Weights and Plates Podcast - #96 - The Secret To Looking Like You Lift

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Starting Strength Coach Robert Santana talks about how everyone looks different when they train, why that is, why squatting, deadlifting, bench press will help you gain long-term strength, and how to evaluate coaches and trainers. 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

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host. It has been some time since I've had an episode, in part because I've been rearranging my studio here. As you can see, I now have a backdrop for those of you watching on YouTube. I worked on improving the lighting. So if it's not perfect today,

it's gonna get better from episode to episode. But basically I've just been trying to clean up the look of this show so that we can continue pumping out new episodes and make them visually appealing. So let's move on to what we wanna talk about today. So if you know, in the last month that I've had to think about what my next episode is going to be about thinking about some things, things I want to talk about some guests that I'm going to bring on. So we're going to have some more guests in the weeks to come.

The next episode will most likely be a guest. But today I really want to talk about aesthetics and looking like you train. You know, it's something me and Trent talked about a lot when he was my co-host on the show. And, you know, as I put out more and more content and read through more and more hater comments, as well as, I guess, liker comments, whatever the opposite of hater is,

supporters, you know, comments from supporters, comments from the haters, it just gets me thinking about this concept of looking like you train. You know, how do we define that? And and what I come up with is for most people, that is defined as being very muscular, very lean and very vascular. Now, many of you listening may not subscribe to that definition, but a lot of the mainstream does.

And as I've talked about many times on this show and for our new listeners, I'll hit on this again. I date a lot of this back to... You could go back to 70s bodybuilding with Arnold and then what followed in the 80s with Stallone and some of these other action heroes that walked around with visible abs, although they were a lot more muscular than the action heroes you see today, the idea of low body fat, kinda, I would kinda put that there. So when you go back into the 1970s, the 1960s,

and you look at shirtless actors in various movies, you think of a couple that come to mind would be Sean Connery and the James Bond movies. You know, he was built, he was a bodybuilder in the 50s, but he didn't walk around with chiseled abs and a bunch of veins, but he was built, he was fairly muscular, slender, not super big, but not skinny, but he had a flat stomach,

he didn't walk around with visible abs. They also allowed body hair back then, which is falling out of favor, but that's like a whole nother topic that I don't care to get into. Then the 70s Clint Eastwood, he was in pretty good shape. He was known to exercise and lift, and he didn't walk around with visible abs and vascularity.

But then after Arnold popularized bodybuilding, that became the de facto look of the 80s and early 90s, big jacked, ripped guys. And you kinda saw similar things in WWF, which is now WWE, but not quite to that extreme. A lot of the guys did not have visible abs, but were just very big and muscular. And then in the late 1990s,

a movie called Fight Club came out and Brad Pitt was a star of that movie. I'd probably peg him at 155 to 165 pounds, probably 5 to 7% body fat, but he probably is pretty close to that lean naturally based on how you see him out in the world. I don't think that he had to lose a ton of body weight or body fat to look that way. Another movie from that era with another actor from Fight Club, Edward Norton, he was the star of the movie. Brad Pitt was the co-star. Edward Norton starred in another movie

called American History X, where he was also jacked, lean, and somewhere between 165 and 175 pounds. And from that point forward, you started seeing that look in fitness magazines of the early 2000s. And it seems that since then, and since the rise of social media, that look is everywhere. It's much more magnified. Sometimes it's the result of drug use. And other times guys just look like that. Which brings me to the broader point of this episode, is every single human being that trains and makes

progress in the weight room going to achieve the same body composition results. And if you've been a regular listener of this show you know the answer to that is no. However many consumers of mainstream fitness content because now it's no longer in magazines or forums like back in my day I don't want to fucking date myself here, but now everything is on social media and YouTube and We now have This look like you lift term that is assigned to people and When you think about it objectively as bullshit,

because a lot of people lift, and a lot of people look different. Some guys have high body fat and lift. You'll see guys that are like 200 to 300 pounds that lift weights that are very strong. And then you have guys that have that more traditional mesomorph look that we're talking about, where they are naturally more defined.

Their muscles, quote unquote, stick out more, they pop out more, and there's reasons for that that I'll get into. And they tend to have thin skin, elastic skin that kind of sticks to the muscle, makes them look more fuller, more muscular. And then you have guys in between, that if you saw them on the street, you'd have no idea that they train, but they're pretty pretty damn strong and they were a lot more skinny when they first started

But you may not know that you see the end result you see a guy who's been training you've seen a guy who's been lifting since he was in high school and Who's still getting stronger? And he just looks like any other guy in the street except you can kind of tell that you know He's not scraggly and doesn't look emaciated but he just blends in with the crowd, right? So all of these guys lift weights but then they don't all look the same. However here's the problem. There is now this idea and it's not new, it's been around since I think lifting got popularized

in the 70s. There's this idea that lifting weights in and of itself, you are going to achieve a very specific look. And I wanna talk about the negative truth in that and where that's bullshit, right? Obviously, I think we've gotten to a point now where we know that no amount of weight lifting is gonna make us look like Arnold or Ronnie Coleman.

