Mark Bell's Power Project - All About Building MUSCLE - Live Q&A || MBPP Ep. 1048
Episode Date: March 22, 2024In episode 1048, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza go live and answer your questions about all things muscle! Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Pro...ject Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! Natural Sexual Performance Booster ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECT Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order! The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! ➢https://emr-tek.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order! 👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶 ➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject 🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab! Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night! 🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements! ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel! Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/untapped ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Where does strength play in regards to building muscle?
Powerlifting gave me a good base.
It gave me some ass and some hamstrings.
Do I really need carbs to build muscle?
Using them around your workout can help your workout performance,
and you don't need to worry about eating during the day
if that's something that you're worried about eating too many carbs.
Can muscle burn be an effective metric for muscle building?
Yeah, I think so.
I think the muscle, what, heats up, right?
That's what a pump is, man.
Any tips on grip strength and forearm size?
Check out some stuff that the arm wrestlers do.
Like, you want big-ass forearms?
Those guys do a lot of crazy exercises for their forearms.
Can you build good muscle with only bodyweight exercises?
They're really effective.
You know, going out and doing some sprints is really effective.
Best muscles to target to look bigger quicker.
When you think about people that are big, he almost always has a big back.
It's, like, kind of hard to avoid.
Hey.
There we go.
Muscle.
Did you try your mackerel yet?
Dude.
So.
You still nervous?
No.
I had every intention on eating my mackerel yesterday.
I promise you.
I ate my normal breakfast and I just simply was not hungry
all day. I kept looking at it. I'm like, all right, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to eat
that mackerel in a little bit, walk past it. Like, I'm just not, not really hungry right now. And I
don't want, I don't want to give it a fair shot. I want to give it a, like a time where I'm hungry
and I actually want to like enjoy this mackerel.
If you don't eat that bitch today, just bring it here.
I'll chomp it up right at the time.
I'm going to eat it.
I promise.
You better.
Don't waste some good fish, bro.
I really, really want to.
Mark's been talking about the benefits of the DHA or omega-3s.
And I don't eat that sort of thing.
So I want to take advantage of it.
And so I want to eat that.
Who in here likes fish?
Comment down below.
Let us know in that box.
And by the way,
like I mentioned the Discord,
we're going to try to focus on muscle building questions,
but ask anything you want.
Yeah, build some muscles.
Get big.
Get strong.
Muscles are overrated, though.
It's true.
Having big muscles means that it's more in your muscles and less in your brain.
Well, there's that.
And then also muscles just make you really tired.
Because you've got to lug them around all day.
And they have to be fed.
That's a bitch.
They take a lot of maintenance.
And then you lose your mobility.
Yep.
All of it.
It's the worst thing ever.
You don't want muscle.
You don't want muscle you don't want muscle
for jujitsu yeah and it was how long did that take literally that's a cool less than 90 seconds
and we already got the first jujitsu can we get a siren that just like goes off and just messes
everything up and it just like you should make something on your fucking clicker button thing. Soundboard?
Alright, soundboard, yeah.
Alright guys, let's start answering some of these
questions. Guess who the first question is from?
It's our boy with...
No, I can't remember.
Gunpowder T. Gunpowder T.
Gunpowder T with the super chat. Best
recovery modalities for leg
workouts.
Training legs can be really brutal.
Yeah.
Especially when you're really trying to get after it and trying to make the legs grow.
You're kind of forced to train them hard enough to where you can't walk so great.
But I think some of the greatest kind of recovery tools that I ever ran into were just the simple things of like just taking your time to get
used to it. You know, it's very simple rules. Like just, you know, if, if you're like, if you wake up
one day and like my legs are skinny and I want to, I want to slap some meat on these legs and you
start getting inspired to do some leg workouts, well, maybe like 10 sets of 10 on the first day
is not a great idea. And so think about, um, you know, what
you've done previously, um, cause you're only as good as that and, uh, prepare yourself to go up
just a little bit from, uh, where you currently are. Don't, don't try to just all of a sudden,
just blast your legs with tons and tons of volume. You'll get super sore and not feel great.
That after leg day, take a walk. I think that's one of the best things that
you can do because, um, walking is obviously just a good thing for recovery in general,
but the amount of like blood flow and blood you're going to get moving throughout your legs
all the way down to your feet back up, right. That's going to be pretty helpful. Um, and I
also think that adding in certain movements that will allow you to work your legs through long
ranges of motion, a movement that I think is beneficial for every athlete is a ATG split squat. And now before
it became popular for ATG and Ben, right? Charles Poliquin was, that was like the split squat that
he popularized back in the day. I think he'd maybe call it the Poliquin split squat. Now people call
it the ATG split squat, but that's's movement that I think is literally good for everybody to progress because it's going to get you to stretch. It's a unilateral leg
movement, deep knee flexion on the front leg. The hips on the back leg are getting stretched out.
You're like you, even your torso, cause the goal is to keep your torso upright. So you're feeling
a deep stretch throughout like your psoas in this area. It's, it's such a beautiful movement
that I think on leg day is something that can
actually help you recover faster. It's a great movement for athletics. I mean, you think about
like a pitcher or a batter in baseball or somebody throwing really hard from third to first,
they almost get in that position. Somebody dunking a basketball, you don't really think
about somebody dunking a basketball getting super low, but a lot of times their back leg is almost as low as somebody in an ATG split squat. All you have to
do is, you know, watch Ben do like, you know, when he puts some of these dunks in reverse and you'll
kind of see what I'm talking about. But to generate a lot of force, it's important to do movements
like that. I also think that over the years, I don't know if this is more like intuition or if there's actual like a lot of science to it.
But it does seem like movement is really important.
You mentioned walking.
I know some people like to get on like an airdyne bike, getting on some sort of bike.
Um, I know for myself, when my legs have been really sore, getting on a bike and having my legs kind of pushed into these ranges of motion that kind of hurt because you're so sore.
Yep.
Um, and then you move for a little while and, and I don't know what the terminology is.
Maybe you're moving around some lactic acid or something like that.
I don't know, but I know that like even just 10 minutes of that can make a huge difference.
And all of a sudden you're like, wow, my legs actually feel better. And I do know that you, you know, just by simply doing exercise for these body
parts, you can assist with getting more nutrients to those body parts. So if you trained legs on
Monday and you went real hard and you went crazy on your legs, and then Tuesday, you also, you know,
get on a bike, you do a little bit of walking, you should be able to drive more nutrients there to assist with the recovery process. Something that absolutely helped me was
kind of splitting out leg day throughout the week. So if I'm going to do smart move, if I'm going to
work quads one day, then I'm not going to work hamstrings that day either. Or maybe I will,
but I'm not going to do calves or something like that. Or I'm going to do glutes, but I'm going to
do that on a separate day. But that's how, that's what worked for me. But do you guys think that if somebody is
trying to add some size to, to their legs, should they hit legs multiple times that week? Like if
they're not splitting it up, if they're having like a leg day that where they want to gain some
size, should they hit that leg day workout more than once a week i think it depends on their
adaptation to volume in general because when a lifter becomes more advanced and a lifter would
be like adapts to what they're currently doing then they're going to be able to first off like
like maybe they'll be able to handle more volume on a specific day and then recover and then handle
more volume on a second day during the week right right? Whereas if like you're new to training
your legs, you probably don't need to do a lot of volume on specific days because you're not,
you're not adapted to that yet. So as a lifter gets better, they can probably have more frequency
and gain benefit from it. Whereas a newer person with high frequency is just going to beat
themselves up. I do think you don't have to get yourself like insanely sore. I do think that sometimes that's part of the process because you just don't know and you're going to
have workouts that are going to end up like that where you maybe even tried to undershoot the
volume. You tried to go with not a lot of sets, not a lot of exercises, and you still got really
sore. Like that just happens sometimes because you're so new that you don't understand what
you're adapted to and what you're not adapted to. But I really like what you said about, you know, spreading out the amount of
days that you're going to do it. Like maybe you are training your legs three days a week, but
maybe one day is more quad focused. The other day is a little bit more hamstring focused. And
another day is like a little bit more calf, tib, uh, focus. And then you kind of repeat.
half-tib focus, and then you kind of repeat.
I found it really useful to me at this stage in my life to,
like my leg day, my leg focus day,
it's like I do one or two exercises,
and then I move on to something else.
Now, I also already acquired a decent amount of muscle mass on my legs, so I don't maybe have to push through the same way as somebody else,
but I actually think it's a smart move to put something else on your leg day,
almost like shoulders, maybe like maybe you work quads and like shoulders because
that kind of forces you to only train your legs for like X amount of time, you know,
30 minutes or so. And that might be a good place to start. Like if you're trying to,
cause I, again, when I think about leg day, I'm just thinking
of like, man, like I spent a lot of days, like not being able to get up and down stairs
and being real fumbly and just having my legs be incredibly sore.
And my legs did not grow very well from that.
I used to just like, I used to try to kill them and it didn't, for me, it didn't work.
I don't know why it didn't work, but it didn't work well.
And it wasn't until after my powerlifting career that my legs, which doesn't make any sense either because they didn't grow from a lot of volume and they didn't grow from going heavy.
It grew more from like me just I guess utilizing like almost straight bodybuilding tactics.
bodybuilding tactics. Mark, can you explain, cause like you've mentioned this in the past, or, I mean, both of you guys have talked about this, how powerlifting did make your, your,
your body, your muscles grow and stuff. But like, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole
concept of like going heavier versus like hypertrophy. I know the answer is both, but
you know, what you just said there too, is like after powerlifting, you got bigger, but people
that are into bodybuilding
they're not really worried about lifting as much weight as possible or maybe they are but the the
main thing is like they want to build that hypertrophy and they want to go with the higher
reps so where does strength play in regards to building muscle for the legs i think powerlifting
gave me a good base like it gave me some ass and some hamstrings and maybe even some calves
but calves could also been like genetic or something too or just environmental, playing football and playing a bunch of other sports.
So maybe that was part of it.
But I think powerlifting helped give my legs some size, but they didn't have any shape.
They were just like blocks.
They didn't have much shape to them.
They're just like blocks.
They didn't have much shape to them.
And then after I was done powerlifting, losing a lot of body fat made a lot of the shape come out and then also utilizing some bodybuilding techniques.
But it seems like to me that when you put your muscles under stress for 40 seconds to a minute, somewhere in that range, you do 8 to 12 repetitions and you do it under control. That's some of the protocol for hypertrophy.
For gaining strength, it's usually done a lot quicker.
You know, you're only doing like one rep, maybe five reps, something like that.
And you're still utilizing some control.
So there's still a lot of muscle tension.
But the duration of the exercise is shortened quite a bit.
And then there's a lot of crossover between gaining strength and gaining muscle mass.
So sometimes some people can respond really well
to five sets of five.
But also sometimes people respond really well
to five sets of five because it's such a departure
from what they're currently doing
that it almost is, it maybe acts as
like a way to recover from all the sets of 10 and 12 and 15 that they may have been doing
previously.
Yeah.
I think just the concept to think about, especially if your main focus is building muscle and
you're not someone who really cares about lifting the most weight possible or competing
in powerlifting, then
chase the stimulus and then not the weight. And one thing to think about here is like you mentioned,
the amount of time that you're working with a load. So the amount of time it's going to take you
to do 10 to 15 repetitions, right? With a decent tempo, it's going to take you a little bit of
time. But think about this too. The longer you're working a specific muscle group towards the end of that set, you're tapping into all of
the fibers versus a set of three. You're going to be utilizing those fibers to move that load fast
through space, but you're not fatiguing all of those fibers like you would on a set of 10 to 15.
That's like one to two reps shy of failure.
About 50 seconds in, you're using everything, everything to move that load, right? That's why
bodybuilders are able to get away with using much lighter weight with much higher reps,
and they look bigger than powerlifters, even though they're weaker than a powerlifter.
So, I mean, you can also get the best of both worlds. If you do want to be a strength athlete,
you can do some strength work and that can be beneficial for your bodybuilding.
But if you're just trying to build muscle, you don't have to do sets of three or five. You don't have to, you can, if you want to. And normally bodybuilders are actually really strong. I think
that that was maybe like a misconception for maybe years. I think maybe in like some parts of the nineties and maybe two thousands, there was
a lot of people using machines and stuff. And then somehow that got translated into like,
meaning that you're not strong. Um, but I mean, just look at Jay Cutler and look at these guys.
I mean, they're insanely strong. It's not only the strong bodybuilders, it's not only the Ronnie
Coleman's and a lot of these guys are really, really strong and they're strong at like a lot of different exercises.
You know, if you were to take Michael Hearn is finally starting to get like a little older.
else in the world, he would do really well, even against somebody who's probably like in their twenties or something like that, because he's adapted himself to all these
different exercises, all these different angles, um, and also doing it for a long ass period
of time and also being under tremendous amounts of, uh, tension during his training sessions
and the trend.
You pronounced testosterone as tension.
That's weird.
Yeah, exactly.
By the way, guys,
we are going to be giving away some things today at the end.
Anybody ask questions, and that's why gunpowder,
your tactic, bro, you've won a lot of these giveaways.
We're giving away something from Joy Mode.
All right?
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orange right now i'm sorry but maybe they'll come out with it. They have a new one coming out too.
So anyway, yes, that's at Vivo.
Hostage tape, we're going to give away a year's supply, and then we're giving away some stuff from within you also.
So if you ask a question, we answer it.
You're on a list, and then we will pick a name out, and if you win, you win.
I just want to go back to the question.
The question is like what's the best recovery?
So I do think a sauna can be helpful.
A hot tub, for some reason that's always left out.
But I found going into a hot tub just feels incredible.
If you can meditate, that would be great.
I know most people really struggle with it.
Cold plunge, unbelievable I think for recovery.
I know there's some people who are like, ah, it might interfere with hypertrophy or whatever.
But a few hours away, fucking.
Yeah, right.
Do it beforehand or do it the next day or whatever.
It's a great recovery tool.
And then also, just keep it in mind,
just don't do garbage sets.
Don't do sets that maybe don't provide value.
Don't do a set just because you're like,
this is going to hurt really bad.
Do the set with intention and do the set with the idea of like,
I'm doing this to stimulate.
I think it was Lee Haney said, stimulate, don't annihilate.
So stimulate the muscle, get what you need out of it.
And there's really no reason to think like,
oh, on my way out the door, I'm really going to smash this last set. Don't do shit like that because that's going to
cut into your recovery. And it's, it's most likely not going to be valuable. It's something that you
think about. You're like, oh, I'm going to get this sick pump on my way out the door. And I'm
going to do this like massive drop set or super set. And it's like, no, what, what you were doing
for the whole workout was great. And that's going to be plenty for you to grow off of.
