Weights and Plates Podcast - Ep. 125 - Your Workout Is Hard. But Is It Working?

Episode Date: October 27, 2026

Is your workout making you stronger - or just making you tired? Robert takes aim at the endless exercise lists, muscle-group splits, and pump-chasing routines that continue to dominate gym culture.Tracing bodybuilding’s influence from Joe Weider and Arnold Schwarzenegger to today’s fitness influencers, Robert explains why he prioritizes training movements over targeting individual muscles. He makes the case for building strength through squats, deadlifts, presses, and chin-ups—and measuring progress over months instead of judging a workout by how exhausted you feel afterward.Plus, Robert shares how his own lifting journey shaped his coaching, why a great physique doesn’t automatically make someone a great trainer, and what commercial gyms often miss when they sell access without instruction. It’s a passionate call for better coaching, stronger communities, and a return to gyms where people learn, lift, and grow together.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Strong and Sleak podcast. I am Robert Santana and I am your host. You ever wonder why when you go to the gym, or let's say you get a workout off of the internet, it typically consists of a long laundry list of exercises. And it's very focused on training muscle groups. Many of your fellow gymgoers are following programs like that. And you see it, people lining up for the lap pull-down machine, lining up with the dumbbell rack, the benches, you know, Monday is international bench day. It's an interesting phenomenon, and it's been going on in some version for over 40 years,

much like the low-carb thing has been going on with diet for the last 30 years. So where does this all start? Well, it started with Mr. Joe Weeder. People who have listened to this show have heard me mention it many times. Other hosts, like my good friend Mark Ripeto has went into it a lot. But then I also wonder, does the young man at the 24-hour gym that pays $10 a month even know who Joe or Ben Wheater are? You know, a lot of this is starting to get lost in history. You see a lot of them doing a lot of the things that people in Arnold's era told them to do.

They're going in, they're doing 15 different bicep variations. They're using all the machines. They're flexing in the mirror in the locker room. Not something that I used to see coming up, at least at most commercial gyms in the Midwest. Typically, you'd see that at more serious lifting gyms where bodybuilders were, something I was not exposed to. The closest thing I had to that was the Leaning Tower YMCA in Niles, Illinois, just northwest of Chicago. My father lived there.

He would take me to the gym, and there were some serious lifters in there. later learned that Eddie Cohen used to lift in there, the great power lifter. But we're not here to talk about power lifting today. We're here to talk about how most people view lifting weights. And the training of muscle groups seems to be a theme that has lasted about 50 years, with a small hiccup on CrossFit popularized about 18 years ago. Crossfit made lifting into a sport. So now it became more about performance and not necessarily pump chasing or looking a certain way.

I mean, people would do CrossFit because the people winning the competitions looked the way many people wanted to look. They typically looked like a muscular fitness model, not necessarily a bodybuilder, but a muscular fitness model, the females and the males. You'd have women with visible abs, some muscle definition in the arms, full glutes, thighs, etc., all the things that people aspire to be physically. And it was great because I would say that despite all my criticisms of CrossFit, it got more people's strength training than any other trend. It by far outperform powerlifting. There were boxes everywhere in the 2010s, and they're still in existence now. There's still people doing some version of it. Now it looks like Hirox has replaced it.

I can't speak on that yet because I haven't educated myself on that particular form of training, because there are competition, so it is training. But CrossFit got people lifting barbells and caring about strength for a good decade, I would say, maybe a little bit longer. And now it just seems like the momentum that Mr. Weeder built, along with his brother, back in the 1960s onward, it was never really stopped. I think it probably went dormant. You know, it's great that we see power racks and bumper plates at gyms now because of the CrossFit era. But it still hasn't replaced this concept of lifting light weights and training to feel something in the moment. So where does that come from?

It comes from bodybuilding. And bodybuilding is very focused on achieving a look. And looks can be very subjective. Sure, there's objective measurements. You can get a body fat test done. It'll tell you your lean mass or your estimated lean mass because it's estimating it based on several equations. Estimated fat mass, waist circumference, arm circumference, thigh circumference. but that's not how people are judged in beauty pageants, let alone beauty pageants with muscles.

