Stop Switching Exercises Until Changing THIS First (Tolerance Analysis) | Ep 240

Are you quick to abandon exercises that don't feel quite right? Maybe bench press bothers your shoulders, rows don't hit your back, or squats just feel unstable.

The typical advice is to "just find another exercise." But before you give up on a movement that could be great for your goals, there's an engineering solution you need to try.

You'll learn how the engineering concept of Tolerance Analysis reveals why small, systematic modifications can transform problematic exercises into some of your best movements - all while maintaining proper form principles.

Discover how to methodically test exercise variations, know exactly which variables you can adjust (and by how much), and determine when modifications will work versus when you truly need a different exercise.

Whether you're dealing with discomfort, poor muscle engagement, or exercises that just don't feel right, this episode gives you a systematic approach to optimize movements for YOUR body.

To build your best physique through proper exercise technique (including free form video checks!), join our free Facebook community at facebook.com/groups/witsandweights

Main Takeaways:

• Maintain fundamental movement principles while making small adjustments

• Use systematic testing to find the right variations for your body

• Small, precise modifications often make the biggest difference

• Know when to modify versus when to move on to different exercises

How Small Exercise Tweaks Can Transform Your Workouts

Frustrated with an Exercise? Don’t Quit Yet—Try This First

If you've ever found yourself struggling with a lift—like bench presses irritating your shoulders or squats feeling unstable—you might be tempted to swap it out for something else. But before you abandon a valuable exercise, consider an engineering-inspired approach: tolerance analysis. This method helps you systematically adjust movements while maintaining proper form and focusing on your goals, so you can get results without giving up on the exercise itself.

In Episode 240 of Wits & Weights, we explore how tolerance analysis, a precision method engineers use for design adjustments, can enhance your training. Here’s how this approach could be the key to getting more out of movements you thought were off-limits.

What Is Tolerance Analysis, and Why Should You Use It?

Tolerance analysis is a technique from engineering that defines an acceptable range for modifying a design without compromising its function. Think of it as a checklist for making small adjustments that keep the core function intact. In strength training, this applies well because certain elements of a lift, like the movement pattern, need to stay fixed, while others, like grip or stance, can vary slightly. By knowing what to tweak, you’ll find that “sweet spot” where the movement works for you instead of against you.

Fixed Elements vs. Modifiable Adjustments

Start by getting clear on what must remain constant in any lift to maintain its effectiveness:

• Movement Pattern: Stick to the fundamental motion, whether it's a squat or press.

• Target Muscles: Focus on the correct muscles that should be engaged.

• Joint Alignment: Keep joints in safe alignment, like a vertical bar path during squats.

These are the foundation of your lift, so keep them intact. Once these elements are in place, you can move on to adjusting other aspects.

1. Identify the Modifiable Variables

When you need to fine-tune a lift, start by experimenting with one of these variables at a time:

a. Grip Width

• For a bench press, adjusting your grip can change which muscles are targeted. A close grip hits the triceps, while a wider grip emphasizes the chest.

b. Hand Angle

• Small shifts in hand positioning, like using a neutral grip instead of a pronated one, can reduce strain, especially for those with shoulder issues.

c. Range of Motion

• If you experience discomfort at certain points of a lift (like at the bottom of a bench press), consider limiting the range of motion slightly to avoid joint stress.

d. Tempo and Speed

• Slowing down the eccentric (lowering) phase or pausing at the bottom can enhance control, prevent injury, and provide better muscle engagement. For example, pausing during a squat or bench can build joint resilience.

2. Test One Adjustment at a Time

Just as an engineer would, focus on changing only one thing at a time:

1. Try a grip adjustment on the bench press, like narrowing the grip to alleviate shoulder stress.

2. Observe the impact on comfort, stability, and muscle engagement, and document the outcome.

Isolating one variable allows you to zero in on what works and ensures that the exercise still feels natural without losing the intended benefits.

3. Know When It’s Time to Change Exercises

If you’ve exhausted your adjustment options and the lift still feels uncomfortable or ineffective, it may be time to try a similar but different exercise. For example, if bench pressing continues to aggravate your shoulders despite adjustments, consider switching to an incline press or using dumbbells. Recognizing your limits is crucial to prevent injury and maintain consistent progress.

The Impact of Small Adjustments

Tiny changes, like stance or grip, can have an outsized impact on how a movement feels. With tolerance analysis, you’ll find options you hadn’t considered before, making lifts you once avoided feel accessible and even enjoyable.

So, before scrapping an exercise, give this framework a try. You may find that the right tweaks make it not only doable but effective, letting you keep progressing toward your goals.

Key Takeaway

By using tolerance analysis to make minor but impactful adjustments, you can keep movements effective without compromising technique. When you stay patient, adjust systematically, and track results, you’ll open up new possibilities for each lift, unlocking gains you didn’t know were possible.

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to hit follow and leave a review on Wits & Weights. Until next time, keep using your wits, lift those weights, and remember—sometimes, a small tweak makes all the difference.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're struggling with an exercise that just isn't quite working maybe bench press bothers your shoulders, rows don't engage your back properly or squats don't feel stable and you're thinking about abandoning it completely for a different movement hold up. There's an engineering approach that could save that exercise while maintaining perfect form, and today I'm revealing how engineers use tolerance analysis to make precise adjustments to complex systems, and how you can apply this same method to modify exercises without compromising proper technique. Get ready to learn a systematic approach to exercise modification that will unlock better gains for movements that you thought you couldn could do. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape. Now, when an exercise isn't working perfectly, the easy answer is let's switch to something else. Let me just give up and try something else. But what if you could systematically modify that movement, while maintaining proper form and principles of movement, to make it work exactly as intended, so you don't have to abandon it? Today, we're exploring how engineers use tolerance analysis to make precise adjustments within acceptable ranges. Again, you don't have to be an engineer to understand this stuff. I really try to simplify it for you and show you how to use these frameworks to optimize exercise and exercise selection, even when it's not quite clicking for you right now, as always, before we get into it. If you're enjoying the show, if you want more content on building muscle, losing fat, like today's engineering approach, and you're not gonna find this anywhere else, go ahead and hit the follow button right now. It will help more people find the show, but also ensure that you never miss an episode. All right.

Philip Pape: 1:59

So what is the problem we're talking about today? It's something I see all the time with my clients, but I've experienced it myself, having come through shoulder recovery over the last year and wondering can I even do this movement? And, if so, do I need to modify it? Because we don't want to be in pain, we don't want to feel like we can't make progress, and so when an exercise isn't working perfectly, most people usually fall into one of three traps. They either keep forcing themselves to do it anyway, even though they're not getting results and that could be dangerous if it's even causing pain, for example or they start randomly trying all sorts of modifications. All at once, they change a whole bunch of variables their grip, their stance, their angle and they don't really have a plan for that or, most commonly, they just give up and switch to a different exercise. So the real issue is not the fundamental movement pattern itself.

Philip Pape: 2:52

We're going to assume that your strength training for progressive overload, for progressive loading, and you have a decent understanding of how to lift weights and you understand the value of proper form, proper form principles, like maintaining a vertical bar path when you're squatting, or engaging your back instead of your arms when you're rowing or doing a pull down. These are universal principles. They are not negotiable. The problem is finding the right variation within those principles that works for you and your body right now, at this moment. Don't get frustrated or discouraged.

Philip Pape: 3:23

This is where the approach I'm going to share today is going to come in to help you. It's called tolerance analysis. Now, in engineering, tolerance analysis determines the acceptable range for modifying a product or item or design while maintaining the core principles or core specs, core specifications. Right, think about if you had to make a critical part for an engine. The width might need to be exactly 10 millimeters, because that's an important criteria, but the height could vary within certain limits without affecting performance. So the same concept applies perfectly to exercise modification.

Philip Pape: 3:59

Some aspects of a movement are fixed right, like the vertical bar path in a squat. We want that to be non-negotiable. In fact, even having that midfoot center of gravity, you know, within a tiny tolerance, those are the core specifications that we don't change. But other elements have ranges where you can modify them, and so the key is understanding which is which and then how far you can adjust those, while keeping the exercise true to its intended purpose and getting what you want out of it right. Like when you squat. Chances are you're trying to get bigger legs and it may be a specific muscle group quads, hams, you know, glutes but that's that's the purpose of it. So let's just break down systematically how to modify exercises using this framework.

Philip Pape: 4:42

All right, first, you have to be crystal clear on the parts that don't change what is the movement pattern you're going for? Which muscles should be engaged and triggered and targeted? What say joint alignments have to be maintained, right, if you're doing a hinge, trying to do a deadlift. There's a principle there that is a non-negotiable. So you've got that in place right. Let's say it's a um.

Philip Pape: 5:10

Let's go with a bench press right, because I've had shoulder issues and a lot of you listening probably have issues with your shoulder. When it comes to bench press, what are you trying to do? Well, you're probably trying to target the pecs right, the chest muscles, but also the triceps, and you know it depends on the grip and everything else what you're going to target. But there are a lot of variables that you can adjust and still get incredible growth in those few areas that you're going for with the bench press. And so what can you adjust? That's what we have to identify. So with most exercises, you have a few variables to work with. You have grip width.

Philip Pape: 5:47

So think about let's focus on the bench press. You could go with kind of the standard grip, which is a fairly wide grip but not super wide. It's wide enough where your forearms are vertical at the bottom, all right. But we can go narrow, which you see with a close grip, bench press, hence the name. It's gonna target the triceps. You can go much wider, which is more like a power lifting kind of width which shortens the range of motion. So that that's one thing you could change width, and that applies to presses, that applies to pulls, like you could change width on a lot of exercises.

Philip Pape: 6:17

The next variable is your angle of your hands. So think about we often don't even think about our hands. We were like, okay, it's a bench press, it's a straight bar, so my hands are just going to be facing forward, which is effectively pronated. If you were standing up, that's what it's called facing forward. But what if you used a multi-grip bar that lets you have a neutral grip? Right? What if you use a pull-up bar that lets you have a neutral grip? What if you use a trap bar for your rows instead of a barbell to have a neutral grip and for shoulder issues? That can be a huge difference. Just that slight change. What about a lat pull-down? Slight change. What about a lat pulldown? Look at all the attachments you could have for lat pulldown. You don't have to pull down with a pronated grip. You can have a neutral grip pulldown or even a supine like slightly underhand, slightly angled grip with these special attachments. You know the V grips and such that have different angles. There's a lot of different angles you can work with without changing anything else how far you move through the range of motion.

Philip Pape: 7:15

And I say it that way because there is a full range of motion and if you're going for the normal traditional movement. You want the full range of motion. Get the most muscle group muscle engaged, muscle fibers engaged through the lengthened and shortened parts of the muscle. But you might not find that super comfortable for certain movements. Take bench press again If you've got shoulder issues, the very bottom of the muscle. But you might not find that super comfortable for certain movements. Take bench press again If you've got shoulder issues. The very bottom of the movement might be so much of a rotation on your shoulder, there's too much stress there. And so that's where you can say, okay, should I come down almost to that level, but not quite, by using pins in the rack right, more of a rack press than a full press? Should I use a pause at the bottom? Actually, that's a different variable. Let's hold on that. Should I use a slingshot? So it takes some of the load at the very bottom, knowing that I still get to push through the sticking point and work the pecs.

Philip Pape: 8:06

So think about range of motion. You know something like a what do you call it? A barbell row. You know traditional row is fairly bent over. You pull back with your back, um, but you can come up to a higher angle and do more like, like uh, what is it called Yates row where, um, it kind of changes the range of motion a bit as well in the angle. So that's another variable.

Philip Pape: 8:28

Then we have the speed or the tempo, and here you have tons of options. My two favorite options are pause, okay, pause at the bottom of the movement. So pause at the bottom of a squat, a bench, pause at the bottom of anything. Pause at the bottom of a bicep curl. It actually makes a massive difference. It makes it harder, yes, meaning you're going to have to drop the weight, but don't let your ego get in the way, because it could give you much more growth by doing that. Pause and protect your joints and tendons. So think about that.

Philip Pape: 8:57

We also have another way to modify tempo is slowing down the eccentric and exploding on the concentric, like when you're doing dynamic effort movement or compensatory type acceleration, or just just don't get hung up in all the terms. Let's just say a bench press. You come down nice and easy to the chest, you pause for a good one, two count and then you explode up. You might find that feels great on your shoulder, right? Let's say, doing a seated overhead press using a multi-grip bar, right? See, you can get creative and combine these in any different way, but I would only change one thing at once. What else can you change? Your stance width, you can change your stance width, or, on the squat, you can change the heel raise If you're wearing squat shoes or putting plates under your heel. I was trying to help somebody with a front squat and they were trying to front squat barefoot and I said let's just throw some rise under the heels, either standing on plates or wearing squat shoes. And all of a sudden I was like, oh great, now the bar isn't trying to pull me forward, it feels much more comfortable and now I can do the movement. All right. So it's a lot of different things that you can change without actually changing the fundamental movement pattern. I think that's incredibly powerful. It really is. Those are your modifiable specifications. All right, now, when you have that, instead of being overwhelmed.

Philip Pape: 10:19

This is where the engineering mindset comes in Don't change multiple things at once. You want to isolate one variable Again, just like an engineer would isolate one thing at a time. So, going back to the bench, press right. The core principle here is maintaining that consistent bar path with stable, tight shoulders, a slight arch, feet driven into the ground, right, all of those are going to be fixed. And then you change one thing I'm going to bring my grip closer, or I'm going to keep the grip with the same, but I'm going to switch to a multi-grip bar and have a neutral handle and try that and see how it feels, see what the difference feels like. Do it in your warmup both ways and just see how it feels. And then know that you might have to reset a bit on the load, because it's kind of a new movement to your body, but it's a sort of variety that can actually help quite a bit and might translate to the main movement pattern and make it feel better as well in some cases.

Philip Pape: 11:18

Okay, so this requires a little patience, a little experimentation. You know, starting with a small change and keeping everything else the same, and then paying attention. Is your shoulder discomfort relieved, while you're actually able to get the movement in? What about an incline instead of a flat? What about a steeper incline, right? So there's a lot of things that you can change. Make sure to write it down, make sure to log what's happening. Note it in your notebook or app for your workouts. Find that sweet spot where the movement feels better but still accomplishes its intended purpose.

Philip Pape: 11:51

Now the critical piece here is you need to know when you've reached the limit of that modification. Sometimes, despite your best effort, you've made all these changes, it doesn't solve the root movement problem or it starts to compromise form. That's when you have to admit hey, maybe I just want to switch to a different exercise. Maybe I do, maybe I just do want to have a completely different exercise. And in the case of bench press, like going from a bench to a incline, that's technically a different exercise, right, even though they're kind of different angles of the same thing. But you've got to be open to those kinds of more dramatic changes if needed, right. Sometimes you have to redesign the system rather than just modify the piece.

Philip Pape: 12:31

Now, the fascinating thing about this approach that I've been actually using a lot lately. I've been thinking how do I change my grip width, how do I maybe different straps that I'm using, equipment that I'm using? It reveals that small, precise adjustments actually can make a huge difference. They weren't feeling it and all we did is we. We changed the hand angle right, or we adjust the the shoes or um chain, even changed a cue. We were, that's more of a form issue and that tiny change made the difference, and now something that they dreaded and did not look forward to now becomes potentially a cornerstone of that muscle development group. You know, like back development, whatever it is. Like back development, whatever. It is Not reinventing, but finding the variation that allows you to perform it as intended. And that's it. That's it for today. That's really what I want to tell you is think about the creative ways that you can modify your exercises to keep using the same movement patterns.

Philip Pape: 13:29

And, of course, if you found value in today's episode again and you want more content, please hit the follow button and let other people know. If you want to go an extra step and support me, I would love a five-star rating and review in Apple or Spotify. Not enough people do that, even if they follow the podcast, and if you're a super fan, or even a somewhat fan, and you love it and you think it's worth sharing with others, please go ahead and leave a review. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember that sometimes the perfect exercise is just a small modification away. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

The Lifter’s Guide to BFR Training for Muscle Growth, Rehab, and Recovery | Ep 239

Are you curious about blood flow restriction (BFR) training but unsure how to get results? Or have you tried it and felt it fell short of expectations?

Philip (@witsandweights) dives into a complete, practical guide to incorporating BFR training for maximum muscle growth. He breaks down the science and technique behind BFR, sharing tips on equipment selection, limb placement, and programming that ensure your BFR efforts pay off. Plus, he has a free, downloadable guide on BFR training with protocols, exercise examples, and templates you can start using today.

💪 Download your free Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Training guide or go to witsandweights.com/free

Today, you’ll learn all about:

2:59 What is BFR training?
6:40 Equipment and cuff setup for safe, effective BFR training
11:58 Key mistakes to avoid and recommended rep protocol
16:45 Integrating BFR as a supplement to heavy lifting
20:45 Recovery benefits and advanced applications for BFR
23:27 Outro

Episode resources:

• Download your free Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Training guide or go to witsandweights.com/free

The Ultimate Lifter’s Guide to Blood Flow Restriction Training for Muscle Growth

Blood flow restriction (BFR) training has been making waves in the fitness community as a game-changer for muscle growth, rehab, and recovery. In this post, we'll explore how to effectively incorporate BFR into your training routine, addressing common mistakes, the science behind it, and how it can complement your existing workout strategy. If you're looking to enhance your gains while reducing joint stress, you’re in the right place.

What is Blood Flow Restriction Training?

Blood flow restriction training involves using specialized cuffs or bands to partially restrict blood flow to your limbs while performing resistance exercises. This technique allows you to lift significantly lighter weights—typically 20-30% of your one-rep max—while still stimulating muscle hypertrophy. By creating metabolic stress within the muscle, BFR training can help you achieve similar muscle-building results to traditional heavy lifting but with less strain on your joints and central nervous system.

Why Does BFR Training Work?

BFR training leverages the body’s physiological responses to lighter loads. When you restrict blood flow during exercise, it leads to the accumulation of metabolic byproducts, which signal your muscles to grow. This method can also decrease the risk of injury, making it particularly beneficial for those recovering from injuries or looking to maintain muscle mass during deload phases. In essence, it’s a strategic way to enhance your training without compromising your body’s integrity.

Setting Up for Success: Equipment and Execution

To get started with BFR training, having the right equipment is crucial. Avoid cheap elastic bands that can’t provide consistent pressure. Instead, invest in high-quality BFR cuffs, like the ones from Smart Tools, which can be accurately inflated to the recommended limb occlusion pressures. For arms, aim for 50-60% of your limb occlusion pressure (LOP), and for legs, 70-80%. Start on the lower end if you’re new to this technique to ensure comfort and effectiveness.

Common Mistakes in BFR Training

1. Using Too Much Weight: A common pitfall is letting your ego take the reins. Stick to the prescribed light weights—this isn’t the time to impress anyone at the gym.

2. Insufficient Training Volume: Follow the classic BFR protocol of 30-15-15-15 reps with short rest intervals. This volume is essential for maximizing muscle gains.

3. Overusing BFR: Don’t replace all your lifts with BFR. Use it as a complement to your heavy lifting, especially for accessory or isolation movements.

4. Improper Exercise Selection: Focus on isolation exercises like bicep curls, leg extensions, and tricep extensions. BFR is most effective with these types of movements rather than compound lifts.

Programming BFR into Your Routine

Integrating BFR training into your existing workout plan can be seamless if you know when and how to use it. Here are three optimal scenarios:

• As a Finisher: Add BFR to your workout as a finisher after completing your main lifts. This is a great way to enhance muscle pump and volume without additional strain.

• During a Deload: Substitute some of your regular lifts with BFR to maintain muscle stimulus while allowing your body to recover.

• When Dealing with Joint Issues: If you have nagging pains or are recovering from an injury, BFR can allow you to maintain training intensity without further stressing the affected joints.

By following these guidelines and incorporating BFR into your training two to three times a week, you can enjoy the benefits of enhanced muscle growth, improved recovery, and less joint strain.

Conclusion

Blood flow restriction training is a powerful tool for any lifter looking to maximize gains while minimizing injury risk. Remember that it’s just one part of a comprehensive training strategy, and when used correctly, it can be incredibly effective. For a deeper dive into the protocols and tips discussed, don’t forget to download my free comprehensive guide on BFR training.

In this episode, I provide a complete guide to using blood flow restriction training to maximize your muscle growth, whether you're working through an injury or just looking to enhance your routine. Don’t miss out—click the link in the show notes to grab your free BFR training guide!

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you've been curious about BFR training but aren't sure exactly how to implement it, or maybe you've tried using blood flow restriction but haven't seen the muscle building results you expected. Today's episode is for you, because I am breaking down exactly how to incorporate BFR training into your program for maximum muscle growth, from selecting the right exercises and equipment to programming it alongside your heavy training. You'll learn why so many lifters get subpar results from BFR and, more importantly, how to avoid those mistakes. Whether you're dealing with an injury, looking to add training volume without beating up your joints, or just want another tool in your muscle building toolbox, this episode will show you exactly how to make BFR training work for you. You exactly how to make BFR training work for you. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape. I recently had BFR expert Nick Colosi on the show this was a few weeks back, episode 235, to discuss the science behind blood flow restriction training, and everybody really loved the episode. The response was incredible. It's not something I had talked about before and many of you wanted to learn more about exactly how to implement BFR into your own training. We kind of teased you here and there in the conversation with Nick, but today I wanted to give you exactly that a complete, practical guide to using BFR training for maximum muscle growth. If you are already lifting weights. We'll explore everything from proper setup and exercise selection to how to program it alongside your regular training. Because that's what it is it is a compliment. It is not intended to replace your primary lifting. Plus, I'm going to share the biggest mistakes that I see lifters make with BFR and, of course, how to avoid them. And to go along with today's episode, I've put together a free, comprehensive, downloadable guide called Blood Flow Restriction Training. Just for you, it includes detailed protocols, exercise examples, programming templates that you can start using right away. To get your free copy, just click the link in the show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash free. Again, that's a free BFR training guide. There's a link in the show notes or you could always go to witsandweightscom slash free. Find it there, along with a ton of other guides that keeps getting expanded over the years that I add to it.

Philip Pape: 2:21

All right, let's break down the BFR training into four segments today. First, I'm going to quickly recap what are we talking about? What is BFR? Why does it work? Especially if you missed the interview with Nick, of course I'm going to link that episode in the show notes so you can go and listen to that. Second, I'm going to go over the proper setup and execution, the technical details that you have to get right when you are using these. I've been using them personally for about three years, so I have quite a bit of experience. Third, I'll share the common mistakes the most common mistakes that I see lifters make with BFR and how to avoid them. And then, finally, I'm going to dig into some of the programming so that you can incorporate BFR systematically into your existing routine. All right, let's start with a quick refresher For those who might have missed my interview with Nick or just want some more details on how this works.

Philip Pape: 3:07

Bfr training blood flow restriction training involves using specialized cuffs. There are bands that you can tighten around your limbs, but I don't recommend them because they are hard to get the right pressure. So usually you want some sort of cuffs, and there are multiple brands on the market. I'm going to tell you which one I use, and the idea is those cuffs partially restrict blood flow, while you're then able to exercise with much lighter weights. And I do mean much lighter to the point where if you've got an ego, you tend to be a little bit embarrassed when somebody sees you hammer curling. You know 20 pounders. I'm talking to guys you know my size who are used to curling. You know 50, 60, 70 pounds in an arm. You go way down from that. So wherever you normally lift, it's going to be a small fraction of that because of the limb occlusion is what it's called 20 to 30% of your one rep max. If you need numbers Again, you might be thinking like how is it possible to then build muscle with such light weights?

Philip Pape: 4:02

You talk all about heavy lifting and lower rep ranges and you talk about strength. You know building strength. So here's where it gets interesting, because I think this is all consistent with what we know about mechanical tension, lifting heavy training close to failure and by close I mean two to three reps or more from failure. We don't often have to go all the way to failure, but here's how it works. From failure. We don't often have to go all the way to failure, but here's how it works by restricting blood flow while keeping the weight low, we create metabolic stress in the muscle far beyond what you would get without that restriction. And then this triggers many of the same muscle building signals you'd get from heavy lifting, but without say the joint stress and the central nervous system fatigue. Now, some of those things are beneficial, not necessarily joint stress per se, but central nervous system fatigue, neuromuscular adaptation all of these are important for heavy lifting, which is why I never tell you to replace heavy lifting with this at all, and Nick didn't either when I interviewed him last time.

Philip Pape: 4:59

But think of it like this when you do a heavy set of squats, you're creating mechanical tension, right, and you're creating it on that, what some people call effective reps, but they're the reps closer to failure. And we're learning more and more. I think Michael Zordos just released the huge meta-analysis that you could be pretty far from failure and still get hypertrophy and still get pretty good results, but it doesn't necessarily give you the most results in terms of strength as well. That's why you still use the range of two to three reps from failure. So when you're doing a heavy set of squats, let's say three sets of five, you know it shouldn't be a grind necessarily, but maybe the last rep of the last set is a grind, but for the most part you're getting close to failure, but not all the way, and that's one pathway to muscle growth.

Philip Pape: 5:46

Now, blood flow restriction, bfr, creates metabolic stress, which is kind of another pathway to muscle growth, but it's still related to the tension piece and what it does is it traps metabolites in the muscle, and there are a lot of theories that you know. Is it cause and effect? Like? Are the metabolites that you're creating in your muscle, lactate, for example, causing the hypertrophy? Are they just a side effect? But we do know that training in that way and this is why we like low reps and moderate reps and different types of tension for different types of exercises and movements to lead to gains through the different mechanisms that lead to gains and putting them all together. This is an argument for variety that lead to gains and putting them all together. This is an argument for variety, if I want to put it that way. This is an argument for variety, not for variety's sake, but to kind of make sure you're taking advantage of the various mechanisms that lead to strength and muscle gain. And here we're primarily talking about muscle, we're talking about hypertrophy. So that's kind of the basics Now I want to segue now into the technical details, that kind of make or break the results you get when you use bfr.

Philip Pape: 6:46

So you're not wasting your time. And I think the equipment is the most important thing to start, because with bad equipment you're just Setting yourself up for either injury or just not getting the results you want, or it's going to be super uncomfortable but not actually work. So I'm talking about those cheap elastic bands that you see on amazon. Okay, and I have a couple of pairs of those that I used for a while and I'm glad I went through that experience because then I realized how inaccurate it was. They're problematic because you cannot measure or control the pressure right and then they loosen up over time and your arms are at different pressures and maybe you can over-tight tighten it and so on. So I personally use and recommend BFR cuffs that you can either pump up to an accurate pressure measure in some other way or they automatically pump up right. They're definitely more expensive. They're electronic devices that have gone through some level of testing but they are safer. They are safer and they're more effective, which is what we need when we're lifting weights.

Philip Pape: 7:45

Really, that's the foundation of anything we do in the your limbs, your upper arms or your upper thighs, period. Do not put them on your forearms, do not put them on your calves. That is mistake number one that I see people make. I see way too many YouTube videos and shorts with people doing calf raises and they're placed just above the calves. And I think kind of what Nick said on the episode was it's all the same plumbing and you're actually increasing your chance of nerve damage by putting them further down, you know, distally on the limb. Put them proximally, at the very top. I shouldn't use those words because you're going to say, well, proximal to the calves is near the calves, okay, forget that, put them at the top of the limb.

Philip Pape: 8:41

So, upper arm, upper thigh, so if the arms place them as high as possible without hitting your armpit, that's all it is. I mean, basically, your armpit is a natural stop. And then for your legs, get them high as you can on your thigh and guess what, your groin, your crotch, is a natural stop. So get them pretty darn close to there and you're good. And then the pressure is crucial and that's why I like the auto-inflating cuffs you want. Otherwise your limbs are going to turn purple, you're going to completely cut off blood flow and it's not what we're going for. And, don't worry, you have a lot of tolerance on that. I mean a significant amount of tolerance on that.

Philip Pape: 9:13

So, if you're using proper cuffs, like the ones I use and yes, I use the one from Smart Tools, and Nick is the founder of Smart Tools, who I interviewed last week, but just so you know the order of events here, I've been using their cuffs for years. I then asked them to be on the show. They then sent me a pair of cuffs after that, which, of course, I'm not going to say no to that. So, yeah, I'm a shill for them, but I also use them. It's kind of like some of the other products I use that I promote because I use them. So I think it's perfectly aligned and these are the best ones on the market. Now they have different versions. Their latest version is quite expensive. I'll be totally honest, it's quite expensive. So they have a version three that came before that. I think they're version four now and it was version three. But whatever the previous version was is significantly lower in cost and I think they may even drop the price when the new one came out, and they're just as effective. They're just a little older, so the way that they get set up and everything is a little bit slightly more clumsy. But I used them for years and I thought they were great. Okay.

Philip Pape: 10:08

So, using cuffs like that, if you find others that auto-inflate, that you respect the company, you think they are tested properly, go for it right. And once you've got those cuffs, you're going to use about 50 to 60% LOP limb occlusion pressure for the arms. So the arms are 50 to 60% and then 70 to 80% for the legs. And if you're new to this, I would start on the lower end of those ranges because it could feel quite uncomfortable.

Philip Pape: 10:35

For me personally, the legs almost hurt. I know, I know they're not. It doesn't actually get to the point of pain, it's just so tight. It's like when you get your blood pressure and you're like, is this supposed to keep inflating? And then you're like, okay, I get it, cause it right around that point it's a. It starts to stop the calibration and say, okay, now we're at your limit, now we're going to dial it back to what percentage you want. So when it's calibrating it might feel uncomfortably tight, but then the actual limb occlusion pressure you select is going to be a little bit backed off from that. So 50 to 60% for arms, 70 to 80% for legs and start lower and build up to it. So that's kind of the details on that.

Shonnetta: 11:14

Hi, my name is Shawnetta and I want to give a big shout out to Philip of Wits and Weights. I discovered his podcast just a few short months ago, but I quickly realized how valuable his content is. With all the many fitness and nutrition influencers out in the world today, I often suffer from information overload, but Philip poses careful questions to his guests that get to the meat of the subject matter, while most everyone offers free guides to this, and that what I found most unique about Philip is his live training and weekly Q&A sessions. If I can't make it live, I can always catch the replay. I am very grateful to find someone I feel is so passionate and genuine to his purpose, while also being hands-on within the Wits and Weights online community. He is truly only a click away. Thanks, philip, for all you do.

Philip Pape: 11:59

Now I want to talk about common mistakes and then what to do about those, the solutions to those mistakes and these will improve your result. So the first one is going too heavy. All right, the first mistake is having an ego and thinking that, okay, I'm just doing bicep curls, so I'm going to go almost as heavy as I normally do. Don't do that. Don't do that. Remember, we are talking 20 to 30% of your one rep max. So if you can curl, let's say, 40 pound dumbbells for your working sets, you might use 10 pounders or 15 pounders for BFR. Seriously, I'm telling you, you got to check your ego at the door with this stuff. If anybody asks you to say, yeah, I'm doing rehab or I'm doing a warmup, okay, not that it matters, but, guys, you know what I'm talking about. Okay, the amazing thing is when you do that and I actually recommend going slightly lighter than heavier, because the protocol we're going to talk about is going to slam you because of the number of reps and you'd be better off starting that way and getting all the reps and feeling accomplished and then knowing what you can go up to, rather than going too high and then be like man, I can only get you know, half the reps I'm supposed to get, it is going to feel plenty heavy by the end of your set. In fact, just this morning I did hammer curls and I was right at the limit using 20 pounders and I actually fell a few reps shy on the final set because it was just so. There was such a massive pump and it was so tight. It felt great but also miserable in a way, and I'm being honest because this is not for everyone and it's not easy Like you think. Oh, lightweights, it's going to be a walk in the park. It's a different kind of hard, that's the way I can put it. It's a different kind of hard. Okay, so that's the first mistake is going too heavy. The second mistake is not using enough volume, and so if you stick to the classic protocol, you'll be fine.

Philip Pape: 13:45

The classic protocol is 30, 15, 15, 15, 30, 15, 15, 15, with 30 seconds rest between sets, super easy to remember, and that first set of 30, 30 is a decent amount of reps, but it still might feel a little bit easy, depending, right, if it actually starts to feel hard at rep 20, you may have selected too high of a weight. Go back to mistake number one and fix that. But it should feel kind of easy but a little bit hard, and then you keep going and by the final set of 15, you're going to feel it Like I said this morning. I on the third set I was like man, I could barely get the 15. And on the fourth set I think I got nine or 10 reps which I was fine with Like it was. I knew for sure that I had trained basically to failure. And they say you're not really supposed to go that close to failure. It should be where you could get all the reps with a little bit left in the tank. But we are talking isolation work, so it's probably not a big deal to kind of experiment. So that's the second one is not getting enough volume. So just follow the protocol 30, 15, 15, 15 with 30 seconds in between. And, by the way, when you're wearing the cuffs that I recommend the smart tools you could do a continuous mode or an intermittent mode. A continuous mode would be they stay inflated the whole time, so that's like hardcore all the way. The intermittent mode is they inflate for the set and then when you tell it the set's done, it will deflate for the rest and then reinflate. You just got to make sure to tell it to start again a few seconds ahead of time, so it inflates by the time the 30 seconds is done.

Philip Pape: 15:11

All right, the third mistake is trying to do all of your lifting with BFR. Okay, don't do that either. Don't think okay, I'm just going to switch everything to BFR. It's going to be a walk in the park and I'm going to get just as much gains. Because they just told me that you can get the same response as a heavy lift but with lighter weights. And the real answer is, first of all, that's not entirely true. Right, it's more of a proxy for that in terms of the metabolic stress, but it doesn't replace the other benefits of heavy lifting, and we talked about that on the podcast with Nick. So I would definitely check it out for deep dive on that subject.

Philip Pape: 15:45

But this is a compliment to your regular training. This is not a replacement for your training. You use it strategically for accessory or isolation work or, say, when you need a deload or when you've got a nagging injury or some pain, and you're able to work with lighter weights without the pain, and now you can add some difficulty to it with the cuffs. That's how I like it. So that's the third mistake. And then the fourth mistake is improper exercise selection. Bfr works best with isolation exercises, especially arm and legs, but it will work distally for your pecs, say on an incline bench, for example, or for your calves on a calf raise. But think isolation exercises, bicep curls, tricep extensions, leg extensions, walking lunges I mean, nick talked about all the use cases where you can do like Bulgarian split squats, walking lunges, just walking in general, or riding on a bike while wearing the cuffs. You can get very creative. So those are some of the mistakes people make and I think it's important to understand what not to do.

Philip Pape: 16:47

And then, finally, I want to talk about how you incorporate BFR into your routine. How do you program with it? And the first question to ask yourself is when should I use it? And I think there are three scenarios. The first is as a finisher after your main lifts. Right, I love finishers because it kind of makes lifting a little more fun. You've got lengthened partials, you've got myoreps, you've got rest pause, you've got all these fun ways to add finishers where you're just adding a little more volume without much stress, right, that's, you know, not only to get a pump, but really to get a little extra hypertrophy volume on the muscle group. So adding BFR as a finisher is a great idea.

Philip Pape: 17:23

Today I did standard bicep, barbell, bicep curls, you know, heavy, like sets of four to eight and then eight to 12. And then I switched to BFR for hammer curls with 20 pounders, where I normally would do the hammer curls with like 50 or 60 at lower reps. So that's a good way to do it. That's scenario one. Scenario two is during a deload, right During a deload, where you're dropping the intensity and you're dropping the volume, think creatively about okay, maybe I'll switch some of my normal exercises that I've been using and just switch them to BFR. That effectively deloads you on those lifts.

Philip Pape: 17:58

And then the third scenario is when dealing with joint issues, and I'm not going to define specifically for you what that might be. It could be a nagging pain or injury, it could be a recovery from surgery. For you what that might be, it could be a nagging pain or injury, it could be a recovery from surgery. It could be just too much stress on the joint fatigue, things like that and you just want to reduce loading in that area. But keep getting the stimulus, keep training. I love that, because then you're saying, look, I'm not going to give up, I'm not just going to rest, I'm going to keep moving and getting the blood flow, I'm going to get the blood flow, and it's a nice compromise or a nice trade-off, I should say. So that's the three scenarios.

Philip Pape: 18:32

As a finisher, during deload or joint issues, and then for a typical four-day upper-lower split just very common type of program the vast majority of people tend to run would look like this. So, on an upper body day, after your main pressing and pulling movements, I would pick a bicep and a tricep exercise, and that would be great for BFR, right, and maybe you want an extra one or two in there without BFR. That's fine, depending on how much time you have. But I would pick one of those isolation movements with biceps or triceps, do with BFR. Maybe it's overhead extensions, line tricep extensions, barbell curls, all the types of curls, so those would be a good idea there.

Philip Pape: 19:08

You could, of course, also incorporate it with like, say, decline push-ups or incline presses with light weights and dumbbells. For example, on lower body days, after your squats, after your deadlifts, after your big movements and accessories, I would choose one quad-focused and one hamstring-focused isolation exercise. So that could be leg extensions, hamstring curls. You might see people doing these with squats. I'm not a huge fan of that. Only because you probably should be getting your squats through main lifts that are heavier and because you tend to have to do a lot of reps with the squats, it ends up being more like a CrossFit workout with a lot of eccentric loading that makes you pretty damn sore the next day, and sometimes that's not what you want. You know, when we're lifting for strength and muscle you don't want to be overly sore, but I'm not discouraging experimenting with it.

Philip Pape: 20:01

Now, the other piece here is cardio. You can incorporate your BFR with cardio, like pushing a prowler going for a walk, and it should up the stress just a little bit without impeding recovery, and kind of enhance the rigor and the difficulty of the cardio and, should you know, burn some more calories. Give you a little bit extra cardio work. There's some correlation with a higher VO2 max for folks that wear BFR. It's a lot of fun ways to do this, and so get creative.

Philip Pape: 20:27

Again, use Google as your friend, reach out to me if you want more specific ideas, and I would say, go ahead and use it two to three times per week per muscle group. I mean no more than that really. I would pick one upper day and one lower day, and then maybe one other day where you use it at the most, and any more than that is probably not necessary and it could impede recovery and it could be taken away from your traditional lifting as well. So got to balance it in there All right. Now, we've talked a lot about building muscle today, but I've also found that BFR is incredible for recovery. Right, and that's one of the main reasons BFR even exists is for rehab and recovery. So you've had a tough training session, like a heavy leg day. The next day, doing some very light BFR work could actually reduce soreness and improve blood flow to the muscles. So think about ways to do that.

Philip Pape: 21:11

A lot of pro athletes use it for this purpose. When I talked to Nick, you know he worked with LeBron James on that, and if you download my guide, you'll see that the cover photo is, with copyright permission, a picture of the King right, king James using it on his legs to recover and he's reading a book or something on a stationary bike, and that's what Nick mentioned. Right, is that there's something super powerful about getting blood flow to the muscles after you've hit them hard, but without beating them up more, to kind of enhance that recovery. And then guess what that does? Is it when you get to the gym the next time you might feel even more fresh and recovered to be able to really hit it hard and get all those reps. Maybe push it a little more, maybe get a little stronger and build more muscle with your traditional lifting, and that's where the power is for this.

Philip Pape: 21:56

So, even if you hear critics talk about well, bfr is kind of you know it's, you don't need it. Like a lot of people say, it's unnecessary because you can just train normally, and there is some truth to that. But there are some other unique benefits to BFR, like recovery, that you might want to give a chance. That will help with your traditional lifting as well, not to mention the mental and the psychological aspect of the kind of variety and getting that pump. It's pretty cool, all right. So as we wrap up today's episode, let me emphasize that BFR training is a powerful tool, but it is only one tool in the toolbox, like anything we do. It's not magic. It's not going to replace heavy compound lifts, but when you use it correctly, it can help you build some muscle with a little bit less joint stress. It can maintain gains during deloads and it can enhance recovery. You don't have to use it, it's just another option. It's pretty cool. A lot of new studies being done on it, so keep an eye out for the literature.

Philip Pape: 22:49

If you have follow-up questions, reach out to me, send me a text message through the show notes and I'll tell you my thoughts. The key here with BFR is you've got to be safe, you've got to be consistent with it, you've got to implement it properly. So start with the guidelines we covered today. I really hope today was a complete guide and then the downloadable guide I made spells it out a little bit more detail so you can reference it. You can go back and say okay, what's the protocol again, and what did he say about limb occlusion pressure, what did he say about where to wear these and so on, and then, as always, track your results, see how you feel and respond and then adjust it based on how your body responds.

Philip Pape: 23:23

And if it doesn't work for you, you know you don't have to use it. So remember, if you want to implement everything we covered today, don't forget, go, grab your free copy of my blood flow restriction training guide. It includes the detailed protocols, the exercise examples and the programming templates that complement everything we discussed today. Just click the link in the show notes or visit witsandweightscom. Slash free Again. That's the BFR training guide, the link's in the show notes or witsandweightscom. All right, everybody, until next time, keep using those wits, lifting those weights, and remember sometimes the smartest way to train isn't just lifting the heaviest weights. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Injury-Resilient Training for Lifetime Strength and Muscle (Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum) | Ep 238

Are nagging injuries and joint pain holding back your progress in the gym? Are you concerned about lifting as you get older, or simply want to stay strong for life?

Philip (@witsandweights) connects with Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum, a seasoned powerlifter, coach, and physician. Together, they tackle the reality of aging and training, providing practical strategies to help you build a resilient body that can stand the test of time. Whether you're new to lifting or an experienced lifter facing setbacks, this conversation will equip you with the tools and confidence to train intelligently for years to come.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum is a powerhouse in the fitness and medical fields, holding an MD, and is ranked as one of the top 20 powerlifters worldwide. He co-founded Barbell Medicine, where he and his team integrate evidence-based practice with strength training, health promotion, and longevity coaching. Through his work, he has empowered lifters of all ages and experience levels to reach their goals with resilience and confidence.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

2:52 How to program for strength, injury prevention, and longevity in lifting
8:38 Avoiding overuse injuries and common training pitfalls
13:03 The role of variety in injury prevention
20:27 Debunking myths about heavy lifting and joint health
29:11 Understanding training load and soreness Vs. Injury
39:13 Managing fatigue to train effectively for longevity
43:54 Common causes of low-back fatigue and how to address it
50:15 Maintaining strength, realistic goals as you age, and progressive loading
56:19 Outro

Episode resources:

• Barbell Medicine podcast 

• Instagram: @jordan_barbellmedicine/ 

• X: @BarbellMedicine 

• Threads: @jordan_barbellmedicine 

Injury-Resilient Training for Lifetime Strength and Muscle

Are you worried that lifting heavy after 40 might be a ticking time bomb for your joints? Or maybe you're frustrated by nagging injuries slowing your progress? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum, powerlifter-turned-physician and founder of Barbell Medicine, to uncover evidence-based strategies for bulletproofing your training as you age.

The Truth About Heavy Lifting and Joint Health

One of the most persistent myths in strength training is that heavy lifting inevitably leads to joint problems, especially as we age. Dr. Feigenbaum challenges this notion with compelling evidence: injury rates between powerlifters and bodybuilders are remarkably similar, suggesting that load itself isn't the primary risk factor. What matters more is proper preparation and appropriate progression.

The fear of injury often prevents people from starting or continuing strength training, with about 40% of people citing injury concerns as their reason for not exercising. However, the research shows that being insufficiently active carries its own risks – people who don't exercise experience similar rates of musculoskeletal complaints as those who do.

The Science of Progressive Loading

Rather than focusing on constantly increasing weights or volume (traditional progressive overload), Dr. Feigenbaum advocates for a more nuanced approach called progressive loading. This method emphasizes training hard enough to drive adaptation while staying within your current fitness capacity. The key is allowing these adaptations to occur before increasing loads.

Think of it as a "therapeutic index" for training – there's a sweet spot between the minimum effective dose for results and the maximum recoverable training load. The goal isn't to constantly push this upper limit but to maintain a buffer for sustainability. This approach becomes especially crucial as we age and need to balance progress with recovery.

Smart Exercise Selection for Longevity

Training variety emerges as a crucial factor for injury prevention and long-term progress. Dr. Feigenbaum recommends varying movement patterns within each lift category (squat, hinge, press, pull), potentially using different variations each training session. This variety serves two purposes: it helps distribute training stress across different tissues and improves motor learning.

For example, instead of doing the same back squat variation multiple times per week, you might rotate between:

• Traditional back squats

• Front squats

• Safety bar squats

• Bulgarian split squats

This variation doesn't mean compromising specificity – rather, it's about finding the right balance based on your goals and training experience.

Managing Training Load and Recovery

Recognizing the signs of overuse versus normal training stress becomes crucial for sustainable progress. Watch for decreasing performance over time, persistent soreness that's out of proportion to your training, reduced motivation, and joint-related complaints. These symptoms often indicate you're pushing beyond your recovery capacity.

Dr. Feigenbaum emphasizes that training should be about development, not testing. This means implementing auto-regulation strategies like monitoring daily readiness and adjusting training loads accordingly. The goal is to make training challenging enough to drive progress but not so demanding that it compromises recovery.

Setting Realistic Expectations After 40

While it's true that maintaining peak strength from your 20s and 30s into your 70s might not be realistic, this doesn't mean you can't continue making progress. The key is adjusting expectations and focusing on three evidence-based goals for long-term health:

1. Maximal strength development

2. Muscle hypertrophy

3. Cardiovascular fitness

By prioritizing these areas while managing training load appropriately, you can continue making meaningful progress well into your later years. The focus shifts from constant progression to maintaining capabilities and quality of life.

Practical Implementation

Success in long-term strength training comes down to consistency over intensity. Rather than trying to max out every session or constantly push your limits, focus on sustainable progress. Use RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) or RIR (Reps in Reserve) to guide intensity, and remember that not every session needs to be a personal record attempt.

For those wanting to implement these principles, start by assessing your current training program. Are you varying your exercises enough? Are you allowing adequate recovery between challenging sessions? Are you adjusting your training based on daily readiness? These questions can help guide you toward more sustainable training practices.

Remember: Training is about development, not testing. Focus on sustainable progress rather than constantly pushing your limits, and you'll be able to maintain strength and muscle for years to come.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're a lifter in your 40s or beyond who's frustrated by nagging injuries slowing your progress, or you're worried that adding more weight to the bar might be a ticking time bomb for your joints and you want to bulletproof your training to be more resilient to injury, this episode is for you. Today I'm sitting down with Dr Jordan Feigenbaum, a powerlifter turned physician. Bridges the gap between heavy lifting and injury prevention. Powerlifter-turned-physician bridges the gap between heavy lifting and injury prevention. You'll discover why age isn't the limiting factor you think. It is how to program intelligently to build strength without breaking down, and the often overlooked recovery strategies that can add years to your lifting life. Whether you're battling chronic pain or just want to ensure you're still crushing it well into your golden years, the practical strategies you're about to learn will give you the confidence to train hard and stay healthy, no matter your age.

Philip Pape: 0:55

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are addressing injury prevention and longevity for lifters with Dr Jordan Feigenbaum. Jordan is both a seasoned strength coach and practicing physician. He holds an MD, is an elite power lifter with one of the top 20 totals of all time and has tons of experience coaching everyone from everyday gym goers to professional athletes.

Philip Pape: 1:24

Now, I personally learned about him through Barbell Medicine and the podcast of the same name, where he and his partner, austin, promote health. They promote performance, longevity, definitely with a focus on resistance training and evidence-based practice, which is why I wanted to invite him on the show Today. You're going to learn how to design your training to maximize strength gains while minimizing injury risk as you age. We'll explore the role of recovery in preventing overuse injuries, debunk some myths about lifting and joint health and give you strategies to build resilience into your training program. You'll discover how to balance intensity and volume for optimal progress, the connection between pain and tissue damage and practical ways to personalize your lifting for any limitations you might have. Jordan, it's an honor to have you on the show.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 2:07

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Philip Pape: 2:09

Yeah, man. So we want to talk about the, I'll say, the older lifting crowd today, which a lot of people I joke about with friends is over 40, right, like as soon as you hit 40 year old. Right, You're both a lifter and a doctor, which, sadly, is not a combination we see too often. I wish it were, and I'm sure you've seen many older lifters struggle with really wanting to push the heavier weights. They want to push the PRs. Some of it's ego, some of it is like we got started late, like I did, and we're trying to catch up, and there's this fear, or sometimes reality, of getting injured. So what, in your opinion, is the main differentiator between lifters who continue making progress safely over the decades and those who experience more interruptions related to, say, injury or joint health?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 2:52

Yeah, great question. Maybe we should answer some easy stuff first, like what's the meaning of life, or like you know what's the purpose.

Philip Pape: 2:58

I'd love to set a floor for this show man. Yeah, yeah, no.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 3:02

Yeah, it's interesting. Think about what sort of predicts you know, long-term, not only like just longevity, as far as being able to participate period, right, but then also like long-term success, because those are slightly different things. You know there's definitely benefits from just participation in exercise, resistance training, conditioning both of them ideally and then actually making progress within those two pursuits, particularly like improvements in maximal strength, improvements in VO2 max. So there's a difference. You want to do both of those things, so improve those things and do it for a long period of time. So, as far as things that predict success and longevity, certainly there's a large genetic component to both which, unfortunately, CRISPR is not yet. We can't do that. So not necessarily Unless you go, CRISPR is not yet we can't do that, so not necessarily going to China.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 3:46

Yeah, right, yeah, so maybe in the future that's going to be a modifiable factor. So genetics are certainly important. Your environment is certainly important, not only like opportunities to exercise but also just what's happening around you. So some social elements, conditioning wise, as far as is this a normal thing for people to engage in resistance training and formalized exercise or, you know, culturally, for example? So it definitely varies.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 4:11

But as far as things that actually most people can probably modify or at least start thinking about, likely has to do primarily with program design, and I you know when people hear that and they start thinking about okay, so I just need to focus on how do I lay out the elements of my programming? You know how far down the rabbit hole do we really need to go to give people actionable advice on what to do? And I think varies by degree, meaning that if you're relatively new, you don't need to have, you know, a PhD in exercise science or sports performance or anything like that to kind of make heads and tails of what the research says and take that away and actually do stuff in your own training. But there are a handful of maybe pillars if you want to call it that term, or heuristics that are useful. And I think the main things are we need to make sure that the training suits you or is fitted to you or individualized to you for your current level of fitness. So that's thing one. And so, unfortunately, when you look up programs that are available online, there are internet age, they're everywhere, which is great, because back when I started lifting that wasn't the case. If you looked up, like you know, lifting program or powerlifting program, you'd get a handful of results. And I'm not being you know, lifting program or powerlifting program, you'd get a handful of results. And I'm not being you know, not exaggerating this, it just wasn't out there. And now the Google return hundreds of thousands, if not millions of things.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 5:32

And so when you're writing a program for a general audience, for their consumption, you're going to you know it's like a bell curve, bell distribution. You're going to get a number of folks, but other folks will be underdosed and other folks will be overdosed and you're kind of just hoping for the best. So that's thing, you know. Pillar number one it's got to be suited to you, the individual, based on your current level of fitness, because that will predict what's your training tolerance, so how much exercise you can do and also your needs right. So those are two things that are related. Second thing is, after, making sure that it's appropriately dosed for the individual is going to be that it actually produces the outcomes that are desired.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 6:08

So if we think about this from like a health promotion standpoint you know, health span and maybe adding on to that lifespan there are a handful of things we have great evidence on that actually promote sort of improvements in health span, reducing the risk of disease, particularly the burden of chronic disease, developing new chronic disease, and then also improves quality of life, puts life in your years. Those would be things like maximal strength, which you could tack on muscular power. To that, those things are kind of related. Obviously, muscular hypertrophy another one of those evidence-based goals and then cardiorespiratory fitness. Now, that's a pretty short list of things, really. Three things, maybe four If you say strength and power are different, which, yeah, short list of things, you know. Really three things, maybe four If you say strength and power are different, which, yeah, the scientists in me definitely would want to make that distinction. But people are going to listen to this and they'll say, well, what about stretching? Or what about?

Philip Pape: 6:51

balance? Or what about mobility Agility?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 6:55

It's not that those things are unrelated to function so how well you can use your strength, for example, or how you interact with the environment it's just that they tend to be adequately addressed by programs that improve muscular strength through ways we typically test them. And I make that caveat because it is possible for me I could put you on a program that was completely isometric, for example, where your muscles don't actually contract and extend, You're just creating force in a fixed position where the muscle doesn't actually move, and I could say, look, you got stronger, but that's probably not doing anything for your range of motion. So anyway, if you got to get really specific with you would want to say, yeah, totally.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 7:32

So you'd want to improve dynamic strength, You'd want to improve muscular size, so muscle cross-sectional area, and you'd want to improve cardiorespiratory fitness, and so that means that the program has to be individualized or adjusted in order to produce those results for people. So when we look at the response of people to exercise interventions, you're going to have the extreme responders. Those are the people that we tend to see at the top of sport. Whatever they be, they just tend to respond super well, whether that's genetically predisposed to doing awesome. Slash the environment, slash other factors, nutrition factors, nutritionally, uh, and lifestyle wise sure, all of those are related. And then there's going to be this group of people that are termed non-responders, who you know in some studies, the short-term ones in particular. They actually lose strength, for example, or lose muscle size, and you're like how is that possible? Because they're actually exercising just not well suited to that program. So even if it was dosed in a way that they could currently tolerate, kind of met them where they're at, it wasn't enough or wasn't the right type of training to elicit the responses that we need to improve health and, ultimately, quality of life. So those two things right off the bat.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 8:37

And then, when we think about how to make sure that goes on for a long period of time, we really just want to avoid the major pitfall when it comes to those who will regularly participate in exercise, which are overuse injuries. Yes, you could go down the list and say, look, acute trauma accidents in the gym. You know the things of that nature. But the biggest source of you know injury when it comes to resistance training and even in cardiorespiratory fitness conditioning exercise, is going to be an overuse injury, which is exactly what it sounds like You're doing too much of the same thing at a load or intensity or, ultimately, a training volume. So a combination of all these factors that you can't currently tolerate and that tends to be predicted by the variety, or really lack thereof, in the program. So it's a person who only does back squats for their lower extremity you know squat pattern training rather than multiple different types of things or only does the same rep range or always goes to failure. So there's like a handful of different elements within programming that can kind of predict that people will have an overuse injury.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 9:41

The last thing I'd add on this would just be consistency, which is no surprise to anyone who's listened to your podcast or any other fitness podcast, because it's the same thing you see in weekend warriors when it comes to sport A person who plays basketball on the weekends, a person who takes a ski trip every winter or something like that and they come back their knees hurt, their elbow hurt, whatever.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 9:59

It has mostly to do with being prepared for the tasks that they're asking their body to do, and so if you have these long gaps where you're not training, you're not preparing for what you're asking your body to do, yeah, that does set you up for an injury. So ultimately, you'd want the thing to be dosed properly, not only for the person's current fitness level but their actual responsiveness to the thing, so they actually get the results that we want. You'd want to make sure that the training is heavily varied so that there's less risk of an overuse injury, although not so varied that you're kind of spreading yourself too thin and then do that consistently for a long period of time, and I don't know that those things are. Any of those things are controversial, like someone's listening to this and like, wow, you just opened my eyes but yeah, you could have luck in there, but I don't know that's a modifiable risk factor either.

Philip Pape: 10:52

So, yeah, the things you can and can't control. I hear you, man Cause it's funny, you mentioned it wouldn't surprise anyone, maybe people who'd listened to our shows consistently, but every day and I'm sure you get it as well People ask how heavy should I lift, how much recovery should I get? You know this, this, this, and you're like, well, it depends, you know. Let's add like 10 assumptions or caveats. Here's a program for a newer lifter, but here are your caveats. And so you mentioned the suitability, the minimum effective dose. You know, going for the actual goal you want. Because someone says how do I train? Well, what are you trying to do? Right, like, if you're a backcountry mountain goat hunter, you know which I know a guy like that versus you know you really care about endurance. There's a huge difference there. So, looking at strength, hypertrophy, power and fitness, I do love thinking of it as that kind of pie that covers all types of fitness that extend or correlate from that. And then the different levels of response, you know, knowing that even when you start something, you may not respond like someone else. So, jordan, it's funny, I just had it came out today.

Philip Pape: 11:48

Um, as we're recording this, justin Cottle he's an anatomy expert and he was talking about what he sees like in a cadaver, related to people who lift versus those who don't. And there were two things I was going to mention. One I can remember is the genetic variation between people and their response levels, down to the, you know, sarcoplasm, sarcomere, myosin levels. You know what I mean. Down to that level, how vastly different it can be. And there was one other thing I can't remember, but oh, the variety.

Philip Pape: 12:17

You talked about variety, like there's some of the bro science about shocking and muscle confusion and this and that. But I think there is a kernel of truth to that when you talk about not getting injured right, not like back squatting every session forever, but also the neuromuscular. In a way. There's a progressive loading aspect to that, beyond just adding weight to the bar of inserting this variety. Can we segue just a little bit on that? So, for example, westside conjugate right, one of the principles there is you rotate through like six or seven variants of a main lift and they knew intuitively that if you don't do that you're going to get over, fatigued or overuse from the one lift. Can we jumpstart off of that to talk about variety and muscle confusion and that whole idea?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 13:03

Yeah, sure.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 13:05

So I think again, when we're going to kind of bring all of these sort of ideas around program design back to those core sort of goals that we're looking for.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 13:14

So again, strength, power, hypertrophy, cardio, free fitness. So when you think about exercise selection, exercise mode, so the type of exercise that you're selecting and increasing variety within those domains, what you are really trying to do is use to leverage the body's ability to learn how to move we call it motor learning, for example and so some pretty decent evidence in my estimation, particularly with respect to physical task performance, that people learn better when they have an increase in variety of physical tasks that they have to perform, particularly when they're untrained. And so if you have a person who's not very well trained in the squat, for example, you might intuitively believe that if you just have them do one type of squat, they're going to become very efficient at doing that, meaning that they're going to clean up their technique in such a way where they're maximizing muscular force production in a way to move the bar completely vertically. But and granted, none of these studies have been done on the squat per se, but I think there is-.

Philip Pape: 14:14

Of course not. It's always the leg press.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 14:16

Leg press, leg extension or even more dynamic tasks jumping, stuff like that the idea is that if you give people slight differences in the movement pattern and so, again, if we use a squat, it's a back squat and then a front squat, maybe it's a high bar and a low bar, back squat, a safety squat, bar squat or a leg press or single leg work, for example the prediction that we would make, based on the current evidence, is that people would get better and more proficient at moving their body in space and come up with additional strategies to perform the physical task under periods of fatigue or duress or whatever, which is what happens in a workout anyway, right, and so you just get better at not only like this kinesthetic awareness where's your body in space but also you have additional strategies to leverage in order to move the weight, for example. So you not only get more efficient motor learning wise, you can pick things up a little faster, but you also have more resources to kind of use. So that's thing one. You're also distributing the training load, which again, is this term referring to not only volume, but also intensity, proximity to failure, frequency, all of the variables that kind of turn the program from this idea pie in the sky. To put it on paper, you're distributing it over more and more mass of tissue, right. It's not just always loading the patellar tendon or the ligament in the same way. You're doing it in different ways, and so you give the body a greater opportunity to adapt to those things, rather than maybe outkicking your coverage by kind of specializing.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 15:44

It doesn't mean that there's no place for specialization, and so when I think about Westside, I think about okay, what was Westside like designed for? It's mostly, you know, its original iteration was for powerlifters, and so powerlifter, we know the domains of sport squat, bench, deadlift, one rep, right. And so you know, in the off the off season, pre-season, before you're like actually going into specified meat prep, yeah, you would have a wide variety of movements, but once you get closer to the meat, you really want to focus in on the. You know things you need to do on meat day, and so there's times for specificity as well. The problem I see is that people get excited about lifting, which I'm 100 in in favor of. I want you to get bit by the bug, but I also don't want people to perseverate on a particular, a single form of a lift, a single rep range, for example, because ultimately I think that increases the risk of an overuse injury.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 16:37

So time for both being relatively varied than relatively specific, but taken to extreme for too long on either end, I think, is you're missing the boat. So one example of being too varied maybe all the time would be like some iterations of CrossFit, and then too specific on the other end would be some type of like the Bulgarian training. You know where you're maxing out daily which can be useful in short periods of time, but you think about expanding that over to eight weeks, 12 weeks, 16 weeks, 24 weeks. You're like I predict that most people are not going to be able to tolerate that and the people you hear about that did well on it. Well, that's survivor bias, right? You're like you're the only person left standing right and you're able to demonstrate these great results, whereas we're all the people who didn't make it that far.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 17:22

So when I think about practical implementation of variety for your general strength conditioning enthusiast I think about, you have a handful of movement patterns. Well, we can classify them as a squat pattern, a hinge pattern, a press pattern and a row or pull pattern, and I don't know that there's much benefit to repeating the exact movement more than once per week. Now, granted, that's speculative, right, you could make the case should you repeat them more than once every two weeks. We don't know, this is just more speculation, but when it comes time for me to actually generate a program, I think about all right, this person's going to do a squat pattern, squat type pattern, two times a week. I'm doing two different variations. If it's three times a week, three different variations. Four times a week, four different variations. And again you can make them very diverse.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 18:16

So like a back squat versus a Bulgarian split squat versus a step up. You know what I'm saying. That's big, big variances. Or they can be closer Back squat, low bar. Back squat, high bar, two count, pause squat, back squat. You know you're like okay, these are more similar, but still little variety. So it just depends on what is the end goal. What are you training for? What gets you up in the morning to go to the gym, for example? So that's kind of how I think about variety.

Philip Pape: 18:36

Yeah, I love that. I think there's a lot of counterintuitive and revelatory things that you said in there. Knowing the population that I know, when it comes to lifting there are definitely camps right. There's the kind of the starting strength and the basic but boring in the strength lifts side which, again, for new lifters, almost any program could be super effective and if you're committed and you want to learn those movement patterns, get strong fast, they could work. On the other hand, you have, you know, the six, seven day a week, bodybuilding. Every single movement's different and the fact that it's not just about fun, even though that's important. It's also the fact that your body engages in motor learning and you might actually become more efficient at the patterns you ironically, are doing less frequently now by mixing it up. It's heartening to people who wonder about that and think, oh, am I just slowing myself down and then even distributing the training load. When we talk about injury, we talk about longevity. That is super important. You think of whether it's muscle weaknesses or whatever the term people want to use. You're kind of distributing and letting your body use its system and do the movement patterns all across the board and you might be surprised how I mean, I found that doing weighted dips helped my overhead press and you're like, doing weighted dips helped my overhead press and when you look at the history of powerlifters and guys like Bill Starr, you see they did that and you're wondering why. Okay, so really good stuff.

Philip Pape: 19:52

I want to dive in a little bit to the joint health topic or arguments people make. A lot of people are fearful. If they're brand new to lifting, they're fearful. They're going to get injured just lifting in general, because of bad form or what have you, or because it's too heavy, or because their bones are going to break. They're fearful. They're going to get injured just lifting in general because of bad form or what have you, or because it's too heavy, or because their bones are going to break because they're now menopausal, whatever it is. Then you have, on the other hand, you know, dedicated lifters have been doing this for years who are worried about too much repetition of compound lifts and lower rep ranges on their joint health. What does the current evidence say about heavy lifting, you know, in our kind of sphere and joint health?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 20:27

Yeah, no, that's a great question, and even like joint health, it's more of this like nebulous umbrella term. I think on the one hand, we all understand what it means You're talking about pain-free sort of range of motion and being able to use it actively and passively, and then Connective tissue.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 20:41

No tendonitis you know, yeah, great function being able to walk up the stairs. Yeah, sure, totally yeah. So you know, there's this assumption, as you mentioned, that okay, if you train heavier rather than lighter, for example, just generally speaking, same proximity to failure, meaning you're doing three reps, two repetitions left in reserve, versus 10 reps left in reserve there's a thought well, the three reps definitely got to be heavier for a given exercise compared to the 10-rep set, and if it's heavier, so you're doing the three-rep set, you're at a higher risk of injury, whether we're talking about acute, catastrophic injury or a chronic sort of overuse injury, and you would expect that to play out with a pretty robust signal in the data, meaning that if you looked at powerlifters training presumably in the powerlifting way, all right, which is generally lower reps, getting ready for maximal strength sort of test on the platform, that they would have higher injury rates than, say, something like bodybuilders, right, that are training the same types of lifts, because then that's another sort of variable that we'd want to adjust and on balance, you don't really see that. You know, you can look at different data sets and come up with slightly different numbers, but when I look at them, and just just with the understanding that across all types of training resistance training the average injury rate is two to four injuries per 1,000 participation hours. And there are some bodybuilding-specific data sets that show, oh, it's 1.5 injuries per 1,000 participation hours, and there's other bodybuilding data sets that are up to three and a half injuries. So it just varies, right, because you just need a big sample size and how you define injuries. There's a bunch of other stuff. Do a whole podcast on that, but I think it's boring, don't need to do that.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 22:12

And then you look at powerlifting datasets and you see almost a mirror image of that, right. And so then you're like, even if there was a slight, maybe benefit or reduced risk of injury in bodybuilding, in my estimation, based on the existing data that we have, it's not robust enough to feel confident in that opinion that heavier is always a higher risk, higher risk, the biggest thing here. That is not an evidence-based sort of idea. This is more practical experience and the way I think about it. If somebody is not prepared for the task they're being asked to do, I do think that incurs a higher risk. How much higher depends on how far removed that is from their preparation, how novel it is to them, and so there's this kind of like open window theory of risk, meaning that if you're doing something new, you're effectively opening a window, and that window is wide open at first until you get used to it, have some exposure, have some experience with it. And so if it's your first time doing powerlifting training and you're asked to do one repetition, for example, like pretty close to failure just to see where you're at, and you've never done a one rep challenge test before, well, that's probably higher risk compared to somebody that's done single repetition work for years and years and years. But you don't need to study to tell you that.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 23:25

That said, if it were inherently risky meaning just dead bodies everywhere you would see that in the literature and not just in the injury data. We're talking about exercise science at large, where they routinely test people's one rep max to garner exercise prescription for loads. They'll have elderly individuals, people in their 60s, in their 70s, in their 80s even and they'll max them out on a leg extension and then say, okay, for the next eight weeks we're doing, we're starting at 65%, they're going 70%, 75%. Well, where's that percentage coming from? It's a one rep max test and what do they do? How do they obtain that At the beginning of the study, when these people were untrained. And again, there's not bodies everywhere, right?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 24:02

So I think the assumption that heavier loads are always more risky doesn't make sense to me for a given exercise. Just the caveat there is you need to be prepared for that and working up to that would probably be best practices. So I personally wouldn't test somebody's one rep max day one you could. I think there is some increased risk. I just don't know how big that risk is and I think it's relatively small compared to the risk of not exercising at all due to fear of injury. But to your point earlier most people well, most people don't exercise period. And and you ask them why, 40% of them will respond they don't exercise because they're afraid of getting hurt. And then, if you ask them further, why are they afraid? And it's something learned sort of thing, whether it's through social conditioning, they've had friends who've gotten hurt or they've learned it from who they consider an expert resource usually healthcare professional. Unfortunately, doctors say dumb stuff all the time.

Speaker 3: 24:56

Expert resource usually healthcare professional unfortunately, doctors say dumb stuff all the time. Shout out to Philip Pei. I've known Philip for a long time. I know how passionate he is about healthy eating and body strength, and that's why I choose him to be my coach. I was no stranger to dieting and body training, but I always struggled to do it sustainably. Philip helped me prioritize my goals with evidence-based recommendations while not overstressing my body and not feeling like I'm starving. In six months, I lost 45 pounds without drastically changing the foods I enjoy, but now I have a more balanced diet. I weight train consistently but, most importantly, I do it sustainably. If a scientifically sound, healthy diet and a lean, strong body is what you're looking for, philip Pape is your guy.

Philip Pape: 25:44

It's true. That's why I like guys like you on the show. You know we need more doctors who know their stuff and lift yeah.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 25:49

I'm just not convinced that the load itself is particularly risky, even in like subgroup analysis and some of these studies where they look at like, well, what about just the competition period? Only If we isolate just the competition period, so at a meet or the last few weeks before a meet, where the loads are heavier compared to generalized training, is there a higher injury incidence? Not really In Olympic weightlifting, in powerlifting, and you're like huh. Well, how confident am I in this claim that heavier weights are generally more risky? And I'm like I don't think they are. I think there's a maybe a little kernel, a nugget of truth in there saying that if you compare to set going all the way to failure versus a set that's like three or four reps shy of failure, I think the set that's a few reps shy of failure is probably less risky due to the fatigue stuff that happens later on, you know, as you get closer to failure, all the way to failure, and maybe that sort of the effect that we're seeing in the injury data, if any.

Philip Pape: 26:46

But even then we're not talking about this huge like cataclysmic effect again, otherwise you'd see bodies right and you'd see people who had back surgeries and knee surgeries who got back into heavy lifting and do really well not be able to do that.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 27:00

I think I mean it's super helpful one of the most interesting studies on this has to do with people who don't exercise. They're insufficiently active. I prefer that to the term sedentary. It makes me feel better, just about. You know how I'm labeling these people. I don't say, oh, you're sedentary, it's insufficiently active, we're working on it. You would expect, if you're of this very mechanistic mindset, that heavier loading worse, lighter loading better than taken to its logical end, logical conclusion there.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 27:28

You'd say, well, if the person isn't, exercising they should have a near zero risk of musculoskeletal injury.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 27:36

But that's not the case. In fact, they did this year-long study. They took people both previously and sufficiently active two groups. Half the groups were subject to do six hours per week of conditioning, pretty like moderate intensity conditioning, I think it was at like 75% of their VO2 max, six hours a week, which is, yeah, pretty significant versus people who did no exercise. And the musculoskeletal injury complaint rate was effectively the same between groups. Because there's just this non-zero risk of being a human for injury, like, yeah, people have low back pain, they don't exercise. People have shoulder pain, don't exercise. People have knee pain, they don't exercise. And so you would expect again, if it was just really tied to loading just literally the weight on the bar, the weight on the machine or whatever, you would expect it to be significantly higher in folks who regularly challenge their body with weights. But you just don't see that. So, yeah, I'm bearish on that. I don't think it's no.

Philip Pape: 28:27

No, I totally agree. I was giving you the platform because I want people to have the confidence to get started lifting and to lift heavy. I mean, there are definitely plenty of anecdotes of people who had back pain, for example, who now started deadlifting and the pain goes away. I hear that way more often than I hear people getting injured lifting. So if that's the case, when we talk about overuse because back earlier, when you're talking about the pillars you mentioned, that was kind of the one thing and it's tied to a lack of preparation, which is, I think, a good way to think of it as a principle, because then it can apply to lots of different contexts. When you say lack of preparation right the specificity and progressively loading up to that point and so on, what do you mean by overuse? How do people know that they're overusing and how do we not do that?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 29:10

Yeah, unfortunately, you don't know that you're overusing until it's too late, which is the problem. Right, it like declares itself and you're like dang, that was too much. So people may be familiar with the term like overtraining, which you know if you're an exercise scientist Overreaching overtraining, yeah, yeah, yeah, so like words have meaning and unfortunately you got to get a little pedantic about it.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 29:27

It's like overtraining refers to a syndrome, right, Generally including endocrinology changes. So like thyroid hormone will go down, cortisol is way up, people have poor appetite, poor sleep, feel irritable, et cetera. Never been described in resistance training, not once it's been investigated. They've had people max out daily for over a month in a row, trying to like make them overtrained, and it turns out they just got better at lifting heavy weights. So like, yeah, which by definition should not happen if you're overtrained. Also, injury risk during that period was also relatively low.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 29:56

But if people are familiar with this concept maybe of overtraining, we're just doing too much. It's like okay, well, what do you mean by too much? What does that refer to? It's not just too much weight, it's a combination of weight on the bar, how close your efforts are to failure, whether it's resistance training or conditioning, and how much of it you're doing. So volume, right. And so that all encapsulates this thing we like to refer to as training load, and training load you can think about that as a sort of external sort of stress, meaning it's all the stuff that you could write down on paper that is pertinent to your program. So again, sets, reps, rest periods, proximity to failure, intensity, whatever that gets applied to the individual, okay, okay. And they experience it in different ways, and the way that they experience it can be monitored by heart rate change, heart rate variability, heart rate recovery. For example, rpe can be useful for to just tell us how hard it was, you can apply the same external stress, external stimulus in this case, to an individual group of individuals and they'll experience it differently, based on their current fitness level, their genetics, their expectations, so psychological the environment that they're in. Right, Are they in a powerlifting gym where there's death metal playing chalk in the air? You know whatever back slaps are going on, or are they doing it like a curves? You know different sort of settings.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 31:11

So, anyway, all of that is to say that when I'm talking about overuse, it means that the experience of the training, the external stimulus, is too much for them to currently tolerate and then ultimately recover from, and it's usually not a singular instance. It's repeatedly kind of insulting the body in a way that you can't sort of keep your head above water and so you drown. In this case it usually results in musculoskeletal pain. So most of the time these overuse injuries, they're kind of insidious. It's not like I did one squat and my knee started hurting. That can happen with an acute sort of catastrophic injury. Unfortunately, or fortunately, rather, those are relatively rare.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 31:47

So this sort of overuse thing is just too much training load, experienced chronically for the individual and ultimately produces this sort of these pain syndromes that people have. And so then what do you do? You're basically now you got a person who's been exercising, has pain, and you're like what do? What do I do about that? You tell them well, you're going to have to exercise still, but in a different way that's currently accessible to you. And so I just want people to.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 32:12

When they think about overuse injury, I don't want them to think about like I did one thing wrong and that's what happened. It's more of chronically. You were exposing yourself to something that you couldn't currently tolerate, whether it was due to the nuts and bolts of the program, that external sort of stimulus, or your environment. Your lifestyle suddenly changed lost your job, stressful season at work, less sleep, relationship troubles, financial stress, dietarily you now have a bunch of nutritional stress you didn't have before, For example. All of those things can change the experience that somebody has to a given type of training intervention. And so, again, if there's a mismatch between the training load being imparted on somebody and their ability to tolerate it and then subsequently recover from it, well, that portends a risk of overtraining, and in this case we would define overtraining as like the appearance of an overuse injury, even though that's not the classical definition of overtraining syndrome.

Philip Pape: 33:04

It's all right, we'll forgive you for that. Yeah, so this is really good because people, I guess, oversimplify the idea of pain and overuse or maybe they avoid training too hard, thinking that it's going to be a problem. Like you said, it's the total load or stimulus and it's too much to recover from because of chronic occurrence and it results in some form of pain, which leads to the question what types of soreness slash pain, slash some other feeling, and when should people be concerned? Because newer lifters are very confused about that. Like I talked to somebody the other day, she had a little bit of soreness and had been one day and it was something new and I said is it getting better? Oh, it's getting a little better. I said, okay, let's, I think it's gonna be fine. You're just scared. It's like a new experience to you, but color that for us yeah, no, that's a great question.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 33:51

I mean, you know there's like how sore is too sore or how often is, you know, being sore a problem. I think maybe one of the best use cases here that's applicable actually to one of the evidence based goals talked about in the beginning hypertrophy. So it variably, when people start doing resistance training or really any type of exercise, your risk of soreness goes up, mainly because it's a novel physical task that you're being asked of and if the muscles are forced to move through a dynamic range of motion so they're extending and shortening under load, yeah, your risk of having some sort of muscle soreness, whether it's delayed onset muscle soreness or just muscular fatigue or other, that goes up and that's not unusual. But in the case of hypertrophy we think that's due at least partially to muscle protein breakdown. Your muscles are made out of protein, water and some other stuff and muscular protein breakdown can increase DOMS, that late onset muscle soreness. When it comes to hypertrophy, what you're really looking to have happen is that you, over time, you get better at tolerating the exercise, you get used to it, you accommodate the stress and you get less muscle protein breakdown which allows the sort of muscle protein synthesis, the recovery efforts to outpace the amount of muscle protein that you're breaking down. And so that's why, when you look at hypertrophy studies, it's very rare, particularly for untrained individuals, that they grow muscle in the first three, four, five, even six weeks. Rather, that's like the just keep your head above water kind of deal with the soreness that you're having and then after that you start seeing muscular growth.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 35:20

And so what I predict and kind of how I think about how often should people be sore, how severe should it be, it's that initially having some soreness is fine and I would expect that on most sessions, in fact if somebody's very new to training. But that should get become few and far between as somebody gets more and more trained. Yes, if you take time off and kind of come back, I would expect a slight uptick. But again, it should be this general trend of waning soreness as somebody becomes more and more trained. And if the dose of training is correct, being actually sore from a workout should be relatively infrequent. If you're never sore, ever, to me that suggests underdosed training. So it's kind of like an artifact of properly dosed training where you're sore relatively infrequently but still sometimes, if that makes sense.

