Weights and Plates Podcast - #85 - The Illusion of Safety

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

Many people who start barbell training say something to the effect of "I just don't want to get hurt" when asked about their fitness goals. It's understandable -- no one wants to get hurt -- but the statement displays some ignorance about the reality of aches, pains, and sometimes injuries that occur during hard physical training. When we train with barbells, we are pushing our bodies to the limit to grow muscle, get stronger, and become more resilient. Even if we aren't great athletes squatting and deadlifting several hundred pounds, improvement requires pushing the limit, and pushing the limit increases the risk of aches, pains, and injuries. Moreover, as Coach Trent points out, life itself is non-zero risk, and many people get hurt without ever touching a barbell. So, the idea that you can control "not getting hurt" is false. You can bend the curve in your favor to reduce the likelihood of tweaks and injuries, but life happens. The best you can do is be strong and resilient so that you can bounce back from tweaks and injuries faster, and develop the mental fortitude to deal with the setbacks they cause.   Online Diet Coaching and Strength Training with Dr. Robert Santana https://weightsandplates.com/online-coaching/     Weights & Plates on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@weights_and_plates?si=ebAS8sRtzsPmFQf- 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 Trenton Jones, my co-host. Yo, what's going on, man? I'm bringing back the Rogue shirts. I'm bringing back the Rogue shirts. You know, I went, I had a whole bunch of them. And, uh, you know, people used to joke when I worked at a gym in, uh, in Fort Worth, the Fort Worth strength, I would basically every day be wearing a Rogue shirt. They used to joke that I was sponsored by Rogue. I'm still waiting on that sponsorship, by the way.

It hasn't, hasn't, hasn't come in yet. Not yet. Not any day now, but, but I finally wore through all my Rogue shirts, you know? And so for the last year I've been, you know, haven't had, had any. And, um, I, but I realized I had some long sleeves, got a little chilly today. So bust out the long sleeve. I still have two rogue shirts. So there we go. I'm not going to buy any more because they used to be decent quality and they were like 20 bucks a piece, you know, not cheap for a t-shirt that I'm going to beat up in the gym, but, but they were decent enough. They last a long time. Not the last several that I've bought, not so good. And they're like 25, 30 bucks now. So I don't know. I'm still looking for a decent training, like t-shirt that's cheap that will hold up to a barbell rubbing on

it, you know know multiple times a week you know don't laugh at me but i'm all in on the bar grip shirts now that's all i ever wear but you wear for everything so squat squat bench yeah that's it sure yeah and the other two i just wear tank top okay i mean yeah i guess it doesn't really matter for the press and deadlift no all right he's a bar grip shirt i haven't tried it yet i recommend them to people oh i love it for all the press it's the only way to fly yeah i recommend them to people all the time i just i've never bought one myself so all right maybe i should do that is it is a7 still like the the main game in town for that that's the only one I ever use, you know?

Okay. A7 International. Yeah. Well, there you go. Maybe I know what to put on my Christmas list. Well, today, I think we wanted to talk about safety, something like that. Yeah. You were talking about, you know, people that come in

and, you know, they want to train, they want to get stronger, but they always have this caveat, right? Where they're like, ah, I just, man, like, I just don't want to get hurt. I don't want to get hurt. And you wanted to dig into that mindset a little bit today, right? Yeah, absolutely. I spend a lot of time talking to people about injuries, managing injuries. And when I'm talking about injuries, I'm not talking about things that are going to require you to go get surgery, but, you know, aches, pains, tweaks, things like that, they're going to happen no matter what you do. You know, if you're using your body, things are going to tweak periodically, especially as you do things that are more vigorous and demanding. Just talk to anybody who has a laborious job. They're going

to tell you something hurts. So I think that somehow, I certainly fell into this camp before I started training like this. There was this idea that getting injured means you're doing something wrong. And that's what I used to think. I used to say, oh, I've never been injured. I used to be one of those guys, right? Right, yeah. And I also never pushed myself. So I didn't put myself in a position to get injured.

You used to wear it as a badge of pride. Yeah, and let's be real. I never got injured lifting weights. I've fallen off a bike before. I got hit by a car once on a bike. Fortunately, he was stopping, and it wasn't super high impact. But I scraped injured lifting weights. You know, I've fallen off a bike before. You know, I got hit by a car once on a bike. Fortunately, he was stopping, and it wasn't super high impact. But, you know, scraped up my leg.

Never had anything super serious happen where I needed surgery due to an injury other than a hernia that happened later. You know, got aggravated. But, you know, it didn't break any bones or anything like that. But a lot of people have. It's super common. I remember when I was in junior high and high school, were people with casts you know people got hurt so you know i started pushing myself in the first three to six months that i did this i tore uh my left adductor the first time that's when i reached out to rip directly and said hey man uh i got hurt what am i doing wrong and i posted my video up and he's like yeah you're fucking this whole thing up you know right and the

only thing i had right was i was squatting deep but the rest of it was just fucked up right so with my video up and he's like yeah you're fucking this whole thing up you know right and the only thing i had right was i was squatting deep but the rest of it was just fucked up right so i hired a local starting strength coach got my form cleaned up ran the weight back up then three months later toward the other side right the right side and uh i'm like what the hell's going on and you know lo and behold i didn't know this at the time time, but things got heavier and I defaulted back to shitty form, shitty technique. So I rehabbed that injury. Then I got an online coach for a couple years and got routine follow-up via video and learned more about how to program. But the main thing was we fixed the squat and it actually started feeling more correct most of the time.

