 Hello, everyone, welcome to Mind Pump. Today we speak to our good friend and author of bigger, leaner, stronger, Mike Matthews about how to gain 10 pounds of pure muscle in 90 days. Mike Matthews. What's up, friends? Is it possible to gain 10 pounds of lean body mass in 90 days? Yes, with an asterisk. Because, like, who are we talking about? Are we talking about somebody who's brand new to strength training? That's pretty straightforward, right? Male versus female, we'd have to make that distinction too. But your average guy just getting into strength training, I think that pretty much everybody can do that. Now, take a guy, though, who's been lifting weights for several years. He's pretty strong now. He's gained a fair amount of muscle. I think it's probably still possible, but it's a lot more difficult. Even with that more experienced weightlifter, we have to talk about, well, when we say lean mass, are we talking about actual contractile muscle tissue, or are we also talking about fluid expansion as well? You also have to talk about where he's at in his journey, because actually that guy that would also be the most challenged, because he's been lifting for years, had he just come off of a break of not lifting for like three to six months, he actually would be at an advantage because he had built that in the past to gain that. The before and after scam. The detrain. Yes, that's a good one. Well, I mean, before we even get into that, it's first off, why would anybody even wanna do this? Well, aside from the obvious, people who wanna build muscle, it's a great way to boost your metabolism. Lean body mass looks good. It improves insulin sensitivity. It sculpts and shapes your body. Of course, I've talked about how it increases your ability to burn calories. So if you wanna get lean, so anybody listening who just wants to burn body fat, this strategy in the short term is a great way to improve your odds at long-term body fat. Now, what I think I wanna add to what you were saying earlier is it's hard. Building muscle isn't easy at all because of all, most all of what I mentioned, but primarily because muscle is expensive tissue. So your body's not trying to become more calorie dependent unless it thinks it has to. So this is why building muscle so hard. And once you build a certain amount of muscle, it gets harder and harder. Like if I gained 10 pounds of muscle, you know. Geometrically harder, I mean. Yeah, it's like significantly harder the longer you strength train and the longer you do this, like I said. In the context that you are consistent at the time. Right, right, right. So it's really hard, but there's a lot of things that play a role in this. Male versus female, how experienced you are, genetics. Boy, does that play a huge role. I remember the first time I was exposed to superior muscle building genetics. I was managing a gym and I had this guy that worked for me, he used to clean the gym. So he cleaned the gym and he didn't make a lot of money and he was super muscular and I'd watch him every once in a while go out and work out and he would do skull crushers with 225. And I'd watch him eat and he'd eat like a 99 cents cheeseburger. He'd eat a couple of pop tarts. And this is when it dawned on me. Oh, there's a whole nother level of muscle building genes out there. But that all being said, I think what I wanna say here is what we're gonna talk about, anybody could apply to build the most amount of muscle that they can personally build in that 90 day process. Does that sound fair to you guys? And to give a little bit of context to that, so somebody who works with me, he did, I think he lasted, maybe he made it eight weeks on this program. So a pretty experienced weightlifter when he did this, he had already squatted 405, so he's a strong, and at a body weight of probably like 170, he's not a very big guy, he's not very tall, but pretty experienced weightlifter. And in about eight weeks, he gained about eight pounds, a little bit of body fat, of course. There was definitely more fluid. I mean, he was eating about 1,000 grams of carbs a day and he was keeping his fat under 80 grams a day, which is, that's a feat actually. How the hell did he do that? He ate a loaf of bread every day and he would eat a huge bowl of pasta every day with like low fat, gross, tastes like nothing, watered down sauce, right? And lean protein. So he was very meticulous with his diet and his training program though, he was doing two a days, five days a week, and that's simply because to get in enough volume to grow like that, I mean, he had to be in the gym three hours a day. And so he did that and again, about, I think it was about eight pounds gained, let's just say six pounds of that probably was quote unquote lean mass, even though some of that is just gonna be extra fluid in his muscles. Which adds to the size and shape of your muscles. Yeah, for sure, for sure. But, you know, often when people think gaining lean mass, gaining muscle, they don't necessarily think, oh, well I'm just gonna stuff some more fluid in my muscles to make them look bigger. Like they're thinking this is dense. The solid contractility. Yeah, contractile. Yeah, no, I'm glad you said that. Lean mass. But after that, everything was hurting. And this is when he was in his, he was like 24. So he was invincible, you