Weights and Plates Podcast - #58 - Bulking, Part Deux

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

Dr. Robert Santana and Starting Strength Coach Trent Jones continue their discussion on bulking, including favorite foods for amassing calories, how fast you should gain weight, and why the weight on the bar should be the main metric of progress.   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. What is it, 639 here? here it's what 939 there yeah that's right yeah my days are I'm like a vampire basically except that I don't sleep during the day I just don't sleep me too I basically yeah work and pass the baby around during the day and then work at night some more. So before we get into the show today, we're going to talk about bulking some more. Okay.

This is part de of the bulking conversation. Before we do that, though, we got to talk about something that's been going around the news in the strength community. Have you heard about the personal trainer in, was it like Bali or something, that died squatting? Oh, yeah. Have you seen the video? I didn't see the video of him dying. Is that up?

It's around. Yeah, it's not hard to find. Do I want to see this? No, not really. But it's not as gruesome as it might sound he didn't he didn't die immediately in the set uh he died not long after so i saw a video of him doing that load and completing the reps in a previous workout and uh i have some thoughts on it but i'm gonna need you to fill in the blanks here of what actually happened. Okay. Well, I've only seen the video of the incident.

Right. What was the incident? And basically, okay, so we got this guy's like a personal trainer of some kind. I don't know anything about him, but apparently he was somewhat of a, he was a minor fitness influencer. So he had a lot of followers, but, you know, pretty, pretty jacked looking guy, but a smaller guy. Anyway, uh, he takes out 210 kilos, I think it was. So like four 60, whatever, and high bar position descends with the weight gets stapled in the hole. And, you know, basically after it's, he, he, he, he pops out of the hole a few inches and then it staples him

right after that so he sinks down and then in that bottom position he didn't have a proper spotter which is what i want to talk about he had one guy behind him no safeties so he's down in the hole asked a grass now with nowhere to go there's nowhere to go and so basically at some point his balance shifts forward or something it didn't look like he was deliberately doing this i think what happened is his balance shifted forward a little bit the bar rolls up his neck and then snaps his neck it broke his neck and killed him basically he face planted with the bar in his neck yes yeah so the bar rolled forward off of that high bar position onto his neck pinned him to the ground and then you know it that was so

that's what i basically over at that point that's what i thought happened and uh watching his other video you know us lifters were creatures of habit and the first thing i noticed was there were no spotter arms in and he had one dude behind him like you said right so my assumption was that he did that during the incident and uh that's what i've been telling people behind him like you said right so my assumption was that he did that during the incident and uh that's what i've been telling people i'm like you know you're supposed to use spotter arms if you don't you've assumed the fucking risk i don't for those of you who have watched me squat outside the rack for a pr attempt uh the bar is lower on my back and uh it's going to be harder for it to do that to me but that doesn't excuse me from

doing it i'm just telling you my yeah shitty rationalizations or shitty rationalizations you know after what just happened i'm i've been using them regularly now but you know we we hate having spotter arms and i get it but you know PR attempt like that, he has probably a good idea. Actually, my PR attempts, the last time I maxed out my squat, as a matter of fact, I did have them in. When I'm doing 1RMs, I have them in. Well, that's, yeah, that's what I wanted to talk about. So I think most of the people familiar with starting strength would would understand that yeah you either use spotter arms or you have proper spotters which means you have two spotters on either end of the

barbell no rear spotter like not not two spotters plus a rear spotter no rear spotter because a rear spotter is really i think the only reason you have a rear spotter ever is to help you back in the rack to make sure you don't bounce off of the uprights. And that means that they do not do anything with the lift whatsoever. They just are there to make sure that as you are putting it into the pins, you don't bounce out of the pins. That's it. The actual people spotting the bar, if you were to miss a rep, are the people on the side of the barbell. So if you're not familiar with that, yeah, that's why I wanted to bring it up. I want to take this a step further too. I

think bench press should be handled the same way. Nobody says this enough. This one spotter on the bench press, I've had two incidents. Thankfully, both these guys survived them. One was with my cousin. This was eight years ago. He was, it's funny, both guys were benching the same weight, oddly enough. My cousin was benching 215. He had a spotter at the gym who was a gym bro. And for no apparent reason, the bar just slipped out of his hands and fell on his chest, you know?

Yeah, right. Knocked the wind out of him. and fell on his chest, you know? Yeah, right. Knocked the wind out of him. He survived it. Nothing broken, thankfully. And it freaked him out. And then he had like anxiety benching after that, you know, understandably so. And then a few months after that, around the same time, my best friend Eric was benching with me at a powerlifting gym here in town.

And I think that he was on a combo rack that had safe, I think it had safeties. Maybe it didn't. Maybe it was just a combo rack without safeties. Either way, I think if it did have safeties, they weren't set to the right height. Anyway, same exact thing happened, just rolled out of his hands randomly. There was no way that I was going to react to that fast enough standing over him. Impossible. Standing over him on those foot plates, the distance between the bar and my hands is pretty great, and I need reaction time, right? So I'm thinking about this. If you have two side spotters, they can react to that.

They're level with the bar. Their hands are close to it. They can react to that. But a spotter standing over the lifter several inches above the bar, the highest point of the bar, is not going to react quickly to a sudden loss of control of the bar. So I think that this silliness with one spotter on the bench press, that needs to go away. You need to have two spotters on the bench press because it's much easier to die on that lift than a squat. What happened to that guy is unfortunate, but it's a fluke. The chances of that happening are much lower than the chances of a bench press breaking your fucking neck, you know?

Yeah, right. Yeah, and there's guys that have died from dropping weights onto their chest. Happens every year. Yeah. Happens every year. Much less onto their throat, you know? Yeah, and the IPF still has one bench spotter, I think, right?

Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. I don't think I've ever seen in sanctioned competition, I don't think I've ever seen two side spotters on a bench press. No, there needs to be. I'm of the position that a bench press in competition should come out of a monolift so that you're eliminating all other humans from the performance of the lift and that there should be two side spotters. That's it. No handoff. You hand yourself off with a monolift and you have your spotters on each side. And that's the best way to handle a 1RM bench in competition. But that hasn't caught on yet because, you know,

power lifters aren't always the most logical people, you know, I like to think that's changing, but right, right. You know, inertia is a hell of a thing as we lifters know. Yes, for sure. For sure. Well, yeah. I mean, so, so let's, let's bring it back down to the, Yes, for sure. For sure. Well, yeah. I mean, so, so let's, let's bring it back down to the, to the home gym or your local gym, you know, wherever you train, you know, if you are squatting and you're going to go for a heavy single or really heavy doubles or triples, if you are working in a very high intensity range, um, then you need to either squat inside the cage with spotter arms. You can get spotter arms that come outside the rack. That's what I use. Or you need to have two well-trained spotters on

either side of you. And if you're training in a public gym, they're not well-trained. They're going to be fucking useless. So get the spotter arms. And if you don't have strong enough and possibly not strong enough right you know it's it's really that's that's really the long the short of it if you're on the bench press number one don't ever put collars on the bar um and number two use your spotter arms and or have a well-trained spotter working with you and well-trained means you're going to have to practice with them because, you know, handoffs and, you know, spotting correctly, that's just not somebody, you know, even me, you know,

I know what I'm doing when I spot a bench press, but, you know, if I was to spot you, you know, I haven't done that before, so I don't know exactly how you like the handoff. And if you're trying to bench 315 or whatever, that can really fuck you up. So, yeah. Yeah. Use the spotter arms. Little PSA. Little PSA there. So, yeah, that's incredibly unfortunate that that happened, but easily our episode. I had an incident where not having collars on the bench press became a problem. And this was one of my four attempts to get 315 when I was probably strong enough to get it. And there were flukes that took place. Two out of those four times, I had the bar uncollared and the plate slid off. had the bar on collared and the plate slid off.

