Volume for muscle, macros for cutting, free weights vs machines, and more!

Welcome to the No Bull Just Bacon fitness, nutrition, and health podcast with Dr. Allan and Coach Beth!

All of your fitness and nutrition related questions answered...in one place...by the best in fitness.

Show Topics (in order):

1) What is the most reliable formula to calculate maintenance calories?

2) Does starting bf% matter before doing a build?  If so, what % for men and women?

3) Which is better for building muscle, strength, and function: free weights or machines?

4) When cutting, where should carbs and fats fall? (An in-depth discussion on how to set protein, carbs, and fats depending on whether you are building or cutting)

5) Can a trained athlete really build muscle at maintenance?

6) Can 2 full body lifting days be enough to build muscle during menopause?

7) Why is beef protein isolate not counted towards protein intake? (An in-depth discussion on collagen, gelatin, beef protein isolate)

8) Do I need to worry about spikes in blood sugar?

9) I'm in a calorie deficit and I eat inadequate protein, what happens?  (Discussions surrounding inadequate protein, then challenges for plant-based diets)

10) For muscle gain, how many working sets per muscle would you recommend? (An in-depth discussion on how to set up your working set volume and frequency)

11) Training legs twice per week, yes or no and why?

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Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Welcome everybody to the Noble Just Bacon podcast where we go
over all of your questions from the social media sphere,
Facebook, Mighty Networks, our YouTube, our Instagram accounts,
everything that is a burning question in fitness, nutrition
and health today. Let's get started.
We've got a ton of backed up questions.
We want to be able to cover as many as we possibly can to help

(00:26):
you all out. First question, what is the most
reliable formula to count to calculate maintenance calories?
So this is kind of a loaded question from the start because
all of these calorie equations are guesstimates at best.
And people really need to understand that this is just a
guess. So it may or may not be remotely

(00:49):
accurate for you. You're going to have to make
adjustments based off of your activity levels, based off of
how you progress. If I was gun to my head, forced
to give somebody an answer to this question, I would tell them
to use probably the Cunningham equation if you are a more
seasoned athlete, if you have a little bit more lean muscle, or
the Mifflin St. Gior equation if you're an

(01:10):
average person. Now both of these work decently
well within the athletic population.
So I kind of skew towards athletic populations because the
more and more experience that you become and the better your
body comosition becomes, the more that these are thrown off
an so we want to air towards these tyes of equations.
Now, like I said though, if you're asking this question, you

(01:30):
probably are less thoroughly versed in nutrition and making
these adjustments. I would highly recommend that
you reach out to a coach and at least work with a coach for
three, six months, something like that to be able to figure
out one where you're tracking inaccurately.
Because I guarantee you that you're going to be tracking in
accurately. And even people that we find

(01:51):
have been doing macros for years, almost everyone across
the board is tracking wrong whenthey start to work with us and
we cure up some of those little deficiencies in the way that
we're doing because they're. The problem with this is there
are things that you may not knowthat you're doing.
And it's not that you're intentionally trying to lie to

(02:12):
yourself or cause any of these issues, but you don't know what
you don't know. And understanding that can be a
very powerful thing. And for those of you that follow
us on Instagram, you would have noticed that my post this
morning actually talks about this distinctly.
When people who have categorize themselves as people with slow
metabolisms, they've tried 20 diet attempts or more without

(02:34):
success and they track calories,we find that a mean error is
over 1000 calories. There are 1000 calories off they
are doing. They're claiming that their
activity levels are 250 caloriesmore than they are.
And so you're probably not as atextreme as this is, but for

(02:55):
those of you that are tracking, you probably do have errors.
And I mean, even people like registered dietitians, when we
look at them in the research, they're about 223 calories off.
So if a registered dietitian, a person that has made this their
entire life's journey is off by almost an entire Snickers bar
per day, you're probably off by a little bit more.
So being conscious of this, being very honest with yourself

(03:17):
and being critical of your logs,the nutrition information that
you're using, the way that you measure these things is a very
important thing. And like I said, if you need
help, certainly reach out to a coach, go to mauiathletics.com.
We're there to help you. But there are a lot of pitfalls
using these calorie calculators and trying to track on your own

(03:37):
that people just don't really realize are there.
You know, some of the bigger ones that I would look into are
are you weighing raw versus versus cooked?
Are you paying attention to volume measurements versus
weight measurements? You know, people have a tendency
to do things like whey protein where they will say I'm using a
scoop or peanut butter where they're saying I'm using a

(03:59):
spoonful. And these are just not accurate
measures. You have to use raw weights if
it is not a liquid. You can use volume if it's
something like vegetable oils orextra virgin olive oil or you
know, something that you're mixing in with your coffee, you
can certainly use volume measurements there.
But there are a lot of things like rice vegetables in in, in

(04:23):
the sense that you're getting some of those higher calorie
vegetables like corn or or potatoes.
Using a cup is not an accurate measure and you can be off by
over 100 calories for each serving of that that you do.
So if you're doing this every day or you're doing this
multiple meals per day, you could be off 56700 calories.
And like I said, the study in the people that had obesity and
claimed that they were, that they were slow metabolizers and

(04:45):
this was over 200 participants, literally none of them were out
of bounds from what the predicted equation should put
them at. So they all showed that they had
accurate metabolisms, but their tracking was so far off that it
caused all of these major issuesand it became a very frustrating
point. Do you have anything else to add
to that, Beth? Yeah, I mean, the the tracking

(05:06):
issues aren't always necessarily, you know, raw
versus cooked, that kind of thing.
It's also, I think a lot of it comes from people aimlessly kind
of putting food into their mouths, not really realizing
that they're doing that. Like if they're cooking dinner
and they have a couple bites of potato chips or they're cleaning
up their kids plate and they eatthe, you know, the last three

(05:29):
chicken Nuggets that were on their kids plate.
And they don't even, they might not even remember at the end of
the day that they ate those things.
And I think that's actually where a lot of people, moms in
particular, get screwed up on this kind of stuff is actually
eating stuff that they don't even remember at the end of the
day we're. Not tracking stuff that they ate
yourself. Yeah, yeah.
Like they don't stop in that moment and then go track it and

(05:51):
log it. And that can account for four or
five 600 calories by the end of your day.
The other thing about maintenance that I think is
important for people to know is that it's a range.
So because you're, you're going to sort of wax and wane over the
course of a maintenance period, depending on how long you're
there and if you're there forever, if you're living there
for the rest of your life, theremay be some periods of time

(06:14):
where you're less active, you move around a lot less than you
normally do, your neat decreases.
So for a couple months, like if you get injured or have a
surgery or something like that, your maintenance might drop by
200 calories a day. You know it.
So I want, I don't want people to think, think of maintenance
is a hard number. I want people to think of

(06:34):
maintenance as a range in a spectrum that is constantly
shifting. And if you are, if you're seeing
scale creep, So if you're seeingthose pounds start to slowly add
on and add on, you're no longer in maintenance and you would
need to adjust your calorie level down.
Even though the equation for it might be correct.