know, physically. And he couldn't do it for more than six, seven, eight weeks because everything was hurting. Yeah, lean mass refers to anything that's not body fat. Right. What's up everybody? I gotta give away today as usual, but before I do, our Black Friday sale is still going on and then it's gonna go into Cyber Monday, which ends the second, okay? This means 60% off any MAPS workout program and 60% off any MAPS workout program bundle. So across the board, 60% off. Here's how you can do it. Go to mapsfitnessproducts.com, use the code Black Friday. If it's still Black Friday, if it's after Black Friday, but before the second of December, then use the code Cyber Monday. Nonetheless, both of those give you 60% off any and all workout programs and bundles. All right, here's the giveaway. I'm gonna give away another Super Bundle. Here's how you can win a Super Bundle. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that would drop this episode. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications and then if you win, we'll let you know in the comment section and then boom, you got free access to the Super Bundle. All right, here comes the show. Now, I wanna touch on something without getting too deep in the weeds, but I do wanna touch on something. You said he was doing two workouts a day. You know, it's interesting about that. We just created a program called MAPS 15. This is, and we put an advanced version in there, but for the average person trying to work out 15 minutes every day, which equates to like 250 something minute workouts a week or whatever. We have an advanced version there, but what we found is when you take, what we found and also data seems to support this, when you take your total volume and just break it up into smaller workouts, you seem to build more muscle and bodybuilders and strength athletes have known this for a long time. I know Olympic lifters have done this forever, first, originating in the Soviet Union when they would just kick our ass and weightlifting. Have you experimented with anything like that where you, instead of doing your whole workout, I know you have a crazy schedule. You're one of the hardest working people I know. Have you ever tried something like this? Not to the degree that you're talking about, and they're certainly, so my position on frequency and my understanding of the research, at least as it stands right now, is that particularly with experienced weightlifters, higher frequency, it wins to a point, like training each major muscle group two or three times per week is probably better than training, let's say one time a week. Although that's hard to do if you're doing compound lifts, because you're training multiple major muscle groups with those lifts, but to keep it simple, I would agree that two to three times per week for major muscle groups that you wanna grow, if you're an experienced weightlifter is probably superior to one. You also kind of have to do that because of the amount of volume. So take my body, right? If I want to get bigger and stronger, and my genetics are not going to allow for much more of anything, but if I really, and I have been pushing it pretty hard for two years, although I dialed it back a little bit recently, it takes, let's just say 15 to 16 hard sets per week for any major muscle group to make any progress, for me to gain any strength, for example, and gain any size to get anywhere. You figured that out for yourself? Yeah, 10 sets per week, for example, let's say my chest, I just want more chest, 10 sets per week will not do it. I can maintain, of course, what I have, but if I wanna make any progress, I have to do upward of 15 or 16 hard sets for my pecs, right? Now, the interesting part, if you also push the opposite into that spectrum and know that, oh, once I start going in the 25 to 30 sets, then you just get hurt. Negative results, right? I mean, that's one of the hardest things about what we're talking about right now is finding that sweet spot. It's because a lot of times people hear something like that and they go, oh, okay, more is better. It's like, that's not necessarily true because there's definitely, you know, like this belt. Finishing returns. Yeah, for sure. After you get... That's probably 20 or 25 is, you know, a lot of McDonald has been saying this for at least a decade now. It's been saying up to 20 to 25 hard sets per week, if you're an advanced weight lifter and you're really going for it, beyond that, you're probably just gonna get hurt. So even if more volume, even if there were a linear relationship between volume and hypertrophy, you're just gonna get hurt and you can't build muscle when you're hurt. So to that point, a frequency, okay, I'll say I'm gonna do 15 hard sets for my pecs. I'm gonna really go for it per week. Should I do that in one session? Right. No, because for a couple of reasons. One is research shows that once you get beyond probably 10, eight to 10 sets for any individual major muscle group in one workout, the hypertrophic response, the muscle building signal gets muddied and you are not gonna get the response that you would get if you were to take, let's say those 15 sets and do them over two, three workouts. Now someone like Meno Henselman's is big on very high frequency, even six to seven days training, I'm also group