The other two times, I think I had collars on it once, and then I got dizzy and had to set it down on the pins. And the other time I had collars off and it got dizzy and had to set it down on the pins. It sucked. It was, this is, people, this is why I haven't been to three plates, because with the time that it was there, these were the things that kept happening week after week. And then on week five, I was detrained.

I couldn't do it anymore. Right. This was right, just shy of lockout, these these things were happening but that's a separate topic what i'm getting at is uh i practically went black with no spotter maxing out and i dropped it right on those damn pins uh but the whole plate sliding off one side and the bar yanking off to the other with the other three plates you know there's right i think the real thing is if you are in a upright support bench that does not have spotter arms, you need to not have collars on. because I've had this happen with people that I've coached. It's happened to me before, where 999 times out of a thousand, I set my pins on the bench. I set them in the same,

no, I set them to the right height. And there's one time out of a thousand, for whatever reason, I was moving too fast, something changed, we had somebody new over, whatever, you know, whatever the reason is. I was rack pulling and they were in a different spot and the pins aren't there when you expect them to be there. And you're like, oh, they're there. If you have collars in the bar, you're fucked if you miss that rep. Oh yeah. And you have nowhere to go. You have nowhere to go. You have to be absolutely sure that those pins are going to be there. And you just like, it's going to happen one day. All it takes is one time for you to not set them right. And you can have a real problem on your hands. I've seen that happen before. So that's why I always, I will always advise, do not put collars on there. And you know, if you have shitty plates that won't, you know, or they don't fit on the

bar well, then you don't go after one RMs. Yeah. True that. You know, get better plates or go somewhere else where you can do that safely. And now I understand why people do it for that reason. That is legit. Sometimes you just have plates that don't sit on there well enough and, and, you know, not everybody's going to bench evenly. You know, my bar is not perfectly flat when I bench because my shoulder mobility and stuff is not perfectly even.

Right. So yeah, I get it, but you know, that's, I'm not, I'm not going to perfectly even. Right. So yeah, I get it. But, you know, that's, I'm not gonna recommend it. Right? No, that's a good point that I had not considered. I just had the opposite experience where the plate slid off on me. Fortunately, no incidents. Right place. But watching a barbell swing over you like that. Well, I tell you what, i'll never forget this stuck with me

from high school is sort of sort of related incident uh we had a big old offensive lineman this guy was huge he was like 6'2 330 340 he was 16 that's a big motherfucker yeah he was huge uh when he fell on you in the pile man it was It was terrible. He got carded for the kid's meal. Yeah, right. Well, he was squatting in the rack next to me. And the coaches had, you know, because football, we've got to be efficient. So we had like guys squatting

and all the racks are in a row along one wall. And then in between the racks, they had guys doing abs, you know, doing your crunches or whatever in between the racks they had guys doing abs you know doing your crunches or whatever in between right okay yeah and you know there's not that much space in between the racks it's it's like maybe four feet you know five feet just enough for the barbells you know to get loaded on and well uh he's squatting like i don't know 450 or something and one of the the the sleeves of the barbell fucking just popped and slid off holy shit the sleeve all the plates the sleeve what the broke yeah um now i don't know what

kind of god-awful bars we were using i i have no idea how this happened that you know it didn't really occur to me in high school that they could that could happen but so all the plates slide off basically it took the collar like basically because it that happened and it started sliding so you know the bar dipped to one direction and then the the plates took the the shitty spring collar with it so this collar came off and four plates in a quarter fall off. Right. And then of course the left side goes. And I was just thinking, I was like, man, two minutes earlier,

there was some guy doing crunches right there where those fucking plates slid off. And thank God that wasn't happening then because you would have been screwed. Absolutely. Anyway, you know, so just common sense, man. You know, that's the thing. With all these things, it could not happen time after time after time. You know, just eliminate the stuff that, like, is unforgivable. So, enough of that.

Let's get fat. Yeah, let's talk about getting fat. Yeah. Awesome. So much fun. So you had some thoughts you wanted to piggyback from last week, right? And then I want to talk about women. So, yeah. So yeah, we wanted to kind of follow up on the bulking episode, right? So we, we talked a lot about why you ought to bulk, um, you know, what, what the purpose of,

of bulking up is, um, and, and why the average person is going to have to do this in order to build muscle mass so that they can look like how they want to look down the road, right? Over years of training. And I realized in doing that, we didn't really talk about how to do this. And it sounds obvious, right? You're like, oh, well, you just eat a shitload of food, right? But I think a lot of people find that it's actually, it's harder than that. You can't just be like, oh, I'll just eat a shitload of food, right? But I think a lot of people find that it's actually, it's harder than that. You can't just be like, oh, well, I'll just eat a whole lot more food because most people do that and they gain like a little bit of weight, but not much. They, they, they stall out very quickly. And, um, you know, it helps to have a little bit of a strategy and some plans in order to, to actually hit your body weight target that you want.

And also do that without getting ridiculously fat, right? We don't want you to be a sloppy mess at the end of this process. And how you eat to get there matters. It's going to play into whether you end up being a sloppy mess or you just end up being, you know, big and jacked and, you know, a little bit more body fat. Yeah. So let's talk abouted and, you know, a little bit more body fat. Yeah. So let's talk about that process, you know, so what, what is it, you know, how do you talk about, you know, to your underweight

skinny fat males? How do you start to frame that discussion around eating? Like what are you going to advise in terms of calories, food choices, that kind of stuff. Well, I might tell them that if they don't want to gain any body fat or if they don't want to gain any visible body fat, that they've, you know, they're setting themselves up for failure and that, you know, they've come to the wrong place because that's just not how this works. Right. that's just not how this works. Right. Now, because I know that there's a psychological component here, I may start them on calories that are lower than I would like them to be on so that they can comply with something. And then I will increase the number of calories as the lifts start to slow down,

and I try to stay ahead of it so that we don't get a bunch of missed lifts, injuries, etc. and I try to stay ahead of it so that we don't get a bunch of mislifts, injuries, et cetera. And the biggest thing with these guys is they just think that, well, if I gain muscle, I'm going to gain fat. My fat percentage is high, so therefore it's going to get higher. And really, shouldn't I lean out? And then, you know, as we've talked about in the last episode and many other episodes, well, if you lean out, you're going to be 130 pounds at 5 foot 10 yeah and that's just that's not tenable i don't think you understand that your muscle to fat gain

is at a pretty decent ratio right now you know i'm not going to say one to one because then you know we're going to get all the trolls saying no there's no evidence, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, it's probably closer to one-to-one versus, you know, one-to-two, you know. Sure. One pound of muscle for two pounds of fat, right? It's probably somewhere in between those two if we had to guesstimate, right? And then I'd pay attention to their strength ratios, right? Because strength matters here, you know. Like these aren't guys

walking in here with a 500-pound deadlift, which is what the guru who told them not to get fat did. His first day in the gym, he was pulling 475 probably. And therefore, him pumping out reps early in his career made sense because him pumping out reps is reps with you know 400 pound deadlift 300 pound squat you know or maybe even higher than that you know for all we know so this guy didn't have to spend a bunch of time getting strong because his first day in the gym he was already fucking strong you know versus our skinny fat guy whose first day in the gym he's squatting 135 maybe 185 because he's fucked around in the gym for a while, or maybe 225, three inches high, you know? Yeah.

