Weights and Plates Podcast - #64 - Reading vs Doing: Why You Can't Read Your Way to Strength and Good Training Habits

Episode Date: November 5, 2023

    Mark Rippetoe and Marty Gallagher Interview (3 Parts): Part 1: https://youtu.be/siaDQdpQPRQ?si=jBBEqMFP6drd1mKm Part 2: https://youtu.be/TxjibbKJ8UE?si=YilgpD6MG6bxAGZG Part 3: https://youtu.be/RIe_7ODKycQ?si=6t5M2L88a0J7DvGV   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. Yo, what's going on? Not a whole lot, man. Afternoon slump here. Long day. Drinking coffee still. It's getting kind of lukewarm. I'm not a fan of lukewarm but I'll drink it anyway you're dancing with the devil over there with with the coffee intake I know the coffee doesn't hit you like it does me but yeah once once I start sipping on coffee Pat I try to try to cut it off at two o'clock in the afternoon because I

think the half-life of caffeine is like like six hours or something like that yes I'm like I'm sure it caffeine is like six hours or something like that. Yeah, something like that. I'm sure it varies, somewhere like six to eight hours. So if you cut it off at 2 o'clock, you can still go to bed. That's true. But sometimes it's like 3 o'clock, rolling around, it's been a long day. Like just one more sip.

Just one more sip, man. It can't hurt, right? It's just one sip. No, it's just like one bite, one Oreo, you know? Just one Oreo. Well, I've heard you've been busy over there at your gym. You had a strength lifting meet recently, right? I did. One of my members won.

All right. So was this a, did you do this, like publish it through the Starting Strength website or is this just a local event? This was through the Starting Strength website. Okay. All right. So this was kind of, this was an official strength lifting competition. Yeah. I'm going to publish one for next spring as well. Okay, yeah, excellent.

Hopefully promote this one better. Yeah. Okay, so yeah, if you're in the Phoenix area or close, you should check that out. Because I know lately, in the last year or two at least, maybe three years now, the only way to do a strength lifting meet in person was to go to Wichita Falls, go to the Wichita Falls Athletic Club, which is awesome because Rip always announces the meets, but it is a pain in the ass to get to if you do not live in

the Dallas-Fort Worth area or Oklahoma, Kansas. New Mexico. New Mexico. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So if you don't live in those areas, it was a massive pain in the ass to get to, um, even though it was fun. So good. It's good to have some more options out there. Maggers holds them in Omaha as well. Oh, that's right. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah. What is this? Testify strength and conditioning. Is that what they're called? Yeah. Testify. I got to get out there sometime. I had a lifter. I forgot about that. I had a lifter that competed there and he said it was a great time. So they ran a really great meet. They also do powerlifting and weight lifting meets too, I think. Right? That's right. That's right. All right. So we're doing an episode today and we're going to talk to you, you all who have read everything and done nothing or not a

whole lot. And so, you know, if you're offended by that, you should continue listening because you might actually learn something. If you're laughing about that, you should definitely keep listening. And if you don't know what the fuck I laughing about that, you should definitely keep listening. And if you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, you should definitely keep listening. You know, and the last probably, I don't know, 20 years with the internet being what it is, you know, as many of you know, and more broadly speaking, information is widely available. And some of it is valid and useful and good. and some of it is invalid, useless, and shitty, you know? And in our industry, there was already a lot of bad, shitty information out there before the dawn of the internet.

Right. There's also some good stuff, too, you know, like programming principles and starting strength are not new. You know, Rip has said this out loud. People have been doing heavy fives for decades, but you didn't typically see that in the Joe Weider magazines. You know, for those of you, my younger audience that is unfamiliar, Joe Weider was a major bodybuilding promoter and owner of several fitness publications. He was a large name, still a large name in the fitness industry because a lot of those publications are still owned by Weider. He's dead now, but the name, if you kind of look at Flex Magazine or Muscle and Fitness, they're under the Weider name. Occasionally, you see those old Weider supplements at certain mom and

pop supplement shops because the old timers like to take them. But Weider popularized fitness in the 70s and 80s. He was a guy that was largely responsible for this. He hosted the bodybuilding meets of the 60s and 70s in the days of Arnold. He sponsored Arnold. He helped bring him out here. He subsidized his living when he first moved out here. And, you know, he was a big reason Arnold came to be who he was in fitness. So they started publishing magazines. And I think it really shifted in the 1980s with the dawn of machines, upright support benches, and other things, you know, especially the Nautilus, you know, the, you know, Arthur Jones creating the Nautilus machines. And it turned into this approach to lifting. It went away from heavy compound lifts and Olympic lifts, which was what people did,

you know, probably pre-1980, you know, definitely pre-1970 to, you know, you're going to isolate your way to gains, as I call it. You know, you're going to, you have to work the muscles in isolation and not work the body, you know, you're going to isolate your way to gains, as I call it. You know, you have to work the muscles in isolation and not work the body. You know, functional strength is separate from hypertrophy or building muscle. You know, building muscle and building strength, they created this false dichotomy, as some people like to say. They dichotomized strength and hypertrophy because bodybuilders didn't train like powerlifters and powerlifters didn't train like bodybuilders. Right. And Olympic weightlifters didn't train like neither of them. But the thing is, all of them have a lot more muscle than the average reader of these publications. And all of them are also genetic outliers when you're talking about the competitive level.

You know, you're not taking somebody with, you know, you're not going to take somebody who struggled to squat 200 and get them to the Olympics, you know, clean and jerking 500. You know, that's not going to happen. You know, we talk about this on this show quite a bit. So the reason I bring this up is because now, you know, there's been about 50 years of publications that have evolved. is because now, you know, there's been about 50 years of publications that have evolved. And those publications have turned into internet blogs, social media posts, YouTube videos, and other things. And because the information is even more accessible now, you don't have to go to the grocery store anymore, the gas station to buy a magazine. You don't have to do that. You can

open up your phone and look at the things that we used to look at at the convenience store, because we don't want to pay the $6 for the magazine. That was more like $4 to $5 back then. No, probably in the $3 to $5 range, I'd say. Back of the Barnes & Noble. Yeah, back of the Barnes & Noble. Walden Books used to go there. Oh, yeah.

