Weights and Plates Podcast - #69 - We Command You to Grow! (With the Barbell)

Episode Date: February 11, 2024

You've tried the templates in the bodybuilding magazines, from the bodybuilding sites. You've tried lifting like the big jacked, ripped dudes on social media... and it hasn't worked. You don't look like them, and your growth has stalled out. For some reason we accept that in sports, we shouldn't expect to perform like pro athletes without elite genetics and many years of training, but in fitness, we expect to acheive the look of people with outlier genetics, years of training, and, often, performance enhancing drugs as well. In today's episode, Dr. Santana and Coach Trent explain why basic barbell training is the answer to a better physique for the vast majority of trainees -- and that includes you!   Compound lifts -- the squat, bench press, overhead press, and deadlift -- work the entire body with very heavy weights if you progressively train them, that is, add weight to the bar on a regular basis. Because they utilize so much muscle mass, they can produce a stimulus for growth that no isolation exercise can match, and many of the best physiques in the world were built, at the beginning, with a lot of basic compound lifts. A solid base of strength in these four lifts forms of the base of the pyramid for body composition. A guy that works hard to get his squat to 315 and bench to 225 will have a decent set of legs and chest! Once that is achieved, he can then bring up his weak points with a small selection of assistance work. The same guy squatting only 185 is wasting his time trying to do any assistance work -- he simply needs to drive his squat up.   So, if you're tired of not having a muscular physique and "looking like you lift," then re-dedicate yourself to acheiving some baseline achievements on the main barbell lifts. Then, when it's time to introduce some additional exercises, you'll have a much better base of strength to perform them with (i.e. you'll be able to do those lifts heavier, and thus get more out of them) and you'll have a much better idea of where your actual weak points are.   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream Email: [e-mail]    

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. Hey, what's going on, man? Not much, man. I'm drinking some. You're drinking. I'm drinking. Yeah, I'm drinking some Elijah Craig small batch. Okay. All right. Which used to have a 12-year age statement that they got rid of sometime around 2018, I think.

Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. So I always hear Elijah Craig mentioned as like one of the affordable buys, but I've never had it. Yeah. What do you think? It was, it's, it was, it is still a $30 whiskey it. Yeah, it was. What do you think? It was. It is still a $30 whiskey, and you can find it anywhere. You can find it at Walmart. You can find it at the grocery store. You're never going to have a problem finding Elijah Craig, and the prices stay the same. In fact, if you have Costco near you, you can occasionally find it there in 1.75 liters

for $42, at least here in Phoenix. I don't know what other markets charge for that because, you know, the liquor tax is different everywhere, but yeah, $42 for a handle. You know, I buy it at Walmart every month, you know, because I stretch this thing out. My members have some too. All right. Nice. Yeah, that's good. Well, maybe I'll have to pick up some. Well, how does, let me, let me ask this. How does it compare to Evan Williams bottled and bond it has a little more kick to it I mean you put a tiny bit of water it's a 94 but it's got it's got some heat to it naturally you know even even though it's a lower proof

you know Elijah Craig barrel proof is amazing man that's probably one of my favorites yeah yeah hmm interesting I'll have to have to try some of the Elijah Craig sometime I'm drinking scotch today. I was feeling in a bit more refined mood. Yeah. So I've got some Macallan 18. Is that the double oak or the sherry cask? It is a triple oak. Triple oak, oh.

I believe this is triple oak. It comes with a purple label. Okay. I believe it is triple oak. I think it's sherry oak is what they call it. I don't know what that means. What was the price point? This was a gift. I think it's probably pretty expensive. Truth be told, so I'm trying to finish this bottle up because I've had it, and I've had this bottle for three years now.

Oh man, I've had this bottle for three years now. And I've had just, you know, a couple inches of whiskey left in the bottle for the last year. And I poured some over the holidays and I realized like it's probably lost a little bit of the flavor that it had. It doesn't seem to be as good as I remember it. Still very good, but not quite as good. And so I'm like, you know, I think I might need to just need to finish this thing off. I think I might've left it left in the bottle too long. Well, I know that they have different, uh, there's different expressions of it. And the more expensive one is the Sherry cask, uh, McAllen 12. Um, then they have, I think probably what you're referring to as the triple Oak. I thought it was double, but it might be triple. Um, there's probably both. Yeah, there might be, there's, there might it might be triple um there's probably both yeah there might be there's there might be there's there's probably both yeah i'm not super familiar with um with mccallan's offerings i you know i'm not a huge fan of the of the lower age statement stuff you know like the mccallan uh what's the what's sort of the basic one a 12 i think that's a 12 isn't that what you're drinking uh no this is 18 18 18. Oh, the 18. Shit, man. Oh, here we go. It's the Fine Oak 18. Yeah, pinkies up. So the McAllen 18, at least the sherry cask finish, is a $300 bottle.

I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, this was a very generous gift from a client. Yeah, I mean, I think that even the one you have sitting there is probably not – they're not far apart when you look at the different casks until you get to the higher age statements. But typically the higher age statements are that sherry cask. And I've – I don't know what I have because those bottles look similar. I'm pretty sure that I've had the 12 in sherry cask. I've not had anything higher than that. The 15 is one of those double or triple oak ones. Okay, yeah. And the 18 comes 12 and sherry cask. I've not had anything higher than that. The 15 is one of those double or triple oak ones. Uh, then the 18 comes in a sherry cask and that's, that one I know is $300 and the pours at the restaurants are really expensive.

Yeah. Um, yeah, it's, uh, well, yeah. So lest y'all think that I'm, I'm over here, you know, buying a multi hundred dollar bottles of, of, uh, scotch on a regular basis. No, that's not the case. This was a gift. It's a very generous gift. I've been milking this bottle for three years now and it's time to finish it off. I will say, so I said, it doesn't taste as good as I remember it. It still tastes really good. It's a really nice scotch. And one of the things I've, you know, I'm not, I'm no expert here. I'm not a scotch bro, but, uh, I I've noticed that when you get up to the 18 and 20 year, man, scotch just smooths out so beautifully. That's the problem with scotch. I don't know if bourbon's the same way.

Yeah, it's a very different experience. If you've only had like 10, 12 year scotches, if you can ever get your hands on some 18 plus, it's quite good. It's quite good it's quite good so that is the problem with scotch is that it starts to get good at like 18 20 plus years right it also starts to get expensive very expensive at that point um I think the Balvenie 17 double wood is probably you know just as good or maybe even better than the mcallen 18 and that's like 170 price point so okay yeah well i'm a i'm a big fan of the i always tell people like if they're gonna try a scotch for the first time i if i if i have some i'll pour it but if not i'll

tell them to get uh the balvinie 12 the double wood balvinie double wood 12 um because i think that's just a it's like if you don't like that you're just not gonna like scotch in my opinion pretty much because it's pretty mild it's not super peaty you know it's got some sweetness to it very balanced yeah it's kind of like the bourbon of scotch you know it tastes like scotch it's a good scotch i like it a lot but it's yeah it's very balanced no weird flavors yeah nope doesn't taste like ash. No, so, yeah, no, that one I got introduced to by an old friend of mine. She was a lifter. I used to train about six, seven years ago.

And she was a waitress and waitress at various places out east and here as well, a place here. And we went to a bar in Scottsdale, and she ordered scotch. And I was like, okay. And then she told me to try the Balvini 14 and this is how much of an amateur I was back then she was like here you throw some water in it that'll open up the uh the flavor and that one was the Caribbean cask and uh oh yes that's good yeah that's the 14 year and I remember that was really good rum cask yeah yeah and I should own that bottle and I don't. I have the 21.

I think that's the only one I have actually, but the one I defaulted to over the years was the 15, the sherry cask, which is pretty good. Okay. I've not had that one. Yeah, I've had the Caribbean cask. I've had the 12 and I've had the Portwood 21 year. That was another gift from years ago. That was a $300 bottle.

Yeah, that was really good. I drink that once a year, if that, I mean, I think, I think I've had it since when was the last time I poured that probably pre pandemic. I'd have been poured in years, you know? So, all right. So I have a question for you. Do you know this? If so, I have heard differing opinions on this, that if you have a certain amount of air volume in the bottle, it it does kind of you know i guess it degrades the flavor over time like so if you if the bottle's like half full it's fine but if it's like a quarter full you got to go ahead and drink it that's what i've heard i think if you're down to i think if you're down to the last drop i mean if you've let that last drop sit for a while

it could be psychological but i think it tastes different than if you've had half the bottle for a while, you know? Right, yeah. Okay, so that's what I think I'm tasting here, because it's been like, you know, the last two inches, let's say, that had sit in there for at least a year. Yeah, I think there's something to that. Anyway, still good stuff. Here's the awkward segue. We talked too much about booze, and now we're going to jump into what we need to be talking about here. And that today is growth for the non-bodybuilder and otherwise non-competitor, right?

