Weights and Plates Podcast - #95 - Getting Stronger Makes Everything Better

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

Starting Strength Coach Robert Santana talks about how getting stronger helps you achieve every fitness goal, bodybuilding vs powerlifting vs starting strength, novices, and more.  https://weightsandplates.com/online-coaching/ Follow Weights & Plates YouTube: https://youtube.com/@weights_and_plates?si=ebAS8sRtzsPmFQf- Instagram: @the_robert_santana Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/weightsandplates Web: https://weightsandplates.com

Before we get started, if you like the show and you're watching on YouTube or Rumble, please smash that subscribe button. Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana and I am your host. You know, for the last five years, we've spent a lot of time talking about lifting weights and many things related to lifting weights. And we've never really went into a deep dive on the history and who should be doing it, right? When I was first coming up, the bodybuilders had a monopoly on most

weight rooms in the United States. And they also had a fair monopoly on much of the information pertaining to weightlifting that most of the general public was receiving because of the Weider company being as large as it was and as popular as it was starting way back in the 1970s. Some would argue even earlier. So typically, if you heard about lifting weights, you thought about a bodybuilder, maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger or Lou Ferrigno. And then you had Hollywood celebrities like Sylvester Stallone lifting weights. So typically there was this association with pumping iron, right? As they used to say,

and a body that was very vascular, lean and huge, you know, which I now call a steroid body in a lot of cases. Not that, you know, there's plenty of muscular, lean guys that aren't on steroids. You know, a lot of cases. Not that, you know, there's plenty of muscular, lean guys that aren't on steroids. You know, a lot of athletes are built that way, but much of what you see in muscle magazines is the result of a combination of good genetics, training, and steroid use. But that's a whole other topic for a different conversation. Today, I want to talk about how weightlifting has and continues to benefit people other than bodybuilders. Now, Olympic weightlifters were also using barbells and weights

and applying force against an external resistance, if I may say. And so were powerlifters, but that wasn't quite as popular back in the 70s, 80s, 90s, even the 2000s. Muscular physiques grew in popularity in the 80s. At some point in the late 90s, the overall size of these muscular men got smaller. And as a result, that shaped the culture that followed. And we had a lot of men interested in getting smaller rather than larger when in a lot of cases they needed to get larger rather than smaller as we've talked about here. You know, skinny fat is usually a problem of insufficient size, not too much body fat. And that's a topic I harp on a lot.

But one of the common themes of what I've been saying here is that men have largely occupied weight rooms since weight rooms came into existence. I think that's less true today, but if you surveyed every gym in the United States I'd say that probably mostly men are spending time lifting weights versus women although the share of women has increased and I know that because I've trained a lot of women over the years and that kind of brings us to the core question here why why should somebody who is not a competitive lifter lift? And why the fuck am I talking about this? Well, I'm talking about this because I put a lot of

content out trying to get people bought into getting stronger. And a lot of the pushback comes from decades of people that have followed competitive lifters, whether they be bodybuilders, power lifters, not so much weight lifters. They kind of live in their own world because they are an Olympic sport. I'll let somebody else make fun of them. They haven't really pissed me off too much. Crossfitters, you know, started lifting weights in the 2010s, but a lot of what comes through my gym are just regular old people.

Like many of you listening that have found some reason to lift. The most commonly cited reason for lifting weights is people want to look a certain way, right? They want bigger arms, they want more developed legs or glutes or you know whatever muscle group is in fashion. People have made the connection that lifting weights will change the appearance of their body in a positive way and And that's, that's largely true. And you know, certainly there are benefits to that up to a point, you know, it's like anything else. If you keep pushing in that direction, things can become very high maintenance and can become counterproductive.

That's why we have problems with body dysmorphia and eating disorders that go in both directions. There's people that don't think they're big enough, and then there's people that don't think they're small enough, right? At my gym here at Weights and Plates, I've tried to seek a balance, right? I want to help people look better. I want to help them feel better and I want to help them move better. I've, you know, dabbled with power lifting meets, strength lifting meets. I've been lifting continuously for the last 12 years with the goal of having a stronger squat,

bench press, press, deadlift. Because I enjoy that right. As I talked about in a previous episode with Jesse Vesna, I'm not interested in competing in a league or club sport. Although I do need to post a more recent total because when I was first coming up, I did a few powerlifting meets. I didn't particularly enjoy them. And, uh, my lifting totals back from 2017, it was a horrible fucking meat. I was cold. I was enjoy them. And my lifting totals back from 2017, it was a horrible fucking meet.

