Weights and Plates Podcast - #68 - The One Thing Your Training Is Missing: Consistency

Episode Date: February 10, 2024

Happy New Year! To kick off 2024, Dr. Santana and Coach Trent discuss the biggest ingredient to success in achieiving your fitness goals -- consistency. All the talk about programming and training splits and macros is futile if you aren't taking action consistently to meet your goals. Many people struggle with consistency, however, so they dive deep into the factors that influence consistent action: environment, motivation, and discipline. Dr. Santana points out that every trainee has modifiable and non-modifiable factors in their life, and optimizing the things you can modify, while setting expectations around what you cannot, is important to creating a productive environment.   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. How you doing, man? I'm good, man. How are you? I'm good. I have a bottle in front of me. Really? So do I. What have you got over there? Well, for playing a game of show and tell, I have Evan Williams, Ronald and Bond. Okay. Yeah, that's a good daily driver. Yeah, I would say so. A gym member gave it to me, and he said that it is Poor Man's McKenna. For those of you who aren't familiar, William McKenna. It's a pretty good bourbon at the $50 price point, but this is, I think, in the $15 to $20 price point, right? Yeah, I mean, that's my go-to cheap bourbon.

That's what I always have some in the cabinet. If I need something cheap, if I have guests over that won't appreciate the finer pours, or if I just want something that, you know, if I just don't feel like opening the fancy bottles, it's really good. Yeah, it's a good solid bourbon. And I think it's like 100 proof, right? Yeah, it's 100 proof. I'm enjoying it. Yeah, yeah. So you can drink it hot or, you know it put a bit of water in there if you need it i needed a daily that you know uh that kind of works for this situation i think this

is perfect this is a perfect daily yeah uh so my my problem is i'm not a so i'm not a whiskey nerd um i appreciate a good whiskey but i'm not a whiskey nerd so i'm not i'm not gonna drop a bunch of knowledge about mash bills and shit right here. But, um, I, I am friends with a lot of whiskey nerds and they all have their like list. This was like a few years ago. They had their list of like, Hey, we get it. You can't find Weller 12. You can't find Blanton's, but here's our like top 10 cheap whiskeys that, that you can don't sleep on these. These are cheap and you can find them anywhere. that you don't sleep on these. These are cheap and you can find them anywhere. Well, I'll be damned if like eight out of those 10, you can't find anymore because everybody buys up the cheap ones too. Everybody had the same,

like I have not had the McKenna for that reason because it wasn't like McKenna 10 used to be like on everyone's like cheap whiskey label. Yeah, I got it for like $35. Now it's like 50. Yeah, right. Yeah, or it's like that would happen. It'd go up in price and then I can't find it.

But I can always find Evan Williams bottled and bond so at least around where i am so that's that's my go-to the the funniest one to me was um is weller special reserve you know with the green label yeah green wellers it's it's not it's not good whiskey it's not bad it's decent best but it's a good whiskey and i think because it said weller on there everybody's like well they can't find weller 12 they can't find 107 so they're like well weller special reserve and so then people buy up all that that was my go-to cocktail bourbon you know if i were to make an old-fashioned or like a boulevardier or something i would use the the special reserve because it was

cheap and it and it mixed really well right but now it's like impossible to find stupid i mean when i when i see it i grab it you know apparently you can find it in texas and illinois pretty easy right now but that okay very that varies too yeah um i liked uh which one was it nicholson right 1843 i told you about that yes right i recently saw that shit for yeah i saw it for like 50 bucks Yeah. I liked, which one was it? Nicholson, right? 1843. I told you about that. Yes. Right. I recently saw that shit for, yeah, I saw it for like 50 bucks and I went to Illinois

and it was 25, which is what it was priced here before, you know? So it's just ridiculous, you know, these. That's, yeah, this, yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of stupid. I honestly went back to after the, the, the bourbon craze really kicked off, I don't know, five, six, seven years ago. Yeah. It seems like. And I, I kind of went back to Scotch for that reason because it was like,

there's some great bourbons here. I can't find any of them. So, you know, I'll just get, I can get nice bottles of Scotch anywhere, you know. Dude, the Costco single malt for like $70. It's like 19 year old. That shit's good. Oh, 19. Yeah, the Kirkland.

It's Alexander Murray 19 is what it is. Okay. Alexander Murray 19 is what it is okay alexander murray 19 i think is in the 150 range normally and you can get it the costco kirkland brand for 80 bucks or 70 bucks what what can't you get at costco um i know i know something you can't get at costco what's that you can't get um poor man's pappy um I got a bottle of this from a, a client. So, so shout out to, uh, Brad Lamar, uh, one of my clients at the Jones Barbell Club. And, uh, and he, he's, he belongs to a whiskey club that makes this stuff. So I finally got a bottle of poor man's pappy. I've heard about this stuff and I've never, I've never tried it. Yeah. Um, my understanding is if you mix so this is a this is a mix of

weller 12 and antique 107 and i believe the mixture is 60 107 40 weller 12 and apparently if you mix these two in that proportion and then you age it for a few weeks yeah then um it tastes a lot like pappy van winkle which is the the the hallowed happy halloween pappy van winkle um so you know so i'm going to give this a try i have not even opened the bottle yet i got to peel off the plastic here right well have at it man yeah so for those of you listening while trent pours his poor man's pappy uh alcohol as in one drink which is in this case you know whiskey they assume 80 proof it's 90 proof so you can kind of scale this down or just round up one and a half ounces right that's a pour two of those if you're a. Two of those if you're a man, one of those if you're a woman can raise your high density lipoprotein, your HDL, your

quote unquote good cholesterol. Not that any cholesterol is good or bad. They just have different functions, right? So Trent is just helping his lipid profile right now. So am I. See, I'll drink to that. That's right. Yeah, I'll drink to that. Poor man's pappy. So am I. See, I'll drink to that. That's right. Yeah, I'll drink to that. Poor man's pappy. But these people will say, oh, you know, it's wine. But first of all, we're getting this information, again, from shitty data. That's what our next episode is going to be about. We can get Dr. Bradford locked down.

When you're studying humans, it's garbage in, garbage out, for the most part. I hate to say it. You know, I want to say there's exceptions. I don't want to be an absolutist, but it's a structurally fucked up situation. You cannot control for lifestyle. When you artificially alter somebody's lifestyle, live in your lab, that's not the same thing, but that's better, I guess, because assuming you're an honest researcher and you're actually you know measuring everything and reporting things accurately you know you can get some information in an inpatient setting but over how long right so these are short-term studies right you have somebody live somewhere for years unless you cite those prison studies in the 1970s like the vermont study etc you know but uh

you know the data says that the type of alcohol doesn't matter the last time I looked at it. So I guess it doesn't have to be wine, but, you know, use common sense. Don't be a drunk and, you know, enjoy a drink or two. Yeah. So, yeah, the people that I know that get into trouble with alcohol as part of their, you know, diet and their fitness, I'm not talking about alcoholics who have a problem it it's it's not one drink or two drinks they get that's getting them it's the it's the four or five six over the weekend plus the extra snacks and dinners that they ate you know they went out to eat because they had a few and then had a couple more there um yeah it's not, it's not the, it's not the one snifter of, of Pappy Van Winkle on Saturday night.

Not even the two. It's the five, six, seven, eight. Yeah, exactly. Um, this is- Or the case of beer. This is really good. This is really good. That's good shit. I should go get the fucking real deal upstairs. Yeah, man, it smells good. It tastes good. Um, what, what are the tasting notes here? It's like, it tastes good um what what are the tasting notes here it's like uh i'm getting a smooth nose of vanilla with uh a finish of cardamom and clove he's just making up all this bullshit just like the stories on the bottles that's largely bullshit oh right right remember orphan

barrel we just found these bottles you bottles buried away in the warehouse. These barrels. Not bottles, barrels. They were just back in the rickhouse. Back in the, yeah. Yeah, it was bullshit. Yeah, so, yeah, this. Poor man's pappy.

