WHOOP Podcast - From Prevention to Progression: A Comprehensive Guide to Strength Training

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

On this week’s episode, we have another great listener questions episode for you. WHOOP Senior Sport Scientist Chris Chapman joins us to answer all of your questions on strength training and performance. Chris answers questions around strength training and workout focus (2:17), preventing osteoporosis (8:43), the timing of workouts impacting recovery (12:55), building the ideal training program (16:32), progression through lifting programs (21:08), creatine and other supplements (27:39), and nutritional suggestions for different lifting programs (31:41).Resources:Research Paper on Bone HealthResearch Paper on Creatine and DiseaseResearch Paper on Creatine and Brain HealthResearch Paper on ProteinWHOOP Podcast #252 with Dr. Darren CandowWHOOP Podcast #218 with Chris ChapmanFollow WHOOPwww.whoop.comTrial WHOOP for FreeInstagramTikTokXFacebookLinkedInFollow Will AhmedInstagramXLinkedInSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

I'm in the world of high-performance sport, and as we say in our world, the best ability is availability. You can't train or make gains if you're injured, so staying healthy is key to making consistent gains over time. And that allows you to be in the gym week after week. What's up, folks? Welcome back to the Whoop podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Whoop. We're on a mission to unlock human performance. If you're thinking about joining Whoop, check out whoop.com, sign up for a free 30-day trial. And you can get the full whoop experience for free. That's a pretty damn good deal. Okay, we got an amazing podcast for you today, and it is all of your questions. I'm going to get to that in one second. Also a reminder

that we just came out with the all-new cloud-knit bands. These are amazing cashmere bands made with high-end natural fibers. They're cozy. They're sophisticated. They're stylish. They're versatile. You're going to like these a lot. Three amazing colors. Check those out at shop. shop.wop.com. This week is the listener questions episode. Woop senior sports scientist Chris Chapman joins to answer all of your questions on strength training and performance. He answers how to structure a lifting program, how strength training can prevent diseases like osteoporosis, how working out before bed impacts the body, the aspect of progression, the aspect of progression, throughout a workout program,

creatine and other lifting supplements, and the nutritional aspect of cutting versus bulking. Reminder, if you want your questions answered on a future episode like this one, email us podcast at whoop.com or call us 508-443-4952. Here is the talented Chris Chapman answering your strength training questions.

Hello, Whoop listeners. Chris Chapman here, resident sports scientist and strength coach. Today we have another question and answer podcast coming at you. We've received a lot of questions lately from WOOP members around strength training. So we thought we'd compile them, get some answers to you, and share with everyone since you might be wondering the same. So let's dive right in. Our first question comes from Amy.

She wants to know how to break down and prioritize workout focus. And this is with respect to strength training. She asks, should I focus on low repetitions and building muscle or higher repetitions and muscular endurance and how do these apply to longevity? So let's start with the first part of the question because the answer here is pretty clear. If you want to build muscle mass, also known as hypertrophy, the current body of literature shows you can do it at any rep range as long as you train to failure.

That is the main stimulus. What this means is that during the set of an exercise, you do enough repetitions at the weight you are using until you cannot perform any more reps, essentially have failed the set. This means that you've reached 100% motor unit activation or you've stimulated all of your muscle fibers. The concept of being able to create muscle growth at any rep range, first discovered about 15, 20 years ago, and the research was led by Stu Phillips and the Exercise Metabolism Research Group at McMaster University. These results flipped the industry beliefs on its head at the time because the common consensus was previously

that muscle growth happens at rep ranges of 8 to 15 reps. But they showed that it doesn't matter how many reps you do as long as you trained a failure. And I'll give you an example of one study that was done. They had three training groups, one group trained, trained 90% of your 1 rep max to failure. Another group trained 30% of your 1 rep max to failure. So that's very lightweight. And what they did is they work matched them. So they did the amount of reps in the lightweight group that did the same amount of work as the 90% or heavy weight. Now they had a third group that did that same lightweight or 30% and went all the way to failure. And what they did is they did muscle biopsies, so they take a bit of muscle and they're able to

look at the amount of protein synthesis that occurs. And what they found is that the two groups that trained a failure, irrespective of the load or rep range, had similar muscle protein synthesis, that is similar muscle building. And it was significantly greater than the group that didn't train to failure. So now that we've kind of debunked the myth of the 8 to 15 and that you can train at any rep range, we have to look at the other part of your question. Now, Since we're deciding to train to failure to maximize muscle growth, there are a few considerations that you need to take. First, one of the downsides of training to failure is the soreness and fatigue that coincides with it. So you need to give yourself ample recovery between sessions.