I was cold, I was shivering, I fasted because I thought it was a morning session. Turns out I was lifting in the afternoon sessions, weigh-ins ran longer and I had a terrible meet. And when you look me up on Google and you can go ahead and leave some hater comments about it, you're gonna see some piss poor lifts that aren't anywhere near what I can do now. So I feel like I just need to walk into a meet and you know post

a total but I digress. I happen to enjoy the process of pursuing heavier numbers and I don't really care about placing or winning medals or any of that. I like taking people and meets. They're very fun and you know we could talk about that on a different episode, but when I'm coaching people, I want to give them something they can stick with long-term. It's going to produce most of the result that they want, right? Once you start trying to produce all of the result that you want, now you're getting into a competitive territory, right? If you want to gain as much muscle as possible, it's going to dominate your life once you get past a certain level, right? If you want to get as strong as possible, it's going to dominate your life past a certain level. If you want to be the best guitar player you could possibly be, I love these musical references,

because same thing, it's going to dominate your life. So what you typically want to find is the most efficient system to get most of what you want. So you feel like you're getting that key benefit, right? In this case, are you more functional? Can you lift things up? Can you move your body around in a functional way? Can you move your body around in a way that's much better than before, right?

You're not throwing out your back, taking things out of the trunk of your car. You're able to put luggage up on the overhead compartment in a plane without requiring assistance? Can you pick things up off the floor correctly and not throw your back out? These are the types of things that are beneficial to most people. You don't have to train like a bodybuilder to achieve those things. You also don't have to train like a powerlifter to do those things, within reason, but a lot of the hater comments I get come from people

that do compete and, uh, they'll tend to say that, you know, you need it. You need all this volume to grow and you need a million exercises to grow. This is the kind of things that you hear from the bodybuilding world. Although power lifters have their own subset of people that think you need to spend hours in the gym doing lots of sets. You know, volume has been kind of overhyped in those circles and part of it just comes from the fact

that when you do steroids, you can handle more volume and the people putting out the content are usually on drugs, got on them early on because they're competitors and they're trying to win. And, you know, they counter our arguments that, you know, you don't really need to do that many exercises. You don't really need to spend a whole bunch of time in the gym and you don't need this high maintenance lifting lifestyle that a competitor needs. Most people in this country have never lifted

weights or don't lift weights. You know, the majority of the population doesn't exercise at all and anything is going to work. It's called the novice effect. If you start a program after having done nothing, you're going to see improvements. You know, you could pick up a dumbbell and do curls and you're, you know, with five pounds and you'll see a change from before. You know, I'm exaggerating obviously, but that's typically what happens. That's with anything. You start playing the guitar, you get, you get the basics down pretty quick, and then you get to a point where you're troubleshooting. You start training dogs.

Those basic skills that you learn as a dog trainer tend to come very quickly. I've seen that, right? But I understand the process of developing a skill from novice to intermediate to advanced. And I understand that, you know, now I've been doing that skill for a couple of years. So I'm at a point now where I have to think critically, troubleshoot, consult with other

professionals, try different things. And it's no longer this steady linear, it's no longer this logarithmic linear progression that happens when you first start. And that applies to anything. I always tell people if you can make it past the first two years of lifting you're probably a lifter and you're probably going to go far. Usually most people get weeded out in the first three to six months because once linear progress is no longer happening you see a lot of attrition because it's no longer fun. It's fun when you're adding five pounds to a squat every workout or when

you're losing a couple pounds every week. let's say you're a very heavy person with lots of weight to lose, lots of bad habits, and then you just clean up your diet and you're not doing very much, but you're losing weight every week. Once that honeymoon phase is done and your lifestyle has to change to accommodate furthering your goals,

that's when you start to see people drop off. And that's when you kind of have to figure out, how much of this do I need and what should I do and this is where I find that most commercially available programs are inappropriate for the 75 to 85 percent of people that don't do any of this right but yet that's the bubble that we've lived in in the gym world that you have to be a competitor uh to lift weights you know of some sort and you have to train like a competitor to lift weights, you know, of some sort. And you have to train like a competitor to get results. And that's, that's not necessarily true for most of you running a basic

novice linear progression is going to grow. Most of your body is going to make you more functionally strong is going to make things stop hurting. And you might even get a little bit of conditioning out of it. And we're talking the first year that you spend in the weight room. Then beyond that, now you got to start making some judgment calls. Do you want to be a lifter or do you want lifting to facilitate other things? Usually it's the latter and lifting becomes more exercise or quasi exercise where you're still trying to get stronger but you have other things going on. You

may be in an endurance type sport or you may, fighting's very popular so I have several people that are doing some sort of martial arts, right? And their lifting program has to accommodate that. So once you are no longer a novice, you have to decide where you want to put your resources. You know, if you want to put your resources into more strength, now you have committed to the lifestyle of a lifter. And that doesn't have to be super high maintenance either.

You know, that also depends on what, you you know how much you're wanting out of it. Or your lifting now has to accommodate other things. That means your lifting will take a back seat to the other things you're doing. So if you're doing BJJ or karate, you might not be able to do heavy sets of five, heavy triples. You might have to do less volume, less frequency on big lifts like the squat and deadlift. Maybe high reps on the upper body to accommodate the continuous repetitive movement, because you may not have enough resources to produce those high intensity muscle contractions that really stimulate the nervous system.