And after that, never had anything too serious happen, although feeling more correct most of the time. And after that, never had anything too serious happen, although things have hurt from time to time. So what you got to remember here is there is a difference between exercise and training. And there is a difference between training as a novice and then training beyond that right and uh there's a difference between pushing your limit to set a new limit and staying where you're at right right yeah i think i think this is um where this comes full circle with what i was talking about earlier it's these people who start lifting and they're like man i just i just really don't want to get hurt. I don't want to get injured. I think what they're, it's expectations, right? It's aligning the expectation of like what their goals are in terms of, you know, building muscle, getting stronger, achieving

certain physical feats, right? Whether they have like numbers in their head or they want to translate their strength and the weight room to a certain sport or they want to look a certain way they don't realize that they're going to have to lift like a competitive lifter and that that comes with certain risks right which which means you know potentially getting injured and having to rehab that there is no denying that the heavier the weight you lift the higher the risk of injury irrespective of how that the heavier the weight you lift, the higher the risk of injury, irrespective of how well you lift the weight. Now, there's things you do to bend the curve. And then there's also genetic components. Some people just don't get hurt. You know, you can beat the shit out of them, but they don't get hurt. And some people get hurt sneezing,

you know? So we got to get that out here now because people also forget that there is variability in responses. In other words, you know that old saying, individual results vary? It's true. You're not going to get the same result as the other guy, you know? And that applies to everything. Individual results and individual responses, you know, in medical research, they use the term responses. Individual responses to a treatment will vary, right? Some people take drugs and feel no side effects. And other people experience a multitude of side effects,

you know, and that's the same thing with lifting, right? Some people will run a linear progression, run an intermediate program that's very demanding, like Texas method. If you don't know what that is, look it up. And then go on to advanced training and never really get hurt. Never have aches or pains. Yeah, they just are just built like tanks, and that's great. And then other people will get hurt early on, you know? Yeah, the tweakers, as we call them sometimes. Yeah, we're going to get Wolf on here and talk about this some more. Yeah, he's a tweaker for sure.

He's definitely a tweaker. He listens. He heard me say that. He laughed. You know, what's, what's, what's admirable about that too. I mean, what's, well, I guess it's, what's funny about it is, um, it's admirable that he's still in the game. You know, he's, he's had to rehab so much stuff. Um, so he's stronger than most of us were ever going to get, but he's still pushing. Yeah, I was about to say, but the other thing too is funny is like, yeah, he's, he's also genetically gifted for that. I mean, for that. He's pushed himself really hard in the weight room and on top of that has really good genetics for building muscle and strength. And he's just got a big frame too on top of that. And yeah, he's really fucking strong.

does it? So here's the thing though. Most of the people that come to us, you know, what, what, I think Wolf squatted in the mid six as he pulled over seven and he was benching close to five,

upper fours. And, uh, he, he pressed 315, right? I'm pretty sure he has. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. He's pressed probably three plates. So he's a very strong, big guy. He's about six, two, I think.

Uh, sorry if you're taller, bro. Yeah. And, uh, I think, you know, probably. He's about 6'2", I think. Sorry if you're taller, bro. 280, you know, probably. He just oscillates around 295, sometimes lighter. I don't know if he's ever broken 300. I've never heard him say 300, so I think

275 to 295 range. So he's just a big, broad dude, and this is a solid guy, too. He's not the State Puff Marshmallow Man, for those of you who don't know him. He's a fucking jacked dude at that size. So, you know, he's getting these tweaks, but then, you know, somebody might argue, well, you know, he's squatting all that weight, deadlifting all that weight. Okay, but there are people that will get tweaks, you know, squatting 135. Right.

It's happened, you know? Yeah, exactly. And it's not common. Most people will not typically tweak something with a squat under 200 pounds, but we've seen it happen just because, you know, they didn't pick the right parents. But can't help you there, you know? Yeah, I see it a lot in the people who are tweakers. I see it happen a lot, like you're saying, in that intermediate stage. For the most part, the people that, that, you know, are,

are easy tweakers are not genetically gifted. Um, that's my experience. At least Wolf is a pretty rare combination of those two things. Um, a lot of the guys, these are guys who are going to top out on their squat and the linear progression in like the mid two hundreds, maybe, you know, maybe kind of lower, lower mid twos, their deadlift, you know, maybe upper 200s, maybe they'll touch 315, like on, you know, the very end of their linear progression. And it's usually where the tweaks really start showing up is somewhere in that like early intermediate phase after the novice linear progression where it's on those higher intensity lifts, you know, it's just, they can't

hold it together. Or even if they're moving fine, sometimes they're good. They're, they're solid movers. You know, they finally get there to a point where they have a consistent solid technique, but that's just the tweaks just start accumulating. And then they have trouble building the momentum to, to get to that next level. You know, they have, because they're always having to stop and kind of reset something in order to work around the tweak. They have trouble pushing their squat, you know, five pounds a week

from 255 to 315. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's tough. Yeah, it's a tough position to be in. I think what I wanted to talk about this show, though, is something a little bit different. And I think it's just this illusion of safety that we have in our world today. I think this illusion is starting to break down a little bit in recent years. But where does this impulse come from to, like when somebody is starting up with a

new program, it's like, oh man, I just don't want to get hurt. I think, I, I think that statement comes from this idea that you can control those, those kinds of things like that, that your ability, that you can actually control whether or not you get hurt. Yeah. And that's not, you know, my experience in training has taught me that you don't control these things. You can certainly tempt fate, you know, some people tempt fate. But beyond that, you know, if just not being a dumbass, if you can just check off the box of like, yeah, I'm not training like a dumbass, then the rest of it is just not in your control. And we have a really hard, I think a lot of people have a really hard time with that idea. Like, that's just so foreign to them. They're like,

no, no, no, you're a coach, you're an expert, you know how to do this thing. Like, just don't get me hurt. I can't do that. It's this whole strategy guide mentality, right? People played video games when they were younger, but you you know let's say people my age or your age yeah um played video games they bought the strategy guide they followed the directions and then they won the game without any hiccups and they did this you know anywhere from age 5 to 15 right oh yes and uh you know there's this mentality that you know you can do something and push it to the limit and do so without having a scratch on you. And that's just simply not true. You know, when you accept that you're going to pursue a goal that requires you to lift heavier and heavier weight, whether it's a power lifting total or you want to get bigger, put on more size, you know, you are accepting a level of risk above zero. You are now pushing

your body more than baseline, whatever that is for you, and you're adding more and more stress to it. And eventually, you reach a stress you can't tolerate. And then you got to figure out how to deal with that. There's ways to deal with that. There's ways to work around it. There's ways to rehab it if you do get hurt, but you're not going to push your body vigorously and achieve all of your goals and come out of it unscratched. And some people do, but it's rare, you know, it's rare. The rule is things are going to get in the way, you know, you're going to have tweaks and shit bother you, you know? Um, and, and yeah, so I want to stop you there for a second. I totally agree.