I would recommend a day off or 48 hours in between training sessions. So if you're lifting two to three times per week, this actually fits well within a weekly schedule, say Monday, Wednesday, Friday. However, if you are strength training more than three times per week, this is where you might consider a split routine, such as training different muscle groups or different movements on different days, or maybe splitting upper and lower body, for example. So that way, you give the trained muscles or movements recovery during your next day session and you can focus on training other things. So you're not always putting the same muscles or movements into fatigue day after day after

day. You're allowing enough time for recovery. Second consideration is you need to choose exercises that you can safely train to failure. You do not want to be buried under a barbell or sustain an injury because you're training alone and going beyond your abilities. Always have a spotter, use the safeties and pins, and if you're even questioning if you can safely go to failure, chances are that means you can't. This is also where machines can be beneficial. If you're lifting alone, they can easily return safely to the starting point, which you can set up the end ranges ahead of time.

before beginning yourself. So we need to get to the second part of your question where do you combine it with maximum strength by doing low repetitions or do we combine it with strength endurance by doing high repetitions? So now it comes down to which of the strength qualities you want to focus on. Now you did ask specifically how it's related to longevity. So longevity for our purposes is being healthy as one ages or increasing the duration of your quality of life. Now as we age, humans tend to lose muscle mass and bone density, which can contribute to losses in strength and power. Building up all of these qualities while you're younger and have good health will give you a greater reserve to fall back on as you age. Now the concept of a reserve is how much extra do you have

in your storage tank compared to what you actually need to function day to day. By having greater reserves in these muscle and strength qualities, this allows some maximal tasks of everyday life or activities of daily living to become easier, less effort, and have less energy costs. That is, we become more economical in our activities of daily living. Now, having larger reserves means you have more of a stockpile or more of a buffer. So when you do lose these qualities due to aging, you have a lot more room to play with without having a negative consequence. And these reserve concepts can be applied to any quality or capacity. So building them up while you're in a healthy and young ability to do so is going to benefit

you later in life. There is a lot of literature to show strength training matters as we age or just having good strength. There's multiple large scale studies that show people with less strength actually have a higher all-cause mortality. And what that means is you're just more likely to die from any cause. And this has been shown in numerous strength measures like grip strength, like leg strength. Knowing that alone, if I had to pick one quality of the two, I would focus on the low repetition

strength training to build strength. And then if you want to combine it with the slow tempo and the training to failure safely, that will also maximize muscle growth at the same time. So, following up on longevity, we have another question from Sarah. She says, as a woman in my mid-30s and just starting to get back into strength training, I'm curious about the benefits and how it is going to help me as I get older. I have heard that resistance training can help prevent osteoporosis, but any info on why that is would be beneficial.

We touched on a few reasons in the last question why resistance training can positive. impact our health as we age. But let's focus on the osteoporosis part of this question. If we look at it from birth to about age 25, our skeleton develops through bone modeling. And that means there's greater bone formation happening than bone loss. And this is a critical time to build bone density and strong bones. So doing activities that involve resistance and load during this developmental period into early adulthood is important. to lay down a good base of bone. From 25 to 30, middle ages, which is the age range you're in, bone formation and breakdown is relatively stable without any intervention. Most of this is remodeling

opposed to modeling. So the removal and replacement of bone material typically occurs at the same site, opposed to the formation of bone at Newside. However, bones do remodel at a rate of about 10% per year. So in theory, you can have a new skeleton every 10 years. Now, in reality, if you consistently resistance train or load your skeleton for a long period of time, you can slowly change your skeleton and build stronger bones through middle age. How bones remodel is in response to the forces placed upon them. The mechanical stress of loading your body through resistance training and other loaded activities results in an adaptation of building little bridges inside the bone called trabecula, and they are formed based on the direction of force and the load the bone

sustains. Now, there are other moderating factors that can negatively affect bone remodeling, such as smoking and nutrition, but resistance training is the stimulus side of the equation required to make the positive change in bone growth. So that's why it is important to strength train throughout all ages and stages of life. Now, approximately around age 50, humans have a tendency towards more bone breakdown than formation. And this results in a decrease in density or weakening of the bones. Now, women are even more susceptible to bone loss after menopause as the decrease in estrogen removes a hormonal factor involved in bone formation.

