Ep 12: Gaining Weight to Get Lean

It seems that everyone wants to get “lean” these days. There’s almost an obsession with six-pack abs, visual muscularity, and thinness if you’re to believe the legions of fitness influencers who appear ready for an instant photo shoot on any given day.

I’ve got nothing against maintaining a healthy weight, and in fact this podcast is all about finding a sustainable way to get stronger, build muscle, and stay healthy. But if you were to ask yourself, “what exactly is my goal when it comes to body composition?,” most of us would answer that we want to be lean, as in lower our body fat percentage.

The reasons why are many, from improved performance and cardiovascular health to just feeling and looking good, often measured by whether we can fit into our favorite pair of pants again.

But it often leads to a cycle of aggressive dieting and gaining back the weight (and then some) in an attempt to “see our abs” rather than a steady, consistent approach that results in “leanness” without the extreme dieting, hunger, and disappointment at failing to reach this coveted goal.

Today I want to talk about a refreshingly sustainable, enjoyable approach to getting lean by gaining weight! This episode is all about the benefits of using a nice, long building phase to develop muscle, increase your metabolism, and set yourself up for a much easier dieting phase later on. You’ll be able to perform better in the gym, eat more, and eventually reach your goal without (as much) suffering.

In today’s episode, we cover:

• Two approaches to getting lean, one which often fails

• My recent, successful 15-week muscle-building phase

• Listener Q&A about wearables, calories, and dieting

RELATED LINKS

• MacroFactor app for food logging and calculating expenditure (use code "WITSANDWEIGHTS" to extend free trial to 14 days)

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Transcript

This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.

[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast, for busy professionals who want to get strong and healthy with strength training and a sustainable diet. I’m your host, Philip Pape, and in each episode, we’ll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry, and a commitment to consistent lifting and nutrition.

[00:00:27]Welcome to episode 12 of Wits & Weights. It seems that everyone wants to get quote unquote lean these days. There's almost an obsession with six pack abs visual muscularity and thinness. If are to believe the legions of fitness influencers who appear ready for an instant photo shoot on any given day.

[00:00:55] And now I've got nothing against maintaining a healthy weight. And in fact, this podcast is all about finding a sustainable way to get stronger, build muscle and stay healthy. But if you were to ask yourself what exactly is my goal, when it comes to body composition, most of us would answer that we want to be E lean as in lower our body fat percentage.

[00:01:19] Now the reasons why are many from improved performance and cardiovascular health to just feeling and looking good, often measured by whether we can fit into our favorite pair of pants again. But this often leads to a cycle of aggressive dieting and gaining back the weight and then some in an attempt to quote unquote, see our abs rather than a steady, consistent approach that results in leanness without the extreme dieting, hunger and disappointment at failing to reach this coveted goal.

[00:01:54] Today. I want to talk about a refreshingly sustainable, enjoyable approach to getting lean by gaining weight. This episode is all about the benefits of using a nice long building phase to develop muscle, increase your metabolism and set yourself up for a much easier dieting phase later or on you'll be able to perform better in the gym, eat more and eventually reach your goal without suffering.

[00:02:21] So in today's episode, I cover. Two approaches to getting lean. One of which often fails and one which is much more sustainable. My recent successful 15 week muscle building phase. As an example of one way, you can do this. And finally, I have listener Q and a, a question I'll be answering about wearables, calories and dieting.

[00:02:45] Let's get into the show. All right. The first thing I wanna cover is this idea that the best way to get lean is to burn fat. And it sounds great. Uh, oftentimes it's a combination of dieting and excessive exercise, usually in the form of cardio that is at least in the common zeitgeist of how to do the us.

[00:03:07] But what happens is if you've never gone through a muscle building phase, if you've never added muscle to your frame, through lifting. And you're just trying to get thinner so that you can see your abs or your muscles, whatever, what you're gonna end up doing is being a lighter skinnier, but fatter version of yourself who has a lower metabolism, meaning you're not gonna eat as much in as you diet.

[00:03:34] You'll have to eat less and less. To reduce weight, which is gonna make you miserable. Let's just admit it. It often leads to yo-yo dieting where you rebound, you hit your weight. Great. I'm I've got my goal. I'm thin. Uh, but I'm pretty disappointed at how I look, but I'm thin and now I need to eat again. And then you start gaining the weight and because you've undergone this metabolic adaptation to a small extent, or sometimes an extreme extent.

[00:04:06] Your body is that much more primed to gain more weight and potentially more than you had before. Furthermore, if you're always cutting calories, always trying to get lean or thin, you will never have the performance you need in the gym, especially if you're cutting carbs, for example, to do it, which is a, a common approach these days.

[00:04:28] And this is just an overall inability to get stronger. Keeps you weak. You won't have muscle and you'll just be. Miserable skinnier, but fatter version of yourself. Now, I'm sorry to say, many of us have gone through this in trying to get lean. You may be overweight today, but at some point in your life, I'm going to bet that you've tried a fat loss phase and you were somewhat successful in the short term often through some sort of.

[00:04:56] Diet like keto, low carb Atkins. You didn't add any form of progressive lifting or an idea of building muscle and you got kind of thin or skinny, but you still didn't really see any muscle. Didn't really see the abs. You just look skinny and weak. Let's contrast that with a different approach, the approach that I'm in favor of the approach that.

[00:05:22] Many of us have discovered through a different strategy, one based on improving your body composition in the other direction. And that is getting bigger by adding muscle, adding lean tissue and then dieting. And the idea with this approach is that you enter a long and slow. Muscle building phase, you supply sufficient calories to your body so that as you are lifting, using progressive overload using the.

[00:05:54] Tried and true principles that we've talked about before on this podcast. And we'll talk about again, of objective progress, training, hard, doing it consistently. You will grow muscle over time, especially if you were a newer lifter, newer lifters can gain anywhere from one to maybe even four pounds of muscle in a month, which is quite a bit of lean tissue.

[00:06:18] And the more muscle you have, we've talked about this before, as well, the higher, your total daily energy expenditure metabolism for a variety of reasons, some of which we still can't fully explain some of which come down to the tissue itself. The fact that muscle tissue is more expensive. But there's a systemic effect that you see it inevitably.

[00:06:36] I've seen it myself. I see it with all the other folks in our community who go through phases of building phases of dieting. And inevitably, there's this shift up in your metabolism as you gain weight and muscle. Now, as you gain muscle while lifting and eating more, that is eating in a caloric surplus.

[00:06:54] You are gonna gain a bit of fat. That's just inevitable. And I think this is the thing that scares most people. The thought that there's no magic way to just gain muscle. You're going to gain all types of tissue. The thing is, again, if you are a newer lifter or even intermediate, you can still gain quite a BI bit of muscle as a percentage of that game.

[00:07:16] And then it's a lot easier. To lose fat fairly quickly versus the gaining of the muscle. And you're able to lose fat without losing much muscle. You retain that muscle and that will ultimately result in you being leaner than you were before at the same body weight. Now, if you've ever seen athletes or powerless or body builders or anybody, who's worked hard on their physique, And you try to guess their weight chances are you're gonna underestimate their weight by a pretty good margin because a leaner body will look thinner.

[00:07:53] It's filled out with a, a, a tighter kind of physique to it, but you can still be a heavier weight because muscle's denser. It sort of skews our perception of what we do talk about when we mean fat versus thin. What we mean by lean. And then we get into the rat race of just trying to lose weight, to get lean.

[00:08:11] My argument today that I, that I'm trying to get to here is that. By eating and lifting. We get stronger. We build muscle, we take in more calories, we have better performance. We then enjoy ourselves in the gym. As we see progress, the more progress we make and the bigger we get, the more progress we make still.

[00:08:32] And we get to a point where we say, you know, I'm putting on maybe a little too much fat, but I've, I know I've gained a lot of muscle as evidence by the objective progress in the gym. And now I can go on a steady or maybe slightly aggressive if I want to fat cutting phase, where I try to retain as much muscle as I can.

[00:08:51] Cut off that little bit of extra fat or even more and result in a leaner version of myself. In fact, you may end up at a slightly higher weight than before you started the building and then cutting phases, and yet still be leaner. And isn't that our goal, best of all, not only that you probably have shifted up your TDE, your energy expenditure.

[00:09:15] To the point where now you can eat more at the same weight than you used to. And that to me is an extremely sustainable approach. Let's just walk through an example, right? I'm gonna use my typical 180 pound male. And we're talking about a new-ish lifter. Let's say you've been lifting for six months.

[00:09:33] You've gotten past the, the new beef phase. You've gotten past the awkwardness of learning the lifts, and now you're starting to make. Steady consistent progress. And you're 180 pound man with 22% body fat. Now in subjective terms, if you were to look at someone with 22% body fat, you would say they actually look pretty healthy, but maybe with a little fluff, maybe a little gut or love handles, maybe a little bit on the backside, you know, wherever ends to collect for an individual, we all have our spots.

[00:10:04] You know, I'm not gonna talk about, um, obese or extremely overweight folks on this example, because that's a different scenario. I, I feel that if you are very overweight to an unhealthy level and yes, having too high of a weight is a health concern. It's not about the physique. It's not about the antibody image.

[00:10:25] It's about health, cardiovascular health, uh, and metabolic disease, et cetera. So if you're very overweight, my suggestion would be hit the gym hard, lift heavy and eat roughly at maintenance. And you're probably gonna see some sort of body composition you're gonna lose fat. Anyway, that's a unique scenario.

[00:10:42] There are a lot of sort of use cases that are on the corner like that one, but I wanna focus on the person who's not quite lean, has a little extra fat and wants to become lean. And I think this applies to men and women, you would just shift the body fat percentage by about five to 10% higher for women.

[00:11:01] So the 180 pound man with 22% body fat, if you do the math, that's about 140 pounds of lean mass and 40 pounds of fat. Now we're gonna go on a gaining phase. So this is the trick, right? We need to gain weight to gain muscle in this scenario. There are, there's no way around it. There's no magic formula to some sort of massive body recomposition.

[00:11:25] Yes, body recom recom is possible. But if we're talking about doing this in a fairly effective, efficient manner, rather than over a long period where we have to optimize everything. Uh, this is the more typical approach. So we're gonna target, for example, a pound a week of gain, which is pretty aggressive, but we're talking about a newer lifter, which makes sense.

[00:11:51] And we're gonna assume that half of that gain is muscle. Just for this example, it may be less, it may only be a quarter or a third. It actually may be slightly more depending on the individual responder. And the more advanced you get the less of the percentage of what you gain is muscle. And so you tend to dial back how aggressive you are to increase that percentage back to a higher level, which simply means it's gonna take longer to build muscle.

[00:12:17] But again, going back to this newish lifter, one pound a week, assume how half of that is muscle, which is about four pounds a month of weight gain with two pounds a month of muscle. I think that's reasonable. So after 16 weeks, so here you go, about four months getting to eat more food. If you're using an app like macro factor to track your food and track your weight, you can see how your metabolism fluctuates.

[00:12:47] You're probably gonna see it climb over time. It's generally what happens, which is great. Eight, because then each week you're gonna check in the, app's gonna say, Hey, you get another 125 calories a day this week, next week, Hey, you get another 80 calories a day this week. And you keep pushing and pushing and you enjoy this process of getting to, to taste new foods and try different combinations to hit your macros and all that great stuff that we like about gaining weight.

[00:13:12] So after 16 weeks you've gained 16 pounds. And if half of that is muscle, you've gained eight pounds of muscle. Now you weigh 190. Pounds now, there are people walking around at 180 and I was one of them who never could imagine pushing myself up close to 200 pounds on purpose. Just seemed crazy. I had gotten to 210 in college.

[00:13:36] Totally not on purpose. Uh, and I, I was not lean and I was not lifting. So that was a very different scenario. The kind in that we don't want to follow, but you've been lifting hard three days, four days a week following a linear progression. Or maybe a, an intermediate program. If you're at that level, maybe a four day split, and now you weigh 196 pounds of which 148 is lean mass because you've gained eight pounds of muscle and 48 pounds of fat because you've gained eight pounds of fat.

[00:14:09] So now your body fat percentage has climbed up a little bit to 24 or percent. So you might look in the mirror and say, huh, I'm looking a little fluffy. Uh, my pants are a little bit tight, but it's, it's an incremental change and you've been training hard and eating a lot for about four months, which is a pretty good stretch.

[00:14:27] So now you're slightly quote unquote fatter, but you have quite a bit more muscle. Eight pounds of muscle is nothing to sneeze at. That's a lot of extra lean tissue on your body. So now you just, so I'm gonna go on a diet phase. For eight weeks and eight weeks is a perfectly reasonable sanity maintaining length of time.

[00:14:46] Uh, some people might even call this a mini cut where you're gonna go pretty aggressive. You're gonna go maybe two pounds a week, which again, for a newish lifter at 24% body fat is totally reasonable. In fact, I'm on a cut right now, now where I I'm at 1.7 pounds a week. And the second phase of my cut will be less than that, but it's still pretty aggressive.

[00:15:07] So you're gonna go on a diet phase for eight weeks. At two pounds a week. Cause the goal here is we're gonna take all that, all those pounds that we added, we're gonna take them right back off. But you're gonna find that at the end, you actually have more muscle than you did before. So after eight weeks you've lost 16 pounds.

[00:15:26] You're back to 180 pounds. Now we're gonna assume that of those 16 pounds, you've lost two pounds of muscle. There's always gonna be some level of muscle mass. And there there's different evidence that supports different rates of fat loss. You know, you go, you can go very quick and make sure you have the intensity and volume to the where you retain your muscle in your lifting program.

[00:15:50] But inevitably there's gonna be some loss. So there's no easy way to predict how much it's going to be. The key is just to keep training hard throughout that period. So we're just gonna assume you've lost two pounds of muscle. And now you're back to 180 pounds with 146 pounds of lean mass. Now that's six more pounds of muscle than you used to have.

[00:16:12] And then 34 34 pounds of fat. So that's six pounds, less of fat. So your body fat percentage is 19% at 180 pounds. You just went from 22. It's a 19% body fat. At the same weight, not by reducing fat, but by essentially replacing some fat with muscle, obviously not directly, but you've built muscle. And then lost fat.

[00:16:41] And now you're leaner. Technically, if you wanted to be at the same fat level you were before, you'd actually have to carry a heavier weight than you are now. And as you build muscle, you may find that's what you wanna do, that you actually have a. Nice healthy lean look at a heavier body weight than before.

[00:17:01] And you'll start to change a mindset of what scale weight even means that it's not so much about the number as how you feel. How you're performing in the gym, how healthy you are and your overall leanness in terms of body composition, even better. And here's the bonus. This is the thing that I've actually really enjoyed the past few years.

[00:17:21] Going through this process, your metabolism has likely shifted higher due to the extra muscle on your frame. So your daily food needs. Are at a more comfortable level than before, even when you're just gonna go at maintenance. Now you can switch to maintenance. You've you have this extra muscle and spend a good 2, 3, 4, 6 months a year at this higher metabolism, enjoying more freedom to eat what you want during that building phase, you would've pushed up your metabolism constantly.

[00:17:53] As you're growing in size as you're gaining muscle. And then as you were dieting, the metabolism probably came back down, but chances are, it did not come down to what it was before. And you had a higher level than you were before. Uh, similar phenomenon occurs when someone's in a diet dieting phase and then goes into a maintenance phase or reverse diet as it's called kind of slowly coming out of it, where you can recover some of your metabolism before continuing your diet.

[00:18:19] So all of these are mechanisms to shift your metabolism up, but the, I idea of putting, putting on muscle to do it is one that's sustainable and will last for months or years to come as you retain that muscle. The cool thing is you can repeat this process multiple times over and over again, perhaps with weeks or months of maintenance in between.

[00:18:40] Meaning just not losing weight, not gaining weight, just sitting around, getting a feel for your body, letting things recover, training hard, seeing how you respond and then deciding, okay. Do I need to push it up to add muscle? Do I need to cut to get leaner. Sometimes we do have short term goals. Maybe it's some big event where we just, you know, what a feel and look our best, or if we've got a good six or eight months ahead of us, of the deep, cold winter of new England where I live, I might say, you know, screw it.

[00:19:11] I don't. I don't need to be lean during that period when I'm bundled up. Anyway, it's cold. I just want to eat. I just wanna hunker down. Let me build muscle. Let me just eat at a steady pace. Grow, grow, grow, add that muscle. And then it won't be very hard to spend a couple months. Cutting the fat on top of this, if you add in walking, okay.

[00:19:33] I'm a huge advocate of walking. I've talked about it before. Step count, I think is the most sustainable form of cardio to give you the most impact. So it's not the most effective. In other words, it high intensity interval training and other forms of cardio like that might burn the most calories. But they're not sustainable.

[00:19:53] They beat you up. They're hard on the joints. They make it harder to recover in some cases where they might interfere with your lifting, all of these reasons, but walking doesn't do any of those. Walking's enjoyable. Uh, we're getting to the warmer seasons here. So you get your vitamin D you get your sunshine.

[00:20:10] Get to enjoy nature. It's mentally relaxing. It's great on the joints and the bonus from walking is it adds some cushion to your calories. So as you're lifting, for example, it's a way not to interfere with your lifting and not get to fatigued while still allowing you to keep bumping up your calories.

[00:20:30] And then conversely, with dieting it's even perhaps even more pivotal in that it prevents you from having to cut your calories too much. So I don't know about you, but. Adding muscle by having some fun lifting in the gym while eating more food and increasing my metabolism and hitting these goals, sounds like a pretty reasonable way to get leaner.

[00:20:51] Feel good about yourself after all a said and done. And it's also quite sustainable, which is what we're all about on this podcast. And I wanna talk now about the building phase that I just completed. Uh, as I, as I'm recording this podcast, it was about six or seven weeks ago. I took 15 weeks to bulk after I had cut.

[00:21:12] I had cut to a fairly lean level. About 11% body fat. And if you're wondering how I measure that every week, Sunday morning, I use a tape measure to measure my neck and my waist. I also take measurements of, for muscle mass of my biceps and thighs and chest. And then I also use hallers and I take a few points on my chest, abs and thigh, and I plug those into a couple calculators online and I average them out.

[00:21:43] To get my body fat. So there tends to be a big tolerance or I should say a big, I don't wanna say error, but there's a big variance between these calculators. So for example, I might be. Uh, 12% on one and 15 or 16% on another. So then I average 'em out to about 14% and what I really care about is the trend.

[00:22:02] So over time I can see both numbers shifting up or shifting down in tandem. It's pretty consistently. And so I just take the average. I don't really care about the absolute number. I care about the change, how look, and how I feel. So I dieted down to about 11, 12% body fat, and I was now ready to. Bulk and my goal, because I've been seriously lifting for about two to three years.

[00:22:26] It's not 5, 10, 15 years. Like some folks, you know, I got in my forties finally started to be healthy and started training seriously. And that's what this podcast is all about is sharing these things. I've learned with people maybe in similar, or maybe completely different circumstances who do just want to get healthier.

[00:22:43] And I decided at this point I wanted to bulk and gain a bunch of muscle so that I could do it in time to do another dieting phase leading into the summer, which is a common cycle for a lot of people follow. When you know, you're going to be swimming and be wearing shorts, showing more skin, you know, you wanna feel better about yourself in those leaner months.

[00:23:05] So in late October, just before my birthday, my starting weight was. 167.8. And then the ending weight in February of 2022 was 182.3. So I went from 167.8 to 182.3, the average change being 0.8 pounds per week. And right toward the end of the bulk, I actually had a week long vacation where I didn't do any lifting.

[00:23:34] There was a little bit of a, a burst in my weight there, which. Makes perfect sense. Right? Cuz my activity level was lower during that week. And that gave me a loss of some of my calories for my diet, but I kept my diet the same. So I gained a little bit more weight during that week. It's it's science, you know, it works like you expected to work.

[00:23:55] So the, the true average was 1.0, but the. Trend average throughout the most of the phase was 0.8 pounds a week. By the way, I tracked all of this using macro factor. This is by far my favorite app for this. I've talked about it before. I do have a discount code. It's wits and weights. If you go download the app, but as I am an avid daily user of the app and gained tremendous benefit from it, I have no problem plugging it or being affiliated with them.

[00:24:25] Great developers over stronger by science. So shout out to them. All right back to the bulk. So I gained 14 and a half pounds in 15 weeks, and I would call that a moderately aggressive gaining phase. It's a perfect rate of change for somebody who is still new to intermediate. In fact, you could go faster than that.

[00:24:43] If you wanted to, if you were newer, Um, and if you were more intermediate or you just didn't wanna gain that much fat that quickly, you can go at about maybe a half pound a week if you're around my weight. So it resulted in about a half percent of my weight per week. My starting body fat percentage was about or not about, but the average was 10.7%.

[00:25:06] And I ended at 15%. So I gained about four, a little over 4% of body fat, which you'll tend to gain more. At a leaner level at the rate that I was going, then in the earlier example, I talked about where he went from 22 to 24. So I gained 9.7 pounds of fat and 4.9 pounds. Of lean mass. So about a third of the gain was lean mass lean mass is a combination of muscle water, bone, et cetera.

[00:25:34] It's everything. That's not fat, but most of it's gonna be, you could just use it as a proxy for muscle. So about a third of what I gained was not fat. And I was very happy with that. Remember, in the example earlier, I, I said, assume that. Of what you gain is muscle and for a newer lifter that's that could be true for me going at the rate, I was going a third was pretty good.

[00:25:55] And then I mentioned before that I measured my body measurements and body measurements are a great proxy of your composition, your body fat, as well as your. Muscle mass. And that's why I encourage taking them. I know it's a pain, it's a little bit extra, uh, uh, obsession there. If, if you have body image issues, but I'm a big fan of objective data, especially trends.

[00:26:18] So I collected body measurements. My waist went from 30.8 to 33.8. So I gained three inches by, by no means, you know, fat, obviously still in the low thirties for male. Uh, most of my pants still fit fine. My chest went from 37 to 38. You know, I don't have the biggest chest. I admit it, but I gained an inch biceps.

[00:26:37] I gained a half inch thighs. I gained 1.6 inches. So I'm very happy with this bulk in terms of gaining, you know, a third of the weight as muscle. And I've had two plus years of what I'll call intelligent, serious training that I think has helped, uh, get me to this point of being able to do this. Now let's talk about total daily energy expenditure.

[00:27:01] This is your metabolism. And why? I think using an app like macro factor is important is because the premise is that you track what's coming in, that's your food and you track what's going out based on how much you weigh and that will help you determine your energy expenditure. You don't need any other.

[00:27:23] Variables in the way you don't need to track your exercise calories. For example, your walk, you don't need to track steps. None of those have to be tracked to determine your expenditure because it's all so called built in. Uh, if you use food and weight now, of course you have to smooth the weight over time.

[00:27:41] And that's where it gets a little bit complicated. And that's why using an app or a spreadsheet, uh, is helpful with this. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you for listening to the podcast. If you find it valuable, you would be doing me a huge favor by sharing it on social media. Just take a screenshot, share it to your Instagram story or Facebook, please tag me so I can personally thank you.

[00:28:04] And we can talk about what you found helpful and how I can improve again. An incredible thank you for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. So when I started the bulk, my metabolism was burning 2,965 calories. So Al almost 3000 calories a day. So it was Al already a pretty robust metabolism from the previous muscle building cycles I had gone through, but through the bulk, I actually ended up at 3,500 calories.

[00:28:35] So I was really happy because every week my targets just kept going up and up and up and up. And if you look at the graph. It sort of looks like kind of like a smooth stock market chart in good times when it's going up, comes down a little, goes up, comes down a little bit. Generally the trends is upward.

[00:28:51] And then right at the end it had a small dip. I think that was correlated with the week off that I took the D load, the vacation that I took now, because I switched from. A cut to a bulk, which some people, some coaches don't always recommend that sometimes it's recommended that you have an intermediate maintenance phase.

[00:29:10] You know, you switch to maintenance, say how your body responds, see where your maintenance really is, and then start to. Push it up, you know, that's sort of a reverse diet is the term sometimes used, but I've also heard. And for me, it seems to be perfectly fine that you can switch just like a light bulb, go from a cut, right to a bulk, no big deal.

[00:29:31] Your body will handle it as long as you're tracking it. So that's what I did. And so if you looked at my nutrition every day, I went from eating. A little bit over 2000 calories because I was in a cut to eating well over 3000 calories on a bulk, which I was pretty happy with the first week. I actually had to kind of hunt around for more food to make sure I got enough calories.

[00:29:50] And I know people are groaning listening to this podcast like, oh, don't complain that you had to eat too much. And I'm not, I'm not complaining. I had to eat too much. I was actually very happy at it. And this is why gaining weight and bulking can be, can be a fun process if you don't overdo it. And you stick primarily to.

[00:30:07] Healthy foods, quote unquote, but you still have to throw in some other snacks, treats desserts, things like that to, to get it all in and you might as well, you might as well enjoy life. That's that's my philosophy. At least, you know, the occasional pop. Tart's not gonna hurt you as long as you're also having sweet potato rice and broccoli, uh, for most your meals.

[00:30:26] So by the final week of the gaining phase, I was. Eating 200 grams of protein. My protein always tracked a little bit more than one gram per pound. I'm a, I'm a big fan of, of hitting that target, especially on a cut, but on a bulk is important and I was hitting 450 grams of carbs. And this is somebody folks.

[00:30:48] Let me tell you. I used to be a low carb advocate. And to think that I would be intentionally eating more than 400 grams in a day, would've seemed insane. But the carbs are your friend. When it comes to training, you need them, you love them. The body thrives on them. Don't shy away from it. It's a different way of thinking.

[00:31:09] I know for many of us, but if you're lifting hard in the gym, you need the calories, you need the carbs. It's all good. So to fit all this in I'm, I'm, I'm going through this process by the way, so that you can get a visual of what it's like to do this, and maybe some of the positives. So it doesn't, you don't shy away from it, but you also know what's acquired to be successful.

[00:31:29] So for me, it was three big meals, plus two snacks every day. I would shoot for an average of 40 grams of protein per feeding. So that's an average. I might have 60 on one and 20 on another, but generally I shop for shoot for 40. Um, I try to, you know, really get the protein synthesis triggered. Um, some evidence says it doesn't really matter the timing and, uh, how and the frequency try to get it these three meals and get all your protein and that'll get you most of the way there.

[00:31:59] So here are some things that I. Was consistent about to meet these targets. And I think consistency is. So important. If you generally eat similar foods, it's gonna be a lot easier. If you make your own food, it's gonna be a lot easier. If you're going out to restaurants a lot and eating completely different things every day, it's gonna be a little harder, not impossible if you're okay.

[00:32:20] Fight, figuring it all out, weighing, tracking. And so, and looking up nutrients on cha you know, rest, front websites, et cetera. That's fine. And in fact, while I was bulking, it gave me the opportunity to eat out a little more, but the foundation is consistency. So in a typical day, I'd get up at around five 30.

[00:32:39] Yep. It might be early for some of you. Sorry. That's just me. I like to work out in the morning. I get up at five 30 and I have a, pre-workout a protein shake and a large banana. So that's 30 grams of protein, 25 carbs about half an hour, 45 minutes later. I do my workout. Currently, I am doing a body building program, so I'm working out six days a week and it takes about an hour when I was bulking.

[00:33:04] For most of that time, I was actually doing a, either four or five day split conjugate style programming with maximum effort and dynamic effort days. And this is more advanced training, not gonna get into the details here, but it was a good, good high intensity training with a decent amount of volume and some, uh, physi work as well.

[00:33:24] Um, then I would have a post workout at around eight 30, which is oatmeal with peanut butter and a protein shake. 40 grams of protein, 20 grams of fat 40 grams of carbs. Then mid morning, I'd have to get a snack. Usually it was bagel with cream cheese. A little bit of protein, little bit of fat, a lot of carbs for lunch.

[00:33:42] Some sort of meat might be chicken. Thighs might be pork chops leftover from dinner might be roast beef and then a starch and a veggie. So the starch or other carb, it could be rice, but it could be potato, something like that. And, and then a veggie. So that would gimme about six grams of protein, 20 to 30 of fat and 80 to a hundred of.

[00:34:03] Carbs mid-afternoon snack a protein carb snack of some kind. It might be like a quest bar if I'm feeling lazy, but it might be something like cottage, cheese and some pretzels. And that would gimme about 30 grams of protein, a tiny bit of fat, and about 40 to 60 of carbs. Then for dinner, similar to lunch, I'd have meat starch.

[00:34:23] Veggie. My wife cooks a lot. She makes great food. I sometimes cook. And oftentimes the dinner becomes the next day's lunch. And then I might even have a carby dessert if I'm lowering my carbs for the day. And then before bed, I usually have a pre pre-bed snack of casing pudding, which is another 20 or 30 grams of protein.

[00:34:43] And the only reason I do that is it's just hard to get all that protein in through the other meals consistently. So I would just assume I was gonna have this snack at the end of the night to, to punch it in right before I went to bed. But if I met the macros or calories during the day, I would just skip the pre-bed stack.

[00:35:01] All right now, I took notes as I was bulking the whole time to see how it affected me and some things I observed, some things I learned, and I wanna share some of those today. Using a tracking app or a spreadsheet. So in my case, again, macro factor made this a much easier process because it could calculate my rapidly changing metabolic rate.

[00:35:23] And so I could adjust my macro plan every week, much more dynamically without getting too far off of my, my rate of change. The second thing is that when you're bulking, when you're eating, you definitely see a performance improvement. Just it's inevitable. You're gonna make progress in the gym. All your lifts are gonna go up.

[00:35:42] It's gonna feel great some days. I mean, when I would deadlift, if I had a nice big meal the night before and ate a lot, the deadlift just felt great. Even at six in the morning. And I was never hungry. The third thing that walking every day. So in my case, I shoot for 12,000 steps a day. Which is reasonable, kind of maybe above average, especially since I work from home, I'm not in the city, so I kinda have to force myself to walk, but walking's great.

[00:36:08] A great form of cardio didn't interfere with lifting or recovery while I was bulking and allowed me to just eat a ton of food. And then speaking of eating a lot. Eating 3,600 calories was probably the most I ever had to eat on purpose in my life. So it required consistency. I had to make sure to eat frequently enough.

[00:36:28] Like you can't just fast. You can't wait too long for your first meal, or then you're trying to catch up in the rest of the day and, and stuff yourself. And you don't want to be there. Air. Also try to get EV enough carbs into every meal does require sometimes adding processed foods and by process, I mean, bread.

[00:36:46] I did eat some pop tarts, an occasional donut, maybe, but that was rare. I'm just saying it opens up the options and allows you to throw some of these extra things in there. And then when I wasn't sure how many calories or macros were in a meal, like, you know, my wife cooks, so I, I can't just weigh everything as she's making it at the risk of insulting her.

[00:37:05] And then I had to slightly. Underestimate when I wasn't sure. So if it was my, my wife's cooking or going to a restaurant and I didn't have the exact calories of macros, I would want to slightly underestimate because when you're bulking, it's the opposite of dieting. You're actually trying to eat enough.

[00:37:21] And so you wanna be conservative. The other direction, assume something has fewer calories than it might so that it forces you to make sure you eat enough, to go at least to your target and, and slightly exceed your target. Now, having said all this stuff about eating a lot, I'd never went totally crazy.

[00:37:39] Just eating anything and everything like some people wanna do. They call that. The dreamer bulk, but I did get to enjoy some luxuries ice cream. For example, I love ice cream and I could just enjoy that much more frequently than when I'm dieting also alcohol. You know, if I just want to have a glass of wine or a beer or some liquor, I can do that.

[00:38:00] I still track it, but it fits in nicely. Although always recommend keeping alcohol. To a minimum at any given time, just period. If you're trying to live a healthy lifestyle and perform in the gym, when I'm bulking, I might have alcohol once or twice a week. And when I'm dieting, I usually don't have it at all.

[00:38:16] I know that sounds crazy, but it feels great. And then I did go on that week long vacation at the end of January and I didn't lift at all that week. I didn't get enough steps. I even ate a bit more than usual because I was enjoying myself. And as a result because of science, my weight change rate almost doubled the last few weeks because my metabolism came down and my calories went up.

[00:38:43] But at the end it didn't really matter. I still had the data. I knew what was happening. It was objective and it was kind of my last rah before I turned around and went on a cut. So the bulk was successful. I hope I gave you a good idea of what's involved. And I'm currently now on a cut, which is something I'm going to talk about in the next podcast.

[00:39:03] We'll talk about the other side of this coin, dieting, you know, reasonable dieting, but I wanted to take the last few minutes of today's episode to answer a listener question. Judy in Connecticut. So the same state as me right in the neighborhood says, Hey, Philip, I recently started listening to your podcast.

[00:39:26] I really enjoy it. And I have a question about dieting without dieting. I understand all the info about macros and losing weight, but does my daily exercise fit into the calorie count in any way? I use my fitness pal and it adds your exercise, your calories burned to the daily calorie allotment. Should I not enter my workouts?

[00:39:48] And should I ignore those extra calories that I'm allowed to consume? So thanks for reaching out Judy, and, and this is a great question. I actually hear it. A lot when it comes to, how do we calculate metabolism? If I take the pie chart of metabolism and part of that is my basal metabolic rate. And then you've got your neat, right?

[00:40:10] Your, your, um, like steps in fidgeting and things like that. And then you have your thermic effective feeding. And then finally you have your exercise. Well, shouldn't I be tracking exercise as part of my cat calories. You know, I'm going to eat 2000 calories. But now I'm gonna burn 300 calories. So shouldn't I add or subtract.

[00:40:30] And my response to that is. First of all the data from wearables or machines regarding calories are highly unreliable. The devices themselves tend to be very unreliable as evidenced by any test where they compare these devices. Each individual also burns a different fr of those estimated calories from the device were all different.

[00:40:57] And so if your apple watch says 350 active calories, You may have only burned 70% of that or 245 calories. So even if you were to rely on that, the data itself is not precise, but, but more importantly, the most accurate way to determine your maintenance calories is simply to compare how your weight responds to your food exercise.

[00:41:18] Neat. All these other things are, are lots of variables in the middle of the process and trying to track them separately would be a nightmare. And frankly, F futile. But if you know how much you weigh and you know how much you eat and you eat the exact same amount every day, And you track your weight over say two weeks.

[00:41:35] And you look at the change in the average weight seven day, moving average, for example, you'll know if you're eating too much, too little or just the right amount of calories to maintain your weight. And that builds in all this other stuff that affects your metabolism, including exercise eyes. Now, having said that additional activity in the form of lifting your steps.

[00:41:58] Even cardio, as long as we don't overdo, it usually increases your TDE E E because you are burning more calories and this allows you to eat more. So if you're getting 12,000 steps a day, like I try to do my TDE is probably a few hundred calories higher than if I weren't, but I will see that I, my weight not increasing as much as it would have if I wasn't walking.

[00:42:24] And as a result, it does account for the exercise without me having to track it separately. So, if you're fairly active, your maintenance calories are likely higher. All things equal, but TDE E fluctuates so much and it fluctuates while you're losing weight tends to go down while you're gaining weight tends to go up and even then it's more like a roller coaster.

[00:42:41] Such that I would never recommend counting activity. As part of calculating the calories you need to eat instead base your calories and macros off of your calculated TDE, based on your weight change, do it for the week. Leave it alone. You have your plan in place, and then next week you adjust it again, adjust it weekly, and you'll be just fine.

[00:43:01] So, thanks again, Judy, for that excellent question. I'm sure it's on a lot of people's minds and thank you all for listening to this episode. I had a lot of fun talking about this journey of becoming lean by gaining weight. It's a fantastic, enjoyable process. If you remain consistent, you'll see. Great results.

[00:43:23] Hopefully the things that I shared about my own experience will give you a little view into what it's like as always, I'm happy to answer any questions you have about this. Just reach out and be happy to reply by email and share your answer on a future episode of the podcast.

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Ep 11: Your First Year of Lifting (Doing What Matters)

You decided to get stronger, improve your body composition, and become more healthy. You selected a simple but effective barbell-based strength training program and committed to consistent training. During your first year of lifting, there will be many new things to learn, habits to develop, and temptations to lead you off your chosen path.

After going through the process myself and talking with hundreds of other lifters, I wanted to share some thoughts to help you keep making progress and avoid some common pitfalls that could derail you. When I started lifting seriously and intelligently a few years ago, it was thanks to those who came before me that I could avoid making some big mistakes while still figuring out what worked for me as an individual. I hope these ideas help you in your first year of lifting or really any time during your fitness journey!

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Transcript

This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.

[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast, for busy professionals who want to get strong and healthy with strength training and a sustainable diet. I’m your host, Philip Pape, and in each episode, we’ll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry, and a commitment to consistent lifting and nutrition.

[00:00:26] Welcome to episode 11 of wits and weights. You decided to get stronger, improve your body composition and become more healthy. You selected a simple but effective barbell beast strength training program, and committed to consistent traits. During your first year of lifting, there'll be many new things to learn habits, to develop and temptations to lead you off your chosen path.

[00:00:59] After going through the process, myself and talking with hundreds of other lifters, I wanted to share some thoughts to help you keep making progress and avoid some common pitfalls that could derail. When I started lifting seriously and intelligently a few years ago, it was thanks to those who came before me, that I could avoid making some big mistakes while still figuring out what worked for me as an individual.

[00:01:25] I hope these ideas help you in your first year of lifting or really any time during your fitness. Let's just jump right in. The first thing I'm going to talk about is the fact that when you start something new, when you want to get fit, you want to start working out and training. You want to start eating right.

[00:01:47] There are a lot of new habits. That you have to develop. And initially this is going to require some form of extrinsic motivation reward system and even willpower and discipline. And I know we don't like to say that something requires willpower, but the initial getting over that hump of creating something, that's a system, that's a habit that you can do everyday for the rest of your life.

[00:02:15] Initially requires. A shock to the system. And this is why I think it's important right off the bat to take that excitement. You have that enthusiasm that, you know, I'm going to lose weight. I'm going to gain weight. I'm going to start working out regularly and use that energy to properly put in place those systems that will help you continue to have it days, weeks, and months down the road, when you might not have as much excitement or motivation.

[00:02:42] And I did talk about this in an earlier episode about automating your fitness journey with things like preparing your gym bag and preparing your training, preparing your nutrition, setting things up so that not only. Is it easier to do them each day, but it's hard to avoid doing them. You make it hard on yourself to not do them.

[00:03:06] And what works for you might work, not work for someone else. And the point is rather than just jumping into this and going take the hour or the day or the week to plan. To a little bit greater extent, knowing that this is something that's going to change your life. And so you have to change your life to develop the new habits that will get you there.

[00:03:32] But I assure you that once you get over that initial few weeks or month or two of consistent training and eating that it will be so much easier. It will become a habit. It will be something that you miss. If you don't. And after about, ah, say three to six months, it's just going to be an ingrained part of your life that you're going to enjoy, especially as you then start to see the results, enjoy the process, enjoy the results, set yourself up for success with systems so that the habits become easier to develop.

[00:04:08] Okay. That was more of a mindset thing. Now we're going to get a little more detailed nitty-gritty tactical. The second. Is to make sure that you log your workouts so that you can see progress. I'm not talking about just logging your workouts. I'm talking specifically about the fact that you want to see something going up and improving over time.