six to seven days per week. So you might do the same amount of volume, but now you're only doing a few sets per session, right? And that's an approach I have not tried myself and... That's closer to what he's talking about with the Mass Shifting. I'm three months into experimenting with it. It's fascinating. Yeah, it's really, it's... It's interesting. You know what it feels like, Mike? I'd love your opinion on this because we've talked many times, I've been on your show many times, you're one of the smarter people in our space. It feels like long rest periods. So I'll do three sets for chest today, three sets tomorrow. So it's like I do the three sets, those three sets have short rest periods. The next day, it's almost like a long rest period to the next workout. And that almost feels that way when I'm working out. It's very, very interesting. It feels different. And I almost feel like there's two things. One, I can get away with more volume if I wanted to and two, I can also get away with less volume if I wanted to because of the increased frequency. I would love for you to try experimenting with that because I'd love your opinion, you're very objective. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think there are good evidence-based arguments for increasing frequency beyond that two to three times per week. That's kind of the traditional, I would say currently evidence-based approach to training frequency is to look at it more as a tool for increasing volume. So if you need to get to 20 hard sets for let's say you're like a natural bodybuilder and you are really trying to gain every last ounce of muscle and strength available to you, your legs are big, but they need to be a little bit bigger. That's a weak point according to the judges and you're gonna have to blast yourself. 20 hard sets for your lower body per week. And let's say with fairly heavy weight, like you're never doing more than 10 or 12 reps per set, that's difficult. And you're gonna have to break that up into several workouts. Trying to do that in one workout is maybe rhabdo territory. You might end up in the hospital, right? So that question of, okay, should you do, should you do 10 sets twice a week? Should you do like six or seven sets three times a week? Or should you do what you're talking about? Maybe you're gonna train lower body four or five times per week, but you're only doing four or five sets per workout. And I know that there are smart people in the evidence-based community who would say that there's evidence to suggest that the higher frequency approach is superior to the moderate frequency approach. You know what else is interesting about that? Now, taking aside, we're talking about like advanced lifters or ourselves, very experienced. You talk about the average Joe, average Jane or Joe. Here's another just kind of thing to throw into the mix that complicates things a little bit, but in my opinion, actually makes things a little bit more clear. It's easier for the average person to exercise consistently when you give them short daily workouts versus infrequent longer workouts. At first glance, it doesn't seem apparent, right? Like, well, I mean, take two days a week and do an hour or two days, that should be easier for you to do. But in practice, people tend to do better when they do these little tiny workouts every single day that add up to roughly the same amount of time. So when you add that into it, it starts to become clear like, oh, I wonder if we're prescribing strength training to the average person who isn't necessarily a fitness fanatic, who doesn't love working out. Like maybe we've been prescribing it wrong all along. Maybe instead of saying, do two or three days a week in the gym, what we should be saying is do two exercise a day. Yeah, this is what we're talking about adherence, right? In terms of behaviors, like what's really gonna stick and that's really what's gonna move the needle closer towards getting our goal of 10 pound of muscle at the end of the day. We could have all these techniques that we might see in a study that will play out that way. But if it's not gonna play out in your lifestyle, it's not really... It's also most likely to stick like a habit that way too. And if you don't hit it a day or two, it's less detrimental than missing a full one hour workout. Missing your upper body day. Yeah, completely. You only do once or twice a week. Totally, totally. Now, what about talking about adherence though? And I've actually heard this over the years with some of the shorter workouts in some of the programs that I have, right? Where I would ask somebody to go to the gym and do a 30 to 45 minute workout. Ironically, I would hear from people fairly often. One, they would say they didn't feel like they did enough. But then two, they're like, I drove to the gym. I should just spend more time here. Yeah, I don't wanna drive a total of 45, maybe 60 minutes to do this short little workout and leave. What you're addressing was one of the greatest challenges that I went through. Somebody who loves to train, trains hour, hour and a half workouts all the time to cut down to something as short as 20 minutes like that, I would finish and feel like I have so much more or I should do more. Oh my God, am I even gonna feel that the next day? And so there is that little