 When it comes to autistic people, good piece of advice here. A lot of autistic people do have quite an insensitivity to blunt pain. Some people do, some people don't. It's a good thing to remember when you're working out. Both it really does highlight your potential for pushing yourself hard intensely, but also when you're just starting out you may push yourself quite hard in comparison to other people, because you don't necessarily feel that. So if you're doing some exercise which requires quite a bit of balance in terms of if you're doing squats or deadlifts or bench press or overhead press, if you're doing any of those movements, just be aware that you may not be as sensitive to these feelings of fatigue than to perhaps other people. It can be a good thing, but when it comes to balancing, if your muscles become very fatigued, then I'm not trying to scare you or anything like that, but just maybe be aware of that, because it might be like in my case I can push myself really, really hard on pretty much every exercise, but can sometimes be maybe a little bit too much, I would say. With the intensity that I do. Are you autistic? Are you wanting to get into health and fitness, but don't exactly know how to do so? Well today we're going to be having a look at a very interesting video from Joffrey Verity Schofield, who is a fitness content creator over on YouTube, produces some really awesome videos, and throughout this video I'm going to be explaining some of the differences, some of the tips and tricks that I have used in order to manage my time at the gym, get into it. So if you are interested in learning a bit more about that, this is how to nail your lifting journey, beginner to intermediate to advanced. I'm going to look at it from all perspectives. I'm sure there's going to be some really interesting insights from this guy. Not the most popular fitness creator out there, but his content is top tier. Let's go for it. What's up, peeps? So today we're talking about how to navigate your beginner to intermediate to advanced journey. Now it's been said that some channels keep you small. They keep you novices. They keep you lifetime intermediate. They keep you in what revival fitness says is novice purgatory. And so this is going to be sort of like an overarching overview on how to navigate this journey. Now first, I think it's worth noting that you don't actually want to be advanced. Okay, because being advanced by definition means that your rate of progress is going to be very, very slow. A lot of very advanced letters would be thrilled with a pound of muscle growth per year. A lot of beginners, they can't even stick to the process and be consistent when they could gain 10, 15, or even 20 times that with a fraction of the work. One thing that they don't tell you about getting into the gym, which I think would change a lot of people's motivation to go is that when you start off, you hardly have to do anything at the gym. Like most of it is just doing like the compound movements. You could just do machines even and just building up your strength base. Your muscles at the point when you start as a novice are so sensitive to any sort of weight training to the point where you can do, as Joffrey said, a very, like a fraction of the amount of work that perhaps someone like me would do and gain muscle much, much quicker than I am at the moment. That is, that is a good thing to, to highlight for sure. It gets you in there with these relatively fast results. And then when things slow down, well, you already have the habit of doing it. It's not like playing a musical instrument where you're going to kind of suck for a long time. You know, I remember in middle school playing, you know, hot cross buns on the recorder thinking, wow, I've spent three years and I still sound like shit. In this video, we're going to look at some things that beginners, intermediates and advanced should focus on, which will be different for each category of lifter. We're going to look at. I like that he's pointed that out because it is very, very true. Like the easiest time and the most productive time of your lifting journey is like the start and you don't need to do as much. And that's a really good thing to keep in mind. So even if you're not going five, six times a week like I am, that's not worry. You can go like twice a week and you can just do upper and lower body and you could you'd be fine or you could just do a mixture of lots of different things twice a week and you'd be good. You don't really need to do much. You can just work on the technique and the strength and it'll just naturally sort of come to you over time. Some trends that tend to happen along this journey, as well as some questions that you will have to answer before you become advanced. Also keep in mind that a lot of this I go into in more detail in my recent book. So if you want to just further reading, that would be an excellent resource as a full audio book. So if you enjoy hearing me proud along here, you'll probably enjoy that as well. Okay, so as a beginner, what do you need? The first thing would be consistency might sound obvious, but you have to keep going if you want to get results. And so definitely don't bite off more than you can chew. You don't need to be going to the gym seven days per week or six days per week, or even five days per week, three or four days per week is absolutely plenty, especially if you are even going two days a week. I think you could make some solid progress. I'd say in the context of consistency for autistic people, when we actually have a routine going, it's actually easier for us than perhaps most people in order to maintain that. The difficult part will