So it speeds up the breakdown of bone, which is one of the reasons why women are at a greater risk for osteoporosis. If you did a good job at building bone density and strength throughout your youth and middle age, you have more of that reserve we talked about to rely upon as bone breakdown increases with age. Further, if you continue to load the bones through resistance training and optimize the other lifestyle factors, you can minimize or slow down the bone breakdown due to aging. Now, depending on the severity of the bone loss, it can be categorized two ways. first is osteopenia which is a lower bone density than normal for one's age so we look at like

what is a normal bone density for someone at 50 and if you're lower than that you're on the way towards osteoporosis now if it is more severe it gets categorized as osteoporosis at which point it increases the risk of bone injuries such as fractures so resistance training at any agent stage can provide the stimulus for bone remodeling, it will help build strong and dense bones in youth and middle age and minimize the effect of bone loss due to aging. Having a strong skeleton will help us function as we age and will help us be more resilient to fractures and other bone injuries that come at greater risk with aging. I'm going to link to a good review on this topic if you want to dig in further. Okay, next question here. We're moving on a bit from

longevity. Alexander is a shift worker and he can't get to the gym at a consistent time. He's curious to know if the timing of a workout would have an impact on his recovery score the next day. So what he asked specifically is, does working out later in the evening lead to lower recoveries versus working out in the morning? In short, yes. From our own loop data, we have actually done two different studies related to this exact topic. First, in one of our analyses by our performance science team. We have seen that if you work out within four hours of going to sleep, it will lower your recovery the next day, but this is specifically through a lower HRV score. There is a greater reduction, the closer to sleep onset that you train. So the further

away you can train from sleep, the better. Now, anything more than four hours out, so finishing your training four hours before you go to bed, there is no difference in next day, HRV. So ideally, if you can, finish your workout and have a four hour gap before you go to bed. Now, a second larger study was done by our data science team with using nearly 20,000 users. And what it showed is that strenuous evening exercise disrupts sleep and HRV when done two hours before habitual bedtime. So it further supports that with an even greater sample size. Now specifically what they showed is that it results in a more delayed sleep onset, so it takes longer to fall asleep, a shorter sleep duration, user slept less, lower sleep quality combined

with a higher resting heart rate and a lower HRV. So working out close to bedtime has a lot of potentially negative effects on sleep and heart measures. Now, if we dig into the literature, there does seem to be a dose response relationship to weightlifting and HRV response. I talked about this in a previous episode, April 2023 that was on HRV and weightlifting. If you want to go back and have a listen, we do cite a lot of the specific research there and we link to it in the show notes. But in general, the type of training you are doing can have an effect on this. Training closer to 1RM will have greater reductions in HRV. Training higher reps and higher volume can have a greater effect on heart rate than low-rep, low-volume.

Training to failure also results in greater reductions in HRV. So if you have a workout at night before bed, whether that's for preference or logistical reasons, can't finish your training session with a four-hour gap. There are some strategies you could use potentially maximize the recovery and mitigate some of those negative effects. One of the biggest ones you can do, keep your volume low, especially if intensity is high or you are training to failure. Now, conversely, what you could do is train not to failure. So keep some reps in the tank for every exercise, and that way you're going to minimize some of the negative stimulus that drives HRB lower. Ultimately, you need to choose what you want to optimize. Do you want

to optimize your adaptations from training, or do you want to optimize your recovery the next day for life, for work, for whatever it is. One way to mitigate it, keep that four-hour gap from training to sleep, and you can do both. You can optimize your training stimulus and minimize the negative effects on recovery. So up next, we have a question about a weekly lifting program. James writes, Hey, Whoop Team, what would be your recommendation for a weekly lifting program? How many days should I be lifting and then resting? What are the best groups to work on together?

for example, arms in back, arms and chest on the same day. So James, as a coach, I would actually start by asking you some questions. How many days would you like to lift and realistically how many days can you lift within a week? To me, this is much more important as I would want to set you up for success within the demands of your daily life. However, if we remove that from the equation, in general, the absolute minimum should be two, times per week, full body resistance training. If you go up to three, it will be better as you're creating more stimulus to make more gains. And this will still allow you to have 48 hours full recovery in between sessions. So you can go hard and aren't training in a fatigue state next time you show up to

the gym. So that works perfect with like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday training schedule. Now, if you go above three training sessions per week and remember we're talking about resistance training here, not cardio endurance or sport training. You need to start modifying parameters of the workout and playing with training with a little more purpose in detail. You know, you mentioned arms and back, arms and chest. You could go to a bodybuilding style split workout where you're combining muscle groups on different days, different body parts, so that you can train more often. Certain muscle groups get recovery while you're training others, and that way you can go to the gym a lot more frequently. As far as what groups go well together, there's definitely a lot of different ways you

