's probably going to have to be somewhere between 200 and 225 to hit a physique that is big and muscular and also achieve some strong lifts. In other words, to get enough leverage to really drive their numbers up to be as strong as they can be, right? Absolutely. Obviously, framed matters a lot there. Your skinny ectomorph guys are going to be 200, and that's going to be a hard, you know, it's going to take a while to get there. Your bigger framed guys, you got, you know, bigger skeleton, bigger

bones, bigger joints, all that kind of stuff. They're going to be 225 at that same body weight. Same thing for the 5'8 to 5'10 guys. They're going to be between 185 and 200. Your 6'4 guy needs to weigh 245 probably, maybe 250. That might sound outrageous. It usually does. I think if I go right out and say, hey, you need to weigh 225, they just look at me like, you know, if I go right out and say like, hey, you need to weigh 225. They just look at me like, you're crazy, man. That's freaking huge. Right. It's not. It's not. Right. Remember, Pat Casey was too small at 6'1", 260. Okay. He was a champion powerlifter. We're not talking about that. We're just talking about an average guy that wants to get big and muscular and look big and actually achieve some strong lifts. So that's kind of my just ballpark of like what you should

be looking at. So what is that? In each of those cases, that's roughly 30 to 40 pounds of body weight, of total body weight. Yep. Does that sound about right to you? That's right. That sounds about right. And what I was going to say is it's a temporary situation. You don't have to stay there, but you got to stay there for a bit. You don't have to stay there for a bit. But that's what we're looking at. And so, so I wanted to bring that forward now to the next part of it, which is how do you get there? Because like you said, there's a lot of guys out there in the fitness world who are saying like, oh man, you shouldn't be, if you're getting, if you're eating a bunch of food and getting fat, you know, it's like, you know, what about your health, man? Like you shouldn't do that. You don't have to get fat. Well,

we're telling you like, no, you're going to have to put on this body weight. But then I think there's another breakdown, which is like, how do you put on this body weight? What does that process look like? What the fuck does it even mean to get fat? First of all, like, you know, right. We're not telling you to get morbidly obese because guess what? If you get too fat, you can't get into the positions we need you to get into. So that's number one. Right. But number two, you know, quote unquote, getting fat by today's standards due to, as we've said many times, the fight club era that seems to not die, has convinced many, many boys and men that anything over 10% body fat is fat. And I think that number's probably

gone up to 12 now, maybe 15 is more acceptable because, you know, their girlfriends got mad that they were more, you know, leaner than them. You know, I remember hearing that six years ago from a guy, and then my own girlfriend told me that, you know. So I think 15 has become more acceptable. But, you know, universally, people think 20% body fat is fat. And there are no quote-unquote standards for fat percentage, first of all, because the data that we have on it is such garbage and old and dated and the samples are small and the instruments are different. So we don't really even know if 20% body fat is fat. But basically, any sort of abdominal protrusion is considered fat, whether it's a 50-inch waist or a 35-inch waist. fat, whether it's a 50-inch waist or a 35-inch waist. And I think it's quite ridiculous because if you look throughout history, you look at, just go look at athletic pictures from the early 20th century. A lot of the guys were either skinny or just undefined. Not everybody had visible abs.

It was not the norm. It never was the norm. And suddenly now, it's considered the norm. In some countries, like my professor told me that, he's my advisor actually at the time, that in India, that people think you're poor if you're skinny. If you have abs, you're poor because you're not eating. So a lot of this is just mass media over the last 50 years showing us vascularity and high levels of muscle definition. That said, it's pretty cool to do it. I do it. You're going to see me do it again at some point the next year. I did it last year. I've done it. It's cool. It's fun, whatever. I hated doing it when I was weak because there was no reward on the other side of it. I'd get down to sub 160 and not show any abs or any definition up top. And I'd do the math and I'd be like, well, shit,

I'm going to have to weigh like 135 to show visible abs. And that's not what a man's supposed to weigh, you know? And if you think a man's supposed to weigh that and, you know, whatever, man, you know, that's my opinion. You don't like it, go listen to a different podcast. But a man who's 5'9 is not supposed to weigh 135. That's just simply not a healthy weight for a man. So I'm left with what options, right? I'm like, well, if I really want abs, I get down to 135, or I need to change the lean body mass part of this equation to get that percentage down at a heavier body weight. And nowadays, I get made fun of when I get down because, you know, 170 by powerlifting standards is skinny, you know? Right. 165 is skinny. It's 5'9". Guys competing in the

165 class are 5'4", you know? 5'3". Yes, right. You know, guys, yeah, guys who are 5'9 are 198 on up, you know? The champions are like 275, you know. Kirk Karwoski, he was like 58, 275, you know. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, 59, 170, that's a skinny guy. But, you know, I'm not a powerlifter, you know. So you guys are sitting there thinking that I'm telling you to go be a powerlifter. I'm not a fucking powerlifter.

