Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 553 - Hang Onto Muscle While Getting Lean

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

Can you get lean while hanging onto muscle? We believe you can! Not only that, but we're going to tell you how to do so. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off the Power Project Panel! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use ode "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Okay, anyway, and we're back and we're live. What are we talking about today? We're talking about... It's good he didn't hit record yet. It's good he didn't hit record yet. Because this is private shit. This is very, very private things. I was thinking about...

It's just between us. How good turkey can be when it's prepared the right way. You know what? I hate those motherfucking turkeys. They're everywhere in Davis. There's turkeys running around all the time. They have a crazy sense of entitlement, too. Yeah. I know, right? They're mean. turkeys they're everywhere in davis there's turkeys running around all the time they have a crazy sense of entitlement too yeah i know right they're mean we've had i don't know if

these are turkeys that around here but they just stopped in front of my fucking car i'm like pterodactyls yeah realize what i am i saw a guy outside of temple coffee being like attacked he was like up against the wall and i had to like i had to like throw ice on the ground like next to the turkey to like kind of shoo it away and then some guy you know because it's davis some guy got pissed at me and he's like bro what are you doing throwing ice into turkey i'm like it's like trying to peck the guy's eyeballs out i don't know and the guy was like in like a karate stance i'm like this ain't good like i don't want to see this guy kick the turkey he's gonna try to crane kick it anyway i hope i don't know if that's guy kick the turkey. He was going to try to crane kick it.

Anyway, I don't know if that's the turkey that Eat Right Foods is using, but I hope it is. Yeah, we hate those damn things. That turkey is really good. My wife cooks pretty much almost every night. She's damn good at it, too. She cooked up some chicken last night. Usually it's like monday will be chicken tuesday will be chicken wednesday you guys notice in the theme wednesday will be chicken and thursday to switch things up it'll be chicken and then friday it'll be chicken

how about the weekend so we get some excitement on the weekends we're gonna really go for it we're gonna have more chicken damn but part of Damn. But part of the reason is that my kids kind of like chicken and Jake likes steak, but Quinn doesn't really care about steak much unless it's a tri-tip, which is very specific. So we eat a lot of chicken, but for me, I don't want to eat chicken. So I usually cook up something else. And last night I had eat right salmon and i ate all three of those chunks of salmon with a little bit of chicken because i do eat my wife's food i just think it's good family time together but that salmon is fucking delicious it is and it has a good amount of fat i i know that's exactly what i was going to point

out too for someone like me who like you're saying chicken every night that sounds great uh but no i'm just joking but um that salmon i i do not eat seafood i didn't eat seafood like pretty much at all and then mark introduced me to like sushi and then uh what's the bowl again it's okay okay sorry i love poke um but i still wouldn't have like salmon i wouldn't have anything like that but with eat right i actually I'm enjoying the salmon. I so much so that I went to reach for like the salmon before we started podcasting the first time today. And I screwed up. I have two things of chicken and I was really fired up to have the salmon. And I had the chicken and it was delicious.

But I was like, dude, this Eat Right stuff is actually changing my palate to where I'm'm like excited to have salmon right now how can they get it man yeah dude it's amazing so if you guys do want to dive into this uh head over to eat right foods.com that's eat r-i-t-e foods.com get um you know load up at least a week's worth of meals if this is your first order because you're going to get 25% off your first order using promo code PowerProject25. But then after that, if you guys want to keep the healthy meals rolling, use promo code PowerProject on every order after that to receive 10% off. Again, that's at eatrightfoods.com, promo code PowerProject25 for your 25% off your

first order and then code PowerProject for 10 percent off every order after that. I don't want to necessarily harp on our sponsors and how awesome it is to have these sponsors. But the same time I do, because they're really important. You know, the people that are supporting us, you know, show some love to them by supporting them. to them by supporting them. But in addition to that, what is the most important thing when somebody's after some of these long-term goals to lose body fat,

sometimes potentially gain muscle mass? What's the overarching theme that you see continually over and over again? The overarching theme? Man, I feel like I've been put on the spot and I feel like if I answer this question wrong, if there is a wrong and a right answer... There's a lot of wrong answers. Oh, God.

You're going gonna be persecuted okay well i think the well i'm gonna go left field with this i won't go deep but a zinger to your answer which i know is not going to be wrong is getting the right amount of sleep even though i know that's not what we're talking about here but that was right now i think you're going here with protein having enough protein is part of protein. Having enough protein is part of it. And getting enough sleep is part of it. Okay. What's the other thing?

Staying in tune with your workouts is part of it. Okay. It's all kind of part of this bigger thing that we talk about in the show a lot. Yeah. Damn it. What was the question again? I didn't hear it. Kind of overarching theme to like long-term success in anything really.

