Paul Oneid | From Injury to Strength - 50% Facts with Silent Mike & Jim McD

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Okay, welcome to fifty percent Facts. Paul, Uh, this is
a long time like coming. I should have done this
a long time ago. And and I tell you, like
the moment that I thought about it and didn't do
it was in twenty eighteen. I went to the Arnold, okay,
and I had posted some picture or whatever from the

(00:33):
Arnold and you sent me a DM and you said,
did Jordie give you the hug that I told him
to when he saw you?

Speaker 2 (00:43):
And he hadn't.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
But then I saw him like five minutes later, and
I said, Paul, said, you're supposed to hug me, dude,
and so he did.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Perfect. Yeah. I felt the same when I asked you
on my podcast, I was like, I should have done
this a long time ago. It's this industry is one
that has has so many incredible human beings and to
meet someone who you just vibe with right away and
then hey, like, let's I always do I always do this.

(01:10):
I think my podcast is the most selfish podcast in
the Internet because I just message people who I think
are cool and I talk to them, and it gives
me an opportunity because most most of us are really busy.
So if you say, hey, Jim, you want to hop
on a phone call and just catch up, I think
you would probably say yes. I would probably say yes.
But if I say, I'm going to put it on
the internet, like yeah, for sure, whenever you whenever you need,

(01:33):
I got you.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah. Yeah, No, that's true. That's true.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
That's kind of what I've been doing since excuse me,
Mike's away and has been away since June. And used
to have the option of just you know, saying let's
let's go, let's go put together an episode real quick here,
and we would not necessarily have a strong idea what
we're going to talk about. We have like one thin

(01:58):
topic and we can do forty five minutes to an hour.
And it was easy, you know. And this way, I
don't have anybody that I can do that with currently.
I have some, but you know, people who's whose schedules
don't stick up with mine, who could sit in and talk,
you know, sometimes later this month or whatever, there'll be
more of that. But it means I need to reach

(02:20):
out to guests and people that I people that I
should you know, people that I want to talk to
and that I should have probably should probably have had.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
On the show. A long time ago.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
It's just that we kind of got allergic to doing
you know, remote recording at some point.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
So listen, I hope I can add some value for
your audience and teach them whatever I have to teach them.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Well, only only fifty percent. Yeah, yeah, you know, there's
no fact checking here at all. That's you don't know
which fifty percent is true? Perfect, And that that actually
came from something that Mike said in our in our
original podcast, Oh okay, and it and it ended up
being the title of an episode. And then so when
when he got back together, I said, I, you know,

(03:02):
I can think of a lot of different names, but
this is probably the one.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
That gives us the most flexibility.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Just spowed off about whatever you want.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Oh exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
So you I remember, had like a pretty serious injury
not that long ago, past few years.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, yeah, So in August of last year, I tore
both my quads. I was squatting seven fifty at a
meat and just ended up losing my balance in knee
wraps and so that when I got to the bottom,
my hips were a little too far back, and so
I went when I went to push, my knees were
right over my feet and my quad tenons. Actually they

(03:44):
fractured my patellas, so both my patellas shot up ended
up dumping the bar. Unfortunately, one of the spotters had
his finger caught on like a tip of his finger
caught under the bar. So honestly, I was fine until
I found out he got her hurt, and then I
was just so distraught because like that, if I'm hurt, okay, fine,

(04:05):
but if I hurt somebody else, that sucks. Luckily, he's
a hilarious guy. He actually got a tattoo of a
nail on his finger because he lost his finger. And
he left a review on the business. So he was
at a brewery which cool, really cool meat revenue venue.
He left a review on the on the brewery that
was four point nine stars, and the review said, I'll

(04:28):
always leave a piece of me there. I was like,
you're too good man, so funny. But yeah. So twenty
twenty five was a big year of recovery for me
into twenty twenty six, and you know, it taught me
a lot about number one. It taught me a lot
about rehab. Like I already had quite a thick background

(04:51):
in exercise physiology and strength and conditioning from my experience,
but really diving into the rehab sciences and especially the
different modalities of it able to us now was really
eye opening, and I ended up rehabbing to the point
where thirteen months later I actually or sorry, I had
injuries in July, not August, but thirteen months later this August,

(05:13):
this past August, I actually did a bodybuilding show, my
second one, and had the best physique I've ever had
so and my strength is back better than it was before.
I would say, I haven't had knee pain since the
end of the rehab, and it's coming from somebody who's
I'm running three times a week now, rocking once a week, squatting, deadlifting,

(05:37):
doing a jumping, running, and I have no knee pain
at all. So the rehab was pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah, I wonder sometimes because some people do sometimes come
out of rehabs in in you know, better shape, I mean,
just like generally, but like I'm sure relative to injury
than they were beforehand, and in terms of like, you know,
just pain whatever, and I don't, and I wonder, and
sometimes they're stronger, and sometimes you know, I just wonder

(06:07):
if it is that focus that you don't necessarily always
have ahead of time, you know.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, I think that's part of it for sure, because
I mean, some people get injured and it destroys their world.
They just implode and they quit the sport. For me,
I ended up quitting the sport, but not because of
any other reason that I was done right. I had
been competing since twenty ten. I'd done close to forty meets.
At that point, I had already been top ten all

(06:37):
time in two weight classes, and knowing that we were
going to start a family this year, I'm not willing
to do the things that I was willing to do
to get to that level of performance before. So my
plan was actually to do that meet that I got
injured at as a tune up. I got injured on
my third attempt, which I had already squatted that weight
for a double in prep, so it wasn't going to

(06:59):
be a hard lift, and then compete at Jordan Wong's
meet in December and try to break Jeremy Hamilton's Canadian
squad record. So I wanted to be the best squatter
in Canada. That was my goal, and then I was
going to hang it up anyway. But so part of
it is focus. What I think actually is the biggest
factor in the reason I was able to come back

(07:19):
from it in better, better shape, better function. Was when
you're competing at a high level, when you're doing well,
even when you're in pain, there is an element of
ego that won't allow you to step back. There's an
element of ego that won't allow you to actually stop
lifting heavy and trying to push your strength and go
back to building the foundation. So once I had my

(07:42):
range of motion back, because after you reattach so for
my specific surgery, they went in they cleaned up the
bone fragments and then they screwed my pateeller tendons or sorry,
my quad tendons back to my patilla. You have to
wait six weeks for those screws to have bone heel
around them, So I was in a wheelchair for six weeks.

(08:03):
The first thing you need to do is you need
to get those tendons mobile again passively. So you need
to allow them to get that range of motion passively,
and then you can load it. Once I had my
range of motion back, it was all foundational stuff that
we all ignore. It was isometrics, it was blood flow
restriction training, It was a lot of loaded mobility work.

(08:28):
And these are the things that we ignore, Like why
would I perform sixty second isometrics when I can just
go squat five hundred pounds one I don't think is
going to get me stronger, but it's going to get
me more resilient. And I'm like, how can I, as
a educated individual find a way to blend rehab and

(08:49):
training together as I progress through this rehab process. And
it allowed me to get really creative. Luckily, I had
a phenomenal physical therapist who gave me a lot of
freedom in the process too. For him, it was more
so like, Okay, here are the recovery guidelines in terms
of time, we can be flexible with those. Let's be

(09:10):
flexible with Instead of doing time, let's do function. So
if you can match the function level of this benchmark,
I'll clear you for the next benchmark. And I said okay.
And I was still seeing him once or twice a week,
and so we did a lot of blood flow restriction.
I started doing a ton of isometrics, and I basically

(09:31):
just started at ten degrees of flexion doing sixty second
isometrics and either a leg curl or a leg extension
or a leg press and I would do that every
single day for two rounds. Took me about thirty minutes,
so that was part of the rehab. Then once I
was able to load, I started loading these partial ranges

(09:52):
of motion, but then also doing full range of motion
blood flow restriction training for both hamstrings and quads, because
in my head, I'm like, if I get my hamstrings
really strong, it's going to relax my quad tendons through
reciprocal inhibition. So it's okay, cool. And what I found
is as my hamstrings got stronger, my quad tendons were

(10:13):
more mobile, beautiful. I was able to open up some
hip range of motion through some specific breathing drills with
because I couldn't get into like a lunge position to
do a traditional hip flexor stretch, so I had to
get creative and figure, Okay, how do I get some
rotation out of my hips? How do I get some
extension out of my hips? Then I was like, okay,

