January 27, 2025 • 45 mins
Master Coach Craig joins us again in the studio to talk fundamentals around building muscle and mass, the benefit of knowing and testing your one rep max, and why programmatic development is not hyper dependent on sex.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Then then then.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
What's Upbodybuilding dot Com listeners. My name is Danielle Bitz
and welcome back to the bbcom Podcast Today. I'm joined
by Craig Bonelli, no stranger to Bbcom. We recently welcome
Craig into the roster of our master coaches, who will
be guiding you through workouts on our newest fitness app.
Craig also starred in our original docuseries The West Side Method,
(00:32):
where he travels back to Westside Barbell to put their
training methods to the test. You can watch all the
episodes on Bodybuilding dot COM's YouTube. Craig is a former
professional strongman and prides himself on being a master of strength. Today,
we're going to talk through finding your one rep max,
how to train for mass versus how to train for power,
and why strength above all is the key you need
(00:54):
to unlock the life you're looking for. Craig, Welcome back
to the pod.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
It is a pleasure to be back.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Thank you, exciting to jump in with you today. Starting
with topic one, building foundational strength. You and I talk
about this a lot off camera. You know, when people
start their journey, they struggle to understand the ratio split
between strength and cardio. Now we know the muscle is
a heart and it needs to be worked appropriately. But
I'm more so talking about the person who tries to
(01:20):
go from sitting on the couch to signing up for
their first competition or race, as it means to get started.
So first, Craig tell us why a slow build of
foundational strength work is a great place for most people
to start when they're looking to begin their journey.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So that is a great question, and I admire all
of the excitement people have when they when they have
this new goal, they have the moment of inspiration. They're like, Okay,
here I go. I would say, though, that the best
way to understand that is if I decided I wake
up today, I'm like, I'm going to bake a cake.
I'm so excited. I'm baking a cake. And I do
(01:56):
everything I make the cake. I go to put it
in the oven. I'm like, pardon me an hour. It's
gonna take an hour to get this cake. I'm doing
this in twenty minutes. I'm gonna five x or three sorry,
I'm gonna three x the temperature, and I'm gonna cook
it for twenty minutes. I'm gonna go really hard on
that because I'm really excited about getting this cake that
(02:16):
i want, and I'm gonna end up having to do
it again because my cake is gonna be it's gonna
be burnt or terrible or whatever happens to a cake.
If you cook at it three x the temperature, your
physical results are very, very similar. If somebody wants a
good place to put the excitement and the energy they
have about their goals into into achieving them, then they
(02:39):
should put it into being consistent. They should put it
into into checking every box and checking every box with
full intent with whatever those pieces are towards their goals.
But if you just try to do it faster, you're
gonna end up having to remake your cake. Your cake
being when you blow your hamstring off or hurt your
back or blow your knees out or whatever.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
By cake.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
We are not, in fact referencing glutes in the sistens.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
No, that's perfect. I should have got a gluten your
I forgot. People use glutes and cake interchangeably.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
So yeah, keep up at the times.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah you're gonna bust your cake, like one of your
cakes is gonna get messed up and you're gonna be
here to be back on the couch waiting to heal.
So the excitement is great, and people should use that
to inspire them to check all of the daily boxes
to achieve their goals, not to try to get there faster.
I remember when I was fighting, I'd have coaches all
(03:34):
the time. We're like, listen, smooth as fast or slow
as smooth, and smooth as fast. If you go out
there and try to be really fast, it's not gonna
go well. And that works in almost any realm of achievement.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
You know, slow and steady really does win the race.
When it comes to building strength, I think a lot
of people don't even know where to start, right. I mean,
your first timer is going to the gym. They're picking
up the dumbbells, they're doing a couple of bicep curls,
they're doing the they're kind of just all over the place.
So when it comes to Craig, just like the most
beginner strength split or the beginner program, what would you
(04:10):
tell someone now, Listen, this comes with a lot of
disclaimers because our answer here is always it depends, right.
But you know, in speaking in general terms, you know
what's a good place to start. How do we want
to think about it?
Speaker 1 (04:21):
So depending on the first thing people should start with
as a routine they can do if if I'm going
to and I likely will say that four days a
week in the gym is a is a really great
starting point for most goals, strength being one of them.
But if you can only do two, don't pick a
four day program and get two or three days the
(04:43):
first week, two or three days to second and then
feel like a failure. So figure out what you can
actually do. But I would say the options for strength,
if I had to give to one would be a
full body workout three days a week, and the second
would be an upper lower up or lower split, so
you work your upper body twice a week and your
lower body twice a week. If I were to take
(05:05):
any contingencies off this, people can do whatever I say.
It'd be upper lower, upper lower every week, four days
a week, simple movements, with the idea in the beginning
not even being that you want to improve your results
at each workout as much as you want to practice
what you're doing. Like before, before, you worry too much
(05:28):
about am I stronger? Is my performance better? Am I
moving towards this number, get good at what you're actually doing.
Like before I worry about how many words permitt it
I can type. I'm going to figure out what finger's
supposed to touch which keys instead of just trying to
chicken peck faster.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
That makes sense, it does, and you know, I mean
it goes back to the fundamental movement patterns, right and
just really understanding, Okay, what is the hinge that I'm
going to really focus on right now? What is the
knee dominant movement? The push, vertical push, vertical pull, horizontal push,
horizontal pull, and then what am I doing the strength
in my core as well? Now we can argue all
of those in a way, do work your core if
you're lifting heavy enough to stabilize, right. But finding the
(06:06):
consistent program, I think a lot of newbies and a
lot of beginners in the gym they think every workout
has to be different every week. What you'll often find
if you work with a really great trainer and you
work with them every Monday and Wednesday, the Monday workouts
are going to be the same over the four to
six period, and the Wednesday workouts are going to be
the same, and we're following progressive overload, and we're getting
(06:28):
stronger in each of those moves completely.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
And credit to the late night infomercials that popularize confusing
your muscles not to infringe on their trademarks if they
still have them with that term, like good for them
in terms of marketing, but bad for people in the
sense that we think that's how weightlifting needs to work,
(06:52):
especially for beginners. If somebody going back to the idea
of somebody being a fighter, if you decided I think
I'm going to be a competitive fighter, and you went
to a boxing coach and he taught you how to
throw a jab day number one, it was like, Okay,
job's done, let's go do something else. I assume people
would recognize pretty quickly like oh, if I stay with
this coach, I'm gonna get beat up. Like I'm not
(07:13):
good at this yet, Like I can't go pressure test
my job. I've thrown it for half an hour one time,
Like you're gonna do it a lot, like a lot,
a lot until you're good at it, and then some
variation starts. To make sense. Weight lifting is exactly the
same for somebody just starting out. You need to practice
the movements and ideally, especially when you're in a place
(07:35):
where you're neurologically fresh. If you can program them internally
correctly the first time, it'll save you years of heartache
if you get to intermediate and realize, oh, I'm actually
not squatting very well at all. So if I want
to move to advanced, I have to go back to
the beginning and internally rewire how I do this movement.
(07:55):
That's a bad deal. So trying to start really hard
and really fast can handicap your ultimate potential, which nobody wants.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I mean, it makes a lot of sense. You're essentially
setting yourself up for, like you said, a lot of
disappointment and then potentially injury. Right, how many squads do
you have to do in order to start, you know,
making your hips not feel that great? You know, if
you're not leveraging your glutes in the right way, or
if you don't understand the basic fundamental of how to
activate your glutes, you're going to have some serious problems
here in a year, two years, five years down the road.
(08:26):
By doing that every single week and continuously increasing the
weight on that movement completely completely.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
And I get that that's often driven by excitement, but
it's foolish, I get and all of us have been there.
But getting started on the right foot and programming things
right the first time is invaluable.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I think it's inherently more important as a beginner find
a coach, invest in a coach, invests in the tools
to guide you. Craig's going to have a really fantastic
foundation and fundamental sea on the app. He's going to
teach you proper form for the big three lifts, the deadlift,
the squad, the bench. So you know, take a look
at those videos, study it. Be a student of the
(09:09):
game before you jump into these things. It's going to
pay off in the long run massively.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You'll handicap yourself otherwise.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Agree, So let's let's move away from the beginner's mindset
for a second. Now we're going to go into talking
about finding your one rep max. But the disclaimer before
we dive into this conversation. To your point, Craig, you know,
maybe when we get started, it's nice to know kind
of what your baseline testing is. Right. First of all,
Step one is my form solid great form checks out done.
(09:40):
Now let's understand what your deadlift is, what your squad is,
what your bench is and let's just kind of gauge
where you are. So you know, Jim Rats, of course
are precious gym rats. They love to go for a
one rep max. You and I are probably both guilty
of this. When we're feeling good, we sometimes we just
want to send it for that pie. Especially we're coming
off with Thanksgiving, right, that's always the best time to
(10:01):
do it. You know, you've eaten potatoes and cornbread for
a couple of days. You're ready to get after it.
But Craig, talk to us about how often we should
really be analyzing our prs and why sticking to your
program we'll garner to the stronger results. I want to
kick this conversation off by defining what is a one
retmax and what's the benefit of testing it?
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Great question. So one repmax is exactly what it sounds like.
It is the most amount of weight or the maximum
weight you can perform for a single repetition in a movement.