That's just not gonna happen. These guys are born that way, right? Any more than no amount of starving is gonna make a big bone female look very thin, right? There are just structural and genetic limitations to this. You know, that's why we always say individual results vary. No amount of stretching is gonna make me taller. I'm not gonna grow to six, eight.

Same way, I'm not gonna add a higher number of muscle fibers to my body. The number of muscle fibers you have are fixed. So that's one reason that some guys muscles, so that's one reason some people have muscles that look a certain way or grow bigger than other people. You have a certain number of muscle fibers and lifting weights can allow you to make those fibers bigger. That's what hypertrophy stands for, the enlargement of the muscle fibers you have. Hyperplasia would be when you add muscle fibers and that has not been observed in humans. So somebody who is born with more muscle fibers or develops into an adult human and has a given number of muscle fibers that's higher than somebody else, that guy's going to grow larger muscles most likely.

So that is reason number one. Reason number two, skin, right? If you have thick skin, that's going to hide what's underneath a lot more than if you have thin skin. Just think about that for a second. How elastic it is. If it sags more, you're going gonna look different than if it's pressed up tightly against the fat and muscle mass that's under it.

So these are things that I would call non-modifiable. You cannot train your way to thicker, more elastic skin. You can't train your way to adding more muscle fibers. What else is different? Angle at which those muscle fibers lie on the bones. That's called the angle of penation. So more penated muscle, it fans out. So it forms like a letter V or it looks like wings if you're kind of looking at an anatomy chart. More penated muscle tends to produce more force, tends to appear larger. Where the muscle inserts on the bone or joint can also determine the appearance of that muscle, right?

So if a muscle, if a bicep for instance, so you take my bicep, right? So if I flex, there's a gap between my bicep and my forearm. That is because my bicep attaches further up on the humerus. Now if somebody has a bicep that attaches closer to the elbow, or in some cases on the forearm, they're gonna have a much longer bicep that fills that gap. They will have no gap. So that will influence the way a muscle looks, right? So you have all these factors that are determined

by genetics and that will influence the appearance of your muscles, height, length of the bones too, you know? A longer bone is gonna influence the way a muscle looks on it, right? How a joint looks, so a knee or an elbow that's narrower, makes the muscles around it look larger. So the list goes on. There are many reasons that your muscles appear a certain way, and many of those reasons have nothing to do with your diet or your training program. However, people have this problem of thinking that lifting weights and following a diet, taking supplements or even maybe even taking steroids will allow them to achieve a physique

that may not be achievable. And then we have this stereotype of, well, looking like you train. Well, I like to use the word looks muscular. Some people look more muscular than others, regardless of what's being done in the gym. I know guys that I've met in the past that just look muscular and they don't go into the weight room.

They're lean, they have muscles that pop out, they are very vascular, and they don't do anything. Or guys that just do a little bit and look pumped up all the time. So, looking like you train is a misnomer. Unfortunately, in the fitness industry, and it's probably just out in the world too, there's this perception that if you look at somebody

and they look a certain way, that they are therefore knowledgeable on all subjects related to lifting weights, diet, health, et cetera, because they look muscular, when in fact, they could have just been born that way, or they could just be fucking around in the gym and be highly responsive to training. So how do you evaluate a trainer, right? Well, there's a few different ways to do that.

You could look at experience, what has this person done? Have you been a lifting coach of some sort, whether in strength sports or you're just like me and you're coaching normie people? So if someone's superficial features don't dictate their knowledge, skills, and experience, how the fuck are you supposed to evaluate people, right? A quick one when you're on the internet or YouTube or Instagram is, is this person a full-time actor slash entertainer or does this person actually own a gym and work with people?

That's a very good place to start. It doesn't tell you everything, but it tells you a lot because somebody who is entertaining for a living is not somebody who is coaching for a living. But unfortunately, we have a lot of full-time actors on the internet. Remember, when somebody makes a piece of content, like this right here, this podcast is a piece of content.

As you can see, it's been a few weeks since I made one. I'm not bragging about that, but I also happen to run a gym. I also happen to coach people. I also happen to coach people who struggle with lifting. I'm not coaching elite athletes. That's a whole whole other problem that we're going to go into. I coach regular people that are as old as I think the oldest person in my gym right now is 78. I've coached children. I've coached older adults who are pushing 80. I've coached injured people that were previously injured before coming here. People who've had surgeries. I've coached sick people, were previously injured before coming here. People who've had surgeries.