Consistency. There we go. There we go there we go we need consistency now if you're if your mind and your palate is attached to fast food uh pizza ice cream all the things that we all love we talk about it all the time chinese food gotta throw that in there orange chicken burritos all this different stuff you guys know i need to eat tonight stop oh man a good burrito damn bro how about a good breakfast burrito both these men know that i'm like 60 hours can you mute his microphone i'm like more than 60 hours deep into this past and they're doing this to me right now what do we do anyway i hope doing? We're just podcasting. I don't know what's happening.

Just podcasting. Fuck both of y'all. I don't remember what I was saying. No, I'm just kidding. Consistency. Yeah, consistency. Like an easy way to fall off track is to not be prepared.

And I think, I actually am a big believer in this. I think a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, a lot of what we feel in our day-to-day lives for many, many of us. I'll include myself in that train of thought there is we're not always prepared for every situation that we go into. And if we're prepared and we're consistently prepared, there's a lot less shit to worry about. Because over a period of time, you start to build up a skillset and you know how to deal with stuff. When you have your meals already prepped for you, when you have a meal prep company,

it's not like we're not asking people, and I don't think that this is even a great practice either, but we're not asking people to invest so much money that that's every single meal that you eat. It's on occasion when you need it. It's the consistency of you're sitting there at home and you're like, what should I get for dinner? Should I order pizza? Should I do all those things start to go off in your head? And you're like, you know what? I'm just going to walk to my freezer. I'm going to grab the eat right. I'm going to pop it out of the freezer and I'm going to stick in the microwave. I can't tell you guys how many times I've been driving home from here with those kind of thoughts,

those devilish thoughts running through my head of the different things that I want to eat, the different places I want to stop at and pick up fast food or whatever it might be. And I'm like, you know what, man, just fuck it. I'm just going to go home. I'm going to grab my meal that's already prepped for me that goes in accordance to my goal. And I'm going to put an exclamation point on this day and have that snowball effect going through the whole day of keeping it like a 10 out of 10 rather than all of a sudden derailing the whole day

and turning the day into a 5 out of 10 by screwing up and eating something shitty for dinner. So grab yourself some Eat Right. It can be something that can really help you transform the whole way that you set up your day around your eating. Absolutely. When you mentioned that snowball thing, I know what we're going to be talking about this episode.

I know this is diverting real quick, but just kind of reminds me of what our boy Josh Settleidge mentioned about, um, uh, the willpower thing, right? Cause you know, for example,

that idea of driving home and you don't want to make the right decision, blah, blah, blah. But as our boy, as our boy put it, like, you know,

have the good decision, blah, blah, blah. But as our boy, as our boy put it, like, you know, have the good decisions snow. It should make it easier to make even more good decisions when the end of your day comes. Right. Um, I like that mindset aspect of it rather than understanding or thinking that, Oh, when it gets later in the day, it's going to be harder for me to do the right things. Force yourself to do the right things. Even towards the end of the day, it should be a snowball in the positive direction. And you're thinking, I don't want to deal with all that extra work. I don't want to take the, you know,

meat out of the freezer and try to hope that it defrost in time to be able to halfway cook it halfway decent and then have it not taste that good. I would rather just go right through McDonald's and pick it up. I think it's important that you change your, you reframe your brain around that. That is harder. It's harder. Like, okay, it might be inexpensive. It might be quick, easy, and cheap.

But in the long run, it's harder because your ass is going to be on a treadmill somewhere trying to work off that McDonald's or your brain is going to start to go, oh man, we shouldn't have. And you've just built up so much anxiety and stress on yourself when you know, because you, you do know that that's not in your best interest. It's not going towards your goal. Absolutely. But what we want to talk about today with a lot of all you guys is like when you're cutting, it gets really hard to mean, especially if you're not doing it the right way, you can lose a lot of muscle. And this is the thing I noticed with a lot of people. Like when we're, when I see questions, the DMS, or I see questions on Instagram or Tik TOK, a lot of people are like, okay, I want

to lose 20 pounds. I want to lose this many pounds. I want to lose this. And as much as I understand that, I wish I could just drill into every person on earth. Let's not try to just lose weight and let's not even think about weight loss. Let's think about how many pounds of fat can I lose while either gaining, if you're a new athlete, gaining and maintaining all the muscle on my frame. Because so many people you see, they'll go on these, they'll try to lose 50, 60 pounds. And then it's funny because they'll lose all that weight but they'll just look like a smaller version of what they looked like when they were bigger so they go from 260 to 200 but they have the same shape at 200 that they had at 260 why they lost a lot of muscle while

they're losing fat yeah and you're like man you lost your shoulders you lost your traps a little bit like that's awesome that you lost weight. That's amazing. But something to kind of keep in mind is, and we're not talking like you lose, if you lose 50 pounds and you lose some marginal amount of muscle mass, like, great job. You know, you did a great job. Especially if you're somebody that likes to run, somebody that likes to, you know, some higher level activities, you know, then maybe you're going to lose a little bit along the way. But for most people, you should really keep in mind the importance of preserving that