But the point is, you know, the guys that are telling them that they need to do a bunch of volume and not get fat are guys who had a high baseline level of strength and didn't need to specialize in strength at any point in their career because they were already fucking strong, you know? some cases they're already fucking lean too but because they're already fucking strong they're also already muscular you know right and now they're giving you advice to do what they did when they started out ahead of you you know they had they had a head start on you you know 475 deadlift is going to have a different looking back than your skinny fat guy's back, you know. Yeah, exactly. 100-pound barbell curl or 40, 50-pound dumbbells, you know, the first month of training,

is going to have different looking biceps than skinny fat guy over here, you know. So, you know, I really try to prioritize lifting more, letting the intensity of the workouts, the load lifted, guide the amount of calories eaten. And I was talking to somebody about this the other day, you know, I said, any way you try to spin it, you know, people like to wordsmith this, try to get into the semantics of it you know try to cherry pick sentences phrases you know peer-reviewed journals you name it a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle and just because you didn't peek and test your 1rm like a power lifter and have the absence of a legitimate no bullshit 1rm recorded does not mean that the muscle is not fucking stronger.

Come on. Come on. Right. 1RM goes up in almost all the, you know, I haven't looked at every single training study, but I'd say, I'd probably say that in the absence of studies where there was insufficient stimulus, in the studies where they progressively overload enough and see an effect, that effect is the 1RM goes up, whether it's 30 reps, 20 reps, 15 reps, 10 reps, 5 reps. When you're comparing high versus low, obviously,

low reps go up more, but the 1RM always goes up in these fucking studies. So the bigger muscle is still a stronger muscle. It may not be as strong as the guy who peaked and did fives and threes. It may not be as strong as that guy because you haven't fucking prepared the muscle for that. There's an element of practice involved when you're trying to express strength, right? But the guy doing 30s and adding, you know, a couple pounds a week or, you know, adding reps for a few weeks and adding weight every month or whatever, the guy progressively overloading 30s has a greater 1RM at the end of that training cycle than he did at baseline. So again, if you go through all these

research studies, you strength versus growth dichotomy people, 1RM always increases. You know, in these studies that say, you know, 30s are good for hypertrophy. 1RM always increases. You don't see body composition change in 1rm not increase or decrease you know you know when do you see them get weaker and gain a significant amount of lean mass you know you just don't see it you know no and if you do there's some fucked up shit that happened in the study that they're not reporting because as somebody who's been behind the scenes in an academic institution there's a lot of that shit that happens you know but anyhow we're not here to

shit on research. It's not what we're here to do. I spent seven years in a PhD program. I certainly learned some things there, what to do, what not to do. My point here is that one thing that you see across research on training is regardless of whether the weight is light or heavy, or regardless of whether the reps are high or low, one RM increases every time you see an effect in whatever their measure of muscle masses or wherever their estimate or extrapolation of muscle masses because a lot of the time, actually 100% of the time, it's an extrapolation, you can't measure muscle mass, you measure lean mass, you can't measure muscle mass. And I'd

argue can't even really measure lean mass, you measure lean mass, you can't measure muscle mass. And I'd argue you can't even really measure lean mass. You're estimating that too. You know, you're a lot of assumptions behind these instruments. But when lean mass goes up, 1RM goes up. Now, where people try to get into this strength growth dichotomy, 1RM goes up more if the reps are lower and the weight's heavier. Nobody denies that. But 1RM still goes up significantly when the weight is lower and the reps are higher, and it's progressed enough, you know, they're going to failure, they're adding reps or weight week after week, you see an increase in 1RM, it's not as robust or significant as if they're doing fives, threes or ones, obviously. But it furthers my point. A bigger muscle is a stronger muscle,

you know? Yeah. That's how, that's why they get, that's the adaptation, you know? It's growing larger to produce more fucking force, you know? So I, it can't hammer that enough. So to bring it back to our point here, the skinny fat guy, if his lifts are getting hard, needs to eat more. And if he's not sleeping, he needs to sleep more. But let's assume that his lifestyle is pretty stable. You know, he doesn't have a bunch of stress getting in the way. And really the only lifestyle choice that could be interfering is his diet. Yeah. Right. Sure. You know, once it gets heavy and I'm starting to notice he's barely finishing reps. All right, we're going to hammer some more food. And this approach probably results in more resetting of load than, you know, the traditional shove your face, get to a high BMI to optimize your leverage and lift heavy. You know, that probably works better and you get fewer resets, you know, when you're doing it in a more conservative way to minimize fat gain, you're going to reset more because you're going to have to gain some weight. You're gaining weight slower. So your leverage is improving at a slower rate and you

may not get as fat, you know? Yeah. And so are you, you know, with these guys, like, so I assume that you're probably having, trying to hit a baseline of protein already, right? That's out the gate. From the get-go, right? That's out the gate. 150 to 200 grams of protein out the gate. Okay. So the protein is fixed.

So when they start to hit a wall or they're approaching that wall on their squat and deadlift, then are you adding carbs next? I always start with carbs. I add fat pretty slow because A, fat is more calorically dense, so you don't have to add as many grams to get the same number of calories. And B, it's not as critical to training, you know, beyond making sure you're getting enough, which is pretty easy to do, as carbohydrates and protein. So, you know, I might add a couple grams here and there while adding like, you know,

20 grams of carbs at a time or 30 grams of carbs at a time or 40 grams of carbs at a time, you know? So that's usually my approach there. You know, there's other things, you know, I might recommend creatine, fish oil, you know, multivitamins, you know, various, depending on the situation, but.

Sure. You know, those are, those are other topics, but yeah, that's how I do it. They might get to late stage novice faster you know it just depends how fat the person wants to get you know and part of this series right trying to get carl on here carl carl's a guy i'm just going to introduce him briefly because i think if we can line up schedules he's traveling north america right now he's from london englishman uh you know he's if we can get him in front of a decent mic, we'll probably bring him on.

Carl's a good example of a guy who was in pretty good shape by most people's standards. I think he was, what, he said he was 70 kilos when he started. He's about 5'5", so he was 155 pounds at 5'5", which is not skinny. Decently jacked. When we make fun of 155, we're thinking 5'8 to 5'6", you know, 155. Yeah. But, you know, he's under 5'8". He's about 5'5", I'd say, 155.

So he was in good shape, you know. He looked like, I think I have to clarify with him, assuming he was crossfitting at the time, maybe. I don't know. I don't remember what he was doing before. But he looked like what, you know, a crossfitter would look like. You know, he was crossfitting at the time, maybe. I don't know. I don't remember what he was doing before. But he looked like what a crossfitter would look like. He was lean. He was fairly muscular at baseline. He was squatting over, I think he was squatting over 400, right,

when he met Rip? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I think he had a halfway decent squat for a small guy. So he's fairly athletic. He could do the Olympic lifts with quite a bit of weight. So he's, you know, pretty decent athlete. And, uh, he decided he wanted to get as strong and as big as humanly fucking possible. And, uh, he gained a hundred pounds, you know, he gained a hundred pounds. I don't know what the timeframe was. You'll have,

you know, we'll have to ask him, uh, you know, I got some of the details, but I know he gained a hundred pounds. He's been heavier than that. Even at certain points, he's come down, you know, now he's about a hundred pounds over baseline, but I think at one point he was 120 pounds over baseline. And, you know, he'd be considered obese by body fat percentage standards and by BMI standards, you know, and he did not give a fuck. And, you know, that's for him to talk to us about, you know, I'm not going to speak on his behalf, but what I will say in my interactions with him over the last eight years is he did not give a fuck. There are guys out there that will gain a shitload of body weight to lift more, you know, and, uh, that's not what we're telling you to do, you know? And I think that their perspective is valuable because the thing is, when we think, when a lot of people think about a guy gaining a hundred pounds,

