Weights and Plates Podcast - Ep. 119 - Show the F* Up: The Real Secret to Getting Stronger

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

The perfect program doesn’t matter if you don’t show up.This week on Strong & Sleek, Robert breaks down what training looks like once you’re past the beginner stage—and why getting stronger becomes as much a mental game as a physical one.Robert dives into advanced programming, progressive overload, chasing PRs, moving from higher-volume work into heavy triples, doubles and singles, and why sometimes the smartest program is simply: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. He explains why experienced lifters may need months—or even years—to fully realize their progress and why constantly switching programs can actually get in the way. But programming is only half the conversation. What happens when training stops being new and exciting? Robert explores psychological compliance—finding the environment, community, goals and reasons that keep you walking through the door when motivation disappears. From heavy squats and deadlift PRs to gym culture, coaching, fear, discipline and the importance of simply keeping your commitments, this episode is a reminder that long-term results aren't built by chasing novelty.They're built by showing up. Again. And again. And again.

Welcome to the strong and sleek podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host of this show. Welcome back. Wow, it's already been a week. Now that I'm doing these every week, it feels like I just did this yesterday. I don't know how these guys do it daily and some for like multiple hours a day.

Like props to you guys. You know, I'm like fighting here for 30 to 40 minutes, you know. I think last week I hit 37. That was before it got all cut up and I was like almost 40. But really, I just want to talk to. to you guys. I'm not like trying to PR the time, so to speak, but I am trying to PR the time, so to speak. But yeah, this week, a lot of my mind, a lot of, lots happened. It got less hot here in Arizona, you know, for those of you who live here, make sure you are not just drinking enough

water, but you're getting plenty of fluid and electrolytes because it's been one of my observations that my training goes in the toilet, summer after summer after summer. And for a while there, I didn't see the pattern. See, a lot of you that work out, you're following a program that's usually three to six months in length is what I've kind of noticed. I just follow a program that's open-ended and that just kind of works for me. It eliminates a lot of decision fatigue and it doesn't interrupt progress in my opinion. So this drives a lot of people crazy and if your lifestyle tends to have a lot of wrenches thrown in it, it doesn't work very well. But I like an open-ended program where there's nothing there to really interrupt. And that's

because my life's pretty boring, so to speak, in terms of travel and whatnot these days. And even when I did travel more, I would always find a gym. So, you know, I might start a program with, well, let me back up. When I'm talking about what I'm doing, I'm talking about somebody who's been lifting weights for a long time, right? Not somebody who's just starting, not somebody who's competing, obviously. Now you have a deadline in there that's going to interrupt what you're doing. So you have to kind of accelerate certain parts of it. We're talking about the guy that just likes to push himself or the girl who just likes to push herself and you know has a pretty routine lifestyle not a lot of interruptions and doesn't have a meat coming up has no real reason to change things unless something

stops working so it's what i like to call the if it ain't broke don't fix it program and you know that's an advanced an intermediate or advanced program you know you're just going to keep showing up and keep trying to thread the needle so what does that look like for me uh as a decade plus lifter me what that looks like is I'll start just like many trainers start people with higher reps, higher sets, lower weight because it's a new program. I'm trying to ease into it. I'm not doing warm up weight. A lot of people are guilty of doing a warm up weight, believe it or not. They're lifting a weight that's so light that it doesn't even constitute a work set if we're being honest. But to that person, that person thinks that he's doing volume, that he's doing high volume because

he's doing lots of sets with a weight that's basically a warm-up set and not a single rep gets hard except maybe the last one of the last set. That's not training, ladies and gentlemen. That is exercise. Barely even that. I don't even know that you're getting a good exercise stimulus when you're doing that. Let's say that you're squatting the bar and you're capable of squatting 75 pounds, 95 pounds, 105 pounds, 275 pounds. And let's say you're squatting the bar. I mean, that's a warm-up set. I mean, you might as well not be squatting any weight at that point. You know, you're closer to 0% than you are to 100%. That's another way to look at it.