What the fuck does that mean, right? Because I think some of the messaging in this business, and I don't even know. You and I, we're starting to like, I don't even know, you and I, we're starting to like, I don't even know if we're starting to, we belong in a whole nother category, you know. But we acknowledge people that are, you know, watching this, listening to this, read my content. They've had some, a lot of them have had background in the fitness industry, right? They've had, you know, a history of reading stuff, you know, they're familiar with it, right? Yeah. A lot of my clients follow a handful of guys on Instagram or they read their blog or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, people that come to us, probably

75% of them are familiar with fitness, quote unquote, right? And I'd say 25% of them have never done any of this before. uh you know in some ways it's that's better it's you know i took a break dancing class once in 2006 i think but no later than that probably 2008 seven or eight and uh i remember the instructor was like it's he's like it's good that you never done this before because it's better to learn good habits and to unlearn bad ones and you know as somebody who's coached things, I would agree with that. That's true. Very true. Yeah. And, and, you know, in setting expectations too, right. Which I think was what we're going to talk about today in part, of course, of course, you know, yeah. If you start

looking at people who are huge outliers or not telling you the whole story of what they're doing, they said, they sell you this idea that you can be like them. And that's how they attract followers. And I think that's what we're going to talk about today. So let me piggyback on that for a second. So when I was growing up, I grew up in Chicago in the 90s. So that was the Jordan era of basketball. And it was pretty well understood that Michael Jordan was a genetic outlier, right basketball. And it was pretty well understood that Michael Jordan was a genetic outlier, right? And it's still pretty well fucking understood, right? And, you know, you never heard anybody say that if you played basketball enough and worked hard

enough at basketball, you would get to Jordan's level, right? And the same could be said about, you know, Nolan Ryan. He was a pitcher at the time, you know, I think he was on the, about, you know, Nolan Ryan. He was a pitcher at the time, you know, I think he was on the, was it Texas? Yeah, he was with the Rangers. Yeah, the Rangers, yeah. The early 90s, he was, yeah, he was like 43 and still throwing 100 miles an hour. Exactly, yeah, that was an amazing

athlete, right? And, you know, the list goes on, you know, if you go through hockey or, you know, the NFL that was the Cowboys era, you know, 91, 92, right? Was that right? Or 92, 93? I can't remember, you're from Texas. Yeah, yeah. Yeah's, uh, that's, it sounds about right. Oh, so I'll give you a little, little stat there for all you, uh, Cowboys fans out there. That's better for you to do it than me. See, my stepdad was a Cowboys fan that lived in Illinois. His brother lived in Dallas.

So he went to those Superbowls, uh, Trent, the Bills and the Cowboys went to, I think both of them. Oh, wow. Wow. That's amazing Cowboys went to, I think, both of them. Oh, wow. Wow, that's amazing. Alright, so I've got a funny stat that I saw after the Cowboys lost. Surprisingly, they lost again in the first round of the playoffs. That's never happened before.

So, the Dallas Cowboys, guess how many playoff wins they've had since 1997? Is it triple digits? No. Not even close. Don't tell me it's 10. Not even close.

Five? The Dallas Cowboys have... They went to the Super Bowl. They have, so since 1997, right? That was the last time. Okay, so since then, they have a total of four playoff wins. Holy shit, how did they start sucking? Okay, I'll give you another, here's another comparison here. they have a total of four playoff wins. Holy shit. How did they start sucking? Okay.

Let me, I'll give you another, just another comparison here. So Tom Brady, he has more playoff wins in his time in Tampa Bay than the Cowboys have had in the last 25 years. So old ass Tom Brady, right before he retired,

you know, he spent what, two, three years with Tampa. He got more playoff wins then than the, than the Cowboys have in the last 25 years. Man, I saw that stat and I'm like, wow, that puts it in perspective. So, yeah, there you go. There's America's team for you.

I guess that you can probably figure out when they started fixing football games. But, yeah, we digress. but uh yeah we digress the point here is when watching actual sports versus you know the fake sports we dabble in uh people acknowledge that they can't work their ass off to be as good as these people you know um yeah if you just if you want to go the aesthetic route, you know, if you look at a fucking fashion model or a Hollywood star, no amount of plastic surgery, makeup, and bullshit is going to make you look like that person, right? And we know that. You know, we know that the prettiest people in the world are cast for these things, right? Right. You got to have the best looking people for the camera so that makes the movie more appealing, you know, you know it's an art form right you and your it's a visual art

form on top of it so you want everything to look good right and you know it's subjective beauties and I the beholder I get that you know but let's be honest these people look different than most people let's just put it that way you know yeah and no amount of hard work or even you know technology is gonna make you look like one of these people. No amount of hard work or pharmaceuticals, you know, for those of you that say, oh, well, you know, pro-athletes aren't steroids. Well, you know, that's the last 5%, you know, or put whatever percentage you want. You can't measure it, but I'm going to say 5.

RIP says the last 3%. Maybe it's 10%, but it's not 95% of it. You know, there's no technique steroids, right? So, you know, we acknowledge this, right, largely, that these people are genetic outliers and can do things we can't do. Let me give a more practical example, right, because not everybody's played sports. Most people have been through elementary school, probably high school, and then, you know, what, third of the country has graduated college, you know, and then more have went to college, right? Third of the country, I mean the U.S. I know we have listeners overseas too. So, okay, a lot of people have been to school before at some level, right? So just think about

those days for a second, if you can remember them. Remember that kid that, you know, just showed up to class, didn't study and, you know, got 100% on everything? We all remember him. We all had him at some point in some class, right? Or on some subject, right? You know, he was born that way. And we acknowledge that we don't challenge that we're like, how the fuck this is fucking amazing how he can do that, right? I mean, that's how I thought, right? Right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember. Okay, so now let's bring it back home. Now, why is it that when we open up a fitness magazine or go on Instagram and follow a fitness influencer, you know, they sell this lie. It doesn't seem to die.

It's been 50 years that this lie has been circulating in various different ways. It's been repackaged, rebranded, and resold. That if you work hard, you can look like that person in the picture, you know. I had a guy once tell me, and he was, you know, more of an ectomorph, youomorph, narrow build, tend to be on the leaner side, thinner. That told me he wanted to look like Dwayne the Rock Johnson. And I think back on it now, having more experience in the business, he was a great guy, great client, worked hard, got great results. And I half wasn't as brash with my clients back then and also half still a little bit naive about things, you know. I understood.

I was just starting to understand what drugs did in the weight room and the role of genetics and all that. But I wasn't so direct with it back then like I am now. But, you know, like I look back on that, I'm like, that's like a crazy thing, dude. You're like, okay, 6'2", 6'3", you know, sub 200 pounds at baseline. And you have a full-time job that's very demanding. You know, he had a very demanding job. And, you know, just the structure is not there. The Rock's a Samoan, first of all.

You know, this guy was, you know, this guy was Caucasian. I don't know what his background is. And he's huge. He's a Samoan. You know, those guys can get really fat and really muscular, you know, if they want to. He's, yeah, he's like, what, 6'5"? He's 6'4".

He was 6'2", but, you know, his recorded height's 6'4". I mean, I believe, so, all right, so, you know, I believe watching The Rock, you know, up there against these other guys, you know, a lot of those, a lot of those wrestlers were, you know, six and six and a half feet tall somewhere in that ballparks. And he was as big as most of them. Yeah. So, yeah. But he's a, he's a big guy. If I think, you know, the thing is, if you see that guy not standing a bunch of, against a bunch of other professional wrestlers, but you see him standing against regular people, he would be the biggest dude in the room by far.

Of course. Of course. And, you know, what we're talking about, we're talking about men right now. There's similar shit with women, and that's been going on far longer, I think, before it was, you know, if you follow this diet or take this supplement or get this surgery, you know, you can be a size zero, you know, and you can weigh nothing.

You know, that was like what I remember growing up that was being sold to women, you know, and I think this goes way back, you know. Um, and now it's, you know, there's this appetite for muscle. There's this, uh, market for lifting and for females. Right. There's this market for lifting for females, right? And, you know, they want to have visible abs and, you know, big asses. You know, this is like the types of things I hear, you know, like I want a big booty like the Instagram model, you know? Or the peach.

Yeah, or I want abs. I want no fat on my stomach whatsoever, right? And yeah, usually like either visible triceps or at least like no visible fat, body fat on the bottom of the arms. Body fat is bad. And we'll dive into that too. But, and then when you go into like competitive physique contests,

then they want lateral delts or posterior delts. They sound more like bodybuilders now, right? Yeah, yeah. And again, it's the same kind of thing, right? If you're like this small, petite woman, uh, you're not going to get big delts like the girl who, you know, was a softball pitcher, you know, or, you know, a shot putter or a sprinter, you know, you're not going to have big quads like a Olympic weightlifter that, you know, competes at the world stage, you know, like an Olympic weightlifter that competes at the world stage.