So if you can bench two hundred pounds twice, it
might be your two repmax, but it is not your
ultimate one repmax. Now, the caveat on that outside of
(10:42):
a professional strongman contest or a powerlifting contest, I would
cap people's one repmax at either the most amount of
weight they can handle or the most amount of weight
they can handle without their form breaking down. So if
you start bench pressing and your form is getting kind
of messed up, your shoulders are coming forward like you're
(11:03):
barely squeezing it out, and you're like, I think I
could do five more pounds. As a coach, I would
not be permitting that. So whatever you can you can
hit for a single rep with good form, because it's
never going to be picture perfect at a one rep max.
That would be That would be what that is now
in terms of the importance of it. As with everything,
(11:27):
the importance of something is going to be relative to
what the goal is or what the driving purpose is.
But for everyone having an understanding of am I getting
stronger or not matters, Like it doesn't matter if you're
a grandma or grandpa who's thinking, like, man, five years
from now, am I gonna be able to stand up
off the couch? Getting stronger will help ensure that happens.
(11:50):
It doesn't matter if you're you're looking for performance. It
doesn't matter if you're a competitive athlete. If you just
like being strong having a metric deal. Am I moving
in the right direction? Am I getting stronger? Your Your
one rep max is the ultimate, the ultimate measure of that.
That's what it's telling you.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
So how do we go about testing it? And does
it differ by the type of lift that we're testing?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
So it doesn't differ based on the lift, but in
terms of testing it, essentially, what you're gonna do is
whatever you would do to warm up generally, so you're
gonna get yourself to the point that you feel good,
whether you do a hip warm up for squats, or
you're warming up your shoulders nlbows for a bench prests,
whatever it happens to be. From there. My advice always
(12:35):
is to conserve the number of reps you do. So
let's say we're I'm gonna work up to a one
rep max on squat. I get squat one thirty five,
I don't know one hundred times. I'm gonna squat it
for five reps maybe, and then maybe I go to
one eighty five and I squat that for three, and
then I'm probably doing doubles or singles, so sets of
(12:57):
two or sets of one all the way up trying
to conserve as much energy as possible, will acclimatizing myself
to more and more weight, because you won't be neurologically
or physically ready for a one rep max when you're cold.
Or let's say I've warmed up and I've squatted two
twenty five and I think I'm gonna squat five hundred
jumping straight to five hundred, I will not physically be
(13:18):
ready for physically, neurologically, mentally, emotionally like I won't be there.
So very progressive weight jumps. They get smaller as you
get closer to where you're going, and maximizing how much
energy you keep in the tank is key to building
up and actually testing it.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
You mentioned conserving energy. I think this is a huge one.
This is a mistake that I often see. Sometimes it's
at the end of their day. Sometimes they do a
very very elaborate workout. Sometimes they do some cardio just
to get a sweat in, and now they're doing that
progression that you just mentioned, working up to it. By then,
I mean they're shot. You're done, right, So I mean,
(13:58):
what should even Let's let's take it as far out
as the couple of days leading up to this, right,
So say you're really dialed in, you're dedicated to finding
this one rep max. You've been working hard, let's say
over the last eight weeks, and it's time to retest again.
Whether you're doing it on your own or with your coach,
what did the days leading up to a one rep
max or a testing day look like? And what should
that day, you know, leading up to the time of
(14:21):
the test even look like.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
So leading up to it five four to seven days out,
I would not be training that lift hard at all,
And if it was a dead lift, I'd keep it
at least a week out a squat, maybe about a
week a bench press. You could probably get away with
a moderate amount of benching four or five days out,
and then you're just going to let yourself recover. So
(14:43):
there's this idea in training that you stress your body.
Your capacity diminishes as you stress your body. So the
weakest you should be on a bench press is at
the very end of your bench press workout. From there,
your body starts to recover and essentially, if you picture
like a dip and a raise, it'll come back up
beyond where you started at before the stress, and that's
(15:07):
called super compensation. So you don't just recover, you recover
plus a little bit. So in the time before, you're
trying to give yourself that downtime to make sure that
you get to the height of the peak of recovery
you can get to, and ideally that's where you're testing
in terms of the day of My advice, if you're
at the point where you're seriously testing a one rep
(15:29):
max and planning it into your program, you should be
self aware of what makes you feel good. So if
I was going to test my one rep max squat,
I wouldn't. I wouldn't do a three hour hike with
my wife and the dog that morning. I when I'm
trying to lift heavy heavy, like to feel a little
bloated with food when I go do that. So if
(15:51):
I was going to do a max out squat, I'd
probably get all you can eat sushi like two hours
before and come in like h feeling like a big balloon,
because that is something I like. Some people when they're
lifting heavy, prefer to be a little bit hungry or
just like evenly satiated. But you're gonna do the thing
that would make you feel good, And for a lot
(16:11):
of people, I love gun to the head analogies for
almost everything. If there was a gun to your head
and somebody said, right now, based on everything you know
about yourself, what gets you as prepared as possible to lift?
If you get the answer wrong, I'm gonna blow your
brains out. Whatever pops into your head. Do that, like
whatever you'd say right there, test that, and then as
you continue moving forward with a coach, with mentors, with
(16:35):
questions you you get answered in something like the bodybuilding
dot com app or even oh, I don't know, watching
a YouTube video with one of your favorite experts. They
might say things, really, that sounds neat. Maybe I'll try that,
And you could try it before regular work and be like, oh,
that wasn't it. That was like Craig said, he likes
being really bloated. I just threw up on my squat workout.
That sucked. Test those things in regular workouts. But the
(16:59):
things that you've noticed me you feel the best, bring
those to that day.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Let's set some realistic expectations in terms of progressively improving
your prs now. I think people severely underestimate what a
ten pound jump or a fifteen pound jump or a
twenty pound jump. I think there are a lot of
people out there who think, well, I just did this
(17:24):
program for eight weeks consistently, I'm going to add thirty
pounds to my squat, right, So what as a coach, Craig,
you know what type of expectations do you set? You
know with your clients, and of course that can differ,
but you know what kind of mindset do you get
them in in terms of you know how how big
those jumps are in between programs.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
So there are two things I do with that. One
is I like to talk in trips of percentages. If
you bench, actually no, we'll do this backwards. If I
bench one hundred pounds but you bench four hundred pounds,
a ten pound jump for me is ten percent and
for you it's what two point five somebody check that math.
(18:04):
You let me know in the comments, but it's a
significantly higher percentage for me. That's why at gyms you'll
get dumbells that go five pounds, seven and a half, ten,
twelve and a half, fifteen, seventeen and a half, twenty.
But you won't see a dumbell that goes eighty pounds,
eighty two point five pounds, eighty five pounds Because the
percentage jump is so much smaller. So looking at your
(18:25):
strength relative relative to that improvement with a percentage will
give you a gauge on it. You're like, oh, man,
that was only ten pounds. Well, ten pounds is a lot.
If you woke up ten percent taller, or you woke
up with ten percent more net worth, or you drove
ten percent faster.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Everywhere you're weighed ten percent lighter.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, it's a massive change. Like, that's really big. Ten
pounds doesn't sound like a lot, But ten percent of
your bench press or your squatter youre dead. That sounds
like a ton. The other thing I do when it
comes to setting expectations is I like to start. And
it took me a long time to in this. I've
done a lot of things wrong, I guess a person
and as a coach, so I've learned this.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
That leads to growth in any realm, thankfully.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
I'll typically go, hey, what do you want three months
from now? What would make you happy? And they'll say
sometimes they'll say things that are completely insane, but they'll
say it, and I will always sit there, stonefaced. I'm
cool to do that. We're gonna have to do this
and this and this and this and this, and we
can't do this and this and this and this and this.
(19:31):
Can you do that every day for three months and
not miss? And if the answer is yes, we give
it a go. Usually they're like, whoa, that's kinda, that's
a lot. I'm like, yes, but you want world class
results that you've seen on the internet with people who
are either enhanced or people who do this full time,
like this is all they do. Like you're a dad
(19:53):
with three kids and a job and you play pickleball
with your wife every Saturday. I understand you want to
add twenty pounds of lean mass to your frame in
the next three months, but that's let's say it's possible,
this would be our best chance to get there. Do
you want to do all of this? And then negotiation
then comes down to not what the goal is because
(20:14):
it's very hard to get people to change that. Yo,
are you willing to do all of this and not
miss for that length of time? And if they're not,
it's like, cool, then let's readjust our expectations based on
what we're willing to pay. If I walk into is
there a Louis Vuitton store here? There must be near you, right,
I walk into Louis Vuitton like, I go, I want
(20:34):
to louisse a Toon bag. They go, cool, here's the price.
I go, Oh, I don't know if I want. I
don't know if I want to Louis Vuitton bag anymore.
Like I don't know. If this is a good idea
that I find much better then I want to Louise
a Toon bag. No, you don't know. No, I do know. No,
you don't way better. And you can do this with yourself.
Anybody watching this can do this with themselves. Go cool.
(20:55):
What would it take to get the thing I want? Is?
Can I do that? And am I willing to do that?
Don't have to be, but then scale down the expectation
to the effort you're willing to pay.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Love it, Craig.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Before we move on to the last and final topic,
I just want the record to show that we have
it documented that Daniel bitsbench press is four hundred pounds.