(10:36):
well I can stand and load. Now I'm going to
do a ton of hip extension movements like RDL's hip
thrusts really get my posterior chain as strong as possible.
And it was super funny. Because as I got leaner
from my bodybuilding show, my glutes were huge, so it
just made it made my physique look a bit weird.
But all of these things put together allowed me to

(10:57):
rehab to the point where, you know, I was in
a wheelchair for six weeks. They told me after the wheelchair,
I was supposed to be in a walker for four weeks.
I was in a walker for about an hour. Then
I was supposed to get full range of motion back
by about week twelve. I had full range of motion
back by about week eight, and then that week twelve
Mark I actually did my first bodyweight squad and then

(11:21):
throughout there it just progress, progress, progress. I was training,
will say, normally like a bodybuilder. Within about sixteen weeks,
I was doing like traditional bodybuilder leg days. The hardest
thing to get back was split squatting. I could do
Bulgarians because I could offload that back leg, but with

(11:42):
my back foot on the ground where the force is
going downward through the patella. That took the longest to
come back, but it was you know, I'd say five
months maybe six before I was able to really load that.
By that point, I was doing a ton of isometrics
in that position, so that help it out a lot,
sped it up.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, that's that's pretty amazing. I think that.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
People who have not worked with a good physical therapist
don't understand what a good physical therapist can do.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
We we actually have the three physical therapists as members
of the gym.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
Yeah, and I you know there.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
I'm sure there. I know they're all great. I know
they're all really good. But two of them have worked
primarily in workers conversation so they see a particular type
of patient, and the other one works online and he
works with a lot of athletes and stuff. And uh,
I worked with him for several months and I had
I was having so much shoulder pain that I couldn't.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
I couldn't.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
I couldn't press without pain. I couldn't do a curl
without pain. I couldn't do a row without pain. It
was just it was it was bad. And he I mean,
I've paid out of pocket for physical therapy before and
had good people, but he was literally the just like
the best. He was like, you know, he did really
good assessments and we would trial out different exercises to

(13:14):
see which ones really hit where they needed to, and
and and we're sustainable, you know. I mean, some things
you do just in pt can kind of load your
nervous system in a way that you can't keep doing them,
or you have to figure out what what cadence they
should be performed in or whatever. He was really good

(13:36):
at that, And like you know, within an hour or
so of any time that we met, I would get
a text that had like demonstration videos and just a
real RX the whole, the whole thing. And now I
don't have any you know, I don't have any pain
when doing any.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Of that stuff.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
I will it'll be tired, you know, it'll be sometimes
just the tiniest bit so after, but not anything like
what I was dealing with before. And it's just it's
that attention to detail and working with the individual client
to try to find a thing that works for them.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
Yeah, this physical therapist was his name's Ryan, and he
did a fantastic job with me. He worked with the
Toronto May Beliefs for a number of years, so he's
used to that high performance athlete, but he had never
worked with anyone who was enhanced. He had never worked
with anyone who was using peptides, and I kinda we
took the approach of He provided the evidence based we'll

(14:35):
call it rehab plan and the exercises and functional benchmarks
that I had to meet, and then what I would
do is I would take that home. I would rewrite
them in terms of what I wanted to do, and
then we would compare notes. And he said, listen, as
long as you're not in pain, and as long as
your function continues to improve, you have my clearance to

(14:56):
push it. I understand you. You know what you're doing,
and you know we would go in and there was
a few, like the soft tissue work I think you
can't get away from. You have to do it, especially
in a rehab scenario, because once you cut into a tissue,
whether it be a muscle or a tendon, that tissue
is different. Like even now, my quad tendons are really

(15:17):
thick because when you injure a tendon, it actually loses
the ability to absorb and express water sot tendons. When
most people don't understand, attendon is not an inert tissue.
It's actually hydraulic. So when that tendon is injured or healing,
it absorbs a ton of water and gets really stiff.

(15:39):
So those isometrics actually served to teach that tendon to
hold tension and allow water in and out in a
stable position. And once we got into more movement and
things like that, taking into account, that's six weeks I
was in a wheelchair. I wasn't just in a wheelchair

(15:59):
doing I was doing muscle stem four times a day.
I had a home PEMF unit, and for people who
aren't familiar with PMF is it's pulse electromagnetic field, So
it looks like a little like a cylinder and put
the injured joint or you put it around whatever part
of your body is injured, and it increases cellular metabolism,

(16:22):
so you produce more atp and more blood flow and
it helps to clear inflammation. So I was in that
thing four hours a day. I was doing passive blood
flow restriction, which for anyone listening who's never done blood
flow restriction work before, people think it's like, oh, you're
just trying to get a big pump. Well, no, what
you're doing is you're putting a tourniquet around a joint

(16:43):
or near a muscle so that you prevent venus return,
which means as you perform the movement, the blood can't
exit the limb, and what that does is it essentially
creates an amplified exercise stimulus. Because one of the reasons
why your muscle atrophy after a surgery is they're not moving,

(17:04):
so they have very low glucose and insulin sensitivity because
your gluten flour receptors down regulate, so your body is
just not able to send glucose to that muscle, so
at atrophies. But if you even passively cut off blood
flow to an area, those metabolites from its metabolism, those

(17:26):
waste products that we build up through contractions will build up,
and so you prevent that down regulation in insulin sensitivity,
so you can prevent atrophy. Even after I got out
of the wheelchair, I still had quite a good amount
of muscle bulk to the quad. It didn't atrophy as
much as I thought it would, so I was in

(17:46):
a better position when I was able to actually start moving.
And then once I was able to start moving, that
blood flow restriction. I was doing it while walking. Oh okay,
just walking, So fifteen minutes of walking with the blood
flow restriction a couple times a day and then take
it off. Anything I could do to create some sort
of exercise stimulus. I would do so, even when I

(18:07):
was in the bed, I would put the blood floor
restriction on, and then I would put the muscle stem
on because the muscle stem would flex my muscles in
a stable position, and then the blood flow restriction would
prevent that venus return, so I get a better exercise
stimulus from it. The muscle stem also served to prevent
nervous system down regulation to the area, because when you're injured,

(18:28):
your brain says, I cannot send a stimulus to this
muscle because if I flex it, it'll explode. That's a
good thing, it's a protective mechanism, right, but it's also
going to atrophy your muscle. So preventing that. So I
did all of that stuff. At any given point during
that six weeks, I was doing rehab eight hours a day. Goodness,
So I had this I was sleeping in a hospital bed.

(18:50):
I was in a hospital bed in my office because
the house we were living in, my office was on
the main floor and I couldn't go up the stairs.
So I had this table that would slide across me
and I could work on my laptop and be on
the muscle stammer. Be on my laptop and be in
the PEMF or be on my laptop and do the BFR.
And then every couple hours I would slide the laptop away,
do my my leg raises, my hip extensions, my you know,

(19:13):
all this, all the rehabby stuff that I was supposed
to do. I would slide my laptop across keep working.
So I didn't. I didn't stop working even you know,
the the eight hours or so before my surgery, when
I was laying in the hospital bed, I was like, Wow,
I guess I'll do all my chickens for today. And
that's the beauty of I mean online coaching is I

(19:34):
didn't lose any money, which is great. Yeah, so I
just took it. I took the rehabit seriously as I
would take training for any meat, probably more seriously. And
then because the rehab itself was so foundational to functional
patterns like functional capacity of the muscle other than getting

(19:54):
that range of motion back under load, I didn't really
have any pain once I did, and my mobility is
better than it ever has been because I was training
so many end ranges right, And when I got back
to actually like pushing training, you feel like a newbe again.
It's like, it's so motivating. I remember the first couple
of sessions, like first session doing leg curls, I did

(20:17):
like forty pounds for twelve reps. And then three days later,
because I was training that, I basically did like a
week an a leg workout and a b leg workout
every other day. When I got back to that a workout,
it was forty pounds for twenty one reps. So I
almost doubled my reps in three days. And I was like, well,
this is awesome. If I can keep doubling my reps

(20:39):
over this top be this strong at this point in time,
I'm idiot, that's not how it works. But definitely got
definitely got a lot stronger. So returning back to your question,
I think the biggest thing preventing people who are in
pain although performing at a high level, is pulling back

(20:59):
and actually working on the foundational things that will improve
their resilience underload, primarily isometrics and or long duration sets,
so using BFR and doing you know, two minute sets,
because those are the things that are actually going to
improve tendon resilience. And then also training full ranges of emotion.