[00:04:33] Now as a novice lifters, a new lifter, this is most likely weight on the bar. It's as simple as that, as you see the weight. For the same movements and the same sets and reps, you know, you're making progress. And the purpose of doing this is so that the process becomes your focus rather than the results.

[00:04:58] If you can focus on the process, the results will come. But if you focus on the results, you can sometimes screw yourself up during the process. So chances are, if you've identified a really good training, That's also fairly simple and easy to track, you know, and may have as few as say, five movements, the big barbell lifts and maybe some pull-ups that it should be fairly easy to track your progress as you get experienced.

[00:05:27] And you get stronger to the point where you have to shift to intermediate programming, which may be as early as three to six months. Then not only will you have this habit in place, but then as things get a little more complicated, for example, if you start prac V start progressing against reps or sets, or when you start moving your movements around or adding new movements, it'll be that much easier to see progress.

[00:05:55] Next, I want to talk about the programming itself, not what program you're doing, but the fact that newer lifters are always attracted to the next shiny object. The next fun program you've been on a program for, let's say eight or 12 weeks. And you say to yourself, this seems to be getting repetitive, although I'm making progress, but you know, I want to do some more tricep work.

[00:06:20] I want to do some more back work. Some bodybuilding Hyper-V. And you start to hop around to different programs and you go off the path a little bit and then a little bit more. And before you know it, you're doing some high volume or super squat programming or something with a lot of conditioning that's way off from the original plan of just getting.

[00:06:44] And this is one of the biggest temptations for newer lifters in your first year. So the counter to that is to find a simple, fun training program that doesn't have a lot of movements because we're really looking for efficiency with our limited time in the gym, and we're looking to improve technique and get stronger.

[00:07:07] So when you find that program, stick with it, avoid the temptation to program. If you think you are quote-unquote plateauing chances, are there something else to look at? For example, is it time for a de-load or a reset or are you not getting enough recovery? Are you jumping too quickly in terms of your.

[00:07:33] From session to session, you know, is it time to reduce the increments you were going up 10 pounds, time to go up five. You're going up five time to go up two and a half. These micro plates, if needed. Are you resting sufficiently between sets? I would look at all of those things before you say, ah, that's it, I've just gotten as strong as I'm going to do after four months as a new lifter.

[00:07:57] And I need to get a new. But the next thing I want to talk about is the thought that you just want to get lean. Don't worry about getting quote unquote lean focus instead. Okay. And this comes back to process versus results focus instead on building strengthening. The best way to get lean is to get bigger, to add muscle, not the other way around, not to reduce fat.

[00:08:27] Yes. Reducing fat could make a dent in your body fat percentage, but adding muscle will immediately alter your body composition, increase your metabolism and make it such that getting leaner even at a heavier weight is possible. That is our. So stop trying to get lean, get a six pack. It ripped jacked, whatever in your first year, focus on building the neuromuscular adaptation and then the actual strength and muscle mass.

[00:08:58] As you get stronger and stronger session after session by adding weight to the bar for most new lifters, you're going to want to eat more than you were eating before so that you can provide your body, the nutrition and the environment it needs to build. I'm not talking about dirty bulk or dreamer bulk.

[00:09:18] I'm simply talking about eating enough to make progress, unless you're significantly overweight, you know, you're trying to lose weight. And that is your primary goal. In which case you may want to be at maintenance or even a. You're probably going to need to eat more than you thought you needed to, as you train harder and harder, and it's this eating more and building muscle mass, that'll give you the opportunity later on to get quote unquote lean.

[00:09:47] We're actually going to talk about that in the next episode, because I just completed a building phase or a bulking cycle that I want to talk about in detail, as far as why this concept of eating more and getting. Okay, is the key to getting leaner. The next thing that's super important. When you first start and it's really important for the rest of your life as a lifter, but if you focus on this from day one, it will take you so much farther and give you the progress you're looking for.

[00:10:20] And that is form and technique study. Practice it become one with the technique of the lifts that you are mastering. And by using a simple barbell based strength training program, that's limited to maybe five movements, you know, the squat deadlift press bench press, and then some pole. You can have the focus required to really master form with those techniques.

[00:10:51] And that means when you first start, you picking a reasonable weight, you're not trying to overshoot, even if you've lifted before we're trying to do it, right. Pick a reasonable weight on the bar so that you can do a full range of motion rep with beautiful form. Now it's not going to be beautiful at all.

[00:11:09] When you first start, it's going to be downright ugly most. And this is actually bringing me to the next point, which is to either get a coach or join some sort of group, like an online group where you can get form checks early on. Don't wait, six months later, when you've been squatting two or three times a week for six months, you may have been doing it wrong the whole time.

[00:11:32] And now you've developed a habit with poor form. And I'll tell you a quick story about this. When I was learning the low bar back squat. I had a lot of habits from CrossFit where we learn to high bar back squat and who, you know, asked to grass high reps, all of the things that are not what you need when you're doing low bar back squats for strength, for, you know, in the range of around five reps and much heavier loads.

[00:12:02] Grateful. So for awhile, I tried to figure it out on my own. I read starting strength. They watch videos. You know, I took my time to take notes and practice without a bar practice with an empty bar practice with a bar, looking at my feet, my knees, the angle of my back, all of these things. And I thought I had it pretty good.

[00:12:25] Until I decided to hire a coach for one hour. It was a starting strength coach here in Connecticut to help me with my squat and press the overhead press. And within about 10 minutes he had fixed 15 or 20 different things. I was doing wrong on my squat, despite me being completely certain, I, I was almost.

[00:12:49] And he fixed everything. He fixed my stance, how I pointed my toes, the angle of my knuckles on the bar, the width on the bar, where it was on my back and on and on and on. And by the way, I'd love to talk about some of these in a future episode, specifically about individual lifts. And we'll talk about the back squat.

[00:13:12] But my point of this story is he fixed all these things in less than an hour. That was the best money spent in terms of my lifting progress, because then I could go home. I could apply proper form. I could video myself and keep refining that, and I could start making significant progress because correct form allows you to recruit your muscles in the right way, avoid injury, lift the heaviest loads.

[00:13:40] And that's what we're trying to do so that we can make. If you can't afford a coach or can't get access to one, or there's not any good coach in your area, the next best thing is to join something like a Facebook Reddit group, where you could post a video of yourself doing the lift. And by the way, let's use good etiquette.

[00:14:00] Please make sure your videos are trends. Make sure they're at the right angle with the right lighting so people can help you out and you post the video and hopefully get some good feedback and can self-correct from there. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you for listening to the podcast. If you find it valuable, you would be doing me a huge favor by sharing it on social media.

[00:14:23] Just take a screenshot, share to your Instagram story or Facebook, please tag me so I can personally thank you. And we can talk about what you found helpful and how I can improve again, an incredible thank you for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. The next thing I want to talk about is the fact that when you are a new lifter or you've been away from it for a long time, You're going to make some pretty quick progress.

[00:14:51] Initially, in terms of load on the bar, you're going to be able to jump at fairly large increments, perhaps 10 or even 15 pounds on the deadlift, five or 10 pounds on the squat, five pounds on the. And some of that is what they called neuro muscular adaptation. The idea that you have the capability to lift that weight already sort of a base strength, but you are clumsy and your body hasn't been trained in those movements, in those patterns.

[00:15:21] So now that you learn the patterns pretty quickly, your body sort of catches up to its own. It's not that you're adding significant strength or muscle mass that quickly it's that you're converging to your initial set point. Then it starts to get a little. Right. It starts to flatten out the curve just a little bit and your jumps decrease, but you start to get to that sweet spot where you really are now gaining true strength and muscle mass in the process through this linear progression.

[00:15:53] Eventually though you start to hit the wall, the wall, and you know this because it starts to get a little grindy toward the end of your. It really feels hard. And so expect this to happen. At some point, this is going to come. It may not actually be too far into your, your journey, maybe about 3, 4, 5 months in.

[00:16:14] And one way to prepare for this is to always plan not to fail any reps. If you're going four sets of five, Your plan is to get all sets of all five reps, no matter what. And then your counter-argument is why, how do you do that? You know, what if you're just not as strong that day and not feeling it all right.

[00:16:36] It's not really about what you feel. It's about what you're capable of and the adaptation you've experienced. You may feel terrible and still be able to get all your reps. You may feel great. And it's. But as you reach that point, there are a few things to consider. One is to decrease the increase that's to decrease the increase, decrease the jump for the next workout.

[00:16:58] Plan ahead, knowing that you're reaching that point. Don't keep jumping five pounds. If you should be going up to. Also make sure you have consistent recovery that is sleep consistent. You're consistently eating and you're taking enough rest between sets. I mentioned this earlier, but all of these things, if you do them consistently, then you can compare the progress objectively from session to session.

[00:17:24] But if you all of a sudden, only get four hours of sleep one night and you have. 14 hours. Well, that's going to significantly impact your performance. You may then fail a rep and it's not necessarily because of a lack of adaptation so much as you've hurt yourself by limiting these other factors, recovery, rest, food, so on.

[00:17:46] So it's important to be keenly aware of your performing. In that session and get a feel for what you probably probably are capable of next session and plan accordingly. Don't just blindly jumped by 10 pounds, five pounds. What have you jumped the appropriate amount based on where you think you are in almost hitting that wall.

[00:18:08] Now eventually you'll get to a point where you truly would fail a rep. If you tried to increase the weight on the bar. And at that point, you're probably ready for intermediate. Where you start to split things up and go to something like a heavy light, medium programming or a 40 split, or even a five day something like a power building program that allows you to spread out the work a little bit.

[00:18:33] And then you're looking for weekly increases, not session to session, and eventually even less frequent increases than that, but you're still gonna measure progress somehow. All right, the next thing. And it's somewhat related to some of the recent things we talked about is always listened to your. And what I mean by that is not in it, not in a subjective sense.

[00:18:56] In other words, if you're going to go and do a set of five for squats and you just feel kind of tired that day, and this is going to be a grind, it's going to be terrible. I'm not sure I'm up for it. That's not what I'm talking about in that case. Get yourself under the bar and do the reps I'm talking about.

[00:19:13] You've got this weird tweak in your elbow and it clicks a little bit. When you try to do a bench press or your knee, all of a sudden starts to hurt or here's what happened to me? I got bicep tendonitis because my squat. Wasn't optimal for me. I was actually putting too much strain on my elbow because of too much extension of the wrist.

[00:19:38] And once I fixed my squat grip, the pain in my elbow went away and I no longer feared doing. Supinated chin-ups for example, you know, I was avoiding him. I was avoiding barbell curls, things like that because my barbell tendon hurts so much, but I had to find the root cause and I had to listen to my body and kind of trace it, do the research, try things out until I could figure out what was happening.

[00:20:06] So this is biofeedback. This is the kind of thing it gives you personalized feedback on something going on with your form and technique. Usually the gut reaction is just to not do whatever is causing the feeling or the pain. And that may be true in the short term that you need to avoid that temporarily, but more likely there's something else down the chain that's causing the issue.

[00:20:33] And so this is where we go back to form and technique, evaluate all of your movements and see if there's anything that really could be the root cause. This issue that is pain, and this is separate from true injury or true pain. For example, I had a herniated disc that was impinging impinging on my Sadek nerve.

[00:20:56] Okay. And that caused pain that couldn't go away with any other solution, then a microdiscectomy to get rid of the tissue, and then it solved the problem. That was a clear cause and effect medical issue. And. Affected by my form. Now having said that, did it make me even more rigorous about my squatting and my dead lifting in terms of keeping a neutral spine driving with the hips and my squat, having the right hip angle back angle, et cetera.

[00:21:28] In my deadlift, yes. I pay even more attention to those things. Now, just in case any of them could have contributed to that. So as you begin this journey, you're going to be super excited about trying all these lifts and making progress. And initially you're going to make progress across the board. Even if you have bad form, you could even continue for years like that with bad form.

[00:21:51] But some of these movement issues could cause injury or pain down the road. And so being a student of good form and technique and listening to your body are very helpful as it gets stronger. The last thing I want to talk about. Is a little bit different because this is a new endeavor. You want to try to absorb as much information as possible and also filter that information, using judgment and intelligence, corroborating evidence science experience.

[00:22:25] I implore you to read as many books as you can to listen to podcasts. Thankfully, you're already doing that right here right now, but there are lots of other great podcasts that are a ton of great books. Watch videos, go to YouTube to learn and develop expertise in this field of lifting. Treat it like a skill that you want to master.

[00:22:48] And yes, it takes practice. Yes, it takes training, but it also takes information and knowledge. And the scientific literature is changing all the time. We discover new, exciting things. We discover new techniques and then there's new nut jobs popping up all the time on social media that we want to learn to filter out.

[00:23:08] So reading books, listening to podcasts, watching videos, gaining knowledge, and just being aware of everything going on out there we'll emerge. In this field, to the extent that you're a student of it, as well as a practitioner and at least in my opinion, that makes it even more exciting as you continue to develop this habit through the years.

[00:23:29] Okay. Those. Some tips that I came up with for continuing to make progress and avoid the big mistakes that some people make during their first year of lifting. I'm sure there are many more that you can think of, or others have shared. And that we'll talk about on this podcast in the future, but the ones today can have a huge impact on your enjoyment, your consistency, your sustainable.

[00:23:59] As you transform your strength and body composition for better health.

---

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Ep 10: Focus on These 7 BIG Priorities for Strength and Fitness

Sometimes advice from the fitness industry can be overwhelming. There are so many ways to program your lifting, eat your food, and meet your goals that we often get lost in the small details.

At the end of the day, it’s the BIG details, applied consistently, that contribute the most to your progress and result in sustainable habits of success in getting big and strong, losing or gaining weight, and sculpting a healthier version of you.

In this episode, I wanted to take it to a higher level, so to speak, and go over 7 “big priorities” for strength and fitness that, if you can do these at least 80% of the time, will help you accomplish your goals.

1. Get moving!

2. Keep programming simple and fun

3. Get enough sleep (recovery)

4. Get enough protein (as part of hitting calories)

5. Make your own food for most meals

6. Track progress

7. Enjoy the PROCESS (the results will follow)

🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW
At Wits & Weights, we help you shred fat, build strength, feel energized, and project confidence in your career and relationships without excessive dieting, cardio, or food restrictions.

👉 Just go to witsandweights.com/coaching to connect with me.

👥 To join our Facebook community for live training, free guides, free challenges, and more, just click here.

🙋‍♀️ HOW TO ASK A QUESTION FOR THE SHOW

• 👉 If you have any questions, just click here.

👨‍💻 HOSTED BY

• Philip Pape of Wits & Weights (Instagram 👉 @witsandweights)

👏 ENJOY THE SHOW? 

• Let me know by leaving a review in Apple Podcasts

👉 Apply for 1-on-1 coaching: witsandweights.com/coaching

---

Transcript

This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.

[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast, for busy professionals who want to get strong and healthy with strength training and a sustainable diet. I’m your host, Philip Pape, and in each episode, we’ll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry, and a commitment to consistent lifting and nutrition.

[00:00:26] Welcome to episode 10 of Wits & Weights. Sometimes advice from the fitness industry can be overwhelming. There are so many ways to program your lifting, eat your food, and meet your goals that we often get lost in the small details. At the end of the day, it's the big details applied consistently that contribute the most of your products.

[00:00:56] And results in sustainable habits of success in getting big and strong, losing her gaining weight and sculpting a healthier version of you. In this episode, I wanted to take it to a higher level, so to speak and go over seven big priorities for strength and fitness, that if you can do these at least 80% of the time will help you accomplish your goal.

[00:01:23] The first big priority is just to get moving. I know we pay a lot of lip service to the idea of not sitting around just getting up and walking and moving around, but on a daily basis, moving, getting steps, being active, whether or not you're lifting or doing any particular exercise has a huge impact. All cause mortality.

[00:01:50] And I know from personal experience, it seems to have beneficial effects on your resting heart rate on your metabolism, on your ability to eat more on your general energy and mood on your flexibility, mobility, your joints, so many different things. And recently there was an article published that was analyzed by stronger by science.

[00:02:16] The study of. Daily step count and all cause mortality. And what they found was striking, and that is that quote, walking 2,700 steps per day was associated with a threefold greater risk. Of all cause mortality than walking 16,000 steps per day, they basically found a 12% reduction in all-cause mortality for every thousand steps.

[00:02:46] And apparently this is a bigger impact than the difference between smoking and not smoking or between having a high and a low. But I think even more than that, moving, getting into the habit of being an active person is a catalyst for everything else you do. It sets the stage for your day. It gives you a different mindset to how you approach things versus sitting around all day.

[00:03:14] Not to mention all of the health benefits. The second big priority is about your. And there are so many programs to choose from so many ways to lift weights. There is training for strength, there's bodybuilding power, building a ton of different ways to work out. But at the end of the day, if your programming is not fun, You're not going to do it.

[00:03:40] And if it's not simple, you're probably going to get frustrated and you're probably not going to do it. Although you have to still lift heavy and hard. If you're going to make progress and add muscle as a newer lift or even intermediate lifter, you can do this with very few different exercises. As simple as squat, deadlift bench overhead.

[00:04:04] And you can do it in a variety of different ways that is enjoyable for you. Whether enjoyable means getting up at five in the morning or doing it in the afternoon, whether it means lifting really heavy and focusing on little compound lifts or adding in some accessories for variety for bodybuilding, just because you want to.

[00:04:21] So as you evaluate the different programs, And try to avoid program hopping. I would go back and listen to one of my first episodes, which talks about how to choose a program. Many of the beginner programs I recommend are just that they're simple and I think they're fun, but of course, if you do it and you say that this is, this is torture.

[00:04:43] I really don't like this. There are always alternatives to make it more enjoyable because at the end of the day, what we care about is consistency, which leads to sustainable. That brings me to the third big priority. Something that many people myself included often don't give enough attention to. And that is getting enough sleep.

[00:05:05] Sleep is the cornerstone of recovery of having the energy to get up and do it the next day. Giving your body, the time it needs to repair itself. And I could do an entire podcast episode about all the intricacies of how to improve sleep quality. But as today's episode is about the big priorities, the priority is just to get into.

[00:05:31] Sleep. I think many of us failed to do, even that we limp along five, six hours a night and ideally should be up around seven to eight, maybe even nine, if you're able to pull that off, but figure out how to get enough sleep. Does that mean we have to readjust our schedule to work out either in the morning or in the evening or the afternoon?

[00:05:56] Doesn't mean simply going to bed. And then doing the things that it takes to ensure we get to bed early, making sure that we have our routine, maybe that we're avoiding activities that would distract us or keep us up, like scrolling on social media, watching TV, those sorts of things, which yes can also affect sleep quality.

[00:06:17] But my point is take an inventory of. Your sleep, you know how much you're getting every night. And if it's less than seven on a regular basis, I would suggest you want to find a way to add another 30 minutes to an hour every night so that you can then get into the gym, lift really hard and get the benefits of all that time, trying to build muscle.

[00:06:40] So just focus on getting enough sleep for. Big priority. Number four has to do with nutrition. How do we meet our goals for the longterm? Whether we're trying to lose, maintain, or gain weight, you probably think I'm going to say you have to hit your calories low. I think that's obvious at this point to a lot of us, I'm not saying it's easy, but you could wake up in the morning and say to yourself, okay, I know I have to hit 2100 calories.

[00:07:11] And as I go along and I make my food choices, if I'm tracking, I know where I am against those calories during the day. And it's fairly easy to gauge when I'm going to hit those and how to pace myself. But what's a little more nuanced is. And so big priority. Number four is to make sure you get enough protein.

[00:07:33] I'm assuming you're going to hate your calories or try to as part of your tracking, but it's easy to get two or three meals into the day and really. I haven't been eating enough protein and it's not really something you can make up later in the day. You can make it up, but it won't have as beneficial of an effect because of protein synthesis, the ability of your body to use amino acids for that process.

[00:08:00] And you really want to space it out more now getting your protein one. It's fine, but where I'm going with this is to prioritize protein at every meal. Don't make it complicated from the time you wake up and have your first meal, ask yourself the question. Do I have enough food of the right types to start getting me toward my protein goal?

[00:08:23] If you would normally have, let's say a bowl of oatmeal and a banana and a bagel with cream cheese. Well, you're gonna have very little protein in that breakfast, a little bit in the cream cheese and the oatmeal. If you replaced one of those items with say some eggs or even a protein shake, you're off to a great start.

[00:08:42] You're you're up maybe 15, 20, 25 grams of protein, and you're getting yourself primed for the rest of the. Now let's take the example of a 200 pound male who's shooting for one gram of protein a day. That's 200 grams. If he's going to eat, say five meals during. That's an average of 40 grams of protein per meal, just quite a bit.

[00:09:05] So he's going to either have to add a snack or two that has primarily protein, or he's just going to have to be on top of the fact that he needs sufficient protein in each meal. And that might mean having, you know, more meat for lunch and dinner and making sure there's enough. Each other meals so that the total adds up to meet your goal, the fats and carbs, as I've talked about before, they're fairly interchangeable.

[00:09:29] You need to get enough carbs for your training. You need to get enough fat for your health, but there's a lot of flexibility in one versus the other, as long as you hit your calories. But if you don't get enough protein, you're going to hold yourself back in terms of building muscle, but also in terms of maintaining or retaining the muscle you have, when you.

[00:09:49] On a cut. The other thing about prioritizing protein is when you're craving a snack, for example, and you go to the kitchen, you're just, you're just a little bit hungry. You want something to eat and normally you would just go grab something. Well, if protein comes to. As your priority, you would say, huh? Is what I'm going to grab.

[00:10:08] Have enough to meet my protein goals. Maybe not. So maybe I should go for the cottage cheese instead of the pretzels, or maybe for convenience. I need to have a protein shake or protein bar and fit it in to keep me toward my protein goals. Get enough protein as part of hitting your calories. And you'll be all right.

[00:10:27] Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you for listening to the podcast. If you find. You'd be doing me a huge favor by sharing it on social media. Just take a screenshot, share to your Instagram story or Facebook, please tag me so I can personally thank you. And we can talk about what you found helpful and how I can improve again.

[00:10:46] An incredible thank you for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. The fifth priority, which is also about nutrition is to try to make your own food. For most of your meals and that's about as complicated as I'm going to make it. That's why these are big priorities. I've said before.

[00:11:05] It's not so much about what you eat as whether you have the right calories and macros to. But of course what you eat can make it harder, highly palatable process foods, for example, and they taste great, but they go down so easy and you could eat so much of them. They're high in fat and carbs and whatever and calories.

[00:11:28] That you might be hungry half an hour later, and this is going to make it more difficult to hit your calorie target. Particularly if you're losing weight. Of course, if you're gaining weight, you may actually use some processed foods as a strategy to get in the extra calories. But if you make your own food for most meals, it has a variety of benefits.

[00:11:47] The first benefit is, you know, what's in your food, even if you're making something tasty complicated. Even if you're making a dessert or baked good, you still know what's in it. You're going to make the, your grandma's favorite French bread. You still know it's got flour and the various other ingredients, whereas something you buy in the store.

[00:12:05] Me. 20 other ingredients or worse yet, if you go to a restaurant and get bread, you really don't know what's in it and you have to estimate. So if you're tracking, it just makes tracking easier to know what's in your food. You can prepare meals ahead of time and put them into a recipe in your food tracking.

[00:12:23] Like macro factor, which is what I use. And then the apple just calculate the macros and calories based on the proportion of the food. And it will be highly accurate. Another reason to make your own food for most of your meals is you can control the macronutrients much more easily. If you want to go ahead and make, make a special bread recipe with protein powder in it to up the.

[00:12:44] Go for it. If you want to use the high-protein filtered milk instead of just whatever milk. Well, now, you know, you've got your delicious milk, but you also are meeting your protein targets. Another reason to make your own food. It's a lot cheaper. It's a lot less expensive than going to restaurants all the time or getting takeout.

[00:13:02] And before you say, well, you know, I like the social experience of restaurants. You can have a great social experience with friends and family cooking your own food, having a barbecue. Inviting them over for dinner. So making your own food has a ton of benefits. The main benefit for our purpose being that, you know, what's in it in it's easy to track.

[00:13:20] Speaking of tracking big priority, number six is to track your progress. And this is sort of a catch-all priority because then your next question is, what am I tracking? Am I tracking 50 different things? Because to me that doesn't sound very easy. And again, today we're talking about big priorities, so let's prioritize what we want to track.

[00:13:45] And I would say the big things to track are going. Your food and your weight. You're also going to track your progress in the gym. And then if you want to go further than that and get more into the data and be a little more optimal with all of this, of course you can track other things like your body measurements, but the big things are your food.

[00:14:05] So we want to track calories and Adam. Protein, but usually if you're using an app, you're going to end up tracking your calories with protein fat carbs, because it's all fairly automated. You can use barcodes, you can put in common foods. It's pretty easy to do that. The hard part about tracking food.

[00:14:25] Taking the time to do it, you know, weighing your food, not being weird, uh, learning how to estimate food that other people might've made. It's definitely an art to some extent, but if you don't track, you just don't know the calories that are coming in. So tracking your food is one side of it tracking your weight is of course the other side, you can take a very laid back approach and just weigh yourself once a week on the same day.

[00:14:48] Same. And compare that over time. And if you're going up or going down and it's more or less than the rate that you want, then you just adjust the food side of the equation. If you want to be a little more proactive, a little more precise, then you can weigh yourself a few times a week. Or like I do every day.

[00:15:08] It's just a habit I get up in the morning. Four, use the bathroom step on my smart scale. It beams it to my phone. It takes five seconds. I don't really think about it. It doesn't become an obsession. The scale weight doesn't really do anything emotionally for me at this point, because it's just a data point every day.

[00:15:25] But however you do it, that gives you the two sides of the equation. You need to understand your metabolism and whether you're eating the right amount of food to meet your goal. And then as far as tracking your progress in the gym, we've talked before about the fact that a good training program. And we are training.

[00:15:45] We're not just exercising a good training program. We'll show objective progress, whether that's weight on the bar sets or reps. And then if you want to go to that next level, of course you can measure yourself, measure your waist, measure your arms, things like that, to measure muscle gain and weight loss.

[00:16:02] And I guess this priority really applies to anything you're trying to accomplish in life. Any goal that you're trying to achieve, how do you know if you've gone from a to B to C to all get all the way to. You know that by tracking your progress in some objective measurable way and the last big pre. Is just to enjoy the process.

[00:16:24] The results will follow. We get so hung up on the results. You know, where I have arrived on any given day that we fail to enjoy the process. And in some cases it's because we have a process that we don't enjoy and that's what makes it unsustainable. And so to have something sustainable and consistent that we can do.

[00:16:49] Months years, the rest of our life, both in diet and nutrition, the process itself should be as enjoyable as possible. Now I talked earlier about the priority of keeping your programming, simple and fun. And the fun part of that is what I'm talking about in terms of the process being enjoyable. When I get up at five 30 in the morning to work out and that's usually when I work out.

[00:17:16] Yeah, it's a little bit. And it's a little bit cold and I'm not quite warmed up, but I know that I'm going to get in there and it's going to be tons of fun to lift heavy weight, because I know the results are going to follow now. That is not at all fun for you. And even if you've done it for three months, it's still not fun for you.

[00:17:34] Then it's probably time to change it up to something that you can enjoy. Even if the results are a little less quote, unquote optimal, the same thing goes for diet. I talk a lot about. About macros calories and all this, if all of that stuff is just torture to you, even after you've tried it, even if you seen results, then for you as an individual, you'll have to have a different approach.

[00:17:59] And there are other ways to do things there's other ways to track progress in a little more laid back fashion, where maybe you, you gather data points. Once a month and you don't track your food, but you learn how to estimate based on what you see on the plate. I mean, you can't just totally wing it, especially when you're a beginner to this whole process, because that's probably what got you to the.

[00:18:24] Where you've been in the past where you may not have met your goal. So there is some element of willpower to start the process. There's some element of sacrifice and discipline and hard work, of course, but to be sustainable, you want to settle into the approach that both. And is enjoyable along the way.

[00:18:43] I mean, this is life, this is our life, and we're going to be doing this for many years. So that's why I wanted to include this priority because I know from personal experience, I've done things in the past that worked, but we're no fun at. And those are the kinds of things that lead to yo-yo dieting and program hopping.

[00:19:02] And we want this to be a fun process, a sustainable process, and one that gets results. I hope you found this episode useful and are excited to focus on some or hopefully all of these seven big. That should get you most of the gains and help establish a long-term sustainable approach to strengthen fitness.

[00:19:24] Hit me up with questions by going to the link in the show notes or by email or Instagram.

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Ep 9: 10 Fitness and Nutrition “Facts” I Changed My Mind About

Today I share some helpful and sometimes counterintuitive things I’ve learned over the last year about fitness and nutrition that either changed my mind or were completely new to me.

As a 40-something-year-old lifter who has only been training seriously and effectively for the last few years, I used to believe a lot of nonsense—ideas, myths, preconceptions, assumptions, whatever you want to call them—that often held me back from progress or, even worse, were counterproductive.

Chances are that you’ve heard some of these too, and it’s quite possible you’ll be surprised by some of my thoughts in this episode—or perhaps not. At the very least, I hope you’ll learn something new that will help you continue to remain skeptical, ask questions, and become even more informed on your journey to greater strength, better health, and long-term consistency.

1. More muscle means you can eat more

2. Metabolism is determined by body composition

3. Genetics are no excuse

4. Calories are the LEAST important reason to exercise

5. Walking has more benefits than you think

6. Carbs are not the enemy (they are crucial for training)

7. Losing weight is as "simple" as being in a caloric deficit

8. There are multiple ways to make objective progress

9. Being strong makes it easy to recover from injury or surgery

10. We don't know everything yet but learn new insights every day!

🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW
At Wits & Weights, we help you shred fat, build strength, feel energized, and project confidence in your career and relationships without excessive dieting, cardio, or food restrictions.

👉 Just go to witsandweights.com/coaching to connect with me.

👥 To join our Facebook community for live training, free guides, free challenges, and more, just click here.

🙋‍♀️ HOW TO ASK A QUESTION FOR THE SHOW

• 👉 If you have any questions, just click here.

👨‍💻 HOSTED BY

• Philip Pape of Wits & Weights (Instagram 👉 @witsandweights)

👏 ENJOY THE SHOW? 

• Let me know by leaving a review in Apple Podcasts

👉 Apply for 1-on-1 coaching: witsandweights.com/coaching

---

Transcript

This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.

[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast, for busy professionals who want to get strong and healthy with strength training and a sustainable diet. I’m your host, Philip Pape, and in each episode, we’ll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry, and a commitment to consistent lifting and nutrition.

[00:00:26]Welcome to episode nine of Wits & Weights. Today, I wanted to share some helpful and sometimes counter intuitive things I've learned over the last year about fitness and nutrition that either changed my mind or were completely new to me that I found.

[00:00:51] And as a 40 something year old lifter, who's only been training seriously and effectively for the last few years, I used to believe a lot of nonsense ideas, myths, preconceptions, assumptions, whatever you want to call them that often held me back from progress or even worse were counterproductive.

[00:01:11] Chances are, you've heard some of these too, and it's quite possible. You'll be surprised by some of the thoughts that I have in this episode, or perhaps not at the very least. I hope you'll learn something new that will help you continue to remain skeptical, ask questions and become even more informed on your journey to greater strength, better health and longterm consistency.

[00:01:35] Number one. Adding muscle, lets you eat more food, even in a deficit. Now this is a big one because for most of my life, when I was either sedentary or doing things like CrossFit and not really lifting and adding. It was always a struggle to maintain my weight. At least for me, I would call it a quote unquote, slow metabolism, which is not really a thing.

[00:02:04] And we'll get to that in, uh, the second item. The, the fact is that whatever my metabolism was based on my activity levels and based on my body composition, I would have to always be in a slight state of hunger to maintain my weight and definitely to lose weight. So I couldn't necessarily, at least in my mind enjoy eating without the risk of gaining weight.

[00:02:30] And if that sounds like you, the revelation I had over the past few years, when I. Singularly on strength, training and building muscle. Is that muscles and expensive tissue. You probably heard that before. It's more expensive than your other tissue. And having more of it generally increases your metabolism relative to your.

[00:02:53] Baseline. So it essentially increases your set point, but the idea is that while everyone is on the hamster wheel of cardio, trying to burn the fat off with burning calories, I was here lifting three or four days a week, which is a lot of fun. At least for me building muscle, not doing much, if any cardio not doing CrossFit anymore.

[00:03:18] And all of a sudden. I could eat more and more and more without gaining weight, or if I wanted to gain weight on purpose, I would have to even more. And then when I went into a cut last year, I had to reduce my calories, but it was reasonable. I'm five, nine, and I had to get it down to maybe 20 to 2300 calories a day, which is not starving.

[00:03:45] And before I had gained that muscle, I would have had to go much lower than that. If I were to lose any significant weight. And now that I've been in a bulk, I found that my metabolism continues to go up and up and up as I add muscle, allowing me to just eat tons of food. So the moral of the story is if you like to eat, like I do, you can eat more.

[00:04:07] If you add more. Number two, your metabolism is explained primarily by your body composition. We often talk about how metabolism is different for everybody, and it slows down as you age and men have a higher metabolism than women and all of these. Um, what I now know to be proxies of metabolism, but not direct causes.

[00:04:35] It turns out that the largest explanatory variable of a higher or lower metabolism is how much fat free mass you have. That is simply the more muscle you have, the less fat you have. So in other words, the lower body fat percentage, you have a higher metabolism. You have. If you took two individual. That were roughly the same height, same weight, but one had a significantly better body composition.

[00:05:03] That person would have a high on average, a higher metabolism. Now, if you extend that logic and say, okay, well, why do older people have slower metabolisms? It's because as you age sarcopenia and osteopenia kick in your muscles and tissue degrade waste away, whatever you want to call it. And your fat free mass declines.

[00:05:23] So your metabolism decline. Why do men have a higher metabolism than women? Well, again, all things equal. Men have a higher fat free mass they're leaner women carry more fat, just biologically. So men are going to have a higher metabolism. And what this means is that you can actually flip the switch and turn the dial and increase your metabolism simply by improving your body composition and adding muscle.

[00:05:49] Oh, that's exactly consistent with the first item I was talking about. Which brings me to number three related to these. And that is genetics are not really an excuse. Having a quote unquote, slow metabolism is not an excuse. And I know this from personal experience, but we also see this in the literature.

[00:06:09] And we see this among the population that if you engage in really any form of fitness, but especially resistance training. Eat properly, meaning to maintain a healthy weight that no matter what you are born with genetically, you can significantly improve and transform your own body. No, not everybody is going to look like the rock or Arnold or whoever your ideal physique.

[00:06:38] Of course not. There are differences between people and genetics do give you a different baseline and a different set point. But in relative terms, you can go from what you are now to a significantly improved, healthier version of yourself through your own effort. And this is liberating. Number four calories burn.

[00:07:04] Is the least important thing about exercise for many years, I came to realize that diet was definitely the most important factor in whether you gain or lose weight in general terms. But I also thought that calories burned while performing exercise was significant. And you've heard the phrase that you can't outrun a diet.

[00:07:26] That's true, but even more important than. I think lots of folks in society have gotten into their head that lots of cardio, that should be the primary form of exercise and that the more you run and the more you bike and the more you swim, the more calories you burn, that's how you stay on top of your weight gain.

[00:07:46] When in fact prioritizing cardio and not doing resistance training will send your body a signal that endurance is. And you will become more efficient, meaning your metabolism will actually decline. And you may even see reduction in muscle tissue, which is the opposite of what we want. What we instead, what are, what I talked about in number one, and number two, you build more.

[00:08:15] You drive up your metabolism. You don't have to do a crazy amount of cardio. Cardio is great. Cardio is healthy for you. There are a lot of reasons to cardio, but not as the primary driver of fitness in the context we're talking about, which is improved body composition, additional muscle ability to eat more, to eat in a healthy way to maintain a healthy weight.

[00:08:36] And therefore we don't perform exercise to burn calories. We perform exercise to lift weights and add. And to get healthy. Now having said that I'm going to contradict myself slightly with number five, and that is that while. Has so many more benefits than I realized, including the fact that if you walk regularly, you are going to burn a few more calories and those extra calories will give you a little bit of cushion in your.

[00:09:08] But that is different from doing medium or high intensity cardio on a regular basis for the sole purpose of burning calories, which then may lead to you adapting to endurance, which is counter to our goals of building muscle becoming less efficient so that we have a higher metabolism, but walking is such a great movement.

[00:09:32] I had back surgery last year, a microdiscectomy. And the best way to rehab that in the early weeks after the surgery, because I couldn't do much else was to walk now all of my life, I've not been a huge fan of walking. I've talked about this before. My wife would have to drag me out to go on a walk. I just thought it was kind of boring and a waste of time.

[00:09:56] I'd rather be, I'd rather be doing just about anything else, but. All of a sudden, it's the only thing I can do. It helped me heal. And I, all of a sudden had a new, found psychological link to the benefits of walking and I wanted to do it. And so I started to give myself a daily target of, I think it was initially 8,000, then 10,000.

[00:10:18] And currently it's 12,000 steps a day. And I think that's planning for most people. In fact, it's a little bit tough to get that if you work at home or are you work. Sedentary at a desk, you have to force yourself to either go for walks or have a treadmill, or get on a bike even, and get some steps that way at a low intensity by.

[00:10:41] But I've found that there are so many benefits to walking. One of those is it keeps you generally active. Meaning if you know, you want to get certain step amount of steps in for a day, you're going to find a way to do it. You're going to go get some vitamin D outside, go for a walk. After lunch, after dinner with your family, you're going to maybe walk around the house and pace a little bit while you're on the phone or doing work, it keeps you generally active as opposed to just sitting around all day.

[00:11:10] Second. It does burn a bunch of calories, almost you, without you realizing it, you know, several hundred more calories a day and it doesn't do so in a way that causes your body to adapt and go into the endurance mode. Walking gives you the opportunity to enjoy your surroundings, your environment. Get out into nature.

[00:11:30] You look for any excuse to walk more. You park farther from the grocery store entrance. You look for a reason to go upstairs. And then as I get older, I'm in my forties and I realized walking keeps me. It keeps the joints lubricated, so to speak. It's great for just general movement and joint health. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you for listening to the podcast.

[00:11:56] If you find it valuable, you would be doing me a huge favor by sharing it on social media. Just take a screenshot, share it to your Instagram story or Facebook, please tag me so I can personally. And we can talk about what you found helpful and how I can improve again, an incredible thank you for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode.

[00:12:17] Okay. The next couple items are related to nutrition. And the first one, which is this is number six, is that carbs are not the enemy. And not only that, they are crucial for training. If you're doing resistance training and trying to build. I followed low carb diets for many years from Atkins to paleo and primal, which by default are low carb because you're avoiding grains to Quito.

[00:12:48] And all of them helped me lose weight to an extent simply because I was excluding many food groups and many sources of calories, including processed foods, but none of them are sustaining. Nonetheless, I kept trying them over and over again under the mantra that carbs are somehow evil. And then when I got into serious lifting a few years ago and I had to really eat for the first time in my life, I couldn't do so.