muscle mass is going to be huge to keep your metabolism going. Because over time you want, I think our goal is to, I think your goal in your head from a work perspective and from a, like almost like a life perspective, like you start out life and you're in school forever. Right. And you get out of school and you're like, I'm going to go to college and you go to college and you're like, you know, you start to work towards a career and you're like, I would like to have a career that like sets me up so I can retire and I can chill. Like you're hoping that you work so hard at some point that things are going to get easier. And you can do this with your chill. Like you're hoping that you work so hard at some point that things are

going to get easier. And you can do this with your nutrition if you play your cards right. If you don't play your cards right and you continually lose muscle, things will continually continue to stay about as hard as they are. And sometimes even get harder if you're continually, continually losing muscle mass. So hold onto that that muscle mass because that's gonna be the thing that as you start to graduate and as you start to understand nutrition a little bit better, you will be able to relax a little bit more. I mean, you'll always be,

if you're trying to have the body that you want and you're trying to look like a bodybuilder or something like that, most likely you gotta stay pretty damn connected to your fitness and your nutrition, but you'll have a little bit more freedom coming up. It will be around the corner. And for me personally, I've lost weight in many stages. And so I've had periods of time where I've chilled pretty much every year. I take a whole week off of just even thinking about nutrition at all. I still, I've mentioned this many times, I still enjoy wine with my wife. I still

enjoy some food here and there. That's off plan. That's off target. And it's because I got myself to a more comfortable level. I feel good with where I'm at. And I'm over the years, I'm going to continue to get leaner and leaner and leaner, and it will continue to get easier and easier and easier until it doesn't, until I get to a point where I'm leaned out to where my body just doesn't want to respond to it anymore. Absolutely. Like we've mentioned multiple times, muscle is money. Two people that are both 200 pounds, but one person has more muscle on their frame and the other person has less muscle on their frame.

The one with more muscle is generally going to be able to burn more calories. And I don't like to use this, but I mean, sometimes this gets people excited. You can get away with more. You can get away with having an extra glass of wine, et cetera, because you will be burning more calories in general. That's not the way you want to look at it, but that can be a slight incentive. And then one other thing to think about, and I've seen this happen so much, is they're going on a weight loss journey and they, they lose a substantial amount of weight. And when they get down to that body, they don't, they're not necessarily happy with

the look. Even like they're, they might, they are happier that they're lighter, that they've lost so much weight, but they're like, I wish my shoulders were more capped. I wish I could see, I wish, you know, that my legs were a little bit bigger. You know what I mean? I wish I had this, I wish, you know, that my legs were a little bit bigger. You know what I mean? I wish I had this. I wish I had that. And if you made sure that you were doing enough lifting as you're dropping weight, but not

just lifting enough and eating enough protein, you kind of maybe prolonged that cut a little bit longer, you would have been happy because we know that there are a lot of ways to lose a lot of weight very quickly. And you could lose, you could lose 30 pounds in two months. You know, I've seen people do that. Even people that aren't like morbidly obese. I'm like, cause I get, if you're very overweight, you're very, very overweight and you have a lot of body fat to lose, there's some merit in losing some fast. We talked about that with Menno Hanselman,

that can increase your motivation. But if you're just trying to like, if your goal is to get from let's say 190 pounds and you want to get lean at 170 right instead of doing that in 12 weeks maybe you want to do that in 20 24 weeks give yourself the time because the longer you can prolong it ideally the more muscle you're going to maintain but i thought it was impossible to gain muscle and not simply just gain fat right because that's why like like oh i'm bulking now so i'm gonna because i want to gain muscle and it's like i i've asked it several times like a bunch of our guests like hey can we actually you know gain muscle and lose fat like it seems like if you try to chase both, you're not going to get one. So how can people, because you said eat more protein, I get that, but like you're saying like we're going to eat more to gain more muscle, but how can we do that

without having the scale go up too much to where it freaks us out? Yeah, you're going to have to kind of toe that line and learn what feels best and what's working for you. But what has worked really well for me, especially lately, is to just have a really focused diet on protein. style background where I don't think it was uncommon for me to eat like 300 grams of protein in a day. And, uh, I was like, man, I think maybe, you know, cause here and there I would struggle with being able to continue to lose weight. And so I was like, I should maybe re-examine that. And then by having, uh, uh, Piedmontese, uh, uh, and having that, those leaner cuts of meat made a huge difference. I was able to lean out, uh, much, much easier by getting rid of some of the fat, but you got to keep in enough fat so that you're, you feel good. Your hormones are good and stuff like that. So that's how it's kind of

worked for me. It's a meat based, uh, diet. I mix in some vegetables, some fruit here and there, a little bit of dairy and that's it. Like a general guideline for a lot of people is just going to be a gram per pound, you know, just, just generally a gram per pound. I would honestly, I typically suggest people to go maybe a little bit more than that. One to 1.2. Um, but that just ensures that as you're getting leaner, you're holding onto as much muscle as possible along with a good amount of resistance training. holding onto as much muscle as possible, along with a good amount of resistance training.