So before we move on rounding out our conversation on
finding the one rep max, you know what are Let's
let's condense everything that we just spoke about into three tips,
you know, for somebody who's maybe going for the first
(21:27):
one rep Max, you know what are what are your
three tips for them?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Monitor your form as you go. Take your phone. If
you don't have somebody you trust who can watch you,
set your phone up, watch eachs each set back, and
you're going to do that one to make sure your
form's not breaking down. And two sometimes you'll be like, man,
that was really hard, and you'll see the video and
the bar moves way faster than you think you. Okay,
if I was watching somebody do that, I'd probably tell
them they could make a twenty pound jump. So film
(21:56):
every set and watch it back, especially for form Number two,
small numbers of reps. You can do as many weight
jumps as you want, but take it slow that way.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Number three Eat lots of sushi.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, Oh you need sushi is A that's a that's
a pretty good one. That's I've never gone wrong with that.
I've gotten right to the border of regretting it, but
I've never regretted, oh you need Sushi's tip number three.
That's the bonus tip.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Rounding out today, Craig, and we're gonna move into the
topic of training for mass versus training for power. So
there's a difference in training styles when we're training to
put on muscle versus training for power or say performance.
So I want to I want to break open a
couple of things. REP schemes, programming styles splits all of
the fun stuff. So first, first of all, breakdown what
(22:48):
is the biggest difference between training for muscle versus training
for power or performance.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
So when we're talking about power and performance, there are
there's a already broad spectrum even within power and how
people use it or performance. So my the biggest difference
training to build muscle, training to grow muscle, to body build.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, aesthetics, we're focusing on aesthetics.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
We want to get big, we want to get you know, jacked.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, which is awesome, Like if you're not jacked, if
you haven't been jacked, you should try it. It's great.
But the biggest difference between training for aesthetics and training
for a power or performance model, regardless of the specifics
within it, Training for aesthetics is about workload. And there's
a million different ways to skin that cat, but it's
(23:42):
about workload. Training for power and performance is about velocity.
It's about the speed the bar or the thing you're
you're lifting is moving and the velocity you train in
is how you zero in on the particular outcome you want.
But it becomes one is about total work, one is
about speed of the movements.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
So let's get into the granular details of the difference
between those two as well. Give me the examples of
the of the rep schemes in terms of how we're
training for hypertrophy right versus power.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
So if we're talking power, and we're talking like explosive
power output, Let's say for an athlete, if I was
looking at aesthetics, I'd probably give people two options, the
first being more suited to a beginner and the second
being a little more advanced. But I'll give you both
and then compare to power. For a beginner, you could
do the standard I'm doing five sets of ten on
(24:44):
my leg press or five sets of ten on squad.
I'm looking for a large amount of total work. With
somebody more advanced, it might be I'm doing two heavy
sets of squats and then I'm doing a back off
set of squats where I cut the weight twenty five
thirty percent and I go to failure. So you're again
looking for total work and stress on the particular muscles.
(25:06):
If we were to contrast that to something for power,
if we were to take so westside Barbell has something
called the dynamic method, which is about building explosive power.
And if you were to squat with the dynamic method
dynamic method, excuse me, you'd be doing ten to twelve
sets of squat with sixty to eighty percent of your
(25:28):
one rep max. But you'd be doing sets of two
with very low rest, and the focus would be on
how fast you're moving the bar on that movement. So
one is about practicing a physical quality that's power. I'm
practicing being explosive. I'm practicing being powerful. The other is
about total work instead of increasing that over time to
(25:50):
increase my performance. I don't necessarily have to increase my
total work over time if I'm talking explosive output, but
I need to increase the quality of that work. I
need to get better at being explosive, so I practice
being explosive to build muscle. I need to slowly increase
my amount of work over time, so that continue to
stress helps me add the muscle I'm looking for.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
And I'm assuming you mentioned rest time in here as well,
and correct me if I'm wrong here. But when we're
looking at more performance or power athletes. You know, I'm thinking,
I'm thinking the let's put into athlete terms, like a
baseball player, a soccer player. These are people who need
to have one step explosiveness, right, So the work that
they're doing in a weight room, even things like you know,
(26:32):
I don't know, basketball and some of these things where
it's very quick burst of energies that is spent. Right,
So I would assume you mentioned it's a lower rest,
So we're doing the two reps at a lower rest.
How much rest, like totally thirty seconds? Yeah, sure, because
we want to train our energy system to be able
to handle that load with minimal rests, versus if we're
(26:54):
training for esthetics. One could argue, I mean you have
more time. We're almost getting to recovery.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I would absolutely argue that. I would directly argue that, actually,
I think that's one hundred percent right.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Where does you know, where does a cardiovascular role come
into play when we're training these two different goals, you know,
more of the hypercha fee, I mean, it can be
argued that it is less of a heart strain for
that type of training versus your power and performance completely.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
So if I was training strictly for aesthetics, and I
was also concerned about general heart health. I'd be doing
really low intensity cardio for anywhere between three and five
days a week, and let's say it was twenty or
thirty minutes. I'd be doing that for heart health. I'd
be doing it for recovery. Depending on what you're eating
and what you're eating it can aid in digestion. But
there are a huge amount of benefits to just regular cardio,
(27:47):
even for esthetic aesthetic goals. If ever, like I don't
care if I die in ten years, I just want
to be jacked. Low intensity, steady state cardio will help
you get more jack too, and maybe prevent you from
dying in ten years. When it comes to athleticals, it
needs to be much more specific what is expected of
this athlete. A baseball player and a boxer both need explosiveness.
(28:10):
They both need to be able to turn that on
when they want it, but one of them needs a
much bigger gas tank for that. Like a baseball player,
what if they hit a home run or think they
hit a really good ball and have to run the bases.
They're only doing that like they get a lot of rest.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Afterwards for the most part.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
It's swing the bat, hit the ball, sprint to first
or sprint from first to second, or push off you
know your leg to get to backhand that grounder.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, do you know about baseball?
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I was a D one softball player.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
WHOA, I don't know anything about baseball. I went to
coach my daughter's team when they needed a parent volunteer.
I bought two baseball books on Amazon. I'd never hit
a baseball. I don't know if I'd ever thrown what Like,
I had no idea.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
What was going what chat offline Craig.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, I picked a dicey example. So baseball players need
that same explosiveness, but then get a lot of downtime.
A boxer needs almost this continual flow of explosiveness with
a ton of work over time, like they're constantly working
or they're going to get knocked on conscious. So looking
at those helps you manipulate a performance program specifically to
(29:17):
the goal. So performance programs need to be much more
particular as you get to higher and higher levels, Like
when my daughter was playing baseball versus you playing D one,
the level of specificity required is much more significant for you, obviously,
but as you move forward and performance. That specificity needs
to be there, and everything in your program should be
(29:37):
justified by that.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Now, I think we'd be remiss, you know if we
didn't really clarify. Majority of the people who are listening
to this probably just want to gain a couple pounds
of muscle, lose a couple pounds of fat, live a little.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Bit longer, and just be all around healthier. Right.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
I think the split the ratio is split between folks
like that and folks who are true dedicated to a
sports specific program at this at this time is rather small.
But I will also make the argument that there are
a lot of folks out there, a lot of adults
out there who maybe have hobbies that they're very passionate about,
and they do want to excel at those whether that's
(30:16):
the baseball or softball league down in Central Park or
some reck basketball leagues, right, and they want to increase
that performance. I think there's a lot of misinformation and
just a lack of education out there in terms of
training for those sports specific movements in the gym. I
think what you often see. I'm going to throw out
a completely random example. Let's say it's a forty five
(30:39):
year old guy here in New York City and he
plays in a rec basketball league, but he's training for
hypertrophy in the gym where he actually what his main
goal is is he wants to feel a little more
you know, explosive, a little more able, you know, to
play in that league. So, you know, I think there's
a time and a place for everything.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
You just have to be.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Really clear in terms of what your goal is and
be intentional when you're going about your programming. And that
goes back to working with a coach.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Completely agree for those people. If I may, Yeah, I'm
going to make a general suggestion, I make a couple
of general suggestions. There'll be two or three. One is,
like you said, figure out what the thing is that
you actually want or what all the things are, because
there's a variety of areas in training where you can
kill two birds with one stone. So let's say you're saying, hey,
(31:25):
I want to be I want to be fairly jacked,
but I want to be able to play in my
rec basketball league. I want to be healthy and functional
over the long term. Cool. So we've got some ideas here.
You could do a heavy upper and lower day per
week and a lighter, upper and lower day per week,
wherein one you focus on getting strong, which will serve everything,
(31:47):
and the other one you focus on getting more fast,
more explosive, more powerful, which will serve your sport goals.
And then with all the movements you're doing under those
so your main movements can be heavier, light, or heavier fast.
Let's say after that, a broad variance in movement will
help keep you injury free because when you play D
(32:08):
one softball versus let's say I go play softball in
Central Park, the variance in your movements versus mine, when
I catch and throw a ball, mine going to be
all over the map. I'm not precise with baseball the
way a D one player would be. So the broader
variance in my program I have, the more robust all
be or the more the more resistant to injury all
(32:30):
be because I put myself in a variety of situations.
But then we take all that extra work and we go, Okay,
we're gonna build muscle because we want to look jacked,
but we also want to be fit to do all
this stuff cool. Take your get jack training and make
it take less time. Do more work in less time.
You'll get the cardiovascular benefits, you'll get the aesthetic benefits.
It'll help you in your sport. Like, you can combine
(32:51):
these instead of going, oh, do I want to be
jacked or do I want to do a sports specific program,
you can mix those and do a really unique blend
just by having a couple essential movements in your program
and then really pushing the pace on the others.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Yeah. I mean, there's something to certainly be learned from
training like an athlete. You know, I think oftentimes a
lot of us that we're high school players or college players.