Philip Pape: 36:05

And at the beginning of that new stimulus or cycle or program yeah, yeah, or there's an increase in training load, for example.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 36:11

All of us. Yeah, that would all be times where you'd expect an increase in soreness, but it should be generally waning and getting less and less and less, with occasional upticks and as far as when it becomes worrisome, it's when the soreness is out of proportion to what you did. Like you said, I didn't really do that much yesterday. I am cripplingly sore and it's like, okay, was the environment that you were doing this in very harsh? It was really hot, humid, for example, under hydrated. This happens all the time in field athletes. Or are you actually sick and you didn't know that and you did the same training? You didn't adjust that to your current level of fitness on that day and so you actually had a much higher training stress than you otherwise would have predicted. You experienced a much higher level of training stress If you were underslept.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 36:54

That can happen too. In fact, lack of sleep or sleep deprivation is a big risk factor for injury incidents, particularly in athletes. That's been most studied in college-aged athletes, for example. So all of those things can kind of tip the scales as far as what somebody is able to tolerate, but ultimately I would expect soreness again to happen, sometimes generally decreasing as somebody becomes more and more trained, and then I only get worried about it if it's out of proportion to what happen, sometimes generally decreasing as somebody becomes more and more trained, and then I only get worried about it if it's out of proportion to what they did, very severely limiting as far as function goes, and or acute. So the delayed onset muscle soreness stuff happens the day after, two days after, may persist for a few days, even after that up to five or six days.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 37:33

But if it happens like I did one set and now my legs, both quads, for example, are you know eight out of 10 pain, that's not soreness to me that is more suggestive of like maybe something acute happened, particularly if it persists. It just doesn't go away. I recall one particular study on youth individuals. They were trying to characterize the incidence of injury risk in kids lifting weights. They recalled this one kid who had 30 seconds of 10 out of 10 quad pain. That just went away, like they didn't do anything, but it just went away and they're like yeah, well, that was an injury that the person had and we're like was it though? So it kind of comes back to definitions like what is an injury? But anyway, I get another podcast.

Philip Pape: 38:11

I hear you, I mean 10 by 10s in CrossFit. Take me back to when I was sore and probably didn't need to be chasing that soreness, so I want to piggyback off this is really good, the soreness piece, because then there's the fatigue. You know magic word fatigue that we use, and I think in one of your Insta posts recently, so I'm going to do an Oprah on you here. I've got some quotes.

Philip Pape: 38:31

Training must match an individual's fitness level that day, which you just said being hard enough to drive an adaptation, but not too hard where it drives too much fatigue. Now I would say, if you're tracking your program, if you're being consistent, like you said, with your frequency and volume, and you're progressing what you call progressive loading not necessarily overloading you should be at least prepared to know what is appropriate, in spite or independent of all these other variables you mentioned, like it's very hot or hydration's an issue. So maybe the question is how do you know that you're pushing that fatigue or driving too much fatigue, or how do you get ahead of it in terms of that biofeedback, those other variables?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 39:09

I know it's not a exact science, but you know yeah, no, it's a million dollar question, maybe a billion dollar question. You know, if we were really able to reliably predict fatigue in a quantifiable manner and then monitor it, man, that'd be cool. But there's been multiple efforts to try to do that. So people have used things like session RPE, for example, where after the end of a session you rate it one to 10, 10 was like I'm so fatigued, I can't do anything else. One is I didn't do anything, I'm at rest, right. So that's one way and you would prefer most of your sessions to probably fall in that. You know six to eight type range for like adequate sort of stimulus, but not too much, unless it was like an active recovery thing, in which case it'd be much, much less than that. If you find that after most sessions it's session RP 10, you would predict that would be a little too high. For example, other methods that have been tried and implemented variability is like this way to kind of test like oh, are you recovered or not? No data on that in resistance training, only in the endurance world, and there's a lot of nuance there. Again, that probably would deserve a multi-part podcast series, but that again, people have been trying to measure this for a long time. As far as the way I do this in practice monitoring fatigue it's more of this like subjective battery of how do you feel on average when you come into a training session. Are you super motivated to train? You're excited to do so or generally excited? Is your performance more or less holding up, despite having recent fatigue implemented from training? Are you super sore? For example, are you having any sort of you know boiling or bubbling, percolating injuries that you feel like are popping up? Your you know your joints are sore, for example, much fatigue. You would expect them to have lower training motivation. You would expect them to have decreasing levels of performance. You would expect them to have more soreness on average, more sort of joint related complaints on average. And that kind of tells you like the training stress I'm exposing myself to is a little bit too much right now. It doesn't mean you're doing too much volume per se, but maybe you're doing too much volume of stuff that's too close to failure and so practically kind of figuring out a way to get pretty close to the sun but not too close where you burn yourself.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 41:17

I think a concept that could be useful to folks is this sort of therapeutic index for training, meaning that there's a low end right Minimal effective dose, if you want to use that term and then an upper end, maybe that you call that maximal recoverable training load. You know, just to make up terms here, you don't need to be all the way at the limit to get the maximum benefit. You want to be trending that way, like on average, getting close to that, but you can leave a little safety buffer in there, and so I want people to understand that you don't have to go to the well max out, leave it all in the gym every single session. In fact, I would say that's unsustainable. Rather, it just needs to be hard enough to drive the adaptations that you want For strength training. You don't have to be really anywhere close to failure. When I say close to failure, I'm talking about one rep.

Philip Pape: 42:07

Zero one RP. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 42:08

You can be three reps shy of failure, five reps shy of failure, in fact, if it's over about 70% of your one rep max, I think that's going to make you most people pretty strong, even if they have five reps left in the tank. When it comes to hypertrophy, particularly so muscle growth, particularly for isolation exercises, you can actually send it a little bit closer to failure, right? The thing that's important to note there is the stakes are lower. When you're talking about isolation exercises, it's much lower muscle mass, right. The weights on average are lower. The sort of risk of failure is generally lower.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 42:40

Oh, I failed a biceps curl, oh no. Compared to oh, I failed a squat, a heavy squat, yeah, much, much bigger sort of potential, the stakes are much higher there. So this therapeutic index of like exercise, as I view it, gives us a wide range to sort of get something from our efforts right and to maximize that. Sure, we want to push it towards the upper end, but I don't know that it's useful to get super close to that top end, like what's the maximum amount of stuff I can?

Philip Pape: 43:04

do Icarus threshold? Yeah, totally, totally. Yeah, I think that's yeah, a good takeaway.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 43:08

No, that's a good takeaway.

Philip Pape: 43:09

No, that's good. The therapeutic index. And again, I like how there's a system here of variables. It's multifactorial and, like you said, you might be training close to failure and that's perfectly fine. But if you're doing it to such an extent that that's the issue, it's the volume, it's the training to failure, it's the frequency, all of it together. You mentioned joint health. What about the big one that comes up all the time, low back fatigue? Right, that's like the one I hear personally most often, especially for older folks, of this mysterious low back fatigue that doesn't always seem attributable to a specific movement. You know they might squat and it's fine. Then they do an RDL and it hits them. Then they're fine on the next RDL, but it happens after their bench press and they're like maybe it's my arching. What's going on there? What's the low back mystery all about?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 43:54

Yeah, no, it's a great question I mean. So, first off, low back pain in general is super common, I think, for the lifetime risk for adults globally is like approaching 90%, so most people are going to have at least some about of low back pain. As far as the most common causes of low back pain, yeah, big question mark we don't know, because most low back pain is what's called non-specific. That isn't meant to minimize anybody's experience, right? Doesn't mean that just popped up out of nowhere, we have no idea why, or whatever. It just means that it's probably not due to a specific anatomical structure like oh, we got to go, you know, is this a ligament around the spine, for example, example? Is it a disc related? Is it, you know, related to your hips, for example? It's nonspecific, meaning that it's probably a constellation of things and your pain experience is real. It just means that there's not a pain generator that we can localize and need to work on, which, on the one hand, is good news because we don't need to wait for something specific to heal in order to get back after it, but it's also not academically satisfying, or even satisfying to the patient, because they're like well, what's wrong? Why did I have this, but this is a great example of maybe some of that overuse type injury. You know, there's this like threshold of load, training load or maybe a better way of describing it as like a physical activity load, or you could even extend that to like physical activity load in a particular environment load, right, like super stressful environment versus you know, somebody who's well-rested, well-fed and you know otherwise sleep, you know something like that. So if people kind of Icarus, flying too close to the sun, based on their training, based on their lifestyle or whatever they may sensitize themselves during particular movements right so, an RDL in this case, or a deadlift in another case, or arching on the bench press, the problem then is like, well, if I'm having pain when doing this, I don't want to expose myself to those positions which can be problematic, because if people's expectation is, you know, you lay down on the bench, you arch like ow, pain and extension. I'm sensitive to extension, particularly in this posture. I don't want to do that and it's like, okay, so now your expectation is every time that you arch in this way or you adopt that type of posture, you're going to have pain.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 46:03

People start kind of they get this condition called kinesiophobia they're afraid of particular movements, and so one of our strategies then is if somebody is experiencing sensitivity in particular positions, we want to do the most threatening type of movement that they can do, like they can currently tolerate, as their entry point back to physical activity. So in the case of like an RDL, right, somebody says all right, full weight, rdl, normal weight. They're doing sets of five or eight or something like that and they're having sensitivity at that loading level, with that full range of motion. Doing an RDL, what do? Well, we could increase the rep range, which would lighten the load. So maybe it's a load-related sort of sensitivity. If that doesn't work, maybe we slow down the tempo to lower the load even further or potentially give them chance to feel like they're maintaining a slightly different position, even if that's not really happening. It's getting sort of mind games, if you will.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 46:52

Another option is reducing the range of motion. So perhaps it's range of motion related. And if none of those things are tolerable, you're like maybe this is a no-go, we need to regress even further and so that it's like a trap bar, you know, type partial deadlift, for example, or hip thrust, you go even further back. So there are options there, but as far as what's actually happening, I think it's back to that concept of just tissue sensitization, or maybe we'll call it tissue-brain connection sensitization, because you can't separate the two things. So just sensitization due to high of fatigue, due to too high of training load in a particular environment and I know that's an unsatisfying answer for a lot of folks.

Philip Pape: 47:29

No, it's super solid to me. I mean I like the. I mean effectively, it's facing your fears in a way which it applies, for example, to people who've had surgery and they're afraid to be active again, especially when you have doctors saying don't do anything for months and months and months and maybe need to get under the bar earlier than you think Just to build up to that. I remember I had a deadlift sling when I had my rotator cuff surgery, just so I could get back to deadlifts with one arm because I was so missing it. But some people will have the opposite of like that's it, I'm done, I can never do this again. Or you know, I had knee surgery. I can never squat again. And yeah, you want to say something about that?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 48:02

Yeah, Well, what you would prefer for people to have is basically unrestricted movement potential, meaning that they could do whatever it is they want to do, even if they don't do everything right.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 48:16

But you don't want people to have these sort of limitations on like, ah, I can't do that because of this pain sensitivity. You'd want to identify those things, work on them actively and then just give people the option, like, should you want to do this or need to do this, usually in some case outside of the gym, well, you have access to that right and you're relatively well-prepared to tolerate that, and so you can go on. The biggest issue I see with lifters as they go on through time is that they keep pulling out exercises, movement patterns, ranges of motion that either ah, I had a little injury or I don't particularly like that, or whatever, and so they get more and more specific to something, to stuff that they like over the years and they're missing this whole sort of cadre of other physical development and effectively atrophying over time. And it's like which, again, is why I intentionally even with myself, I have to intentionally broaden, because, if left to my own devices, I like to squat, bench, deadlift, yeah.

Philip Pape: 49:03

Another case for variety?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 49:04

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Philip Pape: 49:05

Yeah, yeah, no, this is great, yeah. So the next thing I actually wanted to ask you about was kind of the other end, the folks because I know there's a lot listening who really do go all out. They love PRs, they love getting stronger. Maybe they push too hard, right. Maybe they don't have any of these fears. They do the variety, they just push, push, push.

Philip Pape: 49:22

We talked about a lot of the aspects of fatigue, but some of it comes from a little bit of ego and something you talked about recently, which is how people would love to maintain their peak, especially if they were lifting early in life, like their 20s, 30s, 40s. I didn't start to my 40s, so I don't have that exact experience, but like, hey, in my 20s I could deadlift 700 and now I'm approaching 70. Also, you mentioned that people who start lifting later in life are not gonna be able to get as strong as when they were earlier. So sometimes they maybe overreach and I've seen that. Given this reality, where does realistic goals piece of this come in for, that being the cause of, say, overuse or fatigue, if you know what I mean?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 50:04

Just aging in general being the cause of.

Philip Pape: 50:07

Yeah, aging ego wanting to be strong, keep getting strong forever.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 50:11

Yeah, yeah, I mean, we all want to be strong, keep getting strong forever. Yeah, yeah, I mean we all want to, but Totally, is it possible? Well, I think what happens in general as people age, especially if we just move like general population, right, musculoskeletal injury rates tend to go up as people get older. I view that as mostly a symptom of detraining due to insufficient activity. People just become less and less active, whether that's due to occupational demands, familial demands, the constellation of those things.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 50:35

People are tired, whatever You're, just exercising less, moving less, and ultimately their body responds accordingly.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 50:40

It adapts to what's being asked of it and so, yeah, your threshold for what you can tolerate goes down. And so people might experience that in training where they say I can't go as heavy as often as I used to and it's like, well, that's probably a function of what you've been doing the last few years, not like what's happening chronologically on the calendar. So I think that, barring market reductions in sort of training time, training resources and just activity in general, the issue that is likely to happen and this is kind of a black box there's something that's going to happen in various periods of our lives. Our performance is going to go down and we don't know why I don't have a solid answer, why I can give you all these mechanisms but, like as far as which one's causal or which ones are causal, I think there's a bunch of them and it's like you know, death by a thousand cuts. It's not just one thing that's leading to a 20% decline, it's you know, 20 things leading to 1% decline.

Philip Pape: 51:32

No man, it's my hormones, it's cortisol. It's cortisol Totally, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 51:37

Probably a nervous system more than anything. But the point is people, they sort of forget what they learned along the way. Again, we don't want to fly too close to the sun, we want it to be hard enough, but not too hard. And you want to do a lot of that stuff as much as you can without outkicking your coverage. Well, if you're still hanging on to what you were doing 10 years ago, five years ago, and that's not who you are presently, again you're outkicking your coverage. It's the same thing that would have happened if you did the same thing 10 years ago. You have these overuse injuries, and so I think if you stick to the script, if you're like, okay, it needs to be hard enough to develop a training adaptation on this day and you keep clocking those wins, punching in, punching out, day after day, it is likely you're going to have lots of success in your lifting career, and by success I mean demonstrable improvements or, as you age, maintenance to the best of our ability, with performance and a relatively low risk of injury, barring terrible luck and or terrible genetics. And so we can't do anything about the genetics and luck kind of is what it is. But the stuff we can modify is mostly going to be training related, and so I think most people, if they can wrap their heads around some sort of auto-regulation on a given training session, can probably avoid most of that. Meaning that if it's a number on the bar you have historically in your brain, that's great, but is that the appropriate load for today?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 52:55

Training is about development. It's not about testing. I don't need to test you every time you're in the gym. Yes, we could do that, but we can do that intelligently at a low stakes sort of situation. So again, rather than one rep max all the way to failure, I could do it at 80%. A one rep effort.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 53:15

That would give me enough data to say here's how strong you are today. Meaning that here's the rest of your loads for this particular exercise should be to be within that therapeutic index and we can give yourself a little buffer. So that's kind of. I think people kind of mess this up, as they're attached to these historical performances, they ignore all the stuff that we talked about and they're like, yeah, well, I've been doing this for 20 years and so I can just do this right now. It's like, look man, no, you couldn't have done that 20 years ago anyway, you know. So like I would avoid kind of being too attached to a particular number in training Competition. Do what you got to do, but in training the main thing is make sure you're getting an effect and don't fly too close to the sun.

Philip Pape: 53:51

Love it, man Clocking in the winds, auto-regulation that is huge. And then I like what you said training is development, not testing. That's a really good line. Just people keep that in mind. Constant growth from where you are right now in the last session, not necessarily who you were in your 20s or even six weeks ago. All right. So as we wrap up, is there anything that you wish I had asked that we didn't cover and what would be your answer to that?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 54:15

No, I think the only thing I mean. You mentioned this progressive loading thing versus progressive overload and if people have never heard that, we do have an article about that on our website. It's titled Progressive Loading. We've got a podcast on it as well. But just as a brief takeaway, it's the same kind of messaging throughout this entire podcast, the messaging throughout this entire podcast.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 54:29

The point of the training is to provide you enough stimulus to get what you want out of it, but not too much where you can't recover from it. So with the idea of progressive loading, you have to increase either the weight, reps or total training load as you become fitter, but not before the adequate training stress is there to drive fitness. And once fitness has gone up, then you have to increase the training stimulus, but not before you get bigger, faster, stronger, so you can lift more weights, go faster, et cetera. Okay, so it's kind of a chicken and egg situation in my estimation. People want to go, increase the weight, increase the reps or increase the pace before they've actually generated those adaptations the idea that you have to overload the body and it's like it shouldn't actually get any harder. You just got fitter.

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 55:14

That Greg LeMond quote. You know it never gets easier, you just go faster. Well, in this case, you know it never gets any harder, you just get fitter and so the load go up, you're able to do more reps, do more sets, etc. And so progressive loading, I think actually might actually be the key here. People are saying, I don't know this auto-regulation shit, like whatever Progressive loading might be the key takeaway.

Philip Pape: 55:33

No, I love it. You train right to the limit of your current capability, that Icarus threshold not pass, and not even into that little regime right on the hairy edge where you're just not getting anything out of it, and then that makes you bigger, faster, stronger. To do that again over and Cool. I think we covered a lot about training. I hope people got I know they did got some really good strategies out of this to modify their approach, because it really comes down to the principles more than like a specific workout program. For example, when can listeners learn more about you, Jordan?

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum: 56:00

Sure, yeah, barbell Medicine. You search that on Google, you're going to find all of our stuff. My personal Instagram account is Jordan, underscore Barbell Medicine. You can find me there. You can find me on Twitter threads. People seem to like my threads stuff. I'm a little salty on there. It's just just that outlet for me. So if you search barbell medicine, you can find all of our stuff and we'd love to have you part of our community.

Philip Pape: 56:19

Cool man, I'll put all that stuff in the show notes so people can find you. I will, of course, keep following you as well, and I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show.

Is Excess Protein Turned Into Sugar and Fat? (Input-Output Systems) | Ep 237

Is that scoop of protein powder helping you build muscle, or is it just being wasted and turned into sugar and fat?

Today, we're using the engineering concept of Input-Output Systems to bust this common protein myth and help you make informed decisions about your protein intake and supplements like whey and pea/rice powder.

Listener Sara S. asked about claims that protein powder isn't used by the body and is instead converted to sugar and fat. Learn about the science of protein metabolism and explain why these claims don't hold up to scrutiny.

Learn how to choose the right protein powder for your goals and why it can be a valuable tool in optimizing your overall nutrition strategy.

To get your question answered on a future episode, send me a text message.

Try 1st Phorm protein powder as mentioned on the episode.

Main Takeaways:

• Your body is an efficient input-output system that uses protein powder (and any "extra" protein) in a very specific way

• High-quality protein powders, especially whey, are highly bioavailable and can be just as good (or superior to) many whole-food protein sources for muscle protein synthesis

• When choosing a protein powder, there are specific objective elements you should look for rather than believing any particular marketing claim

• Protein powder can help optimize your overall nutrition by making it easier to meet protein goals and has a surprising benefit when building muscle in a gaining phase

Episode summary:

In the latest episode of Wits and Weights, we dive deep into the world of protein powders, debunking myths and exploring their true role in supporting your fitness journey. Hosted by Philip Pape, the episode begins by challenging the widespread misconception that protein powder is wasted by the body or transformed into sugar or fat. Using a listener's query as inspiration, Pape delves into the science behind protein metabolism, likening the body to a complex manufacturing plant where protein serves as a raw material for producing muscle, energy, and hormones.

The discussion begins by addressing the input-output system model, which is pivotal in understanding how the body processes protein. Protein is not simply converted into sugar or fat as some might claim. Instead, the body efficiently utilizes protein for essential functions like muscle repair and growth, enzyme production, and immune function. Only when the body's immediate protein needs are met does excess protein potentially convert into glucose via gluconeogenesis, and even then, it's primarily used for energy rather than stored as fat. This insight dispels the myth that protein powder is a direct pathway to weight gain, clarifying that any weight increase results from an overall calorie surplus, not the protein itself.

The episode further explores the advantages of high-quality protein powders such as whey, pea, and rice proteins. These powders are highlighted for their bioavailability and rich amino acid profiles, with whey protein particularly noted for its high leucine content, crucial for muscle protein synthesis. This underscores the idea that protein powders can be as effective as whole food sources, providing a convenient solution for those with high protein requirements or busy lifestyles.

Pape provides practical advice on choosing the right protein powder, emphasizing the importance of protein content, amino acid profiles, and brand reliability. He warns against misleading marketing claims, encouraging listeners to focus on the ingredients and third-party testing. Brands like First Form and Legion are recommended for their quality and transparency, offering a reliable source of protein supplementation.

In a detailed examination of protein powder myths, Pape reassures listeners that protein powder is not inherently inferior to whole foods. While some might argue for whole foods due to their comprehensive nutrient profiles, protein powders offer a practical alternative for those struggling to meet their protein needs. They are particularly beneficial for individuals who need easily digestible protein, such as those in a muscle-building phase or individuals who struggle with appetite.

The episode also touches on the psychological and practical benefits of incorporating protein powder into a fitness routine. For many, protein powder serves as an essential tool for achieving protein intake goals, supporting muscle growth and recovery. By debunking myths and providing a clear understanding of protein metabolism, Pape empowers listeners to make informed decisions about their protein sources, ensuring they can confidently fuel their fitness journey.

As the episode concludes, Pape encourages listeners to keep lifting weights and using their wits, reminding them that their body is a complex system capable of achieving the desired outcomes with the right inputs. This comprehensive exploration of protein powder's role in fitness provides valuable insights, helping listeners navigate the often confusing world of nutritional supplements.

For those seeking to optimize their fitness journey, understanding the science behind protein powder and its role in muscle building is crucial. This episode of Wits and Weights offers a balanced perspective, blending scientific evidence with practical advice to support listeners in making informed decisions about their nutrition and fitness strategies. Whether you're a seasoned athlete or just beginning your fitness journey, the insights shared in this episode can help you harness the power of protein to achieve your goals.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you like, using protein powder to support your muscle building goals, but you've heard claims that it's just wasted. If you have too much protein or too much protein powder, or it turns into sugar or fat and you're questioning should I even be using this stuff? This episode is for you. Today, we are talking about input output systems to understand how your body processes protein powder. You'll discover the truth about the protein powder is wasted claim and how to choose the right one for your goals. So if you want to know whether that scoop of protein is helping you or just going down the drain, stick around. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 0:59

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're answering a question that's been floating around the fitness industry for years Is protein powder actually used by your body or does it turn into sugar and fat? Now, I was a little bit surprised that this question is so common, but I've heard it multiple times. Sometimes people are talking about excess protein in general, but some brands actually make this claim, and I was. I was pretty shocked, but maybe I shouldn't be, and so this question comes from listener, sarah S, and I wanted to give her a big shout out for inspiring today's episode, because she wrote, quote I've been using protein powder again recently after giving it up for a while. The reason I gave it up is sources like and I'm going to leave the brand name out claim that protein powder isn't actually used by the body and is instead turned into sugar than fat in our bodies. I've been using a different brand name protein powder recently, but we'll be trying this other brand name's new powder as soon as it runs out. What are your thoughts on this? End quote All right, thank you for the question, sarah, because it is one I'm sure many listeners have wondered about, if they've heard this claim, and today we're going to get into some of the science and engineering behind protein metabolism to get to the bottom of this. And so I just want to jump into the topic today and address the claim that protein powder isn't used by your body and just turns into sugar and fat, and I'm going to extend this to apply to quote-unquote excess protein in general, because this one idea or the other has been floating around for quite a while and I still hear it, and it's based on a misunderstanding of how our bodies process protein, and so we're going to use a concept from engineering today called input-output systems.

Philip Pape: 2:44

Very simply, an input-output system is a model that describes how a system processes inputs to produce outputs. And think of it like a manufacturing plant. Raw materials go in steel, wood, whatever finished products come out, and your body is essentially a highly complex input-output system. The food that you eat, including the protein powder, that's the input, and then the outputs are things like your energy, your muscle tissue, your hormones and, yes, sometimes stored energy in the form of fat. It's got to go somewhere. Let's just put it that way. Now the confusion comes in, because some people claim protein powder goes straight from input to an unwanted output like sugar or fat, without being used for its intended purpose. But our bodies are much more complex. We know this. They're very good at adapting as well, and so let's talk about exactly how this works.

Philip Pape: 3:39

On the input side, when you consume protein powder, it's broken down into amino acids in your digestive tract, and these are the raw materials Again, the manufacturing plant analogy. These are your raw materials, amino acids that your body then uses for a whole bunch of metabolic processes. So, number two, processing. Your body does stuff with this. It distributes them. It distributes the amino acids where they are needed. This could be muscle repair and growth, it could be enzyme production, it could be immune function. There's actually a ton of things that amino acids are used for. Very exhaustive list. And then number three, the output.

Philip Pape: 4:23

Only when your body has more protein than it immediately needs will some of it potentially be converted to glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis. Right, and that's when you hear of it. Okay, it's converted to sugar, and even then, this glucose is then primarily used for energy. Right, it doesn't mean it's automatically stored as fat. It's like any other source of glucose, namely, for example, carbs. Right, we don't avoid them because we're worried about getting fat. Actually, I should. That I knew as soon as I said it out of my mouth what the response would be. A lot of people think you should avoid them because they make you fat, but in reality they do not. We know this because plenty of healthy, fit people can eat hundreds of carbs, grams of carbs, and be in peak performance and health and body composition and leanness, myself included. So we know that that doesn't happen. And so that's the same glucose that protein can get converted to as well through gluconeogenesis, but it rarely happens. It actually rarely gets to that point.

Philip Pape: 5:18

Your body is very efficient. It doesn't just take a valuable input like protein and just immediately convert it into some waste product. I mean, that would be like a car engine turning fuel straight into exhaust without moving, without producing motion or energy at all. And so I want to address the specific claim about protein powder being inferior to whole food sources. First, or not. First, but in addition to this, as a side tangent, because it's important, I think high quality protein powders, especially whey or pea and rice protein, which is great for vegetarians or people who avoid milk products, are actually some of the most bioavailable protein sources out there. Right, and so your body can efficiently use them for muscle protein synthesis. That's why I don't shy away from them at all, and I think most people trying to get a decent amount of protein you know, 120, 140, 160 grams will often end up supplementing a bit with some protein powder. Right, and it's convenient in other ways. But despite all that, you know, whey protein is sometimes considered superior to many whole food protein sources because of the high leucine content. Right, leucine is one of the essential amino acids and it's the most important one, or at least it's one of the most crucial ones, for triggering muscle protein synthesis. And if you look at, if you take a whole list of protein sources and rank them in terms of percentage of leucine content, whey is going to be at the top.

Philip Pape: 6:45

So now, why do some people experience, say, weight gain when using protein powder? Well, it has nothing to do with the protein itself being converted to fat. It's simply because they're over-consuming calories, period, and they haven't adjusted to anything else. You can definitely get fat on protein if you just eat too much of it, and by too much I don't mean too much for your body. There's no such thing as too much protein in and of itself, but there is such thing as too much protein leading to too much calories. Too many calories, and then you're over consuming and gaining weight when you don't intend to. That's it right.

Philip Pape: 7:19

Our body is an input output system. It follows the laws of thermodynamics. If you constantly consume more energy than you expend, you're going to gain weight, regardless of the source of those calories. Period, end of story on that. That's it. So that's kind of the long and the short of it. When you think about it, our body's going to use the energy and anything it can't use it's either going to expend or store, depending on how much you've consumed right and how much you are, how much you need it and by needed I mean all the things you're doing, as well as all the things going on inside your body, as well as what your organs need and so on. So I think that settles it. In other words, the answer is no. It's not going to get converted to sugar and fat and make you fat. Yes, it can get converted to glucose if all the protein you possibly need in your body has been used, but very few people actually get to that point. In fact, we know that you can consume quite a bit of protein and it's still going to get used. And you can consume it even all in one meal in a day instead of spreading it out, and it's still going to get used. Recent research even backs that up. So there's a ton of flexibility.

Philip Pape: 8:22

Now as far as like choosing the right protein powder, because, sarah, you mentioned trying all these different brands. Again, I'm not going to mention them on the show and frankly, I don't think you have to jump around. I think if you find one that meets the general things that you're going for, without big marketing claims, you're good. Of course, even good ones have good marketing, so that can be confusing as well. What matters most is the ingredients, the protein content, the amino acid profile, and that it's a trusted brand. So what do you look for? Number one protein content. It should like a scoop of protein of like 26 to 30 grams should have most of those grams as protein. So if it's 30 grams as a scoop and it's like 26 grams of protein, you're good. But if it's a 30 gram scoop and it has, you know, 15 or 20, something's off. There's something else in there, you know, it's just, it's just a matter of weight, right?

Philip Pape: 9:17

Then you also want to look at the amino acid profile. If it's whey protein, you're fine, but I've seen some wonky brands that claim to be whey and then when you then they list their amino acids and are missing some of the essential amino acids, and that is fishy to me as well, unless it's just a typo on their nutrition label. Then the next thing which is important for more important for some than others is the number of ingredients and the additives, right? Fewer ingredients usually means less processing, and you want to look out for things that you may be concerned about. You may be concerned about red dye, you may be concerned about artificial sweeteners or other things that are in there, and not all proteins are pure protein too. Some proteins are like whole food substitutes and they have carbs in there as well, or they're like meal replacement proteins. So just watch out, because it may have a bunch of carbs that you didn't want, because they're put in there on purpose for people who want that. And then, lastly, just make sure that you're getting what's on the label because of the quality of the company and the third-party testing that they do so, for example. This is why I usually recommend a brand like Legion or First Form brands like that. I use them all. I use a bunch of brands, but First Form is one that I love for protein powder. They meet all the criteria.

Philip Pape: 10:34

Maybe some people would argue that on the ingredient side there are purer forms. Excuse me, there are purer, less ingredient versions of powder out there, but if you want kind of the flavored protein, you're gonna end up having some extra ingredients in there. Of course, you can get pure, just pure whey protein, nothing else in there, and then you flavor it how you want, if you even need it flavored, or you just dump it in some milk or almond milk and just chug it down. It works really well with milk because it basically is come, it comes from milk, um, and then you know if it meets all the criteria and it tastes the way you want. Great, you know, that's it. And if you want to try out first form, I will put the link in the show notes to find some products in First Form. But that's all I'm going to say about it.

Philip Pape: 11:15

Just keep in mind that protein powder is a supplement. It's not a necessity. It's not technically a quote-unquote whole food, but from the nutritional and health profile it is pretty much just as good as whole food, if you will. Some people will argue with that and you can have your opinion, but a lot of people I found have success when they couldn't quite get their protein. They do a little supplementation with protein powder and now they're good and they're better off than the alternative of constantly missing on their protein. And then of course you try to shift toward more and more whole foods.

Philip Pape: 11:48

Right, if you have a high protein requirement, if you have a busy lifestyle, if you travel, if protein powder can be a convenient and perfectly effective way to support muscle growth and recovery. There's another cool little benefit of protein power and that's it kind of. If you're in a muscle building phase, for example, it is more easily digestible and doesn't take up as much space. It is kind of slightly less filling than a whole food version of protein. This can be a benefit if you need the extra calories, right, if you feel like you can't fit it in. Actually, in fact, I've had many female clients, you know women who they're not on that high level of calories but yet they still don't get hungry. And I find this with older women as well, like in menopause. For some reason they just don't have the hunger they used to have because of their hormones and they're like how do I even eat more? I feel full already. Protein powder can be great for that.

Philip Pape: 12:41

So if you're struggling to meet your protein goals, consider protein powder. It's just fine, any brand that meets the criteria we talked about. Don't worry about over-consuming or just general consumption leading to sugar and fat storage. It doesn't work that way. Only energy balance and calorie consumption leads to excess fat storage and that's it. You got to find what works for you and for your lifestyle and don't listen to what other people say with a fear mongering. Right, if protein powder helps you consistently meet your goals and support your training, it can definitely be a valuable part of your nutrition strategy.

Philip Pape: 13:12

So again, if you want to try high quality protein powder that I personally use and recommend, definitely check out First Form. They're third party tested. They taste really good, they mix really easily, and then I'll throw the link in my show notes for that. Give it a try. Let me know your favorite flavor. They've got a lot of cool flavors. They have some pumpkin stuff now, of course, for the fall. No surprise. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember your body is a complex system but with the right inputs you can engineer the outputs that you want. And yes, protein powder is perfectly fine. This is Philip Pape and you've been listening to Wits and Weights. I'll talk to you next time.

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you've ever started a new fat loss phase or training program with enthusiasm, only to have it derailed by unexpected events like illness, work, stress or family emergencies, and you find yourself constantly falling off track and struggling to maintain consistency with your goals, this episode's for you. Today, I'm going to reveal how the engineering concept of risk management can help you create a bulletproof plan that adapts to life's chaos and uncertainty. You'll learn how to build flexibility and resilience into your nutrition and training approach so you can keep making progress even when life throws curveballs your way. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are diving into a concept from the corporate world risk management. Hear me out, it is not as boring as it sounds. It's not just for big corporations and Wall Street types. This is an engineering principle and I've used it almost every day in my engineering career. That can be a real secret weapon for creating a sustainable, resilient, adaptable plan and in this case we're talking about your fitness, your nutrition and so on that will then stand up to real life, because, think about it, how many times have you started something new. You're super excited. You're entering a fat loss phase, starting a new training program. You're ready to go Monday? Right, I'm going to start on Monday. You're all fired up, ready to go, and then it falls apart, sometimes pretty quickly, when unexpected stuff happens. Right, maybe you got sick, maybe you had to travel for work, maybe some family obligations just took over your schedule. You know, 20 people visited your house, whatever. And suddenly that quote, unquote, perfect plan that you had mapped out goes right out the window, and so we're going to talk about that today. I'm going to show you how to use risk management principles to create an approach that can bend without breaking, no matter what life throws your way, because that's what we want, that is what is sustainable, something that you can just keep doing, no matter what, knowing that the default is life. Life is the default. Things that are unexpected is actually the norm. And before we dive into that, just really quick. If you enjoy the show, if you want to hear more episodes like this, hit follow in your app. It helps people find the show, but it also makes sure that you don't miss an episode. Just hit the follow button, make sure that you go into your podcast app you're listening right now and click, follow or subscribe whatever it's called.

Philip Pape: 2:50

All right, let's talk about the main reason that most plans fail, and this this is really any plan right, whether it's in the corporate world, engineering or with your fitness. And the biggest culprit here is rigidity. We create perfect, ideal scenarios in our heads, and I do this as well. Our future self is going to be perfect. I'm going to work out five days a week, I'm going to meal prep every Sunday, I'm never going to touch food after 7 pm, I'm going to get my 12,000 steps a day and it's just going to work out Right. Sound familiar, even if you think you have the discipline and willpower to do it. And the problem is, life doesn't care about this, life doesn't care about your plan. Life is messy, it's unpredictable, it loves to throw wrenches even to the best laid schemes that we create. And then what do most people do when this happens? They think they failed, they beat themselves up. They oftentimes just give up like, oh, I just can't be consistent, I can't stick to my plan because this happened, and that is the all or nothing mentality that leads to frustration and inconsistency. And this is where risk management comes in.

Philip Pape: 4:00

In engineering, risk management, sometimes called risk and opportunities management, is about planning for the known and unknown risks to get to your outcome, to achieve your objective, to get the product out the door on time, on budget, meeting all the requirements, and it's not about creating a perfect plan. It's about creating one that is resilient to all the things that you may not foresee, and there's two types of risk we deal with. So this is really important. There are foreseeable risks. These are the known unknowns. Okay, these are things we can predict that might happen, based on our experience and based on common sense. It's the things that you know are going to happen, but you're not sure when like getting sick, like having to travel for work, like dealing with holidays, social events. You know they're going to happen. They're known unknowns. That's foreseeable. Then there's unforeseeable risks. These are unknown unknowns, things that you don't know. You don't know the curve balls that you could not have possibly anticipated, like a family emergency that pops up or you suddenly have to move, or a global pandemic hits right, so sound familiar. And those are the. So there's the what we know, we don't know, and what we don't know that we don't know. And the thing is, we know that all of that is going to happen. We know that the unknowns are going to happen and we know that the unknown unknowns are going to happen.

Philip Pape: 5:31

So the key is to create a plan that can adapt to both types of risks. And instead of a rigid and flexible plan which guess what? Hint, that's what diets are like the keto diet or vegetarianism or whatever it is rigid and inflexible we want to build a strategy that's more like a shock absorber, right? It can cushion the impact of the bumps of life and then just allow you to keep moving forward, like a really good suspension on a car, you know, not like a finely tuned sports car trying to go off road, right, but actually something that can handle all the bumps. So how do we actually do this? So I'm going to give you just a few practical steps here. The first one, of course, is we have to identify what those risks are and this is reflection, this is brainstorming Anything that could derail your plan.

Philip Pape: 6:15

Go through the list, take a piece of paper out and think about your life and, over the next six months, what could happen Work deadlines, family commitments, do you get sick on a regular basis, or your family or your child gets sick and it could make you sick. And it's not like you're trying to predict when exactly these are going to happen, although in some cases, like social events or the deadlines, you know when they're going to happen. And then you're basically leaving room for the things you know are going to happen. You're just not sure when the things you know you're going to happen and when they're happening, and then even some things that you may not have a clue they're going to happen, and then for each of those, you want to identify how likely it's to happen and how much it would impact your plan, because some things may not matter that much, right, like, okay, you have a work deadline. It creates stress, but if you know for sure you're going to schedule in your training in the morning and work doesn't start till later and it's not going to matter, then maybe it's not going to impact your plan as much. But it might impact your food plan, right, having having more stress or having a situation where you have to go into work more frequently or something. So for each one of these, you want to know is it how likely it is and how much will impact your plan, and then you can prioritize the ones that you want to focus on the most, and I would just keep it simple and literally just, you know, circle the top three that you want to focus on for this exercise.

Philip Pape: 7:36

Now step three develop strategies to deal with each risk. This is develop strategies to deal with each risk. This is contingency plans. These are what I've sometimes called if-then strategies. If you often miss workouts due to work, then have a 20-minute home workout ready to go as a backup. If a social event is going to come up for work let's say you get invited to a happy hour and you're going to go because it's good for business or whatever and it normally derails your nutrition then I'm going to eat a small protein-focused meal before I go out or I'm going to have a plan ready to go to choose what I eat and drink at any event. Right. So if, then, eat and drink at this at any event, right. So if then, if unexpected travel comes up, then I'm going to research nearby or the hotel gym in advance, or I'm going to pack my bands or my blood full restriction training cuffs for a in-room workout, right. So again, it's if this thing happens. I don't know when it's going to happen. I don't know how long it's going to be. I'm going to have a then strategy, a contingency plan for it.

Philip Pape: 8:47

The other thing that complements this, that supports this, is building in flexibility to your whole plan in general. By default right Now it depends on what we're talking about. So, for example, training, training sessions Instead of saying I'm absolutely going to work out five days a week, you can say I have a plan for a five day. You know five days of training. But because I know sometimes I'm not able to do that, I'm okay stretching out my week by a day or two and still getting in on my workouts. I just might have an extra day there or I might shift them back and forth, right. So either the number of training sessions can kind of spread out beyond that week or I know that I have flexibility in the days that I can train right. If you're only training three days a week, you probably have more flexibility to do that than, say, if your training program is five or six days. So that's some flexibility on the training side.

Philip Pape: 9:40

For your food, I love ranges, right Minimums and ranges for calorie macro targets. So again, it depends on what you're going for. But let's say you're in a fat loss plan, you have calorie and protein target. I would want to hit the minimum protein but then kind of get within 100 or 150 calories of the calorie target, either direction from fats or carbs. Right, like, create the amount of flexibility you need to know that it's sustainable.

Philip Pape: 10:08

Another flexibility is eating throughout the week, right, when you do meal prep and when you have quick options to go to in your pantry and you are smart about your grocery shopping ahead of time so that you have your fridge, your cabinets, your pantry filled up with multiple options. Then, if something throws you off during the week and you can't stick to your normal meal plan, your normal routine, even if you have prepped it, you'll at least have a second, third or fourth backup that you can go to and you're not just reaching for the candy jar or reaching for the vending machine, right, or just you're not sure what to do. So you stop in a grocery or you stop in a convenience store and you grab, um, you know a muffin, right. Or uh, you know calorie dense hot dog or something. So, building in flexibility, compliments, having the backup, uh, contingency plans.

Philip Pape: 10:58

And then, because you have all this flexibility built in, you always want to assess uh, is it working for you? Is one of these things not actually solving the problem and mitigating the risk? Let's say you are invited to a happy hour and you go and all of a sudden, the same thing happens, as always happens. You have the nachos, you have the three margaritas and you overconsume and before you know it, you've gone way past your calories for the week, despite having your risk management plan. Well, that plan obviously wasn't effective, so you just have to come up with a different one that's actually going to work. So that doesn't rely on you having too much discipline or willpower to do it.

Philip Pape: 11:42

And that iterative process is part of the flexibility of risk management and is key to, again, sustainability. And then, underlying all of this is, again, we are not trying to be perfect, we're not trying to have a perfect plan, nor are we trying to execute perfectly. We're trying to just make progress from day to day. Look at every challenge that trips us up as a lesson to adjust our plan rather than a reason to quit and we'll be fine. And so the power of this approach isn't just helping you stick to your plan. It's in transforming the approach, in the relationship and thinking like a risk manager, not seeing setbacks as failures, but really data points, opportunities to learn, to adapt, to improve the system.

Philip Pape: 12:25

Right, that vacation that used to derail your diet for weeks because, well, you know, I ate whatever I wanted on vacation and I can't get back to it now. I'm off track. I might as well just enjoy myself for a while. Now that is a chance to practice the flexible strategies, the flexible eating and nutrition strategies. That busy work period that would have meant skipping the gym. Now it's an opportunity to test out either the home workouts or the flexibility you built into your training days. And that is now taking the power back into you, an internal locus of control. You're not trapped now by some external rigid rule, some unrealistic expectation. You actually have power to navigate the unpredictable nature of life which is the default and make progress, and that is the key to sustainable long-term success.

Philip Pape: 13:18

So if we were to just recap this episode number one, a perfect plan will fail because it can't adapt to life. There's no such thing. Number two risk management principles are a way to create a flexible, resilient strategy, both contingency plans and building in flexibility, which then number three, allows you to make consistent progress even when life gets chaotic, and not just quote unquote, stick to your plan, which now is really a wide range of flexible options, but changing your approach to it in the first place, which will serve you well forever. So your goal is not to create a plan that worked perfectly in ideal conditions, because that doesn't exist. It's to create a system that keeps you moving forward no matter what life throws your way, and that's really it when it comes to risk management.

Philip Pape: 14:06

So if you found value in today's episode and you want to learn more about creating a flexible, sustainable approach to nutrition, I do have a guide that I think you're going to enjoy, called the Nutrition 101 Guide, and it's geared toward body composition with this flexible approach. Just go to witsandweightscom slash free or click the link in my show notes. Again, witsandweightscom slash free or click the link in my show notes and I'll send you the guide for free. It'll help you master that flexible dieting.

Philip Pape: 14:34

Whatever your goal fat loss, muscle building, improved health. It covers everything from calculating your ideal macros to optimizing your nutrition for your workouts, and it's a really good companion to today's episode, because today was a little bit more high level about the risk management in general, but then this helps you dig one level deeper with some practical tools for this resilient, adaptable strategy. Again, go to witsandweightscom, slash free or click the link in the show notes. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights, and remember, in fitness and life it's not about avoiding obstacles, it's just being prepared to overcome them. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

4 Ways to Increase Your Metabolism by 500 to 1000 Calories per Day | Ep 236

Are you tired of cutting calories to stay lean? Are you wondering how some people eat more while staying fit?

Philip (@witsandweights)  shares simple, effective ways to help you burn an extra 500-1,000 calories daily—all through sustainable lifestyle tweaks. Learn how to fire up your metabolism, feel more energized, and efficiently work towards your fitness goals. Philip breaks down four key areas that increase calorie burn. He’ll guide you through small, realistic steps like adding more protein, moving more throughout the day, and building steady habits that make a big difference over time.

👥 To connect with other listeners who are applying these evidence-based approaches to their fitness journey, join our free Wits & Weights Facebook group here or search “Wits & Weights” on Facebook.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

5:23 Strength training for calorie burn
8:25 Impact of NEAT on Metabolism
10:37 Nutrition's role in metabolism
12:15 Daily lifestyle activity boost
14:34 Listener feedback on nutrition coaching
15:01 Recovering from metabolic adaptation
16:12 How sleep affects your metabolism
18:03 Sustainable strength training tips
19:27 Adding more steps easily
28:07 Outro

Episode resources:

• Try MacroFactor free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS – Apple/iPhone or Google/Android

Related episodes:

• 7 Surprising BMR Facts (Your Metabolism Isn't Broken)

• How to Allocate 1200, 2000, & 3000 Calories in Your Meal Plan (Plus Hit Your Protein!)

Increase Your Metabolism by 500 to 1000 Calories per Day

Want to boost your metabolism without endless cardio or extreme dieting? Let's break down exactly how to increase your daily calorie burn by 500-1000 calories through sustainable strategies that actually work.

The Four Key Components of a Higher Metabolism

1. Strength Training and Muscle Gain (100-150 calories)

Building 8-10 pounds of muscle over 6-12 months increases your resting metabolic rate by about 50 calories per day. But here's something most people miss - the adaptations in your heart and other organs from consistent training can contribute another 50-100 calories daily. Your body becomes more metabolically active overall.

2. Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) (200-300 calories)

This is where we can make the biggest impact. By increasing your daily steps by 5,000-7,500 (about 30-60 minutes of walking spread throughout the day), you'll burn an extra 200-300 calories. This isn't intense exercise - it's just moving more through:

• Walking meetings

• Taking stairs

• Parking further away

• Standing desk work

• General movement throughout the day

3. Thermic Effect of Food (50-100 calories)

Optimizing your nutrition through higher protein intake and whole foods increases the calories burned during digestion. Protein requires 20-30% of its calories just for digestion, compared to 5-10% for carbs and 0-3% for fats. Focus on:

• 0.7-1g protein per pound of bodyweight

• Whole, minimally processed foods

• High-fiber foods that require more energy to digest

4. Active Lifestyle Enhancement (50-100 calories)

Light physical activity you actually enjoy:

• Playing with kids

• Gardening

• Recreational sports

• Yoga

• Quick movement breaks throughout the day

Bonus Strategy: Recovery From Chronic Dieting (100-200 calories)

If you've been in a prolonged calorie deficit (12+ weeks), your metabolism has likely adapted downward. Strategic reverse dieting or a building phase can add another 100-200 calories to your daily metabolism as your body adjusts to higher energy availability.

Implementation Strategy for Sustainable Results

Don't try to implement everything at once. Start with one area:

1. Begin strength training 3-4 times per week with compound movements

2. Track current steps and add 1,000 steps per week until reaching your target

3. Focus on hitting protein targets first, then gradually shift toward more whole foods

4. Find movement you genuinely enjoy and incorporate it regularly

The key is creating an upward spiral where each improvement enhances the others. When you build muscle, you burn more calories during all activities. When you increase NEAT, you improve cardiovascular fitness. When you optimize nutrition, you support better training performance and recovery.

The Bottom Line

Your metabolism isn't fixed - it's trainable. By implementing these strategies systematically, you can increase your daily calorie burn by 500-1000 calories while improving your overall health and fitness. This isn't about quick fixes or extreme measures. It's about building a metabolism that supports your goals long-term through sustainable lifestyle changes.

Ready to transform your metabolism? Join our free Wits & Weights Facebook Community where we discuss these strategies and support each other's success.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're tired of feeling like you need to eat less and less just to avoid gaining weight and you see others who seem to be able to eat way more food while staying lean, this episode is for you. Today, I'm breaking down exactly how to increase your daily metabolism to burn 500 to 1,000 more calories every day, without endless cardio or anything extreme. You'll discover the four key factors that actually determine your metabolic rate and how to optimize each one for maximum but sustainable results. Whether you're deep in a fat loss phase or trying to maintain while eating more food, this episode will give you a specific list of things to do to add up to a thousand more calories to your daily metabolism. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 0:58

I'm your host, philip Pape. Picture this You're eating what feels like barely any food. Maybe that's 1,100 or 1,500 calories a day, depending on your metabolism. You're doing cardio several times a week, your energy is in the gutter and still the scale the fat will budge. Meanwhile, you see others eating 2,000, 2,500, even 3,000 calories, while maintaining a lean physique. Well, what if I told you there's a way to systematically increase your metabolism by 500 to 1,000 calories per day, not through endless cardio or restrictive dieting, but through strategic approaches that work with your body to increase what we call energy flux. That's exactly what I'm giving you in today's episode. I'll show you exactly where these calories come from and how to implement each strategy in a way that actually works for your lifestyle without feeling deprived anymore. Now, if you want to connect with other listeners who are applying these same approaches to their fitness journey, go ahead and join our free Facebook group. It's called Wits and Weights. Just search the Wits and Weights community on Facebook or use the link in my show notes, and it's a great place to ask questions, to get support from like-minded people who, most of whom, listen to the show as well. Share your wins, your progress, but also focus on building your best physique through the smart, efficient systems we talk about, like increasing your energy flux to burn more calories, and then you can eat more food, have more energy and get the fat loss and muscle gain that you're going for.

Philip Pape: 2:31

Speaking of other listeners, I always promise that if you submit a review, I will give you a shout out and read it on the show Now, if you've submitted a review in the past and you're like I still haven't heard it written. I might have inadvertently missed it, and so please shoot me an email or a message on Instagram and let me know. But just to share some of what we've received lately Sarah P she recently wrote that the podcast is quote real, diverse, relevant. I appreciate so much the information on this podcast. Philip seems like a real person who I can identify with. He talks like someone I can understand, who has a ton of knowledge in a field I'm trying to dive into. I love the diversity of information for men and women, bodybuilders and soccer moms. The episodes are to the point and enjoyable to listen to. Thank you so much for all you do to help us on our individual journeys. Thank you so much.

Philip Pape: 3:23

I love reviews like that that show that you're really absorbing and listening to the information and you get something out of every episode. Sdjvdas said quote love this pod Seriously. So informational Can't get enough. The host is a class act too. I really appreciate. You know can always take a compliment, so thank you. And Jason Z27 wrote quote definitely recommend. I've been trying to work out more, but it's difficult to know if you're doing it right, figuring out how to diet, what muscle groups to work, how to find the right balance with cardio, etc. This podcast clears up a lot of those questions to make sure you get as much as you can out of your health plan. So so good. I love those reviews. Thank you for sending them in.

Philip Pape: 4:05

The reviews offer what's called social proof. They help others find the show and have some trust that it's what they're looking for. It makes a huge difference than in growing the community, and so if you're a listener, if you love the show, if you haven't left a review yet, hey, my birthday was two days ago before this episode came out. On the 26th of October was my birthday. I'm 44. I'll come out right out and say it I'm 44. And my goal is to get one year younger for every year of age when it comes to my physical fitness. But the best gift you can give me for my birthday is just a review of the show. That's all I ask for, please. I mean, you don't have to give me a gift at all. Just reach out and say hi, that would be great too. But leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I'll give you a shout out. I'd be very, very grateful. Now, one of the reviews said we get to the point, so I better live up to that.

Philip Pape: 4:50

Let's get into today's topic. Here is what we are covering today. First, I want to go over the exact breakdown of where extra calories come from. When we talk about metabolism in general, I want to give a refresher of the components of metabolism and then how you can increase your metabolism in a sustainable way by up to a thousand calories a day, how to implement these strategies sustainably and then a little bonus approach at the end for those who might have been dieting for a long time. So stick around for that, all right.

Philip Pape: 5:23

I want to start with the overall theme here of increasing your metabolism, and some of you might be skeptical rightly so. You're like hey, philip, 500 to 1,000 calories is insane. That could be like double my current metabolism, or not double, but a huge jump to what I'm currently burning every day. But stick with me here because I'm going to break down objectively, scientifically, exactly where these numbers come from and give you a menu of options and you can kind of put them together. You don't necessarily have to do all the things, but it gives you some ideas to get started and make them work for you.

Philip Pape: 5:56

So first is strength training All right if you're not already lifting weights. That is the biggest low-hanging fruit in existence for your physical fitness for the rest of your life. In so many ways, well beyond calorie burning, even though that's the context for today, it is huge for your health, for your bone density, for your insulin sensitivity, for your function, for living a long, amazing life and, like I mentioned earlier, potentially turning back the clock as you age. I spoke to someone recently on his podcast. It was called On the Brink, john Brink. He's 84 years old and he's the oldest natural competitive bodybuilder on the planet, and he didn't get started until his, I think, late 70s. Bruce and Jan on Instagram they're in their 70s and they're kicking butt in the gym, showing that you can be strong and functional and completely defy aging.

Philip Pape: 6:49

Okay, I'm getting off track, but I think it's important. So let's talk about specifically calories. If you can add muscle just that alone let's say eight to 10 pounds of muscle over the next six to 12 months, which is totally achievable for both men and women you're going to burn an extra at least 50 calories per day at rest, and we know that because research shows that you can burn up to 9 calories per pound of muscle tissue on your body just from the tissue itself, let alone all the corollary ways that your body burns calories when you have more muscle. And again you might be thinking well, that's only 50 calories, right? But there findings from research that I want to add on to that, that people miss in this equation, and I've talked about them recently.

Philip Pape: 7:35

The adaptations in your heart and other organs from consistent training, from being an athlete, which you are, if you're a lifter, can actually contribute another 50 to 100 calories a day. Now some people might question the number, but I've seen it often anecdotally, and there does seem to be research that backs this up, if you add it all up. So, in summary, what I'm saying is, if you add muscle tissue, if you train like an athlete, if you're active, your organs increase in size as well. Your BMR will increase from multiple sources. You're more active in general. You are lifting weights. That burns calories. You add it all up and we're talking an extra 100 to 150 calories. So that's our first 100 to 150 calories. Just go out and lift weights and that is going to massively unlock so many other things. All right.

Philip Pape: 8:25

Second is non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, and it's important to give you a refresher on these, even if you've heard it a million times, because somebody might be listening and saying I don't even know what that is. What are you talking about? Neat is the components of your metabolism where we can make the biggest impact, because it is all the non-exercise movement, such as walking, such as parking farther from the store, doing your chores, doing yard work, fidgeting, unconscious movement, really everything other than deliberate training or exercise. And we've seen that NEAT can by far have the biggest swing in your metabolic rate. For example, by increasing your daily steps by about 5,000, which sounds like a lot, but most people are super sedentary and getting only three or four so five gets you up to eight, nine, maybe 10,000 steps Stretch goal would be 12,000, but let's say eight to 10. That's about an extra up to an hour of walking spread throughout your day, and walking can be spread all over the place in all different ways.

Philip Pape: 9:30

Just doing that is going to burn an extra 200 to 300 calories. Now this is independent of your job, of how active you are in general. We definitely have seen a widespread between people who are sedentary, people who have a modesty, active jobs and like manual laborers of up to something like don't quote me on it, but I want to say it's almost a 2000 calorie difference on the extreme ends. But even if you were to shrink that by down to a quarter, we're still talking two 300 calories, right, just from your lifestyle. But deliberately walking every day in some way, excessively to you in an enjoyable way, is going to burn an extra 200, 300 calories. Right, we're not talking about intense exercise, we're not talking about running, it's just moving more throughout your day, getting off your butt, pacing around the house, doing all the things. And the beautiful thing about this is that is really sustainable. Right, you're not killing yourself with high intensity interval workouts or specific cardio sessions. You know, hopping on the treadmill, unless it's just to go walk on a treadmill. Or what I like is a standup desk with under-desk treadmill if that's a possibility for you. So that's our next 200 to 300 calories.

Philip Pape: 10:37

The third way we're going to add calories is optimizing your nutrition a bit, and one component of your metabolic rate is called TEF, the thermic effect of food, and there are a lot of people in the evidence-based space that are like eh, you know the extra calories burned from that really isn't worth discussing. I tend to disagree, because maintaining a higher protein intake and by higher I mean 0.7 to 1 grams per pound of your body weight, which is almost or more than double what most people are getting to start, and if you're eating more whole foods, with fiber, for example, you're going to burn more calories just from processing the food. You know it could amount to an extra 50 to 100 calories a day based on that shift. All right, so again, I give you I'm giving you ranges because we can be conservative and say maybe it's 25 to 50, maybe it is up to 100, depending on where you started and where you went. If you're eating a lot of ultra processedprocessed foods now a lot of fast food, quote-unquote junk food, whatever you want to call it chances are your body is not having to work very hard to digest it. If you switch to a lot of protein and whole foods and fiber things you have to chew harder foods, things you have to digest you are going to burn a bunch more calories just through digesting and processing that food, because protein requires 20% to 30% of its calories just for digestion, compared to, say, 5 to 10% for carbs and 0 to 3% for fats. So there's another funny thing If you are from the low carb, high fat camp in the past and now you're eating a more balanced diet with much higher protein and then some higher carbs, both of those are going to contribute to this metabolic bonus, just for eating different foods. So that's pretty cool, all right.

Philip Pape: 12:15

The fourth method here is what I call just active lifestyle enhancements, like light physical activity that you actually enjoy. Now you might say, well, this is part of NEAT, isn't it? But with NEAT we talked about specifically adding in walks. In this case, while it is part of NEAT, it's thinking of everything you do in your life, your daily life, and being more active in general. So this could be gardening, playing with your kids, recreational sports, yoga I don't care what it is, I bet, unless you're the type of person that's always out hiking, that's always out playing sports, which a lot of us are not.

Philip Pape: 12:52

We're kind of I'm not going to say stuck with desk jobs, but you sit around all day. You're tired. At the end of the day you just veg out, right, and then maybe the weekend you do some fun activities here or there. But can you think of a strategy where you every day are active, doing something, and if you have kids for example, fathers, mothers out there I mean especially the dads out there if you're not playing with your kids almost every day in some way, take advantage of that. It's such a wonderful bonding opportunity, it's so great for them. You know, get away from the devices and all that, just have fun, especially quick five-minute snacks, what we call. What did Brian Borstein call cardio snacks or exercise snacks. For example, running up and down the stairs a few times I mean silly things like that you can add another 50 to 100 calories to your day.

Jenny: 13:48

Hi, my name is Jenny and I just wanted to say a big thank you to Philip Pape of Wits and Weights for offering his free 50-minute nutritional assessment. During that time he gave me really good tools on how I can further my health and fitness goals. He asked really great questions and stayed true to his offer of no sales pitch. I have since applied these things and gotten really close to my health goals and my weight goals, and now I'm able to flip over and work on my strength and my muscle conditioning using a lot of the things he offers in his podcasts, and I just am very grateful for his positive inspiration and encouragement for all of our health. Thank you, Philip.

Philip Pape: 14:34

So, if we add it all up, strength training and the adaptations from strength training and the lifestyle of strength training add up to about 100 to 150 calories. Increased meat through walking is another 200 to 300 calories. Optimizing your nutrition, your protein, your fiber, whole foods another 50 to 100 calories. And having an active lifestyle 50 to 100 calories and that's maybe 400 to 600 calories per day. Right there, all right. Now here's the bonus strategy that can push this even higher.

Philip Pape: 15:01

For those who've been dieting for a long time and that's a lot of you If you've been in a prolonged calorie deficit and you may not even be in enough of a deficit to be losing weight anymore, you may just be below your set point for your current metabolic rate and just kind of under eating but not really losing weight. You could be in that situation. Your metabolism is probably adapted downward right. It's called metabolic adaptation and it's basically conserving resources because you're not eating enough. And if you can then recover out of that, if you could track your food, recover out of it, increase your calories to the point where you're now at your, you know, full, recovered, homeostatic maintenance calories, you don't have to use a reverse diet, right? You don't have to go into a building phase, although that can, in my opinion, you know, ramp it up even further. You can definitely add another, maybe 100 to 200 calories to your daily metabolism, and that's just like a starting point. Some of you may be more adapted than that. You know three, four, 500 calories, but if you've been dieting a lot, then 100 to 200 is a good estimate. If your thyroid has been slightly downregulated through being in a deficit, okay. So that brings our total potential increase to 500 to 800 calories per day.

Philip Pape: 16:12

And I would say there is one more thing that I totally forgot on my list, but it was what gets you to the thousand, and that is getting more and better quality sleep. Okay, so just improving your sleep would increase your metabolic rate, because a lack of sleep affects your hormones. It also affects things like visceral fat or visceral fat storage in the belly, but that's a separate topic. It downgrades your metabolic rate, downgrades your thyroid production, affects your cortisol, all the things, such that your body also conserves energy, and so getting more sleep is going to increase your metabolic rate. Notice that nowhere in that entire list that I mentioned cardio. In fact, for some of you, you're doing so much cardio that it's actually adding too much net stress to your body and that is actually causing you to burn fewer calories. You may be burning some calories from all the movements, but it is a small percentage of what you should be burning for that movement, because your body has adapted to compensate. So that gets you plenty of things to think about, of low-hanging fruit, where you may not be giving your body what it needs to fully thrive and be in this high energy flux state.

Philip Pape: 17:22

So how do we actually implement these in a way that's sustainable? All right, let's talk about strength training. Let's break it down Strength training if you can lift weights, if you can aim for three days a week to start and then eventually four or even five I like four or five for folks that are more in the intermediate to advanced phase of their training. Three days a week, full body, progressive loading with compound movements I'm talking squats, deadlifts, bench presses, rows the basics that build strength. Right, they build strength and by building strength they're going to build muscle as well. So don't think about it as two different concepts and you don't need anything fancy here, just consistent, progressive training that challenges you. That's lifting.

Philip Pape: 18:03

I've got tons of resources If you're like where do I start? How do I train? What program do I use? This is where you can jump on a call with me a 15 minute rapid nutrition assessment, and if you just want to talk training, I can get you started exactly where you need to go. You know, no charge. I don't charge for those calls. I also don't sell you on anything. I literally will suggest an app, I'll suggest a program, maybe even give you a guide or two that I have. If you're kind of newer to this and just send you on your way and if you're like, hey, I really love what you do and I need more support, that's when you'll reach back for more support. But I want to get you started. So reach out and you can use the link on my show notes to do that For neat.

Philip Pape: 18:38

For walking, first you have to know how many steps you're getting, so you should be tracking your current daily steps and almost any device now phone or wearable even very inexpensive wearables track steps just accurately enough. They're just fine. And if you can start this week and add a thousand steps a day this week, that's not very much at all. That's like a 10 minute walk, ideally after a meal. That's where I would place it if you have a choice, because that will help with blood sugar, insulin sensitivity, digestion and it just feels good Usually after you eat. It kind of helps settle down your stomach, gets the blood flowing and all that. But wherever you can add, it is what matters. So add a thousand steps this week and keep doing that each week until you consistently do it as a habit and reach your target, which I would aim for eight to 10,000, or, if you're bold, go for 12,000. All right, so this could be taking a 10-minute walk after meals, like I mentioned, or having walking meetings where you're pacing around on your Zoom calls, parking further away from stores, using the stairs.

Philip Pape: 19:42

When I go to any place with a parking lot. Now it's awesome because my goal is to park in the farthest spot I can possibly find, unless it's in like a massive Walmart or something where I have to walk. You know half a mile and there's a time constraint or something to my shopping. But you give yourself some time. I try to park far away. Guess what happens Nobody else is trying to get that spot. Your car is nice and safe. You get the steps. It's great, all right. So the key here is just making it feel effortless and natural and just part of what you do Not like.

Philip Pape: 20:06

Oh, I had to get a walk-in, or I feel like I'm forced to get a walk-in. All right, nutrition that's a whole separate topic that I cover many times on this podcast, but I would focus first on just hitting your protein target. Use a tracking app, and I'm going to, of course, suggest MacroFactor, because it's the only app that, once you track your food and weight, it can calculate your metabolism and if it knows your metabolism, it knows the targets it needs to give you for your calories and macros to get to whatever goal you have. But just start tracking, eat at maintenance and ensure that you're actually getting enough protein. People overestimate their intake big time. And then, after protein, I would shift toward more whole foods, with an emphasis on fiber, not being restrictive, but adding in the things that taste great, that satisfy your needs, that give you nutrition, that give you protein. We're talking lean meats, vegetables, fruits. I love fruit. If you can't think of what to eat for lunch and you haven't meal prepped, just think of a meat and a fruit, because to me that's super convenient. A meat maybe you've meal prepped it or maybe you've got some leftovers. If you don't, that's a good place to prep on the weekend, cook a whole casserole of chicken thighs, for example, and then fruit is usually just, you pull it right out of the fridge or right off the counter, the fridge or right off the counter. And that's why I suggest that as a very sustainable first step. And fruit people underestimate how nutritious it is. It's so tasty, it kind of covers your carbs and your fiber altogether. Sure, it has some calories, but it's so many fewer calories than you think given the volume, right, obviously, greens like broccoli are going to have almost no calories. But it's not all about calories, right, it's also about the fiber and the taste and you need some carbs and so on. So protein, then fiber, you know whole foods, and then you're still going to enjoy some of the foods you love anyway as part of that process. But now your body is going to be burning, you know, more like a furnace when it comes to digesting all of that food. And you're just optimizing your pattern slowly over time, all of that food, and you're just optimizing your pattern slowly over time. So that's for nutrition, for the active lifestyle.

Philip Pape: 22:13

Find something you really enjoy to do. Maybe it's throwing a frisbee with your kids, maybe it's doing some yard work. Let me tell you something my wife has taught me. Okay, I used to hate doing the lawn. We have a huge yard. Now it's like an acre and a half. We have a mowing tractor. I still, in the back of my head, think, oh, I have to mow the lawn. Now my wife loves it. She just loves being outside in general and doing anything outside, including yard work. She sometimes mows the lawn, so thank her for that. We have an equal opportunity household. I would say it's 50% of the time I mow the lawn, but she's taught me Now, granted, that's a lawn tractor.

Philip Pape: 22:42

So this is actually a terrible example. I just realized a lawn tractor. So this is actually a terrible example. I just realized. But after doing that, I'll go do some weed whacking, some cleanup of the weeds, you know anything to just use my hands.

Philip Pape: 22:57

Take pride in my house and I don't outsource any of that stuff. The only thing we outsource is plowing the driveway because it's like 300 feet long in the middle of winter in New England. I'm not going to do that when I've got to get to work, anyway. So I don't know if I'm like helping my case or hurting my case. Find a thing that you enjoy doing. Maybe you don't enjoy doing yard work, maybe you want to take a dance class, dance with the kids. Whatever, the goal is to move more without it feeling like exercise. Okay. So, hey guys, this is me being real. I'm not even going to edit any of that stuff out. Take with it what you will. All right. Now here's something that most people miss.

Philip Pape: 23:31

When it comes to enhancing your metabolism, it's not just about stacking up ways to burn calories. It's doing things that support your physical health, your function, your longevity, and allowing those things to then drive you to do the other things that also support that and create this compounding effect, not just a habit. Compounding effect like one thing leads to better outcomes over the long term. It's that one activity like lifting weights leads to wanting to move more, leads to wanting to eat better, leads to wanting to sleep more, and so on and so forth, and it starts to add up and create a compounding effect. I've mentioned the term upward spiraling from positive psychology. Once you do one positive thing, it leads to another, to another, to another, and they just start to stack on top of each other. Right?

Philip Pape: 24:21

So you think about, for example, when you build muscle, you're not just burning calories in the gym. You're also burning calories when you're at rest. You're also increasing your organ size. So that's even yet another way to think about the compounding effect is that there's a cascade even in your body. Your body's like okay, I see what you're doing here. You're active, you need to move heavy things, you need to load your body, I need to adapt. I as in like anthropomorphizing my own internal body's monologue. I need to optimize everything cognitively. You know the neural connections, the muscle tissue and the sarcomeres, the way I utilize nutrients and you become this like machine with a huge engine burning, burning lots of calories. And again, it's not just about that, but hey, take the bonus along for. And again, it's not just about that, but hey, take the bonus along for the ride for doing all these wonderful things that are great for you anyway.

Philip Pape: 25:13

Right, when you increase your neat, when you walk more, when you get up off the chair, you then improve your cardiovascular fitness. And, by the way, studies now have confirmed that the amount of cardio is more important than the type Meaning. If you just walk a lot and it's equivalent to running the same amount, you're pretty much going to get a similar cardiovascular improvement, with the exception of the optimal end of that. In other words, if you're trying to go at maximum VO2 and maximum conditioning and endurance sports, okay, you should probably add in training for those. But if you just want general fitness, that's like as good as it needs to be to thrive for the rest of your life and be sustainable. Walking can do it.

Philip Pape: 25:54

Believe it or not, now, many of us get into that. We're like okay, now what do I do? I'm going to throw on a rucksack, I'm going to go on an incline. Maybe I'm going to throw in some prowler pushes. Maybe I do want to do some sprinting, maybe I want to do this sport over here. And you start to get more athletic, anyway, hopefully.

Philip Pape: 26:08

Some of us, though don't Some of us just like to lift. We get off our butt, we walk around, we're just generally active. We do things outside, we do things with our hands, we go help somebody move into their new house and we're just a more active person. And then people are not having to take care of us when we're in our 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s In fact, we might be taking care of them because we can, because we're capable. So when you optimize all these things, other things improve when you optimize your nutrition. You improve your ability to train, to perform, to recover, and, yes, that includes potentially increasing your carbs. All right, I saved it for deep into the episode because then I know all the YouTube trolls will never hear it. All of these things create an upward spiral where each improvement enhances the other.

Philip Pape: 26:51

Now, the opposite of that would be crash diets, extreme exercise programs right, which are short, quick fixes, where you punish yourself, you berate yourself, you get a short-term result that you think is what you want and it ends up not being and it has no long-term impact whatsoever, makes you miserable and it trashes your mental state. That's not what we want. So the key to making all this work is sustainability. I think that is one of the most important terms that we use on this podcast and in this philosophy is getting it to work for you and it's part of your life. Don't try to implement everything at once right. Start with one thing. Maybe you increase your daily steps, maybe you start training right With a new training program and then, once that becomes ingrained, a habit, a system, you start to add other elements in right.

Philip Pape: 27:40

So not quick fixes, not extreme measures, but building and stacking a running, burning metabolism that also supports your goals long-term, and your body's incredibly adaptive. It's incredibly adaptive. So give it the stimulus, that positive stimulus that it needs. Give it to it consistently and it will respond and do the work for you. And then, guess what? You can eat more food. Hey, you're like what does this all mean? I can eat more food. Yes, absolutely All right.

Philip Pape: 28:07

So if today's episode resonated with you and you want to discuss these metabolism boosting strategies with other people who are implementing them, join our free Wits and Weights Facebook group super supportive community where we dive deeper into topics like this. We share our experiences. We help each other succeed. I do a bi-weekly live on fridays answering your questions. So much good stuff in there. Just search wits and weights on facebook or click the link in the show notes to join the group and I will approve you. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember your metabolism is dynamic and you can train it to work for you, not against you. Talk to you time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

How Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Builds More Muscle Using Less Weight (Nick Colosi) | Ep 235

Are you an experienced lifter looking for new ways to boost muscle growth, improve recovery, and stay injury-free? Have you heard about blood flow restriction (BFR) training but aren’t sure how it can fit into your routine?

Philip (@witsandweights) welcomes Nick Colosi to break down how BFR can enhance muscle growth, speed up recovery, and take the strain off your joints—without sacrificing intensity. Nick explains the science behind BFR and shares real-world success stories from elite athletes like LeBron James and the USA Olympic weightlifting team, all of whom have used BFR to stay at the top of their game.

Nick Colosi, founder and president of Smart Tools, has a doctorate in chiropractic and extensive training in sports rehab and performance. Since 2014, Smart Tools has been at the forefront of developing innovative BFR devices used by elite athletes across professional sports, including the USA Olympic weightlifting team. Nick’s mission is to make BFR training accessible, safe, and effective for everyone, from fitness enthusiasts to pro athletes.

🧤 Get your own pair of safe, effective BFR cuffs at Smart Tools (anything you buy with this link supports the podcast) or here: https://www.smarttoolsplus.com/?sscid=91k8_q3zxr&

Today, you’ll learn all about:

2:01 How BFR fits into a traditional lifting routine
4:25 Typical BFR workout structure
8:59 Substituting BFR into your workout split
11:45 Why lighter weights are essential for BFR success
14:25 Comparing BFR for arms vs. legs
20:55 Safety considerations and common mistakes
23:12 Using BFR for recovery and DOMS relief
29:19 Pro athlete success stories: LeBron and Olympic athletes
36:18 What Nick wished Philip had asked 
37:52 How to connect with Nick
38:24 Outro

Episode resources:

• Smart Tools (anything you buy with this link supports the podcast) - https://www.smarttoolsplus.com/?sscid=91k8_q3zxr&

How Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Builds More Muscle Using Less Weight

As a lifter, you’re always looking for ways to maximize muscle growth while staying injury-free. Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) training offers a new tool in your strength and hypertrophy toolbox. Whether you're dealing with joint pain, overuse injuries, or simply want to build muscle with less weight, BFR can help. In this post, I’ll break down how BFR works, how to implement it into your training, and why it’s gaining traction among elite athletes.

What is Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Training?

BFR training involves using cuffs to restrict blood flow to a limb during exercise, allowing you to lift lighter weights while still getting the muscle growth benefits of heavy lifting. This technique works because restricting blood flow creates metabolic stress in the muscle, which mimics the effects of lifting heavier loads.

So, why does this matter? With BFR, you can stimulate muscle growth without the heavy weights that wear down your joints over time. This is huge for those of us who want to keep lifting for years without breaking down.

How to Incorporate BFR in Your Routine

Let’s say you’re already following a solid lifting routine with compounds like squats, deadlifts, and presses. How do you add BFR into the mix without overhauling everything?

Start with isolation exercises. BFR works great for exercises like bicep curls, tricep extensions, and leg extensions—movements that don’t require heavy weights to begin with. You’re still doing your regular lifts, but you’re swapping one or two isolation exercises for BFR.

Here’s an example:

• For arms: Add BFR to bicep curls at the end of your workout.

• For legs: Use BFR with lunges or leg extensions after your heavy lifts.

Use a 30-15-15-15 rep scheme:

1. Start with 30 reps on the first set, using about 30% of your one-rep max.

2. Take a 30-second break.

3. Complete 15 reps for each of the next three sets, with 30-second breaks in between.

By the end, your muscles should feel like they’ve been through a heavy workout, even though you’ve used significantly lighter weights. This is why elite athletes like LeBron James and Olympic weightlifters use BFR—it gives them the gains without the wear and tear.

Why Use BFR? Benefits for Lifters

Increased Hypertrophy with Less Weight
The main benefit of BFR is hypertrophy (muscle growth) while using less weight. If you’re someone who deals with joint pain or just wants to give your body a break from heavy loads, BFR lets you keep training hard without the risk of injury.

Faster Recovery
BFR also helps with recovery. Because you’re using lighter weights, you’re reducing the strain on your body. BFR helps reduce muscle soreness (DOMS), allowing you to train more frequently without burning out.

Maintain Muscle While Injured
Dealing with a nagging injury? BFR is an excellent tool for staying active while you recover. You can maintain or even build muscle without pushing through the pain of heavy lifting.

How Safe is BFR Training?

Like anything in the gym, safety comes first. BFR is generally safe when used correctly, but there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Hydration is key. Make sure you’re hydrated and have eaten before your session.

• Use proper equipment. Avoid cheap straps. Use validated BFR cuffs like the ones from Smart Tools.

• Stick to the recommended pressures. 50-60% for arms and 70-80% for legs.

• Don’t overdo it. 5-6 minutes per BFR exercise is plenty. You should want the cuffs off by the end.

How to Get Started with BFR

If you’re ready to give BFR a try, here’s a simple way to get started:

1. Choose one or two isolation exercises per workout.

2. Apply the BFR cuffs to your upper arms or legs, depending on the exercise.

3. Use lighter weights (around 30% of your 1RM) and follow the 30-15-15-15 rep scheme.

4. Be consistent. Like any training method, the benefits of BFR come with time and regular use.

You don’t need to overhaul your entire routine—just add BFR where it makes sense, especially on days when you want to focus on hypertrophy without taxing your joints.