I don't know who made this label. I'm guessing somebody at the club made this, but it's got Rodney Dangerfield. Get the, oh yeah, I've seen that. Have you seen this? You can download that offline, yeah. Okay, yeah. So it's, yeah, Rodney Dangerfield with a big old stogie in his mouth. Dude, what movie was that? Natural Born Killers. That's, man, it's great. And it's in a Weller 12 bottle, obviously, because you got the black on there. I liked him when he was like the white trash dad in Natural Born Killers. Remember that?

I've not seen that. That was a fucked up movie. I don't know if I've seen any Rodney Dangerfield movies. Really? Yeah. So today, I thought we might talk about, since this is the beginning of the year, something that you recently posted about on your Instagram. And that's consistency. Yeah. Because, uh, as you and I know, we have a lot of knowledge as coaches.

We have a lot of strategies for helping people over roadblocks around roadblocks. Uh, but if someone isn't consistent, there's not a whole lot we can do. I mean, that's kind of the first and most important thing about training. If you want to get stronger, if you want to build muscle mass, if you want to get leaner, if you want to lose weight, what if you want to gain weight, whatever your goal is, if you're not doing, if you're not taking action consistently to get there, then it, you know, there's not then there's nothing we can do, really, as coaches. No, there's not a whole lot. So let's start the year off on the right foot,

and that is the consistent foot. Let's talk about that a little bit. So I really thought you were going to segue into an episode about alcohol. But we could save that for another time. Just let's make sure we schedule the next one when you're in the mood to drink, because this doesn't happen very often that he drinks with me on the podcast. Yeah.

Well, I have another good bottle that we can open up on that one that I'm very excited about, but please do so. Let's plan that accordingly. Yes. Yeah. Let's do it. But I'm happy I'm not the only one drinking this time. Usually I just have one. But anyhow, consistency. I talk about this a lot because I've been doing this a real long time. And the number one problem that I see, and I said this in my post, is that, you know, people fail to follow any type of structure on a consistent basis. and by that, I measure that as a week at a time. I understand that these changes, change in general, can be challenging for a human being.

There's plenty written and posted on about this. So some people have to take it a day at a time. I get that, but to see measurable results, a week at a time is the minimum. You're not going to see measurable results a day at a time. You're going to see a week at a time, depending on what you're looking at, right? So if we're talking about fat loss, you know, because that's usually where I run into it the most, you're not going to see measurable fat loss for probably about a week, you know, a week at a time. I tell people the seven-day rule, you have to follow the prescribed diet for seven days. You know, with lifting, you typically see in a couple days

at first, but then later to week to week deal, right? So if you're missing workouts throughout the week, the next week goes to shit, you know, then you gotta try it all over again, right? Right. You know, in terms of weight gain, that's a little bit different, because I don't like to think of massing or muscle building or strength building as a thing that's tied to body weight. I mean, body weight's important. You have to gain weight, but what you want to focus on is what you're putting on the bar because you can gain body weight and put nothing on the bar if you're doing things right, you know? Right. So like,

you know, a simple rule, and this is, you know, this is an aside to the main episode, is if you're building, if you're massing, whatever word you want to use, your focus has to be on new PRs, whatever that may be. If you're into the bodybuilding hypertrophy stuff, your 15 rep, your 20 rep, your 25 rep, if you're going down that stupid fucking path, needs to go up. All that shit needs to go up. Your set of 30 that I think is a giant waste of time needs to go up. Yeah. You know, all that shit needs to go up. Your set of 30 that I think is a giant waste of time needs to go up, right? If you're bought into this, it needs to go up. You know, your set of five needs to go up if you're a lifter, you know. That's what building is all about.

You have to overload to provide the stimulus to promote an anabolic response, right? So I don't like when people ask me how much, you know, body weight do I need to gain per week, you know? It's like, I don't fucking know however much you need to make the workouts, or you need to eat enough food to make your workouts. And the weight gain is a side effect of that. The focus needs to be on what you're putting on the bar, and what you're eating to put that on the bar, and whatever happens to your body weight will happen as a side effect of that process of lifting heavy and eating more to lift heavier, eating through the sticking points, as they say, right? Yep, yep.

So that's an important point that I want to bring up. But the point is, if you can't stick to whatever structure you're committed to, sure, you might need a new program. That's rarely the case, though. Rarely is it the case that somebody needs a new program. Sometimes people just need to exercise and not program. That's rarely the case, though. Rarely is it the case that somebody needs a new program. Sometimes people just need to exercise and not train. You know, that's different, you know. But, you know, if you're showing up and, you know, skipping your deadlift every week, skipping your chin-ups every week, you know, showing up twice a week and you're a young man, you know, you're not an old man that can get away with that. You're a young man or a young woman.

And, you know, eating a bunch of carbs and fat, not enough protein, I mean, you're setting yourself up for failure, right? You probably just need to exercise and get, you know, the basic health benefit if you want to continue those habits. You can't out-train a bad diet. You know, you can't out-diet a bad training program either. You know, that's what I used to try to do. I didn't know I was doing that, but that's what I was doing. I was trying to out-diet a bad training program. So at the end of the day, you have to accumulate seven consecutive days of adherence to a diet plan to see it work. In terms of training, it depends on your level, right? If you're a novice, two days, right? If you're a novice a month or two in,

you have to knock a week out because you're going to miss your a month or two in, you have to, you know, knock a week out because you're going to miss your bench press or your press if you don't, right? So you're going to have to make a full week at a time, right? Now, if you're an intermediate, which, you know, I think a lot of people that are enthusiasts with this will get there, you know, to early intermediate. Now, at that point, things get more sensitive, right? You know, you can't skip a workout because you're trying to add each week, right? It becomes more demanding under life, it becomes a little bit more high maintenance. But you're going to have to look at this in terms of months, right? Especially if you've gotten past early intermediate, like you've ran like, you know, a basic intermediate program

where you got one heavy day per week, one light day per week, one medium day per week, and you're adding week to week, and then every week's a PR. You know, that happens, you know, in the first year and a half. You know, you start to see that after your novice phase. But let's say you've made it to year two, right? You're not sending a new PR every week for a variety of reasons. It just doesn't happen anymore, right? Now you're a solid intermediate.

You might do it every two, three weeks, you know, if things work neatly. At this point, you have to look ahead. You're like, what am I going to accomplish in three months? So now it's no longer a week at a time or a month at a time. It is three months at a time, you know? And when you're an advanced lifter like me, I'm looking at it a year at a time, you know? So if you're going to go deep into this, and I know a lot of you aren't, you know, many people that listen to us, I think, have other things in mind. And this is something they want to do to supplement those things, you know, like, you know, just some for some people, it's functional strength, they want to not get hurt, pulling things out of their car,

you know, for some people, they want to put on enough muscle and notice it, you know, I think most people can accomplish that. But you know, we have very few people that are chasing the last 2%, which is something I like to always hit on, you know, like a lot of the information you consume on the Internet about lifting, about diet pertains to the last 2%. You know, your life doesn't have to be that high maintenance to move the needle with this shit and see the benefit. It just doesn't, you know. Right. Right. Now, if you're a skinny guy, it can, you know, can get very high maintenance because eating to gain weight when you have problems gaining weight is far fucking harder than eating to lose weight. Way harder. Sorry, fat guy. I agree with that. It's the truth. Yeah. For the fat guy who thinks otherwise, try restricting your fat intake. Keep your carb and protein intake high seven days in a row. Like, go eat 500 carbs a day and 200 grams of protein without going over 100 grams of fat. I challenge you, fat guy, to do that.