I've coached sick people, diabetics, people who've had stents put in, heart attacks, you name it. Basically, I coach people who have a difficult time with this that is very different than coaching someone who is elite. People who are elite, similar to the person we described earlier who's naturally muscular, they're born that way, you know? There's probably a level of skill. I'm not going to say there's no level of skill involved in coaching them, but the problems you're dealing with are very different. These people are likely to show improvements for a very long time to a very

high level that most people won't reach. The people coming in here to lift are people struggling to achieve what an elite person achieved when he was 10 years old. You know, I'm exaggerating, but you get my drift, right? The guy who comes in and struggles to squat over 200 is very different than the guy whose first day in the high school gym is squatting 405. And these people exist. These people exist. Let's not pretend they don't. So let's back up. Is the person you're following on Instagram or YouTube actively coaching people? Were they actively coaching people in person for a significant timeline and who are these people, right? So that's an important one because many

many many many coaches on the internet that are talking about these things have no practical experience with it. You know, they might be giving you programs online based on some theory that they read about or research papers that they're reading. That is not the same thing as evaluating a human being, figuring out what his needs are, and getting him from point A to point B. Writing a program and following a theory, handing it out and assuming the person is following it is similar to doing the same thing with a diet. We know where that leads. Most people don't fucking follow it. It's not followed as intended. If you can't find this person's gym on Google or hire this person for an in-person training session, then that's a tall-tail sign that you got somebody that's chattering away. The

same thing goes for academia. You have plenty of researchers who have never set foot in a weight room calling themselves muscle physiology experts. I've met these people before, and I was told, well, they don't have to actually lift to study this. And this feeds into the bigger problem. A lot of these research studies are not even

conducted by the person on the paper. People don't understand this, right? You got a guy who is, let's say, the lab director or the assistant lab director or the PI. Let's use the PI. The common word in research is primary investigator or PI. That's the person who typically has his name on the paper placed in the spot that makes him the lead investigator. Sometimes that's the last name, depending on the journal.

Sometimes it's the first name. I don't think it's ever in the middle because that would make it confusing if you have a bunch of authors. So I think it's either first name listed or last name listed. But this is the guy that gets all the credit. This is the guy that the mainstream media publications

will talk about in sight when they're talking about what the study supposedly found. However, this is not the guy who's coaching the lifters workout after workout. In fact, the guy who's coaching the lifters workout after workout may not be the same guy from the beginning of the study to the end of the study. So what a study typically looks like is you're recruiting people on a rolling recruitment schedule. So you're constantly recruiting, people are starting at different times. And let's say you start in the spring semester and you're doing a 12 week study. Typically the person coaching is going to be an undergraduate or a master

student. In some cases, at least in my experience doing it, nobody worked at a gym full-time coaching people year after year. Nobody had been through any type of apprenticeship program on coaching weightlifting. And yet these people, because their major was exercise science, that qualified them to supervise these sessions and quote unquote coach these people, right? But then the summer hits. People graduate, people go home to another state or to another town within the state,

depending on which college we're talking about. And the study has to continue. So now maybe that student's gone and now maybe the doctoral student, which would have been me, is coaching people through the summer, or maybe they'll get some other undergraduate in the summer to start helping, right?

So now you're switching out the trainers, you have different people training. So there's, there's this thing in research that they call, um, inter-rater reliability. And it's not something that is typically checked for in training studies is one coach that's evaluating the lifting and coaching the lifting as competent as the next one. In fact, they don't mention that different people are coaching these people in a lot of cases.

They might say that, oh, this person was coached by somebody who has a certification. Again, what does a certification require when you're trying to become a fitness coach or even a CSCS, certified strength and conditioning specialist, typically a written exam on a computer? There's no practical component to it.

Now, my starting strength coach credential requires two practical components to be passed. You have to demonstrate competency as a lifter. You have to demonstrate competency as a coach. So you are on a platform with about four other lifters, so it's usually a total of five. There's a platform coach who's already certified, who's been through what you're going through,

and actively coaches people. And that person's gonna watch you lift to make sure that you are lifting in the way described in the book, in the model, that you are conforming to the model described in the book. And then he's gonna watch you coach another lifter. So I'll lift, somebody will coach me.

Then they'll lift, somebody will coach them. And you'll go through a rotation. So my coaching will be evaluated. Now I may not be able to get somebody into a perfect squat, deadlift press, bench press, or power clean in one day, but what they wanna see is that I am identifying problems, evaluating those problems,

and correcting those problems in real time to where each set for that lifter gets better than the last one. If I demonstrate that, I pass what's called the platform exam. And then from there, you have to schedule an oral exam where you're peppered with questions, much like you would be in grad school doing a thesis or dissertation. Sometimes, I don't know exactly how the system works now. When I did it, there was a written exam. Then they moved to an oral board and I heard that if there's clarification needed from the oral board, then written responses will be submitted.