[00:13:14] Without having some amount of carbs over 150, 200 grams a day, otherwise I'd be eating just a ton of protein and fat and nothing else. And I found that it just gave me a huge burst of energy and this is not unheard of. And some people may operate perfectly fine. Without too many carbs in their diet, but generally the, the evidence supports the idea that if you are training hard, whether you're doing endurance or heavy lifting, that you've got to have some carbs in your diet, and it doesn't have to be a massive amount, but if you're trying to shovel in 4,000 calories a day on a bulk, it's going to be meaningful.

[00:13:51] It's going to be probably. Four, maybe 500 grams of carbs. Now want to know when you're on a cut, when you're keeping your calories low and you're trying to lose weight, the carbs will naturally decline because you're keeping your protein high and you might to keep a little fat in there. And so your carbs may be down in the hundreds, which by some definitions is bordering on low carb.

[00:14:13] Anyway. So I have come to embrace carbs and they're just a macronutrient they're found in all sorts of delicious, healthy, natural foods. And it is a liberating experience to focus more on what's my target for calories and macros and not worrying that any particular macronutrient is good or bad. And that brings me to numbers.

[00:14:36] Losing weight is really as simple quote-unquote as hitting your calories, whether it is low carb, high carb, whatever, if you are training hard and you're trying to build muscle, you've got to hit your protein target no matter what, but when it comes to gaining weight or losing weight, especially losing weight, there is no magic to it.

[00:15:00] There's no special diet. I covered this in my episode, all about. All about dieting without being on a diet. That is as simple as the first law of thermal dynamics. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. If you want to lose weight, you simply have to be in an appropriate reasonable caloric deficit and be consistent.

[00:15:24] And generally, as I always advise that does require some form of tracking. So you know how much you're eating and eventually if you get good at that, you may not need to track it. But like many of the other insights I've talked about today, this is also quite liberating because it means you don't have to be on a specific diet and restrict all sorts of foods.

[00:15:45] You can enjoy what you like, as long as it fits your calories or your macros. You're good to go. The next to number eight and nine have to do with training. Number eight, you can make progress. In multiple ways in the gym, not just with weight on the bar, although that is the best place to start when you're doing a novice linear progression, but you can also progress the number of reps with the same weight.

[00:16:15] You can even add sets, whatever you use to measure progress. Make sure it is objective and demonstrates. So, for example, I've recently started a power building type program where I do a combination of the big strength movements, the compound lifts combined with some accessories, for physic development and on the accessory movements.

[00:16:43] The progress is sometimes with. But sometimes I use different rep ranges and I keep the weight on the bar and I try to hit slightly more reps. It really depends on the type of movement. Isn't an isolation movement. Is it something heavy multi-joint and so on, but the point is, have your notebook, have your app and make sure that every week you are making.

[00:17:09] Somewhere when you initially start that's five pounds on the bar, 10 pounds on the bar, two and a half pounds on the bar, whatever it might be for the same number of reps. But as you get more advanced, you may have different schemes that rotate using periodization. You may go through different rep ranges and you may be progressing weight within a rep range, and then you reset and try to get more reps and progress the way to get, or you may progress using.

[00:17:38] And then you add a fourth set and then maybe a fifth set, and then you reset back to three sets, but with a higher weight, always make objective progress and you will eventually hit your goals. Number nine, being strong makes it easier to recover from injury or surgery. And I have personal experience here.

[00:18:03] Because of my back surgery last year, which was followed two months later by an appendectomy. And in both cases, I felt during preparing for the surgery, the surgery itself, the early recovery, and then the rehab. That I could quickly bounce back. I had the willpower to do it. The discipline, I felt strong. I felt that if I just moved and use my joints, I could quickly get back to lifting and making progress.

[00:18:33] And indeed, that is what happened. It wasn't long before I was back to heavy deadlifts, heavy squats, everything I'm doing today and it's as if it never happened, but I attribute much of that to the year and a half or two years of discipline. Efficient effective strength training that I had performed prior to those surgeries.

[00:18:57] And if you go back to, I think my second episode, which was about all about strength, we talk about the benefits of being strong and health and recovery, vitality being useful are key parts of that. And number 10, the last item on the list today, we don't know everything. We really don't, but we learned fascinating new mechanisms about how our bodies work.

[00:19:25] Every single. For example, last year I was reading the newspaper and it referred to a recent scientific article that had come out called mechanical overload, induced muscle derived, extracellular, vesicles, promote adipose tissue lipolysis. And you're asking, why am I sharing this? Well from the abstract, the authors wrote.

[00:19:48] That their findings demonstrate that skeletal muscle promotes metabolic adaptations in adipose tissue. And what it seemed to suggest is that strength training and specifically the act of actually doing the resistance training and the results shortly thereafter causes your muscle cells to release some sort of genetic material.

[00:20:10] They called it intracellular. That and this material normally suppresses hypertrophy prevents your muscles from growing. And when you work out your muscles apparently release this material and it gets transmitted through these bubbles called vesicles to your fat cells and their, they signal your fat cells to break down and release energy.

[00:20:36] Now it's just one paper of many, but it seemed to indicate that maybe there are multiple complex mechanisms for how building muscle and working out, help us burn fat things that we still don't understand. I've heard it said that muscle is an expensive tissue, but the calories burned just from the additional muscle on your body.

[00:21:00] When you gain muscle are not enough to explain the increase in metabolism you get when you start building muscle. And perhaps this is just one of the many insights into those possible mechanisms. Th the point is it's fascinating. The body is fascinating and we know lots of things anecdotally, and by the way, anecdotes are a part of gathering data and research.

[00:21:25] And we know a lot of things from the scientific literature, and we know a lot of things from repeated practical use over thousands. Millions of real life people over decades. And I think the point here is not that we need to just latch onto the latest study to say, okay, this proves this or proves that, but that we don't know everything.

[00:21:48] And so we should make the best with what we do know. And the only way as an individual to try things out is to try things out and equals one. You are your own experiment. So get in the gym, start trying. Start making progress. See what works, see what doesn't and iterate until you get something that works for you that sustainable, that helps you be consistent.

[00:22:15] And most importantly is. And that's it. 10 things I learned over the last year that changed my perspective for the better. And we'll hopefully give you some insights that make it easier to progress toward your goals.

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Ep 8: Build the Ultimate Home Gym to Make Gains, Save Time, and Be Consistent

One of our big goals on this podcast is sustainability and consistency, and the whole process of going to the gym is a huge barrier for many of us.

The hassle of preparing your clothing, gym bag, nutrition, and then factoring in drive time, weather, convenience within our schedules, compounded by access to random equipment at the gym, sharing a rack or barbell with other members, and sometimes dealing with policies like “no deadlifting” are just some of the many reasons we find to just hit the snooze button and avoid our workouts altogether.

That’s why building your own home gym can be a huge factor in developing good habits and consistency with your workout routine. It saves a ton of time, you can choose exactly the equipment you need, you can control the entire experience, and you can be more flexible with your training schedule. It’s a simple but highly effective step you can take to eliminate excuses and keep making progress.

In today’s episode, we cover:

• The pros and cons of a home gym

• Where in your home and how much space you need for your home gym

• What type of flooring to use

• Basic equipment to get started for the main lifts

• Extra equipment for accessory and bodybuilding movements

• Nice to have equipment to cover almost everything else

RELATED LINKS

• Fitness Reality Power Rack (Amazon)

• Vertical Leg Press (Titan Fitness)

🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW
At Wits & Weights, we help you shred fat, build strength, feel energized, and project confidence in your career and relationships without excessive dieting, cardio, or food restrictions.

👉 Just go to witsandweights.com/coaching to connect with me.

👥 To join our Facebook community for live training, free guides, free challenges, and more, just click here.

🙋‍♀️ HOW TO ASK A QUESTION FOR THE SHOW

• 👉 If you have any questions, just click here.

👨‍💻 HOSTED BY

• Philip Pape of Wits & Weights (Instagram 👉 @witsandweights)

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• Let me know by leaving a review in Apple Podcasts

👉 Apply for 1-on-1 coaching: witsandweights.com/coaching

---

Transcript

This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.

[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast for busy professionals who want to get strong and lean with the strength training and sustainable diet. I am your host Philip Pape. And in each episode, we'll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry and a commitment to lifting heavy and eating right.

[00:00:29]Welcome to episode eight of Wits & Weights. One of our big goals on this podcast is sustainability and consistency. And the whole process of going to the gym is sometimes a huge barrier for many of us to just that the hassle of preparing your clothes, your gym bag, your food factoring in drive time, whether.

[00:00:55] Convenience within our schedules compounded by access to random equipment at the gym, sharing a rack or barbell with other members waiting your turn. Sometimes dealing with policies like no deadlifting. These are just some of the many reasons we find to just hit the snooze button and avoid our workouts.

[00:01:15] That's why building your own home gym can be a huge factor in developing good habits and consistency with your workout routine. It saves a ton of time. You can choose exactly the equipment you need. You can control the entire experience and environment, and you can be more flexible with your training schedule.

[00:01:36] It's a simple but highly effective step you can take to eliminate excuses and keep making. In today's episode, we cover the pros and cons of a home gym. Where in your home and how much space you need for your home gym. What type of flooring to use the basic equipment to get you started and make tons of gains on the mainland.

[00:02:01] Then some extra equipment you might need for accessory or bodybuilding movements. And finally, nice to have equipment to cover almost everything else and build the ultimate home gym. First, let's start by talking about the pros and cons of. Jim, the biggest pro the biggest benefit of a home gym is just that you don't have to drive anywhere.

[00:02:24] It saves you a ton of time. It could be anywhere from 30 minutes, but more likely to one or two hours because of the entire process of getting ready and traveling and getting your session going at the gym. And, and doing that times two because of the round trip. And because you don't have that extra fixed time of traveling to the gym, you could split up your sessions for example, or you can have smaller or larger sessions, uh, much more flexibly.

[00:02:54] So there's flexibility with your time. You can squeeze in an hour at lunch. If you're working from home, for example, or you can sleep in an extra 30 minutes and just get a little bit more recovery before you work out, of course you don't need to pack a big gym bag or a change of clothes where, and you might forget something, you have it all right there, convenient to you.

[00:03:17] All of your equipment is there. Everything's waiting for you ready to go with the settings you'd like with consistently marked barbells, consistent weights between plates and dumbbells. And if you are taking care of your family, if you have children to care for where you need to be there for them, or you're single parent, it's just that much more convenient because you're in the same space.

[00:03:42] You're only a few steps away. So that's the big one related to time and convenience. The second thing is you could research and buy the exact equipment you need over time for your specific goals. The equipment will be consistent from one workout to the next. You know, I mentioned the plates and I mentioned the dumbbells, but you might also consider the barbell, the narrowing on the barbell, the height of your rack, the height of the hooks on the rack, the height of your bench, the angle of your bench, and so on.

[00:04:14] You could also make sure that it's safe. You know, you have the right pins in the rack, the spotter arm. You know how things are balanced, how things are level, you have complete control over the equipment to become familiar with it and make sure that it's safe, which is a huge component of lifting over the longterm and lifting, sustaining.

[00:04:35] And of course you can keep expanding your gym over time and add equipment as you need it. When you need it for your particular goals, this is your environment. And now that is a huge one. For some people you can wear whatever you want. You can throw on whatever clothes you want. Don't have to worry about the judgment of others or how you look.

[00:04:54] You can listen to your music as loud as you want, whatever type of music you want. You could change the temperature. You could change the light. For example, I actually have a smart bulb right over my rack so that when I do bench presses, I can dim or turn off the lights. So it's not shining in my face.

[00:05:12] You have privacy to practice your form without other others commenting or trying to give you advice or bothering you. And for some people, this is much more of a problem than others. In some of these big box gyms, having a home gym helps you establish consistency and accountability. Because it's always visible.

[00:05:32] It's easy to access. It helps you stick to your routine. Totally eliminating that excuse of going to the gym. And of course you won't get the flu or COVID from those other disgusting gym patrons. I'm kidding. Or am I. All right now, let's talk about some of the disadvantages that might come up that we have to consider.

[00:05:52] The first one is it takes space. You have to have enough space for all your equipment, but it's not as much space as you think. And we can get creative with this. If you're able to find space for some of the other things in your house, you should probably be able to find space for if this is something serious for your life.

[00:06:12] In addition to two dimensional space. There's the three-dimensional space, the height that is required for not only pull and chin ups, but pressing. And we'll talk about the height requirements in a bit costs. Okay. Some people think this is a disadvantage because now you have to buy all of this.

[00:06:33] Expensive equipment or seemingly expensive. And there are strategies where you can shop used. You could simply acquire what you need over time, so it's manageable within your budget. But I would actually say that the cost could also be an advantage because the equipment you invest in can easily. Decades, if not your entire life, if well-maintained and comparing that to a monthly membership at a gym over time, there is a payback of probably five to 10 years.

[00:07:04] And once you get over that initial hump of equipment, after that, it's really more of an elective process of if you need this or that over time and small investments here. Now, the next advantage is really a more practical one. And that is that you're going to have limited equipment, at least initially, you're not going to have the 50 machines that a big box gym might have.

[00:07:29] So what you might do is keep paying your gym membership, which are usually pretty inexpensive, 20, $30 a month. There's really not that much for a typical gym membership, just so that you can go in maybe once or twice a week. Or every now and then for special equipment, like a calf raise machine or cable crossover, or some other specialized device that you don't have space or budget for in your home gym, or it just wouldn't be worth investing in given the cost versus how often you're going to.

[00:08:00] And I guess the last disadvantage is that for some people, a home gym is maybe too flexible. It's not structured enough and you may want the accountability of having to go to another place to work out. But even in that case, consider a hybrid option where you have a very basic gym and home for the big compound lifts, you know, the rack, the barbell, et cetera.

[00:08:22] We'll talk about and continue to use the membership, which gives you the option to go either direction on any given day for your work. Those are what I would say are the big pros and cons of a home gym and maybe I'm biased, but I think there's a heavy lean toward the advantages of a home gym and some of the disadvantages can be mitigated in most cases.

[00:08:46] All right. Now let's talk about the location in your home and the space requirements for a home gym, just so you can think ahead about this. Really plan it out. So you don't just start throwing equipment in some random spot in your house and then regret it a few months later, especially how heavy some of this equipment is.

[00:09:07] The first consideration is a solid floor that can support enough weight. This may seem obvious, but some of you might live in an apartment, a condominium. Be considering the second or third floor of your house. And you just have to make sure that the load that it can support is sufficient. This usually that leads to using a garage or basement, which tend to have concrete floors.

[00:09:34] Or some sort of extra room on the first floor or a corner of a big room. Now I actually have my gym in, what's called a bonus room. It's a room over the garage, but it's climate controlled and I'm fortunate enough to have the space there. I also know how the house was built because I built it myself and per today's code.

[00:09:56] You have to have these massive. Uh, laminated beams, it supports thousands of pounds of weight. I did the calculations. There's no way I'm going to exceed that in whatever configuration I use. Uh, garage in most places, you're going to have to deal with the climate meaning cold, cold space in the winter, a hot humid space in the summer.

[00:10:17] The humidity could be a challenge for your barbell and your plates, but plenty of people have garage gyms. It works. And if that's the best space for your gym, go for it. Basements tend to be a little more temperature controlled, a little more stable throughout. A little bit on the cool land, but stable. So those will work.

[00:10:35] The problem with the basement tends to be height. Uh, most older houses or even modern houses sometimes have a low ceiling as low as say seven feet. And we're going to talk soon about the need. Eight feet to do everything you need to do. If you can't, then you'll be limited in what you can do. Or you can split up in your house where you perform certain movements like pull-ups and presses might have to be performed in a different spot than everything.

[00:11:03] I would say maybe the best option is if you have an extra room on the first floor, climate controlled supports the weight. That's a great option. Something like a spare bedroom or office, or if there's a corner or a section of a larger room, most people don't want a bunch of gym equipment staring at them in their living room when they're hanging out at the kitchen or watching TV.

[00:11:25] So again, you have to consider all these lifestyle and comfort factor. Now, what about the space needed? All right. I was remeasuring my gym. I was looking at it again. I was checking out some equipment online and I think that a reasonable space to cover most of your needs for the vast majority of your early lifting career is 12 feet by 12 feet.

[00:11:51] And this will allow you to lay down. Some solid flooring, have a power rack clearance for your barbell. Consider that a barbells little over seven feet long. So when it's sitting in the rack, it's you need at least the seven feet, but you also need room to maneuver to the sides of the bar to load plates.

[00:12:13] And you don't want to be crammed up against the wall either. And you don't want to be slamming your bar into the dry. So you want that extra space. So 12 feet gives you the room and then 12 feet, the other direction, the depth gives you room for your bench or inclined bench to stick out as well as room in front of the rack for pressing, for dead lifting.

[00:12:36] And for other movements, you're going to want to do dumbbell movements, say with an inclined bench and you, you don't necessarily want that crammed inside your power. So the space of 12 feet by 12 feet should be fine. My own gym. It's about 13 feet wide, which has plenty of space. I actually have extra equipment on either side and then it's 12 feet deep and I actually even have a vertical leg press machine in the corner of that 12 feet in front of the rack.

[00:13:04] And it still gives me enough room to. And then as far as height, you need eight feet and that's because typically a pull up bar you'll want it to be about seven feet height. If you buy a, uh, economy, I'll call it or a value, power rack. The pull-up bar tends to be raised a bit, and it's at about seven feet, which is tall enough to hang from it and do your poles, but then you also need a one foot clearance.

[00:13:31] Above that for your head and your shoulders when you do those polls, but also for overhead presses or shoulder presses, consider that a six foot tall male would push the bar up to about seven feet, but then the plates that the radius of a. Is eight inches. So you definitely want that extra foot above the seven feet.

[00:13:52] And of course, if you're extra tall, you may need slightly more than that. So that then tends to limit you to a garage or a typical house has eight foot tall ceilings or many in many cases. First floors today have nine feet tall ceilings. And this goes back to my comment about basements being a little bit low.

[00:14:10] If it's not eight feet, you're gonna have to consider what to do in that situation. For pull-ups and chin-ups, you could always put a rig anywhere, basically a pull-up rig or a doorframe bar. One that sticks out enough. So you're not hitting yourself on the doorframe, but you still need that extra height for the overhead presses.

[00:14:29] Otherwise you'd be limiting to doing Z presses and seated presses, things like that. But what we really want to do the full standing overhead. The only other space that you'll want to consider is for the extra equipment you might have like a dumbbell rack or extra benches or a stand, a freestanding plant stand for your plates.

[00:14:49] And this is where again, like let's, let's talk about the plates for a second. I have played holders that attach into the holes on my power rack, that saves space, or there are wall mounted, racks, and shelves for different things. So you can get. Of course you can have other gear. You're going to have your dip belt and your shoes and collars and all these things.

[00:15:09] And for that, you can go with a storage bin or shelving or something like that. Now let's talk about flooring, right? We're working our way up from the floor on up. We've got our space and now we have to have florid. Well, In a garage or basement, you've got concrete flooring. I don't think you want to be doing certain movements and dropping your bar and dropping your dumbbells on right onto the concrete.

[00:15:34] And similarly, if you're in a carpeted area or hardwood flooring, you don't want to damage. So we want something that's hard, but somewhat shock absorbing and a very common solution. And one that I use myself and I'm sure there are superior solutions depending on time, money, resources, creativity. What I use are, is plywood covered by horse stall mats, and you see this as a very common solution, Google it online.

[00:16:01] You'll see floor plans to see how to do. But you can easily take, say half inch or three quarter inch plywood. Go ahead and get the finished grade plywood. That's really smooth that you can just lay right on your carpet, right on the concrete and then horse stall mats. You can go anywhere from specialized gym, rubber flooring, which tends to be a bit pricey all the way down to.

[00:16:26] The horse stall mats, a tractor supply, which is what I got. And they do give off a little bit of a smell initially to go through what's called offgassing. But if you let them sit in your garage for say a week, bring them in. They're fine. And they're great. They're thick, they're shock absorbing, and they make a perfect cover on top of the plywood to give you.

[00:16:49] Now, some people like to have a deadlift platform. In addition to that, you can make your own, or you can purchase one. They tend to be a little more expensive. And I'm not really including this in the initial equipment because you don't have to. When I do deadlifts, I don't throw the bar on the ground.

[00:17:05] Like I learned to do in CrossFit with bumper plates, I use iron plates. So I'm lowering the bar to the ground. If the flooring supports the weight and you've got some shock absorption, you should be fine. But if you're worried about it, there is something called the deadlift platform meant to absorb the shock from deadlifts and protect your floor further.

[00:17:26] You can also get dropped pads, drop pads. Go on either side of you, so you could drop the bar onto the past and they absorb the shock. The problem there is you need to then be on a platform yourself so that the bar isn't elevated anyway, that's flooring. And again, I would just start with the basic plywood and rubber mats and it should be fine for quite a long time.

[00:17:48] Now let's talk about the basic equipment. If. Can acquire the things we'll talk about in this section of the episode, then that will be enough to get you going pretty far before we become intermediate or advanced. And if it works for you, you'll quickly decide that you want to start gathering some of the other equipment.

[00:18:09] Cause you'll see how convenient, how much fun it is, but I'll let you get there on your own. Let's just talk about the equipment. The first thing, the most important piece of equipment, and one of the best investments you can make is of course, the barbell and we are looking for a barbell that will last you a lifetime that will support all the weight you could ever.

[00:18:31] That is of high quality that has the right markings, the right knurling that can be maintained. That has the proper coding. There's all these things. So we're looking forward to the standard Olympic or seven foot PowerBar or similar that has several features. And I'm going to tell you what I like about.

[00:18:50] And it's not what I had in my first bar. So when I bought my first bar, it was from a guy off of, I think, Facebook market. And I met him in a parking lot, but he was a college student who could deadlift 600 pounds. That's what he'd used the bar for was all of his training. I think he was. Football or hockey player.

[00:19:09] And he was going to be an engineer. He was upgrading his gym and he didn't need the bar anymore. And I think I paid something like 75 bucks for it, but that bar lasted me a long time and I did tons of work with it, but it lacks some of the features that I got with my current bar. My current bar is a rogue Ohio power bar, and you'll probably hear.

[00:19:30] All over the place. The more you get into this, because it's one of the most popular, effective bars out there. It's a high quality piece of equipment. Now I bought it as part of their bone yard sale. So this is one of my pieces of advice is just look for sales, buy used. When you can, as you build your gym, save some.

[00:19:49] Get the same quality. The boneyard bars from rogue are just bars that have some sort of imperfection that is non-functional. And I don't even know what the problem is with my bar, to be honest, it's a beautiful bar. Now here's some of the features that it has, that I would look for in any bar that will last you a lifetime.

[00:20:09] First of all. The knurling does it have fairly aggressive? Knarly knurling is the crosshatching that's etched into the bar and I would look for center knurling. Okay. So right in the middle there's knurling, which is great for squats because the bar will stick to your back. And then I would look for a smooth section on either side of that.

[00:20:33] And that's where your shins will be when you deadlift and then more knurling beyond that, up to the. On that outer knurling, there should be at least one ring grooved in either side at 32 inches apart. And this is the standard width for power lifting for the bench. And it serves as a reference point for bench pressing, pressing, um, So that you can standardize your lifts.

[00:21:00] This is one of the benefits of being at home and using the same bar over and over, you know, where your grip's going to be and you know how the bar is going to feel. The next thing is look on the end of the bar and you should see no hex. In the center of the end, you should just see it, it just look flat or slightly recessed, but no nut at the end of the bar, that indicates that it's a good quality bar that it's smooth at the end.

[00:21:27] The sleeves themselves should spin very easily. And then the material. I have a raw steel bar now, raw steel bar. It's gonna last me forever. It's strong. It looks great. It's just metal. And all I have to do is wipe it and oil it with three in one oil and a bristle brush. Occasionally. Now I don't have a human environment.

[00:21:50] It's climate control. I have a lot of leeway in half. And I do that. If you are in a human environment and you go with raw steel, you just have to keep it maintained to avoid rust and oxidation, but there are many other coatings and a lot of it's based on preference and feel, you know, there's zinc coatings as black coatings, different colors, different materials.

[00:22:12] So just do the research and pick something that you think will work for you. Now cost-wise a barbell. A good barbell should run you anywhere from, I mean, on the low, low, low end, maybe 200 and then up to mid four hundreds, $500. So the robo higher power bar last I checked was in the low four hundreds. And the version I got on sale, I think it was like two 50 or 2 75.

[00:22:38] So it was. But budget about three or $400 for your barbell, unless you get it used. And then you might get a great deal. And then to go with a barbell, we need a power rack, also called a power cage. In some cases, some folks go ahead and. A squat stand, for example, which doesn't have the full four or six uprights.

[00:23:01] It's not a box. It's just a stand. I would recommend going straight for the power rack because it's very versatile. It's going to provide you a lot more capabilities for accessories, for expandability in the future. It's strong. It's safe. It's just the way to go. Especially given the price difference today.

[00:23:21] It's not very much. I would go straight for a power rack. A power rack is simply a box of steel angle iron post. It's typically a budget or value, power rack. Like the one I have it's for upright posts with a base connected at the top with a couple pull-up bars with neutral handle bars, connecting the two polo.

[00:23:46] Mine has two by two. Uh, but you can find three by two or a three by three steel with holes at different, at different distances. And the holes are where you will Fasten the hook. So put your barbell in, you can put in your pins, your safety pins, your spotter arms, and in all sorts of other attachments like placeholders, a power rack is typically about four feet by four feet in terms of footprint, unless you go with bigger, more expensive, maybe one that has six upright, something like the soar and ax, or, you know, in the really pricey range, then you start to take up more and more space.

[00:24:26] But consider about four by four. And this is where you've got your power rack. You've got your bar, the 12 feet total with makes a lot of sense and the 12 feet depth, because it gives you all that extra space around it to get all your work. I would say today, you could get a decent power rack for anywhere on the low end, as low as potentially $300.

[00:24:48] If you go to Amazon or something like that, you can find decent power racks. You look at the reviews, you look at how it's tested. They hold up really well. Uh, but then the price of a power that can go up to four or four or five, $600 for pretty good one up to a thousand dollars and up. I mean, you know, sky's the limit depending on what your budget is and what you're looking.

[00:25:09] With the power rack, it should add a minimum, have safety pins or spotter arms. You have to have that for safety during bench, press and squats. So when you bench, you're going to set the pins between your chest and neck height, so that if you fail. You're just going to gently lay it onto the pins. It's not going to crush you.

[00:25:30] It is as the least safe movement when it comes to working by yourself. So you have to have those pins, squats. Similarly, you would set the squats low enough so that if you failed it, you could just, you could just drop the bar onto the pins. I would also recommend if the power rack doesn't come with J hooks.

[00:25:51] If it comes with these small hooks that don't have much of a vertical back to them that goes up maybe 6, 8, 10 inches along the upright to get a separate set of J hooks and J hooks are nice because then when you slam the bar back onto the upright. When you, when you push it into the rack, when you're racking it, they hit the back of the J hook and not the upright itself.

[00:26:17] So you're not going to wear or damage the uprights. You're going to push it on the hood. So we've got our barbell and we've got our rack, the other things we need our bench and plates. So let's talk about the bench at a minimum. You want a flat bench and there are many options there as well, but make sure the bench can support plenty of weight.

[00:26:40] And then look at the base of the bench. Look at the feet, make sure they're high. And there are some benches that are more like power lifting style, like a tripod. They may have a single leg in front to give you plenty of clearance for your feet, but almost any bench will work. And if you want to invest now in something that will give you more flexibility down the road.

[00:27:05] Adjustable bench that can go into an incline also called an FID, which is flat incline decline bench. So that allows you to incline press. And other movements like declined sit-ups. And then on top of that, if you can find an FID bench that allows for attachments, like the one I have now, I actually just acquired an FID bench that has a leg developer attachment for curls and extensions.

[00:27:34] It also has a preacher curl attachment. The more you want in something like this, the more it's going to cost. So from a starter perspective, a flat bench, that's a hundred, 150 bucks. Should be fine, but you can go all the way up to four or five, $600 for these more advanced benches. And finally you need plates of course, to go with your barbell and at a minimum, I would say you need at least three.

[00:27:58] Or four pairs of 40 fives, depending on how strong you are. If you're a pretty weak, if you're just getting started, then three pairs should be enough because three pairs will get you to 315 pounds on the bar. And you can always go a little bit higher than that with the smaller weights added to it, but get four pairs, if you're a little bit stronger than that.

[00:28:18] So three or four pairs of 40 fives, at least one pair of 25. At least two pairs of tens, a pair of fives and a pair of two and a half. Also, I would suggest micro plates, micro plates. You could usually buy a package of micro plates that give you a quarter, a half, three quarter, and one pound plates. This is for more incremental loading on something like the overhead press.

[00:28:48] And then when you buy your plates, make sure to weigh them, take out your scale, right? When the plates come in and right when you buy them, weigh the plates and make sure they're very close to what's marked you don't want a 45 pound plate. That's 41 pounds. This has happened to me a couple of times, and I had to reach out to the manufacturer and say, Hey guys, what are you giving me here?

[00:29:07] I need to send these back, send me something that's close to what. Now iron plates, cast iron plates are the cheapest. The last you forever. That's what I use. That's what most serious lifters use, who don't want to then invest in. Uh, Olympic or bumper plates, which tend to be more expensive, but they're nice because they save your floor.

[00:29:30] They're great to put onto the bar with dead lifts, you could do a hybrid approach. You can get a pair, one pair of bumper, plate, 40 fives, throw those on the bar and then use iron plates for the rest of the weight. When you do a deadlift and that'll soften the landing. When the. Is lowered when it's lowered, not dropped when it's lowered, because we're not going to be dropping our bars in our house.

[00:29:54] We're going to be lowering them. The price of plates can vary widely, especially in today's supply chain and crazy market. There's places like rogue and tightened fitness. And even Amazon that sells, I think the cap. And as long as it's a piece of iron with a two inch hole at ways, what you need to, it's probably gonna work.

[00:30:15] Now. The only other consideration wood plates are, where are you going to store them? So if you have a power rack, then you might be able to put on plate holder attachments, they look like the two inch rods that stick. Onto a base that attaches to a hole on the rack and you might need four or six of those to hold all your weights.

[00:30:37] That's how I do it. Or you can get a free standing plate holder that goes on the. And then don't forget to get bar collars. They might get thrown in with the rack or some of the other equipment, the spring loaded colors, and there's different variations of colors. But basically these go on to the end of the bar to hold the plates on for certain movements.

[00:30:56] I wouldn't use bar callers for bench presses, for example, because you might want to shift the plates off from a safety perspective, but any movement where the plates can slide off, you would use. And that's it for basic equipment that will let you perform the deadlift, the squat, the bench, press the overhead press pull-ups and chin-ups, that'll take you very far.

[00:31:21] And if you have just that, you can do a lot of your programming, even as you get into intermediate and advanced stages. And you can combine that with a commercial. For some of the other work and that's a pretty good, a reasonable approach. But if you want like me to continue to build your home gym and do more and more from home to the point where you probably don't even need to go to the gym, let's talk about some of the extra equipment that we'll cover.

[00:31:48] I'll say 10 to 15% of the remaining 20%. And the first is going to be dumbbell. You could either acquire individual pairs. They're not too expensive. They've definitely gone up in price over the last couple of years. This is 2022 and we saw them go up during the pandemic. And some of them are so fairly expensive or go ahead and invest in a pair of adjustable dumbbells.

[00:32:14] I have a pair that's similar to the Bowflex. I think select texts. There's similar to that, but it's an offering. There's also the power blocks. There's other brands coming out all the time. I would look for dumbbells that can go up to at least 90 pounds. Don't get the ones that are limited to 52 and a half, because those will just you'll hit a wall pretty quickly when you get to things like pressing or shrugs or something like that.

[00:32:42] So get as heavy as you can that you can afford. And these tend to be fairly expensive. Let's say anywhere from four to $800 for the pair or even more, but comparing that to a bunch of different pairs of iron dumbbells, it may be the better. And then you of course, need a stand or a rack to hold the dumbbells or even the adjustable dumbbells, but dumbbells open up a ton of movements where your arms can move independently.

[00:33:11] Whether it's bench presses, overhead presses, rose, shrugs, all sorts of bodybuilding movements like side laterals, front raises, and. And these are the kinds of things you will start to incorporate as you become more advanced, as variations of the main lifts or accessories for weak spots. And for bodybuilding, if you're really on a budget, you could just get dumbbell handles that you can load plates onto either the one inch plates, but then you would need to buy the special one inch plates or the Olympic size where you can throw your two inch plates right onto.

[00:33:46] The handles the downside of that is the inconvenience and the hassle of constantly taking off and loading the weight. Especially if you want to do something like drop sets or you want to change the load or go from one movement to the next, it really is kind of a hassle. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that if you can go ahead, right, for full dumbbells or the adjustable dumbbells that have the dial on it while you're getting acquiring dumbbells, you might want to.

[00:34:12] By one or two medium or heavy kettlebells, if that's part of your programming or what I have is actually a kettlebell handle. It's a plastic handle with a rubber insert where it wraps around the dumbbell handle in terms of the dumbbell into okay. The second piece of equipment would be a dip attachment for your power rack.

[00:34:35] You can obviously buy a separate dip machine, but you don't really need that. If you could just get either the Matador attachment or like what I have are two separate handles that go into the holes on the power rack, and now you can do dips. And if you have a dip belt, you can also do weighted. And dips are a fantastic movement as an accessory to your pressing into your triceps.

[00:35:00] All right, then the next big piece of equipment would be a lat pull down cable attachment, and you could buy a free standing all in one. Functional fitness machine is what I think they call them, which tend to be quite expensive. We're we're looking at maybe at least a thousand dollars just for that. But if you planned ahead and you purchased a power rack that can support a lat pull down that lat pull down itself may only be a couple hundred dollars as an attachment to the power rack.

[00:35:29] And that's what I have. And what's great about it. It is. So it's not a stack. If you'd rather have a stack, you're probably going to pay a little more for that it's plate loaded, but it has a cable at the top and it has a cable at the bottom and it attaches to the power racks of the rack itself provides stability.

[00:35:45] Now this is where if you have extra space and extra money, if I went back to square one and budget was no limit, I might actually consider. Uh, functional fitness machine or a crossover, a cable crossover machine where you have two separate cables, it's really opens up a ton of more movements. Things like flies and lots of other things, but you don't need that.

[00:36:06] A straight pull down cable attachment will still work. Lat pull downs with wide or narrow grips, seated rows, tricep, press downs, rope curls, one-arm cable variations, like flies. Lateral raises a ton of versatility. A lot of these are, as you can tell bodybuilding movements, but still we're talking about the next level of your home gym.

[00:36:29] All right, let's go through some more equipment. Um, and this isn't, this isn't an exhaustive list or a list where you have to get everything. This is to give you ideas. How you can add versatility and movements to your home gym and start to whittle away the reasons that you need to go to another gym outside your house.

[00:36:49] So the next thing is a landmine attachment and these actually are fairly inexpensive. They would attach to the base of Iraq and it looks like a cylinder on a pivot and the cylinder, which tends to be about maybe six or eight inches long. Is where the end of the barbell is inserted. And then there tends to be a tightening.

[00:37:11] And now you have a free floating barbell attached to on the floor that can pivot. And it opens up movements like T-bar rows and landmine presses, and you can get attachments that go in the end for those types of movements. So for example, I like to do T-bar rows occasionally really hit the lats, the upper back and load a lot of weight for not much extra investment.

[00:37:36] All right to enhance all of this are some smaller items that I would consider. One of those is an easy curl bar. An easy curl bar is pretty inexpensive. You can get one on Amazon for probably as little as a hundred dollars or less. And they're great for curl variations, lying, tricep, extensions, French overhead, press.

[00:37:58] And it's just one of those extra types of bars that you can get for very little additional investment. Okay. The next item is a box, a strong box, probably 12 inches high. Sometimes it's called a plyo box or maybe one of those wood boxes that you see for box jumps and CrossFit or a steel box, or you can make your own, and these would be four box squats.

[00:38:23] So it has to be low enough that you get. Below parallel or right around or below parallel, but they could also be used as a platform. You know, you can stand on them before you do your dips, or you could put your feet on them for deficit pushups. Very versatile. The next item is a bar holder. Now that you have an easy bar and the bar.

[00:38:44] And when we get to the next section, we talk about other types of bars. You may need a place to hold all these, or if you have dumbbell handles that are the two inch dumbbell handles, you might need a bar holder that can hold something like five barbells. The next item is a deadlift Jack. Now I only got one of these recently.

[00:39:04] I saw Jujimufu talk about how this is the first piece of equipment you should get, which I thought was a little bit of hyperbole. And I realized how useful it can be. It's basically what it sounds like. It's a. Jack and they come in different styles, different designs that you can insert under a bar, prop the bar up, and then load your plates.

[00:39:25] It holds the bar up just high enough. So you can load your plates and avoid the awkwardness of trying to Jimmy on all of your 40 fives before you do your deadlifts. The next item is an app. Yeah, as seen on TV from the 1990s infomercials, but the app will is still around because AB wheel roll outs are a fantastic app.

[00:39:47] Exercise also called a roller AB roller there's the traditional wheel with the two handles. And there's something like the Sora annex roller, which looks more like a rectangular frame. That's flat on the ground with. Great for AB workouts. And then the last piece of equipment might be a calf. You could make your own, just look it up, how to make a calf block, make it out of wood, or you can buy one made out of metal.

[00:40:15] That's a simple horizontal bar, or some of them are triangular to put your feet on a wedge at an angle. And these are for you guessed at calf raises, CDs, seated, or standing calf raises. It just gives you a nice stable platform so you can get the full stretch and the full range of. With your calves. And finally we get to the ultimate.

[00:40:39] Gym equipment. You've covered all the other bases. Here are a few other things you might want to add to your gym. And again, this is like kind of like a menu. These last two sections here, the one I just covered in this one, in that you can pick the pieces from each that makes sense for your programming and your goals.

[00:40:57] I have some pieces from all of these lists, but I don't necessarily have them all. So for ultimate equipment, the first one. Cardio machines. Now I talk a lot about how cardio isn't all that important when it comes to lifting for strength, but it's still important. And cardio machines can come in handy for warmups.

[00:41:19] You know, if it's a cold day and you want to just jump on your assault, bike, your fan bike, they're good for a quick. Session right. High interval intensity interval training. Or if you're just trying to get an extra steps or low intensity cardio on the bike, on a rower, on a treadmill, whatever works for you, they tend to be a little more expensive.

[00:41:42] I personally have a fan bike. I think I got it from tightened fitness. I'd love to have the rogue echo bike. It's it's super smooth, but it's very expensive. So. You have to balance budget with quality with your needs. So a cardio machines are going to take up space, but they could be a great addition to your.

[00:42:03] The next item would be something like a glute ham developer, a GHD machine where you could do back extensions and glute ham raises. Now I have a very simple version of that where I could do back extensions, but I can't do . So I tend to do those at a commercial gym, but if you can get the all in one, which tends to be more expensive and it takes up more space, then go for it.