(21:20):
And when I say full ranges of emotion, I mean
like deep extended ranges of emotion because of ego. Another
thing I could touch on too, is an area that
I really wanted to research because so when I went
in for my surgery and they did all the imaging,
they're like, you know, your tendons are sclerotic, and what

(21:45):
that means is is that they're very stiff. And I
was like, well, sclerotic doesn't sound good. That's a very
bad connotation. What does that actually mean? And it means
that tendon stiff And over time, what I came to
realize that long term testosterone use or to saster one supplement,
to saster on replacement can lead to decreased tendon I

(22:11):
guess the word would be malleability, or it increases tendon
stiffness because you have increased collision deposits. And I was like, well,
if we look how many guys you know, thirty five
plus who have been using performance enhancing drugs tear something almost.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
All of them all yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
I was like, huh interesting. So if I have thicker
tendons that aren't as flexible, and then the training that
I'm doing is also very high tension, which also increases
tendon stiffness. That's like the perfect recipe if someone isn't
training and ranges of motion to tear something. So I

(22:55):
think there's something here. And what I came to realize is,
especially with the isometric work, is that combining isometrics with
extended ranges of motion can help to either maintain or
reverse that tendon stiffness. And so I started doing it
in all of my training. So if I was doing

(23:17):
let's say a bench press or a Dumbell bench pressing,
I would do I mixed it up. I got really
creative with how I did it. So if I was
doing my first set of that movement really heavy, well,
all of my back down work I would do with
really long pauses at the bottom. If I was doing
leg presses, I got really strong at leg presses relatively

(23:39):
quickly because there's a more comfortable, controlled movement. So I
was like, I don't want to load this as heavy,
So I would do my first set with that extended
pause in the bottom so I didn't have to use
as much weight. And then when I was fatigued from
that first set, I would keep the weight the same
and then I would remove the pause and say to
try to exceed the wraps from the first set, and
then I was like, huh, what if I could do

(24:00):
different intensifying strategies with that. So I started doing, Okay,
we'll do five normal reps, and then on the fifth rep,
I'll hold the stretch for five seconds, and then I'll
hold the contraction for five seconds, and then I'll do
five more normal reps. And I got these really like
eclectic rep schemes that I kind of came up with
in my head. Even like, I'm working with a guy

(24:22):
right now with a shoulder injury. So he's doing a
chaos bench press with the earthquake bar. So his first
set he's doing a thirty second hold at the bottom
on his first rep, and then ten reps. His second set,
he's doing three second pauses every rep, so it's that
same thirty seconds of isometric, but instead of doing it

(24:43):
all at the beginning, he's spreading it out over the set,
and then the third set he has no isometric and
he's just trying to get as many reps as he can.
So all of these different strategies serve a purpose because
that isometric hold in that bottom position is increasing his
appropriate reception in that bottom position. It's increasing his tendon resilience.
It's giving him more exposure to end ranges of motion

(25:06):
where we tend to get hurt, and because typically in
those stretch positions is where we lose positioning, it's improving
his technique. And I started doing more and more of
my clients and I'm just seeing all of these phenomenal results.
No one's getting hurt, everyone's reporting better mobility, less pain.
They don't need to warm up for thirty minutes at

(25:28):
a time before they get under a bar, and all
the same things that I noticed with myself through the rehab,
I'm seeing with my clients. And I'm not going to
take full credit for this. I had a lot of
amazing people help me out with learning about these things.
Doctor Danny Lamartine, who is actually my coach leading into
the surgery, taught me a ton. She's a physical therapist
and an IFBB pro. She's also all time i think,

(25:52):
top five all time female competitor at one twenty three
in powerlifting. Doctor Mike T. Nelson would really help me
a lot. He's a very famous researcher and author. Doctor
Dylan Seely was phenomenal as well, with a lot of
the breathing stuff and hip rotation stuff. So I had
a lot of help. And that's one thing I'm not
afraid to ask for help, especially when I don't have

(26:12):
the answers. But I'm also a really exploratory person. I
like to use myself as a guinea pig, as a
lot of us do. And yeah, it was just really fun.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
You know, it's funny that you put it like that
because I, you know, being my age and having like
adopting powerlifting when I was over forty, which is not
a thing I usually would suggest. And you know, in
the in the geared era, heavier weights than I would

(26:49):
normally have been exposed to all that stuff. I mean
obviously I had I had, I had issues. I had
a hamstring tendon issue. I had, uh, I had super
Spanadas tendon like with whole punch tears and calcium deposits
and and all that stuff that's not that's not even
the slight that hurts the side that side. Like I

(27:13):
was like scheduled for surgery and I said, you know what,
I'm not doing it. I just the the success rate
is just not good enough for me to put myself through.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
That super Spanadas and brutal. It's so tedious that muscle
has such bad blood flow. Yeah. I had one of
my clients who who had it done and the rehab
was just really really tedious.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah, that's what I could see coming as like, if
I'm gonna have to do a bunch of pete for
it anyway, I might as well just do it now
and see what the outcome is. And and and part
of it was just not loading it the way I
was loading it before, and over time that and so
I mean it's I probably stronger now. And it's been
it's been a few years since I since since I

(27:55):
was dealing with that, but and then rehabbing the other
side it, I'm probably stronger now. You know the press
that I've been a really long, really really long time.
But I you know, I was talking about the physical
therapist that I work with. But I talked to a
lot of people when I when I was like, okay,

(28:16):
I need to actually like get I own a gym.
I've owned a gym for years. How serious have I've
been here? And the answer was not very really And
and you know, part of it is that you know,
it's a it's running a business is a drain in
a hassle, you know a lot of the time, and
sometimes there isn't like the counterbalancing joy sometimes there is.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
And I think I just kind.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
Of resented it some and I was like, well, fuck it,
I'm not doing that. And but you know, earlier this year,
I was like, I really really have to get serious
about it. I want to I want to get my
body weight down into closer to where I was before
I started powerlifting, and I want to get in better
shape and whatever.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
And I have like.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Three, four or five people that I talked to about
different aspects of it and get different different views. I
have my own views about what I want to do
and have sort of cobble together what I'm doing now,
and I'm I'm pretty comfortable with it, honestly, and I'm not.
I don't like, I don't. I don't resent my gym

(29:20):
the same way I did before. But I but I
also don't.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
I don't. It's not a drain on me to do it.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
It was like, and I think that one of the
things that people don't understand when they start committing to
you know, diet changes, lifestyle changes, whatever, and being in
the gym with frequency and all that stuff is that
it isn't a short period of time that you're talking about.

(29:47):
You know, I understand the industry indulges in in twelve
week challenges.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
In order to.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Generate leads a lot of the time and customer acquisition. Yeah,
but the reality is that it's a lifetime commitment you're
going to just you know, if you're going to get
into good shape and stay in good shape. There isn't
a moment where you can't be intentional about it.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
It's really interesting to me because my personality is such
that I try to find the good in everything. So
when you talk about twelve week challenges, we will never
run twelve week challenges with Master Athletic Performance because it
doesn't align with our core values. But do I see

(30:37):
a world in which that could potentially benefit somebody. Yeah,
if it's set up properly, if it's set up so
that these twelve weeks teach you the foundational habits required
to maintain them. But the problem is is typically challenges
are set up in a way where it's almost like
a shotgun approach to fitness, where you do all the

(30:57):
things all the time, and it's completely unsustainable. So either
people drop off and you have high attrition rates, or
people just can't maintain the habits that got them to
where they are, and that's why they do challenges around
the holidays because there's this massive motivation for the new year,
or they do challenges in the summer when typically the

(31:19):
kids aren't like are kind of out of the way
or like at summer camp or whatever, and people's schedules
are a little bit more open. And what I've personally
found like with regards to the sales process. Obviously I've
run mass athletic performance for ten years now, I've been
coaching for twenty. I also mentor other coaches on how
to build their businesses. And what I've found to be

(31:41):
the most impactful when it comes to building a sustainable
business is not selling a product, but selling a relationship.
So I think it's really important to engage your clients
at every step of the process, from the moment they're
exposed to your content to the moment they start coaching,
and then that onboarding process and thereafter how involved can

(32:02):
you get this person in the process, because you're not
selling a product, you're actually selling a transformation of identity. Right,
those people who are most successful in losing weight, gaining muscle.
They don't do things perfectly, they do things mostly right
most of the time for a really long time. To me,
that's what consistency means. Consistency doesn't mean that you're perfect

(32:25):
all the time. Consistency means that you're somewhat good most
of the time for a really long time. And if
you can pitch people on, hey, I'm going to meet
you where you are and I'm actually going to show
you what you're capable of, because most people will say
I want to lose ten pounds. But using myself as

(32:46):
an example, so I've recently pivoted my training quite heavily
more towards aerobic work, more towards we'll call it functional training,
where I'm moving my body through space, farmers, carry sled walks,
strong man stuff, and then getting back into running. And
you would say, well, oh yeah, Paul, that's easy because

(33:06):
you want to compete in tactical games. I'm like, yep,
I do only because for me, having an end goal
allows me to create structure. But my true motivation for
my training pivot is that we want to start a
family and I couldn't play on the ground with my
kids at two hundred and fifty pounds powerlifting, and one
of the main thoughts that I had in my head.