That's not going to happen through training in a lot of cases. But there's this belief that it's just a matter of work and formula and the program and this supplement. A lot of that is bullshit. What's true is what we've been telling you. If you lift weights and you get stronger, your muscles will grow from where they were at baseline, you know, so if you're 115 pound female, and you know, your baseline squat is the bar, and you're benching 35 pounds, and you're pressing 25 pounds, you can move the needle on that, you know, you might squat, you know, assume you're young and don't have a bunch of orthopedic issues. You probably squat one and a half times body

weight, deadlift, double body weight, you know, and press 75% body weight and, you know, get as close as you can to a body weight bench. That one's a little bit hit or miss, I've noticed, you know, but you could do that if you dedicate, you know, two to four years to it, you know, it takes time, you know, and yeah, I say that rather casually, because that's about how long it takes, you know, on the same note, if you're 160 pound woman, 180 pound woman on the heavier side, you're gonna probably lift quite a bit, but you're not going to be a size zero, most likely, you know, you know, I'm assuming normal height, what normal height for female five, four to five, six, something like that, right? You know, you're just there's, there's just things that are baked into the cake that you can't.

In healthcare, we used to call them modifiable risk factors and non-modifiable risk factors in the context of cardiovascular disease. So basically what that means is there are things you can change, you know, through hard work and there are things you cannot, right? And the example I was giving, we talk about family history was something you can change, you know, through hard work, and there are things you cannot, right? And, and the example I was giving, we talked about family history was something you couldn't change. Sex was something you couldn't change, you know. And in this case, it's kind of the same thing, right? Family history totally plays a role here. You know, if you don't have muscular people in your family tree, then you're going to have a hard time building muscle. You know, if you have marathoners, if you come from a, if you're from a multi-generation family of marathoners, you know, you're pissing upstream, you know?

Right. If you come from, you know, a multi-generational family of American football players, then, you know, you might have a good chance, you know? So you got to look at the things you can't control first before you start deciding how much effort you want to put into the things you can control because that amount of effort to get a certain output is going to vary based on those things you can't modify right so if you have genetics right like let's say you're real smart up here you know you're you're real smart but you're unathletic motor moron can't coordinate uh you're gonna spend you know five to ten years to get to where you know the football guy starts you know think about that think about that for a second yeah well yeah

although i will be the devil's advocate here because i i see a lot of people just you know in in common parlance blame genetics for things like oh you know that's genetic right and a lot of times they're talking about like chronic disease. Yeah. We're not saying to do that. We're not saying to do that. Uh, what, you know, but, but like people will blame genetics on stuff like, oh, well, you know, it's just genetic. And it's like, and what they're, what they're implying when they say that is that it doesn't, it's not my habits that, that caused this. It's just something I inherited. And I think when it comes to the

realm of physical fitness, there's a lot of people that are, that just don't, that never had any athletic exposure as kids. And so they don't, they have no idea what their genetic potential is. Their epigenetics are all screwed up, right? So the expression of the genes that they do have like you could say their genes are underexpressed right for for athletic development and that's that's the whole of it right that's strength that's coordination balance you know all the all the 10 general physical skills and so you know training is a process of developing that as well as seeing what, you know, seeing what your genetic potential could be. Right. So I think there's a lot of people who have not even put themselves to that, gotten themselves to that baseline level of development of, you know, learning to use their body to even start training effectively for a while, right? And so I'm talking about the person who's like, didn't play sports in high school or growing up as a kid and were sedentary for most of their adult life until they decided to start training.

You know, that person has not developed the baseline physical skills that the person who played sports as a kid and maybe played a little bit of high school sports and then you know even if they had ten years or whatever afterwards that they laid off and they weren't super active they still had developed those sort of baseline physical skills and I think that that makes a big difference when it comes to you know how far you're going to go when you train 100 you know we're not saying

that oh you're genetically fucked and you get to blame that when shit doesn't go well right that's not we're saying we're saying that you have to consider that when you're making the decision to pursue a certain goal if you are a motor moron like a real motor moron that also can't get strong very easily, and you figure this out quick, and you want a 500 deadlift, you know, prepare for a lot of fucking frustration for the next decade, you know, versus, you know, if you're a mediocre lifter and you're male, you know, you might do it in three to five years, you know? Right.

You know, you might do it in three to five years, but if you're a motor moron, you know who you are and you know who you are. You're, you know, five, nine, you're 160 pounds, 170 pounds, you're 30% body fat. You can barely walk straight without having to think about it. I'm exaggerating, obviously, but, you know, you have no idea what your body is doing at any point in time. And, you know, you're struggling with weights that, you know, guys do their first day. A lot of guys do their first day, right? You're on the left tail of the bell curve. You know, that's okay. You know, that's okay, because you can get stronger

than you are now. And you can be better off in the long run, right? But you don't get to say, I'm a motor moron, so therefore I'm not going to work hard. You know, you can put your talents elsewhere. You're always welcome to do that, you know. But your genetics aren't stopping you from getting stronger than you were yesterday. That's your mindset, your proclivity for hard work. You know, I've heard that being argued as genetic, and maybe it is, you know. Where do you draw the line on this shit, you know?

Whatever makes sense to you. You know, where I draw the line is if you suck at something, but it's important to you to improve at it or it's going to give you some benefit, then you've got to deal with all the bullshit that comes with it, you know? I'm not a phenomenal lifter, you know, but I get it. You know, I accidentally squatted 315 and I've coached guys that had to work hard to do that, you know? So I get it. I'm not in the worst position there, but I'm not in the best position either.

I didn't, you know, pull 475 in my first deadlift. You know, I know guys that have, you know. So there's a big, wide range of results here, you know. And, you know, for the females, it's the same thing. You know, I've seen women that are, you know, petite and struggling to deadlift 75 pounds the first day. And then I've had women that have a little bit of muscle on them, five, six, 135 pounds, pulling 175 for five the first day. I've seen it all. I've seen old guys do 265 on the deadlift for three sets of five at age 75, six foot, 185 pounds. Then I've seen you know, are throwing out their back doing that same weight, the same size, you know? Right. So it just, you

know, there's a lot of variability here. And that's really what this episode's about, you know, like, I'm just telling you the pool of people that we deal with who are not phenomenal athletes and the variety of responses that we see, and they're not anything close to what a pro with a 45 inch vertical jump can do you know right and still even then we see a variety of results we see you know like i said if woman comes in she's in good shape she's young 75 pounds for five knees caving in things are falling apart but then you know you get another woman similar size 175 for five you know and but then you know when you get in athletics you might get a woman that pulls 275 for five the first day, you know? Right. Like that happens. I have a guy right now, his wife's a, was a volleyball player at the collegiate level, and she was squatting more

than he was. He's 6'2", he's, I think he's over 200. He's at a, he's a good size. I can't remember what his exact weight is, and you might be listening to this, we talk a lot. But he said his wife squatted more than him, not anymore. But, you know, he's struggling to climb up to 400, and she squatted 300 when she was playing, you know? Yeah, right, right. So there's a lot of variability there, you know, obviously, if he puts in the work long enough, he's going to squat more than she could ever squat, obviously, because men have an advantage there, you know? But he has to work hard for it, you know? there, you know? But he has to work hard for it, you know? You know, her thing was a byproduct of a side activity she did to enhance her main activity. It's kind of funny how that works, right? On the other hand, you know, he got to over 300 pretty quick, but to get to 400, he has to work

hard, you know? And, you know, the point there is that, you know, you're not going to, hard work isn't going to get you an elite result. You know, we've got to really hammer this home because a lot of the information you're consuming, if you look into fitness, if you're one of these people that has looked into fitness for information on this, is going to tell you, do this to do what I do or look how I look, you know. And it's horseshit. You know, it's total fucking horse shit. And, you know, when it comes to like, appearance, you're going to look better if you lift, you're going to look better if you add weight to the bar, every single fucking time, you know, unless you hate muscle mass, and nobody listening to this hates muscle mass. So we're gonna, you know, fuck those people, you know, but you're going to look better if you lift weights,

add weight to the bar and do your, you know, five basic exercises. So to that point, you know, we always hear this, oh, strength growth dichotomy that doesn't really exist because growth is a product of strength. You know, we just got a lot of people playing with words now, you know, saying, oh, well, you know, you have to do it this way, if your goal is hypertrophy and do it this way, if your goal is strength, and then even, you know, when you look at their own meta analyses, they say that it doesn't fucking matter if you're progressing, you know, if you're progressing, yeah, if you're doing fives or threes, and you're adding to that, you're going to see growth, if you're doing 15s or 20s, and you add to that,

you're going to see growth, and it's comparable. So I don't know why this dichotomy continues to exist and is being propagated by the same people that say that they both lead to growth. Right? So if they both lead to growth, by extension, it's always a product of strength. It's just how you measure strength, right? Like, yeah, you don't have to max out like a powerlifter and do three lifts. So sure,

if you're saying that, yeah, you don't have to squat, bench, and deadlift and get bigger. Because we also press and do chin-ups and eventually row. And then we add curls too. And I do calf raises, you know, if you care about calves, you have to train calves. So like, yeah, you know, there's, you know, you have to add exercises depending on what you're trying to grow, but not as many as people say, you know, you got a lot of confounding variables there when it comes to growth. If you look on how to grow muscle, the bodybuilders dominate all the information on this. They've been deemed the experts on how to grow muscle because they have large muscles.