(06:56):
I want people to know that this is a, this is a range that's
going to constantly be moving. Yeah.
And that's a great point. I mean, there's certainly a lot
of things that add into metabolism and it's different
than just resting metabolic rate.
And I think the people really, you know, the people that are
big proponents against things like calories in, calories out.
Calories in calories out is as far as as can be 100% proven as

(07:16):
anything in. Science unit of measure.
It's a unit of measure of measure.
It's energy within the system. I mean, the laws of
thermodynamics are immutable as far as we understand.
That we call them laws. But people erroneously think
about this in different ways, like what you take in the the
number that you take in versus the number that goes out will
always determine weight loss or weight gain.

(07:38):
But certain things can affect that.
I mean, if you have hyper hypothyroidism that can drop
your resting metabolic rate 30 to 40% in the worst cases.
And so it's not the calories in calories out doesn't work, it's
that your calories out is much lower compared to somebody that
had a thyroid that functions. So calories in, calories out is
still 100% working, You just don't realize that it's working

(07:58):
and it's shifted because of something that might be
happening. Now, the good thing about
hypothyroidism, it's only about four percent, 4.6% of the
population. So it's not a ton of the
population. So there's a 95% chance that
it's not you. And so this gives us a better
idea of where we can look to figure out what's going on if
you have stalled in a weight loss journey.

(08:19):
And that's really important, accepting the fact that it is
probably something that you're doing unconsciously.
Probably, Yeah. Because I do believe that people
really are honest and they're trying really hard.
And I think that people take this as like an affront or, or.
If they take it very personally when you tell them that, they're
not tracking right. And that's not what this is at
all. They're not you're, you know, if
you say you're not eating 1200 calories a day, they take that

(08:40):
very personally. It's like you're not a bad
person, like, but you're not eating 1200.
I can almost guarantee you that you're not eating 1200 calories
a day. No, but let's, Let's assume that
a person is because I want to give a frame of reference here
so people can become more comfortable along this journey
and then maybe really understandwhat's going on with their body.
Because if you have this information, then you can become

(09:01):
more comfortable in understanding what's going on.
If we look at the average woman,the average woman's resting
metabolic rate in the United States is about 14150 calories,
14150. Now to lose body fat, we need to
be 250 to 500 calories. That's where we want to be
optimally to lose body fat and retain as much lean muscle as

(09:24):
possible. When we're doing that so
automatically that puts us down below 1000 calories.
Now that's just resting metabolic rate.
Now we add in activity and activity can be anywhere from
depending on how sedentary you are, can be like 400 calories to
like 2000 calories if you work on a farm and you're working 10
or 12 hour work days on a farm. So are you working on a farm?

(09:48):
And I would say most people aren't.
So we probably fall anywhere between 400 and maybe 1000
calories. So if we were below 1000
calories already, it is conceivable that you would need
to get below 1300 calories to actually lose weight.
Now, this is an interesting conversation to have because

(10:08):
when you talk about this with people that have been on social
media, they say, Oh well, if you're below like, and it's
somewhere around 12 or 1300 calories that everybody always
quotes. And I don't know why they quote
that. But if they quote that number,
people will always say if you'rebelow that you're going into
this metabolic damage and that kind of stuff.
And that's not happening. No, you're probably either

(10:29):
miscalculating what you're putting in or you're a very
small sedentary person. So you might be counting
correctly and you might be 5 twoand you might not have much
muscle mass. And so when people talk about,
OK, well, if we want to get yourmetabolism going, we need to
build muscle, that can be true. And particularly in people that

(10:51):
consider themselves skinny fat, that might be the right answer
is to actually gain weight because being down at that 1200
calories. First figure out if you have any
of these issues that we've talked about.
Get with a coach, identify if you've got any counting issues,
because that's the most frustrating thing.
But once you've identified that,you might prove to yourself that
I need to spend a year to three to actually building muscle and,

(11:13):
and put that idea of being ripped and toned on the back
burner. Because you're not going to get
that toned look until you do this.
Until. You add.
Muscle, yeah. And so you can do it in two
ways. You can either go into a build
where you add the lean muscle as, as optimally as possible, or

(11:33):
you can stay closer to maintenance and build up.
But then it could be even longerthan the time period that I gave
you before. I mean, one to three years is
assuming that we're going into an actual build throughout those
those times. And so people will typically
women in particular, but men in a lot, you know, a high rate
will say, well, I don't want to do that because I don't want to

(11:55):
see any body fat coming on. And The thing is, if you're
going to optimize lean muscle building, body fat accrual comes
with that. There's no situation where
you've maximized lean muscle building that you don't also
gain some fat. It's impossible.
And so in a practical sense, it's impossible.
Now, you will see this happen very quickly.
You know, where you can gain a lot of lean muscle without

(12:15):
getting body fat in people that are brand new to training people
are on steroids. But you know, if you're not
obese or, or in any of those twocategories, you're probably not
going to be gaining lean muscle at a super accelerated rate.
So talking about this, figuring out where your calorie needs are
is important. Having a proper expectation of
what you can do is important. And then making the right choice
for you is really important. I know that we've got some

(12:37):
questions about building here coming up, but I wanted to touch
on where people are, where resting metabolic rates sit.
And men aren't much higher. It's about 1700 calories as a
resting metabolic rate. But women being at 1450, I think
really surprises people because they don't.

(12:59):
They're surprised it's that high.
No, they're surprised that it's that low.
Really, I would think I would think the opposite.
Well, you know, more about nutrition.
And so I think that people are surprised that it's that low
because I, I talked to a lot of,of people and they'll, they're
saying, oh, well, if it's at 1450 and I'm trying to lose
weight, you know, everybody's telling me that I'm doing it
wrong. If I'm not at 1900 calories and

(13:19):
not losing weight as like a smaller woman.
Like the message that keeps getting thrown out there is, oh,
if you want to lose weight, add more calories in.
That's not why you add more calories in.
You never add more calories to lose weight.
You never do that. You add more calories because
you don't have enough muscle to sustain what you want to do or
to reach your goal. So when these influencers are

(13:40):
telling you we'll add more calories in, maybe the ultimate,
the end point there is actually where you need to go.
But the whole idea of add more calories in because then you'll
lose weight is 100% false. There's no situation in which
you're at a calorie level, you're not losing weight.
You add more calories and then you lose weight.
The only time that that becomes something that is confusing is

(14:01):
when if you, if you are so low that your metabolic adaptation
has kicked in and you've stoppedmoving, adding more calories in
and then all of a sudden you getthat jolt and you actually start
moving again. So it, it's, it's not the
calories in calories out isn't working.
It's that when you stop starvingyourself to death, you actually
started moving around, you started fidgeting, you started

(14:22):
walking more during the day. And then that net activity
caused a decrease, cause a net decrease in, in your energy
expenditure or your total daily energy expenditure.
So then you lost weight. So if adding more calories in
gets you moving more and createsa calorie deficit beyond those
calories that you added in, yes,that can work.
But if you're monitoring step count throughout this journey,

(14:45):
that shouldn't be an issue anyways because you should be
able to tell, OK, well, while I've been losing this weight,
what is my step count been doingas a proxy for that, that
activity throughout the day. And we've talked about this
before, aiming for a good starting point is between 6 and
8000 steps per day and then raising above that based off of
how you progress and how you're feeling in the time allotments

