Weights and Plates Podcast - Ep. 110 - Breaking the Survival Mode Mindset

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

 In episode 110 of the Weights and Plates Podcast, Robert passionately addresses the common excuse of being in "survival mode," which leads many to neglect their fitness and dietary goals. He reflects on conversations with individuals who feel overwhelmed by life's demands, emphasizing that the belief in a lack of time is often a self-imposed limitation. Throughout the episode, he advocates for the importance of showing up and making time for health, encouraging listeners to challenge their mindset and prioritize their well-being despite life's challenges.

Welcome to the weights and plates and podcasts. I am Robert Santana. I am your host. You know, today I had an interesting day. I had a grown-ass man tell me that he is literally in survival mode. You know, I'm not going to go into the details. You know, he's a good dude. But it really gets under my skin when I hear this shit. When they say that when people tell me they're in survival mode, they're overwhelmed by the demands of life. And therefore, they have to stop lifting. or they have to let their diet slide, or they got fat because they don't have time. And throughout this conversation, the thing that I concluded from it was that this person is married to the idea that he doesn't have time.

And it's not a unique conversation. It's one that I've had today, but I've had many times with many people. And over the years, I've tried to make sense of it. That's why on this show and a lot of my content, I talk about the importance of showing up. because if we want to, we will engineer Ph.D. level bullshit for why we can't do something, whether it's lifting weights, whether it's following a healthy diet. Sometimes we can't get enough sleep. If, you know, if we have certain jobs that demand a set amount of time, sure, you know, some of us have to operate on low sleep. And, you know, there are things you can do to mitigate that and make that less shitty of a situation.

So I'm not going to sit here and knock somebody who can't get enough sleep because he has to go earn a living. You know, I've been in that situation myself, you know. But the problem is the storytelling. You know, we can be very exceptional at bullshitting ourselves if we let us. Whenever you're trying to reach a goal, when you're trying to go from point A to point B, things are going to get hard. And the longer you have to work towards that goal, the more advanced you become at the the thing you're learning, the harder it becomes, the more demanding it becomes, the more tradeoffs you have to make.

You know, we've talked about this many times. However, if you stop doing the thing, you lose everything, even that base that you worked so hard for in those early years. Remember, this doesn't just apply to lifting. That's what I coach. But this also applies to play musical instruments, reading. You know, your reading can slow down if you don't read very often. I've seen that happen to people.

Dog training, all dog training is perishable. One of my good friends and – sorry, one of my good friends and dog trainers once told me it's all perishable. One thing gets better, one thing falls off. So even something like that, you know, training an animal. The animal is not repeatedly exposing himself to a stimulus, whatever that may be, then some of that gets lost. So that's what I really want to talk about today. You know, why it's so important to not let these narratives in your head stop you from doing the thing you know you want to do.

I mean, maybe you don't want to do it, but you want the benefit from it because you can't just sit here and get the benefit. You know, I think in the last episode that I had, I talked about how you can't exercise your way to a trained body. Well, you also can't not exercise your way to a trained body. You can't not train your way to a trained body. You can't sedentary yourself into a trained body. And really, there is no tomorrow in the words of the great Apollo Creed.

In the words of the great Apollo Creed, there is no tomorrow because every day you are getting older. And every second you add to your lice makes it harder to train at some level. Because an aging body is not going to be as effective at tolerating stress as a young body. So some of us started later in life because we didn't have access to information. or we had preconceived notions of what weightlifting was. Lots of different reasons. But some of us have started earlier, too. I know guys that started in their teens and continued to PR into their 20s.

And I know one right now that comes to mind, Chase Lindley, you should follow him. He started, I think, as a teen, 14, 13. And he's in his mid-20s. Now he's still training. I believe he's still hitting PRs. Last I heard he was on the weightlifting side. We haven't talked in a while. but I like bringing him up because he got access to the information.

Old fuckers like me didn't have access to when we were young boys. And we had kind of teased through a bunch of silly bullshit to figure out that, you know, we just need to add weight to the bar. And things need to get heavier for us to get stronger to build muscle to make our bones, joints, and connective tissue stronger. But the bottom line is, time never stop. The world never stops turning. So the more you delay something that requires you to stress yourself out so that you can adapt to that stress, the less of a window of opportunity you have.