they say, oh, that's not healthy. I don't want to be a fat ass. Right. And nobody ever considers the benefits to that because, you know, there, there, there are trade-offs for sure. And there are guys that should not do that ever. If you're over 40, I don't suggest you gain a hundred pounds. He did this, I believe in his twenties, you know, and now I think he's in his thirties. He's trying to take, he's trying to take it off. You know, he wants to get as low as he can while staying strong. Last time I talked to him, but, uh, you know, just because you're getting fat doesn't mean everything's bad. You know, that doesn't mean everything's bad. Again, we're not advocating for people to get fat. I can't say that enough. And I'll probably say it 10 more times in this podcast

to hammer that point home. But I want you to understand why somebody would do it to get strong, you know, and what the benefits are. And, you know, your leverage changes, you know, did you need to gain 100 pounds? You know, we'll never know. We can't go back in time. But, you know, there's guys that'll do that. You know, there's guys that'll do that. And they don't give a fuck. You know, the reason that somebody, power lifters especially, gain body weight and get fat to lift more is because it gives you more leverage. Mass moves mass. And it's not just muscles contracting and producing force. If you have more to push against, it's easier to move the weight. You know, if you push your body against something, like let's say you're trying to move a safe, right? This is the first thing that pops in my head. Safes are heavy, you know, and they kind of glue to the floor.

If you push your whole body into it, you can move it, right? Now, imagine if you're heavier and you don't even train. Let's say you're 100 pounds heavier. It's going to be easier to move that safe, even if you don't train. If you're untrained at 155, and let's assume you're staying reasonably active and can still walk around and do things. I'm not saying you're just on the couch all day, sedentary. Let's say you're a manual laborer who's obese. You're 5'5", 255, but you're active. You're going to have an easier time pushing that safe at 255

versus 155 even if you don't train because you have more leverage to fucking push it, you know? For those of you who have watched wrestling, whether it's pro wrestling, sports entertainment, or actual wrestling, right? If you're,

I don't know, let's say 500 pounds. Remember Yokozuna? Did you watch WWE? Oh, yes. I do remember him. Yeah. Cause he was, uh, yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So we got a guy like Yokozuna. He was a sumo wrestler. That's what he was billed as. He may have been, he was definitely built like when he was more, he was obese, you know, five, but he was athletic obese because sumo wrestlers are pretty athletic, you know, it's still a sport. They have to have endurance, you know, but he was athletic obese because sumo wrestlers are pretty athletic, you know, it's still a sport.

They have to have endurance, you know, and they have to be somewhat fast for what they're doing, you know. But that guy was over 500 pounds, or Andre the Giant. He was like, what, seven feet, like four or something, you know, close to five. Outrageous, yeah, yeah. Like, okay, let's talk about leverage here. If one of those guys is on top of you versus me on top of you, who's going to be easier to kick out from, right? How are you going to get out of that? You could be full of energy. And if you have Andre the Giant on top of you,

you're probably not going to get him off of you. You know, if you're an average person of average strength, right? But if I'm on top of you and you're still full of energy, you might be able to get me off of you, right? Yeah. So just think about wrestling. They pin each other, right? And a lot of those guys are big, you know, but you take one of the extremes, you know, a big 500 pound guy, put them on top of 160 pound guy, and then take 160 pound guy, put them on top of the same guy, who's he going to get off of easier? So there's your perfect example of leverage. A bigger mass is going to have an easier time moving mass or preventing mass from moving in the example I just gave, right? So this is why people get fat. It allows you to lift more. And for reasons we can't fully explain, and you're not going to find a peer reviewed article on this because it's impossible to measure. When these guys lose the body fat, they're stronger than

they would have been, or we think they're stronger than they would have been had they just trained skinny. And that's been my experience with it. When I've tried to stay thin too long, just the weight wouldn't move. Then I'd get fat and it would be like a novice effect all over again, just shorter lived. Absolutely. I wouldn't get fat. I would gain fat. Like I'd gotten fat before, but I'm talking about later in my career, post 500 deadlift, you know, I gained 10 pounds and it's, everything just got easier, you know? Then I lost the weight and ended up like right now in the high 170s, I'm stronger, lost the weight and ended up like right now in the high 170s i'm stronger leaner and more muscular than i was five years ago with this weight you know yeah time time under the bar you know it

yeah i've seen it happen many times or you know just somebody even that uh is at a decent body weight for leverage so you know take your 510 guy who gets up to 205 let's say it was not huge by any measure but you know decent size enough to kind of fill out and uh spend three or four years training plus or minus five pounds so they're basically in the same the basically the same body weight at the end of that process than they started they're gonna have better body composition right they just are yeah and that's how many times yeah how many times you've seen an obese you know man or woman train while they're losing the fat you know they decided to take up lifting while losing all this weight they've had their whole life and they end up jacked on the other

side of that you know yeah absolutely like i remember I knew a girl once at a powerlifting gym I was at. She was a top powerlifter at the time, and she pulled 385 at 114. You know, I honestly don't think she was taking any PEDs, and even if she was, you know, go listen to Rip's podcast on this. We're talking about she'd still be fucking strong without it, you know? Yeah, right. Let's just leave it at that, right? But I don't think she was, and I was just very impressed with how this 114-pound girl, who was like 5' to 5'3 range, was pulling 385, you know? And she had scoliosis, so there was a leverage. She had scoliosis and long arms, so leverage, right?

So that's part of it. But 385 for any woman of any size is a lot of fucking weight, right? Yes. Well, one day she posts up a progress picture on Instagram, and she was a big fat girl before, you know? And then she lost the weight and trained and probably had good genetics for this type of sport. Sure, we're going to acknowledge that, but I'm sure carrying that extra weight around

and training heavy while she was losing, getting the novice effect while she was losing 50 pounds, because, you know, 50 pounds at that height is like 100 pounds for a taller person, you know. Right, right. It probably helped, you know. We've seen this before. Yes. uh it probably helped you know we've seen this before you know carl run you know runs goes a distance and loses let's say let's see where did he start at well we're gonna ignore the 275 because he admitted that was too much so he's at 255 now this is kind of where he likes to sit

for a heavyweight powerlifter let's say he goes down to 200. He was 200 about six years ago when I first met him in person. And I thought he was pretty big at the time and not fat. I just thought he was a big dude for his size, you know? And I guarantee you he's going to be bigger this time if he gets down to 200 pounds. Guarantee. He's squatting and deadlifting close to 600. Even if he loses the leverage and gets a little bit weaker, probably will happen on the squat. His deadlift might actually go up.

He's going to be more dense than he was in 2016 when he was 200 pounds, you know? Yeah. It's just going to happen. But if he tried to, I don't know that he needed to get up to 255. I don't know that he knows he needed to get up to 255. needed to get up to 255. I don't know that he knows he needed to get up to 255. But had he tried to stay at 200, which for him now as a power, not very good leverage there, you know, you know, it might not have worked out as well, you know, or maybe it would have, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. There's an inflection point somewhere in that.