necessarily be at the start. So what I recommend to anybody who really struggles with the gym environment, and also sort of starting things and adding things into their routine is to try and go for a very minimal amount of time. And for the first month, two months, don't necessarily focus too much on trying to like hit every muscle group and do it like optimally. Just go try out the machines that you want to do just give everything a go and go for a very short amount of time and do that for at least a month. You'll find that after that month, it starts to become something that you also somewhat look forward to. It doesn't have quite the energy draining effect that it did have at the start. And as you sort of go through and over the sort of the coming months, you can increase the amount of time that you go deadlift bench row, maybe squat. Just use the bar to do it correctly. And the movement is crisp. Yeah, I think one of the one of the things that I get told a lot whenever I talk about fitness for autistic people is that quite often we do tend to have joints and joint issues, particularly like hypermobility. If you do have those difficulties, highly recommend going going talk to a PT about it and learn how to do the techniques. Other than that, you can use some wrist and knee supports. You really want to focus on trying to get the technique as Tanwin, not Tanwin, as Johnny says, get the technique on point before trying to like exert yourself to it to any considerable amount. Ending up not going on the leg days of a push pull leg split. But seriously, the legs are hard. Yes, I'm talking to you. Consistency is what is going to be much more important. Now we're getting ready to launch the first full body. You also need to be tracking your training. Keep a training log. I'm always astonished by the number of people who contact me for coaching and then they just have no record of anything they did for the first few years. How can he not know? Oh, that meme is great. Yes. Definitely like logging. If you are like me, if you are an autistic person who's like me, you're probably really, really enjoy the logging aspect of it. I highly recommend a particular app called Strong. It has a free version and it also has a pro version as well. It's really, really good for logging different workouts and stuff. And it also has some inbuilt workouts that you can do. So this is what the app looks like, this Strong Work app. And so you can see the different sections, each of these things. They have their own exercise things that I do. And when you start the workout, as you can see, there's like different exercises and they have like reps and they have like weight. And there's also a little rest timer function in there as well. And whenever you finish like a set, if I like tick one of them, it basically starts like a little timer in the corner for my rest period. And it allows me to sort of keep track. You can't really see the green on the screen because of the filter that I'm using for my green string. But really, really helpful. It has been really, really helpful for me rather than using sort of like your notes pages. It can be quite, quite useful. This is valuable information. So anyone who says like, don't count your reps, don't count your sets, don't count anything. They are instantly exposing themselves and not in a good way. Next, you're also going to want to focus. Nathaniel says RP Hypertrophy app is awesome and it just you adjust the better as you get better. The RP Hypertrophy app is definitely a good one to check out as well. There's another channel on YouTube called Renaissance Periodization. That's a little bit more exercise sciencey kind of intermediate kind of advanced level. But I highly recommend checking them out as well because they have some really informative content. And when we're talking about sort of lifting, like we're talking about this, he's very much talking about bodybuilding. So about hypertrophy. I think one thing that people worry about, especially women I've found about sort of getting into fitness and sort of building muscle and things of that nature is that they don't want to get too bulky. And even guys might might might say it as well, like I don't want to get too bulky. And a lot of the time they're sort of thinking of bodybuilding as being like Ronnie Coleman, as like Arnold Schwarzenegger, like they they take a lot of exogenous compounds, steroids, things of that nature, which cause them to develop muscle like that. Most people, you probably won't get to that degree. And if you do, you are a genetic phenom and you'll probably be like one of the world's best athletes. You know, muscle gain is very relatively quite slow. So if you wanted to stop at any point and you wanted to lose muscle, you could do that. And so you don't necessarily have to worry about that. As you gain muscle, you're also gaining quite a bit of strength at these times. So even if you're going to build muscular strength and you're not really too bothered about gaining a lot of muscle, doing like a year of this this type of stuff, it's going to be going to be quite useful for you, like no matter what your goals are. Generally, when you increase muscle size, you tend to increase your strength and vice versa to a certain point. There is also aspects of your central nervous system involved in developing strength. But generally, when you get bigger muscles, you get stronger. And there is no way to tone. That's another fitness myth. Usually people use tone as sort of a marketing method for AFAB individuals for women because they don't want to get bulky. But tone is not a thing. You can either add muscle or you can lose weight. There's no there's no tone. Usually, when