Right. The reason I drifted towards this style of training was because it was evident to me that the champions in bodybuilding, the IFBB, had a powerlifting background for many decades. I don't know what the situation is now, but Ronnie Coleman had a powerlifting background. Arnold had a powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting background. Franco Colombo had a powerlifting background and it was pretty common knowledge that these guys would powerlift or do some form of that high intensity, low volume training and the off season, you know, and maybe their volumes higher, you know, their bodybuilders than a traditional powerlifter. But the point is they lifted heavy.

And then I talked to just bros that I knew that had been, you know, in the weight room since they were, since they were teens and they were big and strong guys. And, you know, they were on, and I'm thinking of one guy in particular from Chicago that I'm friends with. I haven't talked to him in a while. I'll have to drop him a note. But I was talking to him, and he did martial arts when he was younger. He was thin. He had more of the slim, fucking mainstream ab look that we talk about,

the fight club type of look, but probably like 10 to 15 pounds heavier than Brad Pick's. He had more muscle density. But, you know, he looked like that. He was, you know, probably 5'5", you know, and he was probably 160, you know, 165 and lean, which is a pretty dense guy. Then, you know, he did some fucking drugs and all that shit and kept lifting. And, you know, now he's probably like 185, 190, you know, at that height. He's a big dude. He likes being that big. I don't know what he weighs now he's older you know but this was when

he was in his 30s you know now he's in his 40s and uh anyhow i remember asking him like 10 years ago i'm like i need to get big man i'm like i'm having trouble building muscle you know i keep fucking cutting down and you know i end up at 155 pounds and, you know, 13% body fat with no muscle definition up top, you know. And he's like, if you want to get big, you got to lift fucking heavy, you know. And I heard that before. My stepbrother told me that. My dad told me that. Like all the big guys I talked to would say you have to lift fucking heavy.

And, you know, when he told me that, you know, I'm like, okay, that makes sense. And then I started lifting heavy and my body started changing. You know, the part I didn't understand was I'm not a thick guy, so I'm never going to look like a thick guy. And I'm just going to, you know, grow in relation to where I was, and that's going to continue over time as long as I don't get hurt. So that part's cool. But the recipe was correct. You know, the weight had to get fucking heavy. So I'm not a power lifter. I actually have only competed in two or three power lifting meets. I think I've competed in more strength lifting meets. Right. I don't enjoy those meets. I like going to them and hanging out and taking lifters to power lifting meets because the environment is fun. I just don't enjoy being a competitor in that sport. I've not had a fun time in a competition as a lifter. I always

have as a coach. It's never a bad experience as a coach. Sure. Get to talk to people, get to coach lifters, you know, get to drink sometimes, get to eat hot dogs. You know, it's a lot of camaraderie, but I don't enjoy it as a lifter. So this idea that I'm telling you to power lift, to squat, bench, and deadlift, that's it, that's bullshit, because I also tell you to chin and press and eventually curl and do other things. But my point is, you fuckers with the 135 squat and the 175 bench, that's not strong enough, man. Look at the guys that you're comparing yourself to. Look at the guys that you seek to look like. They're fucking around in the gym doing bro shit, lifting a lot more weight than you. They're repping out 225, even though they have visible abs and vascularity and all that shit you're chasing,

they're repping out 225 benches, you know? Their baseline press is 135, you know, for several reps, right? If they were to even deadlift, they would have at least three plates on the bar, you know? Like, why is there this correlation with these guys that are muscular that you want to look like you know jacked fight club because fight club he was pretty skinny but you know what actually brad pitt bench 275 when he did that movie let's be clear on that there you go i didn't know that yeah i did know that i remember reading that so there is a tight correlation between muscularity and strength you know that's not an impressive bench by powerlifting standards, but hey, he lifted a lot more than you're lifting.