So it doesn't matter if you're doing 50 sets of 10 with it. It's not training. So we got to make sure that we're loading things enough and that we're understanding why things are lighter. They're not light because it's supposed to be light and easy. They're light, in this case, because I've started a new program. So I'm not going to go balls of the wall the first week. I'm going to start with a weight that's moderately heavy.

if you have actually maxed out, and I'm not talking about when you've just randomly decided to max out, you can use that max for data to guide you in a direction. So if I'm going to do sets of eight, I might start at 70 to 75% of max. If you don't have max data and you've made it this far, you probably know what a light set of eight is versus an all-out set of eight.

You know what your PRs are. So you're typically not going to start with your PRs. You're going to start with lighter weight than your PRs, and you're going to build that rep range. So in this case, I start with eights. You're going to build that rep range up to a new PR, hopefully, or multiple sometimes. Sometimes you get on a streak. You know, you've had better sleep than usual.

You've put on more weight because you've either done it on purpose or maybe you've started eating a little bit too much and it accidentally benefited you. But for whatever reason, sometimes you get on a streak and you get a few new PRs for a given rep range. So that's what I'll typically do. I'll run the rep range out. And similar concept, the first few weeks, I might just add weight every week because it's lightweight that becomes lighter. Then as I approach the PR, I'm starting to get to 90, 95% of the PR.

It might even be less than that depending on the lift. Now I might go to every other week, every third week, every fourth week, depending on where I'm at. You know, the closer I get to that PR weight, the more I'm going to change variables to allow for more recovery, if that makes sense. So I'll run through eights for a while. I'll do the same things through fives. I might put a delode week in between eights and fives where I'm just doing much lighter weight to let the joints rest from the stress of those heavy eights that I topped off at. And then I might start up with some fives.

Same thing. Set a five that I probably just did for eight weeks ago that ramps up and so on. You know, by the time I get to triples, now I'm ramping things up quickly. I'm not going every two, three, four weeks. Now, you know, we're trying to express that strength. So remember, training, when you're doing higher sets and higher reps, you're building the muscles. You're building endurance. You're building strength.

You're building. That's what fives, eights, for some exercises, tens. That's what that does. All that volume, that high rep work builds the muscle mass, builds the strength, and also builds your nervous system to an extent. Once you start getting into triples, now the ratio flips. You're mostly using your nervous system to fire off all that muscle mass. that you have had and that you've now added. And then you also are still building a little bit of muscle because you're overloading it, right?

It's just a matter of ratios. You tend to, when you go down this rabbit hole on the internet, one of the things you often hear is, oh, there's no reason to do singles, doubles, and triples or sets of one, two, or three. It's all neuromuscular, meaning that your nervous system is doing all the work. There's no hypertrophic response, which means they're not building muscle from that. you're just using your nervous system as though that doesn't play a relevant role in it. Well, it does. It definitely does.

And it's not all nervous system either. A large percentage of it is nervous system, right? Just like when they say that long distance cardio is purely aerobic. There's no anaerobic component. No, there's a small anaerobic component. Just like sprinting is not all anaerobic. There is a small aerobic component. That's why your VO2 max goes up when you're a sprinter.

That's why you're one RR. goes up when you train 15s. Obviously, the more advanced you become, 15s and 20s aren't going to raise that max to a meaningful extent without practicing. Practicing singles, doubles, and triples, right? Because the ratio flips. So sure, you can build muscle at higher rep ranges. And the extent to how high you want to go is going to depend on the exercise. I've talked about this at length in other episodes. But let's say you're doing eights, tens, 15s, or if you're stupid enough to do 20s, you're doing 20s. You've failed the idea. Q test, by the way. You know, all that can build muscle if those rep ranges result in a new PR for that rep range, if it's getting heavier, right? But then to actually have the max go up as somebody who's more advanced, you have to spend time doing threes, twos, and ones, triples, doubles, singles. All of it has to get trained to truly express a max. So at that point, now you're dealing with the window of time. You got about probably six to 12 weeks, depending on how advanced the lifter is, where you're, you're, you're

you're going to do sets of three for a while. You're going to start with a set of three that you could probably do five or six reps with. You're not going to start with your all-out triple. You're going to ramp that up. Either you're going to touch a new PR set of three or you're going to get close to it. And then you're going to go to twos and then you're going to start running up ones. And always that first week, it's going to be a set that you can do more reps with so that you teach your body to fire off more of those motor units. Obviously, the overload of those PRs at those low rep ranges is going to stimulate muscle growth.

just not to the same extent of doing more sets of five, more sets of eight, more sets of 10. Different stimulus, right? Just like fives, eights and tens and 15s do have a neuromuscular effect too. Your nervous system gets better at recruiting muscle, just not to the same extent because you're not maxing out for a single rep or a couple of reps. You're having to sustain one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 15, 20 reps. So in short, it's a ratio. And that's basically how I do my programming. keep things open-ended. I take things where they can go. I try not to go to all-out exhaustion.