people see toning things, it's usually related to losing weight and perhaps gaining a bit of muscle in the process. Ignore that stuff. If you want to put muscle on, do this stuff. If you want to lose weight, obviously like cardio and diet is like the best way to do so. It's on the basics. Now, this seems to be a little bit controversial lately, but I do think that mastering the basics, just the, you know, the barbell movements, dumbbell movements, maybe a bit of, you know, machines, but don't think that you need ultra specialized training at this point. You absolutely do not learn to work hard. A lot of people are nowhere near as close to failure as they think. You might think it's zero or one reps and reserve when it's actually four or five, six or more. So just learn how to train hard. It is a skill and it can absolutely be improved. You don't actually need to do this stuff if you don't want to. First, first year of my lifting, pretty much just solely use machines. That can take a lot of the stress out of it. And if you do want to learn these barbell kind of dumbbell related exercises, you can do, you can do so, but you don't necessarily have to do them. It's just usually optimal. You know, if you're wanting to do it over the long run, these kind of compound barbell dumbbell movements can be quite good. What do you think about training sore? I just started out and skipped my second workout this week because I have terrible Dom. Sorry. I keep beating this question. I'd say you want to at least have a rest day or two in between the sessions that you do. So generally, what I would recommend is either is doing an upper lower split. You can do, you can also do push, pull, legs, split and upper body is basically, well, the upper part of your body and lower body is like your legs, obviously. So if you generally program it as, so perhaps you're doing two days a week, you would do one day, you do some kind of pushing related thing like a chest press or like a shoulder press. You could do the machines. You do some kind of bicep curl. You do some kind of pulling movement, whether it be from the top or as a row. And then on the next day or perhaps a day later, you do your legs and then you'd always have like a solid amount of time in order to recover between them. If you are still struggling with that even after two days, perhaps reduce the amount of workload that you have per session and consider doing cardio as well, because that can also help quite a bit. Johnny Crash says recovery takes forever after 45, like five to six days. Rest is important as the lifts. Yeah, you damage your muscles during the actual session and you build your muscles when you rest. Tried the gym years ago. I must admit it was not for me, but I do love swimming. That's fair enough for me. I don't think it's for everybody. Like there's definitely individual variation, you know, but I think strength training at least once a week has been shown to pretty much eliminate all risks of developing mobility issues in older age. So I'd highly recommend at least trying to do one day a week, sort of doing the basics of strength movement. You don't have to go too hard, but sort of maintaining something can be really beneficial, especially if you're a bit older. Also learn the skill of good techniques. Head and hand positions. So controlling the lowering. You don't have to count tempo, maybe a slight pause at the bottom of your presses at the bottom of your squats, just learning not ego lifting and doing a good job first and foremost. Not program hopping, not getting shiny. I would say again, adding to this in terms of the lowering part of it, I'd try and count count your reps. So like, for example, Geoffrey was doing the pull down thing for his back and his biceps. The actual concentric, the shortening of your muscles, the bit that sort of most people think is the most stimulatory of like growth is not the most impactful. It's actually the bit up, so the bit where your muscles are lengthening sort of at the end of sort of pulling something. So I try as hard as you can to, even if the weight, you have to cut down the weight quite a bit to really, really get that slow sort of lowering on the way up. It can be really good both for safety and also for like long term muscle growth. Doing whole body two days, Monday, Thursday and whole body still sore. So I decided to wait for a second workout on Monday. I feel kind of lame for it, but I feel like I'm doing what's best. I could barely walk for two days. Yeah, yeah, I understand. Ian says, Thomas, should I work on my balance first before weight training? Or can weight lifting help with this issue? Yeah, I mean, it's very difficult to work on your balance unless you are actively like trying to train that. But a lot of the movements that we do in the gym definitely incorporate aspects of balance. And when you do barbell and dumbbell movements, not machines, you're actually, you're training the actual muscles that you would do if you were on the machines, but you're also training these stabilizer muscles. So like, if you can imagine with a squat, something like that, you're training your typically you're training your quads, the front of your leg, and you're training your butt, your glutes, when you're doing these squats. You're also training the the outsides of your leg, the adductors, the abductors, you're also training different smaller muscles sort of within your knee, you know. So it can definitely help with stability when it comes to balance. It's more of a skill, you know, so if you learn to do this skill over time, you did it in a safe way. Perhaps you started with instead of doing barbell squats, you started with a goblet