Final Thoughts on BFR for Strength and Hypertrophy

BFR is not a magic bullet, but it’s a powerful tool for experienced lifters looking to add variety, improve recovery, and maximize muscle growth with less weight. If you’re dealing with joint pain, overtraining, or just want to try something new, BFR might be the game-changer you’re looking for. It’s like getting the best of both worlds—gains without the grind.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're a lifter who's been training consistently, pushing heavy weights for your main lifts, but you're looking for ways to maximize your gains and enhance your recovery and maybe you've even heard about BFR or blood flow restriction training, but aren't sure how it fits into a serious lifting program then this episode's for you. My guest today, a leading expert in BFR, will show you how this technique can complement your heavy lifting and unlock new avenues for muscle growth. Bfr might even accelerate recovery, help with rehab and add an extra dimension to your isolation work, without overtaxing your central nervous system or risking overuse injuries. We're going to show you how to intelligently incorporate BFR to enhance your training. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 0:54

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today I'm excited to get into blood flow restriction, or BFR training with Nick Colosi, founder and president of Smart Tools. Nick has a doctorate of chiropractic with extensive postgraduate training in sports rehab and performance. He founded Smart Tools in 2014 to innovate on products for soft tissue mobilization and later BFR training. These tools have been adopted by elite athletes across professional and collegiate sports, including LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers and I've used personally their Smart Cuffs myself for several years. Smart Tools is also the official BFR partner for the USA Olympic weightlifting team, now in full disclosure. After agreeing to have Nick on the show, smart Tools sent me a pair of the latest Smart Cuffs 4.0 to try out, and, of course, I've used their 3.0 for a long time, so that was a no-brainer. I tried them out and maybe we'll have a chance to talk about them during our conversation Today. You're going to learn from Nick how BFR can enhance muscle growth, accelerate recovery and complement your traditional lifting routine.

Philip Pape: 1:57

Nick, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Philip, appreciate it All right, man. So let's just jump in with a scenario that many of our listeners can relate to, and this is a lifter who has solid experience already with a traditional type program. You know they're doing the compound lifts, squats, deadlifts. They might be using bench presses or barbells or machines and they want to add some more volume, maybe get some more hypertrophy, they want to get a pump, or maybe they are dealing with overtraining or recovery issues. Stress things like that. How can they use blood flow restriction to complement their lifting in the right way?

Nick Colosi: 2:33

Yeah, I mean it's a common question we get from our non-rehab customers or non-athlete customers, just general fitness. How do I use this just for my general fitness? How do I program it? It usually starts with let's define BFR Like hey, bfr blood flow restriction training we're restricting blood flow to the limb and exercising under a very light load. We're trying to mimic heavier loads. So we're going to exercise that maybe 30% of your one rep max and try to mimic 70 to 80% of your one rep max.

Nick Colosi: 3:07

And there's a lot of research behind that. And when you show people research, they're very shocked to know that there's this much research behind this. They're like, man, there's no way that works and there is there's a lot of research behind it. So, getting that out of the way and kind of saying, hey, this is very safe, this is very effective behind it. So getting that out of the way and kind of saying, hey, this is very safe, this is very effective, they got the cuffs, they got them on. They're finding their personalized their pressure, because that's very important. Finding limb occlusion pressure, or otherwise known as personal pressure, is vitally important to all that we do, as far as all of our programming, because it allows you to scale up and scale down as far as increasing pressure, decreasing weight or increasing weight and decreasing pressure depending on where you are in your training.

Nick Colosi: 3:49

So a typical prescription for back-of-letter terms for training is using it three to four times a week per muscle group. You want to isolate that muscle. So say like, hey, it's your bicep day. Maybe you have two or three bicep exercises you want to pick. You have two or three bicep exercises. You want to pick one of those exercises and do a BFR session with that one exercise. And a typical BFR session would be 30 reps for your first set and take a 30 second to a minute break and then 15 reps and then another 30 second to a minute break and then do another 15. And you kind of keep doing that until you get you don't want to go to like you know full exhaustion, but you want to get to like volitional failure. Right, you want to get to about where you're like okay, I got maybe one or two reps in me, save it in the tank.

Philip Pape: 4:33

You'll know where it is, because it's the point. You don't want to continue.

Nick Colosi: 4:37

Yeah, exactly, Typically it's around the five minute mark. Typically, if the load and pressure is correct, and by correct meaning, you want that thing off by five or six minutes. It's not a comfortable thing, it's not a spa treatment. It's like oh, this is going to be like a Normatec or something like that. It's like flush the systems. It's not that. However, it's highly effective at what it does.

Nick Colosi: 5:00

So if your goal is to increase strength and increase hypertrophy and decrease the load on the joints, BFR is a great, great accessory work to augment, you know, heavier lifting days. You want to maybe take a little lighter, because I see it a lot, especially at my age. You know I'm pushing 40 and you know, and I used to do a lot of lifting when I was younger and you see, a lot of people are like, yeah, my joints aren't what they were when I was 21. I can't lift as heavy as I did and as often as I did when I was younger, and so BFR is a great plugin for that. I mean, that's just one example, but it's a great example, right? I have people up to 85 years old using these things. I mean it's crazy, because they're just like I'm getting some great results and lifting these light loads.

Philip Pape: 5:46

Yeah, and I feel like it's still this secret in the community. A lot of people don't know about it still and they're like what the heck is that? I don't remember how I came across it years ago because I used to use the just cheap straps that you would just strap together and, oh man, you could screw that up easily. And then I came across, you guys, because I was looking into different products but I did find that I'm north of 40. So and I didn't get started to this until I was in my late thirties anyway.

Philip Pape: 6:13

But even now I deal with, you know, low back fatigue or shoulder fatigue or whatever. I've had a couple of surgeries and even just last week I was using the cuffs because I was having some agitation with my shoulder and I said you know, I want to just go higher rep on this, really get that close to failure without the load, and it's a great use case to fit into a lot of different populations. One of the questions people have is how does it truly mimic the 80 or 90% of one RM when you're not literally loading your body with that weight?

Nick Colosi: 6:47

Yeah, I mean, there's been so much research over the last decade and everybody kind of says something a little bit different. For a while it was metabolic stress, right, or tricking the brain, or maybe neurological, or it's just strictly mechanical loading. You're just doing that many reps.

Philip Pape: 7:02

Yeah, effective reps, yep, yep.

Nick Colosi: 7:04

Yeah, I mean, it really is about building up lactate, you know, not lactic acid.

Philip Pape: 7:08

Most people don't care, but since we're on a various science, no, let's do it because lactic acid people think of as a byproduct of hypertrophy. You're talking about lactate, so yeah, let's do that.

Nick Colosi: 7:23

Yeah, so I mean restricting oxygen-rich blood to the muscle and you're doing a lot of reps, about 50 to 75, depending on what pressure you have the cuff at, whether it be 30%, 40%, 50%, lop or 80%, so that really depends. So that's kind of what we know now is that there's that lactate buildup in the muscle restricting oxygen to the muscle, because what BFR is doing is it's restricting oxygenate buildup in the muscle, restricting oxygen to the muscle, because what BFR is doing is it's restricting oxygen-rich blood into the muscle but it's blocking those waste products out. Basically, imagine if you're doing like a high rep set of like 30 or 40 or 50. So something ridiculous, or like a HIIT training. Basically, you're going to feel exhausted. You kind of get that feeling with BFR but you get it very quickly and at very low loads. So it's used very commonly in the rehab setting for obvious reasons low load, you get recover faster.

Nick Colosi: 8:15

It's used in mainly for professional reasons, like for like athletes. It's used mainly for in-season training to deload joints, to maintain strength and hypertrophy. But you're deloading the joints NFL guys pretty much that's what they're doing now because their bodies are taking beating. Or what are we on now? Week three, going into week three. They're just starting to get beat up pretty good, so they're using it that way. Our NBA guys they use it mainly for recovery after games, but that's the pro athletes and the general athletes. They use it at all three levels. They use it during their regular training, they use it for recovery, for flushing, so there's a lot of different ways to use it. It's not just for isolation. There's a lot of different ways you can do BF.

Philip Pape: 8:59

Yeah. So that's the perfect segue, right? Because someone's thinking okay, let's say I'm on a four-day split very typical maybe upper-lower push-pull leg type split where they've got some compound lifts, some accessories and then some isolation. I mean you kind of alluded to earlier. You know a few days a week, a few different muscle groups, but you know you don't want to do all BFR and I'll tell you like there's value. And once you've done BFR you realize like sets of three to five aren't so bad sometimes and having variety in there is helpful, right? Because even with normal isolation work on a cable you might be up in the 15, 20 range for some of those. So give it to us Like what's a typical. You're going to substitute this for this or add this in with BFR.

Nick Colosi: 9:37

Yeah, I mean, kind of like I was saying before, you would substitute it. It's good to pick one exercise and substitute that as a BFR exercise. So, like biceps is just an easy example. You know, if you're doing bicep curls there's a thousand other bicep exercises you're doing, but you just pick one and then you do that rep and set scheme with BFR. That would probably be a good recommendation.

Nick Colosi: 10:02

If you're doing it for training and not for rehab and you have no other contraindications, that's also very important, making sure that you're clear to do BFR, because there are contraindications. Doing BFR like with anything I mean like with regular strength training there's contraindications. You want to be clear by a physician, but 50% LOP for the arm, 80%, 70% for the leg that is kind of where the sweet spot is now as far as LOP goes. And then you can play around with those pressures, kind of like I was saying before. You want to increase the pressure, decrease the load. So yeah, I mean that would be the typical. You know, if you're doing a push pull, I mean obviously the pulling muscles. You know bicep, you know if you're pushing muscles, tricep, you know that would be on your push days. You want to work your triceps and shoulders, you know for your push. And it's not just a distal muscle effect, it's also proximal. You're still going to get some shoulder activity.

Philip Pape: 10:48

Yeah, let's go on that. So, like, does that extend further down to, like, the pec area for bench presses, or is that a little bit less? Yeah?

Nick Colosi: 10:55

there was one research study that looked at that.

Philip Pape: 11:02

There is. There is some benefit to using it for chest exercises, for pec major, pec minor.

Nick Colosi: 11:04

Yeah, because for those listening, we're putting these in our upper arm or our upper leg and that's it right yeah, regardless of the exercise you're doing, it's always going to go on the upper arm, between your bicep and deltoid, and on the upper leg as far up on the hip as you can because you see incorrect use of this stuff on youtube with like upper calf and some other spots.

Nick Colosi: 11:20

Yeah, it's all the same plumbing and that's what you know, that's what we say, that's what Dr Nicholas Rolnick in New York says it's all the same plumbing, right? So there's no reason. You're only increasing the chances of having a nerve-related issue if you have it that far down because it's more superficial. So we do recommend it to put on the upper leg because it's thicker. Nerves are not as superficial. You'll have less complications, yeah, cool.

Philip Pape: 11:44

So you mentioned the arm. Definitely like biceps and tricep work for anybody listening, if you want, like a massive pump and just everything popping out. I mean not that that's the end goal, but it's a nice short-term reward when you do this, yeah yeah 30, 15, 15, 15. Like, that's like the protocol typically and start way lighter than you think with the load. Trust me, and start way later. Yeah, yeah.

Nick Colosi: 12:07

That's so you know like you need an ego check, right? Because you're like, ah, I can. You know I can do a 50 pound dumbbell curls, no problem, put the BFR cups on. Then you get about maybe five or six reps in. You're like, wow, this was a bad decision.

Philip Pape: 12:20

Yeah, yeah, it resets you for the next time You're like okay, now I get it, I get it. Okay, so limit collusion pressure. Just for folks to know, that's the amount of pressure that you put on the limb, and there's different ways to gauge that. Right, like you guys, your equipment does it automatically with some advanced sensors. I'd be curious to know how that happens, cause I know you've evolved the technology as well. Yeah.

Nick Colosi: 12:40

Yeah, I mean we first started we really weren't finding LLP at all and we were just kind of saying, hey, inflate it to a pressure between 100 and 200. And then once you're at maybe at a 7 out of 10, you're good to go Get out there and give it your all. And then, as things went on, it's like, okay, that's probably not the safest way to do it. It's just because that's highly, highly subjective. So when we came out with our Gen 2 model, we started using a handheld Doppler and that's great. You're finding limb occlusion pressure. You're finding that personalized pressure.

Nick Colosi: 13:12

For that user it's not the most easiest thing to do, especially on yourself. To this day I still can't find it on my foot from my lower extremity, can't do it. So it's great for the clinic because you need two people, but for the regular gym goer, they're never going to do that. We wanted the solutions for both. You know, ease of use in the clinic, but also ease of use for patients, athletes and general fitness. You know enthusiasts, as we like to call them, because usually you know people usually using this product are the ones that are very serious about their fitness. It's not going to be somebody that's like, yeah, I work out once a week and do some BFR. That's not the person. The person that's using BFR is really into fitness and know what they're doing.

Nick Colosi: 13:48

They're listening to this podcast, man, they are listening to this podcast, not pandering, I swear, but yeah. So the Gen 3 electronic pressure sensors built in both Gen 3 and Gen 4 products that we sell now they have the pressure sensor built into it with algorithms that control that sensor, and we're actually only one of two products to be validated. We're actually validated for LOP accuracy by Mayo Clinic, so we take great pride in that, because a lot of products out there say they do that, but they actually either failed their validation test or never been validated, probably because it's not accurate. So it's easy to say that, but once you have that peer-reviewed research backing you up on what you're saying, we take great pride.

Philip Pape: 14:25

Yeah, and again for the listener who has never done this before, it feels like a blood pressure cuff basically, and I know in your version three so I had the three and now I have the four it was you had to plug it into a unit and then that would pump up the unit and I think it was like a multi-chamber system and now it's maybe a single chamber bladder or something like that. Yeah, you had a multi-chambered system. Very briefly, Okay, I mean that was probably like the first six weeks.

Nick Colosi: 14:49

That was our Gen 1. You can't find LOP, oh, okay, yeah, so if it's a multi-chamber bladder system, you can't find LOP, and we moved on. We moved on to our Gen 2 units and that was a single chamber bladder system. That was like in 2018. And we've used single bladder chamber systems ever since.

Philip Pape: 15:07

Okay, yeah, and you said the upper arm maybe 50%, I think. I recall in the app you can go up to 60% on the arm and you implied more than that for the leg right.

Nick Colosi: 15:18

Correct, yeah, so you can do for the arm anywhere between 30 and 60 and then for the leg right. Correct, yeah, so you can do for the arm anywhere between 30 and 60 and then for the leg anywhere between 40 and 90.

Philip Pape: 15:26

Yeah, man, and I personally find the leg more uncomfortable than the arm, you know, probably just because it's just so massive, but others may have a different experience. For me it just feels like, wow, that's tight, even when it's not up there. But then when you start doing some, let's say, front squats, I mean, man, talk about a totally different experience, like what's your favorite leg movement or two with the cuffs? Probably lunges, which is not a favorite without the cuffs for a lot of people.

Nick Colosi: 15:52

I know right, yeah, Bulgarian split squats. I mean I hate those. I do them, but I hate them with BFR. It's like a next level. Hate Like it is.

Philip Pape: 16:04

Do you do them loaded, in that you still do them loaded, or can you do them almost body weight? In that case, I haven't done BFR ball bearings because yeah, yeah, yeah, but lunges like walking lunges.

Nick Colosi: 16:10

Yeah, walking lunges. Yeah, yeah, walking lunges.

Philip Pape: 16:12

Because walking lunges. Well, I mean you could throw a barbell on your back if you be pretty brutal, right, typically body weight. I'll do body weight.

Nick Colosi: 16:17

Yeah, nothing crazy, yeah cool, I'll also just walk with them too for like 20 minutes or 30 minutes.

Philip Pape: 16:26

Just do some aerobic stuff, that's awesome because you know, and I'm sure you come across this misconception and you mentioned already, like oh, bfr, lighter weight Sounds so much easier until you realize squeezing your limb and doing tons of reps of something is not. It's a different hard, it's a different form of hard. But for something like that where you're doing a leg day and you're doing accessories for hypertrophy, like quad war, split stuff, maybe step ups Some of those people don't really like as much anyway with load, and I could see this being a selling point and I'm selling myself on it Like, yeah, do the walking lunges, just throw in the cuffs and just walk. So it's convenient and you're still getting this nice workout.

Nick Colosi: 17:02

Yep, yeah, I think it's a lot of our. I mean, I do it, but anybody can do it. A lot of our older customers do it to boost their aerobic capacity. You don't want to go on a 16 mile bike ride with them or anything like that, but like a 20, 30 minute decently brisk walk with cuffs more than enough. We don't recommend doing all four cuffs at one time. That's one thing that I just absolutely detest when I see that on social media. Because you kind of need to do that. If you have a multi-chamber bladder cuff, you need that because it's not going to give you that stress to the muscle. You need to do four cuffs at one time all limbs but the single chamber bladder system like ours, not only don't need to do that, it's recommended not to do that because it's not safe at all. Got it Good to know not safe.

Philip Pape: 17:51

Just two cuffs. If you need to challenge yourself, throw on a rucksack or something.

Nick Colosi: 17:55

Yeah, exactly Throw on a rucksack if you need to challenge yourself.

Philip Pape: 17:58

I like that man. Yeah, I forgot about that trick, though, just walking with the cuffs. I don't know, I haven't read through all the literature that comes with the new smart cuffs, but I assume there's some resources you have that kind of give people these ideas.

Nick Colosi: 18:10

Yeah, I mean you can simply. I mean, if you want to make it easy, just put it on. You know, starting off, just do like 50% LLP and put it on your legs, pump it up to 50% LLP and just walk for 20 minutes and then, if you get tired, just deflate them. Just deflate them. And yeah, I mean, safety is number one. Safety is the most important thing. We just don't want people abusing it and then potentially injuring themselves. We have a lot of self protections in the app and also the product, but you only can do so much.

Philip Pape: 18:41

Nothing in the show constitutes also the product, but you only can do so much. Nothing in the show constitutes medical advice.

Allan: 18:50

Please seek consultation with your doctor before starting VFR training. Hi, my name is Alan and I just want to give a shout out to Philip, pape of Wits and Weights for being a huge part of the foundation for my continued health and well-being. Philip exemplifies a nutrition coach who demonstrates how much he cares. Philip works tirelessly and with dedication to provide coaching, support and major content for us to use. He creates a practical approach from research and Philip empowers all of us to use food as quality for our health. He is skilled in how to assess and direct nutrition. Philip creates a community full of wisdom, support and camaraderie. In summary, philip Piper is the real deal. He knows how to assess and direct nutrition and he continues to steer me in the right direction. Thank you, philip.

Philip Pape: 19:43

Are there scenarios where BFR is actually more effective? And I'm thinking of training specifically, not necessarily rehab, but I don't know how much research studies you guys have done on that, maybe even the cardio that you just mentioned but from a training perspective, would you say BFR is superior to X, for I mean we always tell people, if you can lift heavy, lift heavy, because there's a huge neurological component to that that you're just not going to get with lighter loads.

Nick Colosi: 20:09

And we never tell people that this is going to replace heavy lifting. That's also not true. We always tell people this is a accessory work, this is to augment your heavier lifts. You're going to improve your heavier lifts by integrating BFR into your training. So we're not saying this is going to replace it. It is a nice adjunct to it. It's a nice accessory work. It's nice to help prevent injury and recover from injury. If you got a nagging shoulder like my shoulder is always pain. So like if you got a nagging shoulder, nagging elbow, you know you tweak something, do some BFR for the week, you know, and just take it lighter and let those tendons recover. You know I also noticed my tendons don't recover as fast as they used to. You know, you know when I was 21,. Right, you can go out drinking and then you know not to worry about golfer's elbow, but it's, yeah. So that's where it really is highly effective.

Philip Pape: 20:58

That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, no, as an accessory, and the things we mentioned before. What about? And then travel comes to mind. Actually, we're going to a family vacation next weekend. I would never ask my wife like to let me go to a gym while we're on a family vacation, but I could bring my little you know case of BFR cuffs and do stuff in the room. Gives even more options than just like bands or TRX or something no-transcript.

Nick Colosi: 21:50

Active lifestyle. Nowadays they're requesting for better equipment.

Philip Pape: 21:55

Until you stay in an Airbnb. You see, I love bringing guests like you on, because then it's selfishly. I'm like, okay, here's all the ideas for this, because you could do pushups, you could do all sorts of body weight things, and now you're getting it up into the quasi or mimic of a loaded regime of that movement, which is awesome. So let's just tie up on the safety thing, since you've alluded to it a couple of times. You mentioned the pressure which can be controlled if you have good equipment. You mentioned not doing four limbs at once. You mentioned not going too long with these. On Any other key things people need to be aware of and stupid things that people have done that they shouldn't.

Nick Colosi: 22:31

Yeah, I mean make sure you're hydrated. Make sure you're hydrated and make sure you've eaten something that day. Don't go in, don't try doing it fast. It's probably not the greatest idea If you have any blood disorders or anything like that. There's a significant amount of contraindications Nothing major, though, like pretty much. If you're cleared to do strength training, you can do BFR. So there's really not, like you know, special contraindications for BFR that you wouldn't really have for regular strength training. I mean, maybe cancer, that's about it. Pregnancy, although that one's that's a hot topic.

Philip Pape: 23:04

It always is, even with lifting.

Nick Colosi: 23:05

We always say pregnancy but we'd have. There's no research to say that it's hard with pregnancy. It's just play it safe.

Philip Pape: 23:12

And because there's no research to say that it's effective with pregnancies. Right, exactly, all right, so that's good. Let's talk about recovery, then. What are, what are some ways people might think of using BFR for recovery? You you already mentioned a couple, like one being if your joints are acting up instead of doing your normal training session, put this in there. What I'd be concerned about is people starting doing more volume than their body can handle and actually backfiring, you know, because they're like adding this into what they're already doing. So what are some good ways to think of it that way?

Nick Colosi: 23:40

Yeah, I mean from a recovery standpoint. I mean IPC comes to mind ischemic preconditioning. We know that's on our 3.0 Pro model. You can do it with a 4.0 model, although with new updates we're going to make it a lot more automated. So IPC stands for ischemic preconditioning, aka recovery mode. Basically what it does, it will inflate to a pressure. Usually it's about 80 to 100% LOP, so almost full occlusion.

Nick Colosi: 24:10

It's entirely passive, Okay. So like I remember one person was like yeah, I put IPC and I started exercising. I was like why did you do that? So like it was incredibly painful. I was like, yeah, no shit. Like it's not meant to be active, it's definitely passive. So like, like, don't do that. Like nowhere in our user manual says that. But anyways, we said entirely passive. So you just sit there. It's like a norm attack, right. So you just sit there, watch tv, do whatever. It will inflate and it will hold that for five minutes and after five minutes it will deflate. And then it will deflate and stay deflated for three minutes and then it will five minutes on again. So five minutes on, three minutes off. You can do that three times and then that's it.

Nick Colosi: 24:46

That's's the recovery period and the research is relatively mixed up. It's not a slam dunk, not a home run. That just does everything that some research studies says it. It increases VO2 max one to 2%. So for the average person, is that really that big of a deal? Yeah, kind of. For the pro athlete, that's everything right. One to 2%, that's huge. But it does reduce DOMS. It does improve your recovery for the next day. So if you had a hard workout, do a recovery mode for 10, 15 minutes when you get home, after you shower or whatever, and just sitting on the couch great way to just recover.

Nick Colosi: 25:18

You can do that on arm or legs. Arms are a little bit more painful, so you got to be a little bit more painful. So you got to be a little bit more mindful. Like, would I go 100% LLP on the arms? For LLP, Probably not. I'd probably go more like 80%. It's funny, the research is really mixed. So I keep saying 80% or 100% because there's been studies that have shown that both are effective. For IPC it's not just 100% LLP anymore, it's, you know, could be 80%. And for the arm, you know you got the neurovascular bundle 80%. And for the arm, you got the neurovascular bundle. It's pretty superficial. So you want to be mindful of that. So numbness and tingling is a lot easier to get to occur on your arm than it is on your leg. So 80% LLP for a recovery session for the arm it's usually what I do. But yeah, I mean, that's how it's really used for recovery. Besides for your active recovery days or your light lift days, Besides that kind of what we already touched on already. That's how it's usually commonly used.

Philip Pape: 26:10

Yeah, that's a really good one. I wasn't aware of that recovery mode. I think that's awesome because that is super common for especially like a really heavy low back workout or a leg day, to just have that bit of DOMS. And I'm going to try that out and, you know, let people know how it goes. You said it even slightly increases VO2 max. You said one or 2%. So it's something which I want to pull on that thread because earlier you also mentioned the walking with it and whatnot. What does this science show if it's used kind of on a regular basis as a conditioning tool, what you potentially could get out of it?

Nick Colosi: 26:41

Yeah, you're just stressing the body. You're just stressing the body to a greater degree in a very short amount of time. So that's pretty much the theory about how it's going to increase that VO2 max Research. Again, sometimes you can make it say what you want to say, Sure.

Philip Pape: 26:55

I appreciate there's nuance. Yeah, there's.

Nick Colosi: 26:57

There's nuance, right, and there's a lot of there's just mixed results on it. So the theory behind it really isn't all there or, as we don't really know for sure how it's doing it, and that's kind of what we have to live with right now. We know it's safe to do. We definitely know it's safe to do because I mean, it's funny, as you talk, to like orthos, right, and they're recommending BFR for their patients and the patients would be like, oh, that sounds dangerous and the ortho is like I just had you on this. I'm in surgery in the OR, restricted fully for two hours, you're okay for five minutes. They just find it silly and comical and you're not even a full occlusion, you're at percentage.

Philip Pape: 27:35

Yeah, no, no. But some people do have that instant reaction when they don't know, and even listening to the show and the curiosity they're like let's step back. Are you guys talking about just completely cutting off all blood flow? You know, and it's not that there is a safety element, you have to be aware and do it properly. There is some tolerance, like let's just admit it.

Nick Colosi: 27:54

Yeah, back to the safety point. Yeah, that's why we do it that way. That's why we do personalized pressure, because we're almost guaranteeing not almost, we are guaranteeing that you're not going to exercise at full solution, as opposed to you just taking a wrist strap and just wrapping it and you see that right. You see those BFR straps on Amazon the 20 bucks. It's like cool, if you want to do it, go for it. Me first, I would never do that. I feel like it's very unsafe, easy to occlude and there's just a lot of drawbacks.

Nick Colosi: 28:29

But yeah, that's how it started, right, arnold was doing that back in the 60s and 70s. Right, he was back, he was taking I don't even know what the hell he was using. It was like a towel or something. He was just wrapping his arms and he was chasing the pump, right, and that's Arnold works for him. But we've evolved a little bit. The tech's evolved. We're not blind to the fact that people use wrist straps or BFR straps or whatever, because some people yeah, we understand it's a higher price point for our products, the digital, electronic BFR products, we understand.

Philip Pape: 28:52

Yeah, no, and I've seen the evolution over the years as well. I did used to have straps like that that had the little clip, and it was like the difference from one limb to another and one session to another. It was so big you were just wondering if you were getting the right. You don't want to tighten it too much because you're like, oh man, turning purple, what's going on?

Nick Colosi: 29:07

We're not good. I mean purple. It's a yeah, that's a relatively once you're exercising, relatively normal reaction. But if you're purple before you start exercising, probably over tightened in the pit.

Philip Pape: 29:19

Exactly, man, exactly All right. So I know you've worked with athletes. I know you have this partnership with the Olympic weightlifting team. People want to hear some cool stories. I know you talked about things on other podcasts, but you work with LeBron James. I used to be a Miami Heat fan, by the way, and it was a big. It was sad when he went to the Cavs from our perspective. Hey, you stole from us in the beginning. I mean yeah, no, I mean that's what I mean yeah, yeah, yeah, it went both ways. Exactly. I was actually in Florida when he did the announcement and I hadn't been living there in years, but that was funny. So either him or you know we just had the Olympics, so maybe that's a super relevant what you guys have been doing there outfitting them with the cuffs.

Nick Colosi: 29:56

Yeah, actually, lebron, I live in Cleveland, by the way. Cool, I figured that. Yeah, Okay, that makes sense. Around the same time, yeah, I played LeBron's high school team, akron, in Akron. Yeah, in Akron. Yeah, yeah, he lives in Bath, right outside. But yeah, no, he uses a lot for recovery, so like on the plane after games. He uses a little bit in off-season training, but mainly for recovery purposes, like a lot of the other NBA guys do.

Nick Colosi: 30:20

As far as our you know, usa USA Weightlifting was interesting. They actually were using our product, unbeknownst to me, I have no idea. Sometimes it's amazing people that will email you and be like, hey, we're using your product. I'm like, I had no idea you're using our product, no clue. So, usa Weightlifting they've been using our product now for about three or four years and they're like we love the BFR product, we've used others.

Nick Colosi: 30:45

Our athletes love your product. Would you be able to sponsor us for the upcoming Olympics? I'm like, yeah for sure, whatever you need. So we started working closer with them about a year and a half ago as far as protocols and things like that. Hampton Morris, who won the bronze, he's been using our product now for quite a while, even before the partnership and he used a lot for recovery. He used a lot mostly exclusively for recovery, and he's just like I just love the way I feel the next day or immediately after doing the recovery modes for my lips. So, and he won bronze, so that was pretty cool. I think he was a male weightlifter to win a medal since 84.

Philip Pape: 31:18

Yeah, I know it's crazy. We are not dominant in that sport, so that's pretty cool to be tied to that yeah.

Nick Colosi: 31:23

Yeah, and he's young, he's just a kid, he's like 20 years old, so that was really cool. So, yeah, I mean they've been using a lot and, being as portable as it is, it was really nice. They can take a Harris, they can have it in the village and take it everywhere they want.

Philip Pape: 31:37

So he was using it like after every training session. I'm just curious, like the protocol there.

Nick Colosi: 31:42

Yeah, he would take it. He wasn't using it every night, but he was using it pretty frequently. He was probably doing it maybe three or four days a week for recovery purposes. Yeah, some pretty cool stories. That was a really cool story. It's always good when you don't know that they're using it and they love it. Or you see it on social media with somebody and you're like I had no idea they got it. I don't know if I can mention his name, but he's a head of a. I don't know if I can mention his name, but he's a head of a major studio like NBC, cbs, abc, and he was using the product. I was like that's really cool. And he's like, hey, let's jump on a call and go over. I'm like don't you have anything? They're like I'm sure you have better. You know, like to waste your time on me. Like you know that was really cool, like awesome guy devoting time. You know, for this was really cool.

Philip Pape: 32:25

Yeah, and for his physical health too, you know so.

Nick Colosi: 32:28

Yeah, You'd be surprised who orders off the website that you know, because a lot of, like athletes or movie stars, they want just free products, sometimes Right, and other times they just order off the website. I was like I wonder if that's you know, so-and-so you know.

Philip Pape: 32:42

No, that's awesome. I mean so because people are always wondering, like, what does this person do? Because they want to emulate it, and that's not always the right approach when it comes to training because they're elite athletes. But it does lead me to ask do you guys have like training programs that you offer associated with the product or even for free online for people to check out?

Nick Colosi: 33:02

So right now, all of our education is more clinical sports, performance-based, for health professionals and personal trainers, strength coaches, things like that.

Nick Colosi: 33:10

But as BFR has now evolved, almost half of our customer base is non-health professional, so it's like patients and athletes and, just again, just general fitness enthusiasts. So we are currently transitioning to offer more options for them, for more custom programming. So we're launching a new website in about 60 days we are going to start doing 30-minute free consultations with customers to just say, hey, what are your needs, what are your goals, how do you want to apply this to your training? And then we can kind of go over that with them and then offer them, you know, online coaching, just in BFR, you know, if they want. So I'm like, yeah, that's 30 minutes enough, just I just need to get started. Others are like I need my handheld from start to finish, right, so then we're going to start doing that and offering some more specialty courses as well, you know that are non-clinical, just so people you know people are using it not only correctly but also, you know, optimally for their training, so they get the most bang for their buck.

Philip Pape: 34:11

Cool man. Yeah, no, I, without being in a walking infomercial, I'm probably going to be using them more, maybe posting some stuff for folks, so those listening to the podcast. Maybe I'll do a follow-up episode or two from this on taking the information and talking about the recovery mode and walking with it, and maybe some tips for folks who want to try it, Because I do think it opens up a whole other world. That again, I don't know why more people haven't heard about it. I don't know if you know why that's the case or not.

Nick Colosi: 34:35

I think it's because it sounds dangerous. It's relatively unknown, mainly because the price point was so high for so long. But I think we're at a point now where we're getting the price point down. I think our 3.0 is 299, right. So as far as BFR goes for electronics, it's the most affordable electronic BFR device you can find. You won't find a more affordable product for that short of like straps. So making it affordable was like step one. Step two was getting it into the hands of patients from primary market was clinical, so we did that. Now it's okay. We got athletes using it. We got people that are working out four or five days a week. They're really into their fitness. They've heard about BFR. They want to kind of take it to the next level or they want to augment their training older and they want to deload the joints, you know, and it's still workout and still lift weights. So it's interesting the amount of people that it can be used for. It's really it's way more than actually I even thought when we first launched the product.

Philip Pape: 35:35

Yeah, that's usually what happens, right? People start using it in ways that you didn't expect and then boom new market.

Nick Colosi: 35:40

Yeah, although I did have one person use it. They're like I have. They're like they had four cuffs on and they had like a heart rate monitor and then they had something else on their ears and then like something on their head. I was like that's a bit much. I think you're taking the wearable thing to a whole different level that I don't want to go to. So I was like tone it down a little bit. But yeah, people are using it in ways that I never thought. I'm like ah, that's a pretty good idea.

Philip Pape: 36:04

Yeah, and I know there's an entire podcast devoted just to BFR, right, every single episode, because I can imagine now how connected we are with all the integrations, with the rings, with the wearables. There's just sky's the limit on how we study all this and connect it all together. But if there's one thing that we didn't cover today that you wished I had asked, what would that be?

Nick Colosi: 36:25

It's a bigger question, probably like something that you regret or think you could have done differently, and that would have been. I mean, I don't regret anything as far as like the product goes, because sometimes you have to take those lumps to learn right. So, like our 3.0 was our first electronic product we ever did. We were learning. So it's like if it's everything smooth sailing, you are not ready for failure. You know like you're not pushing yourself right. You know you kind of have to take those lumps. But yeah, I mean, I guess what we have cooking, I guess you know. So we have two more products that we're working on that aren't BFR related but they're health and fitness related, so can't really mention it. But they're health and fitness related, so I can't really mention it, but it's in the fitness strength realm. So I'm really excited about that because it works well with BFR and it goes to our. You know we're making things simple and easy to use for people, making it affordable and making it affordable that that's kind of what our company's all about.

Philip Pape: 37:19

What a tease man. What a tease. All right, I guess I'll see what that is.

Nick Colosi: 37:22

Yeah, I'll see in the next months with the new product. That's kind of what we're looking at. So we're about a year out from it.

Philip Pape: 37:28

Yeah, no. So just for the listener knows, I was more than excited to have Nick on here, because I use the product myself and any product that you go from one version to another and they seem to have listened to every single thing that customers wanted changed about that, even though the first product's great. I think they're doing the right thing. It's kind of like some of the apps that I use that they're super involved with the community and the user base, so I respect that. I think you're doing great work. Those listening. We'll throw some links in the show notes. Where would you like listeners to learn more about you and your work?

Nick Colosi: 37:57

Yeah, our website, smarttoolspluscom. You can just Google it. You can Google Smart Cuffs, smarttoolscom or SmartToolsPluscom. Yeah, that's probably the best way. You know, we're rehauling our blog so it's much more educational. Right now it's kind of again we're building a new website, so we're kind of just like in transition period right now. But, yeah, we want to be much more active on our blog. As far as you know, educating, you know non-health professionals as well as health professionals on how to best use our product. You know how best to use BFR Cool man.

Philip Pape: 38:28

What I want to do is I'm going to put together a quick little like suggested kind of program thing, maybe run it by you and let the listeners know they can download that as well and kind of connect all this together that way for our listeners. Awesome, man. Well, thanks so much for coming on. It was a pleasure. Love learning about this stuff.

Nick Colosi: 38:42

Absolutely Thanks for having me.

Never "Fall Off Track" Again with Your Fitness or Fat Loss (Risk Management) | Ep 234

Are you constantly "falling off track" with your fitness or fat loss goals?

Life has a way of throwing curveballs at our carefully laid plans. Illness, work stress, family emergencies, or unexpected travel can derail even the most dedicated among us.

But what if you could create a fitness and nutrition approach that adapts to life's chaos instead of crumbling under it?

You'll learn why traditional "perfect" plans often fail in the face of real-life challenges and how the engineering concept of Risk Management can help you build flexibility and resilience into your routine.

Discover simple ways to identify and prepare for both foreseeable and unforeseeable obstacles, and the mindset shift that turns setbacks into learning opportunities.

Whether you're struggling with consistency or just want to "bulletproof" your current approach, you'll learn about a tool to create a sustainable, adaptable fitness plan that keeps you progressing no matter what life throws your way.

To master flexible dieting for fat loss, muscle building, and better health, download my free Nutrition 101 guide at witsandweights.com/free

Main Takeaways:

• Risk management in fitness involves planning for both known and unknown challenges

• Building flexibility into your plan is key to long-term consistency and success

• A resilient mindset sees obstacles as opportunities to learn and improve, not reasons to quit

• Regular assessment and adjustment of your approach ensures continued progress

Episode summary:

In today's fast-paced world, the challenge of maintaining a consistent fitness regimen can be daunting. Many embark on new fitness journeys with enthusiasm, only to be derailed by life's unpredictabilities. This episode explores how engineering principles of risk management can be the key to creating resilient and adaptable fitness plans that withstand everyday chaos. The traditional all-or-nothing approach often leads to frustration and inconsistency when life doesn't align with rigid plans. By incorporating risk management, you can craft a sustainable strategy that adapts to life's inevitable curveballs.

Risk management is a concept commonly used in engineering to foresee and mitigate potential disruptions. By applying this to fitness, we can anticipate both foreseeable and unforeseeable challenges. Foreseeable risks are those we can predict, such as work deadlines or planned travel, while unforeseeable risks are the unexpected events like family emergencies. The key to success is developing a plan that can adapt to both types of risks. This approach allows for flexibility, much like a shock absorber cushions a car from road bumps, ensuring that your fitness goals remain within reach even when life throws you off course.

One practical step is to identify potential risks by reflecting on past experiences and brainstorming possible future disruptions. Consider the likelihood and impact of each risk, then prioritize the top three to focus on. For each risk, develop contingency plans, or "if-then" strategies, to ensure you're prepared. For example, if work commitments often interfere with workouts, have a quick home workout ready as a backup. If social events tend to derail your nutrition, plan to eat a protein-focused meal before attending or decide in advance what you'll consume.

Flexibility should be built into your overall plan. For training, this might mean allowing your workout schedule to stretch over an extra day or two. For nutrition, consider using ranges for calorie and macro targets, rather than rigid numbers. Having multiple meal options available ensures you can adapt your eating habits even when your routine is disrupted. The iterative process of assessing and adjusting your strategies ensures they remain effective over time.

The ultimate goal is not perfection, but progress. Risk management shifts your mindset from seeing setbacks as failures to viewing them as opportunities to learn and improve. Each challenge becomes a lesson, and the process of adapting reinforces your ability to navigate life's unpredictabilities. This approach empowers you to maintain control over your fitness journey, transforming potential obstacles into stepping stones for success.

To summarize, a perfect plan doesn't exist because life is inherently unpredictable. Risk management provides a framework for creating flexible, resilient strategies that keep you moving forward despite disruptions. This episode is a valuable resource for anyone seeking to achieve long-term fitness success without succumbing to the rigidity of traditional plans. For further guidance, visit witsandweights.com/free for additional resources that support this flexible approach to nutrition and fitness.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you've ever started a new fat loss phase or training program with enthusiasm, only to have it derailed by unexpected events like illness, work, stress or family emergencies, and you find yourself constantly falling off track and struggling to maintain consistency with your goals, this episode's for you. Today, I'm going to reveal how the engineering concept of risk management can help you create a bulletproof plan that adapts to life's chaos and uncertainty. You'll learn how to build flexibility and resilience into your nutrition and training approach so you can keep making progress even when life throws curveballs your way. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are diving into a concept from the corporate world risk management. Hear me out, it is not as boring as it sounds. It's not just for big corporations and Wall Street types. This is an engineering principle and I've used it almost every day in my engineering career. That can be a real secret weapon for creating a sustainable, resilient, adaptable plan and in this case we're talking about your fitness, your nutrition and so on that will then stand up to real life, because, think about it, how many times have you started something new. You're super excited. You're entering a fat loss phase, starting a new training program. You're ready to go Monday? Right, I'm going to start on Monday. You're all fired up, ready to go, and then it falls apart, sometimes pretty quickly, when unexpected stuff happens. Right, maybe you got sick, maybe you had to travel for work, maybe some family obligations just took over your schedule. You know, 20 people visited your house, whatever. And suddenly that quote, unquote, perfect plan that you had mapped out goes right out the window, and so we're going to talk about that today. I'm going to show you how to use risk management principles to create an approach that can bend without breaking, no matter what life throws your way, because that's what we want, that is what is sustainable, something that you can just keep doing, no matter what, knowing that the default is life. Life is the default. Things that are unexpected is actually the norm. And before we dive into that, just really quick. If you enjoy the show, if you want to hear more episodes like this, hit follow in your app. It helps people find the show, but it also makes sure that you don't miss an episode. Just hit the follow button, make sure that you go into your podcast app you're listening right now and click, follow or subscribe whatever it's called.

Philip Pape: 2:50

All right, let's talk about the main reason that most plans fail, and this this is really any plan right, whether it's in the corporate world, engineering or with your fitness. And the biggest culprit here is rigidity. We create perfect, ideal scenarios in our heads, and I do this as well. Our future self is going to be perfect. I'm going to work out five days a week, I'm going to meal prep every Sunday, I'm never going to touch food after 7 pm, I'm going to get my 12,000 steps a day and it's just going to work out Right. Sound familiar, even if you think you have the discipline and willpower to do it. And the problem is, life doesn't care about this, life doesn't care about your plan. Life is messy, it's unpredictable, it loves to throw wrenches even to the best laid schemes that we create. And then what do most people do when this happens? They think they failed, they beat themselves up. They oftentimes just give up like, oh, I just can't be consistent, I can't stick to my plan because this happened, and that is the all or nothing mentality that leads to frustration and inconsistency. And this is where risk management comes in.

Philip Pape: 4:00

In engineering, risk management, sometimes called risk and opportunities management, is about planning for the known and unknown risks to get to your outcome, to achieve your objective, to get the product out the door on time, on budget, meeting all the requirements, and it's not about creating a perfect plan. It's about creating one that is resilient to all the things that you may not foresee, and there's two types of risk we deal with. So this is really important. There are foreseeable risks. These are the known unknowns. Okay, these are things we can predict that might happen, based on our experience and based on common sense. It's the things that you know are going to happen, but you're not sure when like getting sick, like having to travel for work, like dealing with holidays, social events. You know they're going to happen. They're known unknowns. That's foreseeable. Then there's unforeseeable risks. These are unknown unknowns, things that you don't know. You don't know the curve balls that you could not have possibly anticipated, like a family emergency that pops up or you suddenly have to move, or a global pandemic hits right, so sound familiar. And those are the. So there's the what we know, we don't know, and what we don't know that we don't know. And the thing is, we know that all of that is going to happen. We know that the unknowns are going to happen and we know that the unknown unknowns are going to happen.

Philip Pape: 5:31

So the key is to create a plan that can adapt to both types of risks. And instead of a rigid and flexible plan which guess what? Hint, that's what diets are like the keto diet or vegetarianism or whatever it is rigid and inflexible we want to build a strategy that's more like a shock absorber, right? It can cushion the impact of the bumps of life and then just allow you to keep moving forward, like a really good suspension on a car, you know, not like a finely tuned sports car trying to go off road, right, but actually something that can handle all the bumps. So how do we actually do this? So I'm going to give you just a few practical steps here. The first one, of course, is we have to identify what those risks are and this is reflection, this is brainstorming Anything that could derail your plan.

Philip Pape: 6:15

Go through the list, take a piece of paper out and think about your life and, over the next six months, what could happen Work deadlines, family commitments, do you get sick on a regular basis, or your family or your child gets sick and it could make you sick. And it's not like you're trying to predict when exactly these are going to happen, although in some cases, like social events or the deadlines, you know when they're going to happen. And then you're basically leaving room for the things you know are going to happen. You're just not sure when the things you know you're going to happen and when they're happening, and then even some things that you may not have a clue they're going to happen, and then for each of those, you want to identify how likely it's to happen and how much it would impact your plan, because some things may not matter that much, right, like, okay, you have a work deadline. It creates stress, but if you know for sure you're going to schedule in your training in the morning and work doesn't start till later and it's not going to matter, then maybe it's not going to impact your plan as much. But it might impact your food plan, right, having having more stress or having a situation where you have to go into work more frequently or something. So for each one of these, you want to know is it how likely it is and how much will impact your plan, and then you can prioritize the ones that you want to focus on the most, and I would just keep it simple and literally just, you know, circle the top three that you want to focus on for this exercise.

Philip Pape: 7:36

Now step three develop strategies to deal with each risk. This is develop strategies to deal with each risk. This is contingency plans. These are what I've sometimes called if-then strategies. If you often miss workouts due to work, then have a 20-minute home workout ready to go as a backup. If a social event is going to come up for work let's say you get invited to a happy hour and you're going to go because it's good for business or whatever and it normally derails your nutrition then I'm going to eat a small protein-focused meal before I go out or I'm going to have a plan ready to go to choose what I eat and drink at any event. Right. So if, then, eat and drink at this at any event, right. So if then, if unexpected travel comes up, then I'm going to research nearby or the hotel gym in advance, or I'm going to pack my bands or my blood full restriction training cuffs for a in-room workout, right. So again, it's if this thing happens. I don't know when it's going to happen. I don't know how long it's going to be. I'm going to have a then strategy, a contingency plan for it.

Philip Pape: 8:47

The other thing that complements this, that supports this, is building in flexibility to your whole plan in general. By default right Now it depends on what we're talking about. So, for example, training, training sessions Instead of saying I'm absolutely going to work out five days a week, you can say I have a plan for a five day. You know five days of training. But because I know sometimes I'm not able to do that, I'm okay stretching out my week by a day or two and still getting in on my workouts. I just might have an extra day there or I might shift them back and forth, right. So either the number of training sessions can kind of spread out beyond that week or I know that I have flexibility in the days that I can train right. If you're only training three days a week, you probably have more flexibility to do that than, say, if your training program is five or six days. So that's some flexibility on the training side.

Philip Pape: 9:40

For your food, I love ranges, right Minimums and ranges for calorie macro targets. So again, it depends on what you're going for. But let's say you're in a fat loss plan, you have calorie and protein target. I would want to hit the minimum protein but then kind of get within 100 or 150 calories of the calorie target, either direction from fats or carbs. Right, like, create the amount of flexibility you need to know that it's sustainable.

Philip Pape: 10:08

Another flexibility is eating throughout the week, right, when you do meal prep and when you have quick options to go to in your pantry and you are smart about your grocery shopping ahead of time so that you have your fridge, your cabinets, your pantry filled up with multiple options. Then, if something throws you off during the week and you can't stick to your normal meal plan, your normal routine, even if you have prepped it, you'll at least have a second, third or fourth backup that you can go to and you're not just reaching for the candy jar or reaching for the vending machine, right, or just you're not sure what to do. So you stop in a grocery or you stop in a convenience store and you grab, um, you know a muffin, right. Or uh, you know calorie dense hot dog or something. So, building in flexibility, compliments, having the backup, uh, contingency plans.

Philip Pape: 10:58

And then, because you have all this flexibility built in, you always want to assess uh, is it working for you? Is one of these things not actually solving the problem and mitigating the risk? Let's say you are invited to a happy hour and you go and all of a sudden, the same thing happens, as always happens. You have the nachos, you have the three margaritas and you overconsume and before you know it, you've gone way past your calories for the week, despite having your risk management plan. Well, that plan obviously wasn't effective, so you just have to come up with a different one that's actually going to work. So that doesn't rely on you having too much discipline or willpower to do it.

Philip Pape: 11:42

And that iterative process is part of the flexibility of risk management and is key to, again, sustainability. And then, underlying all of this is, again, we are not trying to be perfect, we're not trying to have a perfect plan, nor are we trying to execute perfectly. We're trying to just make progress from day to day. Look at every challenge that trips us up as a lesson to adjust our plan rather than a reason to quit and we'll be fine. And so the power of this approach isn't just helping you stick to your plan. It's in transforming the approach, in the relationship and thinking like a risk manager, not seeing setbacks as failures, but really data points, opportunities to learn, to adapt, to improve the system.

Philip Pape: 12:25

Right, that vacation that used to derail your diet for weeks because, well, you know, I ate whatever I wanted on vacation and I can't get back to it now. I'm off track. I might as well just enjoy myself for a while. Now that is a chance to practice the flexible strategies, the flexible eating and nutrition strategies. That busy work period that would have meant skipping the gym. Now it's an opportunity to test out either the home workouts or the flexibility you built into your training days. And that is now taking the power back into you, an internal locus of control. You're not trapped now by some external rigid rule, some unrealistic expectation. You actually have power to navigate the unpredictable nature of life which is the default and make progress, and that is the key to sustainable long-term success.

Philip Pape: 13:18

So if we were to just recap this episode number one, a perfect plan will fail because it can't adapt to life. There's no such thing. Number two risk management principles are a way to create a flexible, resilient strategy, both contingency plans and building in flexibility, which then number three, allows you to make consistent progress even when life gets chaotic, and not just quote unquote, stick to your plan, which now is really a wide range of flexible options, but changing your approach to it in the first place, which will serve you well forever. So your goal is not to create a plan that worked perfectly in ideal conditions, because that doesn't exist. It's to create a system that keeps you moving forward no matter what life throws your way, and that's really it when it comes to risk management.

Philip Pape: 14:06

So if you found value in today's episode and you want to learn more about creating a flexible, sustainable approach to nutrition, I do have a guide that I think you're going to enjoy, called the Nutrition 101 Guide, and it's geared toward body composition with this flexible approach. Just go to witsandweightscom slash free or click the link in my show notes. Again, witsandweightscom slash free or click the link in my show notes and I'll send you the guide for free. It'll help you master that flexible dieting.

Philip Pape: 14:34

Whatever your goal fat loss, muscle building, improved health. It covers everything from calculating your ideal macros to optimizing your nutrition for your workouts, and it's a really good companion to today's episode, because today was a little bit more high level about the risk management in general, but then this helps you dig one level deeper with some practical tools for this resilient, adaptable strategy. Again, go to witsandweightscom, slash free or click the link in the show notes. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights, and remember, in fitness and life it's not about avoiding obstacles, it's just being prepared to overcome them. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

Metabolic Inflexibility After Extreme Dieting on 'The Biggest Loser' | Ep 233

Have you ever wondered why crash diets seem to backfire, leaving you worse off than before? Do crash diets seem to set you up for failure instead of long-term success? What if there’s a smarter, healthier way to achieve sustainable fat loss?

Philip (@witsandweights) explores the truth behind metabolic adaptation and the science of extreme weight loss, as seen on The Biggest Loser. Discover why crash diets cause more harm than good, leading to muscle loss, hormonal imbalances, and a slowed metabolism that makes fat loss even harder. More importantly, Philip shares a sustainable approach to fat loss that prioritizes health and performance without punishing your body.

🔁 Share this episode on social media and tag @witsandweights on Instagram, Threads, or Twitter/X.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

2:05 The Biggest Loser effect explained
3:24 The science behind metabolic adaptation
6:22 Hormonal imbalances and disordered eating
7:18 The truth about metabolic flexibility
12:00 Sustainable fat loss: A smarter approach
20:20 Building sustainable habits
22:40 Working with your body, not against it
27:58 Outro

Episode resources:

• 7 Surprising BMR Facts (Your Metabolism Isn't Broken)

Metabolic “Damange” After Extreme Weight Loss? Lessons from 'The Biggest Loser'

Are crash diets wrecking your metabolism? If you've ever lost weight rapidly only to gain it all back (and then some), you're not alone. Let's dive into the long-term consequences of extreme weight loss methods like those used on 'The Biggest Loser' and uncover why sustainable fat loss is crucial for your metabolic health.

The Biggest Loser Effect: What Research Reveals

A groundbreaking 2016 study by Dr. Kevin Hall followed up with contestants from Season 8 of 'The Biggest Loser'. The findings were eye-opening and challenged many assumptions about rapid weight loss:

• Contestants were burning about 500 fewer calories per day at rest, even six years after the show

• This metabolic slowdown persisted even in those who managed to keep some weight off

• Significant muscle loss contributed to lowered metabolic rates

• Hormonal imbalances led to increased hunger and decreased feelings of fullness

These results paint a clear picture: extreme dieting doesn't just lead to weight regain – it can have lasting effects on your metabolism.

Understanding Metabolic Adaptation

Rapid weight loss triggers a process called metabolic adaptation – your body's survival response to what it perceives as starvation. This includes:

1. Decreased resting metabolic rate: Your body becomes super efficient, burning fewer calories at rest

2. Increased efficiency in movement: You burn fewer calories for the same activities

3. Hormonal changes: Disruptions in leptin (fullness hormone) and ghrelin (hunger hormone) levels

It's important to note that some degree of metabolic adaptation is normal with any weight loss. What was surprising about 'The Biggest Loser' contestants was the extreme degree and persistence of these adaptations.

Debunking "Metabolic Damage" and "Inflexibility"

You might have heard terms like "metabolic damage" or "metabolic inflexibility" thrown around in fitness circles. While these concepts point to real phenomena, they're not entirely accurate from a scientific standpoint.

Your metabolism isn't permanently "broken" after extreme dieting. However, it does become highly efficient at storing energy and resistant to further weight loss. This is your body fighting to defend its highest weight – a survival mechanism that can work against your fat loss goals.

The idea of "metabolic inflexibility" – the supposed inability to switch efficiently between burning carbs and fats – is still being researched. While it's an intriguing concept, its role in weight management may be overstated.

The Hidden Costs of Crash Dieting

Beyond the metabolic impacts, extreme dieting often comes with other hidden costs:

• Muscle loss: Rapid weight loss often results in losing muscle along with fat, further lowering your metabolic rate

• Psychological toll: Many contestants developed disordered eating patterns and a warped relationship with food and exercise

• Nutrient deficiencies: Severely restrictive diets can lead to inadequate intake of essential nutrients

• Reduced performance: Extreme calorie deficits can tank your energy levels and gym performance

Sustainable Fat Loss Strategies

To avoid the pitfalls of extreme dieting and achieve lasting results, consider these strategies:

• Focus on gradual fat loss: Aim for 0.5-1% of body weight per week

• Prioritize muscle retention: Incorporate regular strength training and maintain adequate protein intake

• Implement a flexible approach to nutrition: No foods should be off-limits; focus on balance and moderation

• Emphasize overall health markers: Don't fixate solely on the scale; consider energy levels, sleep quality, and gym performance

• Be patient and consistent: Sustainable change takes time; focus on building lifelong habits

• Monitor and adjust: Pay attention to how your body responds and be willing to make changes as needed

The Power of Working With Your Body

The biggest lesson we can learn from 'The Biggest Loser' study isn't that weight loss is impossible. It's that extreme, rapid weight loss often backfires. Instead of viewing your body as something to be hacked or tricked into rapid transformation, see it as a complex, adaptive system that responds best to gradual, consistent change.

Every balanced meal, every workout, every good night's sleep is an investment in your overall health and metabolism. This approach might not give you dramatic before and after photos in 12 weeks, but it will give you sustainable results and a healthier relationship with food and fitness.

Key Takeaways

• Extreme dieting can lead to significant metabolic adaptation, making future weight loss more challenging

• While these adaptations are real, they're not permanent "damage" to your metabolism

• A balanced, patient approach leads to more sustainable fat loss and better long-term metabolic health

• Focus on overall health, not just weight loss, for lasting results

Remember, your body is incredibly adaptive. With the right approach – one that prioritizes gradual, sustainable changes – you can achieve your fitness goals without sacrificing your metabolic health. It's time to work with your body, not against it, for lasting transformation.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you've ever heard about metabolic damage or metabolic inflexibility after crash diets, this episode is for you, because we are diving into the long-term consequences of extreme weight loss methods like those used on the Biggest Loser. You'll discover what really happens to your body and metabolism when you lose weight rapidly and why contestants struggle to keep the weight off years later. More importantly, you'll learn why the concept of metabolic inflexibility might not tell the whole story and what current research actually says about sustainable fat loss. If you think you need to lose weight, whether 10 pounds or 100 pounds, understanding the real impact of extreme dieting is crucial for achieving lasting results without compromising your health. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're venturing into the dark side of extreme weight loss methods the long-term effect of shows like the Biggest Loser. Imagine losing a ton of weight through an intense diet and exercise program, only to find yourself years later not only regaining the weight, but struggling to lose fat no matter what you do. And this is not a hypothetical scenario. It's the reality faced by many contestants from the Biggest Loser, and it's a cautionary tale for anyone considering extreme measures for rapid weight loss. Today, we're going to break down the science behind what really happens with extreme dieting, explore the complex relationship between rapid weight loss and metabolic changes and, most importantly, discuss a more balanced approach to sustainable fat loss. If you enjoy this episode, if you've been following the show for any length of time and you enjoy it, just do me a quick favor and share it on social media. You can just take a screenshot and share it to your story or some apps like Spotify. Let you share directly to Instagram and then tag me at Wits and Weights.

Philip Pape: 2:05

All right, let's get into today's topic, because I want to break this down into a few segments. The first is what I'm going to call the biggest loser effect, what the research actually shows from this great example of the most extreme form of weight loss that we have. The second segment is we're going to unpack the concept of not only metabolic damage, which I think if you listen to this show at all, you know it's not a real thing but there is something called metabolic inflexibility, the idea that you shift from fat to carb burning and back and forth, and now, all of a sudden, after an extreme diet, you can't do that as effectively. And then the third segment is going to be well, what is a balanced approach? What is the alternative when it comes to not just weight loss, but what we talk about here, which is fat loss losing fat, getting leaner, getting healthier, getting the physique and body composition you want, not necessarily a lower number on the scale. So let's start with the biggest loser effect. Back in 2016, so that's eight years ago as of the time of this episode. In 2016, so that's eight years ago as of the time of this episode Dr Kevin Hall and his team published a study that followed up with 14 of the contestants from season eight of the Biggest Loser, and their findings opened a lot of eyes. They challenged many of the assumptions people had about weight loss, and I think our space does well to refer to it and learn from that. And I think our space does well to refer to it and learn from that.

Philip Pape: 3:27

Six years after the show, the contestants were still dealing with the significant slowdown that they had experienced in their metabolism. Now you might think already, okay, well, that sounds like metabolic damage to me, but just hear the whole context. So, on average, they were burning about 500 fewer calories per day at rest compared to what you would expect for someone their size. And then this effect continued. It persisted even in contestants who had managed to keep some of that weight off. So even when they continued to do what they needed to do to try to maintain their weight, it was at a much lower metabolic rate. Here's a very crucial point. This metabolic slowdown wasn't just because they lost weight. It was more extreme than what we would typically expect from weight loss alone, and the researchers called this metabolic adaptation a term that we now use all the time essentially the body fighting against weight loss right, you might have heard the term survival by becoming super efficient with its calories Just very, very efficient. Not something we want to be when we're trying to lose some of that stored energy.

Philip Pape: 4:36

Now, the contestants. Here's the other important thing that's super important for us. The contestants didn't just lose fat, they lost a substantial amount of muscle mass as well. Now, this is important, because muscle we talk about, why it helps burn more calories, because it is metabolically active. It burns calories even when you're just sitting around, and I think there's more effects than just that, like the fact that the process of building muscle itself requires more energy. Being athletic requires, you know, bigger organs. A lot of the things I talked about recently on my 7 BMR facts episode go check that out. I'll link that in the show notes. But losing a ton of muscle along with the fat. The contestants essentially downsized the engine of their body, right, it's just a smaller engine.

Philip Pape: 5:25

The study also found major hormonal imbalances, for example leptin, that's the hormone that signals fullness. It dropped, you know, it plummeted At. Ghrelin, the hunger hormone, increased significantly, right? These are extreme versions of what we would see in a dieting phase, and the combination of the two left contestants then constantly ravenously hungry, even when they'd eaten enough. You know, quote unquote enough. And then there's the psychological toll, which we cannot understate here. It was immense because many of the people on the show developed disordered eating patterns, swinging between restrictive dieting and binge eating, the classic yo-yo cycle on steroids to the extreme. Their relationship with food and exercise became warped. They started to view workouts as punishment for eating and food as the enemy. And if you can relate to this, it's important to understand the psychological impacts of extreme dieting.

Philip Pape: 6:26

So now let's talk about the idea of metabolic inflexibility and you might have heard this term maybe you haven't. You've probably heard of metabolic damage and there's other terms for that in the fitness industry, and it's often used to explain why people struggle to lose weight or to keep it off after extreme dieting and why so many people say well, you just have to eat more, you just have to reverse diet. But what does the science actually say, and I think it's good to revisit this topic. Metabolic flexibility specifically refers to the body's ability to switch between using carbs and fats for fuel efficiently. Now, in theory, someone who is metabolically flexible can easily burn fat when in a calorie deficit and they efficiently use carbs when they eat them. And the idea goes that extreme dieting might impair this flexibility, making it harder to lose fat in the future. However, skepticism antennae should always be up here. It's important to note that, while metabolic flexibility is a, it's important to note that, while metabolic flexibility is a real physiological concept, I think its role in managing weight and fat loss and body composition and all of that is still being researched and debated. In other words, it may not apply right.

Philip Pape: 7:37

Here's what we know. First, metabolic flexibility does change with obesity and with weight loss, but the relationship is very complex. There are lots and lots of variables going on here and we can't always tease out the cause and effect. Number two this impaired metabolic flexibility has been observed in people with obesity and with type 2 diabetes. But again, it's not clear if this is a cause or it's just an effect of the conditions. Kind of like we say, well, people who are overweight drink Diet Coke, so Diet Coke must be making them overweight, but in fact they're overweight so they're trying to lose weight and therefore more people who have weight to lose drink Diet Coke.

Philip Pape: 8:15

Number three the direct link between metabolic flexibility and how easy it is to lose weight or to maintain your weight again, is not straightforward as it's often portrayed in, you know, the fitness industry. Some researchers argue that the importance of it in weight management may be overstated. So researchers themselves are saying this in the studies. So yeah, it's a pretty cool concept, an intriguing concept, to the point where I've thought of dedicating an episode just to the concept. But I think it's something we don't want to put too much thought into because it's not something we can control, nor is possibly relevant to what we're doing. Anyway. It's probably not the whole story when it comes to why the contestants from the Biggest Loser struggle to maintain their weight loss, and the reality is, this is physiology, this is biology, more complex.

Philip Pape: 9:06

What we do know more conclusively is that rapid, extreme weight loss can and does lead to significant metabolic adaptation. And I always advise if you're going to lose fat, we're going to do it at a conservative rate of loss so we don't experience so much adaptation, so much hunger, so much reduction in our hormone production, and also so that we are not suffering through the process psychologically. All those reasons Plus. And so we don't lose muscle. So we don't lose muscle. All of the reasons. There's no reason to crash diet, basically. And it's not about the flexibility of our metabolism, it's really just your body's becoming super efficient with calories and it's fighting to regain the lost weight all throughout that process, especially the more extreme you go. So just to revisit why this happens, why does metabolic adaptation occur?

Philip Pape: 9:59

Well, first, you have a decreased resting metabolic rate. Your RMR or your BMR pretty similar concepts have dropped for multiple reasons. One being you weigh less. Another being you're eating less. You may have a tiny bit of muscle loss, things like that. Number two is, you tend to become more efficient when you move, when you're in fat loss, and often it's unconscious. Not only do you potentially move less, you also become more efficient in movement, and this all the way goes down to this. This goes all the way down to the cellular level, practically like cells become more efficient. I'm not saying that cells movement becomes efficient, but the efficiency is systemic. Is what I'm saying? Also, hormonal changes that increase hunger and decrease fullness right, the same hormones we talked about leptin, ghrelin occur and they get ramped up because your body's saying feed me, feed me now, feed me now. A lot you know, the more you go into that diet. I think I mentioned on a recent episode how we see how, for example, thyroid production drops like five or six percent immediately in a diet and then it comes right back up at the end. But keep in mind that the biggest loser contestants went through a much more extreme change and so it took a lot longer for that to recover.

Philip Pape: 11:13

And yeah, we need to understand that these adaptations exist and, yes, they make weight loss and fat loss and maintaining our weight more challenging. They don't. This is important. They don't represent permanent damage to your metabolism period. With time, with proper nutrition meaning you're not continuing to diet these adaptations can be reversed and I'm going to say they'll be reversed. Can they be reversed all the way? Well, that's the question. If you have so much adaptation and your body has changed so much because you've lost a ton of weight and muscle, can you reverse it all the way? Well, possibly not, until you get your body back to the state it was, which itself might be an uphill climb. If you've lost a bunch of muscle, for example, now you have to spend several years training to get that muscle back. It's not just about the calories, if that makes sense Now.

Philip Pape: 12:05

There are multiple reasons for this adaptation, and it isn't just the dieting itself, but what the dieting has caused that you need to now also reverse. So what does this mean for sustainable fat loss? You're like, okay, doom and gloom. Let's talk about how to approach this. This is the bread and butter, what I love about a flexible, balanced, sustainable approach that you can actually stick with and enjoy and go out with your friends and go out with your family and eat, go on vacation and eat out at a restaurant.

Philip Pape: 12:39

Okay, the big takeaway, I think, from the Biggest Losers study is not that weight loss is impossible or that dieting always fails and if you know me, you know, I don't even care about weight loss. I care about body composition and fat loss, even though to induce that sometimes also requires dropping some weight in the form of fat. It is that extreme rapid weight loss crash dieting that is going to backfire. I was going to say it often backfires pretty much always backfires in some way. Even if you do it in a quote-unquote, controlled way, like if you go on keto and you cut carbs and you all of a sudden use 40 pounds in a month, there are still going to be consequences for that. So instead, why don't we focus on gradual, sustainable changes that work with our biology? Once you know all of this, you realize that our biology is complex, but there's a way to work with it. Be friendly to our bodies.

Philip Pape: 13:22

Here's the philosophy that I advocate. Number one I want you to focus on health, not just weight. I want you to focus on health Okay, health Instead of obsessing over the scale. Prioritize health, and I don't often say it that way. Sometimes I say body composition, but really what I'm getting at is are you giving yourself the energy you need to be able to train and perform the sleep quality and quantity you need?

Philip Pape: 13:47

You know the performance in the gym itself.

Philip Pape: 13:49

You're training hard, you're going after it to be a healthy, fit person, getting strong and building muscle, and then the nutrition supports that, and if at some point you go through a fat loss phase, that's fine.

Philip Pape: 14:00

But by having to focus on health first, mentally and physically, all the rest becomes that much more well aligned and natural and easy to go after. I can't tell you how many clients I've had who they might start off in a fat loss phase after we do the pre-diet maintenance phase for anywhere from four to six weeks, I'll say and they might go into a fat loss phase and realize you know what I don't necessarily like the cost of fat loss, the trade-offs that I have to make of, you know, eating less and having a little bit less energy, a little bit less performance and and kind of a slowdown in my progress in the gym. I'd rather actually be going all out right now for performance. That's not everybody. Some people are like, yep, I'm willing to make the trade-offs right now. So just so I can lean out a bit. But it all comes down to how do you feel, how do you perform, how's your health, and then we let the other things fall along with that.

Jenny: 14:50

Hi, my name is Jenny and I just wanted to say a big thank you to Philip Pape of Wits and Weights for the 15 minute rapid nutrition assessment he offers for free. During that session I found he asked really good personal questions that helped him be able to give me excellent advice and tangible tools which I've applied, and since then I have lost 12 pounds where I was otherwise stuck. Now that I'm closer to my weight goals, I'm focusing more on my fitness and muscle and strength. So I just really want to say thanks, philip, for all of your encouragement and the free tools you offer, as well as the positive podcast message. It's really helped me.

Philip Pape: 15:33

The second thing is gradual fat loss. So if you are going to go into fat loss, aiming for that slow, steady progress of around a half 0.75% of your body weight per week is a usually pretty solid place to be. For a lot of people that's around a pound a week, right, I'm just giving you rough numbers. We'd have to personalize it for you specifically, depending on your metabolism, your goals, your timeframe, the calorie intake, so many things. But aiming for no more than 1% of your body weight per week, that is going to minimize the metabolic adaptation and the muscle loss, especially the muscle loss. You're still going to have metabolic adaptation, but it's going to be a lot less. It's proportional to the quickness, the rapidity of the diet. Now, just real caveat here. A little caveat Because it's proportional. Just understand that you are getting something for it. I want to be clear on that. So if you decide to step on the gas and go at 1% body weight per week and then the metabolic adaptation therefore kicks up to its maximum within that range, the benefit is you're getting 1% body fat loss per week. So it's faster and you know larger magnitude and for some people that's what they want and they're willing to make that trade off. So it's just, it's all. Let's be objective about it, right? It's not a right or wrong. It's just if you do this, you get this. If you're okay with more metabolic adaptation, you do this.

Philip Pape: 16:56

Now the muscle loss piece. I have a problem with that that we have to be careful of. If you go too fast, you're going to lose muscle and again, there's always exceptions. I have plenty of clients that have a good base of strength and muscle. They have a high calorie base to work with, so they can intake a lot of carbs that are anabolic or anti-catabolic. When they're losing, they can take both protein and even when they're on a diet, whereas other people with a much lower metabolism, the carbs come down pretty low and that starts to eat into their ability to hold onto that muscle other than the protein. So what I'm saying is you can go past 1% in some cases, very personalized, okay.

Philip Pape: 17:33

Number three we do want to emphasize body composition over weight. So if we're going to still be looking at fat loss and using the number on the scale as one of many measures, we still want to prioritize maintaining or, for some of you, a tiny bit of gain of muscle mass while losing the body weight, because that means you're losing fat. It also maintains that metabolic rate, it mitigates some of these other problems and then along the way, throughout this whole process, we want to create sustainable habits, because it's not about dieting as a switch, as an on-off switch. It's really about your identity, your routines, your systems around nutrition, around training and stress management, sleep and so on that can carry with you for the rest of your life, regardless of these short-term cycles of building or losing fat. You know, building muscle or losing fat, and so with that comes some patience and some consistency.

Philip Pape: 18:32

But I think we give that lip service too much where it's like got to be patient, got to be consistent. Let's look at it this way If you try to crash diet and you're not patient, in that context it's all going to come back. You're going to lose muscle, you're going to feel terrible, it's going to take longer to recover and, guess what, you're actually further back than when you started. So even if you're impatient, like I kind of am, in a way that's actually the most frustrating long way to do it, inefficient, lengthy way to do it. So that's where you hear something like the long path is the fastest path, so to speak. It's like the planned out, consistency based approach is the one that's going to get you the fastest result at the end, ironically, or whatever term you want to use get you the fastest result at the end, ironically, or whatever term you want to use.

Philip Pape: 19:22

Okay, and then the food itself. This is oh. There's so many debates about what are the right diets and what should you cut out, and I I I need to be good or bad, I need to cut out alcohol, I need to cut out sugar and I need to cut out carbs. The best thing to cut out is this thinking and to instead add in the things that satisfy you and that you need and that you're not going to be guilty eating, and that is lots of protein, lots of fiber and, yes, some carbs. That all support your goals, make you feel great, allow you to perform, allow you to train, and it's very flexible. Resistance training, of course, is super important throughout this whole thing. The biggest loser contestants a lot of them were going all out on cardio and it wasn't about muscle mass at all, and that's a huge problem. So, just being a person who lifts weights regularly and uses progressive overload and lifts in, you know the strength regime, for part of that, using compound lifts is going to have a massive base to build on and maintain metabolic health, whatever phase they're in, including fat loss.

Philip Pape: 20:21

And then recovery goes hand in hand with that right Getting enough sleep, getting enough stress for supporting your hormones and supporting your cravings and supporting the fat loss as well. And then when you're doing fat loss, you know having diet breaks built in can be helpful for some people. Some people don't need them, they just go all out. You know, for eight, 12, 16 weeks, go all out for a fat loss phase and then you're done. Others want to have breaks in there. You know weekend breaks or week-long breaks, breaks aligned with their lifestyle, like business travel, right, or just a weekend where you plan to go out to a restaurant or go to your you know grandmother's house for Thanksgiving, whatever it might be. It can give you a little mental reset. It's not too much of a physical reset, let's be honest. I should probably do a whole episode about that.

Philip Pape: 21:11

Refeeds and diet breaks Again, because people give too much emphasis on recovery physical, physiological recovery from diet breaks. Not so much, really, really not so much. We don't see meaningful recovery until you're out of a diet for some time, at least for several weeks in a row. But there are huge psychological benefits from short-term recovery and there also is a perceived level of recovery just from all the extra calories you're able to eat when you go back to maintenance, even if it's just for a day or two. And throughout all of this, of course, you're going to be monitoring, adjusting, paying attention to how your body responds, and know that what works for you or someone else might not be working for you, because the goal is health and quality of life, which is going to be very personalized itself. Right.

Philip Pape: 21:56

I spoke to someone today who is a cyclist. He's getting ready for a hundred mile mountain biking race and he's in his sixties. He wants to be strong, he wants to be healthy. He doesn't even care about aesthetics. Now, you might care about aesthetics and, honestly, if you focus on health, aesthetics will take care of themselves. But you know for him he has a specific goal that he's going after. That's very personalized and so health and quality of life for him might be different than for someone else.

Philip Pape: 22:23

You know I had surgery last year on my shoulder, so health and quality of life for me was recovery, taking it at the right pace to get back and not re-injure myself, having the right nutrition supplementation to support that, okay, and this approach might again seem like, oh, that's more work, that's going to take longer, but it's actually the one that's going to stick and give you the lasting results, which means it's actually more efficient and even faster. So I want to leave you with something super powerful, because I know the context of this was the biggest loser and I think the biggest lesson from that show isn't really about metabolic damage or metabolic flexibility or inflexibility. I think it's about the importance of working with your body and not against it. Not punishing yourself, not doing something that feels like I mean, if anybody's aware of that show, it was like people screaming at them. It was this all out, balls to the wall, go above and beyond everyday extreme. That is not realistic for anybody to do this sustainably. We're not even talking about a competition or a race or something where, yeah, you do want to do a more extreme level of training than just a normal lifestyle training to get ready for that. But even then, it's in a controlled, conservative fashion to get you there with your health intact and with the right fuel and the right performance to go after it and just trying to lose a ton of weight is not going to be that. So, instead of viewing your body as something that has to be punished, has to be hacked, has to be tricked into rapid transformation, see it as an adaptive system that responds best to love, to gradual, consistent change. Every meal that you're balancing out with protein and fiber, every training session that you give it, that what we call acute or hormetic stress, that good stress that your body feels great but it also is going to have lasting effects by building muscle, every good night's sleep you know that you wake up feeling refreshed. Those are all investments that really pay off. Those are investments in your health, right? Not punishing yourself on a treadmill, getting sweaty, getting sore, feeling like you're going to die, feeling like you're going to just keel over and thinking that that is somehow a good sign, that is somehow associated with good health. Cause, it's not. It's not If you're punishing yourself.

Philip Pape: 24:45

If you think of your language around the gym, if it's like, oh, that was brutal, oh, that crushed me, and it's not done out of just like jest. Like you know, if I do a heavy back squat, I'm like grinding through it, I'm like, oh, that was brutal. That's different, I mean, in my opinion, because it's more about the language. That's different than something that just makes you want to puke and collapse afterward and then you can't walk up the stairs for three days and then guess what. It's really not going to give you a result anyway that you're going for. There's a difference. If you go on the biggest loser, are you going to have a dramatic before and after? Absolutely Right, is that really what you want when you then lose it? So the biggest losers lost a lot more than that, didn't they? They lost their ability to sustain that, and it actually crushes your confidence, because then it sets you up for thinking the only way I can get to something that I'm going for with aesthetics or weight or whatever, is to do this crazy extreme thing. And then you dread that thing or you just won't do it. You're like, well, I'll do that next week or I'll do that next month, and then you don't do it because it's not the right thing to do for you, right, it's not the right thing to do.

Philip Pape: 25:49

You want a peaceful relationship with food. Food is something you eat multiple times a day, every day, for the rest of your life, don't? We want to enjoy that relationship. It doesn't mean you have to, you know, indulge and just love every single bite and mindfully eat 100% of the time, or anything like that. It also doesn't mean that everything that goes in your body has to be just of the perfect health, so to speak, right. Give yourself some flexibility.

Philip Pape: 26:12

Training is kind of the same thing. It's like life is going to happen. You might have to shift your training day around, you might have to swap out some exercises. Just show up and go to the gym, get it done right, and in the long run, that's going to matter for who you are and then what you are, what you're able to do and, yes, even what you look like. So imagine being able to lose fat when you want to maintain your weight wherever you want to maintain it, and then actually enjoy the process. That's what we're going for here. Okay, and it's achievable For anyone who's willing to play that long game. It's achievable and I want you to reach out. If you want to understand how right Reach out, send me a text message using the link in the show notes. Hit me up on Instagram at Wits and Weights.