So do you think that when you cut down to 5% body fat and starve yourself to do it, that you're going to, you know, do that at a reasonable body weight? I mean, what was he, probably a buck 55? But again, he benched 275. You know, that's getting up there. That's the high 200s. That's more than a lot of these

guys lift. These skinny fat dudes, and I know some of you are listening, are often struggling to get past 175 for a set of five on the bench. I see it all the time. Sometimes 165, 155. 175 seems to be a common number that I've seen in these smaller guys that just aren't very muscular, but aren't super lean either. Yeah.? Yeah. And, uh, yeah, I had, um, something I looked up for this show is, uh, cause I think he's maybe to your, to your point, uh, that fight club, I think that's, that's finally starting to shift a little bit and, uh, guys can be a little bit heavier now, right? Just a little bit. But so I, to me, all the girlfriends got pissed off. Right. Right. So Henry Cavill, I think he's a good kind of bellwether for the, the modern, you know, little bit but so i to me all the girlfriends got pissed off right right so henry cavill i think

he's a good kind of bellwether for the the modern you know attractive male in mass media um so for those of you who don't know him he played superman in several movies he played the witcher recently you know he's so he's done the obligatory shirtless scenes in those movies, superhero movies, basically. So when he was training for Superman, I believe, this was, I don't know, five or six years ago, let's say. Yeah. I found some articles about his training regimen and he started at a deadlift of 300 and he PR'd his deadlift at 435 during his time training for that movie. How much? It doesn't say how many reps, but 435, okay?

He can bench 435? No, no, that was a deadlift. Oh, okay. So deadlift 435. Other PRs of note include a 245-pound push press, a 365-pound back squat, and 10 sets of 10 on the front squat with 225.

Um, and I, I have heard him say that, um, he's, he's benched 300 at some point as well. Okay. So yeah, so this is a guy like, right. He's not an athlete. He's not a power lifter, right? This guy's only job job was to look good for this movie. Okay. So for those of you who want to look good, this, I think he's a good example, right? Other than the fact that yes, he's genetically elite in the sense that he has the right body and face and everything for movies. But, but think about that. Okay. What is this guy doing? 435 deadlift, 365 squat, deadlift, 365 squat, front squatting 225 for 10 sets of 10 for a bunch of volume, benching 300. If you can't do that or close to it, then you're barking up the wrong tree.

You need to work on that first. Those are very achievable numbers for most guys. As you're saying that, I just did a quick Google on Brad Pitt's bench press because I remember reading this years ago yeah and uh you know i could keep looking but i haven't found the exact article that you know cited the 275 but i remember seeing that uh they're talking about for troy and fight club he had to lift to hold on to muscle and run off the and he did a lot of cardio to get rid of the fat you know there's this crazy fucking workout in here but you know as expected the only thing that the fucker really did with a barbell was bench press um according to this according to this article and uh listen up people you guys getting stuck at 175 doing set of five set of four set of three i'm talking to you brad pitt who was probably 155 to 165 when he did that movie. I don't know what he weighed, but it's probably in that range given his height. And he was 5% body fat probably. And he probably sits at

9% naturally. But all that aside, he was benching your 165 bench that, you know, you got three sets of five for before you started failing at 170. He did that for 25 reps,5 for 25 195 for 15 225 for eight so you know there's an obvious correlation here between strength and size and he's not huge but look at the guy in that movie he doesn't look like an untrained flaccid pile of shit it looks like he's doing something with his muscles right uh you know we can come up with a fancy word for that let me think on it the next few episodes and maybe we need to come up with a word for that these little skinny fucking ripped motherfuckers that you look at him you're like right that guy's he's one of those skinny motherfuckers that can lift like you just

know by looking at him and that's what he looked like in that movie you know he didn't look like a flaccid skinny pile of shit so i So I see these numbers. It's no surprise, but guess what people? They're not that heavy. That is not competitive for powerlifting. Okay. Henry Cavill, he's six foot one. Right. And as much as you can believe this information, his weight is cited at 205 pounds. Okay. So what did I say earlier? I said, if you weigh, if you're six feet tall, you weigh 170, you need to weigh 200 to 225. That's right. Okay. This guy's a great,

this guy is exactly the mold that I'm talking about. Right. So he hit some, some heavy numbers for an average guy. You don't see people doing that in the gym. Um, and, uh, I've seen some other articles about him that by the way, he ate about 5,000 to 6,000 calories a day when he was training to hit those numbers to gain weight. So, you know, I think that proves our point there. I think that's a decent example. Yeah, I just pulled up our guy Brad Pitt. He was 172 pounds.