And, you know, when I talk to the metaphorical fat guy, I'm not offending you. And I don't think you are offended. Most big fat guys aren't, in my experience, you know. Yeah. But the point is, you got to 300 pounds drinking Coke and eating garbage, you know. And if you don't, if you're one of these guys that doesn't eat that much, you know, with exceptions, you know, there's certainly people that, you know, are metabolically efficient. I understand that. But I don't eat that much, crowd.

You're eating too much fat. You know it. You're eating too much fat and you're still eating all the carbs on top of it and you're gaining weight and holding on to it with a low volume of food. That's a topic that we've covered in other episodes. We could do a whole podcast episode on it, but my point is I've listed out a bunch of bad habits there, right? Eating a high carb, high fat diet, snacking a lot, right? Going out to eat a lot. We talked about drinking too much earlier, right? When you decide that you're going to lose weight or you decide that you're going to eat to train, now you can't just follow the diet Monday through Wednesday or Monday through Thursday or Monday through Friday. It's a Monday

through Sunday deal. It's seven days a week. So if it's calorie restriction you're after, you have to restrict those calories on the days you eat out. And, you know, we've talked about ways to try and do that. Drinking is the easiest way and not eating. That's what Andrea, uh, Drea. Yes. Right. Yes. Yeah. And drinking is one way to do it. You know, we talked about that in our restaurant episode. You drink alcohol, you know what's in it because that's the one thing they measure. That's what Drea told us, right? I'm not suggesting that you go be a drunk. You know, it's a joke. But, you know, the point is you have to eat the same types of foods, the same amount of calories seven days a week.

And there's ways to do that. You know, that's what I do for a living. You know, when you hire me to coach you, I kind of go through some of those strategies. And I've talked about them on this podcast. You know, basically, if you're going to eat at a restaurant, the safest way to do that is to fast and just get the best of the worst options. And you'll probably get almost your day's worth of calories, if not your day's worth of calories or slightly more. But my point is consistency, right? It's hard. So I get a new client, hey, here's your diet. This is too much food. I'm like, well, it's a lot more than you're eating, but it's a lot fewer calories.

You're just not doing that. And guess what? You can't go out and eat like a sack of shit on Saturday. You can't do that. You know? Right, right. And if they follow it, I've seen a lot of situations. I'd say probably 50, 50 or 60, 40.

But I'd say 50 to 70% of the time, people lose weight on a lot more food than they think. You know, I'll get the guy that says, I need 1200 calories to lose weight. And then he loses on 2000 because he's not eating 6,000 calories on Saturday anymore. You know? Right. And I see that with the women, you know, I need a thousand calories or 800 calories or whatever low, crazy number some of these women give me. And then they lose on 1800. You know, I remember, and I said this in, I think the last episode or one of the ones before in the 2015 coaches conference bo bryant spoke and uh he owns westminster strength conditioning in maryland so if you're you know over there near westminster go visit it's a great gym and he spoke and he told the group first he

said i hate people and i said ditto. But then he elaborated and said, and when I get women in my gym, I tell them, I'm not a nutritionist. I'm not a diet guy. I tell them 1800 calories, just eat 1800 calories every single day. And most of the time they lose weight and they get stronger, you know? And I believe that 1800 calories is not a lot of food. It's a lot of food in the context of eating 3000 on000 on Saturday and Sunday, sure. Men, you're getting a lot of calories, you know. But if you're eating 1,800 calories seven days a week, I'd say for most women, that's a safe number. You know, if you're a smaller stature, shorter height, you know, it'd be 1,500, 1,600. But this 1,200, 1,000 calorie shit, you know, if you have to really go that low to lose weight legitimately,

and there are people out there, I've worked with people that have thyroid conditions, autoimmune diseases, and, you know, it has to get really low just to lose weight, even when the person's overweight, you know, at this point, you have to have one way or another, you have to accept the situation that you're just going to be heavy and make the best of it, because you're not going to eat 600 calories a day the rest of your life, you're just not going to fucking do that you know and i don't recommend you do that so you know you know go that's a psychological problem you know right and you know that's something you're gonna have to work through i'm sorry you know i'm not

six foot five you know i don't want to cry about it i'm not six five i'm not even six foot shit i'm five i don't look like brad pitt i i don't look yeah neither about it. I'm not 6'5". I'm not even 6'0". Shit, I'm 5'9". I don't look like Brad Pitt. I don't look... Yeah, neither of us look like fucking Brad Pitt. Fuck that motherfucker, you know? Right. And Brad's fucking great in his 50s. Right.

What the fuck? I mean, I was thinking 1992, but now that you mention it in his 50s, the motherfucker looks better than we do. Yeah, I know. You know, I can cry about it, you know? I can cry about it. On the other end, you know,

I don't... You know, I can cry about it, you know? I can cry about it. On the other end, you know, I don't, you know, I'm not as strong as fucking, I'm trying to think of somebody people know, you know? Nobody knows fucking powerlifters, you know? Half Thor, Bjornson. Yeah, Half Thor, you know, the mountain in Game of Thrones. I'm not as big and strong as him. He's 6'8", and he's fucking jacked at 400 pounds, you know? Like, I'm not that you know well all right so so let's let's let's dial it back though because i think i think one one thing that i'm hearing here or i'm observing in what you're talking about consistency is that if you

want to achieve that seven days in a row right one the things that, that everybody that does this, that I observe that is successful at, you know, habit change. Yeah. They structure their environment to make that habit change happen. Right. Right. And that's, that, that just, that's one of the things I've seen work really reliably. And what does that look like? Well, I mean, you can probably, you probably know the answer already. You know, you don't need us to tell you this, but if you have a problem with blowing your diet because you're eating out every Saturday and Sunday night, stop eating out for a while. Not forever, but you can do it for a while. What about three months? Right? It's not going to kill you. And the thing is, like, I think what you will find is that it

will reveal just how much of a problem that was. Right? And you probably know the answer to that. And I find it interesting when I suggest this sometimes, you know, to people that I work with. I don't do diet coaching, but I offer advice and, you know, to people that I work with. Um, I don't do diet coaching, but I, I offer advice and, you know, I know a lot, I know a lot about it. Um, and I will suggest some things like this. And a lot of times you get the answer of what the problem really is by how people respond to those kinds of suggestions. Like, Hey, have you ever thought about like, you know, somebody might do like a dry January or something that's really popular? You know, several people have talked about that. Hey, I'm all for it. That's cool. That's great. Right. Um, what about the first quarter? Why not go all the way through March? Three months, no alcohol. And sometimes you get a response that's kind of like, wow, I don't know about that. I was doing good for a month. And it is good.

If you have a tendency to drink often and that is a problem with meeting your health and fitness goals, a month is great. But if you're like, but I can't do three months, if that seems like a huge problem, well, there you go. That, that, I think there's something you need to drill into there, right? The same thing with restaurants, same thing with certain snacks. Um, because I've found that people who are successful are able to do this and they're able to, to basically say like, you know what, I just need to get away from that thing that I'm, that's, that's disrupting the habit change that I want. And, you know, removing yourself from it for a long period of time allows you to come back to it in a much more measured way in the future. I've experienced this over the last few years with restaurants for a variety of reasons. Now, I don't go to restaurants very often at all,

unless I'm traveling. And the reason is not because I'm like, have this iron will or something. I just don't want to anymore. Right. My palate changed over the last several years. Same, yeah. But that only happened because I had various times in my life where I just said, you know what?