That's what bodybuilding is. It's a beauty pageant with muscles. Women's bikini is the same thing. Men's physique, women's physique, classic wellness. You've got so many divisions now. It's deviated so far away from what Mr. Wheater originally designed in the 1960s. And by the way, for those of you who are in might, group. Most of the muscle magazines that you've read were owned by Weeder, and you probably

know that. Some of you may not. I don't believe that magazine consumption is big in younger crowds, but if you're reading fitness magazines or on a website that was once a fitness magazine, I know men's health still has a website as an Instagram page. They did an interview with Frank Grillo a few months ago, maybe last year that I enjoyed very much. So they're still relevant, but that was a publication owned by Weeder. So everything we see in gyms from equipment to supplements to magazines and to various forms of content come from Joe and Ben Wheater in the 60s. They were great advertisers, great promoters. And back then, there was no internet.

There was no social media. Heck, there weren't commercial gyms as you know them today. Lifting weights was very much a blue-collar thing. Guys who did it were what I refer to as lifers. They're probably still lifting today in their 70s and 80s at some capacity. Or they did it until they broke so much that they couldn't. They typically competed in a sport or a pageant of some sort, whether it was bodybuilding or powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting. World's strongest man also came into play.

But people who went into weight rooms 60 or 70 years ago were tributting. training for something. It was serious. There wasn't this recreational lifting thing that exploded in the late 70s through the 80s and onward to today where you could get into a gym for $10 a month and use some form of equipment that challenges your muscles to produce force. That's the best way I can define it without just simply calling it silly bullshit. it's every piece of equipment has usefulness in various contexts, some more than others. Obviously, the barbell is the most versatile. It's extremely ergonomic.

It doesn't change shape as it gets larger, much like dumbbells and kettlebells do, and it forces you to stabilize your body using your spinal erectors, your abs, your obliques, or what many refer to as your core. So why are we back in a place now where, people are training muscle groups. Well, the majority of gym goers go to the gym to look better. And that goes back to 1960s, 1970s, even 1980s bodybuilding, and later Hollywood, who adopted principles learned from bodybuilders. The bodybuilders basically set the stage. And a lot of that had to do with Arnold, who went on to Hollywood to have a career in film. Arnold was the poster

boy for Weeder, neither could exist without each other. Weeder brought Arnold here, put him on, and Arnold was a great marketer and self-promoter and made a lot of this popular. But what we have to understand is a lot of its marketing hype. One of the taglines at my gym is, we don't train muscle groups, we train movements. And all of the muscles that are involved in those movements that work in those movements that contract and produce force in those movements respond and they develop. They get bigger. And when they get bigger, it looks to you as though they're toned, right? They're flexed at rest, so to speak.

That's not literally what's happening, but I have a lot of people that have no aspiration of becoming a bodybuilder, a powerlifter, a strong man, or competing in a pro sport, but want to look more toned. They want their body to show evidence that they're in the weight. room. And that happens through an increase in size. You know, we talk about it on the show a lot. One of the things that Weeder put out back in the 1970s, 1980s, the Wheater principles. And one of them was that you had to target these muscles in isolation. Another one was that you had to go to failure. And it seems like we're back to that. You know, I have to train guys to not beat themselves up, especially when I'm training younger men. I've had some younger men that I've trained who have gotten significantly stronger and look better,

but when it's easy and it doesn't feel like it's doing anything, they add more weight. It's funny because when I'm training females, it's a similar phenomenon. When it feels easy, they either add more reps or do another set or another two sets or another three sets. The thing about building muscle mass and getting stronger is it's not about killing yourself. yourself today, how you feel today has little to do with what happens months from now. Building muscle, it's a long-term process. It's not something that happens overnight. You show up and you complete a workout, and then you show up and complete another workout days later, and then another one days later, maybe a fourth or a fifth one, depending on your schedule.