But having large muscles doesn't mean that they train to have large muscles. They may have been born with large muscles. They may have taken drugs and then fucked around in the gym and got larger muscles. And those are the two things that often happen. You know, bodybuilders are born, you know, you don't train a bodybuilder. They're born that way and drugs become part of the game you know it's a drug contest as well how many pharmaceuticals can you take in what combinations and not fuck up your liver you know that plays into this and that also plays into power lifting as well uh for different reasons you know but the same thing right it's eventually to lift more weight you take more drugs that's what happens and that's just it's a sport so that's what's happening in the nfl you know they're taking drugs and all sorts of shit to

keep themselves playing same thing in mlb but but they test but they test for those and i got a bridge to sell you trent yeah right um yeah well i think you know so our our buddy dante trudell uh who our our friend andy Baker on the podcast has talked about, and, and, you know, we've, we've talked about him too here. Uh, Dante has actually been posting a lot on his Instagram page lately. So that's, it's, it's always a treat when he has a post, but, but, you know, he said, he said more or less the same thing. He's like, you know, look, when you look at the, the field of bodybuilders, um, the guys, there are guys who know how to train in the field of bodybuilding, but they're the minority. And he's like, the way that you find the good information amongst the sea of bodybuilders is you look at all the guys who grow consistently even after

they've gotten to a baseline level of big, you know, because he's like the guys who get big and stay big, but just never go anywhere for years and years. Those are the guys who big you know because he's like the guys who get big and stay big but just they never go anywhere for years and years those are the guys who you know are they're the genetic phenoms like you're talking about that sort of accidentally got big because they've got really favorable genetics for it and they did some drugs but he's like there's other guys you see they get big and they continue to add to their physique over the next decade. And they're all doing the same stuff. He's like, but some of these guys have figured out how to train. And those are the people you want to pay attention to.

And that's the, you know, more or less, if you had to boil down his whole dog crap DC training philosophy, it's that you got to pick a rep range. So you got to pick some exercises that are going to hit the target muscle groups you want to grow. Then you got to pick a rep range and you got to add weight to it. That's what he says. He's like, that's the thing everybody missed is you got to add weight and progressively overload it. His phrase is you need to beat the log book. That's what he says. Beat the log book. That's right. So if you know, if you did, if you did eight reps, you got to do nine reps. You got to do 10 reps, you got to add two and a half pounds, five pounds, whatever it is, um, to create, to create growth, uh, progressive overload over time. And so it's funny, like, even if you delve into the bodybuilding side of things, the, there's a, there's a dichotomy there about what people are saying. But yeah, the guys who are popular, who you see all over

Instagram and YouTube and shit, those are the bodybuilders that are, you know, spouting the nonsense that you were talking about earlier. Yeah, exactly. It's most of them, you know, it's funny, the old school guys, if you look at what Arnold wrote, and some of those guys from that day wrote, you know, progressive overload was typically referred to as adding weight to the bar. You know, these guys have now extended that, oh, you can add reps and you can add sets, you know, that's progressive overload. You know, I can't argue that because, you know, how do you measure that, right? These are statements that can't be really objectively contradicted. So we're not going to waste our time, right? But

at the end of the day, when the muscles get bigger, the muscles get stronger, right? And the most efficient way to get there, this is one thing I can't argue, is to add fucking weight, right? And I think that the reason, and I don't think they know it. These people aren't necessarily scientists, you know, the guys in bodybuilding, because these principles have been around for a while. They're not new. They're just, you got a bunch of, so what's happened now in professional research, and I'll come back to my point, is that historically, if you've been in an exercise science program or familiar with that realm of academia, most of the professors were marathon runners and cyclists, triathletes and endurance athletes that couldn't get a job,

essentially. So they went to academia and started studying exercise science you know there's when you have a you know the term science the qualifier over it that kind of tells you something but anyways they did a lot of papers in the 70s 80s and 90s and even through the 2000s on you know the impact of endurance exercise and endurance training on all sorts of cardiopulmonary responses. And then it went into cancer, diabetes, and other things, you know, probably in the 90s, 2000s, etc., you know, but we have a lot of research on endurance exercise, because these guys that trained in that ended up

going into these academic programs and studying things they were interested in, right? And we're not going to go on a big rant about all that. And now, since the 2010s, these guys have gotten old and retired, right? And they're now being replaced by the Joe Weider fanboys in the 1980s. And now we're seeing a bunch of papers on adding sets, adding reps, doing volume, isolation exercises, all this other bullshit, right? And it's not 100% bullshit. It's just, who does this apply to? That's, you know, that's really

what has always bothered me, you know, like, I don't know what it's like to be on a shitload of drugs and be approaching ceiling effects of my ability to gain muscle. So that situation is not one that I can speak on, but I don't train bodybuilders either. So do I need to know that? Probably not. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I train people that have mediocre genetics, are often uninterested in taking steroids, you know, maybe TRT at the most. You know, if I get somebody that needs that, will take that, you're going to get an effect out of it. So these other assholes in these circles that say TRT doesn't do anything, that's bullshit too. And they're on a bunch of shit also, you know? But that's a whole nother topic and a whole nother episode. We'll

get a guest for that, right? But y'all listening to us are not pro bodybuilders busting your ass for the last 1% of muscle gain that you can eke out, right? You don't have that problem. Your problem is that you don't have a whole lot of muscle to begin with. And when you lift weights, you don't see it really come on doing the shit that you've read in the magazines, maybe a little bit in the beginning, novice effect, but you're, you know, you might be, you know, you might end up doing that and then still feel squishy at the end. I get a lot of guys on the skinny fat side. These are the guys that tend to reach out to me. You know, they're just like, you know, I lift, I can't gain muscle, et cetera. You know, and the big guys, they already have it, you know,

so I don't have these conversations. That's more of a fat loss discussion. But the guys that are really interested in building muscle, a lot of the time aren't the guys that can build it very easily, you know? And when I talk to them and I think about my own journey with this, I was one of them. I was a skinny fat guy and I was one of them. I was a skinny, fat guy, and I was very bottom heavy. So I always had, you know, muscle on my legs, not nearly like I do now, but always bottom heavy. You know, top was squishy and not much going on, right? And through trying all these stupid programs, I was always good with diet. I could figure out how to gain weight.

I could figure out how to lose weight. But I couldn't quite figure out how to put on muscle mass, right? Like, I would just never look like I trained. That's what, you know, I see these questionnaires I get. These guys say, I just want to look like a lift, right? And I know what that means. If it's a male, they want to look, they want to have big arms, big chest, you know, maybe a big back. Because, you know, funny thing I learned in master's program was, you know, you do learn some things in academia. It's not a total waste of time. But i had a professor who was big into powerlifting strongman and olympic lifting and uh one of the things he said was he's like you know people care about the muscles they can see and he's 100 correct you know so if you take them think about most men you know they're not sitting there i mean if you're bodybuilding i guess you are but most of us are wearing pants or shorts we're not looking at our thighs you know um i started wearing the ranger shorts the squat because they're more comfortable so now i do see my thighs but for the longest time i didn't our thighs, you know. I started wearing the Ranger shorts to squat because they're more comfortable. So now I do see my thighs, but for the longest time,