(15:08):
that you have during the day. But if you're not getting at
least 6000 steps per day, that'syour number one answer right
there. You're you're extremely
sedentary. Sedentary.
Yeah, and that's a very common thing.
So we went off track a little bit with this, but there's a lot
to cover when we talk about why are people stalled.
And then people really need to understand the background of
what's actually going on. Calories in, calories out is

(15:29):
always working, but your metabolism may not be as high as
you think it is, particularly ifyour activity levels are really
low. And if you're not getting 6000
steps per day, it's very low, you're sedentary.
So that's something to keep in mind.
All right, next question, does starting body fat percentage
matter before doing a bulk? If so, at what percentage for

(15:52):
women? OK, so assuming that we really
want to optimize lean muscle gain, being in a calorie surplus
is the way to go. There's, I mean, Alan Aragon and
I are doing a, a four part series in the Alan Aragon
Research Review. So if people have questions
about that, you can always checkout that research review.
You can gain muscle at maintenance, certainly at least

(16:15):
for a time. And particularly if you have
some more body fat to lose. You can have a recomp effect.
But you want to, assuming that we're not working with somebody
that's like a strongman competitor, a power lifter
that's in like an ultra heavyweight division, a super
heavyweight, you're going to want to keep body fat levels
within a certain range for overall health.

(16:37):
Chasing lean muscle mass at the expense of your health is
probably not something that you all want to do anyways.
And it's probably not something that's smart from a coaching
perspective unless you have a reason to do it.
You know, if I'm working with somebody that says, oh, you
know, I'm AD 1 college lineman, OK, well, maybe we're going to
be above that body fat percentage.
But he knows that we're doing that for a reason.

(16:57):
And he knows that we're not doing this for optimal health.
So when a person asks this question and a woman says, what
is the percentage of body fat that I should be in before going
into a build, what I would say is anywhere between 20 and 30%.
When you start to get up to 30% body fat, that's where you start
to think, OK, well, maybe I should be doing some mini cuts
throughout this. If the goal is to continue

(17:19):
adding muscle mass over time, two to four week mini cuts
spread throughout can keep body fat percentages controlled.
Men 10 to 20%. And we've talked about this in
the past where we say, hey, you know, there's always one person
that a woman that will come in and she'll say, well, I'm at 18%
all the time and I feel perfectly fine.
OK, cool. You're right outside the bell
curve. That's cool.
That's fine. For most people, optimal health

(17:40):
tends to happen within these ranges.
And so you figure out where you could sit within these ranges
and then be in a calorie surplusas long as you can be, as long
as your emotional state can allow it, and continue
fluctuating between that and staying within that range.
So you build up and then you cutback down a little bit, then you
go back up, then you cut back down a little bit.
And over time, you'll improve your body composition to where

(18:01):
you will get bigger and strongerand leaner and toner.
But it is something that I wouldbe cautious of when shooting
above those body fat percentagesfor men, women and men,
respectively. Anything to add there, Beth?
No, but how are you measuring the body fat percentage?
I would do it off of visual assessment.

(18:21):
Yeah, that's important because really anybody fat assessment
that you're going to do isn't going to be super accurate.
So we typically use measurementsthe abdominal in particular for
for clients. I would use that to track what's
going on as far as as body fat game goes, especially around the
the midsection. I would use a visual assessment.

(18:41):
And if anybody's got any questions about that, we can
always point you towards some good examples.
But if you go on Google Images and type in body fat percentage
examples, they're actually sheets that show what each kind
of looks like, and you can get yourself within 2, three, 4%
based off of that. Like be doing.
In body, yeah, don't, don't do in body.

(19:03):
The bio electrical impedance analysis, the BIA scans, they
are as they're off by as much as8% in, in both directions.
So that's a 16% spread and they're not standardized.
So you cannot use them to tell whether you're gaining or
losing. DEXA is better.
It's between 3:00, maybe 4%. But the problem is you can also

(19:28):
visually assess that, yeah, if you know, if you know what to
look at. So like it has about the same
error as visual assessment. Now, when you get into higher
and higher body fat percentage, visual assessment becomes more
and more difficult. But that's not a body fat
percentage that you would be working within this range.
You wouldn't get there anyway, yeah.
Right. You should never be in those
ranges. So if you're in a range where
you're like, I can't tell where I am, you're you.
Need to. You need to lose body fat.

(19:49):
Yeah, you're too high. So.
So those ranges that you can actually tell you should be able
to do a visual assessment and visual assessment is as
accurate, if not probably a little bit more accurate than
the DEXA scans themselves. I mean, DEXA has been shown to
be for most people roughly in line with like BM is.

(20:09):
You know, if you really want high accuracy, you do things
like MRI. But I'm not recommending people
go out and get Mr. Is. It's a huge waste of money.
You're putting yourself under these.
Conditions where it's probably not great to be getting these
all the time and visual assessment works really well.
So again, if you don't know how to do this, get a coach that can
help you out here. But this is where you want to
hover in a build to be able to get the best return with putting

(20:31):
the least amount of body fat on and stay healthy.
I want to build a physique with proper muscle.
I have dumbbells and Smith machine which is better.
My gym doesn't have a bar. I'm assuming that this is a
Planet Fitness cause they've gotsome dumbbells and and Smith
machines and stuff like that. Assuming that you are not

(20:54):
competing in a sport that requires a certain type of lift,
either works. And they've done studies looking
at physique, they've done studies looking at strength,
they've done studies looking at transfer to function.
So like functional fitness and believe it or not, Smith
machines, regular machines work just as well as free weights in

(21:15):
transfer to everyday function. And so I would say whatever's
available to you, whatever you enjoy the most and whether
whatever hurts you the least. And that's not saying, you know,
shy away from discomfort, but like if you've got one movement
that, you know, I'll have peoplethat'll do barbell curls and
they'll say, hey, you know, these kind of really hurt my
forearms. I'm like, do you have an easy
curl bar available? And they'll be like, no.

(21:37):
And I'll be like, OK, we'll go to dumbbells or go to a preacher
curl machine or go to anything that makes that bicep flexion
possible. And the outcomes are the same
for things like physique, for things like strength and and
transfer to function. I think that the transfer to
function is the thing that really takes people by surprise
is that there's this thought process that for some reason

(21:59):
machines don't cause a functional transfer.
And they 100% do, according to the research.
They 100% do in the populations that need it the most and so
more. For people.
I think machine works great. I would never replace free
weights entirely. I I like this the the variance
of stimulus. But if you if you if you never

(22:22):
use machines or cables because you're like, well, I want the
the best return. You're, you're hamstringing your
own progress because you can't make an entire program off of a
barbell in the same way that youcan off of some of these other
things that allow you to tax themuscle without putting extra tax
on the joints or extra tax on the nervous system.
And so these allow you to more thoroughly hit it when it's part

(22:44):
of an overall comprehensive program.
And I think that for people, particularly with nagging
injuries, machines can be a saving grace because they allow
you to continue progressing during those periods that you
otherwise would not be able to because of those nagging
injuries themselves. It gives them time to heal up
while you have an alternative that you can do that you
otherwise wouldn't have if you were just sticking to something
like a barbell. I will.