squat. So you got like a dumbbell, you sort of held it here, and you did your squat. And it was a very light dumbbell, you sort of focus on trying to get trying to get the movement properly, you know, sort of over time, you can progress that and then eventually, if you feel comfortable, you can move on to barbell squats, if you feel a bit more stable. But it's a skill and generally, if you practice that skill quite a bit and you're focusing, the coordination in my experience doesn't tend to be too much of an issue. It really depends, you know, your balance will improve as you wait, train, there you go, Nathaniel. Swimming is the best exercise, water is awesome. That is true. It's one of the best forms of exercise. It's also really good on your joints as well, if you struggle with that. Yeah, yoga. Yoga also helps the balance, sort of building your core muscles and your stabilizing muscles 100%. Object syndrome, not over consuming fitness content. Okay, there's a lot of people putting out information that as a beginner, you just won't need and very well might never need. A lot of stuff that you see on social media is stuff that I would never do and I would never recommend anyone doing. And as a beginner, you really need to learn how to sort out good and bad information. And often the bad information will look much better. As a beginner, a wide range of things should work. So if you're two months into lifting and nothing seems to be working, it might not be your program. It might not be your plan. It's probably something else. Could be you're just not eating enough food, it could be a lack of sleep, could be a lack of effort. But it's probably not your programming as a beginner, because hypertrophy specifically is a very forgiving adaptation where a wide range of things should work. Now, once you are an intermediate, which doesn't happen all at once, it's not like one day you wake up and you're like, today's the day I'm finally, no, it's not, it's a general gradual process. Okay, but once you're intermediate, I would say a little bit more variety and variation can be very, very helpful. You're going to want to experiment a little bit more. You don't have to have a cookie cutter plan. You want to focus on training. Was he just going to say training artistically? I think he might have might have just been about said that. I highly recommend experimenting with stuff, like trying different movements, you know, you don't have to take, like take it so seriously, like out of the gates, you can take your time. That is for sure. You can start introducing a bit like different variations of movements, like if you're getting really good at doing squats, you might want to try some split squats, which are definitely a lot more balance heavy, you know, you can try different movements and variations of the same things. But generally, like doing stuff that seems exciting, or seems interesting to you, and learning how to do it properly and being careful and, you know, taking it sort of seriously in terms of like safety. I think when you do that, and you sort of build up your skills in different areas, it also it makes the gym more fun, but it also gives you more skills, like in a lot of different areas nearly falling over in the shower, but can stand on one leg for 10 minutes. Is that when you're like closing your eyes to like wash your hair? I get that as well. Yeah, Tom often falls down in the shower, will not fall down, but almost slips in the shower, but can do like reverse turning kicks. Tonomy and making your own decisions, not just following cookie cutter stuff online. You might want and or need a little bit more training volume. By now, you should probably not be getting as sore. You are well equipped to handle a little bit more volume and you can actually benefit from it compared to a beginner. Set some goals, keep learning, keep tracking, keep the process processing, don't get distracted from goals that are implanted into your brain from other people and make sure that what you want is actually what you are working towards and vice versa. Also make sure that you stay humble. A lot of people who are intermediate think they are advanced because things have slowed down a lot when it's actually your lifestyle choices. Again, the sleep, the stress, et cetera, or it is your programming. Like if you don't know some very, very basic concepts like linear progression, linear privatization, double progression, these kinds of things. If these terms are just like, what are you talking about? You are definitely not advanced and you are maybe not even intermediate. On the other hand, stay optimistic. A lot of people hit intermediate, maybe early intermediate, mid-intermediate, whatever, and things slow down and they are like, genetic limit. If you guys are wondering what the intermediate, like whereabouts you would be like in your lifting journey when you get to intermediate, I think for a lot of people it can vary between about one and two years. For me, it was about two years because of my size. It takes a bit longer sometimes for taller people to sort of progress in terms of gaining weight and gaining muscle and such. I'm to TRT it up. No. Once you are advanced, which might be four or five, six years of very, very good lifting, patience is a big one. You're going to have to reframe success. If you're a beginner who gains five pounds of muscle the first year, not that great. If you're advanced and you do that, it's fricking amazing. A lot of people would be very, very happy to gain two or three pounds of muscle in a year. You just have to reframe where you are on that curve and what success actually is. By the time you are advanced, you probably have done a