We're not going to go to any restaurants for this period of time. It's going to be a stretch goal for us this quarter, no restaurant, no Chick-fil-A trips. And we'd be in the car and be like, man, I'm fucking tired. We've got a lot of errands to run. I just want to get Chick-fil-A. Nope, we can't do that. We said we weren't going to do that. We can do it on April 1st, but we can't do it until then. Right. Right. So you go through a few of those periods and all of a sudden my palate changed. And I remember two years ago, I remember I got Chick-fil-A, specifically Chick-fil-A, and I hadn't had it in months. And the amount of sodium on that chicken nugget burned my tongue. I was tasting metal for the next hour.

And I'm like, what the fuck? And I thought at first, I was like, maybe they just fucked up the nuggets or something. And then I happened to have had it again several weeks later. And the same effect happened. I'm like, no, this is just what they taste like. And my palate had changed. the same, same effect happened. I'm like, no, I, this is just what they taste like. And I, my palate had changed. Right. So, um, and, and I think that's, uh, I've seen that happen a lot of times when you change your environment and you get away from a, you know, you get away from

something that's disrupting the habit chains that you want for a long enough period of time for it to matter. And, uh, you know, that that probably is more like three months than one month. So you bring up an interesting point. So what we're really talking about here is what can you control? What can you not control, right? You have in the wellness area and the healthcare area, they use the terms modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors. factor is something you can modify that could contribute to a greater risk of disease or, in this case, fat gain or any of these other problems that you're having, right? So a non-modifiable risk factor is something you cannot modify that also contributes to

the problem you're trying to address, right? In the context of public health and healthcare and wellness, they're referring to disease. They usually talk about that in the context of public health and health care and wellness, they're referring to disease. They usually talk about that in the context of cardiometabolic disease. So you can apply it however you want. This can apply to anything. You have modifiable things, non-modifiable things. They call them risk factors. It's a good way to look at it.

I actually like that word. So your non-modifiable risk factors is what I've been going off about, right? Yeah. If you're a big fat guy, you know, big old hands, big wrists, big ankles, and you're just thick and just carry a lot of fat, you're not going to be 9% body fat, you know? I mean, if you take a bunch of drugs, maybe, you know, then it depends how you respond to those drugs. That's a whole other topic. But you're not going to be 9% body fat through diet and exercise. It's not going to happen, right? You may not even be 9% body fat through diet and exercise. It's not going to happen, right? You may not even be 15% body fat. You may just sit and settle at 20% to 25%, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

And it will creep down as you get stronger because you put on more muscle that will alter the ratio. And what we're really talking about here is the fat mass, not the total ratio, right? Right. That fat mass becomes a – so if you have a set point, let's say you have X kilos of fat or X pounds of fat, where dropping below that number basically triggers starvation mode and your body refuses to let you go lower. Let's say at your set point, we're going to define that as fat mass, not fat percentage, fat mass. So the total amount of fat on your body, right? If the lean mass goes

up, then that fat mass, that bottom end just gets smaller, right? In terms of the ratio, that fat percentage gets smaller. So let's say your cut point, let's say you can't get below 30 pounds of fat in your body. Let's just use this arbitrary number, right? Well, 30 pounds is a lower percentage at 200 pounds with most, with the other 170 pounds being lean than 150 pounds with the other 120 pounds being lean, right? That percentage is smaller, right? So it's the same thing. Let's say 275 300, put whatever number you want to put in there, you know, I always think lower because I started out as a skinny fat guy. And the reason it's been easier for me to diet is because that ratio has

shifted. So my lean mass is higher. So my fat mass doesn't have to get so low to get to a low percentage, which is interesting. So you could do that you can alter the ratio by getting stronger. But let's say you're just naturally sit in the 20s. You're probably always going to sit somewhere in the 20s, you might get lower into the 20s, you might get into the high teens, it depends how much muscle mass you put on, right? The point is, you know, I kind of digress there. Point is, you have a set point for how fat you're going to be, right? And you have a bone structure that you're built with, right? And then there's things like family history, right? If you have a family of diabetics

or people with heart disease or people that have had heart attacks, your likelihood of getting it is high and there is absolutely nothing you can fucking do about that. You can bend the curve by adjusting your modifiable risk factors, which I'm going to go into next. Right. But you're not going to, you can't control for something that is built into, baked into the cake, so to speak, right? Built into the system. Yeah. So, yes, we talked about that, you know, we talked, so adiposity, you know, that's the big one I talk about because some people are just going to be heavier, you know. Then if you have a disease, you're not curing it. Some are curable, but a lot of the time, like autoimmune disease, hypothyroidism, things like that, they're not curable.

You can treat them with medicine. So now you're not just focusing on diet and exercise. There's a medical intervention going on as well, right? So if you have medical conditions, it's kind of like a car, right? You can replace some things, but then get to a point where it's like, okay, you just got to get rid of the car. And I'm not saying you got to go die. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm kind of trying to get at is, well, you know, what I'm trying to get at with that is that once something is broken in your body, in a lot of cases, there's no going back from that,

especially if it's an organ or something metabolic. Sure, if you break a bone and you splint it and do the right things, it can heal back and be back to normal. But, you know, like once you tear a muscle, right, you can kind of always feel something there, you know. Right. Yeah. I've torn things before and you can still kind of feel something there. There's going to be some scar tissue of some kind in there. Yeah, the body's been modified permanently permanently so there's no reversing that so if you have a bunch of chronic diseases

that contribute to you being fat or you recovering slow you're not going to get rid of that you know like you're working around that kind of like you know i always go off about pain because there's a lot of fucking people out there that bitch about pain and the underlying message is i want my pain to go away and guess what it's not going away You can make it less shitty, right? So when you're talking about those things, when you're talking about non-modifiable risk factors, you can make them less shitty. You can bend the curve. You cannot control for them, you know? You can't control them, you know? It's not something that you can modify. You're stuck with it, right? Like if you're a man, you're more likely to have a heart attack younger than if you're a woman, right? You can't really modify that, but you could do things to lower your chances, right?

And that's how you want to look at it. So those things you got to put aside, you know, if you're a big person, you're a big person. You know, if you're a skinny guy, you're a skinny guy. You can get less skinny, more jacked, but you're generally a small guy. Look at me. I'm still a small guy, and I've been training my ass off. So yeah, so you can't modify things that are baked into the cake, right? Things you're born with genetic factors, can't modify that. Can't pick your parents, can't do that either, right? But you can modify some things.