You know, usually I set a few PRs. If I have a new one in mind, I try my damnedest to hit that one, and then I go to the next rep range. I may not hit a PR in every rep range, but I want it somewhere. Obviously, the max is the one I care about the most. Not everybody listening to this is going to max out. Some people, some of my mentors even, think that it's silly to max out unless you're on a powerlifting platform. I disagree with that. I think. I think maxing gives you a purpose. I think when you're in competition, there's other things going on there.

Now you're bound by rules. You're bound by dates. You're bound by the fucking weather. You're bound by all the shit going on around you, all the people there. And you're bound by a sport you may not even like. You may like the lifting. You may not like the sport of power lifting.

You know, so there's, you get your weigh-ins too. So now you're messing around with your diet. I find that for the lifter, who doesn't care about any of that, I think maxing out in the weight room is completely fine. It pulls back the curtain so that you can see what the hell you've built for all those months. For me, it's like these 18 month runs, 24 month runs before I max out. You know, it's just this long, drawn out cycle.

So that's going to really depend on what kind of person you are. I find that the busier the person, the less useful and productive this approaches because all the life interruptions ultimately fuck things up. And you start getting missed reps, you start getting fatigue, you constantly read. resetting and redoing the same weight. That creates internal frustration because now you feel like you're not going anywhere. And I find that a more accelerated compact program that changes more often tends to work better to keep you psychologically engaged. If you're somebody that can't sustain an open-ended program that's, I don't know, rather boring, I would say.

So, you know, that's advanced programming for me in a nutshell. There's two ways to approach it. You can approach it open-ended and run things where they may. and because you're recovering slower, that can draw out. I can run a program for two years and not miss a rep or maybe miss on occasion, but it requires a lot of patience. And, you know, I like that I can get more progress that way. I'm not having to stop artificially because, oh, you know,

I've done eights for six months. You know, it's time to do fives. You know, it's just a more individualized, customized approach, in my opinion. But the caveat is that you don't have a defined endpoint. You just know you're just trying to get more. You just kind of zone out and do it. Kind of like anything. It's one of those set it, forget it things.

You know, you set it, forget it. You show up. You try to add. And then maybe you have to add in a month. So, okay, I just PR the deadlift. Actually, this week, I PR the deadlift, 490 for a set of eight. So I get to attempt five plates next time for a set of eight, which would be cool. And then the time after that will be 500.

Guess what? That's two months from now. I've been on this program at some capacity for over a year. And it's been fun. done this before, you know, but that's advanced programming. You know, takes me a month to go for a new PR, sometimes two if I miss, right? And as a result, you know, there's not a whole lot to look forward to in the short term. You're playing the long game. So, you know, you just got to ask yourself what, uh, what complements your mindset better because you could run a 12 week block that accelerates

and you kind of plan for a PR, whether it's a number of sets at a given weight, a rep PR, or a one rep max, depending on what you're doing. But just having it in mind that however you're planning, you're programming, you're gearing things towards something new and novel that overloads the system, so that you adapt and go further. So a whole bunch of nerdy shit that some of you may care about.

Some of you may not give a flying fuck, but everybody that's lifting wants some sort of adaptation out of it. So this is beneficial stuff. And all built upon, you know, your core principles. You do your basic lifts, you add a few pounds, you plan how often to add a few pounds. And most importantly, people, you're not getting off the hook on this one. You got to show up. You know, commitment is everything.

Commitment is everything. You know, every activity will be fun when you first do it. But then as you commit more time, effort, energy, and resources, it stops being fun, novel, and exciting. You know, it becomes something you got to push yourself to do to an extent. Not something you hate doing. I mean, I hate squads. but I like the result of squats. If I can fast forward to the end of the fucking squat,

that's the part I like. When I'm done, you know, I didn't break. I didn't get hurt. I didn't miss reps. I finished what I set out to finish. And man, do I feel accomplished after that damn squat? Because nothing stimulates my adrenaline more than that fucking squat. And many of you listening know this.