I didn't see my thighs, you know, because I just wore pants or long shorts, you know. So, you know, most dudes care about arms and chest, you know, and you know, most women will sit, you know, from my experience, they're thinking about thighs, you know, glutes and stomach, you know, a lot of that. And then, you know, when they're into the fitness stuff, I'll hear about delts, you know, but a lot of the times it's, you know, glutes, stomach, you know, a lot of that. And then, you know, when they're into the fitness stuff up here about delts, you know, but a lot of the times it's, you know, glutes, thighs, yeah, right. Stomach, right. So it's things you can see, right. So when I, you know, when I messed

around with this, I figured out when I, you know, I used to complain a bit, you know, my, my arms look flat, you know, like from the side view, you know, I'd see my front delts from all the benching, you know, I'd see my rear delts from all the chinning, because I did, you know, rear delts from all the chinning because I did, you know, swimmer, we had to do pull-ups. So I never had problems with posterior deltoids like these people because I did my fucking pull-ups since the age of 15, you know. But then, you know, I wouldn't get that lateral delt. And part of that is, you know, I don't have short lateral delts that insert high up on the humerus like these, you know, gifted bodybuilders do. So a lot of the way your muscle appears has to do with that too. How does the muscle insert? What's the length of the muscle? What's the shape

of the muscle, right? You can't control it's not it's not a modifiable thing, people. But the interesting thing is, when I started pressing regularly and progressing it, my side delt filled out, you know, I've, you know, it's visible now, you know, it's long, because, you know, a swimmer built more like an athlete, you know, it's longer, right? It's not shorter and poppier, like a bodybuilder, which is fine, but it's visible. Now it's visible because I started pressing. But pressing is the most underrated movement in the weight room, because people believe that, you know, you either

do it with dumbbells, or you don't need it, you need to lateral raises. And, you know, we're not even going to go down that rabbit hole. But what I kind of figured out was, you know, these lifts that we really promote cover everything, you know, your press covers your delts, all you know, we're not even going to go down that rabbit hole. But what I kind of figured out was, you know, these lifts that we really promote cover everything, you know, your press covers your delts all, you know, mostly, I think you get a lot of, the press has a reputation for hitting the front delt because, you know, you're raising the shoulder at the bottom, you're flexing the shoulder. So that a lot of that is anterior deltoid, but you're also rotating it as you press it up, right? So you're hitting pretty much all three heads, right? And the thing is, it's not heavy, right? So like, anybody who says they have front delt problems, they're just not benching. You know, if you bench, your front delts are going to grow, you know? Right. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And if you're doing chin-ups or rows, your rear

delts are going to grow. But the only thing that I've ever seen grow my long-ass front delts is the press, right? And then you front delts is the press, right? And then you kind of go down the list, right? Like the deadlift, you know, you see these nice backs, right, that are well-developed. You know, men and women tend to appreciate backs, you know, different look, but I tend to see this across the sexes. You know, I did all sorts of rowing, and rowing has its place. I will come back to that. But if you want a thick back, you have to train it isometrically. It has to hold position of the spine. That's what those muscles are designed to do. And I keep

putting videos up about this all the time, you know, that the back works in every exercise. So what makes the back work the hardest to maintain spinal position? A fucking deadlift. Because you're holding the bar in front of you, it's pulling down on it, and you're holding it flat. Every muscle that's attached to it grows from that. And once I pushed my deadlift up to 500, all that shit that I was convinced couldn't grow, grew. You know, my traps grew, my fucking, you know, my lats were already, I would always grow wider because I did chins, but I would never grow thicker, you know? The deadlift took care of that, right? And you know, it's obvious, you squat, your thighs get bigger. Just plain and simple. Ass and thighs get bigger when you squat, especially if you push it up, but that involves dealing with fear and all these other things that we talk about, right? And you know, it's obvious you squat, your thighs get bigger, just plain and simple. Ass and thighs get bigger when you squat, especially if you push it up, but that involves

dealing with fear and all these other things that we talk about, right? And then if you bench, you know, so benches, the bench taught me a few things, right? So I neglected the bench when I really got into this stuff because, you know, I was getting a lot of the deadlift. I was getting a lot of the press and I just, you know, I thought my bench was decent. I just, I didn't care about the bench. I didn't see the value, you know. But what I've learned over the last year, now that I'm really focused on it, is that, you know, you always think of bench as like a chest exercise if you're somebody that's thinking about aesthetics, right? But, yeah. And you think about rows as like a back exercise, right? But now, like, I've done this for a while and I've really pushed those movements, those horizontal pushes and pulls, benching and rowing.

I've kind of learned that you get a fuckload of arm growth from that, you know? No, yeah. You don't get a ton of pec growth and a ton of lat growth or trap growth. Remember, your traps go all the way down your back. I'm not talking about the part you can see next to your neck. I'm talking about the part in the middle, right? You know, you don't get a ton of that from rowing. You get that from deadlifting.

What I've noticed from rowing you get that from deadlifting what i've noticed from rowing heavy is my forearms got bigger my biceps got bigger what i've noticed from benching and benching by me benching is like focusing on the bench i'm benching like a bench specialist is my triceps have gotten a lot bigger especially because i'm doing a lot of close grip right yes so but if you know if you want big pecs you gotta do dumbbells you know plain and simple because uh when you do barbell if if you watch a barbell bench, you, the bar is pretty much going up and down for the most part. It's not your, your shoulders aren't really moving through much range of motion while your elbows are moving through a lot of range of motion. So your triceps are really doing a lot of the work with a barbell versus a dumbbell. You're going up and down, but you're also going in and out. You know, you're bringing the dumbbells in, you're bringing them out. So your pecs get much more range of motion. So if your goal is, you know, pec growth, you're going to do dumbbells. And you're going to add weight to them.

And, you know, we have a way to do that here. But my point, so just to kind of consolidate all this, for reasons that we probably can't measure and don't fully understand, when you hit these compounds, these muscles work together collectively to lift a big heavy weight, they tend to fucking grow, right? And it's not to say the isolation stuff does nothing. I'm just saying it's the last 2%, you know? Like, for most of you, if you're a man and you're benching 135 and struggling, you know, your efforts are probably better placed getting your bench up and doing a 35-pound tricep extension isn't going to get your bench up, right? You know, if you're squatting 95 pounds and you're, you know, a 25-year-old dude that's, you know, 185 pounds, you need to get that to 395, you know? That's not unreasonable. And if you're a motor moron, then get it to fucking 255, you know? Like, get the squat up, right? Your legs will grow bigger, right?

a fucking 255, you know, like get the squat up, right? Your legs will grow bigger, right? If you're a woman and you want bigger glutes and you're squatting 55 pounds, get it to 155 and see what happens. They will grow, you know? I know that certain guys, you know, selling these booty programs will say otherwise, but those same guys are having their women squat too, you know? Right, right. Yeah. And that's the thing that i notice when talking to a lot of people is their their idea of what a baseline level of strength looks like in terms of the barbell lifts is well they usually don't have one and their idea of like what heavy is is usually really light you know so we've talked about this before in the podcast when i go into a globo gym i always watch the guys squatting right um occasionally i see more women squatting now which is cool uh because it used to be i didn't see any women squatting but i do see women squat now women

wouldn't go in the freeway area before well right yeah that's true yeah it's been a big change as well just you know lifting barbells in general uh but i always see the same weights. Like I see guys squatting 135 and 185. That's probably 80% or more of the guys in the gym squatting is they're, they're doing one of those two weights and it's, and there's no in between. It's not like I never see 155 loaded on the bar. No, it's either it's plates and quarters, right? Nobody uses two and a halves. No, oh no, no way. They can, there's like one pair in the whole gym. Right. But occasionally, occasionally you see a bigger dude squatting like 225.

I don't see 275. I don't see 315. Once in a blue moon, you might see a guy squatting 315 or 405. Yeah, once in a blue moon, yeah. Yeah, he's, he's, he's, you know, he's traveling and he's just had to drop in. That's the best place he could find. But it's interesting that I always see those same weights

and it kind of tracks with my experience talking to people that don't know about, that are just getting interested in strength training, but they don't really have a background in the world of strength training. I think they generally think that 185,

like that's a pretty heavy squat for a dude. Oh yeah. And, um, and you, they don't realize that that's like, ah, that's really like, you're just barely getting started, you know, for an average dude. I mean, uh, a two 50 squat is kind of where it's like decently heavy for an average guy, you know, you know, and when we start getting to like a lot of guys, three 15 is a really, that's a really big watermark for them. Or a really good benchmark for them is like you put three plates on the bar and if you can squat that for five reps or even better three sets of five reps, then that's just sort of a hallmark of like, you're, you're decently strong. You're nowhere near powerlifting strong, not even close. We're not even sniffing that. But for an average guy,

if you can squat that you're pretty dang strong and you're going to have a good set of legs, right? But that's, but that 315, that that's like double what most people are thinking is like, what a decent squat would look like in terms of pounds on the bar. So there's a big, there's a big gap there. Oh, yeah. And if you're a woman and you're squatting 75 pounds, which is what you usually see, you might see a 10 or a 15 on there, right? If you're watching women, you occasionally see the 25 on each side, right? The 95 pounds, but you're not going to see 135. You don't see that very often. And once in a blue moon, you get a girl that's traveling for a powerlifting competition,

you might see 185 or 225, you know, but that's rare. But most women have the 10 or the 15 on there, you know, is what I've tended to see. And what I see when I get women that hire me from that realm, you know, they'll put like 65 or 75 on and they're 150 pound women, you know, or 100, you know, somewhere from 120 to 160 pounds, you know, right. You know, if it's a 110 pound woman, then yeah, we're starting somewhere, we're getting somewhere, but a lot of the time it's just, oh, that feels hard, you know, and then they're then we're even getting in depth, right? That's a whole nother

issue. And but my point is, like, somehow, we got this problem where weight doesn't matter. you know? That's the main thing. It's like you're lifting weights, yet weight doesn't matter. You know, it's the mantra, you know, and they say it in a lot of different ways. And, you know, because academia has kind of stepped into this now, they say it in a lot of different ways while leaving themselves now and saying, well, no, I didn't say you didn't need to lift heavy. What I said was this. And they like change one word of the sentence, you know? But when you really look at it, it's like, it's turned into this.