You know, a lot of old novices that I train, older novices that are in their 70s, 70 plus, 60 plus even. They know their best PRs ever are behind them. And, you know, this, again, this can apply to anything. Not everybody listening wants to have the biggest squat or deadlift that they can ever get. But many of you listening want more muscle mass than you have, want more strength than you have, want less pain than you've had, want to feel better outside the weight room than you've had. And you want the benefits of lifting weights. And maybe you have certain objectives that may require you to become an intermediate or advanced lifter.

and if you fall into those categories, then you need to listen because the clock's ticking. And every time you stop for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, a year, two years, five years, those are windows of opportunity you've lost. Now, you're going back into it with an older body. Now, sure, if you're 21 and you come back at 25 and no big deal. If you're 34 and you come back at 40, you know, it's a bigger deal. if you're 40 and you come back at 60, it's a lot bigger deal. And if you're starting at 70, it's great.

If you've never done it before and this is brand new to you, you're going to hit PRs. You don't know any different. But if you stop and come back at 70, you know, it's going to be hard psychologically. It's going to be hard physically. And you're just not going to get all the benefits that you want necessarily. So when I tell people to show up, it's not just me calling you a pussy. That's part of it, of course. I hold contempt for people that don't show up and engineer bullshit stories for why they didn't show up.

Just, you know, the best client I had, I know he listens to this show. I think I just sent him a message the other day. He messaged me, yeah, I just want to be a pussy, Rob. The best client I had, and I know he's listening to this, I'd sent him a message the other day. I haven't talked to him in a while when I had him for a long period of time and, you know, he finally tapped out. He was dealing with aches and pains and intermediate level stuff that more advanced lifters deal with. Not all, you know, but some. And he's just like, he tapped out.

And then I'm talking to him and trying to understand where he's coming from. And at the end, he was like, I just want to be a pussy. And my respect for him shot through the damn roof for saying that. I'm like, all right, well, if you're going to own that, don't let me be the one to stop you. But at least you're not lying to yourself. If you're listening, you know who you are. I have a lot of respect for you for doing that. But, you know, the excuse mill can be endless.

You know, don't fall into that. So let's, uh, so let's kind of dive in on, you know, why we think this, this happens. You know, I think that the industry as a whole, and I've mentioned this in various contexts before, has fed into this with a lot of silly bullshit. The industry as a whole has fed into this with a lot of silly bullshit. They've put out advice, content, programs that have made people feel like they're training and doing something productive while they're quietly holding themselves back and running through an excuse script, essentially. So the net result is, if nothing ever gets hard, then you're never going to quit, right? So if programs are designed to be easy or to never get hard enough to be uncomfortable and are also permissive of skipping days, for instance.

And, you know, not just moving a workout from Wednesday to Friday or missing a couple workouts a month, but like routinely skipping, going to the gym once a week, once a month, twice a month, when you have a structure built upon that, then, you know, yeah, you have somebody that casually comes in and out, but they're going to be in and out. They're not doing themselves any favors. So some of the most common, let's erase that. So some of the most common things that I hear from people. And this kind of lines up in research, too, that when I looked at the research on physical activity adherence or exercise adherence, this was years ago, and the number one reason people cited for not exercising was perceived lack of time, the key word being perceived.

So what are some reasons I hear? Well, I got small children. I have a job that works me many hours. I'm only getting four or six hours of sleep doing another activity. I travel a lot. These are some of the most common ones I hear, but especially family and work, I'd say, are probably the most common. I haven't surveyed that or looked at surveyed data on that, but family and work are the most common. Now, if you're a man and you want to be perceived as the leader of your family, they need to lead by example,

and telling yourself you don't have time to train when it's something that you believe is valuable, because I think all these people, they wouldn't be talking to me if they didn't believe it was valuable. If you believe it's valuable and you want your children to do this, then you need to show them. People, you know, small humans watch and they learn from watching. You need to show them how this is done. and it's done by showing up, right? But how it's not done is you don't sit there and get to say, oh, my family is demanding my time,

my job is demanding my time, therefore I could be a sloppy piece of shit and teach my kid how to be a sloppy piece of shit. And sure, you're going to fire back at me and tell me I don't have kids. Fair enough, fair enough. But I have countless numbers of clients who have not just one or two kids, but I've had clients that have four or five. I have a friend who has nine kids.

and he still finds a way to train because he tells me that the training, because he tells me that the training helps balance his mind out. You know, maybe I'm paraphrasing incorrectly there, but, you know, he'll confirm. Sorry, let me repeat that. You know, I have clients with four, five, six. I have a client that turned into a good friend of mine with nine kids. And he doesn't just train. He's a late intermediate, possibly an advanced lifter at this point. And yes, he carries multiple jobs, too.