And then you're going to build upon that week after week. And then three to six months from now, you wake up in the morning, you look in the mirror and you're like, damn, my arm's got bigger. I got an ass now. You know, my thighs are filling out my pants, but my waist is still small. All sorts of physical changes seem to happen overnight, but they don't. It's a process. It's a process, and that process is not one that involves killing yourself so that you feel beat up today, every day. That's actually a good way to get hurt or to stagnate, especially if you're training with light weights, which is what you do when you train muscle. It's by design. You can't load an individual movement like a wrist curl or a bicep curl that only involves your elbow bending or a leg extension. You can't load that with heavy weights. And it's by design. Will it build muscle? Of course. If you look at the studies on it, that's evident. And I have a lot to say about academic studies, but that's another episode. The thing is how much muscle and for how long. You have a lot. You have a lot to say about academic studies, but that's another episode.

The thing is how much muscle and for how long? You have to ask these questions when you're evaluating information. So when you're isolating a movement, you're never isolating a muscle, you isolate movements. And several muscles are involved, but some are disproportionately more involved than others. On a knee extension, obviously your quads are the most involved. But you have to keep your back on the pad. So your core is doing works. You're not wiggling around all over the place.

your calf muscles have a role in it. You're pushing up against the pad with them. And therefore, the movement is not isolating one muscle. You're also training multiple quadriceps as well. So when you isolate a movement, you're trying to take as many other muscles out of the equation as possible to hone in on that one. Now, when does this become a problem? Or who does this become a problem for? Does it become a problem for somebody who just started lifting weights and just wants a nicer ass, a nicer set of legs, bigger arms?

Probably not. Why? Because this person's entire body is weak. If you are this person, if you're someone who, you know, starts and stops or has never lifted before, isolating one movement while it will build muscle greater than zero, is only going to go so far. You can only load a knee extension up to a point. And this argument can be made about any exercise. You can make this argument about a squat or a deadlift,

but that point is much further along than a knee extension. And funny enough, the squat brings up your knee extension. The knee extension does not bring up your squat because you can't push it for as long. And of course, context matters. We live in a world obsessed with nuance. people watching this or listening to this that disagree are probably mentally masturbating to some nuanced argument about why that's not technically true. I'm not trying to have those arguments. We're talking broadly here, right? Obviously, on some level, getting your knee extension up helps your squat.

But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about respecting your own time and respecting other people's time if you're a coach that's actually trying to help people and not trying to get clicks and not trying to baby people. Now again, most of my clientele is never going to compete in a beauty pageant with muscles or in a powerlifting competition, at least not seriously, or in the world's strongest man or Olympic weightlifting. But they all want to look better. and putting someone that's inexperienced under a knee extension and spending a bunch of time there and then having them do lunges and monster walks and kickbacks with the cable machine and all these other exercises that isolate individual movements is a waste of their fucking time because this person is weak, deconditioned or both.

So we get that person squat up, whether it's a man or a woman. You're going to squat, you're going to squat heavier because, Guess what? I had a woman come in my gym, 24-year-old woman, first squat was the bar. She's squatting 115 now. That is not anywhere near the realm of a competition, or it's not near the realm of a competitive squat total. Remember, when we're talking about extreme lifting, there are women out there that squat for 500 pounds. It's quite ridiculous, right? And then it depends on weight class, but you're looking. looking at somewhere between 3 and 500 pounds, depending on the size of the woman. So, yes, this woman has been in my gym for a couple months.

She's adding 5 pounds to her squat every other workout. But she's squatting 115. So yes, she's squatting heavy for her today. But is she going to keep progressing years from now and chase a 250, 350, 400 squat? Probably not. But you know what will happen? her thighs are going to get more defined and harder and denser her ass is going to grow her core is going to get stronger her back's going to get stronger and all the muscles that support those structures are going to be more visible which is what she wants she wants to look like she does something she's not going to gain 50 to 75 pounds and become a heavyweight power lifter but she's lifting heavy and heavy for her we don't know where that's going to end but right now heavy for her is 115 so why am i going to

put her in a leg extension to make her quads burn up in the moment, but then be limited by how much weight I can add. You know, she starts with 30 and then, what, a couple months from now? She's at 50 or 60, you know, depending on the machine. It might be 100 on one machine, 60 and another. But let's say she hits a wall a couple months from now. Now what? Oh, well, we're going to do lunges now. Or we're going to start over and do sets of 20, right?

