Should You Lose Fat, Build Muscle, or Maintain? (Nutrition & Training Audit) | Ep 315
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Feeling stuck between competing fitness goals? Unsure whether to focus on fat loss, muscle building, or maintenance?
In this episode, I share a real live recording of a 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment with Sam, who wasn't sure which direction to take her fitness journey next despite already establishing solid nutrition and training habits.
Sam has made impressive progress with her nutrition and training habits but struggles with competing goals: wanting to build muscle and improve bone density while maintaining the lean physique she worked hard to achieve.
Having previously reached 14% body fat, she loved how she looked and felt, but found this difficult to maintain long-term. Now at 18%, she's hesitant about entering a building phase that might push her away from her aesthetic comfort zone.
You'll discover why the choice between building muscle and staying lean doesn't have to be binary, and how finding the right balance can transform both your physique and long-term health.
Main Takeaways:
Why "aggressive maintenance" might be the perfect approach for building muscle without sacrificing leanness
How to increase training intensity to improve bone density and muscle growth
The importance of strength-focused training versus hypertrophy for overall health outcomes
Why adding just 50-100 calories can make a significant difference in your body's ability to build muscle
Timestamps:
0:01 - Why you might be torn between competing fitness goals
4:11 - Bone density, muscle building, and training intensity
12:04 - Choosing between maintenance, fat loss, or muscle gain
15:44 - Why small calorie increases help with building muscle
19:44 - What is true maintenance?
21:51 - Improving bone density
The Right Time to Cut, Build, or Maintain—and How to Know for Sure
You’ve cleaned up your nutrition. You’re training consistently. You’ve even dialed in recovery and started tracking data. But you’re still asking the one question that seems to haunt every lifter at some point:
What should I do next—lose fat, build muscle, or maintain?
This episode of Wits & Weights gives you a front-row seat to a real 15-minute coaching call that answers that exact question. Sam, a listener with solid habits and experience, wants to know what phase to pursue after already hitting 14% body fat, feeling confident, and then regaining a few pounds. The result? A powerful, nuanced strategy that might help you finally get clear on your own path.
Let’s break it down.
Why the “Next Phase” Dilemma Is So Common
Here’s the truth: you can always make a case for fat loss, maintenance, or building muscle.
You might want more muscle mass and strength
You might want to stay leaner and feel comfortable in your clothes
You might just want to do something new to break the monotony
But the best decision starts with clarity. And that comes from:
Knowing your long-term why (health? confidence? strength?)
Understanding your set point and current biofeedback
Accepting the trade-offs that come with any goal
In Sam’s case, she’s already experienced what 14% body fat feels like. It was empowering. But it also took work to maintain—and she wasn’t sure she wanted to live there year-round. That’s the kind of honest reflection that needs to happen before you jump into your next phase.
What Is “Aggressive Maintenance”—and Why It Works
One of the core ideas from this conversation is something I call aggressive maintenance—which is basically a lean gain or body recomp approach with the smallest caloric surplus possible.
You’re training with intensity and progressive overload
You’re tracking data like body weight, energy, and strength
You’re increasing calories slightly—maybe 50–100 kcal—to provide just enough energy for growth
You’re aiming for a slow drift upward in weight over several months (think 0.15% of bodyweight per week)
This is a sweet spot for people who:
Are already lean or metabolically healthy
Don’t want to do a full bulk but want to gain some muscle
Prefer to avoid fat gain and are patient enough to play the long game
It’s also a great way to develop nutritional skills like managing food intake with more flexibility and learning how to eat for performance.
Why Training Intensity Matters More Than You Think
Sam mentioned she’d been active for years, but only recently started pushing intensity—moving from an RPE of 4 to more like 6 or 7. To truly grow muscle and build bone density (her goal after a recent DEXA scan), you have to train at a higher intensity.
That means:
Moving toward RPE 8–9 on your main lifts
Choosing weights that make you doubt whether you can finish the set
Progressing your strength, not just doing more reps
This is where a structured strength program comes in. You don’t need to kill yourself with volume or chase soreness. You need consistent progressive overload with big compound lifts (squat, press, deadlift, pull). And you need to track it.