He has multiple jobs, and he has nine kids, all of different ages. I don't know about now, but at one point they all lived under the same roof with him. He's not, you know, and he made damn sure that he kept training, and he said he needed it, that it was therapeutic for him. Training is an important part of his life, and he also is leading by example. So don't look at me for this. You know, look at other people for this. There's countless examples of this of people that have strains on their time, but they see the value in training and they find a way to do it.

Now, it may not be a workout that matches Mr. Olympia or an IPF power lifter or even a casual power lifter. You know, might just be going in the gym doing one lift a day or two lifts a day, getting in and out of there in 30 to 60 minutes. You know, I've been doing this a long time. I'm not a young man anymore, but what I will tell you is when I was a young boy, the men my age, all had chronic back pain. You slap them on the back. It would hurt. You know, they all had all sorts of joint pain that started in the early 30s even,

you know, late 20s, early 30s. I don't have any of that shit. I've been squatting since I was 18 years old. I've been deadlifting on and off since about then, but consistently since I was 28 years old. I've been benching since I was 15 and I've been pressing since I was in my mid-20s. And I've been doing this for a long time. and it's real nice when duty calls and I have to use my whole body to lift something heavy or even repetitively lift something heavy like moving and it doesn't hurt.

I sleep good. Things go well. You know, if I lose sleep, my training's not good. I just throttle it. You know, I might not chin as much, you know, might not bench as much. You know, I'll get a squat in once a week, a deadlift in once a week. I'll try to bench at least twice. I'll try to press at least once and maybe get one chin up in there.

week and I'm not, you know, I may not get the armwork in that I want to get in because my schedule is kind of crazy. You know, I run three businesses. I record this show. I do a lot of things. So it's not the same as having a bunch of living human beings that I have to be responsible for. That adds another layer to it. And if I did, I'm sure my training would be even more watered down from what I've seen, but I'd keep it productive because training is important in my life. There are people, I mean, shit. Arnold himself was the governor of the state of California. Do you think He ever stopped training. He had a family, and he was the governor of one of the largest economies in the world. And, you know, the guy still trained. But he didn't train like

he did when he was 25. But he got in there, he got in the weight room. You know, he's always been shown riding bikes. So I know he values the aerobic side too. You just have to throttle the amount. It's not an all or nothing thing. Many people think it's an all or nothing thing that You either have to train hard or not train at all. And the moment it gets hard and uncomfortable, they choose the latter. And I've not seen anything good come out of that. They end up worse off than before they started. In many cases, they never get back to it.

And they're just losing out on all the benefits. You know, do you not brush your teeth every day? You know, it really needs to be viewed as routine maintenance, in my opinion. Now, you know, when I get overwhelmed, that can get a little neurotic, you know, that happens. You know, like when there's a lot on your plate and you're work, work, work, working, and you got like, and you feel like you're working all the time. You're working at work. You're working at work.

You're working at home. You've got these late nights, early mornings. But at the end of the day, even in that chaos, my mentality is how do I even move this big boulder forward? Just an inch. Just an inch. Just an inch. You know, I might show up and just squat. You know, that's what that might look like.

I might just deadlift the next day. Or I might bench the next day to give my back. break and then, you know, deadlift the third day. But even in my most neurotic state, and I've been fucked with a lot in my life, it overcome some difficult things and difficult people, you know, especially difficult people. And lifting always took the edge off. You know, it's really good about, it's real good at releasing anxious, nervous, and angry energy. Conditioning, on the other hand, you up if you're feeling kind of down and have the blues. So I've used it for that as well. I tend to be more on the former or, you know, anger, angst, nervousness. And nothing like a big

heavy weight shakes that off. Nothing better than a big heavy weight to shake that off. But it's beyond that. It's beyond that. It's more of I've committed myself to this. I believe in what it will do for me. And I'm going to make sure that I get some dose of it in so that I don't lose all of it. And it's not even about, you know, big arms or looking good or any of those things that it may have been about when I started. It's more about, I don't want to know what it feels like to not do this. And not to mention, there are some people on this planet that can't do it. You know, there's people that have lost limbs that can't do it and wish they can do it, or people that have done it and lost limbs or have gotten paralyzed and can't do it. And you're

going to sit there and say, well, I don't have time because I have the responsibilities of a grown-ass man or a grown-ass adult. You know, I don't typically or a grown-ass adult. It's bullshit. It is bullshit, and you know it's bullshit,

but, like I said, if you let your brain do it, we have PhD-level abilities to engineer bullshit into our brains to talk us out of doing things. We all are capable of this. The key is you want to be the person that overrides it.