Yeah, there's an inflection point. But, you know, this is an anecdote that you really don't want to ignore because we keep seeing it time and time again you try to stay at a low body weight and train the bar doesn't move you don't become more muscular you're stuck stuck stuck then you get a little bit fat or maybe a lot of bit fat and everything skyrockets like a rocket ship then you lose the weight and guess what you're bigger and leaner at a heavier body weight you know yeah we've seen it happen time and time again uh and yes it's an anecdote but also you can't fucking prove otherwise we don't have the instrumentation or the resources to try and prove this shit we don't have time travel you know you can't have a person go through something then go back in time and have them not go through it and compare

the two results you know there, scientific research is limited. Even if you do it exactly as it's intended, it is limited. You can't answer this question. So it's just kind of a moot point, right? But, you know, coaches around the world will tell you, you know, when you gain body weight, fat, and muscle, you know, you're going to end up more muscular in the long run. Yeah. So, you know, we, we kind of talk about gaining weight as if it's like this obvious,

easy thing to accomplish, but I know for a lot of people, it's not. I remember, man, it, it took, it took me a while when I started the starting strength novice linear progression at 5'8", 150, 155 pounds. I was somewhere around there. It took me a while to figure out how to eat enough to get to where I needed to go. Now, I ultimately on novice LP, I think I got up to like 185 or 190, somewhere around there by the end of my novice LP. And because I had gained, you know, 35 pounds in that process, I was able to extend my novice LP for

quite a while. I think I ran it for a solid six months. And then all the advanced novice after that. But I remember, you know, it didn't, it didn't just come immediately. Like I knew how to eat enough to gain that much weight because the reality was the force of habit kept me at 155. I had arrived at 155 over the course of years. And, you know, my accumulated habits kept me at 155 before I started training and wanting to do something about that and move it in a different direction. before I started training and wanting to do something about that and move it in a different direction. So I want to talk about that a little bit. One thing I remember is appetite was a challenge for me. So it's one thing to know that you need to eat more food and even have like a meal plan in front of you. You know, you can, anybody can plug numbers into a macros calculator, but then it's another thing to actually eat that and then do it consistently. So, you know, I think that your approach of adding calories as the weight gets heavy really makes a lot of sense, especially if you struggle to gain weight.

gain weight because I found that I didn't have the appetite off the bat to eat, you know, 3000 calories. But I got there as the, as the training got more intense, my appetite ratcheted up along with that. And so it made it easier to take down more calories. So, you know, that's one reason why I think I agree with you. I think for most people, a slower rate of gain is probably a good idea because it's going to be easier to pull off. Most people don't want to be competitive powerlifters. You know, they tell us this, you know, people criticize starting strength for that. They're like, oh, I don't want to be a powerlifter. And, you know, people, Rip was a competitive power lifter. You can't erase that from his personality. It's going to come out in his advice and his suggestions and the way he approaches training. He can't help it. It's what he did with his sport, right? I was a skinny, fat guy that wanted to look better.

That comes out in my content. And, uh, the reason that I'm so aligned with starting strength and have become good friends with Rip is because I came to the conclusion that the guys that looked the way that I wanted to look were lifting a lot more fucking weight, you know? Yep. And it became very obvious to me that I was limited by strength, you know? And then it also became obvious to me just through my experience as a young trainee fucking around in the gym that the muscles primarily involved in the barbell exercises that I was doing were the only muscles that were really growing. And that would make sense because I can make more incremental jumps on those. You know, like I'm doing, what was I doing, bicep curls? Like a lot of the time I'm using dumbbells, can't add to them.

You know, they're 10-pound combined jumps. You know, you can't do anything with that. I didn't understand that at the time, you know. I never thought to use the Olympic bar for curls. You don't use the long bar, you use the short bar. Jim doesn't have the short bar, he used the one with the welded-on plate. So I never incrementally loaded that. The machines, you know, they've made 15 pound jumps. The whole point is my, you know, I squatted, my thighs would grow. I'd bench, my pecs would

grow. I do lat pull downs, my back will get wider, right? So what Rip was talking about, I'd already experienced three fifths of that. Then I added the press and the deadlift and the, you know, my shoulders finally grew. My traps finally grew. my, you know, my back got thicker, you know, it always got wider, never got thicker until I started deadlifting. And I took the general principles from that and now in the last year I've been applying it to some isolation work because A, I want my bench to go up and I've, you know, powerlifters themselves have said that you need to do tricep isolation if you want to bring up your bench press. Rip has said it himself in his chapter about the accessories that the LTEs are a staple in powerlifting

programs and so is the close grip bench press. So, you know, I've reached that point. But then also, you know, I still have aesthetic goals, if you want to put it that way. I wanted my arms to get bigger. And in my case, the bigger biceps also became stronger biceps, also made me more functional. I was not very good at carrying things with my elbows and flexion. And now I am, you know. I wasn't good at holding on to things for long periods of time or using my fingers because, you know, I had weak grip. I trained that.

Now I'm also more functional because of some of this stuff I've done, you know? Sure. But my point there is that, you know, the big barbell lifts, you know, they account for most of the growth you make. You know, we've heard this in many places. You may not, you know, you're going to find a peer-reviewed paper that disproves that, you know, if you want to fucking

write a paper, you're going to write a paper, you know, and you're going to have a variety of responders to certain things for a variety of reasons. You know, sometimes a program doesn't work because a person doesn't like the program, you know, and that might show up in the data. You know, there's a lot of reasons something may not work. But what we have generally seen personally and in coaching people is that heavier barbell lifts put on a lot of overall size. And as the lifter spends more time with it, you start to see weaknesses develop. Like my girlfriend, she does bikini shows. And she needs deltoids,

right? I had her pressed, that helped her deltoids. And later on it, you know, it dawned on her that, you know, she didn't have much bicep going on. Then it like hit me in the head. I'm like, well, wait a minute. If you get your biceps bigger, it'll make your delts look more defined. Same with your triceps. So we started doing arm work and now she's starting to get that development that they want for that contest. Anyhow, skinny fat guy, back to you. You got to get stronger, man. You know, 200 pound squat is not heavy, you know? Yeah. 225 is not heavy. It's a good milestone. Congratulations. I'll always celebrate a guy hitting two plates the first time, but you're just getting started, you know? Right. Yep. You know, the guy who told you that you don't have to be strong, he squatted 550 for reps, you know? Yep. Exactly. You know, and his first squat was probably 315, you know, he never had difficulty squatting 225. So his, so his advice is not pertinent to you. He doesn't understand what it's like to be you.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, you know, and, and back to the topic of bulking, you know, that's, you know, as you're, as, as those weights climb up, your appetite will come up as well. Now, I think there's something that is kind of overlooked and, um, this is something I, I really haven't paid much attention to until fairly recently is for that person who is, you know, skinny fat and, and skinny guys. I think you could both throw both of those people in this category. I have found that one of the barriers to them getting the calories in that they need is satiety. And there there's a, I think there's, there's a couple elements to this, right? So basically, the basic problem is these people will eat a meal,

and then they're just full for like hours, and then they don't eat again until the next big meal, and then they're full for like four or five hours, and then they eat again. So they might get three square meals in a day, but they're not getting anything more than that, and they're definitely not getting any snacks or anything like that to help push up their calorie content. And, um, you know, I, so I haven't really paid attention until fairly recently to

the composition of the meal, right. And, and focusing on digestibility, right. And satiety. So I wanted to ask you about that. Do you make any, do you recommend like certain food choices for someone that's struggling to get the food in so that they can, you know, digest meals easier, get more meals in? How do you handle that? So first there's two types of skinny fat guys. There's guys that are, you know, never actually gotten fat. They're just soft and squishy, you know? Right. And then there's guys that lost 100 pounds and are skinny fat.