(23:06):
Say Planet Fitness, I think mostof them at least because I, I
do, I did sort of get the sense that this is a, a Planet Fitness
question. I have a client who she just
finished a build and she belongsto Planet Fitness.
And so we did a lot of Smith deadlifts, Smith RDLS, Smith
lunges. So there's a lot that you can do

(23:27):
in the Smith machine to stimulate your legs, but her
Planet Fitness also has a hack squat and a leg press, so you
should also have, I don't know that they all have hack squats,
but I'm pretty sure they all have leg presses.
You should be able to have othermachines at Planet Fitness at
your disposal, but even if you don't, there's plenty that you

(23:48):
can do with the Smith machine and dumbbells to get done what
you need to get done. Yeah, and many of them have
preloaded barbells. Yeah, which can be used by a lot
of people for whatever exercise you want to use when cutting.
I know, to up protein, but whereshould carbs and fats fall?

(24:10):
OK, just so we cover this for everybody else since the person
that asked this question seems to understand this.
As your calories go down, as youare deeper into a calorie
deficit, your protein needs probably go up.
This is anti catabolic. It prevents the loss of lean
muscle. It allows you to recomp a little

(24:31):
bit better and even over 1g per pound of body weight in the non
obese is appropriate for this. Up to about 1.45g.
I always just say 1.5 but the research suggests up to about
1.45g. You're going to see continued
benefits in body composition, maybe satiety, if you can
maintain that type of diet. Now, I'm not saying you have to,

(24:51):
but for those of you that are scared to go over 1g because
it's really cool these days to say don't go very high, that's
not really what the research is showing us.
If body composition is the main goal.
And there's a reason that nobodywho wins bodybuilding
competitions eats only 1g of protein per pound of body, but
they don't. They eat higher than that and
they eat higher than that because the leaner that you are

(25:13):
and the deeper in a deficit thatyou are, the more protein you
probably need to get, the betterresult.
And so these studies where people are like, well, you don't
need to go above .72g per pound of body weight.
That's not wrong under the rightcontext.
If the idea here is building themost lean muscle at maintenance
or above, you probably don't need to go above .72 or .8.

(25:37):
You can have some benefits goingabove that, particularly for
satiety, maybe body composition to prevent a little bit of
addition of body fat during thatjourney, but it's not necessary
for muscle building. And so people get this mistaken
idea that, oh, if you know, somebody said that I don't ever
have to go above this. Therefore there are 0 benefits
to ever go above this. That's not entirely accurate.

(25:58):
So we know that protein needs togo up as we get deeper into a
cut in the leaner that we are. So what do we do with carbs and
fats? The idea here is when we're in a
calorie deficit and this person is trying to lose body fat, you
have to maintain a minimum of fats to be able to account for

(26:20):
immunological function, cell wall integrity, hair, skin,
nails, hormones, all of those different things require fats.
Absorption of vitamins, you know, vitamins and minerals that
are, that are fat soluble, we'llneed them.
And so we want to at least hit .3G of dietary fat per pound of
body weight per day in the non obese.

(26:42):
If you're obese, you can technically go a little bit
lower because you've got body fat stores that can kind of
account for some of these things.
But for the average person, .3G per pound of body weight.
So if we're hitting our, let's just say we're doing 1g of
protein per pound of body weight, we're doing .3G of fats
per pound of body weight. Those are our our either goals

(27:04):
or minimums for whatever this cut is.
You can then distribute the restof your calories any way that
you want as long as you're staying within that calorie
allotment. So you can put them into fat,
fat, you can put them into carbs, you can put them into
whatever you want. I would highly recommend putting
a decent chunk of them into carbs as you can, and

(27:26):
particularly into fruits and vegetables because as we're
cutting, our calories are comingat a premium.
We need to maintain health, which means we need to have the
most nutrients in our system as possible.
And there's nothing in the worldthat is going to be fruits and
veggies for the amount of nutrients that you get for the
calories and for the satiety that they provide.

(27:47):
And that's why when we look at research looking at people that
have successfully lost weight and maintained it more than a
year, they're almost all, it's 83% of those people that do this
are lower fat, higher carb. In comparison, the lower carb,
higher fats only account for about 17% of people that can

(28:08):
maintain weight loss long term. And it's not that there's
anything wrong with the higher fats, it's that it is more
sustainable for most people. You fight hunger a lot better.
You feel a lot better with fruits and veggies in a diet.
And so taking advantage of as many of those things as
possible. And I know Beth is a big
proponent of this, and so am I Having a large salad meal a day,

(28:31):
even for men? Probably fucking required.
If you want to lose significant amounts of body fat and keep it
off, it's almost required. Especially at dinner time where
people tend to get the munchies.You know every night time tends
to be a an issue for a lot of people.
Every single time I've done a cut for a weightlifting meat or

(28:52):
whatever, my dinner meal almost always turns into a big ass
salad where I have a huge bowl of of lettuce, tomatoes,
cucumbers, red onions, banana Peppers, like cilantro, like
everything that I can throw intoall kinds of Peppers.

(29:12):
And then a boatload of either shrimp mahi or chicken breast.
So it's a lean meat on top of that.
So it's so high volume and honestly, like you've seen me,
it takes me like 45 minutes to eat that thing.
Well, we'll often use serving bowls.
There's our bowls. For these we don't use regular
bowls. No, we use the big serving bowls
for it and like it takes me 45 minutes to finish that shit.

(29:36):
And I use you know, low calorie dressings you can put if you
have room in your fat macros, you can throw some avocado or
like blue cheese. Like these salads taste really
good, but it keeps me like I'm stuffed after that.
Like, I don't feel like I need something sweet.
I don't feel like I need a dessert.
And I'm full up through the timethat I go to bed.

(29:59):
And that is, it's such a hack that people just don't employ
often enough. And it's it has saved me on so
many cuts. Yeah, I mean, it makes a big
difference and and a lot of times for people that have lost
a lot of weight long term, your hunger cues, your hunger
signaling is going to be worse than a person that had always

(30:20):
been that body weight. And we've talked about this
where you drop from 200 lbs to 150 lbs.
If you compare yourself to a person that's always been 150
lbs, you're going to experience more hunger than they experience
and a lot more hunger in some cases.
And sometimes that lasts years. And so when people talk about
trying to prevent weight regain,one of the things that I really

(30:40):
point out is when you get down to where you want to be, it's
not like all of a sudden you're done.
You're you might be able to bring calories back up a little
bit as you were shifting into maintenance from a deep cut, but
you're still mostly going to be eating those foods that you ate
all the way down. Seriously, you're just going to

(31:00):
be sticking to the same food. It's just more of them.
You're not going to all of a sudden be eating.
Can't eat what can't eat? What you used to eat and
maintain the body that you got eating something completely
different and high volume foods for those people are always
gonna be their friend because iftheir hunger and satiety
signaling is off you, you have no choice but to stick to high

(31:22):
satiety foods. Otherwise you'll you'll easily
regain that weight. Yeah.
Can a trained individual really build muscle and maintenance?
The Yes, the higher body fat that you have, the less trained
you are. So I mean it you get diminishing
returns the more and more trained you are yes you can.
However, trying to consistently like, let's say that you have

(31:46):
significant amount of muscle that you want to build, trying
to stay at maintenance consistently is like balancing
on a razor's edge. You're going to dip under
sometimes you're going to go over, sometimes you need a
little bit of excess energy to actually build muscle if you're
lean and the more trained that you are.