So this is a much more rigorous process to become a starting strength coach versus a CSCS or certified personal trainer. And I can't highlight that enough because just think about it on its face, right? If you hire somebody with a training certificate, all that tells you is that that person can read, memorize, possibly comprehend and pass a written exam. It doesn't tell you if this person can apply it, carry it forward and actually train somebody

to improve at any given metric, whether it be strength, endurance, flexibility, whatever the certification's for, because there's a lot of them for different physical attributes. There's yoga instructors that are certified. There's personal trainers from different agencies. There's certified strength conditioning coach, the CSCS that I mentioned earlier. None of them have a practical component, certainly not one as rigorous as what I just described.

So back to the research studies I mentioned, in many cases these undergraduate students or master's students may not have certifications at all and then they're supervising these studies. And as a result what happens is the author of the paper who coached nobody is now viewed as an expert and then his protocol is being promoted as a protocol that's superior for either strength or hypertrophy. Those are typically the two things people are interested in when they want to lift weights. So now you have all these protocols that are getting out there. In many cases, you can't evaluate who was coaching, right? You're evaluating

a written account of what happened. That is one of the things about research that you should never forget. A research paper is a written account of what happened in the study. That doesn't mean that it reflects exactly what happened in the study. There are things that end up getting modified during the publication process. There are things that end up not making it in because people have things at stake, like graduation for instance, right? People start sweeping things under the rug because they don't want to fail.

And then you might have your buddy that's doing your peer review or your nemesis that's doing your peer review. And that will determine whether something gets published or not. So I implore you to go back to my episode with Dr. Steph Bradford to listen to some of the pros and cons of academic research.

But at the end of the day, as a researcher and expert on coaching, I'm going to say probably not and maybe not 100% of the time. Some of these guys train, some of these guys have coached people, but evaluating them on their CV or the number of research papers they've published, it's not a good way to determine if somebody's a good coach. We've talked about internet gurus. We've talked about certified trainers, and we've talked about academics. Right? Now, what about athletes or competitors?

Is a contest bodybuilder who places in the top five necessarily going to be a good coach? Top five in the world, so Mr. Olympia? Not necessarily. All that tells you is that this person's elite. This person has the raw materials to get to the top five, is likable by the judges, because remember this is subjective. And I'm not saying this as somebody who's competed,

but I'm repeating what other bodybuilders have said, that there is a level of subjectivity there. If you are likable, you have better chances of winning. I think I saw a video with the great Tom Platts talking about Arnold versus Mike Menser. And he just talked about how, you know, Mike Menser's downfall was that he was, he thought everything was objective.

And a lot of things are subjective, you know, and I think what he was getting at was Arnold's charisma allowed him to win in 1980, even though Menser probably looked more muscular. So, you know, I've seen that whole beef play out on the internet. I don't have a dog in that fight. I'm not a contest bodybuilder. Um, I like Menser's content.

I found Arnold entertaining when I was younger. So, you know, I don't really care, but, um, that's just an example, right? Um, there are factors, different factors there that, uh, they're evaluated on. So being a good competitor doesn't make you a good coach necessarily. Michael Jordan's a good example of this. I think when he was the general manager of the Wizards, there was complaints about his ability to manage and management and coaching is kind of similar.

There's other examples of this in pro sports. Typically the best athlete is not the best coach. The best competitor in this case in bodybuilding is not the best coach, the best competitor in this case in bodybuilding is not the best coach because this person leapfrog through many milestones that most people are going to struggle with and they tend to get frustrated because they don't understand why it's hard for you because it wasn't hard for them. They just kind of, you know, it's not, it's not heavy, you know, or, or listen, that's

not hard. You know, you just, just do your curls and your biceps will grow, you know, if you're talking about bodybuilding. In strength sports, it's a similar thing. All these dumbasses on social media will sit there and tell me, oh, you don't know what you're talking about because you're squatting as much as a 15-year-old

or who are you to say anything about the deadlift? You're weak. What entitles you to say anything about the deadlift? You know, you're weak. What entitles you to an opinion? You're so fucking weak. And I have to remind them that the 97% of people disagree because, and I'm being generous because it's probably more like 99, most people aren't casually deadlifting 505 for five.

Now I acknowledge it's not super strong for powerlifting or strength sports, of course, because there are,, you know, the world record in strongmans, 1100. And I think in powerlifting, it's, you got thousand pound deadlifters. I don't know if anybody's done it conventional yet, but you have, you know, certainly deadlifters over 900, you know, I've, I know a thousand has been pulled with the inside grip, but, uh, we certainly have deadlifts over 900, so I acknowledge that. You know, my mid to high 500s 1RM that I'm probably going to produce this month is not heavy in terms of a strength sport, strongman or powerlifting, where the deadlift is a competition

lift. But, if you go to commercial gyms and you just kind of look around, most people aren't deadlifting, and the people that are deadlifting, you're lucky to see more than 315 most of the time, if that. You see a lot of 185s, 225s, 275s maybe, and you'll see some 315s. Occasionally you'll see 400 plus, but you're not walking around seeing guys do 500 plus for a set of five. You just don't see that at most commercial gyms where most people lift weights, where the general public lifts weights. So that's problem number one. You got these bubbles, right?