Philip Pape: 26:55

I want to recap, just to kind of reiterate the importance of this episode and what we learned from the Biggest Loser, because that extreme dieting, that rapid weight loss that leads to significant metabolic adaptation, that results in weight regain but, worse than that, it results in your overall metabolism being lower than it was before because now you've lost a bunch of muscle. The concept of metabolic inflexibility it's very intriguing Metabolic damage and flexibility but in reality, a lot of this is effect and cause, not cause and effect. Having a balanced approach that prioritizes health and then the consistency and patience to get there is really what's going to pay off. All right, before we wrap up, if you found value in today's episode, I really appreciate it. I'm so grateful if you would just share it on your social media. That's all I'm asking for.

Philip Pape: 27:40

Tell people about it.

Philip Pape: 27:41

Take a photo of you listening you know, hey, look at me or a screenshot of the episode and just post it. Post it to wherever Instagram X threads. Tag me at what's in weights and let your friends know what you learned and why you found the information helpful. That's really all I'm asking for. If you found this helpful, if you're like, hey, this guy talked about what really is happening when we diet, I think you find it pretty cool because he talks about, you know, losing fat instead of losing muscle, or he talks about a better approach that you could actually enjoy, and you don't have to feel guilty and like you're punishing yourself.

Philip Pape: 28:14

Just share it with people. I also love to see who's listening, so when you share it on social, I'll be able to see who's commenting, who's listening and then hearing how you describe the show to people. So don't be shy. Don't be shy. Share away. Let's spread the word about smart, efficient, sustainable strategies based on the evidence. Okay, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting some weights, and remember your body is incredibly adaptive. With the right approach and with the love it deserves, you can achieve your goals without anything extreme, without extreme diet and extreme measures. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

Microscopic Muscle Growth for Huge Gains (Justin Cottle) | Ep 232

Have your muscle gains stalled? Do you struggle to build muscle as fast as others despite your best efforts in the gym?

Philip (@witsandweights) connects with anatomy expert Justin Cottle to dive deep into the cellular world of muscle hypertrophy. You'll learn why some people build muscle faster, what happens inside your muscles as they adapt to strength training, and how understanding these processes can unlock your muscle-building potential. If you want to go beyond the surface level and truly understand how to build muscle efficiently, this is for you.

Justin Cottle, a former lab director at the Institute of Human Anatomy, returns to the show to break down the science of muscle fibers, the role of protein synthesis, and how our genetics influence muscle growth.

🔔 Make sure to hit “follow” to be notified of more episodes like these!

Today, you’ll learn all about:

2:02 Cellular differences between hypertrophied and untrained muscle
3:37 Breaking down muscle fibers and tissue layers
7:15 Fast-twitch vs. slow-twitch muscle fibers
10:03 The role of protein and amino acids in muscle growth
15:30 The connection between carbs and glycogen storage
20:22 The three types of muscle tissues
24:18 Eccentric vs. concentric contractions and training
28:48 Training variation and breaking through plateaus
32:44 Genetic variability in muscle fiber composition
36:43 Mechanisms beyond individual fiber growth (e.g., hyperplasia)
39:09 The importance of rest and recovery for hypertrophy
45:30 Role of muscle damage in hypertrophy
49:34 Practical strategies and training methods for lifters
52:21 Advancements in muscle growth science
55:50 Where to find Justin
56:24 Outro

Episode resources:

• Youtube: @thedissectionroom 

• Substack: @thedissectionroom 

• Instagram: @realjustincottle

• Learn anatomy faster: kenhub.com

Related episode:

• How Anatomy Impacts Your Gut, Muscle Mass, Hormones, and Health with Justin Cottle | Ep 177

Episode summary:

In the latest episode of the Wits & Weights podcast, host Philip Pape sits down with Justin Cottle, a former lab director at the Institute of Human Anatomy, to delve into the fascinating world of muscle hypertrophy. This episode promises to enlighten listeners on the microscopic wonders of muscle growth, exploring how cellular and genetic factors can significantly influence an individual's ability to build muscle mass.

The conversation kicks off with a deep dive into the microscopic processes that underpin hypertrophy. Justin Cottle brings his expertise to the table, highlighting the importance of understanding the subcellular changes that occur with regular strength training. Muscle hypertrophy, the increase in muscle size, is influenced by factors such as the increase in sarcoplasm and the presence of more nuclei within muscle cells. These indicators are crucial for enhancing training effectiveness and maximizing gains.

Listeners are then taken on a journey through the intricate anatomy of muscle fibers. The episode sheds light on the various layers of skeletal muscles and the roles of connective tissues like endomycium and epimycium. These structures organize muscle fibers into functional units, while organelles like myofibrils and mitochondria play pivotal roles in muscle contraction and energy storage. Understanding these elements is key for anyone looking to optimize their workout regimen and tailor it to their unique physiology.

The episode doesn't shy away from tackling controversial topics, such as the role of carbohydrates in muscle function. Contrary to modern dietary trends that demonize carbs, Justin Cottle emphasizes their importance as a primary energy source for muscle contraction and brain function. Carbohydrates, stored as glycogen, are vital for supporting both slow and fast-twitch muscle fibers. The discussion highlights how a balanced intake of carbs is essential for fueling intense workouts and ensuring optimal performance.

A fascinating segment of the episode is dedicated to exploring the relationship between muscle growth and metabolic processes. The hosts discuss how different muscle types, including skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscles, contribute to overall metabolism. They examine recent findings that suggest athletes may have a higher basal metabolic rate due to increased organ size, a hypothesis that underscores the complex interplay between muscle growth and organ function.

Genetic variability also takes center stage in this episode. The hosts explore how subtle changes in training can influence the central nervous system, leading to improved performance. They discuss the genetic factors that affect muscle fiber composition and hypertrophy potential, acknowledging that some individuals are naturally predisposed to excel in specific physical activities due to their genetic makeup.

Rest and recovery are highlighted as crucial components of any fitness regimen. The episode delves into the science of rest, emphasizing its role in muscle repair and growth. Adequate rest periods between workouts and proper sleep are essential for replenishing glycogen stores and allowing for muscle repair. The conversation underscores the significance of integrating proper nutrition, particularly carbohydrates, into recovery routines to enhance athletic outcomes.

Looking to the future, the episode explores the exciting potential of personalized supplementation and AI in health and wellness. Justin Cottle shares his insights on how advanced technologies could revolutionize personalized medicine, offering tailored solutions based on an individual's genetic profile. This forward-thinking discussion promises a future where bioavailability and targeted treatments enhance natural bodily processes, paving the way for groundbreaking advancements in health and fitness.

Overall, this episode is a treasure trove of insights for athletes, fitness enthusiasts, and anyone curious about the marvels of human anatomy. With expert guidance from Justin Cottle, listeners are equipped with practical advice and scientific knowledge to unlock their muscle-building potential and enhance their performance. Whether you're looking to optimize your workout routine, understand the role of genetics in muscle growth, or explore the future of personalized health solutions, this episode is a must-listen for anyone committed to achieving their fitness goals.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

What exactly causes muscles to grow. If your muscle gains have stalled or you want to get more out of your lifting, you might be missing a piece of the puzzle that even most trainers don't know about. Today, we are shrinking down into the microscopic world of muscle growth with an expert on human anatomy who's seen firsthand what really happens when your muscles adapt to training. You'll discover the intricate cellular dance that occurs with every rep and your recovery, why some people seem to pack on muscle effortlessly while others struggle, and how understanding these hidden processes can inform your training approach. If you're serious about strength training and muscle growth, this episode will show you how to unlock your muscle building potential by understanding what happens at the microscopic level. By understanding what happens at the microscopic level, welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 0:56

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're peering through the microscope at the fascinating world of muscle hypertrophy with Justin Cottle, who is back on the show to dig a little deeper for those of us who are serious about lifting weights and building muscle. Justin is a former lab director at the Institute of Human Anatomy. He's a pioneer in using real human cadavers to educate the public about the human body Very unique angle, especially when we talk about lifting and hypertrophy. He's also the creator behind the Dissection Room, a YouTube channel and Substack newsletter devoted to dissecting life, creativity and what it means to be human. Today you'll learn about muscle growth down to the cellular level, including types of muscle fibers, how they respond to training stimuli, what actually happens inside your muscle cells when you use them, and how understanding those subcellular stress and adaptation cycles can inform your training. What can we actually do about it and why? Some people seem to respond differently, based on their genetics, and some people may require a little more effort. So, justin, it's awesome to have you back on the show, my man.

Justin Cottle: 2:00

Thanks, philip, it's great to be back.

Philip Pape: 2:02

And so we're going to learn something new today. We're definitely going to learn something new. I presume that you've spent countless hours in the lab or maybe looking at muscle tissue under a microscope at some point at that level, or at least know a lot about it, and I guess what I first want to understand is what do you actually see when you look at the cross-section of muscle between someone that's been lifting and has gone through hypertrophy for a decent part of their life and someone who hasn't, maybe somebody who's been sedentary? Do we have that, something like that?

Justin Cottle: 2:32

Yeah, yeah. So what you'll see is basically just more space, I mean cells. For anyone who's ever seen like a micrograph or say like a slide that you'd look through a microscope, it oftentimes just looks transparent. So I mean, there's not like this sexy answer of like oh, you can see all these proteins really like in this robust form. I mean, you can.

Justin Cottle: 2:51

You definitely can see when there are more, when there's more protein, but at the same time, a lot of times it just looks bigger, like. What you're seeing is almost like it's just the space which in a muscle cell we call the sarcoplasm. The sarcoplasm is actually just going to be larger, and so what you're just seeing is more of that. You're also going to see more nuclei, typically, just because, as a lot of people in the fitness realm will know, especially like, the more you get hypertrophic, then you're actually going to have more nuclei attached to the cell. So you'll also see that, but it's more about space than anything else. It's just an increase in space and then you will see some more protein as you're looking through it.

Philip Pape: 3:29

So it's kind of swollen jacked at that level already. So you could even just it's a microcosm of what we see expressed ultimately at the physical level or the macro level. Why don't we break that down a little more? Then, when we talk about muscle fibers you mentioned nuclei, maybe the types of muscle fibers when do we want to start this so people understand what the heck's in a muscle? Because we really oversimplify it sometimes. I think it'd be helpful to take that little journey.

Justin Cottle: 3:52

Yeah, by the way, if this gets to be just too much of the weeds, you can let me know, because we can talk on this for quite a bit of time. And I love that we're talking about it because I think every time I hear this conversation happening on the side, the anatomy and the micro anatomy are kind of touched on, but very briefly, which I totally understand, but I think it actually helps really like just justify specific training regimens and things of that nature. So if you actually took a skeletal muscle which, by the way, there's three different types of muscle you have skeletal, cardiac and smooth Cardiac is only found in the heart and then smooth muscle is basically like in your organs. So if you focus on skeletal muscle, if you took a cross section, like, let's say, like you cut mid brachium, so you're looking through the biceps, you're looking through the triceps, and then you like peeled apart the muscle fibers, you would actually see a whole variety of layers, right? So basically you have skeletal muscle cell or the muscle fiber, same thing and then what you do is you wrap that in connective tissue called endomycium. So if anyone's ever like in the literature and they see endomycium, that is the connective tissue that wraps individual muscle cells and then what you do is you put those into like a honeycomb structure that we call a fasciculus, and that honeycomb structure is just a bundle of muscle fibers and then so that's wrapped in connective tissue and then you bundle those together. So it's like you have all of these honeycomb structures all bundled together and you wrap that in another layer of connective tissue called epimycium, layer of connective tissue called epimycium, and you now have a muscle. So a muscle is actually bundles of bundles of muscle fibers. And then you even wrap groups of muscles together with fascia. So people have probably heard of fascia before, but that's just like the macro anatomy. That's what you'd see if you just cut your own arm or you were in the cadaver lab and you were looking at it. Cut your own arm or you were in the cadaver lab and you were looking at it.

Justin Cottle: 5:47

You could then go inside the muscle cell itself and this is where I think a lot of people it starts to get interesting, really exciting, although I will say the connective tissues do come into play in terms of, say, like stress and damage to the cell. So when you're working out you can damage those connective tissues, which is part of just the whole repair process and just getting stronger. But if you went into the muscle cell, that's where you're going to start seeing what are called organelles. So people have probably heard of organs. Organelles are tiny little structures that we all probably learned about in eighth grade biology, so like mitochondria, lysosomes, paroxysomes, but skeletal muscles have a very unique organelle called a myofibril.

Justin Cottle: 6:27

The myofibril is this really long tube essentially of protein, and that protein is what we all know and love in terms of like what we want, right, like the more protein, obviously, the stronger it's going to be. And what you do is you organize in these little contractile units called sarcomeres. So sarcomeres are basically like these membranes and protein bound areas that have a bunch of protein and they all just attach to one another and then they contract and get shorter. And so this is where people might be familiar with, like myosin, actin. These are the contractile proteins. So if you looked inside of the sarcomere, this is all microscopic so you can't see this with the naked eye. You have myosin attaching to actin and when it does that, it pushes on actin and that's what causes the contraction to occur. But you also have to understand that surrounding all of the myofibrils, all of the protein. That's where you get glycogen right, that's where you have all these different enzymes, that's where you get glycogen right, that's where you have all these different enzymes, that's where you put water, it's where you have mitochondria and this is where you start to see the subtle differences in muscle fiber type.

Justin Cottle: 7:31

So if you've ever heard of like slow twitch versus fast twitch, right, like basically the difference there is basically how much mitochondria does the cell have? How big are those mitochondria? If you have a lot of them and they're pretty big, you're looking at a slow twitch or a type one fiber. If you don't have a lot of mitochondria but the cell diameter, by the way, is bigger, in a type 2a or also you'll hear about type 2x, those are just fast twitch fibers. So basically it's like what you're looking for to determine is this cell a slow or versus fast twitch is mostly mitochondria and then the diameter of the cell, and so that's the kind of stuff you're really looking at, although there are hybrids which are kind of interesting. You have, like, some muscle cells are somewhat slow twitch, are somewhat fast twitch and they can change over time based on demand and training, which is obviously really interesting, for you know those in the fitness realm, so it's like and, by the way, slow and fast twitch, they get their name for exact reasons you probably suspect.

Justin Cottle: 8:33

It's just how fast does that do the proteins contract? And there's a whole variety of factors that go into that. And, by the way, like all that I've just said is touching the surface, there are countless other structures that are in and around the cell itself. But I mean, from a micro anatomy perspective, those are probably the need to knows right, like it's based on protein. It's based on how fast those proteins contract and the diameter of it and then around those proteins, how much glycogen, how much water, how much mitochondria is stuffed in there, and that's pretty much what determines if something is going to be you know that fiber is going to be growing strength wise, or if it's going to actually just be increasing in size, which would we would pretty much just call hypertrophy.

Philip Pape: 9:16

Okay, I'm drawn in, man, I could just let you keep going. Literally you could take over the podcast talking about this, because, yeah, if anybody's taking a biology class, they know it can get so complicated, and I'm sure you could do an entire semester on just skeletal muscle and actually that'd be fascinating for me, I think, but just at a high level. So so we recap what we're saying here is there's kind of multiple layers here. There's muscle cells, they're bundled into fibers, they're bundled together, there's bundles of bundles grouped with fascia and then down at the lowest level or one of the lowest levels within the cell, we have these organelles, especially myofibril, a tube of protein, and so that is correlated with strength and also contraction because of the myosin and actin, and then surrounding that is some glycogen and water.

Philip Pape: 10:01

I think I kind of got what you were saying. So it leads to some follow-up questions, because what I really want to connect is what do we do about this? Right, we can geek out on it all day, and I've got some interesting follow-ups here that I didn't expect to ask. So the first one is with the protein. People think about consuming protein, get that breaking down into amino acids, and then how does that get back to these proteins in the muscle, because it's not like it doesn't just travel there and then become muscle tissue. There's some synthesis going on. Can we just briefly?

Justin Cottle: 10:31

discuss that process? Yeah, absolutely. So this is where you start to hear. There's a lot of talk these days about the mTOR pathway if anyone's ever heard of like TORC1, torc2. This is a really fascinating pathway, not just even for, like muscles health, but I mean just cellular health. It's about protein synthesis. It's interesting just for longevity purposes. So you know, those in the longevity sphere are just really excited about mTOR. Mtor stands for what is it? I think it's mammalian target of rapamycin.

Justin Cottle: 11:00

The point here is when you digest proteins right, so digesting is literally just breaking apart the proteins. Most proteins your body can't absorb at the size they are. So you have all these enzymes that break the proteins down into amino acids, and so those amino acids are going to be the building blocks of protein. And there's no at least to my understanding, we still haven't found any kind of targeted type of protein. What I mean is eat this protein, these amino acids will build this muscle or reinforce this specific area. Instead, what happens is the amino acids are distributed throughout the body based on demand, and that demand is based on environmental influence. So obviously, if you are working out a muscle right, if it's under tension, you have all of this micro damage and micro tears. That's a signal that we need to reinforce it. And there are certain amino acids that are going to be better for protein synthesis. I mean I would imagine a lot of your audience is going to be familiar with, say, leucine for example. So you're talking like these are your, you know your branch chain amino acids. Those are going to be fantastic with the mTOR pathway to synthesize more protein.

Justin Cottle: 12:06

So basically what happens is these amino acids go into the myofibril and what they make is more myosin and actin. And the more myosin and actin you have in theory and I say in theory because it's there's a little bit of nuance to this but the stronger the muscle is going to be able to get. And basically strength you could actually say very specifically is how many actin or thin filament proteins are around the myosin protein. So in human beings, if I'm remembering correctly, I think it's six. So basically a myosin protein has two heads to it and then around it you have six different options for it to actually bind to. In human beings that number varies when you go in the animal kingdom and some creatures including insects, if I remember correctly have a wide variety or larger number of actin and thin filament, which means there's more options for the myosin to attach to, and it actually equates to more strength. That's why, like insects are just dramatically stronger for their body weight than you are right. You?

Philip Pape: 13:17

can't lift. Oh yeah, allometric scaling yeah yeah, we'll talk about that, right, sure.

Justin Cottle: 13:21

So the point, though, is that's what the amino acids do. So the amino acids are basically you can't make more skeletal muscle cell right. You're essentially born. There's always debate, but, generally speaking, you're born with as much skeletal muscle as you're ever going to have. What's changing is going to be the amount of nuclei on those cell and the protein inside of it, and that's what the amino acids go to, and those branched chain amino acids and everything it just protein synthesis, reinforces and builds myosin, actin, other proteins in there, like titan, nebulin. There's so many varying proteins inside of there that are all being just fueled and built together in response to environmental damage.

Philip Pape: 14:00

Cool. And if we man I can go off so many tangents If we took someone and just completely eliminated, say, leucine from their diet and got all the other amino acids, what would happen?

Justin Cottle: 14:11

That's a really good question. I'm not even sure I have a great answer for you, I would say.

Justin Cottle: 14:17

I mean, the thing is, the human body is extraordinarily adaptable. So you know, you have to just think about it in this really broad perspective, that basically and we might have even talked about this on our last episode, I forget that I like to think of humans as being more opportunivores, in the sense that we eat whatever we can eat whatever we can, and your body is ridiculously good at extracting nutrients from things that don't seem very nutritious, and so I wouldn't be surprised and I don't know off the top of my head, I'll be completely honest with you if we have ways of converting for leucine or other pathways that can adapt, I'm pretty sure that's the case, but at the same time, it's not a good thing. Right, like, leucine is important and you want that, and I know you know, especially for your audience. We're talking about optimization, and so that's where leucine is going to be very important, but I don't want to make it seem as though you're going to fall apart without it.

Philip Pape: 15:07

Yeah, yeah, I love these thought experiments, because when you go, people usually ask the other way, like, well, I'm trying to get more leucine because I know how important that is, how important is it really? And obviously we're not. So the thought experiment is go the other direction and if you completely eliminated it, because you know more of the research now is showing us that really getting the total protein is where it's at and we shouldn't necessarily overthink the sources, as long as we have a diverse diet, like you said, opportunivore, just eat a good variety and you should be good. So the proteins okay. So that's really cool that we can't make more muscle cells, skeletal muscle cells, but we have more nuclei. So we'll get back to that.

Philip Pape: 15:41

Two other things you mentioned. One was the glycogen, and that brings to mind carbs, and every time I put out an episode that's like carbs aren't the problem or carbs are okay for you, you get all the hate, like all the YouTube hate, like how dare you? Carbs are terrible, you need to cut carbs. Anyway, I don't want to make this a carb loving episode, but what is the relationship between carbohydrate, sugar, glucose consumption and the glycogen you're referring to supporting our muscles?

Justin Cottle: 16:07

First of all, I can totally empathize with you on that. Like in these days, if you even minorly support carbohydrates, it's a hot button topic. So glycogen is glucose, it's just the storage form of glucose. You have to understand that when it comes down, we go back to slow twitch versus fast twitch Mitochondria. They use oxygen to convert glucose, as well as fatty acids, as well as lactate, into ATP. Atp is the energy currency of the body. So what's nice is slow twitch is filled with mitochondria, just filled with mitochondria, which means if you are actually using slow twitch muscle fibers, you're not really working out. Basically, you are not in an anaerobic state. There's plentiful oxygen. Slow twitch muscle fibers primarily burn fat and so it's when you start doing more explosive or high demand activity that you're going to start contracting more of the fast twitch fibers, and these are anaerobic, meaning that they don't really utilize oxygen. There's mitochondria in there, but I mean, compared to the slow twitch, they don't. Instead, what they utilize is another pathway called glycolysis.

Justin Cottle: 17:20

Glycolysis happens in what's called the sarcoplasm. So again, if you had like the diameter, if you like, took like a cross-section of a muscle cell, all the space where you all the little organelles are floating in that's called the sarcoplasm and there's a fluid in there called cytosol, and that that in there is where chemistry occurs, basically a glucose molecule. So a sugar molecule is broken down into pyruvate. We don't need to get into the actual biochem here. The point is you get energy but you don't get a lot. This is one of my favorite things. Like if I took one glucose molecule and put it into the glycolysis pathway, you get two ATP. But if we kept that process going and you were able to give it to a mitochondria, you would end up with 36 ATP for that same one glucose molecule.

Justin Cottle: 18:11

So that means with oxygen you get more energy. Without oxygen you still get energy, but not enough. So what that means is fast twitch fibers are relying on an anaerobic pathway. They don't get as much energy, so they need more glucose to pull from to try and get energy in those times of high demand. What this means is you need glucose. There is no ifs, ands or buts. Glucose is the fuel source for your fast twitch muscle fibers, right? So they're like your type 2X fibers. Specifically, those fibers need the glycogen and they just have this, all these storages of it that they can pull from and then they can metabolize, they can get the energy, the ATP, they need for that muscle contraction. It's so important. If you did not get glucose in your body, your liver would do what's called gluconeogenesis, and gluconeogenesis is where your liver is like I'm going to start destroying other parts of your body to get the glucose.

Justin Cottle: 19:12

So the idea that we don't need glucose or we can operate without it, I mean, I think that's a modern convenience thing. Right, it's something that we just. This is where nutrition gets fun. It gets interesting and exciting. We're talking more about a biohacking perspective, but I mean very explicitly your body needs carbs. Carbs are essential. It's what red blood cells operate off of. It's what fast twitch muscle fibers operate. Red blood cells operate off of. It's what fast twitch muscle fibers operate. Glucose is what your brain runs off of. So you need glucose, and glycogen is just how you store it.

Philip Pape: 19:43

Yeah, I think it's fascinating. You'll still get people who are sticking to the like. Well, your body can convert or can use fat as its primary storage mechanism, but then when you look at studies comparing two groups of bodybuilders in a surplus, the one that has higher carbs tend to build a lot more muscle, and there seems to be a reason for that. So I think that's important. I love the way you put that, really the whole conversion mechanism and the pathways too.

Philip Pape: 20:05

We recently did an episode about the three pathways. You know the ATP-CP and then glycolytic and then the other one, the aerobic pathway, but whatever the name is, and they kind of all work together. So if you're lifting heavy or even if you're doing intense exercise or HIIT type cardio, it all kind of draws on that and why we need glucose, okay. So the other thing you mentioned just very briefly early was the three types of muscle and you mentioned skeletal, cardiac and smooth, and the smooth is associated with organs. I want to touch on that quickly because recently Macrofactor put out a review of lots of the BMR literature and they found that athletes at rest have a higher BMR than non-athletes accounting for body composition, and they suspect it's due to higher organ size and that organ size has been increased through their activity, through being an athlete Not born that way, necessarily, but they've actually grown their organs and I want to ask you about that what do you think when it comes to metabolism and muscle around organs, the smooth muscle is there a correlation there?

Justin Cottle: 21:05

That is really fascinating, and now I want to dive into that myself. I hadn't heard that, and I mean, just like my instant reaction is it's not all that surprising, that makes sense. But it's really, really interesting because, I mean, smooth muscle is fundamentally different than skeletal muscle, though, and I think, like this is something that's worth diving into real quickly. Like, both cardiac muscle and skeletal muscle are what we call striated. Striated means like if you actually looked at you again, you can see the proteins and they look striped. That's what striated means Cardiac muscle. It does it differently than skeletal muscle, but they're both striped.

Justin Cottle: 21:40

Smooth muscle isn't. Smooth muscle is basically like you have cells that are next door to each other and they form sheets, and then what you can do is you can mold that sheet into like a tube shape or like into a stomach shape, into a bladder shape. Like, smooth muscle is the type of muscle you put places that you don't want to think about that action right, you don't want to voluntarily like how annoying would that be if you had to manually release your stomach, move things through your intestines? The smooth muscle exists to contract, but what that means is how it contracts is more through an electrical stimulus and the whole sheet contracts at once.

Philip Pape: 22:18

That is so cool. Okay, I never thought of it that way because it's involuntary and it all contracts at once because it's a big sheet. Also, just so people know, if you eat organ meat, if you've ever had heart, it's very much like other muscle tissue and that makes a lot of sense because it's striated. Throw it in some chili, you hardly notice it's there. But if you got a little liver, you see it, you notice it. Anyway, continue.

Justin Cottle: 22:38

That's really cool.

Justin Cottle: 22:38

So it's like when it contracts in unison, right?

Justin Cottle: 22:41

So, basically, what's happening is I mean, you could literally just you could put this to any shape you want, and what that means is it's going to just contract at once.

Justin Cottle: 22:50

Well, at the same time, though, organs, their function, are going to increase with other metabolic increases, right? So if you're putting on more muscle mass, then globally, there's going to be more demand for, like even just generally speaking, you're going to have more waste products from muscle cells that need to be cleaned out by the kidneys. So, therefore, that would make a lot of sense that the kidneys are going to have to respond in size, or at least in function, and upregulate to adjust for that, and that should happen across every single organ. That's what I'd be interested to see, right? I don't want to make it seem like it's a one-in-one correlation, right? Like? You put on this many pounds of muscle mass, and then your kidneys, your liver, they grow, that's, you know, some similar amount, but it makes complete sense to me that smooth muscle would need to respond, because the smooth muscle is going to need to work harder, based on the just overall global increase in metabolic processes.

Philip Pape: 23:45

Yeah, it's fascinating. It's another reason people can kind of latch on to for all of these what seem to be mysterious reasons that a more active lifestyle also allows you to eat more and burn more calories, which you know is a struggle for people who like. Food is a part of everyday life, and nutrition and just the amount you eat is part of the whole process. Yeah, I recently learned that, and you know, organs make up like 5% of our mass, but they consume half our BMR. So if you could even move them a little bit, it's going to make a difference. So cool man.

Philip Pape: 24:14

Yeah, maybe that's a future topic for one of your uh, your YouTube or one of your articles. Yeah, yeah, so okay, uh, where do we want to take this next? How about contractions? You know, concentric versus eccentric contractions. We talk about different types of training for muscle growth and people always trying to find the next best thing lengthened partials, eccentric only right, overloaded, like let's just overload the down position on a bench press. What are your thoughts on all of that? Regarding what you know about how muscle fibers work, are we overthinking it? Is that like not necessary, or is there some value there?

Justin Cottle: 24:46

My gut. It's not necessarily gut, but I mean like there's definitely research to back this, but I think it's more so an overreaction. You know, I think there's some kind of psychological thing that we all think and hope and expect that there is this secret sauce somewhere. We just got to find that one little thing. And the thing is a lot of times that's true, you know, there's so much truth to that.

Justin Cottle: 25:08

But if you look through and I know you're going to very well understand this, right, if you look through the history of this aspect of trying to find the most optimal way, the most optimal type of contraction, whether it's eccentric, concentric, so on and so forth, it's going back and forth, right, whenever we think we have something, then we don't, and then we have something we don't. To me it's like I mean, we can very clearly say, okay, eccentric is going to, you know that's going to shred muscle tissue Absolutely. However, does that make it more conducive to hypertrophy? Not really, at least not that I've seen. You know, like there's been times we thought that was true, right, people will know like time under tension was just so you know that was TUT, that was an acronym, everybody knew it, yeah.

Justin Cottle: 25:49

And then now it's kind of like well, I don't know about that actually, and that's where it's like to me, from my understanding of the body. It's like it's not about as much as I wish there was some optimal type of contraction. It's more so about just diversity, and that's always what it seemed to me, right, it's not that you're only doing eccentric or mostly doing eccentric, it's okay, it's. You're doing full range of motion, right? You're doing concentric, you're doing eccentric, you're doing isometric, you're looking for diversity with this, you're getting creative with it, right? Like if you're stuck in the pattern, if you're just sitting there doing the same routine over and over, obviously your muscles are going to adapt and so you need to break that routine.

Justin Cottle: 26:31

To me, it's all about diversity. And so when you add that diversity with individuality right, as any coach will tell you then it's like okay, well then I also have to take it person by person. And as much as we want this like cookie cutter, like this is the rules. That here's your 10 commandments. This is exactly what you do.

Justin Cottle: 26:44

The body just doesn't work that way, and muscle tissue very much doesn't work that way. It's meant to respond to specific demands and then it gets used to them, and so you have to be able to surprise the muscle in certain ways. But at the same time, there's obviously general guidelines that are true, right, like you know it's, there's certain activities that are going to be a little more targeted for fast twitch versus slow twitch. There's all sorts of things that you can work within, but in terms of, like, concentric and eccentric and those things, I've just personally felt like we've been overthinking it, like the everyone's been overthinking it for a long time yeah, okay now, that's good to hear, and we also know the eccentric makes you sore like sore as hell.

Philip Pape: 27:24

You know, if you do too much of it, like if you do a bunch of air squats, you're're going to get sore and the benefit may be minimal depending on if your body's totally used to just doing body weight movements.

Jerry: 27:35

I just wanted to give a shout out to Philip.

Jerry: 27:37

I personally worked with Philip for about eight months and I lost a total of 33 pounds of scale weight and about five inches off my waist.

Jerry: 27:46

Two things I really enjoy about working with Philip is number one he's really taking the time to develop a deep expertise in nutrition and also resistance training, so he has that depth. If you want to go deep on the lies with Philip, but if also if you want to just kind of get some instruction and more practical advice and a plan on what you need to do, you can pull back and communicate at that level. Also, he is a lifter himself, so he's very familiar with the performance and body composition goals that most lifters have. And also Philip is trained in engineering, so he has some very efficient systems set up to make the coaching experience very easy and very efficient and you can really track your results and you will have real data when you're done working with Philip and also have access to some tools likely that you can continue to use. If all that sounds interesting to you. Philip, like all good coaches, has a ton of free information out there and really encourage you to see if he may be able to help you out. So thanks again, philip.

Philip Pape: 28:48

I want to challenge, maybe, or hit on something you said about muscle surprise or and I know other terms have been used, like confusion and shock and everything, and I want to separate the bro stuff from the reality, because you talked about not getting stale, not hitting that plateau, and the first thing that comes to mind to me is how people, in my opinion, too often change things up, don't make enough progress and, for example, if you do a bench press and the next time you add five pounds, that's also different, like that also causes adaptation, even though it's the same movement. So where's the separation on? Let's be consistent for a while with our training and actually do the same movements and progress on them versus we need to change and our bench press is stalling, so let's move to a pause or a closed grip or tricep work. You know what I mean.

Justin Cottle: 29:34

Yeah, absolutely yeah. You hit the nail on the head right Like the bro. Science with this can really take over if we're not careful. And so, for most people, most of the time, stick with your routine, stick with what's working, because it's going to continue to work, and you'd be surprised at how long often it's going to continue to work. And you know, it's like a lot of times we talk about at the extreme levels or the opposite ends. The extreme ends, you know, we're talking about the elite of the elite. That's when they you start seeing these pretty interesting plateaus, and it takes a lot of cognitive effort and time and experimentation to figure out how do we break that plateau. That's not most people. At the same time, though, there's genetic factors, there's individual factors, there's dietary factors, there's all sorts of things that can just kind of come out of left field and all of a sudden can stall out a little bit here or there.

Justin Cottle: 30:18

And what I mean by surprising the muscle, it's like I'm more talking neurologically where it's like, you know, if you think about it, like you're just getting this repetitive action potential being sent to the sarcolemma. So the sarcolemma is the outside of the skeletal muscle cell, and then you have a neuron that's right on the other side of it. So this, that location where the neuron is communicating with the sarcolemma, is called the neuromuscular junction. That's where acetylcholine is, you know, transverses the cleft. And then what I mean here is, like when we're talking about like just how a signal is sent.

Justin Cottle: 30:50

You know, sometimes a quick little jolt, a little bit of a change can actually alter this enough to where you can start playing with motor units in subtle ways. That can almost I don't want to say trick, that's not the right word but it can influence your central nervous system to start maybe trying new things, maybe sending more motor units or more prolonged action potentials. So it's more of like you are just neurologically being diverse, as opposed to like changing your routine from the ground up. Right, it's just it's being willing to play with it. And oftentimes you said it add five pounds, right, like you know, it's like maybe you're just adding a little bit, you still do the same routine. It's those incremental progress can be enough too, can also definitely do it. So it's not like you need to change everything and, just like you know, basically go out in the woods and just like chop wood and do all this kind of stuff.

Philip Pape: 31:39

Yeah, no, I love the phrase neurological surprise. I'm going to steal that in the future and give you credit for it, because that's a really good way to put it. It reminds me of a form of training that I've done in the past and I'm probably going to do again, influenced by Westside Barbell, louie Simmons, back in the 80s. These were powerlifters, but my coach has a programming style based on that, and on two days of the week max effort days you actually test a 1RM, the day's 1RM, not your max PR, but what is the 1RM at that moment? Even if you're in a fat loss phase, you don't have as much energy and you've lost weight. What is your 1RM in that moment?

Philip Pape: 32:13

And then you do some back offsets, but the key is, over about six weeks you're rotating the variance of that lift.

Philip Pape: 32:20

So every Monday if you're doing, you know, back squat, this week you're going to do a pause back squat and then a box squat and then a front squat, and you're basically rotating with the idea of being that if you kept doing the same one, you would get so fatigued and the adaptation wouldn't be worth it anymore. It just kind of reminds me of that, right, because even that's a subtle difference in the movement, but it's enough, like you said, to unlock something going on with the motor units. I think that's awesome, that's really cool. Okay, so you mentioned the variability between humans in part of your answer there, the genetic differences, and I know we got into that last time how any one thing that you examine in the human body could have on the record, you know, 15 variants but in reality 200 or infinite permutations. How does that play out when it comes to, I guess, muscle fiber composition and but hypertrophy potential, specifically like the genetic variance between people?

Justin Cottle: 33:12

Yeah, that's a great question. So, like I mean broadly speaking, I was thinking about this in, like in just preparation for, you know, our interview, where I was like if I could just say, like, what are the four things? Well, there weren't four at the time. I've narrowed it down to four things, 22 things. Like hypertrophy, just broadly speaking, just means the cells getting bigger, and so if you add more protein, then it's obviously going to get bigger, which means if you're actually training for strength, then you're obviously getting hypertrophy. But that's not what we really mean, right, like we're talking an increase in cell size. So basically, the four things that make hypertrophy right is an increase in protein, an increase in the sarcoplasm, so like glycogen, mitochondria, things inside of the cell, inflammation which comes from I mean, like everyone knows this you get swole, right. So you're just literally going to engorge. But also during the repair process. And then satellite cell activation, right, the cells on the side that lend their nuclei to make the cell actually bigger. But what's interesting about that is every single one of those has genetic variability, right? How well do you, you know, build your sarcoplasm? How well do you build protein? How many satellite cells do you have available to you, which is likely predetermined at birth, right, like you think about, like some bodybuilders, just no matter what, are going to be better than everyone else. There's just, there's nothing that could possibly, there's no hurdle that you could cross, that it would get closer to them and it could just be they have more satellite cells available to them, so they have more myonuclei, and therefore it's just.

Justin Cottle: 34:42

There is these types of variabilities with it, with skeletal muscle type, right, like that goes. That goes into the fiber, I mean into the protein amount. Some people will have a higher density of slow twitch. Some people will have a higher density of type 2a or 2x or more hybrid fibers. I am not super clear on like. In terms of like, I imagine there's probably ethnicity differences. I imagine that there's just geographical differences, but I'm not. I don't want to give anyone bad information, but at the same time, it's like there are clear differences with this, and we see this in athletics. Right, you don't have to look anywhere else outside of athletics to just see that some people it's like their body's built for explosive movements, like it's just like they do it better. Well, that's probably because they do. They have probably more 2x fiber and they are literally contracting faster than you and there's no amount of training that you could ever do to overcome that.

Philip Pape: 35:34

Before you go on, I'm sorry. I was talking to my wife last night about a kid we grew up with and he was like half my age and he could just fly barefoot on the asphalt and he can run. It wasn't even believable how fast he could fly and you're like that. There's something genetic there. Anyway, continue.

Justin Cottle: 35:49

I totally get it Like. It's just, some people are better at certain actions, and that's okay, right. That doesn't mean that you can't be great. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't strive for the best you can do. It's just we all have these genetic limitations. They definitely exist with fiber type.

Justin Cottle: 36:02

What's fascinating to me, though, is, you know, if you went back 20 years, we used to think like you couldn't even change your fiber type at all, and now we're like, wait a minute, training can actually change fiber type. Maybe it's more subtle, maybe it's not that big for most people, and you really only see that those gains at the ends of the extremes of the spectrums. But at the same time, it's like it's amazing to me how much we've learned in just the past 10 years around fiber type and what can actually change based on training, and I don't want you to think like, if you're have more slow twitch, that you're going to not be able to do, you know explosive type workouts. At the same time, though, I mean you are going to be limited to some extent to how good you can get for sure.

Philip Pape: 36:44

Yeah, I think was it our conversation? I think it was last time. We talked about how, if you look at the world of athletics, there are so many types of sports and the ways that you use your body that you may be optimal for one and may not even know it, unless you try different things right. And some people maybe luck out and they grow up and they love something because they're good at it. But I do like the more powerful message that, okay, there's this range, there's variability between humans. Some people are on the outliers and they're going to be elite. Fine, maybe you're not trying to do that. You just want to look great, feel great, perform great, maybe enjoy some sports and there's something you can do about it. And so one thing is the fiber type. What would you say is the other thing, or two out of those four areas protein, cycloplasm, inflammation and satellite cell activation that we have the biggest impact over?

Justin Cottle: 37:33

I mean, like, when it comes to inflammation and repair, I mean that's obviously going to be just like how you rest, right. I mean this just goes to show, just like that's a good one.

Philip Pape: 37:37

Let's talk about that.

Justin Cottle: 37:39

It's always surprising to me how I love that things have changed. Right, like rest and its understanding of the importance of rest has really started to make some changes, but I still think there's a lot of significant work that needs to be done with it in terms of, like, even just resting in between sets, like we can take, like just talking about in your workout, versus, okay, are you resting for 24 hours, 72 hours? How are you cycling through muscle groups? You know, is it upper, body, lower? But like, there's all this nuance to it.

Justin Cottle: 38:04

But rest is so important because this is how you replenish glycogen storages.

Justin Cottle: 38:09

This is how you because if you destroy I say that maybe not destroy if you injure the muscle tissue through micro damage, through micro tears, right, you have the lactate, you have all this stuff.

Justin Cottle: 38:20

It takes time to rebuild that stuff and you want it to take that time and you want to give your body that time because you will come back stronger. You will 1000% come back stronger. So you're going to get that immediate hypertrophy from the inflammation and swelling and then it's going to transition into actual hypertrophy because you've constructed more mitochondria, you've constructed more proteins, you've given your body the time to actually adapt to the situation that you put it in right, like if you're changing your routine or if you're just adding more weight or whatever kind of change you're making. You got to give yourself time to recover, and that can sometimes be 72 hours or more. Right, the importance of rest it really just comes down to. You know you got to give your body the time to do what you want it to do and what you are. You know you really are doing when you're working out.

Philip Pape: 39:13

Yeah, there's that. We all have that immediate gratification. And it's funny you mentioned immediate hypertrophy versus actual hypertrophy, because there is a thought of getting a pump, getting sore, sweating, enjoying your workout, all of which can be wonderful things as far as motivators in the moment, but not all of which are necessarily an indicator of what is to come when not coupled with the follow-up action of rest. And you pointed out the different types of rest, which is great Cause I was thinking, okay, we're going to talk about, you know, sleeping and resting between sessions, but let's, you know, start small and work our way up the pyramid between sets. Very important, right, because we've heard we see a lot of people doing the 20, 30 seconds and just like going to the next one, which again, could be effective if you're doing mile reps or some form of like close to failure training and you want to be more time efficient, but it also may not be enough.

Philip Pape: 40:04

If you're doing, say, a deadlift or back squat and now you know you're not giving yourself enough rest, then we have between our sessions in general and then between muscle groups being stimulated across those sessions. It's kind of like an overlap when we do a four-day split or something you might work out three or four days in a row, but they're different muscle groups and then finally recovering your glycogen storage due to all the tearing and whatnot, and that's where nutrition, and again carbs and everything, can come into play as well, as well as not training fasted, in my opinion. So, all of that said, are there like a couple, like big tips I'll call them low hanging fruit for folks that you've seen. They don't do enough of that. Hey, do this, and it kind of could be a game changer on your road to recovering better.

Justin Cottle: 40:50

The only one that really truly comes to mind is something I'm so glad I think we even might've talked about it a bit last time, I think and if we didn't, we should have is sleep, and you just mentioned it. Right now, I'm still surprised at how many people aren't really prioritizing sleep, how many people say they are but they're really not. And sleep is just one of the most important things you can possibly do and I swear, every single month it's becoming more and more important, or at least more and more in the public eye. People are just talking about it more and more, and it makes me so happy.

Justin Cottle: 41:20

It's finding that time to really take care of your sleep is such an important one. But at the same time, just a more lower scale, I would say just taking time and resting between sets is probably one of the easiest ones. I understand that you could get bored. I'm not saying you have to rest. I mean, I forget what it is. It's something like you can go as high as like four or five minutes, like that's like a real solid recommendation. But I totally understand where you're just like jittery.

Justin Cottle: 41:45

You're just like I want to talk, right, but at the same time you jittery, you're just like I want to talk right, but at the same time, you know, taking that time, taking the time to rest, not being afraid of resting, it's really only going to add what? Maybe 10 minutes to your workout. I mean, it's not going to be that big of a deal, but little things like that really go a long way. But that's what comes to mind immediately is just be sleep.

Philip Pape: 42:04

I mean both of those. Obviously sleep. I feel like sleep is one of those unsexy topics. Every time we bring it up, if I make an episode about it, I'm like how do I even title this thing? Because people are like going to skip or delete. I just feel that from people when we talk about sleep and maybe there's a way to make it more interesting and tie it to the result. Maybe you have ideas on that.

Philip Pape: 42:23

But the resting between sets you mentioned you know four or five minutes. I think that's a great recommendation when you're getting started and you're trying to progress and lift heavy and just kind of give yourself the best shot to get all the reps. Because one of the things I hear from newer lifters is I just missed my reps, what do I do? And I'm like, well, don't miss the reps. And the way you don't miss the reps in the first place is probably taking longer rest periods. I'm guessing that's like the thing you're not doing other than, okay, you're not sleeping, you're not eating, you know all the other recovery aspects. So yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one, jess. I did want to ask you about you mentioned the genetic differences. Something you mentioned there made me think of that bull, that cow that's like overly muscular. Do you know what I'm talking about? I don't think it's urban legend. It's like a genetic defect that caused this bull to get like massively muscular. Do you know what I'm talking about, or no?

Justin Cottle: 43:16

I don't. I don't know, Okay, I mean you're welcome to like. Tell me about it.

Philip Pape: 43:20

No, I don't have the details on it, it just came to mind. I remember seeing it and it was like just imagine Ronnie Coleman times three as a bull okay.

Justin Cottle: 43:30

That's the most terrifying bull ever. Is what?

Philip Pape: 43:32

you're Unsettling. It revolts you to look at it because it's so unnatural. But of course I'm sure people look at that saying how do I get the pill to do that for me?

Justin Cottle: 43:41

Anyway, yeah, yeah, I will say I don't know, for some reason, this is what jumped in my mind. Yeah, yeah, I will say I don't know, for some reason, this is what jumped in my mind, just kind of. What's been interesting is there has been a kind of a shift in the myonuclear domain hypothesis. So the myonuclear domain hypothesis has to do with the myonuclei from the satellite cells. So basically you can think of it like this right, as the cell gets bigger and you add more nuclei, the idea is, what we used to think for a very long time was that the nucleus is only responsible for a certain radius within the whole diameter of the cell, and so you actually have a ceiling for how big that muscle can get, because there's only so many satellite cells that you can have and they can only control so much of an area.

Justin Cottle: 44:24

What's been interesting in the past few years is that we're starting to kind of like think that's not true and what it really seems like is the nuclei can be responsible for a whole lot bigger of an area than we thought, and there and it may even be boundless in some situations, which actually could suggest that hypertrophy doesn't have a ceiling we obviously have a long ways to go to figure out how to get even bigger. I mean I, if you're thinking maybe, or the reason I'm thinking this maybe we really could have Ronnie Coleman times three, you know, just in human form, which would be ridiculous. There's a lot of work that needs to go there. I'm not saying that's it's ready, but it's interesting to think that, like, maybe the ceiling that we thought was there is not actually there and we just got to figure out how to keep on pushing.

Philip Pape: 45:07

Okay, my own nuclear domain hypothesis. That is the hypothesis or it's a counter to that.

Justin Cottle: 45:17

So that's the original hypothesis, is really just saying generally that a nucleus is in charge of a radius. But within that hypothesis we used to think that it was smaller than the data is actually suggesting it is. So it's still under the same name, still the hypothesis. It's just evolving.

Philip Pape: 45:34

Makes sense. Okay, no, that's awesome. I'm going to look more into that. These are all great follow-ups, really good stuff, okay, cool. So you also mentioned muscle damage. So, maybe, going back to anatomy and what you've seen in the lab or what the research says, how crucial is the damage itself for growth? Let's use the right language so people understand what's happening, because we talked in simplistic terms damage, repair, what's really going on and how important is that?

Justin Cottle: 45:57

It's everything. Without damage, without stress, there's no way for tissue to respond and cells and proteins and all of these things to respond. Everything is about stress. There's always an optimal amount of stress. Obviously you can go far beyond and then we have problems. But without stress there's no way to actually modulate, there's no way to change. And so what's actually being affected?

Justin Cottle: 46:22

When you hear like micro tears we all hear about micro tears and it's like a lot of people be like does that mean that is the muscle fiber literally tearing, like, do I have a hole in my muscle? Maybe, kind of, not really, though it's more microscopic. You can have a rupture in the sarcolemma. So again, that was the outside of the muscle fiber. But you can also I'm going to start just dropping terms you can actually shred what's called the sarcoplasmic reticulum, which is what stores calcium. You can start breaking the T-tubule, which is like this invagination, it's like a tunnel that goes into the muscle cell, which is where calcium is going to travel and the action potential. You can shred the actual Z-membranes, the Z-disks, which are like borders of one individual contractile unit. So I can keep on going, you can literally start.

Justin Cottle: 47:09

So when we're talking about muscle damage, there's a lot of things that can be damaged and that doesn't mean that everything does get damaged, and I don't think we have. At least if we do. I don't know this, I don't know how to like, I can't say like this workout will damage your Z membrane as opposed to your T tubule. I don't think. It probably gets that specific. But at the same time it's like the damage can be quite extensive and as long as you're staying within those or you're not overdoing it, then you can actually get some pretty robust repair. Because if you have more efficient T-tubules, then you are actually making it more efficient for the action potential to propagate through the muscle fiber. If your sarcoplasmic reticulum becomes healthier, calcium will be released more efficiently, which could potentially lead to a stronger and faster muscle contraction.

Justin Cottle: 47:57

So when you start actually seeing what's being repaired and being like fortified, you can start seeing how hypertrophy. A lot of times people just view it as the muscles just getting bigger. You're not necessarily getting stronger, which is just a really nonsensical way to view it, because you are getting much stronger. Maybe it's not exclusively with how much protein, but the cell itself is getting stronger, it's getting healthier, it's getting not just bigger. I mean you're literally going to perform better. And again, this just goes back to rest and why rest is so essential because you want to maximize that repair. You want to give your body the time to do that, because if you're not, you're continually injuring the same thing and your body's getting the signal but it doesn't have a way to properly fortify everything.

Philip Pape: 48:41

Yeah, it doesn't think it needs to go beyond that original capacity each time it repairs is what I'm hearing. I do want to hit on the hypertrophy being bigger, not just being muscles being bigger, but also strength, cause yeah, that is a big misconception. It's often this false dichotomy that people create, like are you training for strength or are you training for muscle? Right, and granted, there are extremes, like if you look at power lifters, they may be going for max lifts in a very unique way that you're not going to want or need to do to build muscle, but they kind of lead to the same result because powerlifters are jacked Like once they lose the fat man. You look at Brian Shaw and those guys that have now leaned out and you're like it's incredible. They never thought about or focused on building muscle per se.

Philip Pape: 49:25

And we also know that powerlifters now train in a more well-rounded way, not just doing the big lifts. In fact, that's probably like 20% of their training. The rest of it is accessory work and support work. So are they effectively equivalent? Or if the average lifestyle lifter is listening to this podcast, watching this show, and they're like Justin, what's the best way to train? If I just want to look good. Maybe I want to have a six pack, but I mean and we know nutrition is part of it I just want to look good, be fit. General performance right. Like where would you send them? Easy question, right, yeah?

Justin Cottle: 49:59

You know, and I will say, like I'm not a coach or anything, you know it's like for me. It's like my understanding of this is more based in the science and just like you know for my own working out. But what I would say is, unless you are on those opposite ends of the spectrum, right, if you're really just going for elite type status, I don't think it matters all that much as much as it just means finding something that works for you, because, again, I guarantee, if you were training for hypertrophy, you're going to get a lot stronger too, right? Like, whatever differences are going to be there, you're probably not going to be seeing it in any short term aspect, and so it almost doesn't matter as much as just like, are you seeing results? And that's that, to me, I would say, is what you really want to be heading towards.

Justin Cottle: 50:42

It's more focusing on your nutrition, it's focusing on consistency, it's focusing on all the stuff that we all know we need to do that sometimes we skimp here and there. It's saying, no, like, I'm going to take this seriously, I'm going to get my, I'm going to just check all my boxes and then I'm going to start seeing progress with that. That's, to me the most important thing and that is going to carry you a long way, like a long way just doing that alone. And then what's fun is then you can start experimenting. You know, that's where you can start playing with this and then you can start optimizing.

Justin Cottle: 51:15

So it's I don't know yeah, it's for me, I don't know that I'd send them anywhere outside of just like developing not just the habits, because so many people have the habit of going to the gym right, getting your workout. It's just more like it's everything also around it. It's treating it like an ecosystem. You know, again, it's the getting the sleep, it's getting all that. It's not drinking alcohol. There's so many things that if you can start working on, you're going to see results. That's what I would say.

Philip Pape: 51:40

We're kindred spirits. My man, that's the exact answer I was hoping for, because it is not a binary answer. None of these things are. It's what is going to work for you and, like you said, it's not just doing it. It's doing it, measuring it in some way, seeing that it's working. If it's not working, something has to change, and it may just be one small thing. But don't keep doing what you're doing just because someone says it's the right thing to do if it's not producing results for you. Absolutely, love that. That's what we're all about.

Philip Pape: 52:04

You also talked about having a system or an ecosystem, having just something that works for you. That's part of your routine. I mean, I get up every day and I'm like if I don't train? I don't train every day, but I mean if I weren't training for a week, I would get antsy. I have to do it. It's what works for me, so find what works. I know we're wrapping up on time here. One last question here is do you think what we're learning about this at the cellular level, about muscle growth, about the research, is going to like how is it going to evolve? And, specifically, do we think are there like, any revelations that haven't been discovered or we're trying to get to, that will inform what we are doing in the gym, like is there still a big black box or mystery somewhere that you're hoping we will unlock in the near future?

Justin Cottle: 52:45

You know that is a really good question. And yes, there are plenty. I mean, I don't know, it's hard to say, maybe black box, but there are still plenty of mysteries. A lot of the mysteries within physiology, just generally speaking, is how things work together. Like, if you like, we can see a lot of things there. Like, I want you to put yourself into the position of, like, a research scientist. You can see all the parts. You're just not really sure how they work together, and so the refinement in our understanding of how these parts go together and also the timing in which they do that, there is a lot of room to go with that.

Justin Cottle: 53:16

And what's really exciting for me I know this is a term that's like everyone's kind of getting sick of right now but with AI, a lot of times people think of AI just being this LLM thing like chat, gpt, but there's a lot of really interesting advancements being made in material science, in pharmaceuticals, in the supplement industry, right Targeted medicine and personalized medicine to where it's like what I'm excited about and I can't give you a timeframe on this, like I throw around the number 10 years, I throw around the number five years, I really don't know but I'm excited for like personalized supplementation. I'm excited for kind of like better understanding of what the genetic tests even mean. I'm really excited for how we're going to get better at just delivering these supplements, so not only just giving you what you need, but making sure they are bioavailable to you. To me, I think like we're just starting another revolution, another kind of just huge expansion in this space, where we're going to start feeling healthier than we ever have. It almost sounds science fiction. It almost sounds like pie in the sky type stuff, and that's why I'm like constantly amazed that it's not where it's like I have to catch myself when I'm looking into this and I'm like, are you serious? Like that's actually on the forefront.

Justin Cottle: 54:26

You know, um, I mean imagine just, you know, not even needing to, like you know, take like testosterone or any of these like exogenous hormones. Instead, we're just taking care of the body's natural processes to not only build protein but to inhibit protein degradation, to break down. Like there's so many things that we can play with that we are playing with that are going to start being publicly aware. That I think people are going to be really excited about. So I would say, like in the next 10, 15 years probably. We're going to see some of the coolest advancements things right now that, like we are just used to being science fiction. I think that's all in the pipeline and people are going to be pretty amazed.

Philip Pape: 55:03

Yeah, I'm excited about that. I mean, you mentioned like geneticbased personalization and also doing something that can unlock the limitations, like the protein limitation you said, protein degradation where it's like you combine that with the lifting and the eating properly and it's like you just accelerate that process even more. Very exciting, okay, is there anything you wish I'd asked in this conversation? I know we could probably do another hour on this topic.

Justin Cottle: 55:28

No, actually that's the one thing I want is I want to do another hour sometime. So that's what's fun is. It's like these conversations can go so many different directions in so many different ways. I've loved every part of it, but I do want more. I do want more.

Philip Pape: 55:40

Yeah, awesome, and I hope and I know our listeners have gotten a lot out of this, and hopefully your students as well and everybody, especially when we can kind of combine these different industries and how it all comes together. Thank you, man, this has been really awesome. I want people to know where to find all of your the stuff where you geek out and you talk about what you're excited about. So where can people go, justin?

Justin Cottle: 55:59

Yeah, so you can find me at the Dissection Room. You can find me YouTube channel. You can find me all over social media these me, all over social media. These days, I'm also starting to work at a company called Kenhub. They are the world's leading anatomy educator. So if you guys go to Kenhubcom, you can also see a lot of I'm doing videos for their YouTube channel. I'm doing I'm all over the place these days. So just find me the dissection room. Kenhub is the good place to start. How do you spell Kenhub? K-e-n-h-u-b.

Philip Pape: 56:31

Okay, cool, awesome. Yeah, I'll include those in the show notes, as always and, man, this is a pleasure. I learned a bunch of things and these are probably going to spawn some other episodes on my end too, to dive into some of these topics. So I'll hit you up with questions if I have them, which I know I will, and then we'll connect again in the future. Justin, thank you so much for coming on, my man.

Here's Why Your Diet SHOULD Be Restrictive for Fat Loss (Design of Experiments) | Ep 231

"You don't need to restrict your diet to lose fat."

How many times have you heard that? Yet you're still not seeing results.

Here's the truth: some level of restriction in your diet isn't just helpful – it's essential for achieving your fat loss goals. But it's not about cutting out entire food groups or following a rigid meal plan.

Learn how the engineering concept of Design of Experiments (DOE) reveals why smart restrictions actually work better for sustainable fat loss. You'll discover how to create a flexible, effective nutrition plan without feeling deprived or overwhelmed.

Rethink everything you know about dietary restrictions and learn how to engineer your perfect fat loss strategy.

To support the show, please take a moment to leave a 5-star rating and review (links for Apple and Spotify). It helps others discover the podcast and lets us know what content resonates with you. I will give you a shout-out on a future episode!

Main Takeaways:

• Design of Experiments provides a framework for approaching nutrition systematically

• Reasonable restrictions act as helpful guidelines, not rigid rules

• This approach allows for flexibility while still moving you toward your goals

• By gathering data and making informed adjustments, you can optimize your nutrition over time

Episode summary:

In the latest episode of Wits and Weights, we dive into a revolutionary approach to nutrition by blending engineering principles with dietary strategies. This episode aims to redefine how we think about dieting. Forget the conventional wisdom that demands you cut out entire food groups or follow rigid meal plans. Instead, we're exploring how you can achieve lasting fat loss by applying the precision of engineering to your nutrition plan.

At the heart of this episode is the concept of "reasonable restriction." This approach challenges the notion that all dietary restrictions are inherently negative. By employing a method known as the design of experiments (DOE), listeners are guided on how to strategically manipulate variables such as calorie intake, macronutrient distribution, and meal timing to meet personal health and fitness goals. Much like managing a financial budget, it's about making informed, calculated choices that lead to sustainable results.

The episode emphasizes the importance of protein intake, recommending a strategic minimum to support body composition goals. By focusing on nutrient-dense foods, individuals can ensure they meet their essential vitamin and mineral needs while naturally reducing ultra-processed food consumption. Additionally, the episode discusses meal timing as a personal toolkit, offering strategies such as pre- and post-workout meals or intermittent fasting to enhance dietary adherence without feeling deprived.

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to introducing a flexible nutrition framework. This approach promotes personalization over rigid rules, aiming to reduce decision fatigue and accommodate lifestyle needs, such as social events and cravings. It's likened to budgeting for long-term health goals, where nutrition becomes an enjoyable, efficient part of daily life rather than a chore. This framework allows individuals to tailor their dietary restrictions in a way that is both practical and aligned with their unique lifestyle and fitness objectives.

One of the standout features of this episode is its focus on reducing the psychological burden often associated with dieting. By employing a flexible set of guidelines rather than rigid rules, individuals can navigate their nutrition journey with greater ease and less stress. The episode underscores the idea that reasonable restriction provides more freedom, not less, by offering clear targets that eliminate the constant decision-making associated with food choices.

Listeners are encouraged to engage with the podcast by leaving reviews, which not only support the show's mission but also provide valuable feedback for future episodes. This engagement is crucial in helping the podcast reach a wider audience and continue delivering evidence-based, engineering-inspired content.

Ultimately, this episode of Wits and Weights offers a refreshing take on dieting by applying engineering principles to create a more sustainable and enjoyable approach to nutrition. It invites listeners to rethink their relationship with food and discover a personalized path to health and fitness that doesn't compromise on the foods they love. By adopting the strategies discussed, individuals can achieve their body composition goals while maintaining a positive and flexible approach to their dietary habits.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

Should you count calories, track macros? Should you cut out carbs or specific foods? Should you avoid dieting altogether and just eat intuitively? Will any of these approaches get you the result you want? If you're confused about all of this, this episode is for you. We are going to dive into an engineering concept called design of experiments and tie it into why some level of restriction is actually helpful, but not necessarily the restriction you've heard about. By the end of this episode, you're going to have a more sustainable, enjoyable way to approach your nutrition while still being successful, achieving the fat loss that you desire.

Philip Pape: 0:52

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are hitting on a controversial topic in the nutrition world, and that is restricting Dietary restrictions, restriction in general and just the word, the term, the language that we use around restriction. Now we are not talking about eliminating entire food groups or macros like carbs, or following any sort of extreme diet whatsoever. Instead, we are going to use an engineering concept called design of experiments to show why some level of restriction is actually beneficial but not what you think and then how to implement it in a way that's sustainable and enjoyable, so that you can hold two concepts in your head at the same time and realize that there is a way that these all work together. And before we get into it, if you've been enjoying the show, if you're a longtime listener, or maybe you've just checked out a few episodes and you want more content on what we talk about here building muscle, losing fat hit the follow button so that people can find the show and you don't miss an episode. And then, if you're willing to take an extra small step with your time and find value in the episodes, take a moment to leave a five-star rating or review in your podcast platform of choice Ideally the platform you're using right now to listen to this show.

Philip Pape: 2:24

All right, let's get into this concept, because there is an elephant in the room in the nutrition world with the word restriction. It's gotten a bad rap, right. We've heard all the influencers, all the coaches, myself included, have said you know, you don't need restriction or you can get your goals without dieting, without restriction. And you see, you hear people say that, like you don't need to diet. Uh, and sometimes it's taken to the level of not only do you not need to diet, you don't need to track anything, just eat intuitively with your hunger signals. And while, while every one of these approaches there's a rationale behind it, there there's a little bit of truth to whatever they're saying. It often then leads to a rigid approach that is overly restrictive in the way that prevents you from getting results. Does that make sense? Like you're restricting the wrong things? Let's just start with that premise.

Philip Pape: 3:16

And then, on the flip side, you have approaches that tell you you know, cut out entire food groups, follow rigid meal plans we're talking about traditional diets like keto and the like carnivore, what have you. And that doesn't seem to be working well either for people, because they might quote unquote lose a lot of weight and then they binge it right back. They gain it right back. You hear the very rare story of oh, my friend's been on keto for four years and loves it. Okay, great, 99% of people don't. They don't love cutting out a ton of possible foods from their diet. And so is there a middle ground? Or is there even a different ground that is not even on that spectrum that we're going to talk about today? Yes, okay, and I want to use something called design of experiments DOE from engineering, and this isn't a stretch at all.

Philip Pape: 4:05

This is actually a really good approach to think about this. This is a method to plan, conduct and analyze experiments. That's what it is Plan, conduct, analyze experiments efficiently. We all know I love efficiency, and the goal is to understand the relationship between the factors that affect a process or a system and then the output of that process or system, while working within the constraints that you have all the real world constraints and so I want to apply this to nutrition. Think of your body as the experiment, your nutrition, your diet as the inputs right, the input factors, the inputs, and then your goals your physique goals, body composition goals, whatever have you as the output. Your body is the experiment, the food is the input, your goals are the output. So, like in engineering, we have to work within certain constraints to get those results, and so, when we look at design of experiments, there are four elements that we can use and apply them to nutrition.

Philip Pape: 5:06

The first one is what I'll call controlled variables. In design of experiments, we select specific variables that we're going to change, while we keep others constant. In nutrition, this means what can you change, right? What variables can you change. We can change calories, we can change our macros, like protein, carbs, fats, right and then we can see how they affect our results. So there's certain variables that we keep constant. There's certain variables that we change. So, for example, in keto, you would keep something constant and that is the level of carbs. You cut out all carbs and that doesn't change. So that's an example.

Philip Pape: 5:47

The second element is the constraints. So, again, in engineering we operate within limitations, like time, resources, materials. In nutrition, our constraints might be our daily calorie budget, our macro targets, our food preferences, our lifestyle factors. Some of these might even be non-negotiables, some of them are just upper or lower limits or ranges right, you can even hear some flexibility in here even though they are constraints. The third element is optimization, because the goal of design of experiments is to identify the best combination of variables to achieve the results you want.

Philip Pape: 6:24

Okay, ah, this is where the magic's going to happen, everyone, because in nutrition, this means finding the right balance of all the variables whether it's macros, calories, food choices that lead to our goals while still being enjoyable and sustainable. That, for us, is that is going to be my definition of optimal, not that it's perfectly tuned to get you the results at all costs, but that it gets you the best result while being something you can live with and enjoy. And then the last element here is efficiency. All right, design of experiments aims to gain the maximum output or information with the minimal experimentation or inputs. Right, so get the most for what you put in. And in nutrition, this translates to making those little tweaks, those little strategic changes in our diet based on the data and the results, rather than thinking that an entire extreme approach or diet or rigid plan is going to solve it, and when it doesn't, you switch to an entire separate plan. That makes sense. So we're actually making these adjustments with all these variables along the way. Okay, so hopefully I haven't lost you just with that setup.

Philip Pape: 7:39

Here's where the concept of reasonable restriction comes in, and I don't remember what podcast I was I had a guest on and we were talking about restriction versus deprivation, and a light bulb went off for me when I realized, you know what, at some point, if you need to lose fat and go into calorie deficit and release energy from your body, there is some level of restriction, as in a constraint, as in a limit and it doesn't mean you have to restrict things that cause you to be miserable, however. So, just like how engineers they set parameters for their experiment, we can do the same thing and figure out what it is that allows us to do this in a sustainable way. We can set some guidelines not to deprive ourselves as a rule, like a carnivore, where you say, just cut out all plant-based foods and deprive yourself and tell yourself no and abstain from them, and deprive yourself of, and tell yourself no and abstain from them. In fact, it's not even about deprivation if you know that you have a trigger food for a craving and saying I'm just going to abstain from that. It's really creating a framework that allows us to achieve our goals efficiently, and my definition of efficiently includes not having to psychologically beat your head against the wall and feel like you're constantly depriving yourself of the foods you love, for example. So what does reasonable restriction look like in practice? Okay, this is really cool here.

Philip Pape: 9:02

The first one is about we'll talk about calories. Let's really get nuts and bolts Calories. We don't need to meticulously count calories, we don't need to weigh everything to the gram, but having a general target and awareness through some form of tracking right, kind of like having a budget for your finances so you know how much you are spending, in this case, how much you are spending on you know eating food calories, so that you can make informed decisions. Now I do like logging my food. I do like using an app like MacaFactor to log food so that you can see, in the ballpark of you know, a few hundred calories of what you're eating. But don't take it overboard to where you're obsessed about every little tenth of a gram. And you know you can do this with more generalities, you can do this at a higher level and still have a really good, solid awareness.

Philip Pape: 9:54

Then we have our macros right, protein especially, and we know that prioritizing protein intake is one of the most effective strategies for body composition. And if we just have a minimum like 0.7 grams per pound of our target body weight every day, right. So if your target body weight is I don't know, let's say, 200 pounds, I don't know if you're gaining or losing, let's just say it's 200 pounds for easy math, you'd be going for 140 grams minimum a day, right. And this is again, guess what. This is a form of restriction, because you are restricting what you eat to being at least 140 grams of protein, just like you are restricting what you eat to be within a certain calorie target. That leads us to number three food quality, again, another restriction. Now, no food is off limits, but if we have a constraint that says we're going to emphasize nutrient dense options most of the time so we know we get enough vitamins and minerals, so that we know we are more full right, we have the food volume and it tends to crowd out more ultra processed foods. Well, that's a form of restriction, but it's additive. It's adding in things that you need and want and making sure it's things that you like and that tastes good and that you love to cook and prepare. So you're adding a food quality restriction.

Philip Pape: 11:12

The next one is meal timing. This is another restriction, because you're saying, okay, I'm going to have I'm not going to train fasted, I'm going to eat some protein and carbs before I train. I'm going to have a post workout meal. I'm maybe going to spread my protein intake throughout the day you don't have to, but this is what I want to do for my goals and you are going to eat at certain times of the day. Well, that's a form of restriction. In fact, you could take that to the extreme and talk about fasting and intermittent fasting. That is a form of restriction and again, I'm not saying that's good or bad. It definitely doesn't have any more benefit than any other form of meal timing other than from a practical standpoint, from a logistical, schedule standpoint, adherence standpoint. But that is up to you to decide. What level of restriction do I want with my meal timing? Because if you just say I'm just going to eat whenever and I'm not sure how the macros are going to be balanced out, and maybe I'll train fast and maybe I won't, you're not going to hit your goals that way. So you have to have some guidelines for meal timing.

Philip Pape: 12:08

And then the last level of restriction, of reasonable restriction, is the tracking itself. Now, I already alluded to this when I talked about calories. But the actual act of tracking things in general, not just calories but progress photos and body circumference measurements and biofeedback, those are restrictions. Because you're saying I am going to put a constraint on myself, that I am going to take a moment, right A few minutes every day to identify these and measure these things. That is a form of restriction, reasonable restriction, versus just not doing it.

Philip Pape: 12:39

So now you might be thinking okay, this sounds like a lot of rules. This sounds kind of rigid to me. There, like a lot of rules. This sounds kind of rigid to me. There's a lot of things you want me to think about, but the key difference is these are not rigid restrictions. They're very flexible guidelines that give you a framework, a set of principles to work within, and you can actually have a wide range for all of them, like calories, for example.

Philip Pape: 12:59

If you're losing fat, you can lose fat at different rates of loss. You can go aggressive or not. You can shift your calories day to day. I mean, I could go on. There's a million ways to do this. I've had episodes in the past talking about the various ways to structure your fat loss plan so it fits within your life. Very flexible, very flexible. But what's nice about having a calorie target is you know you can control for energy balance and yet you can still eat a wide variety of foods. So, again, these are flexible guidelines. It's like having a map for a road trip. Right, you know the general route to get there, but you can still take detours. You can still enjoy the journey along the way. Right, You're not going to detour constantly, but in general, you've got flexibility to do that.

Philip Pape: 13:44

So if we were to make this very specific let's say you are in a fat loss phase, using the design for experiments approach, you might set a moderate calorie deficit right Of uh, uh what am I trying to say here? Half a percent of your body weight per week, and then you set up protein minimum, say that 0.7 grams per pound of target body weight. Then I'm going to basically eat whatever fats and carbs I want within my food preferences. After I hit the protein to hit that calorie target roughly within, say, 5%, 10% I'm going to track my food and wait for a while to see what's happening and I'm going to evaluate the results and then make adjustments. And so this gives you clear targets and minimums and ranges to aim for, but still allows for tons of flexibility in your food choices and your indulgences and having some cravings and those kinds of things that other dieting approaches tend to restrict that end up causing failure.

Philip Pape: 14:44

Dieting approaches tend to restrict that end up causing failure. So it is a far cry from the you know, eat whatever you want approach, but it's also a far cry from ultra restrictive diets that eliminate entire food groups. And so this method is what it is, adaptable. As you gather more data about how your body responds, you can refine your approach. Maybe you find you perform better with slightly higher carbs.

Philip Pape: 15:03

Yes, you might be one of the many, many, many people who want to be on a moderate to high carb diet because they perform and recover better. Or you might having a larger breakfast helps control appetite throughout the day. You know, it might be the opposite. Maybe you perform better on lower carbs. Maybe you don't want a big breakfast. You see what I mean. You have the flexibility to do that, and yet you still have some constraints. You are still restricting something so that you can remain within a big box, a big envelope, so to speak, to get to your goal, and then you can optimize the plan over time, like engineers refine their designs through multiple iterations.

Philip Pape: 15:40

So the cool thing about this the surprising perhaps thing about this is this approach of reasonable restriction actually gives you more freedom, not less. It gives you clear guidelines and therefore you eliminate the constant decision fatigue that comes with trying to be perfect all the time. You know your targets, which means you can plan for social events, for travel, the days and when you want a slice of pizza or ice cream which is my vice, or even, yes, alcohol. It's like having a budget for your finances which lets you spend on the things you care about, because you still know you're on track for retirement or your kid's education, and so, instead of viewing restrictions just as a blanket negative, think about the helpful guideline version of restriction that we talked about today, and this can kind of change the game for you when it comes to nutrition and health. So I just want to recap.

Philip Pape: 16:36

Number one design of experiments is a framework to approach nutrition where you have reasonable restrictions that act as your constraints they're your guidelines instead of rigid rules. This then allows for flexibility while still making progress towards your goals, and then you gather data and make informed adjustments along the way to optimize it, and so that makes it very individualized, very personalized. It's exactly what I do with clients and why it is not a one-size-fits-all, why I'm not a macro coach, why I don't provide a template. You can't just download this nutrition plan and run it. It's not a meal plan. It's very personalized, optimized, efficient way where you're like oh, this is way easier than I even thought it would be. I'm eating the food I love. I'm eating the food I love. I'm not very hungry most of the time and I can train effectively and just feel great, feel and look my best, all right.

Philip Pape: 17:27

So, again, if you got any value from today and you haven't already, take a moment to leave me a five-star rating in the app that you're using right now and then, if you're feeling generous in fact, this is coming out around my birthday in October, so a birthday gift to me would be a review.

Philip Pape: 17:42

That would be the best gift you can give me is giving me a review for my podcast. It would be incredible. It just takes a few seconds but makes a huge difference in helping people discover the show and it also gives me some feedback on what resonated with you. Your support you just listening to the show right now really means the world to me and it supports me so I can bring you the evidence-based and, like today's episode, the engineering inspired advice that I love making for you and I hope you enjoy receiving. So, if you found value in any of our episodes, including this one, head over to the rating section, leave that five-star rating and, if you're generous, a review, and I will be eternally grateful. It'll help us reach more people with our message. Until next time, keep using your weights, lifting those weights and remember a little restriction in your diet isn't deprivation, it's smart engineering. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

How to Find Fitness Motivation When Nothing Seems to Work | Ep 230

Are you having trouble staying motivated with your fitness goals? Do you start strong, only to lose momentum after a few weeks? Are you wondering why discipline and willpower never seem to be enough?

Philip (@witsandweights) dives into the psychology of motivation and the hidden forces that drive our behaviors. You’ll learn why relying on willpower isn’t a sustainable strategy and discover seven types of motivation to help you stay on track long-term. From internal motivators like intrinsic enjoyment to external motivators like social support, Philip covers how to identify your primary drivers and create an environment that fosters lasting motivation. Whether you're just starting your fitness journey or looking to reignite your passion, this gives you the tools to build systems for success that don’t depend on fleeting discipline. Find out how to use multiple sources of motivation to crush your goals without relying on willpower alone.

📋 To learn how to reframe your goals and implement them, even when you’re not “motivated,” so you can finally be consistent with your fitness and nutrition, join my email list here or at https://witsandweights.com/email and reply to ask for my “Action-Oriented Goals” guide.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

1:19 Holly's (listener) question
2:29 Why willpower isn’t enough for long-term motivation
4:15 Seven types of motivation explained
9:00 A client's story about motivation
14:14 How to identify your primary motivators
17:10 Tips for creating a motivating environment
19:15 How action can spark motivation and using the "motivation wave"
22:04 Outro

Episode resources:

• Join my email list here or at https://witsandweights.com/email and reply to ask for my free “Action-Oriented Goals” guide.

Episode summary:

Unlocking motivation for a successful fitness journey is a nuanced topic that goes beyond sheer willpower. This episode delves into the psychology of motivation, explaining why aligning your actions with personal values is essential and how understanding different motivators can sustain your drive toward fitness goals. Discover how to tap into the right sources of motivation, such as intrinsic joy or social incentives, and how they can significantly impact your journey.

One of the fundamental insights shared is the concept of ego depletion, which explains why willpower is a limited resource. This phenomenon underscores the importance of finding motivators that resonate with your personal values, as they are more sustainable. Understanding these psychological aspects allows individuals to craft a personalized motivation plan that isn't solely reliant on discipline.

The episode explores seven types of motivation, ranging from intrinsic and extrinsic to fear-based and social motivators. Intrinsic motivation, for example, is derived from the inherent satisfaction of an activity, like the joy of a runner's high. In contrast, extrinsic motivation might come from external rewards, such as compliments or winning a competition. By identifying which type resonates most with you, you can leverage these motivators to fuel your fitness journey effectively.

An inspiring story featured in the episode is that of a client named Marie. Her journey illustrates the transformative power of aligning motivations with personal values. Initially trapped in a cycle of ineffective fitness plans, Marie discovered that her true motivator was her desire to be active with her kids and serve as a role model. This realization shifted her focus from external goals, like fitting into old clothes, to more meaningful and aligned motivators. As a result, she found joy in her fitness journey and achieved lasting success.

