Weights and Plates Podcast - #98 - The Shocking Truth About Gaining Muscle (No One Tells You This)

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

In this episode of the Weights & Plates Podcast, Robert Santana is joined by strength coach Gretchen Geist to break down the biggest misconceptions in the gym. They dive into why most people confuse exercise with actual training, the problem with group classes and light weights, and how real strength training impacts bone density, muscle growth, and long-term health. They also discuss why genetics matter more than people want to admit, what most personal trainers get completely wrong, and why compound barbell lifts should be a non-negotiable for anyone serious about improving their body and their health. If you're tired of spinning your wheels in the gym, or you're a coach trying to educate your clients, this one’s for you. 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 Waits and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana and I am your host along with a special guest today, Gretchen Geist. Would you like to re-welcome yourself to the show? Say hello to the audience. Hi. I'm here. Welcome back. Thank you. It's good to the audience. Hi. I'm here. Welcome back. Thank you. It's good to be back. You were with us, how long ago was that?

Three months ago, four months ago? It was in December. Wow. It's now June. Shit. Yeah. Where's the year going? It's been kind of blending together.

I don't even know. It's just flying by. Well, today we've got to come up with a topic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have a lot on our minds here. So last, last episode, I introduced a topic that kind of pertains to you and what you've been doing.

I talked about how the general public doesn't find minimalistic training palatable. Yeah. And I think you have a lot more in-person experience with this than I do. That's true. So I think this would be a good thing to talk about because I'm gonna talk about it more and more.

Okay. You know, in the last episode we did, you talked about your background, my background. We're serious trainees. You know, we always have been. You're a lifter at this point. I'm a lifter at this point. We're very focused on this one physical attribute, this one type of training.

You know, you got runners who run year round, you know, and this is secondary to them. Cyclists, same thing. We got BJJ people, all sorts of different athletes, whether they are recreational or, you know, competitive in a league, club or collegiate level. But then you have the average person that walks in the gym and typically wants to change their appearance. That's often what they're coming for. They're either too fat, too skinny, you name it, right? And they don't fully comprehend the muscle mass side of the equation.

Would you say that's an accurate statement? I would say that's mostly an accurate statement. Although I think with the current like Maha movement, people are much more aware of using exercise for health benefits and longevity. Longevity. Longevity. We all love that word. I kind of cringe a little inside when I say it, but it's really an accurate term. So yes, I think there's three reasons people come to a gym. It's to look better, to improve their health outcomes, and for like mental health to blow off steam.

So I think, yes, the large portion of people coming into the gym are trying to look better, either put on muscle or lose fat. But I think more are like, hey, I need to... I touch on bone density so much. Like if I have a woman in front of me, even a younger woman, like you need to be putting on bone density now for the future. But yeah, people are looking to improve

health outcomes with exercise. You're working on your bone density right now. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's, I don't. Like at this moment. Oh. Oh. Thanks for that plug y'all.

Raw milk, it's the best. She just trained and you know, we train heavy here. So for those of you who are unaware of this, bone density is sensitive to intensity. It's more responsive to heavier weights. And you can't lift heavier weights with isolation movements. You're gonna load the body heavier with compounds and the volume shit just isn't gonna have the same effect.

So you just lifted heavy and now you are drinking a high calcium beverage. Love it. Look at that. So I don't know if I told you this, but I, oh, I don't think I did. Okay. This will be fun to tell you on the podcast. Okay. So I started doing these like presentations at work and people can sign up for them and

hear me talk for like 50, 55 minutes. I basically walk people through like, why do people come to the gym? What are the different things we can do? What is the best way to accomplish these things? And pointing it all back to training for strength with compound exercises, using barbells. And one thing I touch on is bone density. Like, hey, you need to be doing exercises that directly load the spine. to be doing exercises that directly load the spine. So that eliminates a lot of things like your dumbbells and your bands, like those aren't, they're not loading your spine directly. So that you need to be using a load that actually compresses your skeletal system because that's the signal for your body to lay down denser bones. Am I wrong? I mean, the compression is going to break your back.

Your spine is going to snap in half. Snap city. I gave a presentation, there were women there that were like, oh, and one of them goes to these little classes and they're doing like, it's like, oh, it's strength. And this is, we were talking about this earlier, how where I work will label everything as, oh, you're gonna get stronger. Like strength training. No, this is not strength training.

It's hard because I have to be careful. But I don't want to be rude to people. And at the same time, like, hey, I want to, but I have to like, I'm in a setting where I have to like, really, you know. And walk the line. Yeah, I gotta walk the line, but I gotta tell people the truth.

Like, hey, when you're squatting, when you're doing like these little quarter squats with a five pound dumbbell in your hands, that's not a signal to your body to lay down more bones, or denser bones. It's just not. I relate it to... I don't know if I told you about this analogy. And this really resonates with people.

I tell them, like, okay, let's say you have a child that's reading on a seventh-grade reading level, okay? Yep. And you want the child to improve their reading level. Are you gonna have that child read hop on pop? No, like it's not going to improve their reading level. Can they do it? Yes, they can read hop on pop over and over and over again,

but their reading level will not improve. And I tell people it's the same with strength training. You have a certain capacity and if you're working so far under it, you're not challenging that capacity at all. So that metaphor really, people are like, oh, okay. That really relating it to reading. Matthew 18 That's a good way to do it, especially if you have people that have children and have had to deal with these sorts of things, which I'm assuming you do working at a very high end commercial gym.