What About the Scale and Body Fat?
If you’ve ever hesitated to eat more because of the scale creeping up—even if you know you should be building—you’re not alone.
But as I told Sam, maintenance is a range, not a single weight. A swing of 2–3 pounds in either direction is totally normal. The goal during aggressive maintenance is to see a very slight upward drift over time, especially if strength is improving.
You’ll also want to measure other data points:
Strength progress
Waist and other measurements
Recovery markers (sleep, energy, HRV)
Subjective feelings of motivation and drive
The real transformation happens before it’s obvious in the mirror.
Why the Right Program Is Everything
Sam is following a functional bodybuilding program, which is great for movement quality and hypertrophy—but maybe not ideal for prioritizing strength and bone density. I suggested a hybrid or powerbuilding approach:
Start sessions with a main lift (squat, bench, deadlift, press) in the 4–6 rep range
Follow up with 1–2 variations or developmental lifts
Finish with isolation work or accessory volume in the 8–15 rep range
This still builds muscle. But it prioritizes strength, which in turn supports everything else—including aesthetics.
If your bones and joints matter to you—and they should—getting stronger is non-negotiable.
Maintenance Isn’t Stagnation
Choosing not to cut or bulk doesn't mean you're spinning your wheels. In fact, maintenance done right is often the most strategic thing you can do:
It teaches you to train hard without the distractions of dieting
It improves your relationship with food and your body
It sets the stage for better results in your next fat loss or building phase
And when you're ready, a small caloric increase (50–100 kcal) and a focus on performance can push you into a lean gain without sacrificing confidence, clothes that fit, or summer plans.
The key takeaway?
You don’t have to diet or bulk to make progress. You just need a goal, a strategy, and consistency.
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Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
What should you do next? Build muscle, maintain your current physique or cut body fat? Today's episode will give you clarity, because you're going to hear a real-time rapid nutrition assessment call with someone who's made really impressive progress but now faces that familiar quandary what is my next phase? We are going to talk about an approach that honors both your aesthetic goals and long-term health, especially bone density. Approach that honors both your aesthetic goals and long-term health, especially bone density. You'll discover why intensity in the gym might matter more than calories, how to break through training plateaus without compromising results and deal with what feels like competing fitness goals so that you can move forward with confidence.
Philip Pape: 0:52
Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip Ape, and today we are featuring another recording from a rapid nutrition assessment call with someone who is weighing different options for their next fitness phase. Now, these are just 15-minute calls that I offer for free to help people identify their key roadblocks, create a plan moving forward. It's not a sales pitch. You can use the link in the show notes anytime if you want to schedule one with me, and today's conversation with Sam perfectly captures the struggle that many of us face wanting to build muscle for health and strength while maintaining a lean physique that we worked hard to achieve. And what makes this really valuable, I think, is that, sam, she has already established some solid nutrition and training habits, yet she still needs guidance on an optimal path forward. We always need support and guidance at these forks in the road, no matter how much knowledge we have, no matter how much we've been there before. I have coaches, I have systems that help me as well, and I feel like these calls will give you a way to do that. So, whether you're currently in a similar position as Sam or you know, you'll be there one day. I think the insights from today's conversation are still going to help you navigate what to do next in your fitness journey with a bit more clarity.
Philip Pape: 2:08
Thanks, sam, for setting this up. I know you've been listening to the podcast a while, so you also have a lot of knowledge and experience. You mentioned that you're looking at counsel on what phase to go into next. Right, should you build? Should you maintain? Should you do fat loss? Um, and let's see. I, it says here, you've invested time in nutrition and fitness coaching with great results. Give credit for being dialed in in the behaviors, to the behaviors we care most about. So those would be the big pillars we talk about a lot and, um, I can make a case for each of the three options. We all can at any given time. Every day I'm thinking about these three options myself.
Philip Pape: 2:45
I'm like because are you the type of person who just loves to push a little bit and kind of vary things up?
