Weights and Plates Podcast - #67 - Lessons Learned in 2023: Hypertrophy BS, Arm Training, Food Quality, & More

Episode Date: February 10, 2024

Dr. Santana and Coach Trent share some of the lessons they've learend about training, health, nutrition, and human behavior in 2023.   Happy New Year!   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. Hello. Hello. Merry Christmas, sir. Merry Christmas to you, sir. Yeah, we say Merry Christmas on this podcast, not Happy Holiday. We sure do. We sure do. We sure do.

But even if you don't celebrate Merry Christmas, I hope you had a good holiday. Well, on December 25th, it's a specific holiday, you know? It is, yeah. What's this Happy Holiday shit, you know? Yeah, it's an American holiday, whether you celebrate the meaning behind it or not. Mm-hmm. You know. And so is New Year's. So when this comes out, it's You know, but... And so is New Year's.

So when this comes out, it's going to be just a couple days from New Year's. So Happy New Year as well. Happy New Year as well. So we thought that today we'd do something a little bit different. This is the last episode of 2023. Wow.

We thought we'd just do a quick, you know, just a quick episode talking about some of the lessons we've learned this year about training, diet, coaching other people, just watching other people. I think it's kind of interesting to look back over the year and kind of figure out, you know, hey, did I learn anything? Because sometimes I feel like I don't. I didn't. But if I sit down and kind of reflect a little bit, I'm like, yeah, you know, actually, I learned some stuff. I learned some stuff here. And maybe that could be helpful to you, dear listener. Yeah, man, I can't,

I can't believe we're doing the last episode of the year. It's kind of crazy. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't check like what episode number this is, but we're getting up there. 67. 67. Yeah. Dang. It's not 69. Not yet, dude. Not yet. So close. Dang, it's not 69. Not yet, dude. Not yet. So close. We need the Beavis and Butthead people to be like, uh, episode 69.

Dude, the new episodes were kind of funny. Not going to lie. Wait, like how new? Like last year. I don't think I saw those. I think I missed those. There were a couple a few years ago that were pretty funny. Damn.

I'm gonna have to go check this out. I didn't know there was a more Beavis and Butthead. There was a movie too in 2022. Well, yeah. Man, where was I? I don't know.

I love this stuff. The, the best, although the best Beavis and Butthead bits for me were the, when they would, they would basically like shit on music videos. They just watch MTV. Like, i don't you i guess you have to go on youtube to find them because they would play during the commercial break sometimes oh yeah during the actual show like when it was the original run oh it was so good well now they watch youtube and make fun of those music videos

yeah there you go there you. They watch music videos on YouTube. So, yeah, man, we covered a lot this year. I don't know where to start. Yeah, well, I shed on hypertrophy a lot. Right? Yeah. Well, we still haven't killed the beast. It just won't die. It won't.

It will not die. And, you know, we won't name any names here, but yeah, there's definitely a lot of people out there in social media still banging that drum. Yep. And I think, okay, so resolution. Here's a resolution for you if you need some resolution. You probably should just stop fucking watching

all fitness content next year and just train instead. But I know it's hard because, you know, I like to watch it too. I like to watch some of it too. Um, but if it says hypertrophy in the title, don't watch it. Yeah.

I think that's a good, that's a good new year's resolution. For the most part. That's what I do. I don't, I don't, I've just read a few people I'll watch on that. Yeah.

Unless it's the weights and plates podcast. If we use the word hypertrophy, then you can, you can listen to us. We're safe. Yeah. Cause we're just doing it. We're doing it's the Weights and Plates podcast. If we use the word hypertrophy, then you can listen to us. We're safe. Yeah. Because we're just doing it. We're doing it for the clickbait.

Mm-hmm. Because you know, if you see it on one of our titles, there's a good chance I'm going on a rant. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Look, I spent most of my younger years wasting time on this stupid shit. And I've talked about it on here until I'm blue in the face. And I'll keep talking about it, but, you know, at the end of the day,

when you look at people that are big and muscular, they're never weak. You know, they're never weak. They're never piss weak. They may not be an IPF world champion. They don't train that way usually, but they may not be an IPF world champion, but that doesn't mean they're fucking weak. You know, you don't see a guy who's, you know, of normal height, 5'10", you know, let's say he's 200 pounds and low body fat.

He's not, you know, barely benching 135, you know. But on the same token, just because you see the 165-pound guy benching 315, he's the outlier, okay? And he's bigger than he was before he trained too. Let's keep that in mind, you know, people, people love to point that out. Oh, I know this little skinny guy that lifts a bunch of weight. And first of all, they usually don't tell you that the person's benching a lot. They'll say they're deadlifting or squatting a lot. Right. Yeah. They've got the, they've got the Lamar Gantant type deadlift leverages where they you know four inch lockout or whatever um yep yep yeah you get those types are like you

know i get some i've got some friends who are really into uh brazilian jiu-jitsu and other martial arts and you know it attracts a young crowd and you get these good athletes there and they're just like oh man there's this one guy he's so small but dude he'll kick your ass he's just so fucking strong and i'm like yeah i mean some of that is is the training adaptation you know if you grew up wrestling from a young age uh it's it's kind of like forearm strength you know it's there are there are there's a certain amount of strength in that application that uh you just gain from lots strength, you know, it's just, there are, there are, there's a certain amount of strength in that application that, uh, you just gain from lots of years. Uh, you know, even if you're a small, these are all like, you know, small skinny dudes from those parts. These

are your like, of course, you know, five, seven, 155 pound, 65 pound guys. Um, but the other thing is that I think is always funny is like, a lot of those guys are fucking strong because they're really good at their sport. And the whole sport is leverage. Oh, yeah. Right. You know, we talk about in the barbell world, moment arms, you know, we do, we, at least in the starting strength world, we talk about moment arm analysis, right? Which is like, if you lift incorrectly, or what we would consider incorrectly, it's the reason we consider it incorrect is because it's inefficient from a mechanical standpoint. If you create unnecessary moment arms, it makes the weight feel a lot heavier than it actually is. Well, it's the same thing in jujitsu or whatever. A guy that's really, really good knows how to put his body and your body

into a position where he doesn't have to use a lot of force to end up torquing the shit out of you. Right. And so that makes these little tiny guys appear that they're really, really fucking strong. But I don't, I don't believe that these same guys are deadlifting 600. No.