Yep, yep. So there's our more slender example, right? Yeah. You have 15 inch biceps. Yeah. You know, that's self-reported, but that looks about right. Yeah. He's not, he doesn't have champion bodybuilder biceps, but again, he doesn't look like a scrawny, flaccid pile of shit, you know?

So that's the point, people. Like you guys that are like, you know, 165 to 195, depending on height, we're talking, you know, five, six to six foot, you know, let's say you're 155 to 195, 165 to 195, and you're 20% body fat, your problem is not body fat, it's muscle mass. you're looking at that is about 185 and ripped he's lifting a lot more fucking weight than you at 185 and ripped i used to see it in the weight room all the time in college they have these bros they were probably on shit too some were some weren't i have no fucking idea um but the point is i'd look at them and they're just repping out weights that i can't even do for a single rep and they weren't impressive power lifting weights the thing thing is, because I was weak as piss, I had to train like a power lifter. I had to get strong, you know, I had to get strong.

But I never trained like a pure power lifter. I always did presses. I always did chin-ups, did some rows. I'm doing curls, you know, but, you know, this idea that heavy lifting equals power lifting, no, you're not going on a platform. You're not going to do a one RM squat, bench press and deadlift on a platform. We're not

doing that, you know, but you are limited by strength. Brad Pitt and Henry Cavill probably are not, you know, and they're probably, you know, especially Henry Cavill, he probably had to take some drugs for that, you know? I don't know that Brad Pitt did. He kind of looks like that all the time, it looks like, you know? Right. Yeah. He's got that physique. That's a great point. So, again, if you look at pictures of Henry Cavill just, like, day-to-day, so, in other words, not in movie mode, not actually shooting, the guy, like, he just looks like a jacked, like, he's just like a jacked dude, but he's got a smooth stomach.

He's got, you know, some smoothness around his arms and delt caps in his chest but he but he looks jacked there's still like muscularity there you can see like he look would look good in a t-shirt but yeah he takes a shirt off at the beach and he's not he's not all ripped up no like that's that's that's pretty realistic i mean that's what you're gonna see with a lot of guys what you have to understand is you are not them and you're gonna have to bust your fucking ass off to get a fraction of what they have at baseline you know that's right so this this is why you don't kind of summarize all this this is why we you know you do this long enough and you age like a normal human male you come to the conclusion that training for looks is a giant waste of fucking

time because it doesn't fucking matter that much you you know. But, you know, we got a lot of guys that, you know, started doing this in their 20s, never figured it out. They're still attached to these goals. And, you know, I'm still going to help you do that. You know, I'm not going to criticize you for shit that I did when I was younger. But at the end of the day, you're going to come to that conclusion eventually. You know, you will. If you haven't already, you will. Yeah. That doesn't mean go look like a fat sloppy pile of shit but you know you don't have to be super ripped nobody cares your girlfriend's gonna get pissed at you you're not supposed to be smaller or leaner than her yeah and your legs certainly better not be smaller than hers i've heard this from many women yeah right right and my girlfriend included she said that uh yeah you know that i'm lucky my legs

are bigger than hers are. It was the opposite. It was unacceptable. My wife wants me to weigh more than her, be able to pick her up. And, yeah, I need to look bigger than her, you know. And she's a muscular woman. She's got pretty good genetics for building muscle. And she's strong. But, yeah, those are the criteria.

But, you know, at the end of the day, there's so many, now this is just like YouTube common knowledge, but there's so many fucking spoof videos that make fun of this. You train for looks and get into bodybuilding shit, over a long enough timeline, you're really just competing with other dudes.

Yeah, it's true. It's a sausage party. Yeah, it's essentially, yeah. It's no longer about the opposite sex. You know who we haven't really given much credence to on this. You know, the reason we haven't really dove into women and bulking is because a lot of women don't need to do it. You know, like, there are some of you do, you know, my girlfriend

is one of them, she had to gain 20 pounds, and she looks great, you know, her didn't have to buy new clothes, you know, got stronger, she was so under muscled. So for you great, you know. Didn't have to buy new clothes, you know. Got stronger. She was so under-muscled. So for, you know, you women listening, she was 98 pounds at one point in her PhD program. That's the earliest DEXA we have of her pre-weightlifting, pre-marathon running, too. She was 98 pounds at 28% body fat. That is an under-muscled woman. She never thought she was fat.