You know this. Even if you haven't pushed yourself to your limit on it, you've experienced enough of it to know. This is a miserable fucking lift. And I got to get my head right before I do it every time. You know, it's one of those deals, right? So like I've said it many times, lifting weights, lifting heavy weights, teaches you to deal with fear.

It's going to make you a more confident person under high stress situations. Endurance work, you know, long distance running, long distance cycling, long distance swimming, hiking. That teaches you to deal with pain, which is another important thing. You know, they're both important and they both have a place. It's just much easier. for many people to deal with pain than to deal with fear. You know,

I think our pain tolerance as a group, as humans, is probably higher than our fear tolerance. I think that the fear tolerance is more individual since we're all wired to try and survive. You know, it's there for a reason. So that's the main reason I think that people should lift weights and expose themselves and expose themselves to heavier loads. Whether you're male, female, old, young, and, you know, heavier loads of airy, you know,

like people think heavier loads means several hundred pounds. Hey, for you, old guy, old lady, over 70, heavy for you might be 100 pounds. Might be less than 100 pounds. You ever consider that? I mean, I had a lady who was 80. She had to work her ass off to deadlift 110. It took her six months. I think we might have gotten her to 132 eventually. But I remember 110 was a big fucking deal. You know, I've had old men that worked hard to squat 165. You know, it doesn't sound like a lot to many people who have squatted before, but they weren't big, fat, strong master's power lifters. These were just normal people using it to better themselves, to be more functional, useful human beings. And they had to work their asses off for it.

They showed up. They kept a fairly good diet. And they tried to add. And they had to work through a lot of ailments. You know, when you're at that advanced age, as they say, that's going to interrupt things periodically. So it teaches you to be creative. One of the issues in this industry is that most personal trainers are successful because they know how to sell. And go apply to gym if you don't believe me.

The metric that you're evaluated on is how much personal training you're selling, not the outcomes you're producing for your clients. Nobody cares about that. They care about how many personal training sales you're making. That's the commercial gym model. If you work at a small studio, maybe not. Now you have to service your session. So are you showing up? Are clients staying?

You know, but clients can stay for lots of reasons. You know, most people, including many of you, have no idea what you're capable of. And then when somebody tells you, hey, man, your 225 deadlift is bullshit. We're at 3.15 in a month. It's eye opening. Many of you have probably been there. If you're a woman and a 200 pound deadlift sounds insane on day one, well, month three, you're doing it for a set of five. You know, I've seen that happen many times.

So when it comes to this stuff especially, like just anything, when you aren't naturally innately awesome at something, it doesn't mean you suck at it, but let's say that you just can't pick up a big heavy weight the first day. You can't run a six minute mile the first day. You know, pick your poison. You can't play a full-length song on a guitar the first day. And you need practice. You often underestimate what you're going to be able to do with it.

Some people overestimate, you know, you get people that have massive dunning crueger's, But a lot of people underestimate it. They're like, I'll just be happy with insert your mediocre result, right? And then they exceed that. They're like, what the fuck do I do now? You know, and that's where good coaching comes into play to keep you moving correctly, progressing intelligently. And you'll surprise yourself. You'll surprise yourself.

And then you won't know what the hell to do. You're like, what the hell are my goals now? I've shattered everything. You know, I've had that. I've worked myself out of a job many times. It's pretty cool. It's pretty rewarding. But the key thing there is just showing up.

You know, how do I even know that I need to train the way that I do? Well, I've been showing up consistently for over 20 years. You know, the one metric that I care about more than anything else is attendance. So that's why you'll hear me say that a lot. Show up. You know, when you commit to something, show up. It's not just a wait room, you know. All you commitment phobes out there that cancel appointments at the last minute,

constantly changing things, try showing up, you know, for a month, two months, three months. You know, we got to snap out of this bullshit where everything, you know, where time is negotiable. I'm cool with being late. If you are fucking early to meet me, you are late. I am the inverse of the greatest generation. Yeah, so in my book, if you're early, you are late. So I want you exactly on time or even a little bit late. I prefer that. But that's one thing. But show the fuck up. At least show the fuck. I'm not if you're fucking one, two, three, four hours late. Come on, man. You're just, you're not just cut the corner. You're taking the whole fucking street block. But, yeah, just one of the things that is critical to succeeding in anything is just walking through the fucking door, you know, getting something done.