Now you could just go on Instagram and get information like that. In college, it was bodybuilding.com. It was websites and forums. That's started to die, you know. And, you know, we get a lot of you get them to Trent, because I've talked to you about this. So you know, speak on your behalf here, we get a lot of people that will come to us, because they are well read on the topic. And we'll start going on about the technicalities of everything that they've read about. And, you know, they've obviously lifted.

So, you know, I'm exaggerating when I say they've done nothing. But they haven't gone very far in their own training, hence why they're hiring a coach. But they've spent a lot more time reading and a lot less time doing is what you kind of find out when you start asking questions. You know, workouts are being skipped. Deadlifts are being skipped. The same weight's being repeated. They're not eating enough. They're eating the wrong things. There's all these things wrong, right? And all the reason to hire a coach, right? I recently had a client hire me. He made me laugh. He's one of the more humble ones, but I'm going to read this out loud because at first, I read the first sentence and I thought I was about to get pissed off at this guy,

and then his follow-up sentence changed my opinion. He said, as you could tell, I know enough to be dangerous, and if I really knew, I wouldn't be spinning my wheels. So I'm like, at least he's fucking honest. I like this guy already. We talked and he's great. I look forward to getting them started. But I've had other people say the first part without saying the second part. I know enough to be dangerous. I know too much. I've read everything, all this fucking bullshit. And then when you assess the practical experience of this bookworm, essentially, there's none. There's very little, It's like they're going to the gym, they're repeating weights, the workout's inconsistent, shit's all over the place.

And then, this is fine. You're hiring a coach, you're taking a step in the right direction, but then it turns into the client telling the coach how he's going to coach him. So now I have somebody who's hired me to coach them trying to micromanage me, you know. Yeah. And, you know, people, this pisses your coach off. Obviously, you don't need a coach. So continue doing what you're doing, you know. Right. Obviously, you've read everything and it hasn't worked, you know.

So why have you hired somebody? Because you want me to apply the thing that you read, which you tried to apply and didn't do. You know, in some cases, that makes sense. You've read starting strength, you've quote unquote, done the squat, and it's nine inches high, and you're adding 15 pounds to it every week. Okay, you've read everything, you've misinterpreted it, we're going to clear some things up. But a lot of the time, it's just like, you know, you're reading about all these things that can't accurately be, they can't reasonably be proven.

The way that these conclusions were drawn are a bit of a stretch. And when you're talking about information that's based on professional research, now we're talking about methodologies that are very narrow, you know, and samples of people that are very small, and results or findings, research findings that are very narrow, and instrumentation that's not measuring the thing you're trying to measure. You have a lot of problems. We're going to do a whole series on this. You know what? After this episode, I'm going to email you, Trent. We're going to get Dr. Bradford back on. We're going to start this professional research series of episodes. This just needs to happen. But, you know, they've read

all this shit, and a lot of it's bullshit it doesn't apply to their situation and when you try to teach them what's actually going to work for them they basically tell you to get fucked that you don't know what you're talking about and that they know more than you do right yeah oh Well, what I see, I tend to get less of the intellectual arguing. I have run into some of that before, but basically what I run into when I run into this resistance is it boils down to, hey, this really jacked guy on the internet said something contrary to what I'm having them do. And so why, why am I not doing that? Right. That guy's really jacked. Why am I not doing what he said I should do? And you know, so, so just throw out the, the studies and the research bullshit and all that stuff. Um, yeah, that's, that's really what it is. And so what I've, what, what I have have come to learn is that the dominant way of knowing something or attempting to know something nowadays, especially among younger people, is let me go find the right authority. Like, I don't know something and I want to learn. Let me go find the right authority in that field

And I want to learn, let me go find the right authority in that field and then do what the expert told me to do. And so the, the way that people have learned at other times in history right um you know i've i have dabbled in reading some greek philosophy um certainly not very deeply and not very well but you know enough to leave a mark on me you know one of the things i know enough to be dangerous and one of the things that's that's very apparent is that the uh philosophy by the way comes from the the greek words meaning love love of wisdom right so so a love for seeking the truth but the dominant way that these great thinkers of early Western civilization would approach the world is to go and interact with the world with their five senses. That's right. Taste it, touch it, smell it, look at it, hear it, and then draw conclusions from that and start to build a model of how this thing might work.

Okay. It came from actually experiencing and interacting with the world first. Not like, hey, let me go find an expert to tell me what to do. And find, and spend all this energy finding the right expert. But that's what it is today. Well, and by the way, back then, I want to add something to that. They would do all those things sometimes under an actual expert as an apprentice, and that's different than what you and I are talking about right now.

Right, and I should say, you know, that they didn't do that. Well, it depends who we're talking about. The philosophers did not do that. Socrates did not do that. But Socrates railed against the young men of Athens who, guess what, were going to the so-called sophists, these learned, supposedly wise men that talked in pretty speeches and stuff, and they would pay these guys to teach them. These are the young, rich men of Athens. So these are like the sons

of politicians and generals and stuff like that. They would go to these sophists, um, to, to teach them how to argue correctly, to teach them how to speak pretty sentences, to teach them virtue and wisdom. Um, and so that's exactly what they were doing. They were, it's the same human behavior, right? So they were going and seeking the expert and paying the expert a bunch of money to tell them the right things as opposed to actually learning about the world using their own faculties. And, um, man, uh, my experience has been that I read starting strength and I had years in the gym, but I had not achieved any real strength, right? I lifted a whole bunch. I'd spent a lot of time in the gym, but I had not achieved any real strength, right? I lifted a whole bunch. I'd spent a lot of time in the gym, but I had never achieved any real strength. I don't think I'd ever actually full depth squatted more than like 225. Like I'd put 315 on my back in high school and squatted nine

inches high, but I'd never done that, you know, full depth, right? So when I first encountered starting strength, I read it cover to cover. I thought, man, this is really interesting, So when I first encountered starting strength, I read it cover to cover, thought, man, this is really interesting. But I understood about 25% of it. And I only knew that because three years later, after I'd actually done some strength training, and I'd actually done this process, and I had been coached, and come back to starting strength, the book, then I realized how much I missed, how much I misinterpreted the first time, how much I just simply didn't have any reference point for. Um, and there, and that's because I just had not, I had not engaged with the actual practice in person. I hadn't experienced it. I had not used my senses and, and battled with the iron myself. And so that's just been my experience is that you cannot read your way to,

you certainly can't read your way to strength, but you can't read your way into proper understanding of strength training. It's not going to happen. You will never learn until you do it yourself. Absolutely. And to piggyback what I said earlier, if you want to seek help from an expert, the best thing you can do is what we said in the last episode.