Maybe we find some sort of passion in the years after,
and then you know, we know what the steady decline
looks like there. But there's something to be said about
continuing to train explosive movements, to continuing to train speed.
(33:27):
It really does equip you in a lot of different ways.
When you're stepping off that curb quickly on a rainy
day and you can catch yourself, well, guess what, that
probably just came from some of the cleans or some
of the boxing, some of the things that you're doing
inside of the gym. I think too often we get
really stuck into a box of linear movement. We're not
doing rotational work. We're not doing you know, agility work
(33:50):
and athleticism work. And you know, I know coach Ken
has a lot of this upcoming and some of the
workouts that he'll be doing in the app right, just
really staying fit for a life is so under and
I think, you know, we shouldn't box ourselves to your point, Craig,
we shouldn't box ourselves into well, I'm only training for hyperchaphine.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
I'm only training for performance or whatever the goal may be.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Yeah, And on a personal level, I feel a lot
of people will resonate with this. It's cool to be jacked,
But if I'm jack, just like, hey, can you throw
that to me? And I toss it and pop my peck?
That's not cool. That's not cool at all. Like you
don't want to look like you can do stuff and
actually be like, listen, there's there's a Lambeau. Like I
(34:33):
painted a Lamborghini at a cardboard and I just put
it on top of my nineteen ninety three Civic. You're like, wait, what,
Like nobody wants to be that guy or a girl.
So having a mix of those things in your program
unless you're like, hey, my performance in bodybuilding or sports
or whatever is my career, in which case, do what
it takes to make the most money you can and
(34:55):
be successful in your career. If it's not that hyperchavy
training has permeated almost all aspects of gym life to
the point that we don't even realize it's our fundamental
first language in the gym, and it doesn't need to be,
nor should it be. If you want a broad spectrum
of results, and being jacked is awesome, but being jacked
(35:17):
at the expense of everything else is the Lambeau cardboard
on top of the old civic like, it's not not
cool when you actually have to take it out for
a spin.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Very well put, I love the analogy crag rounding out
here with the next couple. You know.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
I want to be clear, training for muscle gains and
hypertrophy training is not a male focused goal, right, so
oftentimes we think men and women should have totally different
plans for the same goals. Can you debunk this a
bit for us?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yes, yes I can. There are a variety of people
who have talked about the pink tax, which is like, hey,
you take a razor, but you put it in a
pink package. You say it's for women, you charge fifty
percent more. I think, broadly speaking, people who have done
that with fitness like, hey, this is training science. This
(36:11):
is how you get more muscular. It is how you
get leaner, stronger, faster, And they're like, but here's our
pink version, where like women have to come over here
and do this special thing and it probably costs war
as the way they're getting people to follow them or whatever.
Men and women inside I can tell you having daughters,
(36:31):
we are fundamentally so different it's like insane. But physically
we're not that different. The things that are gonna make
you jump higher are gonna make me jump high, and
vice versa. The things that are gonna help you build
muscle are gonna help me build muscle, provided we're both
at the same level of training. But it's it's nonsense
(36:53):
that women need some hyper specific program that defies all
of the laws of exercise science that men are you using.
If you'd like your biceps to be more jacked, or
you want more shoulders so you have more of a
V tap or an hourglass, we can do the same
things to get those, like the fundamental differences in terms
(37:13):
of the programming are massively overplayed to the point that
it's exhausting.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
And that goes for all goals. It goes for hypertrophy,
it goes for performance, it goes for endurance. I mean,
you know, now, we know that the studies behind the
female athletes is not nearly at the height of where
men is, and that goes across the board. For a
lot of the medical journeys that journals that we look
(37:39):
at today, just women were really not the focus groups
that were included in a lot of so thankfully we're
seeing that start to shift now over the last decade
or so. But there is no reason to say that
women shouldn't be doing the same exact program that a
man is doing to train for a specific goal in.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Mind completely and and anybody pushing that as an idea
either has a fundamental misunderstanding of how things work, or
they're lying to you because they'd like some of your money.
Like those are the two options. They either don't understand
or they do understand, and they're they're doing something as
(38:21):
a sales pitch. And I would argue it's not any
different than hey, what am I gonna do? My son
wants to be a lawyer, But so does my daughter.
I've got a plan for my son. What should I
tell my daughter to do? Like, probably the same thing.
It's probably probably about the same thing, like and and women,
(38:42):
I'm sorry for all the men listening. Women on average
work way harder than men in the gym, way harder,
like the I don't know if it's a lack of ego.
I don't know if it's I've never been able to
figure out what it is. The average woman in the gym,
like who cares about it? Is a killer? Like the
average woman is probably in the top fifteen percent of
men for work ethic in my experience. And the ones
(39:05):
who really embrace that and and follow a serious program
similar to what a male counterpart with the same goals
might be following, they crush it.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Do you see that in some of the past and
current clients that you train with today.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
That women work harder?
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Oh lord, yes, but.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
By always and tells his male clients not to watch
this episode.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Any of my male clients watching this, like, feel free
to ask me, ask me what category you're in, Like, Hey,
do most of your female clients work harder than me?
And I will tell you honestly, and for some of them,
there's gonna be.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Yes, it's time for a time for a new year
wake up call for Craig's male clients here.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, truly, I think I think women in is gonna
get slightly political or philosophical. Women who who dedicate themselves
or have a goal in something that is cred actionally
male dominated always seem I think they feel like they
have something to prove to a degree, and I think
(40:08):
that feeling is reasonable. Not that I'm saying they have
to prove themselves, but I can see where that would
come from, and it works really well, like they really
have to have to push and try and fight for
their spot, and I love it.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Yeah, I mean I think, I think to a certain degree,
you know, there's a percentage of women who do walk
around with the chip on their shoulder, but they put
that to work once they step into a gym.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
We see this a.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Lot, right, It goes back to the old Gosh, I
don't even know what brand it was, but it was
anything you can do, I can do better right in
the nineties. Right, So it's very much so that mindset,
and I think the leaps and bounds that we've seen
occur in women's let's say women's sports specifically, just in
the last decade alone has been a monumental shift and
(40:54):
the data and science that is coming out now because
you know, I talked to the the head strength and
conditioning coach over at ut for the women's basketball team
and to hear some of the stuff that they're doing
with their women's basketball team, the technology that they're wearing
on a daily basis in their practices, and the data
that's coming out of that, and then that's being shared
(41:15):
in the general strength and conditioning world. It's having a moment.
It's really exciting to see. And what's most exciting is
the point that both you and I have made so
far in the last couple of minutes there, we have officially,
I think, as an industry, debunked the idea that women
can not train as intense, as hard and at the
(41:35):
same level as their male counterparts.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Completely and for women who are working hard especially, and
I would put men who are working really hard in
this category as well. Get a chip, Get a chip
and put it on your shoulder and then every day
prove why it should be there. And that doesn't mean
I think you should go be a jerk at the
gym and I don't know, push somebody off the bench
you want, but get an internal chip. As a personal example,
(42:03):
my youngest daughter three or four months ago started going
to the like wanted to go to the gym with
my wife. They started going. She started like eating healthier,
like with intent, like I'm gonna be as healthy and
energeticized as I can be.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
How old is she?
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Fourteen? Right now? Has completely transformed her body, like way stronger.
She looks amazing, she looks healthy, she looks happy, like
it's been amazing to see. And if I could give
her something, it'd be a little chip on her shoulder
where internally she's going, hey, like I've done something that
most people can't do or won't do, and I'd like
(42:38):
for you to have that. I'd like to have that.
I'd like every single person watching this to get a
chip and put it on their shoulder and just keep
it inside so that when you when you have that
voice inside that is like your lazy voice that wants
you to get a donut or skip that workout or
do something because you don't think anyone's going to know
(42:58):
where anyone's going to see and that little Chip is like, no,
I'm better than that. I'm better than that. I love that.
I'd like everybody get one of those.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
We're going to round out this episode within the same
topic of training mass versus training for power. So I
want you to give us your biggest piece of advice
for being successful in terms of training for mass, and
I want you to give us your biggest piece of
advice for being successful in training for power performance based goals.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
My biggest piece of advice training for mass is a
lot of what's going to matter is outside the gym,
recovering like crazy and eating probably more than you think
you need if you're trying to put on a significant
amount of mass and all the right foods. But a
lot of it's going to be outside the gym. You
can't You can't will yourself to grow muscle by training
(43:53):
more or training more often, training longer, training harder. Once
you're doing a good job in the gym, the rest
of your job is to recover and let that work
take effect. When it comes to performance or powertraining. Imitate
someone who was powerful and explosive when you're in the gym.
If you imagine, I don't know I'm not good with
(44:15):
any sports, not just baseball. Take the most explosive guy
you recognize in the NFL, like, how would this guy squat?
What would it look like when he was doing bench press?
Imitate him? That is the best thing you could possibly do.
Doing that is at least as valuable as a better program.
You could have a mediocre program. But if you go
(44:36):
in there and you execute it like you're a genetic
freak from the NFL or wherever you'll get results, it
will switch things on and will have your perform in
a way that actually moves you towards that so explosive
and power figure till you make it. Everything else, rest
and recover till you make it.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
It flows, it works.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
I got a patent. I you gonna trademark that.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Get the bumper sticker, mates, That's what we did. Craig,
thanks so much for stopping by.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
It was it was great to have you on the
pot again.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Absolutely my pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Thanks for tuning in to another episode here at bodybuilding
dot Com.