(33:27):
I remember laying in the hospital bed waiting for surgery,
looking at my wife. She was completely distraught, and I thought,
if I can't play on the ground with our kids
because of this, I'm a piece of shit. And so
that thought is my main motivator. And so when we're
talking to our clients, we're really trying to get down
to what's the deep motivation within them to create change,

(33:52):
And it's up to us to create a structure and
a runway of progression to get them from where they
are to where they want to be well capitalizing on
that true motivation. You know, I've got on a call
with a prospective client yesterday, fifty three year old woman
who's on hormone replacement and she just feels like completely

(34:12):
run down, riddled with stress and knows that she needs
to improve her health. Why does she want to improve
her health? Lo and behold, she's going to be a grandmother, right.
So it's never the ten pounds, And I think people
will capitalize their marketing on that surface level goal. But
the way to build a sustainable business is to set
up a structure of relationship that allows you to get

(34:36):
deeper with that client, get them to open up, get
them to be vulnerable with you, get them to trust
you enough so that you can get them on the
way to actually the person they want to become, not
just the short term result they want to achieve.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
That makes a lot of sense, that's for sure. It is.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
It is easy for people who are who want to
lose weight to get caught up in the scale part
of it.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yeah, and it's.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
It's not where most people who don't have like a
lot of weight to lose people who are, you know,
people who are are very obese.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
That's it. Obviously, the scale is a big.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
Part of it.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
It's very important for people who have you know, ten
twenty thirty.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Pounds to lose.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
You you, if you're actually training, you actually recomp a fair
amount and the scale might not move very much for
a while, and you can't really you can't really get
caught up in that. And I know that intellectually. And
yet in the time that I've been, you know, trying
to trying to cut down, and it's not like I

(35:47):
haven't been in a calorie difference since you know, may
because I have, but it's not it's not being quick.
And then like about a month ago, a little maybe, yeah,
a little bit more than a month ago, I did
a I did a deck before I started, and then
I did another one at four months and I had
lost nineteen pounds of fat and recount six pounds of muscle.

(36:09):
It's like, okay, well, that's why the scale hasn't moved.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeap, for sure. And so there's a lot of different
ways that we can work with clients on that sort
of mentality shift around the scale. I like, especially with
my weight loss clients. Usually it's females. I'll say, hey, listen,
if your weight didn't change from the where it is today,
but when you looked in the mirror you had the
best body you've ever had, would that change how you felt?

(36:34):
And unequivocally they say no. I'm like cool. So we
can establish that the weight on the scale isn't the issue.
We're trying to work on losing fat and building muscle,
and they say okay, yeah for sure. And then I'm
a big educator. I love teaching people about this sort
of stuff and the common misconception now because for the
longest time it was what the science revealed and what

(36:55):
we believed is that in order to gain fat gain muscle,
you had to be in a chlor surplus. In order
to lose fat, you have to be in a colerk deficit.
That never sat well with me, even as even as
a master's student in a physiology lab. I never sat
well with me because if you have body fat, you
have energy stores. So if I'm using the energy from

(37:17):
those energy stores to train really hard, and training really
hard builds muscle, it stands to reason that even if
I was eating at maintenance, I could lose fat and
build muscle. And that's what the research shows us. Now
it's much more of a slow process. Yeah, but it's possible,
and I know that conceptually, but even when I'm prepping

(37:38):
for a bodybuilding show, I still watch the scale. So
there's an education process, there's a mindset process, and then
there's the metrics process. So we do have our clients
weigh themselves every single day. There's a few reasons for
that number. One, it kind of inoculates them to the fluctuations,
Like if I'm weighing myself every day, that number matters
less because you're not going to gain fat in a day,

(38:00):
and you're also not going to lose fat in a day.
Takes thirty five hundred calories to burn a pound of fat.
You're not going to get that deficit in a day.
Then it's taking pictures. So take your pictures. Let's see
your physique, Let's see it change over time. Let's make
sure those pictures are taken in the same place, relatively
the same time of day, under the same conditions, so

(38:21):
you can see the changes. And then the third thing
is we get our clients to pick an outfit that
they want to wear that's a little bit too tight,
and the changes in your physique will reflect in the
way those clothes fit. So now we've got three metrics.
I forgot to mention. So with the body weight, when
you're weighing yourself every day, there are natural fluctuations based

(38:42):
on hydration, digestion status, stress, sleep quality, sleep duration, all
these sorts of things. We take a weekly average body weight,
So as long as the weekly average body weight is
trending where we wanted to go, we know we're in
a good position and that trending where we wanted to
go over time. So typically what I do with my
clients based on the app that we use for our coaching.

(39:03):
As I can say, Okay, in the last seven days,
your average body weight has come down or it has maintained,
but in the last thirty days you're actually down two pounds.
So we're at a half pounds a week. We're in
a good spot. Then we look at the pictures, then
we reflect on the clothing, so there's a lot of
different Then we can also some of my clients use measurements,
so they'll measure circumferences of like waist, bicep, chest, that

(39:25):
sort of stuff, and we can track measurements. So if
your wiste comes down a couple inches, but your biceps
stay the same circumference, hey, probably gaining some muscle.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
That's a wind.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
Yeah, You're going to look pretty freaky with some big
arms and a tiny waist, right, Yeah. So there's tons
of different metrics that we can track. There's the education
process and what I'm actually learning the most right now,
I would say over the last couple of years, probably
since I met my wife. Actually to be honest, because
this is an area where she truly excels is most

(39:55):
of us have really poor relationships with food, and so
food is a really interesting part of our life, because
it's a way that we reward ourselves. Right. You remember
as a kid, you're like, mom my, god an am
my test? And she said, let's go get McDonald's. Right.
So it's a way that we reward ourselves. It's also
a way that we soothe ourselves when we're stressed or anxious.

(40:18):
It's also a way that we socially connect, right breaking
bread with your brothers. That also plays with alcohol as well.
You know, hey, let's go grab a drink together. It's
a way that we bond. So how do we intermingle
this very socially connected part of our lives with something
that we actually have to restrict? And so the next

(40:40):
piece is we actually focus on abundance. So rather than
thinking about the things we can pull away, what are
the things that we can actually add to the diet
that will inherently reduce intake. So that's where we get into, Hey,
we're going to eat a high protein diet because protein's
very satiating. It also has a high thermic effective food. Hey,
I want you to eat a thousand rams of fruits
and vegetables a day. Most people, you say, a thousand

(41:03):
grams of fruits and vegetables. They're like, I haven't eaten
a que I actually had a kind who had never
eaten a cucumber. He was thirty six years old, Like,
what the fuck are we doing here? But you know,
when you do it as not as long as me.
There's some there's some outliers. But you know, if you're
eating a thousand grams of fruit and vegetables a day
and your body weight in protein a day, that's very

(41:27):
few calories, but you're gonna be really full, so you're
gonna eat less of the other stuff. And then not
only that, but in the in the process of actually
learning the habits required to eat enough protein, eat enough
fruits and vegetables. Well, then we can get into establishing
baselines of coloric intakes. So when the initial progress slows down,

(41:49):
now we can start to track total calories. Now we
can start to pull those total calories down. Now we
can talk about you know, carbs are gonna be great
for energy from training, fats are gonna be awesome for
your health, and they're gonna help with society because they
slow gastric emptying. And we can get more complex as
we go. But it all started with Hey, let's eat
enough protein, and let's eat a lot of fruits and vegetables,

(42:11):
and we focus on abundance rather than you know, hey,
we're going to make you do cardio because you hate cardio,
but it's going to burn fat. Well, I don't want
you to be in that negative mindset. Let's just try
walking a little bit more. Let's get your steps up.
So we're adding steps, we're adding protein, we're adding fruits
and vegetables, we're adding meals to your day, increasing meal frequency,
and all of that stuff inherently decreases your or increases