You want to be the person, that overrides it. And, you know, I'm not asking you to, you know, be a stoic, you know, because that's, that's trendy now. I'm not asking for that. You know, what I, you know, if you need to cry, break shit, uh, be neurotic, you know, journal. I did do whatever it is you need to do to deal with the craziness that's going through your head when you're in the midst of chaos, then do it. But keep the ball moving forward. That's the most important thing. I don't care how irrational you look or how goofy you have to behave to work through those feelings because what we're talking about here is emotion. But in the midst of that, remind yourself, you still have a job

to do, just like you still have to wake up and brush your teeth and hopefully floss if a lot of people don't do that, but you should, and take a shower at some point. You have to do those things, right? Well, you also have to squat at some point. You have deadlift at some point. You got a bench at some point. You got to press at some point. You got to do chin-ups at some point. That's five days. That's probably 20 minutes each. It doesn't even have to be a certain load. It's load something on that'll get you out in the amount of time you want to get out. But the time is there.

You know, the time is there. It's always there if you want to find it. So it really comes down to swimming through those emotions and getting to the root of this, you know. How important is this for you and how much of a believer are you? There's no right or wrong answer. You just have to be honest with yourself about your situation and what's going on. And that's very difficult to do. It's very difficult for a man to look in the mirror and say, I am a pussy and I'm going to own it.

At least it is for me. For my one client, it wasn't that hard. And love the guy to death. I hope that he comes back around and wants to push hard again. This might be a little solicitation there, by the way. But I can't say it enough. Not showing up is a real big fucking problem. And it should never be an acceptable alternative unless you.

you have completely given up and do not think that there's any value in this. In which case, I can't help you. Nobody can. You know what's best at this point. So go do what you think is best. If you want to go do calisthenics or not do anything, if you think that this only makes your life 2% better, then I can't convince you otherwise. I'm not here to convince anybody of anything. I'm just here to highlight issues that I've encountered, first and second hand, and help you identify them, help you identify them so that you can get the most out of your time in the weight room, whether you're training or whether you're exercising with the movements. Again, there's no right or wrong.

There's no right or wrong. There's just what makes sense for you. I just want to be your guide towards the best possible experience that you can have with this. And to that point, I want to push back at this easy works. that the industry has pushed upon us going back to the Joe Wheater days. Although progressive overload was part of one of the weeder principles, you were supposed to do more than you did last time, you know, that that was at least emphasized in the 70s, probably through the 80s. But it seems that since the odds, there's been this trend towards lifting weights for a feeling or working out for a feeling. And I'm sure this applies to other industries.

You know, there's such a thing as recreation. You can do things to feel good. It doesn't mean they're going to produce a result. So in both the power lifting and bodybuilding world, especially in the bodybuilding world, the concept of RPE and RIR reps in reserve or rating of perceived exertion, rating of perceived exertion or reps in reserve, now puts it on the lifter to subjectively judge how a lift felt and estimate what he had left. I'm not going to get into a debate about this again with powerlifting people that insist that, you know, with an advanced lifter, you have to do this.

Okay, fine. An advanced lifter is working hard. Okay? An advanced lifter is working hard. And an advanced lifter wants a PR. If you're a powerlifter and you're using RPE and you're producing PRs, don't let me tell you what the fuck to do. You've figured it out. I mean, you're hitting PRs, okay?

So my opinion doesn't fucking matter. I don't compete in powerlifting. However, I do coach normal people with adult responsibilities that have goals, that have objective goals. But those goals are not to get on a platform and beat the other guy. They're trying to beat their own logbook, and they're trying to get as strong and durable as they can as a human being. And for a lot of these people, they're never going to get anywhere near a point where they can reasonably perceive how, difficult to lift is with even minimal accuracy. Because they're not lifters.

They're not competitors. They're just normal run-of-the-mill people that want to use the weight room to look better, feel better, and move better. And I'm here to guide them through that. And what I have seen is when these people get a hold of a bodybuilding program, I don't see it too much of powerlifting programs, the power lifter, the power lifter's use of RPE tends to stay in powerlifting because it's centered around the squat, bench, and deadlift and exercises that help drive up the squat bench and deadlift. That's what power lifters do. That's

not what we do. Those are three of the lifts we use, but we also press overhead, just like any other lift, any of those three lifts, we treat the press the same. We pull overhead and do chin-ups or pull-downs, and then we add various assistance exercises for all of these lifts to drive them up, because that covers the whole body, essentially. I mean, you could do calf raises to some bicep curls, but your squat press, deadlift, bench press, and overhead pull covers most of it. Remember, we are not lifting to break records,

to beat people on the platform. We are lifting to beat our own logbook for as long as we can and as practical of a way as we can. And when you start telling a normal person that doesn't typically have a lot of training drive to begin with because this is a secondary, tertiary or quaternity thing in their life, that they can now use their feelings to dictate how hard they push. Which way do you think they're going to go?