But what if the chick working the front desk is really hot?
And you spend two and a half hours training in the same spot for as long as possible.
Okay, cool.
Exactly.
All right, next question from Haley Neal.
Do I really need carbs to build muscle?
I think they're valuable.
I don't think there's any reason to chop them out.
I don't think there's any reason to chop them out. I don't know.
Each person maybe is a little individual, but I would say start going underneath 100 grams of carbs a day.
It's like that's pretty low.
I think most bodybuilders, most people that you've seen that have good amounts of muscle are probably at a minimum of taking in a gram per pound of body weight in carbohydrates and sometimes 1.5 and sometimes even all the way up to two and sometimes even more. You know, I think Jay Cutler like famously
had like a thousand carbs a day or something like that. He wanted to win. It mattered.
Yeah. It's definitely can help. And if you're someone who's trying to build muscle, I know like,
you know, there's nothing wrong with using a ketogenic diet or if you like
the carnivore diet. But if you want to be a little bit more sparing with your carbs, try to use them
around your workout. So try to maybe have some carbs an hour or two before your workout,
maybe 50 or 100 grams or something. And you will feel that because muscle building and bodybuilding is
in its nature glycolytic. You're going to tap into those glycogen stores when you're lifting.
That's why you'll notice if you're someone that's coming from like a carnivore diet and then you get
some carbs and then you do another workout, you're like, why are these pumps hurt? Like the pumps
are quite literally skin splitting, especially if you haven't had carbs for a while. So you know how effective they're going to be.
Like I've noticed that difference too.
So with that being said, if you use them around your workout, during your workout, I know you like to sometimes use CarboMax or a carbohydrate type supplement drink.
And those are definitely beneficial.
But using them around your workout can help your workout performance and you don't need to worry about eating them during the day if that's something that you're worried about eating too many carbs. Yeah, some rice and potatoes, some general
carbohydrates I think can make a big difference. Remember, it's assisting with hydrating. We know
how important hydration is. We know how important it is to have water and to have salt and have
minerals. The carbohydrates are literally helping to hydrate the tissue. And it's going to actually
make you weigh a little bit more, which some people who are trying to like get skinny might
think is a bad thing, but you're going to be full of glycogen. And so therefore your performances
should be better. And if you can work out, like, let's just throw a percentage on it and say,
you can work out two or 3% better when you have carbohydrates in your system. Maybe there's
some data that shows some other statistic, but I'm just saying like for argument's sake,
it makes a two to 3% difference in your output. Like to me, that sounds really valuable for fat
burning, for gaining muscle and gaining strength. I have a specific Mexican candy that I have.
I have like eight bags of it. Why'd you point to Andrew?
You've had it. I gave you some of it.
I don't remember though.
It was the one that had, it was like coated with spicy stuff.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
That's my special pre-workout candy.
That shit's good.
I'll only eat it pre-workout and sometimes outside of a workout, but I'll usually eat
it pre-workout because I'm like, all right, let's get this pump, bro.
There's like no fat and stuff like that, right?
Nah, it's just sugar.
It's just sugar.
It would be like a kind of like a fruit by the foot, but with like spicy, sweet goodness all over it.
It's incredible.
Yeah.
Real quick, if you're digging the live so far, please hit that like button because we only have like a couple of likes, but a good amount of people in here.
So we appreciate you, but let's hit that like button.
About how long should somebody utilize carbs pre-workout?
Like how long before?
I know it's going to vary for everybody, but like, could they do it if they're going to
work out in the morning?
Could they do it the night before?
Or is that like too far, two hours?
Like what do we got?
I think for a lot of people, it's kind of mental.
I think they feel like they need the carbs.
So if you feel like you need the carbs and you need to eat some like honey on your way
out the door before you go do your workout, then just go for it.
Like whatever feels good to you and then also like whatever digests well.
But I would say like if you had some carbs at night and you work out, you know, the next day, even before noon or something, those carbs are still sitting around.
I don't understand where they would have went.
So they're still in your system.
It's not like you're depleted.
I think you would have to fast for,
you'd have to fast for like 24 hours
to get rid of the glycogen
that's like even just in your liver
and the glycogen that's sitting around in your muscles
like doesn't get moved around,
I don't think,
until you start to really move yourself around a lot.
This is a hack.
Actually, I don't even know if I should call it a hack.
I just know that like it feels pretty wild and I don't use it all the time there's no side effects uh the
supplement from jake i don't think you can tell people about this max uptake you remember that
shit yeah yeah yeah it's great i so like super brain formulated by the way dude i ate such a big
a fucking fat meal and then i took four max
updates before that meal and then a few hours after i went to go do a lift holy shit i was
drenched and the pump i had looked so crazy and i was just like i texted jake right after i'm like
dude dude this shit's awesome send me more it's just a supplement yeah i think it has like chromium
and stuff like that and it has anything uh It has nothing in it that's dangerous or nothing.
And it's going to hurt you.
It just apparently helps you uptake nutrients better.
That's what it's meant for.
So is it just like an oral supplement or it's a pill?
It's anal.
Yeah.
You have to stick it up your ass.
Sweet.
Yeah.
I can do it for you.
I was waiting.
I'm looking at both of you.
Got you, bro.
Just make sure to shave before. Last time I had to do that for you was too hairy
down there. I don't like that.
Too much prep work when I have to shave and then you want me to wax
and then who knows what else you're going to want me to do next.
Pulled hair out of my teeth the next morning. It wasn't fun.
It's supposed to be sunning your butthole. How are you supposed to sun that thing
when it's that furry? Dude, I don't do everything
you guys tell me to do, okay?
Hence why
you didn't eat the mackerel just yet i'm working on it couldn't be
couldn't be more disappointed gotta get hyped up for it even though it's a muscle day we got a
running question because darian donaldson said that he's been inspired to do his first marathon
and he needs some tips oh yeah i'm not the guy to ask about running that far. That's really far.
Talk to Jeremy Miller.
I would say that like I think that you got to kind of proceed with caution. Like if you're just getting excited and out of nowhere you're going to do a marathon, it's just really far.
It's really, really far.
It's really far to even walk.
far. It's really, really far. It's really far to even walk. So I would say like, if you don't have the opportunity, if you don't have previous running history and you don't have the opportunity
to train for like 20 weeks, I would just suggest that you don't do it. But I know that people like
the mental side of it and they're like, no, I want to do it. And I want to make sure that I don't
stop. And I go the whole way and they got like a bet with their friend or something like that. In that case, then, you know, I would just
try to get a coach and I would try to adhere to, there's apps, there's all kinds of stuff that you
can use. There's all kinds of ways you can kind of learn how to run, but just kind of quick advice,
I would say you got to run about four days a week. You're going to need a run that's considered like a tempo run, which is just going to be faster than a zone two run.
A zone two is going to be you get a maybe heart rate monitor, check your heart rate.
It should be 180 minus your age-ish in that range.
And you want to run like that twice a week. One time a week, you want to do the tempo run, which is just going to be slightly faster.
Maybe rather than, you know, maybe that zone two run feels like 60, 70%. Now you're just going to
bump up to about 80%. The tempo run is going to be a lot shorter. The zone two run is going to be longer,
somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to 10 miles. The tempo run might be half of that.
And then you're going to want to have one day that's like maybe like a speed day. And then
that would, you know, and you can just, again, like me trying to give all this to you in one
quick answer is too hard. So just look some of it up, review it, check it out,
and you should be on your way.
I don't have any tips for this.
I have not run a marathon.
But I do have a question for you,
and I want to know your thoughts on it.
Because you know how sometimes when somebody wants to,
they want to get in shape, so they're like,
okay, I'm going to schedule a bodybuilding show,
and this is the show I'm going to do.
This is very similar to that, yeah.
Like, don't do it. Yeah this is the show I'm going to do. This is very similar to that. Yeah. Like don't do it.
Yeah.
But the thing I wonder is like for like the bodybuilding show, typically it's not going to be as hard on your body.
Right.
Especially if you're not someone who's been a runner before, like trying to, you know, just lift a little bit more.
You can generally be kind of safe.
You know what I mean?
more, you can generally be kind of safe. You know what I mean? Um, but when people are just like,
I'm going to do a marathon six months from now with no running experience and their feet are weak and they have all these dysfunctional gait issues, but they're going to run a marathon six
weeks from now. And then they have four runs that they need to do a week. And then their knee starts
fucking hurting in the ankle, but they're like, I'm going to run through it. It just feels like
a bad idea. It's a bad idea. Yeah. It's a bad idea. I mean,
it's not any different than, um, me rushing into jujitsu and like, I'm, you know, I tell you guys
like, oh man, I went to class yesterday and then I'm all hyped up and I'm like, I did pretty good.
You know, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to compete. And not only do I compete, but I like
compete a bunch of times and I'm trying to like, and you guys are like, dude, like you, this is cool.
This is amazing.
I'm so proud of you.
This is cool.
I'm, I'm happy for you, but your luck's going to run out, you know?
And I just keep going and going and going.
Eventually, like I'm just going to get, you're going to get hurt, you know?
And so that's the thing.
That's the unfortunate thing.
I hate, I hate doing that to people.
I hate like knocking down their hopes or their dreams
and I don't want to doubt anybody
and I never want to do that
I always want to try to encourage people
but I would rather encourage you to think about
if you're thinking
oh I want to do this marathon this summer
and it's already like March or April
or something like that
think about maybe next summer
you know what I mean
play the slower game play the next summer. You know what I mean? Play the slower game, play the long game.
Say, you know what?
Well, this summer, I'm going to do the 10K.
There we go.
Or this summer, I'm going to do the half marathon.
A half marathon is still a lot to chew off.
Yes, it is.
That is a lot.
That is a lot of work.
And I think that here's something that people don't realize.
Here's something that people don't realize about a marathon.
If you're not efficient at running, you're out there for longer than four hours
you're out there for long it's an event that's four hours long so again using the analogy back
to because we've got to always talk about jujitsu imagine four hours of jujitsu yeah that would suck
oh yeah yeah without hardly you know without that much. Yeah. Without hardly, you know, without that much
exposure to it, you know, I, you know, you go an hour, you know, a couple of days a week and then
you try to have this one day where you go against people for four hours. Like he would just be,
so what I like to think about too, is not only think about the race and the idea of why you want
to do it, maybe something tragic
happened in your life. And maybe you're, you know, maybe you're trying to get a strong mental focus,
maybe a loved one passed away or something and you have a real, that's, that's incredible. And
when you go and run a marathon, you'll see people like that and they'll run in groups.
There's people that run for breast cancer and there's people that run for all kinds of really
cool things. And it's actually like very
emotional, but you don't have to run a marathon for that. You can run a 10K, you can run a half
marathon, you could try something slightly different and you'll still get all the same
feelings and all the same vibe out of it. You know, later just had an awesome night. You got
dinner or you just came back from the gym and it's time for that fun time. But you look down
at your willy and well, it's not working the way it should.
Where's that blood flow?
Well, that's where Joy Mode comes in.
And I can read you these ingredients right off the bat because they're all natural ingredients.
L-citrulline, arginine nitrate, panoxynsing root, and vitamin C.
The thing about Joy Mode is you just slip this baby into a little bit of water,
drink it, and 45 minutes later, when you're getting ready to go to the pound town, you will be ready to rock.
And you know what I mean by rock.
Joy Mode's really awesome because there's a lot of things that people promote as far as sexual wellness tools, but there's a lot of weird ingredients in there.
These are all natural ingredients that's going to help your own production of blood flow.
Stick it in some water.
60 minutes later, you're going to be able to stick it into something else.
Joy mode's your way to go.
Andrew, how can they get it?
Yes, that's over at usejoymode.com slash powerproject.
And at checkout, enter promo code powerproject to save 20% off your entire order.
Again, usejoymode.com slash powerproject,
promo code powerproject,
links in the description
as well as the podcast show notes.
Next question from Nate Gates.
And like I mentioned, guys,
right now we're trying to answer
all the super chats
and we're going to come and answer
as many muscle building questions
and some other questions.
You sound money hungry.
Ah, we had to get the super chats.
We got to help them out.
People are paying?
They're paying.
Damn. All right, let's answer those questions. super chats. We got to help them out. People are paying? They're paying. Damn.
All right, let's answer those questions.
All right.
Going to our bank account?
I don't know where it goes.
Do we have an account?
You don't know where it goes?
Shit.
All right.
Pretty sure we have a bank account.
Yeah.
But I don't know who has access to it.
Can muscle burn be an effective metric for muscle building and or work output?
Hmm.
Yeah, I think so.
I think the muscle, what, heats up, right?
Yeah, that shit.
That's what a pump is, man.
Yeah.
A pump is painful, especially when it's a good pump.
You know what I mean?
And I think almost no matter how you do it, there's a lot of different ways to get to that point where the muscle
will burn.
So I'm thinking like you could do like a set of 30,
right?
And the muscles,
they might start to burn at rep 22 or something,
right?
And the last eight reps start to,
you could do a drop set.
You could do a super set.
You can just do a regular set and prick,
pick a particular weight.
You can also do sets where you're not resting a lot, which I think is probably,
in my opinion, is probably the most effective, is to do four to five good clean sets of 10 reps,
have all of those reps on every single set be clean. And you're going to, which you'll end up
with by the time you got past your warmup is you're going to end up with about
three or four, three or four working sets where you're getting that heat, where that muscle is
kind of heating up. It's kind of hard to mimic that any other way. That's why I think that's
probably the most effective. It's also the most boring and, uh, bodybuilders are actually really
good at it because they don't mind just, they're going to have chicken and broccoli and then they're going to have chicken and broccoli, and then they're going to have chicken and broccoli.
And they're going to do a set of dumbbell bench press, and then they're going to do a set of dumbbell bench press, and then they're going to do a set of dumbbell bench press.
They don't care.
They don't have to have this crazy stimulus sometimes of jumping from here, jumping from from there and making their workouts look like a
CrossFit workout or something like that. Some advice I have for someone who's like newer to,
to lifting, I don't know how new you are to lifting Nate. But if you're within your first
year I know a lot of people talk about like, you know, training to failure, getting a pump,
feeling that burn. But when you're newer, understand that along with that, your tendons
and ligaments are going to be getting stronger to be able to handle what you're lifting. Not just
your muscles getting bigger, your tendons and ligaments are going to be getting stronger to
be able to handle the stress of a dumbbell when you're doing a bicep curl, et cetera.