A hundred percent agree with that. Um, but I think, I think we need to be even more explicit with it. This is just life, man. Like you can, you're going to get hurt in life, regardless of whether you train or not. Um, some, some people are like you said, you get hit by a car while you're riding your bike, right? Or you step off a curb weird and you were holding on to the railing and you tear your shoulder horribly. I think that happened to Wolf, right? He's slipped on ice or something. He completely, like, bad, bad, bad tear.

Labral tear, yeah. Yeah. So this just happens in life, right? And some people get a lucky roll of the dice. Some people get a bad roll of the dice. You can't really control that. So it's true in training, right? That there's unpredictable outcomes in training, but it's just in life too. barbell and you never train, you never push your body, you're still likely, you still have a non zero risk of getting hurt. And, um, you know, like we always say, I don't think that risk is much lower than it is living a very active, vigorous lifestyle where you train and get strong and become more resilient. Right. Yeah. So our opinion is, I think I can speak for you on this one because we've said it before here on the show,

that if you get strong and you train hard, your risk is slightly higher than that person who never does. But at least you're resilient now. At least you have something to show for it. You can bounce back after you get injured because it's probably going to happen. The problem is that person who doesn't

is going to eventually be an old fucker and then he's going to slip and fall and he's going to be out for fucking six to nine months because he's weak as shit and doesn't have that resilience you do. You're going to be out for a couple months, you know, with the same injury. And I'm generalizing, of course, I'm not talking about any specific person or specific injury, but in general, a strong person is going to recover better than a weak person. And we see it all the time. Even the tweakers, even the tweakers. I've got tweakers I've trained for years now, and they still tweak their back a lot. Well, a lot, you know, they tweak their back a lot less than they used to. It's still a lot compared to some people, a few times a year,

but they're a lot stronger than they used to be and they bounce back a lot quicker too. So, counts for the tweakers too. Mm-hmm. I mean, my hip, I think my left,

when I say my left, which adductor did I tear? I tore both. I think the left one was the bad one. That took 10 months. Mm-hmm. Sometimes that gets tight, you know,

but now the front of my hip gets real fucking bugged out when I get up into the 400s on the squat, you know, I'm trying to figure that out, but you don't have to back it down, you know, uh, work back up and then ride it out. I think a lot of it has to do with the way I'm programming it, but, uh, you know, I tend to shift too. There's a lot of things that go on there and I'm also squatting over 400 pounds for reps. So even though these power lifters that jumped all over my Instagram feed saying, I thought you meant the bench press. You know, and I said that 400 is not heavy.

Remember you said, you know, 250 is not heavy. 350 is not heavy. 450 is not heavy. Okay, 550, that's heavy. So we made a clip of that. And everybody just came in. Oh, I thought you were talking about bench press. These fucking guys are so.

Fuckers. The same guys, you know, I shut them all up pretty fast because I'm like, you've been to a commercial gym recently, right? They're like, all right. Or they don't say anything, you know? Yeah. But, you know, 400 pounds is a lot of fucking weight for most people, you know? For most people. For some people, it's not.

If you're competing in powerlifting, it's not heavy. It's fucking bullshit, you know? for most people, for some people it's not, if you're competing in powerlifting, it was not heavy. It was fucking bullshit, you know? Yeah. Right. But, uh, you know, puts a lot of stress on my body. So it is what it is, you know, I don't know what you want me to do. Right. Yeah, absolutely. It does. And most people that hire us don't do that. They're not squatting four or five for five, you know, the big guys will do it, you know, but you're small to medium sized people, not going to get that high most of the time, you know? Yeah. So my point there is if you think you're in control of whether you get hurt or not, you've already set yourself up for failure.

You may get lucky and not get hurt at all. You may get hurt some of the time, which is probably the most common situation, or you may be a tweaker that just gets fucking hurt you know um yeah you have to really decide uh how important it is for you you know and you also got to decide if you're using this as exercise or if you have clear defined goals that you want out of this right because if you run in linear progression and the squat starts to get hard at 225 right but you know that you have to squat into the threes to you know grow a bigger set of legs for instance right or your deadlift you're at 315 but going from 300 to 400 you know you get back tweaks right right uh again you got to decide you know are you satisfied with where you're at physically uh aesthetically i

guess because some people live for that reason. A lot of people do. And if you are, then great. But if you're not, guess what? You got to train. And that's the thing. You're going to have to train like an athlete to get to that athlete's baseline. Yep, exactly.

And that's the bitch of this all. Like, I've had a lot of guys work very hard to get from 300 to 400, work through all sorts of shit, you know, crazy life schedules, tweaks, illness, you know, life circumstances that change suddenly. And they eventually drag themselves over the finish line. finish line but at the end of the day uh you know i'll get you know we'll get to this point in the process when they're intermediate past early intermediate where you get to the point where things start to become unpredictable and more um individual and shit starts to happen and i just want to be healthy and i'm like dude you're wanting to push your body to the limits and set a new limit. That is not about health. You're more of an athlete now. Not a very good one because you're not that strong compared to the extremes.

But just because you're not a 500, 600, 800-pound squatter or just because you're not getting on a platform competing against other lifters on these lifts, that doesn't mean that you're not competitive and that you're not training like an athlete. You are. You are trying to surpass your limit and set a new one. You've now accepted a higher level of risk. Now, don't go getting scared now and thinking, oh, fuck, I'm going to get hurt if I train. If you're doing that, then fuck, man, you fucked up a long time ago trying to do this. But just acknowledge it. You know, like, it sucks. I've been hurt. I've, you know, bruised my scaphoid, you know, catching cleans wrong when I first started.