[00:42:28] Great hamstring workout. Great. Lower back. Great posterior chain. So related to this would be a reverse hyper reverse hyper extension machine. We're getting into very specialized equipment here, but the footprint isn't very big they're plate loaded. And if you've got back issues, or this is a important part of your workouts, if you follow the west side, a conjugate programming, you do a lot of posterior chain work.

[00:42:56] The reverse hyper could be useful. The next item would be one or more. Pieces of equipment for legwork, and I'm thinking the leg press the hack squat. I have a vertical leg press. It really doesn't take up much space. It's maybe two by two and it's plate loaded, but there are more expensive machines and some of them are multifunctional with the track, you know, for the hack squat or the leg, press the track of the plate loading.

[00:43:24] They take up more space. They cost more. If you have the room and that's part of your programming again, it's something to consider. And even more specialized piece of equipment would be a calf raise machine standing or seated calf raises. That's basically all they're good for. I don't have one of those.

[00:43:40] I like to hack up my calf movements. I'll either do a calf raise on my leg press or I'll rig up some sort of donkey raise with a barbell, or I will do seated calf raises with. And then finally there are lots of different specialty bars. There's a specialty bar, which is the kind that has multiple hand positions and angles.

[00:44:09] There are safety squat bars. There's the transformer bar by. Kabuki strength, I think which can go into multiple positions for things like front squats, there's Canberra bars. For example, if you want to get really deep into a bench, press a Canberra bar can be a great tool. And there are lots of other variations of bars out there.

[00:44:32] If you want to look for them, as you can see, although you can eventually build your ultimate dream home gym with time and money, all you need to start are around. Bar bench and plates. At the very least, you should be able to do one or two full workouts from home each week, as you design and build your home gym over time.

[00:44:54] I personally find that the option to roll out of bed, throw all my gym clothes, get in a good session from the comfort of my home is a big motivator when compared to the hassle of going to a gym, but I still have a membership so that I can work on specific movements like reverse hypers since I don't have that.

[00:45:13] Look for deals, buy used. If needed, check out Craigslist or Facebook, get started on creating that fun space for you to make gains at home. And as always hit me up with questions by email or Instagram.

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Ep 7: A Journey of Strength (Interview on Finding Your Strength Radio)

I had the pleasure of being on another podcast called Finding Your Strength Radio Powered by Romeo Athletics, where I was interviewed by Andrew Romeo. He’s an excellent host, experienced coach, and the owner of my long-time gym, Romeo Athletics (in Enfield, CT).

He asked me a ton of great questions about my journey to fitness, how I got into lifting and strength training, different movements and programming, my recent bulk and cut, body recomposition, sustainable nutrition, and other random topics like metabolism, walking, and even the similarities between music and lifting.

I think the conversation has some interesting and valuable information for those of you looking to transform your life in terms of strength, diet, and overall fitness.

It was a fun interview, and if you want to learn more about Andrew’s podcast, Finding Your Strength Radio, I’ve linked to it below, and I encourage you to check it out and subscribe.

Enjoy the conversation!

RELATED LINKS:

• Finding Your Strength Radio podcast (Romeo Athletics)

🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW
At Wits & Weights, we help you shred fat, build strength, feel energized, and project confidence in your career and relationships without excessive dieting, cardio, or food restrictions.

👉 Just go to witsandweights.com/coaching to connect with me.

👥 To join our Facebook community for live training, free guides, free challenges, and more, just click here.

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• Let me know by leaving a review in Apple Podcasts

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Transcript

This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.

[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast for busy professionals who want to get strong and lean with the strength training and sustainable diet. I am your host Philip Pape. And in each episode, we'll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry and a commitment to lifting heavy and eating right.

[00:00:29] Welcome to episode seven of Wits & Weights. I had the pleasure of being on another podcast a few months ago called finding your strength, radio powered by Romeo athletics, where I was interviewed by Andrew Romeo. He's an excellent host experienced coach, and he's also the owner of my long time gym, Romeo athletics.

[00:00:53] He asked me a ton of great questions about my journey to fitness, how I got into lifting and strength, training, different movements and programs. My recent bulk and cut body recomposition sustainable nutrition and lots of other random topics like metabolism walking, and even the similarities between music and lifting.

[00:01:13] I think the conversation has some interesting and valuable information for those of you looking to transform your life in terms of. Diet and overall fitness. It was a fun interview. And if you want to learn more about Andrew's podcast, finding your strength radio, I've linked to it in the show notes, and I encourage you to check it out and subscribe.

[00:01:34] And if you enjoy this episode, I really appreciate if you could leave a five-star rating on apple podcasts for Wits & Weights, strength training for skeptics, enjoy the conversation.

[00:01:46] Andrew Romeo:What's up everybody. Welcome to another episode of finding your strength, radio. I'm your host, Andrew Romeo guys. I'm super lucky today.

[00:01:53] And I think you guys are super lucky as well for our guests. Our guest is Phillip. Phillip Phillips has been with me since 2011. So if you're doing the math on that right now, that's a decade. Phillip has been training at Romeo athletics, which used to be across at revelation for 10 years. So he's seen a lot of our changes, a lot of.

[00:02:13] Come what's gone what we've prioritized, but we don't prioritize and how the whole gym works. So welcome to the

[00:02:18] Philip Pape: show, Philip. Hey, thanks for having me. You trying to say I'm old here. I am

[00:02:22] Andrew Romeo: not trying to say you're old by any means, because I've been here for 12 years. I'm calling myself even older.

[00:02:27] Philip Pape: Thanks for having me on the podcast.

[00:02:28] Andrew Romeo: Yeah, man, I was really excited to bring you on. I know we were chatting the other day. We briefly mentioned podcasting. Immediately popped into my head. I was like, ellipse should come on the podcast. Um, so here we are here we are, um, to dive into this, I know a lot of members do know who you are, but there's also probably a lot of members who don't know who you are.

[00:02:48] So if you want to just give us a quick background of w where are you coming from? What's your background look like? What do you do? All that kind of

[00:02:53] Philip Pape: stuff. The problem, I kind of keep to myself here at the gym. So. So I am a, an engineering manager at Raytheon technologies based here out of Windsor locks.

[00:03:03] Um, I bet in technology, product development, software, and project engineering for about 20 years, that'll be 20 years next year. Um, and you know, I love my job there. I love working on products that keep people safe in the air that protect our military really cool stuff. Um, and that's, that's like my day job, but as you know, I have a lot of side ventures and hustles and endeavors that are.

[00:03:26] Andrew Romeo: Were you ever involved in sports was sports, anything that was ever, uh, like kind of put physical activity and that kind of stuff in the back of your brain where you're like, I like being active. What did that look like for you? Yeah,

[00:03:36] Philip Pape: the answer is an emphatic. No. So I have a very different background from a lot of folks.

[00:03:41] I was not in organized sports. We grew up in Florida. The weather was great all year round. So I played football in the street. My brother and friends played baseball on the street. So it was active in that sense, but never an organized. I went to an arts high school. Cool. Didn't even have athletics. Okay. I went to college, gained the freshmen 15, then the sophomore 15.

[00:04:02] Gotcha. Skinny, fat, fluffy, you know, my whole life. And finally the senior of college, they built a brand new gym. This is over at RPI. New York. And I decided to try some machine, some cardio kind of flare around in the gym. Like most people didn't know what I was doing. And then that's it graduated college still?

[00:04:21] Not, not in great shape and didn't know what to do in the gym. I knew how to maintain my weight. Diets, so to speak Atkins, what do I do? All

[00:04:31] Andrew Romeo: right, nice. See this ad for Atkins, as you're referring to that'll help me lose my freshmen 15. Let's go

[00:04:37] Philip Pape: for it. Yeah. It's like conflicting sources of information

[00:04:39] Andrew Romeo: all the time.

[00:04:40] Of course. That's what's out there. Right. I try to be the beacon of a truth for a lot of people in that

[00:04:45] Philip Pape: regard. Tell me about it. And today it's a lot, it's both a lot easier and a lot more difficult with the internet, right? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:51] Andrew Romeo: The information era where everything is at our fingertips and we can do anything.

[00:04:55] But there's a downside to that because there's a lot of misinformation out there. That'll lead you down a bad path. Um, diving back into one thing you said. So you went to an art school. What, what type of art did you practice?

[00:05:05] Philip Pape: Yeah, I was a musician, so I played saxophone jazz, and I did that well after college.

[00:05:10] I mean, when I met my wife, we were set up on. We were set up on a date when I was actually playing a gig. Wow. You know, and this is while I'm an engineer and this is just the thing I do on the side of the chair. Right. So I played music for three years and it was one of these high schools where you had to travel on a bus and a Metro rail at a Metro mover into downtown Miami.

[00:05:30] You were there for probably three hours longer than average high school kids because half of your day is music. Very cool. So it was a great experience. It was a small school, especially being in a big city, you know, and they had a good academic program as well.

[00:05:45] Andrew Romeo: Absolutely. I mean, if you become an engineer and gone to the lengths that you've gone with your education, they must've had a good education system.

[00:05:50] You did. That's very cool, man. Cause one interesting thing that I have noticed from musicians that come into weightlifting is typically musicians are meticulous in terms of wanting things to be perfect, right? Because when you're making music want it to sound perfect, and then you come into the world of lifting and they have that same mindset of how do I make this movement?

[00:06:10] How do I make what I'm doing? Perfect. And it really gives people a solid work ethic and also an ideal. Trying to do things really well. So I think that's a great background to come into probably engineering. Cause I'm assuming if you're designing flight controls or whatever you're designing, it needs

[00:06:28] Philip Pape: to be, it is funny, you link all of those because I've always linked music to engineering.

[00:06:34] The math that's inherent in music. You know, the music kids in my art school were always the top of the class compared to let's say the artists or dancers, right. Just different type of minds. So that's the way your brain works. Pretty mathematical. But I hadn't thought of the fact that lifting is its own science that can be thought of in that way.

[00:06:52] And I remember when I first met you, we talked about plate math. You know, you could just, just say a hundred thirty five, one hundred five to 25. Right. And I was like, what are you doing? I have to calculate what's on the box.

[00:07:02] Andrew Romeo: Right. I've just seen those combinations so many times where there's no thought behind it anymore.

[00:07:07] And I'm there

[00:07:07] Philip Pape: and I'm finding that. I'm sure you are.

[00:07:09] Andrew Romeo: Absolutely. It's the only thing that always throws you for a wrench is when there's a 35 pound bar. Wait a second. Hold on. Minus Ted,

[00:07:16] Philip Pape: or have you heard the joke about 35 pound plates from

[00:07:18] Andrew Romeo: Kabuki? How they absolutely hate them, but

[00:07:20] Philip Pape: what's the joke? Well, well, how do you make a 35 pound plate?

[00:07:23] Well, together a 25 and a 10, because you're not supposed to have 3,500 places. The joke, right?

[00:07:27] Andrew Romeo: That is Kabuki did a big thing out there with Christophe and about trying to get. 35 pounds. It's just obviously joking. And, but for the most part, you don't use them that

[00:07:37] Philip Pape: often they're here, they're convenient.

[00:07:39] Um, or you can use them for calf raises, you know, have you ever

[00:07:43] Andrew Romeo: looked into, um, why they decided to go with 45 pounds things and not 50? I, I mean, I've been in the strength industry for probably over two decades and I've never looked into that, but like, why would you make a 45 pound plate and not a 50 pound plate?

[00:07:57] Philip Pape: That is a good question. I don't know if it's really to be in 20

[00:07:59] Andrew Romeo: kilos. It's probably something that came from lifting of like 20 kilos is a 44 pounds for closest to 44 is 45. We'll cast them that way. Do that. So super interesting stuff. So a little bit of background where you're coming from. So you get out of college and you're you, did you go right into the engineering world and you also, you stayed in the music world.

[00:08:19] So you're in both of them, um, was physical fitness part of your life at that point?

[00:08:24] Philip Pape: Not really. Um, I, there was a gym at, I actually lived at Bigelow comments right here. And there was a, a little gym there with just like every gym. You've got some cardio machines and you've got some like Nautilus style machines, maybe a couple of dumbbells.

[00:08:40] Definitely. No barbells it's too dangerous. So before, up until I was 30, so that was like my first eight years living here, um, on and off global gyms didn't have program. He didn't have a plan and pretty much stayed where I was.

[00:08:54] Andrew Romeo: Gotcha. So how old were you when you decided to venture into the world of CrossFit?

[00:09:00] And look me up on the internet and go down that path. When was that in your life?

[00:09:05] Philip Pape: I had just turned 30 when we got pregnant with our first child interests. You know, it's these moments in life that make you think right. I'm going to be a father. I need to get in shape. I don't know how to do it, but I can figure it out.

[00:09:17] So I did the research and there's this big craze called CrossFit, right? There was 2011. It's getting toward its peak. I think CrossFits peak was like mid, I

[00:09:27] Andrew Romeo: would say to you probably. Yeah, like 2013, 2014. It was like every week there's a new gym charting. There's more. And you're like, oh my God, how big does this bubble get before?

[00:09:39] Philip Pape: Yeah. It's like bank branches. You see a new one, like every week on every corner. Um, yeah, so that was, I saw I, so I tried a couple gyms and I ended up here, I think it was convenient to work and I definitely liked the vibe and the culture. And you guys were pretty small back then. It was like a third, the size of this today.

[00:09:56] So yeah, I'm trying to

[00:09:57] Andrew Romeo: think back. I think when you first started, we were probably the L-shaped facility where it was, you walked in. You walked into the bay where all like the exercise equipment is right now, like the sore and extra eggs and the turf as you would walk in there, but it was a green carpet and a wall with a big window.

[00:10:16] And you walked through that and there was a standalone rig that went the language. Yes. And then to the right there was like another little, like half bay where I built a pull-up bar out of two by four, by whatever, by eight and then plumbing pipe that I ran through and connected to both sides of the wall.

[00:10:35] And everybody loved that pull apart. Cause it had like this big flex to it. So when people were doing pull ups, the bar would flex down and like kind of prop you back up. Yeah, exactly. Right. It was popping back up and down, but, um, did that was. A long time ago. It seems like it. Right. So coming into the CrossFit world, what was, what were you looking to do?

[00:10:54] Well, I don't even know if you remember, it was long ago, a long time ago at this point, but what was your goal? What were you trying to get get into at that point?

[00:11:01] Philip Pape: Yeah, I, I didn't, I figured that I couldn't do things on my own successfully in that space. And I needed somebody to tell me what to do. It was basically what it came down to CrossFit sold itself.

[00:11:12] Small group classes with coaching in a, in a good community environment. Right. And with all this cool stuff that I just didn't know about. And I say stuff like that, cause that's what it was in my head at the time. And I think CrossFit for introducing me to some things that were new to me, barbells. Sure.

[00:11:29] I mean, I had never picked up a by my entire life.

[00:11:31] Andrew Romeo: I think that might be one of the greatest gifts that cross it has given the world is putting barbells in people's hands and somewhat like rejuvenating. Even rejuvenated in powerlifting, rejuvenating, Olympic lifting, rejuvenating, all of these things where before people looked at a barbell and they're like, you can bench press with it.

[00:11:49] You can incline bench, press with it. And people didn't even think like dead lifting or squatting with it. Cause they're like yeah.

[00:11:56] Philip Pape: Cleaning and snatch. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[00:11:58] Andrew Romeo: Nevermind that stuff that is outrageous.

[00:12:00] Philip Pape: It's crazy. Yeah, exactly. So, and I agree because I think there was several decades between, I don't know, the seventies and eighties when power lifting and bodybuilding and kind of on the wane at the big gym model came into,

[00:12:13] Andrew Romeo: into play and the Nautilus machines are big.

[00:12:16] Did you look to the, to what you were saying, like your, your last year of college or P everybody that goes to the global gyms while I don't have a lot of money, so I can join this gym for 20 bucks, 30 bucks. And the machine right here has this little diagram that says, put my hands here, press this direction.

[00:12:33] And I work my, sorry, sorry. If you guys can't see what I'm doing, do sitting down and doing like a skull cross hopping around on a machine. Um, so it's like, uh, I mean it's very convenient and they kind of figured out

[00:12:44] Philip Pape: the scalability could sit down and do all your workouts, just sitting down and you can look

[00:12:48] Andrew Romeo: like Arnold Schwartzenegger when you're doing.

[00:12:51] And that's the hard part of, we were talking about booth misinformation. If they sell you a bad bag of goods of you can get all of this and they're not wrong, if you dialed in your diet and did all of the machines stuff, you could look really

[00:13:02] Philip Pape: good, but sure. I mean, there's value in, in some of those, especially the cable machines and some of them.

[00:13:07] Yeah,

[00:13:07] Andrew Romeo: absolutely. I mean, that's why I bought a lat pull down and a cable stack. They're awesome. Um, there's a lot of good stuff with that. Um, and I know as we've trained together for a long time, you've had history of back stuff going on. Was that prior to gyms or is that developed in

[00:13:23] Philip Pape: gym? I don't think I'll ever know.

[00:13:26] I, my wife and I have a theory that it was a snowboarding accident I had around that time 10 years ago, where I just took a hard fall, the board smacked right into my, um, like rear oblique area.

[00:13:40] Andrew Romeo: So you went forward, then you went forwards and your feet

[00:13:42] Philip Pape: kicked into what direction? I don't even remember. I just know I got hit really hard extras on the left side.

[00:13:49] Um, and then it wasn't long after that, that I would occasionally squat and it was always in a warm-up it was never with heavy load. Sure. And it would just. Go like that's the best way I can put it. You know, you feel that playing twins, a lot of people have spoken about that, such a bad feeling, but it, but it always recovered within a few days and I got back to normal stuff.

[00:14:12] And finally this year, uh, again, I was warming up a back squat at home and I felt. And this time it got worse over several days to the point where I couldn't walk, sit or stand, the pain was so bad all the way down my left leg lay down. And all you do is lay down with your feet up in the air. Like people people know back pain, know about that.

[00:14:34] I know exactly

[00:14:34] Andrew Romeo: I've had, I've had to the point where. Lay in a bed where it was like, I, and that, but I found out with Elvis was stuck in a certain position. So it was just creating a lot of tension where I just had to get everything popped and put back in and it was fine. But to your point yet back pain is very debilitating where you can't put your socks or your shoes on.

[00:14:52] Philip Pape: Yeah. And it, and it never really held me back all those years really. Um, and the funny thing is this year, I would say I've had my best fitness year this year, despite. Which is kind of funny, but I had the, I had the issue back in March, late March and all through April, went through the physical therapy and then finally had to have surgery microdiscectomy.

[00:15:14] Okay. What is that? That is where they make an incision in the spine between the vertebra of where the issue is and incise or cut out the tissue. That's herniated disc. So, okay. Which was impinging on my,

[00:15:29] Andrew Romeo: what was pushing them nurses. They just cut that away in Pinterest goes away. Optimally life

[00:15:35] goes

[00:15:35] Philip Pape: back to normal.

[00:15:36] And the thing is back surgeries is they don't have the highest, uh, success rate. It depends on what you have. So what I had was is a very acute issue that the surgeon literally said, the tissue like flew out when he opened me up, you know, it was just easier to just get rid of it,

[00:15:51] Andrew Romeo: waiting pressure on this thing where it's like,

[00:15:54] Philip Pape: oh, look at that popped her.

[00:15:55] Exactly. And so when I woke up. From the surgery. I Amelie felt no pain. I could stand up. I could walk. And the recovery for that is just a lot of walking. Can't really do any weights until you get green-lighted. Sure. And of course, when he said, all right, you can start lightweights. And I said, is that light for me?

[00:16:13] Or just, is this an absolute number? And he's like, not in a light for you. He works with athletes and people like that. And he could die. Yeah, no good doctor, because when everything was done, he's like, I'm not going to tell you what else to do. Just go have. You know, if you're back here again, you're back here again, but you'll be fine.

[00:16:28] Go

[00:16:28] Andrew Romeo: live your life. That's awesome, man. And I gave you a ton of credit because a lot of people that have been battling the back stuff that you've been battling at a certain point, you'd be like, well, I'm done lifting weights. I guess this is never again. Will I do that? Then that's where you took a different approach to that where you're like, okay, clearly there's something that's missing.

[00:16:45] That's triggering this. How do I strengthen everything up around it? What do I need to do to combat this, to stay active and achieve my goals whilst. Moving forward, which is awesome. Then I gave you a ton of credit for that.

[00:16:58] Philip Pape: Um, yeah, I I'd rather have, like, they say a strong, bad back than a weak, bad back.

[00:17:02] Like, I don't want to be 70 bending over to pick up a ball and then there's an issue just because I didn't strengthen my back.

[00:17:09] Andrew Romeo: Yeah. And I mean, you hear a lot of these doctors talk and I've talked to PAs that are in these surgeries where they're like, most people have some fucked up discs, something is wrong, somewhere in there, but as long as you're not that aware of it and it doesn't hurt you every day, you can pretty much, as you're saying, just develop strength around it and you're going to be okay and you're going to be able to do whatever you need to do.

[00:17:32] And I, I feel the same way where I, I I've gotten pretty good at self-diagnosing. I feel something out of alignment with my background, like, all right, I just need to get a pop out of this area. Right. And I'll get all of this tension relief and I'll be fine. Um,

[00:17:47] Philip Pape: but don't you find that working out usually makes it feel better?

[00:17:49] Not

[00:17:50] Andrew Romeo: 100%, man. I mean, so I'm in the middle of squat Tobar right now. Um, so if you're ever have. Uh, tired back is now in a day that you don't look forward to getting back under a barbell. The squad is right now for me, and today's a great example yesterday. I squatted heavier, went up to like 92% of my best and like a Seesaw.

[00:18:08] And then today I had to go back under the barbell and do paused back squats. I didn't look forward to it, but when I walked away from the session, I was like, man, I feel a lot better way. Things are, things are popping. Things are moving. I'm feeling. So we're, we're diving into kind of, you're in, you just got into the cross that world.

[00:18:28] Um, you had a back injury early on. It was snowboarding and squatting and it was some stuff through there. We're not attributing to the squatting, but how you felt it while you were squatting lightweights while you were warming up and things were popping with that. Um, as you progressed over the last decade, It seems like your goals have shifted, um, and your goals have shifted from, Hey, I just need to get fit and healthy to where are you now with your goals?

[00:18:50] What are you doing

[00:18:51] Philip Pape: now? You're like a mind reader, man. I mean, you, you, you know this all about me without me telling you, right? Um, so I want a good coach. So I agreed like about eight, nine years of that timeframe was. Fairly inconsistent. You know, I came in maybe two or three days a week.

[00:19:07] Andrew Romeo: So I would see you in the mornings, typically around 7:00 AM, 7:00 AM

[00:19:09] Philip Pape: is the only one.

[00:19:10] Sometimes

[00:19:11] Andrew Romeo: that timeframe of the Jim's history for a lot of people that don't see me coaching a lot. Now I used to coach almost every class, um, in, for a little while. Brian CARF, Brian you're listening. Hi, Brian. Um, Brian used to coach along with me and we had some other coaches that coached as well, but for the majority of classes, I ran ran them all.

[00:19:29] So Phillip and I got to know each other really, really well throughout classes, because as you said, sometimes it's like right now, seven 30 is a really popular time. Right. A lot of people come in, but back then, no one came to seven. Right. Maybe Phillip, maybe mark did when mark wasn't retired yet. Um, so I will, yeah, Lauren and I'd have an opportunity to talk to these guys for an hour.

[00:19:48] Three times a week, which is actually a really interesting and unique opportunity because how often do you have an opportunity to connect with somebody for an hour, three times a week? It doesn't happen often.

[00:19:58] Philip Pape: It's like a fun social club and get together.

[00:20:01] Andrew Romeo: I mean, I call my parents once a week for 15 minutes, like nevermind three hours a week.

[00:20:06] So you get to know, I get to know all of the clients and athletes and everybody really, really well. Um, so Phillip, when you went from training kind of inconsistently two to three times a week, 7:00 AM, and then. It wasn't just COVID shift of training at home, but there was, I feel like you were shifting before COVID happened, um, into more of the strengths.

[00:20:26] Philip Pape: Did you take a look at my notes? I know I was thinking, how do I do, I was looking back at that timeframe. I said, you know, 2019 is really when I made the shift. Cause I started doing RA strength. I, so

[00:20:37] Andrew Romeo: the way that I. The way that my mind works. I can specifically remember when the Soren next rigs were against that wall.

[00:20:44] So the far wall where the bay doors there in the middle bay against that, and I can remember squatting in the rack next to Philip and chatting, chatting about strength and that kind of stuff. So that, that's where my pinpoint comes from of being like somewhere around that timeframe, your mind switched from being like, Hey, I want to exercise for time and fitness.

[00:21:02] I want to start prioritizing strength a little bit more.

[00:21:04] Philip Pape: Exactly. Yeah. And I didn't entirely know why, like I have a much better grasp now of how important strength is as a foundation to everything.

[00:21:13] Andrew Romeo: I agree. I couldn't agree. More

[00:21:15] Philip Pape: aging and mood and energy and productivity at work. Like everything that's, that's better now from a physical standpoint is because of strength.

[00:21:22] That's awesome. That that's my opinion. But, uh, yeah, it was around 2019 doing RA strength, which for the listeners is, is rooms. Custom group programming for people used to be called the barbell

[00:21:33] Andrew Romeo: class. It was Barbara and we still have a barbell club and I kept that as Olympic weightlifting. So that's now before it was like a mix of whatever kind of strength things my head was at.

[00:21:42] And I've peeled that off to be like, all right, barbell club is straight Olympic weightlifting, and now RA strength is kind of like. My training program that I run through that I put everybody else through this at the same

[00:21:53] Philip Pape: time I would, I would classify it as like power building. Yes. Because you always have the compound lift to start one or two of those and then some form of hypertrophy or.

[00:22:04] Accessories, barbell rows,

[00:22:05] Andrew Romeo: things like that. Exactly. Yeah. 100%. I mean, you're definitely dead on with that. We'll start out with a squat or a deadlift or a bench press, and then we move into the auxiliary movement and more so for our listeners that don't know what hypertrophy is, anything over eight reps, uh, or, I mean, so you're talking what a four to eight reps is, um, Mio fibrillary hypertrophy.

[00:22:26] And then eight to 12 reps are talking about sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. So if you guys don't know what I mean by that is four to eight is get stronger. Eight to 12 is get bigger. And then above 12, you're talking more about muscular endurance. Yeah. So right around that timeframe, you're switching over to RA strength in somewhere in your brain.

[00:22:43] It's making the connection of, I think I might like

[00:22:46] Philip Pape: this more. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah. Cause, uh, co COVID, I mean really did a lot for me in our car because everything shut down. We started working from home. All of a sudden I had all this extra times, I said, well, why don't I just work out five days a week now?

[00:23:01] Right. And then you offered custom individualized programming to all your members. That was,

[00:23:06] Andrew Romeo: yeah. As soon as we kicked off COVID. What do we do? How do we keep people engaged? If I give you equipment and give you a program, will you do it? You will. Great. Let's do that then.

[00:23:15] Philip Pape: And what do you have? Right. Like I said, okay, I've got some fifties, some 25 Dumbo, no barbell, you know, maybe a ball or a limited.

[00:23:24] Andrew Romeo: Let's make it work, man. Let's make it work. And I've, as I've watched you, it seems like you're very similar to me in this, regardless. You've just slowly started collecting equipment and finding deals for equipment. I'm like, dude, I, if anybody is a fitness equipment junkie, it's me like, and I've had to pull like reel myself in recently because shit's gotten so expensive out there, but I am the same.

[00:23:46] Pick

[00:23:46] Philip Pape: this up. Well, rogue has her boneyard sale right now

[00:23:51] Andrew Romeo: because I just saw an email from them or they're like, just so people know for our black Friday stuff. Like the price of steel has gone up 300%. Nevermind. The price of cardboard. Nevermind. The price of tape. Nevermind the price of stickers. So take that into consideration when you're purchasing equipment, nothing.

[00:24:09] Philip Pape: Yeah. So I, I didn't have any equipment at the time. Right. And so you programmed for me, something like a moderate strength program with what I did have with. Yep. And here's the thing like when you're newbie, right? The newbie gains are still there on the table. I got to take advantage of that because my tonnage of volume went up, even though my load went down.

[00:24:28] Gotcha. Right. And I think, and then I also went on kind of a unintentional cut, you know, I just wasn't eating that much,

[00:24:35] Andrew Romeo: not eating that much. And you're lifting five days a week. So your caloric expenditure just went

[00:24:38] Philip Pape: through the roof, metallic metabolisms, going up with the muscle mass. Right. My activity is going up my energy inputs coming down.

[00:24:46] Um, You started to see it physically. I started to see the physical transformation, which was very motivating because my whole life, I thought, ah, my genes, you know, there's no way you can look like this or that. And it's not all about looks, but for a lot of dudes, it is somewhat about looks right.

[00:25:01] Andrew Romeo: And even if it's not about looks when you circuiting results in that category, as you said, it's very motivating.

[00:25:07] It's motive. You're like, wow, that, that traffic is starting to pop out a little bit more. Oh, my shoulder. No matter what anybody says, you're going to enjoy the, that aspect

[00:25:17] Philip Pape: of it. Exactly. And it feels great. You know, you feel lighter, you feel stronger. So it started to get me into. A little bit, I won't say an obsession, but a hobby of learning about strength.

[00:25:28] Right. And so I started to read a lot more and listen to a lot more, you know, starting strength and bigger leaner, stronger. And, you know, you've got the power athlete guys and, uh, RA and all the, the old timers. What's his name, Marty Gallagher and the power I can just listen on and on. And those are great

[00:25:44] Andrew Romeo: resources.

[00:25:45] And I mean, Phillip and I will talk about the podcast that he's going to be launching soon and what he's starting to do with that. But the resources that you're citing are all solid and quality resources, which I'm super happy that you found compared to finding people. Aren't going to lead you down a bad, bad path that you're like this, this doesn't look.

[00:26:05] Yeah.

[00:26:05] Philip Pape: Like the men's health guys or the supplement folks and whatnot. Yeah. Um, so once, once I did that, I started collecting equipment. As you mentioned, you know, I found, I found a bar about found some plates. Then I bought a power rack and it went on from there to the point where, okay, I've got everything I need.

[00:26:23] What do I do now? What do I really want to focus on? So I said, let me, let me strip everything away. I even said, you know, RA strength is great, but it's got a lot of stuff I don't even want to worry about at the moment. I just want to learn the lifts. I mean, big lists. We're looking

[00:26:37] Andrew Romeo: at primarily, you're looking at squat, dead bench and press and press.

[00:26:41] Okay. I love the overhead press. How many people do cause it moves. So. Uh, that's like the technician in you.

[00:26:49] Philip Pape: It's a very technical lift. People don't realize that. Right? Most people think the squad is the most technical, but the press is very technical and there are, I would say three styles of press. Right?

[00:26:58] You have the strict press. Everybody's familiar. But then you also have the Olympic press that went on a favor back and you get, you get hit. You get the,

[00:27:07] Andrew Romeo: if you had anybody has ever, if, so Steve Powell is listening to this. People used to refer to him as old Steve, and that's not an insult. And Steve knew we were calling him that at the same time, but he had the Olympic style press where he would like to go up Steve's Emma, would it be like your front squatting?

[00:27:20] He would come up and say, Pressure barbell, but you'd always look at it and be like, well, he's not push pressing, and almost looks like

[00:27:26] Philip Pape: the hip. And then it looks almost like a bench press lean

[00:27:29] Andrew Romeo: back and press it over

[00:27:30] Philip Pape: your head. Yep. And then, and then there's an intermediate form of that, or there's a combination of two where you can do the Olympic on the first rep and do strict with the stretch reflex on the subsequent reps.

[00:27:42] And.

[00:27:43] Andrew Romeo: I will say I dabble in a little of those, uh, those they're almost cheater reps, but it's how do you move a bigger weight? Well, if I let this bar even like, sometimes you take it out of the rack and you let it just drop like an inch or two and then boom, use that stretch reflex to drive it up. And you're like, well, I can press 10 more pounds doing it.

[00:27:58] Like, yeah.

[00:27:59] Philip Pape: Is there anything part of the range of motion that then gets the benefit from exactly that. Lion tricep extensions, full range back with your shoulders. Right. You can do a higher load. So part of the, yeah,

[00:28:11] Andrew Romeo: exactly. And then if you slip that tricep creep back or that four, or that you're to get your tricep creep back a little bit and then pull going, boom.

[00:28:17] And you're like, wow, that's all. And I mean, again, that comes back down to the training principle of overload. How do you overload a specific training? A body part? Well, sometimes giving a little body English. Isn't the worst thing in the world. Like the cheater curls, but that's fine because at the top of your curl, your.

[00:28:33] Philip Pape: Yep. Curling it. Yeah. So I basically those four, the big four. Also Paul's right. Cause I couldn't deadlift twice or three times a week. So I'd alternate with poles and chins and then some power cleans as well. Cool. For polling. Um, and I did kind of a variation of starting strength in some of Andy Baker's programming and some other things that I mixed in there, uh, like a novice linear progression.

[00:28:57] Andrew Romeo: Yup. I liked the fact that you mentioned a linear progression because typically. Uh, a lifter is considered a novice lifter until you've completed a linear progression and it doesn't have to be power athletes bedrock, or Jim Wendler is 5, 3, 1, or anybody else's, it can be one of your own creating, but if you don't know how much strength you can accumulate or what you're leaving on the table until you fully go through a linear progression where you're failing, and then you go back down and you reload it, you go through it and push it up again.

[00:29:28] And then you. Honestly, I've been veneer. Progressions are probably one of the hardest things I've ever done because with mine, I'd be squatting twice a week and you barely squeak through squatting session one. And you know, two days later you have to add more weight to the bar and try to do it again, force your body to adapt to it.

[00:29:43] Like linear progressions are hard.

[00:29:45] Philip Pape: Yeah, no, no. They're super hard. And each lift wants to go at its own rate of progress. Yep. And. You got to eat like yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually the shoulder press is the first install in my, my personal experience with

[00:29:58] Andrew Romeo: all shoulder presses. That's why I, that's why I said I was surprised at your favorite.

[00:30:02] Cause it's the most fickle fucking lift in the world where you're like, why doesn't this thing move.

[00:30:07] Philip Pape: Yeah. And, and one week to the next you could, all of a sudden lose 10% of Australia. Let's go.

[00:30:11] Andrew Romeo: What happened here? Teeny bit fatigue. All right, fine.

[00:30:14] Philip Pape: And do you remember, I don't know if you remember when I was doing, I was pressing like three or four times a week.

[00:30:19] I was doing like singles one day strict one day Olympic one day. And, and I've heard that that's what you need to do a lot of volume on the press for it to keep going up. So that works well for you. It worked at the time. Like if I wanted to get into it again and push, push the press up, that would work cool.

[00:30:34] Then. What's his name? Bill Starr had his athletes years ago doing weighted dips. He did a way to dip progression to where you were repping a hundred pounds hanging off of you. Dibs are awesome.

[00:30:48] Andrew Romeo: So bill SARS, big influencer, not so people think influencer and they think Instagram bill Starr was alive when there was no such thing as Instagram, um, by influencer, I mean, he had a big influence on these strength community.

[00:31:01] Um, there's even something called a star shrug, which is named after him for his shrug. I was aware of that. So it's more of like you at the bar slide down to the top of your knee. And then as you. Where you would normally shrug. You get a little bit more momentum and you can pop that shrug up. So you can go a little bit heavier rather than holding the shrug and just shrugging

[00:31:20] Philip Pape: kind of like a power shrug, putting pins.

[00:31:23] Andrew Romeo: You hold it, hold it the whole time. So he was a, um, more of than the Olympic side of things. And that's kind of where if you look at a clean or a snatch, that's where that's coming from and trying to get some hip momentum behind it. But, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't know where I was.

[00:31:38] Philip Pape: You're talking to that linear progression.

[00:31:40] Yeah. If you want to get strong, just, just strip away all the nonsense and all the accessories and all the bodybuilding stuff and just focus on heavy lifting and adding weight to the bar. Yup.

[00:31:51] Andrew Romeo: And in a consistent controlled pattern, it's very measurable. It's actually really satisfying. Yeah,

[00:31:58] Philip Pape: it's

[00:31:58] Andrew Romeo: active.

[00:32:00] And if you talk to any strength person, pretty much anywhere, they're going to be like, well, if you are you a novice athlete, are you an advanced athlete? And the way that you're going to differentiate between the two is have you completed any type of linear progression? Yes or no? So it sounds like the beginning of COVID you took that opportunity to focus on your big four to five lifts.

[00:32:17] You went through your linear progressions. So that's probably bringing you to like mid 2020.

[00:32:22] Philip Pape: That was, I didn't really start that til the fall ish of 2020. Got you. Okay. Yeah. So I started eating a lot. I mean, I gained 30 pounds in like four or five months. Just really fast for you. I know I'm fine with it.

[00:32:35] Like normally you'd call that almost a dirty bowl for some people you don't look like you put on any bad weight. Well, no, I didn't put on that's the thing. It's the first time I ever put on muscle at a decent clip. And then, uh, and then I maintain that for a long time. And then I'm about done with a cut.

[00:32:52] Okay. So I'm about done with the three month. Gotcha.

[00:32:55] Andrew Romeo: What if you don't mind sharing, what weight did you start at and what weight did you go to and where are you cutting to what's that look

[00:33:01] Philip Pape: like? Yeah. So I started in like the one sixties kind of not skinny fat. I mean, I had a little bit of muscle, but that was, you definitely had muscle on

[00:33:10] Andrew Romeo: you because you've been exercising.

[00:33:12] So at that point you've been exercising for eight years, as you said, inconsistently, but. You're leaner. Yeah. But you're like, you're not bigger. You don't have

[00:33:21] Philip Pape: a lot of exactly. So I went from that to 1 95. Wow. I was thinking of getting to 200, but, but it's true when you start, when you start getting up above where you normally sit there's impacts, right?

[00:33:34] Like it's hard, it's hard to eat. You don't feel as good. Even my blood didn't look your sweaty, like higher blood pressure and cholesterol. I mean, these things do start to creep up. They do, um, very strong correlation. So I was like, okay, this is it. So that's when I did my first real cut, that was last summer heading up to my brother's wedding.

[00:33:55] It was just coincidence, but it was a way on the beach side. It wouldn't be, you know, fat, Hey, we're going to

[00:34:00] Andrew Romeo: a beach and

[00:34:02] Philip Pape: I want to look good for this. Right. So, uh, that, that was, uh, that was kind of a random cut. I think I was trying to do keto or something at the time. I still wasn't dialing in my nutrition.

[00:34:11] Like I do today. And that worked out. And then I kind of maintain that, uh, for a while until then my back surgery. Right. So I was starting to get back into the end of my linear progression, moving into an intermediate four day split. So where

[00:34:27] Andrew Romeo: did you cut down to with the keto thing for the. 1 65. When, so you went for it, you started the one sixties, you went up to 1 95 and you went back down to,

[00:34:35] Philip Pape: okay.