You don't have to lift heavy to grow muscle. Right. And that's fucking bullshit. You know, that's complete fucking bullshit. And what's, and how do you define heavy? That's such a broad term, right? Like, okay, that means you don't have to max out. I will agree with that. You don't have to do a one RM. You may not even, you may not even have to do triples, you know? If you're a woman, you do, you know? I

would say that, but, you know, if you're a male, probably not, you know? But this whole idea that you can get around putting weight on the bar is a business model. They're trying to take your money. That's what that is. Because here's how I'm going to explain it to you. When you turn lifting into an aerobic activity, which is what they've tried to do for 40 years, you know, as they try to make it more aerobic, make it burn more, make you sweat more, make you breathe heavy more. That makes you feel like you did something because you're tired, right? And, you know, aerobic work is hard. Running a marathon is hard. Running a 10K is hard. You know, sprintobic work is hard. Running a marathon is hard. Running a 10k is hard. You know, sprinting is fucking hard. Nobody's saying that's not difficult.

It's a different type of difficult, right? And it does require a certain mindset. We're not discrediting that. If you're pushing hard aerobically, you're still working hard. We're not saying you're not. However, and this is a big however, when you start increasing intensity, which means you're adding weight you're trying to lift heavier and closer to the biggest weight you can ever lift right uh the analogy i like to say is if you do a set of 15 to failure right and say you do 15 reps and you truly fail where you're like shaking at the end what it tends to feel like is everything burns you know if it's a squat your lower back's completely pumped up right right everything

fucking burns you're breathing heavy if you haven't been doing cardio, and you're probably breathing heavy anyways, even if you have been doing cardio, right? And, you know, it just burns, and you're trying to finish it, right? Eights are in that realm. Tens are in that realm. You're burning up. You're breathing heavy. Heart rate's going up. And, you know, if you keep adding more reps, do 12s, 15s, 20s, you know, you feel like you're going to vomit. That's a good way to put it. It makes you nauseous to crank out high reps to failure. You get nauseous. You want to puke, right? And some of you may have experienced that. Some of you think you're doing a 15 to failure and you're not, or a 12 to failure and

you're not. But if you've done an honest set of eight to 15 or more to failure, it gives you this nauseating feeling. So it's hard and it makes you feel like shit and it makes you tired, but it makes you nauseous, right? Now, my analogy is this. When you do a set of five to failure or a set of three to failure, you feel like your fucking body is going to explode. And instead of getting nauseous, you feel like you are going to shit your pants. Okay? Right. Yeah. So it's really the choice you know if you had to choose do you want to puke or do you want to shit yourself you know

i think most people would rather puke to be honest yeah because at least doesn't stay in your pants right you get it out in the fucking ground and it's gone right um you know simplifying there's a lot of reasons for that but you know doing 15 reps in a row to failure to you almost puke. It's hard. You know, you feel like you accomplish something, but there's something about, there's no fear element to it, right? You're just like, fuck, this sucks. And it's like a mind game, right?

You're just, it's an endurance thing, right? But it doesn't elicit that fear because you don't have this adrenaline dumping like you do when you're doing five or less. So it challenges you in a very, very, very, very different way. And it's hard in a very different way that elicits fear and anxiety, right? And that doesn't make for good marketing. Hey, man, I'm going to make you lift a heavy weight that's going to scare the shit out of you and you might shit your pants. Like, right. People don't want to sign up for that. But if I say, I'm going to work you so hard and have you do a super

set. Yeah. If I'm going to say, I'm going to work you so, yeah, here do a super set yeah if i'm gonna say i'm gonna work you so yeah here's my credit card make me shit myself but people will hand you their credit card for you to make them puke themselves which is ridiculous yeah right you know that that sounds plausible doesn't it trent when i say it like that oh yeah absolutely well i mean you know uh crossfit had at one point earlier in in the early days of crossfit they had pukey the clown you remember that it's you, that it was, that we're kind of, uh, romanticizing the idea that it's like, you know, we work so hard over here at CrossFit, we make people puke. And then like, uh, puking is marketable, but shitting is

not right. It's so ridiculous. Um, but yeah, no, you're totally right. You're totally right. It's uncomfortable in a way that nothing else is. And, you know, I think part of this— It triggers that fight or flight response, and I don't think endurance work does. system, you know, the, the activities and athletics that you're exposed to there with a couple of exceptions, they're all aerobics type sports and activities too, right? You don't, the only, the only sports that I can think of off the top of my head that really give you that sense of, you know, of, of getting crushed or like, you know, really straining hard against a, against an external force is a football, you know, especially if you play on the line, right. And you're pushing other guys that are pushing on you and you get hit really hard. And, you know, there's, there's a little bit of that context and I'm sure there's, there's some other contact sports. Yeah. I'm sure like I've never played hockey, but you know, maybe it's like that. I don't know. Wrestling probably

is like that, but you know, that's, but you think about it too. And it's like, there's a certain type of person that plays those and a very different type of person that plays tennis, baseball, you know, soccer, um, for the most part. Right. Um, there's some crossover, but yeah. So it's just something that people aren't really exposed to anywhere else. I think though, if we turn the clock back 150 years and you know, we're back in a mostly agrarian society, I think that strength training would go over better from that standpoint in the sense that like you get a bunch of, you get a bunch of people who from, from the age, from a young age have been lifting heavy ass stuff. You know, they were kids, they were little kids and they were carrying around 50 pound sacks of seed you know they were they got they got to be

teenagers and they were pitching watermelons or you know lifting bales of hay or whatever and slinging that stuff around all day and uh you know maybe they had uh been working with animals and got you know had to really push hard against an animal and get out of a tight spot yeah that teaches you stuff but that's again that's an experience that very few people have nowadays. And, um, yeah, I think that's, it, that's hard. It's hard to get people to buy into it. Um, or I should say buy in, it's hard to get people who are interested in strength training to get over that hump when they first hit that set. You know, the first few weeks are pretty easy because they're working on technique and there's a lot of neuromuscular learning going on, their brain and their central nervous systems

learning how to coordinate their body and these, you know, fairly complex movements. But then they hit a point pretty soon where the weight gets legitimately heavy for them and they've got to get over that hump of, you know, that feeling of fear. They've got to face that fear and they've got to get over that hump of just being okay with feeling like they're getting crushed to death for about 30 seconds while they do a set of five. No, that's right. I mean, you're going to get scared. You know, if you lift heavy, you're going to get scared. I mean, I do. I do. Right. You know, I've been doing this for years and I still, there's still like some moments where

it, I get butterflies, you know, now it's a lot less than it used to be. But like anytime I throw anything over 405 on the squat, that's, I get the butterflies start creeping in something about that fourth plate. It does it to me. I do too, man. So yeah, it's, it never goes goes away you just get more used to it and it's as soon as i step on the the platform now my focus takes over yeah but but that took years of practice to get there yeah and uh you know you're gonna have to experience that you know

you're gonna have to push through and uh it going to have to get heavier. And you can try it with tens and eights and that last rep to failure is going to be hard, but eventually you can't keep adding to tens and eights. Eventually the intensity has to get higher. It's debatable if you have to go down triples and singles as a male. As a female, pretty confident that you're going to get a lot out of triples because it's a different situation. Most women seem to, yeah. Yeah. Most women seem to respond well to triples. And I don't know that 10s, 12s, and 15s are useful for a female client. And we could talk about that in a different episode. I'd like to bring Steph on for that because she has different ideas about it. And, you know, she said that, you know, some women

are explosive, you know, and you can train them similar to males in terms of the programming, obviously. And, you know, a lot of them are not, you know, and they tend to do better with triples. But that's a whole other topic that we don't need to get into. But, you know, my point in this episode is that you have to add weight to the bar, and eventually it has to get heavy. You know, there's no way around it. It has to get heavy eventually. And, you know, the main point that we want to hit on is that, you know,