Speaker 2: 3:06
nerd out on this stuff. I have really good systems in place and I frankly do get a little bored and restless. So I, like I probably too often kind of reconsider the plan, like, oh, does it need tweaking? Does it need tweaking? And a lot of times the answers just stay the course. But that's sort of what I want to talk about is like am I just being restless and a little, you know, do I need to just kind of settle in? But I do think it's helpful for me to hear what I'm settling into and kind of for the right reasons.
Philip Pape: 3:32
So yeah, and you hit the nail on the head by saying the right reasons, because usually what I come back to is the front of the loop and the back of the loop. The front of the loop is like envisioning your future self. Why are you doing this? What does it look like? What are you actually trying to achieve? Like, what is the real reason here, the purpose driving you other than short-term? Yeah, I like up a good project, which is also acceptable, and then and then, um, knowing that you've been through this before, you know there's some level of, I'll say, discomfort, um, in change. And so what's going to give you the most momentum toward that goal in the next, say, six to 12 months? So how does what resonates with you there?
Speaker 2: 4:11
I guess I'm I'm torn because one of your first questions always is, and ought to be, like what's your goal, what are you working towards? And kind of what's your why for that goal Right? Kind of what's your why for that goal right? Like fair questions, I think I'm torn because I want to build muscle and I particularly want to get my bone density score higher. I had a recent DEXA scan.
Speaker 2: 4:35
This is very much on my mind, so I know what's needed in order to do that. I need to push it in the gym more, just as some very quick backstory on gym training. So I would say for many, many years I've always been a very fit and active person, but for many years, kind of in my twenties and thirties I'm now in my late forties, I would say my RPE during workouts, bar cycling, hiking, that kind of stuff my RPE was always like three, four. You know it's kind of mild to moderate. I would say the last two to five years I've gotten much more comfortable with being in like a five six zone and now I'm looking, I know I need to move more into an RPE of like seven, eight and nine in the gym, particularly around strength training, if I'm going to move the needle on building muscle. So I've recently started following a program I really like I don't know if you know Marcus Philly functional bodybuilding.
Philip Pape: 5:37
Yeah, I know, I don't know that specific one Continue.
Speaker 2: 5:40
He's great. He's kind of an ex crossfitter who's really come up with a lot more kind of sane approach to weightlifting and a lot of mobility work. So anyway, I really like his program. I'm weightlifting currently four times a week, but I know the direction I need to go in has a lot to do with increasing intensity, so, like when it comes to the muscle building and the bone density piece, I kind of understand how to do that.
Speaker 2: 6:06
I think the part that feels like maybe I'm torn about is I also would like to have um, lower body fat than I currently do and, um, this is the part that I just sort of not sure about. I'm currently sitting at 18%. Last year I had done a fat loss phase and I got down to 14%. I felt amazing. I felt shredded, I felt strong, I liked how I looked in clothes, I felt confident, and that was a very hard place to stay.
Speaker 2: 6:41
In the course of a year I've put back on seven pounds, not through being slovenly or not moving. I've been constantly active and training, but I do think my body kind of likes to sit where it always kind of has and to go down from there requires a caloric restriction at being in a calorie deficit, but it comes with, I think, a pretty good feeling, and that's where I get torn. Okay, you might tell me, in order to put on muscle, you've got to go into a build. And I'm kind of sitting here going. I feel really ambivalent about that because I'm already at the top end of my weight range. If I just start kind of increasing calories, even in a slow and steady way, I might feel a lot of discomfort with that, and I so. Anyway, I've said a lot.
Philip Pape: 7:36
No, you said a lot of great things on a lot of really good points, so I took some notes, cause there's different things we should cover here. Um, let's start strategic. Let's start strategic. Let's start high level. When you talk about discomfort and top of your range and all of that, it's very personal, right? I always tell people how do you know you're ready? You just know that you're kind of uncomfortable where you are and you want to go the other direction. Having said that, one question I always like to ask is besides a seven pound weight gain, have you ever intentionally tried to build muscle, or even been training to build muscle and slowly gained weight?
Speaker 2: 8:09
besides that, no, I've never gone into a caloric surplus, um, I have only ever been at maintenance and trying to add muscle or been in a deficit and trying to add muscle trying to add muscle, or been in a deficit and trying to add muscle.