[00:34:35] Yep. And then I kind of gradually got back up into the one eighties. Gotcha. And just hovered. Um, but I was working hard. I was training hard, so I still was building muscle, but I was more in a maintenance, so I don't know how anabolic it was. Who knows. Right. Um, then Baxter. Kind of interrupted and that was making good gains.

[00:34:55] You know, I was, I had just, and my deadlifts, like two weeks before, right here in the gym. So yeah, I had the back surgery then after about a month started to get back in. Then we went on a trip to Maine for 10 days. And I had appendicitis. I think

[00:35:11] Andrew Romeo: that you and I were communicating at this point about something on the digital side of things.

[00:35:15] And I think you were like, I just got back from vacation and I'm down and out for a while. Oh

[00:35:20] Philip Pape: man. Yeah, exactly. It was on, it was on the day back. So silver lining, we enjoyed our whole vacation. It was not till the day we came home. When St. Francis hospital, they had me sitting there all day. P three times had to give me painkillers.

[00:35:32] So it's like, man, you're just not a priority compared to these, you know, people losing their arms and whatnot over

[00:35:37] Andrew Romeo: here, your stomach hurts and your side hurts or whatever. You'll

[00:35:40] Philip Pape: be fine. You're good. Yeah. Yeah. More than pills. That's rough. So whatever, you know, I read, read books all day or whatever. I listen to podcasts.

[00:35:50] Find your straight radio who knows. And finally, they got me in at like 6:00 PM, took half an hour for the surgery. I mean, I was out completely cut you open and they do the appendectomy. And that was a lot faster recovery than back surgery. Absolutely. Maybe a week or two,

[00:36:05] Andrew Romeo: make sure that those stitches hold and when your blood pressure goes through the roof, you're not ripping anything or tearing it.

[00:36:10] Yeah.

[00:36:11] Philip Pape: So then I got back to me again and I said, you know, what, if I can't live heavy, why don't I lose weight? Sure. And go on a real cut. Okay. And I started to do it properly. So by properly, I mean, in my, for me, it's more of a flexible dieting. I track my calories, check my macros. Okay. Eat whatever. As long as it fits in

[00:36:30] there.

[00:36:31] Andrew Romeo: Absolutely. I mean, you'll hear it. Think there's so many different opinions on dieting and shit like that. And in my opinion, if that's what worked really well for. Awesome. That's an adherence. If you can adhere to it and you can achieve the goals that you want.

[00:36:46] Philip Pape: That's great. If you can eat keto for the rest of your life, go for it.

[00:36:49] Sure.

[00:36:50] Andrew Romeo: And I know with me, I can't do that. I can't, I mean, I, I work out, I lift weights five days a week and I can have a pretty open diet, but my primary, my state, my principals of my dieters, there has to be animal based protein throughout the course of the day, some solid carbohydrates throughout the course of the day.

[00:37:07] And then I filter in a bunch of junk, unfortunately, and that's probably why I have more fluff than I have on me than I need, because when you're lifting it like the middle of squats, I crushed one of the grand day home record burritos today for Moe's and it was awesome. And I had

[00:37:20] Philip Pape: enjoyed it. And if it fits overall in your plans, that's fine.

[00:37:24] Right? That's

[00:37:25] Andrew Romeo: fine. So on this final cut, where

[00:37:28] Philip Pape: did you come down to? All right. So I started at one 90 and I'm today at like one 60. And my goal was 1 65. Okay. I measure myself every week in terms of body fat. And I do that with calipers. I do it with the Navy tape measurement because I'm not going to go do Dex or bod pod or something that there's,

[00:37:48] Andrew Romeo: there's so much, as long as you're using the same thing consistently, that's all that matters.

[00:37:53] It's like consistency of the tool is what matters. It doesn't matter necessarily if it's the bod pod or a DEXA scan or. Uh, hydrostatic weighing or whatever, as long as it's the same tool every time. Cool.

[00:38:05] Philip Pape: And honestly, for most people, if you measure waste yes. You know, you drop inches on your way, so you probably dropped body fat.

[00:38:10] Yeah.

[00:38:10] Andrew Romeo: I've gone back to, and I know what April, April does tape tape measurements as well in terms of that is the least, um, variants. Right? As long as I'm the same person, as long as I measure the first time and I measured the same with a second. I'm going to have consistent, consistent, trackable results where there's no machine, there's nothing that comes in between what we're trying to get.

[00:38:31] Philip Pape: Exactly. Right. And you can measure both fat loss and muscle gain, right? Because you can measure your biceps in your thighs and your chest. And of course, I've seen those slightly dip because as you're leaning, I'm leaning down and again, for people listening, you know, when you really go farther into a cut because.

[00:38:49] I started around 18, 19% body fat and probably around 11, 12, maybe, I don't know, around 11 or 12. And that's what I'm gonna end up. Cause I don't want to go any further. You know, you start getting hungry, you start to, you know, you lose muscle mass first and then you lose strength is what I've found. And. My deadlifts going up, my squats about stalled, the benches stalled and the press going back.

[00:39:11] Gosh. And I'm like, I'm done. I need to start.

[00:39:14] Andrew Romeo: I was going to ask. So that was my next question, because I know myself personally, I have a specific number where if one of my body weight drops under it, I know it. I can feel it in my lifts. And I'm like, I'm too light. I know that I'm too. I don't know. Have you found that number yet where you're like, okay, I think this is

[00:39:27] Philip Pape: it.

[00:39:27] I think this is it like to go beyond this would be more of the obsessive. You're going to do a physique show or something. Sure.

[00:39:34] Andrew Romeo: And then you're doing it for the pure aesthetic aspect. You're

[00:39:37] Philip Pape: suffering on purpose and I don't need to do that. So now my goal is five pounds and five months of muscle. Wow. So to do that, I probably have to gain about 15 pounds in the next five months,

[00:39:50] Andrew Romeo: but it's good that you have that.

[00:39:52] Yeah, because a lot of people are like, so again like seven pounds and five, it will be muscle. No,

[00:39:57] Philip Pape: I think if you're new to. Like a third of it will be muscle.

[00:40:02] Andrew Romeo: And it's like for me to do that, like, it's real hard

[00:40:05] Philip Pape: now for you. It's probably like I have a training.

[00:40:08] Andrew Romeo: I have a training age of over 20 years at this point where like to change my, like, to put on five pounds in five months, I would be slamming steaks.

[00:40:16] Yeah, like steak three times a day and sleeping my face off

[00:40:19] Philip Pape: 300 grams of protein a

[00:40:21] Andrew Romeo: day. Yeah. That's awesome though, man, you have a plan, so you know what you're going to, so this next game you said you're going to get about 15 pounds. So it's going to put you back in the low one

[00:40:29] Philip Pape: eighties. Yeah, that sounds about right.

[00:40:31] Yeah. So about half a percent up to a half percent of. Of body weight gain. So like, if you, you got to plan all this out, like this is one of my big takeaways for sustainability, right? You have to track, you have to track it and know what your numbers are. If I know I want to gain a half percent of my body weight, I know exactly what I need to weigh on a seven day moving average week to week.

[00:40:52] And if I'm going higher or lower than that, adjust the calories. No.

[00:40:56] Andrew Romeo: This is the concept that you're talking about is really hard for a lot of people,

[00:41:03] Philip Pape: because it is hard, super

[00:41:05] Andrew Romeo: hard, and people don't understand the journey like, so I talked to people a lot about the journey that you need to go on. Like, if you want to make a body change, it's not something that you can do in six months, or you can, you can change.

[00:41:17] Don't get me wrong. You can lose a lot of weight quickly and you can keep weight off quickly, but the journey that Phillip's going on, it's a very similar journey that I went on. Takes a long time. Um, I went from somewhere around, one 70 up to, so my bulk brought me up to about 2 25. I gained about 55 pounds doing that.

[00:41:37] Um, and that was, I was eating a lot of five guys and they took me five, six years to do it. And then I would do what you're saying. And I pulled back down to one. And then I popped back up to two 20 and then I went back down to like 1 95. Then I popped back up to like two 20 again. And I've just yo-yo that.

[00:41:54] And that's not a yo-yo diet thing. I've done intentionally. These are all intentional mass gains and cuts and mass gains. And it's just slowly, every time you're just layering on a little bit of more muscle and a little bit more muscle. So you're just stacking that on and over the years and over your training age.

[00:42:10] You just find yourself, you get a little bit thicker and a little bit stronger and things just as long as you're consistent with it, move in the right direction,

[00:42:17] Philip Pape: stock Monterey up and down, up and down, but always up. It

[00:42:20] Andrew Romeo: always slowly works its way up magically. Um, and I, I admire the journey you're on.

[00:42:26] Cause it's not easy. It's not an easy journey. And to have the mental fortitude being like it's okay to get a little bit. Um, cause I'll pull it off eventually and then I'll put it back on and then I'll pull it back off because as you said, there's a plan and it's all trackable and you're going to do it in a way that makes sense to you.

[00:42:41] And if you like. Super hard thing, especially what I've found is people that come from being overweight and they've lost all that weight. And then I tell them, well, you need to put on some fat. They're like, I'm not doing that. And you're like, well, I can understand. You've worked really hard to get down into your body weight, but unfortunately you're going to need to put on some fat, if you're gonna put on muscle, it's just the.

[00:43:03] I guess I would say the only way that you can put on just straight muscles, if you play with drugs. Uh, and if you, if you play with drugs yeah. You can do it. And that's when you see people put on 20 pounds of just straight muscle and they're super vascular and they're purple. And you're like, well, what the fuck happened to that guy?

[00:43:20] He's probably playing with some drugs along. So that's kind of brought us to where we're currently at, right? This is what you're currently doing. And it seems like over the last decade, you've really developed a big passion for strength, training and fitness and trying to help people put them in the right, um, the right paths.

[00:43:37] Anything that I missed anything that we didn't talk about that I should

[00:43:40] Philip Pape: have taught. Uh, the only other thing I want to mention was how, how walking has kind of changed my life to really fill me in. And so when I broke my back, broke my back, when I hurt my back and had to recover, I had to walk, right. And I used to hate walking, found it boring.

[00:43:58] My wife loved walking and she had always drag me out to go on a walk and. When, when I recovered and started walking again, I eventually started building up where I, I was getting like 12,000 steps a day. And that's what I do every day now, effort,

[00:44:13] Andrew Romeo: especially because as you said, you're working from home.

[00:44:15] So treadmill, a treadmill

[00:44:17] Philip Pape: treadmill, and then walking outside. Cool. Cause I would say

[00:44:19] Andrew Romeo: if you were at an office, you could try to make a loop or find something, but I could see a lot of people falling into the trap of when they work at home, they walk from their bed to. Table or the refrigerator back to their class and their steps drastically decreased.

[00:44:33] Nevermind. Going the direction where you're seeing where they yeah. Right. It sounds like yours have drastically increased.

[00:44:40] Philip Pape: And I've found that because of that, I really don't need to do any other type of cardio. And I also, my resting heart rate has come down. So for my whole life, it was in the upper fifties.

[00:44:51] I mean, at least for the last 10 years or so. And it dropped to like 52. Wow. When I started walking, interesting cholesterol went down, you know, all these things improved. Um, and my metabolism has shot up beyond what I think it would have from lifting. And this is while I'm on a cut. So I'm just, it's just this epiphany.

[00:45:10] Is this all from the walking and there's no other variable. It seems to correlate. Have you read the book

[00:45:15] Andrew Romeo: comfort crisis? No. Okay. So there's a, there's a book out there. A lot of people have read it recently. It's called comfort crisis. And what it does, it talks about how we're more comfortable now than we've ever been in the history of humankind's right in the last a hundred years, our, our technological developments, our food, our.

[00:45:31] The ability to be comfortable has increased drastically, but they talk, he also breaks down part of it, how we are genetically designed to walk, um, and. Designed to be fast, right? If we're not out outrunning animals and he was making some analogy in the book or not knowledge comparison of, um, a kitten that's like 10 weeks old can run faster than us.

[00:45:52] Um, and there's more equipped to kill something than we are with our bare hands. Cause we don't have claws. Sharp sharp teeth and, um, all of these things, but what we're genetically designed to do is walk long distances and then carry loads over long distances. I E we're designed to walk down an animal until it dies and then process the animal and carry it back at that.

[00:46:16] Exactly. So we've been designed to walk and there's a lot of really big health benefits that come with walking, which we are discovering. And, and another part of it, what was really interesting, he was talking about the mental benefits that come from walking are exponential, but to receive them, you have to put your phone away where if you're walking and you're on your phone, checking your email, checking, whatever, which I find myself guilty of.

[00:46:40] Um, technical. A lot of times I try to listen to a book, um,

[00:46:44] Philip Pape: Is it okay to listen to something and still be looking at nature? You have to think

[00:46:51] Andrew Romeo: I do the same thing. Right? Um, it's so it's, it's really interesting. I literally just read this book where it really connects that all together of like, that's what we're designed to do.

[00:47:00] And going back to it, you're finding a lot of these really big benefits. Um, and I also know from a recovery side on the weightlifting side, walking shoes.

[00:47:07] Philip Pape: Oh, it's huge. No interference. Yeah. And even, even rucking, like I actually have a backpack and throw some weights in there and that'll, you know, step it up a little bit.

[00:47:16] And they actually

[00:47:16] Andrew Romeo: talk about, um, in that book, they talk about the guy that created the GORUCK challenge, where it came from, what he did, what he was designing to do with it, how he was designing and all of that fun stuff. So for any of our listeners, I actually really, really enjoyed the book. Um, comfort crisis, check it out.

[00:47:30] Uh, I have no ties to the book. I'm I get nothing from you buying this book, but I thought it was.

[00:47:36] Philip Pape: Amazon link in the show notes. I will drop that in there actually. So another book somewhat related, it's called burn. It came out earlier this year by Henry ponsor. He's like a very well-known researcher in, in the metabolism space.

[00:47:50] He's the one who came up with a constrained model of energy as opposed to the additive model. So we all, we all are familiar with the additive model where. The idea is the more activity you do, the more calories you burn indefinitely, the constraint model suggests that after a certain amount of activity, your body starts to adapt metabolic adaptation.

[00:48:10] And so the total calories level out plateau. Now a lot of people took this to mean, oh, so I shouldn't even do exercise, right. Because it's going to be one where I get to a certain point and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. But. First part of the graph that does show an increase anyway. So you should still be exercising and walking does that, but he, he did all the studies with the Hadza tribe in Tanzania, where they did the double isotope water analysis.

[00:48:35] I think it's called when they can measure precisely calories in calories out. Interesting. And they can, and they found that HODs HODs are highly active, right? Westerner is not very active at all, but they have similar metabolisms because of this phenomenon. But the other cool thing was where do the HODs that get their activity walking.

[00:48:54] They pairing

[00:48:55] Andrew Romeo: water to carry they're

[00:48:56] Philip Pape: hunter gatherers.

[00:48:58] Andrew Romeo: So where we originally

[00:48:59] Philip Pape: came here, an animal and they walk all day and they walk up back and they get about 15,000 steps a day, 20,000. It's not a crazy

[00:49:06] Andrew Romeo: amount. And the big difference is they're doing it because their lives depend on it. We're doing it because we're like, man, I want to close this ring on my iWatch today.

[00:49:14] Like I better get out there so

[00:49:15] Philip Pape: true when I'm good today. Yeah. Okay. There you go. So you're close

[00:49:18] Andrew Romeo: to rings already. You're good to go. I think that's awesome, Phil, but I think that's a great place to leave it.

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Ep 6: Set Your Fitness and Nutrition Habits on Autopilot

We wrap up our foundational series by diving into some practical strategies, tools, and life hacks to set your fitness and nutrition habits on autopilot.

If you’re at all familiar with the autopilot in an airplane—and as a side note, I used to fly small planes years ago and still work as an engineer in the aerospace industry—you know it’s a tool to eliminate constant manual intervention by the pilot.

In a similar way, we want to find ways to create consistency with our lifting and eating by using systems and tools to eliminate manual steps, barriers, and—frankly, excuses—that prevent us from taking action and developing solid habits.

Given that you have enough to think about between your profession, your family, and the million other things you enjoy, why not put in place some “life hacks” so you can just get to it and make progress! A word of warning—none of this relieves you of discipline and hard work—but a little preparation when you’re more motivated will set you up for long-term success, even when you’re not.

In today’s episode, we cover:

• Establishing a plan for your lifting ritual

• Locking in your programming calendar to make consistent progress

• Removing the most common barriers that prevent you from going to the gym or working out

• Establishing a plan for your diet and weight phases, and

• Planning ahead for consistent meals and successful nutrition progress

RELATED LINKS:

• MacroFactor app for food logging and calculating expenditure (use code "WITSANDWEIGHTS" to extend free trial to 14 days)

🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW
At Wits & Weights, we help you shred fat, build strength, feel energized, and project confidence in your career and relationships without excessive dieting, cardio, or food restrictions.

👉 Just go to witsandweights.com/coaching to connect with me.

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Transcript

This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.

[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast for busy professionals who want to get strong and lean with the strength training and sustainable diet. I am your host Philip Pape. And in each episode, we'll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry and a commitment to lifting heavy and eating right.

[00:00:29] Welcome to episode six of Wits & Weights. Today, we wrap up our foundational series by diving into some practical strategies, tools, and life hacks to set your. And nutrition habits on autopilot. If you're at all familiar with the autopilot in an airplane. And as a side note, I used to fly small planes years ago, and I still work as an engineer in the aerospace industry.

[00:00:56] You know, it's a tool to eliminate constant manual intervention by the. In a similar way. We want to find ways to create consistency with our lifting and eating, by using systems and tools to eliminate manual steps and barriers, and frankly, excuses that prevent us from taking action and developing solid habits.

[00:01:21] Given that you probably have enough to think about between your profession, your family, and the million other things you enjoy. Why not put in place some life hacks so you can just get to it and make progress. A word of warning, none of this relieves you of discipline and hard work, but a little preparation when you're more motivated will set you up for long-term success.

[00:01:44] Even when you're not in today's episode. Establishing a plan for your lifting ritual, locking in your programming calendar to make consistent progress, removing the most common barriers that prevent you from going to the gym or working out, establishing a plan for your diet and weight phases and planning ahead for consistent meals and successful nutrition products.

[00:02:13] Almost everything we talk about today involves planning ahead taking action when you feel the energy and motivation to do so, rather than acting in the moment, which is a surefire way of sabotaging your progress. Instead, we want to build the scaffolding of your new fitness and nutrition habits. So you can just focus on executing your plan in the moment without any excuses to fall back.

[00:02:40] Let's start with planning ahead with your lifting. The first thing I want to talk about is picking a gym that is convenient in terms of distance equipment and the type of policies they have. So if you pick a gym that's an hour away, it's going to be tough to feel that you can find the time to get there.

[00:03:00] So picking a gym that's closer is probably a good idea. However, it's got to have the right equipment, meaning at a minimum. Iraq rack and some barbells, but even better yet. Some of the other equipment you might need for the other movements as you plan out your programming. And then it has to have good policies that are friendly to lifters like us.

[00:03:22] For example, they don't let you deadlift. That's going to be a non-starter. So picking a gym that meets all of these criteria is going to reduce the excuses for going to the gym. Now here's a bonus. If you can start building your home gym earlier than later, and do it in a way where you can do at least one workout each week from.

[00:03:45] Then that's one less barrier to worry about in terms of working out. And then as you acquire and collect more equipment and you will do that as you get into this and find out how much fun it is, then eventually you can do more workouts per week and perhaps all of your workouts at home. And this just eliminates the excuse of needing to leave the house and drive to the.

[00:04:07] The next thing is to pick a training program that works with your schedule. If you are extremely busy and it's very hard to find more than say two or three days a week to work out, you don't want to pick a six day. Program. And in fact, if you go back and listen to, I think it's episode two, where we talk about choosing a strength training program that is inadvisable anyway for a new lifter, ideally you would pick something like a three-day per week, full body program.

[00:04:39] If you're a beginner or even intermediate, and then later you can progress to say a four day split or even a five day program. I currently work out five days a week. So from day one, picking a program that works with your schedule will eliminate excuses from doing that program. You could even, let's say you have only two days a week.

[00:05:00] You can take a three-day per week program and just stretch it. The next little tip I have is to pre schedule your lifting sessions. And you can do this with appointments, whether it's in a, an appointment book or your smartphone or on your computer or work calendar or reminders, whatever works for you.

[00:05:20] The point is, look ahead. And actually block that time out. That that means you have, it's like going to a doctor appointment or going to an important meeting. It's just going to happen. You are committed. It's in your schedule. And the next thing related to planning ahead for your lifting is deciding on the best time that works for you.

[00:05:42] Again, to minimize excuses. If you are a morning person, you love to get up early and start being productive, then go ahead and do your workout. First thing it gets you energized helps you continue with your day. You've got it out of the way. That's what I do. I've been doing that for years. I couldn't do it any other way.

[00:06:01] Now. Other people. I want to sleep in, or they couldn't imagine training in the morning, whether due to energy or motivation or whatever else. So they might work out at lunch and this is convenient if you're working out from home or if you're working from home and you can squeeze it in between meetings or working out in the evening.

[00:06:22] And that could be right after work or it could be after dinner or even later in the evening before. And some people might have more energy at this time and it see it as a good way to cap off your day. It's a reward. It feels good. Helps you sleep. Whatever reason motivates you choose the best time of the day.

[00:06:39] Right now, as you get started with your training, that will help you commit, help you enjoy it and helping you remain. Next, let's talk about planning ahead with your programming. So we talked about lifting in terms of the facility, time of day, things like that. Now let's talk about the programming itself, and this is really critical because most people just go to the gym and they just go to exercise and build up a sweat and fill in the time.

[00:07:08] We're not doing that. Here we are. So we have to plan for our training in a methodical way, but we can do it to significantly reduce the amount of thinking and work we have to do when the time comes to actually lift. So let's start from the. We need to look out at our upcoming cycle. What do you call that?

[00:07:28] A cycle? A mesocycle macrocycle whatever makes sense. It could be four weeks. It could be eight, could be 12 weeks. I like to do 12 weeks, but if you're just getting started and it's fairly consistent, repetitive type programming, like an AB AB or ABC type program, you don't need to look too far out and what you want to.

[00:07:49] Identify is exactly what your progression is. Meaning. And am I doing a linear progression where I'm going to increase weight on the bar for all the main lifts? Am I doing a 8 5, 2 or 5, 3, 1 type progression? Am I doing double progression? Whatever your progression is and your programming, and it gets more advanced.

[00:08:08] The more advanced you are as. But you can plan out the next four weeks and say, okay, I'm doing squats on Monday and I'm going to go up five pounds a week or 10 pounds, whatever it is or I'm doing, I'm doing bench press on Thursdays, and I'm going to cycle through eight reps, five reps, two reps, and then I'm going to repeat eight reps, five reps, two reps.

[00:08:31] Then you want to choose which weeks and days you're performing those workouts, the actual. Days in this cycle, given this calendar and time of year, look at your vacation, special events appointments, and basically eliminate all your excuses. If you know, you're going to have a big event in the morning on a day that you would do a heavy workout in the morning.

[00:08:58] Well, the you're probably not gonna be able to do that workout on that day. So can you do it later in the day, or can you shift your work? Your workouts by one day that week, plan it ahead so that you've got it booked in your calendar. And you know, when you're going to do it, there's no excuses. And you can track all of this in a spreadsheet, in a notebook in your app, whatever is your favorite medium for doing this.

[00:09:22] Okay. Then we bring it down a level and we want to plan ahead for the upcoming. So you've got your, your next four to 12 weeks mapped out at a high level. Now we say it's Sunday, for example. And we're going to look at the upcoming week, which days of the week am I working out based on what I planned earlier.

[00:09:44] Am I doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday? Am I doing Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Are there any special times this week because of what's going on and based on that, now you can preplan. All of your lifts sets, reps and loads because you know what you lifted last week, and now you can plan out this week at that greater level of detail and do it all in one day.

[00:10:06] It's like meal planning, just get it all done, take the effort, plan it out. And then when the time comes, you just have to execute. Look at the week as a whole, and then move things around if needed. If you find that Thursday's workout just can not be as long as it normally is. Maybe you move something to Saturday or you eliminate a movement.

[00:10:28] And then finally, we get down to the one day, look ahead. We're looking at tomorrow. So let's say it's Tuesday and we are looking ahead to our Wednesday workout. Go ahead. And pre-fill. Your notebook or your app with the exact lifts sets, reps and loads. If you're using an app, for example, you can enter the movements in, you can put in your reps and loads and all you have to do then in the gym is check it off.

[00:10:56] As you execute, add any specific cues or notes, if. If you're doing a particular movement and want to remind yourself to use a particular form or queue, go ahead and put that in now for the next day. And then again, all you do the next day is execute. Now, let's talk about the logistics of going to the gym of doing your workout and all the excuses we make for ourselves to just hit the snooze button and sleep in or whatever other excuse not to go to the gym.

[00:11:27] And the first thing we'll talk about is preparing a go-bag. Now, you've got your programming all set up, you know what you're going to do the next day. You've already entered it in your notebook or your app. So you're already somewhat committed, but now you can select the exact equipment you're going to need for the gym.

[00:11:44] Some examples might be your lifting belt, your lifting shoes, a chalk bag, or liquid chalk lifting straps. Wrist straps. These are just some examples. I might bring a neck pad if I'm doing, I don't know, calf raises with a barbell in the gym. Cause I don't want to use somebody. Else's use neck pad. I might have to pack my three in one soap and clothes.

[00:12:10] If I'm going to shower and change, if I'm headed out to work. Now we're talking about preparing your bag the day before at a time, when you feel motivated, you have energy. You're getting things ready? You have no problem doing this. There's no pressure to actually go to the gym at that time. Go ahead and prepare this bag.

[00:12:29] You could also remove your jewelry. Like if you have a wedding ring and you want to zip it up securely, or your personal items, like your wallet or keys, all that stuff, get it ready. And then place the bag right near the door where you're going to leave. That is one less excuse for the next day. Not only that I know I've, I've been in situations where I wake up think, do I really have to go to the gym?

[00:12:50] And then I realized, you know, it's gonna be a lot of work. Unpack the bag I just packed up and I'm going to not feel so great about myself. If I do that site might as well just. The next thing for preparing for the gym is to prepare your clothes, lay it out, lay out your shirt, your pants, socks, shoes, pick them all out ahead of time.

[00:13:11] Lay them out in advance. I work out really early, so it's dark. And if I had to find all that stuff, well, my wife is sleeping. That would be a problem. That would be one more. Excuse me, hunting around my flashlight, realizing something's not clean. Can't find my socks. You get the idea, prepare entertainment.

[00:13:29] If you need to download the latest episodes of your favorite podcast to enjoy during your drive or at the gym. And then if you're working out from home, instead of going to the gym, some of the previous steps may not apply, but most of them do you still want to prepare all that stuff, even in your home gym, go ahead and prepare the equipment in your gym.

[00:13:50] Move. J hooks and your pins or spotter arms on the rack for your first lift of the next day, a ranger bench and your barbell, wherever you need it prepare any special equipment, your easy curl bar, your calf block, your cable attachment, whatever it might be. And that will save you time in getting started and potentially between exercises.

[00:14:14] All right. So we've talked about preparing for lifting your programming and going to the gym. We are knocking down excuses one by one. We're being disciplined. We're setting ourselves up for really good habits here. Next let's move to the food side of the equation. Let's talk about preparing your workout nutrition.

[00:14:33] Now this may be going to the gym or at home, but it's just one more thing you can do ahead of. For example, if you use blender bottles, the shake bottles for protein shakes, I like to have four or five of them in the kitchen available so that if I've used one or two yesterday and haven't washed them yet, for example, I've still have new ones available.

[00:14:56] Again, one less excuse to think about having plenty of bottles, plenty of vessels for your powders and whatever you need. Also grab or prepare. Pre-workout pre and post-workout nutrition as best you can. For example, if you eat a banana, like I do, or something that you can hold like that it doesn't have to be refrigerated, get it ready and put it on the counter.

[00:15:19] You could also preload your protein powder, your creatine, your pre and post-workout drinks. Put them all in either the shakers or in little containers. So that they're all organized, ready to go. So when you need him and he's just, boom, boom, boom. Pull them out. Go ahead and place all of that on the most convenient counter.

[00:15:40] So it takes just a few minutes to prepare before you leave for the gym or before you work out at home. Again, we're trying to eliminate excuses, do this all before the day before when you've got the energy or gone around doing things around the house, get it right. And then the next day it's all set up.

[00:15:57] All right. We're going to shift the discussion a little bit now and talk about nutrition. We'll start with. Goals for your weight change. That is whether you're trying to gain weight, lose weight, or maintain. You should refer back to the last episode, episode five, which is all about going on a diet without being on a diet.

[00:16:20] And it talks about estimating your maintenance calories and setting a reasonable weight loss or weight gain. We talked about adjusting that each week. So what we're talking about today is, okay, you've got that information. Now you use those inputs, your maintenance calories, and your goal, your change goal to plan your calories and macros for the upcoming week.

[00:16:45] So again, we're saying Sunday, isn't. You want to plan it out? Are you going to increase your calories by 50 a day? Are you reducing them by a hundred a day? You've had a certain target this week and the next week it'll be something else, but you want to know what it is now. I'm going to plug macro factor again because that's the app that I use to do this pretty much automatically.

[00:17:07] I get up in the morning on Monday, the app checks in and says, we're going to increase your calories by 25 calories a day based on. T D E right, your total daily energy expenditure over the past few weeks, as well as your food intake. And that takes about five seconds, which is why I like to use that. So if you want to download macro factor, check out the show notes for how to do it.

[00:17:30] And now that you know how many calories you're shooting for in your macros, you can plan your meals for the week and, or work around special occasions. Or high calorie days, if you know, Thanksgiving is this week or there's a birthday party, or you want to go out with your friends and there's a big social event.

[00:17:48] Plan for it. It's it's Sunday, the events on Friday, you know, you're going to consume an extra, say 1500 or 2000 calories that day. Now you can plan for it for the week and know that you're going to stay on track going into the subsequent weeks. You can also take this further and look ahead to the next 12 months and even plan.

[00:18:11] Cuts and bulks to coincide with the seasons or special events and make it easier to stick with during those times. Again, things like holidays where you want to bulk during the holidays, because that's when you want to enjoy eating a lot more. Or if you want to cut for a bigger. So even if your plan right now is to say, lose 20 pounds and you do doing it at a reasonable rate of say a pound and a half per week, and you know, how many weeks it's going to take.

[00:18:40] Well then great look ahead toward when you will hit that goal and decide what will be my next goal and sort of plan out three months, maybe six or even 12 months to, to deal with the ups and downs or maintenance that coincide with the seasons or the. That's from the numbers side. Now we want to talk about planning ahead for your actual meals, the food you will be eating, and I'm not one of these obsessive.

[00:19:07] Meal preppers. And I admire people who are people who can basically, they can prepare all their meals for the week and store them all individually in Tupperware. And then they just pull every single one out when the, that takes quite a level of planning and discipline. And it may be to such an extent that you would not stick to your plan if you had to do that.

[00:19:29] But if that sounds awesome. If you're like an organizational guru and love doing that, by all means do it. I'm just going to share with you my experience. So the first thing I like to do is buy food in bulk. That's a simple thing that most of us understand many of us already do this, but this might look like choosing one meat of the.

[00:19:50] For your protein for lunch. Okay. Now I work from home currently. And so I can go ahead and easily pull that out of the microwave, but even if you go to work, you can pack it up. And this might enable you to cook one or two big recipes, say on Sunday and then just portion it out and heat it up when you need them during the week.

[00:20:11] And this, this could be fairly. So you would save the recipe probably in your nutrition app. So if you're using macro factor, you can just enter each bulk amount of food. The total grams of total macros, put them all in as a recipe. And then when you measure it out individually later, the combined recipe it'll automatically enter.

[00:20:35] Calories and macros for that portion. Pretty simple. So here are some ideas. For example, you can buy five pounds of ground beef and then cook it up with some rice, some Jasmine or basmati rice, throwing some taco seasoning. And now you've got a pretty rich, uh, modestly high fat, high protein, lot of carbs.

[00:20:58] Good lunch that you can. Or you can get a 10 pound pork roast and do pulled pork in the oven that allows you all week. You can get a Turkey, you know, do it Thanksgiving style, get a 15 pound Turkey, carve it up. And now you got 6, 7, 8 pounds of meat. Or I like chicken thighs. I love chicken thighs. So I might get a dozen chicken thighs, bake them all at once with some sort of very light seasoning or sauce on it.

[00:21:22] And then they're versatile. I can just eat them straight. Heat them up for lunch, where I can chop them up and mix with a salad or eat them with my carb or veggie of choice during the week. And again, you can go more extreme and, and make individual meals and split them all out if you want, but you don't have to do it that way.

[00:21:40] Just make things easier so that during the week you can quickly grab something. That's not junk food, that's not processed food necessarily, but it's something you enjoy. And you've already prepared it and you don't have to do this for every meal. I'm suggesting start with lunches. Dinners might be a little bit more of an involved affair depending on you and your family, but a similar thing can apply when you make dinners make a lot more than you normally would.

[00:22:06] So you have plenty of leftovers. Here's another tip related to meal planning. A lot of people don't do this, but you can pre enter food in your nutrition app to quote unquote, reserve those calories or macros. And. For example, if I want to have my casein pudding at the end of the night, I know it sounds kind of gross, but it's basically just casing.

[00:22:29] Vanilla flavored caisson powder mixed with some Oland milk. And it's probably 200 calories with maybe 40 grams of protein. It's slow digesting, so I can have it at the end of the evening, you know, watch some Netflix or something and relax right before I go to bed. Get the protein bolus in there. So that I can have protein synthesis going on for the next few hours.

[00:22:51] These are those advanced timing strategies don't necessarily have to worry about at this point, but it's fun to do. And I will enter that into my app. I might do it at 10 in the morning, but I'll enter it for eight or nine. And now I've reserved those 210 calories. So as the day goes on and I see the calories left, that's already accounted for, and you can do this for anything.

[00:23:13] If you know, you're going to have a huge party meal with family, it's going to be 2,500 calories. You're going to have Thanksgiving, whatever, reserve them ahead of time. Just to give you the signal that maybe you can take it easy the rest of the day and stay on track. All right next. I just want to talk about some of the technology that can help with some of the tips that we've discussed.

[00:23:38] And we'll start with apps, smartphone apps. There's really only one that I strongly recommend, and that is macro factor, which we talked about already for nutrition, because it's a food logger combined with an energy expenditure estimator, and. Adherents neutral. It does not penalize you for going over or under your calories.

[00:23:59] It simply tells you the data gives you the plan and then it adjusts based on what you do. Check that out in the show notes, as far as lifting goes, a lot of folks just love a plain notebook notebooks, great whiteboard if you work out from home. But if you'd like to use technology, there are plenty of apps out there like stacked, which I think is from Legion athletics.

[00:24:21] Mike Matthews strong is popular with a lot of folks. I use train heroic because I'm associated with a gym that has a coach that I work with sometimes, but also. In a program on train heroic, you can create your own sessions. And I have several years of history in the app. And the reason I like apps for this purpose is you can easily track all of your maxes, your one, RM three, RM, five RM, et cetera.

[00:24:50] You can see what you did last time. You know, there's a lot of. Ways to help the next time you have to go to the gym, which again, I like things that make it easier for me because it reduces excuses. Then there's the health integration, whether you have an iPhone or an Android device, there's apple health and there's Google.

[00:25:11] And they both are the defacto standards on those platforms that can link to most other. So, if you're using a nutrition app, like macro factor, you can then link it to apple health to pulling your weight. And eventually it might pull in fitness data, which really isn't that important from a calorie perspective.

[00:25:30] But because I use a smart scale, the smart sale can connect to apple health, apple health connects to macro factor. It's all Daisy chain again, making it super easy where I don't have to manually enter. I even have a blood pressure cuff that does the same thing. And you can link these to fitness wearables.

[00:25:49] When you have the apple watch Fitbit or whatever. Another way you can use technology is reminders set up reminders on your smartphone. A couple of examples would be a daily reminder to weigh yourself. I know it seems simple and eventually it'll just become. But if you get up at six, am you set the reminder for, you know, 5:45 AM?

[00:26:08] So when you wake up, you see it there. Oh, I got to weigh myself. Just don't want to forget first thing in the morning or a weekly reminder to take body measures. I strongly encourage measuring your waist, your arms, your chest, your thighs, or even your body fat with calipers or the Navy measurement using a tape measure of your neck and abdomen.

[00:26:32] But a weekly reminder, let's say Sunday. That says, make sure to take measurements and even photos of you want to take body photos. And I have one final bonus tip when it comes to setting your fitness and nutrition on autopilot. And that is to join a like-minded community, either up the place you work out, it could be at your.

[00:26:58] Or it can be online, a place to share ideas, videos, get form checks, keep each other accountable. You can yourself contribute to these communities as you learn and help others, which is extremely rewarding. And then you can continue to learn yourself and stay on top of things as they evolve, as they change over time.

[00:27:19] As we learn new information in this. Exciting, but sometimes confusing and complicated world of fitness and nutrition and one such group would be our wits and weights listener community Facebook group, which you can find in the show now. Okay. I think we've covered everything I wanted to get to. And I hope you find these ideas helpful and practical.

[00:27:42] You don't have to do them all at once. Just start with your biggest sticking points, figure out where you tend to struggle and the things that tend to hold you back from turning these actions into habits, and then just experiment with automating things, using technology, planning ahead, removing barriers to progress using some of that.

[00:28:05] We've talked about. I'd also love to hear your ideas for strategies or tools you've used to put your fitness and nutrition on autopilot. Just drop me a line by email or on Instagram at Whitson weights or on Facebook. This concludes our foundational series two. The wits and waits podcasts, but I think the fun has just begun.

[00:28:28] Stay tuned for exciting topics related to resistance, training, diet, programming, even mindset, and lots more to come in upcoming episodes.

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Ep 5: How to Diet Without Being "On" a Diet

Today is the DIET and NUTRITION episode, one of my favorite topics. Although this IS a podcast focused on lifting and getting strong, what you eat—and more importantly, HOW MUCH you eat—plays a huge role in your ability to lose fat (while preserving muscle) or gain muscle (while limiting fat gain).

You can’t have one without the other—and I’m going to assume you’re here because you want to get stronger AND leaner, and you want to do it productively without spinning your wheels.

I’m very passionate about taking a SUSTAINABLE approach to diet because, like many of you, I’ve personally experienced yo-yo dieting, fad diets, and all sorts of crazy food restrictions and questionable supplements over the years. Only in the last two years or so did I finally make peace with the nutrition gods and realize that proper nutrition is not nearly as complicated or restrictive as I once thought.

Today we’re going on a journey together that will equip you with the tools you need to eat a balanced, enjoyable diet for the rest of your life.