The episode provides a wealth of practical strategies to optimize motivation. Reflecting on past successes can help you identify what has consistently motivated you in the past. Consideration of your core values and identity is crucial, as aligning fitness goals with these elements can significantly boost motivation. The episode encourages experimentation with different motivational approaches, emphasizing that motivation is not one-size-fits-all.

Creating a motivating environment is another key strategy discussed. Setting process-related goals, for instance, can help maintain motivation by focusing on actionable steps rather than just outcomes. Celebrating small wins and connecting goals to a deeper purpose are other effective tactics to foster a resilient mindset. By building systems and routines that align with personal values, individuals can maintain a consistent drive, even during low motivation periods.

The episode wraps up with an invitation to obtain the Action Versus Results-Oriented Goals Guide. This guide is designed to help listeners align their actions with desired outcomes, providing a practical approach to goal setting. It reinforces the idea that motivation is not just a fleeting feeling but a skill that can be developed and refined over time.

In conclusion, understanding the psychology of motivation and aligning it with personal values is essential for a successful fitness journey. By exploring different types of motivation and implementing personalized strategies, individuals can create a sustainable drive that transforms their fitness goals into achievements. This episode is a valuable resource for anyone looking to enhance their motivation and achieve long-term success in their health journey.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:00

If you're really good at getting excited to finally start going to the gym or fixing your nutrition and then, after only a few days or weeks, you struggle to follow through, or you find yourself constantly starting and stopping diet plans, unable to stay consistent. Or maybe you've achieved some success but you can't seem to stay motivated. This episode is for you. Today, you'll learn about the psychology of motivation, those hidden forces that drive our behaviors, so you can harness them rather than letting them control you. You'll discover why willpower is never something to rely on, how to tap into more powerful sources of motivation, and the surprising ways your environment shapes your actions. If you're looking to reignite that drive and passion, this episode will give you the tools to finally achieve long-lasting motivation with your physical fitness. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are tackling something that is so fundamental to success in fitness and in life, and that is motivation. This episode was inspired by a really good question from a long-time listener, holly B. Holly, if you're listening and I know you are thanks for the inspiration and shout out to you for the question. Holly asked, quote what motivates someone? What are the different kinds of motivations, like external, internal, fear-based, goal-setting, timeframes, peer pressure, performance, etc. So she's kind of setting up the list already for us here. It is a fantastic question, because understanding motivation is often the missing piece. It is the key to achieving whatever the goal is, especially in fitness, where an effective plan requires going to the gym and training multiple days a week and making good decisions most of the time almost daily for your food and your lifestyle. So today we're going to break down the science behind motivation, including seven types of motivators and how you can use these to understand what drives you without relying on discipline or willpower. Now, if you want your question answered or if you want a shout out on a future episode, you can send me a text message using the link in the show notes. So, on your mobile device, click the link to send me a text message and send me a question, and that question will be featured in its own entire episode, or a Q&A, or hey, let me know how you'd want it to be featured and I will definitely take that into serious consideration.

Philip Pape: 2:29

All right, let's get into the topic and I want to break this down into four segments today. The first is the psychology of motivation and why willpower isn't enough. And then the seven key types of motivation and how they influence what you do, your behavior. The third segment is how to identify your primary motivator so you can use them to make progress. And then, finally, some practical strategies to create a motivating environment and then maintain that long-term drive, because we want our motivation itself to also be sustainable, motivation itself to also be sustainable.

Philip Pape: 3:07

So I want to start off with a common misconception that motivation is at any point about willpower or discipline. And how many times have you heard someone say this and you may have said it yourself I just need more willpower to stick to my diet, or I just need better discipline, or I just need to do it, just need to go to the gym consistently. That's all I'm missing is the doing of it. And while action is a part of the equation, when it comes from a place of this reserve, this limited resource we know as willpower, there is a problem because there's something psychologists call ego depletion, the idea that self-control or willpower draws upon a limited pool of mental resources and it can be used up. And when we rely solely on that, then we're setting ourselves up for failure and we instead want to understand what's deeper, the deeper psychological forces that are at play here, because motivation isn't about forcing yourself to do something, it's not that. It's about aligning the actions with your values and then creating the right environment and tapping into both internal and external drivers. Okay, and it'll all become clear as we move forward what I mean by all of that. Okay, aligning actions with values, with the right environment, with both internal and external motivators. So this brings me to seven key types of motivation that research has identified, and if you understand these, then you can use the right motivators for you and your fitness journey.

Philip Pape: 4:35

So the first one is intrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is when you do something because it's inherently fun, enjoyable, satisfying and for fitness. This might be the runner's high you get from a run as much as I'm not a runner people talk about that all the time or what I really tap into the sense of accomplishment after a tough, intense training session where I've hit the numbers, I've progressed, I've worked my muscles, whatever it might be. That's intrinsic. Number two is extrinsic, and this involves external rewards or punishments, things like winning a competition, getting compliments on your physique right. The external validation of your physique, avoiding health issues is even an external or extrinsic motivation. And again, there's no right or wrong with any of these. We can tap into any combination of these at any time to make the whole thing more frictionless and not have to rely on willpower and motivation or discipline.

Philip Pape: 5:34

The third type of motivation is identified motivation. This is when you do something because you recognize that it is important, even if it's not inherently enjoyable. This is a really key one in our space because, for example, you might not love every workout or training session, but you do it because you understand its value for your health and goals. That's still motivation. It's not willpower. There's something there that takes the place of willpower that gets you to show up and go to the gym. Number four is integrated motivation, and this is when an activity aligns with your core values and identity. If being an athlete, being fit and healthy, is a key part of who you are, you're more likely to stay motivated. It's what you do. It is who you are. To the point and I can identify with this to the point where it feels off not to do those things. It actually takes more willpower to not go to the gym. That is a great place to be.

Philip Pape: 6:36

Number five is fear-based motivation, and I think it's important to recognize this because, while it's not always positive fear in fact, fear is almost never positive but it can be a powerful motivator regardless. For example, fear of health problems, right, fear of type two diabetes, fear of osteoporosis, losing mobility as you age, those things might drive you to train as well. And so there there could be a reframing of a positive from a fear, and that's what I like to do, but just understand that that is one of the drivers we have. Number six is goal-oriented motivation, and this is setting specific, measurable targets and working toward them. So notice, I put it in its own category right, I want to lose 20 pounds of fat, I want to deadlift 300. It's that kind of approach, and humans really love goals, we love going after numbers and progress and specific endpoints, and, again, there's nothing wrong with that, as long as it aligns with what you're doing in a positive way. And, again, it's just one type of motivator, not the one we rely on.

Philip Pape: 7:39

And then number seven is social motivation Very important, very powerful. This is peer pressure, accountability, the desire for social connection, working out with friends or a training partner joining a fitness community Facebook group'm a coach and so I fully recognize, when I hire a coach, how much it motivates me in so many ways, whether it is peer pressure, whether it is the support, whether it is hey, they're waiting for me to check in and show that I've made progress, so I better get my butt in gear. So it's kind of an external thing, but it is very integrated into self-motivation in being related to a community and be motivated by a social group. We are social creatures. All right now you might be wondering okay, that's a lot. Definitely go back and review those seven motivators if you need to identify which ones are most resonating with you. And you're wondering okay, what's the best one?

Philip Pape: 8:35

And like any of the stuff we talk about on the show, there's no one size fits all answer. Different types of motivation work better for different people and in different contexts, different situations, which can change week to week, month to month, year to year. The key here is understanding what drives you personally and how to leverage multiple sources of motivation. So kind of like putting together your menu of motivation so that willpower gets to become a smaller and smaller slice and just disappears from the pie altogether and all you're left with is things that just motivate you to naturally get the job done. So let me tell you about, like the typical client I work with and I'm going to I'm thinking of a specific client, I'm going to protect her identity and use a name. I'm going to I'm thinking of a specific client, I'm going to protect her identity and use a name. I'm going to call her Marie and this particular client.

Philip Pape: 9:23

When she came to me, she was over it, like she was done. She tried all the diets keto, low carb, even some extreme stuff like those juice cleanses, all of it and she'd always kind of start out strong, super motivated, quote unquote but then eventually life would get in the way, life would happen, and she'd find herself back at the beginning and stuck in a cycle Very common that I deal with when clients come to me and then she felt like she couldn't break free because the only option was to start a new cycle of something that she knew inevitably would fail. And Marie's motivation had always been about well, I want to be able to fit into these clothes, or this dress that I wore at my wedding 10 years ago, or the jeans that I wore in my twenties. And that was the problem. Even though it's, it's an external motivator of some kind at least it seems to be she was focused on a goal that wasn't meaningful. It wasn't meaningful to her anymore. So, yeah, it's external, but it wasn't aligned, and if you go back and listen to the seven motivators, notice the recurrence of the motivation being aligned with you and your goals. And so it was something that she thought she should care about, not something that actually mattered to her right now and then that's why it never stuck. So we dug deeper I always like to dig deeper when we do our onboarding call and then as we move forward, because I think mindset is the biggest part of this and then we wanted to tap into the types of motivations that aligned with where she was in life.

Philip Pape: 10:50

So for Marie, it wasn't about fitting into the dress, it was about having the energy to be active with her kids, right, and be a role model for her kids. And, yeah, maybe being leaner and stronger and fitter was an outcome of that, but it was a lagging indicator. The true motivator was her children, and that is what we call integrated motivation, but that's not it. She also realized that she missed the feeling of accomplishment from her workout. She wasn't getting the progress and yet she was working out a lot, and that's a disconnect, right. And so we wanted to lean into intrinsic motivation and help her find an activity that she enjoyed and gave her progress, which happened to be lifting weights. And I know a lot of you are thinking well, I don't like lifting weights. Well, when lifting weights gets you a result that is highly satisfying and also gets you the physique and the health and the role model that you want to be, it gets you the things that you want, you will like it. That's kind of where I'm going with that you.

Philip Pape: 12:36

And then, to top it off, we got her connected, of course, with a supportive group in my coaching program and she was able to tap into that social motivation, which is hugely important. In fact, just this week I had someone in my group who was actually she wanted to cancel, and this happens occasionally. Where somebody is very motivated, they get started, get started. We get her the tools and onboarding and a plan and even the accountability and the calls. But there was a piece of it that wasn't aligning for her and it was. It was a specific type of tracking that she didn't like it wasn't tracking in general. It was. It was thinking she had to track in this specific way and it wasn't aligned with her Right. So we had to tap into the true motivators of why she's doing this and find a way that actually worked. And she did. And the only way oh, my whole point was the way she was able to do that was bringing it up in the group setting and actually have two or three of my other clients chime in with their ideas, rather than the coach just saying this is what you need to do, and kind of help her brainstorm through it. And as a collective group we were able to say okay, here's the thing we suggest. You said oh my God, I hadn't even thought of that. That actually sounds like a lot of fun. Let me do that. And now she's making progress.

Philip Pape: 13:47

So, going back to Marie, you know, over about a 10 month period we worked together. Yeah, she lost like 27 pounds on the scale and 4% body fat. And while that's important from a pure numbers and fat loss perspective, it wasn't because she was chasing the number or some outdated idea of what she thought she should look like, but because she was living in a way that matched her values. She wasn't just going through the motions anymore, she was enjoying her training sessions, and then she wanted to eat in a way that worked for her and supported it, and then she started to feel strong and confident again, again, and then, of course, yeah, she lost some fat and got leaner as a result, which was almost like almost didn't matter at the end of the day, because the other things were already satisfied, and so the key here for her wasn't finding willpower at all. It was aligning her motivation with what truly mattered to her, and that's where the real change happened.

Philip Pape: 14:42

So let's apply this to you. Let's break down how you can identify your primary motivators and use them effectively. First, reflect on your past successes. Think about times when you've been consistently motivated in your fitness journey or in any other area of your life, something that you've done. That seems like a hard thing that other people may not do, but you do it, and you do it consistently, and there's some reason for that, and you don't feel like you're forced to do it either. What drove you? Was it the intrinsic enjoyment of the thing? Was it the pursuit of a goal? Was it the support you had from your partner or a group, right, identify the thing aligned with one of the seven motivators and it could be multiple. So that's the first thing to do is look at what you've done successfully in the past and what motivated you.

Philip Pape: 15:28

The second, I want you to consider your values and identity. What's important to you? How does fitness fit into your overall vision for your life? Right, the more that you can align your fitness goals with your core values of who you are, who you want to be, but really who you are should be living right now to be that person, the more motivated you'll be to pursue them. All right, that's the second thing is to consider your values and what's important to you. Third, I want you to experiment with different approaches. So I talk about this a lot, experimentation. There's no one size fits all. There's no plan. There's no here Do. The Philip Witson Waits plan of motivation doesn't exist. It's very individualized. This is why a lot of people hire me as a coach to help them find what this is for them.

Philip Pape: 16:14

I want you to try setting specific goals and see how that affects your motivation. Or join a class, or find a training partner or a group. Join our Facebook group totally free and tap into that social motivation right. Go through the list of motivators and figure out which one seems most accessible, interesting, something that you can identify with right now and give it a shot. Pay attention, then, to how these different strategies impact your drive and your consistency, because for one person, a goal might be a great idea. For you, it might be intrinsic or social support. It's okay and it's beneficial if you have multiple sources. I think of it almost like motivation diversity, or like your nest egg, right? Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Don't put all your eggs in one motivation basket. Rely on multiple sources, it's okay. You might be primarily driven by health concerns, which is a form of identified motivation, but you might also enjoy the social aspect of a group workout, and I'm not against that. I have plenty of clients who love group workouts, so we kind of blend in a little bit of strength training, a little bit of group work, and they enjoy it. You might enjoy the sense of accomplishment from hitting a target, like getting your lift to a certain number. It's all fine, okay. So that's kind of how you reflect on this and then identify how you want to go ahead.

Philip Pape: 17:34

If I were to get a little more specific and practical in terms of the environment. So that you can make this even easier and even more frictionless, I've got a few tips that come to mind. The first one is always set process-related goals, not just outcome goals. So, even though I mentioned before, yeah, you can set lose 20 pounds as a goal, I would want to set up micro goals that get you to that. Like I'm going to train three days a week, I'm going to eat protein with every meal, and so on, and those are more within your control. Every meal and so on, and those are more within your control. They're more today, things you can do. Check off the box, say I did it or I didn't, and then move on, and then you get those regular wins that keep you motivated. Huge fan of that.

Philip Pape: 18:17

The second one is taking more control of the environment as best you can, and this could be joining a gym where you don't feel intimidated or that has the right equipment, finding a training partner, following people who inspire you I hope I do, and this show does but also weeding out the people that are toxic and don't inspire you, but following the people that do, and even controlling your physical environment and your kitchen environment, for example, because it does play a huge role in your motivation and you do have some control over its shape, how you shape your environment. The next tip I have for you is habit stacking Always love that one Attaching your new habits to existing routines. So, for example, tying your workouts to your morning coffee, tying your walking to listening to a podcast. You know, taking the power of something that's already so ingrained in what you do and then just tweaking it to add this extra little thing that seems like no big deal and before long it compounds into something amazing. And so you know I I could go on. I don't want to make this episode too long, but if, if you can make it so that you feel like you're accomplishing and celebrating things just about every day along the way. It might not be all the things, it might be okay, you made this meal choice today that you're proud of. Okay, you took a nice long walk today that you're proud of, but every day there's something that's going to keep tapping into intrinsic motivation and build momentum. And then the other types of motivators can also come, you know, kind of pile on and just going back to the why right, connecting your goals to that deeper purpose of playing actively with your kids or grandkids, feeling confident in your own skin, the stronger that why, the more resilient this motivation will be. So those are some tips I have, as I mentioned before.

Philip Pape: 20:08

You know, people ask me how do you find motivation? And I think motivation often follows action, not from discipline or willpower, but just from these simple little things. We often feel we need to be motivated to act right. We often feel we need the motivation first to oh, how do I get motivated? But taking action that's fairly effortless and frictionless can create this motivation through the wins, and that's why the just show up mentality can be powerful. Right, even if you don't feel like training, commit to getting to the gym and doing it for five minutes, and then you'll find that once you start you're like, yeah, well, I'm here, I'm going, it feels great, let me do the whole training session. And that ties into a concept called the motivation wave. All right, so that's my last thing for you here the motivation wave.

Philip Pape: 20:55

Motivation itself naturally ebbs and flows. It's not a constant. All right, you want to build systems? We talk about systems In fact, it's in my opening of every podcast building systems that carry you through life and low points of motivation. And here's the little trick I have for you when motivation is high, that's when you want to use it to set up these systems, and then, when motivation is low, you're going to rely on your systems and just focus on showing up. This is a game changer. This takes the pressure off always needing to feel motivated and instead you're just focused on consistent action. That's it, and then, over time, you build momentum, you create the results and guess what? It keeps motivating you forever, and I love that. I think it's awesome, I think it's empowering.

Philip Pape: 21:44

So let's recap what we talked about today. The first thing is that motivation is complex and it's beyond willpower and discipline. It's a totally separate thing that I want you to think of as something that we do want to look for instead of discipline. Second, there are multiple types intrinsic, extrinsic, identified, integrated, fear-based, goal-oriented and social. Number three is that the most effective motivational strategy is personal. It's the one that works for you, depends on your values, depends on your goals and preferences. And then, number four, creating a supportive environment and using multiple sources of motivation is the key to long-term success. And once you do that, action is easy, it creates motivation and it just builds on itself. So remember, understanding and using motivation itself is also a skill. It's also a skill. It's okay if you're not there yet. It takes practice and refinement. I want you to be patient with yourself. I want you to experiment with different strategies and just keep showing up. If you do that, you'll be good. All right, if you found value in today's episode.

Philip Pape: 22:45

If you want to take the next step in harnessing that power of motivation, I created a guide as part of my coaching program and I'm going to give it to you for free. It's called Action Versus Results Oriented Goals and it's going to help you transform your approach a bit and think about how you set goals today and how you might shift those goals to something that creates action instead of focusing on a result. And that goes back to what I talked about earlier with process orientation instead of results orientation. All right. And the guide's gonna show you how to shift from vague goals to very specific, actionable ones that help you build momentum and then tie it into the motivators. You'll learn how to reframe those goals. You'll learn how to implement them in your day-to-day and then stay consistent, even when motivation itself isn't quite at its highest.

Philip Pape: 23:32

So if you want to get your copy of the Action Versus Results-Oriented Goals Guide. Join my email list, click the link in the show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash email and then, when you're on the list, just reply to it and say, hey, I want the action-oriented results guide and I'll send it right over Again. Just go to witsandweightscom slash email to join my list and ask for the action-oriented results guide. All right, until next time, keep using your wits lifting some weights, and remember, when it comes to motivation, action is sometimes the best catalyst. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

The 5 Stages of Fitness Over 40 (Your Health and Longevity Roadmap) with Allan Misner | Ep 229

Are you over 40 and frustrated by slow progress in your fitness journey? Do you find it harder to build muscle, lose fat, or maintain energy levels like you used to? Do you need help creating a sustainable plan for health and longevity?

Philip (@witsandweights) sits down with fitness expert Allan Misner, host of the 40+ Fitness Podcast and author of The Wellness Roadmap, to break down the five key stages of fitness transformation after 40. Learn how to stop wasting time on ineffective workouts and diets and build a clear path toward lifelong health and success.

Allan shares the five key stages of fitness transformation after 40, offering practical insights on how to make lasting changes in your health, even if you’ve struggled for years. He’ll dive into the mindset shifts, motivation strategies, and systems you need to stop spinning your wheels and finally achieve sustainable fitness results in midlife and beyond.

📱 Book a FREE 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment, designed to fine-tune your strategy, identify your #1 roadblock, and give you a personalized 3-step action plan in a fast-paced 15 minutes. https://witsandweights.com/free-call

Today, you’ll learn all about:

1:46 Stage 1 - The catalyst: When you realize something needs to change
7:32 Stage 2 - Starting over: Facing the challenges of starting a fitness journey after 40
10:11 The turning point when Allan decided to change
13:11 Stage 3 - Sustainability and balance: Training for a Tough Mudder
19:38 The importance of long-term vision and sustaining your results
24:50 How to build self-motivation and lasting habits
36:40 Stage 4 - Bouncing back: Dealing with setbacks and injuries to keep the momentum going
46:20 Stage 5 - CARGO: Celebrate, align, recalibrate, and go for long-term success
52:30 What Allan wished Philip had asked
54:45 Where to find Allan
55:16 Outro

Episode resources:

• 40+ Fitness Podcast

• Instagram: @40plusfitnesspodcast 

• Book - The Wellness Roadmap

• Quiz - Find Your Primary Fitness Mindset

Episode summary:

As we journey through life, the inevitable passage of time often brings new challenges, especially when it comes to maintaining our health and fitness. This episode explores these challenges, offering insights into how individuals over 40 can pursue a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle. This episode features Alan Meisner, the seasoned host of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, who shares his own experiences and wisdom gained from over 600 podcast episodes.

The journey to fitness beyond 40 begins with a personal commitment to change. The episode opens with a compelling story about a life-threatening experience in Malaysia, which served as a catalyst for the host's fitness transformation. Alan Meisner joins the conversation to share his own journey, including a humbling moment on the volleyball court that made him realize the need for a healthier lifestyle. The discussion emphasizes the importance of creating a roadmap for health and longevity, which involves understanding the five key stages of fitness transformation.

Commitment is a recurring theme throughout the episode, as illustrated by the host's decision to improve his health after a scare in Malaysia. This transformative journey was marked by a commitment to self-education and the pursuit of daunting challenges, such as participating in a Tough Mudder event with his daughter. The episode highlights the significance of setting bold goals and the role of self-discovery in driving personal growth and transformation. The journey to fitness after 40 is not just about physical changes but also involves cultivating a mindset of self-love and resilience.

The episode delves into the concept of self-love as a driving force for maintaining independence and vitality in later years. Inspired by a personal story of a grandfather who lost his ability to enjoy golf, the conversation emphasizes the importance of having a vision for a future filled with activities and independence. Self-love is framed as a proactive effort to improve one's health, allowing the body to heal and grow. Overcoming self-doubt and forgiving oneself for past mistakes are key components of this journey, as motivation is earned through intrinsic and extrinsic means.

Navigating setbacks is an inevitable part of the fitness journey, and the episode provides valuable insights into overcoming these challenges. Self-awareness and mindset are crucial for achieving personal goals, and understanding one's current capabilities is essential. The discussion explores the role of accountability, whether through a coach or personal tracking methods, and the importance of aligning actions with clear objectives. By addressing psychological barriers and embracing flexible goals, individuals can add real value to their lives.

The journey of resilience and recovery is exemplified through Alan Meisner's experience with a rotator cuff injury. Despite the setback, Alan remained determined to complete a Spartan race, demonstrating the power of persistence and adaptability. The episode emphasizes the importance of seeking top-notch medical professionals who understand athletic needs, as well as maintaining range of motion and a proactive approach to physical therapy. These elements are crucial for overcoming physical challenges and maintaining progress.

The episode concludes by exploring the concept of tackling challenges and embracing difficult tasks as a pathway to achieving desired results. Building stamina through hard work enables individuals to enjoy activities like hiking and fosters a sense of accomplishment. Alan Meisner's extensive experience, with over 600 podcast episodes, offers valuable guidance on training, nutrition, and psychological aspects of fitness. The episode encourages listeners to explore Alan's resources for fitness, health, and mindset insights, highlighting the virtues of persistence, adaptability, and hard work in maintaining a zest for life at any age.

This episode is a testament to the power of commitment, self-love, and resilience in pursuing health and happiness beyond 40. Through personal stories and expert insights, the episode provides a roadmap for crafting a lifetime of wellness and vitality. Whether you're just beginning your fitness journey or looking to overcome setbacks, this episode offers valuable lessons and inspiration to help you thrive at any age.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're over 40 and have been struggling to get fit despite trying all the diets and workouts, or maybe you haven't yet started your fitness journey and want to reclaim your health, this episode's for you. Today, I'm sitting down with fitness expert Alan Meisner to reveal the five key stages of fitness over 40 that you must go through to transform your health and physique. When you understand these stages, you create a roadmap that clarifies your purpose and your approach to health and physique. When you understand these stages, you create a roadmap that clarifies your purpose and your approach to health and longevity. The best part is that getting this right means you'll actually do less of the ineffective workouts and dieting you've been struggling with, because you'll have a clear path to focus your fitness in midlife and beyond. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 0:53

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are mapping out the journey to better health and fitness after 40 with Alan Meisner, host of the 40 Plus Fitness Podcast and author of the Wellness Roadmap. Now Alan is a certified personal trainer, nutrition coach and functional aging specialist who's helped thousands navigate the ups and downs of getting fit in midlife and beyond, and he had me on his show recently and I was very excited to sit down with him again today. Today, you're going to learn about the five stages of fitness transformation after 40, from the moment you realize things need to change to finally achieving your goal and then maintaining it for life. Through Alan's experiences and, in my opinion, his masterful storytelling, you'll discover how to make that commitment and build a system that will give you lasting success, no matter where you're starting from. Alan, my man, it is good to see you again and welcome back to the show.

Allan Misner: 1:46

Thank you, Philip.

Philip Pape: 1:47

This is exciting and I should say welcome to the show, but welcome back to seeing you again, yeah, so let's just start with the moment that someone realizes things aren't quite working anymore. Maybe they've put on a little weight, maybe they're not as strong, they're feeling tired, they don't have the energy. We all have kids and family and obligations as we get older. What is that catalyst for change that you've seen in most people over 40? We're just going to start there. What is that catalyst for most people?

Allan Misner: 2:18

Well, most of us over 40 are getting to a point in our lives where we're in this kind of weird place in the middle. Our kids are getting old enough that they don't need us as much. So if you're a woman, there's that. If you're a man, it's like, okay, the kids are out and about doing their sports, I might be driving them around, and then eventually now I'm handing them the keys and they're driving themselves around. So again, it's that stage out. And then we also get to see our parents, who are kind of forecasting our future, and so if we're living the same lifestyle they live, that's our future. And they're seeing the illness, they're seeing the things going on there. So for a lot of people, that's the point where they're kind of bridging and figuring this stuff out.

Allan Misner: 3:01

Now, I was in a very weird place when I hit my mid-40s, because I was very successful in my career, but I was not successful at pretty much anything else Relationships, health, fitness, all of it. And so while I had started making the decision that I wanted to change, I went through eight years of just yo-yo. Some people talk about hitting rock bottom. I got drug across rock bottom over eight years. Okay, you got the scrapes to show for it, right, right. And so it started like I was sitting on the beach in Mexico and I had forced myself to take a vacation. I should have been celebrating. I was like I've made it to vice president of a Fortune 500 company at the age of 39. That's the dream, right? Well, so I went down to this timeshare. I literally bought the timeshare, sight unseen, pretty much. I just walked in and said sell me, because I knew if I put the money in, I would start taking that annual vacation. So I'm not going to let that money burn. And so I did.

Allan Misner: 4:01

I forced myself to take a week off, and then I forced myself to sign up to take another week off every year, okay, and so I was kind of on my way a little bit, but it was haphazard and it wasn't controlled. And so the next day I was pretty happy because they had beach volleyball on the schedule. So the week the daily schedule was put up and they had beach volleyball every day. I'm like this is gonna to be so cool, because I used to play competitively when I was younger. Well, I wasn't younger, I was in really bad shape.

Allan Misner: 4:30

So I went out to try to start playing volleyball, and this was not the two-man volleyball that I played a lot, or the four-man that I played some. This was like six on six. So this is take a step bump, take a step bump. Just one game of that had me completely wiped out. And so I'm just I'm sitting there the next morning and I'm like what in the hell happened? You know where did I go? Cause this isn't me. Uh, I'm not someone who dies on a volleyball court at 39 years old. And so I kind of made the decision to change right there. I even had someone take a picture of me with my shirt off, which was insane, and if you go to my website and you look at my About Me page, you see that photo. It's also in the book. But, yeah, I was not very proud of that picture, but I thought that'll be enough to make me change. Of course, it was an all-inclusive resort. Alcohol was already paid for, so, yeah, I commenced to drink my ass off for the whole rest of the week.

Allan Misner: 5:26

I'll start on Monday. You know, yeah, you had the idea, but not quite yet, and so I did try, I did try, I would try this, I would try that, I would look for things. You know what can I do? And there was nothing. There was nothing out there that really told me how to train myself, because everything that was out there was well, you need to do what everybody else does. You're just like everybody else. But I did the Insanity workout, just the benchmark test. I bought the DVD set because it looked cool. Shanti is awesome, it's energy. That's a P90. This was Insanity was also. Yeah, it was Beachbody.

Philip Pape: 5:56

Yeah, yeah, beachbody, this was.

Allan Misner: 5:57

Shanti, and so Shanti was just. You know, he's fit. The reason I didn't go with P90X because I had done that when I was younger was that they did require dumbbells and a pull-up bar. So I was like, okay, I can't do that traveling. So I bought these DVDs, I took the time to diligently rip them all onto my iPad and so here I am. I have all the workouts. I said, okay, I'll sit down and do the benchmark test here, so I know where I am. Okay, so I do the benchmark test and it's very, very motivating. They're dancing around, everybody looks great, they're smiling, they're having fun. I'm not having fun, but I'm doing it.

Allan Misner: 6:31

The next morning I couldn't get out of bed. It was like men had just sat there and beat me with a baseball bat all night. I'm just laying in the bed like, oh my God, it hurt to reach over and grab my phone to call into work, because there was no way I was going to be able to get it to work and do my job. So I didn't do a single one of those workouts again ever. They were still on that iPad when I handed them over to IT.

Allan Misner: 6:56

So there's that first period where you don't really even know what you need. You don't know what's going on and it's easy to tell yourself this isn't a problem. Everybody's overweight, everybody's living like this, everybody's doing this, so I'm just like everybody else, so there's not really a problem. Problem and so not to steal. We're not stealing from the stages of change. If you notice, there's five stages we're going to go through. They do align with the stages of change. I was in pre-contemplation for those eight years. I would try something, maybe, or do this or piddle, but I wasn't really in it.

Philip Pape: 7:32

What's interesting, Alan, is and people can relate to this there sounded to be multiple points that were realizations or wake-up calls that you went through, but then you may have attempted to act on it, maybe not, and even when you did, it wasn't right for you, it wasn't the thing that would work and therefore you didn't stick with it.

Philip Pape: 7:51

And so there are these fleeting realizations that probably happen often right Throughout a year, or even a month, or even a day. We're thinking about this stuff often and then it's like what do we do with it? So, even though it's pre-contemplation, you get to the point of taking action, and the action doesn't even seem to get you what you want if it's not the right action.

Allan Misner: 8:11

Right, right. So I remember this because I read this email I wrote years ago, but I was in Malaysia and when I was getting there it was Ramadan. So Ramadan is a season of fasting. They don't eat during the day, they don't even drink water. It's like for 12 hours. They don't do any of that. And so what I was doing was I said, okay, I'm going to have a good breakfast, I'll have a breakfast with some coffee and I'll have a water in there, but I won't let anybody see it, and then I'll eat a reasonable dinner.

Allan Misner: 8:44

And I did that for the first week. The second week, I'm like, okay, now I'm just going to add some walking. I'll walk for an hour. Well, malaysia is very, very humid, so those are sweaty, sweaty walks, okay. And so I did that the whole second week and I was actually losing weight. I was feeling pretty good going home. I flew home and I got home and I spent the weekend. I kept up with it.

Allan Misner: 9:06

Well, like, on Tuesday morning, I'm sitting at work and I start convulsing and I literally threw up and shat on myself at the same time and hit the ground, and they wanted to call an ambulance. I said no, no, no, let me clean up here and then I'm going to go home, clean up, rest. If I still feel bad, I'll go to the hospital. I did go to the hospital later, after I slept a few hours, but what happened was because I had drank so much water and I'd sweated so much, I was dehydrated and I'd washed out all of my sodium. So I was close to going into a coma, doing what I thought was the right thing Quit alcohol, just drink water, exercise hard. It wasn't hard, it was walking, but for me at the time it was hard. An hour of walking and sweating and boom, here I am laying down on the floor, convulsing, almost going into a coma. And so it was that thing of not knowing what I didn't know, thinking I can just do what I've always done, and it didn't work. So you know, for me the next stage started.

Allan Misner: 10:16

I happened to also be in Malaysia, which is interesting. I traveled there a lot, though at that time in my life. So my daughter and I got on a phone call and she said to me, because she was getting into CrossFit and she had just become a level one CrossFit coach. And so she says to me daddy, would you come watch me do a CrossFit competition and I'm like I just felt this pit in my stomach. I'm like I'm not supposed to be a spectator in my daughter's life. I'm supposed to be a participant, I'm supposed to be there with her doing it. Well, I did go watch her. I'm not that bad. I did go watch the competition.

Allan Misner: 10:53

But that was the moment where there was like a click in my head and I'm like, okay, this is a problem, this is hard, it's really hard, but it's not so hard that I shouldn't be able to do it. So what is different between all the hard things I did? You don't make it to the C-suite age of 39, a fortune 500 company without doing some hard things. You don't do what I did in the military without being able to do some hard things. So I was like what makes this different? And that's when the word hit my head. It was like commitment. For For all those other things that I did, I committed to do it and I became fanatical, obsessed with doing it and doing it right. So I knew that's what I needed to do here.

Allan Misner: 11:38

The problem was I was traveling so much that I couldn't hire a coach, a personal trainer, and there was no one doing this online. There were no books, there were no podcasts, there was no nothing. And so I was like, okay, well, I've got to figure this out. So I'm like I guess I have to become my own personal trainer. So I went for the certs you know NASM I got my corrective exercise, fitness, nutrition, the functional aging specialty, all these other things I started doing. And then I started figuring out what I had done wrong all those other times. And so now I had a plan, and now I was starting to train the right way, I was starting to eat the right way and I was able to start making change. But there was still just one piece missing.

Allan Misner: 12:29

And this was when I realized I tend to at that point in my life, I tend to not move unless I have something scary to do, something that's going to force me to really push. And now that I've done this and I've worked with thousands of people, I've come to realize there's five of these mindsets, and I had actually worked through a few of them on the way up. But what I am now, or what I needed was then, was I was an Atlas. Now an Atlas, uh, in my vernacular is the is the book, you know the map book that we used to have when we were younger, not the God holding the earth. But I went out and I said, okay, I need something big and scary. I went out and I said, okay, I need something big and scary, a big goal like something big. So I called up my daughter and I said, hey, how about the two of us sign up for a Tough Mudder eight months from now? I had no business signing up for a Tough.

Philip Pape: 13:22

Mudder.

Allan Misner: 13:23

The 13-mile run in very hard terrain to do anything to move through. And then they're just going to throw in 25 obstacles just to make it fun With penalties too, right? Well, they didn't have the penalties. That's the Spartan. Spartan does the penalties.

Philip Pape: 13:38

Oh, that's Spartan right With the burpee penalties yeah.

Allan Misner: 13:41

That's Joe, but no, so here's the deal. I realize, okay, I have a level one CrossFit coach daughter and I have this thing I want to do and I don't want to just do it. I don't want to go on there and her have to stay back with me or for me to say, go on without me, I'll finish. That just wasn't the personality. I was like, okay, look, I'm going to participate with her on this thing at her speed, she's not going to have to slow down for me. And that's what I did. I started training a lot harder, started pushing myself and over the course of eight months well, really, 11 months total I lost 66 pounds of fat and I gained 11 pounds of muscle, dexascan to Dexascan Awesome At the age of 46.

Philip Pape: 14:28

And that's what we're here for.

Philip Pape: 14:29

So people, are okay, now people are hearing this. Let's rewind just a little bit. You mentioned the word scary and I know in your book you said that your vision isn't necessarily the highest pinnacle you could reach or the most difficult goal you can imagine. It's the precise image of what you want. Your vision should scare you slightly, but you know that's where you belong in your heart. And so when is your vision not scary enough? Because that's what you just said it's like it's got to be scary. When is it not scary enough?

Allan Misner: 14:55

Well, yeah, I mean, some of it doesn't have to be. So one of the ways I kind of talk about it now a lot is I say, okay, what do you need and what do you want? Okay, I live on a Caribbean island and there's not really an ambulance service that you can rely on. So if my daughter, my wife, were to fall and hurt herself or to have some kind of medical emergency and she's laying on the floor and I have to get her to the hospital I suppose about two miles away I've got to be able to pick her up and get her into the car and drive her there. So I need to be physically strong to be able to lift my wife and do that.

Allan Misner: 15:39

I live on an island. I don't actually have a driver's license, so I'd be violating the law in Panama by driving her there, but it's an emergency. I'm going to break the law Sorry, panama, but gonna but I don't have a driver's license because I live on an island. From one side of the island to the other is no more than 14 miles, so I can walk anywhere on this island I want to be, and so I need to be in the physical shape to walk where I want to go. If I'm out with my wife and she says, hey, we're going to stay or we're going to go to this other place, it's like no problem, I'll walk home, I can do that from anywhere on this island. Okay, so I need that.

Allan Misner: 16:18

But what do I want? Well, I want to have an active lifestyle like kayaking. I kind of wish we had tennis courts here. We don't, but at some point we might move somewhere. I want to be able to just step in and start playing that. When I travel back to Puerto Vallarta, which I do about once a year, I play volleyball. I want to be able to play volleyball. So my vision right now, at 58 years old, is to be a very active 58-year-old. Now our daughters got married about two years ago, both of them six months apart. Congrats, okay.

Philip Pape: 16:55

So there's going to be grandkids, and good luck.

Allan Misner: 16:58

There are going to be grandkids and I can tell you the same mindset that I had with my daughter I am not going to be a spectator in their lives. So babies and kids crawl and run around on the floor. They sit on the floor and they watch television. They, when they go to the zoo, they lose their freaking minds and they're running everywhere. I want to be the grandpa that can do that. And then, when they're older, I don't know what crazy stuff they're going to be doing. But you know we didn't have Tough Mudder growing up. You know we had our stuff, but it wasn't that. And so I don't know what they're going to be doing 20 years from now. But guess what? I'm going to want to be the person doing it. So I'll be that crazy 80 year old doing this thing. Like, what are you doing? I'm like having fun with my grandkids, that's what I'm doing. So that's what I want. Now I'll tell you this other story. We might not make it through your whole five stages, but okay. So here's the next story.

Allan Misner: 17:59

My grandfather loved golf. He loved golf more than people. He was a salesman which, back in that day, you went golfing with potential buyers, to make deals. So he golfed practically every day of his life. He lived on a golf course. He loved golf. At the age of 80, he had to give up playing golf because his balance wasn't there, his strength wasn't there. He could not swing a golf club anymore. Now a lot of people say, oh well, he's 80. Okay, last few years he lived till he was 95. So the last 15 years of his life he didn't get to do the one thing he loved most. I don't want that. I don't think anyone wants that, and so if I can fix it, I won't. Now I'll flash forward 10 years. He can't make it from the chair to the bathroom in time when he realizes he has to go and so he has to call down to the care desk because he's in this. You know homes, he's all these little one bedroom houses, apartments. He can't make it down there, so they send someone up to clean him up because he can't even clean himself up.

Allan Misner: 19:04

I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105. Okay, so I need to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105. Okay, so I need to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105. I need to be able to open my own jars. If I want a pickle, I'm eating a pickle. If you can't open the jar and you want a pickle, you ain't eating the pickle. You get someone to help you and now you're no longer independent, you're dependent on tools and other people and you're in this decline and I don't want that. I don't and I don't need that.

Allan Misner: 19:33

So when I look at vision, is it scary? Well, my side of the vision is not scary at all. I'm wiping my butt, I'm playing with my grandkids, I'm doing any sport that I want to do my entire life, because I build the foundation and I'm going to keep building on the foundation to be able to do it. And so, as you start looking at vision, the value of vision is it helps you forecast your future and the fact that the human body, the most wonderful gift you've ever been given, is your body. It's a machine that you live in that can repair itself and get better. If you do the right things, it heals itself and it gets better. That's crazy good, isn't it? That's amazing.

Philip Pape: 20:19

It is amazing, and it is amazing, and I want everyone to experience how amazing that is, especially at this age, when they don't think it might be possible. Right, that's what we're unlocking here. If you've got one more breath.

Allan Misner: 20:30

If you've got one more breath, you could do something to improve yourself. Yeah.

Philip Pape: 20:34

So maybe to keep us on track with the phases, but naturally segue into the next one. Somebody's saying, okay, this is great, I could do something like I can get a piece of paper and write all the things I need, all the things I want. That's a great starting point, catalyst, for you know, I have some wake-up call that's driving me. Now I'm going to solidify what that really looks like, my future self. But now I have this doubt, I have this self-doubt. I'm critical of myself, I'm not sure of my capabilities. I don't even know if the body can do what you're saying, Alan. And so one of the things you talk about is self-love, and that's one way to empower us. You could take it however you want, but what is the first step toward that next step right? Either embracing the self-love or getting that power to become unstoppable. Know that you can do this before you even take that step.

Allan Misner: 21:20

Yeah Well, anything you do to improve your body is an act of self-love. And so when you define it that way and you're like, okay, I've got this guy in my head, you can bleep me if you need to bleep me. So just fair warning, I called the voice in my head the fat bastard. Okay, that's that guy. He's miserable and he's terrible, and if I screw up he's all over me.

Philip Pape: 21:43

Does he have Mike Myers' voice? Is it that fat bastard? No, no, no, not that one.

Allan Misner: 21:48

No, but he's an evil dude, this bastard, no, no, no, not that one, no, but he's, he's, he's, he's an evil. This was even before that, I think. But this is an evil dude. And so if I let him own the frame of the dialogue, I lose. And so I have to realize if I make a mistake, I have to start with forgiveness. Okay, if I forgive myself, I'm a human being. I shouldn't have done that. I did. I can't undo it, but I can learn from it. And so if I go at it and say, okay, I want to show myself self-love, I'm going to forgive myself because I'm not perfect, haven't met anybody who is. I've heard there was one, but I didn't meet him that way. So you know, you start that way and then you learn from what you've done.

Allan Misner: 22:33

Now, one of the key aspects of this where I think people get lost is they think that they don't have what they need. You know, it's like I don't have willpower, I'm not disciplined, and that's not how all this works. So motivation is not magic fairy dust that shows up and that you hope sticks around. Hope doesn't get you very far, and motivation is not received. It's earned.

Allan Misner: 23:01

And so let me explain how this works, and it's pretty simple, but there's two types of motivation. There's the intrinsic type, which is internal, and there's extrinsic, which is outward, to someone else. So the extrinsic is based on accountability, and so the easiest. And there's two layers there's a leader layer and then there's a social layer. So the easiest way to get motivated is to hire a coach. You're going to show up for that coach. You share your goals, they help you with your programs, and they're there. You show up for that coach. You share your goals, they help you with your programs, and they're there. You show up. That accountability gets you motivated. I don't want to be there at five o'clock in the morning, but I told Dave I'd be there at five o'clock in the morning.

Allan Misner: 23:40

I'm there at five o'clock in the morning. Okay, that's accountability which creates motivation. And then maybe I joined some groups so I get in a running group or I do the spin class or water aerobics class or any other kind of group that's going to help me stay accountable. They say peer pressure and people think peer pressure is a bad thing. It's only a bad thing if you have bad peers. If you surround yourself with good people, like Jim Rohn told us, we become good people. Okay, so find a group and get accountability from them. If you want to do CrossFit, as an example, I was in the five o'clock CrossFit class. We same people, we were the five o'clockers and it was the same people that show up.

Allan Misner: 24:22

They show up every day, for most days, and you just all know you're all there and you see them, hi, how are you doing? And now they expect you there. If you're not there, they might even call you hey, dude, you okay, what's going on? Okay, that's accountability at a social level. Now, that only goes so far, because you get a workout partner and the workout partner breaks his arm doing something stupid. He's not going anymore. Are you going to stop? And for a lot of people, if you only rely on accountability, you probably will.

Allan Misner: 24:52

So what we want to do is we want to focus on the intrinsic. Now, the intrinsic is really cool because that is about self-efficacy, and self-efficacy is hugely powerful. So there's two layers for this as well the leader and the social. The leader level is basically self-management, where you become the CEO of your body and you start making decisions on what you're going to do and what you're not going to do, and then what we do in business and which you know from engineers if something's not working, I've got to fix that process. So I have a failure. I want to fix it. So we put friction in to stop things that we don't want to happen and we take friction away to make the things that we do want to happen easier.

Carol: 25:37

Before I started working with Philip, I had been trying to lose weight and was really struggling with consistency, but from the very beginning, philip took the time to listen to me and understand my goals. He taught me the importance of fueling my body with the right foods to optimize my training in the gym, and I lost 20 pounds. More importantly, I gained self-confidence. What sets Philip apart is the personal connection. He supported and encouraged me every step of the way. So if you're looking for a coach who cares about your journey as much as you do, I highly recommend Philip Pape.

Allan Misner: 26:18

So we build these frictionless and frictioned areas to kind of wall us in and make it easier and easier to do the things we want to do. Here's one example for me. So I wanted to work out. Two o'clock in the afternoon was the best time to go to a gym, so I knew that. So I told my boss I'm going to work, work out from two to three. That's going to be my lunch hour. I'm going to block it out of my calendar. I'm going to do this thing. Obviously, if you need me I'll be here. But I'm going to go work out Now what I needed, and so I would forget a shirt, pair of shorts, socks.

Allan Misner: 26:54

But one day I forgot one shoe, and I don't even know how you do that. I still, to this day, cannot tell you why there was only one shoe in that bag. I do not know. But I just knew this is something I have to fix as the manager or CEO of my own health and fitness. I want to do this. I had signed up for a Tough Mudder, I had to do this. I said, okay, what do I need? I said, well, I got to do stupid checklists. That's what we do. So I made a checklist, everything that was supposed to be in the bag. I laminated it and every evening, when I was brushing my teeth, set the bag out, pull the list out one by one, from the top to the bottom. Everything is in the bag. The list went in the bag. I put the bag right by the door so I would have to either jump over or trip over to go to work in the morning.

Philip Pape: 27:40

Yeah, we would call that mistake proofing right, mistake proofing the process.

Allan Misner: 27:43

Exactly so. It was looking at the process and say how can I make this easier? Because I would use that bag, especially the one shoe day bag, to not do the workout and I'm like I can't keep doing this. And so over time, you're doing this as self-manager, making it easier, you're developing habits and you're developing values. So now, at the social level, you now begin to identify as that person, that healthier, more fit person.

Allan Misner: 28:18

The easiest example I can give you is okay, so someone says I'm going to start a walking program. So they start walking, they're walking and maybe initially 15, 20 minutes, they up it to 30, maybe 45. Then they start throwing in little jogs and then eventually they say hey, and they get a friend and they all sign up for a 5k. And now they're buying shoes. And they're buying, hey, and they get a friend and they all sign up for a 5k. And now they're buying shoes and they're buying water bottles and they consider themselves a runner. They now identify as a runner. And so at five o'clock in the morning, when the alarm goes off, what are runners? Do they run? It's an automatic. They don't even think about not running. In fact, if they got injured and can't run or the weather was too inclement and they can't run, they feel bad, they'd be frustrated, yeah Right.

Allan Misner: 29:02

So that identity of identifying as a person who's fit you've now come full circle. You have unlimited motivation and the person that does the best with this has their feet in all four of them. So you have a coach that's helping you get better at things you want to get better at. You have people around you that are right peers, so the peer pressure is positive and pushing you. You are doing the self-management, so you're making things easier and better.

Allan Misner: 29:29

I get on a plane, I'm going to fly somewhere. I go and research gems near my hotel. I go and pre-look at menus at all the different local restaurants to figure out what foods, where's the best place for me to have dinner, what does the gym at the hotel look like? And if that's not good enough, is there another gym that I can get a day pass for? So a little bit of research, and so you're doing that and then, yeah, you identify as someone. That's who I am, this is what I do, this is how I live. So you have unlimited motivation. It's not something you find, it's something you learn.

Philip Pape: 30:03

Yeah, and I love that mental model with the grid, cause I'm thinking I'm sure you have something that you know.

Allan Misner: 30:07

I absolutely do.

Philip Pape: 30:09

I'll, I'll send it to you, Okay, Is it? Is it kind of self-accountability, CEO of your own body? And the other is relatedness, which ties into the social layer but also the individual identity. There's a lot of cross-correlation here with Well it all is.

Allan Misner: 30:38

The thing is well, you know, psychology, engineering, accounting, they're all systems, and the human body is a system, you know.

Philip Pape: 30:47

Yeah, no. So speaking of that, then it's true, Systems. I heard somebody talking about how they didn't like the word habits because you're creating a system and I'm like, well, that's semantics, but you do talk about this quite a bit. I know in your book you say that it's kind of a lagging indicator right Of maybe all these accountability factors that come first. Does that mean that we put the cart before the horse when we think of habits, kind of in a vacuum, rather than the commitments that lead to what you just talked about, leading to the habits?

Allan Misner: 31:17

Right. So what we're going to do is we're going to go on a particular diet. We need to lose weight. Okay, I'm going to do this diet. Well, you're putting the strategy and the tactics ahead of the brain. Okay, you have to have the commitment first. You have to do some self-awareness first to know okay, am I someone who's going to hurt myself because I'm looking in the rear view mirror and seeing the 29-year-old me that could pretty much do anything. I could tackle a freaking car if I wanted to and not get hurt. Or the guy I am today who will definitely get hurt if I get hit by someone on a trike, if I get hit by someone on a trike. So you have to start working through the mindset stuff of understanding what am I? What do I need? So I, like I said, I have the five mindsets. You can go to 40plusfitnesscom forward slash quiz and that'll tell you your primary one. But I worked through all five of these. I was looking in the rear view mirror at who I was, rather than realizing where I'm sitting and where I needed to go.

Allan Misner: 32:16

There were points in time when I just didn't get enough traction and I wasn't doing it consistently enough to see or feel anything, and so I would just fall off. It'd be like Monday through Friday I'd do great, and then Friday night I would mess up. And then that rolled a Saturday, sunday, and I might start back on Monday, or three weeks Monday, or four months Monday, and so I needed traction, I needed to see it. So I needed gamification of okay, I need to mark something down every time I do this so that I want to run that streak. I want to see more of this. So I was a tires person and then I was a co-pilot early on, and what I mean by that is everybody else's obligations and needs went above my own. The job was first If I had to work a 16-hour day and I didn't get my workout in, that's good. I put in a 16-hour day, but I didn't get my workout in, and I'm sitting at the hotel bar eating my dinner, drinking some beers, because it just didn't feel like doing anything else, but go in, get myself sedated and go to bed, start it over and do it again tomorrow. So you have to do some self-awareness to know what you need to do, and a coach can help you do that, particularly if they're the right kind of coach. But they're going to hold you accountable, they're going to get you moving.

Allan Misner: 33:33

And then that's when you can start figuring some of this stuff out. Do you need to have a list that you pack your bag the night before? Do you need to avoid trying to do too much at one time? Do you need to see your consistency on a map? Do you need to convince yourself that three weeks is not enough time to know that something works? So you start a diet. Three weeks later it's like well, I've only lost two pounds and I actually gained about us three, but I gained one back. So this doesn't work. Quit, put the brakes on, go do something else. Like you're never going to get anywhere.

Allan Misner: 34:07

So you have to at least understand what your tendencies are. And then you meet the fat bastard, or whatever name you want to call your bad boys, and you start saying I need to show self-love, I need to be kind to myself. I need to realize when I'm using those words that I would never say to another human being, never in a million years. If a friend came to me and says, hey, even an enemy came to me and said, hey, I want you to hold me accountable, I would not use the words that my internal voice uses when I screw up, when they screw up, I mean because I would never talk to another human being that way, but he does. He does if I let him. So it's understanding all the psychology and mindset and motivation stuff and getting that all in place and then the strategies and tactics begin to make sense and add value to your life.

Allan Misner: 34:59

So there is a cart before the horse. You have to have a destination before you start driving. Okay, it doesn't have to be a clear destination because I don't have to have the GPS totally loaded, but I do know I have to get out of the parking lot before I can go somewhere else. So I could start driving out of the parking lot before I really know where I'm going. But after that I need to know am I turning right or turning left? I got to have directions before I get on the road and we don't do that. We just say, okay, well, just keep going left.

Philip Pape: 35:28

Right, yeah, so I like how all of these interplay, because what did you just say? Yeah, the direction and the plan, kind of in parallel with the accountability. That helps you gain the confidence that this thing's actually working. And it made me think of in engineering you'll have um, there's a particular guy I'm thinking of. He was an amazing electrical designer, you know could design anything and the joke was that he will design the perfect system to the wrong requirements. You know, if you give him the wrong requirement, that's what he'll design. He'll design the perfect system to the wrong requirements. If you give him the wrong requirement, that's what he'll design. He'll design it perfectly to those requirements.

Philip Pape: 36:02

So there is a sense of upfront having the. If you have a coach, for example, yes, they're going to help you with the nuts and bolts and the direction and they'll help you with all the psychology and the accountability along the way. And there's degrees of this. Right, Alan, Just listening to a podcast like yours will be a great first start, because you're a coach in their ears You're not necessarily somebody you hired, but you're the person giving that sense of wisdom and direction.

Allan Misner: 36:25

But I will say this information is only valuable if you act on it. For sure, For sure. How many technical manuals have ever been written and never read?

Philip Pape: 36:36

Yeah, there's a lot of content binging without the action to go with it. All right. So we've got the realization. Then we have, we have the wake up call. Then we kind of have facing the challenges of starting over. At this age we have the beginnings of commitment leading to the development of system and having accountability. Then we get to the point where maybe things are rolling a bit and we have some momentum, and now we have some sort of setback or life gets in the way, as if life just doesn't always exist right, as if it's supposed to be smooth sailing. But injuries, especially at this age, work stress, family obligations, interruptions to your sleep, you've got kids all of these things are inevitable. So maybe tell us a story about how do we deal with that, because that's super common.

Allan Misner: 37:20

It is, it is, and so there's two stories I like to tell. Okay, so I'll tell the base story that I use and I put this in the book. So you imagine you're driving down the highway and you're on a road trip, you know where you're going, and then you see this sign and it's the world's largest carved beaver. Next exit Got to stop. Right. Of course, I got to see this thing. So instead of going in and having a plan, you just go off the highway. And then you see the next sign Albino alligators, one mile down the road. Well, crap, we got to go see the albino alligators, right. And then you get down there and across the street, is this wonderful, you know best ice cream in all of the Northeast. So now you got to go across the street and have the best ice cream in all the Northeast. And now you've been off the highway for well over an hour and a half when all you intended to do was just see that damn Bieber.

Allan Misner: 38:15

Okay, so we're going to have detours, we're going to go off path. Now, sometimes they're important. So if my buddy called me up and said hey, alan, I'm going through a tough patch right now and can we just sit down and have a few beers and talk. Guess what I'm going to do. Even if I'm training for something, even if I want to cut weight, I'm going to go have a couple beers with my friends. Now I'm going to buy the best quality beer that bar sells. I'm not going to do crap. I'm going to get a good IPA, good beer. Okay, I know a lot of people don't agree with IPA, but I love IPA.

Philip Pape: 38:47

There are two camps. It's okay. You're allowed to have. You're allowed to like inferior beer, it's all right.

Allan Misner: 38:53

Anyway, but I'm going to go have beers with my friend, and so that's not a necessarily planned detour, but I can have a plan of how I'm going to do it. It's like, okay, I'm going to have a beer, and then I'm going to have a water, and then I'll have a beer and then I'll have a water. Okay, so that's the plan. And then tomorrow I, just when I first get up, make sure the first thing I do is drink water. Okay, not going for the coffee, because I'm up a little later and I'm going to want the coffee. Have the water first, water before coffee, so I'm good and hydrated, and then I can go to the gym and do what I got to do.

Allan Misner: 39:29

Okay, I don't have to skip that workout if I manage my hydration. Okay, I might be a little tired because I didn't get enough sleep, but I'm going to make it work. Okay, that's the plan off, plan on. So if I went in and said, okay, there's the wooden beaver, what we're going to do is go, we're going to stop, we'll get the selfie, and then we're going to go into the bathroom, I'm going to fill up with gas and we'll get right back on the highway, that would have been a successful detour.

Philip Pape: 39:48

Instead of just letting it carry you along.

Allan Misner: 39:51

Letting. Yeah, I screwed up, I'm off, I'm out, so having a plan going out and a plan coming back in. And so I was 51 and I was getting ready to do a Spartan. I'd signed up with a Spartan because I wanted my brother to do it with me. I have brothers. My youngest brother is 25 years younger than me, but this brother was like 13 years younger than me. So at the time I'm 51, he's in his late thirties, and so I'm like we're going to do, well, let's do this Spartan, and that is the one with the penalties, the penalty burpees, and so we're going to do it. And then it turned out that his daughter was having a recital that weekend, so he wasn't going to go. So I'm like, okay, I'm doing it by myself. But I was training for that.

Allan Misner: 40:34

I hired a coach. Yes, coaches should hire coaches. I wanted to get strong. So I had a strength coach and Dave was a really good strength coach. This had nothing to do with him.

Allan Misner: 40:44

I was trying to do dumbbell, overhead presses, military press seated, and I was stupid about how I got the weights up and I really didn't need to be pressing 80s, but I was, because Dave's a really good strength coach. I got really freaking strong and I tore a rotator cuff and I knew when I did I'm like, okay, that's like tore off the bone or that's not even connected anymore. I knew it and so I told him. I said, okay, dave workout's over. And he's like what happened? I said I think I just tore my, I tore my rotator cuff. He's like, oh, oh, no, man, I'm like, okay, no problem. No problem, I'll see you on Thursday. He was like what I said? Well, I won't be able to do presses, but I could probably do everything else because I was still going to do the Spartan. I'm an. That was the push. You know, I'm gonna do the spartan. You got one more arm and you got two legs. I got the other arm and I can't tear it again. Yeah, it's true, I feel you man, okay now. Uh, it still hurt a lot, but I kept training and the training itself.

Allan Misner: 41:51

We didn't do any presses. We tried a couple different things like using the sm Smith machine and changing angles and doing declines. None of it really worked. And so I went and did the Tough Mudder and then I went in and saw the surgeon and I told the surgeon I said I tore my rotator cuff. He says how do you know? I said I know. And he says well, let's take an x-ray. I took the x-ray. He says yeah, it looks like you did tear it. And then he did a couple of strength moves, you know. He put your arm up. He said push, push, pull. He said yeah, it's pretty much tore. I said yeah, pretty much tore. He said they, you know, the insurance companies want to send you to PT. I said that's not going to do any good. He said that won't do any good. He said I'm going to ask like okay, he put it in, they got me to do the MRI. It was yeah, I was shredded, it was gone. And so he's like okay, we're going to go in for surgery.

Allan Misner: 42:46

I went in for surgery on Thursday. I was out and in PT on Monday. So I walk into PT on Monday and the PT guy's like well, when did, how long ago did you have the surgery? I'm like Thursday. He's like you're already here. I'm like yeah, this is, this is my on-ramp. Okay, it's time to recover.

Allan Misner: 42:59

The detour was the surgery and now I've got to get right back on the highway. So that was my plan. I was going to do the tough. I'm just going to do the Spartan, because I was dedicated to do the Spartan and I did it and it hurt like hell and I got it done. And then I'm like, okay, now I get the surgery and I'm on ramp and every bit of homework he gave me I did. I understood why I was doing everything, everything I was supposed to. I literally was probably his best client because I could just I just walk in and say same workout as last time. He said, well, I want to add one exercise and he'd show me how to do the exercise. And boom, I just do the whole workout by myself. Okay, he put the ice cuff on to cut the, to basically bring down information after the workout. But I did all the workouts myself. I got all my but.

Allan Misner: 43:44

But the core thing was, because I had done all the training all the way up until the surgery, I never really lost much range of motion. So they lay you in there and they start measuring range of motion. He's like, he's like I know you're in your 50s, but you've got the range of motion at this point that I've never even seen in athletes. What did you do? I said I just kept training. I couldn't do any presses, but I could do pulls, and so my arm is. You know, I just grab hold of the bar for lat, pull downs and sit down and it stretched my arm and then I could pull. So my arms never didn't go through the full range of motion. I never put myself in any kind of sling to avoid the pain because I knew it was already tore. I couldn't tear it again.

Allan Misner: 44:30

So I did all these things knowing that that's my plan during this detour, and then my on-ramp is to get my PT done as quickly as I possibly could. I got through because my range of motion was back to about 100% within three weeks. He's like I don't even know if we can start strength training now, right now, because I've never put anybody strength training in just three and a half weeks. So let me talk to your surgeon. Surgeon says well, alan thinks he can do it. He can do it, do it. You know and that was the other thing If you get hurt, get the best, get the best PT, get the best surgeon. Look for someone who works with athletes. Yes, and don't just tell them I want you to fix me and make me stop hurting. Tell them you want to be back to performance of where you were before, and a good surgeon and a good PT will get you there.

Philip Pape: 45:22

Yeah, I can relate to all of that because I also had rotator cuff surgery last year and I have my deadlift. Harness was one of the fun toys early on. I'm like I got a deadlift, but it wasn't there with two arms quite yet. So let's get creative. I think the point here that you're saying is these things are always inevitable. They're probably quite yet. So let's, let's get creative. I think the point here that you're saying is things, these things are always inevitable. They're probably more inevitable as we age. And there's something you can do. There is something you can do. Don't make, don't make excuses for yourself, and it's not like a yeah, just get out there and just be reckless. It's figure out a way around it to move forward. I do like that specific advice about finding PTs, doctors, trainers, all who understand lifting and athletes. It makes a massive difference. They'll be aggressive when they need to be and they'll also understand why you do what you do, because the other guys just don't have a clue.

Allan Misner: 46:08

These are guys that did the division. One football team in town, they get it, they get it. And so when I walked in and said, no, I performance, I don't care about pain, I care about performance, they're like okay.

Philip Pape: 46:20

Yeah, so all right. So full circle back to the. I guess we're we're kind of in the last stage here.

Philip Pape: 46:25

I don't know, we'll see how the show notes tie up with all these, uh, what we're saying here but you know some is someone has gone through this process. At this point they're definitely getting results of some kind, both physical, mental and then deeper results. I'm sure that surprised them along the way they get to this point. Maybe it is a fat loss phase, maybe it's something more than that, maybe it's performance related. People always ask how do I maintain that? Now? That mentality probably comes from the quick fix weight loss of like you lose your weight, you gain it, you lose your weight. We're not doing it that way and I would argue that it's almost easier to maintain something when you've done it this way. But tell us, how do we reground ourselves? Maybe have a new goal, have a new kind of thing that pushes us to the next level?

Allan Misner: 47:07

So yeah, that was one thing about my book that I wanted to make sure I got into, because so many people think, well, yay, race is over, go back to eating fat food and then you'll end up having to do this whole thing all over again, or maybe. So what I did? I called it CARGO. Okay, so it's an acronym and the C means celebrate. You should be very proud of yourself for doing this, because so many people don't. If it's weight loss, I want you to think about one billion people on this planet are obese. I saw that stat the other day. Dr Lahnke's book and it was like that just floored me and then I realized how right it was. I mean, just even in the United States, there's over 100 million obese people. That's insane, but it's getting worse.

Allan Misner: 47:54

So you've done something that a small fraction of people like you're in rare air. You're a very special individual if you've lost a substantial amount of weight, because most people don't, and most people don't keep it off. But go ahead and celebrate Now. This is not celebrate with a jelly donut or cake or a bunch of alcohol. This is celebrate yourself. Or a bunch of alcohol. This is celebrate yourself. You've shown yourself this much self-love and you're at this point because you did something important. You did hard things and you should be very proud.

Allan Misner: 48:28

Now, after that, you need to realign yourself. So the A is about alignment, and what you're going to realize is that you feel different. You are a different person. This change that you went through was not just a physical change. It changed who you are as a human, and other people are looking at you differently. You may even have a whole different new set of friends that you didn't have before. Okay. So just recognize that you will be treated differently based on where you are, and you have to accept that. Okay, the next is to sit down and recalibrate your GPS. Where, where did you? Where do you want to go next? A lot of times, people will climb out of a hole. I was in this hole.

Allan Misner: 49:14

I was over 60 pounds overweight and I climbed out of the hole and I could have just stayed there. But there's this mountain in front of me that I can also climb. So we go from dealing with a problem or despair to aspiration. So what do you really want? You know you could lose 30, 40 pounds, but what do you really want? Well, I want to wear the jeans that I wore in college. You still have those old things. Yeah, pull them out. Pull them out and get ready. That's your new thing. I'm going to be wearing these jeans by February. Tell yourself that, set that as the standard. That's your new vision. Okay, I'll be wearing the same size jeans when I go to my class reunion next year. I'll be wearing the same size jeans I was wearing in high school. Okay, set the goal, set the aspiration. Okay.

Allan Misner: 50:04

So you recalibrate your GPS. I'm like, okay, I feel good at 205, but I'll be optimal at 185. That's where I want to go. And then go. That G-O is go, go, do it.

Allan Misner: 50:17

And this is a cycle that you'll just roll over and over and over. So, if you look at, what we emulated here is the cycle of change we went from pre-contemplation. I didn't really know, I had a problem. I was okay with it, I was accepting it To recognizing I have a problem in contemplation, to determination or preparation, which depending on which one you look at. But basically this is where you make the decision, where you really commit to doing something. Then you have action, then you have maintenance and then it's a cycle. Now, the cycle doesn't always have to go in a positive direction, but if you do this right, you just keep cycling through.

Allan Misner: 50:56

Okay, I want to get the fastest speed for over 80 in the a hundred yard dash. I want to continue to play tennis and beat the kids when I'm 80. I want to be doing whatever crazy thing my grandkids are doing when I'm 80. So you kind of get the idea that this is just these cycles of your life. As you go through, we age and we don't want to follow the curve, the way the curve is taking us. We see where that curve takes us. It's illness, it's chronic, it's horrible and we lose our independence along the way. I don't want that. So it's a loop. I don't have to do another Tough Mudder, so that's not my loop anymore. I have to carry five-gallon bottles of water all over this place.

Philip Pape: 51:49

That's what I have to do fun and I think it opens up more options. When you have all these loops, you may you may have the setbacks, like the surgery, but it just you know, you have the confidence from your past cycles of this that you can then go for something else. So, yeah, I love that recalibrating, not not only climbing out of a hole. You've done that.

Allan Misner: 52:09

Now it's just the sky's the limit, I mean no-transcript pieces of advice that I think are kind of wrong. And one is just start, and I used to think that was right, but now I know, just think Really, get your head straight first, because if you just act and you just do the thing, you won't stick to it because you haven't built, you haven't made it easy enough. So fix your plan, have a plan and execute on the plan. In that order Okay. And then the other one that people like to do is just for exercise, just do something you enjoy. And I think that's a bad one too, because if you, you know, I I enjoy laying in a bathtub, but that's about as strenuous as I would want to get if I just did something.

Philip Pape: 53:22

I'm so glad you said that, because that ties with the doing hard things. I'm so glad you said that. Nobody likes back squats when they start, but when you get good at it, you start to.

Allan Misner: 53:31

I want to. If I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105, I'm going to have to be able to do squats. I'm going to have to have the dexterity to twist and do the paperwork, and then I'm going to have to have the speed and agility to be able to get up from where I am and make it in there in time. So there are fitness aspects of everything we do in our lives. Train to be that person. Be fit for task, and if the task is making it to the bathroom and wiping your own butt, that's the task. Train for it so you can keep doing it.

Philip Pape: 54:03

Yeah, and I think a good physical analogy is when you go to the gym and do a set, you're always doing something harder than last time. It's never going to be easier, but that gives you the results. So I mean a good analogy for that. All right, I love that. So just start is should be really just think, you know, come up with a plan, fix it, go after it and then just doing something you enjoy should be. You know, choose hard things, do hard things and maybe you'll enjoy them, maybe not, it doesn't matter. Almost it's going to give you the result, but you'll enjoy the things you do enjoy.

Allan Misner: 54:30

Like you like hiking and you build stamina on an elliptical machine because it's six feet of snow outside when a season comes around, you're going to have the stamina to do the hiking you want to do. So you do hard things, so you can do wonderful things.

Philip Pape: 54:46

That's great, Alan. Where do you want listeners to find you?

Allan Misner: 54:49

Okay, well, the 40 Plus Fitness Podcast is available. Wherever you're listening to podcasts, including here where you're listening to wits and weights and I have the website 40plusfitnesscom. That's 40plusfitnesscom, and all my stuff's there. You can links to the book, links to the podcast, link to everything I do Love to hear from you. So come out there and say hi, and I hope you get fit and healthy and enjoy your life.

Philip Pape: 55:17

Awesome. I'll include those in the show notes. Everybody here go follow 40 Plus Fitness Podcast, because he gets into all the details, the nitty gritty, all the training and nutrition stuff, as well as mindset psychology we talked about here, and he's going on 600, well over 600 episodes, so you guys will love that. Thanks again, alan, for coming on. It was a lot of fun to do the back and forth with you. Appreciate your time.

Allan Misner: 55:37

Yeah, thank you, philip.

Why Bodybuilders and Marathon Runners Train SO Differently (Critical Path Method) | Ep 228

Are you training for the wrong outcome?

Are you working hard, going to the gym, but things aren't quite lining up for your physique and body composition goals?

Imagine a fitness plan where every effort counts, and nothing is wasted. 

Learn how the Critical Path Method (CPM) explains why bodybuilders and marathon runners have such contrasting approaches and how you can determine where on that spectrum YOUR goals are so you can save time and be more efficient with your fitness.

Discover:

• How to identify your fitness "critical path"

• Why doing less can often lead to better results

• How to eliminate time-wasting exercises from your routine

• The power of laser-focusing on what truly matters for your goals

Whether you're aiming to build muscle, lose fat, or improve endurance, this episode will help you optimize your training for maximum results with minimum wasted effort.

Book a FREE 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment, designed to fine-tune your strategy, identify your #1 roadblock, and give you a personalized 3-step action plan in a fast-paced 15 minutes. 

Main Takeaways:

• The Critical Path Method reveals why different physique goals require different training approaches

• Focusing on your "critical path" activities can accelerate progress while reducing overall workload

• Regularly reassessing your critical path is key as your fitness journey evolves

• Eliminating wasteful and unnecessary activities is often as important as adding the RIGHT activities to your plate

Episode summary:

In the latest episode of the "Wits and Weights" podcast, we delve into the intriguing world of fitness planning by merging the contrasting realms of bodybuilding and marathon running with the Critical Path Method, a powerful tool from project management. This method is typically used to identify essential tasks in engineering projects, but here, it is applied to streamline fitness goals, whether they are focused on muscle hypertrophy or cardiovascular endurance. This strategic alignment ensures every effort counts and eliminates wasted time, enhancing your journey to your ideal physique.

Listeners are guided to understand the stark differences between the training regimens of bodybuilders and marathon runners, and why these two groups train so differently. Bodybuilders focus on heavy lifting, volume, and muscle building, whereas marathon runners prioritize endurance and mileage. These differences stem from their distinct end goals: muscle hypertrophy for bodybuilders and peak cardiovascular endurance for marathon runners. This episode explores how the Critical Path Method helps in identifying the most impactful activities for your specific fitness goals, thus eliminating wasted effort and optimizing efficiency.

The episode further emphasizes the importance of prioritizing critical tasks to achieve specific fitness goals. By drawing parallels between project management in engineering and fitness planning, listeners learn about the inefficiencies of pursuing conflicting goals simultaneously. The discussion highlights the need for specificity and prioritization in fitness journeys. By identifying non-negotiable activities and allocating resources effectively, individuals can stay focused on their primary objectives, reassessing goals and adapting plans as personal needs and circumstances evolve.

One key takeaway is the idea that efficiency is not about doing more, but about doing the right things. This principle is reinforced by illustrating the critical path for bodybuilders, which includes progressive overload, resistance training, and adequate nutrition. Similarly, marathon runners have their path focusing on running volume, cardiovascular improvement, and proper fueling. By recognizing and emphasizing these paths, listeners can avoid the common mistake of trying to pursue multiple conflicting goals, which often leads to inefficiency and frustration.

The podcast encourages a strategic approach to fitness that mirrors engineering principles, reducing stress and increasing adherence to fitness plans. By identifying critical tasks and eliminating non-essential activities, listeners can save time and energy, leading to better results. This efficiency-focused approach helps reduce stress, improve confidence, and enhance long-term adherence to fitness goals, which is crucial for sustainability.

Listeners are also introduced to the concept of a rapid nutrition assessment, which is available on the host's website. This practical tool helps identify critical path activities, providing a structured strategy to accelerate progress. The episode concludes by reminding listeners to keep focused on their goals, blending fitness and engineering for a structured approach to success.

In conclusion, this episode of "Wits and Weights" offers a comprehensive guide to achieving fitness milestones with a structured approach. By applying the Critical Path Method to fitness planning, listeners can align their bodybuilding and marathon goals, prioritize critical tasks, and eliminate inefficiencies. This strategic alignment ensures every effort counts, maximizing workout efficiency and achieving desired results. Whether you're lifting weights or logging miles, this episode provides valuable insights into streamlining your fitness journey.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're the type of person who spends lots of time focusing on your training and going to the gym to build strength and muscle for your ideal physique, but you haven't seen the transformation that you envisioned, this episode's for you, because today I'm explaining how the critical path method and engineering principle clarifies why bodybuilders and marathon runners train so differently and how this applies to your fitness journey. You'll learn to identify the most impactful activities for your specific goals, and that allows you to focus on what truly drives progress and then eliminate wasted effort. This approach often means doing less overall work while accelerating results, efficiency being the name of the game. So if you've been putting in this consistent effort but not seeing proportional gains, what I'm outlining today will show you where to refocus your energy for maximum impact. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're dissecting a question that puzzles many people who are into this fitness and strength training. Why do different people with different goals, like bodybuilders and marathon runners, train in such radically different ways, such that they get different results? It might seem obvious, but it's not, because you are probably one of those in the camp who lift weights, who want to build muscle, want a better physique, and you're a bit frustrated because it doesn't seem to be going the way you expect. So we are going to use the critical path method, cpm a tool from project management to break down these contrasting approaches and show you how to apply this principle to wherever you fall on that spectrum to optimize your own training regimen. And, of course, before we dive in, if you're finding value in these engineering inspired insights and episodes, hit the follow button. Just push follow right now so you get notified of future episodes. You don't miss them and it helps others discover the show. And, as a bonus, if you'd like to give a rating and or review in the podcast app you're listening right now I would be very grateful for that.

Philip Pape: 2:19

All right, let's get into it today, and I want to talk about the paradox of the world we're in here when it comes to fitness physical fitness Because on one hand, we have bodybuilders and I pick that because those are kind of the extreme example of people who are focused on consistent heavy lifting and weight training and volume, isolation exercises, compound lifts all of it to kind of build the strongest, most developed physique they can. On the other hand of the spectrum, we have marathon runners who are purely focused on endurance, logging extensive mileage, almost to the detriment of any resistance training. Of course we know now that fitness and strength and resistance training is helpful, no matter who you are. But even if you watch the Olympics and you just look at the physiques, you can tell there's a marked difference in muscle mass and body fat and things like that. And this stark contrast. You might think, okay, that kind of makes sense because they train differently. But it's still perplexing when both are held up as a model of fitness. Right, like people are, on one hand, a marathon runners are considered athletes and they're very and they're in the elite, you know the, the ones who are very competitive. On the other hand, so our bodybuilders but they couldn't probably run in a 5k and do super well. Uh, and I say that in all kindness, because kindness, because I know that if they did, they would have to sacrifice some of their bodybuilding goals. So it's not an insult to them at all. It's a matter of specificity, right? How do you determine which method aligns with your objectives in the most efficient way, the most specific way so you're not wasting time doing the things that don't really matter for your goals, and that's the important thing. I care doing the things that don't really matter for your goals, and that's the important thing. I care about efficiency. I don't know about you. I'm kind of lazy in that sense. I don't want to waste time doing these other things. So here's where we bring in the critical path method, cpm.

Philip Pape: 4:17

Now, in engineering, anybody who's familiar with managing projects and schedules and this could be hey, if you're a stay-at-home mom, if you're a homeschool teacher you guys are some of the best at managing budgets and schedules. But in the business world and engineering, a lot of people are familiar with this concept where you have to identify the most critical tasks in your project from start to finish. That if that thing is delayed, it's going to push back the entire schedule, right? If your materials for the foundation of your house haven't arrived, you can't build a foundation of your house and it's going to delay everything else with your house. You can't build a foundation of your house and it's going to delay everything else with your house, whereas if the you know siding hasn't arrived, you might have a lot of time until that happens before it matters, right, and even then you could live in a house that has no siding, for you could literally live in a house without siding. So the essential tasks form what we call the critical path.