There's far more efficient ways to approach this. You don't have to be a power lifter to benefit from a barbell squat or barbell deadlift or barbell overhead press, a barbell bench press, or chin-ups. And they benefit each and every one of us at certain stages and depending on where we're at. If you're naturally strong and you don't really care to get much stronger or bigger, then sure, you can skip over these things. I mean, you should still do them. You should learn how to do them right. Chances are that if you're naturally strong and muscular, you're fucking this up along the way.

So keep that in mind. So what do we do instead? How do we combat this? There's only so much you can do. You know, young people at a $10 a month gym, they can't afford somebody with knowledge yet. They don't have access to somebody with knowledge, and they're following with largely what they see.

They're going to see a guy on the internet that's super rich, and jacked, and because he has boatloads of muscle, therefore he's an authority on training, not knowing that some men have boatloads of muscle because they were born that way, because they were born that way, and taking steroids, and sometimes because they were just taking a bunch of steroids. And some women have a nice, round, voluptuous ass because they were born that way. And they started lifting, and it got more, they got more of what they had, even though their workout is bullshit. You know, there's a lot of things that influence this.

What you want to look at is the person who has it hard, you know, they're not naturally muscular, fit, lean, pick your word. But six months from now, 12 months from now you see them, and they look a lot more muscular, lean, and fit than what you were used to seeing. Now, that person did something, especially if they tell you they, haven't used drugs or we're assuming that you have access to complete information this person just started lifting eating better and then they look better right no pharmaceuticals involved you know now now we have something to talk about because you know it wasn't easy for that person

somebody who's skinny and uh on the slender side that tends to burn a lot of calories now suddenly has a little bit of muscle you know a semblance of an ass probably had to work hard for versus the guy who was, you know, fairly fit to begin with and got yoked, you know, or the girl who already looked great and then looked even greater. The way you have to evaluate information is who is coming from. Joe Weeder was a promoter. Arnold was a genetic outlier, and yet they set the standard for decades on how people should lift. Most trainers train some version of this where the goal of the program is to make sure that each workout

practically destroys you, that you feel like you're burning up, like you're sweating, like you want to vomit, that you're doing lots of exercises to hit individual muscle groups. There's no denying that these workouts are difficult, but a lot of things are difficult that don't do anything for you, right? There's difficult jobs that don't pay you very much. So you have to evaluate it by the outcomes it produces for people that have it hard, not for people that have it easy. One of the most Common arguments we hear in this business is, well, the best in the world do it. Great. But they're the best in the world.

They were born that way and got 10 to 20% better, you know. Nobody's getting an order of magnitude better with ever. You have to be born for the damn thing, right? Sure, you start lifting weights. You squat 100 the first day. You squat 200 a month from now or two months from now, right? You know, those things happen, sure. you're not going to take a guy who after three to six months is squatting 200, 300 pounds, right?

And getting them to 700 pounds. You're not taking a girl who has a 28-inch waist with abs to a 22-inch waist with abs. You know, she's built a certain weight, right? Just like our hip structure and shoulder structure are fixed, the number of muscle fibers we have are fixed and their capacity to grow is fixed. So if you don't already have a decent amount of muscle, they're not going to gain 50% more muscle, 75% more muscle. You can gain a lot of strength because a lot of it is your nervous system.

You're learning how to move. You're learning how to use your body in ways you haven't before. But you're not gaining 70 pounds of muscle with diet and exercise. You add steroids in there, sure. Who wants to gain 70 pounds of muscle, though? Bodybuilders, pro athletes, young men. So we're back to square one, where Mr. Wheaters' methods still dominate the gym sphere.

I'm part of that is accessibility. There are more people that have access to a $10 a month gym. So what do we do there? Well, I would like to say we need better people working at these places, but those places don't select for the best. They select for people that are going to show up. do a baseline minimum job and make sure that they keep selling memberships, personal training, products, and other services.

It's a very sales-centered culture in a commercial gym. The goal is not to teach you how to train. In fact, they want you to not train because if you don't train, the gym still gets that membership due and you're not putting wear and tear on their facility, their machines, and their other amenities. They're selling access. That's their main service that they're selling. It's not a bad thing.

I have access to a gym that I don't use because sometimes I'm on the other side of town or I'm in a different state. I need to hop in somewhere. And I like using the sauna, the jacuzzi. I want to lie and say the cold plunge, but I do not like using that. But it's there. And sometimes I go on the little massager chairs. But 99% of the year I don't use that membership. So keep in mind what's being sold.