(42:34):
your coloric expenditure versus your intake. And now you're losing
fat and you're only focused on abundance. So it's a
very layered process. But I think the habit formation for
me has been the biggest piece managing people's relationship with food,
helping them understand what food does for them and how
it impacts their daily life and their performance. I don't

(42:57):
know how most people look Oh I do know how
most people look at it. But look at all of
our clients as athletes, so whether they're you know, I
have some all time world record holders, like coaching Jordan
Wong right now and Jordan's going for an all time
world record squad again, or I'm coaching again the single
mom who's on hormone replacement and wants to be in
great shape for her grandchildren. There's a performance attached to that. So,

(43:20):
whether you're competing on a platform or you're trying to
perform at the highest level in your life, you're an athlete.
So when we talk about athletics, we have to talk
about quality of nutrition we have. So the conversation shifts
when you bring a performance into it versus just I
want to lose weight.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, because like your daily life
is what's important, right, I mean, yeah, navigating your daily life.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
People sometimes just don't get that.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
I find like if I get into the kind of
mode that I've been in for months.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
I don't really crave stuff. I don't have have that.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
It's just sometimes it's just the volume, Like I want
more of a thing. That's okay, but I want a
lot of it, you know. Like currently I'm on a
frozen strawberry kick that I need to cannot break.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
Yeah, yeah, awesome, They're so good and you can eat
so much of them.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
Yes, yes, I I cleared two costco bags of them
this week, which is a lot. But but I also,
like this morning, hit the lowest body weight that I've
had this whole time. Hell so, and I'm and I
do feel pretty good about how I look right now.
That's what which brings up another point. I I I

(44:32):
sent a picture to to a friend last night, which
that's and that's the thing about this industry is that
you send nearly naked pictures of yourself to your friends,
totally normal and and expecting get comments from them about it.
The I sent this to to a friend last night,
and I had I had to take a week off

(44:54):
and I couldn't do anything. I literally wasn't supposed to
bend at the waist or pick up more than three
pounds or whatever because I had little little skin cancer
surgery and they're afraid about anything that's going to raise
your blood pressure, right yeah, A heal like you know,
I just I literally just couldn't do anything they want
you to be A couldn't even walk for exercise.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
They didn't even want that.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
It's like all right, whatever, well, I mean, I'll give
you a week, but I will not give you more.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Than a week.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
That you know, and the weird thing is is like
it's healing really really fast.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
It's like you're in great shape.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
Yeah, I guess so yeah apparently apparently. Anyway, though, I
sent this picture to a friend and he said, I
showed this to my neighbor and he said, maybe I should.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
Get my ass in shape. And I said, is he
old like me?

Speaker 1 (45:39):
And the response was early fifties, heavy smoker, daily heartburn pills,
high blood pressure, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
And I was like, that is a tough hole to
climb out of.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
If you were faced with somebody like that, Like, what
would your approach be?

Speaker 3 (45:55):
That's a great question. Number one it would be does
this person actually want to change? Yeah? I think people
will say that they want certain things, but ultimately they're
really comfortable with where they're at and they don't have
enough of a call to action to actually make a change.
And one of the things that I've come to realize
it's not my place to judge, right, so if someone

(46:17):
but if I take it as if someone's willing to
reach out to me for coaching, there is at least
a spark within them that understands that their current trajectory
isn't where they want to go, So there's some something
within that. So the first step is what's that spark?
So I try to immediately when we get on a call,
tell me about yourself, what's going on, what are you

(46:38):
dealing with? And it becomes less of a solution finding
exercise and more of a truth finding exercise. And that
does a few things. Number one, it allows people to
let their guard down. Number two, it gives you more
information that you can work off of. And then number three,
it helps to start start forming that relationship. So that
would be my first step. Once I have that, I

(47:01):
try to get a sense of where that person is
within their fitness journey. So it sounds like this guy
doesn't exercise, he has no idea about nutrition. And then
it comes to what is the biggest lever that I
can pull That is a low hanging fruit. So I
learn about his schedule, I learn about his family life,
I learn about everything I can about him, almost like

(47:22):
a doctor taking a history of their patient. Right, it's
like where are the areas in which I can dig
my crowbar into and start reefing on it. For most people,
it's like very subtle changes. So, say he's a packa
day smoker, Well, can we reduce your cigarette intake by

(47:43):
one a week, one a day? Yeah, probably, it's a
very low, low threshold type of change. Yeah, but if
we go one a day over the course of I
don't know how many cigarettes are in a pack, but
over the course of however many weeks, well, all of
a sudden, hey you're not smoking anymore. If it's I
want you to wake up first thing in the morning,
drink a liter of water, and get out your door.

(48:05):
That's your first habit, first thing in the morning, leader
of water, get out the door, and we slowly start
to build this lattice of habits on top of it,
on top of itself, to the point where over the
course of six months a year, this is a person
who gets his ten thousand steps, who eats five times
a day, who gets this protein intake. But it all

(48:28):
starts with forming that relationship and getting that first change
in there. And I wouldn't start in any case. This
is something I see all the time. Here are your macros,
this is your workout plan. Check in with me in
a week. No, that's not the way that we coach.
We run up a very high touch coaching model. Where
I'm talking to my clients almost every single day. You know,

(48:49):
we have a DM DM function in our app that
I'm I literally have opened all the time, and our
clients can communicate with us as much as they want.
They can get support, they can ask questions, and we
really position ourselves as guides along the journey and we're
not holding their hand and like pulling them along where

(49:09):
that person is standing beside them walking through the fire,
because we all represent ourselves as the person that the
client wants to be right. You know, I'm posting my workouts,
I'm posting my food, I'm posting my process so that
I am the product of my product. And especially now
I've seen I've seen this with a lot of the
coaches that I mentor, but I've seen it mostly with myself.

(49:32):
Along my journey is you know, when I was a
high level powerlifter, I got clients who wanted to be
high level powerlifters. Now that I'm a business owner, who
is you know to Mountain Horn. I'm pretty good shape,
you know, two hundred twenty five pounds, twelve percent body fat.
I get a lot of business owners, CEOs, entrepreneurs, They're like, hey,

(49:52):
this guy's busy and he's still able to do his stuff.
I want to be like him. And so by being
the product of your product automatically kind of creates trust
and credibility. Then if you can show evidence with successive
past clients, now you've got this person's buy in, and
then the coaching process kind of takes care of itself.
So starting with that person, like, if you are that

(50:14):
person who wants to create change, do not jump in
the deep end. That is, it might work for like
a very short period of time. You know, that twelve
week challenge might work, but your ability to sustain progress
over the long term is one hundred percent based on
it's it's called self efficacy. So self efficacy is your

(50:36):
confidence in your competence to achieve a goal or to
complete a task. And if you're participating in tasks that
are not things that are very hard or high friction activities,
your self efficacy is going to be really low. The
only way that we build self efficacy is through creating
evidence of victories. So these small victories that you stack

(50:58):
on top of one another up over time. So you know,
for myself, my first run twelve weeks ago was five
rounds of one minute running one minute walking, and it
fucking destroyed me. This morning, I went for a three
mile trail run and didn't walk a single time. But
it didn't start with three miles on a trail. It

(51:20):
started with ten five total minutes of walking over ten
ten total minutes. And that's like the perfect you know, everything,
even even when it comes to bench press, Like I
didn't start off benching two interrkilos. It took me eighteen
years to bench two interkilos. It was just adding two
and a half to the bar every couple months, right,

(51:41):
So that runway of progression and progressive overload that we
have in training, it's the same thing with nutrition, it's
the same thing with habit building. So where's that first
crowbar jab that I can start pulling on? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (51:56):
That makes sense.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yeah, everybody kind of thinks it has to be a
twelve week challenge in which you change everything or you know,
like Biggest Loser style where you change absolutely everything and
you overwork toward a toward a goal instead of an
artificial goal really instead of something sustainable.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
Yeah, I think that's Can I have one more thing?

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Sure?