You know, it's not, it's, it's a different thing. And I also don't believe that a guy who's 145 is going to beat the ever-living shit out of a guy who's 365. No. These are weight class sports for a reason, you know? That's right, yeah, in a real fight, yeah.

In an actual fight. In a real fight. The thing is, in a real fight, you pull out your pistol and you shoot. Now, let's assume you try to brawl. The guy who's 365 is not going to be phased by this 145 pound guy no matter how flashy his moves are right yeah yeah it's not going to go to the ground he's fucking laying on you okay i'm sure there's an outlier there always is i don't care we're not talking about outliers here you know right uh. Dude, all the people into BJJ just are like swerving off the road right now.

Oh, yeah. Fuming. Look, the sport is really cool. Absolutely. It's not my thing. It's hardcore. You don't have to preach to me about how hardcore it is. Dude, I know it is.

I know I can't hang in that environment. Wrestling, those guys are fucking hardcore too way more than like power lifters and stuff like this you know all all due respect there uh but yeah it's i think the the the misunderstanding of like athletic adaptations is um is is kind of funny to me so hopefully we've you know hopefully we've educated some of y'all out there, at least kind of cleared up some misunderstandings. I certainly have clarified my thoughts on some things. I was trying to think about this year, like, what did I learn from a training perspective? And that's a tough one. I think you could say from one perspective, this year has been one of

the worst training years I've ever had since I've started training. I'm weaker at all the four main lifts than I was this time last year. Pretty much across the board. But I think there's some context there. I'm also 10 pounds lighter than I was last year, which on my frame is not a small amount. Uh, and I, I'm not that, I'm not that much weaker than I was last year. You know, I'm within 10% of, of most of the numbers I was hitting last year

at this time. And so, you know, one of the things I've learned in this process is that, you know, I've, I've been dealing with a lot of limitations in terms of my recovery. And I've talked about that a lot on the podcast. But one thing I've learned in this whole year is when you have those limitations, really drilling down on one goal in terms of, you know, physical goals, really drilling down on one thing helps a lot. And at some point, you know, I remember early in this year, I was kind of fucking around like, well, what I want to do, like, I know I'm, you know, I'm not going to, I was in no danger of like working back up to hitting like PRs or whatever this year. So I was like, well, you know, maybe I'll just, you know, like do some different style of training. Maybe I'll do some hypertrophy training or some different shit. Right. Right. And I just, I kind of spun my wheels for like three months

until finally I was like, all right, look, this year I don't have a whole lot of time to dedicate to training. It's not going to change anytime soon. I'm not going to be able to gain much weight at all this year, if any. And, uh, so what am I going to do? Okay. I want to get stronger. I want to get stronger on the, on the big four barbell lifts. I'm going to cut out all of the accessories more or less, you know, I do some chin ups and shit, but that's about it. And once I did that, that gave me a very clear goal with my programming. Okay. I need to drive these numbers up in these rep ranges. Absolutely.

And then once I started doing that, I've had pretty smooth sailing. Now, you know, some big interruptions and stuff, big sleep loss events that would knock me back or sickness or whatever. But if you look at the whole year from that point where I made that decision, I've pretty smoothly sailed up on my lifts. So I guess that's one

takeaway that I have is that set a goal and then stick with it. And when they say stick with it, you really like, you got to stick with something for a, I think a minimum of six months. Oh yeah. That's like the absolute bare minimum. Really it's more like a year. You know, I do things a year at a time usually. Yeah. And that's a better number. I was talking to somebody earlier about this, and I've said it many times, maybe not on the show, but, you know, this whole idea of three-month training cycles, you know, that comes from the fact that an academic semester is three months long. That's actually four.

from the fact that an academic semester is three months long. That's actually four, but when you factor in recruitment testing, post-testing, all that, you're going to land at about three productive months of training because in a 16-week semester, finals week included, if you did things fairly decently well, you're lucky to get 12 solid weeks where you're training people. And the thing is, between academia and the bodybuilders, this idea of three months to fat loss or three months to muscle gain has permeated the industry for about 50 years. And on the bodybuilding side, keep in mind that when you're taking a bunch of anabolics, anabolic steroids, for those of you new listeners, your rate of muscle growth is faster, right? So if they're loading up on a bunch of drugs, eating a bunch of food and training heavy, sure, they can get something done in three months, especially the less advanced they are.