Is that right? Yes, that is true. And what ratio of your clients have kids? Nine out of 10. Okay. Yeah. So a lot of them, right? So yeah, pretty good analogy. I think what you're pointing out there is that strength

occurs due to specific stimuli. Yes, yes. And I say you have to, I tell them about the stress recovery adaptation. I'm like, okay, let's go back to eighth grade biology. And then I explain it to them. I have a little chart and it makes sense to them. So I have to, I say, like, the stress has to specifically be designed to challenge the capacity that you're trying to build. It has to overload. Yeah. It has to overload the system.

What do they think they need to do when they come in? Do you get a lot of people that already have ideas, or are they completely a blank slate, and they're like, hit me? I think that people believe that they do anything and it's going to help them achieve their goals. Like I'm at the gym, I'm doing this class, I'm going to see the results that I want to see. I tell people, hey, anything works for three to six weeks. Depending on who you are as a person, your exercise history, what the thing is that you're doing.

Hey, you go from couch to anything, you will definitely see some sort of results. Um... Novelist effect, as we like to call it. Exactly, and I literally tell, you know... I try to avoid, like, starting-strength, jargony phrases. You say newbie games, they've heard tell, you know, I try to avoid like starting strength, jargony phrases. Say newbie games. They've heard that, you know? Exactly. So, but people understand that they're like, okay, that makes sense. If you've done

nothing, and then you do something, you're going to see some sort of change. But they just kind of, they don't think much further than like, oh, I'm going to the gym, I'm getting sweaty, my muscles are burning, I'm out of breath, I must be getting the results that I want. So the common belief is that entering a weight room is gonna get you those results. I think just entering a gym...

It's the gym in general. So I think the cardio's making them build muscle. I've been out a gym. It's the gym in general. So I think the cardio's making them build muscle. I've been out of that scene for so long, so I'm learning from you. I worked with a lot of these types of people online, but the audience that I worked with had consumed content and were a little more informed, even if the information was not the best information. But you're in a commercial gym, so they may not necessarily be informed, right? Yeah. I mean, I think people understand

that they won't build muscle doing cardio, but I mean, I've had so many... I mean, I've had women be like, I don't know what to do, and I just go on the treadmill, because like, I know I can do that. Or that's something I can do. But they think that, I think the bigger, because, like, I know I can do that. Or that's something I can do. But they think that, I think the bigger problem is, it's any sort of, oh, if I'm lifting a weight, period,

then I'm building muscle and getting stronger. Like, if I'm doing 20 reps in this bar class of little, like, micro muscle movements or whatever. So, weights equal muscle. Yes, I think that is the general thing that people believe. And if they're feeling, oh, I'm feeling this when I do this exercise, they think that that, it's kind of like the soreness thing.

Or the pump. Yeah, the pump. So like, I feel something, so therefore it must be doing something. I think people fall in that trap a lot. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, bodybuilders used to promote that in the 70s, 80s, 90s, you know, the pump was so important.

And you give yourself a pump with very little weight, with pretty much any exercise, especially something that's more localized, like a knee extension, a bicep curl, even hand grippers with the grip work. You know, I get a pump in my forearms, but does that mean that I'm growing? You know, not necessarily. Yeah, why do people get a pump? Why don't we start there?

What is the pump? So, you're doing a lot of reps with a lighter weight, so it's not... You're not challenging the actual contractile components in the muscle to pull harder. It's basically a metabolic thing. It's like, okay, can we provide enough fuel to fuel these contractions that occur over and over again?

And then there's waste products and- So let's be clear so the bodybuilder bros don't come after you. They're going to come after me. You are, the muscles contracting, so if the muscles contracting, you are challenging the contractile components. It's a different, in a different manner. So it's more endurance based, I think is what you're trying to say. They're contracting, but are they, how hard are they having to pull? How much force is being produced? Yes, exactly.

Okay, sorry, bros, if it's eight reps, it's not heavy. Like, you might feel pump, you might feel burn, but you're not actually challenging how much force can be produced by those muscles. So, sorry, I'm not sorry. Mm-hmm. She probably deadlifts more than a lot of bros. She probably deadlifts more than a lot of braids. You fuckers that are doing 225 or 275 over and over again,

you know, she's pulling more than you. Yeah. And doesn't have to be that way. It does not have to be that way. Stop listening to the bodybuilders. That is an injection contest, that is pageantry. When you remove the needles, the steroids, and the superior muscle building genetics, the equation changes. Wait, were you in here when I told that story about the guy

with the lat pull down? You want to tell that? So I love hearing stories about the commercial gym because, you know, I might drop in there once in a while to do a donkey calf raise or some obscure machine that I like. I like donkey calf raises because you can do them real heavy. It takes the back out of it and you know, they'll grow the calves if you're committed. You know, calf work, it's one of those things where you have to train them in isolation. They don't, they kind of stop growing after you've been squatting for a few months, but

they're a pain in the fucking ass because you got to do them like a couple of times a week. Like slow twitch, endurancey muscle. It's both. Yeah. It's both. I mean, yeah, not that there's not. Yeah.

It's a mix of both. 50 50 mix of both because they have to hold your ass up, you know? So they have to be strong, but they also have to have a mix of both. A 50-50 mix of both, because it has to hold your ass up, you know? So they have to be strong, but they also have to have a lot of endurance. Where people make a mistake, I'm not going to go into a huge diatribe about calf work, but where people fuck this up is they don't put enough weight on the exercise. If you're going to try and grow your calves, you need to do heavy standing or donkey calf raises to get them to grow. And heavy on calves is like 10, eights. I wouldn't go under five.

Right. Yeah. No. And for, yes. Okay. On like an isolation exercise, it's like a different thing within isolation. Yeah. Because if you go to fives or triples, you're going to lose your form and you're going to make a compound because you can't really train those exercises for sets of five. There's not enough muscle involved. So you have to know when you're going to fuck the tendons up if you actually try to keep it strict with that kind of weight. Okay. Do you want to hear my story? Sure. Yeah. Let's talk about that. So yeah, the commercial gym,

these are the tails from the commercial tales the commercial gym. I love hearing these. So, okay, there was this guy. Let's give him a nickname. Let's call him Joe. Okay. That's not his name. I'm glad you didn't say Bob. So let's call him Joe.