These people that tend to be good at this, tend to be gifted at this, or have just drugged their way through progress. I remember meeting a guy once and said, oh, I followed a linear progression. Then I did Texas Method. Then I stopped making linear progress, so I just got on steroids because I wanted more linear progress. And I did Texas Method. Then I stopped making linear progress, so I just got on steroids

because I wanted more linear progress. And you know, I don't know what happened to him after that. He got stronger and stronger. He was impressive at the time, but I'm sure there's other guys that keep taking that logic further, right? So every time they run into a problem, it's a new drug, a new compound, a new dose, right?

That's a different skill than having to figure out how to apply the stress recovery adaptation cycle, right? Versus myself, I've been doing this, what, 13 years? I don't think I'm the best coach. I'm certainly not the best lifter, but I've had to troubleshoot a lot of shit. When I first found this material, I was 28 years old right before my 29th birthday. Yeah, this was 2013. And my deadlift was 315. My squat was 315. It was deep enough. I got a video, it's on Facebook.

Wasn't pretty in terms of technique, but you know, it was 315. It was what a passing to me. My bench at the time was 215 for a set of five, and I compressed 135 overhead while doing 10 to 15 chin-ups at a body weight of 167. So this was my baseline going in and this was just for me fucking off in the gym for 11 years

before that. And fast forward now it's been 12 years my deadlift I just pulled 540. Hopefully that'll keep going higher but that's you know it's not a max per se but we're working but I'm peaking right now working towards one. So this is gonna be somewhere around 585 plus or minus, right? Worst case 550, 560, if I just can't seem to unlock it and my patience runs thin, but it's gonna be in the mid to high 500s, right?

So I've put over 200 pounds on my deadlift since then. And that's very different than a novice whose first deadlift is 135 to 185, putting 200 pounds on his deadlift. I put 200 pounds on a 315 pound deadlift over the course of 12 years, and that was hard. And I had to figure things out. I had to figure out how to recover.

I had to figure out how to keep adding. Then recently, I've had to figure out how to peak the damn lifts. You know, this is where a powerlifting coach could be useful because now when you start trying to run up to a max, now you're dabbling in the world of sport. And I think that getting ready for a meet,

that's something that's a little more sport specific, that's different than training, right? So I talked to powerl lifters and power lifting coaches when I'm trying to figure that type of thing out, right? But in terms of the training and the technical execution of the lifts, typically somebody who struggled and sucked and got to a reasonable place is gonna have a lot more to offer than somebody who just improved.

Like my brother, for instance, good example, my stepbrother that I've talked about a lot on this show. Guy's just muscular, you know? He was 100% Polish, had all the genetics for bodybuilding, and no matter what he did, he would blow up. Now when I had him train with barbells, he got bigger much faster than he bitched that he was too big, which,

oh, I'll never understand that, but they don't know what they got, right? But no matter what he did, he would fill out because he was already filled out to begin with. He could not explain to me how to train myself. When I did what he did, nothing worked, right? When I've had people train these five lifts at a few pounds each time, and I say people, I say novices, early intermediates, they tend

to gain quite a bit of muscle. And then it tends to slow down and then weaknesses tend to pop up. And then you address those weaknesses and training starts to take shape in a direction that the client wants to go. Then things become less predictable, more individual, and you troubleshoot, you troubleshoot, you troubleshoot, you build this library in your brain of things you've had to do for different people, and then you can apply that to new people,

and you repeat that process hundreds and thousands of times, and you figure it out. Same thing with the technical aspect. You get all sorts of people that walk in and move all sorts of different ways, are built all sorts of different ways, and have a variety of different ailments or problems that make lifting harder.

And then you try to achieve positions and then you modify their movements and their positions to get as close to the model of what we would consider good technique on these lifts. So that comes with years and hours of experience with lots of different people. And if you're running a gym, you get that, right? So that's how I evaluate somebody.

What were your struggles and what hard cases have you dealt with? Do you work with people who are below average and can you get them to average or slightly above? You know, there's some good questions to ask and then look for examples, right? Oftentimes the model of most commercial gyms and most social media influencers is you take the outlier,

the person who generally looks good but was out of shape, and then you work with them and they made linear progress, did phenomenal, and then you highlight the before and after and you say, hey, you're gonna do that too. You know, that is the scam that never dies, you know, it never dies. Supplement companies do it, influencers do it, commercial gyms do it. The plastic surgery industry does it, you know, even plastic surgery has results that

vary because you're dealing with lots of different humans. There are things that are similar across all of us and then there are things that are very different. So we've talked about the differences, we spent a lot of time talking about the differences, but what's similar, right? Well, here's some of the things that I've seen when I've trained lots of different people.