Tore two adductors. Hip hurts sometimes. You know, SI used to hurt sometimes. That's gotten better. I think it's because I'm carrying more weight. You know, I tend to hurt more when I'm lighter. I got this elbow tendonitis that comes and goes sometimes, right? I'm not, you know, I'm fully functional.

I'm not in pain all day. My activities of daily living are fully functional. I don't feel things, you know, most of the time, you know, but some of the time things pop up and you deal with them. You know, if you're, again, let's be clear here. I want you to be healthy and I factor health into it. We do everything we can to bend the curve and minimize bad shit happening. You know, the technique, the programming. There's things you can do to minimize risk.

But I'm not here to eliminate risk. And I'm not here to tell you that, hey, we're going to keep you healthy at all costs. Whatever that even fucking means, by the way, because it's such a broad statement. But let's say, you know, we're going to prioritize your health above all else. Well, we're probably not going to push you very much then, because if you're going to set new limits, you've accepted a higher level of physical risk. You are pushing your body beyond its limit to set a new limit, and then you're going to try and do the same thing again. I'm sorry, just think about what that sounds like on paper. That is higher risk than just staying where you're at. And that applies to anything. I think of grad

school. When I was in PhD program, that wasn't fucking healthy going through fucking... A lot of your jobs are not healthy. And you know who you are. The guy who's working 70 hours a week, you're working 70 hours a week, probably in front of a computer, dealing with all sorts of corporate shit, and you know what all that is. Yeah, sitting on your ass. Yeah, you're sitting on your ass, pissing off your back and hips, which, and then you're going to later try to blame it on squats, but trust me, no, it's squatting in the context of sitting on your ass all day that's causing all that pain. And I've worked through that with people. And you have to juggle family too and other things, right? Working like that, working all those hours sitting, that has a high level of risk,

right? You know, how many knee and hip replacements happen to people that have never been under a barbell, you know? That was about to say, yeah, I mean, I bet, I mean, it's statistically, right? I don't have to look this up to know this, that most back surgeries are being performed on people who have never done a deadlift before, never done a squat, right? That just statistically has to be true. Yeah, because a minority of people even lift weights and then even ultra minority do these exercises. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's not, um, yeah, it's people like my mom that are getting back surgeries, right? It's not, it's not,

it's not the Ronnie Coleman's, you know? No. And he had problems because it was a botched back surgery the first time that led to other surgeries that were botched. Yeah. It was just fixing the botched up. That's a complicated story. And nobody ever, and nobody ever, everybody always be like, yeah, everybody likes to post his 800 pound, you know, double on the squat that he did. Yeah. And be like,

yeah, but look at him now. He's on a wheelchair. I'm like, you know what, motherfucker? Like, you don't know the full story.

There's more to that. His back hurt before he started training like that. Yeah, exactly. There's, there's,

that's a long, complicated story. A lot more than lifting heavy weights. I, I, I have a little bit different take on it.

I, I agree with everything you've said, but I, I like to think about it in a little bit different take on it. I agree with everything you've said, but I like to think about it in a little bit different terms. And that's that the process of training, it teaches you how to manage your body when you do get hurt. That's part of the skills that it teaches you. And it's a skill, right? There's a lot of components to it, right? Number one is the process of training. When you've accumulated years under the barbell and you've had tweaks, you've had injuries,

and you've had to rehab them, there's a lot of things that go into that. Number one is your psychology, managing your mind, right? Learning that when you get hurt, not to freak out. You know, like to some people, I have a hard time now with people that I know that every time something hurts, they slip off a curb and they sprain their ankle. It's like, they got to go to the doctor. And it's like, oh my God, I don't know if I can do this thing.

I was supposed to go walk with my friends. We're supposed to go to Nashville this weekend. And we can't go to Nashville now because I sprained my ankle. I was supposed to go like walk with my friends. We're supposed to go to Nashville this weekend and we can't go to Nashville now. Cause my ankle, I sprained my ankle. I sprained it. And like, I just, people like freak out over like things that to me are like quite minor. It's not minor to them, but it's, it, it is minor in the grand scheme of things. And, um, the process of training teaches you a skill, which is to like, kind of step outside yourself for a second and like evaluate, like, what, what's going on here? Okay. Can I walk? Can I move it at all? You know, do I have nerve damage? Like, let's just evaluate like what we got going on here. And I found that

people who have been under the barbell for several years, they can, they can do that, right? They can kind of step outside their emotional experience in the moment and just kind of like, okay, like what's going on? Can I walk? Can I stand up? What have I got here? Okay, I can move around a little bit. You know, what else can I do? Can I load it? And so on and so forth. It's also not freaking out and, you know, trying to place your agency into someone else's hands where you're like, oh my God, I got to go to a doctor. And it's like, some people are just so ready to put all the responsibility of their body into someone else's hands.

Like, I got to go to the doctor and they give it to the doctor and it's like, whatever the doctor says, whatever they say, I'm going to do that because I don't want to get hurt more. As if the doctor is going to give you the perfect advice to not hurt yourself more. Like, it's just, it's ridiculous to me. You're giving all of your agency away when you do that. Well, training teaches you not to do that. It teaches you to be your own best advocate.

And there's a lot of other things too, right? Then there's the nuts and bolts of like, okay, well, you know, I'm not freaking out anymore. It hurts, but I can use it. I can use it in some limited function. Okay, let me see what I can do in the gym. Like, what exercises can I do? How can I adapt these exercises? If I can't do a normal squat, can I do a variation of a squat and then work it back up and get back to my normal squat over a period of time, right? Those are all some of the blocking and tackling of rehab that you learn. These are really important skills because it's going to happen to you, whether you like it or not. And if you're 25 and hearing this and you're like, what are you

talking about getting hurt? Well, if you train for the next 10 years, you're going to, you're going to accumulate some injuries and you're going to have to get over that. And you're going to be real happy that you learn those skills when you're 57 and you get hurt because that's what 57-year-olds do. And then you now know what to do about it, right? You know that you're not going to get laid up. You're not going to go to the doctor and let them talk you into back surgery when you don't need it. That's a disaster, by the way. Please do not get back surgery if at all possible. This is not medical advice, but just don't do it. That's a disaster, by the way. Please do not get back surgery if at all possible.