Obviously, the more advanced they become, either they got to take more drugs and experiment that way because it does become a drug contest, of course, in bodybuilding. And the honest ones will tell you that. Or they got to spread it out like the rest of us. I think most of them just try to take more gear to, you know, inject their way through the sticking point, you know? But when you're dealing with mediocre genetics and advanced training, and the absence of anabolic agents, you know, you're looking at a slow, steady gain in muscle mass, a slow and steady gain in strength beyond the first, you know, six, three to nine months, you know, depending on, you know, various factors, you know, novice can make rapid progress for about three to nine months, you know? But we're going to put that

aside, you know, past that point, you know, you're looking at slow and steady gains, even a novice, let's say that a novice had a great first year and they packed on 20 pounds of lean mass, right? And they gained, you know, let's say 40 pounds of body weight. Let's use clean numbers here. So they gained 40 pounds, half of its muscle, right? And they did that, right? Think about it. That's like, what, a pound, a little over a pound and a half a month on average of lean mass. Oh, yeah. Which means that if you're no longer a novice, you're going to, under the best of circumstances, you're going to gain muscle mass slower than a pound and a half a month. Isn't that interesting, huh?

On average, too, because it doesn't happen every single month. It's like nothing happens, and all of a sudden in month three or four, you start to build muscle. So to take it back to my original point, why on earth would you stop when your body's starting to build muscle, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well said. Three months is really that, that's the point when you're just starting to get the wheels rolling this is where we agree with the professional research people and they agree with us you know you don't really see uh gains in muscle mass or you know they'll call it hypertrophy until about 8 to 12 weeks you know or some i think i've seen 6 to 8 and on the on the lower end of that but the whole

point is around month two you start to see it that's when I've started to see it in the past. And it's taking longer now because I'm more advanced. But that's where you start to see it. Why would you stop there? Because you got a little chubby? Just give it a little more time. Month six, month eight, month nine, you're still going to be that same heavier body weight.

You're going to look less chubby. And that's something I was explaining to a kid earlier. He's about 6'2". He's 205 most of the time. And I keep getting on him. I'm like – Underweight. Yeah.

I'm like, you got to get to 220. Well, I have like a dead bun now. And I'm like, for now. I'm like, you keep training. You keep adding – It's because you're 205. Yeah. Dude, you're under-muscled, dude.

So, you know, we watched Rip and Marty Gallagher's interview today because a couple members that moved out of the state were visiting. And he was talking about how, you know, how Rip gets on us about body weight because he is so pissed that he didn't go past 220. And I'm like, I'll show you the moment where he had that realization. And I pull up that interview. And that's where you know that's where that started, right, Trent? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because Marty, he asked Marty, how the hell, you know, you guys talk about 750 or 800 squats, 750 deadlifts and 500 benches as though it's the norm. You know, where did I go wrong? And long story short of it, Marty was like, you know, we would have made you a world champion easily with your structure if you pushed up to 242 or better yet, 275, you know?

So ever since then, Rip just, you know, rips into people about this. You know, I was 220. It wasn't heavy enough to do it. You need to be heavier, you know? 5'8", 185 is not enough density per height, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. But, you know, he's right. And, you know, the thing is most of the people that listen to this show aren't trying to lift the maximum amount of weight possible or even gain the most muscle mass possible, you know. So there's tradeoffs to going down that road. Yes, I can get 220 or 242 and probably lift more.

But I don't want to get that fat, you know. Yeah. Yeah, there's a downside to it. So, I mean, let me, let me say that. Uh, so kind of, I've given this history before on the podcast, but just in a nutshell, if you roll back the clock two years, I'm sitting around 195 to 200. So I would compete in the 90 kilo weight class. I was right around that walking around. And, uh, you know, a year ago I was in kind of low one 90, you know, one 91, one 92, and now I'm one 82, one 83. Okay. So, so, and I've been as heavy as two 15. So, um, and I'm five". At those various body weights, like I absolutely feel better moving my body around, like doing chores out on, you know, taking care of the chickens and gardening and, you know, hauling shit around. I absolutely feel better below 200 pounds and, and one somewhere around 190. I feel better. Like my joints feel better. I, you you know have more energy. It's easier for me to hike

It's easier for me to run um all that stuff, right Now i'm not as strong But it's definitely better now when I get down on the low side, you know at one point I hit like 170 I think when when we saw each other in may at the power lifting meet we had some lifters at the power lifting meet I think it was like 178 Skinny as below 180. Skinny as fuck. I remember. Yeah. It was super skinny. Right. Uh, I felt like shit. I felt like shit. It was awful. So, you know, uh, yeah, so there's trade-offs, but it goes both ways. So, you know, cause I know like for me, it's not really, uh,

it's not a goal or something I've, I've actively sought out to like get lean, but I know for some people that is, that is a, uh, that is a goal. Right. And if you're doing that, like, you know, from a health standpoint, some people are like, well, I don't want to be fat and like out of shape and stuff. Okay. I get that. You want to be skinny and out of shape? Cause that's the thing, you know? Yeah. You can go too far the other way. So, you know, that, that's another lesson learned, right? Is I found my bottom this year. I found, I found the bottom and I was like, no, I don't ever want to be 178 again. That was fucking terrible, you know, and I'm still way too skinny now, but I'm getting, you know, but at least I'm several pounds up from there. So I learned a few things, you know, first half of this year, I was still running variations of this hypertrophy arm specialization

workout, right? And, you know, to give a review of what that looked like, I had an arm day, the first day of the week, biceps and triceps, you know, single joint exercises and close grip bench was in there as well. But so it was like three bicep exercises a close grip bench and two tricep exercises so three and three right um and then you know i had a day where i squatted and then i had a day where i deadlifted and did a bunch of pull downs rows and shrugs you know it was a back day so to speak and then i had a day where i just benched and uh did dips and some additional tricep work. And I'd recycled this four times. I did this for a total of 13 months. And I'd say after the first six months, I started getting elbow tendonitis that I'm still dealing with. It's almost gone. And then the second six months,

you know, I kept adding to stuff and then I couldn't really add to my curls because my elbows hurt so much, you know. So I was trying to add where I could. And by the end of it, I was just like, all right, let's just lift heavy again, you know. And I, you know, hired a guy briefly, you know, tried, you know, some block training just to remember how shitty block training is and how it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's just fucking bullshit. I'm not a fan.