can do that. Arms and chest or extensers and press muscles you can train together. So whether that's chest and tries, back and buys, you know, they're going to work together to produce the same movements. If you say go chest and back or push and pull, you're now doing opposite muscle groups. So you're not going to give yourself enough time to recover unless you're just going an upper and lower split, which is something you can do. I would look to a lot of the bodybuilders out there and see what they're doing, then they're going to have a lot more better suggestions for that. The other key to training more than three times per week is training not to failure by leaving reps in the tank. There's a lot of literature to support this and we've talked about this previous podcast. You know, you could also

have lower intensity days. Say you're going five days a week. You're going five days a week. Monday to Friday, your Tuesday and Thursday could be lower intensity where you're not training is heavy, not training is heart. It's definitely possible that if you're going to the gym very frequently and going to failure very frequently, you'll keep yourself in a state of constant residual fatigue and that this over time can lead to overtraining syndrome, which then has negative effect on your nervous system. And it can also lead you to a point where you stop making gains, you plateau, and you can actually start going in the negative direction as far as progress and building strength and those qualities. So one thing, if you are plateauing

and you're not seeing gains, it's one thing to consider, am I training too much, too hard, too frequent? In summary, minimum two times a week that are full body, high intensity. Three is probably more ideal. Four or five can definitely work, but you have to be a bit more purposeful in your splits in the planning and content of those sessions. And I'd say it's also not necessarily to do more than three, given you will get diminishing returns. If you are doing other cardiovascular and sport training as part of a well-balanced program, you know, we can't forget about the cardio piece that's good for our heart health and body composition and all those other things. What's up, folks, if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health, performance, fitness,

you may really enjoy getting a whoop. That's right. You can check out whoop at whoop.com, measures everything around sleep, recovery, strain, and you can now sign up for free for 30 days. So you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free, get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member.

And that is just at whoop.com. Back to the guests. Next question comes from Levion. He is looking for some direction when it comes to choosing weights and when to go up and back down and wait. He asks, what is a typical time frame you should spend within a given weight during a certain lift? Should I be going up week by week? What does that progression ideally look like? If I can't get into the gym each week, should I be going back down? I am sure it's specific to the person, but curious if there is a recommended time frame. So in this question we're talking

about progression. In order to make improvements in any quality, specifically in strength and muscle qualities, we must use the principle of progressive overload. And what that is is gradually increasing a training variable over time. In strength training, this is usually the amount of weight you lift for a set number of reps or increasing the number of reps you do for a given weight. Other less common progressions could be increasing the time under tension or tempo for a given weight in reps, so slowing down your reps to increase the mechanical tension or contraction. You could also increase the speed of the lift for a given weight in reps, so that's focusing more on velocity-based string. Other common progressions you might see increasing the hold time for isometrics,

such as planks or mid-thi-pals, or decreasing the amount of rest in between sets to try and do the same workabout in a more fatigue state. So there are lots of ways you can progress, but for most people, it will be the amount of weight lifted or the repetitions before. So in general, if you are doing the same weight reps and sets for two weeks, you need to make a progression. Unless you are in some sort of maintenance phase for a specific reason, stagnation is one of the biggest killers of gains. And plateauing should only occur because you've maximized the adaptation, not because of a lack of effort and a lack of progression on your part. So the first thing you need to do is log your weight.

You know, tracking what you're lifting is the only way to know if you're progressing or one option is to use the strength trainer feature in the Woop app, but whatever works for you, consistent logging is key. Now, beginner lifters will make gains and progress a lot easier and faster. So it is pretty common to increase weight or reps week over week. You know, my suggestion is always add the smallest possible amount can when you increase. So whether that's one kilo, 2.5 pound plates, 2.5 pound dumbbell increase, one pin on the weight stack, and see if you can complete the same amount of reps with good technique or complete two more reps at the same weight you did with good technique.