It becomes a game of, you know, you still want to lift to keep your muscles, joints, and bones and connective tissues strong, dense, and useful, but not so much that you're tweaking things in your other activity. Or let's say you just started a family, you're a young parent, you have an infant, you're not going to sleep very well. So now it becomes a game of you're going to get in the weight room and you're going to do something so that your muscles are getting enough stimulation so that you're getting the benefits of lifting weights, but you're maybe not necessarily trying to chase that ceiling, whatever that may be for you. So, you know, that really highlights the question,

why should you lift? You're not a bodybuilder, you're not a power lifter, you know, because I get these comments all the time from clients and people sending me messages on the internet, like, you know, I don't want to be a power lifter. Well, you don't have to be a power lifter. So why the hell am I making you live for the barbell then? Well, when power lifters live for the barbell.

So, this is a good segue actually, because people often see the tool associated with a singular application of it. So person A might say, I don't want to be a power lifter. Okay, well, you don't want to be a power lifter. Okay, well, you don't have to be a power lifter. And let's say person A is a male who's 25 to 45, is of normal height, you know, 5'7 to 5'10 and, you know, weighs 155 to 175 pounds. Well, if you don't want to be a power lifter, that's fine, but you do want to build muscle. You do want to get stronger. You do want more bone density, right right so you're going to enter a phase now where

you're going to make the fastest progress you've ever made because you're novice and you can do that but in order to facilitate that you're gonna have to eat more food than you're used to you're gonna have to gain more weight than you might want to maybe not the most weight that you can gain you know let's say you're 5'8 a male 5'8 power lifter is going to weigh in the mid 200s, the low to mid 200s. You know, so that's anywhere from 200 to 242. You know, if you look at these competitors, but they're also on drugs. They're also much fatter than most people want to be.

They're also looking to win medals, set records and compete. So it's a different purpose, right? But me telling the 5'8", 155, 165 pound guy to get to 185, maybe 195 temporarily so that he can add some muscle mass, improve his leverages and get stronger. You know, it's not a bad thing to do, you know, in the short term. And then you can peel the weight back off later and you'll be a leaner, more muscular version of your previous self, right? So I'm not telling you to be a powerlifter, but I am telling you to train for a certain period of time to get stronger. I also don't teach the

lifts like a powerlifter. You know, in powerlifting they have this silly rule, or lack of a rule I should say. They allow the lifter to either place his hands anywhere he wants on the bar when he deadlifts. There's no regulation on where the hands belong. So as a result, some people pick the bar up with the hands inside the legs. Some people pick the bar up with the hands outside the legs and they're both called deadlifts in powerlifting. At my gym and the way I teach you, you're going to pick the bar up with the hands outside your legs and you could have a million arguments about it. Happy to have those with you. But the synopsis of it is if your hands are outside your legs, you have to bend further to pick up the bar,

which is good for most people, especially most novices. Remember novices can't get hurt as easy as somebody who's advanced. These lifts are not as fatiguing for a novice as someone who's advanced. And when I say novice, I'm also including you, the gym bro. Even the guy who's read and consumed all this content that I put out there, that starting strength has put out there and has been doing it themselves, you also may be a novice, because you may be doing this in a fucked up way

that keeps tweaking your back. So, you know, in the absence of some, in the absence of good, in the absence of good efficient lifting technique, you're not really, it's not really fair to say that, oh, you can't do this lift because it's bad for X, Y or Z. You may be doing it fucked up. When I'm, you know, getting it assessed by somebody who knows what they're looking for is the first step, right? So you can see what you can do. Some people can't do some of these lifts on the way outlined in the model. I have people that had a guy that couldn't squat with a barbell.

I had to put them on the leg press because I tried everything under the sun except gaining weight of course. That may have worked. You know who you are. I know you listen. But he got sick of the back tweaks. I got sick of hearing about him. So he went on a leg press, continued to deadlift, continued to do the other lifts. And he said, if he ever moved here or to a town that

has starting strength gym, he'd sign up right away. So there's a difference there between supervised and unsupervised exercise. But the greater point here is when I teach you how to deadlift or I teach you how to bench press, or I teach you how to squat, you know, the three lifts and power lifting, I'm not doing that so that you can lift the most weight, which is what power lifting is about moving the most weight. And that's typically across a short distance, the shortest distance possible because it's going to move better. It's going to move easier over a short distance versus a long distance. Right.