(32:07):
So trying to consistently hit maintenance and still gain
significant amounts of muscle isalmost an effort in futility in
a lot of cases if you've got body fat to lose.
Yeah, 100%. I can get more on board with
that because we've got somewherewhere we can re re partition
some of this energy into into lean muscle.

(32:28):
You know, you'll burn a little bit of of body fat, you'll lose
a little bit of body fat while you build a little bit of
muscle. And that can happen over time.
But the leaner that you are, themore and more that this becomes
probably an an exercise in futility.
If you want to see significant change.
And so can you, Yes. Can you?

(32:48):
Maybe, maybe not. And that's going to be dependent
on the person. And that's why these, you know,
individual assessments are very helpful because then you can
determine what is right for thatperson.
And they don't have to wonder, am I doing what's right?
Am I wasting my time for these next 6 or 8 months or am I
actually progressing as I shouldbe?
Can 2 full body lifting days be enough to build muscle at

(33:10):
menopause? Yeah, absolutely.
Particularly if you've never lifted before.
A lot of times we're seeing these women coming in and
lifting for the first time because you know, the idea that
they are going to have sarcopenia or have osteoporosis
has finally scared them into lifting.
Whereas they, you know, we hope that people get into lifting as
soon as you possibly can. There's no better day than today
to get into lifting if you are just starting out and two days a

(33:34):
week is what you can do. Sure, full body days are great.
That's a wonderful way to set this up.
I wouldn't put the full 2 full body days back-to-back if
possible. Optimally, you spread them out
by at least a day. So if you only have two days to
lift in, your days to lift are Saturday and Sunday.
You can still do 2 full bodies. But if you've got the ability to
spread things out, spread it outmore, and then you can actually

(33:55):
set them up in a little bit of abetter fashion.
But yeah, don't get frustrated if you're a person that's
saying, hey, I can only work outtwo days a week.
You can certainly progress if you've just started out, and you
can probably progress even if you're, you know, intermediate.
You can certainly maintain if you're more advanced with two
days a week. So it's never wasted.
It's always a benefit and don't get discouraged.

(34:18):
Do what you can do at any seasonin life and when life opens up a
little bit more, add that third day in.
Not fitness related but why is beef protein isolate not counted
towards protein intake? Is it a processing thing?
Beef protein isolate has a poor amino acid profile.
I don't want to spend a whole lot of time stressing on this,

(34:40):
but I do want to point this out because beef protein isolate is
the kind that really confuses people since it sounds like it
should be good. It's not actually beef meat.
It is connective tissue and blood product.
It has an amino acid spectrum that is akin to jello and nobody
would eat jello to hit their daily protein needs.
People are confused by collagen,beef protein isolate, bone

(35:02):
broth, all these other differentforms, gelatin, because there
are studies and I actually had somebody that tried to, they
weren't actually arguing. They brought up this study
because another influencer slashresearcher presented it as a
reason to buy collagen in the study that they presented.
And this is how this can get tricky and why it confuses

(35:23):
everybody, including the researchers themselves.
He presented a study where it compared whey to whey plus
collagen. And because collagen and B
protein isolate have the same amino acid profiles, we can use
them interchangeably for this type of thing.
He compared the two, and he saidwhen you have whey plus
collagen, you have better results than whey alone.

(35:45):
That is 100% what the study showed.
But the study did not show that whey plus collagen is better
than whey when protein amounts are equated.
What it did was it took like 15 grams of whey plus 10 grams of
collagen and compared that to 15grams of whey.
So if you have more protein and more amino acids, you're going

(36:07):
to get a better result. But if we're comparing 15 grams
of whey plus 10 grams of collagen to 15 grams of whey,
that's a disingenuous comparison.
So compare 15 grams of whey plus10 grams of collagen to 25 grams
of whey, and the 25 grams of whey will 100% give you a better
result every single time. And so the real question
becomes, well why do people use beef protein isolate?

(36:29):
And the reason is it is super easy to flavor.
It doesn't have the after taste or consistency of whey.
It's what they use in fucking jello.
And jello tastes great and it doesn't upset people's stomach
and dairy products can't upset people's stomachs.
So it's cheaper for these companies to buy this.
They can charge a lot more and make more money because whey has
very, very small margins. People don't make money off of

(36:51):
whey protein products. Companies provide protein
products because it allows them to sell all their junk.
They they just do it to round out the the lineup.
The only people that make money off of whey protein are the
people that own the production and the people that do this in
such massive quantities that pennies can turn into real
money. Glambia, the company that owns

(37:12):
Optimum Nutrition, makes money off of whey.
They own all the farms, they ownall the dairy processing
centers. They can make money because this
is actually just something that would be trash otherwise and
they're selling it off. And I'm not saying it's trash in
a bad way. I'm saying before bodybuilders
whey was thrown away and it was thrown away because people don't
want to eat whey just for taste and that's OK.

(37:33):
It serves a purpose and it's a perfectly good protein source.
It doesn't taste as good as other forms of food and I think
that we can all agree on that because if you have an ON
protein shake, it does not tastelike a regular milkshake.
So you would not choose it for taste.
And that is not a bash on ONONS products are.
Completely, they have one of thebest powders in the market.
They're completely fine. They meet the quality, they meet

(37:55):
the claims. They're awesome.
You don't buy it for taste, justjust the way it is.
So we need to understand that when people are using beef
protein isolate, beef protein isolate is even more of a
garbage waste product than whey was.
Less people want beef protein isolate because it doesn't give
you the benefits that whey does.It basically serves no purpose.
And so these companies realized,hey, these, these, you know,

(38:18):
processing plants are just throwing the stuff away.
Why don't we buy this up and then sell it in a massive
markup? And then people will take this.
They'll see that it's protein onthe label, even though it's not
a great source of protein. They'll see that it's protein on
the label because it has this deficient amino acid
composition. They'll say, hey, this tastes
really good and they'll love it.And they do.