This is not medical advice, but just don't do it. So our colleague, Will Morris, said that back surgery, a third of the time it gets better, a third of time nothing happens, and a third of the time it gets worse. That sounds about right. And you know what Rip said a while back? He said, I've never known somebody that's only had back surgery once. Nope. And I think about that a lot. I'm like, yeah, you know, you're right. Everybody I know that's had back surgery goes back for more back surgery. And you know what it tends to be? I think he also said, I think Rip also said in that same, like wherever he wrote that, I can't remember if I read it on a forum or what, but he also said it's like, you know, it gets better for about a year and then they go back and have back surgery again. And I've seen that happen a few times.

After everything sounds like it seems like it's great. Oh man, I was one of the lucky ones that worked. And then a year later they're having back surgery again. Absolutely. Yep. It doesn Um, but outcomes. Yeah. You know, my problem with that is a lot of cases, you know, people, um, it's not back surgery itself. Sometimes you got to have backstory. Sometimes there's, that's the only solution. Um, but in a lot of cases, people get talked into it, um, by medical authority figures and, and the part it's because they've placed, they've given away their agency and they've allowed the decision-making to take place in someone else's hands that doesn't have your body. Right. You know, I don't care how good they are. Um, they're not you and they don't, they, nobody will ever care about you like you care

about you. No. So, yeah. So that's, that's how's how I look at training as a way to learn how to deal with life. Cause you're going to, you're going to get hurt in some way, whether you train or not. But if you've had years of training under your belt, when you get hurt, you've now have a set of skills that not very many people have nowadays of how to mentally get through it and then physically rehab it. Right. And that's so useful. You know, the other thing it teaches you is it teaches you to get ahead of it. You know?

Right. You kind of start getting more in tune with your body and what things are happening. It teaches you to get ahead of it. Yes, absolutely. You go in, you do a set of bench, get into a limit set. You start to feel some pain sensations in your rotator cuff and then

you decide, I'm not doing that second set. I'm just going to do one set today. And then you move on. Then next week, it doesn't feel as bad, right? That's just one of many examples. Right, absolutely. And that's when you're talking about bending the curve, that's, that's part of it, right. And that's, that's part of managing your, your programming is managing your fatigue levels, you know, not going in and squatting,

trying to squat a limit set of five, you know, after you've, you know, when your back is just torched, cause you've done a bunch of deadlifts and you've, you know, in the same week, and you've done a bunch of volume squats in the same week, and you're just absolutely torched because you've done a bunch of deadlifts and you, you know, in the same week and you've done a bunch of volume squats in the same week and you're just absolutely torched and going in and trying to set a limit set of five. Yeah. You don't want to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's things you learn over with experience. Um, that's not something you're gonna learn in your first couple of years of training, but over five to 10 years, you start to learn those things and where your limits are and when to push yourself and when not to. And frankly, that's just one of those things where to really learn how to auto-regulate, that's the technical term we use for that, right?

Auto-regulation, which is just changing your program as needed to adjust for your fatigue levels. You really can't know that until you've gone too far. Right? Like, that's how you know. That's how you learn. You have to run, you know, like I, like I've talked about when I got patellar tendonitis, it lasted for nearly a year in both of my knees. Yeah, that came after running Texas method too long. And also with, I didn't have the percentages dialed in correctly. And so I was, I was just killing myself with five by five squats that were too heavy and too much deadlifting all in the same week. And then trying to hit limit sets of fives and threes.

Yep. My knees eventually broke down, but you know, that's, that's how I know now to manage that stuff. If I never had that experience, I would have thought that's all just fine. I figured out on the bench, I learned a lot because on the bench, my shoulders and elbows will get wonky if I push it too hard. Yeah. And, uh, the most recent situation. So I've had this elbow tendonitis for a couple of years now, and it started with preacher curls. So you single joint junkies who think that doing isolation work has a lower risk of injury, I beg to differ. Right. Not if you push it.

Not if you're pushing it. If you push yourself in the weight room at any rep range, using any exercise, shit is likely to fucking hurt at some point. But I think it's worse when it's single joint because you don't have anything supporting you other than that one joint in the handful of muscles, right? And the tendon ends up taking a lot of that load. That's why I prescribe that stuff at high reps. But, you know, this is showing up on the bench. And I was pin benching one week and doing some back offsets.

That was my quote unquote light week, except it's not really light. I lightened the range of motion, but the load was heavier. Then the next week I'd do a heavy set of five and 5% back off. Well, I just dropped the pin bench because my shoulders were feeling completely torched even on my actual light day that was actually light. I still felt like those rotator cuff muscles getting tight and the tendonitis was bad. And I noticed every time I'd cut the volume, the elbow got better. And then when I got rid of that pin bench press, the shoulder cleared up. But then I did my limit bench, hit a PR, then did a 5% back off, which is probably not enough. And that was last, what, last Tuesday? This week, my shoulders are fucking torched. So I know what needs to go next,

that 5% back off that is getting dropped entirely next week. Yeah. Because it just, my pecs were so sore the next day too. And I only did two sets. Only two sets, guys. Right. I know. Only two, only 10 reps.