So the amount of muscles involved aren't taken into account. The range of motion is not taken into account. You have landmarks you have to hit, you got to touch your chest on the bench, you have to squat below parallel and you can't hitch the deadlift. You know, there's criteria, but for the most part it's how can you get the most weight from point A to point B. When I teach you how to lift, I want you to number one, recruit the most muscles you can into the movement or use the most muscle mass, right? So a sumo deadlift, you bend less at the hips

and you bend less at the knees. So therefore you are using fewer muscles to lift the weight up. On a deadlift, when you pick the bar up with the hands outside the legs, you have to bend further at the hips and you get a little more knee bend, so you're using more muscles. On a squat in powerlifting, you might be able to squat with a wide stance depending on which federation you're in. And that might only have you squatting a few inches down. Sometimes they let you squat high and consider that legal. When I teach you how to squat, you're going to take a medium stance that gets you below parallel,

which is defined as the crease of your shorts below the top of your knee. And that's going to use more muscles than obviously if I spread your feet wider and let you squat higher, because some federation allows that, right? So again, sport versus general strength conditioning, muscular development. And when you bench press, I want your forearms vertical at the bottom versus you have 33 inches of width between both hands to play with in power lifting. That's the maximum legal width you can grab the bar

is where those rings are and they're 33 inches apart. I want you to grip the bar where your forearms are vertical. And actually recently I learned that the IPF and its affiliates in the various countries now they're defining the bench press bottom as I think the elbows can't go the elbows must dip below the shoulders. I don't think that's the greatest criteria. It's a step in the right direction. They're trying to address these insane arches. But I think vertical forearms solves all of it. Your forearms need to be vertical, but you know, they could change position.

I don't know. It's sport. Once again, it's sport. When you're in here, I want vertical forearms because you're going to get a long range of motion around your elbows. You're going to get a decently long range of motion around your shoulders, and you're going to engage, you know, the triceps, the pecs and all those muscles involved in the bench press.

So again, not power lifting. Power lifting, you have to lift the most weight. It doesn't matter how many muscles you use to lift it. It doesn't matter how far it moves. You just have to lift the most weight within the rules of the meat. When you train with me, I want lots of muscles involved because that is the safest, most effective, and most efficient

way to lift things. And it's also an efficient way to build muscle. If you're just a regular schmuck on the street that wants to be more muscular than you were, but you're not trying to compete in bodybuilding shows, which leads us to person number two. This is a person who's come to me after consuming a bunch of bodybuilding content. This person might say five or six exercises isn't enough. What about my posterior deltoid? What about no actually no posterior deltoid that's the 2000s man now we need to ask

about the lateral deltoid you know especially in the women's side. A lot of women are getting judged by the size of their lateral delts in bikini contest women's bikini contest. So I get all these questions about you know we're we're not doing, we're not doing side delts. We're not, you know, when you squat low bar, you're just using the glutes, you know, I want to target the quads and this, that, and the other. Okay. Well, there are situations, of course, where you're competing in these muscle pageants, you know, these muscle slash beauty pageants. I got to come up with a name for this because it's not a sport. It's a contest. It's pageantry for sure, because you're being judged on how you look.

So it's a beauty contest with muscles of some sort, right? So if you're doing that, you could still benefit from what I'm talking about here because many people that compete in that start out training muscles in isolation. They lose out on the muscle mass gains that are made getting the barbell lifts up to the point where they are no longer novices. You know, if you get a deadlift up for about, you know, that first year training, if you eat, take it seriously, recover and get your deadlift up, you're going to put quite a bit of muscle mass on your back in the first year or two,

even early intermediate, you'll continue to do that. It's usually after year two where things get a little bit more complicated and less predictable, but if you put two good years into barbell training, you're going to gain lots of muscle everywhere. And I find that most people in these pageant contests have never done that. Some are naturally strong at those lifts, especially at the top. These people aren't weak, you know, the top people that are winning, especially at the national and international level. So, you know, there might be an argument to be made that maybe they don't have to do it because if they walk in and they're deadlifting 500 already, do they really need to train the deadlift? You know, I'd argue probably not for pageantry,

but you know, if they decided they wanted to get stronger, it'd be pretty fucking cool to take somebody from 500 to 600 or maybe 700 if they, you know, said fuck this, I want to do strength. But the rank-and- and file person that comes to me isn't naturally that strong. So building that base goes a long way because these compounds do put a lot of muscle mass on your body if you're not trained at them and you're not that strong at them to begin with.

However, when you're talking to someone that is competing in these pageants, you have to understand that many people, especially those that are competitive and they're not doing the lifts, if they're that muscular, they're probably strong, right? They can continue to be competitive in these pageants in spite of not doing the barbell lifts, but those aren't the people that are typically walking in the door. You are probably not one of these people that are listening to me. If you are, you're going to leave a hater comment on my next reel. The people, you, the audience, paying attention to what I'm saying,

you're not that strong, you're not that muscular, and you need help. And I'm trying to give you the most bang for your buck without asking you to commit to a competitor's lifestyle. Bodybuilding workouts are typically four to six day splits. They last about two hours each. The diet is extremely incompatible with modern food choices. You can't eat out that much. You have to either keep fat really low or carbs really low. I think low fat has always been, I don't actually, I don't know.