You immerse yourself in an environment full of these people that are doing this versus watching the guy on YouTube that's probably not even coaching, that probably didn't coach that much to begin with, who's just talking to you so that he gets monetization off of YouTube. His job is to get you to click on his bullshit. That's his job. Yeah. Yeah. So if he's spending so much time and so much money on producing YouTube content, how much time is he spending training? You know, I think of some of that, that had a lot of people say nasty shit to me because they are ideologically dug in to these stupid training philosophies.

And I'll call them stupid. And you know who you are if you're listening. I don't think they listen to me. But most recently, I had somebody say he should stop calling himself a gym owner. Like that gives him credibility. It does not. I know more than him, you know. And this was a person who didn't own weightlifting shoes you know right but you know that person knows more than me you don't when i met rip for the first time 10 years ago there

are two things i got or i got a lot from it actually but in the context of this episode I got a lot from it, actually, but in the context of this episode, Steph said during the Q&A, join a meet so you have something to work towards. You have something to motivate you to keep going, so you have a reason for your training, and it's a good experience. Because you get to see that as a coach, even if you're not going to coach powerlifters, it's good to see the limits of strength, the upper limits, like what that looks like to put the heaviest weight you can put on your back, attempt it, get it or miss it, you know, and understanding that process. I think it's important, even if most of your

clients will never do that, you know, because you understand the lower limits, starting out, novice effect, and you understand the upper limits, peaking, competing for me, right? So that was good, valuable advice. And I took her advice. I've always hated lifting meets personally for a variety of reasons, but I did them. I did several strength lifting meets, a few power lifting meets. I did a weightlifting meet at WFAC once with the coaches. So I've had those experiences. And the second thing, I don't think this was from the seminar, but this was from Rip's interview in 2012 with Marty Gallagher, which I recommend any lifter watch, novice or not, you know, I was gonna say novice lifter, but I'd say any lifter should watch this part two specifically. You know,

they talk about eating and weight gain and how guys in the 1960s and 70s used to train. And there was one thing that one scene that stuck out well there's a couple but for in the context of this episode the scene that i'm thinking of is where marty tells rip he's like because rip's like you know my sorry ass squatted you know 622 deadlifted 633 uh almost bench or bench 396 you know almost had 407 you know if i had another attempt blah blah i have this thing memorized because i've watched it so many times. Sure. And then Marty's like, well, you know, you did pretty good training in a vacuum.

And then he's like, by that I mean, you know, had you trained with us, you know, up in the Baltimore, suburban Washington, D.C. area in the 60s and 70s, he's like, you know, you would have had have had you know easily had a seven or eight squat if we push your weight up you know whatever but then he goes on and says you know when when you're in a gym and everyone around you is squatting 315 and you're squatting 600 you know you're a monster you know you're awesome you know this and that and that's very different than you can't get on the big man platform unless you have at least an eight squat, 800. Right. Because it just doesn't make sense. It messes up the rotation. People get cold,

you know, that gets in the specifics of it. But that's kind of what he's saying. Then Rip's like, you know, I had this in my mind that, you know, 600 is heavy. And then Marty responds, well, you wouldn't if you saw guys benching it. Right. And like, yeah, yeah. Well, you can, I mean, you can, if you've, some, some of y'all out there might have, have watched, uh, West Side versus the world, you know, it's a documentary that came out a year. The, just the insane competition between them and how that competition pushed them to new heights. You know, you get, you get a crazy motherfucker like Chuck Vogelpole,

you know, you walk in, it's like some guy talks about walking in and he had like a, I don't know, some shoulder injury or maybe I think it was maybe like a shoulder repair, like he had had surgery. And so he's rehabbing it. It's his shoulders all,

you know, in a sling and stuff. And he walks in on bench night. And he's like, oh, I'm just going to have to do some like accessory stuff. And Chuck's like, fuck, no, you aren't. And he like duct tapes him to the ground against a piece of equipment and shoves a giant dumbbell in his left hand,

the good hand. He's like, you know, four sets of 10. We got to keep your good arm strong. So when that, yeah, in that kind of environment, you know, you're going to learn some things about pushing yourself that you will never have otherwise. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, for the aesthetic people who are sitting there thinking, I don't care about somebody who benches 500. It's just a fat power lifter, you know?

You know, the same thing applies. You know, if you go train a bodybuilding gym, and that's what you want to do, don't watch the Instagram YouTube experts, people. Go to the fucking bodybuilding gym and train with the bodybuilders. You're probably going to learn real fast you got to get on drugs, you know. And you don't really learn that watching YouTube. You learn that in the gym, that drugs are part of the sport. I learned that talking to powerlifters. They tend to be more open about that, you know, with anybody because it's an actual sport, you know.

Like there's a performance aspect of it, whereas bodybuilding is a fucking beauty contest. There's a performance aspect of it, whereas bodybuilding is a fucking beauty contest. But if that's what you want to do, then you need to stop sitting on the computer, go find a bodybuilding gym, and see how far you want to go with that. I've said it many times. I don't take drugs. I understand their use and application. But bodybuilding is a drug sport. And if you're, yeah, if that's what you're into, you're going to find out about that. And you're going to have to ask yourself some questions about whether you want to do that or not, because it's part of the fucking sport. But you don't really see that unless you're training at a gym full of guys doing that, that are much bigger than

you, I guess, in that sport, what do they care about? Bigger, more cut, more vascular, etc. Right? Like they're doing all the shit you think you want to be doing. And you might find out real quick, well, fuck this, you know, it was the same thing in a powerlifting gym. You know, I was sitting there squatting 405 for a max one day and the owner of the gym just tripled it right in front of me as a warmup, you know? No problem. Right. And, you know, he may have been on drugs. I don't know. You know, I don't know. I don't know what the hell he was doing, but I watched that and I'm like, shit, man, that guy's like a couple inches shorter than me. He's 165. He just tripled 405, you know, and I'm nervous about maxing it. You know, like that's the thing. Like you can watch YouTube, you can read articles, you could, you know, get a degree, but if you're not

in the environment interacting with it, you're not going to get the full experience and you're going to drive yourself crazy via paralysis through analysis. But that being said, you know, if you don't have access to one of these places, if you're training at home, you know, if that's just not an option for whatever reason and you want an online coach because this usually is more of a problem online than in person. Yeah. You know, that's fine. I work with a lot of people that do great. Most of the people that I work with do great and are very pleasant. I work with a lot of people that do great. Most of the people that I work with do great and are very pleasant.