bit of a mental struggle that you have to go to and trust the process. Because then what you end up finding out is over time, not only do you feel okay, what I noticed, the biggest thing that I noticed was I was less likely to overreach. If I have an hour to train and no matter how long I've been doing this, I still tend to want to overreach. I'd rather my theory was always, I'd rather overreach a little bit than to fall short type of attitude where this is a total different philosophy. And because of that, what I've noticed, especially being in my 40s now, my joints don't hurt, my body feels good. And so it's been a, it's kept me more disciplined about doing, not going overdoing it, which I had a tendency to do when I'm doing like this. It's old too. I've already been a catalyst, right? For the last couple of years and I've had to dial it back a little bit. Yeah, well okay, so first off, it's always a mental hurdle. Long-term fitness is more mental than anything. And one of the biggest hurdles is how people think they're supposed to feel after a workout. People are led to believe that they should feel like they just survived battle at the end of a workout. I mean, some people, they use that, like that's the metaphor. Yes. Come on, we picked some things up, we put them down, didn't exactly engage in hand-to-hand combat, mortal combat. Yeah, absolutely. And so, and I know you've experienced this as well. You've been at this for a long time now too. You're a businessman, you're a father, you're very involved. The real way you should feel after a workout is you should feel better than you did going into it. You should actually feel more energized and it should, and now why is this important? Well, two reasons. One, you get better results that way, that's a fact. If you consistently workout and feel better after your workout, consistently, you're more likely to have trained appropriately over long periods of time. So that's number one. But number two, you're now making this something that is easier to develop a good relationship with. If I always feel great after my workout, I'm more likely to look forward to it for five years, 10 years, 15 years. Versus dreading it. I don't care who you are. Yeah, that initial three month period of motivation where you're hating your body and you feel you're so fat and whatever. It may be cathartic to leave the gym and wanna throw up and your legs are shaking. You gotta go take a nap because you just killed yourself at first. But I guarantee you're not gonna develop the kind of relationship with exercise that's gonna last you forever. At some point, you're gonna wake up in the morning and be like, oh, I don't wanna do this crazy, hard workouts, way too much and I didn't get good sleep and whatever. Versus, oh man, I'm not feeling too good. Oh, thank God, I get to go to the gym and then I'll feel so amazing afterwards. So it's a total mental shift. But I think that's where the answers are there. It's not necessarily, and we'll get to the mechanistic aspects of what we're talking about, but really the juice, really where the real answers are, it's in the mental aspect and how do we work around that? Well, let's get to that. I feel like we've talked about all the nuances and takeaways. Yeah, okay. We are now trying to build the most amount of muscle in a 90-day period and if we have to list off all the things that we find very important, like where do you focus on? I would say the first thing is you gotta eat a lot. Let's talk about that for a second, Mike. What is that? What do we mean by when we say we need to eat a lot more specifically? See ideal surplus, yeah. Totally agree. That means a consistent calorie surplus. Yes. That means consistently eating more calories than you burn. Now, there is a debate about how much more, right? Are we talking about 5% more, 10% more, 30% more? And if we look at, there isn't too much research available on this, unfortunately, there are some studies underway. I'm helping fund one that hopefully will. Oh, really? Yep, with Eric Helms being done out of AUT University. Wow, that's awesome. On lean bulking in particular, right? That's good. However, the evidence that we do have available suggests that more calories beyond a point does not mean more muscle, unfortunately. It just means more fat. And so I've always recommended, let's say 5% to 10% more calories than you burn every day. And I like 10% more than 5 because 5 doesn't give you much wiggle room. And we never know exactly how many calories we're burning. Our caloric intake usually, unless we are very conscientiously weighing and measuring every single thing that goes into our body, our actual intake also fluctuates. So if we are trying to maximize muscle building, we do want to err on the side of maybe a little bit, too much food rather than a little bit too little food. Well, especially with this avatar, we're talking about right now, because we're not talking about like general health or the average person. We're trying to build much muscle. Yeah, this is like, I came to you, I said, listen, and if I'm coaching that person, I'm definitely gonna err on the side of over, I'll worry about the couple of extra pounds of body fat we put on later because this person is struggling with putting muscle on and they're trying to put on as much as they