Either have to keep carbs really low or fat really low, or you have to watch for certain foods. It's a very restrictive diet because they tend to want to stay leaner than the, they tend to want to stay on the lean side year round. And that's not what most people need to do. If you're out of shape and sitting on your ass,

or you've been doing a workout that it hasn't produced anything beyond the first month you went in the weight room, then you know, you're doing a handful of lifts and focusing on strength is gonna get you stronger, more muscular, and even more flexible. You know, something as simple as holding the bar in your back for a low bar squat

stretches out your shoulders. You know, squatting below parallel stretches out your hips. And that works for a while. Obviously, if you become a power lifter or a competitive bodybuilder, all that shit gets tight. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about you, this person who's not doing anything or who's fucking around in the gym,

not going anywhere. You're gonna get a lot, you're gonna improve all these things with barbell training for at least a year or two. And then again, you have to decide what you wanna do from there. That's what being a year or two. And then again, you have to decide what you want to do from there. You know, that's what being a intermediate or an advanced lifter means. You're now either specializing and strength to continue improving, or you're changing your lifting workout to accommodate your lifestyle.

And that's an important distinction between that and somebody who is, whose entire life revolves around competition. For most of you, your entire life does not revolve around competition. You know, you want to look better, you want to feel better, you want to function for whatever it is in your life. That's what you're trying to do. So do you need to work your lateral delts? Well, I don't know if you have a body weight press and you know, you want wanna add a couple percentage points to your shoulders, to the size of your shoulders, by all means, start doing some hypertrophy stuff.

There's nothing wrong with that. But if you're coming in and you're pressing the empty barbell the first day, you're gonna get a lot more done running that press up. Because remember, and I gotta say this over and over again, because people kinda miss this, the shoulder flexes, it extends and it rotates. And all the deltoid heads have their role in that. Obviously in extension it's mostly your posterior deltoid, you know your lateral and your anterior

are stretching when you're doing a chin up or pull down. So your posterior is doing most of that. And you're going to external rotation. You might get a little bit of lateral, but when you're pressing overhead, you're working flexion, rotation, and then eventually you're elevating, bringing the traps into it too. And if you do it with a narrow enough grip,

you get a nice long range of motion. So if you are somebody who's never trained a strict press and you're in a pageant that judges you based on the appearance of your lateral deltoids, it might serve you well to do some presses and get the press up and get your chin ups up if you're not doing those, you know, but the problem that I run into is when the average Joe or Jane comes to me and says, I want to build muscle.

And then I send a program out and says, well, where's the lateral raises? Where's the tricep exercises? Where's the arm exercises? Well, you don't need them. It's just going to add more time to your workout. It's going to make you more tired and you're just not going to go as far at this stage. You know, there's a neuromuscular benefit to getting good at lifting heavy compounds that you're losing out on when you do isolation

work. Likewise, there are body awareness and stability benefits to doing isolation exercises. You are going to improve the stability of that joint by isolating it when the time is appropriate. You're also going to build a better mind muscle connection when the time is appropriate, because think about it, nothing is pure isolation. So if you're doing, let's say, a dumbbell curl standing, you have to have good back control and good hip control so that you're not throwing your hips and back into the lift, or within reason, right?

Because some movement's gonna happen when it gets heavy. But if you have a weak back, when you lower the barbell or the dumbbell, it's gonna pull you forward, because you don't know how to anchor your back well yet. If you've squatted and deadlifted, you get used to using your spinal erectors to maintain your posture so a lot of these exercises assume good posture too. Obviously you can do things on machines, but it's the same thing, right? If you have poor control over your shoulder

you're not going to do very good in a machine either because if your shoulder is not locked in place you're not going to isolate the elbow movement as well. And you know, the list goes on. So if you're wanting to build muscle mass, yes, you need to lift weights. But you know, if you're not very strong or you've been kind of spinning your wheels for many years doing, you know, 15 exercises per workout and not really focused on adding weight and your numbers aren't that impressive. And when I say impressive, like the guy telling you to do 50 exercises, it's probably not productive for him to squat because he's probably squatting five or 600 pounds

and one set's gonna beat the shit out of him. And it's mostly gonna beat up his hips. So he's gonna need to leg press to his quads more. You don't have that problem. You're squatting 135 as a male. You're squatting 65 as a female. Getting're squatting 65 as a female, you know. Getting the squat up is going to grow all your leg muscles for a pretty long period of time before you need to consider doing any bodybuilding work. And trust me, by the time you've gained most of

the muscle that you're going to gain from squatting and deadlifting and pressing and bench pressing, you're probably going to be pretty satisfied with your physique. And if you're not, guess what? You're still not going to need that many exercises to plug up the holes. There's a progression that goes on. You know, we say that once somebody is no longer a novice and they move into intermediate, the need for assistance exercises comes in because you identify weak points in these big movements, right? So like squat, you might find that the bar is rolling up the back, you know,

you're rounding your upper back. Right. And then you might maybe do some front squats to reduce the range of motion around the hip, challenge the quad quadriceps more and force you to hold your back into extension. Otherwise you're going to drop the bar. Right. Um, and you know, this depends on body dimensions too. Different body dimensions are going to run in different problems. So the example I just gave, I think of the person who has a short torso and long legs, that person is going to hinge quite a bit at the bottom of squat, you're going to have a very horizontal back angle and they're going to go far cause there's lots of muscles attached to the hip. So, you know, Ed Cohen was pretty hinged over when he used to squat and, uh, you know, he's considered the greatest power lifter of all time.