Typically when somebody starts squatting and they start adding weight to the squat, their thighs will grow, their ass will grow from where it started, right? So if you have somebody who has really skinny legs and they start squatting, their legs become less skinny. And sure, some people can only grow so much from a squat and might need to address those weaknesses in other ways. I have guys who have to hinge over quite a bit. They're very bent over and horizontal when they squat. And their legs grow in the beginning from baseline,

but later on they have to front squat or use a transformer bar to put more of the stress into the knees and grow the thigh muscles more, if that's what their goal is. It also helps with their regular squat because making the quads stronger will help bring the squat up So, you know, these are things you address later on

But what we're talking about here is somebody who is a novice to barbell training is not genetically gifted and has a hard time building Muscle this person is gonna grow bigger thigh muscles bigger ass muscles from squatting in his first year of training Possibly into the second too and this may continue for a while. We don't really know where it ends. We know where it starts though. You start squatting, your lower body gets bigger. You start deadlifting, traps tend to get bigger, shoulders tend to get bigger,

and that's regardless of how the person's built. You tend to see bigger traps, bigger shoulders, bigger backs. Now again, bigger than where that person started out. You're not gonna take a guy who's a hard gainer and skinny and make him look like a heavyweight. I mean, look at boxing, for instance, or fighting sports, these different weight classes, right? These guys all have different amounts of muscle mass.

You're not gonna take the light weight and have him look like the heavyweight through training. Unlikely to happen, right? Because in order for him to be that light and still be able to hit hard and fight hard, he must be naturally that light and be able to eat a decent amount of food. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to fight.

Now, there's arguments to be made that these guys are too light sometimes, sure. But if the lightweight can get as big as the heavyweight, it would have happened at some point. And typically it doesn't. These guys stay in their weight classes. That's where they're the most competitive. And Jesse Vesna and I spoke about this a few episodes ago.

Sometimes these guys are just lean and light because that's where they're the most competitive and gaining a bunch of weight isn't gonna result in a better performance that will allow them to win at the heavier weight classes, applies in any weight class sport. So keep that in mind, right? So again, there are genetic differences here,

but my point is that when you have somebody who is unathletic, has a hard time building muscle, and tends to be on the small side, squatting's gonna make the lower body grow. Deadlifting's also gonna make the lower body grow. It's gonna make the hamstrings bigger, but the main thing you see when somebody starts deadlifting is

their back gets thicker, their traps get bigger, and their shoulders start to get wider from the growth in the lats. That tends to happen over and over and over again when you push up the deadlift. How much? Are they gonna look like Ronnie Coleman? No. Are they gonna look like some jacked fitness model, you know, in men's health? They may not look like that either. But time and time again, they're going to have bigger traps, broader shoulders, and a thicker back, along with more developed hamstrings from getting their deadlift

up. And you'll see that continue to happen for a period of time. When they start pressing, their delts grow. And you will typically see, yes, the lateral delt will grow. The bodybuilders will tell you that it won't. And you will typically see yes, the lateral delt will grow. The bodybuilders will tell you that it won't, but it will get bigger than it used to be. I have a long lateral delt. Many athletes actually have long muscle. Bodybuilders have short muscle, hence why it pops out more. I've seen it time and time again. When people start training the overhead barbell press, their lateral delts tend to fill out. It's one of the things you tend to see consistently over and over again.

Do they all look the same? No, not necessarily, because everybody's delts look different, but they tend to develop from baseline when they start bench pressing. It's funny, these bodybuilders are always saying, overhead press is good for front delts. Well, my front delts were pretty well developed

from benching when I never even touched an overhead press till I was 26, right? Why? Because benching flexes and adducts the shoulder, which is a function of the front delt and internal rotators. So time and time again, I see more front delt development on people from bench pressing,

because bench pressing is heavier than overhead pressing. Now, are they to have the biggest most well-developed front delts? Are they going to look like some bodybuilder or some fitness model? Not necessarily, but they are going to see more muscular development than where they started out. And the list goes on. What I'm saying here is that training isn't going to make you look a very specific way. It's going to affect your general look. You're going to see things grow from where they were. The most important thing here is the delta, not the destination, because everybody's going to achieve a different destination when you control for effort.

If you have 100 people that are working hard and doing the right thing, you're going to have a wide variety of results. So evaluating someone based on the destination they reach is not a fair evaluation because you don't know where that person started or how fast or slow that person progressed. The destination is highly driven by genetics.