In today’s episode, we cover:

• The spectrum of dieting and why traditional diets don’t work over the long-term

• A balanced, flexible, and sustainable approach that won’t drive you crazy

• Focusing on what’s important and not sweating the rest

• An overview of calories and macronutrients, and the phases of weight change

• Determining your individual energy needs for your goal and then adjusting for success

• The phases of weight change and how they align with your goals as a lifter

• And finally, a brief foray regarding some specific foods and supplements

RELATED LINKS

• MacroFactor app for food logging and calculating expenditure (use code "WITSANDWEIGHTS" to extend free trial to 14 days)

🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW
At Wits & Weights, we help you shred fat, build strength, feel energized, and project confidence in your career and relationships without excessive dieting, cardio, or food restrictions.

👉 Just go to witsandweights.com/coaching to connect with me.

👥 To join our Facebook community for live training, free guides, free challenges, and more, just click here.

🙋‍♀️ HOW TO ASK A QUESTION FOR THE SHOW

• 👉 If you have any questions, just click here.

👨‍💻 HOSTED BY

• Philip Pape of Wits & Weight

👉 Apply for 1-on-1 coaching: witsandweights.com/coaching

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Transcript

This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.

[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast for busy professionals who want to get strong and lean with the strength training and sustainable. I am your host Philip Pape. And in each episode, we'll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry and a commitment to lifting heavy and eating right.

[00:00:31] Hey guys, welcome to episode five of Wits & Weights. Today is the diet and nutrition episode. One of my favorite topics, although this is a podcast focused on lifting and getting strong, what you eat and more importantly, how much you eat, plays a huge role in your ability to lose fat while preserving muscle or to gain muscle while limiting fat.

[00:00:59] You can't have one without the other. And I'm going to assume you're here because you want to get stronger and leaner and you want to do it productively without spinning your wheels. I'm very passionate about taking a sustainable approach to diet because like many of you I've personally experienced yo-yo diets, fad diets, all sorts of crazy food restrictions and questionable supplements over the years, only in the last couple of years or so.

[00:01:31] Did I finally make peace with the nutrition gods and realize that proper nutrition is not nearly as complicated or restrictive as I once thought today, we're going on a journey together that will equip you with the tools you need to eat a balanced, enjoyable diet for the rest of your life. In today's episode, we cover the spectrum of dieting and why traditional diets don't work over the long-term a balanced, flexible, and sustainable approach that won't drive you crazy, focusing on what's important and not sweating the rest and overview of calories and macronutrients and the phases of weight change, determining your individual energy needs for your goal, and then adjusting for success.

[00:02:23] How to align the phases of weight change with your goals, especially as a lifter and finally a brief foray regarding some specific foods I like. And a couple of. Let's start by talking about the spectrum of dieting we have on one extreme are the diets that have specific names. You know what? They are, things like keto, paleo carnivore, Atkins zone.

[00:02:55] And one thing these diets have in common is they typically list good or bad foods or clean versus dirty foods. They tend to be somewhat complicated and somewhat restrictive. There are obviously differences from one to the next and each one has their advocates. But the main thing about them is they use.

[00:03:17] Prescribe how you should eat, eat this, donate that perhaps they give you what time you should eat this or that. And there are often what I will call unbalanced from a macronutrient perspective, meaning they might require very high, fat and very low carb or very high carb, very low fat. And the evidence shows that these are.

[00:03:38] Not sustainable diets in the longterm because they often lead to yo-yo dieting. You lose a lot of weight. Initially, the they're super successful because you might lose a lot of waterway, glycogen and actual fat loss because you've changed your eating patterns. For example, on keto, you try to go very low carb, very high fat, and as a rule, it starts to eliminate a ton of processed foods that might've been in your diet.

[00:04:08] Many of the highly palatable processed foods are a combination of carbs and fat. Well, if you're going to cut out carbs drastically, you're going to severely limit your food choices primarily to whole foods, animal-based products and things like that. And then that results in you significantly cutting your calories.

[00:04:29] If these diets work and they work for some people, it's because of calories in. So that's one extreme. And I put that on an extreme, because this podcast is all about sustainability. How can you eat in a way that will satisfy you? It won't drive you crazy and you could do so for years and decades for the rest of your life.

[00:04:53] If you could do that with say Quito or the zone diet good for you, if it meets your goals, go for it. But I think there's an easier way on the other extreme of this dieting spectrum is what's called intuitive eating. And that's just what it sounds it's eating. When you feel like it, based on the signals your body's giving you and not worrying about tracking or what you eat or really.

[00:05:23] And intuitive eating sounds great, but it's very hard to know how many calories you're eating or whether you need to eat more or less if you've never tracked your food. And if you have a difficult time telling the difference between one food and another, in terms of nutritional density, for example, take a tablespoon of peanut butter and put it next to a large bowl of salted popcorn.

[00:05:50] Chances are the popcorn has fewer calories. Furthermore, most of us who have had let's call them less than optimal eating habits over the years have trained our bodies in a way where we can not recognize those hunger signals as efficiently as somebody who maybe has been eating properly for years. And so if to eat intuitively means to continue eating as much pizza doughnuts and Coca-Cola, as you'd like, it's probably not going to help you meet your goals, but we're going to come back to this later because I believe intuitive eating can be a great approach for someone who has gone through a more balanced approach based on tracking, which is the focus of this podcast.

[00:06:35] Which will then teach you to understand what is in a certain type of food in a certain quantity of food, the nutritional density, and you could eyeball this stuff in the future. If you're not the type of person who likes to track. And that brings me to the middle part of the spectrum, the balanced, sustainable approach to eating that we'll talk about today, which is tracking calories and macronutrients, eating what you enjoy, making choices based on your goal, and eventually to learn enough about food portions and nutrient density to shift more toward intuitive eating.

[00:07:15] If preferred this approach is also called flexible dieting. If it fits your macros, I. Whatever you want to call it because we have, obviously I have a fondness for names when it comes to diets, this approach is significantly more sustainable than the highly restrictive named diets. And I'll give you just a few reasons why you might come up with more than these.

[00:07:40] The first reason is more sustainable is you don't have good or bad foods. You don't have clean or dirty foods. You can eat anything you prefer. As long as you meet your goal. The second reason it's more sustainable is there's no incentive to binge because you've avoided or deprived yourself of some particular food.

[00:08:04] We're not doing that. We're not restricting food groups or types or specific foods in any way with this approach. The next reason it's more sustainable is you're not going to be weird on this diet. What do I mean by that? Meaning your spouse cooks you food. You can enjoy it. You don't have to be picky or control exactly.

[00:08:25] What's in the food. You can go to restaurants, you can go to social events, you can go hang out with your friends and you don't have to be weird. You're not the person bringing your own Tupperware or your own shake bottle. You can just go out and pick from the options that are out there. And as long as it fits your plan, you are good.

[00:08:43] Another reason this is sustainable is it's flexible enough. You can continue to change your foods over time, or even on a. Isn't that great. So a few months from now, the seasons change you go from fall to winter to summer, you have different available options at the grocery store, different produce fresh products available.

[00:09:04] You might just have a new craving. You want to eat more fish now instead of beef, go for it. And finally, the reason the flexible dieting approach is sustainable is it is consistent with the laws of physics it's based on energy balance and nothing more. So it works in something that works and has all of these other benefits we just discussed sounds like a pretty sustainable approach to me.

[00:09:29] Have you ever heard of the parades principle? It basically states that in many cases, 80% of the outcome is from 20% of the causes. Some people call this the 80 20 rule. It just means that there are a few things that are very important and many things that are less. So, so why don't we focus our energy on the few things that impact 80% of the results or 80% of the outcome.

[00:09:59] And in our case, when it comes to diet, the most important aspect is calories or energy balance. And we talked about this and the first law of thermodynamics in episode four, if you want to go revisit that, we talked all about metabolism, the energy out side of the equation. And today we're going to focus on the energy in side of the equation.

[00:10:24] At the end of the day, would you gain or lose weight comes down to the energy coming into your body from food period. But then there is another priority just below calories that makes up the 80 20. And that is macronutrients. The stuff in your food that provides the calories. The proportion of these can be important depending on your goals and optimizing your outcomes.

[00:10:54] Everything else, other than calories and macronutrients is in the 20% things like supplements, micronutrients, meal, timing, food, quality. Yes, you heard it right. We are not going to focus on food quality when it comes to diet. Remember what I said before? You can eat whatever you like, as long as it fits within your calories and your macros, let's start then with calories.

[00:11:21] And we are going to go through a lot of detail on this podcast. Step-by-step lots of calculations. I encourage you to take notes or at the very least use the timestamps in the show notes to find your place later on and revisit some of these topics. The first thing we're going to do is calculate your maintenance calories.

[00:11:40] These are the calories that you need every day just to live and maintain your weight. And again, back in the previous episode, we talked about the breakdown, the various components of metabolism. We're not going to recover all that today. We're just going to talk about the numbers and how to set up. In that episode, we talked about estimating your calories, using a calculator.

[00:12:04] You can do that if you'd like, but the best way to estimate your calories is to track them over two weeks with your current diet, don't change anything. Don't change your lifestyle. Do it in a phase where you've been maintaining your weight. Not much is going to change over the next two weeks. Your activity level, isn't going to change much and you're able to track consistently be consistent and see how your weight changes.

[00:12:28] Ideally, the weight stays roughly the same in which case your daily calorie needs are the average daily calories. You can see. As simple as that. Now, if your weight went up slightly, then your daily calorie needs are a little bit less than what you consumed and vice versa, but it gives you a pretty good estimate.

[00:12:48] If I were to use a calculator today, it would probably say that my total daily energy expenditures, maybe around 25, 2600, but in reality, it's closer to 3000. I'm on, I've been bulking. I'm very active and I've been tracking and that is my current Mattel. Now I am going to mention this particular app several times in the podcast, it's called macro factor.

[00:13:13] It's by the guys at stronger by science. And I personally use this app. I think it is by far the best app on the market, not just for food logging, but for calculating your metabolism, adjusting your plan every week, and then presenting it to you in a way that is compliance neutral. It doesn't beat you over the head for missing your target.

[00:13:36] It simply gives you the data gives you the plan, what you need for the week. You either hit it. You don't no big deal. Here's where you are the next week. Do it again. So if you can get an app like that, it's going to make this entire process. We talk about today, much easier. You're still going to have to log your food.

[00:13:54] You're still going to have to weigh yourself, but all the numbers of calculating calories and macronutrients and metabolism are essentially done for you with some of these. So I'll include a link in the show notes for that there are other apps like my fitness pal chronometer or chronometer carbon and many others that do similar things.

[00:14:16] But again, my favorite is macro factor. So you start by determining your caloric maintenance, how many calories do you need every day to maintain your weight? And you're going to start tracking your food and tracking your weight every day. This is critical. This is integral to everything else we talk about.

[00:14:35] So if you're not willing to, or able to do that, it's going to be more difficult, not impossible, but much more difficult. And we're talking about changing our habits to change our lives for the long-term. And I know from personal experience tracking food and weight is cumbersome at first, but it quickly becomes quite easy, especially with these apps.

[00:14:58] Ma maintain your history. They make it easy to search, to use bar codes. It's really not that bad at all. And you'll be glad you did it because you'll have a much higher level of precision in terms of estimating the food that you're eating. Even if you decide to not track in the future. So how do you track your food?

[00:15:17] If you're eating packaged foods that have a barcode, the app that you use should have a barcode scanner, you scan it in assuming the data is accurate. It spits out the numbers. Boom. If you're eating whole foods like broccoli or meat or something that you can weigh, this is where a food scale comes in. I suggest going to Amazon or wherever you buy your inexpensive likely Chinese made electronics and get yourself a cheap food scale that measures in fractions of grams ideally would also measure in ounces and milliliters.

[00:15:50] So you've got all your liquids and solids. And between the food scale barcodes, the databases that are in the app. And then let's say you go to a restaurant, RET many restaurants, especially chain restaurants, have their nutrition facts posted online in the app that you use. Many of them also have branded food.

[00:16:10] So you want to track your food every day. That's everything you consume. Morning, noon, and night with the exception of small things that you consume every day in the same amount. For example, I take fish oil supplements. I take four capsules. It's probably 40 calories worth of fat. I don't track that because it's consistent every single day.

[00:16:33] So the relative change in metabolism and calories would be the same either way, whether I tracked it or not, because it's consistent. Perhaps you have a splash of half and half in your coffee every day. I wouldn't even track that. If it's an issue with convenience versus accuracy, you make the call, but those things don't necessarily need to be tracked, but all of your food and beverages should be tracked.

[00:16:56] And the other part of this is weighing yourself every day. You have to know how your weight is changing to adjust your calories. I recommend weighing yourself daily in the morning. Before you use the bathroom wearing very little clothing around the same time every day. I actually have a smart scale. I bought it a few months ago.

[00:17:15] I can include a link in the show notes. Connects to apple health on my iPhone and an apple health connects to macro factor. So all I have to do is open the app in the morning. Step on the scale. It beams my way, all the way through to the food log or app. I'm a big fan of automating and making things sustainable and making things much easier for yourself.

[00:17:38] Now that you've determined your maintenance calories, and you have a system in place to track your food and your weight, ask yourself, what is your goal? Are you trying to lose weight, gain, weight, or maintain? If your goal is to maintain your weight, it's pretty simple. You're going to eat as many calories as you burn so that your daily calories equals your estimated calories from the first step.

[00:18:06] That's it? It gets slightly more complicated. If you want to lose or gain weight, if you want to lose weight, the goal is to lose fat. I'm sure that that's your goal is to improve your body composition, which also means not losing too much muscle. And so we want to lose at a reasonable rate that is not overly aggressive, such that we would start to lose lean body mass, but just enough to burn fat at a good rate, to have a reasonable food or calorie plan where we're not starving ourselves.

[00:18:42] Now, if you're very overweight, you could push this a little bit further, be more aggressive. There are always special use cases, but for today, we're just going to talk more or less in the averages, and then we can go from there. So if you want to lose weight, the generally accepted range is going to be to set your.

[00:19:04] That is your caloric deficit, so that you lose between a quarter and 1% of your body weight per week. So what I suggest for your calories to establish a deficit of around 20 to 30% from your maintenance, and later on, you can adjust this based on your weight, that how your weight is changing versus your goal.

[00:19:27] But to start, we're going to say 20 to 30% of your maintenance. Let's go through an example. Let's say you're 200 pounds and you want to lose 20 pounds. And let's say your goal is on the higher end of 1% of your body weight per week or two pounds per week. That's going to take you roughly 10 weeks to lose the weight.

[00:19:48] If your maintenance calories are 2,500 and you're going to target 20 to 30%, let's go slightly on the higher end at 30. 30% of 2,500 is 750 calories per day deficit. If we subtract 750 from 2,500, that leaves you with 1,750 calories a day. So 1,750 calories a day would be your initial plan for your diet in hopes of losing two pounds per week.

[00:20:21] Okay. This is just the starting week. Every week. You're going to adjust this that's one example. Let's talk about gaining weight. Now, why would you want to gain weight? You would want to gain weight to build muscle or to improve performance, or if you're a powerlifter, there are a lot of reasons people can gain weight and we'll talk later on about some specific scenarios, but again, let's talk about the reasonable range for weight gain is probably between 0.1 and 0.25% of your body weight per week.

[00:20:51] Notice that's quite a bit less. Then the rate of weight loss. When you're losing weight, you can lose weight and lose fat quite quickly with not too much impact to muscle loss. But if you gain weight too quickly, it is inevitable that most of that weight will be fat. If you're too aggressive about it, you can only gain muscle at a certain rate.

[00:21:13] And it's not as fast as you might think. So what we want to avoid is what they call the dirty bulk. If you've never heard that term before, that just means eating as much and anything you find and see and want some people call it the seafood diet. You see it, you eat it. You're talking 4, 5, 6, 7,000 calories a day.

[00:21:32] Uninhibited. You are definitely going to gain muscle at a good clip that way, but you're going to gain a ton of fat and that fat later on is going to have to be cut down. So why don't we be smart about it? Why don't we gain in a reasonable fashion? 0.1 to 0.2, 5% of your body weight per week. And the initial target here would be half the target if you were losing weight.

[00:21:56] So if you want to gain weight, we're looking at a 10 to 15% surplus to start. Let's do another example. If you're 200 pounds and you want to gain 20 pounds and you want to go on the higher end of the gaining of quarter percent of your body weight, that's half a pound per week. So that's going to take you 40 weeks to get there, which is a nice drawn out period where you'll get to do a lot of lifting and training.

[00:22:23] You'll get to eat a nice, full, healthy satiating diet, but you're not going to get fat. If your maintenance calories are 2,500 and we go on the higher end of the target at 15%, in terms of our surplus, 15% of 2,500 is 375 calories. You add the two together. And you get 28 75, 2,875 calories a day. That would be your calorie target to gain the weight.

[00:22:50] So we've talked about establishing your maintenance calories, and we've talked about coming up with a goal and setting your either deficit to lose weight or your surplus to gain weight for that initial week. And we'll come back to these examples later, after we talk about the next most important priority, which is macro nutrients.

[00:23:13] If you just want to gain and lose weight, indiscriminately calories will get you there. But we want to be a little bit more discriminant about how we gained the weight, why we gained the weight, what goal we trying to achieve. So now we're going to talk about the three big macronutrients that we care about protein, fat, and carbs.

[00:23:36] We're going to. Explain the purpose of each one in our energy systems. And then more importantly, talk about the target amounts and some eating strategies around those that might help you meet those targets. I like to start with protein because that is, I'll say the most important macronutrient when it comes to muscle building and lifters.

[00:24:01] It's the one that has a solid target that you want to hit every time. Or get close to it. And in the fat and the carbs have a lot more flexibility. Protein is critical to your health. It facilitates muscle protein, synthesis, muscle building. It makes you full. It helps you recover. And it's found in a lot of really delicious foods.

[00:24:27] In my opinion, proteins are comprised of amino acids. There are essential amino acids and non essential. There are 20. And I'm not going to get into the science of that today. What I really want to focus on is the importance of protein for kick-starting what's called muscle protein synthesis. But the idea here is to feed your body with enough protein, that you are engaged in more protein synthesis than protein breakdown, so that the net effect is you gain muscle.

[00:25:01] Furthermore, the evidence seems to support the idea that you need to consume protein. Reasonable amounts, you know, certain minimum amounts multiple times throughout the day to maximize or optimize muscle protein synthesis. So we did talk about how meal timing isn't nearly as important as of course, calories and macronutrients, but there are some timing strategies with protein that will optimize how you use that protein that should fit just fine into your normal eating plan without doing anything crazy.

[00:25:36] So we'll get to that in a bit. Another aspect of protein that I think as well established is the importance of leucine, which is one of the amino acids, as well as the essential amino acids. So getting enough of both is easier when you're eating high quality proteins, such as those from animal sources, whey protein, egg meat, fish, chicken, other forms of poultry and so on.

[00:26:01] So if you are a vegetarian, for example, or a vegan, it's going to be harder to include the. Set of amino acids and loosening in your diet without being very deliberate and careful about your food choices. At the end of the day, you need sufficient protein. You need to eat it enough times per day. And the types that give you the protein that you need for muscle building, the next macronutrient is fat despite its bad reputation over the years, which fortunately, I think we've moved beyond that.

[00:26:34] Fat is particularly important for hormone production. It also, for many people has a positive impact on society. It makes you full it's what you hear often with people who eat the keto diet. For example, although I think people can go too far the other direction. And the third macronutrient of course is carbs.

[00:26:54] And back in the day when I tried Atkins and later on paleo primal and keto carbs were my enemy. And a lot of people have this mindset when it comes to some of the more modern diets. When it comes to people who train people who lift folks like you and me, people listening to this podcast, those of you who are getting into training carbs are your friend.

[00:27:18] When it comes to glucose glycogen, they fuel your training. They help recovery because of glycogen stores. It's actually very hard to be low carb and train, to build muscle when you're losing weight. It's definitely possible to get those carbs down as you're losing weight, because you're simply trying to hold on to muscle.

[00:27:38] You're not trying to train as hard, but when you're building muscle and you're in a bulk carbs, are your friend, at least in my opinion. And you'll find from the strategy we set up here for your macronutrient targets, that carbs are a robust aspect of the eating strategy. Before we talk about amounts and eating strategies, we need to understand what is the energy contained in these macronutrients.

[00:28:04] And it's as simple as. Protein has four calories per gram. Fat has nine calories per gram and carbs have four calories per gram. So both protein and carbs have approximately four calories per gram. Whereas fat has more than twice as much in nine calories per gram. So if we're trying to convert between calories and grams, that's how we would do it.

[00:28:33] If we know our protein target every day is 200 grams. Then, you know, since there are four calories per gram, that's 800 calories and you could do the inverse. If you need to convert from calories two grams, and we'll be doing that in some of the examples later on. Now let's talk about the amounts that we want to target for each macronutrient and some eating strategies, some ideas around these, so that you can determine exactly how many grams or calories of each you want to target based on your goals.

[00:29:08] If you use a food logging app, something like macro factor, many of these apps will calculate this for you, or at least allow you to select some sort of goal. And it will suggest reasonable targets, but we're going to do it by hand on this podcast, giving you the tools to do it yourself in whatever way you wish, whether it's on a notebook or in a spreadsheet or using an app.

[00:29:32] So let's start with protein. The evidence suggests that a reasonable target, especially if you're lifting a reasonable target is 0.82. Gram per pound of body, weight of protein. And you can push that all the way up to 1.2, 1.3 grams per pound, which you might consider, for example, during a cut, when you're losing weight in order to preserve muscle mass.

[00:29:57] And it helps us to tidy as well. You can push that up a bit, but the key is that you must be lifting. If you're sedentary, if you're not lifting the targets go way down. And we're not concerned with that population, we are concerned with folks like you and me who want to get stronger. And it's really as simple as that, where it gets a little more tricky is the evidence that shows when and how much protein to optimize.

[00:30:24] Muscle protein synthesis. And from what I've gathered, the consensus is shoot for 25 to 50 grams of protein in a meal. It's going to depend on your weight and age. For example, the older you are, the more protein you want to try to get at each meal or even overall, but this is a range 25 to 50 grams per meal, roughly four to six hours apart.

[00:30:50] Now I'm not going to tell you that if it's three in the afternoon and you've got to have a snack to avoid having protein in your snack, because it's only 15 or 20 grams, if it gets you to your target. Go for it. We're talking about sustainability and flexibility, but if you want to optimize it and you're okay having say four meals during the day three or four meals, each meal, you shoot to get 25 to 50 grams, some of your bigger meals, your lunch or dinner, where you have a little extra pork or steak or whatever your protein is of choice.

[00:31:23] You might get into the 60, 70 gram range and it all evens out and gets you to your target for a 200 pound person shooting for 200 grams of protein you would need on average four meals containing 50 grams per meal. Now, one of those might just be a to scoop protein shake before or after or during your workout.

[00:31:45] And remember what we talked about before the importance of leucine and good high quality sources of protein to get you to that target most effectively would be things like whey casein eggs. And fish. So good rule of thumb that I live by is one gram per pound. It's easy to remember. It's a nice round number that brings us to fat.

[00:32:06] The amount of fat in your diet can range considerably primarily based on your preferences and goals, such as how much room you want to leave for carbs or what kind of foods you enjoy eating. It really is as simple as that. And the range is anywhere from 0.2 on the low end to maybe 0.6 on the upper end grams per pound, or another way to look at it is 20 to 30% of your calories.

[00:32:33] So, if you're going to pick a nice round number to forget all those ranges, you could say 25% of your calories start there and then adjust up or down based on your other goals. Now I've read over the years and I've heard and seen it supported with the. That it's possibly a good idea to limit how many fats you have in your Perry workout, nutrition, peri, meaning during or in the vicinity just before, during or after your workout in that window to limit your fats and prefer instead carbs and protein, and to distribute your fats throughout your other meals.

[00:33:10] During the day. Now we talked about the fact that there are no good or bad foods, no clean or dirty foods. The one exception to all of that, that I would ever make is trans fats, artificial, trans fats. I don't think anybody agrees. They're a good thing to include in any substantive amount in your diet. So you probably want to limit artificial trans fats.

[00:33:30] That's the only thing in this entire discussion, I would say, try to limit. There's still lots of debate about saturated fats. And I think at the end of the day, if you have a pretty balanced diet, pretty good foods, it's going to balance out between saturated, Moto and saturated polyunsaturated. And that's a good point.

[00:33:49] And we're not trying to artificially bias toward one or the other with some radical food choices, just eat what you enjoy, have a good balanced diet. And it's going to work out. That brings us to carbs. Carbs would make up the remainder of your calories. If protein is one gram per pound and fat is roughly 25% of the cow.

[00:34:11] Then based on your calorie allotment for the day, which we talked about earlier, are you in a surplus? Are you in a deficit or are you maintaining relative to your maintenance calories? Whatever those calories are, the remaining calories or carbs. Now, when you eat carbs, pretty much anytime you want, but there are some benefits eating them at specific times.

[00:34:34] Pre-workout especially if it's your first meal of the day. Like it is for me. I have at the very minimum, I'll have a banana about a half hour to an hour before I work out. So that's a good time. Post-workout seems to be an excellent time to eat carbs, to replenish your glycogen stores. If you've ever heard of the anabolic window, it's actually much larger than people claim or used to think it was probably four to six hours after your workout.

[00:35:04] And that's a good time to replenish and eat your carbs. Some studies even suggest. Roughly 60% of your carbs for the day, peri workout in the vicinity of training. So it's something to consider. If you're eating 300 grams of carbs a day, then perhaps 180 of those are smushed closer to your workout, depending on when that is during the day.

[00:35:27] But again, don't radically alter things just to meet these timing suggestions I would eat when it makes sense to eat, eat normal way. Don't be weird. And it generally is going to work out. These are just extra tips to optimize when and how you. Another thing, more intense workouts require more carbs, and this could be a high volume lifting session, or it could be endurance related exercise if you're using high weight on the bar, but you're working in a very low rep range with lots of rest periods.

[00:36:02] It may not rise to the level of the endurance that requires extra carbs. So again, don't go out of your way, but if, if it's a high volume session or endurance, something like that, then it could be a good idea to bias your carbs close to or in the vicinity of that workout. Now, what about keto? We're talking about carbs and if you're on keto or a low carb, very low carb diet, you're trying to avoid carbs.

[00:36:26] You're trying to stay a hundred under a hundred grams. Maybe even less than that. Maybe under 50 for the day. Keto can work for you if you're losing or maintaining weight. But I think it's going to severely hinder muscle building and performance in the gym. If you're trying to gain. So just keep that in mind, it works for some people, it may work for you.

[00:36:48] I'm not saying this is a hard and fast rule, but given that carbs are the source of glycogen and that's an important input to your performance. When you train the logic goes that it's better to have more carbs than. The last thing about carbs is fiber, which is a type of carbohydrate. You want to get enough fiber, and if you're eating pretty well, if you're eating fruits, vegetables, grains, you're going to get it.

[00:37:14] You could of course seek it out. Quest bars have a lot of fiber. For example, there's obviously fiber supplements, but you want to get your fiber. And the general recommendation is something like 14 grams per thousand calories. So if you, if you have a 2,500 calorie diet, you're up in the thirties terms of grams of fiber.

[00:37:34] Now the only other macronutrient we haven't talked about, or the only big one that people are familiar with is alcohol. What about alcohol? I love a glass of wine or a, a nice stout or, you know, a mixed drink every now and then a couple of times a week. In fact, now that I'm on a bulk, I can drink a little bit more than when I was cutting.

[00:37:54] And it's an integral part of many people's social lives. Some people suggest take. The calories and alcohol and treating it as a carbohydrate, which means you would take the calories and you, and multiply it by four. For example, I had, I think it was founder's breakfast stout the other day, which is 270 calories.

[00:38:16] So divide that by four. I could track that as 68 grams of carbs. Now let's start to put all of this together. We've established our maintenance calories. We've talked about macro nutrients and a way to target each one. How much protein, how much fat, how much carbs. Now let's talk about the different phases of weight change and how to adjust your diet to fit each.

[00:38:45] So these are phases of weight change in how they align with their goals. We're starting with weight loss. Typically, this is associated with a goal to lose weight, reduce your body fat and improve your body composition. And the idea here is not just to reduce the number on the scale, but to reduce fat while limiting muscle loss.

[00:39:12] If you are not trained at all and you're overweight. Or even skinny fat as, as it's called, you may decide that you'd like to lose some of that fat before he then bulk up and gain muscle. Now, I would caution you if you are not severely overweight, a more effective approach may be to just eat at maintenance or even in a surplus and start training.

[00:39:36] If you've never trained before this could result in somewhat of a body composition where you actually burn fat while gaining muscle, but let's for the sake of this example, assume you want to lose weight. You're either overweight, you're skinny fat, and you want to lose that fat before he gained weight, or you have been training.

[00:39:56] And now you're just ready for a weight loss phase to lean out before he bulk up. Again, our example will be a 200 pound person who needs to lose 20 pounds with a total daily energy expense. Of 2,500 calories. We previously calculated a starting deficit of 750 calories, which leaves us with 1,750 calories or less per day as our target.

[00:40:26] So to lose weight because our maintenance calories are 2,500. We're going to eat 1,750 calories a day to try to lose weight. And here's how we're going to break up our macronutrients. We're going to start with protein. One gram per pound for a 200 pound person. That's easy, 200 grams of protein. You multiply that by four and you get 800 calories now because we're talking about weight loss.

[00:40:53] Some of the literature supports going even higher for your protein target as you're losing weight to preserve muscle mass. So you might even target 1.2 grams per pound, which would get you up to two 20 grams, which is a lot of protein. I understand if you're not used to eating that, but it's a worthwhile target based on what the evidence supports.

[00:41:13] Then we go to fat again, rule of thumb before I said, just start with 25%. You can adjust up or down to based on your needs, but let's just start with 25% of 7,050 calories is 438 calories. You divide that by nine and remember fat has nine calories per gram, and that gives you, and we're rounding here 50.

[00:41:34] So you got 200 grams of protein, 50 grams of fat. Then we get to carbs. Carbs are simply the remainder of your calories. So you start with 1,750 calories subtract the 800 calories of protein subtract the 438 calories of fat. And you're left with 512 calories divided by four. That gives you around 130 grams.

[00:41:57] Now 130 grams of carbs, depending on how you've been eating for the past few years might seem fairly low for a lot of people who are used to eating three, 400 grams of carbs every day. And if that's you and you want to eat more carbs, just reduce the fat to say 20% instead of 25%. And that'll free up some room for more carbs or vice versa.

[00:42:21] If you want to be in a very low carb diet like keto, and you want the fat to dominate and have very few carbs. But for this example, which is a little more balanced approach in summary, it's 200 grams of protein, 50 grams of fat, 130 grams of carbs. That's your goal. You get in the ballpark of that every day plus or minus 20%, you're going to be pretty good.

[00:42:46] And then later on you can start seeing the results and adjusting accordingly. And we'll talk about that. That was weight loss. Now what about weight gain? Typically you want to gain weight for one reason and one reason alone, and that is to build muscle, but you want to do it while limiting fat gain. So if you're a newbie, you'll probably see some pretty good results, whatever you do.

[00:43:11] And if you are lean but trained, this is where it is even more important to gain weight at a reasonable pace. So you don't gain too much fat because the more experienced you are under the. The slower, the rate of muscle gain, because you've already gained a lot of your muscle. Let's go to the same example, 200 pounds.

[00:43:31] In this case, you want to gain 20 pounds and your maintenance calories are 2,500 calories. So earlier on we talked about the surplus. We calculated a surplus of 375 calories giving you a calorie target of 28 75 now because you're gaining weight. I see that as a floor, meaning you're trying to hit at least that many calories a day.

[00:43:55] It's kind of a nice position to be in, to want to eat a minimum. And you'll get there. If you start lifting, if you lean out and then you're ready to bulk, you'll be in that position. So let's calculate the macronutrients again, protein, same thing. One gram per pound, 200 grams or 800 calories, easy fat.

[00:44:16] We're going to stick with 25%, but now it's 25% of a higher calorie target 28 75. So that's going to result in 719 calories of fat divided by nine gives you 80 grams and then carbs are the remainder. So the carbs are going to be higher as well. Again, cause we're working with more calories and we haven't changed the protein.

[00:44:39] So we take 28, 75 minus 800 calories of protein minus 719 calories of fat leaving us with 1,356 calories of carbs divided by four gives you 340 grams. So in summary, that's 200 grams of protein, 80 grams of fat. So 80, instead of the 50 grams, when you were losing weight, you get to eat 80 grams, all gaining weight.

[00:45:05] So a nice little bump there and then 340 grams of carbs. So that's well more than double. In fact, it's almost triple the amount of carbs you would have been equally while losing weight. And this is what we want to see. If we're training to build muscle. This big bump in carbs is. But you can always swap some fat for carbs and vice versa, depending on your preferences, angles and how you feel.

[00:45:31] All these keeping in mind that fat is nine calories per gram and carbs is four calories per gram. All right, in the last type of weight goal would be maintenance. Your goal is simply to maintain the weight where you are. Now, if you are a newbie, if you're just starting lifting, this could be a good place to start for you where you just try to keep your weight, where it is.

[00:45:55] You start lifting heavy. And what will start to happen is you'll burn fat while gaining muscle in weight really won't change, but your body composition will improve. Another reason we maintain weight is when you're transitioning from a cut to a bulk, for some people they want to break, but they don't want to start gaining heavy right away.

[00:46:16] So they go into a maintenance phase for a few weeks. Or even a month or two before bulking. And finally, if you are trained and you're just trying to maintain your muscle and you're not looking to bulk at this time, maintenance is a good strategy going with our same example, our 200 pound person who wants to maintain and has maintenance calories of 2,500, then you're going to eat 2,500 calories a day.

[00:46:41] And the breakdown is as follows protein 200 grams, same thing, right? One gram per pound. So 200 grams or 800 pounds. Fat 25% of 2,500 is 625 calories divided by nine that's, 70 grams. So it's, in-between the weight loss and the weight gain amount of fat. And then finally carbs is the remainder 2,500 minus 800 calories of protein, minus 625 calories of fat leaving you with 1,075 calories of carbs divided by four that's 270 grams, which is lower than the weight gain, but quite a bit higher, right?

[00:47:24] More than double of the weight loss, which is a nicely balanced, sustainable diet for the longterm. It's you could find a good balance of delicious foods. You can fit in dessert. You can fit in alcohol. Even at that maintenance level in summary, 200 grams of protein, 70 grams of fat and 270 grams of carbs.

[00:47:45] We've just talked about. The calories and the macronutrients, but this really is just for week one. And you might be thinking, oh man, now I have to do this every single week. So hear me out. What are you going to do is weigh yourself every day. And at the end of the first week, I want you to take the seven day average of your weight.

[00:48:09] I don't want you to worry about individual fluctuations. Just take the seven day average. That's the first week compare that seven day average to your starting weight. If the change is in the vicinity of what you're targeting. So let's say you're trying to lose two pounds in a week. If it's in the vicinity of that, I would continue with the exact same calories and macronutrients if however, it's quite a bit off.

[00:48:38] So if you're trying to lose two pounds and you only lost half a pound. Just adjust in the opposite direction conservatively. And I don't want to give you a specific number, a specific target. You can. It really doesn't matter because you're going to converge over time. Let's put it that way. It's not going to be perfect first month or so it'll converge over time.

[00:49:01] So if you intended to lose two pounds and you lost only half a pound, then you were eating too many calories. The data is telling you that either your metabolism is lower than you thought or decreased. Or you ate more calories than you thought you did. Now, I'm making the assumption that you properly tracked all your food, because if you're missing meals in your food logger, that's going to make a big difference on how many calories you think you ate.

[00:49:31] So assuming that you've been tracking it properly and by properly, I mean, within 20%, it really doesn't have to be super precise. Then chances are, it's really your metabolism that is lower than you thought at least for that week. So what do you do? You simply reduce your caloric requirement for the next week and recalculate your macros?

[00:49:54] Just like we did before. So if you're in a weight loss, And your calories were 1,750 and you realize that you're not losing as quickly as you'd like, then reduce it by say a hundred calories, reduce it to 1,650 and recalculate your protein, fat and carbs. Your protein is going to be the same. So it's really your fat and carbs that are going to come down and guess what you do the same thing the following week, the next week you keep taking the moving average.

[00:50:22] You can continue using a seven day average, or if you're a math geek, you can use a, a longer average or another special algorithm. It's really up to you to play around. But you'll keep assessing it this way. If the following week, now that you've cut your calories by a hundred calories a day. If the following week you lost say 1.8 pounds, that's pretty darn close to the two pounds you were shooting for.

[00:50:44] I would keep it the same. Or if you lost 2.2, if it's in the vicinity, keep it the same, make it easy on yourself. You don't have to do all the math again until you see that the change is drifting farther away from what you want. It's that simple. And it goes both directions. Weight gain is the same thing.

[00:51:01] Now I know that was a lot of numbers and each of these sections will be timestamped in the show notes so you can review them again. And again, I'll reiterate that using an app like macro factor makes this much easier, but of course you can also use a spreadsheet or a notebook, and it's just fine, depending on convenience versus results.

[00:51:23] Some important things to keep in mind. The first is that your daily expenditure, your metabolism can fluctuate. All the time and it can do so quite dramatically, based on your weight, your activity level, stress, sleep, your overall lifestyle, your job. So you have to track continuously just to stay on top of how your metabolism is fluctuating.

[00:51:50] The second thing is using an app like macro factor will make this much easier, and I encourage you to use technology. If that's your thing, I'm a big fan of putting things on autopilot. Putting habits in place, tools, technologies, things in place where you don't have to think about things, you just do them or they happen for you.

[00:52:09] I suggest adjusting weekly at first. Meaning at the end of every week, as we talked about earlier, you're going to assess your average weight for the seven. Versus your weight change goal. And if it has drifted from your goal, you're going to adjust your calories for the next week, accordingly at a reasonable level, that doesn't create some big overshoot.

[00:52:35] Eventually you should be able to shift toward an intuitive eating approach if you want, because you'll have the experience to know the calorie content and the macronutrients, the density of the foods you're eating based on having gone through this process, you've developed a skill and a knowledge base that will be with you for the rest of your life.

[00:52:57] I personally continue to track every day because I have very specific goals. It does keep me honest to an extent it's, it's a built-in habit that I've just been doing. And I don't really have to think about it. And I enjoy the science and the numbers behind this whole process. That's just me. I'm a geek.

[00:53:15] What can I. Notice that we have not talked once about specific foods that you can and cannot eat. I've mentioned some examples of foods that will give you higher quality protein, but it's totally up to you. If you want to eat those, there's nothing that you can or cannot eat. However, there are foods that can make the process a little bit easier, depending on which phase you're in.

[00:53:38] And I'd like to share just some of those foods, just to give you some ideas, if you're wondering, Hmm. What, what do I want to pick up at the grocery store or try in some new recipes, starting with weight loss. When you're, when you're losing weight, things become a little bit more restrictive, just because you only have so many calories to play with your fat and carbs have been lowered your protein still up.

[00:54:03] But it, it limits your choices a little bit if you want to avoid being super hungry, for example. So when it comes to protein sources, pretty much any protein source is, is still going to be great, even when you're losing weight. But if you compare to say 80, 20 ground beef to chicken or fish or even pork, there's obviously a difference in content and calories, right?