She always perceived herself as being too damn skinny, you know. Yeah. She graduated high school at 90 pounds, but low muscle mass. Then she ran marathons and she says her calves grew just from running because she was so under-muscled, you know? Right. And she was about 106 when I met her. And then, you know, she trained, gained 15, 20 pounds.

Her abs got more defined, you know, from doing that. And then over the years, she's oscillated between 115 and 125, you know for doing that and uh then over the years she's oscillated between 115 and 125 you know and 125 has been a more recent thing because she's been training for eight years or seven years now she's been training for seven years now so her top has went up their bottom has went up you know in terms of top end of her weight range bottom end of her weight range you know she'll never be 106 again most likely unless she really wants to starve her ass off for one of these contests she does. But my point is, a lot of the time, you know, a skinny, fat female doesn't need to gain a bunch of weight, you know, doesn't need to lose a bunch of weight unless she wants to. You know, I've helped many women lose a bunch of weight that wanted to be leaner. And I've noticed that women

aren't as sensitive to the calorie restriction as men are. And Rip's written about this in the book as well. You know, I can train a woman on low calories and keep a lot more performance than a man. And I think it's just because the way fat's distributed and the way the leverage changes. Yeah. You know, the traditional male fat storage patterns in the midsection, apple shape, right? The traditional or typical, stereotypical, whatever word you want to use, the general female fat storage patterns in the hips and thighs. So you're not going to get much leverage by growing a bigger ass and bigger thighs, but you get a lot of leverage by getting a big gut, you know? Yes. Yeah. Especially in the squat and deadlift.

Exactly. And the bench press. So, you know, I've seen women that are 185 and women that are 115, you know, pressing and bench pressing the same weight, you know, because both of them have visible abs, you know? That's right. And you see a lot more women, uh, that with the muscular distribution between their top and their bottom is different too, right? You see a woman who's 185, they can deadlift a whole lot that still has a small upper body. Their shoulders are small. Uh, and I mean, like the, their, their skeletal frame as well as their muscular distribution. Yeah. So that's pretty common.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's why there's not a whole lot to talk about there. That's a different episode. That's more of a different topic when it comes to women and weight fluctuations. You're dealing with different issues typically, although this issue does come up a fraction of the time. It's just not the most common issue. So we're not trying to leave you out you know yeah physiologically everything

we're saying is still true for a female right the it's just the the uh degree to which the changes will take place is different right everything's just on a smaller scale yeah you're going to gain less total muscle it's going to happen slower You're not going to lift as much total weight. You're not going to lift as much weight in relation to body weight. That's generally not going to happen. So everything's a little bit different, but the process is the same. You're not going to have to eat as many calories to get, you know, to get the needle moving. But, you know, we'll do an episode on this. It's just going to, it's going to sound a little different because the challenges, the goals, the motivations that we run into with female lifters tend to be different, you know, because we are different, you know. that you eventually will come off of the idea of that you're doing all this purely for aesthetic reasons and that you'll do it for reasons of like you enjoy training you enjoy being very functional

because you're strong and you have muscles i think that's very true i think there's another way to frame it which is this if you go through this process, let's say that you are like, all you really care about is like, ah, you know, I really just want to look better. Okay. If you commit yourself to this process and you get strong and you put on muscle and you're a four or five years into this process and the goals have shifted and you just don't care about the aesthetic goals you used to have. Well, guess what? You've given yourself in a tremendous athletic platform that you get to use for the rest of your life. You know, you've given yourself strength that's going to make everything in your life easier.

You know, if you pick up a hobby, an outdoor hobby, you know, whatever it is, kayaking, playing soccer, throwing the baseball, whatever it is, you're going to be better at all of those things because you put all that effort into getting strong. If you get into something else, maybe you go further down this aesthetic, you know, maybe you start lifting, you know, just want to look better. And then you're like, man, you get into bodybuilding, let's say. Well, guess what? You've given yourself a great platform to get into bodybuilding. You've taught yourself the basic skills of lifting the barbell. If you learn how to squat, bench, press, and deadlift, then you're going to be good at doing all of those bodybuilding movements, right? We've talked about that before.