So I think the mistake that you don't want to make as you're starting a cut is you start your cut and then your training gets a lot easier initially. Like a lot of people, they'll increase the amount of reps that they do in the gym. And maybe they'll, if you were doing squatting before with a barbell, they'll pull that out and they'll do more leg pressing, etc. And that can happen at a certain point. But in the beginning, you want to hold on to as much of the progress you made when you were trying to gain muscle and gain strength and bulk. You want to hold on to as much of that as possible as you're getting leaner. Now, there's going to be a certain point when you get so lean and you're not eating as many calories as you were that you might need to take out certain movements that are just very taxing. For a lot of people, deadlifting is taxing, especially heavy deadlifting.

And if you're already eating in a deficit, doing heavy deadlifts while eating in a deficit, that might not be the best use of what you're trying to do at the time. So you could, number one, just lower the load you're doing on deadlifts and still get the movement in. But if that's a movement that makes you so tired and you're only working with so much energy anyway, since you're cutting, remove it and maybe do some type of hip hinge work that isn't as taxing. You could maybe do some, I don't know, goblet squats. You could do some rope glute pulls or something that still gets that type of movement in, but it doesn't tax you as much as moderately heavy deadlifts would. So you're still working all those same muscle groups.

That's the point. You don't want to stop working something as much as you were before, but you want to give it so much stimulus that the muscle pretty much says, I'm going, I need to be here. Because when you don't work it enough, that muscle's like, ah, I don't need to be as big right now. I can go away. When you don't work it enough and you don't work it maybe with enough weight. And when we're talking about like weight or we're saying resistance training, we're really talking about, you know, strength training. But it's strength for you. It's not strength compared to anybody else.

Because that's what your body's going to recognize as being heavy. It's strength for you. It's not strength compared to anybody else because that's what your body's going to recognize as being heavy. It's heavy to you. So while walking with 40 pound dumbbells for farmer's carries might not seem heavy to you, if it's heavy for somebody else, that's going to cause adaptation. That's going to cause an increase in muscle mass. I think the people that have killed it the most in this field have been females. Females have just kicked some ass when it comes to lifting weights over the last several years. I think CrossFit might've had a CrossFit, maybe the internet and a bunch of different things may have been things that contribute to that. but women, there's some fitness influencers that,

that look amazing that might on the scale way quite a bit more than somebody might think, but it's because they're holding onto their muscle mass. Now they kind of might be losing a little bit of fat and quote unquote, you can actually like reshape, you know, certain things, but like they're kind of, uh, re reshaping and remolding their body. And as they continue to lose fat over time, and as they continue to build muscle over time, they are reshaping their body. They are transforming. And I think it's, I think it's pretty awesome because I think so many people are thinking

about being skinny and so many people are thinking about being skinny. And so many people are thinking about having this great body. And if you were to look at someone like Nsema and you would say, that's an excellent body. Like this guy looks great. You wouldn't think, okay, I need to go to the gym and do a bunch of cardio to get that body. Like you wouldn't look at Nsema and think that. But for some reason, people are thinking like, oh, to get my waist smaller, I need to go and do a bunch of cardio to get that body. Like you, you wouldn't look at in semen, think that, but for some reason, people are thinking like, oh, to get my waist smaller, I need to go and do a bunch of cardio. And it's like, no, uh, now you cardio like has its place. I think it can be fantastic way to burn some extra calories here and there, but the goal isn't really to get skinny. I think that's

a little bit of an illusion. The goal is to hold onto that muscle mass so that you can continue to, you're trying to look better. I mean, isn't that the goal, right? We're trying to, when we're trying to quote unquote be skinnier, we're really just after an aesthetic look. We're just trying to look better. We're hoping that by looking better, we're hoping that we're going to feel better. We're hoping that we're going to feel better. We're hoping that we're going to see some results from all the training that we're putting in. Absolutely. And I think one big thing that's going to help a lot of people out here is writing down what you're doing. We've talked about this before, but when you're cutting, right, you know, when you're bulking

and you're eating in a surplus, you can kind of go into the gym every day, every week. And because you're working with such a nice surplus of calories, you can just like on a shoulder press one week, you're doing 40 pounds for three sets of eight. And then the next session, you're like, wow, that 45 went up pretty easily. Wow, I did four sets. I'm not even feeling tired because you're just eating in such a surplus. You have all this extra energy to work with. So you can kind of just go about things willy nilly. You know what I mean? Not really write things down that much, but when you're cutting, you kind of want to, you, you need to know what you were doing when you were bulking first off,

but also your head's going to get to you because now you are working in a deficit for many, most of your training days. Um, that fatigue does get to you. And if you're just going in the gym and doing what you do based on how you feel, well, this is the thing. A lot of days you're not going to have it. And a lot of days you're going to need to know what you need to do to really try to progress. And if you're just going by feel, you'll be like, oh, it looks like I did enough today or that was enough training volume or that was enough weight that I was trying to move. And if you actually wrote it down, you might notice that you move substantially less volume than you were before.