So apparently I had, I'm not going to go into all the nitty gritty details, but this guy like kind of had a crush on me and like was kind of eyeing me. So one day he walked up to me and was like, Hey, can I get a spot? And I hadn't And you're thinking bench press, right? I'm thinking the bench press. I'm like, okay.

So and I knew this person was kind of crushing on me. I'm like, okay, like whatever, I'll just, I mean, he's a member and I have to like, whatever, I wanted to be nice. So we walk over to a seated lat pull down machine, like a plate loaded, they have like these handles and you load the plates. And so I was so confused.

I'm like, wait, what do I do? I'm literally wearing my uniform and he's like, you want me to spot you on a lap pull down? And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, so do you want me to like, like if you start to admit, like tap your hands down? I was, I literally, please walk me through and like, I don't know, like officiating sports, like tell me the rules so I can like,

whatever. So, he does a set, he does like 10, I don't even know how much weight was on there. And I was like, dude, that's like super light. You need to like add weight and do like sixes. And he's like, I don't know what he said. I'm like, what are you deadlift? And he was, okay, for context, he was probably like five, seven. I mean, he wasn't particularly heavy or muscular or anything like that. I mean, maybe he was like 160, 170.

Like, he was like not a giant person. But I'm like, what are you deadlift? And he's like, oh, he said either like 27... I think he said like 275. Now that I'm thinking about it. Like, bro, like, you need to get your deadlift up. Like, that's gonna work your lats a lot harder than this thing is.

And I'm like, I think it was like, yeah, I did like 3 a lot harder than this thing. I think it was like, yeah, I did like 315 for five the other day. I think that was right after my PR. Yeah. And he's like, whoa. Anyway, I made it clear. I was like, I am not impressed. I tried to be tactful, like, oh, this would be much better, give you better results for what you're trying to do with your lats. So anyway, did you upsell them? What do you mean? Sell them some training.

I mean, I should have, I should have been like, Hey, like, let me help you get your deadlift up to something a man would do. You want me to show you how to do that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it was, you could take all the credit. Nobody has to know.

Yeah. Yeah. So it was... You could take all the credit. Nobody has to know. Yeah. Nobody has to know. Anyway, that's like, there's some more details that I eliminated, but that's like the main part of the story. We got the gist of it. Yeah, I'm like, I never... Like, you don't need a spotter on a machine.

You just do it or you don't do it. I was so confused. Like, what are we doing here? There was a commercial gym that I used to train. It's where I met Andrew the first time before I opened my gym. I used to train at this commercial gym that was kind of like a bodybuilding gym. I'd say maybe what do you think? Maybe a third of the people there in the bodybuilding, like actual bodybuilding, not fucking around. Yeah. So there's maybe a third of the membership are actual bodybuilders at some level.

And there was a guy there that was just a standard personal trainer. He was just teaching people how to exercise with weights, to put it lightly. Babysitting. Yeah, he's babysitting. And he had several trainers under him and they would do these like classes, kind of like group training. And the main trainer, that business owner guy, the face of the company, he had a lot of young girls that he trained. And by young, I mean early twenties, you know? And Andrew saw him once having a girl hip thrust, and he was spotting her chin.

Or her neck? Or like... Was her neck? Oh, I thought he put his hand on her chin. That's so weird. For all these years, I thought you said that he lifted her chin up. And that would be like, wrong, because... That's the image I've had in my head, was that he was had his hand under her chin and was

lifting her chin up. So he was spotting her neck, which is still strange. Because it's just, you know, you probably, I don't know how much of this you deal with in the commercial gym. Because when I worked there, the types of people that would consume content weren't the type of people that spent that kind of money. And this was back in 2010. Wait, so you're saying the people that consumed legit, good, decent content are not the same

people that spend money on training? Is that what you're saying? I'm talking about the people that leave the hater comments, have online debates, have memorized everything that said bodybuilding guru said has debunked everything that said, bodybuilding guru said, has debunked everything that the opposing guru said, like... Yeah, exactly. Like, these guys that are highly active on the internet with content. Back in those days, it was forums. They'd sit on forums and have wars on multiple forums.

So, like, I remember Rip had a guy, a notable guy that he still respects, actually. They got into a dispute because he had this kid gain a bunch of body weight and, uh, Rip claimed that, you know, he got his squat up to 320. I think it was for three sets of five and under six months. I don't remember how long it was. And back in those days, that was not common. As Rip says, powerlifting is a trailer trash sport.

And I think it's changed over the years. Yeah, not that way right now. Pre-2014, I'd say, you know, people wore suits, you know, squat suits, for those of you who don't know, it looks like a singlet, but it has elastic properties that help push you out of the squat so you can lift more. They were bench press shirts that kind of roll your shoulders forward and you can barely

get the bar down if it's heavy and it's the down is harder than the up apparently from what I've seen. And they wear these suits and shirts to get to get more weight up, even though it was due to the equipment more than the lifter. But that was the sport in the 1990s and the early 2000s. And then the mid 2010s, it went back to raw lifting where you can only wear a belt and knee sleeves. Back then, raw power lifting

had been out of favor for 20 years. You know, it fell out of favor in the 1980s and the equipped power lifting took over. So the idea that, you know, somebody's, you know, this young kid is getting his squat up 200 pounds and a handful of months was not new, but it wasn't widespread on the internet because a lot of the internet forums

were tilted towards bodybuilding. Yeah. So Rip posted the video up, you know, the guy conceded, because he's an honest fucker. He's just, you know, he's kind of like Rip. He got too strong. Was that like... Because that was a's just, you know, he's kind of like Rip. He got too strong. Was that like, because that was a thing like...