That's why I think when you're newer, it's much more beneficial to work within a higher rep range. Because if
you're working with a really heavy load and you're doing sets of five or six, and six is like the top,
there's a level of strength you need to lift that weight efficiently. And when you're lifting weight
that's too heavy and you're new, you're at more risk of multiple types of injuries, whether it's a ligament tear,
a muscle pull, et cetera. How high of reps are you thinking?
I think eight to 15 to 20. I think that's a safe place for you to be able to get good stimulus for the tissue, but also not too heavy where you have a lesser risk of injury. So anywhere between eight
and 20. Because a lot of times, but sometimes when there's training partners, there's always somebody that's stronger than the other one, right?
And what happens a lot, you would actually think that the weaker guy would start to close the gap on the stronger guy.
But that's not usually what happens.
Usually the stronger guy just continues to get stronger and stronger.
And the weaker guy, he makes progress, but he makes it slowly.
And the weaker guy, he makes progress, but he makes it slowly. And what my theory on this, because this used to happen in here all the time or at super training all the time, was that the weaker guy just didn't get enough volume. He just could not figure out a way to get enough work. and maybe I'm using 225 and you appropriately should be using 185,
but you're like, no, I'll just use that.
And then you get three reps,
but I'm getting seven every time.
And I do five sets of seven and you do five sets of three.
It's a totally different outcome.
You're still going to get stronger.
You'll still make progress,
but it's not going to be the same.
And you'll be kind of scratching your head all the time
being like, why can't I keep up with that guy? It's because you're trying to keep up with
him and you need to stay in your lane a little bit more. And if you concentrated and got the
reps cleanly the way the other person did, and you got the same amount of reps, you would be
getting mathematically the same amount of volumes. So technically you should be getting at least
similar results. Yeah. When I switched to what Insuma said earlier about like training for the stimulus
versus like what the number was on the bar,
that's when a lot of stuff changed for me.
So yeah, I 100% agree.
Nice.
And is your training similar now
as far as rep ranges and stuff?
Or do you do any heavier stuff now?
No, everything's been kind of the same
just because like limited time.
And if I'm going to like come here,
I'm just going to hit that cable machine,
get like one super set.
And then we come podcast.
So like the rep ranges and weights,
I don't even, again,
I don't pay attention to the weights.
Did that feel good?
All right, cool.
Can I go heavier on the next one?
Maybe.
Okay.
That didn't feel so good.
Let me just keep the same weight and do it again.
And then maybe lower the reps
and then maybe, you know, raise the weight.
But yeah, no, it's been the same for like two years now do you guys care about heavy like do you care about
like a set of three or five on something here and there or not really like it like it is your heavy
is your heavy jujitsu like is your heavy getting trained other places like we did some sprints the
other day you know the yeah exactly so that's a that's a high intensity yeah i guess you didn't i guess that's what i'm asking you like do you guys feel for yourselves
that like appropriately do you need the intensity come from the weight room what do you think yeah
i was gonna say i i miss that from the weight room a little bit like i i do miss those days of like
when we used to do like a power lifting stuff back in the day like i i do miss that feeling, but I don't miss it enough to do it again.
So, no, I don't I genuinely don't care about like the weight side of things.
Now, on the jujitsu side, if I leave the day and I don't feel like my my gis not drenched from head to neck to toe or neck to ankle, then I do feel like, man, maybe I didn't quite give it my all, you know.
But then what happens, right?
Everything that we've always talked about, it's like, well, the next session, it's like, oh, man, why can't I?
I'm getting smashed today.
Like, what's going on?
Like, how come nothing's clicking?
It's like, oh, yeah, dumbass, because you went too hard the time before.
So there are times when I just, I want that feeling, right?
I want to feel accomplished.
I want to feel like I gave it my all, but I'm understanding that like the more I do that, the less I'm going to get out
of it. So I try to calm everything down as much as possible and stay at like a good level instead
of like skyrocketing one day and then just totally plummeting the next day. So I guess it's kind of
an in-betweener. Yes, I miss it, but I'm just a little bit smarter now with how I go about my training.
Heavy on certain things.
Again, with a lot of movements I do, my focus is the quality of movement that I was getting there.
And I'll usually stick to higher repetitions of that movement with good movement quality.
And I'll usually stick to higher repetitions of that movement with good movement quality.
But there are certain things that I will allow myself to push the weight on because it's like I still like to throw some weight around.
So I'll still push heavy penalties around for like four or five reps.
I'll still do that every now and then.
But I'm careful with the things that I push heavy because I do notice when I do heavier work, my body, I have to, I have to wring that shit out because my body has to create so much rigidity and stiffness to do that. And I, it's
good to have that ability, but I do that in spurts because for my sport, my body needs the ability to
stay loose and move fluidly while, while creating force. Whereas when doing heavy work, I have to be rigid and doing
that too much causes me to maintain too much rigidity. I don't, I can't do that.
What do you think about maybe for other athletes? Do you think maybe for other,
cause you already have muscle, you already have bone density. Um, I don't think someone's going
to like lock up with you and be like, he's really got to work on his strength. So if it is another
athlete that maybe does need to work on their strength, do you think, like, he's really got to work on his strength. So if it is another athlete
that maybe does need to work on their strength, do you think maybe on some of the exercises that
they're doing, like, let's just say they're doing some curls and some overhead presses,
do you think on some exercises like that, they should maybe just have a set where they do
a set of five or six just to feel something a little heavier. And then they kind of resume
back to like a safer workout that's still going to fit the needs of the athlete. I still think I agree
with you, but I think that athletes, especially athletes where their sport isn't powerlifting
should not rush strength. I don't think powerlifters should rush strength either.
But the thing is, is like, if you're doing stuff within eight, six, eight, 10, 12, 15 reps,
and you're progressing over time, you're going to be getting stronger over time.
The strength gains are going to be a little bit slower than if you were consistently working
threes to five rep ranges, right? But you're still going to be getting stronger.
And the threes to five just lend themselves to you just utilizing an inappropriate weight.
And especially if you're rushing, because there's an excitement to lifting heavy weight.
And don't get me wrong, I think it's a good thing.
But I think that leads a lot of us,
and that's happened to myself,
to making bad decisions with the amount
that we load on the bar.
We end up being a little bit too overzealous on one day.
We're like, we want to do 225, I want to do 315 a day.
You load it up and then boom, something happens
because you were rushing it.
You didn't gradually take yourself there.
You know, even the best power lifters generally on the platform,
they're still shy of what their best is.
You know, their third attempt is usually going to be like that 95%
and it's still a PR, right?
So that's why it's just like don't rush strength
because then you're just rushing yourself towards an injury.
What about for you, Andrew? Do you think on some of the main movements that you like that you enjoy um at this moment because you've gotten pat you got over the hump with jujitsu i know there's like
multiple humps to get over but you got over like i'm getting the shit beat out of me i can't breathe
or do anything uh phase right and now you're able to lift consistently and stuff.
Do you think it might be advantageous for you to, you know, on some of these main exercises
that you're doing to maybe just like up the weight a little bit occasionally?
You're talking about like non like big three movements?
Yeah, the movements like the current, you know, five main movements that you currently do.
Do you think it makes any sense for you to be like,
you know what?
Screw it.
I'm going to go a little heavier and see what I can push for a set or two of
three reps.
Yeah.
And I've still might do that once in a while,
but I think that the main thing for me though,
is like the range of motion.
So like if I'm doing like a,
you know,
decline cable press instead of like worrying about like staying, you know,
where, where, where you would be safely doing it, right.
Like not really dropping too far back.
I might let the weight pull me way far back and then maybe even open wide just
so it puts me in a weird spot so I can reverse out of that. Now,
when I do that, the way it's going to be like first set,
like amount of weight, right?
Like it's not going to be heavy cause I don't want to put myself in a bad spot. But in doing that, cause in ju going to be like first set, like amount of weight, right? Like it's not going
to be heavy. Cause I don't want to put myself in a bad spot, but in doing that, cause in jujitsu,
you're, you're not, I mean, we all know this, right? Like there's so many different angles
and you're not in a, in a straight line with any of it really. So I think working on, on that side
of things is where I need to be focused on more than, you know, like the, the going heavy stuff.
But if I were to do something, it would be you know, like the, the going heavy stuff. But if I were to do
something, it would be something like a deadlift, actually like a trap bar deadlift, just to get
used to like being strong off of like, like as good stable position. And if case, like I need to
like, you know, pick someone up or whatever it may be, but just to build that overall, like rigidity
and just like strength and that sort of thing. That's the one movement that I think I will start implementing again, but it will be with the trap bar. Yeah, that's, that's for
sure. Yeah. And this is one of the last things I'll mention on this. Uh, I think whoever's in
here, if you, if you are someone who does grappling or anything like that, um, I think doing, if you
have access to heavier kettlebells, start, start working with kettlebells. Start doing swings,
snatches, throwing the bell around. Get stronger throwing that weight around. I think that there's
a really good transfer between being able to literally throw heavy kettlebells around
and your activity in actual sport. The hip drive you're using, the extension, all these things that
happen when you are throwing a heavy kettlebell around, I think is very, very beneficial for
martial artists. So that's something I've been doing quite heavy kettlebell around, I think is very, very beneficial for martial artists.
So that's something I've been doing quite a bit of.
And I think it can reap massive benefit for people.
I'll be talking about that more over time.
And you do a lot of stuff that is intense.
You know, like I saw you doing that hang today where you're biting down on the towel and you got the kettlebell, you know, hanging from the towel and stuff.
the kettlebell, you know, hanging from the towel and stuff.
And that looks like, you know, that's not the same as pulling 675 on a deadlift.
But I'd imagine it feels, probably feels challenging.
And probably when you're done, it probably felt maybe a little similar to those heavyweights that you've lifted before.
I started seeing, yeah, I started seeing Bill, Bill Maeda.
And we'll have him on the show soon.
We're going to have him via Zoom.
But he's been doing a lot of bite work. So lifting, you know, heavy objects. But what that does is it works on the strength of the neck and also the strength of the jaw. And people might
think it looks weird, but there have been people that have lifted 600 pounds with the strength of
their jaw. The sensation that you feel after you get done doing something like that is wild like all the muscles in my jaw and even my neck are just like what the fuck and when i
thought about it i'm like okay people are gonna think this is quirky and we're doing another thing
that's a fad blah blah blah but the this whole complex there there's a lot that goes on here
when strong men talk about like you know i've heard brian shaw talk about biting down he uses
a mouth guard right this that that using that to be able to produce force, that's, I think there's
something to that. So that's why I've started to like progress the biting stuff because like I made
a neck video recently, by the way, and it is the most comprehensive neck video on YouTube. If you
guys haven't seen it, go check it out. It's on my YouTube channel. Um, but I talked about that
towards the end of that video. So I've been progressing that bite stuff. And I think that if you don't have any pain in your jaw, you don't
have TMJ or any jaw issues and you've done a neck work before, right? You've done some neck work
before. You can give that a shot. But if you've never done any neck work before, don't fuck with
the jaw stuff. That's just, you're just going to fuck yourself up for no reason. Maybe a little
bit more of an advanced movement. I think so. Yeah. Andrew, I sent you a clip you a clip if you can bring that up i think and seem is trying to get his neck to be
like this guy's does it need audio yes 100 all right well it'll be on the replay oh they won't
be able to see it they won't be ah then yeah yeah they can't hear it then yeah my bad well
let's pull it up on the show. All right. Yeah, never mind.
You can pull it up for a second just so we can see it as part of the video or whatever. And then maybe put the link in the chat so they want to go check that out.
It's fucking funny as fuck.
It's so fucking hilarious.
So we'll have it on the replay, but the live feed won't have it.
So let me hit here.
Bam.
At least it'll be funny to us.
Let's see what we got.
Have you been able to do that or is that new?
That's new.
It used to be like a lot of time.
How do you get a snack like that?
Moving on.
What is your biggest weakness?
Two miles, 35 minutes.
Your biggest weakness is running two miles in 35 minutes?
Yeah.
I really plateau at the one mile.
So you can run one mile in nine minutes and two miles in 35 minutes. And that's sort of standard every time you run. I gasped
after the first mile. Well, what about three miles? 16 minutes. So wait, if you decide to run three
miles, you can do it in 16 minutes. I have to know ahead of time. If you decide to run three miles,
you can do it in 16 minutes. But if you're doing two, it's 35 and one, it's nine. Does Chad have
this link? Dare I ask for? So maybe that's your next
challenge.
It's really everywhere. What is your greatest
show? So weird.
What is that name of that Instagram? That's
a weird show or whatever. It's hilarious.
Very important podcast?
Very important podcast or something?
Very important people show.
Yeah, guys, go follow that page.
We want you laughing. That'll bring some joy to your day. I like asking you guys some of these questions, guys, go follow that page. We want you laughing.
That'll bring some joy to your day.
I like asking you guys some of these questions, though, because I think that – I think it's important for people to understand, like, it just really depends on your goals.
Oh, yeah.
If you enjoy – like, if you want to do some bodybuilding, but you happen to really enjoy every once in a while going a little bit heavy, then that's what you should do.
And if you're a young kid and you're playing football and you like going heavy and stuff like that,
I mean, work yourself to a point where you can handle these things so you can do the stuff that you enjoy.
For myself, I tend to like want to pick up something heavy-ish, but it's heavy-ish for me now,
which is like just it's nothing to like write home about or anything.
But I'll just go in the gym and occasionally in between sets, I'll pick up the kettlebell in there that's heavy.
And that one's like 200 pounds, so that's not some monumental deadlift.
But I might go over to it.
If I feel good, I might do it for a set of 10.
If I'm a little stiffer and don't feel great, I might do a couple explosive reps for sets of three or five in between doing something else. I'll throw med
balls around. I do think it's important to try to find things that you can do with some sort of
intensity. I think that's always important. And I think even something I've noticed, something I
observed over the years, the most muscular people, a lot of times, not all the time, but a lot of times they can be very explosive.
There's something to like the type two muscle fibers that maybe just have a better propensity for hypertrophy.
But like John Cena comes to mind and SEMA comes to mind.
Like a lot of Kenny.
I mean, these guys, like they,
they're clearly very explosive. They're clearly very fast and they're able to put on a lot of
muscle mass. So it's just something to think about. I think there's a important element there
to trying to keep some sort of athleticism and also try to keep some pretty good intensity with,
it doesn't have to always be with a heavy weight, but it
could be with an object. It could be with a farmer's carry. It could be with throwing a med ball.