You think they're going to overdo it or underdo it? In many cases, it's the latter. Many people underdo it. You put an RIR on there. You take a kid who's got low training drive, not great genetics for muscle building or strength, and not a high proclivity for hard work. him that he's going to do something with three reps in reserve, he's probably going to choose

a weight that has 15 reps in reserve. And sure, I might be exaggerating that, but I've seen this enough times to see that play out. You end up getting a bunch of junk volume. You have a kid who's fully capable of deadlifting 250, 275 for sets of five, deadlifting 165 for sets of five, because he thinks 185's heavy when it just isn't, feels like weight looks like a warm-up. So we have this epidemic of people that use training apps or consume YouTube content from heavily or consume YouTube content from heavy drug using influencers who are bottom 50% of bodybuilders, telling them that, hey, it's all about the pump.

It's all about the feel. you know, just keep it some maximal. Do three reps in reserve. Don't go to failure, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, when the average person lacks the training drive to go to failure on their own. That's why they hire a coach in many cases. And when they hire a coach like myself, failure for them is actually not muscular failure.

They just think it is. And then a couple days later, we add five pounds. They lift more and they get stronger. You know, I trained a lady at our apartment. complex. And, you know, she's fairly athletic. She doesn't compete in anything, but her main priority is I don't want to get hurt. You know, I want to look good. I don't want to get hurt. And the first time the bench got heavy, I had to yell at her to finish the rep. And then afterwards, she's like, I don't think I would have finished that if you didn't yell at me. Okay. So just take that,

right? This is somebody who likes to work out, too. She just hasn't worked out in this way before, so she doesn't understand what muscular failure is or what pushing heavy is. Now, let's say you take someone that's even a fraction of that, and you give them an RPE. You're going to say you're going to do a rating of perceived exertion level 7, which means that you could have done three more reps. There is a high likelihood that person is going to judge that prescription as there's a high likelihood that that person is going to choose a load that they could probably do 10 more times. I might be exaggerating a little bit, but it's not going to be an RPE 7. and it's going to be lighter than that. Because training drive is a real thing.

I think it's genetic. I think you can increase it with encouragement, with coaching, especially in-person coaching and with community. You know, if you're lifting around a bunch of strong people that are really into it, that can help. There's a lot of things that help. But independently, if you don't have it, it's going to be hard to drum it up without a village to help you. I consider myself to be someone with a very high training drive.

I injured myself early on in my strength training career. I squatted. I was squatting wrong. I thought I knew what I was doing because I read magazines, tore my ad doctor, did the same thing three months later because I got what I now know is form creep. So I got coached, got it fixed, first injury healed. Three months later, tore the other side.

What did I do? Both times, well, I don't even know if I could get up. I don't know what just happened. But nobody was coming to save me. That's the other thing people don't realize. Nobody's fucking coming to save you. You know, when shit goes bad, you've got to figure this out. And lifting is one of those ways that works that part of your brain that troubleshoot stressful situations.

And it can feed it to other things. I've seen it in my own life. So when I was injured lying on the gym floor watching the gym bro next to me in a tank top flexing in the mirror, I realized, well, I got to pick my ass up because I got to get to work. So I waddled out of there. I went to work. And the whole time I was hurt, I was just pissed off that I could not squat three plates or more at the time. You know, now I'm much further long than that, but at the time I was chasing that three-plate squat. Then the second injury happened, and I'm like, fuck, man, I just can't get this right.

Well, that was form creep. I was probably lifting correctly after getting coaching up to a point. It got heavy. I got form creep. I got hurt. And I was out for 10 months on the squat. My dead lift one up, though. So funny thing there is I was out.

I was out for the count toward my right end doctor. Five days later, I went to a starting strength seminar where Rip was still doing some. some of the lectures. It's my first time meeting Rip, actually. Mark Ripettow, for those of you newer to the podcast. Told him what happened. He adjusted my foot position, turned my toes forward. I was able to squat 135 that day after tearing my ad doctor with 330. The next night, we had to deadlift. Turn my toes forward. I deadlifted 3.15 for a set of five. the day, the workout before the tear, I had pulled 3.30 or 335 for 5. That was 335 for 5. It was the PR at the time. So I was 15 pounds under that because he knew how to modify the lift. I remember that, not because I'm toot my own horn. I have friends that have been far, injured, far worse than me that have come back from it. But the thing is, this was new to me. I'd never got hurt before because I never pushed hard before. I showed up and lifted weights. before the attendance thing was important to me.