(38:39):
People love this stuff because it tastes better.
The other it's in protein bars too, which people do need to be
aware of because a lot of protein bars in the market will
have a blend of like a whey protein isolate or concentrate
or whatever. But then the, if you look at the
label, it actually like it'll, it'll have like, you know,
protein matrix. And then it has like 3 different

(39:00):
ingredients listed and one of them may be beef protein isolate
or collagen, depending how they label it.
So like the David bars I know are super popular right?
Maribel's. Maribel's does the same thing.
The built part, the built puffs are almost exclusive.
I think they are exclusively collagen, but you need to
understand if you're buying those bars, you, you are not

(39:23):
getting the amount of protein that it says on the label.
So, Bill? Bill was really funny.
They, I sent them a message because remember you and I did
a, you and I did a review of built bars, like they're when
they were OG I, there was a weight lifter that I followed
who was sponsored by built and like I remember her posting
videos of her eating these bars and the texture of them looked

(39:44):
really interesting to me. They were soft, they were kind
of gooey. And so I bought a box and they
were delicious. And then we looked at it and we
were like, God damn it, like this has collagen in it.
And I emailed them and I asked them for this specific.
Amino acid profile breakdown andthey did not respond to me and

(40:04):
then they reformulated. I think they got enough messages
about they did formulated their bars and so the bars that are
now marketed as built puffs are their original bar and their new
bars are now a different formulation with true like built
regular built bars are legit like they're there's no
collagen, there's no beef, beef protein ice in it.

(40:26):
But they had to completely rebrand I think because people
started calling them out on this.
They, they did. And I remember when this was
happening and I actually remember a few of their athletes
messaged me about it and I told them what we're talking about
here. And I was like, ask them, ask
them for amino acid breakdown. And every one of them came back
and they said, oh, they didn't. They wouldn't give it.
To us. And so they're not like, if you

(40:46):
have any company that has like these beef protein isolates, ask
them for the amino acid breakdown.
We can go over it with you and we can show you where it's
deficient compared to regular protein.
And so it's really funny becausewhen you ask a company that has
one of these things, they will 100% never give you an amino
acid breakdown because they'll know that when you get that,
you'll be able to tell how much it's lacking in actually whole
comprehensive protein. Yeah.

(41:07):
So just if you're eating a DavidBar or the Bear Bells, I don't
even know how many grams of protein the labels claim that
they have, but let's say they have 20 to 25 grams, you're
probably getting like 15. So just be aware of that, that
if you see that on a label on a protein bar, it's in a blend.
It's in a mix. You're not getting the protein
that's on the label. Now I just would not use this to

(41:29):
hit your minimums for sure. Once you're above minimums and
protein, it doesn't really matter.
And, and there, there are studies that show that where
like people are like, well, I, Ihave a collagen supplement and
it didn't make it didn't negatively affect my progress.
And it was like, well, right, because you were getting your
minimum, you're already eating .7228 grams of protein per pound
of body weight per day. So like this bumped you up to
.9. So it didn't matter because any

(41:52):
deficiency in the amino acid is going to be picked up by other
protein containing sources, amino acid containing proteins
in the diet. And so if you, if you make a
large portion of the diet off ofthese things and you're not
hitting your minimums or you're just at your minimums, you're
going to have a problem. If you're significantly above
your minimums or the majority ofyour sources are from whole
minimally processed foods, and this is a super small portion,

(42:13):
it probably doesn't make a difference.
But that's why I tell people, don't use this to hit your
minimums. Hit your minimums first, or at
least plan to hit your minimums first.
And then this can be added on top of it and you don't have to
worry about it. I mean, it's just, it's just not
something you hit your minimums with because of the issues.
But there, there people can present studies.
And this is another way that these people that want to push
this will point this out to people.

(42:34):
They'll be like, we'll look at this study that showed that like
we gave them this and it didn't affect anything.
It was like right, because the person was already eating enough
protein. So you can massage this in the
research to show whatever you want it to show, but be careful
when people are presenting these.
And like I said, if you ever have a question about it, send
that company a message and say, hey, can you give me amino acid
breakdown of this? You're never going to hear back.
You'll never hear back. Not if it says any of these

(42:55):
things on the on the label. All over social media these days
I see stuff screaming about spikes and blood sugar.
Do I need to care? No, not unless you have
something like a metabolic disorder.
If you are diabetic or you're literally on the verge of
diabetes, if your doctor's like you're really pre diabetic, you

(43:16):
need to start to watch out for these things.
Spikes in blood sugar are not anything that you need to worry
about. It does not matter if you are in
menopause or not, it makes no difference.
These are normal in a daily life.
And you know I point this out all the time.
Red meat spikes blood sugar morethan things like oatmeal and
pasta. Yep.
So like it's so funny because the people that always

(43:37):
fearmonger these things are likeI I eat carnivore and it's like
you're spicy your. Blood sugar higher.
It's higher than pasta. Like like if you if you equate
calories between the two, it's higher than pasta.
So like, what are we talking about?
Like what's the issue here? And it's just because they don't
really understand what spikes and blood sugar are.
And spikes and blood sugar are your body reacting to food that

(43:58):
you eat. And if you eat foods that you
don't have more glucose in them,you can cause higher blood sugar
spikes. But like doing things like
trying to follow the glycemic index, which nobody should
follow, not even diabetics should follow the glycemic
index. The if you're diabetic and you
want a little bit of an idea, follow glycemic load.
But either way, don't follow these things if you're not
diabetic. I mean, the glycemic index even

(44:20):
ranks watermelon as worse for you than a Kit Kat bar.
When one of the I know that one of the things that is the lowest
on the glycemic index is white potatoes and white potatoes are
the are among the highest on thesatiety index.
So when you're talking about eating for feeling full and for
keeping your hunger at Bay, likeif you're, if you're paying

(44:42):
attention to the glycemic index,you would never touch a white
potato. And then like, how are you
surviving a cut? Right, make me this this stuff
is it was never made to be the entire basis of a of nutrition.
And unfortunately, people are using it as that and that's at
the same time they're going to be selling continuous glucose
monitors and, and all of these other things.
And so you just got to be reallycareful about this type of

(45:02):
stuff. Devil's advocate, I'm in a
calorie deficit, I get an adequate protein.
What happens next? What happens next if you're in a
calorie deficit and you're getting an adequate protein, is
you potentially lose muscle. So adequate protein levels help

(45:24):
prevent catabolism. Remember, one of the things that
we were talking about earlier isthat calorie protein
requirements, likely it's smart to raise them slightly as you
cut. And that's to prevent this
catabolism, the loss of lean muscle because your body needs
to get energy from somewhere. If you're in a net negative
energy balance, your body says Ineed to pull energy from
somewhere. And what you want is for it to

(45:45):
liberate fat cells. Is it for, for it to burn fat to
give you the energy? However, if you were in a
situation where you are at low levels of amino acids, it will
are low levels of energy from, from other things and you're not
getting enough amino acids and it can start to pull from lean
muscle stores. So you got to be very careful
about really undershooting your,your protein levels.

(46:08):
Now, obviously, as we talked about, doesn't have to be as
high as like the old bodybuilderthings where you're at like 1.5
or 2G per pound of body weight, but it does have to be
reasonable. And if you're asking what is
reasonable and you're not obese,.72 grams of protein daily per
pound of body weight is reasonable.
However, I even having said that, I have gone below that in

(46:30):
certain clients and I've gone below that in certain clients
because giving them that level of protein is not sustainable
for them. They literally just refused to
consistently eat that level of protein.
In that case, you do the best that you possibly can.
You hope that their sleep and their weight training is on
point because both of those act as anti catabolic.