But I know every, I've read everything. I've read slash watched everything and have done next to nothing. You know, why don't you just try to get on a routine and like, you know, follow my line of thinking here for a few months, you know, and see what happens. Yeah, right. I think I've seen this before and I've been guilty of this before in other, you know, see what happens yeah right yeah i think i i've seen this before and and i've been guilty of this before in other you know in other contexts um i i think sometimes especially young guys want to impress their coach with what they know or what they can do yep and uh we're not impressed we're not impressed like i don't care what you do um and that hey that's a that's a good thing too right like so if you come in day one and you're squatting 405, I'm not impressed if you come in day one and you're squatting 95

That's fine. I don't it doesn't matter to me I'm unfazed either way So you don't need to be embarrassed about anything, but you also you don't need to be proud about anything either. No Because if you want to impress me, what I am impressed by is effort and consistency. Because I know, like, I don't hide it here on this show. I like to coach regular Joes who have jobs. They've got demanding jobs.

They've got demanding families, you know, other things outside of the gym. And the gym, they're trying to make the most out of the gym that they can within a lot of limitations, right? That's who I like to work with. And so the guys that impress me are the guys that get in there, you know, day in, day out, they have consistency and they hit it hard. You know, I asked them to do something and they do their best. And even guys that are, are low responders to training that are low on the totem pole of genetics and all that stuff, man, if they come in like that, that's awesome. That

impresses me. That impresses me a lot. But yeah, you know, our conversation a few minutes ago made me think, okay, so in theory, we are two experts here. After we just talked about how this expert worship is bullshit. But I think that we can make a distinction here that's important. Because I seek out experts when I need help. hire people to consult with, uh, to, to level up my knowledge and learn something. But I have found that the experts, if you want to call them that, that you want to, you want to seek out are the ones that have a practice that are practicing, that are doing the thing. And, uh, those are the people that have always been the most, uh, the most helpful to me. So like in, in my, my audio engineering world, you know, in my audio business, uh, I have learned a lot hiring other experts, other producers, voiceover talent, you know, whatever it is that I, that, that are doing this day in and day out. And they're hard to get ahold of because they're busy with their jobs. They do not need to,

they do not need to consult with you to make their living. That's it's actually, frankly, it's, it's usually a distraction for them. But if you find the right people and you, you can network and you make a good connection with them, you can find some opportunities to do this. And I've learned so much, but they all have the practice thing in, in common. They're not the people on YouTube making four, dropping four videos a week. No. They're the people actually doing the thing day in and day out. And those are the people who you want. And they're also not necessarily the most impressive looking,

you know, we're talking about back to fitness here, not necessarily the most impressive looking or strongest people either. No. It's the people that have had that arc of training over a long period of time. They have the experience and the perspective that will be useful to you as a trainee. Yeah, I mean, you're going to hire Michael Jordan to teach you the basics of basketball. You know, he's a horrible general manager, but I imagine he can't. He's not going to understand why you have a hard time performing a free throw correctly, you know, and I'm just using a, you know, vague example, right? So, but for some reason in lifting, people seem to gravitate towards this idea that the most jacked strong guy must be the most skilled coach, right?

And they think because somebody wrote something down and they read it, that now they are well-versed on it, right? You know, I've hired coaches that I've had a bad experience with, you know, multiple times. And I learned what not to do. And I learned what not to do because when I was younger, you know, I'm much faster now, but when I was younger, I'd look at the program, this looks off, it's not kind of lining up with what I was younger, I'd look at the program. This looks off. It's not kind of lining up with what I've read, but let's give it a shot. You know, maybe I'll be, maybe this guy will surprise me, you know. And then I'll follow it by the book. And I did that a couple of times, you know, years ago for, you know, the six to 12 month range. For, you know, the six to 12 month range.

Yeah, about, no, I think one guy. Yeah, about the six to 12 month range, two times that I can think of. And both times by the, because, you know, it takes about three to six months to see anything, you know. Sure. After about a year, you're pretty sure if something worked or not. That's the problem with, you know, trying to build muscle or get stronger beyond being novice. It takes a long time to see if something's working right and the first time i was furious second time i was the first time i was furious because i figured out that the guy was just selling and he knew he was full of and he was just straight up lying and then he also

had behavioral characteristics that trend towards uh sociopathy and narcissism and basically would find a way that no matter what type of argument I would try to frame, and I would frame pretty rational arguments too. I'm not just saying, oh, so-and-so said this. It's like, dude, it doesn't make sense for these reasons. Then he would try to do a play on words to make sure that he was still correct every time. And I'm like, okay, I'm not just somebody who exercises and reads things and thinks he's an expert. I was coaching people at the time. Right. I was an experienced coach and I had read a lot of things as well. So for me to be wrong 100%

of the time is a statistical impossibility and that's what i was kind of that's how i was looking at this situation and i'm like this motherfucker's a car salesman with a god complex i'm done you know yeah and that was it you know and then i hired another guy who uh you know was just basically copying another guy so what a guy was doing on him you know which is very common in this business and i just realized the competency i needed wasn't there i didn't get too mad at that guy. I was just like, all right, I'm done with that. You know, then I hired a third guy, great technique coach, got me to a great place. Then I hit a threshold of strength where the intensity was

very high, absolutely. And the prescription got to be too much on the intensity side. And then I just kind of realized, you know, he had a competitive background and, uh, there were elements of my recovery that were absent that may not have been absent in some of the other people he was training, you know? Right. Yeah. Drugs. So, uh, you know, I just, I didn't get too mad about that. I moved on, you know, I've gotten less mad about it each time because I just realized I'm taking a risk every time I try something. And I had reasons for hiring each of these people. And the third guy was pretty good because he had owned a gym before, trained all sorts of people.