Philip Pape: 8:27
Okay, and you mentioned that when you got shredded it was hard to maintain, which means your body set point might float a little bit higher than that, which is totally normal, especially when you're talking 14%, which when I always subtract 10 to think of a man, it was like 5%. It's very lean again, not right or wrong, but it makes a lot of sense. So I would first ask and rule out or accept in is there a really driving reason to get shredded?
Speaker 2: 8:52
right now? Absolutely no, none of that. It was just a feeling of confidence that I haven't typically experienced day to day. I really like how clothes fit. I liked how I felt naked, frankly, like I just felt comfortable, strong and confident. So, but no, there's no kind of event, there's no particular anything that's significant.
Philip Pape: 9:25
Okay. So the next thing I want to get to because I want to come back to the three options maintenance, fat loss, muscle building is when you talk about training intensity. I like that because sometimes we feel like we have to bring out the intensity or, like you said, you're not feeling like you're necessarily training as intensely as you can and you understand that that's important. How do you know? So this is kind of just putting you on the spot how do you know you're training intensely or not?
Speaker 2: 9:53
One obvious side effect for me is getting a little sore at times. I would say when I've been weightlifting before exercising, kind of prior to this year, last year, I didn't experience soreness kind of ever, and now I'm trying to feel it a little bit more the next day as some biofeedback, like hey, your body responded to what you did yesterday. So that's one thing. I think the other thing is, mentally, when I'm choosing a weight that I'm doubting can I do that, that's usually an indicator that I'm stepping out of my comfort zone.
Philip Pape: 10:31
That's a good one.
Philip Pape: 10:31
No, I like that right, because sometimes it is about making the attempt regardless.
Philip Pape: 10:37
So what I think of when you say you're doing four days a week and it's kind of a bodybuilding thing, is um, when I work with a beginner who's never lifted before, for example, we're going to use like a very simple strength based program I deal with barbells if they have it, if not, we can use dumbbells, and I would I would actually use a program that involves pushing load and only load and not reps or rep ranges, not even rep ranges. Right Sets across like starting strength, something like that, only because it basically tricks you into getting more intense, like, involuntarily you are going to, it's going to get to a point where the RP is getting to six, seven, maybe eight or even nine. Um, assuming you don't push, you know the load too much from one session to the next, cause that's one of the variables. You don't push, you know the load too much from one session to the next, because that's one of the variables, and so have you. Have you done like a focus to strength?
Speaker 2: 11:26
training. You know, push the numbers type program A little bit. I wouldn't say program, but like. So part of the help and the coaching that I've gotten over the course of the past 18 months was I worked with a trainer so that I could feel what it felt like. Well, first of all I wanted to get like really good form, but I also wanted to feel what it felt like to go somewhere I hadn't been before with someone watching, because I was scared.
Speaker 2: 11:50
It brings up a lot of fear in me to go to like seven, eight, nine. So not a program per se, but I've, I've done, I've had some rehearsal with what it feels like to kind of push and get uncomfortable.
Philip Pape: 12:04
Okay, and now this segues then into the phases. Because if you're in a fat loss phase, you know a bodybuilding style program can be great because it's auto-regulated right, like you can adjust um, you can be, you can push intensely, even if your strength isn't necessarily increasing, and hold on to muscle. But that that's. That's. The goal is to hold on to muscle, which it sounds like you've kind of already gone through. That Um, I'm leaning, like for you more toward maintenance, recomp, man, maybe muscle building. I know you came with maybe some preconceived notions like he's going to tell me to gain Um, and obviously it I don't. I'm not going to tell me to gain Um, and obviously I don't. I'm not going to force you to do anything, obviously. But where, where, where the options are, are um maintenance right? If, if your body fat is in what you think of as a healthy range and your training is progressing, um, that could be a really beneficial place to be, because then you can, I'll say, chase the numbers in the gym. You can chase the progression in the gym as your like metric, and not worry about body weight, body anything really. Just, yeah, I take body measurements once a week, things like that, but you can just focus on the growth and the energy and the performance without pushing yourself to that level of, like my clothes don't fit, discomfort, self doubt, looking in the mirror and but also not worried about like, starving yourself to get to it. I'm not saying that's what you did, but there are sacrifices in both directions. Um, the pros being that you know the pros of that approach being you could potentially gain some muscle with minimal fat gain. It's very flexible for your life. You could just live and enjoy the summer which is coming up right without feeling uncomfortable in a bathing suit. Uh, if, if you have the occasional high stress or other demanding things in your life, it's, it's great Cause you're energized, right, yeah, the really only downside it's going to be a little slower. The visual changes are slower. It requires a little more patience. Um, I like to track even more precisely in maintenance, just cause it's, you know, sometimes hard to tell what's going on without doing that, but it's a great place to be. So that's one option.