[00:54:25] The beef is going to have a higher content of fat. So you'd have to eat more of it to get the similar amount of protein. But now you're eating into your fat target. Doesn't mean I haven't done it. I love beef. I love a simple dish of ground beef and rice with some taco seasoning as a, as a nice pre-made lunch for the week.

[00:54:44] But generally the lower fat leaner meats might make it a little easier to get the protein you need while avoiding hitting those targets. And I think, you know what? Those are things like chicken and. I'm I love chicken thighs. So I'm not a big chicken breasts advocate necessarily, but of course chicken breast is going to be leaner, but eat what you enjoy and then make it work.

[00:55:09] So chicken fish even lean cuts of beef steak. And so on. Certain dairy products are excellent sources of protein like cottage cheese. That's a really nicely balanced snack, cottage, cheese, and Greek yogurt. Eggs are great. But again, if you're on a cut, you've got the protein in there along with the fat, if you're eating whole eggs.

[00:55:31] And frankly, I don't like to eat my eggs any other way than hole, so I make it work, but you could just eat egg whites and you'll get a lot of protein. You're not going to get the fat that way. The standard grains like wheat, right? Barley oats. I love oatmeal, oatmeal. It's got protein and it gives me my carbs and it's got fiber kind of has everything in it.

[00:55:51] And it mixes well with things like peanut butter fruit. You can use almond milk, you can use whole milk again, depending on what you're gaining or losing weight. You can adjust some of these ingredients and the amount to hit. Vegetables are always great. Vegetables are effectively free when we're talking about things like green vegetables, broccoli, and green beans, I consider them almost free.

[00:56:13] So when you're trying to lose weight, those are excellent fillers to cram into your diet and to every meal, eat big salads and whatnot because they'll fill you up and they'll keep the calories where you need them. And then as far as carbs go tos, there's always the potato variants, sweet potatoes, white potato.

[00:56:29] In addition to the grains we talked about. So you notice, I'm not telling you anything surprising any super foods, any special foods you have to get in some organic local food source or anything like that. However you notice, I didn't mention say sour patch, kids or Hershey. Chocolate bars, even though I love all those things.

[00:56:53] I have a sweet tooth, chocolate brownies, muffins, all this delicious stuff. If those are parts of your diet, you can still eat them. You just have to track your macros and calories and make it work. But the idea is I was sharing with you where those that will maximize your ability to get your protein, keep the fats and carbs and moderate range and still enjoy it.

[00:57:13] All right now, foods for bulking. Okay. We talked about a dirty bulk, which is the idea of just eating whatever you want. We're not going to do that. There are so many delicious foods in existence on this planet for your protein, carbs, and fat. When it comes to bulking, when your calorie limit is higher, everything is higher and you could really enjoy yourself.

[00:57:34] Let's take proteins. For example, all the meats are on the table. Lean fatty from beef to chicken, to seafood eggs, the dairy sources, as we talked about cottage, cheese, Greek yogurt, but even milk, even whole milk. I love whole milk. They're all on the table. And they're excellent. Sources of protein. Think about the grains, think about potatoes, rice keenwah.

[00:57:59] And then as far as fats go, here's where you've got a little more licensed to use some more butter, olive oil, eggs, eat some nuts, things like that. And I'm not saying any of these things won't work while losing weight. It just comes back to your calories and your macros. All right. The last thing I want to talk about is supplements and it really isn't going to take very long.

[00:58:21] I plan to do a future episode exclusively about the whole variety of supplements out there, things that work things that don't things, where the science is out. But today I want to talk about just two of them, whey protein. And Creotine whey protein really isn't even a supplement. In my opinion, it's just a food that's been processed.

[00:58:42] It comes from milk. We're talking about whey protein, isolate in particular. There's also casein protein, which has slower digesting, but let's just focus on way. I have way every day that I work out and usually on days that I don't. And the only reason I have it is because it's a quickly digestible, convenient, ready source of lots of protein and not much else.

[00:59:06] So the way I consume protein is before and after my workouts, I might have 30 grams before and 50 grams after, along with carbs, that's my preference. And that's it. And then the rest of the day, I get my protein from whole food sources, from meat, from dairy eggs, fish. So whey protein, there's nothing wrong with it.

[00:59:26] Yes, it's processed, but so is just about everything else in our diet. And it's an excellent source of all the complete proteins we talked about, including leucine. It's probably the ideal source of leucine from a convenience perspective and one scoop of a minimally flavored high quality whey protein will give you something like 25 grams of protein.

[00:59:49] Okay. So that's enough said about that. Now let's talk about creatine. Creatine is the one supplement that has been validated to actually be effective in a way that's meaningful in a way that most would suggest that you should take it, especially if you're lifting, but now we're coming to find. Various populations would probably benefit from creatine, the elderly, the sedentary kids.

[01:00:12] And I'm not going to go there and I'm not going to bring up the studies. You can look those up. I'm just focusing on us as lifters. The recommendation is three to five grams of creatine every day. Creatine monohydrate it's dirt cheap. It's easy to just throw in your post-workout shake or a glass of water.

[01:00:30] It doesn't taste like anything goes down easy, and there is plenty of evidence through hundreds of studies that it helps you build muscle and gain strength more quickly. If you're taking creatine than if you're not, it helps with your endurance specifically anaerobic endurance and between sessions that helps with recovery.

[01:00:51] It's perfectly safe. It's totally natural. You get creatine from food. You just don't get as much as you should from an optimal perspective. If you want to take it as a supplement for training, if you're going to take creatine, you might hear about a loading phase where you take 20 grams a day for the first week or so, but there's research that shows you probably don't need to do this.

[01:01:14] Just take three to five grams a day. It'll be saturated in your body soon enough. And then you just keep taking it and you could just take it for the rest of your life. It has no side effects whatsoever. It's good stuff. Enough said, let's recap. Everything we've talked about today. Cause I know this was a long episode.

[01:01:33] But I hope it was extremely useful to setting up and adjusting your diet to meet your goals. We talked about how to estimate your maintenance calories and the best way to do that is to track for two weeks, track your calories that you eat and track your weight. We talked about identifying your goal.

[01:01:53] Are you trying to lose weight because you want to burn fat? Are you trying to gain weight so you can build muscle or maintain your weight and how aggressive do you want to be? We talked about establishing your calories for the deficit or surplus consistent with that. Then we talked about macro nutrients, what they are protein, fat, and carbs, and how to set up your targets, proteins easy.

[01:02:19] One, one gram per pound fat. We talked about 20 to 30% in carbs, the remainder, but fat and carbs can be adjusted based on your preferences and training needs. We talked about logging your food every day, preferably using an app. So it's easier weigh in yourself every day and you can use something like a smart scale to make it easier, and then measuring your weight change each week and adjusting the calories up or down by tweaking the fat and carbs accordingly.

[01:02:50] If you have questions about any of the specifics in this episode, or want to share with me your personal experience and your individual goals, I'd be happy to get back to you by email@phillipatwhitsonwaits.com or you can DM me on Instagram at Whitson weights. I'd be happy to go over those details with you.

[01:03:10] That should cover it regarding the basic plan of attack for fat loss and muscle building. When it comes to calories, macronutrients, and even supplements. Stay tuned for episode six, where we introduce systems and habits to put your fitness on autopilot. If you have questions for me or topics you'd like to hear on future episodes, just connect with me by email, Instagram or Facebook.

[01:03:34] All the links are in the episodes. Show notes.

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Ep 4: The Truth about Metabolism, Cardio, and Fat Loss

Today we’re focusing on the “calories out” side of energy balance with a discussion of metabolism, as well as whether and how we can manipulate this “calories out” side of the equation.

We will not discuss diet or nutrition, which is the “calories in” side of the equation. Stay tuned for the next episode. In the meantime, understanding metabolism and especially how to accurately calculate your own energy expenditure sets the foundation for a sustainable approach to diet later on.

In today’s episode, we cover:

• What is metabolism in the context of your total daily energy expenditure?

• How to estimate your expenditure, which will be useful later for weight management

• Whether it’s possible change your baseline metabolism, both short- and long-term

• The truth about cardio and its effect on metabolism and fat loss

• A more efficient, sustainable way to burn fat

RELATED LINKS

• Burn: New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories, Lose Weight, and Stay Healthy by Herman Pontzer, PhD

• MacroFactor app for food logging and calculating expenditure (use code "WITSANDWEIGHTS" to extend free trial to 14 days)

🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW
At Wits & Weights, we help you shred fat, build strength, feel energized, and project confidence in your career and relationships without excessive dieting, cardio, or food restrictions.

👉 Just go to witsandweights.com/coaching to connect with me.

👥 To join our Facebook community for live training, free guides, free challenges, and more, just click here.

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Transcript

This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.

[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast for busy professionals who want to get strong and lean with the strength training and sustainable. I am your host Philip Pape. And in each episode, we'll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry and a commitment to lifting heavy and eating right.

[00:00:29] Welcome to episode four of Wits & Weights. As pedestrian as it sounds, your ability to manage weight comes down, not to food, quality, carbs versus fat meal timing or any other new and improved fat loss secret. But rather to the age old first law of thermodynamics energy can neither be created nor destroyed, or in our context, calories in calories out, we refer to this as energy.

[00:01:01] Today, we're focusing on the calories out side of energy balance with the discussion of metabolism, as well as weather and how we can manipulate this calories outside of the equation. I don't plan on discussing diet or nutrition. Which is the calories in side of the equation. You can stay tuned for the next episode for that, but in the meantime, understanding metabolism and especially how to accurately calculate your own energy expenditure, sets the foundation for a sustainable approach to diet.

[00:01:34] Later on in today's episode, we cover what metabolism is in the context of your total daily energy expense. How to estimate your expenditure, which will be useful later for weight management, whether it's possible to change your baseline metabolism, both in the short and long-term. The truth about cardio and its effect on metabolism and fat loss and a more efficient, sustainable way to burn fat.

[00:02:05] Let's start by defining metabolism. Metabolism is basically all the chemical reactions going on inside your body that keep you alive. If you look up the definition on Wikipedia or anywhere else, You'll see three purposes for your metabolism. The first is to convert energy from the food you eat to run cellular processes.

[00:02:30] The second is to convert the stuff that comes from food, into building blocks, for things like proteins to build your muscle. And the third is to eliminate metabolic waste. So this would be through excretion urination, CO2. And the inner workings of this can get very complicated and it could be worth exploring in a future episode.

[00:02:54] But today I really want to keep it at a higher level and talk about the constituents of your metabolism and the various models that are, that exist to define how you might manipulate metabolism. We'll talk about how to track it, how to calculate it. Can you change it? And all of those sorts of things.

[00:03:13] Now, if we want to get objective and start tracking what we mean by metabolism. Total daily energy expenditure or T D E E. And I found a pretty good breakdown of this that you, you can consider an average for most people who are generally active or just mildly active, uh, some of these components change based on your activity level, but generally they hold for the average person, your TD E again, your total daily energy expense.

[00:03:43] Can be broken down into four components. The largest component is your BMR, your basal metabolic rate. And this could comprise roughly two thirds to maybe 70, even 75% of your expenditure. This is just the energy you need to stay alive. This is the energy you would burn. If you were sleeping. The next component of metabolism is the thermic effect of feeding.

[00:04:12] And this is the energy you burn to eat, to digest metabolize and store your food. And that makes up roughly 10%. And some people argue, you can increase that by eating more protein. And, you know, these things are probably true, but. Amount by which you can manipulate. It may not be significant. The next component is neat.

[00:04:33] Non-exercise activity, thermogenesis. That's all the energy you expend throughout the day, doing stuff, not necessarily intentionally like standing, walking yard work, doing your job, fidgeting, typing on the computer. So that's your non-exercise activity thermogenesis that represents roughly 15%. This is the, the one that I think possibly fluctuates most from person to person and even within a single individual, depending on.

[00:05:06] Your circumstances, right? How much sleep you're getting, how much activity you're doing, whether what your job is also, whether you're on a diet or gaining weight. And then the last component, which happens to be the smallest is exercise activity, thermogenesis. And this could be as little as 5% of your metabolism, which you might be thinking, well, that's not very high.

[00:05:27] Is it? Isn't the point of exercise and activity to burn calories? Well, not. And we'll get back to that. That actually brings me to the next topic, which is energy expenditure models. Now just to keep it simple, I'm going to compare what I'll call the traditional model, which is called the additive expenditure model and something proposed by Herman.

[00:05:55] Ponsor called the constrained energy model. And I'm not saying one is right or wrong. They're evidence, there's evidence to support both. And even if the constraint model is. Quote unquote accurate. It has to be interpreted properly. I think people take some of these to the extreme, to make a wild claims and recommendations.

[00:06:16] So if we look at the additive model, this is what I'll call the traditional model. The idea is simply. The more activity you engage in, the more calories you burn and it's linear and it goes up forever. So if you're running two hours a day or you're preparing for the tour de France or Olympic swimming, you're just going to burn tons and tons and tons more calories a day than somebody who's less active or sedentary.

[00:06:44] That's the traditional model. What Herman ponsor. His colleagues have found, and other researchers who have analyzed precisely calories in calories out in many different populations is that perhaps there's a, an adaptation that occurs with higher activity levels. When you go from sedentary to lightly active, to active, the more activity you engage in, the more calories you burn, but then your body starts to adapt your BMS.

[00:07:14] Declines and thus the total calories burns starts to level off. It starts to plateau rather than continuing to increase. If we're to accept this, then the extreme conclusion some people have made is, Ugh, well then I don't even need to exercise because if I exercise more, my body adapts by burning fewer calories and my net calories are the same.

[00:07:38] I just should just sit around all day because it doesn't make it. Well, the problem with that taken to the extreme is it's just that it's the extreme. When you look at the graph, when you look at the model, there's an entire first segment that shows your activity level does correlate with an increase in calories.

[00:07:57] It's just that perhaps doing lots of activity in the form of cardio could be counterproductive because of this adaptation. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that because that conclusion is supported by what we've discovered when it comes to cardio versus strength training, for example.

[00:08:16] So the constraint model is not a license, not to exercise. Now that we've established the objective definition of metabolism that is total daily energy expenditure, which is comprised of several constituents BMI. Thermic effect of feeding non-exercise and exercise activity, thermogenesis, and that perhaps the curve does not increase forever with activity.

[00:08:44] The next thing we want to understand is, well, how do we measure this? How do we calculate our TDE and then continue to measure it so that we know what to do about it in terms of diet, exercise, or any other levers that we can. And the thing about tracking your TDE, your daily expenditure was just simply how many calories you burn every day.

[00:09:07] Is there tends to be an inverse relationship between the convenience of doing so and the accuracy. That is the easier it is. The more convenient it is, the less accurate it is, but the more complicated and advanced the more algorithms and calculations you do, that's great, but that takes a lot of work and it may not be sustained.

[00:09:29] So we're going to talk about three ways to estimate your daily expenditure from the quick and easy, quick and dirty method that is not very accurate to an intermediate way to do it. That's somewhat accurate to vote way that's most accurate, but not necessarily convenient. And then I'm going to talk about an app that I use that takes the high accuracy.

[00:09:52] But also makes it convenient. So you can kind of have your cake and eat it too. We'll talk about that at the end. So starting with a quick and easy approach, the quickest way to estimate your potential calories burned is purely based on body, weight and calories per pound. So let's say you are. 200 pounds.

[00:10:15] The general number range you see is around 15 or 16 calories per pound. This is your total daily expenditure on average for your weight. So if you're 200 pounds and you assume 15 calories per pound, simple math, 3000 calories, or for example, I'm closer to 180. So 180 pounds, times 15. 2,700 calories. Now in reality, my.

[00:10:44] Daily expenditure at the moment is close to 3000 and the day I'm recording this podcast, I weigh only 1 71, cause I just finished a cut. I just started a bulk. So the 15 calories would be way off. And that's because I'm quite a bit more active. I have a higher metabolism. I have more muscle tissue, all these things that take me away from.

[00:11:09] The center portion of the normal curve in the population. So that's why the accuracy could be way off with this approach. But it's, if, if you have never thought about this before, and you're wondering, Hmm, how many calories do I burn every day? Add maintenance. Take your weight, multiply it by 15. Okay. The next.

[00:11:29] Where you get to a more accurate estimate for most people, but it takes a little more work is to use one of the validated formulas based on research. And most of these formulas are named after the researchers who were involved. And I, there are three formulas that I see used most often. Now the nice thing about these is because they're so.

[00:11:50] You can find calculators online, where you just enter the input data, and then it does the calculation for you. So I'm not saying you have to set up a spreadsheet or, or use Mathematica or something to calculate these, but there are three formulas that I wanted to mention. One is the revised Harris Benedict.

[00:12:09] This uses your gender height, weight, age, and activity level to determine your. TD E and I want to take a quick tangent and talk about this activity level. The big challenge with activity level. They don't decouple deliberate bouts of activity, like going to the gym and lifting heavy five days a week from all the other activity people perform.

[00:12:37] So for example, if you lift heavy and then you sit on your ass all day at a desk job, the rest of the time, another person never goes to the gym, but they're a construction worker who does lots of yard work and chops, whatever. Who has a higher activity level. That's the challenge. So if you're going to use one of these calculators, Look at how they define activity and probably be a little bit conservative just to make sure that you underestimate your expenditure.

[00:13:05] And then there are a couple others. There's the Mifflin St. Jor I think is how you pronounce it, which I think is more accurate than the Harris Bennett Benedict. And you don't have to know your body fat percentage. If you do know your body fat percentage, I would recommend the catch McArdle formula. I will mention these in the show notes.

[00:13:27] But you can go online and Google calculate TDE, and you'll find all these calculators. And most of these websites will say what's recommended. Also be aware to take any recommendations as to what calories and macronutrients you should use to gain or lose weight from those calculators, because they may have very different philosophies than what we're trying to achieve here on this podcast.

[00:13:52] Then we get to the most accurate approach. To collect real data on yourself. And there's two types of data we need, we need our food coming in and we need our wait. The best way to do this as it was some sort of food logger, usually an app where you can log your food every day and figure out how many calories you're eating.

[00:14:14] And then you use a scale every day, weigh yourself in the morning after you've gone to the bathroom with minimal clothing, and then you use a smooth version of your weight, something like a seven day. After about, I would say 14 days, you will have determined how your weight is changing relative to the calories you're eating.

[00:14:38] And that'll tell you how close you are to maintenance. So if you're somebody who has been roughly the same weight for months and months and more. And you're eating fairly consistently. You start measuring that food and you continue weighing yourself and you confirm, yeah, I'm not changing my weight, but I'm eating 2,400 calories a day and I weigh 180 pounds.

[00:15:00] Well, there, you know, you have a data point that tells you that your metabolism is somewhat lower than what these calculators might produce. Conversely, it might be much higher, but the point is it's individually. Now you might say, oh, that sounds like a lot of work. Well, we're going to talk in the next episode about diet and in the following episode about systems to track things on autopilot.

[00:15:23] I am going to be recommending that you log food and weigh yourself daily, at least for a period, if nothing else, then to learn about yourself and to learn about the calorie content and density of foods. But this brings me to what I mentioned earlier, that there are food bloggers that do some of these for.

[00:15:44] But there's only one that I found it's called macro factor and it's by the guys at stronger by science. I have no affiliation with them. They don't even do affiliate links. There's no program or sponsorship with them. I just love the app. I use it every day. And the best thing about it is that it's an adherence.

[00:16:05] It doesn't penalize you for going over or under your calories and macros like many other tools do, but the best part about it is it can calculate your TD E based on some sophisticated algorithms that they've worked out that account for many of these factors and more things like body fat things like are you lifting and doing cardio and can tell you within a few short weeks, roughly what your expenditure is, and then adjust your food plan.

[00:16:32] Going forward week after week to hit your target. And we're not talking about diet today, but I wanted to mention the app because of its ability to calculate for you, your individual TDE based on your food. And. Without you having to do any calculations. All right. We've covered what metabolism is the different models of metabolism and how to calculate it.

[00:16:59] So the next question you might be thinking is, okay, great. That that'll come in handy for diet, but can I actually change my metabolism? Can I change the energy outside meaningfully? I'd like you to ponder something. Think about the calculators we talked about and how most of those calculators. Ask for things like age, gender, height, and weight.

[00:17:19] And the reason they do that is because those factors tend to be correlated with body fat percentage. And it turns out that fat free mass is the strongest explanatory predictor of metabolism. Now, what is fat free? Mass fat free mass is just everything that's not fat in your body, which will be things like Oregon's.

[00:17:41] But more importantly, it includes your muscle tissue. And your bones. Ah, we're going to start to connect the dots here. How can we increase muscle tissue and bone? Resistance training. And we're going to hammer home this message time and again, on this podcast by resistance training, especially with a focus on strength so that you can increase muscle mass and bone density.

[00:18:07] You thus increase your fat free mass and that results in a higher metallic. If you were to take two people that weighed the same, let's say two men that weighed 285 pounds, both six foot eight, but one had significantly lower body fat. Let's say the first person is in the 30% range of body fat and has maybe 20% muscle.

[00:18:34] The second person is down near 10% with 60 something percent. The second person is going to have a higher metabolism by virtue of the extra muscle mass. And you've probably heard muscle is more expensive than fat muscle tissue requires more calories and fat tissue, and it goes beyond just the tissue itself.

[00:18:54] Some people. We'll say, oh, but I've heard it's very few calories per day, extra from muscle versus a pound of fat. And that might be true, but there are other systemic effects of having the extra muscle tissue that also lead to additional calories burned. And we can get into details behind the science, perhaps in another episode, some really cool stuff.

[00:19:15] That's been discovered even in just the last year or so, but suffice it to say it's well understood that a higher fat free mass, which occurs because you have more muscle higher bone density from resistance training will give you a higher metallic. So the best way to do that is through strength, training, the focus, the very focus of this podcast.

[00:19:37] Now, what are some other things you could do to increase your metabolism on a day-to-day level? Because I look at strength and resistance training as the long-term way to increase your overall metabolism, but in the short term, there's some other things you can do. Generally, you're going to burn more calories with more activity.

[00:19:54] Now, many of us can't really help what we're doing for our jobs. You know, if we're working a desk job, If we're sitting behind a desk all day, but we can walk more. We can take a few more walks, take, take a walk after lunch, take a walk after dinner for half an hour, get a couple miles in maybe five, 6,000 more steps for the day than you normally do.

[00:20:13] That's going to burn some more calories. And if you develop a habit of doing that, you might find you enjoy it, and it helps take the edge off of your need to cut your calories on the diets. Also your weight affects your metabolism. When you, if you've lost weight, you're probably going to have a slightly lower metabolism.

[00:20:31] Also things like eating more meals. When you're gaining, when you're bulking, you might end up eating an extra meal or two every day. You're, you're eating more. You're digesting more, you're eating more protein, you're eating more frequently. All of those things can affect your thermic effect of feeding your neat, those.

[00:20:49] The challenge is that metabolism fluctuates constantly. I've seen in my own tracking, my metabolism fluctuate between 2300 and almost 3000 calories just in the last three months or so. And I can't always necessarily explain why, well, what about cardio? I go to the gym and I hit the treadmill. I jog for half an hour, 45 minutes.

[00:21:16] I do the elliptical machine. I swim. What's the problem with lots of medium intensity cardio. Doesn't that burn a lot of calories? Well, here's the problem with too much cardio. And when I say too much, there's a F there's a balance. I'm not one of those hardliners that says you can't do any cardio at all, because it completely interferes with your strength training.

[00:21:36] No, I think there's a balance. I think it is okay to do some cardio. And I think you have to be smart about it, both in terms. What and when, but too much cardio, we're talking 3, 4, 5 days a week, half an hour to an hour or more of medium intensity cardio, where you are doing as much cardio as you are lifting, or perhaps even more, it sends a signal to the body to do two things.

[00:22:04] First, it tells your body to become more efficient, to conserve energy. And it does that by reducing your metabolism. And this is actually. The part that is supported by Herman pantsers constraint, energy model that shows as you, as your activity level goes quite a bit higher, your body starts to adapt and down-regulate parts of your metabolism and thus your overall calorie burn, doesn't go up very high.

[00:22:29] And this is why you see folks. Only do cardio as a form of exercise, often get into a hamster wheel of having to do more and more, eat less and less, not really lose weight, or even if you lose weight, you don't have much muscle and you become. What they call skinny fat, which is the second part of this in that doing too much cardio actually inhibits muscle growth, or even reduces or cannibalizes muscle tissue in the quest to become efficient because of a signal you're sending your body.

[00:23:03] Now it does interfere to some extent with lifting and that's a more nuanced topic for another time, but the take home message here is that some cardio is okay. And you have to be smart about it. For example, when I lift the forms of cardio, I like to use are walking. I think walking is awesome because it doesn't affect your joints.

[00:23:23] It doesn't interfere with recovery, between lifting sessions. You can enjoy nature if you're walking outside and it still burns a bunch of calories and it takes the edge off of your dieting. But other forms of cardio, I like occasionally would be some forms of high intensity interval. Like Tabata sprints are running shuttle runs and sled pushes sled poles, sled, drags, but re you want to limit the total amount of cardio time-wise to something like a quarter to half of your lifting time.

[00:23:53] Not really including things like walking again, walking or very easygoing biking, you could probably do. A lot of it, and it wouldn't interfere with your, if we piece all of this together, we get a good picture of maybe a more optimal way to burn fat. The most immediate route to fat loss is through your diet.

[00:24:13] We're talking about reducing fat, but as we know, reducing fat will take some muscle with it. So there's a smart approach to doing that. And we'll be talking about that in the next episode. The longterm sustainable route to fat loss is like we mentioned before, add muscle. And to do that, you have to do resistance training the way I've heard it said, which I really like is cardio burns, fat while exercising muscle burns fat while you're not exercising more lean tissue equals a higher metabolism, which makes it easier to lose weight later on.

[00:24:51] Or avoid getting fat while still eating more calories. And that is why I love strength training. That is why we're going to hammer that message home time. And again, the importance of adding lean mass to your body, because it helps your metabolism helps you control your diet, helps with fat loss. It's a more sustainable approach.

[00:25:10] And it's a lot of fun. All right, last but not least, I'm introducing a new segment today called the internet. Gets it wrong again. Where I look at the kind of information you get from a Google search when you're just trying to get a simple question answered and Google spits out tons of information that you have to sift through.

[00:25:28] Some of which is right, but most of which is not so right. For example, if you search for ways to increase my metabolism, you'll find several claims that just are not supported by the evidence or if they are they're so insignificant, they're not worth your. Now, the first claim is that metabolism just goes down when you get old and there's not much you can do about it.

[00:25:53] And that is just not true. The reason metabolism decreases as you age comes back to fat, free mass. As you age, you lose muscle mass and bone density. Therefore the lower fat free mass results in a lower metabolism. It's not just because of age. If you can counteract or increase your muscle tissue or bone density.

[00:26:14] As we've discussed multiple times through resistance training, then you can offset this idea that your metabolism declines with age. The second claim is about all these magic foods that can speed up your metabolism. I've seen green tea, chili peppers, even just eating more. We'll increase my metabolism.

[00:26:35] Now, now there might be a little kernel of truth to those in that they affect your digestion and they might burn a few extra calories here or there, but it really is insignificant and it's not worth deliberately going out of your way to try to eat more chili peppers, just to increase your. Just eat a good diet and you'll be fine.

[00:26:55] And the third claim is about using meal. Timing, eating early, eating late skipping meals to jumpstart, weight loss. At the end of the day, the calendar. Inside of the equation comes down to just that calories. And any attempt to manipulate that at the end of the day is measured in terms of calories. So stop trying to use quirky, weird ways to manipulate how and when to eat just in the interest of jump-starting your weight.

[00:27:25] I hope you enjoyed this examination of metabolism and its relationship with cardio fat loss and resistance training. And you're excited to use this information as we delve into diet in episode five, then in episode six, we'll talk about the systems and habits you can put in place to put your fitness and diet on auto.

[00:27:48] If you have questions for me or topics you'd like to hear in future episodes, just connect with me by email, Instagram or Facebook. All the links are in the episodes. Show notes.

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Ep 3: Why is Strength so Important?

Today’s episode is all about the “S” word—STRENGTH. What is it, why is it important, and how to get it.

If you’re listening to this podcast, it’s a safe bet that you have some sort of fitness related goal. You want to improve yourself physically in some way: build muscle, burn fat, get lean, get strong, improve athletic performance, look good in a bathing suit, or even improve mobility, flexibility, or balance.

What if there is one attribute above all others that permeates each of these attributes of fitness—that if you just focus on this attribute for a while as your top priority, it will translate to improvements in all those other attributes?

Well you’re in luck, and if I haven’t made it painfully obvious by the title and intro of this episode, that one fitness attribute is…strength!

In today’s episode, we cover:

• What do we mean by strength?

• Why is strength the most important fitness attribute?

• Assuming strength is so important, how do you get it?

RELATED LINKS

• Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training

• The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40

• The Fitness Wiki

🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW
At Wits & Weights, we help you shred fat, build strength, feel energized, and project confidence in your career and relationships without excessive dieting, cardio, or food restrictions.

👉 Just go to witsandweights.com/coaching to connect with me.

👥 To join our Facebook community for live training, free guides, free challenges, and more, just click here.

🙋‍♀️ HOW TO ASK A QUESTION FOR THE SHOW

• 👉 If you have any questions, just click here.

👨‍💻 HOSTED BY

• Philip Pape of Wits & Weights (Instagram 👉 @witsandweights)

👏 ENJOY THE SHOW? 

• Let me know by leaving a review in Apple Podcasts

👉 Apply for 1-on-1 coaching: witsandweights.com/coaching

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Transcript

This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.

[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast for busy professionals who want to get strong and lean with the strength training and sustainable. I am your host Philip Pape. And in each episode, we'll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry and a commitment to lifting heavy and eating right.

[00:00:31] Welcome to episode three of Wits & Weights. Today's episode is all about the S word strength. What is it? Why is it important and how to get it? If you're listening to this podcast, it's a safe bet that you have some sort of fitness related goal that is you want to improve yourself physically in some way, build muscle burn fat, get lean, get strong, improve athletic performance.

[00:00:59] Look good in a bathing suit. Or even improve mobility, flexibility, or. What if I told you there is one attribute above all others that permeates each of these fitness attributes, that if you just focus on this attribute for awhile as your top priority, it will translate to improvements in all the others while you're in luck.

[00:01:22] And if I haven't made it painfully obvious by the title and intro of this episode, that one fitness attribute is strength. In today's episode, we cover, what do we mean by. Why is strength the most important fitness attribute and assuming it's so important, how do you get it? Let's start by defining strength.

[00:01:44] Although 10 people might give 10 different answers. The definition we're concerned with is the production of force against. We're not concerned with power speed, your ability to do something without getting tired or your ability to do something quickly. Only your ability to overcome a force or load measured by absolute physical.

[00:02:08] Absolute strength is measured simply by the amount of force you can produce. As indicated by the weight you can lift. This could be measured by your one repetition, maximum, or one RM on a barbell movement. Like the squat bench press or deadlift, or it could be measured on other movements like the overhead press, the barbell row, or any number of exercises across multiple numbers of repetitions weather, three, five.

[00:02:37] If you're following a program where you perform three sets of five, you can measure strength by your maximum three by five weight. Once more strength is simply your ability to exert force on an object. And we'll measure that by the weight. Having to find strength. The next question is why is strength relevant in starting strength?

[00:03:00] Mark Rippetoe writes quote, physical strength is the most important thing in life. Our strength, more than any other thing, we possess still determines the quality and quantity of our time. Here in these bodies, a weak man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were strong and. Andy baker wrote that quote strength is foundational to a better life.

[00:03:24] There is no instance in life or sport where stronger isn't better and quote, these may sound like exaggerations, but my personal experience has shown me time. And again, that strength is so much more important than people think. Once you have it, you realize the physical and mental doors and opens, let alone vastly improving your health, fitness, and lunch.

[00:03:47] Unfortunately, the vast majority of so-called fitness programs from CrossFit to bootcamps, to orange theory, to P90X, and many others attempt to generalize across multiple fitness attributes without focusing on any one. In particular, for example, CrossFit claims to improve 10 attributes, cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, stamina strength, flexible.

[00:04:15] Power speed coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. Yet the physical reality is that all of these attributes have a common baseline in stress. Although many of these programs recognize this fact in their descriptions and guides, they don't prioritize strength above all else. I personally was stuck in this hamster wheel with a generalized fitness approach for many years when I finally prioritized strength, that is my ability to handle greater and greater loads on the bar.

[00:04:47] Everything else related to fitness became easier and progressed more. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the benefits of strength training? For many, it's getting big or jacked, but building mass, like that takes hard work and dedication over a very extended period. In fact, strength has a cornucopia of benefits that almost make it seem like a magical elixir.

[00:05:13] And for many who have worked to gain strength, that's not too far from the. In the barbell prescription strength training for life after 40 Jonathan Sullivan wrote that quote, strength training can slow arrest or even reverse many of the degenerative effects of aging, loss of muscle and strength, brittle bones, floppy ligaments, dysfunctional joints, and the decline of mobility and balance and quote.

[00:05:40] Now that sounds like the fountain of youth. According to the fitness Wiki, here are 10 more benefits of building. Improved ability to manipulate or move objects in day-to-day life, including yourself increased bone density, reduced risk of osteoporosis, improve balance, and reduce risk of falls. Reduce symptoms of arthritis, back pain, obesity, heart disease, depression, and diabetes.

[00:06:08] It can improve cognitive ability in older adults. It can improve blood pressure triglycerides. HDL cholesterol can reduce the risk of cancer. Broadly reduces the risk of injury can help maintain joint flexibility and improved ability to control weight gain through increased calorie. For athletes, strength can correct.

[00:06:31] Muscular imbalances, prevent injury, increase power or explosiveness and increase muscular endurance. Whoa, what a list I'm assuming you're now completely convinced that getting stronger is probably a wonderful idea, which brings us to the final question. How do we build strength? It really comes down to lift weights.

[00:06:56] Eat. Lift weights, eat and sleep. Repeat that's it. But I would be doing you a disservice if I left it at that, because as we know, a lot of things can be simple, but they're not necessarily easy. There are many roads that lead to the same destination, some more serpentine than others. And we are going to pay for ourselves the most efficient road we can to get to that destination based on.

[00:07:23] The decades of experience, personal anecdotes, research, knowledge and outcomes. We've seen whether it's among powerlifters, bodybuilders, or everyday folks like you and me who have been successful doing this at a high level, becoming stronger requires a few key elements, heavy resistance training with sufficient frequency and recovery.

[00:07:49] That includes. Eating enough food to create what we call an anabolic environment and eating enough protein to provide sufficient material to build muscle. Let's cover each of these in detail, we'll start with resistance training. There are many strength building programs out there. Some are much more optimal than others.

[00:08:14] And generally, if you pick one of them, you work hard, you stick to it. You'll make much more progress than someone who jumps around from program to program or even worse. Does. In episode two, we talked about how to choose a strength training program. So if you didn't listen to that episode, go back, revisit it, choose a program and start training.

[00:08:39] We established that the optimal approach is one that uses barbells and compound lifts. Namely the squat, deadlift and bench press with the addition of the overhead press and even power clean or barbell rows in some. The conclusion is that you must train heavy with sufficient frequency to build strength by heavy.

[00:09:04] I mean, the load on the bar is high enough to drive the appropriate stress on your body to put it objectively when you're a rank novice following a linear progression, that would be heavier than last time by some meaningful amount, whether that's two and a half, five or 10 more. This is why we use barbells and compound lifts.

[00:09:27] Let's reiterate that barbells allow you to train your entire physical system in a full range of motion with multiple joints recruiting, significant muscle mass. It aligns with the neuromuscular functional reality of our human anatomy, both skeletal and. Barbells let you control the weight over time.

[00:09:50] Whereas machines are the ones controlling you barbells also allow you to scale from very light, to very heavy in an efficient, consistent way. Therefore you can train heavy and progress. Also by heavy, I mean, not so heavy that you can't use proper form and control the movement as Greg knuckles puts it, quote, you should use something between the heaviest weight that you feel very comfortable and confident with and about 15% less than that.

[00:10:21] And if you choose a program like starting strength or the big three routine, you'll see that sets of five are a cornerstone of effective beginner strength. The strength spectrum is generally considered between one and eight reps, where five is the sweet spot for new lifters. And here's why let's say you did only singles the, so those are sets of just one rep you would be required to recruit the maximum force possible for the movement, fully engaging your neuromuscular system, which would provide an excellent stimulus for strength.

[00:10:58] But the volume perhaps is too low. On the other hand. Sets of say eight and above require much more muscular endurance because of the duration and cardiovascular requirements sets of five are a good compromise for novice. To stimulate an increase in strength while maintaining good form consistency, muscular coordination, and still benefit from multiple hard reps from an endurance perspective.

[00:11:26] If you followed my advice in episode two and started. You'll find soon enough, if you haven't already that sets a five can be very hard, especially the last few reps of the last few sets, but that's a good sign that you're applying a stimulus that your body has never experienced before. It teaches you how to do hard things.

[00:11:49] One of the realities you'll come to value over the years. And I say this from experience. Now when you're training this hard, you need time to recover before hitting those same muscles. Again, newer lifters can train more often because they recover quickly as quickly as 48 hours, even for the leg muscles.

[00:12:11] Workout sessions are shorter because rest periods are shorter when you were a newer lifter, as you get stronger, or as they say closer to your genetic potential over months and years, you'll place more stress on the body in each session requiring longer recipes. Thus longer workout sessions and more recovery between sessions.

[00:12:33] At that point, you transitioned from a beginner three days per week, full body style program to either a modified intensity program with longer sessions or something like a four or five day body parts split. Now, one of the keys to recovery, when you are resistance training is to avoid over. And that is when your performance can't recover sufficiently to enable the appropriate adaptation.

[00:13:02] And this leads to much harder and ineffective workouts, which then just sabotages your ability to recover and adapt. Lastly, you have to get sufficient and high quality. And for many, that means not being on a screen till right before bed and getting at least seven or eight hours of sleep per night, which may sound like an insane requirement for busy working professionals based on your habits, but is something that will pay off big time when it comes to recovery between lifting stuff.

[00:13:34] So that's resistance training. That is how we build strength in the gym. And we'll be talking about many more details behind lifting, training, rest periods, and so on in future episodes. But the next thing I want to talk about is getting enough food and getting enough protein. Now, maybe you didn't think we would talk about diet today and it's true.

[00:13:56] Today's episode, isn't the diet episode, but it's a fact that. Your body's a system and building strength requires lifting combined with the right kind of environment from a food perspective so that you're lifting actually pays off. So you have to eat enough food. It's a fact of biology that to build muscle, you must be in a caloric surplus, even if you're a brand new lifter, who's able to build muscle while losing.

[00:14:27] A caloric surplus is simply taking in more energy through your diet than your body burns each day. The easiest way to tell if you're doing this is by the weight on the scale. If you're gaining weight each week, you're headed in the right direction for packing on muscle and taking advantage of that new training program of yours that you're working so hard at.