And two different problems there. The second guy has the appetite and he's afraid to give into it. Okay, yeah. Right. He's terrified he's going to be 100 pounds heavier again. That's one problem. The guy you're talking about might have problems with satiety. Yes. I personally didn't, but I look back on it.

Might have problems with satiety. Yes. I personally didn't, but I look back on it. It's because of the way I ate, and I think that's kind of helped me learn how to teach people how to eat to gain weight. You know, I ate a lot of, like, stuff that just went down easy. You know, like, I ate a lot of carbs and not a lot of protein when I was younger. And I'm not saying do that. You know, I finally figured out how to do that. It was hard for me to get enough protein.

I'd eat it for breakfast, and then I'd slack the rest of the day, but in part because of logistics, but also I think it was just really filling, you know, I don't know. It's hard to think back on it, but basically I'm not, I mean, I eat a ton of oatmeal now, but I'm older, you know, I don't need a ton of food anymore, you know, to do this. I don't need a ton of food anymore, you know, to do this. But back then, and even like when I'm talking to clients now, I recommend things that you can just keep eating, like rice, you know, bread for some people, you know. Cereal, you know, I know it's quote unquote not natural, but neither is lifting barbells in place. But yeah, cereal, low-fat or non-fat milk just because it's less filling and still gives you the protein.

Potatoes, corn, you know, my cousin ate a lot of corn because it just went down easy, you know, and you get some fiber. It's one of the high-fiber sources. They're not high, but you can accumulate quite a bit of fiber from corn. Sure. But then you can also keep eating it.

You know, eat the sweet corn too, shit. You know, have at it. But basically, bottomless pit foods. Pasta. If you have the time to cook pasta, there's never enough pasta. That portion size, that one portion is sad. So sad. It's a quasi-fat.

That's what I call pasta because it's so calorically dense, man. And it's just carbs, but it's so carb-dense, I should say, not calorically dense, because every gram of carb is four calories. But with pasta, you get a handful of pasta with like 45 fucking carbs, 200 calories, you know? Right, yeah. And it's depressing, you know? That's why I remember now in high school when I was a swimmer, they'd say eat a lot of rice and pasta, but especially the pasta was a big one. And old school bodybuilders, too, would say that. And now I know why, because if you eat four servings of pasta, you've had 800 calories.

And that's probably what you put on your plate if you didn't measure it, you know? Right. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Nobody eats a serving of fucking pasta. No. You eat plate or half plate or... Yeah.

Yeah. You're eating fucking three to five servings, which could easily get close to a thousand calories. And then you're still not full unless you put a creamy sauce on it which I'm not suggesting I typically go red sauce with lower fat but uh I ate it plain too I like plain pasta yeah I love plain pasta but yeah well it will say so that's yeah that's that's good advice because I remember I would hit walls trying to order so I was you know I was working in the corporate world.

So I'd go out to lunch a lot or I'd eat at the local cafe or whatever in the building. And I would get like a breakfast sandwich. So it would have maybe an egg and some sausage and cheese on it. And all that grease just saturates the roll that it's on. And, you know, you eat that and it's a big calorie bomb, but then you're just full. I was like full all the way to lunch. Right. And, you know, not to mention like falling asleep at my desk, but, uh, then you hit

lunch and I'm, and I end up with, would usually have like a lighter lunch than I would have had otherwise. Cause it just wasn't that hungry. Um, Same thing, you know, so if you go hit the fast food, right, you get a burger and a milkshake and some fries, you know, yes, that's going to be a lot of calories in one hit. But it's not that many compared to what you need in a day. And that can end up, you know, causing you to eat less at the next meal in the day. So yeah, so that I think that's, I think that's one one trap to avoid is it's easy to think that why I can just reach for these like high calorie, dense foods, like, you know, like the fast food is an easy one to call out because it's just loaded with fat. It's loaded with salt. It's loaded with sugar. It's easy to eat a lot in one meal,

but then the follow on effect of like how full it leads you can throw you off. Another thing I've always used as this example, talking to my skinnier clients that need to gain is that I will often see them eat huge on one day and then eat like a bird the next day. Oh, yeah. So they'll crush like a whole pizza on Friday night.

And they're like, oh my God, you know, I just eat so much and I don't gain any weight. It's like, yeah, you crush that whole pizza, but then you skipped breakfast the next day. You ate a super light lunch and you ate a medium-sized dinner. So you actually vastly underate calories the day after. And then you ate normal the day after that and you ate a medium sized dinner. So you actually vastly under eight calories the day after, and then you ate normal the day after that. And you just average it all out and you just eat

the same, you know, over a week on average, you eat the same amount of calories, even though you're binging on a couple of those days. All right. So that's, yeah, that's a, that's another thing that I've seen a lot with people who are, you know, chronically skinny. Understand something here. The human body is lazy. We were talking about this last night. All animals are lazy. I mean, hell, dogs sleep 16 hours a day, you know, because think about it.

If you expend more energy, that means you have to eat more food and food wasn't always widely available. Right. You know? Yeah. So if you eat a ton of food like that, your body's natural response is to have you eat less to go back to homeostasis you know so you are doing something that is quote-unquote not natural and quote-unquote doesn't feel right or quote-unquote feels wrong right that's what it is eating i told the girl today eating to gain weight it's hard to eat and lose weight and i explain why i'm like you're just chewing all day like it's your full-time job.

You can't not think about food, you know, 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 calories, you know? Right, right. Now, you know, we talked about becoming a big fat guy to lift a bunch of weight. And to do that, you have to eat a ton of fat because you're not going to eat 6,000, 7,000 calories on a low-fat diet. You're just not going to do it. You're talking about pounds and pounds and pounds of food, like several pounds of food. So for you skinny fat guys that are not interested in becoming the big fat guy, you don't want to gain 100 pounds.

You don't want to be a power lifter, but you want to get bigger and stronger. You know, if you keep your fat under control, you're not going to become obese. It's not going to happen. If you keep your fat under control, recover, train and get stronger, you're going to look more muscular than you did when you started. You may not be as defined as you want to be today, but you're setting yourself up to be that defined later. And everybody who sees you in a shirt is going to know that you trained, you know, that's step one. Yes. you in a shirt's going to know that you trained, you know, that's step one. Um, and you might have to go through cycles of this. Like I did, you know, like I've went up and down several times. The last couple of times, uh, weren't so bad, you know, and they were productive. Uh, there was a couple of times before, right before starting strength where it stopped being productive and it was just because of my training. But you know, when I had my first novice effect at 19, you know, I got to the a hundredpound dumbbells for, you know, three to five reps or something like that. I think four reps on the bench press.

I squatted over 300. I don't remember what. I think I had 315 on there. Knowing my 19-year-old self, I would have wanted a third plate on there. I know for sure I hit 275 those years. I deadlifted three plates, you know, like just mediocre numbers, but, you know, I got the novice effect. I got up to 200 pounds and trained, got stronger, then lost the weight, repeated that process throughout my life. You know, about close to

180 pounds and probably 14% body fat, something like that. Looks like I've gotten leaner lately. I don't know how, you know, I was creeping towardser lately. I don't know how. I was creeping towards 180, then I dropped towards 176. Now I'm sitting at 177, 178, but I'm leaner than I was even a month ago. It's kind of interesting. So it's a long, drawn-out thing. Let's really address the elephant in the room here. You got to really want to fucking do this and really like lifting weights and really care about this shit if you're going to go down this road because it's a long fucking road and it's frustrating you know the longer you do it the less predictable the outcomes you know right less predictable your training is you know you start taking on more life

responsibilities it gets harder you got to really love doing this, and you've got to really accept that you're not changing all that much, but you're going to be – so like right now, if I were to look at this numerically, objectively, I haven't changed my body that much, but I am that much happier with what I've accomplished. So you gotta be, you gotta be okay with being, you gotta be the type of person who's, you know, pleased with a mediocre result, you know? Yeah. Well, you, you fall in love with the process. Exactly. And there you go. You're summarizing it better than me. Yeah. You fall in love with the process and, and you, you get your pleasure out of how well you execute the process rather than what result comes out. Now, if I'm getting no results, then that means my process sucks, right?