Can you resist injury? Can you continue making progress that long? Can you, is your novice effect going to be much more pronounced than somebody else, i.e. are you deadlifting 500 at the end of your novice linear progression? Like all these things matter, right? But if somebody is making progress year after year after year beyond the point of being a novice,

and it's measurable, it's visible, then that's a pretty good sign that that person probably knows what the fuck they're doing versus someone else who can perform at a very high level but you have no idea what they had to do to get there and it may not have even been that hard for that person. You know, that person might have gotten there in a few years and have been stuck there

but they're performing so well they keep winning. I've seen that happen too, right? So if somebody sits there and tells you that 500 was never heavy for them, that's a pretty good indicator that they're not gonna, they're probably not gonna understand what the hell you're going through. Not always, but in a lot of cases, like I talked to Ed Cohn,

I think he's actually a pretty good coach considering he's the greatest of all time, but that's rare. It's rare that I can talk to somebody and have them make sense. When it comes to programming, and even I've seen some of his technical videos, they're pretty damn good. You know, he's on the right track, we're all in agreement,

it tends to work. But then there's other guys that are really good, not even as good as him, but they're really good, and they have no fucking idea. They've relied so much on the drugs to improve that they can't tell you what the fuck works. They're just gonna tell you what they did on drugs, have you do it, and then you're gonna crash and burn. And I see that happen far too many times.

And the bigger problem with it is, comes back to the whole topic of this episode, looking like you train, right? Just because somebody looks a certain way and happens to lift weights doesn't mean that you lifting weights is going to allow you to look that way. I wish it were the case. You know, we've all bought into this. Had some other hater the other day telling me that I go on this show and tell you you're not going to get big and strong. And that's not true. You're going to get bigger, you're going to get stronger, but are you going to achieve a fixed absolute result? No, fuck no. I can't predict, you know, I can't predict that. Nobody can. I can't sit here and tell you that if you work very hard,

you're going to deadlift 600, you you're gonna be 200 pounds and ripped, and you're gonna have 20 inch biceps. That's a lie, you know? That'd be a flat out fuckin' lie. What I will tell you is that if you keep deadlifting, your deadlift's gonna keep getting heavier. As long as you don't get hurt and you can keep training, you will keep getting stronger for a very long time.

If you want big arms and you're benching heavier and doing bicep curls and various types of pull ups and pulls Your arms will get bigger. Will they be 21 inches? I can't tell you that I'll say that they were they will get bigger than they were before and they will continue to grow the longer you train the slower The rate of progress we can all acknowledge there is a point of diminishing returns and there's no absolute fixed Metric that's going to determine where that is. It's your ability to recover, adapt, and keep going that's going to determine where that is. For most of us after the first couple of years progress slows down, remains steady for a while, and we reach a point of

diminishing returns. Those of us who love this will keep going and torturing ourselves because we just always want more. We don't believe in maintenance and we like going to the gym for one reason or another. Others will resort to drugs because they want more novice effect. You know, I've literally, like I said, a guy literally told me that. That's not unusual. That's not me being a hater and not knowing what I'm talking about. That's the honest to God truth. Drugs will change the way you look. Drugs will make you bigger.

So that goes back to things I have hammered on in other episodes. There are things other than training and diet that will alter your appearance. Plastic surgery, drugs, genetics, lighting, airbrush. I mean, the list goes on. There's so many things that people do to make their bodies look a certain way

that have nothing to do with training, drugs being the biggest one. So that is not me saying that everybody use musculars on drugs. That is simply me saying that there are things other than training that alter your appearance, but the one you have the most control over is training. And if you keep training, you keep eating good,

you keep recovering, you're gonna be making more and more progress over time. It's just a matter of continuing to go and your love for the game as they say, right? Because to be doing this for 10 plus fucking years and getting negligible results, you really gotta like it. You always think of Layne Norton. Layne Norton's a good guy, friend of mine.

Has a pretty good channel. I like how he evaluates research because he will always tell you where it's limited to, which is rare, you know? He sits there and he says, okay, they found this, this is pretty interesting, this guy's talking bullshit, but does it really mean this?

You know, he's pretty good at balancing his opinion. And I saw a video of his first bodybuilding show, and it's pretty clear the guy was pretty muscular, you know in his late teens And then I started looking at photos of him over the years, you know in the early 2000s mid 2000s and then into the 2010s and there came a certain point where obviously, you know, he was still he lifted the whole time. He got stronger It was a clear difference when he started squatting and deadlifting, you know His lower body got much bigger, that was a sticking point,

he's talked about it quite a bit. And then his muscularity, you know, more or less, you know, stayed the same. And you know, he said it in interviews, you know, like he liked powerlifting because it put his brain in a different mind, it put him in a different mindset because he was working towards a objective measurable goal that's going to be noticeable, right? Like you're adding weight to the bar over time, right?