And I'll come back to that. But I never tried to push as hard as I could. So getting hurt like that was new. It was scary. You know, it scared the shit out of me at first. I didn't know how to deal with it. But the thought of not figuring it out and getting back to work just didn't cross my mind. And that's all I can say is genetic.

I was at a commercial gym. I didn't have a network of people that I lifted weights with. I was just getting to know people in the industry and this side of the industry. So this all was internal. I just knew I had to get up and go. And some of that's upbringing too. You know, my dad immigrated here. My dad immigrated here from Cuba under harsh circumstances in the early 80s.

My parents came here in the 60s and they were all factory workers. So this blue collar upbringing probably contributed to that as well. But I had never been exposed to any of this shit myself. You know, I was a college kid trying to try to. train between the ears. You know, I did swim in high school. I've ridden bikes. I've rollerbladed. I had to dig a hit by a car as a kid. I was riding a bike. I'd hit by a car. Just got up, got on the bike, rode it home. I just had a scrape by my shins, thankfully, nothing serious. But the guy followed me. He's like, are you okay, dude? Are you okay, dude? I'm like, yeah. I didn't

know what I know now. Like something could have been fucked up internally and I had no idea. But, you know, as an 11, 12 year old kid that probably rode his bike way too fucking far, yeah, I got hit by a car across the street. And, you know, it was a T-bone-type deal. So my shin got pretty badly fucked up for a few weeks. But I said, told the guy, hey, man, I'm okay. Got on the bike, rode off. He followed me. And he said, are you sure you're okay? I'm like, yeah, okay. You know, he didn't do anything weird off or a ride or anything like that. He just was, he was jarred because he just hit a kid with a car in suburban Chicago and probably thought he was going to get hit with a lawsuit or cops arresting up later, you know, or something. But I didn't think my, my brain was

working like that. My brain was, okay, get on the bike, ride home, figure it out. And fortunately, it was just a skin scrape. You know, nothing serious. I fell off the bike. The impact from the vehicle wasn't bad. So, you know, it was partially genetic, partially upbringing, you know, you just, I didn't, I didn't play contact sports or, you know, get in a, hold on, let me rephrase that. I did. I was always physically active, but I never had a physical job, you know, I wasn't a professional fighter, you know, I wasn't, getting in fights all the time. You know, I got fights as a kid, of course, like most boys used to do back then. But, you know, I wasn't routinely beating myself up. So, like, this was a new thing, getting hurt under a barbell. And it was the same deal as when I got hit by the car. I got up, waddled to the locker room, still took a shower, because I had to do that. I'd go to work right after. I used to train in the mornings. And my job was behind the gym where it took place. And then I waddled the work, told my good friend and colleague to this day, you know, she was a person I worked with, were friends of this day. I told her, I got hurt in the gym. I'm all fucked up. I can

barely walk. And then a week later, I'm deadlifting heavy. And that's just, you know, that's just how I'm wired. And sometimes I got to remind myself, not everybody's wired that way. And I try to be, I'd say I'm a pretty patient person with my clients. But I'd be lying if I that it's not incredibly difficult to listen to somebody tell me, I don't have time, my family, my job. Dude, you're a leader. You know, show up, you know, warm up the squat and do a set, do something. But ignoring it completely and repeating to yourself, ruminating in this narrative that you don't have time is not productive. Because what else don't you not have time for?

That's the next question you got to ask yourself. You know, what's important to you? What example do you want to set not just for your family? but for other people. That's what goes through my head. I'm teaching you guys things for this podcast. I'm coaching lifters, both in person and online, and I feel like I have to lead through example.

I've never taken an anabolic steroid because it was important to me to learn what my body, at least, is capable of, how much muscle I can build, how to bring up certain muscle group areas, whatever the fuck you want to say, because it's hard for me to say that now because I've done it all through big exercises, most of it through big exercises. But I've answered all those questions without the confounding variable of testosterone and testosterone analogs. Now, I'm not opposed to taking low-dose testosterone as I get older. You know, that's fine. But I've spent a significant portion of my life adding weight to the bar, getting stronger, and figuring out that process.