Then then then.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
What's Upbodybuilding dot Com listeners. My name is Danielle Bitz
and welcome back to the bbcom Podcast Today. I'm joined
by Craig Bonelli, no stranger to Bbcom. We recently welcome
Craig into the roster of our master coaches, who will
be guiding you through workouts on our newest fitness app.
Craig also starred in our original docuseries The West Side Method,
(00:32):
where he travels back to Westside Barbell to put their
training methods to the test. You can watch all the
episodes on Bodybuilding dot COM's YouTube. Craig is a former
professional strongman and prides himself on being a master of strength. Today,
we're going to talk through finding your one rep max,
how to train for mass versus how to train for power,
and why strength above all is the key you need
(00:54):
to unlock the life you're looking for. Craig, Welcome back
to the pod.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
It is a pleasure to be back.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Thank you, exciting to jump in with you today. Starting
with topic one, building foundational strength. You and I talk
about this a lot off camera. You know, when people
start their journey, they struggle to understand the ratio split
between strength and cardio. Now we know the muscle is
a heart and it needs to be worked appropriately. But
I'm more so talking about the person who tries to
(01:20):
go from sitting on the couch to signing up for
their first competition or race, as it means to get started.
So first, Craig tell us why a slow build of
foundational strength work is a great place for most people
to start when they're looking to begin their journey.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So that is a great question, and I admire all
of the excitement people have when they when they have
this new goal, they have the moment of inspiration. They're like, Okay,
here I go. I would say, though, that the best
way to understand that is if I decided I wake
up today, I'm like, I'm going to bake a cake.
I'm so excited. I'm baking a cake. And I do
(01:56):
everything I make the cake. I go to put it
in the oven. I'm like, pardon me an hour. It's
gonna take an hour to get this cake. I'm doing
this in twenty minutes. I'm gonna five x or three sorry,
I'm gonna three x the temperature, and I'm gonna cook
it for twenty minutes. I'm gonna go really hard on
that because I'm really excited about getting this cake that
(02:16):
i want, and I'm gonna end up having to do
it again because my cake is gonna be it's gonna
be burnt or terrible or whatever happens to a cake.
If you cook at it three x the temperature, your
physical results are very, very similar. If somebody wants a
good place to put the excitement and the energy they
have about their goals into into achieving them, then they
(02:39):
should put it into being consistent. They should put it
into into checking every box and checking every box with
full intent with whatever those pieces are towards their goals.
But if you just try to do it faster, you're
gonna end up having to remake your cake. Your cake
being when you blow your hamstring off or hurt your
back or blow your knees out or whatever.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
By cake.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
We are not, in fact referencing glutes in the sistens.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
No, that's perfect. I should have got a gluten your
I forgot. People use glutes and cake interchangeably.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
So yeah, keep up at the times.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah you're gonna bust your cake, like one of your
cakes is gonna get messed up and you're gonna be
here to be back on the couch waiting to heal.
So the excitement is great, and people should use that
to inspire them to check all of the daily boxes
to achieve their goals, not to try to get there faster.
I remember when I was fighting, I'd have coaches all
(03:34):
the time. We're like, listen, smooth as fast or slow
as smooth, and smooth as fast. If you go out
there and try to be really fast, it's not gonna
go well. And that works in almost any realm of achievement.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
You know, slow and steady really does win the race.
When it comes to building strength, I think a lot
of people don't even know where to start, right. I mean,
your first timer is going to the gym. They're picking
up the dumbbells, they're doing a couple of bicep curls,
they're doing the they're kind of just all over the place.
So when it comes to Craig, just like the most
beginner strength split or the beginner program, what would you
(04:10):
tell someone now, Listen, this comes with a lot of
disclaimers because our answer here is always it depends, right.
But you know, in speaking in general terms, you know
what's a good place to start. How do we want
to think about it?
Speaker 1 (04:21):
So depending on the first thing people should start with
as a routine they can do if if I'm going
to and I likely will say that four days a
week in the gym is a is a really great
starting point for most goals, strength being one of them.
But if you can only do two, don't pick a
four day program and get two or three days the
(04:43):
first week, two or three days to second and then
feel like a failure. So figure out what you can
actually do. But I would say the options for strength,
if I had to give to one would be a
full body workout three days a week, and the second
would be an upper lower up or lower split, so
you work your upper body twice a week and your
lower body twice a week. If I were to take
(05:05):
any contingencies off this, people can do whatever I say.
It'd be upper lower, upper lower every week, four days
a week, simple movements, with the idea in the beginning
not even being that you want to improve your results
at each workout as much as you want to practice
what you're doing. Like before, before, you worry too much
(05:28):
about am I stronger? Is my performance better? Am I
moving towards this number, get good at what you're actually doing.
Like before I worry about how many words permitt it
I can type. I'm going to figure out what finger's
supposed to touch which keys instead of just trying to
chicken peck faster.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
That makes sense, it does, and you know, I mean
it goes back to the fundamental movement patterns, right and
just really understanding, Okay, what is the hinge that I'm
going to really focus on right now? What is the
knee dominant movement? The push, vertical push, vertical pull, horizontal push,
horizontal pull, and then what am I doing the strength
in my core as well? Now we can argue all
of those in a way, do work your core if
you're lifting heavy enough to stabilize, right. But finding the
(06:06):
consistent program, I think a lot of newbies and a
lot of beginners in the gym they think every workout
has to be different every week. What you'll often find
if you work with a really great trainer and you
work with them every Monday and Wednesday, the Monday workouts
are going to be the same over the four to
six period, and the Wednesday workouts are going to be
the same, and we're following progressive overload, and we're getting
(06:28):
stronger in each of those moves completely.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
And credit to the late night infomercials that popularize confusing
your muscles not to infringe on their trademarks if they
still have them with that term, like good for them
in terms of marketing, but bad for people in the
sense that we think that's how weightlifting needs to work,
(06:52):
especially for beginners. If somebody going back to the idea
of somebody being a fighter, if you decided I think
I'm going to be a competitive fighter, and you went
to a boxing coach and he taught you how to
throw a jab day number one, it was like, Okay,
job's done, let's go do something else. I assume people
would recognize pretty quickly like oh, if I stay with
this coach, I'm gonna get beat up. Like I'm not
(07:13):
good at this yet, Like I can't go pressure test
my job. I've thrown it for half an hour one time,
Like you're gonna do it a lot, like a lot,
a lot until you're good at it, and then some
variation starts. To make sense. Weight lifting is exactly the
same for somebody just starting out. You need to practice
the movements and ideally, especially when you're in a place
(07:35):
where you're neurologically fresh. If you can program them internally
correctly the first time, it'll save you years of heartache
if you get to intermediate and realize, oh, I'm actually
not squatting very well at all. So if I want
to move to advanced, I have to go back to
the beginning and internally rewire how I do this movement.
(07:55):
That's a bad deal. So trying to start really hard
and really fast can handicap your ultimate potential, which nobody wants.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I mean, it makes a lot of sense. You're essentially
setting yourself up for, like you said, a lot of
disappointment and then potentially injury. Right, how many squads do
you have to do in order to start, you know,
making your hips not feel that great? You know, if
you're not leveraging your glutes in the right way, or
if you don't understand the basic fundamental of how to
activate your glutes, you're going to have some serious problems
here in a year, two years, five years down the road.
(08:26):
By doing that every single week and continuously increasing the
weight on that movement completely completely.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
And I get that that's often driven by excitement, but
it's foolish, I get and all of us have been there.
But getting started on the right foot and programming things
right the first time is invaluable.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I think it's inherently more important as a beginner find
a coach, invest in a coach, invests in the tools
to guide you. Craig's going to have a really fantastic
foundation and fundamental sea on the app. He's going to
teach you proper form for the big three lifts, the deadlift,
the squad, the bench. So you know, take a look
at those videos, study it. Be a student of the
(09:09):
game before you jump into these things. It's going to
pay off in the long run massively.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You'll handicap yourself otherwise.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Agree, So let's let's move away from the beginner's mindset
for a second. Now we're going to go into talking
about finding your one rep max. But the disclaimer before
we dive into this conversation. To your point, Craig, you know,
maybe when we get started, it's nice to know kind
of what your baseline testing is. Right. First of all,
Step one is my form solid great form checks out done.
(09:40):
Now let's understand what your deadlift is, what your squad is,
what your bench is and let's just kind of gauge
where you are. So you know, Jim Rats, of course
are precious gym rats. They love to go for a
one rep max. You and I are probably both guilty
of this. When we're feeling good, we sometimes we just
want to send it for that pie. Especially we're coming
off with Thanksgiving, right, that's always the best time to
(10:01):
do it. You know, you've eaten potatoes and cornbread for
a couple of days. You're ready to get after it.
But Craig, talk to us about how often we should
really be analyzing our prs and why sticking to your
program we'll garner to the stronger results. I want to
kick this conversation off by defining what is a one
retmax and what's the benefit of testing it?
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Great question. So one repmax is exactly what it sounds like.
It is the most amount of weight or the maximum
weight you can perform for a single repetition in a movement.