I think all those types of things are really valuable for anybody, any type of lifter or
bodybuilder or athlete. Yeah, no, that's extremely important. If you guys want to join in on the
conversation and potentially win some prizes, hit up our discord below. It's an awesome community
of over 3000 people and we go live every single week. We notify you there. So join the Discord
so you can join up on these lives and we can answer all of your questions. Next question
from Hayden Pratt. Any tips on grip strength and forearm size? Yeah, grip strength is a,
grip strength sometimes is a tough one for some people, I guess
it would depend on like, you know, if you're, if you're trying to build your grip because you're
trying to build your forearms, um, that's a little bit different, but like what we did in power
lifting, a huge thing that we did was just, we did a lot of double overhand deadlifting to help
build the grip. And then we just hold the weight at the top we also there
was a lot of guys that used under over grip so i would have people use under over grip both ways
so they learned how to do a bolt style so that way they were building their hands and their biceps up
in a similar way and then a couple other things that were really effective believe it or not just
hanging from a chin-up bar is super effective for grip.
And really trying to work on being able to build that capacity up.
And the heavier you are, the kind of almost better it works because a lot of times if you're heavier, you might suck at it for a while.
But the amount of grip that you need to have will start to build up pretty rapidly.
Utilizing thicker bars.
And there's, what are those things that people put on the dumbbells?
Fat grips, right?
Fat grips.
There's things like that that are kind of real easy solutions to help with grip strength.
And then there's all kinds of other things you can do.
We have some of those hand grippers and things like that to build the forms.
What's this guy that we have, that little orange thing?
That thing's pretty wild.
I forgot what that thing is.
It's like an arm wrestling thing.
But I would also advise, you know,
check out some stuff that the arm wrestlers do.
Like you want big ass forearms.
Those guys do a lot of crazy exercises for their forearms.
Farmer's walks, I think, are great.
Not only does it work your grip, forearms your traps it's a good
overall movement um but you can do farmer's walks with fat grips that's also something you could do
obviously you can do wrist curls so you know you can youtube wrist curls just take a dumbbell you
can put it over a bench boom boom boom boom boom boom and then if you have something like a mace or something like that you can do curls in this
direction so and two two right you can do that for high repetitions with high frequency you can
do that maybe two to three times a week that'll be helpful just be mindful uh pay attention to
the way your elbows and your wrists feel over time um i think it'd be a good idea to what is
that tool that we have that that fucking myofascial release tool
the roller yeah roller or something roller eight oh that's very good rogue rogue has it i forget
what's going on when you start working your forearms a lot the tissue here all these tissues
are going to start getting bigger tighter and then you're going to start you might start feeling
some pain in the forearms or even some potential wrist pain. That roller eight thing, that is something that's been
so clutch for me, especially after Ian Danny came and he found that ball of tissue that was like
locked up in my wrist. That's really good. No, we don't have a code and we're not sponsored by them,
but I love that thing to roll out the wrist. Obviously.
Every runner should have that too.
For their legs?
Oh God. Yeah. for your shins and calves
and stuff the thing's incredible i use it all the time i use it um probably since i bought it i
probably used it at least once a week since i bought it which was probably like a year and a
half ago or so i've been using that on my forearms all the time and if you're someone who uh competes
in jujitsu that right there that bitch that is the best thing to use in between rounds of
competition because what happens is guys death grip everything yeah so most guys when they come out they're fucking they're
like so i brought that to my our last tournament and uh i was rolling out i was all stuck yeah yeah
that thing right there that's that's the hack that's the fucking hack yeah on on the uh on the
last live we were talking about i forgot what it was exactly i think it was another forearm question but i was just saying like if you're gonna do your your
bicep curls just switch to a hammer grip oh yeah because that's gonna build the brachialis muscle
and that's just gonna add more more size to the forearm area yeah all right cool next question
from john blade music thoughts on 531 program for beginners looking to get as strong as possible while ensuring balance between sides.
531 is great.
It's written by Jim Wendler.
He wrote it probably a good almost maybe 15 years ago now.
And it has some of the West Side Barbell principles.
has some of the Westside Barbell principles.
Even the wording that he has in the book is excellent, I think, because he wants to see people be successful with their lifts.
And the basics of it are you do five reps one week, three reps the next, one rep the
next week.
And it's usually of the same exercise.
So that way you can actually see that you're, um, able to lift a little bit
more weight. Not it's obvious you'd be able to lift more weight because you're doing less
repetitions. Um, but after you kind of cycle through this multiple times, your sets of five
will get better. Your sets of three will get better. Your sets of one will get better. You'll
just get stronger overall. And I think it's a really great introduction, probably the best
introduction I've ever really seen, uh, into some strength training. Yeah, it's a great program. I did it early on. I did it a few years after I already started lifting.
So I think that having that base of hypertrophy work helped me take advantage of 5-3-1.
So just make sure, because I remember when I did 5-3-1, I'm assuming that Wendler probably
updated the program to add more volume in. But when I did it, there wasn't a lot of higher volume
stuff in it.
So if you, he probably updated it, but if not, try to see if you can get in some good volume work, get in some sets of some stuff like bodybuilder work after your, you know,
main compound movements, um, to help build some muscle. That'll be beneficial.
Yeah. Being bigger is going to help you to be stronger. So there's a lot of crossover
between the two. And if you predominantly only power lift um you could
potentially gain some strength uh but then you might not really look strong and maybe that is
your goal you know if your goal is to look stronger um as well as just be strong then
that might be something you want to consider is adding in some hyper trophy all right now there's
two more super chats i'm going to go up and get to these other questions thank you guys
um it's a running question mark i want to pull in i want to pull in running back in
i want to pull running back in how many times a week can i add without hurting muscle gains
one mile at 15 minutes per day slow enough um yeah that's a, I mean, it just depends on, you know, where, where you're at with
your current ability to run, running every day.
It's just easy to get carried away with running every day.
So I think, I think once you start taking on the mantra of doing anything every day,
I think you start to run into issues. For myself, when it comes to movement, that's an agreement I have with myself that it's
okay to do like movement every day and or exercise. But I don't want to necessarily commit to lifting
every day. And I don't necessarily want to commit to running every day because you just sort of
lock yourself into that box and doing, you know, you know, uh, lifting when you're still hurt or, uh, running when you have a slight injury, just because you're lifting every, just cause you're running every day.
Now you're committed to doing this, even though your knees slightly, or it's just not smart. I wouldn't advise necessarily running every day, but allowing for some walking and some movement and some lifting and stuff like that every day is not a bad idea. How many times a week can you run? I would say maybe start out with two or three and see how that goes.
is modest and slowish for you, I would do that once a week. And then one time a week, I would have it at least one time a week. I would run just a little faster than that. Maybe see if you could
do something that's at just a little higher intensity. Yeah. And I think the higher intensity
stuff might actually help maintain muscle versus doing longer distance. Very true. So cool. Very
true. Maybe look into doing a little bit of hill work,
some sprints or something like that on a hill might be a good idea.
Yeah.
It's going to build a lot of muscles.
It's going to build up your hamstrings and your calves.
You'll feel it.
You'll feel it in your feet, everything.
Just don't do it at 100%.
Okay, please.
Just don't do it at 100%.
Do it nice and easy.
Yeah.
All right.
Last super chat from Darian Donaldson.
Minimum effective dose for strength plus size gains with jujitsu.
Darian, I would suggest minimum effective dose probably twice per week.
I don't know how many days a week you're training jujitsu right now.
But if you're doing jujitsu for two or three sessions, then two to three times a week of lifting is going to be perfectly fine.
Um, if you're newer to jujitsu, I wouldn't suggest trying to lift four or five days a
week just because jujitsu is going to be beating your body up so much.
You're doing so many new things.
Um, but two to three days a week, just make sure also that you're eating enough food.
Cause this is one of the biggest things that I think people that start jujitsu and lifting
for get, uh, when they're doing both, like you are burning I think people that start jujitsu and lifting forget when they're doing both.
Like you are burning a lot of calories in jujitsu.
You're going to be burning quite a few calories in the gym.
You need to fuel yourself so that you're not just draining the tank.
So eat enough protein, eat enough calories, make sure you eat enough food to grow.
Because you can grow, but most people don't eat enough to grow when they're doing both of these activities.
So two to three days. And Seema, what are your thoughts on, uh, jujitsu and train like gym
training on the same day? I don't think it's a bad idea. Um, if you're new, that's going to be a bit
harder to do. It's just going to be harder, but I do that, but I'm experienced with it. So I'm
efficient with jujitsu so I can go in there and I don't need my whole gas tank to be able to be having
effective training session. But when you're newer, it's tough. And who knows what your schedule is
like, maybe because of the way your schedule is set up and where, you know, the time you work,
where jujitsu is, where the gym is. Maybe your only option is sometimes getting the gym and
jujitsu on the same day. And if that's the case, I would suggest doing gym training first and jujitsu second. The reason why I say that is
because you don't want to be fatigued lifting weights in the gym. And of course, you don't
want to be fatigued doing jujitsu either, but in that setting, you can really just toggle down your
intensity well. You can toggle down your intensity in the gym too, but I, I think that you have more chances of injuring yourself with weight
versus when doing drills with another person or doing some sparring stuff, you know? So just,
just be mindful of that. Um, and if you're going to do them on the same day,
don't have your gym workout be way
too intense before you go to jujitsu.
Don't kill yourself and then go to jujitsu expecting to have a decent session.
When I do both in a day, I'll have a decent gym workout, but I'm not fucking dead.
I still have some energy to go roll.
So do enough so that when you go roll, you still have energy to have a decent session
of jujitsu.
How about some, uh, like necessities for like somebody that is
going to train on on both days like i know we talk about electrolytes often hopefully that's
already like cemented in everyone's thoughts when it comes to supplements or whatever but like how
about like diet like i mean uh calories for that day like what should they be paying attention to
also in regards to like the the intensity of the workout before the
jujitsu session, the hydration, is there anything else that like you should just really like, Hey,
like don't overlook this. I think you mentioned the first really important thing is electrolytes.
If you're going to the gym, sweating, you're getting a workout in, or you choose to do jujitsu
first, you sweat a fuck ton. You want to make sure you have electrolytes in you. Cramp. Exactly.
Exactly. Um, for most people, you do want to make sure you have electrolytes in you. Cramp. Exactly. Exactly. For most people,
you do want to make sure you have enough calories in you. So like have some food before your gym
workout, have some food after, before you go to jujitsu, especially if you're new to this,
when you're more experienced, then you know how you're going to feel with a certain amount of
food. You know what I mean? So it's like, but, but make sure you're well fed beforehand. And one thing is
never a lot of people, and I've done this before. Um, you know, you can come to the gym,
you can just kind of start working out, right? Don't do jujitsu cold. Anybody who's new here,
do not do jujitsu without warming your body up adequately. That's the greatest way to tweak your
rib, get a groin injury, tweak something when
you're trying to grapple with somebody in different planes of motion cold. That's just a recipe to
injure yourself. So just never do jujitsu cold. If you came late for the warmups, warm the fuck
up before you start sparring with people. It's just not a good idea. Purple belts. Yeah, we do
that. I've done it. think uh whether you're talking about
lifting and running or lifting and any other combination of things i think as we always
share with you is all this stuff is going to take a long time um you're gonna suck for a while at
stuff it's just the way it is it's just the way it goes so there's really no rush. The idea of somebody like, you know, wanting to
train five days a week, we understand it, we get it. And yes, it could be done because you could
spread out the exercises and stuff. But more than likely, if you're getting yourself to a gym,
once you get inside the gym, you're going to overdo it. And then you're going to be compromising
the two things back and forth.
And Seema and I have talked about this, and we've all talked about this a bunch on the show, about compromising things with the things that you love.
You're doing the thing to its own detriment, which is just brutal.
You're doing jujitsu.
You're like, oh, man, I just want to get better.
And it's like, just stop going.
Stop.
Just knock it off, man. You go too much. You think about it too much. You're, it's a physical and a
mental endeavor at the same time. It's like, it's physical. And there's like puzzle pieces that
you're trying to solve all at the same time. So I don't think we realize how strenuous it is.
This is kind of like unrelated, but it just made me think of this.
When a child is really young,
like when you have a baby,
your baby, everything to the baby is new.
That's why the baby's so damn tired all the time.
Like even just with like a little kid or a baby,
taking them to the grocery store
could like wipe them out,
even if they didn't even walk.
But everything, all the noise, the smells, the lights, everything is a lot for them.
So I think it's a good thing to keep in mind when anything's new for you, even as an adult.
It's way more taxing than what you think.
Do you guys remember how taxing it would be sometimes to be at those trade shows?
And to have 75 different conversations like in a day, like it just whoosh, it just like,
you know, knock you way back. It's because it's novel. It's because you don't do it very often.
And so anytime anything's new or there's like a lot of excitement, like you can't go to these
shows and not be excited. You know, you can't go to jujitsu. You can't be in the middle of a
lifting session and not get excited by it. And so you're more than likely probably going to do too much we don't recognize
it might not feel like much sometimes might be like i can go again oh no i can handle it
and it's like well maybe you should just pump the brakes here and there a little bit yeah i i've
pretty much every expo that we've ever gone to, like I get, I come back sick and of course it could be because I'm around so many people, but I think the, what it was is just, I got
no sleep and was on my feet all day and yelling and talking, but same thing will happen to
me too.
If I go too hard in jujitsu and in the gym, like I don't recover.
And then I like, no, I don't want to be a bitch, you know, I got to keep going.
And then I'm getting sick, you know, like the immune system drops or whatever it may
be.
And that's definitely going to slow all of the progression down. So yeah, you just got to
listen to the body. Yeah. You're probably wondering why am I wearing these glasses? Well, it's because
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Valerie Page. That's a good question. Valerie Page. I love Valerie. She's awesome. Can you
build good muscle with only body weight
exercises in example squats push-ups pull-ups etc also is creatine really that beneficial in muscle
growth oh creatine yeah creatine body weight exercises are amazing you know how big can you
get with just body weight exercise i have no idea idea. Have you seen those? I know there's calisthenics type people and stuff.
What?
On YouTube, there's a sect of the fitness that's just these black dudes that love calisthenics.
It's mainly a lot of black guys.
And I haven't seen any other channels.
I'm not saying they don't exist.
I'm not saying they don't exist. I'm just saying.
But no, like-
You're 250 pounds and calisthenics, holy shit.
Oh, he's Nigerian.
Okay, I get it.
I get it.
No, but Gabo Serturno, there is an example.
He's like, he's Spanish or something.
He's Hispanic.
He's very large.
He mainly does calisthenics stuff.
Yes, you can gain muscle from calisthenics stuff. Yes, you can gain muscle
from calisthenics work.
I think it's actually
really good to do.