Even, you know, there's been higher totals since his day, but, you know, Eddie's the GOAT, greatest power lifter of all time. And, uh, you know, he was quite hinged over. Um, I haven't talked to him about, you know, any problems that he ran into early in his training, but I'm giving an example, right? You can lift quite a bit of weight in a hinge heavy squat, right? Some of the problems I've seen, and some of you listening may have ran into these. When you're hinged over because you have a short torso and long legs, when the weight gets heavy, the upper back tends to round and the bar tends to roll up the back.

Sometimes onto the neck, it can turn into a dangerous situation, which is why you should be using safeties if you're not already doing that. I've addressed this by running up front squats, but sometimes these people are bent over on front squats, so I know some of you are thinking that. Well, I have a transformer bar. I have a transformer bar here at my gym. It's made by Kabuki. I think Rogue sells it exclusively now. Last time I checked Kabuki store shut down. So it's a Rogue Kabuki transformer bar. And it has a cam on the side to rotate

the sleeve of the bar either further behind you or further in front of you. Now the setting that is furthest in front of you is the goblet squat. So it places the sleeves way in front of you. You can also adjust the sleeves vertically. So you can hold, you can have the sleeves set lower or higher to make it difficult that way. So I have a guy here, I have a gentleman here at my gym with this body type, who I had run up this variant of the squat on the transformer bar. I put it to goblet and I set the sleeves all the way down vertically. His squat looked like a more normal squat.

He was no longer super bent over. And what we saw was his quads grew and his deadlift went up 35 pounds. His squat also went up, but his deadlift went up 35 pounds because his back got stronger. His quads got stronger. You know, the quads help you get the bar off the floor on a, on a deadlift went up 35 pounds because his back got stronger, his quads got stronger. You know, the quads help you get the bar off the floor on a deadlift. So I started using this approach with other people that are built similarly and I saw similar results. The bar roll on the heavy squats, low bar squats with a straight bar, the heavy squats,

it stopped happening. The deadlift got stronger and the thoracic flex it stopped happening. The deadlift got stronger and the thoracic flexion stopped happening. So the theory is that that happens because the quads get tired, which makes sense. The theory is that that happens because the quads aren't strong enough to finish the lift. So the thoracic spine rounds

to get the bar closer to the hip and muscle it up that way. It's not efficient, it's a power leak, it's an injury risk. So this is one way to address it, right? Same thing on a bench press. I've had some of my female lifters do wide grip bench press because they don't have the big peck musculature that most men have. And that addresses the weakness at the bottom.

Likewise, I've had some people who get stuck in the middle. We do close grip bench press. For most men, close grip bench press tends to help because most men fail in the middle. So, you know, the list goes on. You know, there's these weaknesses that show up once you've been running up these lifts and adding weight frequently,

and you can no longer add weight because the limiting factor might be one muscle or another or a group of muscles, right? And then you can address those and that's basically what most of your early intermediate training looks like for a while. And then it all kind of comes full circle if you stick around and become advanced. In the end, you no longer have weak points, you're settled into your technique, everything's reproducible, and you're just basically now focusing on the main lifts, things become specific again. So it's like I said, it comes full circle. So, you know, there is such a thing as weak points. I just find that most people that

have never lifted haven't identified them yet. And then people that have lifted or been in a weight room haven't trained long enough to identify them. You know, like I was one of these people myself that thought, Hey, my biceps are my weak point, right? And it turns out my grip was a weak point, but I discovered that much later. Once I got my grip stronger, my curls got stronger. My chin's got stronger. All my back work got stronger.

My biceps grew. That's probably not the best example, but a better example would be, I used to say, oh, my lateral delts are flat, you know, and I would do all these side raises, all types of lateral raises, lying lateral raises, standing lateral raises, cable lateral raises. And I'd get, you know, good anterior deltoid development from all the benching I did, good posterior deltoid development from all the chin ups I did. But then if you viewed my arm from the side, there was no evidence that I had any work on my shoulders. Viewed from the front and back,

good stuff. Viewed from the side, nothing. Then I ran up my press and that pretty much took care of that. I'm sure if I did some sort of bodybuilding protocol, I'd see a percent growth in my building protocol, I'd see, you know, a percent growth in my deltoid head. If I wanted to train it in isolation, you know, to the extent that you can, because you can't really train anything in pure isolation. But you know what I mean? If I went to single joint work that targets that muscle more than the rest, you know, I'd probably see some growth because you're lifting weights and you're adding to it. The key difference there is you can't add to it for very long, but

you know, I just try to hammer that point home, right? When you come into a gym and your goals are you want to look better than you did and you want to feel better than you did and you want to function better than you did, you know, these are your basics, you know, these are your basic movements that you can do and that will improve everything. However, if you're, let's say somebody who could just walk in the gym and deadlift four or 500 pounds or squat three, 400 pounds or bench 315, press 200,

sure, you probably don't need to focus on strength. It might take you some time to get those numbers up. And in that time, you know, same thing. If you're getting strong, slow, you're gaining muscle slow, right? So if your goal is pageantry, it might make sense to work on single joint exercises that you can do for lots of volume

and see if you can bring up, get some muscle growth that way, right? Anytime you lift weights and progress, you get muscle growth. The problem is when you're performing single joint exercises, you can't progress them for as long or as fast as you can a compound.