when bodybuilders talk about growth, especially guys that have been at it for a while, you know, the main point that we want to hit on is that, you know, when bodybuilders talk about growth, especially guys that have been at it for a while, you know, they've been doing it for many years. They're on a bunch of drugs. They compete on stage. When they're talking about growth, they're talking about the last 2%. You know, they want to add a fraction of an inch to their lateral deltoid. And maybe, just maybe, at that level, a lateral raise might do that, right? But what we're talking to you, you've been in the gym spinning your wheels, doing, you know, pink dumbbells for your lateral raises, or, you know, 10 pounds,

five pounds, whatever, right? And you're not seeing any growth in that muscle. Or you're, you know, doing lunges and leg extensions and things like that, or leg pressing two plates, which for leg press, not heavy people, just FYI, you know, they, there are guys that will go in there and accidentally leg press 600, you know, and, you know, if you make it honest and fix their form, they'll still do 500, you know, so 225 on leg pressing heavy, you know, so know so you know you'll see people going in there with doing these you know exercises that the bodybuilders tell them to do and they won't really see their body change you know and a lot of it is that their their whole body is weak you know and you're going to get a lot more out of a whole body stimulus at that level than you are out of a

single joint or you know dual joint you know more focused exercise you know you're gonna get more out of a squat than a knee extension but sure maybe ronnie coleman who was 300 pounds and ripped got a quarter of an inch on his quads from doing a bunch of knee extensions maybe maybe and i'm not saying he did that because i don't think he claimed that he did 2400 pounds on leg press you know so he's actually a pretty bad example because he does closer what we do but you know let's take a bodybuilder right that's at the Olympia in the top five. And he's doing all that shit just to get, you know, a 10th of an inch, right? You don't need to do that, because you're not trying to get a 10th of an inch, you're going to get inches just by squatting, you know, it's going to happen, right? And you're going to get inches

on your back by deadlifting, and you're going to get inches on your arms by benching and doing rows, and you're going to get inches on your delts by doing presses. You know, like growth for you is not growth for them. And when they're talking to you, a lot of the time they're basically taking things completely out of context by advising you to do things to address problems they have that you will never have. You will never have a problem growing muscle to the point where you'll need a single joint exercise. And that's not to say don't do them. I'm saying need. Need is a very strong word. Do you need a single joint exercise? Most of us will never need them, just to be clear, especially if you're not taking drugs, you know? Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. Yeah. So, you know, to address that point really quickly this is really not who are you know target audiences today but uh you know for those

folks who are who have been training with a barbell for a couple years let's say and they've put in the time and they've really they've really driven their their barbell lifts up to a decent level but they're still you know average genetic folks right they're level, but they're still, you know, average genetic folks, right? They're not super athletic. They're not super strong. There are some guys who go through a novice linear progression and they get their squat up into the 300s. They get their bench to 225 for some fives, you know, et cetera. They get their press up and they are, you know, they have usually some pretty decent muscle at that point, but maybe there's some weak spots, right? Like maybe their chest isn't really that big, right? Okay, that does happen, and it's going to be dependent on their anthropometry and their genetics as well.

And so, yeah, sometimes there is a time in a program if you want to add a little extra muscle mass to an area, you're going to have to do a little bit more. But guess what? The core of the training program is always the barbell, the main barbell movements. And then you add to it with some select exercises, right? But yeah, to your point, though, that's not a need. If you want to be strong and functional, then, you know, you never need to do anything more than the main barbell lifts. They cover so much. It's something that's additive to that base, right? The isolation exercises and the, you know, what would you call them? Do we settle on those bi-joints?

Bi-joint, dual-joint, dual-joint. Whatever you want to call them, right? The sort of supplemental accessory, whatever you want to call them. Those kind of exercises. They're in between. Those are additive. Yeah, they're in between a, you know, they're in between a barbell lift, like a squat, a multi-joint exercise, and a single joint exercise. So you might, a dual joint, you know, like a pull down your shoulders and your elbows, right?

Sure, yeah, yeah. You know, yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You know, uh, yeah. But yeah, you absolutely can, can build a very good body and, uh, in a very strong and functional body with just a handful of basic barbell exercises, you know? Um, yeah, I think that's, and I think that's really underrated. And the thing is, you know, most, most people that we're talking to, you know, they haven't put in a few years of barbell training, right? So I have, if I'm talking to an audience of people who have put in, you know, a legit two, three, four, five years of barbell training, it's a little bit of different conversation, right? But most people haven't done

that yet. They haven't, they haven't lifted to the point where it's really gotten heavy. And so if you haven't done that, there's really just the, you know, you'd really just have one stone to unturn. And that's that barbell stone. So, you know, go at it. The nice thing is it's simple in that way. It's really hard, but it's also simple. And I think that's underrated. You know, if you can apply yourself to the mastery of a few basic things and just go down that road and see how far you can get, that's a really clear goal that you can pursue. You know, when you get into these bodybuilding programs that want to have you doing, you know, 20, 30 different exercises, you know, how do you apply yourself to that? You know, what are you going to master 30 different exercises, you know, how do you, how do you apply yourself to that? You know, what are you going to master 30 different exercises? Like you just really, every exercise ends up getting just a small focus of your attention or a small piece of your attention. But if you go in there

and you do a squat, press and deadlift, and you really work on mastering those three exercises over the course of several months, that's something you can actually apply yourself to and see your improvement on, you know, rather than splitting all that attention and focus up over 35 exercises. That's right. That's right. You made me think of something when you said that, you know, I have two different, two different guys. Actually, there's several guys that transformer bar is a fan favorite here at the gym. And I have a bookie. Is that the book? Oh, yeah. That's the best safety squat bar in the business. I'm you know, the pads a Kibuki. Is that the Kibuki? That's the best safety squat bar in the business. I'm, you know, the pads, not pads, not perfect, but it's good enough. But the damn bar feels like a low bar squat. That's why I spent the money. You know, I sent,

I sold my yoke elite FTS safety squat bar, which has the best pad. It's the most comfortable pad, but so you, yeah. Cause you used to have the, is it the Mars bar that you had? A member of mine brought his in. I don't own one. Oh, okay, okay. So a member of mine, his sits here, and he's one of the guys I'm about to bring up. But I had an Elite FTS Yoke SS bar is what it's called. And it's more like a high bar. It's in between a high bar and a low bar, I would say.

And that had the best pad, so that's what I used to recommend. And I knew about the transformer bar, but it looked complicated. And then one of my colleagues at one of the gyms, a starting strength coach, he didn't like it. He liked the Mars bar better. I never tried it though. So, you know, I kind of took his word for it. Didn't really entertain it. So when I was down in Cincinnati to doing a nutrition camp back in October, I'm like, I'm going to travel up to Rogue and get some fractional plates for my dumbbells not to pay the shipping and get a few collars because my collars are sliding off right so I drove up to Rogue and I wanted to see Rogue right and then you know they have a big warehouse and they're all they have racks set up and you can

like you know you can mess around with all the equipment that they have out and I saw their version of the Kabuki transformer bar because Rogue bought out Kabuki so if you go to Kabuki's website they have the Oregon version and they have the ohio version made by rogue with their proprietary you know black powder coating etc um okay first of all i thought it was cool because they didn't have that stupid sticker on it with all the settings they etch all the settings in there so it looks pretty neat you know rogue designed it pretty well so i like the way it looked but then i put it on the low bar setting and had the uh sleeves the sleeves can go so for those of you aren't familiar a goblet squat, they have a setting for goblet squat, a setting for front squat, a setting for high bar and low bar squat, and a setting for what they call hinge, you know,

where you're really bent over. And then they, you can also slide out the sleeves and put them lower and lower from a setting of one to four with one being easy and four being the hardest, right? So you can drop the sleeve. It's kind of cambering the bar, essentially. Yeah, exactly. You can camber the bar and you can also adjust. So those settings about bar placement that adjusts where the sleeve sits in relation to your torso. So further in front of you, further behind you. So it's pretty trippy because when you put it to front squat,

you feel like you're doing a front squat with the bar in your back. It's freaking weird. Right, right. But, you know, you move, the mechanics are front squat mechanics. So anyways, I bring this up because when I did it on low bar, I was like this to me, I'm only squatted low bar and I can hold the bar in the correct position. I can hold it with a narrow grip. I don't get any tendonitis. So I'm like, I have a perfect low bar squat grip. That's never had a problem. I don't round my back. It doesn't roll up my back. It's very rare. It does happen sometimes. It's very rare. It's usually after a rack pull, but like I'm pretty good as far as being able to low bar squat so i've never had to use one

of these things you know i have in my gym for members with shitty shoulders and elbows you know um so i tried it and i you know i have my flats on but i was like man this this feels like a low bar squat i'm gonna buy this thing so i went you know i went back home i sold this uh elite um the elite fts yoke ss bar sold to my neighbor because they do workouts outside in his backyard. So they bought it. His one friend has bad shoulders. And they don't do what we do. So it serves their purposes.