variety of different programs. You have training autonomy. You might have a coach. You might be coaching yourself, but you know generally what works for you because of that narrowing scope of what works. You've gone from beginner where a lot of stuff works, then you went through intermediate, which shrank what is going to actually work. And now you're advanced, so you have a lot more data and information through your journey on what is actually going to work for you. So yes. Yes. And I think that that's a really important thing that he's highlighting there. I think generally when you start, you should try and do things by the bulk. Try not to admit to vary exercises too much based on what feels good or feels more exciting. Definitely try and learn the basics and do sort of the stricter kind of technique as it be. But yeah, he's right. I mean, each person is very, very different. So for perhaps the bench press, like the one where you grab a barbell, long bar in front of you and you're sort of pushing it up and down. With that movement, I find that doing paused bench presses works really, really well for me because if I do it quite quickly, like what you saw Joffrey doing, I tend to recruit more of my arms in that rather than yeah, this guy uses a lot of body English, no expert. Yeah. But this guy's been trading a long, long time and he's got some really, really good results. This is what works for him. It doesn't work for me when it comes to like bench press, as I was saying, like I utilize a lot more in my chest when it comes to pausing at the bottom and then exploding up rather than sort of being a bit more bouncy with it. But when it comes to my back, my back muscles, my pulling muscles, if I try to do that with my back, it doesn't tend to work as well. Like if I use a bit more body English and I go a bit more kind of intense with it, I guess, try not to be as strict, then I tend to get the most development of my back and my strength in that sense. So it's a very, very, very different person to person. And another example, take squats. So most people would say 10 to 15 reps is a good sort of rep range for like squats in terms of like getting some muscle on your legs. Although that would probably be good for me, I can't because it just doesn't work for me. Like I find it way too fatiguing and I end up sort of my technique breaks down. And so trying to go for like a lower rep range, but use more weight really works for me. And it's the same with bench press, like I use very, very strict sort of Paul's techniques when it comes to that, because I do have a history of like struggling with my lower back. What is body English? Okay, so if you were doing, don't know if you can see me, maybe the other arm, if you're doing a bicep curl, like doing it strict would be like it goes down and you go up and you curl it and you squeeze and then you down very slowly. Whereas if you're doing it with a lot of body English, you'd be like, like really just like moving your whole body and sort of contorting yourself in order to like get the weight up. That's what we describe as like, yeah, body English means extra moving that helps you advantage to complete the rep. But it's not generally the best thing to do. Unless that really you found that that really works for you after quite a while. But I try and stay away from the body English when you're just starting out a narrower, narrower range of things actually works. But you have information on what that is. And so you want to double down on dialing things in, you want to keep keep focusing on doing what has worked in the past, while also combining that with learning new things, which might actually be useful, because perhaps there's something else which you could add in, which could provide new results, but you don't want to completely leave behind everything else that has worked. So if you know you respond to, you know, moderate frequency, high volume or low volume, high frequency or something else, that's probably not going to change that much through your training career. You also might want to be a little bit more risk averse at this point, you're probably moving heavier weights, you're stronger, you might have a little bit more, you know, mileage on your body. You may have already experienced an injury in the past could be lower back shoulder and elbow and knee or whatever, but you've probably had to work around something at some point. It's very rare for me to talk to someone who's been lifting, you know, six years, eight years, 10 years, 12 years, hard, you know, passionate, this is their life. They really want to push this and maximize this who has never had any issues. And so you'll probably know yourself by now, and you'll know which areas tend to break down, which movements work for you, which should be avoided. I think for anybody out there who is just starting lifting, good, good piece of information here. If something is like really, really hurting, and it's like sharp pain, stop what you're doing, do not continue, go home, rest, recover, perhaps look into some physio if it's really bugging you after a while. The actual soreness, if you were to contract the muscle and it's kind of this dull, sort of achy feeling, that's normal. That's not something that you need to be concerned about. If you feel like you're unable to form the exercise without moving your body, then using too much weight and you're only risking injury while skating, nothing. I think it really depends. It really depends on the person, because if you can imagine the eccentric aspects of the lifting, so the lowering, so if you're doing this exercise that Joffrey is showing, they'll pull down if you were really body-englishing it