I'm not a fan. It's bullshit. It's overcomplicated bullshit, you know? And, you know, it kind of went back to the roots. And then, you know, I talked to Rip. You know, I call him every few years when I'm stuck. And, you know, my bottleneck is the bench, right? I need 315 bench.

I press 225. I cannot bench 315. And the opposite is more common, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So I've hit 310 before. And I was like, I want to do this right so then you know i got a couple nuggets of uh information from rip that were helpful the biggest thing was to you know just

like just like on the deadlift i rack pull just like on the press i eventually pin press well i started doing pin bench presses from the bottom up um and i do one set of five, just like the rack pull once a week. But in constructing this new program, I started reflecting back on all the arm stuff I did. And what I kind of figured out from it was most of my actual arm growth came from rowing and benching, you know? Yeah, sure. Imagine that, right? Yeah, right. And I think back on it, I'm like, the bicep curls were kind of a small contributor, you know? Like, I could probably, you know, I that right yeah and i think back on it i'm like the bicep curls were kind of a small contributor you know like i can probably you know i probably need one you know like just a barbell curl or a dumbbell curl or alternate the two but i don't need three arm exercise i don't need any tricep work you know i think the close grip bench was the big driver

there right yes so it also made me rethink uh bench pressing in general and one of the big lessons i took away was you know if you're bench pressing for pecs, you need to run up your dumbbells. And I have the setup now to do that here. I got fractional plates. I got dumbbell stands. And I got dumbbells. And if you're doing it for pec growth, you know, you got to do dumbbells. So then I think about it.

I'm like, well, barbell, you know, you get more range of motion on the elbow than you do on the shoulder. So it's a great tricep builder. So I'm like, okay, so why not just drive most of my volume from close grip bench pressing and lockout work and do very little just regular bench pressing, but make sure it's in there, right? And that's what I've done effectively. I'm doing, you know, my volume day is all close grip. Then I do pins from the bottom up, you know, reset each rep. And then I do regular bench plus some volume on incline with dumbbells, you know, because I also recognize that doing it from an incline angle, you know, as much as we want to make fun of incline and bodybuilders, it does elicit muscle growth on the proximal end of the pectorals for whatever reason. You know, just the flat bench. The upper pecs. pectorals for whatever reason, you know,

just the flat bench. Yeah, the upper pecs, you know, just the, you know, so whatever, you know, it does that. I saw it happen fast last year. So that was one thing from that workout that I noticed almost immediately was just hitting that angle, filled my chest out in areas that, you know, hadn't been growing. Anyway, so what I took away from all this was what I already knew to be true was true. Most of your muscle growth, and when I say your, I'm talking about most people. I'm not talking about a strong bodybuilder on a bunch of gear who's chasing the last 2%. I'm not talking about him. And you are not him, and you will probably never be him. So stop trying to train like him, okay?

Single joint exercises aren't what you need. The compounds are what is driving all this, and what was absent from my training was I neglected rows and I neglected bench press. I did chin-ups. I did presses. I was pretty religious with those for years. I did a little bit of bench here, and I did, like, no rows. I really didn't row at all, you know? So that arm program, that was the first time I rowed consistently. I do a little bit of bench here and I did like no rows. I really didn't row at all.

You know, that's that arm program. Those first time I rode consistently, I did a lot of rows. And, you know, I said, now I'm just not rowing because I'm lazy. Just truth be told, you know, I do it every other week.

Probably I probably skip my rows, you know, one week and then I feel bad about it. Then I do them the next week. I don't skip my main exercise, although I've been been kind of bad with press lately because that was the other thing i learned this year when you're really trying to drive the bench you don't give a about the press because you're just sore in the relevant muscles and you feel like you can't press anything you don't want to do it you know right right and it might explain why you know when i was pressing

a lot i didn't care about bench you know um I did it you know I made sure I got it in there like I'm gonna press after this episode because I skipped it last week um but uh you know right now I'm benching I'm squatting I'm dead lifting and I'm trying to make sure I get a press in there you know what I kind of got from it was that you know for since for as far back as I can remember I would complain that oh I can't get any arm, you know, for, since for as far back as I can remember, I would complain that, oh, I can't get any arm growth, you know, and there was a point where I complained I couldn't get any deltoid growth and I fixed that with pressing, right? Well, it's no wonder I couldn't get any arm growth. I'm not freaking benching a whole lot, you know, I wasn't really benching a

whole lot and I didn't do any rows. I never trained the row until last year, you know? Right. And when I did, things grew, you know? And right now, you know, just I've weighed myself for the first time probably since summer, maybe spring. And I was 190 at the end of the day. So I'm guessing I'm somewhere in the high 180s right now. Yeah. And it's interesting. I saw my dad over Christmas. And the first thing he said was, I look strong, you know? And, and you know that's that's no surprise you know I would expect that you know put on some size up top but uh then later he asked me if I lost weight that looked thinner than I did last time so what he's really saying is I look you

know that might waste look smaller because my upper body looks bigger yeah right right and I don't think that's from any of the single joint stuff I did other than shrug shrugs did make my traps grow, you know. But I feel like now. So here's the thing about single joint. I'm going to come back to this. I feel like now my traps are growing because I'm deadlifting heavier. So, like, I just matched my best deadlift ever on a week ago Monday.