They love it. They keep hearing good things. And then I bought that. So it was like almost a $900 bar. And that guy I told you about with the Mars bar, his problem was he would run up the Mars bar. And then he'd try to go back to low bar because occasionally he likes to compete and he only wants to do his maxes with low bar. And his chief complaint was that there was no transfer. He'd go to low bar with the barbell and he'd have to take a bunch of weight off. And then this other guy that uses it, he has a bunch of nerve stuff in

his arms, so he has to use it. And he said, and him and another guy I have online, both said that the heavier it gets, the harder it is to keep their back tight you know so the first guy has weird anthropometry right and his problem on the squat is he rounds his upper back and you've seen this before i'm sure he has short torso long legs and he has to bend way over so then it gets heavy as backgrounds yeah his back starts around upper back starts rounding like crazy these that build tends to do that. And the way that I've addressed that is I typically, you know, front squats are what I use when somebody has a problem rounding the upper back because in front squats, it forces you to keep that upper back engaged. You drop the bar, right? Right. Well, the problem with this guy is

his fucking wrists hurt. So I can't get the front squat heavy enough to elicit, you know, that contraction. So for years, he's just been battling this rounding of the upper back. Well, now I got this thing. We set it to goblet and we put the camber all the way, we put the sleeves all the way down and cambered it, the hardest setting, you know? And that got him looking like a regular high bar squat. Yeah. But then he also took it, he actually had to take it a step further, Trent. He had to put his heels on a couple of mats on top of it. And since he started doing that, he stopped rounding his back on squats.

It just stopped happening. There you go. Yeah. And it's addressed that, and his quads are getting bigger. So that was the other thing. His quads weren't really growing from squatting. And, you know, we got him close. We got the 365 squat.

I think he tripled, like like in the low threes he has problems transmuting that into a max and that's other problems that he has but you know he's probably good for a squat in the upper threes maybe lower fours right and he just wasn't getting much leg growth because his hinge was so pronounced like his hip hip angle would close so much that he was just all glutes you know trying to stand up and uh when he started doing these you could tell this leg started filling out pretty quick and then his back started you know becoming more rigid so you know so to your point yeah you can manipulate certain things to target more muscles if you have weird anthropometry or there's other things like it did you

have to individualize is what I'm saying and sometimes we have to do exactly that but you figure that out post noviceice. That's right. Yeah, exactly. So you just illustrated what I was talking about earlier perfectly, right? Like, yes, there are people like that. That's, you know, not, you know, not everyone is going to grow and have like big, you know, huge full muscle bellies, uh, just from doing low bar, squat, bench, press, deadlift alone. Some, most people I would say are going to have some weak points but the whole the whole thing is like look that guy still got his squat into the 300s before that became an issue right hey squat at 363 and he was good for more if we could have peaked him right right yeah exactly right so that's that's the thing you know so

so for an average guy that's that's the target right That's kind of the bar is, you know, if you're squatting 225 and you're like, Oh, I think I need to do some goblet squats or, you know, leg extensions or, you know, front squats and stuff for my, for my quads is like, you know, you're wasting your time. What you need to do is get to get to 315. Okay. And then then like it becomes obvious at some point because your legs will grow a lot from getting to 315 but then there will be some stuff that starts to lag behind right and then you can individualize that and address it as needed and again that's as needed right like you know that guy probably doesn't need to do any assistance work for his ass and his hamstrings no right they grow just fine from the basic stuff.

Okay. So he, so he's going to spend his time on quad focus stuff to fill out. He's, so that's different again from the standard, you know, templates that you pull out of the bodybuilding mags where it's like, they have you doing a bunch of shit for every body part.

It's like, well, you know, if you grow just fine from one thing, just do one thing. Um, if, and that way you focus your attention on the stuff that matters. Well, then the other thing too, is when you do it that way and you do a lot of single joint stuff, you get tendonitis. The average person gets tendonitis over a long enough timeline, you know?

So even with that, like curls, right? I did a bunch of arm work for a year, got tendonitis. It's finally almost gone. And now three sets of barbell one week, three sets of dumbbell one week. Why? Because I figured out that the rows were driving most of it and I got strong at all those movements. So the same principle applies. I can't do a lot of volume on single joint now, you know, because the intensity is higher, you know, I'm curling over 90 pounds, which is a lot for me, for reps, you know, and I'm doing closer to the 50s with the dumbbells you know so there you go you know um same concept applies you have to cut sets because the intensity is high it takes time to recover from that but what i noticed was a lot of that neutral grip rowing drove a lot

of arm growth drove a lot of forearm growth and all i really need is one supine curling exercise to hit the biceps a little more because when you when you roll like that it tends to hurt the elbows and when you chin like that your lats overwhelm the movement so you don't really they don't really fail the arms don't really fail on the pull downs and chin ups you know yeah um yep but you know that's an aside right like what if you paid attention to the theme that trent and i are talking about it's that you just manipulate how these lifts are done you know we're not sitting there hopping on a machine bicep curl or doing a cable curl or leg extension, you know. We're manipulating the main lifts to target certain areas so that somebody gets more out of that

because, you know, they're more pronounced in one area. Like, you know, you might get a guy with, you know, short thighs and, you know, a long torso that barely bends over right he's gonna probably get more out of deadlifts and good mornings you know for getting his hinge stronger you know his glutes and hamstrings stronger right exactly yeah rdls yeah or stuff like that yeah or get the transformer set it to a hinge you know like you know like we've seen guys at low bar squat look like they're high barring you know yeah mars bar might be good for a guy like that where it's a problem for the guy that i have here you know yeah yeah well that's cool i'm maybe i should get one of those uh kabuki strength dude it's worth the money bars they look sweet dude it is worth the money especially if you got old

timers coming in yeah yeah that's great the rogue ohio one is way better looking they're the same price so i you know oh yeah that's no i agree the the black looks looks really nice have you seen it in the engraving yeah yeah i'm looking at it right now on the road it's fucking sexy isn't it it looks it looks good it looks very good well cool man i think we hammered that home um just remember you know if you're a male and you're squatting 135 you're a female and you're squatting 65 you know bodybuilders last person you want to listen to. You're not dealing with the last 2%. And what you will get out of these main lifts is exactly what you want. You know, everything's going to grow to an extent that's going to make you happy if you push these lifts up.

You know, spending two hours in the gym isolating every muscle is, you know, it's just not going to add that much value to your workout. Remember, growth for a bodybuilder who's approaching ceiling effects is a fraction of an inch per muscle. You know, and that's just me generalizing. I'm not being super specific with that, right? So 0.10 inches of muscle mass, and they're going to do an isolated exercise to achieve that for six months, you know Or no, they'd in three six months hover long, right? They're gonna spend a bunch of time to get a small amount of gain You on the other hand are gonna do a fraction of weight

They do and get a larger percent increase because you're not trying to compete at the Olympia Why do you don't want to look like that, you know on top of it, you know, so well Chances are if you, if you've, if you've made it this far in the podcast and you're listening to us in the first place, chances are that you've tried this before and it didn't work, right? You spent months in the gym and you look pretty much the same as you did, you know, after the first six weeks, we're done. And so, um, you know, so just give it a try, give it a year. If give it a solid year, that's like we were saying in an earlier podcast, you know, like if you want to make some meaningful change, think about it in terms of one year at a

time, that's probably a good, you know, you're going to see some good, good effects before then, but give it a year, dedicate a year to hard barbell training, see how far you get. And then, you know if if you actually know shit do that and and you don't like the results then i'll eat my hat i don't have a hat but i'll eat it yeah me either you know i'm not how can you put a hat on that glorious hair i can't it just sticks out everywhere man right i guess i could wear the you know those little fedoras that Santana wears. Right, right.

He has a hair stick. I think he ties it, though. The other Santana. Yeah. Yeah. Carlos. He ties it, though, I think, right? He doesn't have it

sticking out like this. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't seen a picture of him in a while. I'll have to give it a look. All right. Thank you for tuning in

to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com or on Instagram where I post most of my content right now. We're moving on to YouTube. This podcast will be on YouTube with video. But you can find me on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. just south of Sky Harbor Airport off the I-10 near where the 143 meets the I-10, Weights and Plates Gym. So come on by. And it also has an Instagram page, Weights double underscore and double underscore plates. So, you know, we offer in-person coaching here. I do online coaching for diet and strength training on my website and, you know, happy to help if you need it. All right. Well, you know where to find me on Instagram at marmalade underscore cream. That's where I post about lifting and also

my audio production business where I produce podcasts and I write music bumpers for podcasts and I do voiceovers, things like that. You can find me there. You can also go to marmaladecream.com if you're interested in some of my audio production services, but probably you're here for the coaching. And if you want to ask me a question about coaching, or you're interested in online coaching, form checks and programming, then you can go to jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. All right, we'll talk to you again in a couple of weeks.