So I think Trent, you had a thought on this before I segue into that, right? Yeah, well, right, yeah. And I think chronic disease is an interesting one because- If you have a nine inch vertical jump, you're fucked. Yeah, okay. But you can still get stronger, go on yeah exactly um yeah the the chronic disease is an interesting one because it does play a big role in the way you feel and also i think it plays a big role in

your body composition right there are a lot of people out there who are um for lack of a better term, bloated and inflamed chronically. And it's amazing what happens when you clean up your diet, a lot of those symptoms go away. And they may be tied into a bigger problem like autoimmune disease or whatever. So that's a tricky one. But one thing that I found is interesting, you mentioned like, you know, inherited, inherited traits, right? You know, if you have a family history of metabolic, or, you know, heart disease or whatever. Yeah, that can put you at a greater risk for sure. That is a thing. However, I've also noticed that you tend to inherit family habits that are also implicated in disease, in body composition issues, right? Being too fat. The first, yeah, those are, you know, I want to say those are modifiable things. But I'm not so sure anymore you know sure people so

I think you have I think that's where you're going next yeah well yeah right and you know it's it's it's it's important to be aware of that so like I went through this over the Christmas holiday right I grew up I had a certain experience growing up right when Christmas happened we ate certain foods my mom made fudge she made two kinds soft fudge and a hard fudge you know one for the us one for my dad because he always wanted the hard like candy fudge uh you know she made like sugar cookies and you know with in the shape of christmas trees with green sprinkles on them okay that kind of stuff right

so i grew up with a certain experience as a kid of like what Christmas was all about. And food was one aspect of that. It's not the only aspect, but it is one aspect. And so having a baby now that is actually aware of Christmas, you know, the first Christmas, he was so small, you know, he was just a little potato, but this year he actually had some awareness of what was going on. And I kind of caught myself like wanting to have those things that I grew up with all of a suddenges and I was like, what's going on here? And I was like, I'm wanting the childhood experience that I had during Christmas. I'm wanting that to happen right now because it made me feel a certain way,

made me feel good. And I wanted my son to share in that. And I thought that was really interesting, just observing me having this experience because I reflected on it afterwards. I'm like, oh, that's kind of interesting. I didn't want fudge. I didn't want sugar cookies. I wanted that experience. And this is, this is a, you know, this is take some deep sort of work to just analyze, but just realize that's part of the equation too, is like you have inherited

a set of habits, sort of what you feel like is normal, what a normal meal looks like, what a normal day of eating looks like. And you've inherited that from like what you grew up with. And that can be a big barrier to change. Or maybe if your family actually had really good healthy habits, that's great. You know, that puts you several steps forward ahead in the game. But yeah, is it a modifiable factor? I think so to an extent, but you know, it does color your perception of what is reasonable. Yeah. You know, in theory, these are things you can modify, right? And I've had similar experiences. When I go back to Chicago, I want the pumpkin pie. What else? Basically, all the pies. The pumpkin pie, the pecan pie. Oh, yeah.

deviled eggs you know there's certain things that i want and you know for my brother it's pizza you know i don't have that even though i'm from chicago like i don't go back and have to get pizza when i go to chicago you know you don't want that like lasagna style pizza with i mean it's good but it's not like i can i can go to chicago and come back and not have it you know like i'm not a pizza guy you know i'm trying you know there's very little i care about when i'm there you know in terms of food i can't think of. Um, we don't need restaurants that much that happened when I was a teenager, you know, uh, you know, growing up, my mom didn't take us out to restaurants very much. I started going out with her to restaurants as an adult, actually. I never really thought about this till now. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, these habits that you inherit,

they become pretty well ingrained. And if you have other people in your household, let's say you're married, you have children, you've been doing it this way, like if the whole unit's not on board, it's going to be tough. Like I haven't seen it be successful really, you know. Yeah. And usually when it is successful, I see friction between the spouses, you know. Sure. Yeah. Not in every case, you know. There's certainly cases where, you know, one person, usually the dude kind of laughs it off when the woman barely eats.

You know, I've seen that, you know. Mm-hmm. But when I've seen situations where you have married couples and there's children involved, you know, let's forget the children, married couples, right? And one person wants to accomplish a goal, let's say lose weight. You just weight loss is where I see this more, and they have to restrict all this shit, then the other person gets pissed, you know? Right.

And I see it happen more often than not, so the whole unit has to be on board. And, like, you know, I've had people, you know, one of the most common things that I see in, you know, multi-person households is, you know, just snack foods everywhere, you know? And then I said this before, oh, but, you know, the kids like it. And it's, you know, then that comes into a deeper question, you know, what kind of example are you trying to set?

You know, I'm not insulting you. I'm asking an honest question that's valid in the context, right? If you think this is good for you, then why do you think the shit you're trying to not eat is fine for your kids? You know, it's like young kid equals junk. That's kind of a thing that like is pretty normal in this country you know i don't know how it is in europe and other places but i i kind of see that a lot this association that because somebody because you have a young human you know that's you know let's say pre-adolescent or a child uh that you know it's

good for them to eat crap you know and i think this is just social engineering here, social programming. Yeah, I could go off on a tirade there. Yeah, we could do that in another episode. But my point is the pantries have been a sticking point for not just one, but many of my clients. So I know I have several that I've talked to this about with, some that may be listening, and I'm not talking about you specifically. You know, this is a pattern that I've seen across a lot of people, and the pantry seemed to be a problem in these multi-person households.

The person who's working with me wants to lose weight, and then they're in an environment that is setting them up for failure. Objectively speaking, that's a modifiable thing. Subjectively speaking, that could lead to divorce, you know? Right, right. You know, if you're not on the same page about shit, it just creates friction. That's what I've seen. I'm not a family and marriage therapist by any means, but I'm just speaking from my experience on the side of I'm trying to consult somebody on achieving a goal that requires certain changes to their lifestyle. And then there's other people in their house they have to consider. Right. And, uh, if

the whole unit's not on board, you got a problem. So, you know, there you go, you know, like, yeah, I think that, so that, that actually is a good segue to one of the other things I wanted to talk about. Because I, so I posted on, I got on a little tear in my barbell club as I'm, as I'm wants to do, where, and I also posted this on Instagram, everybody's setting resolutions and goals at the beginning of the year. So that's what people do. And I said, what do you think is more important to achieving a new goal? Or I think I said to achieving habit change, motivation or discipline, motivation versus discipline, right? And there's, there's, you know, tons of digital ink spilled about this. Um, first of all, I think that's a false dichotomy. You know, it's, it's it's i don't think it's it's it's kind of a dumb question but but i'm on the side of

i think motivation is very underrated and i think discipline is highly overrated uh when it comes to this stuff and it's it's this has only been confirmed by my coaching experiences i have not seen people whiten their way. So there's no evidence then? Oh, there's no evidence. Oh, well, of course, yeah. It's just anecdata. It's not anecdata.

It's no data. Yeah. Yeah, there's no evidence of that. Look, I'm segwaying into this next episode. Right, yeah. Go ahead. Those people. No evidence.

There's no evidence I took a piss this morning. Right. That's right. You know, I just have to go on testimony. I have not taken a piss this morning. You're not going to find it in my toilet. There's no evidence. I mean, because I fucking flushed it.

That's why. So, I just have not seen people white knuckle their way through more than a couple weeks of change. You know, every once in a while, you know, somebody will want to go on some crazy diet, super restrictive or, you know, with the food types that they can eat or the amount of calories or whatever, or they'll want to go on like some crazy physical, you know, practice outside of training. And I usually just let them do it because I'm not going to try to sit there and just talk people out of it. You know, I'll, I'll give them a heads up. It's like, Hey, you know, it's probably going to have a big impact

on your training, but you know, uh, if that's what you want to do, sure. They just, just be aware. And I just have not seen people be successful in trying to make these huge changes and white knuckle their way through them. And I think the reason why these people are not successful is because they didn't have a good motivation for doing it. They didn't really have a good reason to do it. I think that's why people don't generally, uh, you know, when people in our world that train on a regular basis that want to get lean, we hear that a lot, you know, when people in our world that train on a regular basis that want to get lean, we hear that a lot. You know, they trained for a little while, they put on some muscle mass, they got bigger, they got stronger. They're like, I want to lean out. And then they fall off the

wagon pretty early. I think it's because they really actually don't care about leaning out. I think they kind of wanted to be, look like someone else. And then they realize at some point that they're not going to look like that other person no matter what they do. And so then once that's gone, the habit change of eating to get leaner stops. You know what's funny? I've been talking about this a lot lately. Only 23% of Americans lift according to the official data. And by lift, they call that muscle strengthening activity, which could involve bands and other shit, right? So if you narrowed it down to barbells and free

weights and progressive overload, I would suspect that we'd be in the low single digits, you know, maybe even a fraction of a percent. I don't know. You know? Right. Yeah. I believe that. Like how many people actually lift and try to add weight to the bar? And then like us in our circle, we're definitely a fraction of a percent. Yeah. Oh, for sure. But my point is that I think the other 75%, three-quarters of the population, it's probably more like 80% to 85%.