I hit 465 for five. And I did it on one attempt. Usually it takes me a couple times, you know. Yeah, yeah. So I might be looking at a deadlift PR next week i hope so but uh my traps have grown so this is something that i started thinking about i haven't shrugged in months you know but i think when you do single joint exercises uh it's kind of like what rip talks about with guys not being able to feel their low back and then he has them do like supermans and they can engage their low back right after that, you know?

I think when you do single joint exercises and train them to a point, you get better at stabilizing that joint, engaging those muscles in the bigger lifts. And I think that's what's happening now with some of this stuff, you know? Sure. Like I'm just more stable in the bench press. I feel my back a lot more when I bench press, you know? And I'm sure I'm, you know,

isometrically engaging my traps more when I deadlift and do that stuff you know right yes and uh i think that's what they're for they're not meant to be trained to these really heavy weights for most people you know like i kind of came up with this continuum right like if it's a compound you want to keep the reps low because if you start adding reps beyond five you you know, that's where we draw the line, you know. You start to have some muscles fail before other muscles. So on a squat or deadlift, I'm referring to the low back, you know. And injury risk aside, that's obvious. When that happens, you're no longer doing the

same lift, right? Right. When you go to the other side of the spectrum and you're doing a single joint exercise, like a skull crusher or a bicep curl with elbow flexion only, right? You're not raising the arms, right? The same thing happens if you do the opposite, right? If you go low rep, heavy weight, it eventually, you know, that curl is going to turn into a reverse clean or that skull crusher is going to slide behind your head and turn into a pullover, you know? Yeah, right. Because you can't manage heavyweights over one joint, doing a single joint action. Not designed for that, right? They're not designed for that, right?

So this is something that I need to make. I hope I can just dig deep for some energy and make a quick Instagram video for this. This is something I've come up with is that, you know, rep ranges are contextual, right? You know, people are always talking about reps broadly speaking. You know, like you need this many reps for this goal, and they completely completely ignore the exercise they never talk about reps in the context of the movement which is what i've just done so one of the things i learned is yeah 20s and 30s great for something like a skull crusher stupid fucking stupid like you're an amoeba single-celled organism if you're doing a 30 rep squat right it you have not just failed the iq test you shouldn't have been allowed to take it to begin with it doesn't apply to you so yeah 30 rep skull crusher sure you know i think that makes sense it's a single joint action you know

you don't want to do 10 sets of 30 you know because it has the same effect you get tendonitis you know or you might get lucky and not so if you're that guy who didn't good for fucking you dude most people are going to get some sort of pain from that, right? But my point is, you know, skull crusher, 30 reps, go for it. 20 reps, go for it. If you're doing 10 or less, get ready for your elbows to hurt, and it's probably not going to stay a skull crusher. It'll turn into an LTE or possibly a pullover, you know?

Yeah, right. But then you go into, like, what did we call them last time? Double joint, bi-joint exercises. Bi-jointal. Yeah, bi- But then you go into like, what did we call them last time? Double joint, bi-joint exercises. Bi-jointal. Yeah, bi-jointal exercises. So something like an LTE, right? You know, you're going behind the head, you're extending the shoulder, you're extending the elbow, or a standard bicep curl, barbell curl, where you're raising, flexing the shoulder, flexing the bicep. Something like that.

Yeah, 8 to 12. You know, that classic 8 to 12 range probably makes sense there because if you start doing 5 or less on a bicep curl, it's going to turn into a reverse clean. And on a tricep extension, it's going to turn into a pullover where your lats are doing most of the work. Right. So, you know, something like that, where there's a couple of joints moving at the same time, you know, eight to 12 probably works. Now, if you're using three or more joints, like a squat, right, your ankles, your hips, your knees, you got three joints going there at a time, something like that, you want to do five or less, you know? So, you know, the more joints in a movement, the fewer the reps, you know, the fewer the joints involved in performing a movement, the higher the reps, you know, this is pretty simple and pretty fucking obvious too,

you know, but yet nobody wants to talk about it that way they just want to talk about reps broadly and say you need 15 sets of 30 for hypertrophy yeah it's well and and the other thing that corresponds with this too is that is is load right like yeah you need the exercise for context but but then also that implies loads, right? Of course. If you're doing a squat, it's a far different load than a leg extension. Of course. Right? If you're doing a, you know, if you're doing a row, that's a far heavier weight than a bicep curl.

Absolutely. So, and so that's the other, that's the other part when you're talking about like, um, you know, how much stress you're imposing on someone when you're talking about sets and reps is like, it's meaningless until you actually put the weight on there. That's right. And, and I think, you know, that's, so we're saying the same thing. It's also meaningless until you put the exercise on there, but the exercise is going to dictate the weight being moved too. So yeah, no, that totally makes sense. Yeah. And and you know i don't have a fucking p value for you and guess what neither do they right let that sink in well and again like you know how many how many studies are out there where they're doing this for an entire year how many studies can be fucking generalized come on that's the more important question. None of that. Human subjects research is bullshit. Largely fucking bullshit.

It's narrow in scope just like the anecdotal stuff that we do. Most of these studies, I would argue all of these studies, the results that are reported can only be generalized to the participants in the study. And we're going to dive into this next year. All nine of them? All 11 of them? Well, fuck, man. Let's just say 14,000. How many people?