You know, like, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You just got to show up. So don't just show up to the gym. Show up for anything. If you are going to try something, if you've committed to trying something and you put it down on paper, just show the fuck up and deal with the consequences later rather than not showing up and incurring those consequences, you know? I think shittier things happen when you don't show up. Let's just think of it that way. So did I say the words show up enough?

I don't think I did today. It's just been on my mind lately. It's been on my mind. So yeah, so advanced programming. It could be open-ended or you can do it in blocks like many people do. That system I described of starting low with weight, higher with volume, going higher and weight, lower with volume. The academics call that classical periodization. You know, doesn't that sound sexy?

classical periodization. And the concept of adding weight is linear periodization. But bro, you can't add weight forever. Well, no fucking shit, Sherlock. You can't add sets forever either. You can't add reps forever either. What are you to do? 1,000 sets of 1,000?

Are you going to progress to that? I mean, yeah, you're going to add weight until you can't add weight in that rep range anymore. Then you're going to try another rep range in another one. And eventually, it's all going to terminate in a max if you're an enthusiast. If you're not an enthusiast, then you can change the exercises. You can do all sorts of different. things. Remember, we're assuming you're not a novice.

There's lots of different directions you can go. You don't have to train like a strength athlete for the rest of your life, but you do if you want to keep getting stronger. After six to nine months of training in the weight room, you've now figured out this is where I'm at. This is what I've achieved. I want more here. You know, I want a bigger squat, a bigger press, a bigger deadlift, or I just want bigger shoulders, bigger biceps, you know, bigger chest, back, legs, pick your muscle group, right? Or, you know, I just want to hit harder. in my fighting sport. I want to strike harder.

I want to be a better athlete, right? And then you start shifting things in that direction. So if it's athletics, you're going to spend more time on your sport, less time in the weight room. Typically, that's the traditional approach. That's the traditional approach when your sport is in season.

When your sport's out of season, you back away. Or, well, you want to look better in certain areas. Well, then you're going to prioritize those areas, right? You want bigger arms, you know, early on, bench more because a novice isn't benching that much to begin with. So now an intermediate, well, you can bench more and you can shift it,

make it more arm focused, right? Bring your grips and narrower. You know, use some dumbbells. Maybe throw some dips in there. Continue pressing, obviously, to supplement that. You know, and maybe add in a tricep exercise. You got to be careful with this stuff. I can hammer the elbows, but I find that early intermediates, it might benefit from benching more to get those arms bigger. Or, hey, my biceps aren't really growing. I'm doing all these chinups. They're weighted. Feel like I'm stagnating there. Okay, well, let's train the curl. You know, the curl's a competition lift, So it can be done very heavy. You know, you can max out a bicep curl.

So train the curl. Let's add that exercise in, figure out how we can do that. Or, you know, my quads aren't really growing. You know, I got these, it got big. My legs got bigger, but I feel like it's, you know, shifting all to my glutes, my adductors, you know, your inner thigh muscles. But, you know, I'm not really seeing it in my quads. Okay, well, let's front squat.

Let's see what that does. Or, you know, maybe you can hop on a leg press if you really want to. But I typically like to stay with free weights until that stops working. because at the end of the day, a strong back is the foundation to every single thing that you do with your muscles. You have to stabilize your spine

so that you can leverage off of it when you're lifting things. Even when you're doing a preacher curl, you're not just going to slump over and curl the bar. You got to keep your back rigid. You got to keep your backwards so you can pull against it.

That's the one thing I've seen with curls and that these guys fail to understand. Like, well, I don't need to deadlift. Well, of course you need to fucking deadlift and of course need to do pull-ups because that allows you to curl more weight. with the hip thrust, same thing. If you have a strong back, you're going to be able to hip thrust more.