And you should have pushed yourself more. But because you're going the way of how you feel, there was no metric to actually make progress. So this is why I think all of you, no matter if you're working with somebody or if you're doing this on your own or you're just going off of a program that you got from a website, write that stuff down. Have a log because that log is going to allow you to make sure that you're not totally losing so much progress that you were making in the past. I think that's huge. Being able to keep track of a little bit of what you're doing. As Nseema said, sometimes it's demoralizing. You're like, what am I doing? You might go to the gym and get pinned by a weight on a

bench press or something and be like, fuck this diet, man. I'm going to switch things up. But just recognize you're in different places at different times. And it's because you have different goals. And it's kind of hard to chase after two things at one time. If you lose considerable amounts of body weight, you are going to lose some leverage and you can prevent losing all your leverage by holding onto your muscle mass. And then also you can regain your strength because a lot of strength comes from the adaptation from your nervous system and not necessarily just your muscular system. But I wrote down a couple of things and Seema, maybe you can add to some of this, but you know, we're after muscle tension and, uh, you know, there's many ways of, of getting, you know, some good muscle tension

on your body, uh, without necessarily, you know, using weights that are like earth shattering, you know, and here are some exercises I think are good, uh, to kind of keep in mind. And then also I'll say that you might want to look into doing some negatives. You don't have to go like really slow in your training, but just lowering the weights really slow. If you're doing a curl and you curl the weight up towards your shoulders, as you go to lower it,

maybe you lower it down for a four count or so. This is going to help increase muscle tension, help make the exercise a little bit more difficult, but you can get more out of using less weight. And you can do that on any exercise. You can do it on all your exercises if you want to for a while. Maybe when you switch back to a bulk, you work on maybe lifting more explosively or a little faster. But here's a couple exercises, a farmer's carry, a suitcase carry, any form of deadlifting. I usually prefer to recommend people to do a partial range of motion deadlifts.

I just feel that they're safer. Um, nothing wrong with a regular deadlift. They're great. Um, but if we're really just trying to preserve some muscle mass and just trying to be jacked, we don't necessarily, in my opinion,

don't necessarily have to deadlift off the floor all the time. If deadlifting for some reason really taxes your back, you might want to try a trap bar deadlift. Those are fantastic. So any type of bench pressing I think is a good idea because now it could be dumbbells. Some people I know that shoulders might bother them when they're doing a regular bench press. You can also do like a pin press where you're pushing off of a pin. Again, it's a partial range of motion.

The reason why I think a bench press is a good idea is because normally you can handle a decent amount of weight in something like a bench press. The barbell exercises, we're going to be able to handle good amounts of weight. So I'm recommending bench pressing in some form, deadlifting in some form, and squatting in some form. Those are the standard kind of big three. And a couple other things that kind of stick out would be dragging a sled, which dragging a sled is amazing because anyone can do it. It has restorative properties to it to where it can help your knees and help your hamstrings, and it can really pack some mass onto your gluteus maximus,

which we're all after. Right. And so those are some of the exercises I kind of came up with that I think would be great to help you kind of increase muscle tension in your workouts. Yeah. I really like, and when I do all my movements these days, like there'll be sometimes like maybe I'm doing a trap bar deadlift or something and I will purposefully go towards being as explosive as possible. or something and I will purposefully go towards being as explosive as possible. But when it comes to all my, my isolatory exercises,

I know that I could move more overall volume if I took things fast, meaning that if I had a pair of fifties and I was shoulder pressing and I just wanted to move it as fast as possible, just boom, boom, boom, I can get more reps. I'd probably be able to get maybe 15, 18 reps. And I've never seen you, I've personally never seen you do anything that's out of control.

So you're moving explosively, but you're still controlled, and the eccentric portion of the lift is still somewhat in control, right? Absolutely. That's why when I'll do a shoulder press, even though everyone's like, you want to move as much training volume as possible, I will slow that movement down. So I feel everything. I think one thing that people might miss a little bit when it comes to maintaining and maybe even building muscle is that you really want to feel that specific muscle working,

even though you might be able to move heavier weight on a shoulder press. And if you do it more explosively, you'll be able to hit 80 90 i'd much rather perfectly honest just move 60 slower and feel more of my shoulder working than moving 80 pounds as explosively as possible um i think that that that plays a big role because you when you when you see bodybuilders like people that are focused on bodybuilding a lot like you've seen jay cutler like bench four plates for multiple reps, et cetera. But at the same time, it doesn't matter.