And he said he wasn't proud of the 800 squatters in his gym as much as he was proud of the, you know, 25, 30, 500 deadlifters, you know, that were just mediocre people. And that's what I was chasing at the time. And he delivered on that. Just getting past that point, I just felt like I was just getting too beat up, you know. So I moved on. Then, you know, I realized I was at a point in my own training where I probably didn't need somebody micromanaging my programming. You know, I was coaching a lot of people. I trained to a solid intermediate advanced level. And that's when Rip's

like, if you need a programming coach, you're not a fucking coach. You're not worth a shit as a coffee guy. What he said, you know, he gave me a, you know, hard response there. And since then, that's pretty much what it's turned into. I call Rip, have a conversation, light bulb moment, apply it to my training. I don't talk to him about it again for a couple of years, you know, and that's seemed to work pretty well. So he's correct in that assessment for where I'm at right now and what I'm doing. And I don't have accountability problems, so I don't need to report to somebody that doesn't enhance anything for me. But recently, you know, I realized my bench was stuck, hired a guy again, tried it for about

five to seven weeks, and then I just stopped. I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore because it's not working. I've been down this road. I have experience now. There's a thing about experience. I've done this before. And I just shut it down. I didn't let it get to a point where I was too pissed off about it, you know?

Right. And that was that. here is when you decide to work with somebody and and uh experiment with their approach then you have to try it as it's being prescribed to you even if it goes against something that you may have tried in the past that clearly didn't work you know what i mean right um and that may mean that you may not you may figure out the fucker's wrong, but then that's news. You've learned something. Or it might help you. I'm pretty confident that most capable people do pretty well with our approach, with the approach we take. And we have lots of case studies and testimonials to back it up. So I'm not too concerned about that. But I'm also not claiming that I'm better than everybody else in the business. You know, I guess what I'm trying to say is if you've read a bunch of shit and it's not working, then forget about everything you've just read.

If you've walked into my gym or hired me online, forget all that you've just read and just do what I tell you to do for a while. You know, prove that what I'm telling you to do doesn't work. And you'll find out, you know, you'll find out. I'm pretty confident in what I do. And that, you know, that offended that same person who doesn't have weightlifting shoes, but ordained themselves as an expert themselves. Right. Yeah. The, I mean, the thing is, so you hit on something that is important, and that is that if you want to go far in training, you ultimately have to become your own coach. Eventually, yes. right? So, you know, I, I have, I've had the privilege of, of coaching some people, um, since 2018 when I started coaching full time. Um, and so now we have, you know, coming up on five and a half years for some of them from some of my earliest clients, five and a half years of solid

training. And, um, the thing is at that point, right? Uh, right, they have to be able to self-direct a good portion of their program. And it's not because I'm lazy or I don't want to help or whatever. It's just that I need a level of feedback, especially working with them online, that I'm not going to get just by watching them from a distance over the end. You won't. Right. So, and that's, and that's, it's a lot of things, right? It's, it's one is like, how, how does the lift feel? How are the joints feel? How, you know, what's their, what's their perspective on like their energy levels, their fatigue levels, that kind of stuff, because they're strong, right? They're very strong after training for five solid years. And so the, the ups and downs of the stress

recovery adaptation model are bigger, you know, the, the, the fatigue, the fitness fatigue, two factor curves are bigger, right? You know, the, the, the amplitudes are bigger. So, right? Curves are bigger, right? You know, the amplitudes are bigger. So I need that feedback in order to coach them. And really, really what it is, I'm not really coaching them anymore, per se. Well, I think of myself more as a consultant, you know? I sort of can look at the big picture in a dispassionate way, because I'm not them, I'm not in the middle of it. And I can sort of set a course and say like, you know, not them. I'm not in the middle of it. And I can sort of set a course and say like, you know, here's what I'm seeing. Here's what I think might work really well for you. Here's the way I would kind of generally structure that. But there's a lot of,

of, there's a lot that's left up to them in that, right. Which is, um, I, you know, I need, I can't say for sure that if we do, if we start working with them, the, you know, one guy in particular with a three week micro cycle, right. I don't know for sure that he's going to be able to maintain that for the next training block. Right. You know, maybe it's going to go to four weeks. Maybe it needs to be two weeks. Right. Yeah. Um, and so I'm going to need a lot more feedback from him in order to, to make that happen. So how does, so the only way that he's going to be successful is if he is already learned a lot about the process of training and, and learn something about programming so he can understand what I'm, the direction I'm,

I'm trying to set and then also give me good feedback. Right. Yeah. Now this is all stuff that a novice, I would not expect to be able to do any of this, right? A novice does not have any of the perspective or experience to do it. But the point remains that if you want to get the most out of your training, you're going to have to learn some of this stuff. And back to the beginning of the episode, you can't do it without going through the process. You will never be able to read yourself to the level of experience and perspective that you need to be a good advanced trainee someday. Right. Exactly. Not going to happen.

Not going to happen. You've got to get the experience yourself by doing it. And that means early on finding someone that you believe is competent, right? Starting strength coaches have a very good reputation and a very good model that's well-tested. There are some other good coaches out there, but you know, you find somebody and you stick with it for a long period of time, longer than you think, you know, I think a year is probably a good marker, like you said. Of course, you know, it's a minimum six months because it takes time, you know, it takes time and not everything is just muscles contracting and relaxing. There's other factors that play a role in this that are going to interfere with your ability to progress and recover.

But don't think because you've been reading a bunch of shit and consuming YouTube content that that qualifies you to micromanage somebody that's in the business of watching, supervising, assessing, and evaluating people for a living. Yes, I'm going to say it again. Owning a gym is a qualification. It is. I own a gym. I have people that come in here. I teach people how to lift. I'm a technique coach.