can. I'm so glad you said that. You are going to gain a little bit of body fat through this process. If you go into this saying, I'm gonna want to gain a single ounce of body fat, you're not gonna build the most amount of muscle you can build within this 90 day period. Now we're not talking about- Unless you're new, right? Because then- No, thanks. All kinds of magic happens. That still might be true to a degree, but when you're new, your body is so responsive to the training. I mean, how many over the years, how many amazing body recomps have you seen from people in their first year? People build muscle almost doing anything in that first month. And drop fat. Which is why I think there's so many shitty programs out there. Because someone's like, we're training, we're working. Yeah, a lot of things can work at that point. One thing you said that was real important is you emphasize the word consistently have a caloric surplus. This is the challenge, because in my experience working with people that are struggling to pack on muscle, when I talk to them about eating and I go, okay, are you eating more than you're burning? Well, yeah, I eat a ton. And then we actually go and break it down. And what ends up happening is commonly, Monday through Friday, they are eating 300, 400 calories above their maintenance. Then Saturday and Sunday come along. And what tends to happen is they sleep in, they wake up two, three hours later, now they're behind the eight ball, and then they try to make up for it by eating a little bit. But anyway, when you end up at the end of the week, you end up with barely a surplus over the course of a week because Saturday, Sunday, they actually, their calories weren't high enough at all. And this actually happens for people trying to lose weight as well. They'll be in a great calorie deficit Saturday and Sunday. Selective memory. They remember the 1,000 calorie Mondays, but they forget the 4,000 calorie Saturdays. Well, and because of that, wouldn't you guys say that this is another example too where it's almost mandatory that this person tracks for me? Like if I'm coaching someone- If you're trying to maximize, right? Yeah, specifically. Now, we talked about that. Why? Because I'm able to, they ask me why, why track? And my answer, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts is because unless you naturally just have a very big appetite, consistently overfeeding is actually kind of difficult. It is, it is. You quickly feel like you are force feeding yourself because you kind of are. And we've all done it. And I can tell you, I remember the last time that I did a lean bulk, I was eating two dinners just because I needed to eat 4,000 calories a day. That's where I was at in it. And so I mean, I was full all of the time. I didn't really enjoy any of the food I was eating. Especially with forcing myself to eat a second dinner. Especially with nutrient dense foods. Because they, you know why? Psychologically- I wasn't going to McDonald's three times. Psychologically they all go like, I'm not going to have a problem eating 5,000 calories because they're thinking of the time they crushed the whole bag of candy or the pizza or like that. You're not thinking about chicken thighs and white rice and sweet potatoes and vegetable. Like you're not thinking- Getting your fiber and your new food. Yeah. Like when you eat like that, it is- We're trying to build muscle here. It is way more difficult than you think to consistently day in and day out stay in a surplus. And that's one of the strategies I would say. One of the most important strategies with being able to consistently hit your caloric targets, which in this case, Mike, I think you said it so well, about 10% over what you're burning. So if you're burning 2,000 calories, you're going to try and eat 2,200 calories to give you an example. Is to hit that number every day. Because what ends up happening is if you're off three days, you're going to try and make up for it now on another day. And now you run the risk. And here's a big challenge that I'd even highlight where when people try to make up for the fact that they missed a few days or whatever, and they really overeat, they mess up their digestion, they get bloated. Try eating in a surplus when you're bloated. Good luck. That really sucks ass. So the key here- And you end up just gaining more fat on those days than you need to. Because you can't just make up for it like that. It doesn't work like that. Thank you. Go into that for a second. So explain that a little bit. So you can't make up for the fact that you weren't in a calorie surplus for three days by adding all those calories up and then doing it on that fourth day or whatever. Yeah, and that is unfortunately the truth. I commented on that just in the beginning of this discussion that again, research shows, and I'm thinking of one study in particular that showed that a 30% calorie surplus, so eating 30% more calories than you burn every day does not produce any additional muscle growth compared to 10%. And so- So this is a day to day thing. Yeah, so it's just, you know, you can, a small calorie surplus, we know that aids in muscle building in different ways. I guess you could kind of say like, your body's muscle building machinery, everything that goes into that just works best when energy is