No, he didn't say he got too strong. He's like, all right, I stand corrected, but there's no way that half that body weight was muscle, which I'm kind of on the guy's side over Rip on this one, you know, but it doesn't matter. He didn't look bad, you know, but yeah, you gain fat. Not all body fat gain looks bad, you know? But yeah, he probably, you know, pushed over 20% body fat, if I gain looks bad, you know? But yeah, he probably, you know, pushed

over 20% body fat, if I had to guess, you know? And I don't think he's that large now at the, you know, now he's a grown man in his thirties, you know? But yeah, I remember that. So it was forums, you know, that guy had a forum, Rip had a forum, then Rip's guys were going on his and that guy was going on Rips. And anyways, these people are the biggest pains in the asses. But then what I've noticed is very few of them spend real money on coaching. So forums, well, they're already pretty much irrelevant. That's true.

Yeah. I miss those days when going bodybuilding forums to find information. This is not something you would be familiar with. Yeah. I was not a forums person. So that guy, yeah, when Rip showed the video, he conceded that Rip was correct. But then he said that he didn't gain that much muscle.

And you know, as I said earlier, probably not, but who gives a fuck? You know, he looked better. He was stronger, he was more functional. I don't think we really know how to separate muscle from fat gain, but that's a whole nother episode. Yeah, that's a whole different series. So yeah, exactly. So, you know, tell me about your clients.

Yeah, so my clients, people will ask me like, oh, what's the type of person you wanna work with? And I think the answer that people expect is, science, people will ask me like, oh, what's the type of person you want to work with? And I think the answer that people expect is, oh, I want to work with young athletes or I want to work with women, like some sort of like demographic information. And I tell people, I will work with anybody that has a specific mindset, that understands delayed gratification, that understands that things that are worth acquiring require time and effort to achieve.

Right. It is wild. I think about my current spectrum of clients, and there's, I mean, I have like a 23-year-old recent college graduate up to like an 84-year-old retiree, like, and people in between. So people that came from the couch, people that do other sports and activities, but the common denominator is the mindset. So that's really the person I'm looking for. And that's who I work with best. Because those are my values too. Of course, it makes things a lot easier when you find people that want to work hard.

Do you screen clients out? Do you turn away business cause you don't want to deal with it? I currently, well, there is kind of this one person that I'm thinking about being like, Hey, maybe like maybe the group sessions aren't a good fit. Maybe we should just go private. I think people kind of screen themselves out honestly honestly, but I'm not at a... I would love to be able to get to a place where I'm like, oh, like I'm choosing who I work with and I just like, oh, I don't think you're a good fit, but I'm not in that place

right now. So and if something, honestly, my retention is really good. If I can get someone to train with me and they start seeing the results, they're like, oh, this is legit. This is the real deal. Right. Especially with seeing like what other people are doing and what I'm doing with my clients and the log books and the progress and coaching, like actual coaching that happens. People can see the difference. So they know,

I think like deep down people know like when, is this really helping me? I'm not really doing this. Yeah. So I guess, why do they want to lift weights? Or are you introducing them to it? What are they coming to you for? Why does anybody hire a personal trainer? I think everybody comes in thinking, I need professional help to achieve X, Y, and Z. And then when I start to, essentially it's like I'm giving a smoke signal to the right people.

And then the right people respond and then sign up and train with me. You know, when I was in my undergraduate, when I was doing my undergraduate studies, getting my bachelor's at WIU, Western Illinois University, one of my professors put it to me the best. And I have to say she wasn't wrong. She said most people that go to a gym wanna look good naked and perform better sexually. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's... Yeah, I learned that.

I learned that, that's one of the few things in college that I learned, well, not few, I gotta be a little bit kind, I learned a lot of things, but it was one of those practical pieces of information that checks out. Most people in the fitness, health, longevity sphere want those two things above everything else. Then all the other stuff comes next. That's true. That's a really good point. And I think the disconnect is they understand that if they're fat, they need to lose weight. A lot of people, I think, and you can speak to this,

I'm pretty sure a lot of people still believe this, actually. I talked to a lot of non-gym goers, and I've had a lot of people that would probably be at a commercial gym if they weren't doing it online. And there's still people that believe you can run off the weight. You know, that you can exercise, you can out train a bad diet.

And you can't, but you know, you have that problem. They understand that you can lose fat through some combination of diet and exercise. They try to exercise off the bad diet. It doesn't work, you know, but they understand that there's a diet component. I think it's not lying to themselves. It's more cognitive dissonance. You know, they eat crap and then they go back to the diet the day after, and they're like, oh, I did so good most of the time, right?

But it's like an all of the time deal, you know? That's a whole other topic, but... But they understand that exercise and diet will get weight off of them. They may not understand exactly how, but that's pretty firmly understood by, you know, you talk to the average person on the street and you say, hey, man, how do you get, how do you unfat fuck yourself? You know? I mean,

I wouldn't say it like that. I might say, how do you, I would say it like that. What am I, who am I shitting? Yeah. How do you unfat fuck yourself? Or, you know, the average person might say, how do you lose weight? You know? And they're going to say, well, you know, you got to run, you got to not eat, you got to not eat carbs, you know, like you'll hear all these variations. Yeah. All these variations of dietary manipulation or exercise manipulation. But then there's very little attention to how you actually build muscle. True.