I've prepared people for competition. I've seen the extreme ends of strength. I've helped people diet down to very low body fats, right? Fat percentages. And I can explain everything I'm doing in a logical fashion using the stress recovery adaptation cycle. What I wanted to add was, I was a dumb ass just like you. And I was. I read all the bodybuilding shit. Arnold's book. Oh, yeah. That was on bodybuilding.com. I read muscle and fitness, muscular development, men's fitness, men's health.

That's what I had back then before the internet popped up. You know, by the time the internet popped up, thankfully, I'd found RIP. And, you know, I just, I never, I'm a very outcomes driven person. And maybe that's where I am in life and doing what I do and how I do it. You know, for me, it was okay. I do a bunch of chest exercises, a bunch of leg exercises, a bunch of shoulder exercises, you know, chest day, shoulder day, whatever, you know, like a train like that split routine type deal. And I do it for months at a time. And it seemed rational and logical to me to add weight to it, to the extent that I could, you know, because we didn't have fractional. So on a lot of the upper body stuff, I couldn't do it, you know. But it made

sense that the weight had to get heavier. And at the time, you know, I didn't know that I can do things multiple times a week, I would just add weight every week, you know, and then I'd drop reps and keep adding weight. Like classical periodization made sense to me. And it was in the fitness magazines back then. I first learned about it in Men's Fitness. There was an article on periodization. They had a strength, hypertrophy phase, a strength phase, and a power phase, which is really a strength phase, you know? And the strength phase is really still kind of an endurance phase. You're doing like eights, I think, something like that, you know, six to eight and four to six is the quote unquote power phase. But I digress. Either way, it was in a fitness publication, you know, you'd find stuff like that. And it made sense to me. I'm like,

okay, so you're going to add weight and you're going to keep adding weight and drop the reps. And then when you can't do that anymore, you start over and you try something new, work on the weak points, you know? And the thing is, I didn't know I didn't have weak points. But my point is, I knew that it had to get heavier. But I was doing a bunch of exercises. And what I'd see by the end of every program was, my lats will get wider, my quads will get bigger, my pecs would fill out, you know, especially if I did dumbbells. And then, you know, my traps and mid back weren't very thick, my arms weren't dumbbells. And then, you know, my traps and mid-back weren't very thick. My arms weren't really growing. And I didn't understand why, you know. And I just,

you know, I'd do more isolation work then, you know. I'd be like, oh, those are weak points. I got to do weak point training, you know. And that's how a lot of you fuckers I'm talking about think. So, I did all sorts of raises and, you know, 15, 20, 30 sets for shoulders that none of which included a press, you know. You know, stopping half of doing partials if I did press, seated with a dumbbell, you know, never a standing barbell press. It just didn't cross my mind, you know. And I would rarely deadlift, you know, because that's for lower back, which meant that I was doing it wrong and my lower back was getting sore, you know. Yeah. So, dumbasses, I was one of you at one point. And fast forward, you know, a few years,

little did I know, like five years later, I would find, you know, Rip on fucking YouTube land teaching a press. And that kind of led to me watching all his videos. And then I was following a different program that was similar. And then long story short, I found his. Did starting strength. Here I am now. But the thing was, when these guys were saying less is more, I didn't argue with it. You know, I just tried it. You know, like I didn't sit there and have a fucking meltdown about taking a bunch of senseless isolation shit out of my workout. You know, like I just did it.

And I knew that it worked because up to that point, if I squatted heavy, that's the other thing. A lot of you motherfuckers that are giving me a hard time aren't lifting heavy, okay? And when I was doing quote-unquote hypertrophy, I was squatting in the upper 200s for sets of 10 and 8. I wouldn't go over 275 because I didn't have good command over the bar because I was doing it wrong. So I was smart enough to not keep pushing it when I didn't have good command over the bar because I was doing it wrong, you know, so I was smart enough to not keep pushing it when I couldn't, hadn't have good command over the bar. But, you know, by the time I got around to rip, I was pulling 315, squatting 315, you know, benching in the mid 200s, you know, pressing over 135 for a single, you know, so not, you know, those aren't competitive numbers, but compared to like what I typically see with the average client,

that's a lot more than a lot of people are lifting at baseline, you know? Right. And my point is that I just did it. You know, I just did it. And I knew that it worked because when I put a bunch of weight on the squat, my thighs would grow. When I did a lot of heavy chin-ups, my lats would get wider. If I did a lot of heavy dips and benching, guess what? My triceps would develop, right?

If I bench with dumbbells, my pecs would grow. It was obvious to me that there was a there there by the time I heard, hey, you don't need all this other shit. Do the big stuff. What was missing for me? I went deadlifting. Plain and simple. Started deadlifting, got traps, got back thickness, started pressing heavy and doing more volume with it. And by more volume, three sets of five, not just like these singles and, you know, randomly switching from presses to push presses and silly shit like that. But right, you know, when I actually trained the press year round, you know, my suddenly I had lateral delts, which I thought, oh, I just have bad genetics for lateral delts. My lateral delts are my weak point. Sound familiar, motherfuckers? I know that some of you listening have had these thoughts. You know, now I needed to press, you know, pressing 225 gave me bigger delts. Tripling

205 two years ago gave me even bigger delts. And this is all relative. You know, you have to look at my baseline to understand why this matters. I am much bigger than I was at baseline. And I've had to troubleshoot my way to getting there. These guys that are on YouTube talking to you, they were big at baseline, much bigger than you're ever going to get. So in my book, that eliminates credibility. You didn't have to troubleshoot for a mediocre result. You started off way ahead of her. Strength was not your limiting factor. Your first deadlift was 475, not 225, not 185, not 135. It was 475.

Yes, these people exist, and they're on YouTube, and they're telling you what you need to be doing. And they have no idea what your challenge is because they never had it. Your max deadlift was their warm-up, their first warm-up on day one. And the gym bro, who was weaker than him, got excited and put more plates on because they wanted to see how heavy they can get it. And then when he pulled five plates, 495, they're like, oh my God, you're so fucking strong. And then in a couple of years, he's pulling 600. This exists, people. This exists. So listening to that guy, regurgitating his content and telling me that you know more than I do and I should consult with you on how to train you is a waste of your money.

It's a waste of my time. It just pisses me off. And then it pisses you off because I call you out. So let's save us, you know, let's save the drama here. You know, if you are an expert, you don't need me. And if you want to hire the guy on YouTube, pay him enough. And he might actually work, but then you'll find out he didn't know what the fuck he's doing. But pay him enough.