I mean, yeah, that's not enough sets for chest, you know. For chest. Only two sets. Yeah. Only two sets for chest, bro. You know, I didn't get enough stretch mediated hypertrophy either because i used a barbell yeah you weren't doing uh you should be doing length and partials bro yeah yeah i won't i was that's what the pin bench press was but you

know then i got fucking sore from that you know yeah that's for me it's like uh learning when to change grips you know i i get stuff um i get random aches and pains in the uh insertion kind of the insertion part of the uh pec you know where it originates yep and um yeah when that start when that thing starts to light up and it starts getting kind of tender and sore and then it starts to become sore during the workout and it becomes a consistent thing. I know it's like, ah, it's time to, it's time to back off. And for me, it's usually change grips, you know, do a close grip bench. Uh, you know, I wish I had a multi grip bar cause I probably use that too. But basically, um, yeah, I just can't continually push that lift and you got to back off for a while. But again, I only figured that out because

I've had times where I get this weird, like, you know, if I had like this weird chest, it's like tendinitis. Cause it felt like it was in the muscle belly, but basically I'd have like aches and pains. It would go on for months. And then finally, you know, because I'm fucking stubborn, uh, I just, you know, keep going, keep working through it. And then eventually i figured out one time i was like oh you know when i close grip bench it usually goes away okay so now i know that right but i only really learned that from pushing through it so um you know this is something that you're going to run into too in your own way you're going to have your own unique things and um you you keep training through them and around them and sometimes you got to back up and you got to do something different and you

got to come back at it and attack it again. And you will accumulate these various skills. And, you know, I don't know. That's, that's the way I want to live life. You know,

I don't want to live life like scared that I might get hurt. And then, you know, like, cause look guys, I got a story for you too, Trent. I mentioned this earlier. So I decided to work on my truck this past weekend.

And I installed a part that required me to remove the intake manifold and the lower intake. It was deep in there. And it was quite the project. I texted you a little bit about this, actually. yeah yeah yeah and you know i had to get way down there and there were some delays because i had to figure out how to disconnect things that weren't very intuitive you know some of these clips on these connectors are stubborn but you know long story short i got it done but it was an all-day affair that went into the evening and even the early morning, mostly because I'm also learning as I'm doing this, you know.

And it was a successful install. Everything works. Everything works great. And I'm very – I'm proud of my work. But think about what this entails. I'm standing over an engine bay with my hips flexed or hinged. So I'm bent over the engine bay for hours, you know, digging in there, taking things out, et cetera, right? Then I'm using my hands a lot.

So, you know, I expected my forearms were going to get sore because I don't do that type of stuff a lot, you know? And essentially I had, you know, a day and a half of manual labor. So the next morning I woke up and I started walking and my fucking hamstrings were lit up. Like I felt like I did high volume deadlifts, you know, Bulgarian method or German volume training maybe, you know, like my hamstrings were lit up. My glutes were lit up, my calves. But I expected that because I was on my ball of my foot on the edge of the truck a few times standing on it, you know. Right. So that didn't surprise me too much. But the hamstrings and the glutes surprised me.

And what I took from that, and this is what I want everybody here listening to, is that because I have done thousands of reps of these lifts where I've had to set my back, lock it into position, engage my hips, and do it over again with heavier and heavier weights for now a 12-year period I've been at this? No, 11 years. Almost 12, going on 12. 11 years going on 12, I've been setting my back, locking in, getting the slack out, lifting the weight. Well, now when I'm bent over an engine bay,

my default mode is my abs are locked in to stabilize my spine and my hip extensors are anchoring me in as well. So what got sore? Not my back. My back wasn't sore at all. My lumbar felt fine. But everything below that, all the way down to my ankles, was sore as shit. Yeah.

Which is the result of what I've done in the weight room. If I was just working on a car and I did not have exposure to this awesome method that I learned from Rip, my back would be torched right now and I probably wouldn't be able to walk, you know, or bend over. Yeah. Which, you know, if you talk to mechanics, talk to laborers, what do they complain about the most? Their backs. Their backs usually hurt. Yes. Right. And this is something that we just, for whatever reason, maybe because we weren't involved for it, it's not something that we default to. Typically,

if you're doing a laborious job, you're just going to move however you have to move to get it done. But now if you've been taught how to move a certain way and also with load, because load makes it even harder to stabilize yourself and maintain positions. Anything done without load is, you know, you don't even think about it. That's what I experienced this weekend. I didn't cross my mind at all until the next day when I was walking and I'm like, what in the fuck is this? I feel like I just deadlifted heavy. Yeah. That's, that's funny. The thing that just immediately comes to mind for me is, uh, raking leaves. My hamstrings are always sore as fuck after I do that. It's the same thing, right? Just cause like, it's just hours of like, just bent over, you know, you're raking the leaves

and then also you're, you're taking them, you know, you're putting them into the bags. Uh, yeah. So you're bent over the whole time. I had a similar experience recently. I was putting on a, this, this weekend I was, I was putting on some, some safety locks, like some child locks on, uh, the vanity that we just installed in our, our master bathroom. Um, we had this beautiful teak vanity that we put in. And I say we put in, we hired a contractor to do the whole bathroom. Like I don't want to take any credit for that. He did a beautiful job.

It was way, way beyond my skill level and time and all that kind of stuff. But anyway, so we've got this vanity and stuff. So we don't want a toddler sitting there, like slamming the doors back and forth the whole time. So I put in these locks, which required me to, you know, drill like this little catch on the underside of each of the drawers. Well, in order to do that, the only way to get my drill in there and like see what

I'm doing, I have to lay on my back and then like arch myself up a little bit so I can see and then, you know, mark it and drill it and all that stuff. That was the best position lay on my back to do that. And I noticed my abs, I was just like, almost like shaking because my abs were so tight. Yeah. And I realized what I was doing just subconsciously, what you're talking about, where I'm like, okay, I'm in this position where my back has to be up off the floor a little bit, so I can reach up to the upper drawers while I'm lying on my back. And I instinctively just squeeze my abs tight. So my torso is as rigid as I can get and I'm up there in position. And, you know, you do that for a while and

basically doing like a, you know, like a, uh, you know, uh, isometric sit up. And, um, yeah, it's just kind of funny. I think you just defaulted to it. I just default to it. And I think most people probably would just, you know, flop on their back and just lay flat and, you know, like kind of prop themselves up. And basically this whole rigid torso thing is, is a learned position that most people aren't doing. So I have a similar experience. I find myself like, man, why am I working so hard here? It's like, oh, well, it's because I'm, I've just, I've learned that I'm trying to stabilize my trunk while I'm in an awkward position. I do that when I move the lawnmower.