That I need to fix that. So that's part of it, right? It's not that you accept zero results, but the results become secondary to the process. That's the way I think about it. That's a good way to think about it. It's a good way to think about it. It's a good way to think about it. I mean, that's why I tell people, I'm like, if you just want to,

all you care about is looking a certain way at all costs, then you need to go talk to a drug coach, a steroid coach, because that's why they do steroids, because it gets you there faster. You know, it doesn't mean you can't train. It doesn't mean it's easy either. It's a whole lifestyle you're agreeing to when you get on steroids. Right. Exactly. It's, it's really, you know, yeah. The funny thing is, um, Andy talked about this on his show and he might've talked about it on the episode that we did with him that, you know, it's, isn't it funny how these these these professional bodybuilders who are pushing their bodies to the extreme they have the benefits of elite genetics uh lots of drugs

and yet they still feel like they they have to train hard lift heavy weights and eat a bunch of fucking food like a a lot, right? Yeah. They're eating six times a day, 7,000 calories. So, yeah. So it's not like these guys that are doing drugs just have easy street, right? No, they still have to do all the same things you have to do, but they're taking these to take their physique to the next level. I want to steal, yeah, I'm going to steal a phrase from my colleague, You know, I'm going to steal a phrase from my colleague, good friend and business associate Nick Shaw, who is the CEO of Renaissance Periodization.

And, you know, they've sent me a lot of business over the years. I've worked with them since 2016. They did an entire episode on steroids. So if you're interested in learning about, you know, steroids and bodybuilders and elite physique competitors. This is a good episode to listen to because the phrase I'm about to steal was that you guys would think it's a shortcut. It's actually a long cut because you end up doing more work and agreeing to a very high maintenance lifestyle when you start hopping on that shit, you know, especially if you want to go very far with it, you know? Right. Because, you know, they have to take the drugs, first of all. Now, that's responsibility. You skip drugs that can fuck you up, so you have to keep taking them. Then you probably shouldn't

drink alcohol. I know people do it. You're not supposed to. You should not do it. The bodybuilders don't do it. A lot of them don't drink, you know? Because think about it. A lot of these drugs are hard on your liver. Some are hard in your kidney. Some are hard in your liver. So now you can't drink. So if you like to drink and have a social life with alcohol, that's out the window, right? The further, the stronger you get, the bigger you get, the more time you have to spend in the gym, because guess what? You can recover more now, so you can do more, right? So their workouts become insane. Then there's side effects to these drugs that everybody knows about, you know, or most people, a lot of people know about, I shouldn't say everybody, a lot of people know about the side effects. That's like

the thing that steroids are synonymous with, right? So then you have to take other drugs to counteract those side effects, and those other drugs might have side effects that you have to take other drugs for, right? So, you know, these people are very similar to older people in an acute hospital or, you know, even just older people with a lot of medical conditions, you know, they're popping shit and sticking shit all day long every day for the rest of their fucking life. Because what I've heard from these guys is once you're on, you stay on, you know, you don't sound like you get off. Some guys will say, oh, I cycled off.

What does that really mean? I think a lot of these guys are on testosterone all the time because they have to be. A lot of the guys, they talk about cruising, you know, I think that's the, that's the slang for it. Right. So, you know, they might cruise, which means they're not they're not blasting right blasting would be the opposite where they're you know they're doing like yeah it's stacks but they might cruise on 400 milligrams of test a week yeah you know which is a lot people which is a lot of trt that's about

four times uh average trt dose yeah right and two times and that's just them that's just them laying out relaxing you know like hey i'm kind of taking a break. It's a long cut. Like Nick Shaw said, it's a long cut. If you want to hear more about that, you know, that was a good episode of just like, so Rip's episode on steroids was great in the context of athletics, you know, just general sports, you know, not excluding bodybuilders, you know, baseball, football, weightlifting, powerlifting, et cetera. And it was a great episode on the context behind steroids for athletics. The RP episode was very good in terms of steroids in the context of physique.

So, you know, you could be a jerk off and get on that shit and be irresponsible with it, but you're going to pay for that dearly. You know, this, you could fuck, it will fuck up your health if you do that. So again, the only reason we got on that topic is because there are guys that just purely care about achieving an appearance. And if that's all you fucking care about, drugs are going to get involved one way or another, or you're gonna have to give up on it because you're not going to sit here and work hard for 20 years and dramatically change your appearance and do, you know, it's just not going to be that dramatic is what I'm saying. Yeah. Unless you, A, have the genetics, and B, are willing to go that extra mile and take drugs.

You know, I'm very happy with modest results. If you're not happy with modest results, then you need to talk to somebody who just specializes in changing the way you look, you know? That's a different situation than training, you know? When you're training to change the way you look, for many people, not all people, some people get a very robust response, you know? They just get really big and strong and it's awesome, you know? But the majority of us, you get a mediocre and sometimes below average response, you know? So you have to really like this you know and uh and the same thing with power lifting if you want to get really fat and lift and squat a thousand pounds or you know maybe not a thousand pounds but if you want to be

at 600 yeah 600 700 800 you know that might require drugs and you know i defer you to rips episode on starting strength radio about that you know again that's a long cut too it's not a shortcut it is definitely not a shortcut you know yeah it's it's it's a lot it's high maintenance lifestyle and my lifestyle is already kind of high maintenance with the training i do so you know there's i see no point in it for myself but yeah the reason we even touched on that here is because if you're going to do this the old-fashioned way and train and eat right and care about your health and you know try to gain as much muscle and strength as you can naturally whatever that even fucking means uh then it's going to be a long process it's going to be frustrating uh and you might just get you know a modest response and you got to be happy with it because you have to enjoy it you know i do

i'm happy with where i'm at right now you know what a sales pitch i don't i'm not i'm not a very good business person i'm not a very good business person but you know what i've been training for 25 years there's a lot of guys i know that hopped on drugs and just trained like jerk offs who got hurt or whatever got off the drugs they're're 50, in some cases, 50 pounds lighter than they were when they were on the drugs and they barely train now, you know? Right, yeah. Or don't train at all.

I knew a guy in high school who was a shredded 200. His wrestling coach apparently encouraged steroid use. And he was like 200, jacked, no neck, you know? And then now he just looks like a skinny guy, you know, he's kind of lean, you know? Right, right. He's like 155 pounds. He still acts like he's 200 pounds. He's a total alpha, but, uh, you know, he's never been that big again. And I don't think he even trains that consistently anymore. I don't know what he does now, but he's also, he's a good guy, but

you know, he's just never gotten that big again. And, you know, good for him that he never got back on the stuff, you know, after he graduated high school. And I think he's always done some sort of training, but you know, these, I know guys like that, they did stuff, they fucked around and they're not in the game anymore. And, you know, you want to live for a variety of reasons beyond just appearance, you know, but my sales pitch that is true, tried and true, and I think will resonate with a lot of you is somebody who trains is always going to look better than they did if they didn't train. So I send you home with that. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Oh, man. So we touched on a lot of things there. You know. Yeah, it went deeper than we thought it would. Yeah. Right. We're both fucking tired, but we pulled it off. Yeah.