So if you can bench two hundred pounds twice, it
might be your two repmax, but it is not your
ultimate one repmax. Now, the caveat on that outside of
(10:42):
a professional strongman contest or a powerlifting contest, I would
cap people's one repmax at either the most amount of
weight they can handle or the most amount of weight
they can handle without their form breaking down. So if
you start bench pressing and your form is getting kind
of messed up, your shoulders are coming forward like you're
(11:03):
barely squeezing it out, and you're like, I think I
could do five more pounds. As a coach, I would
not be permitting that. So whatever you can you can
hit for a single rep with good form, because it's
never going to be picture perfect at a one rep max.
That would be That would be what that is now
in terms of the importance of it. As with everything,
(11:27):
the importance of something is going to be relative to
what the goal is or what the driving purpose is.
But for everyone having an understanding of am I getting
stronger or not matters, Like it doesn't matter if you're
a grandma or grandpa who's thinking, like, man, five years
from now, am I gonna be able to stand up
off the couch? Getting stronger will help ensure that happens.
(11:50):
It doesn't matter if you're you're looking for performance. It
doesn't matter if you're a competitive athlete. If you just
like being strong having a metric deal. Am I moving
in the right direction? Am I getting stronger? Your Your
one rep max is the ultimate, the ultimate measure of that.
That's what it's telling you.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
So how do we go about testing it? And does
it differ by the type of lift that we're testing?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
So it doesn't differ based on the lift, but in
terms of testing it, essentially, what you're gonna do is
whatever you would do to warm up generally, so you're
gonna get yourself to the point that you feel good,
whether you do a hip warm up for squats, or
you're warming up your shoulders nlbows for a bench prests,
whatever it happens to be. From there. My advice always
(12:35):
is to conserve the number of reps you do. So
let's say we're I'm gonna work up to a one
rep max on squat. I get squat one thirty five,
I don't know one hundred times. I'm gonna squat it
for five reps maybe, and then maybe I go to
one eighty five and I squat that for three, and
then I'm probably doing doubles or singles, so sets of
(12:57):
two or sets of one all the way up trying
to conserve as much energy as possible, will acclimatizing myself
to more and more weight, because you won't be neurologically
or physically ready for a one rep max when you're cold.
Or let's say I've warmed up and I've squatted two
twenty five and I think I'm gonna squat five hundred
jumping straight to five hundred, I will not physically be
(13:18):
ready for physically, neurologically, mentally, emotionally like I won't be there.
So very progressive weight jumps. They get smaller as you
get closer to where you're going, and maximizing how much
energy you keep in the tank is key to building
up and actually testing it.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
You mentioned conserving energy. I think this is a huge one.
This is a mistake that I often see. Sometimes it's
at the end of their day. Sometimes they do a
very very elaborate workout. Sometimes they do some cardio just
to get a sweat in, and now they're doing that
progression that you just mentioned, working up to it. By then,
I mean they're shot. You're done, right, So I mean,
(13:58):
what should even Let's let's take it as far out
as the couple of days leading up to this, right,
So say you're really dialed in, you're dedicated to finding
this one rep max. You've been working hard, let's say
over the last eight weeks, and it's time to retest again.
Whether you're doing it on your own or with your coach,
what did the days leading up to a one rep
max or a testing day look like? And what should
that day, you know, leading up to the time of
(14:21):
the test even look like.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
So leading up to it five four to seven days out,
I would not be training that lift hard at all,
And if it was a dead lift, I'd keep it
at least a week out a squat, maybe about a
week a bench press. You could probably get away with
a moderate amount of benching four or five days out,
and then you're just going to let yourself recover. So
(14:43):
there's this idea in training that you stress your body.
Your capacity diminishes as you stress your body. So the
weakest you should be on a bench press is at
the very end of your bench press workout. From there,
your body starts to recover and essentially, if you picture
like a dip and a raise, it'll come back up
beyond where you started at before the stress, and that's
(15:07):
called super compensation. So you don't just recover, you recover
plus a little bit. So in the time before, you're
trying to give yourself that downtime to make sure that
you get to the height of the peak of recovery
you can get to, and ideally that's where you're testing
in terms of the day of My advice, if you're
at the point where you're seriously testing a one rep
(15:29):
max and planning it into your program, you should be
self aware of what makes you feel good. So if
I was going to test my one rep max squat,
I wouldn't. I wouldn't do a three hour hike with
my wife and the dog that morning. I when I'm
trying to lift heavy heavy, like to feel a little
bloated with food when I go do that. So if
(15:51):
I was going to do a max out squat, I'd
probably get all you can eat sushi like two hours
before and come in like h feeling like a big balloon,
because that is something I like. Some people when they're
lifting heavy, prefer to be a little bit hungry or
just like evenly satiated. But you're gonna do the thing
that would make you feel good, And for a lot
(16:11):
of people, I love gun to the head analogies for
almost everything. If there was a gun to your head
and somebody said, right now, based on everything you know
about yourself, what gets you as prepared as possible to lift?
If you get the answer wrong, I'm gonna blow your
brains out. Whatever pops into your head. Do that, like
whatever you'd say right there, test that, and then as
you continue moving forward with a coach, with mentors, with
(16:35):
questions you you get answered in something like the bodybuilding
dot com app or even oh, I don't know, watching
a YouTube video with one of your favorite experts. They
might say things, really, that sounds neat. Maybe I'll try that,
And you could try it before regular work and be like, oh,
that wasn't it. That was like Craig said, he likes
being really bloated. I just threw up on my squat workout.
That sucked. Test those things in regular workouts. But the
(16:59):
things that you've noticed me you feel the best, bring
those to that day.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Let's set some realistic expectations in terms of progressively improving
your prs now. I think people severely underestimate what a
ten pound jump or a fifteen pound jump or a
twenty pound jump. I think there are a lot of
people out there who think, well, I just did this
(17:24):
program for eight weeks consistently, I'm going to add thirty
pounds to my squat, right, So what as a coach, Craig,
you know what type of expectations do you set? You
know with your clients, and of course that can differ,
but you know what kind of mindset do you get
them in in terms of you know how how big
those jumps are in between programs.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
So there are two things I do with that. One
is I like to talk in trips of percentages. If
you bench, actually no, we'll do this backwards. If I
bench one hundred pounds but you bench four hundred pounds,
a ten pound jump for me is ten percent and
for you it's what two point five somebody check that math.
(18:04):
You let me know in the comments, but it's a
significantly higher percentage for me. That's why at gyms you'll
get dumbells that go five pounds, seven and a half, ten,
twelve and a half, fifteen, seventeen and a half, twenty.
But you won't see a dumbell that goes eighty pounds,
eighty two point five pounds, eighty five pounds Because the
percentage jump is so much smaller. So looking at your
(18:25):
strength relative relative to that improvement with a percentage will
give you a gauge on it. You're like, oh, man,
that was only ten pounds. Well, ten pounds is a lot.
If you woke up ten percent taller, or you woke
up with ten percent more net worth, or you drove
ten percent faster.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Everywhere you're weighed ten percent lighter.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, it's a massive change. Like, that's really big. Ten
pounds doesn't sound like a lot, But ten percent of
your bench press or your squatter youre dead. That sounds
like a ton. The other thing I do when it
comes to setting expectations is I like to start. And
it took me a long time to in this. I've
done a lot of things wrong, I guess a person
and as a coach, so I've learned this.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
That leads to growth in any realm, thankfully.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
I'll typically go, hey, what do you want three months
from now? What would make you happy? And they'll say
sometimes they'll say things that are completely insane, but they'll
say it, and I will always sit there, stonefaced. I'm
cool to do that. We're gonna have to do this
and this and this and this and this, and we
can't do this and this and this and this and this.
(19:31):
Can you do that every day for three months and
not miss? And if the answer is yes, we give
it a go. Usually they're like, whoa, that's kinda, that's
a lot. I'm like, yes, but you want world class
results that you've seen on the internet with people who
are either enhanced or people who do this full time,
like this is all they do. Like you're a dad
(19:53):
with three kids and a job and you play pickleball
with your wife every Saturday. I understand you want to
add twenty pounds of lean mass to your frame in
the next three months, but that's let's say it's possible,
this would be our best chance to get there. Do
you want to do all of this? And then negotiation
then comes down to not what the goal is because
(20:14):
it's very hard to get people to change that. Yo,
are you willing to do all of this and not
miss for that length of time? And if they're not,
it's like, cool, then let's readjust our expectations based on
what we're willing to pay. If I walk into is
there a Louis Vuitton store here? There must be near you, right,
I walk into Louis Vuitton like, I go, I want
(20:34):
to louisse a Toon bag. They go, cool, here's the price.
I go, Oh, I don't know if I want. I
don't know if I want to Louis Vuitton bag anymore.
Like I don't know. If this is a good idea
that I find much better then I want to Louise
a Toon bag. No, you don't know. No, I do know. No,
you don't way better. And you can do this with yourself.
Anybody watching this can do this with themselves. Go cool.
(20:55):
What would it take to get the thing I want? Is?
Can I do that? And am I willing to do that?
Don't have to be, but then scale down the expectation
to the effort you're willing to pay.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Love it, Craig.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Before we move on to the last and final topic,
I just want the record to show that we have
it documented that Daniel bitsbench press is four hundred pounds.