If you have a big squat, you're going to be able to hip thrust more, ladies. You want the big ass, you know, hip thrust and squat or hip thrust and deadlift and RDL, right? Like these main lifts are your foundational lifts. You want to keep everything centered around them. And once you identify those other areas that you want to bring up, whether it's strength or muscle, like we just talked about muscle. Like I want more muscle in these areas is what you can do. But if you want more strength.

in certain parts of the lift. Like, let's say your bench is failing halfway up. Yeah, we need more tricep work. We're going to do some partial benches. You know, we're going to do some board pressing where you put a board on your chest and you don't, and you bench halfway down and back up off a board. Or you might do it off pins where the pins have the bar sitting on them slightly above the chest position and you're starting on the pins, hitting the triceps more so that you can

get better lockout strength or let's say that your deadlift is getting stuck at knee height. Well, now we're going to do some rack pulls. So you can start to address weaknesses in the movements if you want those movements to keep getting stronger. So ultimately, the choice to do different things depends on what's needed and also what you're going to like. Shit, I got a cable station at this new gym. I don't see a need to do cables for anything that I'm doing right now, for anything that I'm personally doing. I think they're probably good for rehab. I had some elbow tendonitis. I mixed it in there, here and there, but not consistent enough to say whether they helped or not. But hey, I just want

to get a tricep pump and do some cable pushdowns, bro. Okay, well, we have it. You can do it. Go do sets of 15 with it. It feels great. 20 even. So you might just do some exercises because you like them and you put them in certain places in the program. So the options are limitless and nothing is truly useless. It just may not serve the purpose you think it's serving. Like these isolation exercises aren't going to put large copious amounts of muscle mass on you. The bigger exercises will. The smaller ones will just add more to certain regions, but not by the same margin.

You know, you get the most bang for your buck doing big body movements that require you to stabilize yourself. So, and as you go on, you figure out, you know, what else I need to add to these, right? And how long do I want to run this? Like I said at the beginning, you want it to be open-ended? Or do you want it to be done in blocks, closed-ended programming? What works better for your brain? You always got to ask yourself, what works better for your brain? I think that's what this episode is all about.

psychological compliance is extremely important. We always talk about compliance and measure that as attendance in the gym. Well, that's a measure of compliance. Are you showing up? But then there's psychological compliance. Am I motivated enough? I can't motivate you. I can make it fun if, you know, if we're in sync and we're the same kind of person and we like being around each other,

that can encourage you to come in. So maybe you're drawn to the activity because you and I just get along. We're having a good time. But then what if I'm not there, right? It's not a codependency thing necessarily. Sometimes people just go to gyms because they like hang out with people. You know, that's a very common reason to go to gyms. But if you want to achieve goals, you've got to be able to show up and have a reason to show up.

If it's the people, that's great. That's great. We need more of that. You know, I think that's what gyms used to be. Barbershops are notorious for it. I hang out at my friend's dog kennel, you know, George from the two episodes ago. I hang out at his dog kennel and bullshit and watch them train dogs, learn about it. You know, I enjoy it.

So sometimes it's not necessarily the activity. It's the environment, the people. all those things. So ask yourself, why am I psychologically noncompliant? You know, like, I just hate this. I don't like it. I don't want to do it. I kind of don't like these people even, you know?

Like, sometimes that happens. I was at a gym where equipped power lifting was still in style. I ended up making some good friends there, but when I was there, my mind was in a different place. So wasn't really about what they were doing and always felt out of place, right? Eventually, I moved on to a different gym

where there was more raw power lifting going on. And I met a lot of, of people there had a good time but it was more influencer based also not my thing as you can see not doing a very good job here but i love the fucking podcast so i do it a video is necessary so i do that but i was never the kind of guy that would bring a camera in just to entertain people i brought it in to break my form down i've always been a utilitarian so this whole concept of being a youtube and apple and spotify personality is one that i still can't fucking wrap my mind around but you know like teaching people things that's what keeps me in front of this mic the camera was something that

i kind of had to cross over to but uh you know talking to you guys on the mic's always been fun but um but yeah my point there was you know i was at gyms where people were doing vastly different things than what i was doing and uh it's not it didn't make me not want to lift it made me want to seek another environment out um not because i heavily disliked anybody i like i said i made friends at all those places that i stay in touch with it's just that what what the environment was dominated by was not what I was drawn to. But I did like the competitions. What I did like about that equipped power lifting gym was all the banners on the wall, people that I knew had competed won things. They put their banner up. I like that. I loved watching the whole