So that's the trade off there. Even though you may be recruiting a smaller percentage of muscle fibers in your lateral deltoid to do a press, you're adding weight to the press much more frequently and much longer. So that ratio probably results in more overall force production at that muscle, even though it's a smaller percentage, and more muscle growth for a period of time. But if you're pretty damn strong and muscular, sure, learn how

to do these lifts correctly, because I'm sure you should still include them for longevity, but maybe you don't need to do, maybe you don't need to focus all your time there, but you are the minority. Most of you listening are not in that camp. You can afford to get stronger. You can afford to gain more muscle mass and you can afford to hold on to some extra body weight if you're an underweight male for a period of time. If you're a female, same thing. If you're a female, much of this applies. The crazy weight gains don't seem to make as much of a difference in women, has been my experience.

Obviously there's weight classes, so larger women tend to do better, but most women don't gain weight in the same place as men do, and I think that plays a role in it. We tend to get huge bellies, which tends to help on some of these lifts. Women tend to put it in their lower body. So I think that's part of the reason, you know, there's hormonal differences. I mean, that's a whole episode in and of its own, but the big weight gains really apply to the males. You know, a bigger you is always a stronger you,

right? But you know, if you're a female, the same thing applies, right? You can always get stronger. When women come to me, they typically want nicer lower bodies. They want, you know, glutes have been big for the last 10 years, so I get questions about how do I get my ass bigger, you know? And if you haven't been squatting below parallel, which most people haven't, let's be real, if you haven't been in a competitive lifting world

or in this bubble that I'm a part of, you're probably squatting all fucked up and not really engaging all the muscles that you need to be engaging. So just simply learning the squat, getting it up, it's gonna grow your ass along with all the other muscles of your body. If you're dead lifting that works your hip extensors,

which includes your ass, that's gonna grow. And if you do it long enough and you're still not satisfied and it's taking you longer and longer to get stronger, then sure, do a hip thrust. Do some sort of glute isolation machine or something like that but for most of you that aren't really squatting or squatting fucked up you're going to get that glute growth that lower body development from squatting and deadlifting

it's just it's going to happen because you're novice and those muscles are going to grow quickly as a result of that and the same same thing applies to the upper body. If you want more lateral delt development or nicer looking arms, then you do your chin ups. You know, you do your chin ups, you do your presses. The net result is, yeah, you're going to look, you're going to look more fit, I guess, as they say, more muscular, more athletic. You know, you all have different words for the same thing. You're going to look like you do something, right? Like you're physically capable of doing something. You're going to look strong for sure. And then you're going to feel better. You're going to function better. You know, I can't tell you how many people, especially women and older people, tell me, oh, I love I can put stuff over my head

in the overhead compartment. When I'm on an airplane, you know, it doesn't hurt to stand up anymore. You know, I can pick things up just fine fine and I haven't tweaked my back in months, you know, so those benefits are endless and that's that's why we do this, it's why we do these exercises, it's why we do them in the way we do them and that's why we prioritize strength because for most of you listening you're not really strong enough, you haven't really gotten those benefits, you know, if you're already strong then it's just a matter if you want to get stronger or not, you know, like some of us like me, I wanna keep going.

Other people don't give a fuck. It just, it really depends. I was talking to somebody the other day and a colleague of mine said, when you're marketing services, don't sell a process. Sell an experience, sell a result. That's typically what people wanna know. What can this do for you?

And I'm trying to be more clear about that because I think those of you listening, you want to know, why is this relevant to me? What is this going to do for me? Right? And yeah, I was talking to a different colleague about this who trains at a commercial gym. And I was discussing how, if you're going to sell strong, the population that cares more about being strong

than anybody else is an older population because it's one area where lifters, fitness gurus, academics, and doctors, and health care professionals can all agree as you get older you're going to get weaker and this accelerates as you get into your 60s and 70s right In your 50s things start hurting. So, you know, it's helpful for that. So if you're, you know, so it's invaluable advice that an older person should get stronger.

How that is done is where people start to argue. I still argue that these compounds are very useful for old people, but if you talk to somebody who's 80 years old, they'll tell you if they're weak, it's hard to get off the fucking toilet. You know, a lot of People even in their 40s 50s and 60s avoid bending over They don't know how to use their hips correctly because they're back up their back hurts all the time their neck hurts You know all these spinal problems, right?