So before we move on rounding out our conversation on
finding the one rep max, you know what are Let's
let's condense everything that we just spoke about into three tips,
you know, for somebody who's maybe going for the first
(21:27):
one rep Max, you know what are what are your
three tips for them?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Monitor your form as you go. Take your phone. If
you don't have somebody you trust who can watch you,
set your phone up, watch eachs each set back, and
you're going to do that one to make sure your
form's not breaking down. And two sometimes you'll be like, man,
that was really hard, and you'll see the video and
the bar moves way faster than you think you. Okay,
if I was watching somebody do that, I'd probably tell
them they could make a twenty pound jump. So film
(21:56):
every set and watch it back, especially for form Number two,
small numbers of reps. You can do as many weight
jumps as you want, but take it slow that way.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Number three Eat lots of sushi.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, Oh you need sushi is A that's a that's
a pretty good one. That's I've never gone wrong with that.
I've gotten right to the border of regretting it, but
I've never regretted, oh you need Sushi's tip number three.
That's the bonus tip.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Rounding out today, Craig, and we're gonna move into the
topic of training for mass versus training for power. So
there's a difference in training styles when we're training to
put on muscle versus training for power or say performance.
So I want to I want to break open a
couple of things. REP schemes, programming styles splits all of
the fun stuff. So first, first of all, breakdown what
(22:48):
is the biggest difference between training for muscle versus training
for power or performance.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
So when we're talking about power and performance, there are
there's a already broad spectrum even within power and how
people use it or performance. So my the biggest difference
training to build muscle, training to grow muscle, to body build.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, aesthetics, we're focusing on aesthetics.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
We want to get big, we want to get you know, jacked.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, which is awesome, Like if you're not jacked, if
you haven't been jacked, you should try it. It's great.
But the biggest difference between training for aesthetics and training
for a power or performance model, regardless of the specifics
within it, Training for aesthetics is about workload. And there's
a million different ways to skin that cat, but it's
(23:42):
about workload. Training for power and performance is about velocity.
It's about the speed the bar or the thing you're
you're lifting is moving and the velocity you train in
is how you zero in on the particular outcome you want.
But it becomes one is about total work, one is
about speed of the movements.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
So let's get into the granular details of the difference
between those two as well. Give me the examples of
the of the rep schemes in terms of how we're
training for hypertrophy right versus power.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
So if we're talking power, and we're talking like explosive
power output, Let's say for an athlete, if I was
looking at aesthetics, I'd probably give people two options, the
first being more suited to a beginner and the second
being a little more advanced. But I'll give you both
and then compare to power. For a beginner, you could
do the standard I'm doing five sets of ten on
(24:44):
my leg press or five sets of ten on squad.
I'm looking for a large amount of total work. With
somebody more advanced, it might be I'm doing two heavy
sets of squats and then I'm doing a back off
set of squats where I cut the weight twenty five
thirty percent and I go to failure. So you're again
looking for total work and stress on the particular muscles.
(25:06):
If we were to contrast that to something for power,
if we were to take so westside Barbell has something
called the dynamic method, which is about building explosive power.
And if you were to squat with the dynamic method
dynamic method, excuse me, you'd be doing ten to twelve
sets of squat with sixty to eighty percent of your
(25:28):
one rep max. But you'd be doing sets of two
with very low rest, and the focus would be on
how fast you're moving the bar on that movement. So
one is about practicing a physical quality that's power. I'm
practicing being explosive. I'm practicing being powerful. The other is
about total work instead of increasing that over time to
(25:50):
increase my performance. I don't necessarily have to increase my
total work over time if I'm talking explosive output, but
I need to increase the quality of that work. I
need to get better at being explosive, so I practice
being explosive to build muscle. I need to slowly increase
my amount of work over time, so that continue to
stress helps me add the muscle I'm looking for.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
And I'm assuming you mentioned rest time in here as well,
and correct me if I'm wrong here. But when we're
looking at more performance or power athletes. You know, I'm thinking,
I'm thinking the let's put into athlete terms, like a
baseball player, a soccer player. These are people who need
to have one step explosiveness, right, So the work that
they're doing in a weight room, even things like you know,
(26:32):
I don't know, basketball and some of these things where
it's very quick burst of energies that is spent. Right,
So I would assume you mentioned it's a lower rest,
So we're doing the two reps at a lower rest.
How much rest, like totally thirty seconds? Yeah, sure, because
we want to train our energy system to be able
to handle that load with minimal rests, versus if we're
(26:54):
training for esthetics. One could argue, I mean you have
more time. We're almost getting to recovery.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I would absolutely argue that. I would directly argue that, actually,
I think that's one hundred percent right.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Where does you know, where does a cardiovascular role come
into play when we're training these two different goals, you know,
more of the hypercha fee, I mean, it can be
argued that it is less of a heart strain for
that type of training versus your power and performance completely.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
So if I was training strictly for aesthetics, and I
was also concerned about general heart health. I'd be doing
really low intensity cardio for anywhere between three and five
days a week, and let's say it was twenty or
thirty minutes. I'd be doing that for heart health. I'd
be doing it for recovery. Depending on what you're eating
and what you're eating it can aid in digestion. But
there are a huge amount of benefits to just regular cardio,
(27:47):
even for esthetic aesthetic goals. If ever, like I don't
care if I die in ten years, I just want
to be jacked. Low intensity, steady state cardio will help
you get more jack too, and maybe prevent you from
dying in ten years. When it comes to athleticals, it
needs to be much more specific what is expected of
this athlete. A baseball player and a boxer both need explosiveness.
(28:10):
They both need to be able to turn that on
when they want it, but one of them needs a
much bigger gas tank for that. Like a baseball player,
what if they hit a home run or think they
hit a really good ball and have to run the bases.
They're only doing that like they get a lot of rest.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Afterwards for the most part.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
It's swing the bat, hit the ball, sprint to first
or sprint from first to second, or push off you
know your leg to get to backhand that grounder.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, do you know about baseball?
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I was a D one softball player.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
WHOA, I don't know anything about baseball. I went to
coach my daughter's team when they needed a parent volunteer.
I bought two baseball books on Amazon. I'd never hit
a baseball. I don't know if I'd ever thrown what Like,
I had no idea.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
What was going what chat offline Craig.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, I picked a dicey example. So baseball players need
that same explosiveness, but then get a lot of downtime.
A boxer needs almost this continual flow of explosiveness with
a ton of work over time, like they're constantly working
or they're going to get knocked on conscious. So looking
at those helps you manipulate a performance program specifically to
(29:17):
the goal. So performance programs need to be much more
particular as you get to higher and higher levels, Like
when my daughter was playing baseball versus you playing D one,
the level of specificity required is much more significant for you, obviously,
but as you move forward and performance. That specificity needs
to be there, and everything in your program should be
(29:37):
justified by that.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Now, I think we'd be remiss, you know if we
didn't really clarify. Majority of the people who are listening
to this probably just want to gain a couple pounds
of muscle, lose a couple pounds of fat, live a little.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Bit longer, and just be all around healthier. Right.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
I think the split the ratio is split between folks
like that and folks who are true dedicated to a
sports specific program at this at this time is rather small.
But I will also make the argument that there are
a lot of folks out there, a lot of adults
out there who maybe have hobbies that they're very passionate about,
and they do want to excel at those whether that's
(30:16):
the baseball or softball league down in Central Park or
some reck basketball leagues, right, and they want to increase
that performance. I think there's a lot of misinformation and
just a lack of education out there in terms of
training for those sports specific movements in the gym. I
think what you often see. I'm going to throw out
a completely random example. Let's say it's a forty five
(30:39):
year old guy here in New York City and he
plays in a rec basketball league, but he's training for
hypertrophy in the gym where he actually what his main
goal is is he wants to feel a little more
you know, explosive, a little more able, you know, to
play in that league. So, you know, I think there's
a time and a place for everything.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
You just have to be.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Really clear in terms of what your goal is and
be intentional when you're going about your programming. And that
goes back to working with a coach.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Completely agree for those people. If I may, Yeah, I'm
going to make a general suggestion, I make a couple
of general suggestions. There'll be two or three. One is,
like you said, figure out what the thing is that
you actually want or what all the things are, because
there's a variety of areas in training where you can
kill two birds with one stone. So let's say you're saying, hey,
(31:25):
I want to be I want to be fairly jacked,
but I want to be able to play in my
rec basketball league. I want to be healthy and functional
over the long term. Cool. So we've got some ideas here.
You could do a heavy upper and lower day per
week and a lighter, upper and lower day per week,
wherein one you focus on getting strong, which will serve everything,
(31:47):
and the other one you focus on getting more fast,
more explosive, more powerful, which will serve your sport goals.
And then with all the movements you're doing under those
so your main movements can be heavier, light, or heavier fast.
Let's say after that, a broad variance in movement will
help keep you injury free because when you play D
(32:08):
one softball versus let's say I go play softball in
Central Park, the variance in your movements versus mine, when
I catch and throw a ball, mine going to be
all over the map. I'm not precise with baseball the
way a D one player would be. So the broader
variance in my program I have, the more robust all
be or the more the more resistant to injury all
(32:30):
be because I put myself in a variety of situations.
But then we take all that extra work and we go, Okay,
we're gonna build muscle because we want to look jacked,
but we also want to be fit to do all
this stuff cool. Take your get jack training and make
it take less time. Do more work in less time.
You'll get the cardiovascular benefits, you'll get the aesthetic benefits.
It'll help you in your sport. Like, you can combine
(32:51):
these instead of going, oh, do I want to be
jacked or do I want to do a sports specific program,
you can mix those and do a really unique blend
just by having a couple essential movements in your program
and then really pushing the pace on the others.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Yeah. I mean, there's something to certainly be learned from
training like an athlete. You know, I think oftentimes a
lot of us that we're high school players or college players.