But we'll say 75% don't do anything of the sort, right? Yeah. I think they're on the right track from the standpoint that they understand that they're not going to change their lifestyle. And by that, I mean, if you talk to the average person and show them abs, you know, show them a fitness model, right? They're going to look at you and say, I don't want to be in the gym for three hours. That guy works out every day, you know? Right. That's the first thing you hear, right, is that they work out every day.

that guy works out every day, you know? Right. That's the first thing you hear, right, is that they work out every day. Or, you know, you might hear stuff, you know, if it's a Hollywood person, they might say, oh, well, you know, they have personal chefs and all this money, you know, I don't have that, you know? Yeah, right. You might hear that.

But the theme that I've heard from non-gym people is that it's a full-time job to look like that, right? And they're not wrong unless the person just looks like that. You know, some of these people are genetic like that, right? And they're not wrong unless the person just looks like that. You know, some of these people are genetic outliers, right? But they're not wrong. They understand this intuitively. See, in fitness, people tend to get wrapped up in this bubble of people who consume fitness information, you know, read fitness publications or following fitness pages on social media. You know, they're part of that little niche, right? But it's a niche, you know, outside of that niche, once you go into the gen pop, people start seeing abs and veins and they start thinking, that's a full-time job. I don't want to

be in the gym three hours and I don't want to eat fucking broccoli and chicken breast, you know, if they even understand that aspect of it, but they know that it's a strict diet, you know, they intuitively know that it's a high maintenance lifestyle and they don't participate in it, right? So fitness, the status quo in fitness is turning these fucking people off, you know, because it's a circle jerk like most other things, you know, just like academia and research, you know, it's a big circle jerk, you know, try to read a research paper if you don't even, let's say you don't have a college degree, but you're a smart person, right? Try to read a research paper and tell me what all those fucking words mean, right? Because they're all talking to each other.

They're not talking to you. And then they're telling you to listen to them, right? Well, it's the same thing in fitness. You got this circle jerk of people talking about things like volume and hypertrophy, hypertrophy, volume, hypertrophy. In Rip's case, you know, you gain 100 pounds and, you know, you're going to squat more. You need to get as strong as possible, right? Like all these things, you're talking to the extremes, you know, like Rip talking to me like that, appropriate, because I'm the kind of guy, I'm going to try to add more, you know, I'm going to try and do more.

So tell me I'm a pussy and tell me it's not heavy. I need to hear that, right? But your average person in the 75% that doesn't even do any type of lifting doesn't need to hear that. What they need to hear is, hey, you need to get under a barbell because your back's going to start hurting in about 20 years. Let's say they're 35, right? And you're going to lose a bunch of muscle and, you know, have a hard time taking a shit in 30 years, right? So you need to just do this at some level. It doesn't need to get super heavy, but you need to do this, right?

So the messaging's fucked up, but when you go into fitness, it's fitness people talking to fitness people, right? Yeah, yeah. But the rest of the population, they look at that, they understand. They're like, I don't want to be in the gym three hours a day. I don't want to eat.

I don't want to starve and eat a weird hours a day. I don't want to eat. I don't want to starve, you know, and eat a weird diet. So it kind of comes back to that. You know, you got to figure out when you set a goal, right, a health goal, don't think so much about the goal and think about the lifestyle you're about to commit to, right? So most recently, because that's what it is. The number one thing that derails progress on any of these programs is lifestyle, right? People can't go backwards in lifestyle. They struggle, you know? They struggle to go backwards in lifestyle, you know?

It's like kind of like if you're spending a bunch of money and, you know, you're a big spender, it's hard to cut back, right? You know, Dave Ramsey probably has a ton of statistics on this, but, you know, I think one thing that I heard on that show this year, actually, when I was in Cincinnati, it turned on AM radio and he was on, is he mentioned that debt is the most marketable product out there. You know, we get sold debt more than any other product, right? And this kind of falls into the same category, right? Like once you're used to eating a lot, it's hard to go backwards in that, right? If you're used to going used to eating a lot it's hard to go backwards in that right if you're used to going to restaurants a lot it's hard to go backwards and i think people in general in the majority of people in general struggle to go backwards in lifestyle and cut things back right but it's like you know eventually you know working three

jobs to pay a bunch of bills or you know eating a bunch of junk food and being unable to tie your shoes, eventually that gets old, you know? It's kind of like, you know, it's not the exact same thing, but it's similar, right? Eventually it gets to be too much, you know? And when it gets to be too much, you got to do something about it, right? But, you know, that's a whole nother topic that's a little bit deeper. But the point here is when you commit to a goal, you have to think about what the lifestyle looks like, because I think that lifestyle is the number one variable that gets in the way, you know, by far. And once you figure out where you want to draw those lines, like what's the most you're willing to give up in your lifestyle, then you can kind of figure out how far you can go. And then as you go along, obviously you collect data points, you figure out what you're accomplishing and what's reasonable, right?

points, you figure out what you're accomplishing and what's reasonable, right? But like, if you say you want to deadlift 500 pounds and your baseline's not 405 or 365 or 315, you know, you know, you're, you're asking, you're going to be sacrificing a lot, you know, you're going to be sacrificing a lot. And then you also got to think about the risks too, you know, like some people get hurt easier than others, right? And that's with good form. Some people just get fucking hurt, you know? So you have to think about all of it. You can't just think about the goal, right? And I think the problem with fitness is, it's fitness people talking to fitness people and saying, hey, you know, 12-week program, eating chicken and broccoli and doing 10 sets of 10 on 65 exercises per week and talking about sets per exercise, you know, stimulus to fatigue ratio and all these complex topics that apply to people that are at that level, you know, you lose people, you know.

Like at the end of the day, you're ignoring the most critical variable and that's lifestyle. You have to figure out where you're going to draw the lines on your lifestyle before you commit to any goal because your lifestyle and where you're willing to draw those lines, that's what's going to determine how far you're going to go and how, you know, what kind of goals you can realistically set, right? Like, you know, I could take the average Joe's under 40 and probably get a 315 deadlift out of a guy, get a 155 deadlift out of a woman, you know, that's probably doable for the majority, you know, some people have, you know, just pretty unathletic, uncoordinated, and probably good at cycling, you know, well, you know, hundreds, hundreds of miles, but, you know, notwithstanding that, you know, those are reasonable numbers, you know, just based on what

I've seen, you know, if you're the outlier, dude, I'm sorry, man, but you still need to get stronger, you know. Absolutely. Well, you know, so our good friend Darren Deaton, he, uh, he says, he likes to say you are the product of your daily habits or you are the result of your daily habits, right? So the things that you do every day, your lifestyle will result in what you are. And I think, yeah, I totally agree on the lifestyle thing. The way I like to say it is look at the kind of person you want to be in the, you know, whatever goal you're trying to set, you know, usually there's some sort of change

that you expect. What is the person that you want to be? What kind of person do you want to be? And then what things would that kind of person do every day? I think that's a really good question. Um, I want to be, so this year, one of my goals is to read more because last year I read pitifully little. I mean, I read very few books, maybe two. Bro, what happened to lifting? Right? You're going to need Marcus Aurelius. Right. And get a biology degree. Right. Well, and that's the thing, you know, I don't have to worry about training. Like, I just do it.