Jay's always moving that four plates. Super controlled. Even when he gets to his last hard reps, it's still, and he doesn't explode it off of his chest. He controls it off his chest and he racks the weight. They look to feel everything where they're trying to work it. So I think that all, all dumbbell movements, cable movements, etc. can be great,

but you want to pick movements that you can really feel that muscle being worked and connect with it. Last thing I want to add for Andrew Pops in here is just any form of any type of weighted carry. So I did mention like a farmer's carry, but you can carry like a med ball. I mean, you can carry water jugs at your house. I mean, the amount of different things you can kind of come up with is huge. You can walk with some weights on your back. Whatever way you got to find a way to do some weighted carries,

Stan Efferding has been promoting that for a long time. Really great for bone density and really great for just helping with hypertrophy. Is there any room for something like dog crap training or like circuit training in this sort of to achieve the goal that you're mentioning here? You know, dog crap training is something where you're usually, you know, you're trying to lift with a pretty damn good intensity. So yeah, I definitely think there's room. There's room for all kinds of stuff. i think i think in general like what i would like to see most people do and you know uh people could argue this but like i

would like to see people have a main intent of the day like a focus a main intention of a particular exercise and that could potentially be dog crap but i wouldn't really want to see people start with that i think that's a better place to kind of finish yourself off like i can just give you a quick workout real real easy thing that someone could do is like you can go in the gym and and work on some squats and uh do uh i don't know two to three heavy sets of four to six repetitions good uh eccentric on the way down kind of a slow control eccentric on the way down and then you can do your dog crap stuff on a leg press and you could be done with legs there's no reason to really maybe you finish with a farmer's care or something like that is a lot of that's a lot of work that's a lot of volume and you would see great progress from that absolutely um i have a question for you let me ask this so when it comes

to what movements wipe you out just like over the years, you're just like, I do this, I'm fucking wiped. I would say that the only time I really get my ass handed to me, and this might be a reason why I was never great at it, is deadlifting. And I really had a hard time. I would deadlift kind of heavy, and then I would like a rep scheme after going heavy and I actually found for me like I just for whatever reason it just didn't work you know somebody would prescribe something to me and they'd say hey you know go do three sets of three and you're done with those you know three sets of three maybe do uh do an am rap or something it was so hard for me to get be able to do anything at the am rap so i just i really i should have probably

taken my time and should have gotten myself more conditioned to it but i would say a deadlift was like the one thing that would really whoop my ass so i asked you that and this this is the thing i want people to really pay attention to and then i want you to analyze yourself when it comes to yourself when working out for me deadlifting doesn't wipe me out at all like i feel fine after deadlifting heavy just like for some reason the deadlift isn't a tiring exercise for me. But I know that it would probably be better if I'm cutting. It's taxing enough that I would rather do lighter weight with a deadlift and control it, do controlled eccentrics or do controlled pauses with a lighter weight so I can still get in some deadlift work and then still move really well to the rest of my workout. And for anyone who's trying to go on a cut,

rather than trying to keep your deadlift volume up, if you still really want to deadlift, like Mark mentioned at the beginning, do partial range of motion deadlifts or do another variation that might be easier, like the trap bar or even like just lighter, but lighter, slower deadlifts to the control eccentric do something like that so you can still get in that stimulus it doesn't fatigue you so much

that now you're too tired to get through a good workout because at the end of the day you're looking to get in a really good workout and if you're doing movements that for you personally wipe you out and you're trying to cut but you need to get in all this volume from other movements. You need to, you need to either adjust those really fatiguing movements or not do them and go for something else that works the same muscles. And what, so before I ask this next question, if you guys are digging this topic, uh, let us know, slap a like button or hit the like button and slap a comment down below. And got all tongue twisted but what should um i guess what's the metric like is it the scale and if it's the scale as far as like you know progress i know you're talking about uh lifting and i think you know you said write stuff down

and so you should be progressing that way but should the scale i mean is it going to stay the same should it be going up a little bit should Should it be going down? Is it just hovering between a certain weight range? I think like what's the look you're trying to go for? You know, if the look is you're trying to go for somebody that you see on IG with a V taper, then do it in SEMA recommends all the time. You know, use the scale, use the mirror and also measure, right? Yeah. And you know, a good example of this is, uh, we know this guy, Brian Boudreaux, right? I'm working them right now and we have been close to the same weight for 11 weeks, same weight, but his body's different. Like he was mentioning yesterday that he put his shirt on and he, he, uh, another guy we have to have on the podcast. That guy's lost a hundred and something and he looks fucking awesome looks amazing but at um i think he's early 40s um he was like but i noticed something he's like he's like i was looking at my my lat and i was like that's my lat like that's my fucking lat and this again this is this is this is 10 weeks right and we haven't

changed the weight right his his scale weight is changing, but his performance in the gym is getting better because he's eating enough food to fuel performance and his body is just transforming. Right? So, so that's the thing. It's like, you got to use the metrics in the gym. If you're trying to cut and you have a lot of weight to, you have a lot of fat to lose. Um, yeah, you do want to see the scale go down over time, but if you start to see your performance really dip in the gym really quickly, that's, that's a sign that you might be eating way too little food. You might've put yourself into too large of a deficit. Um, or you might not even want us to go down this rabbit hole, but you might be doing too