They're foundational in a lot of different ways. And the same thing is true for women too. If you want to be, like maybe in your twenties, you just care about looking good at the beach. That's cool. But maybe you get to be in your mid thirties and now you're a mom and you've got little kids. Well, guess what? If you're strong, then you can handle those long days of picking up babies and toddlers and managing kids all day and managing their stuff and then cooking and, you know, cleaning around the house and working a job, right? That's the, you know, the life of a mother is surprisingly physical for those that aren't familiar with it. You know, you're going all day and, you know, you hold a little 20 pound baby.

It's not much, but then you do it for, you know, 12 hours a day and it becomes a lot. So guess what? If you have a good squat and deadlift, you're going to be much more resilient. And I see that a lot in women. I call them young women, but they're women who are in their thirties and their lack of physical practice and lack of strength and muscle mass really starts to wear, wear them down. They're just not ready for the physical demands of motherhood. And, you know, but if, again, if you started, if you're in your 20s and you're just like, okay, you do this process and you get strong and you lift weights, well, you've given yourself that foundation that you get to use for the rest of your life, even if your goals change and what you want out of life changes. So, you know, I think there's a lot of value here and a lot of different ways we can

frame it, but it all comes back to me. This has been my experience with a lot of different people is that what we're talking about here is very foundational, whatever your goals are. And it's never something, I don't think it's ever something you would regret doing. Right. Right. You might regret doing a gymnastics program in your mid-30s.

Yeah. I don't think you're going to regret getting your squat bench and deadlift up, even if you don't care about driving them up 10 years from now. No, you're not. And, you know, I can't say it enough. These guys that you know, are bodybuilders, naturally jacked

actors, etc. They don't have to do this. They want to do this because they want to, you know, be as big as possible be as ripped as possible, whatever, right? Or they have a movie they're getting paid a lot of money for. Yeah, you on the other hand, you're you're starting out much at a much lower baseline than they are you have to get strong they don't have to train to get strong they're strong out the gate right so remember that they are strong out the gate these guys and gals too these people that are that that look like they train look muscular whatever word you want to use, they were strong out the gate.

They were lifting more than you are after a year on their first day. So let that sink in for a second. And if you think that doesn't matter, you're in la-la land. These professional researchers and bodybuilding gurus are out of touch with reality. They haven't went through the process. They went in strong or they're creating artificial conditions for very short periods of time that aren't typically sustainable. You know, guys like us, on the other hand, we've put the years in, we've learned from other people. In my case, I have not fucked with drugs. Trent, you have not fucked with drugs, correct?

Nope. So, you know, there's a lot more to be learned there. You know, the longer you stay off them, the more things you have to troubleshoot. And then, you know, if somebody's doing that stuff, there's things to troubleshoot there. I'm sure that's not what I do, though. You know, that's not what I do. And what I will tell you is this. A, you have to really enjoy this because you're going to be doing it for a long time.

And you may just get a mediocre result out of it. So you have to enjoy it, you know, because if I wanted, like, the absolute absolute best result ever i would have quit a long time ago be pointless or i would have had to get on drugs you know right but i i enjoyed doing it so that's number one you have to have a tremendous amount of motivation to keep doing this um and you know also too i've improved you know sure i'm not a champion bodybuilder i'm not as jacked as a hollywood actor although my friend who works in the film business said that with cameras and shit i probably look just as jacked as a Hollywood actor, although my friend who works in the film business said that with cameras and shit, I probably look just as jacked as these guys when I'm lighter, you know, when I'm on my low end. Sure. But either, so that's another thing we didn't talk about, but we don't need to, you know, it speaks for itself. But, you know, my point is, you know, we went through the work.

We've troubleshooted shit. We've done all the stupid things that you've tried to do. things that you've tried to do. And I'm telling you right now, you really got to like doing this because if, you know, if you could just put all that size on and get all those gains and be super ripped, you know, and do it in a short amount of time without drugs, you would have done it by now because it just accidentally happens for these people. If it's not accidentally happening for you, then, you know, you might want to, you know, he'd do a few words of advice here. You know, you need to get stronger. You know, if you're fucking around with, you know, piddly weights that these guys are warming up with, then that should tell you something, because there's clearly a tight correlation between strength and the appearance of your

muscles. They may not appear the way you'd like them to appear. You know, I'd like to appear to be 6'2". That's not going to fucking happen, you know? Right. If you'd like to have a long bicep from your shoulder to your elbow and you don't already have it, you weren't born with it, that's not going to happen, right? So set your expectations, you know? Look at yourself. Be like, okay, this is what I look like.