You know, let technique be a driver. If you start struggling and technique falls, that means that it's not, you're not ready to progress. Smaller, more consistent progression is definitely more sustainable and safer over the long term than trying to make big jumps. Big jumps is also a good way to injure yourself. So whenever you're progressing, always be sure to use a spotter or use equipment you can safely bail out on, as we talked about in a previous question. You can't make gains if you are injured. Now, as our training age increases, our gains will diminish and it will become harder to make progression over time. This is where more advanced programming and methodology can come into play in order to

break through plateaus. In general, if you find you aren't progressing after three to four weeks of training, it's time to change something. There's so many options for loading schemes out there that I don't even think a full podcast on the topic would do it justice. But this is where you go search on the internet and you can find any rep and set scheme in existence and what experts think on them. But ultimately you have to try them yourself and see what works. You are an n of one. That means an individual, a single subject, and you have to use yourself as the lab. Try a rep set scheme. See how much gains you make. Try a different one. See how much gains you make. Another thing to think about is that you perpetually cannot increase your load or reps

week over week. At some point you will plateau and wade in the waters of overtraining syndrome. So one strategy for this is an unloading week or a delode weaker block placed within your training schedule. And what this will do, this will allow you to maintain the stimulus of training, but allow your body to recover and realize all those gains from the loading block. And then this will set you up to be in a recovered state to then do another progressive loading period. Now, a delode week or a delode block doesn't mean stop lifting. It means drop your intensity down, typically below 75 to 80 percent, don't train to failure, and perhaps cut your volume down, remove a set, or cut the volume in high. So this way

you're still getting stimulus and training, but it's below homeostasis or it's below the baseline level of training, you're doing week and week out. So it promotes recovery. It allows your body to recover. So the second part of the question was about missing a week in the gym. If you can't get into the gym every week or you miss a week, it's definitely best to complete a training session you know you can do and you've done successfully before. So easy enough, go back to your last workout, you've completed, repeat it, try the same weights and same reps. You'll know pretty quickly if you can't hit them all. And if that's the case, drop the weight 10% complete the same workout. You know, the longer you take away from a gym, you know, a week you're not going to see much detraining

happening. Once you get longer, two weeks and greater, yes, you'll definitely see some detraining. The longer you take away from the gym, the more conservative you need to be with your first training session or two back into the gym. It's always better to back off a bit and train where you know you can complete it safely and then build yourself back up. You know, I'm in the world of high-performance sport. And as we say in our world, the best ability is availability. You can't train or make gains if you're injured. So staying healthy is key to making consistent gains over time. And that allows you to be in the gym week after week. Okay, so changing gears here. Our last couple questions are around supplements and nutrition. Stephen has been interested in taking creatine

to help with his lifting program. He writes, I listened to your creatine episode with Dr. Darren Cando, and I'm thinking about adding creatine. I've always used pre-workout and had way protein shakes after my workout. Would I use creatine instead of the pre-workout and protein? What's the main difference and what are the benefits to the three? Okay, so let's break them down to individually first. The goal of a pre-workout is to give you additional stimulus or perceived energy level mental arousal so that you go into the workout with increased effort and performance during the workout. Now, they can contain substances such as caffeine and other stimulants. Sometimes there's like a beta alanine or a lactate buffer in there. And even sometimes they can

contain creatine. So one thing to do is look at your pre-workout and see if it, does contain creatine. That means you might not have to add creatine on top of what you're currently doing. Now, personally, I'm not a user of pre-workout. I don't like relying on stimulants to train just because I don't think it's a good long-term strategy for optimizing nervous system health. In the athlete world I work in, some of these substances in the pre-workouts can also have ingredients that aren't on the label. So this is also one thing you need to consider. Some supplements are safe for sport and they've been batch tested, which means they verify that everything on the label is in them. But there have been a lot of supplements tested that contain

things that aren't on the label. Something to consider. If you are using pre-workout and it doesn't have creatine in it, then it would be good to add creatine as it doesn't serve the same function. So protein is essential to building muscles and building strength. Proteins are made up of amino acids, which are used as the building blocks for muscles in our body. So if we aren't ingesting enough protein, then we aren't maximizing the protein synthesis or recovery after our strength training session. You know, we can meet our protein requirements through food with good nutrition while supplementing with protein can make it easier for people to meet those require. You know, especially if you're someone that doesn't eat meat or dairy,

supplementing protein can really help you easily meet those required. So creatine is different than protein and it does not replace protein intake. So it would be something you do in addition to meeting your daily protein required. So what is creatine? Well, creatine is a substance that is mostly found in skeletal muscle, but it's also found in our brain. Nutritionally, it is primarily found in animal tissue, meat, fish, and its primary function is to replenish adenosine triphosphate or ATP, which is a primary energy source for human muscle in order to contract. So what it does is that it increases performance in short, high intensity activities, or increasing our anaerobic energy capacity. It is one of the most widely used and safe supplements in the training space. It's probably

one of the most research supplements in existence. There's also a lot of literature on the benefits of creatine for mental and cognitive performance as well, which I know has been touched on in that previous podcast, and there's a lot more current research coming out. So in short, your pre-workout may contain creatine, in which case you may not need to add it. If it does not, supplementing with creatine does not replace your pre-workout or your protein intake. So it should be, taking in addition to meeting your daily protein requirements. Finally, we have one last question from Justin on nutrition during different phases of his training routine.