Speaker 3 (52:17):
So one of the quotes that really sticks with me
when it comes to habits is from James clear who
who wrote the book Atomic Habits, which, for anyone who's
interested in habit formation, probably one of the best books
you could ever read on the On the topic, he said,
making setting a goal and not agreeing to the things
required required to meet it is in agreement with yourself

(52:39):
to be unhappy. And what he means by that is,
if you're not willing to become the person who has
achieved that goal already, you're just going to perpetually be unhappy.
So if I know that my goal is to be
functional and able to play on the ground with my kids,
but I'm not willing to do the workouts and the
nutrition and that, it's like, don't even set that goal

(53:03):
in the first place, right, And that's where the relationship
building that I talked about before it comes into. It's like,
if we do the if we do a really good
job of getting down to that person's Simon Sink says, there,
why if I can discover that person's why, and it
allows me to revisit it throughout the process. Yeah, I'm
using training and nutrition as a vehicle, but the actual

(53:26):
direction that we're going is personal development and identity shift,
and I think that's what true coaching is.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Another thing about doing everything
at once, Like if you're you're trying to eliminate trying
to eliminate the negative things, the things that are that
are working against you, that's one thing. But if you're
trying a lot of other stuff from on the beneficial
side at the same time as well, you don't know.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
What worked right the kitchen sink approach.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Yeah, yeah, it's like that there.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
I mean, you have to be a little bit scientific
about stuff, and maybe a lot scientific about how you
approach it. Speaking of science, I know that you're a
big peptides guy, and just share your personal experience with
what's worked for you.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Man. I made that post a couple of weeks ago.
I actually made the post while we were on the
airplane back from Europe, and I was like, yeah, like,
I've tried a whole bunch of stuff again. I like
to consider myself a bit of a guinea pig, but
I always advocate for doing so in a very educated manner,
Like I'm getting my blood work done very regularly. I'm

(54:38):
monitoring my biomarkers, you know, my nutrition's dialed in my
lifestyle is dialed in and I made that post and
it went crazy. I think it's like sixty five thousand
views or something, which for me, I don't have tons
of followers, so that's pretty crazy. But the number of
people that were in my DMS or in the comment
saying like what should I take or how much should

(54:59):
I take? I'm going to caveat the conversation that we're
about to have by saying, my goal is to just
share my experiences with things, not to give advice. Okay,
So there's a ton of different peptides in the market,
I think, starting with like the gh secretagogue peptides like
the IPA, morelen igfl R three hexarell in, all these

(55:22):
other relins. I personally never dove into them because for me,
the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Usually you have to
take two of them at the same time to get
the effect that you want, and for that price, you
could just buy growth hormone. So just growth hormone has
decades of evidence. We know the effects, we know the

(55:42):
side effects, we know the risk factors. It's probably safer
to just use growth hormone. That's been my theory on
that then we get into the GLP drugs. Personally, I
have experience with trzepetide and redititruetide, so the GLP two
I guess, the fourth generation GLP of truzepetide, which is
a GLP one and GIP agonist, and then redaitruetide, which

(56:06):
is the GLP one, GIP and glucag on agonist. The
rubber meets the road for me as a thirty five
plus man on TRT who's been training hard for a
really long time. I actually really believe that these drugs
could potentially be a panacea for guys like us. When
you talk about the issues that you know that population

(56:28):
runs into with, you know, kidney stress, liver stress, lipid issues,
insulin sensitivity issues. Even at a very low dose, you're
really improving all of those issues, and you're it's more
of a I would look at it more of like
a prophylactic, like, yeah, it's going to impact your appetite

(56:49):
to some degree, but even at so currently I'm running
two milligram or point point two milligrams every day, which
is one point four milligrams a week. For those math
majors out there, the clinical dosage for a reditruetide is
two point five, so I'm running a milligram under the
clinical dose. I'm still hungry for my meals. I do

(57:11):
get a little bit less food noise, like I'm not
necessarily thinking about food all the time, Like it's been
three hours since I ate, and I'm like, oh, I
probably should eat now, and my meals right now. Because
of my training, most my meals are seven to eight
hundred calories, so they're big meals. I'm still able to
eat them. Digestion is still good. There are risk factors involved,

(57:33):
so if you are somebody who struggles with, let's say constipation,
you might want to look at dialing in your digestion
before jumping into these drugs because they slow gastric emptying.
That's one of the ways that they actually influence appetite.
So you don't want to slow your motility down. If
you're already constipated, that's going to be a problem. So
that comes back to the lifestyle piece. Is your nutrition

(57:54):
dialedn is your hydration good? You know, are you in good,
good health standing. The other question that I continue to
ask myself about these drugs and the effect on insulin
especially is we know that being in a caloric deficit
will improve insulin sensitivity. We know that losing body fat
will also include reductions or improvements and insulin sensitivity. How

(58:18):
much of the benefits of these drugs from the research
perspective is actually compounded by the fact that the people
using them are losing a ton of weight. And what
I've come to realize is that I think the impacts
on insulin sensitivity are probably a little bit overblown, especially
at low dosages. But if you're a leaner individual, you're

(58:40):
still going to get some benefits. So that's kind of
been my experience. One of the peptides that really impressed
me was DSIP, or deep sleep inducing peptide. Towards the
end of my prep, I typically struggle with sleep. When
I'm in a really deep coloric deficit, I'll sleep like
four or five hours a night. It didn't necessarily impact

(59:02):
the duration I was able to sleep, but the quality
of sleep I was getting was much improved, like my
deep sleep score. I use a Garmin and my deep
sleep score has improved a ton, And I was waking
up feeling more rested in the morning, which was which
was really cool. It's not a peptide that you should
use every day, nor is it one that you should
use for an extended period of time. But for typical

(59:25):
end of prep scenarios where your sleep is perturbed or
maybe you're in a really stressful time in your life
a couple of weeks, I see no issues there. Then
you get into the mitochondrial peptides, and I think that's
the most popular area right now. People are like, oh,
I'm gonna take rid of true tide, and i'make Slupp
three through two and SS three one and ABC DAFG.

(59:47):
These are the ones where for me, you have to
really be in control of the extraneous variables. So we
all know the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell,
right It's where all the energy has made very true.
So Slupp three three two, we'll call it slu for short,
is a phenomenal peptide to increase mitochondrial output, so you're

(01:00:12):
essentially ramping up, You're stepping on the gas pedal of
the mitochondria and has great benefits when it comes to
fat loss and energy. You know, when I used it,
I'd noticed that even at lower calorie levels, my training
output was still really good. I had better cognition throughout
the day. Cool, But we know that whenever we ramp
something up, like if we press on our gas pedal

(01:00:32):
of our car, there's more exhaust that goes out the back,
and that exhaust is free radicals, so oxidative stress. So
if your lifestyle, your sleep, your hydration, some specific supplementation
isn't in place, those free radicals will actually do damage
to your system. Your your liver will be stressed more

(01:00:54):
because that's where detox primarily takes place. Kidneys have to
filter these as well, So there's some kidney stressed concerns there.
And so if you're you got to take care of
both ends. If you're going to step on the gas
tank or gas pedal, sorry, you have to be taking
care of that exhaust. There has to be something getting
rid of that then there. And I will say I

(01:01:14):
had phenomenal, phenomenal results from SLU, but again, lifestyle everything
was locked in. Mot C was something that I tried
by itself, very underwhelming. I didn't really notice much. If
I was really gonna nitpick, maybe I was a little
bit more cognitively cognitively dialed in. But mot C is

(01:01:37):
also a mitochondrial peptide. It's actually responsible for increasing mitochondrial
efficiency and increasing the number of mitochondria. I actually saw
the best benefit when I used Slupp three, three two
and Motz together, because if I'm stepping on the gas
pedal and those mitochondria are more efficient you get you

(01:01:58):
can get more from less, you can take less of each,
which in my opinion is a great thing. Then there's
something called five amino one mq. Five amino one MQ
inhibits one of the rate limiting enzymes of mitochondrial output.
On its own, probably not I've never taken it on
its own, but on its own, it didn't really make

(01:02:20):
sense to me because if I'm not pressing on a
gas pedal that would make that enzyme rate limiting, why
would I need to like inhibit that rate limiting enzyme. So,
for anyone unfamiliar with what an enzyme is is it
catalyzes a reaction, but you only can catalyze a reaction
to a certain degree, Like you can't push your foot
through the floor with the gas pedal. But essentially what

(01:02:44):
five amino one MQ does, it kind of like lowers
the floor so you can push that gas pedal further.
So I did a short round of five amino ONEMQ
towards the end of my prep when I had Slupp
three three two and Matz in place. So I was
stepping up the gas pedal. I was increasing the efficiency
of the engine and I was allowing myself to push

(01:03:04):
that gas pedal further. That means that I can eat
a little bit more food, have higher training output, burn
more calories through my cardio because I can push it harder,
and I was able to get a lot leaner on
higher calories. Essentially, then there's a peptide cod called SS
thirty one, and SS thirty one is more of a
repair peptide. It helps to repair the mitochondrial walls. And