It went deeper than we thought it would. Yeah, right. We're both fucking tired, but we pulled it off. Yeah, I mean, you know, I hope that if we achieve nothing else on this show, that at least we cut through some bullshit, we call bullshit for what it is, and we try to kick you the real deal. And unfortunately, there's just a lot of guys who are heavily invested in doing the opposite.

You know, The Rock still claims he's natty. I love The Rock. I love that guy. He's great. But he's entertaining. Yeah, but it's like, come on, bro. That guy's still bullshitting you. I hope that we can at least not bullshit you and then call out the bullshit that we see and give you a perspective from somebody who's coming at this over a long period of time

and doing it naturally, right? Not taking the long cuts. Yeah. I mean, look, dude, we're using barbells and plates. That's not natural. I know. The whole natural thing breaks down when you really start thinking about it.

But we're not doing drugs. Here's a funny page about steroids and natty. Go to this Instagram page. It's 50% natty. You follow this guy? Oh, no. No, I don't know. Oh, it's hilarious.

So he has his original video pinned. You can pin videos on Instagram so they're permanently at the top. Watch that one. And this guy walks up to him in the gym park and they're like, bro, what's a 50% natty. And then he's like, Oh, that's pretty simple. Have you, have you taken a cycle and gotten off a cycle or you're taking a cycle before, but you're not on a cycle now? Then he's like, yeah, there's like natty. Then he just goes down these list of questions. So at the end, I think I'm paraphrasing, but the guy's like, so i have to be an unvaxxed vegan what did he say oh he says i have to be an unvaxxed vegan something to be considered natty and he's like bingo oh man you have to so watch it 50 natty that guy that guy

is hilarious i get a kick out of those freaking videos, but watch his pinned video. Okay. First one he put out. Yeah. Well, pardon the pun pinned video, uh, with Natty. But anyway, uh, yeah. So there you go. So there's some thoughts about, uh, bulking up, you know, why you had to do that. Some, some things to look out for while you're doing it. Yep. Um, we're not telling you to become a fat sloppy mess. Nope.

Um, slow and steady is, is the way for most people. And, uh, but you know, even to do that, you're going to have to eat until you're uncomfortable and you're gonna have to do it again every day for a while to get things to move. And you're not going to be defined. Yeah. At certain points. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

You're going to go through those awkward phases, right? Just like growing the hair out. Just like that example you gave. Yeah. So, um, yeah, well coming up on future episodes. Yeah. We, we're going to talk to, uh, Carl Raghavan at some point when we can get him on the show and our schedules align. We're going to talk to Steph again about research. I'm excited for that show because, um, I, I, I can't wait to talk about how evidence-based, like anytime I hear evidence-based, I'm just like.

Who decides what evidence is? Right. Yeah. What evidence, how evidence-based people are actually not evidence, evidence-based whatsoever because they rely on shitty research, shitty data, and they completely ignore the good data that's right in front of their face.

Look, I want to hit on this pretty hard. I have a lot to say. And, you know, it will be unfortunate if the people that I still respect in the industry take offense to some of it, but it needs to be said. And, you know, like I said, there are people that stood by my side through very difficult times that are in that industry and do that kind of work. And, you know, I love them. I respect them. I'm not shitting on them.

I don't think they listen to this because it's just totally different stuff. But if you are listening, I am not going to shit on you. You know, I still respect you. But there are parts of the structural process that I will take criticism to. And it doesn't matter. Guess what people? It does not matter that I don't have a hundred thousand publications because I still have experience in that environment and I can still criticize the structure of it. You know, I can speak on that, you know, there's a lot to talk about there. So we'll do that. But, you know, we're going to tie this topic up, I think, next time because we need to talk

about women and building muscle because it's very important. And I've had females that hired me recently that listen to this. I didn't realize we were attracting a female audience. And I'm glad we are. That's cool. We're not intentionally trying to do that uh because you know we're just we're just talking and whoever shows up shows up so right it's pretty cool that it's not all dudes because when it comes to heavy lifting i mean there's data i think when we worked for a company back in the day they showed us a pie chart and it was like 75 male 25 female that were buying their products and uh you know generally kind of has been the thing with, you know, selling big and strong, you know, traditionally. So we're not just talking about

women to check off the box is what I'm trying to say. You know, I've worked with a lot of females in this industry, especially on the traditional personal training side. You know, you tend to get more female clients than male. The strength training side, it tends to be more male than female. So I'd say I have a balanced set of experiences. So definitely not checking off a box, if that's what you think. I have some insights to share there. And I think it's important for those of you female lifters listening, you know, there's a process to building muscle for you as well. And there is some eating more that's involved. And it's just a little, it looks different than what we've discussed the last

two episodes on men. And, you know, I just want you to know we're going there. You know, I wanted to go there today and I kind of went down a rabbit hole. So we'll just make that the third, you know, we're saving the best for last. We'll make that the third part of this. And maybe we'll talk about something else in that episode as well because it's not quite as involved you know there's not i don't have any women that need to gain 100 pounds for instance you know that we don't have the quite the variation in weight gain with women that we do in men you know some men need to gain 20 pounds some men need to gain 100 pounds we just don't see that with females so you know just objectively speaking there's just slightly less to talk about, but there's a process

and there are some mental hurdles that need to be overcome and there's a right and wrong way to do it. Yep. It sounds good, man. Sounds good. All right. Well, let's sign off. Tell us where we can go find you. You can find me at weightsandplates.com where, you know, I've lived for seven years on the internet. And, you know, we sell online coaching, you know, diet coaching, strength coaching. Have a couple other dietitians as well, you know, if you don't want to work with me directly. You know, we have a few different people on there, but I am the strength coach on there. So feel free to reach out if you're interesting and interested in coaching services, I'd like to, you know, offer some other things, you know, that I have, you know, a book that I'm

working on, eventually I'll finish, and I keep getting requests for merch. So I need to start selling that can people just bitch at me more that tends to work, you know? Just bitch at me more. Why aren't you selling T-shirts? You're wearing them. You're not selling them. I want a trucker hat. A weights and plates trucker hat.

Trucker hat, yeah. I wonder how many of those would sell. I think they'd be pretty sweet. Sure, I'll buy a cowboy hat. I don't know. I'll buy one. You got one, at least. Yeah.

I got one sale. I need a flag, too. I need a flag. That's what I need. That's the other thing I need. That might actually work. I need to get a weights and plates flag. There's a lot of things that would probably sell on the merch side.

Just people bitch at me, you know, and I'll get it done. I need it. I need bitching. Okay, so there's there. Then, you know, my content that I keep regularly going is on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. I have a sad gym page that I keep trying to revitalize. Weights double underscore and double underscore plates for the Phoenix gym. If you are in the Phoenix metro area, I have a gym here in the South Mountain area, the south of the Sky Harbor

Airport, 32nd Broadway, 32nd Street and Broadway, not Avenue. And we offer one-on-one personal training and we have gym memberships and we use a starting strength method. No bullshit. I think you'll like it here. Nice little hangout. This is also where I record the podcast. You might see me doing this live periodically. Yeah. If you live in the Phoenix area or you're just traveling, stop in, go see Santana. This in-person coaching, there is no substitute for, um, but if you're interested in some online coaching, I do some of that and I occasionally have some slots that open. So, uh, if you're interested, you can email me at jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. In the meantime, you can follow me and all of my exploits on Instagram at marmalade underscore

cream. All right, we'll talk to you all again in a couple weeks. you