So Justin asks, what are the optimal amounts of protein and calories to take during a balking phase and then conversely during a cutting phase? I'm 27 years old, 175 pounds. Any suggestions would be great. So the first thing I'm going to say with these nutrition questions, so the first thing I'm going to say with these nutrition questions is that I am not a practicing nutritionist or dietitian. There are definitely people out there better to answer this than I, but I can definitely give you a general answer with some pen and paper math using the standard guidelines that are

published by most organizations. For bulking, in general, you need to be in a caloric surplus. So you need to be consuming more calories than you burn on a daily basis. So first you need to figure out how many calories you burn at rest throughout the day. And then you add on top of that your caloric burn through activities. And that would be your baseline calorie intake in order to maintain your current body composition and weight where you're at. Tools like whoop because they measure your heart where in a 24-hour period, use some standard equations to calculate your caloric expenditure based on your body weight and other parameters. So you can look at whoop and look at your caloric expenditure on a daily basis to get an idea. Another way to do this is a general guideline

is 4 to 16 calories per pound of your body weight. And this is for someone doing moderate activity three to four times per week. And that's for your maintenance level. So for you, at your body weight, this would put you at 2,500 to 2,800 calories per day per mate. Now, in order to bulk, you have to go above that. So you aim for 10 to 20% above that number. And what this would do is put you at 3,000 to 3,300 calories per day in order to be in a surplus. So obviously the activity you are doing and how active you are on a daily basis can greatly affect this. So whether you're using whoop to track your activities or you're getting a caloric burn from the cardio machine you're using, you know, you need to figure out how much you're burning through these activities. And that will give

you a better idea of your maintenance level. Now, another important factor is making sure you're getting enough protein in your diet to promote muscle growth or increase muscle protein synthesis. You know, some of the general guidelines from exercise bodies recommend around 0.8 grams pound of body weight. Some of the higher recommendations, 1.0 to 1.2 grams, and that will get you over most of the conservative recommendations. There are definitely people and guidelines out there that recommend higher, but 1.0 to 1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight should suffice for the majority of people. For you, at 175 pounds, this would mean you need to ingest 175 to 210 grams of protein per day. Now, ideally you spread this across three to four different ingestions. We call

these bolus throughout the day. And there's definitely a key window of ingestion immediately post-training that you should take one of these boluses of protein. Now, if we switch to a cutting phase, the goal of cutting is to lose fat while preserving muscle mass. So you need to be in a caloric deficit while maintaining a high protein intake. So a simple way to do this is to keep your protein intake at the same level of 1.0 to 1.2 grams, or for you again, 175 to 210 grams per day, but cut your calories to 10%, 15% below that maintenance level, which we talked about before, which would take you down to about 2,200 to 2,500 calories per day. Now, I'm sure there are a lot of people out there that would adjust these numbers and guidelines

as I find the nutrition space is one where there's a lot of conflicting literature and disagreement upon experts. But for most people, these numbers are within a reasonable range that most experts and organizations recommend. Now, I'd like to thank everyone for the questions. We do our best to answer them all. And these are the questions that are the most comment. So keep them coming in. And when we have enough, we'll do another Q&A podcast. And thank you all for listening. So until next time, this is Chris Chapman, signing up. Big thank you to Chris and a thank you to our listeners. That's right. Thank you for sending your questions. If you enjoyed this episode of the Woo Podcast, please leave a rating or review. Don't forget about the all new cloud knit band. Three

great colors. That's our new Kashmir band. Check us out on social. at WOOP at Will Ahmed. If you're a question you want to see answered on the podcast, email us, podcast at Woop.com. Call us 508-443-4952. If you think about joining Woop, check out Woop.com. Sign up for a 30-day free trial membership.

Take the first step to unlocking a better and healthier you. New members can use the code W-W-I-L, get a $60 credit on W-W-A accessories. And that's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast. stay healthy and stay in the green.