14,000 Americans. How many people are in this country? 330 million. Do the math. Drop in the bucket. Because, you know,'s say oh if you recruit enough subjects that washes all that well what's enough subjects who decides right right who decides what enough is you know since one is a fraction of a percent of a population enough right

yeah um there's a whole lot of pussies on the world exactlyak preview here, people. Professional research on human subjects is limited by the mere fact that we can't pick you at random. And because we can't pick you at random to participate in a study, that means that we can't generalize the findings of that study to the broader population of interest. of that study to the broader population of interest. So what the fuck does that mean? This is a sneak preview because we're going to go into this. That means that if you live on the third floor of an apartment and I want to study everybody on the third floor and I just take volunteers, well, then I can only talk about, I can only generalize those findings to those volunteers. Especially let's say that third floor is you know a fucking high rise that's real wide and there's a lot of people right let's say it's the third floor of thousand people right it's pretty wide big fucking building doesn't exist but we're just gonna try to make this practical well let's say only 10 people enroll. That's not even a... That's what, 1%?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Is that going to tell us what's going to happen to the other 990? No, of course not. Of course not. Of course not. But then who decides, right? But let's put that aside, right? If I take volunteers, then I can only talk to you about how those findings apply to those volunteers, not to the other 990 residents of that floor. Because I didn't flip a coin and decide which 10 I was going to pick, you know? Yeah. And is 10 even enough, you know?

That's the other question. Who decides, right? So random sampling gets ignored a lot because we can't do it. It's unethical. I can't flip a coin and study your neighborhood and decide that these residents are going to participate in the study and these are not. So therefore, let's say we're studying a neighborhood, right? Let's say we're studying your neighborhood, your town. You know, I'm talking to you out there listening. I can't flip a coin and decide which residents are going to participate. So therefore, you don't all have the same opportunity. So therefore, whatever I find only applies to the people that

participate. I can't generalize that out. And, you know, I could try and tell you the lie that, oh, I'll just recruit, quote unquote, enough people, which is a vague term, right? Well, you know, we're going to cite previous studies. Also, we're going to, you know, go and look at how many people the last jerk-off recruited to decide how many I'm going to recruit. Meanwhile, I wasn't, you know, who decides that he was okay, you know? Right, right. Well, you know, for specific to exercise science, what we do, you know, how do you, even if you could randomly sample, right, even if you're an evil dictator that can do these things. Well, now you've got compelled participation. That's a confounding variable. Exactly, right?

Like, what we do is volitional, right? You know, training hard is not a given and um you can't make someone train hard yeah you're not going to find these answers in studies because of what i just told you you're not going to have enough people participating in the study and you're not randomly sampling people from the population you're trying to generalize this to in many cases they just try to generalize this to the ever so broad and vague everyone should should do X, you know? Everyone. Who the fuck is everyone, you know?

I'm just in general, I'm so done with the scientific method as it is practiced in the scientific literature. It is of such vanishingly small use to me that i just don't care whatever whatever benefits that are there uh you know i i i don't need them they're they're just it's a waste of time trying to find them in the sea of of bullshit and i think the thing is too that the more you kind of fixate on this kind of stuff these like little niggly details evidence based you missed a big picture yeah you're you're well what in in your you're pulling yourself away from the much much much more impactful tool that you have which is your own observations okay so you know your own anecdata

if you want to call it that is very valuable and you know however know, however you want to, you know, to whatever depth you want to do this whole training thing, if you want to be, if you want to get the good results out of it, you have to learn how to observe patterns in your own training. Even if you're working with a coach, right? The best trainees that I have that go the furthest, they observe what's going on when they train and they give that information to me. And a lot of times we're like, yeah, I've noticed that too. They'll point out something and be like, yeah, I kind of thought that was going on. But sometimes they point out stuff that I didn't know was going on. I didn't see it. Or, you know, more importantly, I didn't feel it, right? I can't

experience exactly what they experience as a third party. I think one of the bigger points here is that when people talk about research, they're usually comparing an individual study to another. As I highlighted earlier, there are structural problems, and I plan to dive into those next year. But then also, there's an issue of reproducibility. You know, if you can look at an anecdote and see a reproducible outcome, does it fucking matter that it's an anecdote at this point? You know, when the outcome is clearly reproducible? And maybe it's something you can't necessarily study in a controlled lab. A lot of things are because, you know, aside from everything I've mentioned already you can't control for lifestyle right like you know you can't you can't you can't micromanage

somebody's lifestyle outside of your study and if you have them live in the lab that's also not their lifestyle so you're not getting actual lifestyle behaviors captured under you know the uh context of living in the research lab so yeah sure you know sure again the question you really want to ask yourself is you know how how irrelevant is an anecdote if it's reproducible you know right it's it's of course it's of course it's relevant of course it is of course and that yeah and that's the that's the thing is like so cell phones work cell phones work they didn't go through a peer-reviewed process there's no relevant of course it is of course and that yeah and that's the that's the thing is like so cell phones work cell phones work they didn't go through a peer-reviewed process there's no fucking papers on cell phones no engineering papers in the peer-reviewed literature they

just made cell phones you know yeah right exactly and so you know my whole thing is that if you and they work every day they do yes clearly well if you get lost in this world and then you you're just you're you're not um honing your own observational powers and those are that's an enormously powerful tool and that is science you know that is that is like the basis of science is is observation of your you know with your own five senses right that's where it all starts and um i think you know so that that's i that's really like i'm looking And, um, I think, you know, so that, that's, I, that's really like, I'm looking at my little list that I put together, like what, you know, what, what the hell did I learn this year? And a lot of it's that, you know, it's just sort of observing things that I see