So yeah learning how to deadlift a barbell is more ergonomic than all the shit you have to pick up in your life, right? So if you can pick up a barbell correctly load it with with a bunch of weight, then something much lighter and more awkward is less likely to fuck you up. And we've talked about the overhead compartment in the airplane, you know, it's the most classic example of why overhead strength is important than pulling things towards you, carrying things, you know?

I think curls become useful later on. So that's the deal, you know? Lifting weights doesn't mean competing in a sport that requires you to lift weights or in a beauty pageant that requires you to lift weights. It does not mean that. It can if you're doing those things. But if you're one of these people that doesn't want to go to the extreme with this, but wants benefits from it, what the weight room can do for you is it can make you a more functional human being. You're going to look better than

you did, you're going to function better than you did, and you're going to feel better than you did up to a point. Right? Once you reach that point where it starts to become demanding on your lifestyle, now you have to decide you want lifting to accommodate your lifestyle, or do you want your lifestyle to accommodate lifting? And if you can answer that question, it's going to make your time in the weight room a lot less fucking miserable.

Like you know, I go in here, I do my lifts, I have to deal with fear, anxiety, fatigue, you know, mis-lifts that piss me off, you know, all sorts of shit. But I love it. I love the process. I love pursuing that next level. You know, not enough to try and compete with other people on a platform. That's never been why I do this, but I love the process of trying to troubleshoot my own body to see how much further I can go.

And I love how my body looks at the end of it. You know, gaining a bunch of weight, getting strong, losing a bunch of weight, seeing where I'm at now, and I'm leaner to have your body weight than I was before. I mean, all that stuff has fascinated me up to this point. I'm getting closer to a point where I think I need lifting to accommodate my lifestyle because I feel like that's slowly starting to change. And I don't know, you know, I just don't know that I have the drive to, you know, chase any more numbers and, you know, I'm, I think I could pull 600 in my lifetime.

I'll probably keep inching towards that, but other than that, I just, I don't, I'm starting to kind of realize that, you know, I'm at a point of diminishing returns and I don't because I don't compete, you know, what's the value, but then at the same time, I know I'm going to keep going in the weight room. So if I may accidentally get stronger through the process of I'm showing up, I'm trying to do something and I'm trying to go somewhere. I've said it before on this show, maintenance is bullshit. So I think I've hammered this point to high hell. I'll say it one more time. If you have never lifted before, you're new to this, you just started and somehow you're on my show. Your five basic barbell lifts done every workout, every

other workout with a few pounds added each time is going to build quite a bit of muscle is going to get you quite stronger and you're going to feel a lot better. You shouldn't really get hurt that much either. Um, once you've done that for anywhere from 6 to 24 months, it depends on your age and your situation, but typically a good linear progression will run out 3 to 6 months. For most people, older people are probably going to be shorter,

but for most, 6 months. You might make steady progress for about 18 to 24 months. Once you reach that point where now you're having to make lifestyle changes to keep going, you have to decide. Do you want your lifestyle to accommodate lifting or lifting to accommodate your lifestyle? And once you answer that question, then you know where to go from there. Otherwise, for those of you who've been doing it, you know, keep doing it. If you've run into some frustrations in the process process and some of my ramblings today are helping you get some direction to reevaluate where you're at, you know,

do that and figure out, you know, you want to fuck around in the gym because you have more important things to do, but you still want to lift weights. Or do you want to stop fucking around outside the gym so that you can go further and get past this plateau? You know, if any of you, regardless of your situation, are stuck and need some guidance for a period of time, you know, I'm happy to coach you, whether you're local to Phoenix or you need to do it online, you know, you can go to my website and find information for that, which I always plug at the end of the

show and now at the beginning too, because apparently I don't do that enough. I think I've yammered enough, so I'll just close out here and think next time I'll have a guest. I'm going to probably do at least one monologue every month or every other month because I only do a show every other week. So leave comments. I do read them and try to pick my direction based upon them. But yeah, let's close out. Thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com where I have an online coaching store. And you could hire me for strength coaching, nutrition coaching, or combo coaching, or if you just want to consult and are doing it yourself and just need to pick my brain and kind of find your

blind spots and get a better sense of direction. We have that option as well. If you're local to Metro Phoenix, I am just between 32nd Street and 40th Street and Broadway, just south of Sky Harbor Airport at Weights and Plates Gym. We are now offering group training in addition to private training, which we've always offered. I'm rolling out some new offerings this year. Did I say that word enough? If you're local and you're interested, you could give me a call. The number is 480-590-4933. The website is weightsandplatesgym.com,

separate from our main page. If you like what you heard today or in previous episodes and you are watching on YouTube, please click or smash that subscribe button. One of these days I'll get this right. Likewise on Rumble, because we are now in Rumble, so hit that subscribe button. And you can find me on Instagram where I post most of my reels at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. The gyms as weights, double

underscore and double underscore plates until the fucker who took the single underscore disappears. That is still the handle for that page. Yeah, so keep tuning in and we'll have more for you here shortly.