Regardless of how you're programming it, you're sitting there trying to build towards a certain number. You're working towards something that you know you're probably going to end up at or in the ballpark of, right? But he said that gains in muscle were slower to come and harder to notice at that point because he was so advanced. He'd been lifting for so long. So, you know, it's a good one to look at because he says he's drug free. I happen to believe him. And when you go back and look at his progress, when you go back and look at his progress from, I think, I don't know, 2001,

I think was his first show, maybe 99, I can't remember, all the way to now. And I think his, you know, his peak when he set that squat world record was I think that was 2015 so from yeah from about 2000 to 2015 15 years You got a guy who started out he was pretty good size. You know, he's pretty muscular more muscular than the average person You know, he was pretty lean Pretty defined big arms big shoulders, you know struggle with his legs You know powerlifting helped bring that up and then you kind of, big shoulders, you know, struggle with his legs, you know, power lifting helped bring that up.

And then you just kind of follow him for the, you know, the first 15 years of his career, even to now. And you notice there's a point where the changes aren't that pronounced, you know, and that's a guy who's muscular, right? So that kind of follows a similar pattern as somebody who's much smaller and does the same thing, right, except the smaller guy becomes less small, the big guy becomes more big.

And that's the illusion you get, right? You see this guy, you see the end result of this guy, and you're like, oh, this guy must be an expert because he's huge. And it's like, well, you know, he started out pretty muscular and then he just got bigger. You know, he started out big compared to the average person and got bigger. The small guy starts out small and I say becomes less small, more muscular, less skinny. But the point is that Delta, right?

Both guys are training and both guys are improving over time. And if you could figure out how to do that and then reproduce that for other people, I'd say you're a pretty competent coach. But if you're just some fucking actor on the internet trying to entertain people or confuse people or sell a bunch of bullshit,

but you're not actively helping anybody directly on the individual level, then you're not a coach, you're an actor, you're an entertainer. Stop pretending you're a coach. You're a guy assuming the role of a coach to entertain an audience, not necessarily to coach individuals.

Or if you're an academic that wants to study something on a very basic level, you know, you're trying to look at muscle fibers, and you're hiring people that are unqualified to carry out the training protocols, then you know, you're a writer, you know, you're a writer masquerading as a coach, right? But if you're a gym owner, a coach, a person who also participates in the activity, in this case, a lifter, and you're doing all of the above, then that's somebody that I want to talk to. And it doesn't mean you're going to be great because you do those three things,

but you're going to be a lot better than the guy in front of the camera or the guy behind the computer screen typing up papers to get tenure and promotion. Because you're actually on the ground working with people, you're troubleshooting something. Not every coach who does that is going to be great, but they're going to have some experience and have more to offer than somebody who's entertaining in front of a camera, writing papers but not necessarily coaching people, or competing at a very high level and not really coaching people or competing at a very high level and coaching people to do what he did that doesn't necessarily work for them.

So these are all some of the examples and some things to look for when you're trying to evaluate information. You know the old phrase consider the source, I think that's what we should probably, that should be a title of this episode. I don't know what they're gonna title it, but consider the source, right? If you know, consider the source and we've listed several and there might be more that I missed,

but you wanna think about this critically because up until this point and it will probably continue beyond this point, people tend to evaluate competency in the weight room based on superficial features and not actual knowledge, skills, and experience. So if there's anything I hope that you got out of this episode after my long hiatus is some ideas and some things to think about when you're trying to decipher information and consider the source that it's coming from.

So I think I've said that enough times, consider the source. Can you make that echo dude? Anyways, I'm gonna sign out. Next time we'll have a guest, so we'll have someone to talk to, get some different perspectives, and hopefully it won't take a whole month.

No, it won't take a whole month. I'll be back here in two weeks. So I'll close out here. Thank you for listening to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com or if you're local to Metro Phoenix, you can find me at Weights and Plates gym just south of Sky Harbor Airport

between 32nd Street and 40th Street and Broadway. We offer in-person personal training. We're starting group training now. We're gonna play around with that. And we have everything you need to barbell train and even dumbbell train. We got a dumbbell rack and some spotter stands if you wanna dumbbell bench safely.

We got all sorts of gadgets here. So definitely come on by. If you are interested in online coaching, you can find that on the website, weightsandplates.com. We have an online coaching store. I am on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana where you can find a lot of my ramblings the clips from this episode as well as other reels we also post them on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash at weights underscore and plates. Alright

everyone stay tuned hope to see you soon. If you are watching on YouTube or Rumble and you like everything you want to hear, please don't forget to click that subscribe button and like if you liked it, dislike if you disliked it, leave some hater comments if you're a hater, hopefully not, and voice your support if you like it, or just give me some feedback on how to improve it, but definitely subscribe if you are watching us on YouTube or Rumble.