Access is being sold. So you have a situation then where the blind is leading the blind. People who train there are brand new typically, you know, young trainers trying to learn. But then they're also learning from other young trainers who we're trying to learn. And their boss wants them selling memberships more than producing results for their client or selling training sessions or training packages. The focus is not on how to make you the strongest. It's on how to get you to buy my time, me the young trainer, so that I could give you a good workout.

And a good workout might be all that a lot of people need. Sometimes people are so inactive that just showing up and farting around in the gym is better than sitting on your ass. Absolutely. And as long as you're not doing anything that might hurt you, I don't have a problem with that. But what I do have a problem with is that a lot of us going to these places because we're chasing something.

We want a problem solved. So how do we solve that problem? How do we hijack these places so that they start taking things more seriously on the things they're selling on the surface? Kind of tough when it's $10 a month, you don't use it and you feel guilty canceling it. Somebody has to step up to the plate, maybe open their own commercial gym. That's a little bit more serious than what's out there. maybe a bit idealistic, but it'd go a long way. Somebody comes in, you actually get instructed on how to use equipment.

And not just machines, you can read the instructions for those on the machine itself a lot of times. But on the free weights, the things that people are going to do in life, you know, you're going to pick things up, you're going to set things down. You're going to push, you're going to pull. The least they could do is teach you how to use that stuff safely. they have all these power racks now at these gyms. Nobody does I use them. You see atrocious things. You see half squats.

They're not very social either. But that's another episode. Anyhow, I have lots of thoughts on this topic because I started out in commercial gyms and I'm one of the most serious lifters you know that isn't necessarily in a sport, but I do it religiously and the needle keeps moving.

I keep getting stronger. I keep pushing the needle. And I've only gotten older. So it's supposed to get harder, right? It is. It's heavier weight. My recovery time's longer, but I still do it. And I came out of that environment.

But in that environment, I sought out more answers. I ended up going to school for this. I met a lifter. He ran a little dungeon gym under the Salvation Army. We need more of those. We need people utilizing unused space to get people lifting and teaching them how valuable this is. The gym culture has gotten quite bland like many things.

It's unfortunate. You know, they're big boxes with lots of colors and lights and music and carpet. They don't even allow chalk in a lot of these places. Not realizing that having bare hands could lead to an injury. Back will not pull what the hands can't hold. So I think it's an important thing that we do as lifters and as coaches to try and educate the lay public on the benefits of all this so that we can at least move the gym culture back to a place that at least makes sense. Joe Weeder did it.

He did it by promoting bodybuilding shows and finding talent. Finding talent is something that's been lost over the years in many industries. You hear it at music, you see it in movies. You see it in lifting, too. You know, the old-timers worked. When you listen to interviews with various bodybuilders of the past eras, one of the things they notice about the younger guys is that they're on machines now. They rely on the drugs too much.

And you hear this in other sports, too. You don't have that win-at-all-cost mentality. It's kind of died. people more likely enter a marathon and then do a lifting meet. I'm not saying that people need to do lifting competitions, but it'd be nice to see people pushing themselves in a commercial weight room. But I think it's an oxymoron. I think the reality of the matter is we need to get back in touch with our communities

and form groups where we're doing this, maybe not necessarily to compete. Maybe competition can grow out of it. but it'd be nice if you had a group of people doing it and you're not just sitting at your home gym trying to shave every ounce of time so that you can go back to your desk job and look at a computer screen. Hell, it's why I went and put more of my focus into my in-person gym that objectively is less lucrative than an online coaching business because I didn't go into this for an IT job. People mentored me. I was in physical gyms. I was traveling around the country going to physical. gyms to learn various things and unlearn various things. And then it got to a point where I'm online and now my job's IT. I don't even have a gym that remotely resembles the ones that I came up in.

And I'm like, what's going on here? And then the gym that I did have, I spent as much time as I needed to, but never really tried to build anything there. And then as that lease was winding down, I decided to open another one. And this one reflects my vision a little bit more, Because what got me here? Well, what got me here were 80s action movies. My father exposing me to what a real gym looks like at a young age, pro wrestling, and eventually, you know, fitness magazines, not even bodybuilding magazines. I was a men's fitness, men's health guy.