(46:52):
And you do the best that you canfor them because losing body fat
in some of those cases is more important for overall health
than maintaining a little bit oflean muscle.
And hopefully, especially if, ifthese people are having problems
eating that protein, they're probably less trained
individuals. Hopefully they're gaining some
lean muscle as a result. Anyways, will it be optimal?
No, but you have to take each person as they come.

(47:13):
And so this is, this is kind of my disclaimer for any of our
clients that are listening and like, well, I'm not at .72 and
I've got you know this And it's like, well, we're doing what we
need to do. Given what you are able to do
consistently long term without loss of enthusiasm.
And maybe as you get leaner and as you get more experience,
maybe we slowly up that over time.
Maybe we don't say, hey, look, you know that you're the average

(47:35):
person and you've been chronically low on protein as
the average person is maybe we don't make a jump all the way up
to the optimal level immediately.
Maybe we incrementally build up over time.
And so for those people that arefirst working with us, you know,
the first six months or so, maybe we're not at those levels.
And that's 100% intentional because we've been watching the
way that you've been reacting toit and we're adjusting based off

(47:56):
of you as an individual, not youas if we're a robot, you know,
app that is, that doesn't understand the individual.
We're actually making those changes on the fly because we
know ultimately it will do a lotmore good than being so hard set
on this number from research. Yeah, I've had a couple of
female clients in particular who, you know, before they came
to us, maybe they were eating like 30 to 40 grams of protein a

(48:19):
day. And so even if even if that
person is of normal body weight,like let's say they weigh 130 to
140 lbs, trying to bring that person up from, you know, 40
grams of protein a day to like 151 sixty, like that person
would die. Like they would, first of all,
they wouldn't even be able to finish their meals.
Like they would be chewing chicken out of the side of their

(48:39):
mouth. Like it, it would just be a
miserable experience for that person.
So in those instances, like you said it, you can sort of
increase stepwise. And then also people like vegans
and vegetarians, it's obviously much more difficult to to hit
those targets. And if that, if that person
needs to lose a lot of body weight, then the fat loss is the

(49:00):
most important part first and then protein needs.
Yeah. I mean, particularly for vegans,
it becomes very difficult to these optimal levels are not for
vegans really. Yeah.
Is it possible? Yeah, it's possible.
But the problem is there are so few vegan options that actually
have a good amount of protein per the calories that it's it's
almost restrictive. It is restrictive.

(49:21):
I mean, so you know, you, you. In a.
In a. In a build, it's perfectly fine
and easy. Yeah.
In a cut, it's almost impossible, you know, and, and,
and you're almost always using really you're, you're leaning
heavily on protein powders, you're leaning heavily on Cytan,
you're leaning heavily on what like soy that like low fat soy.

(49:43):
And like when you, when you build a diet for somebody that's
like Cytan for two meals a day, every day and nothing else, they
go nuts. And it's funny because when you,
when you discuss this with vegans, they're like, well,
we've got these options that youcan use.
And it's like, that's great. But it doesn't work in reality
because the options are so few that when you give the options
to a person, they maintain it for two weeks.

(50:04):
And they're like, I'm bored of this.
And you're like, OK, well, thereare no other options in
veganism. And so, you know, there's,
there's, there's like a handful and that's it.
Yeah. You know, so you got an entire
diet that's based off of, because a vegan can't have
dairy, they can't have fish, they can't have eggs, you know,
And so you're like, OK, well, you're getting mixtures of rice
and pea, you're getting saitan, you're getting tofu, you're

(50:25):
getting, you know, it's, it's a very limited set of proteins
because most of the things that vegans consider proteins are not
proteins. Beans are not protein sources.
Like they, they have protein in them, but there are far more
carbs than anything else. Peanut butter.
Your calories, you're you're over on carbohydrates, you're
over on fats and then you've barely made a dent in in your

(50:46):
protein. Right.
And I mean, you know, peanut butter's not a protein source.
I don't, I don't care what anybody says this is there's
very little nuts are not a protein source.
They're a fat source. You know, there's, there's no
low fat nut that's like super high protein as far as I can
think of off the top of my head.Somebody please disprove me in
the comments section here because if you can think of 1 I
I will 100% look at it and say OK, they're.

(51:07):
Low fat, low fat nuts seems likean oxymoron to me.
It is. And so I, I can't think of one
off the top of my head, but I hope that somebody else can
think of 1 because maybe there is one.
I just can't think of any. And so we've got these very
limited choices and I, I don't really want to build an entire
diet off of a nut, like a singletype of nut, like enjoy.

(51:27):
So it's, it's just, it's very difficult and, and as long as
you understand these things and then make adjustments based off
of what a person needs, you can do that.
But all right, for muscle gain, how many working sets of each
exercise would you recommend? When we look at the research,
and this is a very contentious point, how much, how many sets
are necessary to optimize lean muscle gain?

(51:48):
The current research suggests anywhere between 10 and 20
working sets per muscle group per week.
However, every one of these studies that says that uses
fractional sets, you have to realize that back exercises
count as half of a bicep set, chest exercises, overhead
pressing counts as half of a tricep set, half of a deltoid

(52:10):
set. So we will have people listen to
us and then, you know, say, OK, well, I got to do that.
And then their programs that they make for themselves are
massively convoluted. They're huge.
There's these. Huge programs.
And so they'll have like 16 setsof biceps alone.
Yeah, 16 sets of biceps alone and then 16 sets of back.

(52:33):
And it's like, holy shit, you'reway above where you should be
for just biceps and you're wasting so much time doing that.
And so like, it's not that it, it, the research is really funny
about this because there's a little bit of a contentious
point with this because we've got edema that comes into play.
We've got measuring methods thatcome into play that that shed
some question in these really high volume sets.

(52:55):
But I mean, technically what theresearch shows is that even at
42 sets per muscle group per week, we see increased gains.
But the problem is we see like 97.5% of that at 20, at 10 to
20. And then everything above that
seems to be minuscule at best. It's diminishing returns click
and hard, even at 18 working sets per muscle group per week,
we see diminishing because there's, there's a little bit of

(53:17):
a range where it's depending on,you know, what was the sample
size that they use, what were the people that they used?
And so anywhere between like 10 and 1810 and 20 seems to be a, a
sweet spot. But going above that doesn't
seem to really give you much. And so you're losing the time
that you could have been spending with family, that you
could have been meal prepping, that you could have been getting
an extra hour of sleep because you're doing fucking bicep curls

(53:38):
to get 20 sets of just bicep curls in the play.
And so when we talk about this, we want people to be realistic
about what they can do and then to program intelligently.
Because if you don't realize thefractional sets are in play,
you're going to be way too much volume.
Is it going to hurt? Not if you're recovering, not if
you have unlimited amounts of time, not if you're staying on

(53:59):
top of your nutrition and sleep.But unless you're like a college
kid with an easy major, you're not able to keep up with these
types of things. And even in that case, you might
not be able to recover from super high volumes without
steroid usage. And so there's a lot of reasons
why you would not go above theselevels.
And the main reason is you're just wasting your time.
Yeah. Well, and then are they, are

(54:20):
they going to be able to adequately take those sets to
the proper intensity? Like if you're, if you have like
if I'm intentionally put, like if I think that I need 10 sets
of just pure bicep work per weekand I'm not factoring in any of
the back work that I'm doing. So let's say I have 5 full bicep
exercises on the same day that Ihave 5 back exercises.