much work in the gym as you're cutting. And then you can't recover from session to session. That's another thing you got to be careful of. You want to do enough work where every workout's good and somewhat progressive, but you don't want to be doing too much where you can barely get in a good workout the next day. If you enjoy training frequency, then, you know, cut back on the duration of each time the exercise, you know, just don't have it be, have it run too long. Before we cut out of here,

cause we're doing some shorter episodes nowadays and make sure you share this with somebody, uh, that, you know, you know, has some of these goals and maybe there's somebody that is trying to be too skinny that's around you. Remember there's no skinny champions. I got that from Dan green and I think it's a good, I think it's a good point. Um, but Brian told me a secret about in SEMA. I maybe, i maybe no maybe we should wait i'm curious what it is maybe maybe i shouldn't say what do you think andrew i'm i'm now now i have blue balls so okay tell me the secret all right well here goes so brian has been working on some keto products and he's making these cookies yeah and i've tried some of the cookies and they're delicious. And he just, the thing is too,

is he keeps making them better and better. He's like, oh, here's this one, here's that one. And he just over the weeks and over the months, he's been working his ass off. I know he started a website and stuff like that and he's getting it going. We'll share it all with you guys. As soon as my man has his everything together

and he's totally ready for orders, we'll unleash that beast on you guys. But he's making these really delicious cookies. Yeah. And he made all these different flavors, right? Well, my boy and Seema starts helping him with some programming and stuff. And Brian's like, man, I'm super excited, man. I want you to try these cookies. And Seema's like, sure, man.

All right. Sounds good. cookies and seaman's like sure man all right sounds good so brian gives him like three of every flavor that he's created over the last year and a half and uh brian like you know leaves and seaman a message or something or they communicate about it somehow and he's like um he's like yeah man you know whenever you get a chance you know give me feedback or whatever and seaman's like yeah man i ate them all already he's like you ate all of them in the same day maybe like nine cookies or something like that and sema's like they were damn good man so i ate one i was like what's the other one tastes like oh great what's the other one tastes like it's like the oreo

effect that we were talking about you can't just have one sleeve well this man's making some healthy snacks but the problem is they're too damn good yeah what are we gonna do when he starts having like a plethora of those around oh it's gonna be rough for us he's gonna make us fat anyway uh you know i i guess we should finish off just by kind of mentioning like maybe a little bit more specific diet just so that people have an idea. And Simo, what would you kind of recommend? You know, somebody that's let's just let's just throw it out there. Somebody wants to lose.

They're looking to lose about 10 pounds of fat and they just want to hold it together with their muscle mass. Okay. So about how long would that take and what would you recommend diet wise? 10 pounds of fat depends on where you but let's just say it's an average person trying to lose 10 pounds of fat. I think that you should give yourself, honestly, you should give yourself maybe 16 to 20 weeks to do it because you're not trying to lose a pound a week. You can, but you're not trying to.

The reason you want it to be a little bit less than a pound a week and maybe some weeks you're staying where you are is so that when you're actually continuing to drop weight, you know that muscle's being maintained. If you make sure that you have the concepts of eating enough protein that we've talked about, getting enough training stimulus in, and also, we kind of touched on this, but you want to make sure that you're also getting in training frequency, meaning that you're not hitting a body part once, especially not in a cut. You don't hit chest on Monday, then hit it again next Monday. Because let's say that you hit chest on Monday. It goes through its whole process of recovery

and then potential growth. And now, but you're continuing to eat in a deficit for the next few days. That's too long between you gave it more stimulus. You need to give it stimulus to stay. So hit each body part two times a week, give yourself 16 to 20 weeks. And then if you're actually trying to figure out

your calories, there's a lot of different calorie calculators out there. But I always mention this to people, since I don't have a calorie calculator on any website, go to the Precision Nutrition Calculator. If you're trying to set your numbers and do all that, because this can be done, it's hard to do this intuitively. So I'd say go there, input your stuff and just start there. So I'd say go there, input your stuff and just start there. Start with the calories it tells you and only maybe chill in a 10 to 15 percent deficit of calories. I know you hate tracking, but it's like if someone's really trying to be a little bit regimented with it and they don't know exactly what they're doing in nutrition, they're just trying to focus on losing fat. There needs to be a little bit extra precision there. They need to know what they're doing. They need to know what's going on. They need to know, you know,

where they're heading and to be able to kind of see their progress and track their progress and have something to kind of relate it back to. I think, um, an interesting thing about you is when you mentioned, when you lay out these weeks and when you're talking about like your, uh, you're talking about jujitsu and you're like,

yeah, I would like to be in this position, you know, five years down the road. I remember you saying that like like as soon as you started jujitsu, you said it early on. I think most people, most people, they don't want to have that diligence. But the diligence is is critical. And there's a saying that says diligence is the mother of good luck. And there's a saying that says, uh, diligence is the mother of good luck. Like if you pack, if you pick away and pick away and pick away and pick away, luck will land in your fucking lap like all the time.