Offer him $1,000. See what he says. Then go to $1,500. Then go to $2,000. Find his price. Get him to train you if you really think that what he's telling you is true. But, you know, don't hire a coach trying to micromanage them with bullshit that you've heard from another coach. You know, everything you go into the relationship with, I know nothing. What I've done thus far isn't working. I'm just going to do what this motherfucker says, because for whatever reason,

I decided to pay him. Right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the thing that I've found is that this has been true for myself, right? So I'm not, I'm not just criticizing others. This has been true in my own struggles, right? When I, when I've been struggling with a skill or whatever, and I talked to, you know, a consultant, somebody that really knows nine times out of 10, I'm focused on the wrong thing. I think my problem is X. Nope, that's not at all. And I just, I can't see past the problem that I perceive that I have. And I see this in training too. A lot of people are looking for programming solutions to problems that aren't related to programming. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a tech, it's a

technique problem. It's a, you know, I don't know what you call it, culture problem. Like you're just like, you're not, it's a, it's a mindset problem rather. Like, you know, you're just behavioral problem, pushing enough. You are not consistent. You are not paying attention to what you're doing. You're not being intentional, whatever it is, right? A lot of people are looking for the wrong solution. And, you know, so that's another part

of what a coach does for you is, you know, some people that, honestly, some people it gets really, really hyper. I get this sometimes. Some people get just really, really hyper-focused on their technique and every little element. And I just have to back off. Like, I'm not going to give that person a bunch of cues to think about. That's what they want, right? They want somebody to just tell them all these little tiny little micro things about their lifts. And I'm like, that's not the problem. You're not hitting the gym with a bunch of intensity. You're, you're, you were not just pushing on the

bar as simple as that sounds, just push harder on the bar. So sometimes people need that perspective. And, uh, absolutely. You need somebody to tell you you're being a pussy and you're not right about it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So anyway anyway so there you go that's that's that's part of um that's part of what coaching is so be open to the idea that maybe what you think is your problem is not your problem no it's not and you know we've hammered this to hell i'm gonna give one more story and then we're gonna close out but i a problem. My bench won't go up. I'm crying and shit. And, you know, hired a guy. Didn't work out too well for me, you know.

He made some money, and I would never ask for a refund. You know, I hired somebody for their opinion. I don't have to like it, but, you know, I wanted his opinion. So I don't, no ill will towards this gentleman. He was a cool dude. I just, you know, didn't work, you know, for whatever reason. Could even be my fault, for all I know. But it didn't work. I moved on, right? I call Rip. First, he yells at me for hiring a programming coach, you know, because I shouldn't be hiring a programming coach right now. Really, I shouldn't. I should have just consulted with this guy and gotten some suggestions, you know, and that's probably, that's where I fucked up. That's the biggest part I fucked up, you know, because I know my body better than somebody is going to know it the first day because of how long I've been doing this.

When you're earlier in the process, that's not the case, you know, that's not. Yeah. To be fair to that guy. Yeah. That's,

that's, it's very difficult to find, to, to take on somebody who's been training that long. It is. And it's probably a minority of his demographic. I think that he gets a lot of high level people that are probably on performance performance-enhancing drugs because they are competing at a high level. And that's a different animal, too. That's a different demographic. I'm a guy who's not taking anything and has been training for over 10 years. You just don't get people like that walking through the door a lot, and that becomes hyper-individual. hyper individual. And I think for that person, you know, consulting is better than, you know,

micromanaging a program. So I'm trying to be fair to this guy, because I liked him. I liked him a lot. You know, he's cool. But you know, I talked to rip. And I go through it after I get bitched at for hiring a programming coach. All right, I'm like, I tell him rip because he wants me at 220. And I'm not opposed to, you know, fluffing up and doing it again, if as long as the weight on the bar goes up, you know, that's always been my thing. So I told him like, Alright, let's put the weight aside for a second, you can yell at me about that afterwards, you know, I want to bench 315 I press 225 at this body weight, I should be able to bench 315. It's not a body weight issue. Because obviously, if I get fat, I barely bench and

it goes up. I told him that story. And anyways, by the time we got to it, he's like, want to get your bench up, you're not lying tricep extensions aren't going to get your bench up. And I'm like, I agree with you. You don't have to tell me I agree with you because how the fuck's 100 pound lying tricep extension going to move a 300 pound bench? It's not, you know, for a separate episode. isolation exercises serve to improve your stability during the big lift because you have better body awareness over those muscles. That's my theory on it. I think that if your goal is to push a big bench, sure, a line tricep extension is going to probably make your elbow more stable under a bench, but it's not going to translate into more force production. It's an entirely different thing. But anyways, so we kind of went into that rant, talked a bunch of shit about isolation exercises, and we got to it. And, you know, I kind of gave him my analysis. I'm like, look, man, I'm like, I would argue the triceps are the prime movers on the bench, because the pecs horizontally adduct the shoulder. And when your

hands are in a fixed position, you're not going to get a lot of range of motion around the shoulder in that horizontal plane, you're not going to get a lot of horizontal adduction, it's a very short range of motion. Therefore, the pec isn't doing a whole lot, you know, it's a partial, you know, if you think about it, if you want to think about in those terms. So I need strong triceps. And I was telling him like, you know, my elbows flare at the bottom, so they're weak in their proximal function, then he then we can then he just called me out. He's like, Why are we thinking in terms of muscle groups? And then I'm like, All right, well, fair enough. I'm like, let's think about this in terms of the movement. I want the fucking bench press to go up. So I need to bench press more, but I've tried bench pressing more. And that didn't work. I get tendonitis, you know, and then, then he's like,

well, you're, you know, you're doing too much or something to that effect. So then we break it down. He's like, do five sets of five on Monday. Do a set of five pin bench press on Wednesday. Then I stop him, and this was the aha moment. I'm like, so just one set? He's like, yeah, because you'll get that tendonitis if you do more. It's stressful. And then I'm like, so do I start from the bottom or the top? Because in the past, I've been told to start from the top, short pause, keep tension and press it up. Start from the bottom, treat it like a rack pull,

you know, reset each rep. And I'm like, duh, that's how I pin press. That's how I rack pull. Why would I do this different? Right? So I'm like, okay, I can get on board with this. So one set of five. And then he said, and then on Friday, do five singles at 90%. You know, just pick a number you can hit that's, you know, reasonably heavy. Don't use an estimated one RM or any of that bullshit. Find what you have that day and work up. So I, you know, reasonably heavy. Don't use an estimated 1RM or any of that bullshit. Find what you have that day and work up. So, you know, I have a little bit of different approach to training, so I didn't follow it exactly. I was like, you know, I don't like mixing rep ranges.