And then of the people that consume content related to that, they think you have to train like a bodybuilder who's on a bunch of fucking steroids and who has very good genetics and look like a miniature version of his roided out self when he started out. You know, they, you know, people look a certain way for lots of other reasons outside of training, you know, and I just did a video on this, I say it all the time, and I'll say it till I turn blue in the face, I'll say it till I go in the grave. Don't put it on my fucking gravestone, though.

We will. Uh... Yeah. -♪ LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SOFTLY, CONTINUES TO LAUGHS SO born this way. Every... So what I was gonna say was, the thing that I'm referencing is, every single person who lifts weights and is capable of adding weight to the bar or progressing their weightlifting workout for a period of time, you know, two to four months, right, is going to build muscle and get stronger. Yep. 100% of people that do this will achieve those things. But a much smaller percentage will look like a competitive bodybuilder or fitness model,

even if he does everything right. Yeah. I mean, you take that same principle and apply it to sports. You know, I mean, how many hundreds of thousands of boys play football and how many of them make it to the NFL? I mean, and they're... You know, obviously, it's got to line up like, they got to work hard, so, but you got to have the genetics for that.

So, it's the same with anything. This is a residual effect of 1980s pop culture, I guess, where, you know, I always think of the movie Back to the Future. Do you ever see that movie? No, I've not seen that. You're not a movie person at all, fuck that. Sorry. Gretchen is not a movie person at all.

You get an F for movie trivia. Yes, I do. I watched a bunch of movies when I was, when you're on a plane and you have nothing to do for like eight and a half hours. Those are shit movies made in the last five years though. I saw a couple good ones. Okay.

They get lucky sometimes. Yeah, there was a good selection. Anyway, okay, Back to the Future. I'll pretend like I understand the references. You're killing me. You need to go watch Back to the Future. I won't. You need to.

We have homework. We're getting close to Back to the Future, by the way, when he travels to the future in the second movie. I'm thinking of Demolition Man. That was 2032. Is that a movie? Oh, yeah. And like, in 2032, Los Angeles is called San Angeles. You get tickets by automated machines for swearing.

Everybody's wearing like robes and gowns. Guns are banned. They have batons robes and gowns, guns are banned. They have batons, electrified batons, the cops do they don't know how to fight hand to hand combat. They don't make physical contact. Sexual intercourse happens through virtual reality. And I think everything's IVF if you want to reproduce. And then you have an un so here's where it gets interesting. In the sewer, all the guys like me live.

They just have to eat rat burgers because there's no cows. So they're eating rat burgers. Oh, they're self-driving cars in the movie. So the car drives itself and there's like screens where they talk to people. A lot of this stuff has started to unfold, which is creepy. If you look up Demolition Man memes... Uh-huh.

It's like LA right now. They'll say it's a prophecy, yeah. So, to answer your question, the movie was made in 1993, but it starts in 96. So in 96, the cops go in and he has... Sylvester Stallone's the lead. He has body scanners so he can see if there's people alive in the building.

Then he gets the guy he needs to get, but then the building explodes and they find out a bunch of dead hostages are in there. So then he goes to prison, they cryogenically freeze him, and then he wakes up in 2032. Oh, there's like other movies that have this premise. Yeah, but this one's 93. So I think, you know, he may, I think that was the first.

See, look, now I don't need to watch it because you told me everything that happened. I didn't tell you the ending. So you need to watch it. Anyways, you know, it's becoming a prophecy. There's all these memes everywhere. I forgot, why the fuck did I bring up demolition, man? Back to the future. Back to the future.

Oh yeah. So back to the future. Where's the fucking hoverboard though? We didn't get the fucking hoverboard yet. Did the hoverboard come out? Well, like, you know those, it's like a skateboard, but like- Yeah, it floats. Well, like, okay.

The one that they have doesn't float, does it? Right, no, of course. In the movie, it floats. I want the floating fucking hoverboard. I've been waiting for my entire life. 2015, so Back to the Future happened, They were wrong. Demolition Man was pretty fucking close. The one thing they never explained in the movie was they didn't have toilet paper. And they laughed at him for asking for it. And he said the place where the toilet paper

is they have three seashells. They never explained the three fucking seashells. There's a scene in Back to the Future where the father tells the son, which is played by Michael J. Fox, he's like, if you work hard, you can accomplish anything. And this was basically 80s messaging, and I think it trickled into the 90s too. And I think the reality of that is,

if you work hard, you can improve at anything. Yep. You know? Oh, we were talking about genetics with bodybuilding and sports and whatnot. But you know, there's a wide belief in this that hard work is the limiting factor to everything. You know, you could work your ass off and get a mediocre result or a below average result

in some cases, you know? It is, you know, obviously. How many people work hard and aren't rich? Yeah, that's aren't rich. Yeah Yeah, that's that's a very good way to put it I mean that's most obvious because everybody has to work to make a living Yeah, but not every but not every person that works hard as a millionaire Multi-millionaire billionaire and that's there's a lot of reasons for that. I'm not an expert in that area So we're not gonna dive into that

But you know, there's a lot of people that work hard and don't have anything to show for it, you know? Or, I shouldn't say don't have anything to show for it, haven't achieved the most extreme of extreme results, is what I mean by that. I don't care about pissing people off, but I didn't mean it that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't want to discourage people

from working hard. So, we want people working hard, but there's a lot of people that work hard, and they don't achieve the extreme result and they kill themselves for a lifetime doing one thing or another. And it's many cases because they have to, you know, but hard work doesn't equal first place. Yeah, that's a really good point.