Like, it's just a part of me. It's ingrained. But reading totally fell off the table. And I kind of thought to myself, like, what kind of person do I want to be? I'm like, I want to be the kind of person that reads, like, on a regular basis. And, well, what sort of things would that person do? Well, they would read, right. But, but more specifically, like, well, uh, you know, they probably have, let's say 30 minutes at the end of the day while they're kind

of winding down to get ready for bed. Well, a person that reads would probably be reading during that time. And I'm looking at myself, I'm like, oh shit, I'm just like doom scrolling on Instagram during that time. Okay. All right. So I need to, uh, I need to figure out how to put myself in front of books when I'm winding down for bed and read instead of doom scrolling on Instagram. So, you know, there you go. There's that environment thing too. So the first thing is I bought some books that are easy to read that are kind of old nostalgic favorites. I'm like, I want to go back through these. I haven't read these in since I was a teenager, right? This would be fun. Okay. So it's easy to pick up. I'm not picking up Plato or Aristotle. Um, this is easy pulpy stuff to pick up. And I left them in my bathroom

so that when I'm, you know, when I'm brushing my teeth, I see the book. Oh yeah. Yeah. I was, I want to read for a little bit. If I'm, if I'm going to take a bath or whatever, I can grab the book and read in the bathtub, um, environment. Uh, the next thing that I need to do, my wife is really good at this is, um, she does this thing where she, she deletes Instagram from her phone during the day. She allows herself to put it on in the morning and at night. That's her designated times. And she just deletes it off her phone.

So if she's in the middle of the day, she's like, oh, I'm going to check Instagram real quick. She can't. It's gone. She has to re-download the app. She does it every single day. And it's actually worked really well for her. That's enough of a pain in the ass

to have to re-download it in the moment that she just won't, she's like, I'll just do something else. I won't scroll. Right. And, uh, I need to do something like that, but there it is in a nutshell, right? But it all started with, I got to this year and I thought like, Oh, what do I want to focus on this year? I'm like, man, I don't want to be a person that just never reads anything. I don't want to be that person. I want to be the person that reads. So that there it is. And then that then it that then begs the question of what kind of daily habits would you do? I wanted a dog and I wanted to learn how to work her, you know, but, uh, the second one was a nightmare, man. My pointer, you know, we've talked about her here many times and you know, she, now she sleeps with me, you know, she's a, she's a sweetheart, you know, little cuddle bug. And, you know, she kind of, she's the only one that moves these fucking

bullies, man. I don't know if any of you try to sleep with a bully. I've tried to sleep with a pit bull before. And we've tried to sleep with a little Boston Terrier before. And I'm telling you, those motherfuckers are like bricks. They don't move. You try to nudge them, they don't get the hint. But the bird dog, she just kind of moves over. I nudge her, she moves over. I'm like, okay, you've earned the right sleep in my bed. Because it's more because I don't let her out much, you know? I work her a few times a day. And then at the end of the day, you know, I want to hang out with her and then we just got to pass out, you know? And she behaves and, you know, moves over when I need her to. Anyway, that's an aside, right? So my second dog was a pain in the

ass, right? And I had to learn her drives and i had to change the way i approached things and it ended up being the most rewarding dog to train that'd be my german short-haired pointer and in it the whole experience was almost therapeutic i guess and it just it was fun you know i'm i coach humans i watch humans lift and i know there's carry over there so naturally humans i watch humans lift and i know there's carry over there so naturally it's not surprising that i would enjoy an activity like this but uh it gets me away from computer screens and the internet and i'm just in touch with the world you know yeah right so it's kind of what you're saying right so like i want to do that more i want to get better at it so i understand that that's a lifestyle change right so that's what my morning routine looks like, and I'm about to put a video out on this.

I wake up, and I brush my teeth. I let dog number one out. That'd be my Malinois. And, you know, he does his business. Then I put him in the kennel that's in the back seat of my truck, right? That just sits back there permanently. You know, there was a time where I thought, I can't wait to take that thing out when my pointer's older. And then I, you know, it just stays in there.

It's safer for the dog, you know. Anyways, then I go back in. I pick up his kennel that he sleeps in. I put it in sideways facing the, you know, the long way facing the passenger seat. So I have to carry it outside, slide it into the behind the passenger seat and make sure the long side, you know, it's going long ways, you know, towards the passenger seat. So I have to carry it outside, slide it into the behind the passenger seat and make sure the long side, you know, it's going long ways, you know, towards the passenger seats, I got to move the seat all the way forward, tilt it all the way forward, then kind of squeeze this thing in next to the other one, because they can't lay long ways. And it's too long, you know,

then I got to walk back in, get dog number two, she has to do her business, you know, I do a little bit of work, and then I pop her in there, right? She there's a side door, right? She gets in, you know, so now I got two dogs in the car, right? And then I, you know, get my coffee and my little Jura. And I start driving, right? So then I, you know, pick my location, you know, the start of the year, I was at the gun range every day, that's like, it's about 40 minutes. And, you know, pick my location. You know, the start of the year, I was at the gun range every day. That's like, and it's about 40 minutes. And, you know, I parked there and then I was getting them used to gunfire, you know, so we just worked in the parking lot while the guns were shooting, right? And they, you know, pretty much adapted within a week or two. Now I'm back at a park that's like 20 minutes from where I live, you know. And every day we do go through this routine. So like, you know, from

6.30, 7 in the morning to about 10 in the morning, you know, I'm running my dogs, you know. Then I get back and I start working. I do my online coaching and then I coach people in the afternoon. That's my routine, you know. So I coach animals in the morning. I coach humans in the afternoon. And that's what my life looks like right now. And you can argue that, man, that's a hell of a disruption, you know.'s a hell of a disruption, you know, but it's not a disruption, you know, it gives me a lot of joy, you know, so I do it, you know, and that's, yeah, I'm fine with it. And the people that have taught me to do it are great, you know, enjoy their company. And that's where the motivation to do that comes from, you know,

it's like, it's net positive, you know, I feel better, I'm learning a new skill, I want to go further with it. And, you know, I enjoy seeing the animals kind of grow and flourish and learn these things, you know? going to be good motivators. And some of these aren't obvious. You know, this is, this is the, the problem with being young is sometimes you don't recognize some of these things. Um, I think that's why my twenties were like the worst decade so far, because you know, you're too young to appreciate some of the things that, uh, go away as you get older. you aren't really sure like what brings you joy yet. And finding that can be difficult, but I'm old enough now to have seen a lot of family members get old and become elderly. And when they're elderly, they lose a lot of function. They become dependent. You know, they go from independent to independent to

dependent. And it's a hard process to watch, you know, people that, that you grew up with that were vibrant and, you know, able, they could do a lot of stuff that had a bunch of skills that just can't do it anymore and watch them slow down. And then what's, what's even harder is watching them want to do certain things that bring them a lot of joy that they just can't anymore. And I think this is a, that, that can be a huge motivator for training, especially for my older clients is part of the reason why I really, really enjoy working with people that are older and by older, I mean really over 40, but, but a lot of, a lot of my clients are over 50. And, um, I really enjoy working with them because a lot of them are in touch with that. You know, they have older parents

that they may have taken care of, you know, recently and had an experience for like, wow, I really would like to be able to like get on the floor and play with my grandkids as opposed to like being stuck on the couch where I really can't move around. Or like, you know, if my grandson is really into baseball, I'd love to be able to go play catch with him in the yard or whatever. Um, instead of being stuck and you can't do it, that can be a huge motivator. Yeah. And, uh, and so anyway, the, the, the, my point in bringing that up is simply that there are things beyond just sort of looking jacked and tan. There are. It's cool, but it's just not a big motivator for most people.