I'd rather keep it all at fives and go to threes and go to ones. You know, it's just a preference thing, and that's in the book. You know, like he said, you know, I don't need somebody micromanaging it, but he gave me the general template to work with. know, I don't need somebody micromanaging it, but he gave me the general template to work with. So what I did instead was, I'm like, well, you know, muscle groups aside, I've identified that the triceps are the limiting factor on the bench press. So I'm going to do close grip for my volume stimulus. So that five sets of five, I'm going to do it all close grip. And then I'm going to do that pin bench, just as he said, a set, a heavy set of five overload, right? Reset each rep. And then on the third day, I'm just going to do standard Texas method intensity set of five bench, bench press. And then when that levels off, because it will, because I'm not an

intermediate anymore, then I'm going to go to every other week and probably every third week at some point, because it's probably where I'm really at on the bench press. But since I'm working back up through weights that I've crushed a long time ago, we're doing a weekly linear progression. But then I thought about it and I'm like, you know, I know I can handle quite a bit on bench press. And I also know that, you know, there's like, and then I also know what I said earlier, that the pecs aren't getting much stimulus from a barbell bench press. So what so what I did instead was this is what I learned when I did a year of hypertrophy last year. Some of you have been listening, I've mentioned that I'm like, I need dumbbells, and incline seems to work really well. So I'll do after my intensity

bench, I'm going to do three sets of five incline dumbbell bench press with my new fancy rack that unracks them for me, it's pretty nice. And I'm still going to press obviously, he didn't go into the press, we weren't talking about the press, but I'm sure he was assuming there'd be a press in there somewhere. So since I'm only doing one heavy set off the pins on Wednesday, I will do a standing press afterwards. So that's how I do that. And then I do a slight seated press after my intensity full range of motion bench press after the after the dumbbell. So that Friday, I hit the I do the one set on the bench, the three sets on the Friday, I hit the I do the one set on the bench, the three sets on the incline and the three sets on the seated press. And that's what

I do. And then Monday, I just do five sets of five close grip. That's why I don't do assistance work on Monday, because I'm doing a lot of sets on the on the on that volume stimulus. So there's I'm not really going to sit there and beat the shit out of my shoulders, you know. So to kind of bring that all back, that was a consult, you know, I basically got a consult with Rip, which I appreciate. He could probably charge $1,000 for that and get it. So I appreciate that. I appreciate a lot of what he's done for me, but especially those moments are good because what I really got from it was, okay, I need to pin bench press. And I need to do a lot less shit than I'm doing because I was doing way too much before.

and I need to do a lot less shit than I'm doing because I was doing way too much before. And I could probably get all the volume I need close gripping, and I don't need to do a lot of medium grip bench press other than for the intensity stimulus, right? And so far that's working. You know, there's no PR shit because I'm only a third week into it. But that pin bench is lighting up the problem that I have when I max out, typically because I have when I max out. Typically, because I have a longer left arm. If you ever see me in person, I'll show you.

It's very visible. You'll see an asymmetry on that last rep or on a max attempt. There'll be a big asymmetry. My left will be way lower than my right. I'll either finish it or the plates will fall off sometimes, you know? Right, right. And now when I do the pin bench press, that asymmetry started happening. And now I'm actually finally starting to correct it. Like I know I'm starting to feel what I have to do to stop it. But I'm starting at the point where it happens, which it's I'm

pretty excited about it, because it's like a new thing, a new old thing, like it's something that I've heard before, but it's a new thing, a new experience, I should say, for me to do that. And it just came from a quick conversation. You know, he's not microman new experience, I should say, for me to do that. And it just came from a quick conversation. You know, he's not micromanaging my programming. Nobody is. I am, you know. And, you know, I was willing to listen. I didn't follow it exact, but I followed the general principles, applied it to my own situation. Like he said, I am an advanced lifter. I know what I need better than him, you know. But it's good to get ideas from somebody who's been doing this longer than you, especially the man himself, right? you know that's what that's what i'm i'm telling you people

like you know listen to your coach if you're so far advanced like i am yeah use your own judgment on that you know that's that's fine but a lot of you aren't if you're dead lifting 185 i mean come on guys you know you're you're you're you're deadlifting 185, I mean, come on, guys. You know, you're probably following some bullshit. You know, like you want some benchmarks? You know, double body weight squat or more, two and a half body weight deadlift or more. You know, one and a half on the bench and body weight press. You're doing shit like that.

You know, you probably are entitled to an opinion, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. And those aren't insane numbers, by the way, but that takes work and time because I've done it. It takes work and time. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Is somebody, the average guy that achieves that has gone through some

serious work to get there. And he's been there and he was too. And he's, yeah, absolutely. and he's bigger than he was too. And he's, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely is. And so that, that alone is edifying, teaches you something. All right, man. Well, let's, I think that's,

I think that's a wrap. Yeah. Like I said, that was the last story I was going to give. It's a long episode. I have a lot of thoughts on it and I hope that our audience took something away from it, especially these stubborn assholes that want to do this shit to me,

want to torture me with this. You know, like no shoes, no shirt, no service. I know everything, no service. I mean, I've got to find something like that, something to hang up at my gym, you know. But thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com. You can find the gym at weightsandplatesgymcom and start using that. Now we've, I think we're almost done

with the final touches on that website, Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. And the gym is at weights, double underscore and double underscore plates. All right. And you know where to find me. I'm at marmalade underscore cream on instagram that's where i share stuff about my own training about training others and also my audio business and if you want to ask me a question about training you can you can dm me there or you can email me jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com all right we'll talk to you again in a couple weeks.