So and it kind of breaks my heart because I'll see people at the gym and they're... Okay, there's one guy in particular, but this could be applied to a lot of different people. They put a lot of effort in their workouts. And they're like, they're doing it. You can tell they're into it. And like, yeah. It's like, dude, you did that same workout. Like, you've done that same workout

for like four or five weeks in a row. Like, it's not helping you. At the end of the day, like, physiology is physiology, and your body already knows what that workout is, so it's not stressful anymore. So you need to do something different. You're only capable of accomplishing so much in any area. You know, you can play the guitar and put in countless hours, and you're not gonna be Eddie Van Halen or Jimi Hendrix,

or pick your favorite guitarist, right? We understand this in music. We understand this in professional sports. That's a really good point. Like, music, like math, or like physics. I mean, I couldn't be an astrophysicist. Like, I just don't have the brain for that. No, it has nothing to do with how hard you work or don't work. You know?

I think you can understand physics up to a level. Yeah, of course. But you're not fucking Elon Musk and these motherfuckers that, you know, are building rockets and shit, you know? Oh, you understand this in so many areas, but when it comes to the gym, for whatever reason, there is this thought that if you aren't accomplishing

an extreme result, whether it's deadlifting 700, if you're talking to the power lifters, or being 200 pounds and ripped, if you're talking to the bodybuilders, right? Or having 18 inch arms, if you're talking to the bodybuilders. Or doing a, you know, you don't hear so much in Olympic lifting because they're actually doing a competitive sport, you know, I understand better. But there's just this belief that

you need the right program, the right diet and hard work and you can achieve all of those things I just outlined. So if you're around power lifters, if you didn't deadlift 700, you fucked up because it's not even heavy, dude. That's not even heavy. And you're only pulling 505 for five, 550. It's nothing, bro. You know? And it's, and then with the body builders, oh, you don't even have big arms. Well, shit, did you see where they started motherfucker? You know? like that's like looking at somebody who plays basketball all the time and who's, you know, I don't play basketball, but let's say that however they evaluate scoring that that improves. Right. And you say, fuck,

dude, you're not Michael Jordan. I mean, you're not even, you're not even Larry Bird. You're not even LeBron, you know, like pick, you know, a top basketball player, right? Like look what those guys are doing, you know? Like you should be able to do at least 75% of what they're doing, you know? Like you don't hear that when it comes to those things, you know? Or like if you play the guitar a lot and you're doing like shows at a local bar, you know? Like people aren't going to tell you you suck because you don't play as good as fucking Eddie Van Halen, you know?

I think this is an interesting thing to talk about. I think when people get to the gym, yeah, they totally don't understand these principles. And I found when I break things down, like, something I get a lot is like, oh, I feel awkward, or like, I feel like I'm not getting it, like the movement. And I'm like, hey, like, if you taught me like a dance move, or if you taught me how

to throw a javelin, I would look awkward when I did it. I wouldn't get it right the first day or the first week. So people are like, oh, okay. Like it brings it down. It's, I think like exercise physiology has not provided good information... No. ...to the general population that goes to the gym. Whereas like all these principles are still at play.

I'm like, yeah, this is going to take some time. And yeah, you're not going gonna take some time. And yeah, you're not gonna necessarily look like this professional athlete or you're probably not gonna get the results of this elite power lifter because of your genetics. People just, their brain goes dead when they walk into a gym and they need us to like, guide them and bring some common sense and common principles back to the gym. And I think that's lacking in the industry. You know, people don't want to spell that out.

There's this thought that it's all a product of hard work. Hard work improves whatever the fuck you're trying to improve at, but there's no guarantee that you're going to achieve a specific outcome. You know, when you compete in sports, there's first place, second place, third place, fourth place, and that goes all the way down, and the number can get rather large, right? But for whatever reason, again,

when it comes to building muscle or lifting heavy weights, they just dump it on, oh, you fucked up. You didn't do the right program. You didn't work hard enough. You're lazy. Individual results vary. And yeah, sure. A lot of people aren't motivated to lift weights seriously and become lifters. You know, they want to exercise with weights and that's, that's great because that's better than sitting on the couch. You know, there's, there's hierarchies to this. Becoming a lifter is a commitment, you know,

and not everybody, not everybody needs to do it, but everybody should lift, everybody should squat, should deadlift, should bench press, should press, should do pull-ups. They should learn the power clean. They don't need to train for an Olympic lifting meet, necessarily, but I think, you know, I say this a lot on the show and I've made videos about it.

Understanding how to hoist a weight up and catch it is important because when you have to pick things up in life, sometimes you can't lift them strictly. You know, you have to use momentum to get the weight to a level that you can walk with it. Yeah. I mean, it's a trainable human movement pattern. Yeah. You can get decent at a clean.

You don't have to be great at a clean, but you should know how to use your hips to hoist up a weight, you know? I think that's valuable, but that's, again, we can dive into that in another episode. But, you know, you should do these lifts. You don't need to train them for competition. You don't need to get so big and ripped to compete in a bodybuilding show either. I feel like bodybuilding just, like, needs to die. I don't know. It's... That's a bodybuilding show either. I feel like bodybuilding just like needs to die.

I don't know. It's... That's a hot take right there. Yeah. She said it, not me. I'm trying to troll less, but, you know, it's hard. Yeah. That was me. I don't know. I just... I don't know. I said this last episode, but I've never seen anything good come out of that. And... Well, people lift weights now recreationally. That's what's come out of it.

Yeah. Okay. That's fair. We got to give them credit. Bodybuilding put the weight room on the map. Fair. Yeah. Like that and CrossFit. CrossFit put barbells on the map. Yeah. And 100%. RIP has admitted that himself. Yeah. Oh, 100%. Bodybuilding got people in the weight room in general.