sport slash team aspect of it. You know, that did drag my game up. And people were lifting quite a bit. They were doing things differently, but they were lifting quite a bit. So I wanted that more than anything. But I was never a sport coach because I never did this for sport. I train it competitively. I compete against my I try to beat my own logbook but never been part of like a power lifting team or anything but I like I love those environments to this day I love those environments

um yeah I'm just not a not a not a not a league sport athlete maybe that'll change maybe that'll change you know I got a new gym now um I love watching it I love spectating the meats but uh yeah the environment's huge you know by the time I moved here I was at a gym that did a mix of everything there was that was tilted towards power lifting the uh owner was power lifter used to be a minor league catcher and there were a lot of power lifters that competed in

untested federations and were strong as fuck and it was great being in there watching guys bench my deadlift like i loved watching that now i moved differently than they did because i learned how to lift their starting strength which is a completely different purpose you know we're just we're basically trying to lift for general overall strength longevity not to win at a meet but still same movements in accordance with the rules of the meat and I'm watching guys that are bench pressing what I'm deadlifting and it's an unquestionable fucking bench press and I'm like well shit I got to get this thing up so I wanted that some people want the you know the high energy gym with the edm music the lights you know the disco feel or nightclub feel um and that's cool you know if that gets you

showing up you know for cardio stuff I actually don't mind that I try to hit studio last year and then they went under construction and I fell off. So see, look, there's my psychological noncompliance. I liked going and I liked the instructor and I was, she was, we're becoming friends, sort of speak. Mango. I like the gym. I like the instructor.

And she was almost like my friend. You know, I didn't go there long enough to say that we became friends, but she was like somebody that I'd hang out with. So it kept me going. But then the thing went under construction and then I didn't keep up with when it opened back up and I kind of fell off. So maybe we need to go back there.

It's a good place to go when it's hot here. or if you're in a cold weather state when it's cold. Because my problem is the cardio helps my lifting. I just don't always stick to it. And that was helpful. And I liked, you know, the fast-paced music. Kind of reminded me when I DJed to. So, you know, I never thought I'd see myself at a cardio gym.

But I saw a thing about it. I'm like, I'll give it a shot. It's right down the street. Tried it out. So, you know, I've been on the other end of it where I'm doing physical activities that I may not necessarily enjoy and good at, really want to get excited about. But then like something about the environment's cool or the instructor's cool.

Or maybe the people that are going are cool. That's how it happened with dogs. I just wanted to learn to train dogs. And, you know, at the time it was just pet obedience. And now what the fuck, man? I'm like in a bite suit, getting bit by police dogs. You know, definitely not what I signed up for. I didn't quite understand it either when I first saw it.

But the people were just so damn cool and they had so much fun with it and that it made me want to do it more. So think about that too. You know, your community can make or break your gym experience. whatever it is you're trying to learn. I've learned a lot of skills over my life. This is the one that I've stuck with the longest and have taken the furthest. So obviously I have a whole show dedicated to it and talk about it a lot. But the pattern that I've seen through all of it is you have to, you know, you have to find a reason to go.

You have to find a reason to go. And then you've got to keep showing up. And understand it's not going to be easy. And the further down the rabbit hole you get, the less fun and new it becomes. And the further down the rabbit hole you get, the slower the results. and I would venture to say you can take a close-ended or open-ended approach to anything, you know, because eventually progress is just fucking slow. And it's one of those deals where you just set it and forget it.

So I think that I have hammered this point to absolute hell. And I'm ready for lunch. I've recorded early today. I've been up since five. I trained a friend this morning. Had a good time doing that. She had never been taught to lift in this way before. and it was cool building that from scratch.

So I had to do that. I woke up earlier than I normally do. Then did a bunch of stuff in between. And now I'm here a few hours earlier than usual. And I'm ready to sign out, guys. So thank you again for tuning in. You can find me at strong and sleek.com. If you are in Metro Phoenix,

I am in North Scottsdale in the Scottsdale Air Park off of the rain tree exit in the 101. You can find me on Instagram at the, underscore Robert underscore Santana. We are on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at strong and sleek, all one word. We are now updating our Instagram page, Strong underscore and underscore sleek.

Thank you again for tuning in, and I'll see you next week.