If I live for five years, am I still going to look like this? No, but you'll look like a better version of that, you know? But you're not going to completely change something that's not already there. You know, you're not going to, you're not going to add inches to your height. You're not going to make your biceps longer. You're not going to make your skin tighter, you know, or more or less, or, or, you know, you're not gonna make your skin tighter, you know? Yeah. You're going to look better. You're going to look better. The thing is like, if you, everybody looks better when they train, if you, yeah. If you look at other people that yourself, and you look at other people that go through this, you're like, wow, that guy looks better.

Wow, she looks so much better. Like, you know, it's like, you can see the improvements in other people, but we're blind to the improvements in ourselves. Yeah. So- Just know you're going to look better if you keep doing this over the long haul. Yeah. And if you don't enjoy doing it, then you're setting yourself up for failure. You got to like it. You really got to like this shit. Right. Yeah. And there's lots of ways to do that. There's lots of ways to do that.

opening gyms. You better really like this business because you don't make a lot of money and, you know, you might be able to, if you do things right and sensibly, you might be able to afford a few beers at the end. And, you know, that sunk in. I thought about that when he said that. It's the same thing here. You better really like training because, you know, what you're probably going to get out of this, you know, is you're going to train for a very long time and you're going to improve, but you're not going to have like a 200% improvement. You know, you're going to look a little more jacked than you did in the beginning and you're going to be very rewarded by it you know it's going to be visible to yourself and others but you're not going to go and be mr olympia just from fucking lifting weights if you're if that's not already happening for you

yeah it's true it's true so enjoy it so there you go this wasn't really a show about bulking but as it was a show about physique this is show about what you need to get there you know there you go hope that's helpful I hope so too you know because I wanted to take a different spin on it because you know lately if you tell anybody they need to gain fat it's like taboo everybody tries to pretend we're not telling you to gain fat no we're telling you to gain fat and muscle and and strength and uh we could go into what that diet looks like we'll do a part two of this episode i think it does yeah let's do part two where we talk about you know about about that right let's go into

what it looks like i think we've just introduced the topic today we're going to talk about what that looks like though though, next time. We'll talk about the training and the diet surrounding that. But I really just wanted to hammer home that, yes, I'm telling you to gain body fat. And I'm not apologizing for that. I'm not telling you to become a fat sloppy mess. I'm not telling you to become a fat unhealthy sloppy mess. And if you have a chronic disease that can be worsened by gaining a bunch of weight or eating a bunch of food, I'm also not telling you to do this. This

is for the general healthy population, you know, that's under 50. Yep. Probably more like under 40. You know, and you can, you can do this and you're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. I don't want you to get obese. You know, I don't want you to have trouble walking. I want you to be able to walk your dog, play with your kids, all that shit. That's not what I'm saying, but you're going to gain body fat. You're not going to be defined. Plain and simple. And that's what the other people don't want to tell you. They're going to say, we want to skew it towards muscle or you want to gain mostly muscle. You want to minimize fat. You're not going to do that. It doesn't work that way. You know, maybe theoretically

it works that way. And you can write a nice paper for a journal that sounds like that, but when the mean body weight of the participants is 75 kilos or less, what does that tell you about the sample? Again, another topic. I could go on and on about this, so I'm just going to close out here by saying, look, guys, you're going to gain fat when you're gaining muscle, and it's going to be probably more than you want to gain. It's not going to be a little itty-bitty amount of fat. It's going to be noticeable, okay? But you're not going to be a sloppy mess. So that said, thank you for tuning into the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. You can visit the gym here in Phoenix, Weights and Plates Gym.

We're about, oh, five to 10 minutes south of Sky Harbor Airport near South Mountain. And we have an Instagram page, Weights on double underscore and double underscore plates, which I desperately need to update, but I plan on doing that. So yeah. Very good.

You know where to find me, on Instagram at marmalade underscore cream. And if you have any coaching questions or you're interested in online coaching, email me jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. All right. We'll talk to you again in a couple of weeks. Thank you.