abundant. But going beyond that, let's say 10% surplus, it doesn't, the machinery can't work any faster. So all that happens is you just gain more fat. It's a bell curve. At one point, at one place, it's peak, but as you start to go over that, it starts to come back. Your body's just trying to capture excess energy at that point. And so you can't make up for those days that you did not provide it the energy it needs to run that machinery at full tilt, so to speak. And those are, in a sense, those days are lost opportunities for muscle growth. And if you try to compensate for that, by eating a lot of food over, let's say the weekend, let's say the week, what you didn't do so great, the weekend now, you're gonna try to really stuff yourself full of food. You will gain more, let's say that's Saturday and Sunday, you will gain more muscle on those days than, let's say, the Monday or Tuesday when you were actually in a slight deficit on accident, but you also are gonna gain quite a bit of fat. Overall, way less effective. And it doesn't feel as good. All right, so what makes up calories, obviously, are the macronutrients. I think we should talk about the most important one when it comes to muscle building. Not that it's the only essential one, but it's the most important one, which is protein. And I typically will tell people to aim for one gram of protein per pound of body mass in appropriately weight individuals. If you're obese, then you probably wanna use lean body mass. How do you feel about that? Can't go wrong with that, right? And you could go, especially if you're in a calorie surplus, you could probably go down to, let's say, 0.8 grams per pound of body weight per day and see the same results. There's research to show that going above one gram per pound probably does not help you build more muscle. Unfortunately, it'd be nice if it were that easy. It's just a point, it's a stupid number. So I'm serious. It's not even, yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to make it as simple as I can for a client, just telling them a one-to-one. Plus people typically miss. And I actually heard someone say this the other day that I thought was a better way of saying it, trying to explain, because you saying something like, if I go a pound for every lean body mass, the person who doesn't understand that doesn't know. So, a similar way is your goal weight. So even if you're, so even if you're 400 pounds, and my goal is to get a healthy body. That's right. Yeah, well, it's my goal weight. So that works for both ways. Yeah, I would be 180 pounds. Great, you'd 180 grams per cell. Oh, very nice. That's a nice, yeah. I've also seen it relevant to height. So one gram per centimeter in height seems to work. Oh, that one I've never seen. Which that seems a little more. I think that, I think nothing can get. Goal weight, I agree, is a better. It's about as easy as you can go. And it works for. As long as they understand what goal weight means, we're talking about body comp. Let's look, okay, you're 400 pounds. You are 62% body fat. You're a man. All right, where would you be at? If you were at 15% body fat, we'd put some muscle on you. Great, you would weigh 180 pounds. Coming back to that number. Cool, there we go. I like that. Okay, so we're hitting roughly a gram of protein per pound of goal body weight. At that point, it's a lot of protein. Does the type of protein matter? Or does it matter more when the grams of protein are below that? Yeah, good question. And I'll make one more comment about the calories just cause it might be helpful to people to understand if the range that they have come up with makes any sense. Most people, let's say they're physically active. This is not walking, this is like formal exercise, vigorous activity. Let's say it's five-ish hours, three to five hours a week. For that person, they're probably gonna have to eat somewhere around 17 to 18 calories per pound of body weight per day if they're in a normal body comp. So just putting that out there, that's not a hard and fast rule, but if somebody's trying to work out their calories and it's coming in at like 12 per pound, that's almost like cutting calories. Something's off. So just, just wondering. Which I think is, I actually think that's the algorithm both of our calculators use. I think we both companies have a calculator that you, if you're at this point and you're trying to figure out where should I start? Although I always recommend figuring out your own baseline. Oh, I agree. I agree. It's just sometimes people that, you know. If you have no idea whatsoever, I think this is a great way you use the calculator, give you kind of a general idea, but then I really think you should take a week to two weeks of consistency and go like, what's happening? Yep, I'm going down. Am I maintaining? We're coming back to proteins. So I think there's no question that the majority of that protein needs to be highly bioavailable. It needs to be rich in essential amino acids. Strictly in leucine. And so that's primarily animal-derived protein. Plant-based proteins are, they're not missing amino acids. Some people claim that they're not incomplete, but many plant proteins, they're essential amino acid profile, which these are the amino acids that we have to get from food. Our body cannot create them in