Maybe we find some sort of passion in the years after,
and then you know, we know what the steady decline
looks like there. But there's something to be said about
continuing to train explosive movements, to continuing to train speed.
(33:27):
It really does equip you in a lot of different ways.
When you're stepping off that curb quickly on a rainy
day and you can catch yourself, well, guess what, that
probably just came from some of the cleans or some
of the boxing, some of the things that you're doing
inside of the gym. I think too often we get
really stuck into a box of linear movement. We're not
doing rotational work. We're not doing you know, agility work
(33:50):
and athleticism work. And you know, I know coach Ken
has a lot of this upcoming and some of the
workouts that he'll be doing in the app right, just
really staying fit for a life is so under and
I think, you know, we shouldn't box ourselves to your point, Craig,
we shouldn't box ourselves into well, I'm only training for hyperchaphine.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
I'm only training for performance or whatever the goal may be.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Yeah, And on a personal level, I feel a lot
of people will resonate with this. It's cool to be jacked,
But if I'm jack, just like, hey, can you throw
that to me? And I toss it and pop my peck?
That's not cool. That's not cool at all. Like you
don't want to look like you can do stuff and
actually be like, listen, there's there's a Lambeau. Like I
(34:33):
painted a Lamborghini at a cardboard and I just put
it on top of my nineteen ninety three Civic. You're like, wait, what,
Like nobody wants to be that guy or a girl.
So having a mix of those things in your program
unless you're like, hey, my performance in bodybuilding or sports
or whatever is my career, in which case, do what
it takes to make the most money you can and
(34:55):
be successful in your career. If it's not that hyperchavy
training has permeated almost all aspects of gym life to
the point that we don't even realize it's our fundamental
first language in the gym, and it doesn't need to be,
nor should it be. If you want a broad spectrum
of results, and being jacked is awesome, but being jacked
(35:17):
at the expense of everything else is the Lambeau cardboard
on top of the old civic like, it's not not
cool when you actually have to take it out for
a spin.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Very well put, I love the analogy crag rounding out
here with the next couple. You know.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
I want to be clear, training for muscle gains and
hypertrophy training is not a male focused goal, right, so
oftentimes we think men and women should have totally different
plans for the same goals. Can you debunk this a
bit for us?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yes, yes I can. There are a variety of people
who have talked about the pink tax, which is like, hey,
you take a razor, but you put it in a
pink package. You say it's for women, you charge fifty
percent more. I think, broadly speaking, people who have done
that with fitness like, hey, this is training science. This
(36:11):
is how you get more muscular. It is how you
get leaner, stronger, faster, And they're like, but here's our
pink version, where like women have to come over here
and do this special thing and it probably costs war
as the way they're getting people to follow them or whatever.
Men and women inside I can tell you having daughters,
(36:31):
we are fundamentally so different it's like insane. But physically
we're not that different. The things that are gonna make
you jump higher are gonna make me jump high, and
vice versa. The things that are gonna help you build
muscle are gonna help me build muscle, provided we're both
at the same level of training. But it's it's nonsense
(36:53):
that women need some hyper specific program that defies all
of the laws of exercise science that men are you using.
If you'd like your biceps to be more jacked, or
you want more shoulders so you have more of a
V tap or an hourglass, we can do the same
things to get those, like the fundamental differences in terms
(37:13):
of the programming are massively overplayed to the point that
it's exhausting.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
And that goes for all goals. It goes for hypertrophy,
it goes for performance, it goes for endurance. I mean,
you know, now, we know that the studies behind the
female athletes is not nearly at the height of where
men is, and that goes across the board. For a
lot of the medical journeys that journals that we look
(37:39):
at today, just women were really not the focus groups
that were included in a lot of so thankfully we're
seeing that start to shift now over the last decade
or so. But there is no reason to say that
women shouldn't be doing the same exact program that a
man is doing to train for a specific goal in.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Mind completely and and anybody pushing that as an idea
either has a fundamental misunderstanding of how things work, or
they're lying to you because they'd like some of your money.
Like those are the two options. They either don't understand
or they do understand, and they're they're doing something as
(38:21):
a sales pitch. And I would argue it's not any
different than hey, what am I gonna do? My son
wants to be a lawyer, But so does my daughter.
I've got a plan for my son. What should I
tell my daughter to do? Like, probably the same thing.
It's probably probably about the same thing, like and and women,
(38:42):
I'm sorry for all the men listening. Women on average
work way harder than men in the gym, way harder,
like the I don't know if it's a lack of ego.
I don't know if it's I've never been able to
figure out what it is. The average woman in the gym,
like who cares about it? Is a killer? Like the
average woman is probably in the top fifteen percent of
men for work ethic in my experience. And the ones
(39:05):
who really embrace that and and follow a serious program
similar to what a male counterpart with the same goals
might be following, they crush it.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Do you see that in some of the past and
current clients that you train with today.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
That women work harder?
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Oh lord, yes, but.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
By always and tells his male clients not to watch
this episode.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Any of my male clients watching this, like, feel free
to ask me, ask me what category you're in, Like, Hey,
do most of your female clients work harder than me?
And I will tell you honestly, and for some of them,
there's gonna be.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Yes, it's time for a time for a new year
wake up call for Craig's male clients here.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, truly, I think I think women in is gonna
get slightly political or philosophical. Women who who dedicate themselves
or have a goal in something that is cred actionally
male dominated always seem I think they feel like they
have something to prove to a degree, and I think
(40:08):
that feeling is reasonable. Not that I'm saying they have
to prove themselves, but I can see where that would
come from, and it works really well, like they really
have to have to push and try and fight for
their spot, and I love it.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Yeah, I mean I think, I think to a certain degree,
you know, there's a percentage of women who do walk
around with the chip on their shoulder, but they put
that to work once they step into a gym.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
We see this a.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Lot, right, It goes back to the old Gosh, I
don't even know what brand it was, but it was
anything you can do, I can do better right in
the nineties. Right, So it's very much so that mindset,
and I think the leaps and bounds that we've seen
occur in women's let's say women's sports specifically, just in
the last decade alone has been a monumental shift and
(40:54):
the data and science that is coming out now because
you know, I talked to the the head strength and
conditioning coach over at ut for the women's basketball team
and to hear some of the stuff that they're doing
with their women's basketball team, the technology that they're wearing
on a daily basis in their practices, and the data
that's coming out of that, and then that's being shared
(41:15):
in the general strength and conditioning world. It's having a moment.
It's really exciting to see. And what's most exciting is
the point that both you and I have made so
far in the last couple of minutes there, we have officially,
I think, as an industry, debunked the idea that women
can not train as intense, as hard and at the
(41:35):
same level as their male counterparts.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Completely and for women who are working hard especially, and
I would put men who are working really hard in
this category as well. Get a chip, Get a chip
and put it on your shoulder and then every day
prove why it should be there. And that doesn't mean
I think you should go be a jerk at the
gym and I don't know, push somebody off the bench
you want, but get an internal chip. As a personal example,
(42:03):
my youngest daughter three or four months ago started going
to the like wanted to go to the gym with
my wife. They started going. She started like eating healthier,
like with intent, like I'm gonna be as healthy and
energeticized as I can be.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
How old is she?
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Fourteen? Right now? Has completely transformed her body, like way stronger.
She looks amazing, she looks healthy, she looks happy, like
it's been amazing to see. And if I could give
her something, it'd be a little chip on her shoulder
where internally she's going, hey, like I've done something that
most people can't do or won't do, and I'd like
(42:38):
for you to have that. I'd like to have that.
I'd like every single person watching this to get a
chip and put it on their shoulder and just keep
it inside so that when you when you have that
voice inside that is like your lazy voice that wants
you to get a donut or skip that workout or
do something because you don't think anyone's going to know
(42:58):
where anyone's going to see and that little Chip is like, no,
I'm better than that. I'm better than that. I love that.
I'd like everybody get one of those.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
We're going to round out this episode within the same
topic of training mass versus training for power. So I
want you to give us your biggest piece of advice
for being successful in terms of training for mass, and
I want you to give us your biggest piece of
advice for being successful in training for power performance based goals.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
My biggest piece of advice training for mass is a
lot of what's going to matter is outside the gym,
recovering like crazy and eating probably more than you think
you need if you're trying to put on a significant
amount of mass and all the right foods. But a
lot of it's going to be outside the gym. You
can't You can't will yourself to grow muscle by training
(43:53):
more or training more often, training longer, training harder. Once
you're doing a good job in the gym, the rest
of your job is to recover and let that work
take effect. When it comes to performance or powertraining. Imitate
someone who was powerful and explosive when you're in the gym.
If you imagine, I don't know I'm not good with
(44:15):
any sports, not just baseball. Take the most explosive guy
you recognize in the NFL, like, how would this guy squat?
What would it look like when he was doing bench press?
Imitate him? That is the best thing you could possibly do.
Doing that is at least as valuable as a better program.
You could have a mediocre program. But if you go
(44:36):
in there and you execute it like you're a genetic
freak from the NFL or wherever you'll get results, it
will switch things on and will have your perform in
a way that actually moves you towards that so explosive
and power figure till you make it. Everything else, rest
and recover till you make it.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
It flows, it works.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
I got a patent. I you gonna trademark that.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Get the bumper sticker, mates, That's what we did. Craig,
thanks so much for stopping by.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
It was it was great to have you on the
pot again.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Absolutely my pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Thanks for tuning in to another episode here at bodybuilding
dot Com.
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