(54:42):
I would argue you cannot adequately do all of those with
the with the appropriate amount of intensity.
I mean that that becomes a limiting issue is that how do
you spread these out over the over the week?
And if you're not on steroids, then you probably need a
frequency of at least two to three times per week because you
want to maintain intensity. Is, is it's not more important

(55:05):
than volume. It's at least as important as,
as proper volume. And so you're as a, as a outside
of the beginner stage, you want to be within one or two reps
short of failure. Yeah, zero to two, one to two
short of failure. Because if you're not should be
smoked by the end of a session like that.
Like you wouldn't be able to do anything.

(55:26):
It they should be if you're training correctly.
And I mean, I, I really want to point this out for people that
really want to make big progresson this.
You should be feeling it by the end of your very first working
set. The first set.
Of your first set of the day hadlike 5 back exercises and then
five bicep exercises. My point is, you wouldn't even
be able to make it to the end ofthat of that bicep session
without like, you wouldn't be you if you're bringing the

(55:49):
appropriate amount of intensity.I don't think that that is
possible. And that's one of the things
that people talk about when theytalk about the issues with these
higher volume studies is that there, there's a contentious
point that the people that showed these benefits in these
higher volume studies are because they were phoning in
some of those earlier sets. And then they were using the

(56:11):
higher volume to make up for thefact that they had poor
intensity in the earlier set. That is one of the arguments,
yes. And so I, I am not convinced in
any way that these people that are spending three hours in the
gym are really getting any better results than people that
are spending an hour to an hour and a half.
You're spending more than an hour and a half and you don't
have technical work in play. I mean, I can see like Olympic

(56:34):
weight lifters spending more than an hour and a half, but
they're, they're doing a lot of technical work.
They're not, they're not just hammering away at the muscle for
an hour and a half. You can't hammer away at a
muscle for more than an hour anda half, like even a group of
muscles without your nervous system just being like, OK,
we're done. I actually timed one of my
weightlifting sessions back whenI was actively weightlifting.
Like I timed the true amount of time under tension in my my

(56:58):
whole session. My most of my sessions used to
be about 2 1/2 hours. Of those 2 1/2 to 3 hours, I
think it was actually only lifting for about 75 minutes in
total. Like all of my rest in between
sets and like all of the the notes that I was making, you
know, in between sets for, you know, cues that I wanted to pay

(57:19):
attention to. I was only actually actively
lift lifting for about 75 to 80 minutes of that 2 1/2 to 3 hour
chunk. That's pretty significant.
Yeah, I mean, but even even withrest and play, you probably
shouldn't be going a lot over anhour and a half for a standard
physique bodybuilding and strength routine.
But yes, there are there are people and that's why I wanted

(57:40):
to mention Olympic weight lifting in particular.
I mean technical lifts, you spend a lot of time doing that,
but you're using some maximal loads because you're you're
instilling movement patterns of very difficult lifts.
So there's there's a difference there.
OK, last question that we'll getto training legs twice per week,
yes or no and why I would opt ultimately if like let's assume

(58:03):
that you have enough time to work out as much as you need to
work out. I would optimally train legs at
least twice per week. Yes.
And I would train legs at least twice per week because this is
like when people ask the question, well, can I train all
of my back and chest in the sameworkout?
Your legs are huge muscles. They've got a front side and a
backside that do opposing muscleactions, opposing movement

(58:24):
actions. So you've got flexion and
extension of at the knee, you'vegot flexion and extension at the
hip. And so we have to optimally, if
we're spreading out that intensity again in a way that we
can recover from and we can adequately hit things intensely.
You probably need 2 days. And you probably need to think
of it as like your glutes are going to be hit no matter what

(58:45):
on every day pretty much becausethey just, they're needed for,
for, for maximal hip extension no matter what movement you're
in. But your quads are going to
extend at the knee. Your, your hamstrings are going
to flex at the knee. You're probably going to need, I
would set things up optimally, days where I would focus a
little bit more on quads one day, a little bit more on

(59:07):
hamstrings the other day. I would include hamstrings and
quads many times in those days when I'm focusing, but my ratio
would change and my ratio would change to allow for adequate
recovery and to hit the shit outof that muscle.
And then once I beat the crap out of quads on Monday, I would
beat the crap out of hamstrings on Thursday.
But I would still, I mean, this is an example, but I would still

(59:29):
have some quads in on Thursday optimally.
Can you do it where you do all quads Monday, all quad, all
hamstrings Thursday? Yeah, you can.
I, I would probably not do that every cycle.
I would probably lean towards more of a ratio where I would
change where I put things. But I would say two to three
times per week to hit legs is probably where you want to be.

(59:51):
I would say two to three times per week to hit every muscle
group at least in some manner isprobably smart.
Now, again, muscle groups are brought into play on days that
you wouldn't consider. Just because we didn't do a
bicep movement on a back day doesn't mean that biceps weren't
hit on that day. Just because we didn't do
triceps or shoulders on a a horizontal or vertical pressing

(01:00:13):
day doesn't mean that it wasn't brought in that day.
So really understanding programming variables is
important here, but frequency, particularly the less trained
you are. Is more important.
Beginners should never try to dolike the old bro splits where
it's like chest one day, back one day, arms one day.
Like hitting an entire 10 to 1220 working sets per muscle

(01:00:34):
group per week in one day is is probably dumb.
The less experience that you are, as you become more and more
experienced, you become able to handle higher volumes and
recover a little bit better. I mean, think about when you
first started working out and you were super sore after doing
an exercise. And then the more that you do
it, the less sore that you get. Yeah, you will build up a

(01:00:56):
tolerance to this type of stuff.So when you look at like the
1960s, seventies and 80s, and the bodybuilders all did those
body weight splits and they wereall huge.
One, they were on steroids, but 2, they were all very advanced
athletes. And you can use less frequency
with the same effect the more advanced you are.
That doesn't mean that there isn't some benefits to doing two

(01:01:16):
or three times per week frequency.
That means that if you're looking at a program that's
written by a super advanced person, particularly when
they're on steroids and they're like, this is what I do, that
doesn't mean it's appropriate for you.
That means it's appropriate for the top 2% of advanced people
who have beaten the crap out of themselves in the past.

(01:01:36):
And maybe they would have gottento that point faster if they
would have been doing two to three times per week.
But there they are where they are now.
For beginners, 2 to three times per week frequency is really an
optimal thing. And I'm not saying three times
is better. What I'm saying is splitting
frequency up beyond one is probably smart for the majority
of people. And even I train that way

(01:01:57):
myself. And I would consider myself not
a beginner. OK.
Anything else to add to that, Beth?
No, totally agree. All right, guys, thank you for
joining us again for another podcast.
We will see you next week on Noble Just Bacon.
Thank you for all the questions that you've given us.
If you have anything, reach out in Facebook, Mighty Networks,
Instagram or YouTube and we willcover your questions in the

(01:02:18):
coming weeks. Thanks guys.