And I never succumb to the temptation to take that stuff, even though I know, you know, I'd lift more, I'd look better, it'd be fun. I've seen it work for other people. It works every fucking time virtually. I've never met somebody it didn't work on. You have adverse responses, of course, where people don't feel very good on it, but it changes your body in ways that lifting and diet don't. I hit on this a lot. But for this episode, what I'm talking about is I didn't do it.

I did the hard thing longer. Does that make me better than someone who did? No, but why did I do it? I wanted to, A, lead through example, and B, gather information that I can share with you, which I'm now doing. And what I've learned from it is you can get strong for a real long time and you can get a little bit bigger year after year. But these crazy 50 to 100 pound muscular transformations that you see, that's the result of drugs. Let's just be honest and call it what it is.

You're not going to gain 30 to 50 percent more muscle mass unless you are incredibly skinny to begin with lifting weights and following a healthy diet and taking whatever supplement there is to take. But I could say that because I put the work in. I put the time in. I learned a lot. I enjoyed the process and it's been very rewarding on the other side of it. Hard work is very rewarding. That's the other thing. When you do it and you start to get the rewards of it, you're never going to regret doing it.

Most people that say they don't have time and still show up, even though they think they don't have time, they never regret showing up. You'll never regret showing up to the weight room. It's rare, you know, maybe if you get hurt. But for the most part, if you show up, you get it done and nothing eventful happens, you're going to feel better than if you didn't show up and told yourself the lie that you don't have time. You all have fucking time. Yeah. So yeah.

So let's go back to training based on feelings. RPE, rating of perceived exertion, RIR, reps and reserve, right? If you're a competitive power lifter, like I said earlier, and you're hitting PR, continue fucking using it. Don't let me be the one to stop you. But if you're not hitting PRs, your body's not changing, and nothing is really happening other than you're going to the gym, which is good.

It's a start, right? If you're using RPE to keep yourself going, that's a whole other story, right? But if you're just a run-of-the-mill guy that wants to look better, feel better, or move better, it's not a good use. It's not going to, Sorry.

If you're using perceived exertion scales to assign your loads and you've never followed a program that holds you accountable to a load, you're not going to develop that grit we're talking about. It is one thing to go in and say, I'm going to do a set of five deadlifts at an RPE7, and then you're just going to pick a weight that just feels about right. Maybe you could have done three more. Now, if it's your first day in the gym, I'm going to make you do that anyway because I have to find out where your baseline is, right? So we are going by feel, we're going by, we are going by feel, we're going by bar speed. But, you know, if you're somebody who's been going for a while, and I tell you one set of five at RP7, or 225 for five, which one holds you more accountable? One of them, you know you've got to go in there and do it. And most people listening to this have experienced that anxiety that builds up to it, especially in a squat.

Like if you know you have to go in, let's say you're a woman and you've got a squat. 185 for 5 for the first time in your life. Or let's even go down. I have a lot of women where 135 for 5 is a big milestone. And I've seen even less, 115. You know, like just pick a number. There is a weight that you have to put on your back that makes you lose sleep at night. Now, if I told you, okay, instead of doing three sets of five at 115, 135, 225, 315, 405,

and I said, you're going to do three sets of five at an RP7. Do you think you're going to lose sleep over that? Do you think you're going to worry about what you're loading onto the bar? Be honest. You know, a seasoned powerlifter probably knows what an RPE7 is on his worst day, right? I'm not sure that he does, but he probably does more than a typical personal training client or gym member. But there's something to be said when you've done one, ten, ten, 10 last week or two days ago.

And you have to do 115 this time. And the next time you have to do 120. And then there's this whole experience where, fuck, man, I want to make the lift, but I don't want to make the lift because that means I have to add five more pounds. You lose out on that valuable experience as a novice lifter or an early intermediate that's under trained when you use perceived exertion. It is important and almost essential that you have that experience and learn how to work

through that stress, not just the physical stress, but the stress between the ears, the stress in your chest cavity, your emotions run high, your mind gets neurotic, you start losing sleep over it, you're scared shitless to go into the gym. Now, does it have to be like that forever? No, not necessarily. One thing that we could all agree on is that over time you do spend more time lifting sub-maximal loads that you know you can get. That may be harder sometimes than others, but that you know you can get. Earlier in the process, you can expose your self. to maximum loads more often because your body is learning how to tolerate them. And it's not just physical. You're not just learning how to recruit more motor units.