Every time I pick something up now, I take a big breath, I squeeze my abs really hard, and then I lift. Especially when I'm rotating. If I've got to pick something up awkward and rotate, I just kind of instinctively take a big breath, the shit out of my abs and try to brace you know try to create that internal brace and you just think about you don't think about it yeah you just start doing it you know and this is what's i think what's funny too is like you know a lot of people think um you know construction workers or just trades people in general are like are going to be like an amazing shape because they do a physically hard job but that's not at all like it's a lot of construction site and look at look at the the the physiques of the

people you see right uh it's not it's not good and i i think part of what that is is um you know a they're they tend to be very specifically strong right when we say strength specific it's usually like they have like really strong forearms and grip because they're just, they're manipulating stuff all day with their hands. Uh, they usually have really strong grip and, um, yeah, but their backs aren't strong. Their abs aren't strong. Then there's no progressive overload and people don't think about that. It's like, yeah, they do work hard. Um, they have to lift some heavy stuff, but they're not lifting anything heavier than that. Right? Like if something is too heavy for you to pick up like comfortably you get something else to pick it up for you like use a lift or you use a crowbar or whatever oh yeah like you know it's not like

you're gonna lp your ability like you're not gonna start with a 50 pound thing of sheetrock and move up to a 200 pound sheet of sheetrock like at some point you're gonna use a panel lift and then you know or somebody else. Right. Yep. No, they're not walking around looking like bodybuilders, but. You know, they typically have big forearms, big shoulders, you know, because they're overhead a lot too. Yeah.

Right. And some of them are naturally big, strong guys. That's why they do those jobs. So you got to factor that into, but. You got to factor in the eating lunch at 7-Eleven every day too. Oh yeah. That doesn't help. But a lot of that is, you know Oh, yeah. That doesn't help.

But a lot of that is, you know, they don't know how to move. And when you add progressive overload, you're trying to move and maintain posture, as they say, with a real heavy weight. So then when you're doing routine shit like that, even though, you know, the stuff they're lifting has some weight to it and it's awkward, so it's harder because of the leverage change. You know, these things become routine and it just wears on you less, you know? So, you know, I think that's huge. Yeah. So, yeah. Safety.

It's an illusion. It's an illusion. It doesn't exist. There are certain legal guardrails that have been put up in our country that give the illusion of safety because there's like, oh, well, there's some legal recourse if something were to happen to you. But that doesn't stop people falling off of roller coasters. Nope. It doesn't stop bridges from collapsing, power lines from falling down. Shit happens, people. Every day. Shit happens. Yeah. nope doesn't stop bridges from collapsing power lines from falling down shit happens people every day shit happens yeah and so i think the the quicker you can just accept that and come to terms with that the the quicker you can get down to like doing something positive

and practical and in my mind training is one of those things. It's an acknowledgement. People who train are more aware of the realities of the physical world than people who don't train. Oh, yeah. They're more in tune with it. It's pretty low risk compared to other things, too. Let's be honest. Yeah, it is. It's very low risk. But it's not absent of risk. You know, we're not claiming that. You know, baseline is that, you know, shit happens.

And if it doesn't, be thankful. You know, you're one of the lucky ones, be thankful. But shit happens. You know, I had a guy once, not at this gym, but the gym I used to train at, dropped a plate on his foot, broke his foot. Just taking a plate off the tree. A big one? Oh, yeah, 25.

Oh, yeah, that hurts. Might even be worse than a plate off the tree. A big one? Oh yeah. 25. Oh, oh yeah. That, that hurts. Might even be worse than a 45 because of how thick it is, you know? Right. Right. Um, but yeah, he dropped a 45 on his foot, still lifted, kept training, you know, but broke his foot. Yep. Yep. You know, shit happens people. Exactly. So yeah, there you go. Um, I, I understand when new people come and they ask that question and i get where it's coming from i think it's usually coming from what they feel is a reasonable place but my hope is that if somebody comes in and it's like i just really don't want to get hurt that they can walk away after a couple years of training and have a completely different outlook on life. Well, you know what?

A little respect. You just reminded me of something. It's not just orthopedic injuries that we're talking about or musculoskeletal injuries that we're talking about. You get people that come in and say, I just don't want to get fat. It's bad for my health, you know? Oh, right. And we've talked about this at length. You know, I'll keep talking about it until I'm blue in the face because I am a nutritionist as well. But some people probably should not get fat because the health risk of it, for whatever reason, is not good. and not looking like a bodybuilder or a fitness model or, you know, just being a little chubbier for a period of time to get strong is also one of these occupational hazards, as they say, right?

And, you know, I get guys, they'll put on the weight, but the strength is coming on slow, so they'll look more fat than muscular for a period of time. Let the lifts keep going up, it all evens out, You lose a few pounds. It looks good. But again, it's one of those things. You have to accept a certain level of discomfort to achieve your objective, right? Like this is about health to an extent,

but there's an element of it that's not about health. You are trying to push limits and set new ones. I've said this several times for this episode. And when you do that, there is a level of discomfort and you're accepting a higher level of risk. Now, it's not high risk like doing a bunch of street drugs all the time. You know, we're not telling you to, you know, do cocaine every day or something stupid like that. But, you know, there's a higher level of risk when you are taking your body to its limit to set a new limit. And that comes in the form of tweaks sometimes.