any way is lackluster, especially compared to animal proteins. And interestingly, research shows that even when you combine different sources of plant proteins to match the essential amino acid profile of whey protein, that the total amount of amino acids that make it into your blood, which is ultimately what matters, is significantly lower with plant protein versus whey, like 30 to 40% lower matched for leucine, matched for total essential amino acids. So there's probably something else going on here that we don't fully understand yet. And that's not to say that you can't do what we're talking about on a plant-based diet, but you actually might need to eat quite a bit more total protein than we're saying. I was just gonna say, if it's high enough, then it'll make up the difference. But let's talk about bioavailability because that's probably what's going on there, right? It probably has to do with bio, what does that mean? What does bioavailable mean? Just available for your body to use. Now with protein, again, what we really are interested in is the amino acids, particularly the essential amino acids. Leucine is very important. That's an essential amino acid that stimulates protein synthesis that actually kickstarts the body's muscle-building machinery, so to speak. And so those amino acids are digested, broken down, but they need to make their way into our blood so our body can use them. And so there's a lot of research on the bioavailability of different types of protein, like for example, beef is quite high. I think it scores in the range of 80 to 90% of its bioavailable, whereas hemp is pretty bad. I think it's like 40 or 50%. And so you have a spectrum of bioavailability and total protein, if you don't know that, total protein can be a little bit misleading because if you're eating, let's say you eat a lot of hemp protein for whatever reason, like that's your protein powder and you're supplementing, let's say you're getting 50% of your daily protein from a supplement and it happens to be a hemp protein or it's like, yeah, or it's hemp and it's maybe pumpkin seed, which is also not very good. Maybe there's some pea protein in there, which is a bit better, rice protein a bit better, but you're eating, let's say, and I'm thinking of women I've heard from over the years who are not naturally drawn to a high protein diet as it is and they, so let's say you have a woman, she's a smaller woman, she wants to gain some muscle. And so she's like, all right, I don't wanna do the one gram per pound per day. I'll do 0.8 grams. Let's say for simple math, she's a small girl, she weighs 100 pounds just for simple. So 80 grams. Right, so she goes, all right, I'll do the 80 grams, but let's say 80% of that protein is low bioavailability, that can get in the way and to fix that, she either is gonna have to work in some higher bioavailability protein. So again, a lot of that's animal derived or she might have to bump that up to 1.3, 1.4 grams per pound of body weight per day to give her body to make sure enough of these essential amino acids are getting into her blood, so her body can use them. Now, would you say to digestibility in terms of the protein source plays a big factor in that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, that's, you know, there's the, what is it? It's PDCAA is the acronym, but that's part of ultimately, I would say that comes under the heading of bioavailability, right? So the body has to be able to digest it and absorb it well enough to get what it needs. You eat a protein that causes digestive issues, your bioavailability goes to the floral. Yeah, you're not doing so good. This is where, especially if you're trying to gain, I think supplementation, protein powder can be so invaluable for two reasons. One, because especially if you're not taking in protein, that is very bioavailable and super high quality. Like maybe to speak to women, maybe you don't really like meat, for example, of any kind. Well, I just wanted to highlight the scenario that you're building is actually way more common than people think. Yeah, it's very common. And not just women. I've seen plenty of guys that were hard gainers and part of the reason why they were hard gainers was they consistently didn't get good, enough good quality protein and usually low appetite. That's right. Yeah, and okay, so there's two pieces and that's one of them. One is if I'm not eating all from these animal sources or I have digestive issues or whatever, I'm gonna need to eat a little more than one gram of protein per pound of target weight, protein powders and supplements make that possible. And then two, what you just said, it's not easy when you're trying to eat in a surplus and eat a gram of protein per pound of body weight. But it's all whole food because it's filling. It's the most satiating macronutrient. Try doing it. You might be able to do it for a few days. Try doing it for 90 days in a row. You'll find real quick that you ate your, if I'm trying to eat 200 grams of protein a day and I'm eating five meals of 40 grams of protein after the third meal, I'm like, oh. With maybe more food, you know, mixed meals or even more filling. Yeah. You know, you had some fat into that, it gets more filling, you had some carbs, it gets more filling. Yes, yes. I know, I've been, it's tough. Yeah, so