down and then you were controlling the eccentric up, just to get more of that stretch aspect to the lift, then you could possibly argue that that's quite beneficial for some people. It really depends, because this guy is natural jacked. He really does train hard. I think it really depends. Also, if you're performing most of the exercise with that controlled, stricter tempo and form, I guess trying to find the word for it, then that's good, but maybe at the end of the set, when you can't do it, maybe using a little bit of body-english and trying to get the weight up, just a little bit could be okay for some people, but you're right, when you do tend to deviate towards that body-english side of things, you do potentially risk yourself, especially if you haven't been trained for quite a while. Some people go too hard of workouts, some don't go hard enough. Know thyself, I guess. I think for most people, if you are wanting to start off, you're not going to struggle to do enough. You're very stimulus, you're very highly, highly stimulated from the exercise that you're doing. You're probably still going to grow. You don't really need to get it perfect. You can take your time with it, but if you do find that you are getting overlapping soreness between workouts, consider dropping them out of days that you do or consider lowering the volume in which you should prioritize. So as a beginner, you don't know what you need to do. There's no way to A-V test stuff because you're just starting out and again, you have that broad scope of what is going to work. As an intermediate, you have a better idea of what you need to do, but it's hard to do it because you haven't quite cultivated those habits. When you are advanced, you know what you need to do and you actually want to do it. It's effortless. It just happens going to the gym is a habit and it's very, very hard to knock you off of your course. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. In other words, what you want versus what you need as a beginner, they're pointed in two different directions. During your journey, those things tend to converge. So during your beginner to intermediate to advanced journey, again, which the book will help on immensely, it's just a troubleshooting guide to get you headed in the right direction. Essentially, there will be a narrowing range of what works. There will have to be more precise exercise selection. There will be more focus on fatigue management because you are capable of generating more fatigue. If you're beginning your like stimulus to fatigue ratio, not focusing on the right thing, just focus on working hard, you know, and progressing essentially. Now training volume is kind of a tricky one because I used to think it would just go up and up and up and up and up. The more advanced you get, the more volume you have to do and you can do. But I think that actually once you are advanced, because you are stronger and, you know, the limiting factor will probably become injuries and soft tissue and structures, etc. that you might not be able to do as much volume because you can get more stimulus and more fatigue out of the set. Okay, so this is where you're really going to be bumping up against your. When it comes to autistic people, good piece of advice here. A lot of autistic people do have like quite an insensitivity to blunt pain. Some people do, some people don't. It's a good thing to remember when you're working out, both like it really does sort of highlight your potential for like pushing yourself hard intensely, but also when you're just starting out, you may push yourself quite hard in comparison to other people because you don't necessarily feel that. So if you're doing some exercise, which is requires quite a bit of balance in terms of like, if you're doing like squats or deadlifts or bench press or overhead press, if you're doing any of those movements, just be aware that you may not be as sensitive to these feelings of fatigue than to perhaps other people. It can be a good thing, but when it comes to like balancing, if your muscles become very fatigued, then you know, I'm not trying to like scare you or anything like that, but just maybe be aware of that because it might be like in my case, I can push myself really, really hard on pretty much every exercise, but you know, can sometimes be maybe a little bit too much, I would say. It turns out like the intensity that I do. Recovery capabilities, fatigue management becomes that much more important. When you're more advanced, you're going to need to have more individualized and personalized and customized training. This is where, you know, if I see an advanced dude doing like some quote unquote weird variation, zero criticism. Okay. By virtue of being advanced, they know what they need. The issue is when beginners start copying people who are like that or people start putting out content for everyone, most of whom are beginners, when it's not what they actually need. You might want to be a little bit more risk averse when you are more advanced. Again, because you are stronger and you have just a greater ability to injure yourself. You're also going to want more complex puritization and programming. When you are more advanced, you might have to take a more phasic approach, specialization phases. Your programming is not going to be as simple as it used to be. So here are some questions that you will need to answer during your beginner to intermediate to advanced journey. First, what do you need to track? Some people can get away with tracking less. Pretty much no one can get away with tracking nothing. Again, if someone says like, you don't need to track your sets or your reps or anything, hack. Diet