(01:03:28):
so it made sense to me as I'm you know,
I started with the slu by itself implemented the MAZI,
did a short four week run of five amino one MQ.
I'm like, well, I've probably ramped myself up for a
really long time. I need to help repair the potential
damage that I'd done. So I was like, I'll try
SS thirty one for a for a six week course

(01:03:51):
to kind of come off of the other peptides repair
my mitochondria. And what I found was the the benefits
that I gained from the more high output peptide cycle
were maintained because of the SS thirty one and not
only and during the SS thirty one use is when
I started running, and so I was like, oh, like,

(01:04:13):
my aerobic output is way better now, and I was
able to maintain that in coming off of the SS
thirty one. Now super good. Everything is cool. So it's
important to understand the mechanisms of action of these peptides.
It's important to understand how they can potentially work together
in concert. And then it's also important to understand what

(01:04:34):
the byproduct of putting that in your body is going
to be. And I can't harp on that enough. It's like,
are you monitoring your blood work to make sure that
all this ramping up isn't being filtered out because that's
when problems can happen. I'm trying to think of other
peptides I've used. MK six seven seven is one that
was really popular probably ten years ago. It's a grellin

(01:04:58):
agonist to help your body produce more gh. It was awful.
Insulin sensitivity was really poorly poorly managed. It made me
it brought my fast blood glucose up like crazy, It
retained a ton of water, and it did make me
really hungry, which was helpful as a powerlifter. But ultimately

(01:05:18):
it's not something I would ever advocate for anyone to take,
or I would ever take again myself. The BPC one
five seven, TB five hundred, and GHK those are the
kind of like the recovery peptides. Those are ones that
I am a big advocate of, especially BPC one five
to seven. I think it has so many benefits. So

(01:05:41):
BPC one five seven helps with something called angiogenesis. So
angiogenesis is the formation of additional blood vessels. It's actually
a gastric peptide, which means that it's it's formed in
the gut. So people who are taking BPC one five
to seven orally tend to report really big improvements in digestion.

(01:06:02):
When it's injected locally into a muscle or attendant, it
can help to increase blood flow, decrease inflammation. So BPC
one five to seven on its own, great TV five
hundred on its own, TB five hundred actually helps more
so with collagen synthesis on its own kind of meh
I didn't really notice much taking on it on its own.

(01:06:23):
And I've used these peptides in the past before with
like muscle tears of power liffing and stuff like that,
but I leverage them a ton during my rehab from surgery,
and so I use both of those together for eighteen weeks,
and then for the first ten weeks after surgery, I
used a peptide called GHK copper or ghkcu. Ghkcu is
a specific collagen synthesis peptide, so it's actually used a

(01:06:47):
ton in cosmetics. Dude, my scars healed so fast, really
and they are barely visible now. Wow. Yeah. So I'm like,
I think, if you have a collagen type of injury,
so we're talking tendon ligament, I think it'd be a
phenomenal thing to add into the TB five hundred and BPC.

(01:07:08):
A peptide that I've only recently started using is KPV,
which is typically used for GI issues. I don't have
enough information on it yet. I have noticed some benefits
from taking it in the short period that I have,
only about two weeks. But I'm also taking BPC and
TB five hundred with it as well, and I'm taking

(01:07:31):
those three together in an injection for some GI issues
that I ran into. So I can't really report on
that just yet, but I think I'm pretty optimistic about it.
I could pull up the post and see if I
missed anything, but I think that's a that's a good

(01:07:51):
round up so far. Let's pull this up here.

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
It is not always the not always the cheapest, oh
no intervention that you can that you can become involved in,
but it is something you can make a decision about
yourself and not have to rely on a medical professional
to describe for you.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
I think the medical professional comes in when you're monitoring
your blood work, like having someone interpret your blood work
for you, let you know where the blind spots are.
But ultimately I'm a big believer in agency, right you
have the decision. Actually had a conversation in the comments
of that post with a doctor. His comment was, I
cannot believe people would take these substances that are untested

(01:08:38):
and UNFDA approved and manufacturing illness. I'll never understand why
someone would do that. And my response to him, I
tend to be very diplomatic and my responses to people,
even if I think that they're kind of dumb. But
it's like, it comes down to a risk reward calculation. Right.
So when I was powerlifting and the conversation was around

(01:08:58):
should I take more testosterone or not, I was like,
I could get a bigger total or I could shorten
my life span. Yeah, I want a bigger total, right,
So it's my agency allows me to use my cost
benefit equation a risk risk reward equation as I see fit.
Now that's important because, especially in the US, we pay

(01:09:18):
for our own healthcare. So if I'm going to pay
for my own healthcare and I'm going to take responsibility
for that, that's my decision. But you have to be
able to effectively and critically evaluate the risk reward. And
most people just look at the reward. They're like, Oh,
I need to lose fat slu Oh I need to
you know, I need to cut my appetite reditrue tide. Well,

(01:09:40):
one of the side effects of GLP drugs is gastroparesis. Right,
that's pretty serious, right, do you want to paralyze GI tract?
I don't, and they'll look at, Oh, the clinical dose
is between two point five and twelve milligrams. I'm just
going to take ten milligrams it's lower than the top end. Well,
you're probably going to be pretty nauseous. You're probably gonna

(01:10:01):
have digestive issues, right, so understanding. The one that I
missed was epitalin. Epitalin is one that's really interesting to me.
It's typically used in the anti aging community because it
increases telomere length. So one of the reasons why we
age is there is these tales of all of our
DNA sequences called telomeres, and as we as we reproduce

(01:10:24):
our cells, those telomeres get shorter and shorter and shorter,
and that results in more and more genetic mutations to
the cells, so the cells are less resilient. Blah blah,
blah blah. I used it after the SLU, the Mazi,
the five Amino, the SS thirty one, then I did
a two week run of the Eptalin. It's not something
you generally feel. I did it notice an improvement in

(01:10:47):
my sleep, but it was also during a period where
my calories were coming up post show, so there's a
lot of noise there. I was actually talking with Chris
Duffin and he suggested using it around daylight saving time.
I said, oh, that makes a lot of sense because
you know system is a little bit out of kilter.
So that's you know, daylight saving time just passed. But

(01:11:10):
for next daylight savings time, I'm gonna try a two
week run around around that time and see if I
can make a better a better assessment of it because
it's only a you know, I think you run it
for ten days. Oh, this one's really cool BAM fifteen. Great.
Have you heard of it? No, it's it's one of

(01:11:31):
the more like underground peptides. It's also very expensive. But
are you familiar with DNP? Yeah, okay, so it's DNP
is an old bodybuilding drug. It's actually a byproduct of
dynamite production, and they discovered they discovered DNP because people
that were working in these dynamite facilities were losing fat

(01:11:53):
like crazy. And one of the reasons because they were
breathing in this DNP. And he's extremely dangerous because what
it does it uncouples your mitochondri metabolism. So essentially your
body is producing a ton of ATP, but it's getting
released as heat, so you're burning energy and DNP will
actually overheat your body and people can die because you

(01:12:16):
just get too hot. BAM fifteen is A is an uncoupler,
but it's specific to the muscle cell, so it actually
increases your heat production, but it doesn't raise your core
body temperature. I used it while I was dieting before
a vacation we took to Puerto Rico, and it literally,

(01:12:37):
I looked, took the lowest dose possible, and I only
took it twice a week on non training days, with
Slupp three three two on my training days. So I'd
take slu on training days and I would take the
BAM fifteen because in my mind, again understanding mechanisms of action,
if I'm going to put my foot on the gas pedal,
I don't want something that's going to remove the ability

(01:13:00):
of that gas pedal to put energy to the engine,
right because if I uncouple mitochondrial metabolism, that energy that
I'm producing isn't going to force production exercise output. So
one of the side effects of BAM fifteen is fatigue
because you're producing all this energy but it's going nowhere.
So I would take the BAM fifteen on rest days,

(01:13:21):
and I took the slu on training days, and I
lost a ton of fat and worked zero percent harder,
So it was pretty impressive, but again I'm not I
don't know enough about the side effects to be able
to recommend it to anyone. I also don't know what
happens when you ramp up dosages because I took the
lowest effective dose, so that was just my experience. Pretty

(01:13:42):
cool peptide. Yes, so that's what I'm taking, taking a
lot of stuff. But like you said, it is these
are these are expensive and you know, again risk reward conversation,
there is very little human testing. Most of the testing
is done with rats or with mice, and you kind
of have to extrap laid out there are guys. So

(01:14:02):
most of the people that take Slupp three three two
are taking anywhere between you know, two hundred and fifty
micrograms and one thousand micrograms if you took the research
based on mice, it's actually ten eleven milligrams per kilo
is the dosage. So there's actually a couple of guys

(01:14:24):
I know who are trying taking one hundred milligrams up
to one hundred and fifty milligrams based on their body
weight of Slupp three three two. Sounds cool in theory,
and most of them will say, oh, I have no
side effects, blah blah blah. I'm like, I'm going to
need to see a little bit more evidence before I

(01:14:46):
make that assumption going from one gram to one hundred
or sorry, from you know, one thousand micrograms to one
hundred and fifty milligrams. But I mean, if you're lose
in a ton of body fat and your health markers
are in a good place, who's to say. But these
are the conversations you have to have. You have to

(01:15:06):
be open to.