And then people would be like, Oh my God, how do you get so lucky all the time? Or those talk about your genetics. And it's like, no, man, I just, I just have really been taking my time with a lot of shit. And I know it doesn't sound amazing to you know lose two pounds a week uh you know but when you do so over the course of uh or if you lose a couple pounds a week and you do so over the course of 20 weeks 10 pounds of fat on somebody that's um on somebody that's let's say 20 body fat you're gonna look so different oh Oh, yeah. You're going to look, it's going to be insane. You're going to look so fucking different.

And how many people do we know that are kind of in that category? They don't quite have a bicep vein yet type of deal, but they train hard. Like we know so many people that are, they're way into training. They are working on their diet. They're really just, they're putting their best foot forward and they're working hard at it, but they could just push a little bit more. They could be a little bit more diligent. And rather than thinking about, they want to lose 10 pounds by, uh, you know, they want to lose 10 pounds in one month. It's like, let's stretch that out a little bit longer and see if we can get you to lose 10 pounds in the course of maybe three months. Yeah. Something like that. 10 pounds in the course of maybe three months. Yeah. Something like that.

Andrew, want to take us on out of here? I will. Again, if you guys dig today's episode, please make sure you share it with somebody. I love what you said, Mark. Let's not be skinny. That's somewhere where I've been and I don't recommend it to anybody. Being skinny to lose weight, it just fucking sucks. So don't be there.

And instead, yeah, get jacked. And one of the best ways to do that with nutrition and everything that we talked about today is with eat right foods uh check them out links to them down in the youtube description as well as the podcast show notes again eat right foods.com promo code power project 25 for 25 off your first order and code power project for 10 off every order after that follow the podcast at mark bells power project on instagram at mb Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ and Seema. What's up, dude? And Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube,

and Seema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark. Andrew, I got a question for you. What do I do? Because we got to make all these podcasts long, right? It's just the way it goes. Yeah. I think that when people have body fat on them even when it's

not a large amount even when it's not an amount that anyone can detect if someone's in just a you know regular t-shirt it's like not a big deal but for you have you ever said to yourself uh you know i i can't do that because that's going to make me fat. Have you ever told yourself, like, I'm fat? Have you ever kind of, have you ever thought that? I know that you know that you're not fat overall, but have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt fat or told yourself that you're fat and then, like, tried to do the opposite of what we would say, you know, being fat

is, it would be to be skinny. I don't think so. No. Um, I, I know like I, I'm self-conscious about like having like a majority of my fat, like in my belly. So like taking my shirt off and stuff like was never a thing. I didn't, I wouldn't do that. But like as I'm sitting down, like I would always try to lean back.

Why wouldn't you take your shirt off? I was, I didn't like my body. I was skinny. Like I know skinny fat's not a real thing but like i was skinny arms skinny like i had like a reverse chest where i had like no pecs and i had just spine like i know you guys know what that looks like but then i had this big old pot belly sounds attractive to me it's horrible i'm getting it sounds like a fucking lab rat. Hey, Mark. Chill, man. Gotta get my tracker keeper over my... Could Mark stand up in front of the class and do your presentation?

Fuck, right now? I don't feel so good. But yeah, so that would never happen. So I would be conscious of my belly, but I never would say I was fat. And I never thought about losing fat. What about some of the process more recently of how you're eating? Not now, but like a couple months back when you're thinking like, I want to look like some of the people that are on the podcast. I want to look like some of the people that I see that are like shredded.

It was, so I tracked everything because I wanted to make sure I hit my protein and my caloric goal. And then I wanted to make sure I was, uh, expending enough energy to make that a deficit. So I was always chasing a deficit. So that way, when I'd wake up in the morning, regardless of what I looked like, if that scale said, let's say I'm going for 170, uh, if it said 172, I'd look in the mirror and be like, Nope, doesn't look good today. If it said like 168 or something, I'd be like, yep, we're getting there. And I'd be backward, like not backwards, but I just, I would, you know, that's a, what like body dysmorphia. And, um, I just, I wouldn't, I just would have the wrong mindset. I, yeah, I asked that because I just think it's really important.

I think a lot of people, they kind of view themselves as they maybe don't think that they're fat necessarily, but they think they're not happy with the way their body looks, and they're just continually trying to make themselves skinnier. So if it happens for somebody like you that is 6 186 yeah you know if happens yeah that's great body weight but if it happens to somebody in that body weight range imagine you know what's going on in the mind of someone that's 230 and has a little bit of extra or even heavier right so i think that's where most people are at and they're just thinking i gotta get skinnier i gotta get skinnier i gotta get skinnier but you just start wasting away at some point. Yeah, and what did we learn

the first time that I shredded down for a photo shoot? It was just like, whoa, dude, you actually had a lot of fat to burn, you know,

and like that was, obviously like what we're just saying right now, it was definitely shocking to me, but even you, you were like, well, I guess you had a lot more fat

to burn off than we thought. I remember that. Yeah. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. I think you already said your bit, right? Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength.

Catch you guys later.