is also a big one. So do you respond well to high carb low fat or vice versa? How many meals do you do well on? How much protein do you need, which is going to vary a little bit? People just say, oh, one gram per pound or point eight grams. When it comes to diet, I think maybe we will talk about this in sort of a later video because this can be somewhat of a difficulty, I think for autistic people when it comes to sort of like constructing a diet and things related to executive function like this. So we'll definitely have to do another video while we look into sort of the diet aspect a bit more. But if you're just starting out, if you're just a beginner, just try and err on the side of eating a bit more protein. You don't need to be so, you don't need to like count your protein so much, unless you want to be like completely optimal. But generally, try and eat a bit more protein heavy stuff. You should be good. What's per pound? Well, there is going to be a little bit of individualization there proximity to the workout. Do you better do better training fasted or do you do better with a small meal beforehand? A big meal? You know, how can you stomach food, etc. What foods do you like? What foods do you need that are those are all questions you're going to have to answer. How much volume do you need slash can you handle some people are super resilient and they're less sensitive to training. I would put myself in this category so I can handle a lot of training and I also need a lot of training at least at this point, where some people are more sensitive to training and they get beaten up easily. And so they just don't need as much volume but also can't handle as much volume. So for them, doing a lower volume approach makes a lot of sense. So try to find out where you are on that spectrum. You're also going to want to find out where you break down structurally. Everyone is a little bit different here. Some people they do a bunch of squats and then their knees get pissed off. Other people it's the hips. Other people it's the lower back. You know, do a bunch of bench presses. Some people's elbows flare up. Other people it's their wrists. Other people it's their shoulder. So find out exactly what areas are resilient and what areas need to be sort of babied and worked around. And also what exercises are just not worth doing. So if you do behind the neck work and every time you do it, your shoulders are like, what is it? What is going on? This is not what we signed up for. We don't do this. Don't do them. It's not worth getting injured over. Whereas other people, they freaking love those movements. They do really, really well with them. So during that intermediate phase, I think it's worth experimenting with a pretty broad range of exercises at the very least to figure out which ones you prefer and respond. I just got on drinking ed whites and that's not too bad. Yeah, apparently they're quite sweet aren't they? I think in general if I was going to give any diet advice, like try and find some things that you can buy which are kind of pre-made if you can that have protein in it. You don't necessarily have to get these like really expensive protein bars or anything like that. Like this, if you're in the UK, you can go to like Aldi and get these protein puddings. There's so many options that you can go for. You can get like pre-made pancakes and you know, all sorts of things like that. There's a lot of options other than getting sort of a bit more into like cooking, sort of batch cooking and you know, things like that. So that's too slimy for me. Yeah. I love dandelion tea. I love tea's period. Dandelion tea can be quite, I think they can be quite quite dehydrating. I think that's one of the, like, I think some bodybuilders use dandelion tea to get like more dry, more dry appearance. It's enough protein and if all, and all else falls in line, if you find yourself tired, eat more carbs. Good way of going about it. Also, and this one might be a little bit controversial, you don't need to become advanced. Most people never do. The vast, vast majority of people in the gym are beginners. Some are intermediates. Most are not advanced. It's a long journey. It's not easy. Okay. There's a reason why most people are not advanced. And if you want to just go in and train for partly results and partly enjoyment, you know, you want to keep it casual, nice, nothing wrong with that at all. You don't need to maximize your physique. I get a lot of messages from people who have this anxiety about like, what is my potential or what can I do or what is my genetic limit is kind of stuff. You don't need to do that. You can work towards that if you want, if it's actually a passion of yours, but you can just go to the gym and enjoy it. Yeah. Crazy. I know. Which makes the sales pitch for my book a little bit tricky now that I've finished with that. Good job. Past self. Anyway, the entire behemoth of a book will be linked in a pinned comment below if you want to check it out. It includes a full seven hour audio book that I decided to record myself. I hope you guys have enjoyed that or found something that useful. Go and check out Joffrey Verity Scofields channel. A lot of really good stuff on there and also go check out Renaissance Periodization if you are wanting to learn a bit more about fitness. Try and stay away from channels like ATHLEANX or V-Shred. Those are notoriously quite pop sciency kind of not good places to learn from, I would say. But those two are really, really good. There are a few others on the top of my head. I can't remember the names. But yeah, I hope you have found this interesting and like, subscribe, do all that stuff and I'll see you later.