like patterns in my life and, um, and, and drawing conclusions from that. So, so, you know, like kind of bring it full circle. This has been a very challenging year for me. And I've learned just how important sleep is, how important food is. I've learned how to offset a lot of the uncontrollable stresses I've had in my life by shoring things up and the controllable parts of them. Right. shoring things up and the controllable parts of them right and uh one thing that i i have found that's been very interesting is the better quality of food that i eat the leaner i get isn't that interesting now there's a lot of people that will just like talk to their blue in the face how it's blah no it's just all macros. Something changed with your behavior. Your macros changed and it doesn't, no, it doesn't make a difference. Oh, you know, people claim it's a myth that raw milk is easier, more easily digest, that it causes less, you know, there's less incidence of lactose intolerance with raw milk

versus pasteurized milk and all that stuff. Dude, I, like I said, I don't care. That's, I'm just losing my own powers of observation. that stuff. Dude, like I said, I don't care. I'm just losing my own powers of observation. The better quality of food that I eat, the better I feel, the more efficient, well, I've had some theories of why it might happen. I don't know if they're true or not, but the observations, right? The better I feel, the better my joints feel, the leaner I get without necessarily losing weight. Now, I lost some weight. That's a confounding variable in my case, but I've, I've been stable for several months now. Amazing. Right. Yeah. And, and, uh, I've lost like two inches off my waist,

even though I've gone up in weights from my low point this year. Right. Uh, and I, I think that trend will continue. We'll see next year, You know, hopefully next year I can get myself back up to like 190 or so and we'll see. Like, does my waist pretty much stay the same? We're not. But that's been a big lesson. And really this year, it's just been a slow iteration for me. Not a lot changed, but I've pretty much this year, I have as close as I reasonably can eliminated seed oils from my diet. Good. Pretty much entirely. There's a few times, you know, we eat at restaurants or whatever, you can't avoid it. But that's one thing. We also eat pretty much all meat that we've raised or that we've bought from farmers in our community. And we know how it's raised. And dude, there's no question. If you just put a chicken in the crock pot that you buy from

the store, it's Tyson brand, and you get the thing out and you eat it and you taste it and you bake stock with the carcass, okay, you can put that stock right next to the stock that you make from one of the chickens that we raised. This is, it is a completely night and day difference in the flavor, the amount of fat that we get, like how many more nutrients are probably in that stock that was made from our chicken. You know, again, it's just doing this side by side. It's a pretty huge difference. And I think all those little changes over time add up to a pretty profound difference in my health and body composition. similar things and we just can't measure it you know i'm not right i'm not one of these guys that's going to say oh that's wrong because it's not in the peer-reviewed literature there's no evidence um i'm just not one of those people you know i'm not also going to say that i believe 100 that's right for every person either you know something that you're fucking doing is working you

know in that assortment of things and i'm going to say keep doing it because the outcome is fucking good so if you're seeing that outcome in your life then why the fuck wouldn't say keep doing it because the outcome is fucking good. So if you're seeing that outcome in your life, then why the fuck wouldn't you keep doing it? You know, and somebody else is listening. It's worth a try. It worked for one guy. You know, it might work for you. You know, unless you have reason to believe something like that would harm you, you would know better than us, you know, because, you know, there are some people that can't eat certain things or do certain things with their life, you know. So the whole point is we're not sitting here generalizing saying, well, it works for a

trend, it works for everybody, but they are, they are. They're taking garbage data, playing around with statistics, ignoring glaring assumptions in their methodology, and then telling you that, well, this applies to everybody. And they may not say it like that because they're real careful with their words, you know, so they can go back and say, well, I didn't say tomato, I said tomato, you know? You're right. But what the inference is from the average person who doesn't know all this research jargon is that, well, they found this in a study and it's scientific, so therefore I should do this, right?

Not necessarily, you know. I'm never going to be that guy that does podcast episodes on research papers and says, oh, look what this paper found. And then, you know, or say, well, this paper is bullshit. And then I'm going to cite other fucking bullshit papers that say the opposite, right? Like, we're never going to do that here because that's not really what you need to know. You know, what you need to understand is how this works structurally. The problems are more macro in nature, not micro. So comparing two papers is like comparing two turds. You know what I mean? Yeah, right. Like, I hate to say that. You know, the thing is,

there's a lot of good people in academia. I've met them. You know, there's a lot of bad people there too, unfortunately. And I met them as well. So I've been hesitant to touch on this topic because of the people I do respect, you know, but. Well, it's, and you know, it's not their fault. The way that the system is, is not their fault individually. Exactly. It's just, it is, it is what it is, right? It's emergent, right? It got here over a long tortured process, right? It's, you know, so it's no one person's fault that this is the way the field is, but it's, it is the way that the field is. And, uh, yeah, I think it's, it's important to know kind of some of those, the, the, the pitfalls just because there's, there are people in the media and elsewhere who will try to browbeat you with, um, so-and-so study says, and just to kind of understand, you know, like you probably know it's wrong anyway, but just understand some of the reasons why I think that could be, could be helpful to be armed with that knowledge. Yeah, I think so. Well, you know, so I have a question for you to kind of changing tack here a little bit

and we can wrap up with this. Do you have any goals in 2024 with your fitness? I do. What are those goals? I want to bench 315. Okay okay and then i probably want to drop some of this weight that i put on um you know i went into this with this mentality i'm going to bench 315 and i'm going to gain as much as i comfortably need to to do it it's kind of cool being 190 and not looking 190 this is a first for me you know usually i'm like i'm freaking heavy you know um but uh you know i don't have big goals on the other lifts i really want a big bench i'd like to i want to stop skipping the press and the rowing the back work like i'd like to be less lazy with my you know um back work and overhead work um the press i haven't been totally lazy with truth be told this is like more

of a recent development in the last month i've only pressed twice um and part of it's scheduled too with the holidays i'm just very fixated on the bench you know i'm fixated on the bench because it's the one lift i have a hard goal on but you know honestly like yeah i want to bench 315 i want to you know stay on top of my hiking i've been kind of slacking on that and uh you know, stay on top of my hiking. I've been kind of slacking on that. And, uh, you know, then from there, I just, you know, drop a few pounds and, you know, I want to be super skinny, super lean, but, you know, a little bit lighter than I am now. And, uh, you know, just keep doing what I'm doing, show up, try to add a little bit more, you know, and, uh, not do stupid high reps again, because that was, that proved to be a waste of time. I mean, not really, it was cool. It challenges you in different ways, but at the end of the day, Not do stupid high reps again because that proved to be a waste of time.