I'm trying to do
more calisthenics myself
because I want
a better
body weight to strength ratio.
I want
because I believe
I can have that capacity.
But I think that's also
going to transfer well
to anything
because like you see
how strong like rock climbers are.
There we go.
Is that Gabbo?
Yeah.
Yeah, Gabbo's awesome.
I've never heard of this guy. You go to his instagram bro like um he's uh well not right i'm just saying like if you check out his instagram he has a lot of good information
on calisthenic types work he also has good programs i think it's amazing i think it's uh
a really huge key that's really not talked about much in terms of like people are always talking
about like things to do for longevity. I think your strength to weight ratio is huge. And now
you can lift weights to build strength to weight ratio, but a great way to see what kind of strength
to weight ratio you have is to try to perform some calisthenics and recognize how terrible you
probably are at them. And the thing is, I think the frustrating thing about calisthenics is that it's not like lifting weights where the progression, the progression isn't perfectly linear when lifting.
Like, you know, there's stall periods, but the progression of calisthenics is much slower.
You actually really need to do regressions for a while.
So that means like if you're bad at pull-ups, you need to do banded pull-ups for a bit. Banded dips, you know,
because like sometimes, you know, you'll want to do like, oh, I want to do some dips. And then
you'll do like five and you're like, fuck, that beat me up too much. Do banded dips for high
volume. Over time, you're going to be able to do normal dips. And then over time, you're going to
be able to do weighted dips. But the progression is slow. Although I think calisthenics are great
because you can just have equipment at your house. It's easy to have two dip bars from like base blocks or something
like that and do this work at home. I think it's beneficial for everybody. It's worth it.
Eat no matter what athlete you are. Definitely build a lot of muscle mass. Um, I guess, you know,
the, the one thing would sometimes is like, well, why not utilize both? Cause we know that weight
training has such a great impact. Um, we, we just know that like a lot of these things have, well, why not utilize both? Because we know that weight training has such a great impact.
We just know that like a lot of these things have – they're really effective.
Going out and doing some sprints is really effective.
So maybe you should do them every once in a while or find some sort of way to sprint on something, whether it's a machine or you go outside and sprint.
But calisthenics are amazing.
I think that most people should probably try to figure out a way to incorporate more of them.
They're probably the only like calisthenics I can kind of think of that I do are probably
like a lunge, a squat, I guess a pull up.
You can kind of count in there, pushups.
I should probably figure out ways to do like a little bit more, but I think they're great.
Good question.
Very good question.
All right. Now,
Nicholas Bredian, do you think one could transfer weighted? Oh, before I continue on this question,
I want to make sure everybody knows, again, we're giving away some good stuff at the end of this Q&A.
If you are a winner, because last week we got three people got their shit, but two people didn't message me on Discord discord so i'm still waiting on two of y'all um but if you win be part of the discord my discord username is
transima message me your name your email address and your physical address right so i can get you
your shit if you're not really on trend right it's just a nickname yeah can't talk about it yeah no i'm not on trend i just it was either
smoky or somebody who called me transsexual i was like i kind of like that it sounds good
yeah so make sure guys all right now nicholas bradyan do you think one could transfer weighted
pull up weighted push-ups on parallettes pronated to benching or at least
improve supplement benching progress do either of you two do any body weight related exercise
okay so that's like open shoulder way up huh yeah yeah weighted push-ups on parallettes yeah yeah
so yeah it goes all the way down i think that could definitely be beneficial that sounds like
a great movement yeah i don't know how much of great movement. I don't know how much it will help your bench, but normally when you do extra ranges of motion, it usually helps.
You think of a deadlift.
Sometimes people will do partial range of motion deadlifts, but sometimes people will do a deficit deadlift.
I've seen people deadlift heavy um almost right off their shoelaces
they got such a deficit going so um extra range of motion is is usually pretty valuable all the
way to the point where you know years back it was pretty popular to utilize a cambered bar there's
a cambered bench press bar and it had like the the center of it was sort of dug out so you would go
an extra like two, three inches lower.
And pushing and pressing and pulling from spots that are like you just don't have good leverage will always assist with making you stronger.
Yeah.
Plus, it's going to be great for the health of your shoulders.
You know what I mean? So it might not directly increase your bench strength immediately, but if it helps your shoulders and these muscles, if this area is healthier is healthier well you're going to be able to do what you love for a longer period
of time so why not whatever happened to the camber bar it's great because like you know when you use
uh when you use dumbbells you know your arms will only go down kind of so far um depending on your
mobility but the camber bar it's a little more dangerous because it kind of shoved you into that position because your your hands are fixed yeah uh but man it felt good it's a really
good stretch yeah i could never keep the uh the weight stable it would always swing on me and it
scared the shit out of me i always thought i was gonna end up like the bar having the bar just
fucking just get rid of all my teeth who needs them man fucking needs teeth gains bro by the way if you guys
haven't it'd be if you don't floss every day right and i'm not saying this judging anybody because
i used to not floss every day i was gonna say there's something new that you found out no no
there's a lot of steak in there dude there is though there is um but it's supposed to be there i mean that's what
the carnivore guys would say i'm kidding oh no way we're supposed to like rot in there that's
good for you right yeah yeah it gives you extra calories later on right that that's the goal
helps the gut microbiome not when i was back to your pitch here i didn't say no listen i didn't
take flossing seriously when i was a kid never had a cavity though um but the hooberman had an episode recently on teeth and we actually had an episode
talking about teeth stuff years ago or whatever but just uh the the it can massively affect your
sleep your brain a bunch of shit make sure to floss your shit yeah yeah that's why it's actually
pretty interesting episode to check out so the uh plaque that builds up on your teeth it's the same plaque that builds up in your arteries oh fuck wow so whatever you know if
you can get rid of that just by picking some shit out of your teeth with some floss and that sounds
like a pretty good victory to me don't neglect it guys yeah i i water i got like a weird spot
too that always has like meat and it's disgusting every time dude i am amazed at how much uh stuff
comes out when i water floss with the water same i'm just like dude like did any of it make it
past like it's all still here like there's at least eight ounces of steak in the you know in
the sink or whatever that's disgusting it is really gross and the holy shit the funny thing
is down you're like oh my god yeah i can like literally like like like oh but when i
was i love how disgusting everything is i really do like it creeps me out but it's yeah amazing too
when i went to the dentist when i went to the dentist a couple years ago you know they they
track shit right like they track like everything okay his teeth is like right here whatever and
my gum line was like right here whatever and then when i went back the next time they time, they're like double checking everything. They're like, that doesn't make any
sense. And like, what are you doing? Like, what are you talking about? Like your mouth is
significantly healthier than it was last time. And it shouldn't be that like that.
What was the change?
I didn't change anything. I just kept water flossing every day.
Wow.
And I told them that and they're like, no, what, what else are you doing? I'm like, dude, that's
it. And they're like, well, water flosser doesn't work that well. And I told them that and they're like, no, what else are you doing? I'm like, dude, that's it. And they're like, well, water flosser doesn't work that well.
And I'm like, yeah, it does.
Because obviously that's working.
That's all I'm doing.
Like, no, you need to use actual floss.
That's the only way to actually get in there.
And I'm like, I'm telling you, I don't use floss.
I just use water.
And he got like, my dentist got mad at me.
You know what?
On that Hooperman episode, because he mentioned he talked to four people they were all like water floss really yeah sick yeah so
my dentist was just bought in by big floss two more things two more things we had a guy on the
show on like episode four something who came and talked about like how mouthwash is fucking up your
mouth's microbiome like listerine and shit same shit that was mentioned on that episode so make sure you're not using an antiseptic mouthwash that kills all the shit in your mouth's microbiome, like Listerine and shit. Same shit that was mentioned on that episode.
So make sure you're not using an antiseptic mouthwash
that kills all the shit in your mouth.
Good job, Huberman, catching up five years later.
Yeah!
We've been on the game, bro.
But one thing I didn't know was that you should brush your gums.
Oh, yeah.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
Yeah, so like actually that's good for your gum health
if you use a soft brush and brush your gums.
So I didn't know.
Nice and easy.
Yeah.
You got to do it nice and easy.
Same with the toothpaste too.
You can just kill everything with like a regular crest.
Like fucking, yeah.
Don't use that acid.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My wife finally got into all that stuff too.
Like it took her like a long time of me being weird.
Wait, what?
Like, oh, I'm going to buy this soap.
I'm going to buy this toothpaste.
I'm going to buy this, you know. buy this toothpaste i'm gonna buy this you know
um yeah i just i don't know i don't always know you know like there still could be shit in the
other thing that i'm buying you know what i mean like it's like information changes all the time
but you're trying i just try to make the attempt i don't know how to stay away from like uh fucking
plastics and 5g or whatever the fuck but i just just try my best. Yeah. Do it where I can. There we go.
All right. Cool. Now I've got another super chat from Luis Arguelles. I've said that wrong for
sure, but all right. Sound good. Yeah. All right. And Seema, what's your approach to maximizing
learning jujitsu techniques? Do you watch BJJ instructionals? What's your approach to learning from them? Lewis. Okay. So there's a few things. The first thing is when I was newer to jujitsu,
I made sure not to watch bad jujitsu. And that was just something for me because
I truly believe that you can learn in a lot of ways and I believe I can learn a lot visually.
So when I watch people do shit, that's bad technique.
It's kind of like my mind kind of records it and I'll recreate it and that's not good. So I watched
a lot of good jujitsu, high level jujitsu. So watch matches because I think that if you watch
matches of like, let's say that you're trying to work fucking half guard, right? And that's
something you're trying to get better at. Find a grappler who does a lot of half guard right and that's something you're trying to get better at find a grappler who does a lot of half guard in the gi like mason fowler he's a half guard player in the gi and
you can watch his matches and see what he does if you're trying to guard like one leg over kind of
deal half guard is like one like we're kind of scissored in between thank you for using it yeah
one guy is on his back and the other guy has uh one leg one leg in between the other guy yeah yeah
right yeah yeah it's it's just it's just yeah you're scissored yeah mike isertel loves half guard because he's big and can't move
i love you mike uh if you're someone who like if you like collar sleeve right uh watch a lot of
nicholas marigali right so you can see these guards in action um and then obviously set up a game plan
in your training so that you can be like okay today
my intention is to get collar sleeve on my opponent and i'm just going to work this guard
today have intention towards your training sessions trying to work specific guards on
specific days so you get that training in and you can set up specific training in this way too
because sometimes when you spar with people you find that you'll never get in those positions
so if you're a lower belt rolling with an upper belt, you can ask them, hey, can I start
an X guard or can I start in half guard or can I start in collar sleeve and can we work
from here?
More than likely, you're going to be willing so you can get your reps in of working that
specific guard.
I do think instructionals are really good.
And I do take advantage of watching instructionals, especially on days, some days that I train,
some days that I don't.
I think watching a lot of the jujitsu and the ways that you want to roll
is going to help you take those and roll with them in class.
So if you're newer, be very mindful of the jujitsu you watch.
At least I was.
Now, like I'm not as nitpicky with that, although I kind of still am.
Like if I see like white belt competitions, unless it's somebody that like
is part of our school, I'll kind of just like look away. Is it good to, uh, is it good
to maybe watch, like, let's say that you have some limitations, let's say you're not super mobile.
Is it good to try to like find some other people that maybe have those limitations or
they're a much shorter athlete? Is it good to watch like the shorter guy or the heavier guy?
Um, just awesome, dude. Yeah. Just like the shorter guy or the heavier guy?
That's awesome, dude.
Yeah, just in the beginning.
Because you're like, I kind of look like that guy.
I kind of move like that guy.
And I should probably, but he's pretty proficient.
It looks like he's winning.
He's doing really well.
Maybe I should kind of click on his Instagram and follow him.
There's a few ways to look at that. I think the biggest factor that you mentioned actually is like the height thing, right?
Merigali is 6'3 with very long legs.
There are certain things that he does that I've tried to replicate. mentioned actually is like the height thing, right? Merigali is 6'3 with very long legs.
There are certain things that he does that I've tried to replicate. And because my legs are so muscular, like my lasso does not get as deep as cleanly as his does. So I do a half lasso, right?
I adjust. If you're someone who's stockier, right? And you're like 5'7, 5'8, 5'5, you probably want
to watch the lightweights or somebody who's a bit's a bit stockier. Right. Um, so you can see
what is their game like, because your jujitsu game does increase with this stuff that you're able to
do the lankier you are for your weight class. Right. Cause if you're like somebody who's, uh,
in Andrew's weight class, you're one 80, but you're like six foot, right? There's a lot of
stuff that you can do versus the 180 pound guy. That five three the he the five three guy is going to be playing half guard all day every day um so you're right
in that sense but i also think if you're not mobile and that's your restriction watch the
people that are doing well with the things that you want to do because your mobility is something
you can change right it's better to change your mobility and have better jiu-jitsu than have less mobility
and have a very limited jiu-jitsu game because now because of that your opponent knows what
you're going to do and if that one a game doesn't work because you're limited on your range of
motion shit game over yeah and then so for me you know even still to this day but when i was like
really really new i would watch stuff i would watch uh instructionals i would watch stuff on instagram and you know again it's like kind of like relearning
or learning a new language i couldn't speak that damn language and then in in time stuff started
making sense but what i had what i had to do was i would have to like screen record something
so i could watch it on my phone in super slow motion still do it i do that i have to just go
frame by frame to be like,
okay,
what,
what is his left foot doing there?
Like,
okay.
Oh,
okay.
So he has the color on this side and then he switched to this side when he
went to the attack,
got it.
And so like,
I had to really just sing like by segment by segment,
just like make sense and chain things together.
Because when you watch it all one in one take,
it's like,
dude,
you miss so much,
but when you go little by little and like,
oh, okay, now, and then things started to click.
And there have been a couple of times
where like I'll look at something and it's like,
oh, that was the thing that I was just looking at.
Like, there it is.
And it's like, ah, sick.
So that, and then of course,
asking a shit ton of questions.
Oh my gosh.
If there's an upper belt that you're friends with
or whatever it may be,
hey, dude, I really want to work this collar sleeve guard and see my after class.
Can we work this?
And then film that.
And then so I have that stuff to reference all the time now.
So questions and slowing down when you're watching stuff.
Yeah.
I think of the age of Jiu-Jitsu that we're in is really dope because like guys like Toby or guys that we know who were black belts back then, they didn't have the resources to watch all the things like we do now.
Like they had to pay for this Budo video thing so that they could see specific matches.
But now everything's on YouTube.
Everything's on instructionals.
You can find all of this stuff.
And that's why people are like doing wild shit at tournaments.