Speaker 1 (01:15:09):
Taking some risks, and it really it kind of comes
down to for how long as well, you know, for
how long how long do you do your biomarkers stay
in a good zone. I'd mean an example of being
like a keto diet, People's numbers get much better for
a period of time until they start getting worse and

(01:15:32):
it really sort of degates the long term benefit of
being on a keto diet unless you need to do
it for medical reasons.

Speaker 3 (01:15:40):
That's a great example. So, like I said, it's important
to understand the mechanisms of action, the risks and evaluating them.
If you look at something like a ketogenic diet, usually
it's coupled with some sort of intermittent fasting or fasting protocol.
To me, I look at all these things like tools
in a toolbox. So I talked about when I use

(01:16:01):
BAM fifteen, I only use it on rest days. Okay,
think about all the nutritional protocols that we have at
our disposal and how the trend of research has been going.
The trend of research has been going. The more research
we do, the more we realize that a balanced approach
works best. So if you could have a situation in
which you are more metabolically flexible. So maybe on your

(01:16:24):
rest days you use a ketogenic diet, higher fat, moderate protein.
Then on training days you're using a very high carbohydrate
diet because you want to fuel your training, and then
a lower fat approach. Well, now I'm fueling training. I'm
maintaining my insulin sensitivity because if you use a high

(01:16:44):
carbohydrate diet for a really long time, potentially you can
decrease insulin sensitivity. So I'm maintaining my insulin sensitivity through
the lower carbon days or the zero carb days. What
if I also included a fasting day once or twice
a month, Well, now I'm in a situation where I
can burn keytnes. I can burn fats, I can burn carbohydrates.

(01:17:07):
I'm maintaining my insulin sensitivity. As long as calories are equated,
I know that my body weight will maintain, and potentially
I'll still have the ability to build muscle. So again,
do I have evidence that this works? No? Is their
research done that shows someone who's using a metabolically flexible
dieting approach? No? Have I used it with some of

(01:17:29):
my clients? Yes? Have I had great results with myself? Yes,
I have great results of those clients. Yes, But when
it comes down to is adherents. How many people are
as controlled with their nutrition and their lifestyle to be
able to follow such a complex nutritional intervention. Very few.

(01:17:49):
So how many people if a research paper came out
and said the best way for you to have amazing health,
great performance, look lean, be strong, and this is it,
does that really help the majority of people? It doesn't
because it's not a sustainable way to live your life.

(01:18:11):
A great example, I've been fasting for twenty four hours
once a week. So usually one day I'll eat my
dinner and then the next day I won't eat until dinnertime.
The next day, I'm doing that as part of a
guess a GI protocol that I'm working with a coach on.
So that worked well until it was my birthday, and

(01:18:32):
then a training day the next day on the day
that I was supposed to fast, Well, I'm not going
to fast on a training day because I'm training three
times a day right now, So I couldn't fast that day.
And then I found myself even knowing the fact that like,
if you miss a week, it's not a big deal,
but I found myself thinking like, oh man, you're not

(01:18:53):
doing what you're supposed to do. It brings again the
relationship with the process and my personality is I check
the ball. So all of these things come into play.
It's like what's best for the outcome has to be
best for the individual and has to be flexible enough
that they can follow it mostly right most of the
time for a really long time. We're back at the

(01:19:14):
beginning of our conversation, right right, So I did I
love having these conversations because I think most people just
look for the best, and the best is now deemed optimal.
So people will talk about the optimal way to train,
you know, the biomechanics bros. Or like this is the
most optimal movement pattern. What they really mean is this

(01:19:37):
is the perfect movement pattern, and perfect is not optimal.
Optimal is what works best for the individual within their
current context. And if we reframe the word optimal to
what works best for you based on where you're at
right now, that's a much easier pill to swallow for people. Yeah,

(01:19:57):
and it makes it more. You're able to add here
to it a little bit better, and then you're able
to sustain it for a little bit longer, and then
all of a sudden you get better results doing something
that is suboptimal. Aren't we just after the results here?

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
Yeah? Of course, yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
Well, I I have one potentially explosive question to okayuh are.

Speaker 2 (01:20:24):
Here's the question.

Speaker 1 (01:20:25):
Are all powerlifters frustrated bodybuilders?

Speaker 3 (01:20:32):
All? No? Some? Yes? So the interesting Like, I could
go pretty deep on this topic. I think most powerlifters
started off as bodybuilders but just didn't want to diet
and ended up really realizing that being really strong it's cool.
I was one of them, Like, I just was like,

(01:20:54):
I just really don't want to diet. I like being cool,
I like squatting heavy, I like doing singles. So I'm
just in a powerlift instead. But at the end of
the day, all of us want to be big, big,
imposing dudes. Like I think very few people get into
this and say, like I just want to build a
little bit of muscle. No, we want to be jacked.
We want to be imposing when we walk in a room.

(01:21:17):
And the funny part is is powerlifters. I'm going to
generalize here, but I think powerlifters walk into a room
and are like looking bench press more than everyone in
this room. Yeah, and all anyone seeses that guy's breathing
really heavy.

Speaker 2 (01:21:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:21:37):
But ultimately, I think there's a lot of people who
think powerlifting and I was one of them, is it's
a lot easier to get external validation from powerlifting than
it is from bodybuilding. And I think a lot of
us are start within this pursuit for external validation. I

(01:21:59):
see it a lot with my client, and I've also
experienced it in my own journey. I started powerlifting because
I didn't think I was good enough, and I thought
that if I got stronger and if I put up
big lifts, people would recognize me and I would have
some worth in this world. And I know that's probably
a bit more philosophical than you thought I would go.
But it's easier to do that when you're lifting heavyweights

(01:22:19):
because it's objectively visible. If you're a bodybuilder, it takes
a really long time to build an imposing physique. It
takes a really long time to build up to the
point where you know you're two hundred and twenty two
hundred and fifty pounds a muscle, even if you're carrying
a little bit more body fat. If you can fill
out a shirt, you know, a two XL shirt, you're

(01:22:42):
an imposing person. But it takes a really long time
to achieve a physique like that. So I think powerlifters
are just in it for the like a lot of
power lifts get into it for the external validation. And
it's just easier to get from lifting heavy because you
can get strong relatively fast because it's a neurological adaptation,
then you can from a more physiological adaptation like building

(01:23:04):
muscle and having a big physique.

Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
That's a reasonable, reasonable answer, Yeah, fair.

Speaker 3 (01:23:13):
Not explosive, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:23:14):
Not explosed.

Speaker 1 (01:23:15):
Well, you know, I just said potentially, I didn't say
it had to be fair enough. Well, anyway, Paul, thank
you very much for coming on where can people find you?

Speaker 3 (01:23:22):
Sure? Yeah, due to is my pleasure. You can find
me on Instagram at Paulo Need. You can find my
coaching company at Master Athletic Performance. And I also have
an education and mentorship company Coaches Corner University. You find
that at coachescornerye dot com. We have an education website
that is thirty dollars a month and it has close

(01:23:43):
to two hundred hours of lectures by myself and twenty
eight other collaborators. And then I also run a mentorship
program for other coaches looking to build their businesses in scale.
So that's where you can find me.

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
Excellent.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
I am at the Jim McDean all the social media.
This show is fifty percent facts. Were percent is a
word in fifty is just numbers. Fifty percent facts is
a speaker by podcast association with iHeartMedia on the Obscure
Celebrity Network.

Speaker 2 (01:24:08):
And thank you again. I will see you in next
week probably

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