You're not just learning how to build more muscle. You're not just learning how to perform specific movements. You're learning how to manage all the psychological and emotional stress that goes with it. And guess what? When something else hard comes up in life that stimulates that fight or flight response, it's a little more familiar now. You see what I mean? So these fucking coaches out there. I don't even know if they're coaches anymore because you can make so much damn money just talking bullshit to a camera and never having to have a human body in front of you, but these coaches, fit fluencers, people on social media and YouTube, they're complicit in this because they sell all this nuance and complexity to keep the lifter engaged and actually educate

to keep somebody enterter. Sorry. These lifters, fit fluencers, YouTube celebrities, they put out content to entertain, not necessarily to educate, not necessarily to encourage or inspire. It's to entertain because entertainment is what keeps you watching the video, which is why this video is probably not getting a lot of views. I don't strive to be entertaining. Sometimes I do it on accident. At least I hope so. Some people are listening to this shit, but the level at which your show is entertaining determines how well you do financially and through viewership, followership, and listens if you're doing audio. But that entertainment doesn't necessarily mean reality.

So the point I am driving home here is that the point I'm driving home here is that it has to get hard. I'm sorry, it has to get hard for a period of time. And if it's too hard, and if it's too hard to where it's incompatible with your lifestyle, you still got to show up. And you have options there. You can show up and try to do more than last week while also doing less. So maybe you're doing one exercise and you're adding five pounds. Or, you know, if you just, if an RPE gets you to walk in the door, then use the damn RPE.

It shouldn't be your default, though. but I feel like I get the sense that all this perceived exertion shit and all these micro variables like time under tension, the stretch, the burn and all that feeling-based things have become the default when they should be last resort. And they're typically things guys focus on later in their careers. Most champions in bodybuilding, at least historically, started outlifting heavier and heavier weights and then got into all that other shit. So I could beat this home until the end of time. But what I'm ultimately saying is easy doesn't work, but it doesn't have to be balls of the wall hard all the time either. The most important thing above all else is that you show up. And then we can talk about what you do when you show up.

find that minimum threshold you can tolerate under the highest amount of stress and run with it. Don't stop showing up. You know, I train all walks of life, but my preference is to train you like you would train for combat. To teach you how to be cool under stressful situations. You know, casual recreational exercise type lifting doesn't do that. You might get tired. You might breathe heavy, you might sweat, you might burn. But it's only when it's to failure and the reps are low enough and the weights heavy enough that you feel that fear that you might feel on a battlefield.

I'm not a soldier. I'm not a fighter. But it is crucial. I think it is critical that people are not a man to stress better. And I think there's no better way to do it than to expose yourself to varying levels of it in an appropriate. way. Like, you're not, I'm not going to come in. You're not going to come in here the first day. I'm not going to put 500 pounds on your back. You're going to start with a lightweight that gets heavier and heavier and heavier and heavier. And eventually it becomes so stressful, like I said, you lose sleep

overnight. So this is what I would consider. This is what I will consider, what's the word I'm looking for. This is what I would consider a wartime situation. You are doing something that drives your stress levels up high and then you have to adapt to it by recovering. You recover and you adapt to it. This has been my experience with it and this is what makes the process the most rewarding because it builds confidence in the human that's doing it. You build confidence through your ability to repeatedly overcome stressful situations. And lifting a heavy weight is a stressful situation. So I can't say it or not. You got to go in, you got to load the bar, and you got to do what you have on there. Anything less, you're shorting yourself.

You're shorting yourself not just so the weight you're going to lift, but that experience of doing something you didn't think you could do or something that you thought was going to break you and then coming out of it alive and doing it again at some point in time. The more you do that, the more durable you're going to be in life. So if you're a man, so if you're listening to this, ask yourself, are you truly in survival mode or are you in discomfort mode? Because there's a key difference.

Only you can answer that question. And there's only one rule that I ask you to live by. If you can move that boulder, even one millimeter forward, then move it. But don't let it sit there for months and years. You only have so much time on this planet. Every second that passes, you have an older body trying to. to go after the thing that you want to go after. So if you can only move it a millimeter,

then move it a millimeter. Because maybe, just maybe, you'll accumulate a meter in weeks' time. That is all I have to say about that. Thank you for tuning in, ladies and gentlemen. You can find me at weights and plates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. If you are in Metro Phoenix and want to get coached by me in person,

you can find me at weights and plates gym, just south of Sky Harbor Airport, between 32nd and 40th Street and Broadway, where you'll also see me training dogs too. Started a dog business last year, Ironwood dog at training. We don't have a whole lot of Instagram content up, but it's starting to grow. And it's fun. It's fun.

So another thing I've added to my list of things that I do. but yeah, that is it for this episode. Stay tuned and I look forward to chat with you again.