That's why you see guys who are like purple belts, brown belts, black belts.
They're like, the fuck you're not.
The fuck?
Because people are actually just watching and doing.
So people are advancing just watching and doing.
So people are advancing much faster.
So it's, it's, it's dope.
You can learn a lot these days.
Yeah.
I was, I love this.
I don't even know what it's called, but maybe it's a flower sweep or pendulum sweep.
I think that's what it is.
Toby showed it to me like a year ago or so.
And every time I do it, I just go Toby's daily and I just do it because I get so hyped up for when I do it.
All right. Next question from nate gates what's the deal with bfr aka blood flow restriction uh could be utilized for injuries you know it could be utilized just to get a pump in a certain
area that maybe you have a hard time you know driving blood to i think it's a good method but um i personally
don't use it maybe just out of like it can be inconvenient yeah if i do hurt something though
i will voodoo floss something and i will move around like that's i've been doing that for years
and that has always been very effective it's great if you're injured you injured your elbow
injured your knee um you want to maintain and still potentially build some muscle you know
what i mean you can get away with using extremely light loads while restricting that area
there's a lot of cool both for restriction guys on youtube where you can like um you know find
that stuff i think there's a there's some bands called bfr bands that are pretty solid for both
for restriction because i mean i know we used to just use fucking uh wrist wraps yeah gangster rap
or something and that shit I can get sketchy.
So, yeah,
but it's great to use,
especially when injured.
All right.
Okay, let's see.
James Gallegos,
best muscles to target
to look bigger quicker.
Yeah.
Well,
there's... Yeah, I would say like what comes to mind is like when people have a
good structure of their back because it seems to kind of push everything else out um so while you
might get some good results or you might see something quickly by kind of training your chest
your arms i think ultimately having a bigger back
when you think about people that are big i think when someone's like when you're like shit man that
guy's big he almost always has a big back it's like kind of hard to avoid yeah the back i love
back training but exactly yeah yeah the back don't neglect your legs i mean but there's pants there's
pants but it's it's it's yeah it's tough if you're walking around like this and then your legs i mean but there's pants there's pants but it's it's it's yeah it's tough if you're
walking around like this and then your legs you know it's like it's not gonna look yeah it's not
good the ladies like the legs too they girls love booty girls love booty just as much as we do
right so yeah maybe not just as much no definitely not just as much but they do. Right? So, yeah. Well, maybe not just as much. No, definitely not just as much. Not even close.
But they like it.
They like it.
Train your neck.
I'm going to plug that.
Yo, yo.
The neck, a nice thick neck makes the boys go crazy.
It brings them all to the yard.
It brings the boys to the yard.
Makes you look more substantial.
That's true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'll say that.
And then, I mean, I wish I could say traps, but I feel like no matter how hard I've tried to train traps, I just can't get them to get as big as I want.
Although they have gotten bigger.
They've gotten bigger.
But the one thing that I will say that just helps everything.
And when I focused on this muscle group for like a year and a half straight, that's when I started getting compliments of like, dude actually you're looking jacked right now your penis yes no my shoulders i because it like it like what mark was saying like it just gets you wider and then you have that wider frame
and now it's like everything else you know just looks better but yeah that was the thing for me
like i was like dude my shoulders not where i wanted them to be and i focused on them just
non-stop for like a year straight.
And I finally made some progress.
And then that's when the compliments started coming in.
The craziest thing is just being like lean.
I know we're talking about like being big or looking big, but you'll look big when you're lean.
Your shoulders popped out more.
It's not like you didn't have shoulders before, but you got a little leaner.
And then now you have like a shadow and a nice line where your shoulder muscles are going into like the tricep.
And that just looks awesome.
And you see that and you're like,
this guy's jacked.
It makes someone look way more jacked.
So I don't think it's great for everyone all the time to like try to be skinny,
but being a little leaner can sometimes make you look a little bigger.
Yep.
Yep.
Oh,
this is a statement from Matt Reynolds. Just saying,, great job, Andrew, on the Savant's podcast.
Andrew was just on Savant's pod.
Yes, sir.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate that.
So that episode's there.
Y'all should check it out.
It was fun.
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Glenn Sturdivant.
Hey, g gents my question
has to do with lifting in a deficit if i'm in a deficit and i need a surplus to add muscle should
i adjust my rep ranges to lower to the lower end to build strength lifting in a deficit i see what
he's saying like he has less energy so should he do less reps right oh okay okay that's
actually what michael hearn does oh he does that oh hearn will get into a deficit he'll you know
get really shredded and really lean and that's usually when he'll do his singles and stuff like
that and he's there'll be way they'll be he's still incredibly strong but they'll be way weaker
than where they normally would be when he's heavier that's interesting yeah he'll do like sets of three sets of five even singles here and there that's really
interesting i wonder like he does it also because like he loves the mental side okay michael trend
so because like so it's like a challenge for him because he's leaner he's like it's gonna feel
harder um because most people you know when you're in when you're when you start to feel tired in a deficit that's like when if you lift heavy heavy for whatever you are like the it's riskier because you don't have as
much focus on what you're doing right but i can get why mike does that it's riskier but if you
in your head you're paying attention and you're like i just got to scale this back never mind
what you lifted in the past exactly just like lift and see what feels
heavy to you at that time it is uh incredibly odd how much uh like a 10 pound shift can make
in your strength um obviously it's very obvious when it comes to something like a pull-up you know
you go to do pull-ups and you got a little extra in in your ass it's a little harder you're like
damn these are these are kind of sluggish.
These are, aren't easy. Um, but when you lose like 10 pounds and you go to do like a deadlift
or you go to do a squat or bench press, I know for me for bench press, like my arms will shake,
which, you know, bench press is usually like solid for me, but yeah, just losing some weight
sometimes, uh, makes you feel a lot weaker. But I've noticed the same thing is that doing the lower rep ranges and just, it seems like it's a good opportunity to kind of preserve
some muscle mass by sending a little bit of a different signal at that time.
All right. Now, Jacob Skoloff, you said you had a sandal question. Go ahead and ask it somewhere
and we can answer your sandal question uh rise above
failure and sema any advice for rib injuries when starting jujitsu um yeah dog yeah rib injuries are
something that happen a lot of people and i think the stiffer you are especially if you're coming
from a strength background again it's not bad to be strong, but to get very strong, you build the adaptation of rigidness in the torso and rigidness in the spine.
So your ability to rotate, your ability to bend, flex, all of that is not as good as it potentially should be.
And what that also does is if you now have lack of ability to extend your spine, to flex your spine and to rotate your spine,
when somebody puts you in a position and you then have limited mobility of your spine, to flex your spine, and to rotate your spine. When somebody puts you
in a position and you then have limited mobility of your spine, you also have limited mobility of
your ribs and your rib cage isn't able to contort and move and rotate. So you have a higher likelihood
of like pressure happening and a rib tweak happening. So with that being said, what you
need to get better at is mobility and the movement of your spine, because what that's
going to do is going to help your ribs. So lateral flexion, movements that help with that,
movements that help with extension, flexion, rotation, all those things over time are going
to allow you to be able to move and contort your ribs through space. And Plug It Untapped is a
program on the ATG app. All those things are programmed in there
because you need those abilities.
But like I said, movements are all out there for that.
So if you can do movements where you're bending forward
like Jefferson curls,
movements like a dumbbell pullover
where you're extending your spine
or the reverse Nordic, which has some regressions,
but your spine is still extending backwards.
Movements that have you getting into lateral flexion
like a QL raise.
So the weight is now pulling you this way and pulling you that way. I know Andrew likes to do
that on cable machines, so you can do it on cable machines too. Movements that help with rotation.
So if you can grab a med ball and you can do a med ball slams from side to side, again,
trying to get rib movement in. And something that I really like is rope flow. This is something that
you can do anywhere. It takes a little bit of time to like, you know, get the hang of it. But when you're doing rope flow, right, you're moving your spine
in these rotational ways, right? And this will also help you get better. As you get better at
rope flow, you're also getting better at moving your spine and getting better at moving your spine
means you're getting better at moving your ribs. So all those things can be beneficial. And if you
have better movement, you're going to have lesser risk of injury for your ribs.
And your breathing, of course, right?
So when you're doing some of these movements, you can kind of work on your breathing.
Especially you might notice it if you're tight and you go to do some rope flow, especially with the heavier rope, which isn't heavy, but it's heavier.
That rope gets a little distance from you and you kind of feel yourself kind of tighten up
and you got to learn to kind of breathe
and gradually kind of go back and forth
and really learn how to sway with it.
And I think in jujitsu, I think a lot of times,
obviously it's like the actual physical pressure
that somebody's putting on top of you,
but it's also like, I think you're breathing.
So the better condition you get, I think you're going to end up with better results in all forms of competition
in anything. But just imagine like if you have a better capacity to breathe and if you're in
better condition and better shape, that's probably going to be a little easier to be able to breathe
during the activity that you're doing. If it's getting to be harder, if I'm now breathing in
and out of my mouth a lot and you're on top of me, now I'm like, I mean, I'm screwed anyway, but I'm like more screwed.
Yeah.
Like you mentioned there, the pressure of another person.
So there's two places where I think you have the highest chance of getting a rib injury.
The first is a body lock.
When somebody puts you in a body lock and their legs are now twisted around you and they lock that and And then they pressure down their legs that if your body isn't able to handle that pressure, that meaning
you can't, you relax with it. That's where you can have a rib tweak. The second place is going
to be neon belly, neon belly. It's a great, it's a, it's a great control position, but if you're
not able to breathe and have relaxed breathing into your diaphragm, once somebody gets neon
belly on you, you're just, that's a place where they're going to cook you.
I like to cook people in knee on belly.
It's a great position.
But when somebody puts me on knee on belly, because my breathing is controlled, I don't mind that position that much.
I kind of can feel comfortable there.
I can let that knee sink into me and I can breathe around it and be soft with it because my breathing, I can breathe deep into my diaphragm and let this area relax. So another thing is over time,
you're going to be able to all these areas, all these muscles around here, you're going to be
able to let them relax so that when somebody now puts pressure on them, you're not super tense and
super stiff. That makes those positions feel worse. Those positions will feel better if you're
able to kind of relax into them and then wait, find your opening to escape or move and find it. But if you're super tense, that makes all this
shit suck way more. Yeah. Think about if you were laid out on your back and put a decent sized
kettlebell on your stomach and then you try to relax your ability to relax. Like if you're super
tight through there, it's going to feel like myofascial release, right? It's going to feel
intense. It's going to hurt. So you're probably going to, and you're probably going to
kind of like flex through it because that's more comfortable for you to, it's like you got pressure
on you and now you're pressurizing it yourself by flexing against it. And I think over time you
want some of that. Do you think that would be like a decent idea for some people to like try to
practice like laying down and maybe having a little bit of weight on them and and breathing and kind of working on it that way that's a great idea
um and that's also a great idea to practice breathing into your diaphragm we had you know
what's his name rare barracuda richard aceves yeah um richard aceves came here and one of the
things that he has people do and this is something that i was doing quite a bit i still do it a bit
here and there uh just to practice but i use my hands is you'll have them put a kettlebell at the base of their uh kind of
like above their pubic bone and hold it there back on the ground and your intention when breathing is
to breathe so that this area comes up like you want this area like the area by your so i was
i hurt me quite a bit so i gotta give that a Yeah. You want the kettlebell to rise as you're inhaling and then depress as you're exhaling.
Because most, like a lot of people breathe, they're breathing here, they're kind of breathing
here, but they're not having expansion of this area when they're breathing.
And when you're doing, when you're able to do that, that means you're getting 360 degree
expansion when breathing.
And if that can become second nature, your breathing, it's just going to have such a
big effect on the way you breathe.
Just think about like if that area is tight, how much it affects everything that you do.
You go to throw a ball, you go to run fast, you go to jump.
I mean, anything that you do is really connected to kind of like near your belly button and
near your pubic bone.
So it sounds like it makes a lot of sense to try to like work those areas
and maybe get something like a sew right or, you know, start digging in there
and see if you can kind of get that area to be less tight.
Yeah.
I get a wicked back pop when I do that, when I put a kettlebell like on top of like the pubic bone
and then I breathe into it to raise it up and just like, oh, it feels fantastic.
Yeah. So everything that you guys said was, yeah, everything that I would know as well. bone and then i breathe into it to like raise it up just like oh it feels fantastic yeah so
everything that you guys said was yeah everything that i would know as well but like the other thing
would be just like to learn how to breathe in certain different ways too so like if you do
have the knee on belly like well now you're going to breathe up a little bit higher you know and
stay calm that way versus you know if i don't know you're stuck in side control then you can breathe
down in your stomach a little bit better and that sort of thing. But in the moment for me personally, it's hard to remember
what the hell to do. So it's easy for me to say this really hard for me to practice though.
Yeah. All right. Next question from 5am. Any specific tips to building a hypertrophy
leg workout? I'm happy that people want to work their legs. Yeah. We talked a lot about,
we talked a lot about legs
in the beginning. Both of them. But yeah, work both of them. That's great advice.
I do actually think that single leg work is important and it's something that probably
gets neglected a lot. So some single leg training is a good idea. Um, I found for myself, just a lot of basics were really helpful.
I always liked, uh, various forms of leg curls. Um, I've always liked various forms of leg
extension, which I know leg extension doesn't really get much love, but I've always found it
to be like an effective exercise, leg press squats, obviously. Um, but I don't think we need
to like, you know, say like, look, man, like you know say like look man if you're not
squatting like you're not you're not worth a shit and it's just your workouts are dumb you know um
i think that we have a tendency to say like the squat is the king but a lot of times when it comes
to like growth of the muscles of your legs it has to do with whether you can squat proficiently so
if you don't squat well and you kind of just lean forward and you use your lower back,
that's a good exercise maybe for overall strength and it's good for you to learn and get better
at.
But that is an activity that's not really benefiting, you know, training your legs.
So find exercises that you're not forcing yourself to do because of like some sort of social pressure
or pressure from some somewhere else do the exercises that you feel the most and and continue
like to explore and find those exercises yeah i'm just gonna kind of zone in on the single leg thing
that you mentioned um and specifically actually hamstrings because the lying hamstring curl is an amazing
movement. Same with seated hamstring curls, but I would say people should do those with single legs
because what happens with most people when they're doing these movements is one leg will take over a
little bit more than the other one doing a hamstring curl. And even though both of your
hamstrings are curling, one's doing a little bit more work than the other. So adjust the load so
that you can do the same rep range, but doing the hamstring curl with a single leg to assure that both
hamstrings are as strong as each other and you build minimal imbalances. I'd say the same thing
goes with leg extensions. If you love the leg extension, do single leg leg extensions because
most of those machines are set up in a way where you can do one leg and the other leg.