Philip Pape: 14:00
The other option when we talk about muscle building is if you're willing to accept a little bit of fat gain, knowing that you can really pack on some more lean tissue so that later lean phases you can get, say, shredded at a higher body fat, with more food, with higher calories, with less impact to your hormones, less negative biofeedback. It's a short-term kind of trade-off for that, right, where the benefit that you go after and you focus on is on chasing the strength and size, and size in a good way, right, because I know some people and women you know chided that thought of bulkiness. You upgrade, upregulate your metabolism, you know you potentially eat more food which helps you develop that skill of doing that in a controlled way. Uh, the cons, of course. Now you're going to have a little more fat there and maybe psychologically run into some issues. So, having said all this, is there a place that you're leaning toward so far, or do we need to drill in a little bit more?
Speaker 2: 14:58
I guess it's one thing I feel a little bit uncertain about, and maybe the whole answer is like I've just never really pushed to a level of intensity where the muscle building is really like alive and well. So I think that like that is a place to really put my focus, like that is something I can control, is like regardless of you know, we're really only talking about like 50 more calories a week, if I do the math, kind of the way that I think you counseled prior clients to do um, which is not significant at all, but the bigger kind of lever it feels like right now is okay, really committing to the training yes and if I did that at maintenance, just to see, like, does that move the needle at all?
Speaker 2: 15:44
And the hypothesis is that a little bit more food would be the variable that would like move the needle a little bit more. Um, I still don't entirely understand why that's the case. If my protein is really high, which it is right now, and I'm training intensely, what would just a little bit more food do? Can maybe you address that piece, because that would help me make sense of the delta between maintenance and a little bit more.
Philip Pape: 16:16
Yeah, I mean, I think of the body as a system and you've got lots of mechanisms going on, like just now sitting there, right, you have so many mechanisms with your hormones, um, keeping you alive, with your organs. Organs actually are very hungry. People don't realize that, and when you're at, let's say, you're at true maintenance exactly the maintenance you need you have everything required to maintain homeostasis and that's where your body likes to be. And so if you go into the gym and you hit it hard, your body, let's say, has to hit a decision point. Do I devote some of the resources coming in to build that muscle by sacrificing storage of energy, which is like a survival mechanism, or do I just, um, maintain what's there and it's?
Philip Pape: 17:04
And here's the thing there's a lot of debates today about whether maintenance is really all you need. I think what it comes down to is the experienced folks, the trainers and lifters out there who are talking about this. They really know how to stay on that aggressive side of maintenance, which is kind of like. You mentioned 50 calories. To me, that's like almost maintenance, right, even though you might be more petite and a lighter body weight. That's why your calories needs and now it can go out and give you um, the, the amino acids you know, devoted to structural build, building of the muscles, and and it's a fine threshold. Because if you, if you're not quite at that threshold, it's still like maintenance and then your body is just kind of floating. And if it's well beyond that, you know, the more you go, the more you're likely to hit that maximum. But then you keep going and you're going to gain more fat, right? That's why we're trying to find that spot. So I don't know if that explained it for you.
Philip Pape: 18:04
It's, I guess not well understood as the exact mechanisms. Why?
Speaker 2: 18:08
No, but I kind of think about it almost from like a resources perspective, that like when resources are scarce, obviously your body is going to try to hold on to it. When resources are just plentiful enough, you're going to kind of stay as things are. But you kind of have to move into like a little bit more of this surplus for your body to be able to release and like to kind of change its focus somehow.