It's not. It's not really the reason. It's a byproduct of a life lived for other more valuable reasons. valuable reasons. You know, the Jack and Tam people popularized weightlifting and they are, you got to credit them because we have gyms everywhere now, you know, because of that. Yeah, that's true. But, you know, if we want to get more people under the bar, we got to get past that because only a minority of the population is willing to go there, you know, the population is willing to go there, you know, willing to do multi hour workouts, most days of the week, go on bizarre diets, you know, weight cycle, quite a bit and get on weird drugs, you know, precious minority of the population. And the same token, there's a minority of the

population that's willing to get pretty fat, take drugs, and lift as heavy a weight as possible and deal with all the injuries that come along with that, right? That's a sport now, right? Power lifting is a sport. Strength lifting is a sport, right? So... That's the best description of power lifting I've ever heard, by the way. I mean, it's accurate, right? I like that. I'm going to steal it. Let's stop pretending that getting fat doesn't help you lift more. It absolutely fucking does, you know?

It does. It doesn't, you know, that doesn't make money. It's not a good business model to tell people, hey, I'm going to get you fat and put a bunch of weight on the bar. You know, I get it. But there's a reason that the champion squatters have bellies, you know? Hell, the biggest deadlifts pulled. Eddie Hall and Half Thor both had bellies when they did it you know that's true so there's a fucking reason for this but yeah you know like that's not what we're asking you to do the reason we choose the barbell is because it

is the most it allows you to perform functional movements with a lot of weight in a safe and effective manner you know yep um you know you can sit up and stand up from a toilet all day long, but when you get older, it gets harder if you're not overloading that. You know, you don't have a surplus of strength. How much? Does that really fucking matter? Because at the end of the day, if you show up, you're going to try and do more. Yeah. Because it is human nature to want to do more than what was previously achieved.

Right? That's right. So don't sit there and think about strong enough. You're never fucking strong enough, first of all. You're not going to reach your genetic ceiling, second of all. Most of us won't. So just get your ass in there, load the bar up, try to add a few pounds next week, and then add a few pounds the next week, you know? And see where that goes in a few years, you know? It's going to help you. It's going to be a net positive. Your back's going to stop hurting. Your knees are going to stop hurting. It's going to help you.

It's going to be a net positive. Your back's going to stop hurting. Your knees are going to stop hurting. And you're going to look better as a byproduct. Are you going to get jacked and tanned? Probably fucking not. If you want to get jacked and tanned, you've got to live like a bodybuilder. And you've got to have a certain set of genetics that allow you to do that. And you're going to eat a very uninteresting bland diet.

You're going to do lots of exercises, be in the gym all fucking day, and that's only going to work if you're taking all the fucking drugs and sticking yourself with a needle. However often they do that, you know? So, you know, when you look at these guys, think about those things. Think about their lifestyle and not their body so much, right? These guys are taking multiple drugs, a ton of supplements, eating a ton of fucking food, and it's not in the fun way you

think. They're not eating donuts. They don't even drink, first of all. That's fine. There's a lot of people that don't drink, but they don't drink because of their beliefs about, you know, what that does to their body in terms of bodybuilding, right? Whether that stuff is 100% true, I don't know. I've set plenty of PRs and drank through those training cycles, but I'm also not starving myself to fucking 5% body fat eating chicken and broccoli and sticking myself with a bunch of compounds, you know? Yep. So, you know, it's a high-maintenance lifestyle, you know?

So stop with the jacked and tanned shit unless you want to become one of those motherfuckers. But guess what? Your brain's going to be all fucked sideways if you do that you know these guys have mental illness too you know yeah all of them but a lot of them you know because think about it you are sitting there fixating on every detail of your fucking body you know what do you think that does to your brain you know so instead of looking at a barbell and thinking of a big fat power lifter squatting a thousand or think of the you a jacked bodybuilder doing 20 exercises in the gym for three hours, six days a week, right? The problem is most people

look at the weight room and think about one of those two situations and that's not what it is, right? There's a handful of things you can do in here that'll accomplish most of your goals. Your goals are much more modest than that, But the guy feeding you information on the internet, he's talking to you as though you're one of them, and you're not. You're just not, right? So ignore him for now. And listen to us. Listen to us instead. Oh, yeah. I'm supposed to say that, right? I'm not really good at the propaganda thing. But yeah, and listen to us. We're not one of them. We're one of you. You're one of us. You're one of us, right? You know, if you get into that, go do it. But for now, show up, do your main exercises, and see where the fuck that takes you. You know, if you get that obsessive and do something competitive, that's great. I have clients that do that, you

know, that max out, you know, we want to see how strong we are. But some people never have any interest in doing that, you know. The point is, show the fuck up and that's i think the theme of this fucking episode that's right yep consistency change your environment to make that happen yeah and you know find your motivation uh and it's and it's not being jacked and tan that's not it that's not it you can you can do better than that um it's okay to like to want that but but that's not That's not it. That's not it. You can do better than that. It's okay to want that, but that's not the motivation that's going to carry you through years of training. People run marathons, and by run, I mean walk, and that seems to be socially acceptable, right? Just because you run doesn't mean you have to be a competitive marathoner.

We need to get this association with the weight room. Just because you lift with a barbell doesn't make you a power lifter. And just because you're in a weight room doesn't mean you're a bodybuilder either, right? Think about that for a second. You could be the guy that walks the marathon, and that guy's pretty healthy. He's doing something, except for the guy who just walks on that day. He's just looking for attention fuck him but uh you know let's say these people you know there's people that like you know they'll sit there and build up mileage at a low pace just to do it right same thing here come in here lift light weights if that's what gets you under the fucking bar because guess what it's better than you sitting on your fucking ass you know that's right step number one to show up all right there you go

well it's a good way to kick off the year, I think, with some poor man's pappy. I got Evan Williams. Motivation. And Evan Williams bottled in bond. I can think of a lot worse ways to kick off the year. So there you go. There's another one.

We'll be up soon with our good friend, Steph Bradford, talking about science the science we'll talk about the science we are going to do a series on science

and research and studies and studies show we're going to tell you what all that fucking shit means or I am Steph is too and we might get some other people

on there I'm just going to sit I'm just going to sit back and drink while you go through all that you know Rip's not a researcher but I think we need to get him

on here for that series because I love his perspective on those things and he's read a lot of papers, you know? Oh, yeah. And he's had a paper rejected, too, you know? I want to find that paper about periodizing your abdominal training. Yes. Or the stability ball

bench pressing. The stability bench pressing. Yes, yeah, that would be great. My favorite quote there was, I respect the nads on the guy same as bench pressing. Yes, yeah, that would be great. My favorite quote there was, I respect the nads on the guy who's benched 253, but do they not realize 253 is not that heavy when the raw bench record is, what, 800 or whatever, you know? Oh, man. Well, there you go.

It's going to be a fun series. You have that to look forward to coming up soon. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. I hope you YouTubers enjoyed us. We're finally on fucking video here. Uh, you can find me at the underscore Robert underscore Santana on Instagram or weights and plates.com. If you want to hire me for coaching, if you want to read some of my articles, I need to update those. Most of them are on starting strength.com, but they are also on my website. The gym is in Phoenix. If you're in Metro Phoenix, you can find us.

We're just south of the airport. You can find the address on Google. And we have an Instagram page that I have been lightly updating. We're working on this. Weights, double underscore underscore and double underscore plates thank you very much all right there you go i noticed that by the way i saw those posts on that instagram account yeah and happy good very good yeah well um yeah happy new year to you as well from uh from me at marmalade underscore cream 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. you