And other times you're going to be heavier than you want to be. And you may not like the way it looks for a period of time. But as you get stronger and stronger, that appearance changes. It has to. Your ratio of muscle to fat changes as you get stronger. And nobody's saying you got to gain weight forever. But you get to a certain level, right? Like if you're 6'2 and you're 230 and you're training, but your deadlift is under 300 pounds, you're going to look more fat than you are muscular because you're 6'2,

230 deadlifting under 300 pounds. But guess what? You're capable of deadlifting over 400 pounds. So give it time, embrace it. And if you're deadlifting 440 or 200 kilos for a set of five and you're 6'2", 230, and you still think, you know, I don't like this little layer of my stomach. Okay, fucking lose it. Lose the layer in your stomach. And it'll happen fast too now because you just pulled 200 kilos for a set of five, you know? If you're a man. And, you know, this applies to women too. You too, if you start with me and you're deadlifting 155 or let's say 95 for a set of five, and let's say you're 5'4 and you're 130 pounds, well, guess what? When you pull 225 for five, you's not going to happen either. But my point is that, you know, when you go down this rabbit hole of getting strong, again, I should just say it the way I've been saying it. When you go down the rabbit hole of pushing limits to set new ones, you're accepting a

higher level of risk, a higher level of discomfort, and you are making more sacrifices for a long term result. What happens here is cumulative. It's not the result of one workout. It's not even the result of two workouts. It is the result of accumulating many workouts over months, if not years, to achieve an objective. Yeah. And that is the most important thing you can take away from this episode

because you're not going to go in here not get hurt and have a perfect fucking body that you know uh photographers are lining up to use to sell fucking products and services you know that's right you know for some people that's true you know you get guys just get more ripped as they lift but come on most people listening to this hate those motherfuckers you know they are not the norm they exist but they're not the norm those people are not listening to us they don't need us um no they're fun to train when they're open though i've had a few oh yeah they're actually pretty easy to train yes yeah i mean yeah it's like what what is that what is the saying it's like um you know i i can't remember how it goes, but basically it's like, you know, you got to be able to plant the tree in whose shade you will never sit under whose shade you will never sit. Right. So that's, that's what we do. You know, that's what our ancestors have done. Right. Like you, we, we build things.

to reap benefits that we won't see and that nobody else is gonna see for a long time. But we know while we're doing it and it's worth it to us. And I mean, again, that's the kind of person I wanna be. I wanna be the kind of person who can be uncomfortable in the short term and be okay with that, knowing that I have a long-term goal

that's important to me that I'm working on. And that's the kind of person I want to be in all aspects of life. If you haven't read it, look up the marshmallow study about delayed versus instant gratification. Oh. Yeah. That's a classic one. Yeah. Marshmallow study.

That's a good one. Yeah. You'll find that. That's a good one. Yep. You're playing, if you're trying to do this for real, you're playing the game of delayed gratification. Yep. That's right. And I'm doing it right now. I've been on this program for a year, the one that I'm on now. For the last year, I've been trying to push this bench and that's had a

lot of frustration go with it. I think 30 pounds heavier than where I was hanging out, 25 to 30 pounds heavier. Don't particularly like being this heavy, but it's fine. It looks good. Most people think it looks good. I think I look fine. I look like a middle-aged man than I am, you know? But, you know, I'm 205 now. I'm better conditioned than I was in the past when I get this heavy. So, I don't feel like a big fat guy. I don't look like a big fat guy. But, you know, I'm a fat bodybuilder if I was doing that. You know, if you asked a bodybuilder, he'd say, oh, he's fat and weak too. Right.

But I don't give a fuck. You know, I'm not doing beauty pageants for other dudes. You know, if that's your thing, that's fine. No offense. Yeah. But that's not my thing. I'm not doing that. And I'm not getting on the platform either.

I don't like that. I like coaching other people to do that. You know. I don't like going to powerlifting meets as a lifter. I like hanging out there as a spectator. I like going as a coach. I don't enjoy it as a lifter. So what I'm doing is I'm lifting for myself. I like PR-ing in my gym when it's about a PR and not about a total. I don't care about that. You know, I care about getting the fucking PR and that will happen in my gym. Um, I'll probably do another meet though. In all actuality, I should. Um, but right now I want this bench. And for the last year, I've had to deal with a bunch of shit, including various tweaks, little random aches and pains, not so much tweaks, aches and pains is more like it, as well as gaining more body weight than I

thought I'd have to gain, you know, but I want the bench and that's what's necessary, you know? So when you're, you know, sitting there crying that, you know, you have a little bit of belly fat, but you're not particularly heavy and you're not particularly strong, you know, trust the process because a year from now, you're going to be a lot stronger and you're going to look a lot different, you know? That belly will look much more dense and less fat, you're going to be a lot stronger and you're going to look a lot different. You know? Yeah. That belly will look much more dense and less fat if you're dead lifting 200 pounds more than you are now. I'm talking to a novice, obviously.

I've almost gotten to the point. This is for another episode. But I've almost gotten to the point where I'm like, outside of, frankly, a fairly small percentage of the population outside of that cutting is stupid yeah you've been saying that let's do that episode let's do it it's because it is it's just stupid like what are you doing like you're just wasting your all you're doing is make yourself weaker for no reason here's why i would do it you know we'll talk we'll talk about this yeah this is for another episode for that stuff right Right. And I'm not talking about obese people, right? There are some people that do need to lose weight. Like that's an, a very important, but that's, that's actually fairly small percent

of the, you know, people that we work with, but anyway, for another show, for another show, I think that's another, I think that's enough. Uh, you know, that's an hour. It's another hour on that. Um, I think that's enough. Hopefully we made our points here, but yeah, just remember like there's no such thing as safety and you know, it's hard. It's hard to wrap your mind around that sometimes. I think a lot of people are ridden with anxiety about that, but it's a reality of the world. And the sooner you can come to terms with that, the better. I think the happier person you will be. I agree. And I think we beat that to hell.

So let's close out. Thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash at weights underscore and underscore plates. And if you're in Metro Phoenix, you can come by my gym. We're just south of the airport in the South Mountain Village. Come by. We offer one-on-one training and open gym if you're local. And if you're not local, we have day passes. So feel free to drop me a note. And as you all know,

I offer online coaching as well. Yeah. Hey, if you're dealing with some aches and pains and you're just not sure what to do about it, he's a great resource. Look him up, send him an email, do a consult with him. If you're local, drop in and you can learn some of those nuts and bolts that we're talking about, about how to work through tweaks and injuries. If you want to talk to me, I'm on Instagram at marmalade underscore cream. That's the name of my audio production business. But of course, also offer online coaching. And if you're interested in that, send me an email jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com.

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