Philip Pape: 18:32
Yeah, it's a prioritization.
Philip Pape: 18:33
And also because you're leaner, you don't have excess energy and so your body, like the hormonal signaling, is even more errors on the side of homeostasis, of holding onto that energy.
Philip Pape: 18:46
So it's kind of like a slight disadvantage that leaner folks have. Right, if you were overweight or even just a little bit, had a little bit of extra fat, your body would perceive maintenance as still potentially a surplus because of the extra fat storage you know it's. It's all just a net energy system to think of it that way. So that's why I do like for you since you basically laid out your thoughts uh, an aggressive maintenance which would be like a lean gain of like uh, 0.15% body weight a week, let's say around that range which would gain very little scale weight over a meaningful period. Like you could do it for six to nine months and you're not talking about a lot of pounds, right. But you give your body the best chance to build. And what's neat about that too, sam, is even though how do I put this there's a chance for some recomp as well while you're doing that, right, meaning because you're in that safety point. Your body might then release some more fat anyway as part of that process.
Philip Pape: 19:42
So kind of interesting place to be.
Speaker 2: 19:44
Yeah, okay, um, and then just last question, in terms of like knowing I'm really at maintenance, I'm looking at my trend weight and so over the course of from Jan one to now, it has fluctuated within four pounds. So some weeks it's up, some weeks it's down. The weeks it's down it's often deliberate, it's not accidental. I'm like, oh, I didn't like the spike from a couple weeks ago. Let me kind of pull my calories down a bit. But within that four pound range, do we tend to think of maintenance as a range or do we tend to think of maintenance as, like within a pound, like a very kind of tidy little unit?
Philip Pape: 20:24
No, the former, yeah, the former. Um, two or three pounds plus or minus is a good. You know, the lighter you are, the smaller the absolute number, but, like for most people, it's like two to three pounds in either direction. So you're talking about like a six pound swing. So you've been a maintenance. That's what I would say. If I saw your purple graph, it'd be like kind of right in that window, right, yeah, yeah, in which case then, a dedicated lean gain should see a very slight drift upward over time. You know, um, the the what.
Philip Pape: 20:51
So here's an interesting, since you've never done this on purpose, um, one of the challenges you might run into is your metabolism responds upward and you fall behind and you're actually no longer in aggressive maintenance, and so you kind of have to get it and look at your expenditure and see how it's trending.
Philip Pape: 21:07
If it starts to take off like really steeply, I would usually advise getting ahead of that by eating more, you know, just to kind of avoid a plateau, because the plateau is just kind of wasting time. If you know, just to kind of avoid a plateau, cause the plateau is just kind of wasting time, if you will, at maintenance. Um, and then the training side. This is really up to you. But, um, if you've never done like a super meaningful strength training focus, I would. I would bias your program toward that where you have either full on main lift focus or a hybrid like what they'd call power building, which is main lifts with some bodybuilding but like focused on the heavier side, especially when your concern is bone density you know you're saying versus hypertrophy versus just hypertrophy or just like eight to 12 rep range type stuff, not to say.
Philip Pape: 21:51
I mean, you probably have heard the science by now. There's a lot of flex in all of that and you could have a hypertrophy bias. In a strength program, for example, you might have one lift that's a main lift and you you do it in like an eight to 12 rep range but then you'll progress over time to like a lower rep range as it gets heavier and it becomes strength, but then it cycles back to the higher rep range as it gets heavy. Um, you can do more of a pot, power building, which is like I'm going to do a main lift, heavy, I'm going to do a support main lift or developmental lift. So you might do like a squat and then a sumo deadlift and then two or three bodybuilding style, right.
Philip Pape: 22:29
Or you could do just straight up strength, where it's like I'm going to do three or four main lifts and variants of main lifts, all compound lifts. You know I'll do a, I'll do a squat, I'll do a sumo, I'll do an RDL, maybe one bodybuilding support thing and call it a day, but like they're all pretty heavy, right, how do you? How do you do? You have a trainer that's giving you a program now, or what are you following?