I mean, not really. It was cool. It challenged you in different ways. But at the end of the day, 465 for five on the deadlift is still hard even though I did 450 for eight. And that was like this big eight-rep PR. 465 for five was still pretty fucking hard. And we'll see how many PRs I get out of that. Right. At a certain point, the stimulus changes. And getting really good at reps gets you really good at reps, you know.

Maybe you get a little bit of muscle growth out of that, but is it going to transfer to the big heavy weights? I don't know. Yeah, the carryover can be limited. I would say it's accurate, but it's limited. I'd say it's limited. Yeah, I want to say there's some. I have a hard time believing it's zero, you know. And it depends on the person too. That's,

that's, that's the other thing too. Yeah. It's at, at, at your level, when we're talking about this level of advancement, you know, training this long, uh, you know, it's really, some people are going to get some decent carryover that's worth doing. Some people are going to get nothing. And then, you know, it's very individual. Yeah. And then you just got to throw it out, man. Yeah. That's, so it's kind of funny. I feel the same way about the bench as you like when i benched 315 i stopped caring i i ended up benching i said bench 315 316 and 320 on three separate occasions yeah and i just i did not care whatsoever about adding a single more pound on my bench after that that's how it happened yeah cool when i pressed 225 pressed 225, that was me. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I've kind of gotten there with the press

because I've hit some heavy presses recently and the layback, the layback that's required for me to drive it up higher, I'm not willing to do it anymore. It bugs the shit out of my back. So I'm like, damn, you know what? I don't really care about the really high, uh, high intensity presses anymore. I care more about my fives and eights on that now. But yeah, I think for me, um, I'm still working it out, but I think for me in 2024, I want to make a commitment to, uh, growing, growing some muscle in my back and my arms. And I, it's going to be a lot of what you're talking about rowing. Uh, you know, all the compounds are still going to be there, but I think what for me, you know, I was talking about goals and sticking with it, you know, this year I made it, I made a clear goal. I want to drive my, the, the numbers on my main lifts up for sets of five and threes.

Uh, and this next year, since I'm, I've kind of at back to a decent sort of plat platform, you know, to work with, I really want to bring up some of the lifts that I've been neglecting entirely this year. And I didn't do a whole lot of the year before either. Um, so, you know, I'm still kind of working on thinking, thinking through what exactly I want to do, but that's going to be my goal. I'm going to commit to getting my rows up and getting some of those other lifts up and just see what happens this year. And just kind of let the chips fall where they may on the compounds. I'd say it's reasonable. Yep. And I think more activity too. And I didn't touch on this, but that's another thing I've learned is I think a lot of the reason why I've been able to, I've had such a high not like out biking and running and, you know, it's

all just kind of playing around the house, moving stuff, doing chores, but it's, but it's a lot of physical chores. And, uh, I think that that really has made a big impact on my metabolic rate. So that's a, that's another thing I want to try to do some more organized activity next year. Yep. You know, underrated part of a fitness, I think. Cool. All right. So there you go. There's 2023. I hope you learned something. I hope so. Thanks for tuning in. I, uh, I really appreciate everyone that has listened. Um, thanks for letting us in your ear holes and thanks for letting us kind of blabber on about health and fitness. Uh, I we're, we're very passionate about what we do and you know I hope that we are a voice of reason in the sea of BS and grifting that is so

much of the health and fitness industry so thanks for listening and we were I really appreciate it yeah echo that you know I don't can't tell you how much I appreciate y'all listening to you know my ramblings every other week. Most of the time we took a little longer on this one because we wanted it at the end of the year. But, yeah, half the time I just kind of, you know, bullshit with Trent for a little bit before we do this. Come up with a topic and hope for the best. And, you know, so far things are looking good. I always laugh when somebody calls me for a consult and says, I feel like I'm talking to a celebrity. I'm like, what the fuck? I mean, I'm just a

fucking gym owner over here, man, you know? But, you know, I appreciate those comments and, you know, I like that y'all are listening. So hopefully next year we can teach you some more. I look forward to recording the next one. For me, it's just two weeks from now, but that's also next year, so I'll acknowledge that for you all. And, yeah, we'll go from there. So let's close out this last one. First of all, Merry Christmas to everybody since that just happened.

Happy New Year, and thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weights and plates.com if you are in metro phoenix you can find the gym at weights and plates gym.com and we are just south sky harbor airport in the south mountain village you can find me this is where i spend most of my time posting things on instagram the underscore robert underscore santana and the gym has one weights double underscore and double underscore plates. Very good. I'm at the same place as I always am

on Instagram at marmalade underscore cream. And you can find me if you have any questions about online coaching or just any coaching questions in general. You can just shoot me a question about your own training or technique or whatever. People do that sometimes and I'm happy to get those messages. You can DM me on Instagram or you can send me an email, jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. All right, we'll

talk to you again in a couple of weeks in the next year. Thank you.