And I bought into the, you know, the fight club era Hollywood body that still pretty much exists today. we're going on 30 years of this, 150 to 170-pound guy with abs. And it's funny because I can get down to that fairly effortlessly now because I got strong. But if you read about what these guys do to look like that on screen, it's a lot more than what I do. And granted, I don't get down to like 5% or 7% body fat, which I think for a film you'd have to do it because the camera adds size.

Typically they're trying to shrink these guys down because they're going to look bigger than they are on camera. So, you know, but I've gotten down a 9 to 11% body fat without much effort, but when I started, I couldn't do it. You know, it was like a lot of you where I thought I just had to lose fat because the fat was what I saw. And I thought that's what I had to lose. But really, I had to gain.

I had to put on muscle, put on muscle mass. You know, I get down a 9 to 11% body fat at a weight that used to be chubby. It's kind of crazy. And this is before starting testosterone. own. So again, I think that Mr. Weeder was highly effective in an era where people read things and people spent time with each other and shared experiences. And then some of the things they were doing circulated from one gym to the next, one community to the next. And now, everything's on social media. It's highly glamorized because there's incentives for that. And a lot of the hard stuff

that happens gets swept under the rug because it doesn't make for good content. So how do you learn what works? You learn what works by spending time with different people. You know, I found Mark Ripito in 2013, at 2013, and I'd kind of been drifting in that direction as it was because it seemed to me the only thing that worked to make my body look better were barbells. Then I find this guy saying the same shit I was saying. I came to the same conclusions, and then I learned that, wait a minute,

Not only do these exercises work, but if I don't do them right, I'm going to fuck myself up. And I'm shortchanging myself. I need to be lifting heavier. And I did it. And I'm still not a humongous large man because I can only strengthen what's there. I can only build what's there. I only have so many muscle fibers. Lifting doesn't add muscle fibers.

I can make those bigger, sure. And I'm proud of it. I'm proud of all of it. I probably put 25, 30 pounds of lean mass on my brain. body since I was 18 years old. That's not bad. It's pretty good. That's in line with what you would expect from a hard gainer. So, but I learned that because I found people that made sense to me. I sought them out. I went to Texas and then I trained with other coaches in the circle. I've made a lot of friends there. It's also how I got into my PhD. I spent a lot of time with academics. And all this was in person.

required me to go places, meet people, see things, see different gyms. And one of my goals is, you know, I got my training gym where I'm going to be running classes and doing private training. But I would like to open, you know, a more traditional old school gym at some point. That doesn't necessarily need to make a killing, but can exist in this economy. And I think the appetite for that is going to grow. I think a lot of you that have been lifting at home, not getting stronger, being safe, you're doing yourself some good, you're going to want the experience. You're going to want the experience.

Can't spend all day in your house, people. I learned it. You will learn it. You know, going out interacting with the world can solve a lot of fucking problems, especially when there's heavy iron involved in it. And you're with several people that are working towards a common. goal. You know, look better, feel better, move better.

That's my theme. It's been my theme since I went to business. It's my slogan, as they say. So look around your town. Some of these old gyms are still around, you know, depending on where you are in the world. They've disappeared in other places. My hope is to see them come back.

I think they will. I think they will. I'm optimistic. But, uh, let's put all this weeder shit aside learn movements get stronger at those movements and

go from a society that's 40% overweight and obese to one that's a little bit stronger than it is today and I think that pretty much hits what I wanted to talk about today so thank you for tuning in you can find me at strong and sleek.com or on Instagram

at the underscore Robert underscore Santana or it's strong underscore and underscore sleek we are airing on YouTube as well if you're not watching and you're listening we're at YouTube.com slash at strong and sleek and if you are in Metro Phoenix

come up to North Scottsdale you can find me in the Scottsdale Air Park off of Rain Tree and Hayden the address is listed on the site strong and sleek.com come on by get a training session if you're local join the gym you know we're running semi-private training and i also do some private sessions with certain people depending on what your goals are you know give me a call we can set something up and go from there but uh thank you for tuning in and i'll see you next week