Speaker 2: 22:50
No, I'm. I bought Marcus program and so following it I move every day of the week, but I'm weightlifting four days. It does tend to be the higher rep range stuff which I was thinking about more like from an aesthetic perspective, looking like I lift, which is always like a fantasy, but you're saying from a bone density perspective, especially thinking about going heavier and not being as hemmed in by those higher reps.
Philip Pape: 23:20
Yeah, it's. It's mainly for that, because your strength and function and bone density is all I think. I think that's like priority number one. Did you listen to my recent episode, strength versus hypertrophy? Yeah, I mean, maybe re-listen to that Cause, then you kind of hear the logic and the progression of it yeah. Yeah, re-listen to that, because then you kind of hear the logic and the progression of it. Yeah, yeah, re-listen to that one.
Philip Pape: 23:44
Um it all works, I'll say, Um, but I like efficiency, you know. Yeah, yeah, Me too. If you can get super strong, it can then translate to having more confidence and higher lifts with your hypertrophy work Also. Doing it that way gives you even more idea of intensity and training close to failure. Yeah, Because when it's five reps for three sets and you can only do five reps, you're up there like RPE eight maybe and you feel it and you know what it's like. But it also won't necessarily make you sore. But for the first time you do it right, Because the body adapts quickly and maybe learning to not necessarily chase soreness but really chase growth is the way to go.
Philip Pape: 24:26
Anyway, I think you have a good. I think you have a good plan aggressive maintenance, um, strength focus. Obviously, if you need specific resources, I've got plenty. I can send you some of our workout programs or point you to some trainers that I like for that Um. And then, since you're already using macro factor, you know how to set that up. So I think you're golden. What?
Speaker 2: 24:44
do you think I feel great. I mean, I'm just basically listening to your podcasts as like a little coach in my ear and trying to make adjustments, kind of based on what I'm hearing and learning all the time. Um, so I'm going to, I'm going to try this out and I might come back to you at some point and just sort of say I think I'm ready to do more of a build, but I'd like to kind of partner and have somebody helping me do that. Just cause that every time. You know it's like the first time you do anything. Sometimes it's helpful to have a coach A hundred percent.
Philip Pape: 25:16
There's so many things. You don't know. You don't know.
Speaker 2: 25:18
That's where I like to put it.
Philip Pape: 25:20
So now you're now you're playing offense, now you've got some good data to get started. I'm really excited for you because it's you've got so much like potential there. I just know it, I can feel it. You have a great attitude and I think you're you're committed and you're going to make it happen. So awesome, sam.
Speaker 2: 25:34
Okay, awesome Phil. Thank you, I so appreciate your time.
Philip Pape: 25:37
Thanks so much. You know how to reach me and have a great day. Enjoy your time in New York and we'll talk soon. Thank you, sounds good, take it easy. All right, and that was my recording with Sam and if you found value in that, if you want your own personalized guidance, like Sam received for your situation, I invite you to go ahead and book your own free 15-minute rapid nutrition assessment with me. Don't be shy, I'm a nice guy, I'll make you feel at ease.
Philip Pape: 26:02
It is not a sales pitch. Basically, it's us talking about the thing holding you back right now, whether it's nutrition, what to do next, your training, really anything and give you some targeted, actionable steps in a fast-paced 15 minutes. So to schedule it, use the link in the show notes or go to witsandweightscom and click the button at the top. Again, no sales pitch, just some guidance from me to you to help you achieve your goals more efficiently. All right, so as we wrap up, I think the most exciting thing about my conversation with Sam and hopefully you got that as well is just focusing on the fundamentals, the pillars right, progressive overload, proper nutrition, consistency with your habits.
Philip Pape: 26:40
You're gonna transform yourself without anything radical. You just need to know a direction and then a consistent plan to get there, knowing there will be deviations along the way, and that's totally okay. Your metabolism's very adaptable, you're very adaptable. So get on that and also schedule your call if you think it'll be helpful. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember that the most powerful fitness tool it's not in a supplement, it's not in the latest YouTube workout program. It is the intelligent application of effort where it matters most. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.