[00:14:49] Let me go on a little. If you think you can't eat enough or gain weight, I want you to get out of your head. All the silly nonsense about being a quote, hard gainer or having any quote, fast metabolism. These aren't real, they're just excuses to avoid eating enough. If you are a human being. Your energy system is ruled by the law of energy balance.

[00:15:13] We'll get into much more detail on this in the next episode, which will be an exciting one full of useful information and plenty of myth-busting. But for now, just accept the fact that if you start training hard to build strength, you must eat enough to be in a caloric surplus. No excuses. Part of eating enough is also making sure you get enough protein.

[00:15:35] Even if you're eating enough calories, you'll need a sufficient amount of protein within those calories, they can't be all fat or carbs. Protein is required for muscle protein synthesis or put simply gaining muscle mass. Now how much protein is enough? This has always been the. And the subject has been exhaustively researched in recent years.

[00:15:56] The consensus seems to be that around 0.8 to one gram of protein per pound of body weight is a good target with no need to go much higher than 1.3 grams per pound. Despite all the bro science out there suggesting that you need hundreds of grams of protein per day. I personally shoot for one gram per pound each day.

[00:16:20] It's a nice round number. And if you fall short, you're still well in the ballpark. What does this look like for a 200 pound man? That's 200 grams of protein per day for a 150 pound woman. That's 150 grams. Now this might sound like a lot. This might be hard if you are not using. So stay tuned for our upcoming episode on diet and nutrition, where I break down a plan of action and some ideas for getting sufficient protein.

[00:16:48] But for now, look for ways to get closer to this target of 0.8 to one gram per pound, starting with things like. Eggs and dairy. All of this leads me to a concept called the stress recovery adaptation model, stress recovery adaptation, which neatly captures much of what we just talked about. First, you apply a new stress to your body with very heavy weight.

[00:17:17] At moderately low reps, we're talking the F one to eight rep range, but primarily around five for most of the effective beginner programs. Second, you give yourself enough time to recover. By resting, sleeping enough, eating enough and getting enough protein. Finally, your body then adapts as a protective survival mechanism to handle a slightly higher level of stress.

[00:17:42] Next time, next time you go to the gym, you have a new baseline and you should be able to lift a little more weight, and it does this by increasing your neuromuscular strength and muscle size, but only if you gave it enough fuel rest and sleep to. Stress recovery adaptation, the magical formula to building strength.

[00:18:05] All it requires of you is hard work, dedication, and consistency. Now here's a bonus tip. Even if your goal is just to have a better physique, just to look. You must have a baseline of strength to grow big dense muscles and support your ability to handle heavy enough high rep exercises. If, and when you Wade into the bodybuilding and hypertrophy world, you can't just jump in and start doing hypertrophy in the eight to 12 rep range and hope to gain much muscle mass.

[00:18:40] You have to lift heavy and gain strength. Let's recap, today's episode, we covered a lot of material, but I think it's important to understand deeply that which might become the foundation of your health and fitness for the rest of your life. My goal in this podcast is to help you become a highly educated, informed consumer and practitioner, an independent thinker and beholden to so-called fitness experts.

[00:19:09] Today, we talked about what we mean by strict. From a fitness perspective, why it's critical to the very essence of your health and all fitness attributes and how you can achieve greater strength through resistance training, eating enough food, getting enough protein and sufficient recovery to exploit the stress recovery adaptation model inherent in our biology.

[00:19:35] In our next episode, we'll talk about cardio fat loss and Metabo. Then episode five, we'll discuss how to approach your diet without going on a diet. We'll dive into a lot of the things we discussed here regarding calories and protein at a much deeper level and how you can put it into practice. And in episode six, we talk about developing systems and habits to put your fitness on auto-pay.

[00:20:01] If you have questions for me or topics you'd like to hear on future episodes, just connect with me by email, Instagram or Facebook. All the links are in the episodes. Show notes.

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Ep 2: How to Choose a Strength Training Program

This is the episode where we lay out our fitness philosophy and give you steps to take action right away.

Strength training is by far the most effective way to increase muscle mass, boost your metabolism, and improve your health in more ways than you can imagine, from mobility, balance, and flexibility to reduced risk of metabolic disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and injury. It also tests you physically and mentally because it’s hard—one of the best reasons for doing it!

Today is about getting you moving on a training program right away.

We will definitely cover some basic principles of strength training and muscle building, but we’ll save a deep dive into all things strength-related for the next episode, where we’ll examine in great detail WHY strength and resistance training are so important.

But today is all about ACTION. Getting you moving and lifting right away. No excuses.

RELATED LINKS

• Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training

• Greg Nuckols - 28 Free Programs

• Andy Morgan - The Big 3 Routine

• Barbell Logic "Gym Shorts" YouTube playlist

• The Fitness Wiki

• MyoTape Body Measure Tape

🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW
At Wits & Weights, we help you shred fat, build strength, feel energized, and project confidence in your career and relationships without excessive dieting, cardio, or food restrictions.

👉 Just go to witsandweights.com/coaching to connect with me.

👥 To join our Facebook community for live training, free guides, free challenges, and more, just click here.

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• Let me know by leaving a review in Apple Podcasts

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Transcript

This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.

[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast for busy professionals who want to get strong and lean with the strength training and sustainable diet. I am your host Philip Pape, and in each episode, we'll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry and a commitment to lifting heavy and eating right.

[00:00:31] Welcome to episode two of Wits & Weights. This is the episode where we lay out our fitness philosophy and give you steps to take action right away. Strength training is by far the most effective way to increase muscle mass boost your metabolism and improve your health in more ways than you can imagine.

[00:00:50] From mobility, balance and flexibility to reduce risk of metabolic disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. It also tests you physically and mentally, because it's hard and that's one of the best reasons for doing it. Today's about getting you moving on a training program right away. We'll definitely cover some basic principles of strength, training, and muscle building, but we're going to save a deep dive into all things, strength related for the next episode, where we'll examine in great detail, why strength and resistance training are so.

[00:01:28] But today is all about action. Getting you moving and lifting right away. No excuses. In today's episode, we cover strength, training lingo. We'll define key terms. So you can speak the language, the importance of training with a program instead of just exercising the requirements to train effectively for strength, the one category of lifting that meets all of those requirements and overview of the movements.

[00:01:55] You'll be. Choosing a program and measuring progress. And finally what to do next to get started this week. First, let's take a moment to define some terms. I'm not going to do this every episode, of course, but I think it's important to get familiar with what people mean when they say certain things in this universe, which can be kind of strange if you've never been in it before.

[00:02:23] So the first thing we're going to define is. Strength is simply the ability to exert force on an object. And for our purposes, strength can be measured by how much weight. That's it. If you're doing a squat, how much weight is on the barbell that measures your strength? The next term is hypertrophy. And I'm defining this early because I know you're going to want to hear about it.

[00:02:50] Uh, and most people getting into strain, training programs, you know, they just want to get big and muscular or they want to increase their muscle mass and hypertrophy is the increase in muscle mass due to. Muscle cell size or quantity increase, but here's a thing. Hypertrophy comes with strength. You don't need to separate the two until you're an immediate, intermediate or advanced lifter.

[00:03:16] And all you need to focus on now is to get stronger. You need to get bigger, but to get bigger, you need to get stronger. Thus, we focus on. Don't worry about hypertrophy. Worrying about hypertrophy takes you down a dark path of tons of exercise, variety, and all sorts of movements that you really don't need early on when you're just trying to build strength.

[00:03:43] The next definition is intensity intensity for our purposes is the weight or load. That's it, it's not how hard you're working or the reps you have left in the tank, or whether you're getting in a good sweat or how sore you are. It's just the weight on the bar. Let's talk about reps and sets and you're probably familiar with these concepts.

[00:04:09] Most people are, but let's just define them. A rep is a repetition or the number of times doing a complete movement. So, if you're doing deadlifts, how many times do you lift the bar off the ground and set it back down? That's a rep. Sets are the number of consecutive reps before taking a rest period. So if we go with that deadlift, if you do one deadlift, you set the bar down, you take a breath, you do another set the bar down, take a breath, and you do this five times and then you stop.

[00:04:46] That's a set of five. However, if you do a deadlift, set it down and you take 15 breaths and then do it again. I would consider those two separate sets of one rep. Now there's nomenclature. When it comes to sets and reps, that gets a little bit confusing for the most part, we're going to use the scheme of sets times reps.

[00:05:12] So if you do three sets of five reps, each we're going to say three by five and that's three X five. If you write it out. So three by five, if you see three by five, three sets of five, the next thing I wanted to find is a rest or rest period. And this is simply the time spent resting between sets. So that you can recover for the next set.

[00:05:39] So when, back to my deadlift example, if you did a set of five and you put the bar down and then you rested for one minute or three minutes or 10 minutes, that's your rest period. The next term, within the last two terms, I want to define our exercise and. Exercise can be one of two things. It can either be the movement itself.

[00:06:07] The back squat is an exercise or physical activity done for its own sake. So by just playing football, you're exercising or running, you're exercising or doing back squats, your exercise. Training on the other hand is physical activity or exercise to achieve a goal. And his goal could be strength. As in the weight on the bar keeps going up.

[00:06:35] It could be physique or aesthetics for some people, it could be performance. If you're. Regardless, you have a goal and then you have to have a plan to get there. And that's the way we are going to operate on this podcast and how I'd like you to operate in your life when you try to build muscle and get stronger and fitter as we move forward.

[00:06:56] Now, the question is, why should you follow a program or training versus random exercise? It really comes down to long-term sustainability and motivation, which is the number one reason people stick to or abandon a particular type of training or diet. If you have a structured plan to follow with specific days of the week, exercises , sets, reps and intensity, it's a lot easier to get motivated to go in the next day and execute you, preplan your workouts, you track your progress. You align all of these with your training goal, which in our case early on will simply be linear progression of weight on the bar and all of these things. They save you a ton of time and they eliminate excuses versus just randomly going to the gym.

[00:07:56] If we want to train for strength, we have to establish the requirements for our training program. What exactly are our parameters? What are our constraints? Because if we don't have those, then we're open to a whole world of possible selection. Do we use dumbbells? Do we use Bosu balls? Do we use yoga? Do we use high intensity interval training?

[00:08:24] What, what do we do exactly? So let's establish five requirements for an effective strength training program. The first is going to be intensity, as we said before, intensity is weighton the bar. So an effective training program will allow us to lift as much weight as possible. The second is efficiency.

[00:08:48] We're busy. We don't have time to go to the gym twice a day, six times a week, like an Arnold Schwarzenegger's bodybuilding encyclopedia, or like somebody competing for a powerlifting competition. We want to maximize our time in the. Train the most amount of muscle using the fewest number of lifts. The third requirement for an effective strength training program is progression.

[00:09:16] We need to be able to measure strength and progress objectively, session to session week to week, but also continue to increase over time. There are many exercises and movements that do not allow you to increase the weight beyond a few sessions they stall out, or it just doesn't make sense based on the movement and the muscles being recruited.

[00:09:42] So it has to be scaled. You have to be able to go from extremely light for somebody who may not be very strong or an older person, somebody who's physically limited all the way to very, very heavy using the same movement without changing the movement. The fourth criteria is safety. We want to avoid extreme high impact high stress type.

[00:10:09] And we'd like to take advantage of the range of motion that is natural to our anatomy, the longest range of motion that our body permits. This is a safe way to exercise and build strength. And finally, The last criteria is recovery. We need a program that allows us to recover so that we can continue to progress.

[00:10:34] And recovery means eating enough, sleeping enough and minimizing stress, which brings us back to what is the most appropriate type of exercise type of equipment that satisfies all of these requirements. And the answer is compound. Put simply a compound lift is a lift that involves more than one joint as opposed to a single joint movement.

[00:11:02] For example, when you do a barbell curl, you're only bending at your elbow. It's a single joint movement. In contrast, when you're doing a back squat, you're bending at the knees and the hips you're bending at the ankles. So it involves multiple genes. Compound lifts like these with barbells satisfy all five criteria.

[00:11:24] We mentioned earlier, let's go through them one by one intensity barbells by far, allow you to lift the heaviest. What about efficiency compound lifts because they involve multiple joints. They recruit many different muscles. Therefore you can minimize the number of exercises, reduce the exercise, variety, keep things simple and thus get through your workout much more quickly, fewer times per week and satisfy the efficiency.

[00:11:59] Next we have progression with barbells and compound lifts. We can continue to add weight for a very long time. We're going to use something called linear progress. We're the only thing you change from session to session is the weight on the bar and barbells are highly scalable. You can go from a, an empty barbell or even an empty lighter version of a barbell all the way up till you start adding weight.

[00:12:29] And then you can continue to add weight with the simple use of plates. The fourth criteria is safety and barbells. Really stand out here because with barbells, you can move in a full range of motion when you're doing a compound lift without undue stress on your joints. If you're doing it properly and with equipment like bar collars pins in the rack spot or on.

[00:12:55] You can have additional safety in the event of a failed rep, such as on a bench press. And of course, failed reps is something we want to avoid, but if, and when they happen, you want it to be safe and finally recovery, heavy lifting. Means that you only need to work out two or three days per week as a new lifter.

[00:13:17] And it gives you plenty of time between sessions to eat and sleep enough as opposed to doing five or six days a week of lots and lots of accessory or isolation exercises. It doesn't add undue stress like running or other quote unquote intense exercise. The next thing you might be asking is what if I don't have access to barbells and power racks, you're telling me I needed to do barbell lifts, but my gym only has machines and cardio equipment.

[00:13:47] My answer would simply be, get access right away. However you can, and you have a few options for this. So this, this should not be an excuse because barbell lifts are the way to go for maximum strength, gains and efficiency and all the other criteria we talked about. Your first option is to find the closest gym that does have barbells and power racks.

[00:14:11] And we'll let you deadlift, even if it's just a commercial gym, find one. The next option is to find a more specialized gym like power powerlifting, bodybuilding style, starting strength, gym that is geared toward clients like yourself who want that equipment. The third option, and this I highly recommend.

[00:14:34] Is to just buy a power rack, barbell and plates. However you can hustle. Look for sale. Go to the Facebook marketplace or Craigslist. That's how I got my first barbell in 40 fives is from a kid who graduated college. He no longer needed his equipment. Bought it from him, met him in a parking lot. It was cheap.

[00:14:55] Good deal. Good equipment. Talk to your friends, look for gyms going out of business, man. There's CrossFit gyms going out of business left and right, unfortunately, but during COVID, that's obviously an opportunity for you to find equipment. And then the other option is to mooch off of a friend who has their own home gym and buy them a bottle of whiskey.

[00:15:16] You've got to have that basic equipment to get started, what we will not be doing. And you do not have to worry about on any of these programs. Things like kettlebells medicine or Bosu balls, fixed plane, weight machines, you know, the kind in the gym where you sit down high intensity interval training, medium intensity, cardio, like running, or really any other cardio initially, other than brisk walking, if you love to do any of these things.

[00:15:47] Sorry, you want to not do them during the novice phase here and focus just on lifting. You can incorporate them later for fun, or if you have specific goals, but any cardio you do now will likely interfere with your ability to recover. And we want to focus on one goal at a time. And then later on, we can pull in sled pushes or things like that, that you might just enjoy sports and such.

[00:16:13] Now that we've established that. The big compound lifts with barbells are the most effective way to go for a strength training program. What do we do with those? What kind of movements are we talking about? And what we're going to examine now is what we call the big four. The big four movements are the squat, the deadlift, the bench press, and the press, which some people call the overhead press or the shoulder press.

[00:16:45] And we will just call the. Now you'll find a lot of programs, leave out the press and focus only on what they call the big three squat deadlift bench press, which are found in powerlifting competitions, but the overhead press, the press is in my opinion, an elegant, beautiful, technical exercise. You can tell I'm passionate about it, and it's superb for developing upper body strength.

[00:17:14] As well as things like balance and awareness, it's not just a shoulder exercise. Like people think it recruits lots of muscle mass from head to toe, but it can be a fickle themed to progress. So it teaches you resilience, precision timing, how to tackle hard things. If you can build to a one times body weight press, you're pretty darn strong.

[00:17:43] Programs like starting strength also incorporate a fifth big lift, the power clean. This is an Olympic lift, which is an explosive dynamic pulling movement that you can alternate with deadlifts to keep progressing. And you'll learn about these lifts in greater detail. Once you dive into the program you choose to go with.

[00:18:05] Now, we have to use correct form to avoid injury and optimize. Your results and your progress. There's so much misinformation out there about whether weightlifting or lifting is safe or not. And it usually comes down to people just not using correct form. And in my opinion, you want to treat this like a skill every time you do the movement, every warmup.

[00:18:30] Treat it like a skill that you're constantly refining and getting better at. There are many ways to improve your form. And I want to focus on this just for a minute before we talk about choosing a program, because I think it's that. The first thing you can do is start to read definitive guides on each of the movements.

[00:18:49] I would recommend something like starting strength by mark Rippetoe, which in my opinion has the most exhaustive, detailed explanation of each of the lifts. The explanation of the low bar back squat itself is probably 30 or 40 pages long. And for that very reason, you should seek it out. There are other guides online.

[00:19:11] Andy Morgan's ripped body website, I think has some good definitive guides on the big three. You can watch form videos. Go to YouTube places like barbell logic. Another way to improve form as you start training is to video all of your lifts and then watch them back yourself and compare them to high quality examples, whether they're online or in a book or even a written description, and just continue to find and be your own worst critic, find where you can.

[00:19:42] You can also post your videos online and get what's called a form. Check my warning. There is just to be very careful where you post them. For example, Reddit, although an awesome place for most communities and discussions, isn't often the best source of quality feedback on a form check. So look for groups that make sense.

[00:20:02] For example, I'll mention starting strength. Again, they have an open Facebook group you can join and people get some really good form checks. The next two tips I have in terms of form and technique has to do with hiring a coach. I strongly believe hiring a coach, even for one or two sessions will help greatly accelerate your ability to do the form correctly because you'll get that second pair of eyes who can tell you immediately the 10 things you're doing wrong.

[00:20:31] Can work on, and I've done this several times where I'll just hire a coach for one session and say, I want to work on my squat today. And out of it, I learned so much way more than I would have learned from these other methods. You could also find a good power lifting type. Make friends with the other lifters, with the coaches and get feedback that way or hire an online coach, especially with the pandemic and people working remotely, everyone starting to build their own home gyms.

[00:21:00] This is an excellent option for getting feedback and working on your skill. The way it works is typically you take a video, you send it to your coach and they get back to you. I have heard of coaching where they'll do it live over. The next step is choosing a program. I suggest selecting a program that lots of people have used successfully rather than trying to write your own program, especially if you're just getting started.

[00:21:26] There's no need to do that. We're going to talk about four. Programs, you could consider, there are many, many more out there, but these are four that I would recommend you look into and choose what works best for you. And the first program we'll talk about, which is the program that really helped me make significant progress is starting strength.

[00:21:48] This is a book written by mark. Rippetoe the thing that I really like about it and why I recommend it highly is it is extremely. It focuses on just the big lifts and you will make significant progress. And that's all we're looking for. The starting training program focuses exclusively on sets of five important.

[00:22:11] Not, not for the reason. A lot of people think a lot of people say, well, the strength rep range is one to five and then the hypertrophy rep ranges, maybe six to 12. So it's more on the strength side, although it is a balance between those and maybe it's that kind of sweets. The most important thing is that it keeps you focused on going heavy.

[00:22:36] If you're doing sets of eight or 12, it disincentivizes really pushing the intensity up. Also doing sets of five keeps things simple from a numbers perspective, from an exercise and movement perspective. You're not going to do leg presses or bicep curls. If you're trying to do heavy sets of five.

[00:22:57] Starting strength also provides, I mentioned this earlier, but a definitive explanation, a guide to form and technique on the big lifts on the squat, the deadlift, the bench press the press and the power clean. And the book does go into other accessory movements. It talks about chin ups and even things like barbell.

[00:23:23] Practically speaking, what does it look like? It's extremely simple. When you are brand new, when you're a novice, there are two workouts and you alternate these two workouts over three days a week. So we'll call them workout a and work out. So week one, you'll do a, B a, then we too. It's B a B, and you continue in that fashion until you get to the next phase.

[00:23:53] Workout a is three by five squats, three by five, press one by five deadlifts, deadlifts are considered highly stressful and they don't recommend doing more than one. So it's squats, press deadlift. Workout. B is three by five squats. So notice you're doing squats again, three by five bench and one by five deadlift.

[00:24:22] So you're squatting and deadlifting every other day during the week, then you take the weekend off and you do it again. And then you're alternating the press and the bench. Again, work out a is three by five squats, three by five, press one, buy five deadlift workout. B is three by five squat, three by five bench, press one by five deadlift.

[00:24:44] So the only difference being the press and the bench press, and you want to pick the days that are convenient for you generally, this is going to be Monday, Wednesday. But you could do Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. And if you are extremely pressed for time, you could reduce the frequency to two days a week.

[00:25:04] You just won't make progress as quickly. It is critical that you have at least one day off between any two training days. This is key to recovery. And as the saying goes, you don't get strong under the bar. You get strong. Between workouts, you don't get strong while you're working out. You get strong while you sleep.

[00:25:25] Now, the one thing I didn't mention it is probably the most important aspect of this program that you need to add weight to the bar. Every time you do a movement, the next day you do that movement. So you're squatting every single cell. You should be adding five pounds or initially it could be as high as 10 pounds.

[00:25:43] If you're brand new and not very strong at all, it might be 10 pounds than it'll be five and it could even drop to two and a half pounds on something like the press or the bench press deadlifts might go up by 10 pounds for quite a while, till you scale them back to going up by five pounds. Now, eventually the deadlift is going to get quite hard.

[00:26:06] It's generally going to be. Far ahead of the squat. And this is pretty quickly like within a month, potentially of starting, in which case you then move to the next phase and you're going to replace the deadlift with a power clean, every other workout. And the power clean is a whole different movement that requires a special skill, and you really have to pay attention to the explanation of the.

[00:26:31] Watch videos get a coach, if you can. It's a lot of fun if you're older, like, and when I say older, I mean maybe in your sixties or higher, or for whatever reason, can't do a power clean, not everybody has to power clean. There are alternatives like doing other pole movements. Pull-ups chin-ups even barbell rows, but this is the program.

[00:26:56] Then when, after a few more weeks and you get the power of. Inc. You moved to the next phase of the novice linear progression. And in this case, you're actually going to add in chin. To get some more upper body volume. And for the guys out there who want big guns, big biceps, chin-ups, we'll do wonders for your biceps.

[00:27:16] You don't even need girls. This phase can actually go on for quite a while and you're going to start feeling it get harder and harder, especially as you push up for guys. For example, once you get into the two hundreds on the squat for the first time ever. You might start to feel it now everybody's different.

[00:27:35] Some guys are very strong naturally. So they're going to push up toward maybe the three hundreds and their novice progression, but most sits somewhere between. I want to say 2 25 and 2 75, by the time they get toward the end of their linear progression and you get to the final phase and you're backing off on frequency of the deadlifts and the power cleans because the deadlifts are just getting so heavy in terms of progression.

[00:28:04] The suggestion is that you start with an empty bar. Now, if you've been lifting for a long. You may be able to start with more weight than that. If you know, for a fact on a back squat, you could easily start at 95 pounds or 135 pounds, you know, your body, you know what you can do, do what makes sense. But the recommendation is to start with an empty bar and then start adding weight because you're doing the lifts so frequently.

[00:28:28] It won't take long to increase to a reasonable level of intense. Now the thing is here. You, you want to be proactive in terms of when you think you're starting to get to your limit, do you think you're actually going to potentially fail one of your sets in the next workout? If you go up by five pounds again, could you then instead go up by two and a half to avoid failing.

[00:28:50] We want to avoid failing the reps for as long as we can, but if you do you try it the next time you try the same weight next. Eventually you will start to plateau. And this is when you're heading towards your intermediate phase. And if you're listening to this and just getting started on this, you haven't even started training.

[00:29:09] So we're talking several months out from now, but it will happen. And at that point we have to discuss things like backing off resetting deloads moving to four day or five days, splits, changing frequency, changing to periodization, all of those kinds of advanced concepts. When you're done with linear progression, but for now, the key is to add weight to the bar, every session and get big and strong.

[00:29:37] That's all I'm going to say on that program. I could get into things like warmups and diet and so on, but go ahead and look it up. Read the book. Go to the website, startingstrength.com. I have no affiliation. I just love the program. It worked wonders for me, and I think it's great for a lot of folks that try it because it's simple and it works and you progress pretty quickly and get bigger and stronger.

[00:30:01] Let's move on to the second program you might want to check out, which is by Greg knuckles. Greg knuckles is the head of content at stronger by site. And I absolutely love their podcasts that are one of the podcasts that I've inspired me over the years. And I listened to it every time it comes out. He also is behind the new nutrition app.

[00:30:23] This is the app that I've been using since it came out not very long ago, it's called macro factor. And I will be talking more about that app in the upcoming episode about diet. But in the meantime, I think if you subscribe to the stronger by science newsletter, I'll include a link in the show notes.

[00:30:42] You'll get 28 free. Programs that he's put together. And they're very simple. What I like about his free programs is he simply splits the programs up by Lyft, the big three. In his case, he lets you choose a frequency and how to put them together. And then he gives you various combinations of how you can do this.

[00:31:03] So if you're looking for kind of a mix and match with the big three and keeping it super simple, check out Greg knuckles, 28 free program. The next program I want to mention is called the big three routine by Andy Morgan at rippedbody.com. And again, I'm not affiliated with any of these. I just think they're good programs, but again, I'll have a link in the notes.

[00:31:26] This again is focused on the big three. Five by five and it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and he has them split up in a certain way. That's explained on the website, he's got some very definitive guides, tutorials and videos that I think would be extremely helpful, even if you don't use one of his programs.

[00:31:47] And then the last resource I'll mention. The fitness.wiki, which is associated with the fitness subreddit. And I recommend checking out this site because it has a bunch of guides on muscle building, strength, training programs, and so on. And they actually have something called a beginner routine. They suggest running it for no more than three months after which you're ready to move on to intermediate.

[00:32:16] It is actually quite similar to starting strength in some ways, because it's three by fives. It's a workout, a and a workout B and three days a week. Alternating workout a is three by five barbell rows three by five bench, three by five squat. So the squat comes last and then workout B is three by five.

[00:32:38] Chin-ups, three by five press and three by five debts. And then they suggest a specific progression two and a half pounds for the upper body lifts, five pounds to the lower body lifts. And then some rules based on how many reps you get, or if you fail and so on, it's has a little more complexity. It also incorporates some specific conditioning requirements, but I think it's still a good program to check out.

[00:33:05] And that brings us to the first action for you in this podcast. And that is to choose one of these programs. Do this today, pick a program, review some of these by the books, or get the eBooks or borrow it, go to the library, whatever it takes, learn about them. There's plenty of information online and then figure out how you're going to track your.

[00:33:31] The simplest way is just use a notebook. I do love technology. So there are apps out there like strong or stacked or train heroic. If you're working with a coach to track. Now that you've chosen a program and have a way to track it. I'd like you to consider measuring progress, taking a baseline, and then measuring yourself going forward.

[00:33:54] Since you're just getting started, it'll be an excellent resource to look back on in the. And to do this first, I would suggest taking some before photos, then take some before measurements. Now I think these are a bit more important for tracking progress, and these would include your weight, your waist, your chest, your biceps, and your thoughts.

[00:34:19] You can use something like the Mio tape and I'll include a link in the show notes. And this allows you to measure yourself without the help of someone else. And I suggest taking measurements now and then every week and write them down or use a spreadsheet. Now I want to give you a couple of bonus tips that are important before we recap the episode and talk about your plan.

[00:34:43] When building muscle, you must eat enough to gain weight. If you do not eat enough, everything else we talked about will be somewhat of a waste of time. You're just not going to make gains. Yes. If you're totally new to this, you will gain initial strength through what's called neuromuscular Adams. And you'll even gain muscle and lose fat because you've never lifted heavy things before, but that will plateau quickly enough without enough food.

[00:35:15] We'll be talking about diet in episode five, but at a minimum to start, just make sure your weight every week is going up. Not down second. You must get enough sleep to recover. And don't do silly things like long distance running or other physical activities that will exhaust you and prevent you from coming into the gym.

[00:35:37] The next session, adding weight to the bar and hitting all your reps. This will only slow you way down. Let's recap. And talk about your plan of action. We talked about the requirements for an effective strength training program. Why compound lifts are the most efficient way to do. And they satisfy all of those criteria and the best programs for getting started.

[00:36:04] Here's what you'll do next first, choose a program. Second, get access to a barbell third, get a notebook or download a workout app to track. Fourth, take initial body measurements and repeat every week, fifth start training right away. Get under a barbell in our next episode, we'll talk about why we care so much about strength in episode four, we'll cover cardio fat loss and metabolism.

[00:36:36] Episode five. We'll discuss how to approach your diet without going on a. And in episode six, we talk about developing systems and habits to put your fitness on autopilot.

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Ep 1: Let's Get Strong Together

Welcome to the very first episode of Wits and Weights: Strength Training for Skeptics.

If you’re a skeptical, critically-minded person like me, you’ve probably gotten tired of what the modern-day so-called fitness industry has to offer, and you just want to know what actually works.

Not only that, you’re probably a busy, working professional with a full-time job or perhaps you own your own business or run several side hustles, so time is at a premium. Can you actually build a stronger, healthier body and maintain a sustainable, active lifestyle?

The answer is an emphatic YES.

Plenty of everyday folks have figured out what works in terms of exercise, nutrition, habits, mindset, and lifestyle, but there is so much information out there—even from highly respectable sources—that it can be overwhelming to distill it down to a single, focused plan that works for you.

That’s why I created this podcast.

On this very first episode, learn about my background, the importance of strength, and what you can expect in future episodes.

RELATED LINKS

• Finding Your Strength Radio podcast (Romeo Athletics)

🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW
At Wits & Weights, we help you shred fat, build strength, feel energized, and project confidence in your career and relationships without excessive dieting, cardio, or food restrictions.

👉 Just go to witsandweights.com/coaching to connect with me.

👥 To join our Facebook community for live training, free guides, free challenges, and more, just click here.

🙋‍♀️ HOW TO ASK A QUESTION FOR THE SHOW

• 👉 If you have any questions, just click here.

👨‍💻 HOSTED BY

• Philip Pape of Wits & Weights (Instagram 👉 @witsandweights)

👏 ENJOY THE SHOW? 

• Let me know by leaving a review in Apple Podcasts

👉 Apply for 1-on-1 coaching: witsandweights.com/coaching

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Transcript

This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.

[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast for busy professionals who want to get strong and lean with the strength training and sustainable diet. I am your host Philip Pape, and in each episode, we'll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry and a commitment to lifting heavy and eating right..

[00:00:32] Hey guys, welcome to the very first episode of Wits and Weights: strength training for skeptics. I'm extremely excited to let you know what I'm all about and give you a sneak preview of what you can expect on this podcast. If you're a skeptical, critically minded person like me, you've probably gotten tired of what the modern day so-called fitness industry has to offer.

[00:00:54] And you just want to know what actually works. Not only that you're probably a busy working professional with a full-time job, maybe two or three, or perhaps you own your own business or run several side hustles. So time is at a premium, let's say you can only get to the gym two days a week. Can you actually build a stronger, healthier body and maintain a sustainable active lifestyle?

[00:01:18] This way? The answer is an emphatic. Yes. Plenty of everyday folks have figured out what works in terms of exercise, nutrition, habits, mindset, and lifestyle. But there is just so much information out there even from highly respectable sources that it can be overwhelming to distill it down to a single focused plan that works for.

[00:01:43] That's why I created this podcast. Like you, I'm busy with a career and family, and I didn't truly understand the importance of strength as a foundation of fitness until my late thirties, just a few short years ago, just to get it out there. I turned 41 right before this podcast went live on this episode.

[00:02:03] First, I'd like to tell you my story and why the heck you'd even want to listen. Then we'll talk about why strength is so important. Perhaps the most important aspect of fitness and health. Finally, we'll preview some of the really cool topics we'll examine in upcoming episodes related to resistance training, especially with barbells fat loss and body recomposition exercise, selection, form technique, programming, recovery, and adaptation, and many other topics from foundational to.

[00:02:38] All right, please indulge me while I share a bit about my background. So you'll understand why this podcast and becoming strong and healthy are so important to me. For most of my life. I was not at all. Athletic, never participated in organized sports and lived the sedentary life of a desk jockey with a job that has me sitting in front of a computer.

[00:03:01] All. During my twenties and thirties, I very inconsistently went to commercial gyms and very inconsistently, tried to quote unquote exercise. Usually this involved, the clumsy sweat inducing use of a treadmill or elliptical machine, and maybe 10 minutes playing around with strength machines. You know, the ones where you get to sit down, there's a label that tells you how to use it.

[00:03:26] And you whip out a few sets of lots of lightweight. Needless to say this, didn't put a single pound of lean muscle on my frame, which vacillated between skinny, fat and fluffy. Over the years in my thirties, I found CrossFit. I had decided that with my wife pregnant with our first daughter and me about to become a father, I needed to step it up and get in shape.

[00:03:52] Although it's far from the most effective way to gain strength and I don't do it anymore. CrossFit introduced me to three new concepts that changed my life: barbells, coaching, and physical transformation. First barbells, many people correctly, in my opinion, credit CrossFit with reintroducing barbells to the general population, not to mention the squat, deadlift and Olympic.

[00:04:19] I had never touched a barbell in my entire life. So the first time I realized an empty bar, weighed a whopping 45 pounds, surprised me, but I also learned that a barbell holds great power due to its uncanny ability to allow a human being, to move very heavy loads, using safe, natural, full range of motion, multi jointed.

[00:04:44] After all squatting picking things up, pushing and pulling our primal to our anatomy.

[00:04:50] Second is coaching other than low paid unskilled, personal trainers and commercial gyms. I had never worked with a coach who would watch me lift and then give me immediate cues and feedback to. Say what you will about certifications and experience the value of having a training partner, coach, or even someone online to look at a video of you lifting cannot be understated if you want to make meaningful progress and improve your form and technique.

[00:05:21] Third CrossFit introduced me to the idea that I could physically manipulate and transform my body through sheer effort. And. Mind you CrossFit doesn't use the principles of linear progression, periodization and objective tracking that we'll talk about in later episodes when it comes to having an effective strength training program.

[00:05:45] But given that I was previously sedentary, the sudden use of barbells and conditioning workouts showed me that. Yes, despite what I thought was my so-called bad genetics. I can indeed improve my fitness and body. By the way the CrossFit gym I attended later evolved into a strength focused facility called Romeo athletics in Enfield, Connecticut of which I'm still a proud member.

[00:06:11] It's owned by Andrew Romeo and you'll hear clips of an interview I did on his podcast. Finding your strength radio in a future episode. It wasn't until two years ago, when I realized progress had stalled years earlier, that I changed my mindset on this whole fitness thing from an inconsistent hobby to a dedicated, focused educational and training pursuit.

[00:06:35] I discovered I needed to take my research and learning to a completely new level. And I began to voraciously consume books, videos, interviews, and podcasts on the subject while gaining direct expertise and experience through heavy barbell training. I also engaged various mentors and coaches posted form checks became active in online communities and started tracking everything with the most contemplative, serious ethos I could.

[00:07:04] That led me to the epiphany. That strength appears to be the pillar of all other aspects of health. And. Want to lose fat, add muscle Want to throw your grandkids in the air. When you're 70, get stronger. Want to avoid injury, metabolic diseases of aging, sarcopenia osteopenia, you need more muscle. Want to increase your metabolism, increase your athletic power or survive a harrowing physical ordeal.

[00:07:31] The answer is strength. And for those fathers out there who want to be an intimidating presence to your daughter's future suitors get big and strong. Having realized this universal truth. I got honest about my training. I buckled down, selected the appropriate program, dialed in my nutrition, which often means eating more, not less and proceeded to gradually get stronger and pack on muscle.

[00:07:56] I'm excited to share the details of my personal habits, training, eating, and progress in future episodes. Strength training is setting a goal, developing a plan, executing that plan and objectively measuring your progress toward that goal until it's achieved. And that is what we're going to do together on this.

[00:08:18] With wits and weights. My goal is to help busy professionals get strong and lean through lifting and eating like a normal human being so they can achieve physical self-mastery to do that. I'm going to draw on personal experience, well vetted sources of information, such as people who have been successful in their fitness.

[00:08:40] The latest evidence-based, but practical findings from the research and comments, reviews, and Q&A from you the listener, I may also experiment with different formats. Initially this'll be a solo podcast, but I may also do interviews live Q&A or even live mentor, coaching and future. Most importantly, I plan to lay out specific actions.

[00:09:04] In each episode you can use and apply right away. Here's a sneak preview of what you can expect in the next few episodes. The next episode is already available for download and future episodes will come out every two weeks. So make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out. In episode two, which as I said, should already be in your download queue.

[00:09:25] If you subscribe to the podcast, I cover how to choose a training program. I think this will get you started in thinking about and taking action on learning to lift properly and developing your initial foundation of strength. We keep things simple and discuss the various programs out there. Programs I have used and how to choose the right one.

[00:09:47] Episodes three through six cover foundational topics to give you a well-rounded base of information to help you separate what's important from what's not as important, including why do we care so much about. The truth about cardio fat loss and metabolism, how to approach diet without being on a diet and developing systems and habits to put your fitness on autopilot.

[00:10:14] After episode six, we will start to dig deeper into all of these topics and more such as dissecting form and technique on the big barbell lifts , rest periods, warmups, how to calculate metabolism and body fat. The truth about supplements, why walking is awesome, how to build a sweet home gym and many more.

[00:10:37] Finally, each episode will have one or more unique segments, such as listener Q&A. Just send me an email, DM me on Instagram @witsandweights or post in our WitsAndWeights subreddit. And we'll feature those on future episodes. I personally love listening to Q&A episodes on other podcasts. So I think it could be awesome to take those topics that you really care about and talk about them here.

[00:11:02] In other segments, I might break down a research paper or critically examine what the internet has to say about a particular fitness. That's just a sampling of what's to come. And I, for one, am extremely excited to start this adventure with you, the listener in a way I'm envious of those who are in an early phase of their strength training journey, because that's when all the wonderful discoveries and progress.

[00:11:28] But I'm equally excited for our more advanced listeners and lifters who might learn something new or contribute to the podcast through our listener community.

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Wits & Weights podcast trailer

In this trailer episode, Philip introduces the new podcast Wits & Weights: Strength Training for Skeptics.

Wits & Weights is a bi-weekly podcast that helps you become stronger, leaner, and just an overall healthier human being with straightforward, no-nonsense education and strategies.

We’ll talk about lifting, eating right, how to train with barbells, programming, dieting without being on a diet, and answer listener Q&A to dig into YOUR favorite topics.

If this sounds awesome to you, you can help support us by subscribing to the show.

If you enjoy the show, let me know by leaving a review in Apple Podcasts!

Subscribe for FREE in your favorite podcast app:
Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Google Podcasts • Overcast • Amazon Music • RSS

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