Crossfit got people lifting with barbells. I think I'm just not the type of person that appeals to. Like, I would rather just... It's pageantry. Yeah. And it's... I mean, you're crashing your metabolism. Like, that's how you get lean and dry and you look like that,

is like, you're crashing all these processes in your body. And it's, I don't know, it's just kind of... to look like this weird Greek statue for like 10 minutes on a stage, and you're like this close to like dying. The Greek statue is not even that lean. Yeah, that's a good point. Those were like athletes that actually had some body fat on them.

Now they were muscular, so. They're like probably nine to 12% body fat. They're not walking around at five to 8%. You've competed in sports, you've seen it. You've seen people that are just like, fuck, Jesse here's like that. He's like 9% body fat, and he's just 9% body fat. The guy's eating 3,500 calories when he's training hard.

Right now he has a torn tricep. So, you know, I had Jesse on the show once, you know, I don't know for the audience. We, you know, he's the weightlifting coach here at my gym. I need to bring him on again. I think I'll do him next. If you are familiar with somatotypes, he's the guy who's very lean and very muscular at baseline. And lifting

just makes him more lean and more muscular. I mean, you saw him. He's super vascular. Even right now, he's injured and barely training and he still looks like that. He just shrank a little. I mean, he could leg press. What else? He can't really do anything. Right now, I don't know. Maybe the safety swap bar? Maybe he's going to try. I know he's going to try. He's a lifter. He's a lif maybe. He's gonna try. I know he's gonna try. Yeah, he's gonna try. He's a lifter. He's a lifter. He's gonna fucking figure out a way to push himself.

But, um, right now, you know, he tore his tricep tendon. He just got it reattached today. Since the injury, you know, he's been finding ways to squat. He finally got into a regular squat with his hands behind his back, you know? He was doing the safety squat bar, and then the injury got to a point where he can hold the bar. So he was squatting. Um, I think he was able to clean. Okay. This is before the surgery. Yeah. Now he's gotten surgery. But my point is this guy is like probably eight, 9% body fat, just hanging out there. And I, you know, he's worked very hard. So he has more muscle than he would have if he didn't train if he wasn't a weightlifter. But I bet if he wasn't a weightlifter, he'd still be

pretty fucking lean. He just wouldn't be as muscular. It wouldn't be as big. I would say he'd probably be 10 pounds lighter and he'd look skinny to everybody else, but he'd have no body fat. So, you know, if you took that guy and tried to train him for bodybuilding, he's five, six, he could probably be competitive in that sport because he already without any steroid use is low body fat, muscular, and highly responsive to strength training. Most people aren't like that. Yeah. You know, it's a genetic lottery that you got to win. So when you artificially take your body fat that low, like what you're describing, like for him to do it, we're talking

five pounds. Yeah, it's less, less effort for someone like him. Yeah. But most people are somewhere. A healthy diet, right? 15, 18% if you're a guy, you know, maybe mid twenties, if you're a female, that's pretty much what I see walking around, you know, people that are healthy. And to take that down to such a low level, that fucks, you know, it's hard to measure, but that fucks your body up, you know?

It fucks your body up. I think that we just need to bring reality back in the gyms, while still getting people under a barbell, because it really does work the best, you know? And yeah, that's what I really emphasize. Like, hey, if you want all the things that you want, we gotta train. Like we can't just, there's the office I primarily use, there's a whiteboard in there.

And I drew like the little stress recovery adaptation graph. And then I drew one for like, so that one's training and then exercise. I have that thing, it's like the graph, but instead of going up, it's just going, it's flat. And I wrote next to it, random exercises, random reps, to it, random exercises, random reps, random weights, random sets, random range of motion, no outcome besides completion. So I have a graph that shows, and it says like exercise versus training, and these things are different. Yeah, I'll explain to people like, hey, if you're not making it harder in some way, you are just doing the same thing over and over again. Like if you're in a class and you only have access to the same equipment, first of all,

you're probably not pushing yourself with the equipment that's in there. And second of all, like, you're not making progress. You're not making it harder. You're just, I literally told you like, you're doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Like, what is that? That's insanity. So, I think just having someone, and like, I don't have all the answers.

And at the same time, there are principles that are always true that I'm just explaining to people. So I'm providing valuable information to the general gym goer. And even if someone doesn't decide to train with me, they're still walking away with like, things need to get harder. If I want these health or aesthetic outcomes, I need to make my workouts harder. If I'm not quantifying them, then I'm basically not going to do that. So there's a lot of, I think just people are so misguided because the general ex-phys personal training certification doesn't teach basic principles.

Those certifications have historically been skewed towards cardio. Oh yeah, for sure. You know, and that's because a lot of endurance athletes in the seventies couldn't get jobs. So they started working at universities and they became tenure track faculty at these universities. So then they started doing research studies, conducting research studies on endurance performance and how it affects various health outcomes.

Yeah, that checks out. Because that's where the funding was. First, it was, let's study endurance performance and see what type of adaptations occur. This was in the 70s. I'm thinking of George Brooks and those guys. Then later on, there's no money in that. Nobody's gonna fund that, you know?

So they started looking at how endurance exercise improves various health outcomes and biomarkers. And this went on through the 90s, 2000s, even to this day, right? Well, a lot of those guys are old and retiring now. And the guys replacing them are Joe Weider fanboys of the 1980s and 1990s that were into bodybuilding and want to study hypertrophy. So now we have a bunch of lifting studies. Except these studies aren't looking

at health outcomes necessarily. Yeah, and they're done on novices, so anything's gonna work. Yeah, and trained people, that just means somebody with a gym membership, that straight line you're talking about. That's what trained... So listen to what she just said. This is a good point. What she said a few minutes ago was she has a graph on her whiteboard of people doing the same shit all

the time and going nowhere. However, you know what they're doing? They're doing the same shit all of the time. They're scanning their key card. they're showing up to the gym, they're exercising. Now you have a study that says we are recruiting individuals who are resistance trained or who lift weights regularly, on the ad they might use more common language, for our study. And then they'll get those guys

who fall onto your straight line and then when they publish it in a peer-reviewed journal, they'll say resistance trained-trained men. They've barely gotten the benefits of the novice effect. They got maybe 30% of it. Your resistance exercised. I'll give you that. But that's... You know, I was talking with my dad the other day.