Philip Pape: 5:14

And so if we apply this to this extreme of bodybuilders versus marathon runners, starting with the bodybuilders right, the bodybuilders have a critical path that usually includes spending time in a building phase, the improvement season some people call it right A gaining phase, using progressive overload, resistance, training, building muscle, being in maintenance or in a surplus, having sufficient protein, calories and carbs and plenty of recovery to just build, build, build, build. That's the critical path. Why? Because if you don't take that time, you'll never have anything to reveal once you diet down later. So if you forget that, it's like the foundation of the house. You're done. You have to start there at some point. Obviously somebody who's already built muscle multiple times over their career or their life. They've gone through that already. They've built that foundation.

Philip Pape: 6:03

Now, on the other hand, we have endurance athletes and marathon runners, and their critical path looks like gradually increasing their running volume, improving their cardiovascular endurance, optimizing the economy of their running and then properly fueling for those efforts which may be at the detriment of, say, protein or building muscle or even strength? Potentially right, not that those things aren't a foundation as well. And so the divergence in these two paths, these two critical paths, which are completely different goals, stems from their distinct end goals. The end result right, the bodybuilder aims to maximize hypertrophy of their muscles. The marathon runner is focused on peak cardiovascular endurance two very hugely different adaptations.

Philip Pape: 6:47

And where most people go wrong is they attempt to pursue multiple, often conflicting goals simultaneously. They want to build substantial muscle, but then they also want to improve their work capacity and their endurance. And then they're trying to lose body fat. Right, and this is akin to trying to, you know, construct a skyscraper and a highway with the exact same crew and resources. Right, they have to go back and forth and back and forth. It's very inefficient and it's often very ineffective.

Philip Pape: 7:17

And so the beauty of the critical path method is emphasizing prioritization. Like, what do you really care about? Right, like in a complex engineering project, you can't do everything at once. Same thing with your fitness journey you have to periodize, you have to focus on the tasks that will propel you the most directly toward your specific goal, and then the training itself has to emphasize that specificity. So what does that look like?

Philip Pape: 7:43

Well, first we have to know what that goal is. If you listen to this podcast, it's probably in the realm of building your physique and health, building muscle. There's an underlying reason that you're doing that right, a deeper why. And yes, you definitely want to start there with who you are and who you want to be, who you are living the life of now, the routine that would be lived by someone who's an athlete, someone who's strong. But then you obviously have to get to the nuts and bolts of something not vague, like I want to get in shape, or I want to get healthier, but I'm going to lose 20 pounds of fat, or I'm going to gain 10 pounds of muscle. I mean, we need to get to some level of specificity, just from a practical perspective, right.

Philip Pape: 8:24

And then you want to identify the critical path for that goal. What are the non-negotiable activities? So, if it's fat loss, this might include, of course, creating a calorie deficit. I mean, it's just a very simple thing that a lot of people take for granted, because you get hung up on well, I need to cut carbs, I need to cut this, or I need to increase my cardio, whatever. No, you just need a calorie deficit, however, that comes in a sustainable way for you, and you need more protein to hold onto the muscle and you have to use resistance training to maintain that muscle. So these are elements on the way with your critical path.

Philip Pape: 8:59

And now that you know that, you get to allocate your resources, your time, your energy, your mental focus to those activities and those activities alone, not to the exclusion of your family and your work and those things, but to the exclusion of other physical fitness related activities that don't get you to your goal, does that make sense? And so then you're going to de-emphasize or, yes, temporarily eliminate activities that don't directly contribute to that goal. It doesn't mean you're never going to do that, but they take a backseat to your focus in this moment, in this period. And then, guess what you do? You execute to that and you regularly assess the critical path because it's going to shift as you progress. Your needs and your goals might evolve, and they can evolve next week. I'm not suggesting that you constantly change what you're doing. I'm suggesting that as you transform, as you progress, as things happen in your life, like potentially injury or your vacation or whatever, you might need to shift those. Maybe you have a new goal you want to go after, like you want to run a 5K. Well, that's going to shift your goal.

Philip Pape: 10:04

So let's say you're a 40-year-old person and you're aiming to lose 30 pounds of fat and you want to gain noticeable muscle definition. Your critical path is going to include some key things. It's going to include, at some point, a moderate calorie deficit that's well controlled. It's going to include a certain type of macro balance, high in protein and enough fats and carbs for hormones and performance. It's going to include resistance training, probably three to four times per week for most people, emphasizing compound movements, strength, higher load activities, but also supplementing with accessories and isolation work. It's going to include a certain amount of sleep right, nightly sleep that's high quality, seven to nine hours typically and it's going to include some level of activity and movement daily right, a daily step goal or some other way to keep yourself active. Now notice what is not in the critical path for this person Excessive cardio, overly strict calories, like a crash diet would have, because that would actually be so detrimental You'd lose muscle.

Philip Pape: 11:04

It doesn't include two a days. It doesn't eliminate entire food groups. It doesn't include lots and lots of running, I think I mentioned that. Excessive cardio. There's a lot of things that it doesn't include, and if you're doing some of those things, even if you're doing them for fun, you still want to reassess your priority for those relative to what you're doing.

Philip Pape: 11:23

I'm not saying cut fun things out, I'm just saying you're probably doing a lot of things and some things can stand to be reduced or eliminated, at least for a while, and so the power of this method extends beyond just identifying what you need to do. It's what you don't need to do, and that's where a lot of people get stuck. They try to incorporate every little fitness strategy they come across, every podcast, every idea, every tip that they hear, every 1% thing, right From cold plunges to red light therapy, everything, and then they spread themselves too thin and then they get a suboptimal results, whereas most people just finding the few critical path things they need to do and doing them modestly, consistently, right, not even like 100% consistent. They're gonna get incredible results that way, right. And so if you apply CPM, you'll find that a significant portion of what you're doing right now is probably wasteful, it's probably not necessary, and so if you can eliminate the non-essential tasks, you're going to save time and energy and you're going to get better results. And that is the definition of efficiency, because you could have a greater focus on, and intensity on, what truly matters, and that's going to reduce your stress, that's going to give you confidence, that's going to improve your long-term adherence, which is sustainability. So, again, it is not about just what to do, it's what you can skip right?

Philip Pape: 12:44

A lot of the clients that come to me are exhausted. They're trying to do it all. They're cramming in daily spin classes or cardio or boot camps. They might be lifting six times a week. They might be doing tons and tons of um I'll call it meal like, obsessive meal prep, obsessive calorie tracking not kind of a more relaxed, uh, flexible tracking that I prefer.

Philip Pape: 13:07

And then when we apply this approach of what can we get rid of first rather than what you need to do right, I don't, I don't even want to tell you what you need to do. Let's say what not to do first and get that off your plate. Give you some more resources back, give you reduced stress. Then the effort goes to where they need to be and then you reclaim your time and energy and you start accelerating your progress because you're no longer dividing your resources. And again, that is why something like this, the critical path method, can be very effective Strategically not doing the wrong things. That's the way I'm going to put it Strategically not doing the wrong things so you can optimize your time and energy and basically be a super efficient, well-managed you know fitness enthusiast here.

Philip Pape: 13:49

All right, as you contemplate your strategy based on this episode, moving forward, keep this critical path method in mind. Take out a sheet of paper, ask yourself and write down the things that you're doing for your physical fitness, physical health, and ask yourself for each one is this truly essential for my goal? If not, what do I do about it? Do I reduce, do I eliminate? And if this discussion resonates with you and you're eager to identify your own critical path and you're not quite sure where to take it, I always provide free calls that you can get on with me.

Philip Pape: 14:19

They're called 15-minute rapid nutrition assessments and it's very focused, very fast-paced. We look at what you're doing today, where you want to be, what are your critical path activities and what are the things in the next 90 days that will get you unstuck so that you can accelerate your progress and have less stress doing it. So if you want to schedule that, just click the link in the show notes or go to witsandweightscom and click the big button at the top. Again, the 15-minute rapid nutrition assessment is always available. I always have spots on my calendar and what I see is the people who sign up for these are the ones who stop stagnating. They start getting tangible progress even when they do it on their own.

Philip Pape: 14:59

I'm going to be totally honest Not everybody signs up with me as a client. That's totally cool. If I could even get you some information that gets you moving and reduces that stress and gets you toward the physique you want, I'm all for it. So go ahead and use the link in my show notes or go to witsandweightscom, click the button at the top for the rapid nutrition assessment. Until next time, keep using those wits, lifting those weights, and remember that in fitness as in engineering, success often comes down to identifying and following the critical path and eliminating what is unnecessary. I'll catch you on the next episode of the Wits and Weights podcast.

7 Surprising BMR Facts (Your Metabolism Isn't Broken) | Ep 227

Is your metabolism holding you back from achieving your fitness goals? Do you ever wonder why your progress slows down despite your best efforts? Why do some people seem to burn more calories than others, even at rest?

Philip (@witsandweights) uncovers 7 surprising facts about your basal metabolic rate (BMR) that will completely change how you think about fat loss, energy, and fitness. You'll discover how factors like body composition, organ size, and even athletic habits play a huge role in your metabolism. From the truth about aging and its impact on BMR to debunking myths about metabolic adaptation, you'll learn practical insights to help you work with your body's natural processes and achieve better results. Whether you’ve been feeling stuck or frustrated, understanding your BMR might be the key to unlocking your fitness goals.

🎞️ To learn how to download and setup MacroFactor for free so you know your exact metabolism for any body composition goal, watch this video or go to https://youtu.be/HTOmVtR9UZw (don’t forget to use code WITSANDWEIGHTS to try it for free!)

Today, you’ll learn all about:

2:48 Fact 1: The wide range of normal BMRs
5:34 Fact 2: How organ size impacts BMR
7:22 Fact 3: Allometric scaling of metabolism
9:11 Fact 4: Athletes' secret metabolic advantage
13:11 Fact 5: How BMR changes with age
14:35 Fact 6: Metabolic adaptation during fat loss
18:07 Fact 7: BMR and PCOS misconceptions
21:20 Outro

Episode resources:

• The MacroFactor BMR Series

Related Episodes:

• Bigger Isn't Always Better for Strength or Metabolism (Scaling Laws) | Ep 195

• Carbs Aren't the Problem (Keto, Paleo, Bioenergetic, and Pro-Metabolic Diets) | Ep 224

Episode summary:

Understanding metabolism is crucial for anyone looking to lead a fit and active lifestyle. In this episode of Wits & Weights, host Philip Pape delves into the often misunderstood topic of metabolism, revealing surprising insights that can revolutionize your approach to fitness and fat loss. At the heart of the discussion is the basal metabolic rate (BMR), the energy your body requires just to stay alive. Contrary to popular belief, your metabolism is not solely determined by muscle mass and activity levels; it also heavily relies on the energy demands of vital organs such as the brain, liver, heart, and kidneys. These organs, despite constituting only a small percentage of body mass, account for a significant portion of your BMR.

One of the most common misconceptions addressed in the episode is the idea that metabolism inevitably slows down with age. While it's true that BMR can decrease over time, this decline is often attributed to loss of muscle mass and decreased physical activity rather than age itself. By maintaining muscle mass through consistent exercise, individuals can effectively counteract the age-related slowdown. Moreover, athletes demonstrate a fascinating connection between athleticism and metabolism. They often burn more calories at rest, thanks in part to larger organs like the heart, which support their increased physical demands. This insight highlights the importance of regular exercise and strength training in maintaining a high metabolic rate.

Another key point discussed is the phenomenon of metabolic adaptation during weight loss. As you reduce calorie intake, your body may conserve energy, making it seem as though your metabolism is slowing down. However, this adaptation is largely reversible once normal calorie intake resumes. Understanding this concept is crucial for setting realistic expectations during a calorie deficit and ensuring sustainable weight loss. The episode also explores the concept of allometric scaling, which describes how metabolic rates vary across different body sizes. Larger individuals have lower BMRs per unit of body mass compared to smaller individuals, emphasizing the need for personalized fitness and diet strategies.

Philip Pape provides practical guidance for kickstarting your fitness journey, beginning with the initial maintenance phase. By calculating your starting calories and macros, you can tailor a diet and fitness plan that aligns with your body's unique needs. This personalized approach is further supported by tools like the Macrofactor app, which uses actual nutrition and weight data to calculate true maintenance calories. The app offers personalized recommendations, taking the guesswork out of tracking your metabolism and making it easier to achieve your fitness goals.

Throughout the episode, the importance of understanding and working with your body's natural processes is emphasized. Rather than relying on generalized guidelines, listeners are encouraged to embrace the uniqueness of their own metabolism and make informed decisions that support their fitness journey. By leveraging the insights shared in this episode, you can transform your understanding of metabolism and achieve a healthier, more efficient lifestyle.

The podcast episode is a treasure trove of information, debunking myths and offering actionable tips for anyone seeking to optimize their metabolism. From the surprising facts about BMR to the empowering message that you can control much of your metabolic fate, the insights provided are both enlightening and motivating. Whether you're an athlete looking to enhance your performance or someone simply trying to navigate the complexities of metabolism and weight loss, this episode of Wits and Weights is a must-listen.

In summary, unlocking the secrets of your metabolism is not just about understanding calorie expenditure but also recognizing the role of your body's organs, muscle mass, and physical activity. By challenging misconceptions and embracing a personalized approach, you can harness the power of your metabolic powerhouse to support a fit and active lifestyle. With practical tips and resources at your disposal, you're well-equipped to embark on a successful fitness journey.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you've ever felt like your metabolism is working against you, no matter what you do, or that you're destined to have a slow metabolism because of your age, genetics or hormones, this episode is for you. Today, I'm going to reveal 7 surprising facts about your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, that will completely change how you think about your metabolism and fat loss. When you understand these facts, you'll see that your metabolism isn't broken or mysterious. It's just a bit unique and, more importantly, you'll learn how to work with your body instead of against it. Understanding your BMR could mean less struggle with fitness and nutrition, because you'll be able to make informed decisions that align with your body's natural processes. So if you've been feeling frustrated with your progress, constantly trying new diets but not maintaining your results, or simply confused about what's going on with your metabolism, what I'm going to outline today will give you the clarity and understanding you're looking for. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're diving deep into the world of your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, which is simply the energy your body burns just to keep you alive. It is part of your metabolism, but a big part of it. We're going to explore seven surprising facts about BMR that will change how you approach diet and fitness. From the range of normal BMRs what's considered normal to the truth about metabolic adaptation during weight or fat loss, we're going to uncover multiple facts about your metabolisms that you might not have been aware of to give you more confidence in what to do with your training and nutrition. Now I want to give a shout out to the team at Macrofactor for putting together the very in-depth series of 10 articles highlighting the latest research on this topic, which I borrowed from heavily for this episode, because they are among the best in the industry at examining metabolism science, and I've added a link to the article series in the show notes so you can go straight to the source. Speaking of Macrofactor, if you want to take the guesswork out of calculating your metabolism and tracking your calories and macros, I do highly recommend trying Macrofactor. It's the only food logging app that uses your actual nutrition and weight data over time to calculate your true maintenance calories not just an estimate, not just a calculator. It's based on your actual body's response, and then it makes personalized recommendations and you can try it for free for two weeks using my code wits and weights all one word wits and weights. Just click the link in the show notes or search for macro factor in your app store and again use my code wits and weights all one word.

Philip Pape: 2:50

All right, let's talk about the seven BMR facts that I wanted to pull out from those very in-depth articles, which are extremely detailed. They cover a lot of the science and background, and I wanted to pick just the things that really stuck out that I think confuse people or will clarify things for you. I learned a couple of interesting things in the process as well, which is always a lot of fun. The first fact is the wide range of what are considered normal BMRs. Actually, let me take a step back.

Philip Pape: 3:18

What is BMR? Basal metabolic rate is the energy or the calories that you burn every day just to keep yourself alive, and it represents usually roughly around two-thirds of all the calories you burn. The other calories you burn are from digestion and exercise and non-exercise, but we are focusing on the big piece of the pie called the BMR, which is usually what causes the confusion for people as to what is going on with my body. So let's start with a fact that might blow your mind maybe, and it's very surprising for a lot of people One in five people so that's 20% have a BMR below 1200 calories or above 2200 calories per day. Okay, so the range of what's considered normal is huge. It's much wider than most people realize, and that variation exists because of differences in body composition. That's a big one. We talk about it on this show all the time. With muscle mass, you take two people of the same weight, age, gender, height, and yet one burns a lot more calories than another. Sometimes it's simply a function of how much more muscle the other person has, but it's also due to differences in genetics and your overall health, and I'm just going to use that as a catch-all when it comes to lifestyle and all the things that could possibly affect your metabolism.

Philip Pape: 4:43

So this kind of one-size-fits-all approach to dieting, where you hear specific calorie targets or numbers that are generalized, even for similar body types, or even when you use a calculator online, that is fundamentally flawed. Even though we love to have targets and we love to have ranges, it's so wide it's almost useless when you just look at it. That way, your friend might be able to eat 2,000 calories a day and maintain their weight, while you might need to eat 1,600 or, on the other end, 2,400 to do the same, even if you're roughly the same size and everything else. And people are frustrated by this. They're like, well, why does so-and-so get to eat way more than I do? And if you understand that this variation exists in the first place, it means that you have to find what works for your unique body, right, not just following general guidelines or comparing yourself to others. So that's the first big one of how wide that ranges.

Philip Pape: 5:37

The second fact today is how your internal organs impact BMR. And here's another thing that might surprise you your high metabolic rate organs so that's your brain, liver, heart and kidneys account for over 50% of your BMR, but they only make up 5% of your body mass. That's incredible. They are very hungry. These organs are like the leads of your metabolic band, the lead singers in your metabolic band. You know they are screaming out and taking up all the attention and energy and asking for calories all day long. Okay, they just, they just don't stop.

Philip Pape: 6:19

And what's even more interesting is that small variations in that organ size between people can significantly affect your BMR. So, for example, two people weigh 165 pounds, right, and they both have 130 pounds of fat-free mass, but one of them has organs that are 20% larger than average and the other person has organs that are 20% smaller than average. Their BMRs could differ by about 230 calories per day, and that is a bigger difference than you'd see from gaining or losing over 20 pounds of muscle. So this highlights why BMR can vary so much between individuals, even when they have a similar size and body composition. So it really isn't just about muscle mass, even though we often oversimplify it to that. It is not. It also explains why the standard BMR prediction equations you find online can sometimes be off by quite a bit because of organ differences. Crazy, right. So that's the second fact to be aware of, and it's not much you could do about that, and that's okay, it's just awareness.

Philip Pape: 7:27

Number three, something called the allometric scaling of metabolism. Now you might think, okay, as people get bigger, their metabolic rate just increases proportionally or linearly. That's not quite how it works. In fact, I've talked about this a little bit on my scaling laws episode a while back. You can go to my podcast and search scaling laws. If you're not sure how to do that, reach out. Anyway, it doesn't increase linearly or proportionally just because you're bigger.

Philip Pape: 7:55

In reality, larger people have lower BMRs per pound or per kilogram than smaller people, and this is due to a principle called allometric scaling A-L-L-O metric allometric scaling, and allometric scaling describes how characteristics scale across organisms of different sizes. As organisms get larger, they tend to slow down. In relative terms, an elephant obviously has a higher BMR than a mouse, but per unit of body mass, the elephant's BMR is much, much lower. And this applies to us too, as humans. Right, the very largest human adults are more than five times larger than the very smallest human adults. So, just literally, body mass. This means that the linear equations, like the ones often used to estimate BMR, tend to overestimate BMR for particularly small people and underestimate it for very large people, and so if you understand this, it can help you set up more realistic expectations, right? A lot of times it comes down to just not expecting more than you can for your own size when it comes to your metabolic rate. So that's. Number three is that allometric scaling, understanding that so if you're very large or very small, this could affect you BMR.

Philip Pape: 9:12

Fact number four athletes.

Philip Pape: 9:14

Okay, athletes have what appears to be a secret metabolic advantage.

Philip Pape: 9:19

And what I would say is that if you think, okay, I'm not an athlete, tell me about athletes, but I'm not an athlete.

Philip Pape: 9:24

I want you to question that premise before I go on, because you can become an athlete, and I don't mean you compete in a sport or get paid professionally, I mean you train, you lift weights, you act like an athlete, you live like an athlete. In fact, that's something I encourage everyone to do on the show, it's something I strive to do, it's something anyone of any age, any gender, no matter where you are, no matter your injury history, can do. So just keep that in your head and this might motivate you then to get back to the gym, to go train, to step it up, to do what you maybe haven't been doing, and that's because athletes have higher BMRs than non-athletes, even when accounting for differences in body composition. So again, kind of like the Oregon fact, where it was above and beyond body composition differences, athletes also seem to have higher BMRs. And again, we're not talking about people born as an athlete, we're talking about people who act as athletes, something anyone can do.

Jenny: 10:16

Hi, my name is Jenny and I just wanted to say a big thank you to Philip Pape of Wits and Weights for the 15-minute rapid nutrition assessment he offers for free. During that session, I found he asked really good personal questions that helped him be able to give me excellent advice and tangible tools which I've applied, and since then I have lost 12 pounds where I was otherwise stuck. Now that I'm closer to my weight goals, I'm focusing more on my fitness and muscle and strength. So I just really want to say thanks, philip, for all of your encouragement and the free tools you offer, as well as the positive podcast message. It's really helped me.

Philip Pape: 11:00

So two people can have the same amount of muscle and fat, but if one is an athlete, they're likely to burn more calories at rest. And this is probably due to a few factors. First, athletes guess what tend to have larger organs, particularly the heart, to support their increased physical demand. So I was wrong earlier in the episode when I said you can't do anything about your organs, forgetting about the heart, because the more healthy you are, the bigger your heart is, therefore the more calories you can burn just from that. And I've always wondered why is it that people who train and build muscle seem to burn way more calories than you would expect, even for themselves, just from the muscle mass? Like if you just took muscle mass, you know roughly at most nine calories per extra pound of muscle mass per day. It's not much at all, and yet they burn way more than that. Is it just that they're burning more calories in general, or is it some of these other factors, like a bigger heart, because they're more healthy? Second, regular intense exercise itself, the training itself, movement training, lifting weights, sprinting, cardio, doesn't matter can lead to lasting metabolic adaptations. Okay, your body adapts to these things. You're doing that increase energy expenditure even when you rest and again, I'm not just talking about muscle mass You've become a person who your body expects to be athletic and to be moving and it craves all that energy all the time. So your energy expenditure is simply higher, even when you're resting. And then the really interesting part if that wasn't interesting already is, as I alluded to before, you don't have to be a professional athlete to see these benefits. Even recreational exercisers, trainers, you know, people who just occasionally, more than the average population, are active, tend to have higher BMRs than completely sedentary people. So if you're looking to boost your metabolism regular movement, regular exercise, especially strength training, because it combines a lot of these into one, one of the best things you can do it's not about burning calories to lose weight. It's really about increasing your energy flux and being a person who just needs and wants and craves that energy to be a thriving and active individual, which is a much more positive way to look at it in the relationship and context to food and protein and carbs and all the things BMR.

Philip Pape: 13:14

Fact number five and this is how BMR actually changes with age. You've probably heard that your metabolism slows down as you age, especially after 40, right, that's the big line. The truth, as always, is a bit more nuanced, because BMR does decrease with age, but it's very gradual through most of our adulthood. How gradual? Well, research shows that BMR decreases by about 1-2% per decade from your 20s to your 60s. So that's like 20 to 40 calories per decade, which is not exactly your metabolism dropping off a cliff, like many people are fearing. Now. This rate of decline does approximately double or triple beyond age 60. But even then, it's not as dramatic as it's often portrayed, because much of this decline is due to something you can control. It's due to the loss of muscle mass and decreased physical activity, not aging itself, and that's empowering. That means you have control over it. That's such a positive message. This means that by maintaining muscle mass through strength training and staying active, you can largely offset the age-related decline in your BMR. So if you're in your 40s or 50s or beyond and you're worried about your slowing metabolism, take heart, because your BMR likely hasn't changed as much as you think and you have a lot of control over keeping it high. All right, bmr.

Philip Pape: 14:38

Fact number six let's talk about metabolic adaptation. Okay, this is your body's protection mechanism, right? If you've ever been on a diet, if you've ever been in a calorie deficit of any level, you might notice that your loss in body mass, your weight loss, slows down over time. You tend to start to hit plateaus, or it gets harder even if you keep eating the same amount, and this is due to a phenomenon called metabolic adaptation, which we do talk about it a lot, but if you're new to the concept, it's simple During weight loss I should say more clearly, during a calorie deficit, which will induce weight loss, if you're truly in a calorie deficit though some people can be in a very slight calorie deficit and the weight loss is so slow it's unnoticeable.

Philip Pape: 15:20

During this calorie deficit or weight loss, your BMR decreases more than would be predicted based on changes in, say, body composition alone or even the weight loss itself and the adaptation. For most people it averages around 5% to 10%, and it's your body's way of conserving energy. Right, it's your body's way of conserving energy when it senses a shortage in resources coming in, and we know that this is temporary, it is largely temporary. It is caused by hormones such as thyroid. We've seen, we know studies that have compared, that have looked at thyroid production. You know TSH, t3, t4, and we see this almost immediate drop 5% or so, 6% I think was the average from the study and it kind of stays there at that level.

Philip Pape: 15:59

It's not like it keeps dropping while you continue to be in the deficit. Now maybe if you ramped up the deficit it would drop more. But let's say you're in a 500 calorie deficit and it drops by 5%. It's going to stay there for the next, say, 16 weeks of your fat loss phase and then once you return to maintenance calories and your weight stabilizes right, most of the metabolic adaptation reverses. You know, some studies do suggest that a very small amount let's say sub 5%, 3 to 5% might persist long-term after significant weight loss, might persist long-term after significant weight loss, but it's much less dramatic than many people fear and it's probably just the piece that's due to you weighing less. In other words, it's not really metabolic adaptation, it's just I mean it is, but it isn't right. It's you weigh less, your body just doesn't need to burn as many calories carrying around less weight. But the adaptation from hormones that was more dramatic during fat loss, that recovers and so if you understand metabolic adaptation, then again you can have realistic expectations.

Philip Pape: 16:56

During a dieting or a calorie deficit phase it's normal for the rate of loss to slow down over time unless you are tracking and aware of it and then adjusting your calorie intake to continue making progress. That's the key. We need to maintain the calorie deficit, not the calorie intake, right? Because if you just calculate your number at the beginning and you're at one calorie level and you eat 500 calories less than that, you might start losing weight at the beginning, but then it slows down because the actual calories you need are less due to this process. So you need to eat even less or do something else that bumps your metabolism up. So this doesn't mean your metabolism is broken or that you can't continue to lose more fat. I mean you can lose an incredible amount of fat if you are aware, if you're tracking and you're managing your lifestyle properly.

Philip Pape: 17:43

I help clients do it all the time. I can help you do it. If you want to reach out and you're like I don't buy it or I'm not sure, or my metabolism is so unique, I don't think this is going to work for me, it will, it will. I've seen every unique little corner, case and situation you can imagine and there's always a solution. It may be more creative and different than you think Right and that's part of my episode today is like. The awareness of it is step one, and then how to apply that to you specifically as step two.

Philip Pape: 18:09

All right, let's go to the seventh BMR fact I want to talk about, and this is related to women's health and PCOS. Pcos is polycystic ovary syndrome and you might have heard that PCOS lowers your BMR and that it makes it harder for women with PCOS to lose weight, and this comes primarily from a single study from 2009. But if we look at the totality of research on this topic, we find that PCOS doesn't appear to have a significant impact at all on BMR. The 2009 study that suggested otherwise had some methodological issues right, issues with its methods that likely lead to inaccurate results. All of this is explained in the detailed articles, so I you know again, shout out to Macrofactor if you want to go dig into that Now.

Philip Pape: 18:56

This doesn't mean that women with PCOS don't face challenges with managing their weight and their fat loss. They do, but they're more likely related to hormonal imbalances affecting hunger and fat storage you know, not a dramatically lower BMR and those can be controlled in some level via lifestyle, via how aggressively you diet, via taking breaks and going to maintenance and eating enough to recover and strength training, and on and on and on. You know more sleep, better stress and so on. So this fact again highlights the importance of you don't want to just cherry pick studies. You don't want to fear monger on one thing. You want to look at the broader body of research when you make any conclusion about health and metabolism. So those are the seven facts I wanted to share about your BMR.

Philip Pape: 19:40

But the most empowering thing about these is realizing that your metabolism isn't some mysterious force working against you. It is a complex, adaptive system and it's doing its best to keep you alive and functioning. So if you can work with your body's natural process, if you understand it and work with it instead of fighting against it, thinking that you have to force yourself to cut calories or do some crazy thing that doesn't feel right, then you can achieve better results, faster results, more sustainable, more efficient results in your fitness journey. All right, as we wrap up, I want you to remember that, even though we're talking a lot about BMR, it's definitely an important factor in your energy expenditure. It's just one piece of the puzzle.

Philip Pape: 20:23

The other pieces are your daily activities, your training and exercise and, of course, the food you eat, which all you know, like protein, which all play very critical roles in your body composition and, of course, in your health. In fact, I recently came out with an episode about carbs and I had people arguing that well, no, maybe carbs come into play with calories and expenditure, but not with health. In other words, you can eat too many carbs and it's bad for your health. And that kind of misinformation and nonsense is what I'm trying to eliminate when we have these discussions right, because a lot of it does come down to metabolism and energy balance and lifestyle. It never comes down to a specific food Again, unless you have an intolerance that you know about. But besides that, we can't generalize.

Philip Pape: 21:08

On the other hand, understanding your BMR is important because it helps you make more informed decisions about your diet and fitness routine, even though it doesn't define you. It doesn't define your potential for change. If you want to be an athlete, you can be an athlete and you can get the results you want. And then remember, if you want to take the guesswork out of calculating your metabolism and tracking your calories and macros, definitely give Macrofactor a try.

Philip Pape: 21:32

I created a free video showing you how to download and set it up for that initial maintenance phase so that you can calculate your starting calories and macros. So just click the link in the show notes for the video, or just grab the app off your app store and use my code WITSANDWEIGHTS all one word, but again you can watch the video, it'll walk you through. Or you could just go into it and have fun and use my code WITSANDWEIGHTS all one word to extend the free trial to give it a shot. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember that your metabolism isn't broken. It's just a bit unique for you and and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Build an Aesthetic Physique Without Destroying Your Mental Health with Laurin Conlin | Ep 226

Do you feel trapped by obsessive dieting and constantly analyzing your body? Are you sacrificing your mental health in the pursuit of fitness goals? What if you could build an aesthetic physique without losing your peace of mind?

Philip (@witsandweights) takes us to the intersection of fitness and mental health with IFBB bikini pro and mental health advocate Laurin Conlin. They discuss how to break free from obsessive behaviors and anxiety around food and exercise, especially in the highly competitive world of physique sports. Laurin shares her journey and the mental costs of chasing the perfect body, offering practical strategies for overcoming food-related anxiety and adopting a more flexible, mentally healthy approach to fitness.

Laurin Conlin is an IFBB bikini pro, owner of Redefine Healthy Brands, and host of The LoCoFit Show podcast. She holds a Master’s in Exercise Science and is pursuing a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. Laurin’s expertise bridges the gap between physical health and mental wellness, making her a unique voice in the fitness industry.

📱 Book a FREE 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment, designed to fine-tune your strategy, identify your #1 roadblock, and give you a personalized 3-step action plan in a fast-paced 15 minutes. https://witsandweights.com/free-call

Today, you’ll learn all about:

3:28 The shift from rigid to flexible dieting and its psychological impacts
6:52 Why food awareness is crucial but can become an obsession
10:01 How childhood behaviors shape our relationship with food
21:22 The mental toll of competitive physique sports
31:46 Why most people need more muscle before considering competitions
41:57 The balance between food awareness and obsession
49:33 Self-reflection and its role in sustainable fitness
54:44 Laurin’s plans to integrate fitness and mental health counseling
100:39 Where to find Laurin
101:53 Outro

Episode resources:

• Instagram: @laurinconlin

• YouTube: @LaurinConlin 

• Website: redefinehealthybrands.com

• The LoCoFit Show Podcast: redefinehealthybrands.com/podcasts

Episode summary:

Balancing fitness and mental health is a complex yet crucial endeavor, especially in the high-pressure world of bodybuilding and physique sports. In our latest podcast episode, we sit down with IFBB bikini pro and mental health advocate Laurin Conlin to explore this intricate balance. Laurin’s journey from a competitive athlete to a passionate spokesperson for mental wellness offers valuable insights into tackling the psychological challenges that accompany the pursuit of physical perfection. Her story underscores the importance of prioritizing mental health in the fitness journey, revealing how societal perceptions of mental well-being have evolved.

In the first segment of our conversation, we delve into the psychological costs associated with chasing the perfect body. The pressures of physique sports and the influence of social media can lead to food-related anxiety and obsessive behaviors. Laurin shares her experiences transitioning from a bikini pro to a mental health advocate and her ongoing pursuit of a master's in clinical mental health counseling. She provides practical advice for adopting a mentally healthier approach to fitness, helping individuals break free from the cycle of rigid dieting and disordered eating behaviors. The discussion highlights how mental well-being should take precedence over aesthetic goals.

As the conversation progresses, we explore the evolving landscape of mental health awareness and nutrition trends. The journey into nutritional research reveals how mindset plays a pivotal role in the success of dieting approaches. Even flexible dieting strategies can fall short without the right perspective. The impact of social media on fitness culture is examined, emphasizing the need for personalized coaching that addresses individual client needs and challenges. This segment provides valuable insights for anyone striving to find balance between nutrition and mental health, revealing that mindset often dictates the flexibility or rigidity of any diet plan.

The broader landscape of physique competitions, disordered eating, and body image challenges is examined in the next chapter. Laurin’s pursuit of a master's in clinical mental health counseling highlights the importance of bridging the gap between mental health and fitness. Reflective practices and self-awareness are emphasized as essential tools for personal growth. Meditation, often dismissed as "woo," is discussed as a potential game-changer, even for skeptics. This part of the episode is packed with insights and practical advice aimed at helping listeners cultivate a healthier relationship with fitness and nutrition, empowering them to make informed and sustainable changes.

Throughout the episode, we also explore the complexities of eating disorders, particularly in the context of bodybuilding. The conversation touches on internalized perceptions of body size, obsessive behaviors, and the rituals that can develop around eating and exercise. We discuss the prevalence of eating disorders among competitive physique athletes and how non-food-related issues often drive these behaviors. The need for better understanding and treatment strategies for eating disorders is highlighted, drawing from both personal and professional observations.

Understanding motivations in physique competitions is another key topic. The different mindsets and motivations of those interested in competing are categorized, emphasizing the importance of self-reflection and understanding personal motivations before entering this competitive space. The potential psychological impacts and the lack of barriers to entry are noted, with examples from Instagram fitness and professional athletes illustrating the unrealistic expectations that can arise. The significance of informed consent and realistic goals is stressed, encouraging listeners to assess how bodybuilding fits into their broader life context.

Navigating body image and competition mindsets presents its own set of challenges, particularly when working with older demographics. The importance of understanding client motivations and the risks of pursuing quick results, including the use of performance-enhancing drugs, is discussed. Long-term well-being is prioritized over short-term achievements, with a focus on building a solid foundation before considering competitive bodybuilding. Misconceptions about the sport are addressed, underscoring the need for thoughtful decision-making in health and fitness journeys.

Exploring food awareness and disordered eating reveals current trends in the health and wellness space, where tracking food and having physique-related goals are sometimes viewed as disordered. The intuitive eating and Health at Every Size movements are examined, highlighting potential misinterpretations or miscommunications, particularly on social media. The importance of food awareness is emphasized as a crucial component of overcoming unhealthy eating habits and achieving health and longevity. Misconceptions about dieting, such as the belief that intentional weight loss or calorie counting is ineffective, are addressed, stressing the need for a balanced approach that considers individual needs and goals.

Finally, the episode explores the importance of self-awareness and reflective practices in achieving long-term personal growth and behavioral change. The benefits of asking clients to reflect on their actions and experiences to uncover underlying triggers and patterns are discussed, emphasizing the value of consistent reflection through journaling or logging notes. The role of language in making reflective exercises more appealing to clients is highlighted, underscoring the crucial role of a coach in guiding clients toward greater self-awareness and sustainable change.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

Let's say you've been obsessing over every gram of food, spending hours analyzing your physique in the mirror and even saying no to social plans because they might derail your diet, and you found yourself constantly anxious about food and exercise, even feeling trapped by the number on the scale. If so, this episode's for you. Today, we're going to explore how to build an aesthetic physique without destroying your mental health. As I sit down with IFBB bikini pro and mental health advocate, Laurin Conlon, we discuss the overlooked psychological costs of pursuing the perfect body, you'll discover how to break free from food-related anxiety, avoid obsessive behaviors and build an integrated approach to fitness that puts your well-being above all else. If you've been feeling trapped by rigid dieting or struggling with body image issues even if you've made progress, this episode will show you what you might be missing for a sustainable physique that you're mentally proud of. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 1:09

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today I'm sitting down with the incredible Laurin Conlin to explore that fine line between building an aesthetic physique and maintaining mental health. Laurin is the host of the LocoFit Show podcast, owner of Redefine Healthy Brands and an IFBB bikini pro. She has a master's in exercise science and is currently pursuing another master's in clinical mental health counseling. Laurin has the practical and the academic experience where fitness and mental health overlap. Today you'll learn about the mental costs of constantly striving for an aesthetic ideal, especially in physique, sports and Instagram fitness culture. Laurin is going to help us understand challenges like food-related anxiety, disordered eating behaviors and obsessive tendencies that can develop when aesthetics are prioritized over well-being. And stick around, because toward the end of the episode, Laurin will give you some first steps to finding a mentally healthier approach to your physique development.

Philip Pape: 2:08

Now, this has been recorded after we attempted to record three times and, due to tech issues, we finally got it right. So you're going to notice a few things at the beginning One that I am looking way up at above the camera if you're watching the video, which I corrected shortly later on, and then a few times where we joke about the fact that we had to re-record a few times and Laurin was awesome. I think you're going to love this episode regardless, so bear with us with the tech issues and dive right in and enjoy the show. Laurin, it's so great to have you. Welcome to the show.

Laurin Conlin: 2:38

I'm so happy to be here. And third time's the charm. We have had two tech issues.

Philip Pape: 2:44

Exactly Two tech issues. We're practicing our acting chops here.

Laurin Conlin: 2:47

Yeah, yeah, exactly, and really wanted to get warmed up for you guys and just really dive right into it. But no, thank you so much for having me on. I really really appreciate it and I'm super excited to dive into these topics.

Philip Pape: 2:57

Yeah, I'm excited too, because mental health is sometimes overlooked, often overlooked. There's such a spectrum of in dieting whether we're talking about macros or intuitive eating or the whole spectrum disordered behaviors and people doing things for an extreme or for a look or to go on Instagram or whatever. And you've had experience across that spectrum. Right, You've been a bikini pro, dieting down and going through all of that, and you've also been a coach who advocates for mental health and now you're going for that master's in mental health. So tell us a little bit about what took you to this point where mental health is so important, and then we can kind of dive in to help people understand it a little more.

Laurin Conlin: 3:37

Yeah, for sure, and it truly is one of those things where I feel like, even just 10 years ago, right, and that's always like my reference point, I don't know why, but 10 years ago, this magical time, whatever, yeah, 2014, yeah, yeah, seven and a half years ago, no, but like 10 years ago, like you were to say, mental health it would still not as popular as it is now.

Laurin Conlin: 3:58

Right, like now, like if I were talking to someone and I could say, hey, like I'm starting to notice some patterns or I'm starting to see X, y, z, and even just talking to people that I knew personally, right, having a therapist or going to therapy was not as common as it is now. Now I work with people who have either had a coach or a therapist or both, usually, like before they even get to me, right, so, like, the space is just very different and so I don't think that it's not quite as stigmatized. There are certainly certain populations where it is still more stigmatized than others. I don't want to make a blanket statement like that, but what's also happened in my mind is that a lot of people are like mental health is important, and then the conversation stops Like, okay, yay, everybody's aware now that it's important, but we're now just saying these things that really don't really mean a lot, because there's not any action or any help. Yeah, what do we do?

Philip Pape: 4:50

about it yeah.

Laurin Conlin: 4:51

Yeah, what are we going to do? Okay, yay, we know it's important. Okay, so now, what? Now what starts? What happens, you know, and that's really where I think not only the space in general needs to kind of pick that up, and therapists on the ground are certainly doing that right. It's not like they're not, I just think in societal sense, you know, we need to also understand, like, yeah, going to therapy is actually a lot of work and it's really important and we need to give people that time to do that.

Laurin Conlin: 5:15

And really, why I started to go down this path was so, back in 2014, I started my December 2nd 2014. Kidding, do your diary. I started my master's with Dr Bill Campbell's lab at USF and I wanted to do research on how different types of diets affect weight loss and weight regain. So I started looking at Because this was of personal interest to me as a coach and also as an athlete. I was competing at the time and so I was like you know, I'm seeing these things with myself, seeing these things with the same clients what's going on. This was also when ifom was very, very popular and starting to like really kick off, like in the space. Also when instagram was really like taking off for like fitness culture. So a lot of things were happening like all at once and it was absolutely one of those like right place, right time kind of moments. And thankfully I had dr campbell who was so gracious to be like sure, you can run this whole study. This sounds crazy, but go do it.

Laurin Conlin: 6:01

And so we did this 22-week study of a diet phase, of looking at a meal plan versus macros for a diet phase and then a post-diet follow-up, which was of utmost importance to me to look at does how we diet affect not just weight loss but weight regain? Because I was seeing that most of the issues were coming not from a diet but from the post-diet period with individuals. So we ran that study, we had some good findings and then really over the next few years I would say that I was able to continue to help people like learn about things, like tracking macros and being more flexible with that and kind of moving away from that like really really rigid mindset of like the meal plans and the really bad diet plans that were so rife that time, and especially with competitors. And what was interesting was that not just competitors were being put on these plans but like people who were reaching out to these big teams, like I want to look like this person. We're being put on the like three noodles and two prunes, you know meal plan bullshit. And I'm like this person isn't competing. You know what are they eating this? So we were coming out of that field like that space.

Laurin Conlin: 7:05

But then things started to change and then I started to notice that people really started having issues Like tracking was no longer the issue. They were able to understand that and do that. They learned this new technique, but now they couldn't stop, or now they didn't know what to do when they couldn't. Interesting, like well, this is really interesting because this is kind of the inverse of what I thought. But wow, this actually looks a lot like what I thought was rigid dieting, but this is supposed to be flexible. So then the whole construct kind of fell apart again and I was like all right, I need to start to figure out what is actually going on. And that's when I really realized that how we view food has nothing to do with the actual plan. It has to do with our mindset. Right, some plans inherently do have more flexibility than others, but our mindset around said plan is really what is flexible or rigid. And so this is kind of what really kicked off a lot of what I started to share in the space.

Laurin Conlin: 7:56

And again, this was at a time where now for a while, ifom was this kind of anti-movement to like the bro space, right, right, right, and really had to fight against all of that. But then it kind of got assimilated and everybody was like, yeah, yeah, tracking macros is the answer for everybody. Oh, my gosh. And then it was like hold on, no, that's not appropriate for everybody. You know what I mean. And then I started getting pushback for talking about let's not do this, like, let's add in more flexibility. And now it's like if you want to track anything now you have a disorder problem.

Laurin Conlin: 8:27

And it's like whoa, how, in the span of my 11 plus year career, have we seen all these evolutions? And it really is truly crazy and what it ultimately is doing is that it's just really not taking into consideration where is the client and where is the individual? How do we coach to them? Because I can't sit here and say one client is better than the other. It has to do with the client and where they're at. And that's really what my study taught me and also just working with a ton of people has taught me, but I think that we really lack that nuance in the space, especially right now. Good, oh my God, and it's just like horrible right now in the you know you mentioned, like the Instagram fitness culture, right? I mean that has completely changed everything and just the way information is disseminated is so different and how people perceive things and the clickbait and what you know is being driven to do well on social media is just really making a mockery of what people actually need.

Philip Pape: 9:20

Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there that I want to touch on. First, you mentioned how the conversation has shifted and this is a really good time in history to really take it to that level you're talking about. I was thinking we just watched the Olympics a short while ago the whole Simone Biles discussion about when she left in the last Olympics for mental health reasons, and even then it was a little bit taboo. It was a little bit taboo. And you go further back than that, right, and you look at anything from the 90s, for example, and you're like, wow, anything that's at all just getting into the realm of it's up here. The issues up here is how was highly stigmatized, you know. So that has shifted.

Philip Pape: 9:56

And then, like you said, the macros approach and the intuitive eating and it's like these camps whether you get down to the obvious camps like the keto versus bioenergetic versus this, none of those things are. The problem is what you're saying, like how it's communicated might be, but let's, I guess let's help people understand why. Like, what is the root cause going on here? You said individualization. We understand that. That's almost like the, I'll say, maybe part of the solution. How do we get back to understanding where this all comes from. Maybe we could do it by looking at how someone has gone through a journey and has harmed their mental health in pursuit of like a physical or the perfect body.

Laurin Conlin: 10:35

Well, I think, first and foremost and this is not to fault any one person, because we all fall into this camp we want easy answers. We want direct answers, right Like when we are dealing or struggling with a problem. I have this issue, I want it solved. Someone explains this to me in a way that seems really, really easy. They don't maybe know that that sounds too good to be true. It just sounds great. So why would they not go for that?

Laurin Conlin: 10:59

When you hear a lot of people who are more science communicators oftentimes there's a lot of nuance they say they take 10 minutes to answer something. They say a lot of words and everybody gets kind of annoyed by that, right. And then you have people who come up and they say hey, eat this, don't eat that. Oh, my gosh, simplifies it for me. Well, that's too simple. Now I'm not going to sit here and say that certain foods are not maybe better in larger quantities or smaller quantities than others. Of course they are, but it's just not ever as simple as saying do this, don't do that, and what that ultimately does is then, you know, some person will say oh, this one thing is really bad, and that's where we get into those camp you said, like the keto camp or the vegan camp or the carnivore camp. Then we get the camps and it's like then people are more confused than ever and they feel even farther away from their solution or their goal than ever. And when people feel too far away from something, they're less likely to actually start to engage in it. If the goal is too easy, people don't wanna engage because they're like this isn't really much different than what I have or what I'm doing, not really interested. If it's too far away their goal pursuit, they just are not very interested in doing that because it feels so large and looming. And that's not to say that we can't have large goals, but we need to have something that is hey, this is a little bit of a stretch for me right now, but it's not so far away from what I have that I can't foresee myself doing this. That's the big picture. But, like, how can I actually overcome this current hurdle and barrier right now?

Laurin Conlin: 12:25

Well, I think that, like, just largely, it's that human desire to have things be concrete and direct. And I also think that it's just a byproduct currently of just like our society and our world we have so much information at all times that people are getting so overwhelmed and people are just tired. Like, life is just hard. There's a lot of things at us all the time. People are busier than ever, and I don't think this is not a fault for anyone, right? Like, I totally understand where people are coming from. Like, I think of myself in other fields, right, financial stuff. I don't love learning about that, not really my jam to understand that kind of stuff, right? So if someone paints it really clearly and really easily for me, well, okay, that sounds pretty good to me, right, but then I have to go. Okay, is that the right answer? And thankfully, I have people in my life who help with that nuance, right, but not everybody has that.

Laurin Conlin: 13:14

So, when it comes to nutrition, when someone is trying to overcome a lifetime of, maybe, poor eating habits and poor mindset around food, they hear someone say, hey, don't eat oats, they're bad for you, but make sure that you eat all of this. Oh, okay, well, I just won't eat oatmeal anymore. Now, I'm healthy. And it's not because they don't want to take the time to look into it, it's just because that's what's there and that's what seems right.

Laurin Conlin: 13:35

So that's where we get the confusion. One person says oats are good, one person says oats are bad, another person says they're going to give you cancer, another person says eat in moderation. And then you're like well, what is happening? So I think that that's really where a lot of the current confusion is. And then, in terms of like people's food and like their view and mental health, in terms of seeking kind of you know, different physiques, right, I think that there are, well to go, a lot of different ways. So I'm like is there a specific direction you want me to go with that? Do we want to talk, maybe on like competitors or lifestyle.

Philip Pape: 14:09

Yeah, you know what? Why don't we do this? Because you mentioned, people have a lifetime of eating habits and mindset around food and I'm like maybe we start there because a lot of this does start with your childhood and how you're raised and how I mean I think I've heard you talk about as young as eight years old having dieting, restricting with your food, and I have daughters that are 10 and 12. And that's like a super important thing I need to be aware of. My wife talks about when she was young, being shamed for, you know, being a little bit heavier at a certain age. I mean, do you mind sharing maybe what you remember from that age personally, but also how common it is? Is it for those behaviors to start that young and how that leads to this? That where we are today?

Laurin Conlin: 14:47

For sure, and I don't want to overstep any, I guess, boundaries in terms of research, so I'm not super familiar with like ages and all that kind of things, like I don't want to say anything in that, but I'll share my experience and also, just, you know, working with a lot of families, especially moms, so I did start to have, you know, restrictive behaviors around eating very young, and this was not due to my parents. They were not saying, oh, you're this, they were giving no supplemental messages to that. So I want to make sure that that's clear. They were not doing that, thankfully. But it was one of these just internalized things that I felt that I was bigger than other people that were around me, which was actually false, which is the hilarious part of how our minds can work sometimes. Right, I was probably an average size in comparison to my friend groups, but I only looked at the people who were smaller and said I'm bigger, so I need to be smaller, right? You know how that works and it was just one of those things where I'm someone who is have a little bit more obsessive behaviors around things. I get very hyper, fixated on things, and so it was a also kind of became a game of like, let me just eat less and oh, I got smaller. Okay, cool, you know it's not a tape measure. Oh, I got smaller. Okay, let me try this again and let me do more. And then let me add in like activity and let me just like run Cause I like running, cause I did like, let me run a lot and let me do a bunch of sit-ups. Then it becomes like I can't leave the house until I do this many sit-ups. I can't eat unless I have this many water bottles I can't like. It became these weird rituals that I developed which is very common for a lot of people who struggle with this. So it was kind of a combination of things for me and you know, at the time it was a few years that it got pretty bad.

Laurin Conlin: 16:21

But then you know, my family my family, you know went to dietitians, went to a therapist. To be honest, I don't really remember a lot of those situations. I can kind of have a vague memory of the lady's office, but I don't really remember, and just remember the one thing the dietitian was asking about, you know, fruits and vegetables that I eat and whatever. And I remember telling her there was this yogurt that I would eat that, you know, and like the yogurts have, like the old yogurts had like the little pieces of fruit, I was like, yeah, I have that in there. And she was like that doesn't count. And I just remember that being like a funny thing. But like now I like think back on but I just, I mean, I became so obsessed. I still to this day know food labels, like I can't remember what I did yesterday, but I know food labels that I haven't eaten in years, you know.

Laurin Conlin: 16:58

So it just became this very interesting thing, thing for me and thankfully I was able to get help and move past that and view food in a healthy way.

Laurin Conlin: 17:06

But it was once I decided, hey, I want to do bodybuilding. I was only a few years removed from being anorexic and also having this exercise kind of bullshit, which I wasn't necessarily diagnosed with but definitely qualified, and I was like, no, no, no, I'm not starving myself, I have to still have some muscles, I can't just not eat at all. And everybody was like, okay, kind of a little worried, but it actually, you know, it definitely, more definitely had its periods, right, it's had its up and down moments, but it never restarted those, never restarted any kind of anorexic tendencies for me, thankfully. But there are a lot of people who get into competitive physique sports who have had a history of eating disorders or disordered eating, I mean the. The prevalence of that is, and I don't know the exact stat off the top of my head, but it is a very, very high number of individuals and it makes sense who's drawn to these types of things, right?

Philip Pape: 17:54

Is it because they're already doing it and or it just aligns with what they're doing, like to some extreme?

Laurin Conlin: 18:00

It kind of a lot of people and and the thing, eating disorders are tough because they are very misunderstood by a lot of people and it's really hard to really classify everyone and say everybody here, this who falls under, like this got it, there's nuance, like so, so tough, like why is someone dealing with this? Right? And I would say that in my experience and maybe this will change but at this current moment, september 20th, I truthfully believe that most eating disorders are stemming from non-food related issues and a lot of people are using food in a way, and for some people it is control, right. You always hear oh, anorexics are, you know, they have a lot of control issues and they're perfectionists and they have all these tendencies. There's another theory that it could be well. They are also typically very conscientious and have a higher level of disgust, sensitivity and disgust towards themselves. So a lot of times it's people who are really struggling internally, who don't know how to express that. So they turn to controlling their own environment and just trying to get smaller and smaller and smaller. And then you know there's also, of course, binge eating disorder and bulimia and a lot of times that is.

Laurin Conlin: 19:10

You know, I've worked with people who they've had that and you know they're working with me now not in an active phase by any means, but you know they are struggling with just emotions in general and they're using things like food and alcohol to cope, which then you're like, okay, well, is this now co-occurring with a substance issue?

Laurin Conlin: 19:26

For some people it is, other people it's not right. So it's so complicated and right now the current strategies are some are good, but I have worked with many people who have gone to different clinics or different specialty programs and some of the stuff that I'm hearing. I'm like, yeah, I really want to change this. I'm really hoping I can actually get into that once I'm practicing to actually maybe help make some adjustments to that for sure. But I would just say in general that people who are a little bit more extreme are drawn to body building, and people who, of course, have an extreme interest in what they look like and what they're eating or not eating are also drawn to body building. I would say that it also draws on people who not all, and when people have worth issues or self-confidence issues, they decide to maybe do this and they think, oh, this would be great. I'm really putting myself out there and challenging myself.

Philip Pape: 20:15

As a goal to hit as a drive-on, right.

Laurin Conlin: 20:18

I can't think of the worst thing to do and not to say that you shouldn't do it, but I'm very, very big on we need to be aware of what is happening, right. The one thing that is really tragic about physique sports is that it often gets glamorized, especially in the bikini division and especially in the men's physique division, sometimes classic, but I would say you know, mostly those are kind of the divisions, right. Most people are not waking up and saying, oh, I'm just gonna look like mr olympia, we're a female bodybuilder.

Philip Pape: 20:51

It's not accessible.

Laurin Conlin: 20:52

Yeah not really accessible to most people. But oh, those bikini girls. They look pretty normal, normal, whatever that means. Right, try to use the language that people use. It's not, and what has happened is that what looks to be like a normal size physique, what looks really glitzy and really glam and really fun, it has a lot of hormonal and metabolic and mental side effects. And that does not mean that nobody should do it. That does not mean that it's bodybuilding's fault. I'm very big on that. There's a lot of people who like to blame the physique world and the whole. No, it's not. It's just a byproduct of it.

Laurin Conlin: 21:29

And problem is you're dealing with a subjective judging for something that you've put a lot of objective time into improving, and what people think is that, oh well, I've worked really hard, I've been really hungry and I've been dedicated to this like I should do well. There is no reason that you should do well because you don't know who else is showing up. You don't know what other physiques are there. It's not like, if I do this, I'm gonna get. You know, I'm running this race and I'm gonna get faster. Right, I got faster, I did better, yay, that's not how it works. You could literally look significantly better your next season and place worse.

Philip Pape: 22:09

Yeah, depending on the competition and the judges.

Laurin Conlin: 22:10

Yeah, so, and that is just. I grew up riding horses and showing competitively, which was all subjective, very subjective. Of course there are certain ground rules you know you have, just like bodybuilding, right, like there are certain things that they're looking for, but it's very subjective and I was accustomed to that, I think, from a young age, and so it's not that I didn't struggle with that bodybuilding, but I think I struggle a little less than other people because of that, because I knew, like this is just kind of how those sports go, but a lot of people get into it and they don't realize that. And then what happens is there's always the next thing, right, it's this very strange thing that sucks you in, and I don't know all the exact mechanisms. Obviously, dopamine isn't right here, of course. It just kind of runs our life in general. But basically you work really, really hard, you are really dieted down. You've said no to a million things in your life. You get down to it, and then you feel amazing, and then you don't play straight ball, you get overlooked, you barely even get noticed, and then you're like, oh my God, what do I do? Should I do another show? Another show seems like the answer, because there's always. Well, you're just right there. Right, there's always. You just get a little leaner, just get a little of this. There's always that.

Laurin Conlin: 23:24

So then what happens is people do another show and then becomes this much more narrow focus of like I have to compete and like do better. And it's really, really tough to see that and I've seen it happen to people and it's really hard because, like anything in life, someone has to like recognize that that's what's happening and they have to want to not be doing those things right. But you see a lot of people following that way and I would say that most of the time just becomes this kind of like hole that you almost like can't dig yourself out of, kind of like almost it's not like an addiction. I don't want to say that it's like, oh, it's like an addiction, but you know it could be likened to that. I would say it can follow along the lines of a behavioral addiction, almost right, and it's so niche that we're never, probably ever, going to get data on this, ever say, like what's actually going on, because there's way bigger fish to fry in the world and I know that, for you know, research and funding and all of that.

Laurin Conlin: 24:16

There's some people who do stuff like this. You know, dr campbell, of course, focuses on physique enhancement. You know, people like dr eric helms focus on things like that as well. So there's a lot of people who are interested in these kinds of things. But it is a very unique subset of things. That happens because it's not just the physiological stuff, it's also the psychological stuff.

Laurin Conlin: 24:34

And then you have this. There's always this like power differential, of like you're being judged by someone and you need to like improve and do better here, you know. So there's always like I'm playing catch up, almost because I have to. You know, like does that make sense? It's really insidious for a lot of people, especially if they're not prepared. And that's where it's when people who decide that they want to compete and they want to turn pro and they fully understand all this like I'm so in it, I'm going to push you as hard as you want. But people are like yeah, I just want to do a bucket list thing, maybe do a show. How about we just get pretty lean, lean and like maybe do a photo shoot, see how you feel before we like enter this like danger zone?

Philip Pape: 25:16

That's a totally different level of leanness. Yeah, so I want to pull on that string. I almost think of like three buckets of people. You have those who are ready for it mentally ready it could be a lot of fun, really no concerns from your perspective. Mental, you know, from a mental health perspective. Then you have people like you said, or a casual maybe they also don't have any issues going on, but they're also not right for it because they're doing it for the wrong reasons. And then you have people who are not ready for it.

Philip Pape: 25:37

Now, obviously, the scope of this show and the scope of my practice is not medical, dealing with eating disorders or any of that. We're not trying to diagnose or help anybody with that specifically on this show. But we do want people to be aware from a self-reflective perspective where they might fall on the spectrum. And so you talked about something like informed consent for people who want to get into bodybuilding and physique sports to understand the risks. Can we bucketize it that way and help people understand like, yes, if you're in this category, you could be ready, or if not, here's some warning or red flags.

Laurin Conlin: 26:10

Yeah, I always just like to ask. When I get a new client who wants to get on a call to work with me and they say that they're interested in competing, my first question is always right what is the reason that's?

Philip Pape: 26:21

a good first question for anything we pursue in life, isn't it yes?

Laurin Conlin: 26:26

And it's not to be judgmental, it's not to be any of those but I really need to understand what are the motivations behind you competing this year? Right, and for some people they've never competed. So that's really the main group that I'm trying to like understand, right, see if they really get a grasp of that. Someone's competed before. Generally they already, even if they've done one show, kind of have an idea, right. But when someone's never done something and they've only to your term, probably, like Instagram fitness, they've only followed people on Instagram or YouTube and they've seen show day vlog and you know all this stuff. And you see the top few Olympians, like they look great all year and that's what they're doing.

Philip Pape: 27:00

Like it's amazing, like especially bikini. It's so sparkly and like, yeah, you're right, the glitz and glam, the lighting, everything yeah.

Laurin Conlin: 27:07

Yeah, and for a handful of those top girls like that is their life and that's amazing, like I'm so happy for them, you know. But we have to put into perspective that that's not most people and I think what's hard is that you brought up Simone Biles earlier. I know there's not many adult gymnasts so maybe it's not a great example now, but most people don't watch the Olympics and are like I'm going to, I'm someone bios. Most people aren't playing recreational basketball and they're like I'm going to join the NBA. We kind of have these understandings that we're not going to do that most likely. But with bodybuilding there's no barrier to entry. Anybody can join as long as you could pay, and it's just like well, maybe I can and some people can. That's the thing. Some people can, some people.

Laurin Conlin: 27:51

I've worked with people who have literally trained weights for a few years, like lifted weights just for a few years, and you're like and you know they're older and you're like how do you have this physique? Oh, my gosh, this is amazing. You have all this potential. You have the perfect structure. You have all this. No, you can't start at any point, but to have this like overly romanticized idea about it, like right now, you know I have posing clients that I work with too, who aren't necessarily my actual clients, and you know it's so common when you know we're practicing posing, you're just so tired, just like whatever. And I was talking to my one girl and you know she's competed before so she knows what this feels like. But she also has a business to run and I'm like, hey, just a reminder. You were because I was like hey, are you gonna do another show or you're just doing this one. She's like I don't know, just really really run down, like this is a reminder that this is, you're doing this for fun. You're doing this as something as a learning experience. You wanted to beat your last season, which you already have with your current physique, but you have other responsibilities. So it's okay if you only want to do one show and remember that. You know, and it's.

Laurin Conlin: 28:50

I think it's just an important conversation that we have with ourselves of how much is this impacting my life. You know my career, my finances. You know people I work with a lot of people who have kids. You know like there's a lot of different factors that we have to like weave into this right, and how important are those? So I would say what are the motivations behind the key to, and based on what someone says, I will kind of start to gear the conversation maybe in a different way, and especially for a new person. Most new people and this is going to generalize, but majority of new clients are not going to have enough new to bodybuilding are not going to have enough muscle to compete. They're just not. That's important.

Laurin Conlin: 29:27

If you want to compete, we can get on stage, probably this time next year. How does that sound? They're like oh my God, what. And I'm like yeah, you said you really wanted to do this. How does that sound? They're like well, I was told I could do it.

Laurin Conlin: 29:40

You know, 10 week prep or 12 week prep. Okay, you could, we could diet down your current physique. 12 weeks is it's probably not long enough, but we could. And you're not going to have enough muscle and you're probably just going to get kind of thin and not really have the shape that you're looking for. And to get that lean in 12 weeks we're going to have to do some stuff that probably isn't super great for you long-term and then you're going to probably be in a worse spot three months later after the show. So if that's something that you want to do, I'm not the coach, but go ahead. And that's always kind of that litmus test and I always say, hey, it could be less than a year, that would be amazing, but we need at least a few months to build and at least a few months to diet and realistically that's going to be about a year.

Laurin Conlin: 30:20

You know, unless someone has. Maybe they've already competed and they've taken a bunch of time off and they've just kind of been like, you know, they've been on like maintenance mode, right, like I've even thought about maybe I'll compete next year. I'm so crazy. But yeah, back in school before I do my practicums, like why did I do this? Yeah, I'm like, well, I've been in maintenance mode for a long time, you know, and but I know that once I started actually training hard again, that's a different story. You know what I mean. It's not like I've not been doing this.

Heather: 30:46

Hello, my name is Heather and I am a client of Philip Pace.

Heather: 30:49

Just six days after I started this cut, my family and I were in a 7.9 magnitude earthquake here in Adana, turkey.

Heather: 30:56

As I tried to process the stress and trauma, my first instinct was to say, oh, you've been through something hard, this is not a good time. But instead I reached out to my coach and he got me under the bar that day and he helped me keep my macros that day, and not only did I realize that I was doing something fantastic for my body, but I realized that I was doing something fantastic for my mind and that it was going to help me keep the mental clarity that I was going to need to get my family through what really has been a very difficult two months. Here I am on the other side of eight weeks, got my kids through all the things that we have been through, and I weigh 12 pounds less than I did, and I got a new PR on my bench press. I have a long way to go and there are still things that I really want to accomplish, but now I know that I can and I'm really grateful. Thank you, philip no-transcript.

Philip Pape: 32:20

Listeners listen closely.

Philip Pape: 32:21

That's most people listening probably.

Laurin Conlin: 32:23

It's most people. I rarely at this point and it's probably also like at this point. Like I, you know, I'm getting older, so the people who I work with are also getting older too. I don't really usually have people who are like 18 reaching out to me to work with me. Not really like my target demo, you know anymore. So when I'm working with you know a 45 year old mom she has in that case, had kids, so possibly had kids has most likely been through multiple diets, if not years and years of dieting. May or may not have competed right.

Laurin Conlin: 32:51

So we have all of these different things coming at us in terms of we have the previous experiences and mindsets from, maybe, coaches that they've had plans that they've followed and then also just like their own perceptions too, and then everything else. So we can't just say like, yeah, you're going to be ready for 12 weeks and you would think that that kind of stuff would go away, but it hasn't, because there's still people who like prey on that and they're like, no, I can get you ready. And then again people's perceptions and they have there are a lot of coaches that prey on that. I can't stand people who just haven't, haven't really seen. I'm like actually just go to a show and also this is another part and a half people who've never competed and I'm like no-transcript. Think, if people are interested in this kind of thing, that we have to really understand their motivations and we have to understand are they willing to look at the big picture? Because I'm not interested at this point to work with people. If they're going to come out of working with me and be worse, like that is like, of course, opposite of my. It doesn't matter to me if I never work with someone again for a pro card or this. That's an added amazing bonus. Yay, but that's never my goal or my intention.

Laurin Conlin: 34:19

How can I leave someone better? And that doesn't mean that competing is ever easy. So I do want to make sure that that's clear. It doesn't matter how great the approach is, whether it's me or any of the other coaches that I know who are fantastic at this. It doesn't matter how great the approach is, whether it's me or any of the other coaches that I know who are fantastic at this. It doesn't make the process any easier. It doesn't make the physiological adaptations any easier. It doesn't make the psychological adaptations easier. It might make it a little better, but it's still just going to be really hard. You can have the best coach in the world and, as a female, if you're getting a 10% body fat, you're not going to feel okay. Things are going to get a little weird for a little while. Right, just how it's going to happen.

Laurin Conlin: 34:54

But how are we keeping someone in this for too long? Are we not paying attention to, maybe, some of the signs and symptoms that they are falling into a not so great place? Right, either mentally or physically? Like, do we need to pull out of prep? Like, there's a lot of different things here that I think some coaches are not focusing on. Thankfully, there are so many amazing coaches now who are interested in this kind of stuff, and I mean, I know so many of them. So it's like there is just a plethora of not great practices that are happening. And then, of course, add in, you know, peds, if someone wants to do that which, again, totally like, that is your choice, your perspective, but it can be very, very short sighted for some people. I think that if someone wants to do that, my personal opinion would be try to do this, naturally, at least for a season, or at least for some period of time to see what you can actually do.

Philip Pape: 35:46

Yeah, I think that's great. Put on the training wheels right and just try to get lean in general and don't worry about all the specific stuff, which is a whole extra layer. Yeah, yeah.

Laurin Conlin: 35:54

Let's not even dabble in that, because you might find that you did a show and you're like I never want to do this ever again, and this is so like just not in congruency with my life. And now you've realized that, like you've taken all of these drugs that could have long-term side effects that people don't like to talk about and I'm not an expert in that, so I'm not going to speak on it, but I do know that there are many things that people take that can affect one long-term. So it's not just like an easy thing to be like, yeah, well, I'm just going to just add that into it. It'll make it easier, yes, in the short term, but you really need to know am I doing this for the long term? If I'm working with a client who has been doing this for several years and they want to then add that in, that is their prerogative, that's their decision.

Laurin Conlin: 36:36

This is not a quick rush to do something like that, and I think that it's really important to also have that discussion with people. But it's kind of this. You know, I think we've made huge strides in the space, but there is still that mindset of like, oh, if you're doing a bodybuilding show like you just have to take drugs and diet, you know, and eat boiled chicken. It's like no, that's through the whole other world.

Philip Pape: 36:58

Yeah yeah, yeah, no, I guess people listening I don't know how many are interested in competing, but a lot of what you're talking about and the principles apply anyway universally.

Philip Pape: 37:08

I mean one thing you mentioned just kind of quickly, but it is important and we love talking about it here is spending some time building muscle first, no matter what, and the vast majority of my female clients I don't do shows or anything, I don't have that experience I gently try to nudge them toward, you know, their own realization that they might really enjoy the process of adding muscle.

Philip Pape: 37:28

And, by the way, you know, look at somebody like Laurin Collins, super strong, you know or Steph Gaudreau, or you know all these in the space you feel great, you eat a lot, right, there's so many like positives, and then it gives you a better base to go from that and then be a very informed like we talked about informed consent, but that could simply be even just lifestyle, lean kind of.

Philip Pape: 37:45

Look at the process that's involved. And, like you said, there's a dieting piece, right, there's a fat loss phase here at some point. And so, if we want to then segue into the mental side of like, where's that line between food awareness and food obsession? Because you and I, either on the first, second attempt or this attempt at recording this podcast early on, so I don't know if the listener heard this. You were kind of talking about that spectrum and the history of like. If it fits your macros to where we are today, we don't have to repeat all that, but basically like, where's that line so that we can have a healthier relationship with food, especially with the history that many people have?

Laurin Conlin: 38:20

I think it was second one, but I'm not sure I know either way, currently there is this new trend I would say it not new, but newer where, again, this is not everybody in the space, but there is a handful of people in the space who are basically saying that if you're tracking any of your food, that it's disorder. Having any kind of physique related goals is disordered in nature and essentially it seems to me like it's the intuitive eating and health at every size. Movement has degenerated, not for everybody, but for some individuals, and how they're sharing their message. They're saying you know, this is a disorder, this is bad for you. You should just be able to eat whatever you want and really just honor that and this and that. And my biggest beef with this is that Pun intended, sorry. Yeah, my biggest beef with this is that most of the people that I've seen sharing these messages the irony is not lost on me that they all have years and years and years of experience tracking their food and being aware of their food and anyone who has ever gone through a period of tracking food. I'm not even talking about weighing it out, I'm just talking about anything like any awareness of food that sticks with you. You don't lose that right. So it's not lost on me that a lot of the people who have all this knowledge are now the ones saying just don't do this at all, but that's really unfair to the person who.

Laurin Conlin: 39:44

Taking it all the way back to the beginning of this episode, these habits and behaviors start early in our life, right, I didn't grow up, I grew up with, clearly, an eating disorder, so my experience was a little different than most people. But let's take the example of someone who grows up in a family who doesn't know about the constituents of healthy eating. They're relying on fast food and convenience foods, and that is how they grew up. That is all that they know, right? So for them to try to overcome those habits and behaviors, they're going to have to learn quite a bit of knowledge around food and what's in that and portions, and so for us to just say to that person you know, just eat whatever you want, just eat what makes you feel good, is really harmful messaging, in my opinion. Do I think that everybody can get to a space where they're intuitive? I call it intuitive-ish. Yeah, I like that Intuitive-ish. I think that that is absolutely appropriate for most people.

Laurin Conlin: 40:43

I am not sitting here tracking my macros. There's no point in me doing that now right For my life, my goals? I don't do that. But, as we've discussed for the past, since I was eight years old, I've had an awareness of what's in food. I haven't lost that. I still meal prep, I still portion foods out. I still know wow, I was kind of low on this today. Maybe I should have a protein shake. Wow, I missed this meal. It's just, and it's not an obsession, it's just a it's awareness. Okay, this is awareness of what is allowing me to be a healthy, optimal, functioning person. Right and physique aside, health. Eating certain ways influences our health directly. Like there's like, no, there's quite literally zero debate on that. So I think there's a lot of principles about intuitive eating that I appreciate and that I like, but I think that a lot of people in the social media space have created this conversation around diets don't work. That's my favorite one. Intentional weight loss doesn't work, not true?

Philip Pape: 41:36

Energy balance doesn't work. Calories in, calories out doesn't work. Intentional dieting works.

Laurin Conlin: 41:43

What didn't work was how that diet was approached and what we did before that diet and what we did after that diet. So that's what we need to change. It's not that calorie deficits are really bad for us. It's that, and actually quite the contrary. But that's a whole different segment, so I'm not going to get into that.

Philip Pape: 41:57

And whether the diet's even the diet for you. Yeah, exactly.

Laurin Conlin: 42:01

So all diets are bad. Any tracking and it's so funny because at the start of my career it was okay, oh, like, were you know any kind of flexibility with diets and food choices was looked at like a monster, like, oh my gosh, like going against the bro diets and you know all of the books that you have, all the diets that everybody you know, magazines, all that kind of stuff, right, like having any kind of flexibility, you can eat whatever you want, just measure it out. That was like this whole big thing and then, like we talked about kind of in the beginning, then I started to realize, well, that actually kind of does have some of the problems, not because of the diet, but because of people's mindset around it. And then now we're at this weird space too. So I feel like it's just like it's continued to and I think that it's just a byproduct of social media and how we said.

Laurin Conlin: 42:45

You know, I think a lot of times people want quick answers, so we want things that are very concrete. This is good, this is bad. It rarely is that what is helpful. So food awareness, I think, is something that is incredibly important, and this again is irrespective of your physique goals, obviously, if you're more specific physique goals, you need more good awareness. That's pretty obvious. But I think that even just having a healthy body and focusing on our health and longevity, having food awareness is incredibly important for that as well. So all of those things Now, food obsession can certainly happen.

Laurin Conlin: 43:22

And why does that happen? Kind of alluded to and this is again not just categorized, diagnosed eating disorders, because a lot more people fall into disordered eating, which is kind of this big broad umbrella term. It's kind of like when you have stomach pain, you go to the doctor like you have IBS and you're like thanks, appreciate it. Or with women, they're like we don't really know. Hey, you're like cool, that really didn't help at all. So, and also, you're too young for it to be hormones. Sorry, yeah, oh no, you look fine. Why do you get your? Okay, yeah, that's totally how it works, right, but so with see, now I got you, I'm trying.

Philip Pape: 43:58

No, no, it's okay yeah, with disordered eating.

Laurin Conlin: 44:02

What does that mean it? Right, like I don't even know if anybody has it a perfect characterization of what that is, but let's just say food obsession, right. And the common thing that I see with clients so we'll speak on that is when people who have learned about tracking macros and have really been able to integrate that now no longer can not track, right, they feel like everything falls apart. When they can't, they're dependent on it. Yeah, everything falls apart. When they can't, they're dependent on it. Yeah, okay, they become dependent on the three numbers and not the food. And this is really where I started to see some of the issues, because I'm like, okay, this doesn't make sense. The people who have allegedly the most food experience right, because they've been weighing their foods, they've been doing all this stuff they should be able to now eyeball these things pretty easily. Why is this not happening?

Laurin Conlin: 44:52

And there is this connection for a multitude of reasons. It could be a control thing, it could be. Everything in my life is like falling apart. I just really want to be able to focus on this, or it becomes something just don't trust themselves, right, maybe they were overweight before and finally they found something that like makes them feel good and they're like I want to stick to this, like I want to clutch to this so tightly. I never want to go back to where I was before I can understand that.

Laurin Conlin: 45:07

Right, there's also just people who just like their personality, right, they're very whether it's okay or conscientious, or meticulous, like they, just that suits them. So for me to tell someone who's very, very numbers based, yeah, we'll just like, eat whatever you want. They're like meltdown ensues, like what is happening. So again, that's where we have to say what are personality traits. But then also it could just be like an emotional reaction, right, like I am trying to suppress other emotions, so I'm using you know, now I'm having these issues with food and it's not just a tracking thing. This could also now be like food obsessions could be, you know, insert x, food right. Or just always constantly having this food noise, or always wanting something new, or feeling like they have to snack, like whenever someone says I feel like I have to do this, I have to do X you know right, and maybe even it goes beyond.

Philip Pape: 45:52

Food is almost what you're implying, and it's not the food, yeah.

Laurin Conlin: 45:56

It's never really like the food. Well, once this happens, then everything kind of falls apart. Okay, well, food is the outcome, but that's not really the driving factor and you driving factor. And I will say that as coaches, it's not necessarily our goal to figure those things out. We can help highlight that for clients because that work needs to be done anyway. That needs to become conscious for people.

Laurin Conlin: 46:18

A lot of times food issues are subconscious For most individuals. They've operated with that for so long and they have no reason. They're not really thinking about why that's happening until they really really reflect on it. And then they're like wow, okay, because of this one situation, like for a whole life. This is how I've viewed things. Or you know another really common one when people go to events and they're not able to like say no to certain foods, right, it's really easy to be like, just say no. What's so hard about that? And I definitely took that stance for a really long time Like just develop the skills to like say no, and for some people that is appropriate. That is what they need, because they've never done that before and they need to learn.

Philip Pape: 46:56

Yes, a strategy to process and move forward. Yes, not even necessarily need to unravel the root cause in that context. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't do.