So lower the load to a point where you can do a single leg leg extension on one side,
full range of motion, not on the other side.
Again, to help deal with any imbalances because one leg is going to have a little bit more output than the other no matter how even you try to make your force production.
Yeah, it's called reciprocal innervation.
Basically, you tell your leg, hey, use both legs evenly.
It cannot do that. No matter how hard you try maybe if you're more in tune like you like you you can but you're doing single legs i'm still
gonna have one leg that's right uh and then so the other thing is like for for me like i i went
away from compound movements and just focused more on like isolation stuff so like the leg curl the
leg extension and that sort of thing and that really helped with helped me a lot with my legs yeah the uh the guys over at mind pump they had a video a couple days ago i sent it
over to you guys and they talked about the differences between exercises and i think it
was sal he was breaking it down he had some uh really interesting commentary what he was talking
about was the idea of like if you do a shoulder press, a standing dumbbell shoulder press, well, that taxes the body quite differently than like a seated dumbbell shoulder press.
It taxes the body differently than a machine seated shoulder press.
And so I think when you're trying to formulate your workout and trying to make your workouts, it's good to kind of think in these terms.
Like a deadlift is just going to cost
a lot of energy. A squat is going to cost a lot of energy. These exercises are going to have an
impact on the lower back. Now I'm not saying good nor bad because it can be effective to help make
you stronger by utilizing some of these core movements, by utilizing the big three, by utilizing deadlifts
and squats can be really effective. But at the same time, you might want to try to balance that
out a little bit with a hack squat, because now it's like, I can go on the hack squat. I can get
everything I need from that. But what's taken out of the picture? My lower back is pretty much taken
out of the picture. I don't have to worry about my hamstrings recruiting a ton. I don't have to worry about maybe these other factors that you might have to worry about when
you're trying to perform a squat. And if you're, again, if your technique on your squat is something
that's hard for you to execute, I don't think you need to really worry about it a ton. I think that
again, for me, the growth of my legs and the shape of my legs improved so much more when I was done
powerlifting
because there was less focus. Again, the squat and some of those things, they were a foundation for
me. It did help build some size. So I'm not saying it was, I definitely would never say that it was
useless for me, but I don't squat with a really good, clean, upright posture. And if you look at
the way that Tom Platz would squat, that is a
great way to build your legs. But who else can squat like Tom Platz? Basically nobody. It's very
difficult to squat with that form. And that's why some athletes and some physique athletes
will utilize something like a Smith machine because now they're in a better position.
So again, I think the exercise selection,
I think it's important for all muscle growth, but I think it's really important for your legs.
Find exercises that don't hurt. It's not hurting your joints, not hurting your knees.
It's not hurting your lower back. Like there's no reason for you to have to, you don't have to do
any one of these exercises. You're going to be able to find a nice list of exercises that you're going to be able to build a good leg program off of.
Yeah.
And, you know, Dexter Jackson, I think famously only worked out with machines.
But would you say that there are drawbacks?
Because like, would you say that there are drawbacks to working with mainly with machines?
Yeah.
I mean, for, you know, there's a lot of give and take, right?
So with, we had Chris Aceto on the podcast.
He hated machines.
He does.
Hated all machines.
So aggressively hated them.
Yeah, he hated them deeply.
He really had an issue with them.
A massive advantage of utilizing a machine is the fact that you don't really need a whole lot of warmup.
It's like you can get on a machine, you can do the exercise, and you can do like a set of five, and you can rest like a minute and then do another set of like 10 or something.
And then you're probably ready to go almost.
Like you're almost ready for your working sets, whereas with free weights, you're putting on a plate and so forth, and it might take a while for you to warm up to the proper weight.
The disadvantages of using a machine could potentially be that you're not working your core as much.
But again, it's like I still think a bigger muscle a lot of times is going to be a stronger muscle.
I'm not a huge – I don't really believe that there's like non-functional movements.
So like a machine may make you move into a certain position, but you're still overloading the muscle.
Like I still think you're sending a message to the body.
One thing that I don't agree with on a machine is just like the idea of isolating a muscle and trying to slap a lot of muscle onto one area is in and of itself a very unnatural thing that we just never had access to really before.
Other than maybe carrying a bucket on one side and never carrying it on the other. Um, so, you know, when I start to think about, you know, like evolution, I start to think
about some of those things.
I'm like, well, you know, if somebody puts on an extra 30 pounds on their legs, uh, that
is probably a huge deviation from where they were naturally when they were younger, uh,
how bad that is or whatever.
I don't really know, but if you put an extra 20, 30 pounds in your legs, well, now your stomach,
I'm just imagining your stomach now
needs to be a lot stronger and so forth.
And so if you did so with just machines
and just isolation,
you could be looking at,
which we see a lot of,
not from all bodybuilders,
but a lot of these clowns out there.
Inside joke on the clowns,
but a lot of these clowns out there are uh you know
really stuck together i'll include myself in that i want you guys to please if you're here
we have an episode with a guy named jack cruz coming up now just remember what mark said there
and when you listen to the episode of jack cruz which is a great episode by the way
you will uh i'm actually scared of clowns so i don't want to
be lumped in oh yeah clowns are scary actually i know what i don't know if we talked about this
we're gonna get some more questions guys but what i'm not sure i should mention that what
are your phobias you have a phobia you guys know mine uh tripophobia yep i don't really know if I have like much of a phobia, but I would be like, I mean, I guess everyone like heights is not a phobia, but like I would be, I wouldn't like jump off the side of a, even like a small cliff.
You know what I mean?
Like I just, I just wouldn't, when I was younger, I would do shit like that, shit like that but i just i would just yeah i would be scared to do that but a phobia wise i'm not really sure i don't
like stuff that like comes from the body like seeing vomit yeah like yeah like pus and like
shit like that because it comes from a whole pimple popper you know like all that kind of
stuff like pimple pop and shit no i don't dude sam that is her love i know that she will sit there while she's like eating her food and she'll just like
watch pimple popping i know that women love to pop zits too they get all excited like oh you got
a pimple and they get like chase your house or whatever uh but yeah i don't have like a phobia
like i can watch it yeah yeah pimple popping videos are they they are nice though i i get i get the alert um
i've mentioned this before and again if any of you yeah if any of you fuck with this with me i will
fuck you up and i'm not even joking okay we know yeah ventriloquist dummies oh yeah those things
are terrifying that's like a clown kind of yeah yeah that shit scared me since i was a kid when
i saw goosebumps slappy the dummy he's this red-headed dummy with the green eyes and he's a dick he oh he was a dick there was a scene where
he was like spinning on a ceiling fan that shit fucked me up bro shit and then what's that called
what ventriloquist i don't know i don't know there's definitely a phobia it has to be a phobia
name for it right but i will not be in a room with that.
And I swear to God.
And it has the things, right?
They're like, yeah, what are those things?
Yeah, it's just the mouth thing.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a comedian that like his whole shtick is ventriloquist.
I mean, I'll never go to that show.
I've seen that guy.
Something Bratton.
I forgot his name, but.
I don't know. I mean, I can't even pronounce this word, but auto
mutton phobia.
Yeah. What's the, so what's
it mean? Automatonophobia, which define
as a persistent, abnormal
and unwarranted fear of ventriloquist
dummies and
animatronic
shit creatures or wax
statues. I had a wax statues
fucking suck too. had a birthday party
at chucky cheese when i was six or seven years old and i was sad the whole time because i don't
know if you guys know at chucky cheese they have the big animatronic things that go like this in
the background and the kid has to go on stage and sing happy birthday or whatever that shit
fucked me up and i don't oh god god no no no God. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no.
That sucks.
Anyway.
Yeah.
How many more questions do you guys want to take?
A few more.
A few more?
All right.
Cool.
Jeff Dunham.
Yeah, that's his name.
Jeff Dunham.
Jeff Dunham.
Thanks, Richard.
Best things to focus on with your clients as a fitness coach.
And this question comes from Liam Turner Buchamp or Buchamp. I don't know. Best things to focus on with your clients as a fitness coach. And this question comes from Liam Turner Buchamp or Buchamp.
I don't know.
Best things to focus on as a fitness coach.
I think all of us are going to agree that, you know, you want some good performance metrics.
You know, you want to see the person just getting better in the gym.
They're able to move better.
They're able to lift a little bit better.
Maybe their strength is going up. You know, have them kind of focusing on performance
and hopefully in your effort to get them focused on performance, hopefully they start to buy into
other things that you're saying and hopefully they'll start to adhere to the nutrition that
you're communicating with them as well. Yeah. Because that's usually the hardest thing. I mean, you know, somebody could,
you know, get great results if they, with like just some haphazard lifting and like losing 30
pounds and someone be like, Oh my God, what'd you do? You look, you know, you look great.
But for a trainer, you know, a lot of times the people that go to a trainer, I think they're kind
of expecting you to do maybe a lot more for them. They're expecting you to kind of solve this problem for them.
And so with that, I think the hardest part is you got to try to really work towards gaining
their trust so that you can get them to follow you, not just follow what you're doing when
you're together, but also following some of your principles when you're not together.
Yeah, dude. I think one of the coolest things about coaching people is learning about them
because like, yeah, you can write out a program and you can write out a nutrition plan,
but we know that like the things that are going to allow you to have the biggest long-term change
are helping them adjust their lifestyle habits, right? So is this a person that they
always go to sleep super late? They're always watching TV before bed. They're eating super
close to bed. They don't go outside in the morning. They don't take walks. When they go and
they do stuff with friends, there's always alcohol involved or copious amounts of food. I think one
of the best things you can do as a coach is spend that time
learning about what they do on a day-to-day basis, learning what they do on their weekends,
because these are the things that if you can help them take small steps to fixing,
right? So instead of drinking Friday, Saturday, Sunday, can we just like, you know, can we cut
that to two of those days and maybe do a little bit less drinking? Or can we maybe do one of those days? I had a friend tell me, he's like, I was like, Hey man,
what have you been doing? You're, you're looking great. And he's like, I only drink on the weekend.
And I'm like, today's Thursday. He had to drink his hand. He goes, well, he's like,
he's like, today's like, you know, special occasion. And I was like, and I was like, is Friday a weekend for you too? You know, because that's always like funny. He's like, yeah. He's like, so I was like, now it is going to be so much easier if their lifestyle habits are optimized. That means they're going
to stick to their diet better. They'll be able to have better workout results because maybe their
sleep's better and they have better energy. But long-term, now that they're not with you anymore,
they know the habits that you guys talked about being important. The fucking sleep, the getting
consistent walks
and sunlight, all these things. They know how important
these things are and they'll maintain this even
when you stop because if it's only
a workout and nutrition plan,
that's 90 minutes of the gym
and then the food they put in their mouth.
But what's going on everywhere else?
If we can optimize those habits, you can change
somebody's life.
Sometimes people go as far to say exercise doesn't really do much.
And it would be – it is kind of hard to see the impact,
the positive impacts of exercise if you're covering it up with too much food.
You really won't – you honestly won't see much change.
Maybe there's some things with your blood that get
better. Maybe your bone density gets better. Maybe you are a little stronger and stuff like that. But
for the most part, you won't really look different and you might not even be hardly any healthier.
You're going to have to figure out a way to get into those habits. And it's, it sucks. It's a,
it's not an easy thing to do because, and I think that's what's so – why nutrition sometimes is almost a little bit like a religion almost.
And when somebody wants to confront somebody about their nutrition, they can be really resistant because they feel like it's an attack on their life.
Like you're a slob.
You're lazy.
You're a piece of shit. And unfortunately,
it usually does mean that you have to work on these new habits. And these new habits are,
for us, they sound so normal because we've been talking about it for so long and we've been
practicing a lot of these things for so long. But just for someone to cut back on alcohol,
like there's no need to talk about other changes.
You know, hey, could you figure out a way to maybe just, you know, how many days a week do you drink now?
And they say four.
Can you meet me in the middle here?
Can we go half?
Can you go half?
How many drinks do you usually have?
Six?
Can you go to like four or three and still have a good time? You know?
Start slow. Yeah. Start slow. And the intention of helping them really slow. Well, and yeah. And,
and even if you mess up, it's like you still, it's just like the gym. You know, if you,
if you currently are doing zero curls and you start doing three sets of curls here and there,
if your consistency wavers a little bit, it's not a huge deal.
At least there's some consistency.
At least you're working on it.
And at least you're trying.
I think that's all you can do as a trainer is to try to continually encourage.
And a lot of communication.
I think that that's another thing is like if you don't hear from your client, you know,
if you're working with someone like online and or like digitally via email or something like that, and you don't really hear from like, you know, like they're not going to send you a picture and be like, hey, bro, 8% body fat.
They're going to be like, dude, I gained 60 pounds.
You didn't hear from like a year or something.
Yeah.
To dive deeper on that, I was talking to one of our buddies, Rester Drake.
He's been following the show for a long time.
And what he'll do is like, I don't know if you guys ever did this or like signed up for like a personal training one-on-one thing.
When I did that, it was like, oh, go walk on the treadmill.
And then like half an hour later, he's like, all right, so what do you want to do?
And like he wrote down a couple of things.
All right, cool.
We'll come back tomorrow.
It was like bullshit, right?
Russ will actually have somebody like, oh, meet me at this coffee shop. Like he doesn't even bring
them into the gym and he just has a conversation and gets to know the person. Oh yeah. So by the
end of that conversation, they're just friends. And it's like, oh yeah, by the way, like, yes,
I do want to hire you as my coach. And this guy's crushing it. He'll get people to sign up for like
years in advance. So just getting to know somebody goes a huge long way, you know?
So like definitely don't overlook that.
But Mike Dolce put out a pretty cool video because somebody had asked like, oh, what's
the most efficient or what's your favorite machine or piece of equipment in the gym?
And he's like, the front door.
He's like, the more times you use that machine, the better your results are going to be. So making sure that your clients are getting into that front door and being consistent,
whatever it takes for that to happen, then, you know, focus on that. Cause then obviously you're
going to have a better looking client and a better, you know, better results and all that stuff. And
so, yeah, that's what I would say. Yeah. Dope. All right. Quickie from Dom Sorenberger and see my question Olipop or Zevia
Olipop
all day long
Zevia
yo
I could kill
a bunch of Olipops
and it's not a good idea
to do
Zevia will give me
the worst
fucking bubble guts
and then my shit's
a little bit off
even though it tastes great
so Olipop wins
all day
fucking long
Olipops
are the best
best flavors are Tropical Punch, Classic Grape.