I trained my dad. He's crushing it. It's great. He's gonna be 71 this year. Congratulations to him. Woo. And we were talking about the like gold standard, like personal training certification and comparing it with what I had to do for starting strength. And he's like, oh, like, is there no practical for like these other certifications? Like, no, there is no practical. You literally answer a multiple choice test and get a 70% and all of a sudden you're a trainer. There is no practical element.

So the barrier entry into the industry is it's too low. It's too low. Let me give like CrossFit some credit on because yes, during my three and a half years, I did their level one and their level two. And the level one, you had to coach. There's a practical component. Yeah, there is a practical component. Now, like, were you heavily evaluated during that? No, but you had to show that you would, like,

give cues to a person doing a class. And then, yes, there was a multiple choice test. But the Level 2, like, they evaluated your coaching. Now, I think everybody passed, so it's not like it was extremely rigorous. But at least with CrossFit, they're like, you have to be giving cues and telling people like what to do. At least now, obviously, yeah, like their methodology isn't super sound and they made a bunch of stuff up. But maybe that'll get some hater comments too.

But at least that element is there. They're watching you, Coach. Yes. There is some sort of practical, like you have to be able to like do something in order to earn this certification. So yes, yes, that's a lower, much lower standard, obviously, than what we had to do. But at least it is there. There's one that's super easy to get.

You have to have NASM, right, for a lifetime? I mean, probably, but I know a guy, so I don't. Hope he's not listening. Yeah. The only certification I can recall that had a practical eliminated the practical before I went to take that exam. And that was the American College of Sports Medicine, ACSM.

But get this. Their practical had nothing to do with lifting. You had to demonstrate that you can perform aerobic exercise tests. That's silly. You had to administer these tests that you are never going to administer in a gym. Yeah, this is totally useless.

Yeah, so I mean, I could see why they got rid of it, but at least they evaluated people. I think, isn't it the CSCS you have to, I know there's an exam. It's all computer, I took that. You have to have a bachelor's in anything anything as long as you have a bachelor's. Rip had his, Rip was one of the first to pass the CSCS because back then it was, yeah, oh yeah, it was about strength and conditioning back then.

Then the physical therapist took it over in the 2000s and Rip said that he let his laps when they published a paper, which I found was published in 2008, that said that he let his laps when they published a paper, which I found was published in 2008, that said that there is no difference in one RM strength, one rep max strength for those, you know, everybody listening knows what that means, but just the most weight you could ever lift. No difference in one RM strength between bench pressing

on a flat bench versus bench pressing on a stability ball. And yeah, when he saw that he let his certification lapse and he formally sent them a letter. Isn't it wild? Because if you if you asked all those peers like, Hey, if you would you rather shoot a cannon off of a canoe or a aircraft carrier? Like the answer is so obvious. But yeah, oh, we're going to peer review this study. And it's like it, I swear with this industry, like common sense is just totally out the window. And it's all, I mean, and I know, like, you've said this, I'm sure Steph has said this. It's like, I mean, and I know like, you've said this, I'm sure Steph has said this, it's like, you know,

they're all like, it's a good old boys club and they all like are yes men to each other's research and these studies. So it's created two camps in the gym business. You got one camp, they believe they can achieve outcomes that require drugs without drugs. Just following the program and the diet of the drug using guy that told them to do it. Then you got people in between that, you know,

maybe they don't wanna look like Ronnie, but maybe they wanna look like some actor who took a few compounds. Compounds as in steroids. They took some steroids, they trained, the camera did its magic, they got airbrushed and all this other shit, right? So that's how most people in the middle, that's what most people in the middle try to follow.

Then on the other end of the spectrum, you have the corrective exercise physical therapy people that have taught typically educated people that you have to train everything in isolation and that anything heavy is gonna hurt you. And that exercise is this really complicated affair. It's like mental practice. Like you're broken, you're fragile,

you need to do these little, and I mean, that's harming. I mean, think of if you get people buying into that and then they're scared to do anything strenuous, it's like your're not, your health is going to be in the toilet because... Absolutely. Yeah, for X, Y, Z reasons. Yeah, but that's why we have shows like this.

Trying to educate the masses. I think if we make enough of these and somebody else hears it and then they make enough of these, you know, maybe we'll make a dent just as I'm dying. I'm hopeful for like the maha thing going on. Well Bobby Kennedy lifts. Yeah, I mean, Luchin' Harem, he's like... I mean, he's probably on testosterone, but yeah, but you know, he's what, 70? Bench presses at least.

Yeah, he can do pull-ups. I mean, yeah, he's it's just an amazing like our health secretary currently and then like what our health secretary was. Yeah, no, I'm hopeful because there are more people that

like, hey, let's find the root cause. Let's get into preventing disease before it even starts. Yeah, I think we've hammered that to high hell. So, you know, now's a good time to probably close out. More people need to understand this shit in a nutshell. So we'll probably do another episode at some point. But yeah, let's wind this down.

Thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at the underscore Robert underscore Santana on Instagram or weights and plates.com. If you are in the wonderful city of Phoenix, you could find me just south of Sky Harbor between 32nd Street 40th and Broadway and come in for a training session. And the gym also has a Instagram page at weights double underscore and double underscore plates. We are on YouTube now. So click and smash that subscribe button, youtube.com slash at weights underscore and underscore

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