Laurin Conlin: 47:08

Sometimes you don't, yep, and then other people there's a lot more there as to why that's happening, right, and then. So that's where we again have to say, okay, maybe. Hey, now I'm going into territory where this isn't necessarily like my scope any longer, right, and I often get this question because I do talk about mental health. You know quite a bit. I have for several years. A lot of coaches are like well, how do I know, or am I always going to know? You don't always know right away, right, if you are working with someone, you might not know and they might not know either, right. And then also things change. Things change people's lives, where then events happen. And then they're like oh my gosh, now this got uncovered and I didn't even know this was here and now, because of this event, then this happened and now we're dealing with this thing, right, so coaching is very dynamic and that's why I think it's so frustrating that people try to make it so straightforward. It's oversimplify, yep, yep, yeah. And it's like why are we trying to oversimplify something that is complicated and doesn't need to be complicated, because we're trying to confuse people, but it needs to be complicated so that we are taking in the entire person and what is going on in their life and really take a holistic approach. I know that word misused sometimes, so I'm like I need a better word, but I think it's coming around in a more positive light again, so I'm going to stick with it.

Laurin Conlin: 48:18

So people can develop food obsessions for a lot of different reasons and I think, as someone who you know say, if any coach is listening right, you're going to want to start to look for changes in language around some of the things that they're sharing with you. That's usually my first indicator is, and that you know that starts with you need to make sure you're asking the right questions, you know, to your clients. But then if you start to notice that they're maybe sharing some language that isn't normal, or they're just sharing, they're really carping on certain things. They're like they brought this up like three times in the past two weeks Like that's not normal for them. You know, because if someone has an off week, you don't need to jump on their throat.

Laurin Conlin: 48:55

Do you have an eating disorder? Like you know, we don't need to like over catastrophize either, right? So sometimes it's like, hey, somebody had an off week just not feeling it, or this is coming on, but I take it out of it After a few weeks kind of been seeing this trend. Just want to put that out there. How are you feeling about it? Do you notice this Right? One of my favorite things to do with clients and sometimes I like this, sometimes I don't is I need you to reflect on X, y, z and then get back to me next week with your responses, right, yeah, yeah On the head.

Philip Pape: 49:24

It resonated with that so hard.

Laurin Conlin: 49:26

And because I'm not going to put words in your mouth because I really don't know what's going on. You know yourself better than the coach does. Yeah, and this is where you know some people don't like that coaching approach. Other people do. I feel like it is the best for the long-term change, and not just the coaches, I mean, the clients don't like that. Just tell them what I will gotta do the tape. So sometimes I'll be like, hey, yeah, these are some things we gotta do. There's some things we gotta not do. This is something that I don't know currently.

Laurin Conlin: 49:56

Like I use that example of you know, like a holiday, like you know a day off and you know party or whatever and this food, and I just you know I couldn't stay on traffic. And then I'm just like, well, that could be 57 different things. I'm getting a little feedback from you as to eternally why that happened, right. And then you know, usually when people do that, they're like, oh my gosh, I didn't even realize, like what. I really sat down and thought about it. Like I really didn't even realize, like this is actually what that was. And it's not always going to be that easy, right, sometimes it's going to be like months of trying to figure that out with a client Especially if there are multiple triggers, you know that they're sensitive to.

Laurin Conlin: 50:27

Exactly. And again, people have a lot of shit going on, so it's not like everybody. It's just, like you know, we're not working with clients who generally have like ample time to be sitting around and doing this, but this is really important work and that's how we always tie it back Like listen, I don't want you to keep falling into these patterns. So we need to start to look at this and for anyone anyone listening, who's not a coach, who's just doing this on their own and they're like well, maybe I feel like I'm kind of being pulled towards that that's where just any kind of reflective exercise is so important and anytime you kind of notice something you know be like okay, well, that was maybe not characteristic of me, right?

Laurin Conlin: 51:00

I haven't done that before I didn't act like that. Just take note of it. That happens again. Okay, let me kind of reflect, you know, on this and that's why I just I'm really big on reflective practices and I don't think that even I think a lot of times people think you need to sit down and have a whole reason. You're going to journal or do a whole thing. Sometimes, if you do it consistently, the things will come up, I promise.

Philip Pape: 51:18

Yeah, and I want to interject because you continue to hit on the self-awareness piece and that's like if anybody who knows about emotional intelligence, which is something I got into 20 or so years ago I'm old now but in my career, as I was trying to manage other people and I'm like I don't really even get people because I don't get myself and one of the first exercises is figure out who you are and what you're saying is just awareness, whether it's food, your behavior, a trigger why you want to do this physique competition sit down for two minutes with a piece of paper and just write it down can be game changing.

Laurin Conlin: 51:53

So I love that.

Philip Pape: 51:54

Yeah.

Laurin Conlin: 51:55

It's so simple it seems like it wouldn't help. You know, and we touched on a little bit and I said, sometimes when goals are too similar to what you're already doing, people don't want to do them. So they think like, what is the two or five minute journal session gonna do for me? Like that doesn't seem like it's gonna highlight much promise.

Laurin Conlin: 52:11

If you do it consistently, it will really really start to like some of the hardest times in my life when I was navigating a lot of like personal growth and changes, I was journaling a lot and it was really the first time that I like dedicated to doing it and I mean it helped so much because you just start to see these patterns. And that is really where a good coach can help step in and kind of be that intermediary right, because as a coach I'm going to be able to bring those things to your awareness that you maybe wouldn't have seen. And then you know we can kind of say like, oh, okay, now I notice. I notice every Thursday we kind of have an issue what's going on either Wednesday or Thursday that maybe is causing this right when someone could just be on autopilot and not realize that every Thursday shit goes awry.

Philip Pape: 52:57

So that's where having someone in your life can really really help, as that kind of outside influence, Absolutely amplifies it and it gives you that extra support around you to kind of flex into that. It's funny that you mentioned journal and that's a trigger word for me, because I've always said that like I'm not a big journaler, right, and I've had clients that are like, don't tell me to journal, Are you telling me to journal? I'm like no, no, we're not going to journal. What I want you to do is log a note in your food log, in your workout log. I want you to write a note and it's like, oh cool, Okay, I'll do that Language is everything, because every word has a connotation.

Laurin Conlin: 53:29

You know you could tell like me journaling. I'm like, oh my God, I love journaling, yeah, I'll tell someone else journaling. And they're like, yeah, not for me. That was me with meditation a few years ago. I was like so convinced I was like I'm not a meditator, it's woo, it's clearly I'm a little over the place, right, and that's just my natural state and I accepted that about myself and it's super fine, it is a strength in some areas.

Laurin Conlin: 53:50

But I was like I'm never gonna meditate. You know, I can't sit still, I can't sit at all this stuff. And that was the reason I couldn't do. It was because I convinced myself otherwise. And then finally I got tired of my own shit and I was like you know what, I'm gonna try. This seems like a lot of people who have their shit together like to meditate and it works pretty well for them. So maybe they're onto something. So let me check it out. And I eventually started to really dedicate more to it and have been able to get a lot out of it. But it is so funny because for years I was just like no no, no, yeah, it's just.

Philip Pape: 54:20

Sometimes it's just a hard thing you've got to do, you know. You just got to choose to do it and then try it. I know we're short on time because of our three times a charm recording, but what I want to end with is you're going for this master's in clinical mental health counseling. You just gave people some actionable things to try and hopefully open people's mind to realize there is a lot of flexibility, even when we say flexible dieting. Alan Aragon was on the show and his definition was your approach is flexible. That's what I mean. He doesn't mean just if it fits your macros. Dr Eric Helms was on and he's like I don't track anymore, but I tracked for 20 years, so you adapt. How do you see in helping people in the future in a way that maybe a lot of fitness coaches like you are not doing, and that's why you're going after this degree.

Laurin Conlin: 55:04

Yeah. So I pretty much realized that I could get people up to a certain point and then I no longer have the skills to do that. I don't have the training, I don't have the licensure and I know that there's a lot of people who operate in a world where they don't care about those things, but I do. It's important to me, and especially when people are talking about very, very intensive things like currently anybody is allowed to share anything with me. That's on them. I'm not trying to extract that information right, they're just shit. But when we start to unravel and really hit the wall of like, oh okay, I have these eating behaviors because of this, you know, childhood trauma and this assault in these different situations, I don't have the tools currently to do that. And not to say that I need to do that for every client, because I don't. But I just have a very deep interest in this and I just felt like there was a way that I could really help bridge both of the worlds, because in the mental health world it's becoming more. You know, people are, of course, focusing on health behaviors, but it's not really taught to most. I mean, honestly, our coursework is very full. I don't know Like I mean just the master program alone is so intensive, like in terms of hours and like coursework and practical hours. So it's not to say that it was the fault, like we need to add in some nutrition classes, like if it's not relevant, right? But there's a lot of people in that space who aren't talking about that. Just like in health and fitness space, more people are talking about mental health, but are they actually able to help clients fully integrate in that way? Not necessarily. So I really wanted to be able to be a bridge for both, and that was because obviously physical health affects mental health and vice versa. So I really want to be able to hopefully bridge that for some people.

Laurin Conlin: 56:40

And I don't know what the current trajectory will look like. You know, because by the time I'm done, it'll be about five years. So it's one of those things where you know because by the time I'm done, it'll be about five years. So it's one of those things where Because you just started, right, you literally just started, yeah, I just started. And then the master's itself is about two and a half years. And then after, because in the master's program I'm also doing in our program, doing 900 supervised hours also within that and then when I graduate I have to then do another 1500 hours over at least, like between two to five years, and then I can sit for my licensure exam. In that period I can take on individuals, but I will still be working towards a license, so people just have to be aware of that. But then in about five years, give or take, I'll be fully licensed, so and that's the fastest process that you can do.

Laurin Conlin: 57:24

So that is one of those things where you know during my internship hours I don't know where I'm going to.

Laurin Conlin: 57:29

Necessarily, you know work and do all that Like I'm keeping my options open, and so I'm sure, like even in my first month, I've learned so much because there really is so much nuance into the field.

Laurin Conlin: 57:40

So I don't know exactly what I'll be doing, but I do envision kind of bringing both together and also being a resource for a lot of other coaches that I know in the space who want to send their clients to therapists. But maybe some of the therapists don't necessarily understand some of the coach stuff that we do deal with in a normal way, right, which I know, for some people could maybe look disordered if they are not aware of it. But we know again, there's a very big difference of food awareness versus, you know, an eating disorder but someone who hasn't necessarily been exposed to, that they might be like I'm not too sure and this sounds like this, so want to maybe be that person within the space as well for those clients, cause that is a big feedback that I get from people who have gone to therapists, especially if they are the nurse or in that kind of space it's. It is a little misunderstood, which no fault to anyone, because how would you know unless you're in that?

Philip Pape: 58:29

No, a hundred percent, I mean, I think, that's weird I think the fact that you said you're already learning a ton. I could see you bringing that you know to your social media and your podcast and stuff like that. But even to enhance coaching practice right, even without the entering into the scope of being licensed, I'm sure there's an untapped area for coaches of just more on awareness and understanding.

Laurin Conlin: 58:49

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I've already learned things in this month that I have been able to apply to clients. And then I also do run a coaching mentorship program and I've already adjusted. One of the weeks I added different stuff that I learned to the lecture. You know what I mean. So it's one of those things where I'm like I'm already, I'm super excited for that. I honestly didn't I knew I would be able to help clients like currently, like that I'm working with, with what I'm learning, but now I'm actually seeing a lot of applications also to the coaches that I help mentor as well. So I'm like, oh okay, this will be good.

Philip Pape: 59:23

So it's all going to be a big learning, eye-opening experience. Well, and if you're not too busy in a few months, maybe we get you back on. You can like share some of that I love to come back on. We had so many topics so I'm more than happy to come back on for part two anytime is there anything just to wrap up, anything you wish I had asked or anything you wanted to leave with?

Laurin Conlin: 59:39

no, I just I really appreciate the conversation. I love all the directions that it went. I love that you care about these types of topics because they are so important but they sometimes get under discussed because the very concrete, flashy things are more exciting to talk about. You know how much protein to get? It's like let's move on.

Laurin Conlin: 59:59

This new thing came out or this whatever and I'm not against those kinds of things at all but I really think that in order to help more people, we need to really kind of take a step back and look at, like, what is like the big picture of, like how we're thinking and why we're doing things. And if I can help encourage anyone as an individual or as a coach to be able to, you know, look at things from that perspective and that lens, then I feel like I've done my job.

Philip Pape: 1:00:24

Awesome. Yeah, I mean behavior change and psychology is the root of. I know me personally. When I talk to more and more clients, it's like just lay it on me. They'll be like am I telling you too much? I'm like, no, this is going to help you, so just lay it on me and I'll help where I can. It's all about the up here, all right? So where can listeners learn more about you, Laurin?

Laurin Conlin: 1:00:42

Yeah, so my Instagram, I would say, post primarily there. So, just at Laurin Conlin, l-a-u-r-i-n, c-o-n-l-i-n. I also just started documenting again on YouTube. So back in the day I used to do YouTube videos and I'm coming back just with going back to school and I'm navigating a business and relationships and all this different stuff and going to school. Here's some things I'm learning, here's how I'm doing stuff.

Laurin Conlin: 1:01:06

So that's back on my YouTube, just my full name as well, taking a little pause on the podcast because of all this, but the Logo Fit Show does have over 300 episodes, so there's plenty of information on there and I have great guests. We actually have also a mental health counselor who I typically do episodes with as well, so we have that in there as well. And then the other coaches on the team and, yeah, so it's pretty much like the main places. And then, of course, our website, redefine Healthy Brands, if anyone is interested in one-on-one coaching for their lifestyle or competition. And then, lastly, I don't know when this is coming out, but I am running my third round of my coaching mentorship the Art and Science of Coaching. So that will be starting on October 7th. So if anyone's interested in that, feel free to send a message or an email and I can shoot you more info.

Philip Pape: 1:01:53

I'm sure there are coaches that listen to the show as well, because I know, as a coach, I like other coaches shows, so we'll put all of that in the show notes. Lots of fun. This will be out in a few weeks from when we record it, so whoever, but when you're listening to it, you've just traveled in time and you've got it right now, and thank you so much for taking the time, even after repeating three times.

Laurin Conlin: 1:02:11

Of course, third time was the charm. It was great. Thank you so much, Laurin.

Ignoring THIS Energy Source Is Killing Your Strength and Stamina (Power Systems) | Ep 225

Are you neglecting a crucial energy system in your workouts?

Discover how the engineering concept of Power Systems can be applied to your training (building strength and muscle as well as cardio and endurance) and how to make the most out of the sources of energy within your own body.

This episode reveals why training all three of your body's energy pathways is necessary if you want to break through plateaus and build more strength, stamina, and overall fitness.

Learn how to design workouts (and program your week) to tap into each system efficiently for improved performance and faster results. 

To get your free "Cardio for Lifters" guide and optimize your training, join our email list at https://witsandweights.com/email (then reply to ask for the guide)

Main Takeaways:

• Your body has 3 main energy systems, each important for different aspects of fitness.

• Neglecting any system, especially THIS often-overlooked system, can hold you back and kill progress.

• Balancing your training across all energy systems leads to improvements in both strength and stamina, increasing your metabolic flexibility and overall physical prowess.

Episode summary:

This episode aims to help listeners understand the intricacies of energy systems and how a balanced training approach can significantly enhance performance, strength, and stamina.

Could your training regimen be missing a crucial component that’s holding you back from achieving peak performance? This episode unpacks the science behind energy systems and offers actionable strategies to optimize your workouts. By delving into the principles of power systems engineering, Philip dissects how your body produces and leverages energy across different exercises. Understanding the phosphagen, glycolytic, and oxidative systems is key to designing balanced workouts that build both strength and stamina.

The phosphagen system, also known as the ATP-CP system, provides immediate, explosive energy for very short durations, typically up to 15 seconds. This system is crucial for heavy lifting and sprinting. It relies on creatine phosphate to quickly regenerate ATP, the primary energy currency of the cell. Without sufficient training in this system, your explosive power and ability to lift heavy weights can be significantly compromised.

The glycolytic system, on the other hand, kicks in when the phosphagen system is depleted. It provides energy for high-intensity efforts lasting from 30 seconds to two minutes. Activities like weightlifting, high-intensity interval training (HIIT), and medium-intensity cardio predominantly use this system. It relies on glycogen, stored in muscles and the liver, to produce ATP. Neglecting this system can lead to poor performance in activities that require sustained high-intensity effort.

The oxidative system, or aerobic system, is the body's base-load power provider. It supports long-duration, low-intensity activities like steady-state cardio and endurance training. This system is crucial for overall cardiovascular health and efficient fat metabolism. Many strength-focused athletes often overlook the oxidative system, fearing it might impede their gains. However, integrating some form of aerobic training can improve recovery, work capacity, and even lifting performance by enhancing overall cardiovascular health.

Balancing these three energy systems in your training regimen can lead to comprehensive fitness improvements. For example, incorporating heavy lifts and explosive movements can efficiently train the phosphagen system. Moderate to high-intensity efforts within your lifting sessions will tap into the glycolytic system. Finally, integrating steady-state cardio or even exercise snacks like stair runs can effectively train the oxidative system.

Achieving a harmonious balance between lifting and cardio is crucial for comprehensive fitness. A well-rounded approach ensures that you’re not only building strength but also improving your work capacity, stamina, and recovery. This episode emphasizes that neglecting any one of the energy systems can hold you back from making significant progress in your fitness journey.

The benefits of training all three energy systems are manifold. First, you'll experience increased strength because of heavy lifting. Second, your work capacity will improve, allowing you to handle more volume and intensity in your workouts. Third, your stamina will be better, helping you sustain longer and more intense exercise sessions. Fourth, you'll recover faster between sets and workouts, reducing the risk of injury and allowing for more frequent training. Finally, you'll achieve better body composition by optimizing your body's ability to use different fuel sources effectively.

Incorporating the principles discussed in this episode into your routine can help you cultivate a more resilient and efficient body. This balanced approach ensures that your body is primed to meet diverse energy demands, whether you're lifting heavy, running long distances, or simply going about your daily activities.

To assist with this balanced approach, Philip introduces the "Cardio for Lifters" guide. This practical resource helps you effectively combine cardio with your strength training. By following the strategies outlined in the guide, you can optimize your training for superior results.

The episode also delves into the analogy of power systems engineering to explain how your body's energy systems work. Just like a power grid that uses immediate high-power generators, intermediate power sources, and base-load providers to meet varying energy demands, your body uses the phosphagen, glycolytic, and oxidative systems to fuel different types of activities. This analogy helps listeners grasp the importance of balancing all three systems to achieve peak performance.

The key takeaway from this episode is that neglecting any one of the energy systems can impede your overall progress. Whether you're a dedicated lifter, a cardio enthusiast, or somewhere in between, understanding and training all three energy systems can help you break through plateaus and reach new heights in your fitness journey.

In conclusion, "Unlocking Peak Performance: Mastering Energy Systems and Balancing Training" is an insightful episode that provides listeners with the knowledge and tools to optimize their workouts. By understanding and training the phosphagen, glycolytic, and oxidative systems, you can achieve a harmonious balance between lifting and cardio, leading to comprehensive fitness improvements. Don't forget to check out the "Cardio for Lifters" guide for practical tips on combining cardio with your strength training.

So, whether you're struggling with workout plateaus, looking to boost your strength and stamina, or simply aiming to improve your overall fitness, this episode has something valuable to offer.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you've been laser-focused solely on heavy lifting or high-intensity cardio or another specific mode of training, or if you've hit a plateau in your strength gains or endurance, or even if you're wondering why your workouts leave you exhausted, then this episode's for you, because today we're revealing why neglecting this one crucial energy source could be holding you back from optimizing your results with your training. Using principles from power systems engineering, we'll explain how your body produces and uses energy during different exercises. You'll discover why a balanced approach to training might skyrocket your performance, and how to design workouts that build strength and stamina more effectively than ever before. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and I have a question for you. Have you ever wondered why, even though you are very strong maybe you've been lifting weights for a while, maybe you're making progress and not quite there and yet, wherever you are on that spectrum, your workouts leave you gasping for air, and some of them make your muscles burn, and some make you really sore. Or you might be excelling in one area of fitness but plateauing in the others, and the answer here lies often in understanding your body's energy systems and then how to train them effectively. So today we're going to look at these systems using principles from power systems engineering. We're going to reveal why neglecting any one of them could be holding you back, and how to design workouts that build strength and stamina more effectively and address the gap potentially in your training. So, whether you are a long-term dedicated lifter, whether you love cardio, whether you're somewhere in between, this episode should give you what you need to shape your approach to training and help break through some of the plateaus related to energy systems.

Philip Pape: 2:12

Before we dive in, I do have something special for you. I created a guide a while back. It's called Cardio for Lifters. That ties in perfectly with today's topic. It breaks down how to effectively combine cardio with your strength training and to get a copy, all you have to do is join my email list and ask for it. Go to witsandweightscom slash email or check the link in the show notes and you can join my email list Again witsandweightscom slash email and then, when you get your welcome email, just reply say hey, philip, I would love your cardio for lifters guide. Heard it on the podcast and you'll get. You know the human that I am responding like a human and we'll start up a conversation and I'll send you that guide.

Philip Pape: 2:52

All right, let's get into it. Here's what we're covering today. We're going to talk about the three main energy systems in your body and then how power systems engineering is a really good analogy to understand why they are important and how they work physically with your body's system. We're going to talk about why neglecting any one of these could be the thing holding you back, not necessarily getting better at the thing you're already good at, and then how to design your training, your week, your sessions, overall to tap into those energy systems effectively, and a little bit of a surprise near the end as to the result of doing this. All right, let's talk about power systems engineering.

Philip Pape: 3:33

So this is the world of electrical grids, power plants, where engineers have to balance different energy sources for the different demands. Right, you have a house, then you have a street, then you have a city, you have a whole region, maybe the whole country, relying on all of these energy sources. And, for example, they'll use immediate high power generators to handle these big sudden spikes these, you know, huge spikes and draws in energy. They have intermediate power sources for kind of the sustained, ongoing needs of the energy, and then they have what's called baseload, which is the constant, long-term energy provision. So you could think of these as three different systems where your body actually works in a remarkably similar way and I'll admit, sometimes I make these episodes and I'm stretching a little bit to tie the energy system or the engineering system to either your approach or your body. And in this case I think it actually works really well to imagine this. So think of three distinct energy systems in your body, just like the three power systems that a power provider would use, energy provider would use to power up a city.

Philip Pape: 4:45

The first one is called the phosphagen system, atp-cp, and that stands for adenosine triphosphate, creatine phosphate, which, honestly, you didn't need to know that, but I'm always interested in what acronyms stand for. So again, this is the phosphagen system. This is your body's equivalent of a high power electrical generator. It provides immediate, explosive energy for very short durations we're talking 10 to 15 seconds max and this is the system used for heavy lifting, for sprinting, any activity that requires a sudden burst of maximum effort. So, again, if you're a lifter, this is really important. And if you've heard of creatine as a supplement and you heard me say creatine phosphate. There you go, there is the connection. Okay, so that's the phosphagen system.

Philip Pape: 5:39

The second is the glycolytic system and this is like your body's intermediate power source, right? It kicks in when the phosphagen system is depleted, which, as we said, can happen very quickly, and then it provides energy for about 30 seconds to two minutes of high intensity effort. So think of activities like lifting weights for more than just a couple reps, you know, I mean bodybuilding ranges eight to 12, but even less than that. Even when you're doing sets of three by five, you know, getting to that second or third set, even when you have some rest, you're depleting your ATP by that point and hitting the glycolytic system. And definitely cardio, medium and high intensity cardio, especially HIIT, high intensity interval training, are definitely going to tap into these. You know people who do CrossFit bootcamps, conditioning, any of that stuff. It's glycolytic workouts. I mean, I've used the term glycolytic often in that sense and you can almost you can hear the source of the word, or the root of the word glyco is the same as glycogen or glucose, right, it's the form of activity that uses glycogen.

Philip Pape: 6:51

And then the third system is the oxidative system. This is your aerobic system. This is your body's base load power, the slow, steady energy provider that can keep you going for hours. It's the primary system used in low intensity, long duration activities like steady state cardio, walking, endurance training, right, marathons, long distance runs.

Philip Pape: 7:14

Now going back to the title of this episode about ignoring one particular system, many fitness enthusiasts like us, especially those focused on strength training like us, or even those who are very much into HIIT, often neglect the oxidative system, right, the aerobic system. They think that the long, slow cardio anything beyond walking, right, running, things like that, biking is it going to kill your gains if you do too much of it, right? Or it's not necessary. I mean, I've probably been accused of saying things like you don't need cardio to lose fat, right, or you don't need cardio to hit your goals, or you don't need cardio to hit your goals. And that is true from a body composition perspective. But it is not the entire picture, because cardio can be beneficial for many other things, including your lifting, including your level of fitness and your performance, even if your primary goal is strength or power.

Philip Pape: 8:12

And I'm coming to realize this more and more and the more experts I talk to on the show, and the more my own experience plays this out and the more of the evidence supports it, I am becoming a more advocate of this hybrid, or at least concurrent, approach to your training if you want to be well-rounded, and here's why. First of all, a well-developed aerobic system well-developed what we call work capacity helps you recover faster between sets and between workouts, so both Both not losing your breath and getting gassed while you're working out which means you could actually get all the sets and all the reps but also even between workouts, so you can recover and then you can train more effectively and even more frequently. Right, and so the better your aerobic fitness, the more work you can do in your sessions before the fatigue sets in. It's also beneficial for cardiovascular health. I think we know this, but I definitely have heard the argument made that you just don't need anything beyond walking for cardiovascular health, and there's evidence that shows that. On one hand, if you walk a lot, it's almost as healthy for longevity and heart health as doing any other form of cardio for that volume. But there is a little bit of an edge to the medium or higher intensity cardio, so it's worth knowing that it could give you a slight advantage from heart health perspective. And then, of course, when we talk about burning fat, you know losing fat. The oxidative system is pretty effective at using fat for fuel and that helps you with body composition changes. I wouldn't read too much into this, other than the fact that if you are athletic, if you are not being sedentary, if you are both walking and using some forms of cardio and you're lifting, you're going to get a. You're going to have an easier time burning fat, and there's some kind of hidden reasons for that related to our oxidative system.

Philip Pape: 9:57

Now, if you neglect any one of the systems, it's going to hold you back from the others, even if your priority is lifting. So, for example, if you, if you, obviously, if you neglect the phosphagen system and you're only doing endurance work, then you're going to lack the strength and power that comes from lifting weights, and we don't ever do that on this show. So I don't know if anybody listening is like, yeah, that's what I want to do, just cardio. Moving to the next one, which is more realistic, neglecting the glycolytic system. Now, this bridges the gap between the intermediate and the long-term energy needs. And so if you, if you neglect this like, let's say, you're only doing I don't know sets of one and you're not doing very much volume with your lifts. And then you sit around all day, you're at a desk job, you do some walking, but pretty much not anything else. Maybe you're not really tapping into that system and then you don't really have that power, endurance, right, just the ability to sustain a really strong effort, explosive or high intensity effort for a moderate duration we're not even talking a long time, just a moderate amount of time. And then, if you neglect the oxidative or aerobic system, that's going to impact the other things we mentioned the recovery, work capacity, health, you know, and your ability to. Then, you know, show up in the gym and get it all done despite the fact that, yeah, you're tapping into the phosphagen system. Get it all done despite the fact that, yeah, you're tapping into the phosphagen system. So if you want to design your training to tap into all of the system effectively, you could do it efficiently and not feel like you have to spend more time working out or do twice as much of everything.

Philip Pape: 11:27

Let's break it down. Here's one way to think about it. So, for the phosphagen system, as long as you have some heavy lifts or explosive movements you know, like power cleans, Olympic lifts, but I'm really a fan of just heavy lifts, right, straight up strength training in your training, right. One to five rep max right. For a lot of you that's going to be trending toward the three to five. Maybe one compound lift in your session is in that range. Okay, even if it gets up to like four to six or even up to eight, you're, you're close enough, you're in that range. You know. Going heavy, close to failure, um. But it could also include some sprinting, shuttle runs, right. Uh. So even some of the athletic things that are involved in various bootcamp type things and, yes, even CrossFit, right, those might be in there, but primarily it's lifting heavy.

Philip Pape: 12:13

So that's one Number two for the glycolytic system. Just having some moderate to high intensity work for a couple minutes in your lifting sessions themselves will pretty much tap into the glycolytic system. You really don't have to add anything for that. And hold that thought, because there is a way to get a two for one out of this that I'm going to talk about toward the end of the episode. Stay tuned, stay tuned for that. Really, it's super exciting. Something I recently learned, or I was recently reminded of, that's going to help you here.

Philip Pape: 12:46

So that's a glycolytic system, making sure your workouts are intense, and then the oxidative system is where you would fit in some steady state cardio. And I really like the idea from Brian Borstein of what's called exercise snacks, for example, running up the stairs for a minute and doing that three or four times a day. Or your traditional cardio, you know, 20 minutes on a bike, pushing a prowler or sled. Try to do something concentric that doesn't involve the eccentric, uh pattern of the movement, eccentric meaning the opposite of a contraction. So, for example, running does include an eccentric, whereas biking does not. Right, pushing a sled does not.

Philip Pape: 13:25

So a balanced weekly routine is probably going to look like three or four days heavy lifting, moderate to heavy lifting, and then one or two days where you fit in a little extra cardio workout and potentially you don't even have to do any hit. And the reason you don't have to do any hit and I kind of alluded to this just a bit ago is and thank you to Cody McBroom for bringing this up on our recent episode, which was episode 220 about hybrid training he was reminding me that heavy compound lifts, like squats and deadlifts, actually offer many of the same benefits as high intensity interval training because they tap into both the phosphagen and glycolytic system, like HIIT does, and so you're getting the cardiovascular benefit from your strength training anyway. And anybody who lifts heavy, myself included, will notice this. If they're wearing like a wearable and you notice, your heart rate cranks up, and for me, the heart rate gets just about as high as it did when I was doing one of those insane, hateful CrossFit workouts Hateful as in, I hated them. Same thing. So I'm like I'd rather deadlift to get the same benefit, and you can too.

Philip Pape: 14:34

So number one and two phosphagen and glycolytic are basically handled by your lifting, and then all you have to do is throw some extra cardio in there and you're probably good. You probably don't need much hit in there unless you want to, which it can be fun for some people, for sure. Now the benefits of all of this, if you haven't gotten it already from what we've talked about, is at the systematic level of combining all of these things and doing it all right. Level of combining all of these things and doing it all right, just making it all fit into your week at a reasonable level is yes, you're going to increase strength because you're lifting heavy. That's that. That should be fairly obvious. But you're also increasing your work capacity by training the other systems, thereby allowing you to do more volume over time and actually hit all your reps and sets and actually train hard, close to failure, which is crucial for progressive overload and thus long-term gains.

Philip Pape: 15:25

The second thing is, because you're training the oxidative system, you're going to have better stamina, right, and you're also going to have better ability to handle and recover from all of the work, which then translates to stamina and all other activities. Number three you're going to have better recovery between both sets and between workouts, allowing you to train more effectively and frequently and also get less injured. You're going to have better power output, the ability to produce force quickly, which helps with strength and endurance activities like sports. So, yes, even if you are a runner, strengthening your legs and having more power output and having a better strength to weight ratio is going to help. And then, last but not least, improved body composition, because different energy systems preferentially use different fuel sources, and now you're optimizing your body's ability to use carbs, fats, use everything in the best way possible as fuel. We don't have to like try to bias one or the other, go keto to become a fat burner. Any of this other weird stuff that the evidence shows isn't very effective. Anyway, it all washes out You're better off being a well-rounded athlete. So if you train all three energy systems, you're improving your fitness. But not just that, you're improving your energy production capabilities.

Philip Pape: 16:42

So, going back to our analogy, think about this A well-designed power grid can smoothly transition between the different energy sources to meet the change in demand from consumers. Similarly, in your body, by training all your energy systems, you're creating a more robust, flexible power grid in your body. That means whether you're lifting heavy, whether you're running a long distance, whether you're just going about your daily life, your body will be primed to meet the energy demands efficiently and effectively. So you're not just building a better body, you're engineering a more capable, resilient version of you, maybe like, kind of like, a cyborg. I don't know if you find that creepy or empowering, but the geeky thought that came to my head.

Philip Pape: 17:29

All right, as we wrap up, let's talk about the main points here. Your body has three main energy systems Phosphogen, glycolytic and oxidative. Each of them is suited for different types and durations of activity. If you neglect any one of these, do it at your own peril, especially the overlooked oxidative system, because it could hold back the other things, even if those things are the priority for you. So a balanced training approach is going to lead to improvement in strength and stamina. That all ties together, and now you have improved overall what we might call metabolic flexibility.

Philip Pape: 18:04

Balanced training approach is going to lead to improvement in strength and stamina. That all ties together, and now you have improved overall what we might call metabolic flexibility. I'm not a huge fan of that term, necessarily, but you get the idea. Now we're not trying to overcomplicate your training. We're just trying to make sure you don't neglect any one thing, and you can do this all within a similar amount of training, because most of it is lifting, but then a little bit of cardio sprinkled in and you should be pretty good. And of training, because most of it is lifting, but then a little bit of cardio sprinkled in and you should be pretty good. And now you're going to have some improved performance. You're going to have better results. You can have more efficient path to your goals and, honestly, that to me is more efficient when you're able to recover, rest better, use your fuel better, eat more, etc.

Philip Pape: 18:33

All right, if you found value in today's episode and want to learn more about balancing your training between lifting and cardio, don't forget about the Cardio for Lifters guide that I mentioned earlier. To get your free copy, head over to witsandweightscom slash email or click the link in the show notes to join my list. Once you're on the list, just reply and say hey, give me that guide, bro, the Cardio for Lifters guide, and I'll send it right over. Definitely tell me what the guide is, or else I'll just have to guess, but I'm pretty good about guessing too. Again, go to witsandweightscom slash email or click the link in the show notes. It will help you optimize some things that you may not be considering, and so definitely get the guide. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember that you are the engineer of your own fitness and your energy systems. This is Philip Pape, and you've been listening to Wits and Weights. I'll talk to you next time.

Carbs Aren't the Problem (Keto, Paleo, Bioenergetic, and Pro-Metabolic Diets) | Ep 224

Do you find yourself torn between low-carb diets and pro-carb philosophies? Are you frustrated by conflicting advice about carbs and wondering what’s right for your body? Should you follow keto, paleo, or maybe a high-carb approach?

Philip (@witsandweights) dives into the great carbohydrate debate and breaks down why carbs aren’t the enemy—or the magic cure—when it comes to your health and physique. He explores the truth behind the carb confusion, reveals why extreme approaches miss the bigger picture, and shares how you can build a sustainable, personalized nutrition strategy that fits your unique goals. Learn how to cut through the noise of diet trends, embrace the fundamentals, and take control of your eating habits without stress or anxiety.

🍽️ To learn how to use a flexible approach to dieting where food isn’t demonized and you can eat carbs (if you want)… for fat loss, muscle building, health, and longevity… Download my free Nutrition 101 for Body Composition Guide or go to witsandweights.com/free

Today, you’ll learn all about:

2:36 Overview of popular carb-related diets
4:48 The three positives and three limitations of restrictive diets
7:37 Why focusing solely on carbs misses the big picture
11:45 How to critically evaluate nutrition claims
21:07 Why moderate to high-carb intake supports muscle growth and performance
25:10 Recap: Carbs and the bigger picture of diet sustainability
27:06 Outro

Episode resources:

• Download my free Nutrition 101 for Body Composition Guide or go to witsandweights.com/free

Related Episode:

• More Carbs, More Muscle (Why Low-Carb and Keto Are Keeping You Skinny Fat) | Ep 126

Episode summary:

Welcome to a comprehensive exploration of carbohydrates, their role in nutrition, and the myths that often surround them. In this episode of Wits & Weights, we delve deep into the world of carbs, dissecting the conflicting advice from various dietary philosophies and providing you with the tools to craft a personalized eating plan that suits your unique needs. Whether you're torn between keto, paleo, or pro-metabolic diets, this blog post will help you navigate the carb wars with clarity and confidence.

Carbohydrates have long been a topic of debate in the nutrition world. From the low-carb advocates of the keto diet to the pro-carb supporters of the bioenergetic camp, the conflicting advice can be overwhelming. In this episode, we aim to clear up the confusion by breaking down the philosophies of these popular diets, highlighting their common positive aspects, and acknowledging their limitations.

One of the key takeaways from this episode is the importance of personalized nutrition. The phrase "one-size-fits-all" doesn't belong in the dietary lexicon. Your genetic makeup, gut microbiome, and lifestyle all impact your food choices and health outcomes. By understanding these factors, you can craft a diet that aligns with your health goals and tastes.

We begin by examining the keto, paleo, and pro-metabolic diets. The keto diet, known for its low-carb, high-fat approach, claims that carbs are essentially poison, causing blood sugar spikes and insulin resistance. The paleo diet focuses on foods that our ancestors supposedly ate, eliminating grains, legumes, and usually dairy. On the other hand, the pro-metabolic camp views carbs, even fruit sugars, as essential for energy and health.

Despite their differences, these diets share some common positive aspects. They all emphasize whole, unprocessed foods and generally recognize the importance of food quality. However, they also have significant limitations. These diets are highly restrictive, making them difficult to sustain long-term. They can foster unhealthy relationships with food and eating, and they lack flexibility, making them challenging to adhere to in real-life settings.

The individual variability and context-dependent nature of nutrition cannot be overstated. Your responses to different foods are influenced by your genetic makeup, gut microbiome, activity levels, and health status. This makes generalized dietary advice problematic. Specific diets like ketogenic or high-carb can be beneficial for certain individuals but are not universally optimal. The dangers of oversimplification in nutrition advice and the tendency to cherry-pick evidence to support specific viewpoints are also highlighted.

As we dive deeper into the role of carbohydrates in nutrition, we address common misconceptions. There's a universal agreement on the benefits of eating whole foods, the importance of fruits and vegetables, and the necessity of adequate protein and hydration. However, myths about carb intake for menopausal women and the realities of keto diets are debunked. Carbs are essential for energy and mood regulation, and avoiding them can lead to nutritional deficiencies.

We also discuss the importance of context in nutritional guidance. For instance, a ketogenic diet might be beneficial for someone with certain neurological conditions but not for everyone. It's crucial to consider the credibility and conflicts of interest of the source of nutritional advice and to seek nuanced, context-aware guidance.

Experimentation and listening to your body are key. Does your diet help you feel great, perform well, and achieve your health goals? Can you maintain it for the rest of your life? If not, it's time to make changes. Personalized nutrition is about finding what works for you and your unique body.

In this episode, we also explore the benefits of carbs for muscle growth, performance, recovery, hormone function, gut health, satiety, and cognitive function. Research shows that bodybuilders in a caloric surplus gain significantly more lean mass on a moderate to high-carb diet compared to a lower keto diet. Carbohydrates enhance both endurance and high-intensity exercise performance, support post-training recovery, and play a crucial role in hormone function and gut health.

The demonization of fruit is another topic we address. Whole fruits provide fiber, vitamins, and other essential nutrients. The demonization of fruit is unfounded, and whole fruits are one of the best foods we have. While fruit juice can be enjoyed in moderation, it's important to be mindful of its high sugar concentration and calorie density.

Vegetables, both above-ground and below-ground, are highly nutritional and should be included in a balanced diet. The idea of avoiding certain vegetables unless you have specific issues with them is misguided. A healthy dietary pattern should be sustainable, flexible, and enjoyable.

As we wrap up, it's important to emphasize that carbs are not inherently good or bad. They are a tool that, when used appropriately, can support your health, performance, and physique goals. The debate over carbs misses the bigger picture of diet quality and individual needs. Be wary of absolutist claims and oversimplified advice, and always consider your personal context when evaluating nutritional guidance.

Focus on the fundamentals of nutrition, such as eating whole foods, getting enough protein and fiber, and staying hydrated. Experiment with your diet to find what works for you and prioritize sustainability over short-term fixes. Nutrition should support your health, performance, and enjoyment of life.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

Should you eat low-carb or high-carb? Keto says carbs are poison. Paleo says grains are the enemy. The bioenergetic and pro-metabolic camps insist that carbs are essential, even fruit juice. This leaves you wondering what the heck should I actually eat? Today, we are exposing why the obsession with carbs misses the bigger picture. You'll discover the nuances behind popular diets, learn how to critically evaluate those nutrition claims and find an approach that works for you and your unique body and goals. This episode will clear up any confusion regarding carbs so you can breathe a sigh of relief, enjoy your food and focus on what actually matters for your health and physique.

Philip Pape: 0:51

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're tackling a topic that has caused probably more confusion than almost any other the great carbohydrate debate, aka carb wars the phantom menace. I just had to do it, guys. I received a really good question from a long-time listener, chris H. She knows who she is and it really captures the frustration that many people feel when trying to navigate conflicting nutritional advice in general. Chris wrote in about feeling torn between opposing camps the low-carb keto approach versus the pro-metabolic bioenergetic approach. And she said and I'm paraphrasing here, quote this dichotomy has bothered me for years. I've oscillated between the two philosophies and basically gotten nowhere. In fact, it can be a dangerous place because I can end up high carb and high fat at the same time. So I think many of you can relate to Chris's struggle. I can as well, from my personal experience, and today we're going to break down why these contradictory viewpoints exist, how to critically evaluate claims and, I think, most importantly, how to find an approach that actually works for you. That's what we're here for. And, of course, if you want to get a head start on finding the exact personalized approach to nutrition that works with your body, download my free Nutrition 101 for Body Composition guide using the link in my show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash free so many of these episodes. I love to put together a guide, or use one of my existing guides and give it to you, because I think it is a great companion to the show. So, again, click the link in the show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash free to get my Nutrition 101 for Body Composition guide.

Philip Pape: 2:36

All right, let's start by setting the landscape, laying out that landscape of the philosophies that Chris specifically mentions, because we can spend three hours talking about all sorts of diets. There are a million of them. They're infinite permutations, but she mentioned a few in particular that we'll just go there and we'll evaluate them and we'll talk about the principles of evaluating them. First we have the keto low carb camp and this camp, which I'm very familiar with because I was in it for years, claims that carbs are essentially poison. I know an actual poison it's called alcohol but they claim carbs are poison, causing blood sugar spikes and insulin resistance. Instead, they promote high fat intake, moderate protein and often cases traditional keto is actually low protein and then very minimal carbs. We're talking sub 100 grams, if not much lower than that, even when you're not dieting and honestly, they don't even distinguish necessarily dieting phases. It's just eat. This way you're going to lose weight, and they often demonize fruit, starchy vegetables and grains.

Philip Pape: 3:40

Then we have the paleo approach and again raising my hand, because I did paleo for years while I was doing CrossFit and it focuses on foods that our ancestors supposedly ate. So you eliminate grains, legumes and usually dairy for the pure paleo. There's always modifications. It definitely allows for some more carbs than keto, right In the form of the whole foods that are included, but it's still relatively low carb, naturally.

Philip Pape: 4:06

Then we have the pro-metabolic and bioenergetic camp, based on the work of Ray Peet. Now, I want to give a caveat here, because I had a gentleman on who talked about the bioenergetic way of eating and it was really more of just a flexible approach that's aligned with giving you a lot of energy, and that is not what I'm talking about, and that's why I'm not mentioning his name, because I don't want to call him out and tie him to this. This is a camp that views carbs like even fruit sugars, which I love fruit and I love the sugar that's from fruit, and they call that the stuff of life, and so they promote high carb intake, including fruit juice, and then they avoid PUFAs and they avoid most, I think, above-ground vegetables. There's always these interesting idiosyncrasies.

Philip Pape: 4:51

Now, at first glance, all of these seem like completely different diets, completely at odds, but if you lay them on top of each other, you're going to find a few areas where they agree, and so I want to highlight three of the I'll call positive areas that they agree first, and then three of the drawbacks or limitations. So, as far as the positives. All of them emphasize whole unprocessed foods Great, love it. All of them generally hate anything manufactured like industrial seed oils. Okay, that's when I start to have a little bit of pushback on, because you're starting to restrict, right. And then all of them generally recognize the importance of food quality, whether they come to it from an ancestral lens or some other lens. And then there are three. Let's just be nice and call them limitations.

Philip Pape: 5:33

And the first big one, as I've always talked about from the beginning of the show very early on, is they are highly restrictive in nature. All of these diets eliminate entire food groups or entire macronutrients, and then that makes them very difficult to sustain long-term. That is the key problem. If you're using it for a quick fix, it might make sense, but we don't want to eat that way. And the other thing is you may have nutritional deficiencies if you don't very carefully plan for that and really get obsessive about combining all the foods in the right way. The second big limitation and we know this from the research is the potential for disordered eating. Any strict rules and any kind of food fears or fear-mongering promoted by these diets can and likely will foster some sort of unhealthy relationship with food and eating.

Philip Pape: 6:23

So I posted something in threads the other day that said I'm enjoying my chemically laden I think. It was like oatmeal, peanut butter, eggs and banana for breakfast. I was being sarcastic. And then I gave a list of all the chemicals in bananas because, guess what? All food is chemical. That's what it is. It's organic, we eat it and therefore it's made of compounds. These are chemicals. And so I think somebody replied and said oh don't, you know, bananas have been genetically modified for years, so even those are blah, blah, blah. And I'm like dude, you just proved my point.

Philip Pape: 6:51

Like the fear mongering out there about you know what's in food, even even what we think of as natural foods, cause people to get so neurotic and just outright scared to death about food, even like real food, like fruit. It's insane. So that's the second one. And then the third one is the lack of flexibility, which I guess you can tie to the first one about food restriction. But what I'm talking about here is that these approaches don't account for you, for your individual things that you like, your preferences, cultural foods, social situations, and so they're even more challenging to adhere to in real life settings. And then you become the weird person saying you can't eat this, can't eat this, can't eat this, can't eat this. Life is miserable. We don't want life to be miserable. I'm sorry. You don't have to be miserable to hit your goals and have the best body composition ever and be happy.

Philip Pape: 7:38

So these limitations highlight why focusing solely on a macro like carbs, or adhering strictly to a named diet with very rigid rules misses the bigger picture of overall health. A healthy dietary pattern, sustainable and flexible nutrition that you can actually stick with still meet your goals. So why is there this big divide on carbs then? Because I still want to address the carb issue for Chris, and I think this gets to the heart of why focusing solely on carbs misses the point. So breaking it down.

Philip Pape: 8:11

Number one the individual variability. I mentioned this before. Our genetic makeup, our gut, microbiome, activity levels and health status all influence how we respond to different foods, and so what works for one person just may not work for the other. And that goes for things that do sometimes get demonized, like I've heard people influencers demonizing broccoli, which on its face, is silly, until you find out there are some people that have a bad reaction to broccoli and then you're like, okay, cool, it's not good for them. But to make generalized statements is where the problem is when it comes to how individualized we are. Number two context matters always.

Philip Pape: 8:51

Ketogenic diet might be beneficial for someone with certain neurological conditions. We know it's great for people with epilepsy. It might be beneficial for someone who just really hates all carbs, which I don't know. If that person exists, but you know, if you claim to be, I would love to hear it, not claim to be. I didn't mean to gaslight you out there if you hate carbs, but I haven't met the person. I'm going to lose some followers with that, maybe, but I think they're the people that wouldn't be following the show anyway. But even though it can be beneficial for some and you can lose weight and you can XYZ, and it can give you some results, it doesn't mean it's optimal for everyone. That's it right. Any one diet or a strategy I use with a client is great for that client and may not be great for almost any other client. Same thing for you when you're evaluating an approach, coming up with a personalized approach. So, similarly, a moderate to high carb diet, which I'm a huge fan of. For people who care about performance, endurance, strength, being athletic, building muscle, right, it's great for all those people. But it could be problematic for someone with, I don't know, insulin resistance, right? Who's diabetic, for example? Not that people who are diabetic like type 1 diabetes not that they can't eat carbs. But you don't necessarily want to just slam right into a high carb diet, especially when you're not accounting for the timing of when those carbs are eaten, whether macros are in balance, whether they're active, whether they're lifting weights, et cetera, right, so, yeah, a low carb diet could be indicated for someone.

Philip Pape: 10:14

The third thing here is that these things get freaking, oversimplified, right, nutrition is nuanced, and I say that knowing that on this show, I try to simplify is nuanced, and I say that knowing that on this show, I try to simplify, but I try not to oversimplify it. I may do it, okay, I admit it, we're all humans. But I'm talking about like statements carbs are bad or carbs are essential, right, and I know I did a muscle or a muscle. I did an episode called more carbs, more muscle. And, effectively, if I had summed it up in one sentence, I would have said carbs are essential, but I didn't say that. That's the point, I didn't just say it that way. I said, let's get into all the details about why this could be helpful in this context. And so these oversimplifications ignore again the vast differences between, say, types of carbs, how they interact with other nutrients, with individual physiology, with your meal timing, with what the heck you're doing on a daily basis Are you lifting weights or not?

Philip Pape: 11:10

And then the fourth thing here is cherry picking evidence, and we're all guilty of this. I've done it myself, and I realize that if I'm trying to answer a question and then I have a hypothesis in my head, and then I go to try to find studies that support the hypothesis, ah, I've just broken the chain and gone down the cherry picking route. It's very hard as a human being, right? There are logical fallacies that come up all the time in our heads and when we interact, and any camp can point to studies supporting their views. But science is about the totality of evidence, the strength, the proportion of the evidence, the recency of it, in some cases, not any one single study. So how do we navigate this without you having to become an expert in reading studies?

Philip Pape: 11:51

And so I'm going to give you a few strategies that I learned when I did my PhD, which, by the way, is not in nutrition science. It was in organization and management, with a specialization in leadership that's a mouthful In talking to experts on the show, in talking to fellow coaches, in talking to other researchers. Here are some strategies. If I were to sum it up in this episode, the first one is be skeptical of just about everything, but especially the oversimplified, absolutist claims A nutrient is always bad or this is the key to health for everyone. That is a red flag.

Philip Pape: 12:26

Number two consider the source. Is the person giving advice qualified to do so? Not necessarily a piece of paper or credential, but some sort of verifiable expertise, time in the trenches, experience, whatever. And do they have conflicts of interest? Are they selling you something? All of us coaches are selling something. The thing is to do it in an authentic way that completely aligns, where what you're selling also provides the benefit that you're delivering on and you're not selling something else. And then bait and switch into the reality of it. And then, number three, look for the nuance we talked about things being in context to be nuanced. Any good advice and this is why I like podcasts instead of reels and short form, which I do those things, I do, those things, I do them, but that's where I get all the trolls, because they don't have the full picture, and so on this show, I can go on and on and on, and if you don't like my voice you can just stop or unfollow. And so good advice acknowledges complexity, it acknowledges individuality and differences between people.

Jenny: 13:30

Hi, my name is Jenny and I just wanted to say a big thank you to Philip Pape of Wits and Weights for offering his free 50-minute nutritional assessment. During that time he gave me really good tools on how I can further my health and fitness goals. He asked really great questions and stayed true to his offer of no sales pitch. I have since applied these things and gotten really close to my health goals and my weight goals, and now I'm able to flip over and work on my strength and my muscle conditioning using a lot of the things he offers in his podcasts, and I just am very grateful for his positive inspiration and encouragement for all of our health. Thank you, philip.

Philip Pape: 14:16

The last thing here is to focus on I'll call it, the fundamentals or the principles. You know, despite all these debates, there is broad agreement on some universal things, like eating mostly whole foods is better than eating a bunch of ultra processed foods. Like eating fruits and vegetables caveat, some people think fruits are bad still, but I think that's ridiculous. But again, maybe that's me giving an absolutist claim. So fair point. But I think people agree vegetables, at least very few. Well, maybe the carnivore people say that oh man, you see what kind of trap you can get into. On this, adequate protein, I hope, is maybe broad agreement. It definitely the science supports it. So there might be people saying that you can live a long life on low protein, based on some inadequate rat studies. I did a whole episode on that nonsense. And then you know, staying hydrated, right, like simple things like that, universal things as well as energy balance and the value of muscle mass and so on. So there's overlap, but we have to be careful on the corners. And then, of course, I want you to experiment and listen to your body, because guess what the best evidence is? Your evidence N equals one sample size of one right. Does the way you're eating. Does your diet help you feel great, perform well, get those reps in the gym, recover without feeling massively sore, getting the sleep you want right? Do you achieve your health goals eating the way you're eating, and can you do that the rest of your life? Eat that way.

Philip Pape: 15:39

Now I've gone on so many tangents, but I think it's worthwhile here to do that because I feel strongly about this. This is the philosophy of this whole show and how we work with clients, and I want to address some specific points from Chris's question. So, chris, hopefully you're still listening. The first one is carbs for menopausal women, because she gave me a lot more detail in her email that I didn't share, but she mentioned that her doctor said menopausal women don't need carbs. This is like the new carb myth that needs to die. It's not just that carbs are bad, but somehow, once you hit menopause, or even sometimes pre-menopause, carbs are bad for you in that context. So it's not, oh, we love carbs, unless you're a menopausal woman. This is another nonsense, oversimplification, because hormonal changes sure, they affect your metabolism, they affect your belly fat, they affect everything. Great, carbs still play the same role, they still do the same thing. They still give you energy. They can help regulate your mood. Sometimes they help with those hormones, they're great for gut health, they're great for energy performance, and on and on and on.

Philip Pape: 16:40

Now you're going to find that I do have a carb bias in this episode, even though I said carbs aren't the issue. The way I'm going to defend that is to suggest that I think cutting out carbs is the problem when done indiscriminately, whereas including carbs at some level and having a balanced approach seems more reasonable to me. It doesn't mean you have to be high carb, is my point. Carbs are still playing an important role. You don't have to cut them out, and so the quality might matter, adjusting the quantity based on what you actually need, like if you're in a dieting phase, if you're in a calorie deficit, you're not going to need that many carbs, nor do you want that many, because you need a lot of protein, you need enough fat and your calories are low. So, guess what? The carbs end up being 150, 100, in some cases, 50 grams. Guess what? Now we're kind of in keto territory, not because keto is so hot, but because that's what the data is telling we need right now.

Philip Pape: 17:29

The second one you mentioned was keto for weight loss. So, yes, keto can help you lose weight, because what it does is it cuts out so many foods and you're eating almost all whole foods that you can't possibly eat enough to even be at maintenance calories relative to how you were eating before, so you're going to lose weight. It's still the fundamental principle of energy balance for weight loss and that can be achieved on any diet. It can be achieved on an all-pizza diet. It's not the best way to go, just like keto is not the best way to go. How about a balanced approach that you enjoy that works for you? I think that's all I need to say on that one.

Philip Pape: 18:05

Then we have fruit and fruit juice. The demonization of fruit. That is unfounded. Okay, there is no evidence to support that. So when people talk about that, it's ridiculous. Whole fruits are one of the best foods we have, and I can't tell you how many clients that I've met who that is the thing that they haven't been eating. And as soon as I say, well, why don't we just have some fruit? They're like my God, yeah, you're right, and a lot of them. Yeah, I know you say we should eat fruit. I've just been demonizing it for years. But whole fruits provide fiber, vitamins, a bunch of compounds that you don't even see on the nutrition label. They fill you up, they hydrate you, they're sweet and delicious, so they're great for sweet cravings. You know what I'm trying to say.

Philip Pape: 18:44

Now, fruit juice specifically. This is the weird one about one of those diets that say you should drink a bunch of fruit juice. I mean, it's just a more concentrated version of the fruit in terms of the sugars and super calorie dense, and you're eliminating a whole bunch of the good stuff in the fruit, like the fiber, and in some cases you know the pectins or you know different compounds in skin. If you're getting rid of the skin, depending on what fruit we're talking about, does that mean you have to eliminate fruit juice? Of course not. If you want to enjoy it in moderation, go for it. You know what we did for our kids. They didn't have fruit juice until they were quite a bit older. When they were young, they mainly had water and milk and things like that, but we just watered it down significantly, and if you don't get used to having that high level of sugar, then it's cool. And I noticed that there are name brands of fruit juice that are sold now, especially the ones marketed at kids that actually do have much lower sugar concentration. So it's simple, things like that.

Philip Pape: 19:39

Now, if someone's claiming that you should drink fruit juice and you should drink it like pure full-on calorie dense, that's kind of what I have a problem with, because again it's saying that there's this magic thing, this thing you have to do. But if you just enjoy it and it fits in your plan and it gives you energy and it works with your carbs and calorie macros, I mean fruit juice could be a great pre and post workout, why not? Then we get to vegetables. Okay, both above ground and below ground vegetables are highly nutritional. I don't know why you have to discriminate against one or the other, unless you have specific issues with those specific digestive issues, specific allergies. There's no reason to avoid leafy greens or cruciferous veggies, I don't know.

Philip Pape: 20:17

Just, I shake my head at some of this stuff. Do you get the message, the big message here? So if you're listening to this podcast and you're like low carb all the way, intermittent fasting all the way, something like that, and I'm making you mad, I want you to lean into that anger and ask yourself why that makes you mad. What is it that you're taking personal that I'm offending in you, because the reframe, the flip on that is maybe, just maybe, I have more options at my disposal for a healthy diet than I thought and that's empowering, and maybe, just maybe, I should experiment with that and not let other people tell me what my body can handle. Let me figure that out, all right. So I do want to cap this episode off on why I love carbs for certain contexts, because it is kind of a carb episode and I agree, carbs are not the problem, right, it's all the other things that I mentioned. But for those curious, especially those looking to build muscle and improve performance, moderate to high carb intake can be incredibly beneficial, and I wanted to say that to assuage your fears of carbs, if you've been beaten down by the message that carbs are bad somehow. So I just want to break down the evidence of can carbs be beneficial for certain people, of course.

Philip Pape: 21:29

Number one muscle growth. The first one is related to muscle growth. Research shows clearly that, for example, bodybuilders in a caloric surplus will gain significantly more lean mass on a moderate to high carb diet when compared to a lower keto diet period. They've done this over and over again and it's clear as much as like five times the increase. We're talking about trained bodybuilders, not even just newbies. Okay, so that's muscle growth. Then we have performance Carbohydrate, which is tied with glycogen, glucose right Enhances your both endurance and also the available intensity in high intensity exercise, and I don't just mean cardio, I actually mean lifting weights. You can experiment this for yourself Train fasted, don't have any carbs for dinner the night before, and then work out in the morning.

Philip Pape: 22:11

Then, a couple of days later, have dinner that has carbs and then have carbs for your pre-workout, like, really load up on carbs. See if there's a difference. If you tell me, hey, I didn't notice a difference or I did better fasted, then heck, there's your data. Like train fast, that's fine, that's cool, I have no problem with it. Number three and, by the way, you know, people are going to see this video on YouTube and I'm going to get some troll comments and it will be people that didn't listen to this point.

Philip Pape: 22:35

Number three is recovery. Carbs play a crucial role in post-training recovery. So I just talked about eating beforehand as a pre-workout, but after you work out, it replenishes the muscle glycogen. It enhances muscle protein synthesis when combined with protein, because carbs are anti-catabolic, that means they prevent breakdown of muscle tissue. That is so powerful. That's such a great reason to latch on to how carbs might be helpful if you're not getting as many carbs right now.

Philip Pape: 23:01

Number four is hormone function. We don't talk about that a lot, but adequate carb intake has been shown to support, for example, thyroid function and leptin levels, which then regulates your metabolism and your appetite. Oh, are you saying that higher carbs may actually help my metabolism and make me fuller? Because I heard that carbs. You know you get so hungry when you eat carbs. Well, yeah, maybe when you eat pizza and donuts, but I don't know about you.

Philip Pape: 23:30

If I eat like vegetables and potatoes and you know brown rice, I mean they're pretty darn filling for as little calories as they have. Tastes good too, and they mix well with stuff. And then regulating your metabolism as well, I mean that's awesome. So when the menopausal woman on low carb thing comes up, question it. Then we have gut health, which I'm becoming more and more aware and a fan of discussing, because the best way to improve your gut microbiome is fiber, having a lot of fiber, have a lot diversity of fiber, and guess where fiber is? It's in carb-rich foods. So kind of opening your ability to eat fruit and vegetables and starches or not starches grains, so I mean you can tolerate them, especially whole grains. All of those have tons of fiber. There you go. Now you support your gut health as well.

Philip Pape: 24:22

Then we have things like satiety and adherence to your diet, because now fiber, which is in carb sources, also increases your feelings of fullness, potentially improving long-term adherence to your diet. Long-term, you know, happiness that I don't have to be miserable while I'm on my diet. And the last thing about carbs is cognitive function. So, interestingly, here and the keto people aren't going to like this one either. Actually, when I did paleo, I remember learning this the brain is the biggest hog for glucose, right? We know this. The brain preferentially uses glucose for fuel and that could impact your cognitive performance, your mood, and the argument goes well. But it only needs so much and your body can produce it. Therefore, because carbs are not essential, you don't need to consume them. You're good to go. I don't know about you. I don't want to be at the bare minimum Like. I want to flood my body with what it needs and then some so that I can perform. Take care of that brain and then take care of the muscles. Take care of the body. Eat the amount of carbs you need is what it comes down to. Carbs aren't inherently good or bad, right, they are a tool that, when used appropriately, can support your health, your performance, your physique goals. So, as we wrap up, let's recap, as always, the main points. Number one the debate over carbs misses the big picture of diet quality and individual needs. Number two be wary, always be wary of claims, claims, claims, absolutist claims, oversimplified claims. People that are in the grocery store fear-mongering over the ingredients on a package, because the truth is usually a lot more nuanced. Number three consider context and personal factors when you evaluate advice, and we're talking about you yourself, your own context. Number four focus on fundamentals, like whole foods, getting enough protein and fiber. You can just start there. You don't even have to track your food. Number five experiment, experiment, experiment. Find what works. Add the carbs in, take the carbs out, see what happens. And the last thing is prioritize always sustainability over anything short-term. If you think with sustainability in mind, you'll also get the short-term result probably more efficiently and quickly, and you'll be able to keep going that way for the rest of your life.

Philip Pape: 26:37

Okay, so this was a passionate one for me, because nutrition should not be a source of stress or anxiety, like if you're getting angry on social media and trolling, and like posting comments about why this diet is better than this. That's stressful, Like I feel bad for you. I think nutrition is a positive thing that should support your health, that should support your performance and the enjoyment of life, and you should enjoy food. And if your current approach isn't doing that, it's okay to make changes. And I want to thank Chris again for inspiring this episode because her question was very thoughtful, very detailed and if you're struggling with similar confusion nutrition confusion even someone like her who, by the way, listens to the show, she's very well educated, she knows what the heck she's talking about and, if anything, she is a victim, like I am, of being so curious that you can overthink things because of the massive amount of information. So if you're struggling with something like that, I hope today's episode has given you some clarity and tools to move forward. I hope it hasn't added to the confusion.

Philip Pape: 27:41

But one way to simplify it is go to get my nutrition guide, because it's very simple and it's not that long my nutrition 101 for body composition guide. Use the link in my show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash free and in that guide you're going to learn the basics of macros, how to master your macros and the calories for the different phases fat loss, muscle gain, health. How to structure your workout nutrition, your meal timing for performance and recovery, and then just the overall philosophy of sustainability and, you know, not depriving yourself or cutting out the foods you love. Again, that's it. Click the link in my show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash free to download a copy of my Nutrition 101 for Body Composition Guide. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting some weights, and remember, when it comes to nutrition, the best approach and the amount of carbs is the one that works for you. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

The Crazy-Busy Parent's Guide to Training and Staying Fit with Bryan Boorstein | Ep 223

Are you a busy parent struggling to stay fit while juggling school runs, work, and family? Do you wonder if it's possible to reclaim your pre-kids fitness? How can you balance your health goals with parenthood?

Philip (https://www.instagram.com/witsandweights) chats with returning guest Bryan Boorstein, founder of Evolve Training Systems and Paragon Training Methods. Bryan,  a fitness coach with 25+ years of experience and a parent himself, shares how busy parents can maintain and surpass their fitness goals.

Bryan Boorstein, co-host of the Eat Train Prosper podcast, has helped everyone from elite athletes to everyday parents. His innovative methods focus on maximizing results, even with limited time, and provide practical advice for making fitness a sustainable and enjoyable part of life.

📱 Book a FREE 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment, designed to fine-tune your strategy, identify your #1 roadblock, and give you a personalized 3-step action plan in a fast-paced 15 minutes: https://witsandweights.com/free-call

Today, you’ll learn all about:

0:00 Intro
2:35 Finding time for fitness in a busy schedule
4:26 Creative workout ideas for parents
13:18 Optimizing training with limited sleep
17:34 Morning workout tips
19:30 Staying consistent with chaotic family life
21:55 Setting realistic fitness goals
27:58 Managing mental health through fitness as a parent
33:07 Brian’s fitness journey as a parent
49:50 Where to find Brian
50:36 Outro

Episode resources:

• Instagram: @bryanboorstein

• Paragon Training Methods: paragontrainingmethods.com

• Evolve Training Systems: evolvetrainingsystems.com

• Eat Train Prosper Podcast: eattrainprosper.com

• Dumbbell Quickie Program

Episode summary:

Parenthood is a life-changing experience that often leaves little time for personal health and fitness. However, maintaining a balanced fitness routine while managing the demands of a family is not only possible but essential for long-term well-being. In this episode of the Wits and Weights Podcast, fitness expert Brian Boorstein shares his insights on how busy parents can incorporate time-efficient workouts, optimize training, and improve sleep quality. His practical advice aims to help parents achieve their fitness goals without compromising family time or mental health.

One of the key topics discussed in the episode is the challenge of balancing fitness and parenthood. Boorstein emphasizes that busy parents can adapt their fitness plans to fit their demanding lifestyles and potentially even surpass their pre-kids performance levels. The first step, according to Boorstein, is to assess how you spend your time. By performing a time audit, parents can identify pockets of time that can be dedicated to fitness. This approach involves making sacrifices and prioritizing personal health, as being in good shape enhances your ability to be an active and energetic parent.

The episode also delves into the balance between exercise and sleep, two critical pillars of health that often clash for busy parents. Boorstein explains that while traditional longer workouts may be ideal for hypertrophy, frequent short sessions can be equally effective. He highlights the importance of sleep in recovery and performance, noting that poor sleep can disrupt glucose metabolism, but intense workouts can mitigate this. Practical tips for improving sleep quality include maintaining consistent sleep schedules, avoiding large meals before bed, and using sleep aids like blue light blockers and blackout curtains.

Another significant topic covered in the episode is the mental health challenges that come with parenthood. Boorstein discusses how exercise can be a powerful tool against stress and anxiety, often more effective than medications. He shares his personal experience with incorporating breathing exercises into his daily routine to alleviate stress and improve mental clarity. Teaching these practices to children can also help them develop healthy coping mechanisms. Boorstein's story of transitioning from hypertrophy-focused training to a more rounded routine that includes cardio serves as an inspiration for parents looking to integrate fitness into their busy lives.

The conversation also explores the emotional experience of parenthood and the importance of implementing lifestyle habits that enhance longevity and health span. Boorstein reflects on the profound shifts in perspective that come with reaching one's early forties and becoming a parent. He emphasizes how the birth of a child can elevate one's sense of purpose and long-term thinking. Practical challenges, such as ensuring children eat healthily, are also discussed. Even with a strong focus on exercise and mindset, nutrition remains a complex issue, exemplified by the struggle to balance a child's need for calories with the desire to provide healthy food options.

Boorstein's journey from hypertrophy to a balanced fitness routine highlights the importance of adapting to changing life circumstances. By building a comprehensive home gym just before the COVID-19 lockdown, he was able to continue his training regimen despite external challenges. His transition to shorter, more frequent workouts during his daughter's naps demonstrates the effectiveness of flexibility and planning in maintaining a consistent fitness routine. The shift to full-body workouts every two to three days allowed Boorstein to incorporate more cardio, further enhancing his overall life balance.

The episode concludes with a reflection on the importance of exploring guest appearances on other shows for a more comprehensive understanding of fitness and training. The conversation with Boorstein offers invaluable lessons for integrating fitness into a busy family life, emphasizing the significance of consistency, planning, and setting realistic goals. By prioritizing personal health and using fitness as a way to be a positive role model, parents can enhance their family's health and happiness.

In summary, this episode of the Wits and Weights Podcast provides actionable strategies for busy parents to balance fitness and family life effectively. Boorstein's expert tips on time-efficient workouts, optimizing training despite limited sleep, and using fitness to combat stress and anxiety offer a comprehensive guide for parents striving to stay fit and healthy. Whether it's through frequent short sessions, practical sleep tips, or incorporating breathing exercises, the insights shared in this episode can help parents navigate the challenges of parenthood while maintaining their physical and mental well-being.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're a busy parent who's been struggling to maintain your fitness routine amidst a chaotic schedule of school runs, work deadlines, family obligations, and you've watched your gym time disappear, replaced by an ever-growing to-do list, leaving you wondering if you'll ever reclaim your pre-kids fitness level, this episode's for you. Today, we're sitting down with fitness expert Brian Borstein to uncover how busy parents can not only maintain their fitness but potentially surpass their pre-kids performance. When you understand how to adapt your fitness routine to a hectic family life, you can approach your health goals with confidence, knowing you don't have to choose between being a great parent and staying in shape. So if you've been putting your fitness on the back burner because family life is just too demanding, what we're about to share will give you the blueprint to balance it all without sacrificing your gains or your family time. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 1:05

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're discussing fitness for busy parents with Brian Borstein, back on the show for a second appearance and also a busy parent, like I am, with a couple kids, but Brian has over 25 years of training experience, over 14 years of coaching. He's the founder of Evolve Training Systems and Paragon Training Methods, and he's worked with everyone from top athletes to everyday people looking to increase their vitality and they want to look great and do all the things. He's also co-host of the Eat Train Prosper podcast, so definitely go follow that one. Today, you're going to learn how to balance the demands of parenthood with your fitness goals, like time-efficient workouts, how to optimize your training despite limited sleep, especially newer parents. Learn how to stay motivated when your priorities have shifted and how to set realistic goals in the face of all those new responsibilities. We'll also discuss using fitness to become a positive role model for your kids. Brian, welcome back to the show, my man.

Bryan Boorstein: 2:04

Yeah, I'm really glad to be here. Thank you for that wonderful introduction and excited to chat with you and help these people out.

Philip Pape: 2:10

Yeah, man. So you probably see this as one of the most common challenges with clients, whether it's someone who used to lift weights, used to be fit you know, they had all that time in their twenties, Maybe they had a physique they were proud of and they're like, I've kind of let it go or those who just maybe haven't ever gotten into it and now they're saying, look, the clock is ticking. I hear all this great stuff about building muscle and eating my protein from guys like Brian on the podcast and they say, man, I just want to get back in shape, but I've got work, I've got kids. I barely have time to even breathe. How do you help them?

Bryan Boorstein: 2:50

I, I don't even breathe.

Bryan Boorstein: 2:51

How do you help them, I guess, frame their new reality before we even get to the nuts and bolts?

Bryan Boorstein: 2:53

Yeah, I think the first step is assessing your own situation in the context of the way that you spend your time, and I'm as familiar as anybody with the trials and tribulations of being time poor.

Bryan Boorstein: 3:01

I am lucky in the sense that I work from home, and so it's a lot easier to find time to go for walks and things like that when you work from home.

Bryan Boorstein: 3:05

I am lucky in the sense that I work from home, and so it's a lot easier to find time to go for walks and things like that when you work from home.

Bryan Boorstein: 3:08

I also have a home gym, so I am easily able to just start downstairs, do some quick fitness and come back up, and in that way I understand my situation can be unrelatable, but I've certainly worked with enough people and I'm familiar with the way that the situation works when you don't have those luxuries. So, like I was saying, I think the first step is really taking an assessment of how you spend your time and making some sacrifices, because in most cases, when you actually look at the 24 hours that you spend in your day, you can find 20 or 30 minutes here and there to prioritize the health and wellness of yourself, because being able to be in good shape and good health means that you bring your best to your family and you can play with your kids and have the energy to do those things, and so I think that there's actually exponential benefit in doubling down on yourself. I mean, put your life jacket on before you help others, right? That's generally the rule of thumb, and I think the same thing kind of applies here.

Philip Pape: 4:10

Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree. That's the whole time audit and the assessments. I know you said people can't always relate, because I get it. I also work from home. I also have a home gym, although the home gym piece I think more people have control of than they think or will like. Take the action to do that, and I think it's a huge benefit if you can. But we all have other things right, like I mean, you and I have plenty of other things that we can make excuses for that take up a lot of our time as well. So from that sense it is relatable and I think you, you know, don't sell yourself short is what I'm saying when it comes to finding the time, or making the time and then deciding what gets filled into that time. Somebody who's, let's say, they haven't trained in a long time or they haven't, they're going to start now. What do they do? And then how much time do they try to find?

Bryan Boorstein: 4:52

as step one, yeah, I mean there's a number of ways you can approach this. I think it depends what your time availability actually is, because I guess when I look at the majority of people that I've worked with and communicated with about this problem, they generally find themselves in two buckets. You either have the person that's like I can commit 60 to 90 minutes, but I can only do it two or three days a week, or you have the person that's like, yeah, I can do this every day, but I only have 20 to 40 minutes, or something along those lines, and so I think there can be a legit, successful program that helps you get in and stay in shape and health in either of those circumstances. So, kind of with that in mind, I think you first have to decide which bucket do you fall into, or maybe it's like kind of somewhere in between, but those two extremes, I think, allow us to make the point effectively and then kind of divvying up how you're going to spend that time. And if you're the person that has 20 or 30 minutes, a lot of times people don't start their fitness journey because they think 20 to 30 minutes isn't enough, whereas the person that has 60 to 90, two to three times a week. They're like hey, I can go to the gym, I can get away, I can have my personal time, but I don't think one is necessarily better than the other. In fact, 20 to 30 minutes every day might be better than 60 to 90 minutes two, three times a week. And so I think, with that 20 to 30 minutes, just use it effectively At a very extreme level.

Bryan Boorstein: 6:14

There's a lot of research on what's called exercise snacks and this is literally this idea of working out for one minute.

Bryan Boorstein: 6:21

So, like every hour or two hours, you just get up and you go run some stairs as hard as you can and you get your heart rate super elevated.

Bryan Boorstein: 6:28

You go back down, you work for another hour and you just kind of repeat this throughout the day, one minute at a time. That's an extreme, obviously, but as an example of that, you can extrapolate that out to these 20 to 30 minute sessions and you can do pushups, sit ups, find a tree branch, do some jumping, pull ups or some pull up lowers. You can go to a jungle gym at a local elementary school and use the dip bars and the pull up bars there. You can do sprints back and forth in your front yard Shuttle runs are something that I do all the time when I'm traveling because I'm like look, I have a 30 foot space, I can run back and forth a ton of times really fast. Do it with like a one-to-one work to rest ratio and you have an extremely effective 20 minute workout in there. So I think, not having limiting beliefs and then trying to get creative with the time that you have available, yeah, like pandemic creative.

Philip Pape: 7:20

You know what I mean. Back then it was like go to Home Depot when they were open and try to get weights. That way, You're already giving people fewer and fewer places to hide. I guess is the goal here, because we want to give ourselves the least friction, even though there's some discomfort, there's some hard thing or some choice you have to make to get going. Be creative, think about your schedule. What time do you have Then? What do you want to do that? Divvy up within that time, the 20 to 30 minutes you said it might be better. Can you elaborate on that? Are we talking recovery? Are we talking adherence? What are we talking? You know training stimulus, cause you're fresh. What are? What are we talking about?

Bryan Boorstein: 7:56

Yeah, I'm more speaking along the lines of like, evolutionarily we were sort of meant to move and we weren't meant to sit for four days and then work really, really hard for three days.

Bryan Boorstein: 8:08

I think that you know, every day, if you look at the way we came through evolution, we would get up and we would move.

Bryan Boorstein: 8:12

In the morning we would have to go find food or whatever our role was within the community, and then we would come back and there would be some periods of relaxation sitting around, of course interspersed with more kind of getting up and moving and playing and stuff like that. And so I just think that if we can move more often, that's better. And so that's why I kind of brought up even that example of the exercise snacks is that falls more in line with our evolution, more even than 20 to 30 minutes a day, because my understanding is that we were a nomadic group that was constantly in movement, not just like we're moving from this place to this place over a five-day period, but more like we wake up, we move, we sit, we move, we sit, we move, and if we can kind of take some of those principles and apply them to our life in the current state of things, I think we can get back to health a lot faster than we can with more of that like slow plotting approach where you're still sedentary the majority of the time.

Philip Pape: 9:07

Yeah, that's powerful, because we do have a lot of people who sit around on their butt all day, myself included sometimes, and I think correct me if I'm wrong or you know the listener thinking about this we separate our movement into different buckets, right?

Philip Pape: 9:19

We think, like there's the training bucket, and I'm going to do that three or four days a week for an hour, and then there's the walking bucket, maybe the cardio bucket, and then there's everything else and what you're saying is that like it's all movement and so why don't we get creative and kind of fit it in on a frequent basis? Some of that's training, cardio, walking, whatever, some of it's all of it at the same time. And it's funny because I just recorded with Cody McBroom yesterday and he's into hybrid training and kind of same mindset of like let's stop fixating on, like, let's stop making it binary. You know, with some of these things, I think we also know the evidence says that not being sedentary is a hugely positive factor, independent of steps and independent of training. So again, there's probably a reason for that, right.