I had to say Classic Grape second because I know what you're thinking.
The Orange Squeeze.
Orange Squeeze is very, very good.
Orange Strawberry is pretty good.
Orange Strawberry exists?
Mm-hmm.
Orange Strawberry?
I think that's what it's called, yeah.
Not Strawberry Vanilla.
Orange Strawberry.
I think it's Orange Strawberry. Oh, yeah. Not strawberry vanilla. Orange strawberry. I think it's orange strawberry.
Oh, my God.
I have to try that.
Maybe I made that up.
Do oranges and strawberries taste good together?
I don't know.
They sound like they should, but if that's a real flavor, that might be fucking amazing, dude.
Yeah.
There's a lot of fiber in those things.
Yeah, there is.
Yeah, you telling me?
Get a big old poop going yeah yeah i
don't even mess with sparkling water anymore yeah you missed artificial no artificial i don't do
anything all i do is drink water out of a mason jar i'm i'm kind of losing it guys like i'm gonna
hear it man if i could grow hair i would and i'd fucking wouldn't put on deodorant i'd be a hippie
and i would just have bare bare feet all day long.
Let's go, dude.
Fucking meditating and floating and just stinking up the room.
Where are you at with Bitcoin?
I still have it.
I've never sold.
Are you decentralizing that too?
No.
I think Mike Nittle told me to move it over to something and I never looked back.
I don't know.
I got – I fell for the hype when it was
really high you might be there next who knows yeah maybe yeah bitcoin running around with tin hat
definitely moving to mexico after jack cruz john rafferty asks favorite everyday running shoes
uh i'd have to say the escalantes are favorite. I just like wearing those for just about anything.
Both of you guys, Escalantes?
No, I would just say the Rivera's, I think.
But they're also another ultra shoe.
They're the red ones that I wear.
They're just, they're way too comfortable.
Like I do everything in those.
You were wearing some ultras, yes, the other day, right?
Yeah, they're the super running things.
I forgot what they're called, but they're the super shoes with the carbon foot plate.
Yeah, I forget what they're called too,
but they're nice.
I use those for sprinting.
So, I mean, I would use it.
I use it as an everyday running shoe too.
You know what I mean?
So, but, you know, super shoes give you a lot.
I think the Escalante is nice
in the sense that it's just a decent shoe in general.
It's good for walking, so.
Yeah.
All right.
Another few questions.
Two more.
Two more.
This one I think will be kind of quick with,
it's an interesting one.
I'm curious where our minds go with this,
but Dylan Burnett asks,
any suggestions for in gym movements to help improve bouldering and rock
climbing?
Damn.
Yeah.
I think body weight stuff.
So like pull-ups are going to be pretty good for you to do. Anything that allows you to kind of like pinch your fingers against. So like plate pinching grip work, right? Because when you're bouldering and rock climbing, like it's not just like you need grip strength, you need finger strength too. And pinching plates and walking is going to help build that.
and walking is going to help build that.
I also think hip flexor work is super necessary because you notice when people are bouldering,
they have to pick up their legs and put them in weird spots, right?
So you want good strength and a long range with your hip flexors.
So anything that can work that.
What else comes to mind?
I would say something like maybe like a deadlift, you know,
exercises like that and then trying to,
I would imagine that if you're a decent
at like rock climbing type stuff that you're probably going to be pretty strong on a deadlift
your strength to weight ratio is probably really good um farmers carries um sled work i think would
be good like trying to build up like your butt and your legs some sort of maybe like leg press
or something like that kind of mentioning what you're talking about where your your your leg is going to be like in this
weird compromised position that you have to kind of push from maybe even something like step-ups
but like weighted step-ups you know because you're going to get your foot onto like a little ledge
and then probably wedge yourself up and i think just a lot of basics would be good like even like
things like curls you know getting getting really strong with exercise like a curl would probably be of benefit as well.
I think there's these handles from Gripzilla, right?
And they kind of allow you to put your fingers in and do pull-ups.
So those are good because when you're doing rock climbing stuff, you need that.
So not just pull-ups, but I'm pretty sure at rock climbing centers, I know this isn't in the gym, but rock climbing centers, they have these boards where it's like different levels of thickness coming out of the wall where you can do pull-ups, but you're using your fingers to do those pull-ups.
And really good rock climbers are able to do that.
Like literally they're doing pull-ups like this.
That's crazy.
Right?
What's that movement?
Is it like just a pegboard that they have like for like the crossfitters do it right
yeah they just stick like that's got to be amazing for rock climbing that seems really difficult
absolutely i wonder if anything like um because in my head i'm just thinking like if you are
climbing up a rock you want your reaction to be pretty good so like throwing a tennis ball against
the wall and catching it or maybe doing a pull-up and having somebody throw a ball at you you catch it and
kind of pass it back something just a concentration while you're doing something yeah probably really
effective i couldn't give you any examples of something like legitimate but i don't know maybe
looking at something like that yeah all right cool okay now this is a really good one. And it's from James Gallegos again. How often should I train to failure? If I lift three times or six times per week? That's a very big difference, my friend. One set or one exercise per day, assuming I get good sleep and enough calories. Interesting. I think there's a big difference between going to failure and getting close to it.
I think if it's a muscle group that you really do want to improve, I think you can do it for multiple sets and I think you can do it for multiple exercises where you can kind of brush up against it. And so I would say, um, you could probably do that, you know, a handful of
times in a given workout would probably be adequate. You know, say you're trying to build
up your chest. Uh, I would say you could probably get a good four or five sets that you've taken to
close to failure with maybe two or three different exercises. I think normally,
like from what I've seen from people bodybuilding and
just some of my own experiences is usually you're not like brushing up next to failure on everything
that you do, you know, and there's certainly not in like your warmups and certainly not like
when someone's like, oh, I did like four sets of 10 of that. The first, um, the first 20 reps, the first two sets are kind of to butter you up for the following two sets, right?
So it's like the next two sets will be taken or close to failure.
The first two were still like just getting your body prepared for that.
So I always think that, again, I think the inadequate rest I I think works really great resting about a minute in between sets and, um, you know, repeated efforts with the
same weight.
I think that that's something that people, they want to keep adding weight.
They want to go from 50 to 55 to 60.
It's like, well, just stick with the fifties and set number one and set number two are
going to be fairly easy.
And set number three and four are going to be the ones that are going to be a little tougher.
So I think about half of your working sets for the day could be something that are close to failure.
And then choose something that you can do maybe some drop sets with.
So I'm going to use your example that you gave right there.
First two sets with 50 pounds, solid.
The next set is rougher, right?
pounds solid the next set is rougher right and then for your last set do that 50 pounds until one rep or maybe it's a failure drop it by 10 pounds do another set close to failure or
failure drop it again 10 pounds do that last set we'll call it maybe a single arm feels good right
but the thing is is think about like i love doing that because you're stimulating so many fibers by
the time you get to like maybe using 30 pounds for it, maybe you manage 10 reps and you feel every
fucking thing. But the thing about that, the reason why it's beneficial is because you already had
prior sets that were good sets of that movement. Now you're gassing it out, right?
Like a pre-fatigue.
Exactly. Now this isn't something you need to do every day. When you become adept and you get
better at recovery, you can do it more often.
But try it twice a week with certain movements.
See how you feel workout to workout.
And then as you get better at handling that type of failure or volumes with failure, you can increase your frequency of doing that.
Do you guys think something like dog crap training might be a better approach or just different?
I like the idea of the dog crap stuff i think it's
uh but it's more like a faster paced thing yeah you know so is dog crap rest pause or is it
something yeah rest pause yeah it's five sets in a row basically okay but i think it's more like um
i mean you could utilize it for all kinds of stuff but i think uh in this case like this guy
could utilize it like for one,
you would only use dog crap stuff for like one exercise.
You wouldn't want to use it for multiple things in a given day.
I don't think.
Yeah.
It was a little too intense to do too much of it.
There's one last question.
That's really good.
I think you guys are going to enjoy this one.
So last question from the math.
Now real quick,
guys,
all these names are in this bucket.
I want to let you know
to be able to win
because we're giving away Joy Mode,
Vivo, Hostage, Good Life,
and Within You,
you got to be part of the Discord.
Yes, you got to be part of the Discord, right?
If your name's called, message me.
Give me that information,
email, name, fiscal address,
and you'll potentially win.
But Namatha asks,
hey, recommendations for someone
who has never been over 180 pounds and is way too comfortable being hungry a lot of the time.
Any tips with eating motivation without eating crap?
That's a great question, Namatha.
It's a great fucking question.
Well, what do we know about hunger?
What are things that can help kind of cue your hunger?
It does seem like carbohydrates can sometimes make it a little easier to eat more food for multiple reasons.
If you have some ground beef, it's not that hard to eat ground beef.
Ground beef can taste great.
But if you have some rice with it.
And some butter.
Then it's amazing, right?
So you can add some calories to things that way.
Anything with butter.
I was going to say butter just helps everything.
That's true.
All right, we solved your problem.
Eat a lot of butter.
Well, that is a good point because it's energy dense, right?
And it's not going to take up room in your stomach and it's not going to be something that's going to make you full.
take up room in your stomach and it's not going to be something that's going to make you full.
So you want to look at food maybe quite the opposite way that what we usually preach on the show, which is like, let's try to have you get a lot of volume in and let's have you try to get in
a lot of protein while also not over consuming calories. Right. So you want to look at it from
the other spectrum. You want to get in a lot of calories. Obviously, you still
need your protein is still critical, but you do want to kind of keep in mind that your protein,
for the most part, shouldn't be super lean. Maybe some of it's lean so that you don't gain a ton of
body fat, but for the most part, you're probably looking at like eating like whole eggs, eating like rib eyes and things that are maybe a little – eating lamb and 85% lean ground beef and stuff like that is probably a really good route to go.
And like rice, I feel like is very easy to make good so you can get a lot of carbohydrates in because i would you know
you you mentioned you want to do this without eating crap right so it's like if you don't want
to eat like cereal and shit i think that's a good idea namatha because when you start eating cereal
and all that stuff to try to gain weight it's very easy to gain a lot of body fat very quickly
but when it comes to something like rice like dan efferding's vertical diet concepts from there he
has these athletes mix up brown beef butter rice like peas all this shit ends up being fucking amazing you can get
in a lot of calories you're not eating crap you're still eating whole foods so i that is a if you
want to have a whole food approach like usually we mentioned don't mix a lot of fats with carbs
it's time for you to party baby it's time for you to party i baby. It's time for you to party. I got to mention Rice and Grinds.
Like that stuff is amazing.
It's got like so many different flavors.
They got like a waffle syrup one.
They have a maple syrup one or whatever the hell that is.
Goes down easy.
They go down easy.
I think even like two or three scoops of that is like 50 to 75 carbs.
And it's like nothing.
You're able to eat through it real easy so they have a
lot of different flavors you might want to check out that product all right cool all right so guys
we're going to be giving away some shit now mark you want to pick the first person this first person
is going to win a year's supply or maybe let's see a year supply of hostage tape goes to
Namatha.
Perfect.
Good for you.
Namatha wins.
Wasn't the set up.
Namatha.
One second before you pick that,
I need to write this down.
Hostage tape.
I love me.
Before you pick,
shake that up a little bit more.
Cause I feel like I thought I shook it up and maybe Namatha was,
did you dig or,
and when you,
when you pick kind of dig in there, don don't don't pick the one from the top
so i don't know get those fingers deeper get those fingers oh you picked okay okay okay the next
person nicholas brady and you're gonna win some joy mode we want you to have a boner drink we
want you to have a big old dick for the girl or the guy who you might be having some fun with.
We're totally inclusive.
Going to send you that and a pair of gray sweatpants.
Yeah.
For bench day.
Yeah, buddy.
Yeah, take some Joy Mode and then go work out in the gym.
Joy Mode should make gray sweatpants.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Our next winner, 5AM, you win i i know who you are on discord
yeah send me send me a message you're gonna win a pair of vivo barefoot shoes of your choice i'm
gonna send you a code for that 5 a.m next person is going to win let's see Dylan Buechner
you win
some meat from Good Life Proteins
so you're going to get a gift card
to Good Life Proteins for some meat
have you guys had their smart chicken?
it is so damn good
wait wait what the fuck is smart chicken?
I have no idea what it is
that's the first company that they started
they sold it but it's part of Good Life Proteins and Piedmontese and everything.
Dude, all we did was we put it in the air fryer, and it was like the juiciest, tenderiest.
It was incredible.
Was it breast, thigh?
It's just chicken breast, dude. That's the thing.
It's chicken breast.
Chicken breast.
And I know I've always had chicken breasts and like you know you guys
clown on me for the lean stuff but this did not taste like a regular dry ass chicken breast why
is it called smart chicken then do they do that i have no idea i don't know that's just the brand
interesting it was dude it was incorrect like i'm gonna get it again dude okay what is that
did did uh did did you get the two i don't know but it's like these are short ribs they're like
a big pack of fucking so good like last month i wasn't sure how i was gonna cook it but it was
like a big old fucking thing of ribs and i finally defrosted because i'm like okay i need to cook
this bitch up i'll figure this out i opened it and it was like you could break it into two big slabs
i just had to put that thing in the air fryer, put some seasoning on it, air fried it, perfect.
I just put,
I cooked a bunch of ribs in the fucking air fryer.
It was pretty great. I wonder what it was.
We got to pick one more, but I'll
send you a picture when I get home.
All right, this last person's going to win
a gift card to Within You Supplements. You get yourself
some protein, some
fasting gum. I need steak shake so
bad. Steak shake, actually.
Get yourself a fucking, get yourself the Total Carnivore because that shit's good.
John Rafferty, are you going to be making more flavors of Total Carnivore or is it just chocolate?
Yeah, I have a vanilla malt and mocha, I think, coming out soon.
Malted milk.
Oh, bro.
Is that what it's called, Andrew?
No, I don't know.
Oh, I thought you had inside scoop not yet
so John Rafferty we're going to send you a gift card
from within you
y'all got to make sure you're part of the discord
you need to message me if you don't message me you don't get your shit
and then don't get mad at me two weeks later
asking me for it
because I'm probably not going to look at the message
I'm just being real
but thank you guys
for answering all these questions.
Appreciate you guys.
Yeah, thanks for all the questions.
And it was cool to talk about hypertrophy today rather than talking about everybody being hurt.
The last one depressed me.
I was like, man, everyone's really fucked up out there.
Oh, God.
Injury sucks, bud.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Strength is never weak.
This week, there's never strength.
Catch you guys later.
Bye.