Bryan Boorstein: 10:02

Yeah, absolutely yeah, agreed.

Philip Pape: 10:04

Yeah, so that's efficiency I think we're speaking to as well. How would you recommend for the average person I hate to say this because it always depends, right, right, it always depends. But like the average dad, for example, let's take me. I'm in my forties. I started training properly maybe five years ago. And somebody like that, when it comes to a training program, who has a little bit of time, maybe like three, four days a week, to strength train let's talk hypertrophy Again where would you start? I know these are generalities.

Bryan Boorstein: 10:32

Yeah, I mean three or four days a week, call it what? An hour, three or four days a week? I think you open up a ton of possibilities. I mean that is honestly within the margins of being optimal. So you can look at like professional bodybuilders or powerlifters or anyone at the extreme of resistance training and there are some at the very top level that are training less than four hours a week or four times a week for one hour each.

Bryan Boorstein: 10:58

There's also people that are doing more. I don't think that their decision to do more is necessarily based on a broad sweeping need, but more like an individual need. So there's just a variance of genetic responses to training and some people might be under that four times a week and some people might be above it. But four times a week is truly a sweet spot, like I almost would say that if you're that person that can do four days a week you shouldn't even really consider yourself limited as far as pursuing strength and hypertrophy. That's just like a good, well-rounded training program. So yeah, I mean, do you want to dig in any more into that?

Philip Pape: 11:32

We can. But I want to sit on that because when we talk about limiting beliefs, like another way to frame, that is, it's only four hours a week you have to find and now you're optimal. It's a really powerful frame because I mean, I guess, unless you're working 12 hour days, you literally have time for nothing at all, which is probably a tiny percentage of people. I don't know. Finding that four hours or even three hours gets you pretty close, aside from the other techniques you talked about, like exercise snacks. So I guess let's talk about the what would you say is average for a busy parent in your experience. Is it more like three or four days for a half hour, you know, closer to the 20, 30 minute mark that you mentioned earlier?

Bryan Boorstein: 12:08

I think it's pretty split man. Through my experience, I have those people that are like I can do two or three days a week for 45 to 60 minutes, or I can do 20 to 30 minutes. It does seem to kind of fit into those extremes, I guess, if I were to have to. So I think an important clarification is that when I said it was four times a week is optimal for an hour, that's assuming the pursuit is purely hypertrophy. I think when you're looking at optimal health, you now have to include things like walking, higher intensity cardiovascular work and things like that. So, yeah, the four times a week can get you there.

Bryan Boorstein: 12:41

With that in mind, though, which one is more popular or do I see more often? I would probably say that maybe 60% of people are in that like two to three times a week for an hour camp, instead of the 20 to 30 minutes every day. But I think that if they were to actually take a step back and reflect on their use of time, they might actually find that 20 to 30 minutes, or 20 to 40 minutes every day, is actually a reasonable thing to do. It just is easier when you're kind of zoomed out to settle on like okay, I can move things around and I can find two days a week, versus I can find time every day. You know what I mean. Yeah, no.

Philip Pape: 13:18

I know what you mean and the reason I'm asking this is I want to get to where this discussion is focused on, the things that people can't already get from. Maybe another podcast, such as the one you and I did earlier, which was all about time intensity techniques or time efficiency techniques For people who like have the time, kind of a standard approach, probably will work For people who are a little bit trying to get creative. That's what I want to hone in on. So before we like dive down the training rabbit hole, I want to start with sleep, because that's a counterpoint to like you're awake, you're moving, you're training, but now you need to recover, and we know for parents that can be hard to come by, depending on how old your kids are, but even when they're older, right, depending on school and all the other things going on. So how does that affect? First of all, just so people know, how does sleep affect recovery and performance? And then how do we optimize it, even if time is limited and you can't find all the hours?

Bryan Boorstein: 14:12

Yeah, it's tough because we know that sleep is so important. We also know that exercise and being in good shape improves the quality of your sleep. So there's a little bit of a catch-22 there. We also know, interestingly, that if you have a poor night of sleep but you're regularly a pretty good sleeper, but if you have a poor night of sleep, your glucose response goes haywire and your body doesn't process carbohydrates very well, which you guys can probably feel. You know, when you're poorly slept you feel like you're reaching for those high carbohydrate, high palatable foods more readily. But the benefit of exercise is that if you actually do a hard, intense workout despite being poorly slept, it corrects the glucose response issues that you would have from the poor sleep. So there's this big interconnected kind of circle of exercise and sleep where they benefit each other and at the end of the day both will improve by improving.

Bryan Boorstein: 15:08

So, with that said, yeah, man, sleep can be tough, depending on the age of your kids and what they're going through mentally.

Bryan Boorstein: 15:13

I mean, I know I have parents, friends, who have kids your age and they're starting to get into the early teenage years and they're saying that now their sleep schedule is completely changed because the kids might need to have an emotional conversation with them about friendships and popularity or whatever, at 10 pm at night, as you're trying to get ready for sleep, and so the whole dynamic is affected, regardless of what age your kids are, as you kind of pointed to.

Bryan Boorstein: 15:39

But the thing with sleep is you just want to do the best you can to be consistent with it, consistent with your bedtime, consistent with your wake-up time, trying to make sure that you're not having huge meals and lots of water right before bed, because then you're going to be digesting as you sleep, you're going to be getting up to urinate and use the bathroom in the middle of the night, and that's going to affect the quality of your sleep. One thing that I learned relatively recently on a podcast with Matthew Walker, who's kind of like the sleep guy. He was saying that even if you get to bed later than you intend, you should still wake up at the same time that you usually would, instead of sleeping in, because then you get one of the two end points correct, like either the start or the end of your sleep, and then, because you woke up earlier, you'll actually be tired and you'll have easier sleep onset the following night.

Philip Pape: 16:28

Yeah, that's a good one.

Bryan Boorstein: 16:29

Yeah, so I think that's interesting. But like sleep, you can only do what you can with sleep. Like you can do all of these things you can wear your blue light blockers and not eat at night and not drink water, and try to tell your kids not to bother you past 9 pm, sleep mask, blackout curtains Don't forget those. White noise or pink noise is now the new thing.

Philip Pape: 16:47

Pink noise $3,000 mattress that cools you down, right, right and then tells you your HRV as you're sleeping.

Bryan Boorstein: 16:51

You can do all of these things and still sleep can evade you, and so it just is something that's important, and I think that, man, this isn't going to be a podcast on sleep, but you ought to do what's necessary to improve your sleep, and if that means seeking out Matthew Walker's work and that of other sleep experts in the field, then I think that that's something that's worth your time to do.

Philip Pape: 17:14

Yeah, I totally agree. I do like the consistent times. I also am using that as rule number one because if you tell people to get more sleep, I mean that can be a big stretch for some people. Just with reality, I do like that trick of at least keep your wake-up time, even if you go to bed late, and then avoiding the huge meals and drinks. I mean, trust me, you're going to pay for it when you do that. Quick question Do you recommend, if people have a choice or don't care, training in the morning?

Bryan Boorstein: 17:40

I think if you have a poor night of sleep, then training in the morning is probably your best friend because it kind of sets things and regulates things much better so that you have a better day as you get going. Beyond that, I don't think it matters. I think it's individual preference and I know for me I prefer to work out in the morning because of what I said earlier. Like it just it sets my day up correctly, it makes me feel good, I feel more cognitively prepared for what is waiting for me for the day.

Bryan Boorstein: 18:07

If I've done my workout first and if I feel like I have too much to do and I end up not getting to work out until noon or one, I just find myself having like little bouts of apprehension about the workout, thinking about how hard it's going to be or what weights I'm going to use, or this interval that I need to push on my bike or whatever it is. Those thoughts start to creep in my head. But once I do the workout, it's just great. It's like this incredible feeling of euphoria that lasts for hours throughout the rest of the day, with a sense of accomplishment that I think is hard to get. I mean, there's a number of ways you can do it, like people use ice baths and things like that, but some sort of shock to get you out of homeostasis really seems to help. Kind of just set the day up correctly.

Philip Pape: 18:47

Yeah, I wonder I ask almost everyone about that now because just my personal experience has been that as well Like it sets the day up really well. Also, if you are a busy parent, the day just gets away from you. You don't know what's going to happen. You think you know, you think your schedule's locked down, but literally the day that gets going and the schedule's changed, it's going to change. So it's easy to have an excuse when it's later in the day.

Bryan Boorstein: 19:15

If you do it first, you do it first period, even if you get up at 4 am. I'm sorry. I mean it can work if you shift things around the right way. You don't want to sacrifice sleep long-term for workouts. If you're like the only time I could work out would be 4 am, then you need to be going to bed at 8 pm for the majority of cases, or else that schedule isn't going to work for you.

Philip Pape: 19:30

For sure, man. All right, so motivation, consistency, all of that, because we know busy parents, maybe more than some, have a lot of variability in their life, kind of what I alluded to, where, because you have these extra kids in your life, there's chaos of one sort or another. How do we stay consistent, knowing a lot can change? Is there an element of planning or updating your schedule, or whatever it might be, some tricks you have in the bag to kind of step it up and say not really any excuses, because I've thought ahead for this.

Bryan Boorstein: 20:01

This is one of the reasons why I love the 20 to 40 minute period every day that you have, because then you just put it into your schedule and you're like this is my very short, brief period of time that I know is there for me every day, no matter what, and even in days where you're not feeling up for it, you're lethargic, you have a ton of stuff on your mind, whatever. Just going out and getting a 30 minute walk in during that period of time is better than nothing, and obviously you know the more intensity you can use. You know incorporating weights and different cardio modalities and stuff like that is going to likely be better than just walking. But what that does is you have that slot of time that you know is yours and that it can't be messed with. So I love that.

Bryan Boorstein: 20:45

For the people that have that two to three days a week for 45 to 60 minutes, they have a longer period of time, but less frequently.

Bryan Boorstein: 20:53

I find that those people tend to more likely put workouts off and say oh well, you know I didn't work out the last two days and now I'm on day three, like I'm supposed to work out, but I feel lethargic. I have this meeting. My son got in trouble with the principal at school and like all these things are weighing on you and you're like I just can't work out for an hour right now, so I'm not going to do it and that's. You know. The nice thing about those 20 to 30 minute chunks is you're like I don't have to work out for an hour, I just need 20 to 30 minutes of time for me, and then it seems like that hour can feel overwhelming sometimes. So I think you know setting yourself up for success in creating a model and a schedule that works with your mindset and you know the nature in which you tend to operate is probably a good first step in setting your schedule.

Philip Pape: 21:37

Yeah, yeah. I like the idea of this ritualistic approach. It is a form of discipline. When you're doing something every day, you know. Maybe once that's in place, you can then expand and experiment with different things and you'll want to go to the gym, like you know, at some point you just want to go, no matter what your schedule is. So a little bit lower level then. For people that want to train, let's say they do that approach. I know you obviously have a million training programs and talk about training all the time on your podcast. What is a reasonable type of training to maybe start with if you're a beginner or you're detrained getting back into it? And then how do you recommend logging and tracking so that you kind of get those wins and that awareness that you are making the progress you want to make early on in that process?

Bryan Boorstein: 22:17

Yeah, I think it really depends on what your equipment access is as far as like what I would prescribe somebody. I mean it could be as simple. As you know, somebody has 20 to 30 minutes seven days a week, and so three of those days are body weight resistance training. You have access to no weights. You're going to do various core movements pushups, air squats, lunges, split squats. Like I said, you can go to a playground, find a jungle gym, pull-up bar type thing. You can find a tree branch, do some dead hangs from there. So I think three days a week you do some form of resistance training in that period of time. Two days a week you probably do some sort of higher intensity cardiovascular work during that time. So that could be finding some stairs and running up and down those for 20 minutes. It could be the shuttle runs in the front yard that I mentioned. It could be jump roping or going for a jog outside, finding a hill Don't say burpees.

Bryan Boorstein: 23:19

No, I don't like programming burpees because, I feel like most people, especially starting out, aren't strong enough to actually burpee properly, and as they fatigue they start to do things that are injurious. So even with pushups, I think you know this is a great one because you can do them at no matter how strong you are. People might say, oh, but I can't do pushups and I would never tell someone to go to their knees because I think that really just messes their form up ultimately. So I'm a huge fan of taking someone and putting them on hands, elevated pushups. So maybe you find a couch or a countertop or something like that and you do your pushups that way with perfect form, and then, as you get stronger, you can find lower and lower objects for you to do your pushups on until eventually you're doing them on the ground with great form. So we have three days a week of bodyweight resistance training, or that could be weighted resistance training. If you have access to dumbbells or barbells or even a gym setup would be even better, but resistance training is fine anyway. Three days a week, two days of higher intensity cardio and then I think the other two days they could be. It really depends on you, I think, starting out just making those other two days walks is probably great, but as you get going and you begin to get in better shape and you want to put more into it, I think doing some lower intensity cardio on those other two days would be great.

Bryan Boorstein: 24:35

Maybe you're now walking hills or you're doing fast walks with a weight vest, or you're getting on a bike and going for a bike ride with your kids, and that counts. That's the beauty is you can double count things. You can get a two for one by going for a bike ride with your kids and now you're parenting, but you're also getting some low-intensity cardiovascular movement. Oftentimes when my kids were young, they would be scooting because they weren't biking yet, and I would jog alongside them as they scooted. And then, because I'm not a runner, I'd be like okay, we need a break and let's chill out for a second. And they're happy to sit, sit there and like watch me breathe for a second and then we get going again. And so a number of ways that you can incorporate activity and movement with the things that generally consume your life.

Philip Pape: 25:21

Yeah, that's a really important one because I think when people think, wow, you're telling me to do all this stuff every day and four of the seven days or some form of cardio, you know people definitely have a love-hate relationship with quote-unquote cardio, but there's a million ways to do that that can be enjoyable. I mean, if you've got kids, honestly, if you're not playing with them on a regular basis, you're missing out on their growing up. I think You're also missing out on selfishly a way for you to be active, even if it's just going to the back and tossing the ball and running around.

Max: 25:52

You know ball and running around, you know whatever it is. I love that. Shout out to Philippe. I know Philippe for a long time. I know how passionate he is about healthy eating and body strength and that's why I choose him to be my coach. I was no stranger to dieting and body training, but I always struggled to do it sustainably. Philippe helped me prioritize my goals with evidence-based recommendations while not overstressing my body and not feeling like I'm starving. In six months, I lost 45 pounds without drastically changing the foods I enjoy, but now I have a more balanced diet. I weight train consistently but, most importantly, I do it sustainably. If a scientifically sound, healthy diet and a lean, strong body is what you're looking for, philly, Pape is your guy.

Philip Pape: 26:37

Question about the activity or the equipment. Do you like gently or even strongly prod clients who don't have any equipment to like? Let's figure out, as we ramp you up body weight to get access to equipment somehow.

Bryan Boorstein: 26:49

Yeah, yeah, I would say like I haven't worked with any clients that don't have some form of equipment for a number of years now, like this was maybe a problem 10 or 15 years ago for me. At this point I work primarily with people that are already bought in, not with like brand new, like off the couch to like, okay, I need to figure this fitness thing out so I don't die. So I'm slightly detached from that person. But, to answer your question, I absolutely believe that the equipment that you have can create a higher quality training stimulants in less time. So as you get past those bodyweight workouts, get less of a tan than you did the prior time. Same response occurs within our bodies as adaptations occur, and so at some point you're going to be not getting the response that you desire from doing the body weight movements that were giving you a great response in the beginning.

Philip Pape: 27:42

Yeah, and I think today, with the prevalence of all sorts of gyms and equipment and I mean the vast majority of people probably have a little space. They can build something, hopefully where they live, but maybe not that is again less of a reason not to do that, other than it's an excuse. Okay, what about so, since we're talking about parenthood specifically, what about the kind of the stress and anxiety is also ramped up. So we talked about all the obligations people have. We talked about schedule and time and time, efficiency and sleep, but then there's also mental health. Right, because you even said like your own kids might be facing mental challenges that you have to help them with, which is draining for some folks, especially introverts, might drain them. I guess what strategies come to mind for managing your mental health, just besides just doing all the things we talked about, which definitely help mental health too?

Bryan Boorstein: 28:29

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It's kind of like sleep. It's this perpetually tied together where the more exercise you do, the better your mental health gets. There's actually been some studies done that have shown that exercise is more effective for combating depression and anxiety than the actual medications that people get, like SSRIs and things like that. So I think that's a great first step.

Bryan Boorstein: 28:50

If you're somebody that's battling these health issues and you don't exercise, like hey, it's out there, it's free, like if you could bottle up exercise in a pill and give it to people, it would be the most popular pill ever taken, like it would exceed everything, so like it'd be better than Ozempic. So I think I mean even people that exercise obviously have mental health problems. So I mean I've certainly dealt with my fair share of days where I'm just like man, this day sucks. I just don't know how I'm going to get through this, and so for me, the way that I generally respond to that is through going for a walk, doing some exercise and doing some breathing practice, and the breathing practice is something that's new for me in the last three years.

Bryan Boorstein: 29:34

So I went through 39 years of my life and had no way of kind of self-regulating through breathing practice and, as I've gotten more into it in the last couple of years, I find myself probably daily, taking five to 10 minutes and just closing my eyes and focusing on a long inhale and an even longer exhale, generally maybe like four to five seconds on the inhale and like six to eight seconds on the exhale, and I'll do that for five to 10 minutes in succession with my eyes closed, and usually I'll do that at times where I feel things beginning to burden me. It could be like on one side, it could be man. Do you ever get that sense where on a computer and you're typing away and you're just like, you feel like you're just like in the computer, you're like you're like this crazy person with like it's hard to describe, but I get like I feel like my blood pressure must be like going through the roof as I'm typing, doing work.

Philip Pape: 30:29

I know what you mean. You're getting hotter and you're just like I got to get this done and the stress is ramping up, I get it, man, yeah yeah.

Bryan Boorstein: 30:35

So in those moments I feel like my heart is beating faster and my breathing is erratic, and so I'll just be like, no, I feel this happening, I'm going to push this computer away and I'm going to do my five to 10 minute breathing thing, and so that's one example where I might do that. Another example is like I have a conflict with somebody, a phone call that is unsettling a meeting, that's unsettling something along those lines, stressed out about something along with work, and that's another great opportunity to take five to 10 minutes and kind of sit down and breathe. I don't even need to necessarily do any reflection, I don't need to come to any conclusions in my brain about how I'm going to handle the situation. It's just separating from it for a moment and trying not to think about it is sort of the best thing that I can do, and I think that that can be extrapolated out to situations with kids and stuff like that too.

Philip Pape: 31:22

Yeah, it's super accessible. And since you just mentioned kids, do you do anything like that with your kids? Do you try to show them some of these practices, or are you not there yet? Yeah, we try. Yeah, you try to show them some of these practices or you're not there yet?

Bryan Boorstein: 31:32

Yeah, we try.

Philip Pape: 31:32

Yeah, you try, yeah, yeah.

Bryan Boorstein: 31:34

They generally wake up in the morning right as I'm doing my morning breathing. So they'll walk in and I'll be like super zen in my chair and they'll just sit there and stare at me and I'm like I can tell they're staring at me right now, but I don't really want to open my eyes and acknowledge them. They see it happening and then my daughter is like this perfect little angel. As you have two girls, you know how it must be. My son is not a perfect little angel.

Philip Pape: 31:59

There are differences, I've heard.

Bryan Boorstein: 32:01

And so my daughter, actually four and a half years old, is already able to implement some of that stuff. Like she was freaking out the other night and talking about how she was unhappy and blah, blah, blah, and then she goes, or no. My wife said remember, vivi, you love yourself. And she goes. Yes, I love myself. And she did like a series of like mantras of I love myself with a bunch of deep breaths and then she goes. I feel better.

Bryan Boorstein: 32:23

So she's like four and a half years old doing this, and my son is like the complete opposite, like if you tell him to do that, he's like no, I don't want to do that. Blah, blah, blah, and like it's this complete outrage that we would even propose the idea that he reflect and sit back.

Philip Pape: 32:36

He needs a little sledgehammer and then some stuff to destroy in the backyard. That'll be his mindfulness. You know therapy, right, right, right. Oh, that's that brings up a couple of things, right Cause? Yeah, no, I mean my, my daughters. Yeah, the definitely difference between daughters and sons are hilarious sometimes.

Philip Pape: 32:52

And talking to your kids and modeling your kids, they're like sponges. And, yeah, if you have them there while you're working out, that's another benefit of a home gym you can have your kids there and they see what it is. Or if you're able to take them to the gym, it depends on age and the setting. I think that's awesome. So, speaking of that, then, how do we leverage the fact that we're parents and have that situation Maybe a single parent, maybe you have a spouse, but you definitely have the kids to shift your focus and really have a driving reason why you do this.

Philip Pape: 33:21

So, as opposed to just, you know, getting jacked like you might've wanted to do in your twenties you know longevity function being a role model. I definitely hear these a lot when I have new clients who are parents. For some reason, man, I attract a lot of homeschool parents these days. We do that too, and I don't know what it is, but they'll say I want to be a role model for my kids. So what are your thoughts on all of that? Like shifting our focus now that we are parents?

Bryan Boorstein: 33:43

Yeah, I mean I think it's super important. Your kids are watching everything that you do, as you kind of said earlier, and so who you are is sort of who they're going to be at some level. I mean, obviously they're their own person as well, but they do follow suit, and so I think living the life for yourself, as if you want your kids to live a similar life, is probably a good approach to take when you think about setting up the things that are important to you in your life. Yeah, I think it's like you mentioned function, longevity. Was it setting an example or something?

Philip Pape: 34:19

like that. Yeah, being a role model, I'm just pulling these things out of my ass. I love that.

Bryan Boorstein: 34:22

Yeah, no, those three were great and I think all of them play a huge role. It's weird I'm in my early forties and so much of my perspective on things shifted, like when I became a parent, but then when I turned 40, because something about turning 40 put this whole life in perspective in a sense of like okay, the average age is around 80, 40 is about halfway. It's not a midlife crisis, but it is a way to reflect and put perspective on the fact that, wow, I'm over halfway done with this journey, potentially now, and if I want it to last longer and I don't want to be halfway done and I want to see my kids when they're my age. I mean that to me is like when you start thinking about the fact that, like, I'm 42, my dad is 70, my mom is 73. I don't want to be 73 and already worrying that I'm not going to see my son make it to 40 because I'm 35 years older than him. I want to see him make it to 40. I want to see him make it to 50.

Bryan Boorstein: 35:26

I want to see my grandkids be older than seven or six or whatever these things, putting them in perspective and then implementing the practices and the lifestyle habits that are necessary to give you the best chance to get there. Because, who knows, my friends see me taking omega-3 pills when we go out to eat. I'll bring omega-3s to take them, because I want to make sure I have my omega-3s in me, and my buddies are always like you're for sure going to get hit by a bus One of those things you just don't know. But you do want to set yourself up for the best opportunity to be there for the long term, and longevity is such a buzzword these days. There's positives and negatives about it, but I think the very positive part of it is that it's forcing people to sit back, reflect and be aware of what things they need to be doing to ensure that they give themselves the best health span and not just lifespan.

Philip Pape: 36:20

Yeah, I almost envision from what you said. I think of okay, we have parents and now we have kids, and there's this continuum of this longevity across generations. You know, the moment that the kid is born. I mean, I remember when my, our first child was born, our daughter we didn't know what the sex was of the baby I know that's very rare these days and so I got to see that she was a girl.

Philip Pape: 36:39

You know, when she was born and man did I like break down and I was like, okay, I'm not, I'm not even important anymore, like this is the most important thing. I'm even about to tear up talking about it, and I think every parent feels that it's like okay, now there's something even more important. I have like my purpose is elevated. It's not that I don't exist, I'm still an individual with my and desires, but now it's extended and you're like thinking across many decades. So then that raises the question are there anything? People who need a kick in the butt right now, who are parents and thinking, man, I'm not doing the things I need to be doing? Is there anything we should be concerned about Because we're not doing these things and our kids are seeing that? Or maybe we're obsessed about things, or maybe we are, I don't know things that we say, things that we do. I know we're getting so philosophical here. Does anything come to mind? Maybe you personally, that you're like, hey, maybe I could do better with that because I have kids.

Bryan Boorstein: 37:29

Yeah, I think I do really well with the exercise and the mindset and things like that. But I don't do very well with the nutrition side for my kids, which I know people might be surprised about to hear. But it is really really hard to get kids to eat healthy. And we have tried, we've tried so many different angles on it and we even, like, had an appointment with our doctor to talk about it and the doctor was like, look, your son is really skinny, Like he just needs food. And we were trying to take this approach of like, you know, if it's not at least semi-healthy, like we're going to sort of restrict it until you're hungry enough that you will eat it.

Bryan Boorstein: 38:09

And I'm not trying to say he needs to be eating like broccoli and tomatoes and things like that, but like how about anything other than a bagel or dessert? Like those are kind of like his two foods bagel and dessert. And so we're just like kind of like his two foods, bagel and dessert. And so we're just like, no, like you can't have bagels and dessert anymore, right. And then we go to the doctor and the doctor's like look, your son's really skinny, like he needs food. He just needs calories, because calories are going to be the thing that are going to power his brain and his body to continue developing and growing. And then we're stuck at this like really challenging crossroads of okay, so do we just feed him bagels for every meal, because that's what he wants and that's what he's going to eat.

Bryan Boorstein: 38:50

And man, that is a really tough cookie to crack and I still feel unprepared for that seven years later and I don't know what even the right move is. Here. It's like we're seeing small improvements here and there and at least I'm getting him enough protein. I'll hide a burger in a bun and he'll have chicken nuggets with barbecue sauce, and like we're getting enough protein and we're eating a little bit of fruit, but like 80% of his food is bagels and yeah, we're just. I'm still working through that. So I think that's the most challenging thing for me, and I know that I can't judge parents that have other issues Like they might have mindset issues or exercise issues or things like that because I'm obviously struggling with one of these components as well.

Philip Pape: 39:22

I mean, I think that's the best example you could give, in that you know, obviously you are walking the walk and know a lot about this stuff and coach people through it, and yet it's still there's challenges that are come from parenting in this realm that anybody listening could relate to. That hey, you're not perfect. I mean. I think maybe that's the messages. None of us are perfect. We're doing our best. Set an example. That's like the best thing you can do. Number one right, set the example.

Philip Pape: 39:44

And then, beyond that, of course, as a parent, we just have to kind of figure out what the heck, what the heck do we do? Because you mentioned a few things, like when kids are growing up, they need to eat calories. But then you have the side that we get a little bit obsessed with. It was just like what to eat and that it's healthy and that it's balanced, that there's protein, and sometimes it's like do we just have them eat whatever because they need to grow? We don't want them to be stunted, you know, be malnourished.

Philip Pape: 40:09

Or do we also try to kind of instill these other things, you know, sneaking stuff in their food? I mean, there's lots of tricks, man, we've done it all as well, and then there's the body image thing. Man, I have two daughters and at their age now 12 and 10, I'm telling you got to be really careful what you say, and that you don't like if they gain a little extra weight. I'm never going to comment on that. I'm like, look, they're still growing. You know what I mean? Like it doesn't matter. They're going to eventually be adults and then have their choices.

Bryan Boorstein: 40:43

I'm doing a lot of well, so that's a good one. I don't know if you want to add anything to that. I'll just say that the body image thing is one that I'm woefully unprepared for as well, and I haven't had to deal with that yet because of their age. But we are cautious of the language that we use as we discuss body size and things like that, and I think that that's a prudent move.

Philip Pape: 40:55

Yeah, the language thing affects everything. I mean, even my wife gets worried very easily about things and if she'll says it out loud, like with the kids there, and then they, they get worried about it and they come there and she's like I need to be careful, like what I say, in what context. I mean, so you're a parent, you've got young ish kids there, you know, like you said, toddler and a little bit older than that. How has your own fitness journey evolved since being a parent yourself? Good question, I love that question.

Bryan Boorstein: 41:20

Well, it's funny because when I had my first child seven years ago, what I did was I went to a three times a week full body approach. So I was that person that had three days a week, or two to three days a week, but I'm going to be in the gym for 90 minutes each time, and I was. I'm going to double down on the hard work, on the big compound movements and stuff like that. And I went to the gym to do that when we had my daughter. She was born one month before COVID started and luckily I had man.

Bryan Boorstein: 41:48

I don't even know how I got so lucky, but I was like I read an article about this disease that might be an issue. This was mid-February and I was like you know what? I'm not going to get caught in this, I'm going to order some dumbbells and a bench right now. And so mid-February, I bought four sets of dumbbells. I bought 25s, 50s, 75s and 100s and I was like, with those four sets of dumbbells and an adjustable bench, I should be able to fully train my whole body with whatever way I need to, if anything happens. Those dumbbells and that bench arrived the day before the world shut down, so that day, on March 13th or whatever it was it was March 12th everything arrived and I was like, yes, so what I did with my second child is I actually took the approach of I'm going to work out 20-ish minutes as often as I can, and this would generally be multiple times a day, like my daughter's down for a nap, boom, go down and hit quads for 20 minutes. Okay, she's sleeping. Again in the afternoon, go down and hit hamstrings or chest or just one little body part at a time for 20 minutes day a week.

Bryan Boorstein: 42:52

I was able to actually make some really good progress through the early stages of COVID, which was kind of cool, and then, once everything opened back up again, I had already built this incredible home gym, so it went from just dumbbells and an incline adjustable bench to what I have now, which is rivaling a commercial gym. I mean, obviously I only have one of everything. So that's the thing. I'm still missing a few things, like I don't have a machine chest press, which I would love. I love a machine chest press, but I'm at a point where I'm one in, one out on equipment and so I don't know what I would ditch to bring in the chest press machine.

Philip Pape: 43:35

You don't have room.

Bryan Boorstein: 43:36

You're saying Like you'd have to swap. Yeah, exactly. So I have the dual cable machine which allows me to emulate most machines. So I'll do my chest presses on the cables, but like I have a pendulum squat, a hack squat, a 45 degree hip extension, a T-bar row, a leg extension, leg curl squat, rack and dumbbells up to 110 plus the cable machine, so it's like a fully functioning gym in there.

Bryan Boorstein: 44:01

And so, as far as how my training has evolved since that point, I would say until two or about three years ago, I was super big in the evidence-based hypertrophy scene. Everything I did was to make hypertrophy the most important thing in my training. So I basically didn't do much cardio until three years ago. I would go for walks just for basic health, but I didn't want to expend any energy that I could be putting into hypertrophy training. I was training six days a week, an hour each day, like a push-pull legs, push-pull legs type split, really putting everything in on hypertrophy. And then I think, as we may have touched on in the last episode, when I turned 40, I got that shot of my future and reflecting on my longevity, and that's when I really began doing cardio. Over the last three years since I first implemented cardio, it has become just as important as weights for me at least, as important, maybe even like an A1 and put the weights as like A2, partially because I just love that I'm still seeing progress so rapidly with cardio. With weights it's like I can go six months and build up and then ramp down, and build back up and ramp down and then test and I'm like, okay, six months later and I added one rep to a movement or five pounds or something like that, and so it's a lot of work and time commitment for this reward in quotes of one additional rep, whereas with cardio, the more I do, the better it gets, and it's just like every month I'm like, wow, I didn't know I could do that. And so it's crazy, three years in, to still be at that point where I'm getting these like intermediate gains sort of. So I love that for cardio. I love the way cardio makes me feel.

Bryan Boorstein: 45:42

I kind of think that in some ways cardio is better for the mind, for the cognitive side of getting through the stresses of life. I always feel better after doing cardio and weight. Sometimes I still feel like it's just kind of like still biting at me after I finish a weight session. So now my training has shifted a lot and I'm kind of at a point where I'm going back to some of my roots with weight training. I'm actually embarking on a new training cycle, like literally just started this week.

Bryan Boorstein: 46:10

That's going to be four training sessions over 10 days, 10 to 12 days. So I'm not I'm only going to train with weights every two to three days now so that I can fit in cardio kind of in between and not be time poor. And my weight sessions are full body, which I also haven't done for many, many, many years. Everything's been split routines for hypertrophy focus, but now going back to like kind of the big compound movements and the. It's like an abbreviated training program, spending, you know, 45 to 60 minutes every two to three days, really hitting it hard and then getting out and kind of living life. And so that's been the meandering journey of kind of the way I approach things over the last seven years since my son was born.

Philip Pape: 46:48

That's cool man.

Philip Pape: 46:49

So I mean that if I were to break that down to principles for folks who, because I'm early in my training career, still relatively, even though I'm in my forties, because I started late, so I'm still making progress quite a bit more progress for myself relatively with the weight, so I kind of feel where you were back then and I would say for those again, for those listening, hear what Brian's saying in terms of like, what feels good, what allows you to progress, what allows you to fit it in, what allows you to be creative, it's not you have to do this specific thing or do this specific plan and in fact you provide programming in a variety of ways to many different clients, depending on what they need, but just make it work for you and enjoy it, man.

Philip Pape: 47:27

Enjoy it Like. This is the thing when you're a parent. There are in many cases more important things, but your health is also the most important thing to allow you to be a parent. So I guess the last question then, brian, is is there anything about parenting and training that you wished I had asked or that you hear often as a big concern or challenge that people have that we didn't address?

Bryan Boorstein: 47:48

It was pretty thorough. I would just say that to double down on the idea that little bits of exercise, like even exercise snacks, are extremely valuable. Studies show that these exercise snacks of getting up and doing one minute of stair runs every hour or two throughout the day has incredible benefits on longevity, health markers, metabolic disease all of these different things that can cause problems for us. So exercise snacks are a great, great thing to do. Doubling down on the idea of 20 to 30 minutes per day of just time for you, where you can fit in movement of some sort during that time, and then for the really A-type personality go-getters out there, just start slow. I think that I've seen enough people with that type A go-getter mentality come from this really high-paced stress, work-life, parenting thing and then jump into exercise and end up getting injured, burnout, et cetera, and so I think a gradual ascent of your training volume and training intensity is probably a prudent move to keep this journey productive for you.

Philip Pape: 49:03

Nice, great advice. The stair runs real quick because now I'm thinking selfishly I've got 17 steps first to second floor. How often and how long do you do each of these?

Bryan Boorstein: 49:12

You said one minute stair runs One minute up and down as fast as you can, as many times as you can in one minute, and I would do that every two to three hours throughout the day. So maybe you hit like three to four of those throughout the day.

Philip Pape: 49:24

Yeah, not always asking. Get a little coaching for myself here too, cause I'm like man, I should just do that, cause I got the stairs and yeah. So, man, always great advice that the time flies when we chat. I think those listening are going to find something to take with. And if you are listening, you know, don't just binge the content Like, think, right now, what is the one thing you're going to do that's different, that's going to push yourself, that's going to expand that comfort zone. You know, choose the either the hard thing or the different thing, or the thing that will help you be the role model. And where can people learn about you, brian?

Bryan Boorstein: 49:53

Yeah, you nailed it in the intro. I'm on Instagram at Brian Borstein, but my programs are Evolved Training Systems and Paragon Training Methods and then my podcast, e-train Prosper. At Paragon we have a program called Dumbbell Quickie, which is 30-minute dumbbell-only workouts four days a week. Actually, it's not dumbbell-only, it's dumbbell bands. You need to have some bands too and a bench, but if you have dumbbells, bands and a bench, which is a pretty low initial investment, you can follow our dumbbell quickie program. And then we also have dumbbell physique program if you're ready to kind of up your game from there. And then beyond that we have other like full gym and home gym, three-day, four-day, five-day programs. So a full arsenal of kind of different ways that you can work out, whether you're at home or at a gym, et cetera.

Philip Pape: 50:37

Yeah, man, you can't go wrong if If you're listening to follow one of Brian's programs he's one of the best in the industry Check out his podcast as well. Find him on other shows as well If you want to get deep dive, and then I'll link to our last episode as well. We also dived into a lot more specifics on training. So thanks again, man. It was, it was a pleasure. Thanks for coming on.

Bryan Boorstein: 50:53

I appreciate you, man. Thank you.

This Quick Change Will Help You Stick to Your Fat Loss Meal Plan (Kaizen) | Ep 222

Struggling to stick to your fat loss meal plan? Or any nutrition plan?

Learn how the engineering concept of Kaizen – continuous improvement through small changes – can revolutionize your approach to nutrition and fat loss.

To celebrate National Cooking Day (September 25), this episode challenges you to make ONE quick change this week that will set off a chain reaction of positive habits. It will gradually upgrade your "sustainability system" to give you results (rather than completely overhauling your diet overnight).

💡 To connect with others on their fat loss journey and share meal ideas, join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/witsandweights

Main Takeaways:

• Kaizen is a powerful engineering principle that focuses on small, continuous improvements.

• Making THIS one quick change this week will significantly impact your fat loss journey.

• You'll have more control over ingredients, portions, and macros.

• This principle can then be applied to every other area of your health and fitness.

Episode summary:

Ever wondered how small changes can lead to big results in your fitness journey? This episode of Wits &Weights delves into the transformative power of Kaizen, a Japanese philosophy that emphasizes continuous improvement through small, manageable changes. By applying this principle to your nutrition and cooking habits, you can overcome common struggles associated with sticking to a fat loss meal plan and create lasting, positive changes in your lifestyle.

The episode kicks off by addressing the core problem many face when embarking on a fat loss journey: maintaining consistency with a meal plan. Often, initial motivation wanes, leading to feelings of failure and the temptation to give up. Kaizen offers a solution by focusing on small, incremental improvements. Instead of overhauling your entire diet, start by cooking just one additional meal at home each week. This simple change can build momentum, making it easier to stick to your dietary goals.

National Cooking Day serves as the perfect backdrop for this discussion. Celebrating this day by cooking one extra meal at home can be a catalyst for better nutrition. The episode highlights the importance of simplicity and consistency in your culinary routine. By making small, manageable changes, you can gradually build better cooking habits, leading to significant improvements in your overall well-being.

Personal anecdotes from the host's family experiences underscore the effectiveness of this approach. For example, substituting fast food with homemade meals has drastically improved their health. Simple, quick meals prepared at home not only offer better control over ingredients but also save time and money. This episode emphasizes that even meals that take just 10 minutes to prepare can have a substantial impact on your nutrition and health.

The concept of Kaizen, or continuous improvement, is further explored in the context of meal planning and preparation. By focusing on just one additional home-cooked meal each week, you can start building a habit gradually. This approach is particularly beneficial during high-stress times when sticking to a meal plan becomes challenging. Small changes, such as preparing a homemade salad instead of opting for fast food, can make a big difference over time.

The episode also introduces the Wits and Weights community, a supportive group of individuals committed to creating efficient systems for better nutrition and fitness. By joining this community, you can access valuable resources like recipe sharing and meal prep swaps. This support system can help you incorporate the Kaizen approach into your daily routine, making it easier to achieve your fitness goals.

The benefits of cooking at home extend beyond better nutrition. When you prepare your own meals, you have complete control over the ingredients, portions, and cooking methods. This control allows you to avoid hidden ingredients like excessive butter, oil, or sugar, and customize your meals to better align with your dietary goals. Additionally, home-cooked meals can be more satisfying and nutritious, helping you stay on track with your fat loss journey.

As you see the positive effects of one home-cooked meal, you'll be motivated to cook more often. Over time, this can lead to significant improvements in your cooking skills and overall well-being. The episode emphasizes the importance of a growth mindset, encouraging listeners to view cooking as a skill that can be learned and improved over time.

One of the key takeaways from this episode is the importance of reducing decision fatigue. By committing to just one home-cooked meal each week, you eliminate the mental struggle of deciding whether to cook or order in. This small change can free up mental energy, making it easier to make healthier choices throughout the day.

The power of Kaizen lies in its ability to create sustainable change. By focusing on small, consistent improvements, you can build habits that stick with you for the long term. This approach is not about drastic changes or restrictive diets but about creating a system that supports your goals and lifestyle.

In conclusion, this episode of Wits and Weights offers valuable insights into how small, incremental changes can lead to big results in your fitness journey. By applying the principles of Kaizen to your meal planning and cooking habits, you can overcome common challenges and create lasting, positive changes in your life. Celebrate National Cooking Day by cooking one extra meal at home this week and see where it takes you. Join the Wits and Weights community for additional support and resources to help you on your journey.

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're struggling to stick to your fat loss meal plan, constantly falling off track after a few days, if you're overwhelmed by the idea of overhauling your entire diet and your approach and cooking routine overnight, this episode's for you. Today we're diving into the world of Kaizen, an engineering concept that shows why small, consistent changes lead to big results. That shows why small, consistent changes lead to big results. You'll discover how this one quick and easy change can make a huge difference in your ability to stick to your meal plans, especially during fat loss. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 0:54

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are celebrating National Cooking Day, september 25th, by exploring how a simple shift in your cooking habits can supercharge your efforts during fat loss. Picture this it's the end of a long day, you're tired, you're hungry. The thought of cooking seems like it's a huge mountain to climb right. You're well past that 3 pm energy crash and you're starving, and the takeout menu is calling your name, especially the Chinese or the pizza or whatever you go for. We've all been there. But what if I told you that by making just one small change to your cooking routine, you could basically set off a chain reaction, start building momentum that transforms how you approach nutrition, especially during fat loss or when the calories are a little bit tight and you have specific goals you're trying to meet, and that's what we're diving into in today's episode. But before we do, the only thing I'm going to ask is that, if you enjoy the show, if you want more content on building muscle, on nutrition training, using intelligent frameworks and principles to do things easily and more efficiently, hit the follow button. Hit the follow button right now. It will help more people find the show according to the podcast gods, the podcast algorithm, and it will ensure also that you never miss another episode.

Philip Pape: 2:14

All right, let's get into the discussion today and we're going to just kick it off with the problem that we're trying to solve. The problem is why is sticking to a meal plan so damn hard? That's the problem, right? We all have goals. We go into fat loss whatever that calorie level is for you, you know, for me it might be around 2,200 or 2,000. For others it might be 1,200 or 1,400. And initially you have all the motivation. Initially you can pretty much bring it out, whatever it's required to make it happen, but before long it starts to become more difficult. You know, we start with the best intentions. We meal prep on Sunday and then by Wednesday we're either elbow deep in a bag of tortilla chips wondering where it all went wrong, or we're going out to eat. Or, you know, by the time the weekend comes, we're just so stressed from the week and we go out to eat all weekend.

Philip Pape: 3:05

Right Now, the issue is usually in the approach itself, the system that we have set up for ourselves. It's not your fault. It's not that you couldn't control yourself. It's not that you quote unquote did bad right. It's that we you, me, collectively as humans, we try to change lots of things all at once and then, when we inevitably slip up, we feel like failures. We then want to give up. We're like forget that, I'm done, that didn't work Right, the all or nothing mindset that sets us up. Now you might be thinking no, no, no, I'm not one of those people. I've got everything dialed in, I do it all, you know, I know, I just need to be consistent, and so on. Even so, there are always ways to improve and make the system work better for you, especially in high times of stress, when life throws us those curve balls and you know you've got a bunch of people staying at your house all of a sudden and you don't know what to do because it's throwing your whole routine out of whack. And this is where our intelligent engineering mindset comes in handy, and that's what you got me for, even if you don't think that way, it's okay.

Philip Pape: 4:08

Today's framework is called Kaizen Kaizen K-A-I-Z-E-N. It's something that I learned years ago at work. It was brought over here by Toyota back in probably the 70s or 80s. It is a Japanese term that translates to change for better, or what we like to call it continuous improvement, and it's a philosophy that focuses on making small incremental changes that compound over time to create significant results. Now, if that sounds familiar, it's because it's underpins a lot of the behavior change and habit formation approaches that are out there, like James Clear's Atomic Habits, where he talks about the compounding of small habits over time. Same idea, but in manufacturing. Kaizen is really about tweaking a single step in a production line and all you're trying to do is you improve efficiency by 1%, by 1%. But when that 1% improvement is made consistently across multiple areas, it then leads to massive gains in productivity and quality.

Philip Pape: 5:13

So how does this apply to you, especially when we're trying to eat in a way that is consistent? We are trying to hit calories and macros and nutrients and all of these things, even with your training perhaps really any system where you're trying to build consistency. It's very simple Instead of trying to overhaul the entire system, your entire diet, your entire training routine, we are going to focus on one small, manageable change cooking just one more meal at home each week. That's it. That is the change today that we are focused on Cooking just one more meal at home each week. As I mentioned earlier, it's National Cooking Day, so what better way to use that as a catalyst for making a very simple, easy, quick change than National Cooking Day?

Philip Pape: 6:02

All right, now you might be asking how is this one meal going to make a difference? I mean, you probably can imagine why. A little bit it would make a difference, but let me give you all the ways. Let me count the ways, okay, the first one is the control that it gives you over your meal. Very simple when you make your own meals, you have complete control. Complete control over the ingredients, portions, the cooking methods, right, which means no hidden ingredients, not a ton of butter or oil or sugar. You can proportion it the way you want rather than restaurant-sized portions, and then even cook it the way you want, so that it's sauteed, roasted, grilled, boiled, broiled, just the way you want. Maybe you don't want to overcook your burgers you know that's my pet peeve and that alone can lead to significant calorie reduction without even feeling like you're being restricted. It's a way to make food not only taste better, but hit the bottom line of your calorie budget even less, and then hit the other things, like protein, right. You can shift the macros the way you want, so you have a lot of control. That's huge.

Philip Pape: 7:06

The second thing is, by focusing on just this one thing one additional home-cooked meal a week we are building a habit gradually. This is exactly the approach I would take with clients for any piece of our nutrition plan. Now, if you work with me, if I'm your coach, we may do two or three of these at a time, because you've got the safety net of someone looking over your shoulder and helping you out and kind of you can lean on. But if you're doing it by yourself, one is perfectly awesome. Okay, it's much easier to commit to one meal than to suddenly decide I'm going to cook every single meal at home, I'm going to meal prep every meal for the entire week, I'm going to put them in Tupperware dishes and it's going to be perfect. That is my goal.

Philip Pape: 7:46

Don't do that. Don't do that. Just do one meal a day, or I mean, sorry, one meal, not even one meal a day, one meal for the whole week. I should have clarified Okay, one meal. Dinner is usually a good place to do that, but it could be lunch, whatever you choose, or breakfast. Number three this is a great learning opportunity, right? Because now you can try different recipes for that one meal and build a repertoire of dishes that you can enjoy, but in a nice, calm, low stress environment. Because you're just doing one meal, you're not out to get a whole you know, pinterest board of recipes or you're. You know, we've got amazing people in our Facebook group who love to post recipes, but you could easily get overwhelmed. So you could just pick one, just one that week, and if you find a winner, awesome. You can make it over and over again. Nothing wrong with that.

Philip Pape: 8:35

Number four as you see the benefits of that one home cooked meal, right, maybe you feel more satisfied from the meal or you realize it freed up some time, even though you're making the meal. You're also not driving to restaurants and spending a lot more time at the meal in a restaurant. You might be more efficient at home. Or you notice that something has improved with your biofeedback, with how you feel, with your body composition, whatever it is from starting to have more home-cooked meals. Right, just your digestion's good, you sleep better, whatever it is that will motivate you to do more often. And then the last reason to do this maybe this is the most important besides control is the reduced decision fatigue. Because you're committing to just one meal, you eliminate the mental struggle of should I cook or order in for at least one meal each week, and then imagine how that's going to compound when you start adding more later. So let's put this into practice. Here's your Kaizen challenge for the week to celebrate National Cooking Day Choose one meal that you typically eat out or order in and commit to cooking it at home instead.

Philip Pape: 9:46

It does not have to be complicated. In fact, the simpler the better when you're starting out, and some of my wife's best meals, honestly, are the really simple ones. You know she will even. She'll even apologize. She'll say, well, it only took me 10 minutes. I'm like, yeah, but that 10 minutes was the most efficient 10 minutes ever, given how awesome this meal is. I mean, that's a definition of efficiency. I love that.

Philip Pape: 10:07

So, for example, let's say you usually grab fast food for lunch on Wednesday, right? Instead, plan to pack a simple salad with chicken I mean, that's just a super simple example with some fruit on the side, right? Or if Thursday dinner is usually when you go out for pizza, make a homemade pizza. I mean, you don't even have to change the food, just make it at home. And now you have control over the crust. What goes in the crust? How many veggies? You know the different types of meat. It doesn't have to be just like like lathered in tons of oil and and have you know? Um, the pepperoni, like the standard pepperoni. You can have whatever nitrate free pepperoni, whatever you want. You know chicken? Uh, pineapple Some people would say how dare you put pineapple on a pizza.

Philip Pape: 10:52

Others are like, well, that is pizza. So, whatever, it is Okay. Um, the goal here is progress. That's it. The goal here is progress because if your homemade meal is not Instagram worthy, that's okay. And in fact I, I challenge you to go ahead and take a picture of it anyway and put it on your story and tag me. I would love to see it and say, hey, national cooking day, september 25th. Today, go post something and just encourage people to do it. In fact, be vulnerable and say, look, my food's not perfect, but it might even not even taste perfect, but you know what it's going to serve me and it's going to be my step toward greatness here when it comes to my nutrition.

Philip Pape: 11:27

The act of cooking itself is a win. So as you get comfortable with this one meal, then you could gradually increase. In a few weeks maybe you're cooking two extra meals at home, then three right, and then before you know it, you might be cooking every single meal at home, except maybe Saturday night. And I'll tell you what. We've gotten to that point, more or less partly because with four of us right, two kids who are now 10 and 12, they eat as much as we do. It gets damn expensive to go out a lot. You know what I mean. It doesn't feel worth it for the quality of food you usually get. It's got to be a more special thing and because we don't do it. Very often it is more special. We might not even go out to eat all week, except we'll go out for an ice cream on Sunday afternoon, and then that's super special. And, yeah, it's ice cream, awesome, we're enjoying it, I plan it in and it's super special, right? So that's another thing. I didn't even think about the fact that it makes going out even more special. And then, before you know it, cooking meals at home is just the thing you do. And that's the power of Kaizen Continuous improvement, change for better, small, consistent changes that compound over time.

Philip Pape: 12:33

Now I know what one of the objections is, philip I don't have time to cook or I'm a terrible cook. So let me just address these real quickly. First, remember we're just talking about one meal, remember, that's the whole point. And you can prepare many healthy meals in less time than it takes to look up order, wait for delivery, even when you're doing takeout, right, not even talking about going to a restaurant. And then, as you get more practice, you'll become more efficient. So I don't think that's an excuse. And then, as far as skills, that's what they are, they're skills. So a skill can be learned and improved over time.

Philip Pape: 13:07

If you tell yourself you're a bad cook. You are going to be a bad cook. That's called a fixed mindset, that's called a self-identity statement. Instead, be open to it. Say, ha, I can learn to cook. I just need to do it. I just need to figure it out right. Start with simple recipes built from there. I mean the internet, google, is full of quick, easy, healthy recipes for beginners. Just use the right word and you'll find exactly what you need.

Philip Pape: 13:34

Okay, the key is to start small and be consistent. Again, that's the essence of Kaizen. In fact, I'm realizing and hopefully I haven't, like, I'm not talking too quickly here I realized that Kaizen itself is one of the most powerful frameworks I've shared on this show ever, because of its ability to be applied to anything and create a foundation of totally sustainable change. And then, when you make that change, what's going to happen is you're going to start to have a sense of control, the sense of agency, the sense of empowerment that, okay, I can do this and I, I'm making it happen, me, I'm making it happen. And then you're then sending a powerful message to yourself. You're saying I'm in charge of my nutrition, I can make choices that will align with my goals. I get to make those choices, in fact.

Philip Pape: 14:17

And then it goes beyond the one meal. You find yourself making better choices throughout the day, upward spiraling. Maybe you drink an extra glass of water. You opt for some fruit for your sweet tooth during the afternoon water, you opt for some fruit for your sweet tooth during the afternoon. And that's the ripple effect of Kaizen One small change creates a wave of positive outcomes. And because the changes are small and they're manageable, they are, that's right. The S word sustainable. You're not white knuckling it through a restrictive diet where you cut carbs. No, you're just building systems, habits, whatever word you like to use. That will stick with you. That will become the essence of you and who you are Now. Imagine where you could be in a year if you commit to this approach.

Philip Pape: 14:57

Today, this week, national Cooking Day. Today, one extra home-cooked meal a week might not seem like much, but that's 52 healthier meals in a year. That's 52 opportunities to nourish your body, to learn new body, to learn new skills, to take control of your nutrition. And that's how the real, lasting change happens. Not through a one-off crash diet, a one-off extreme measure, but these small, consistent steps. So let's just wrap it up, just to really sear it into our brains together.

Philip Pape: 15:26

Number one Kaizen is a concept from engineering change for better that focuses on small, continuous improvements. Number two applying this process of Kaizen to your meal plan means focusing on one small change cooking one extra meal at home each week. This change then leads to the benefits of the change better portion control, improved cooking skills, positive mindset shift all of those things that then spur you to want to do it more often and more frequently. And then you start to be consistent and create gradual progress. It may not be perfect, it doesn't need to be, because it's better than it was before and then, over time, these small changes compound, leading to sustainable long-term results. So, as we celebrate National Cooking Day, I challenge you to embrace the Kaizen approach. Start with one meal, see where it takes you and you might surprise yourself All right.

Philip Pape: 16:25

So today, if you enjoyed this episode and want to connect with others, if you want to get some recipe ideas, if you want to share, for accountability, that you're doing this, join our Wits and Weights Facebook group. It's totally free. It's just on Facebook. You look it up. I'll include a link to the show notes.

Philip Pape: 16:39

It is a community of like-minded individuals quirky nerds, engineers, non-engineers but we all are working toward the same types of goals in the same way. We want to build systems that make our lives more efficient, easier to get the result and have more control at the end of it, all right. So if you join the group, join our Facebook group you can then share recipes, you can swap meal prep, you can find support, motivation as you implement this Kaizen approach to your meal planning, but even to anything else in your fitness journey. Just search for Wits and Weights on Facebook or click the link in your show notes and take that first step today. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting some weights and remember, in the kitchen and in life, small changes lead to big results. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

The Hidden Reason You're Skipping Gym Workouts (It's Not Laziness) | Ep 221

Do you skip the gym, even though you know how amazing you’ll feel afterward? Have you set fitness goals but can't seem to stay consistent with your workouts?

Philip (@witsandweights) dives into the hidden psychological reasons why motivation is elusive and why it’s not about laziness or willpower.  He covers the science of motivation, the misalignment between goals and actions, and how to form lasting habits that make showing up for your workouts easier. Philip also shares practical tips to hack your brain for success. Whether you're a seasoned lifter hitting a motivation wall or a newbie trying to build a gym habit, you'll learn to reframe your mindset, focus on immediate rewards, and build systems for effortless consistency.

💪 To learn how to optimize your nutrition to build muscle and focus on what matters (vs. the number on the scale), making getting to the gym and working out (training) just “what you do,” download my free Muscle-Building Nutrition Blueprint or go to witsandweights.com/free

Today, you’ll learn all about:

2:33 Listener question: Why is it so hard to get motivated to go to the gym?
3:48 The psychology of motivation and "temporal discounting"
6:44 Misalignment between workout goals and actions
13:00 How to form lasting workout habits
16:07 Habit stacking and temptation bundling for workout success
21:14 Developing resilience and mental toughness through training
22:24 Free muscle-building nutrition blueprint to fuel your workouts
23:30 Outro

Episode resources:

• Download the free Muscle-Building Nutrition Blueprint or go to witsandweights.com/free

Episode summary:

If you've ever struggled to find the motivation to hit the gym consistently, you're not alone. Many people grapple with the psychological barriers that prevent them from making regular exercise a habit. The latest episode of "Wits and Weights" dives deep into the hidden psychological factors that could be sabotaging your fitness goals and offers actionable strategies to overcome them.

One of the key insights from the episode is that your lack of gym motivation isn't necessarily about laziness or a lack of willpower. Instead, it often boils down to deeper psychological mechanisms like temporal discounting and the empathy gap. Temporal discounting refers to our tendency to prioritize immediate rewards over future benefits. This means that the comfort of staying on the couch often outweighs the long-term benefits of exercise. The empathy gap, on the other hand, makes it difficult for us to empathize with our future selves who will feel accomplished after a workout. Understanding these concepts can help you hack your motivation and make consistent workouts feel almost effortless.

Another major point discussed in the episode is the misalignment between fitness goals and actual progress. Many people tie their workouts to weight loss, focusing solely on the numbers on the scale. However, this approach can be misleading and demotivating. Scale weight fluctuates due to various factors like muscle gain, water retention, and metabolic changes. Instead, the episode suggests shifting your focus to performance-based metrics such as strength gains, endurance, and overall well-being. These metrics provide a more accurate reflection of your progress and can be incredibly motivating.

The episode also offers practical strategies for building sustainable fitness habits. One effective approach is habit stacking, which involves linking new habits to existing ones. For example, you could tie your workout routine to your morning coffee ritual. Another technique is temptation bundling, where you pair a less enjoyable activity (like exercising) with something you enjoy (like listening to your favorite podcast). These methods can make it easier to stick to your workout routine by reducing the mental effort required to get started.

Reducing friction is another crucial strategy discussed in the episode. This involves making it as easy as possible to start your workout. For instance, setting a specific time for your training and laying out your workout clothes the night before can significantly reduce the barriers to exercise. If you have a home gym, you can even set up your equipment in advance to make it easier to start your workout.

The episode also emphasizes the importance of immediate rewards. While long-term goals are important, focusing on the immediate benefits of exercise, such as feeling energized and clear-headed, can be more motivating. By shifting your focus to these short-term rewards, you can make the process of working out more enjoyable and sustainable.

Understanding the psychological mechanisms that drive your behavior can help you develop a more effective fitness strategy. By focusing on immediate rewards, reducing friction, and aligning your goals with your actions, you can transform your gym experience. Whether you're a seasoned athlete facing a plateau or a beginner struggling to start, these insights can help you build a sustainable fitness habit.

In summary, overcoming gym motivation struggles involves understanding and addressing the psychological barriers that prevent consistent exercise. By focusing on short-term rewards, reducing friction, and aligning your goals with your actions, you can build a more sustainable and enjoyable fitness routine. The episode provides a comprehensive toolkit for anyone looking to make consistent gym visits a reality. So, if you're ready to transform your fitness mindset and unlock your gym potential, be sure to listen to this episode!

📲 Send me a text message!

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment

🎓 Join Wits & Weights Physique University

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free and access 70+ evidence-based workout programs

🩷 Love the podcast? Leave a 5-star review or share on social and tag @witsandweights

📞 Send a Q&A voicemail

---

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!

---

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:02

If you're the type of person who has ambitious training and physique goals, but you find yourself constantly struggling to get to the gym and you're frustrated because you know how good you feel after a workout, yet still can't seem to make it a consistent habit, this episode is for you. Today, we're uncovering the hidden psychological barriers that keep you from working out consistently, even when you know how important it is for your health and physique goals. You'll discover why. It's not about laziness or lack of discipline or willpower, and how to shift your mindset to finally break free from dreading going to the gym. Whether you are a seasoned lifter and you're hitting a motivation wall, or if you're a newbie struggling to establish a routine, this episode will give you the tools to transform your relationship with going to the gym.

Philip Pape: 0:55

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're tackling a topic that plagues even the most dedicated fitness enthusiasts and lifters why it's so challenging to get yourself to the gym consistently. You've got the intention to go, you've planned your workouts, you've written them down in your log or your workout app, and then, when the time comes, you find yourself making excuses or feeling unmotivated. It's very frustrating, especially when you know how good you'll feel once you've accomplished the training session. But the truth is it is not about laziness, it is not about willpower, because there's actually a deeper psychological mechanism at play and once you can understand it which is what this episode's about you can hack your motivation and you can make consistent workouts feel almost effortless. Now, before we get into it, I have a quick favor to ask If you enjoy the show, if you get value from the podcast episodes. I would be grateful for a five-star rating in the app that you're using right now to listen to the show and if you're feeling extra generous, a brief review would go a long way towards supporting us as well. Believe it or not, only a small fraction of followers take the time to submit a review, such as Whitey0414, who said quote. I listen every chance I get and always walk away with something, if not multiple tips and techniques to maximize my time during my workouts. End quote. So go ahead, submit a rating and review and I would love to give you a shout out on a future episode.

Philip Pape: 2:33

All right, now let's get into today's topic on the hidden reason that you're skipping workouts and how to get motivated to go to the gym consistently. And I'd like to kick things off by addressing the struggle to get to the gym. What is that all about? And I want to do it in the context of a listener who inspired this episode, russ G. You know who you are. Special shout out to Russ, who inspired us with his question, and he asked quote why is it so hard to get motivated to go to the gym? Once I'm there, I don't mind doing the work and I always feel awesome when I'm done, so why is it a struggle to start? And I believe Russ followed up to say he actually has a home gym, so it's not even the getting out of his house to go there, which is an important point. And, russ, you are not alone in this at all.

Philip Pape: 3:19

This is one of the most common frustrations I hear from listeners and clients and to tackle it, we are going to break it down into three key areas. The first is the psychology of motivation. The second will be the misalignment between your goals and your actions, and then the third will be tying this together and talking about the power of habit or system formation. Right. How do we create the system for ourselves or habits, whatever word you want to use? So let's start with the first one, the psychology of motivation.

Philip Pape: 3:52

In the field of psychology, there's a concept called temporal discounting. This has nothing to do with time travel, but temporal does mean time and it refers to our tendency to place greater value on immediate rewards compared to future benefits. It's somewhat tied to instant gratification and when we think about working out, the immediate reward of staying comfortable on the couch or staying in bed often outweighs the future benefit even if it's future a few hours from now of, say, feeling great after a workout. If that's the immediate benefit we're going for and we're going to discuss soon why that's not even the ultimate benefit we're going for. But let's stick with me.

Philip Pape: 4:35

And then this temporal discounting is further complicated by something psychologists call the empathy gap. When we're comfortable, right when we're in our normal comfort zone, our comfortable state, day to day, the things we always are used to, we don't think about them. It's very challenging for us to imagine or empathize with our future self. Who is going to feel energized and feel accomplished after training, after working out, and our brain essentially says future, me is a stranger and I care more about current me's comfort, right, that is, the empathy gap. And so between temporal discounting, right, the idea that the immediate reward tends to outweigh the future reward, and the empathy gap where the current me, I want that person to be more comfortable than the future me who I don't even know. If we can understand these, then it shifts our perspective and we realize that it.

Philip Pape: 5:29

No, it's not about laziness, it's not about lack of willpower and, by the way, this applies to anything, not just working out. It's actually about how our brains are wired through, you know, years and years of evolution to prioritize our immediate comfort over future benefits, to prioritize our immediate comfort over future benefits. There's a survival mechanism behind that and the challenge is we have to overcome it and we have to be our modern human selves and try to overcome this psychologically. And so the focus I like is the immediate benefits of working out as a starting point, rather than long-term goals. And again, this can apply to anything. What's the immediate, like within hours, within minutes or like right now, depends on the timing benefits can we extract and focus on. And so, instead of thinking I need to work out to lose weight or I need to work out to lose fat or build muscle. Focus on how energized and clear-headed you'll feel immediately after your workout, and this starts to shift the reward from the future to the present, making it a little bit more motivating. Now, that's just the start. Okay, that's just the start.

Philip Pape: 6:34

It's being aware that that is what we are doing to ourselves and finding benefits that we can actually hold onto and make concrete in a shorter time horizon, which then leads me to the next piece, which is the misalignment between our goals and our actions. And this actually ties into the second part of Russ's question that he asked in email he sent me, where he said, quote how do I come to terms with the fact that the more I work out, the less likely I am to see the scale go down? When I do make it to the gym consistently and I'm hitting my nutrition goals, I am disappointed to see my weight stay the same or go up. End quote. Now my literal interpretation of this question, russ, is that you are trying to be in a calorie deficit and you've set your goal to do so, and then you're eating to your target. That intends you to be in that deficit to induce fat loss, but perhaps something's happening like your metabolism is adapting more quickly than you can adjust and therefore it looks like a plateau. That's one thing that comes to mind.

Philip Pape: 7:42

I think the deeper thing, or the deeper issue here, is that you're connecting your workouts to your scale weight, and that's a common frustration and a common thing people do and it's one of the biggest myths I would say that I deal with on a regular basis is tying workouts to calories, and that is a big misalignment between expectations and reality, with our fitness, with what we're doing, with what we're eating, because many people tie the motivation then for their workouts to their scale weight. But scale weight is actually one of the worst indicators of progress, especially if you're strength training right. So let that sink in. We have a huge misalignment. In other words, the question itself may not be the right question.

Philip Pape: 8:22

When you start a consistent training routine right, especially one that we talk about here, which is resistance training Even if you have other forms of activity walking, cardio, conditioning, whatever the strength training is the focus A few things happen when you start this. Number one is you're going to be building muscle, muscles denser than fat, so your body composition will start to change, even if the weight on the scale doesn't. Number two, your body might retain more water, more fluid, and those fluctuations go up and down. Maybe you started creatine, for example, but even the muscle repair, the inflammatory process, adaptation of building muscle especially if you just started this can cause weird changes in your scale weight. Your metabolism could go up and cause you to have a higher appetite. Maybe you're consuming more Now you said you're tracking, so I assume you are actually consuming what you think your target needs to be to be in a deficit and you've set your goal properly for that deficit, in which case that's not exactly the issue.

Philip Pape: 9:23

Anyway, anything going on when it comes to building muscle can lead to the scale changing in ways that we don't expect. It could go up, it could stay the same, even as your body composition improves, even as you are in what you think is a deficit, and now your body's compensating because you've got more muscle, like by compensating I mean weight on the scale, where it would have gone down because you lost fat, you also gain muscle at the same time, and then it doesn't budge and even the tracking app is like I don't know what's going on. I gave you what should be your deficit based on your maintenance calories. But it's not working that way and if you only care about scale weight as your measure of success, it's incredibly demotivating. And it's okay to monitor the trend in scale weight over time as one data point related to your nutrition, related to your calorie deficit. In fact, we had dedicated an entire episode about this two weeks ago, about why weight loss always fails. It's exactly about that. So go check it out two weeks ago on a Monday.

Philip Pape: 10:16

But it's not helpful. The scale weight is not helpful if you're tying it to your workouts. We don't exercise to burn calories. We train to build and preserve muscle. That is it. There's always a little side effect, a little bonus from moving more, and that is we do tend to burn more calories, but we don't do it for that reason. We do it to stay really active, to be able to eat more, to support ourselves with our nutrition and then to be able to build muscle with all those resources coming in.

Shonnetta: 10:42

Hi, my name is Shawnetta and I want to give a big shout out to Philip of Wits and Weights. I discovered his podcast just a few short months ago, but I quickly realized how valuable his content is. With all the many fitness and nutrition influencers out in the world today, I often suffer from information overload, but Philip poses careful questions to his guests that get to the meat of the subject matter, while most everyone offers free guides to this, and that what I found most unique about Philip is his live training and weekly Q&A sessions. If I can't make it live, I can always catch the replay. I am very grateful to find someone I feel is so passionate and genuine to his purpose, while also being hands-on within the Wits and Weights online community. He is truly only a click away. Thanks, philip, for all you do.

Philip Pape: 11:27

So my philosophy here is let's shift our focus to those performance-based goals. Right, russ? How much weight can you lift? How many you know push-ups can you do? How do your clothes fit? How is your energy throughout the day?

Philip Pape: 11:43

These are often much better indicators of progress and can be incredibly motivating because they directly correlate with what you are doing, with your actions tying to your goals and remember those goals. Based on the first thing we talked about temporal discounting and the empathy gap, we're trying to have as immediate rewarding goals as we can. So we get those quick wins and if that is going to the gym squat five more pounds than you did last time and you're motivated to do that, and you do it and you get it, and now you know that that ties into your strength and muscle. It all aligns. There's no dissonance there Because, remember Russ, when you're consistently working out and you're hitting your goals, you are making progress, even if the scale doesn't reflect it immediately. As long as you're tracking all these other things, and if nothing is progressing, that tells you something too, but you can't just use this one data point to tell that. Then, once you are tracking those things, then you have to trust the process. There's definitely an element of patience and time, of course, and the more signs of improvement you can find beyond the scale, especially in that immediate time horizon, the more easy it will be to motivate yourself. Action result, motivation, not motivation. Action result, action, then the result, then the motivation. But we need that result to happen pretty quickly. So this brings me to the third piece, because if you're not convinced, if you're still like, but wait a minute, this still doesn't get me out of the bed to go to the gym.

Philip Pape: 13:08

Let's talk about the classic process of habit formation, habits systems I really don't care what language we use there, because it's the same thing in practice. It's doing something that you don't have to think about fairly automatically, because it's just what you do. But there's a process to getting to that point and that is how we make anything we want to do easier. Easier in the sense that we're going to do it, not easier in the sense that the thing itself is necessarily easy, makes sense, right? Because you know, once you get to the gym and you start working out, oh man, it can be hard and it should be hard, it should push you, but you've started it and so you're going to finish it. It's very easy to finish at that point. Easy to finish, not easy to do, different concept and then it requires less mental energy and willpower. Much less, in fact. Hopefully very, very close to zero is what we're going for.

Philip Pape: 13:59

So what do we do to form that habit in the first place? Well, we have to create consistency Okay, now, that sounds like a chicken and egg problem and we have to reduce friction. So that's the one I really want to focus on. This is pretty easy to do. It just requires a little step, a little bit of effort, such as setting a specific time for your training in the morning and sticking to it. And by sticking to it, you've got it tied to your alarm, to a reminder. You've delayed anything else you need to do past that point, whether it's getting your kids ready for school, whether it's starting your first meeting in the morning. You've arranged your entire schedule around working out in the morning, even if it's going to be a short session. You've made it as easy as possible to start the workout by laying out your workout clothes and or gym bag and equipment the night before, by pre-logging your exercises, your sets and your reps in your app or your notebook the night or the week before, I like to plan out my entire week.

Philip Pape: 14:59

In fact, I use Boost Camp, an awesome app. You could download it in the show notes near the bottom. I use Boost Camp because I can create a custom program for the next seven-week block, where I have six weeks plus a deload and I can preload everything in there. And now it's super easy to go into the gym for the next seven weeks and it's all set up to go. Or if you're using someone else's program in the app, same thing, it's all set to go. Set up your equipment in advance. Russ, you have a home gym, so anybody who has a home gym. This is really easy to do. Not only can you arrange your workouts so that you can use the equipment that you have easy in order as it makes sense, right, a sequence you know, like, if you're going to do a leg press and a calf raise, we'll do them back to back or even super set them together. You can also set up your equipment in advance. So set up your inclined bench, set up your bar, set up your hooks, set up your racks, set up your plates, whatever. So that, again, it's as easy as possible. Not only is it easy for us or everybody listening. You've actually done so much work ahead of time to get ready for it that it would feel like a huge disappointment to yourself. It would feel demotivating to not go to the gym if that makes sense, right, because you've done all this already.

Philip Pape: 16:08

Another powerful technique I like is habit stacking. Now there's two techniques that get conflated from James Clear's Atomic Habits. One is called habit stacking, one is called temptation bundling. So habit stacking is tying or anchoring a habit to an existing habit, whereas temptation bundling is tying some new habit you want to form to something else that you do. That may or may not be a healthy thing, it may not be the most positive thing, like binging Netflix but you tie it to walking on your inclined treadmill, for example. Or it could be something that's neutral, like listening to a podcast and tying that to your walking outside, whatever. But the habit stacking is stacking those habits on top of each other and linking them together and saying, okay, after I have my morning coffee, I'm going to do my training, you know, and then, even if you didn't feel like it now, you're having your coffee. Oh, that triggers your brain to then want to go to the gym. It's kind of like these naturally go together, so I'm going to do that. So there's there's a lot of techniques like this.

Philip Pape: 17:08

I'm not going to spend too much time today on the how to. Again, the goal is going to be perfect and, like every single day, you're going to do it. It too, again, the goal is going to be perfect and, like every single day, you're going to do it. It takes a little bit of time to build that consistency. So, even if you're consistently inconsistent doing it, more often than not, it's going to eventually build into the momentum. And if you notice that you are not quite where you want to be, you can pull out one of these techniques and say, okay, I need to do something else to reduce friction or to increase the more immediate reward.

Philip Pape: 17:36

Now here's something to consider. The struggle to get motivated for workouts can be a positive sign, because it means that that is the thing you need to do and that is the thing that will expand your comfort zone and that is where growth happens. Apply this to anything, anything that you want to do and you're struggling to do it. Can we reframe that as a positive thing? It means that thing is the thing you need to do because your body is resisting it, and it's a change. If working out was always easy, if it was always enjoyable, everyone would do it all the time. We know that's not the case. The fact that it's challenging and the fact that strength training is something a small fraction of people on the planet do is what makes it valuable, because every time you overcome that initial resistance and you get your training session done, you're not just building physical strength, you're building mental resilience A concept I've touched on many times because those hard things in the gym, those physical things that actually transform your body, spills out, that mental toughness spills over into other areas of your life and you become someone.

Philip Pape: 18:40

You, russ, listening to this, you Susan listening to this, you, jennifer or Peter or whoever listening to this, become someone who can do hard things, who can push through discomfort for a greater goal, and that, my friends, my dear listeners, is a superpower. It is a superpower. You are in the elite once you can get to that, and it doesn't take much to get there. You're listening to this show and we're already equipping you with the mindset and the tools to do that, and you've got individuals that you can reach out to, like myself. Reach out to me. If, russ, you listen to this and you still struggle to get to the gym after all of this and you've put these into place, you still have no excuses.

Philip Pape: 19:20

Reach out to me, right, the next time you're struggling to get motivated, remind yourself that this struggle itself means that it's something that will expand your comfort zone. It will make you stronger, not just physically, but in other ways. Embrace it right, yes, even push through it. There is some pushing, there is some effort there at some point, just like when you lift heavy weights and you have to overcome resistance there is some resistance and there's friction. We're making it as easy as possible to do that, but it's got to be done. Then watch as it transforms, not just your body but everything, everything you do in your life. You will start to take that approach, and that is truly inspiring.

Philip Pape: 20:03

So, as we wrap up, let's recap the points here right. Number one the struggle to get motivated is not about laziness, willpower, discipline. It's about how our brains are wired just naturally wired to prefer short-term comfort over anything else. And therefore, why don't we take advantage of that and hack our brain and focus on immediate benefits rather than long-term goals to overcome this temporal discounting and that empathy gap. And then, tied with that is shifting your focus from a single data point like scale weight that's not even relevant for your workouts to performance-based goals that you can actually achieve day after day after day, and then motivate you even more. Then we want to reduce friction by using something like habit stacking or temptation bundling right, making it as easy as possible to get to the gym so easy it's actually hard not to and that creates consistency. And then finally remind ourselves that the fact that we have a struggle here means we're expanding our comfort zone and building mental resilience. So take some or all of that as you will, and russ and everyone else listening.

Philip Pape: 21:11

I hope this at least gives you a different angle, different perspective on workout motivation, on training motivation and I use the words workout and training kind of interchangeably. I prefer the word training because ultimately what we're doing is we're improving our strength, our performance, our function. We are building our body over time through a process of improvement. We're not just going in to get sweaty or sore, and again, that's another way to think about it is that it is a process and we can hit the weight on the bar and hit those extra reps. That itself can be the immediate reward Every time you overcome that initial resistance, mentally and physically again, you're not just changing your body. You are developing that resilience to know that you can do and choose to do hard things and become a better version of yourself, no matter what happens. No matter what happens in life, the worst things are going to happen and you can continue to be that person, because that's just who you are.

Philip Pape: 22:08

All right, if you found value in today's very motivational, mindset-focused episode and you want to optimize your muscle building nutrition so that it supports your training and that, by the way, is going to motivate you even more once you see the results of a stronger, leaner physique I've got something special for you. I've created a free muscle building nutrition blueprint to help you focus on what really matters when setting up your plan. So instead of focusing on the number, on the scale, you can focus on all the other factors. They are laid out in the guide step by step, and there is even a case study at the end where I applied all of these principles and techniques to my own bulking phase. It's going to show you how to fuel your workouts, how to optimize protein, how to optimize the rate of gain, set realistic expectations, track the right things, look for the right changes. And that is the perfect companion to help you shift your focus from scale weight to overall body composition and performance.

Philip Pape: 23:07

So to get your free copy of the Muscle Building Nutrition Blueprint it's a mouthful click the link in the show notes. Or go to witsandweightscom slash free, which, by the way, I have a lot of guides there in addition to this one. So if you go to witsandweightscom slash free, or click free stuff at the top, you can just browse and pick whatever one you want to your heart's content. Or, again, just click the link in the show notes. All right, man, I am fired up by this one. I hope you are too. I don't know when you're listening to this, but you've got no excuse not to go to your next training session Until next time. Keep using those wits and lifting some weights and remember, every time you choose to train, you're expanding your comfort zone and building a stronger, more resilient version of you, because this isn't just about physical strength, as powerful as that is. It's about developing the mental toughness to overcome challenges in all areas of your life. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.