I think protein powders are, I wouldn't, they're not essential, but I think that they're a very important piece. Well, in this, again, going back to, and I wanna keep this, because I know people are gonna be like, wait, you guys don't say that for this or that it's like this, this person that we're talking about right now who is struggling with building muscle and wants to build the most amount of muscle, this is a scenario where I am gonna push a client in this direction. We just know it's gonna be really hard. We're talking about overall health and long journey and this and that. I'm not really sweating if we have a week where we didn't really gain much as we are consistent with our other behaviors, you ate well overall, we missed our protein and take a little bit, so fucking what? But this person who's like, I wanna build the most amount of muscle in 90 days, like you're buying that. You need to have that as a, just a backup plan at the bare minimum, you need to have that. And I like whey protein in particular because it's less filling than say casein, it's less filling. Is that true? I didn't know that. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait. So collagen, casein, egg, more satiety producing, which is good to know. P as well. P, which is good to know if you're trying to lose weight, but if you're trying to gain whey protein, so long as you digest it well, right? Cause if you, like I can't have dairy protein, but for people who can, whey is the least satiety, one of the least satiety producing. So for building, it's actually a really good protein. You can add it to a meal and it won't necessarily affect the equipment. Speaking of supplements, aside from protein powder and all that stuff, the one supplement, I'll make a statement that is not controversial, but I know everyone in here is gonna agree because the data, the decades now, it's been over two decades or so, the data really clear with this. A sauce room. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That too. No, it's creatine. Creatine is one of the most, if not the most studied ergogenic supplement that exists on the market and it consistently aids in building muscle. How do you feel about creatine and what does that look like? Yeah, creatine now, and I know you guys talk about this, creatine, I think at this point, it's a supplement that everyone should be taking. Yes. It's a health supplement. I mean, we can say everyone should take it. Turn it into a multivitamin, as far as like, that's how it's gonna be. It's almost like a fish oil now. Yeah. You're not gonna be getting enough creatine in your, well, that's not, maybe not enough, but let's say you supplement with five grams a day. That's the standard dosage for body comp and performance. However, research is showing that upward of 10 grams per day can benefit cognition, benefit brain health, unhealthy people too, people who have problems. And so- Heart health? Yeah, try to get 10 grams a day through food. That didn't happen. That's not happening. Yeah, because I think it's like- That's a pile of meat. Maybe liver king can do that, but I'm not liver king. You're only getting like one to three in like a whole pound of meat, right? So I'm like- I think it's three grams, if I'm not gonna go into one. One sounds, that sounds- One to three range. Sounds about right, yeah. You'd have to be- Yeah, creatine is- Three pounds. Several pounds. Yeah. Well, okay, so creatine is, your body can synthesize creatine through amino acids. I can't remember which ones they are. I'm a thionine, I don't remember the other ones. Yeah, the ones that comprise it. Yeah, but to get it from food, it's gotta be animal sources, because it's found in muscle. It's found in muscle, animal muscle tissue. So fish, beef, eggs, you know, you'll find it in turkey chicken. So for the vegans out there, creatine is, in my opinion, the essential must. In fact, the data on vegans with creatine is they get a consistent cognitive boost from taking creatine. Now, this is probably because they're at a cognitive deficit from not eating creatine. So that's a, I agree with you 100%. I think it's a must-have supplement for most people. And not only for vegans, but for people who just don't eat much meat. My wife is like that. She doesn't really like meat. She's not a vegan or even a vegetarian, even though she just kinda tends to eat vegetarian because she'll do some fish, a little bit of chicken here and there, red meat. She just doesn't have a taste for it. And so I finally got her to just start taking, here, swallow a couple of these creatine pills every day. It's good for you, trust me. You're into riding horses. You wanna get better at that. You have to get stronger here. That's what got her. She's like, all right, fine. That's awesome. You know, I put my parents on creatine because of its health benefits. It's, you know, all the bio-hackers talk about like mitochondrial health, right? That's the big thing. It's got mitochondrial health here. It, you know, reverses aging, whatever they like to say. Creatine is essential for mitochondrial health. It's the fuel that runs the cells of our body. So this is a supplement I recommend to everybody. Let's talk about types of creatine. There's like 50 million types of creatine on the market. Which one is the one you should stick to? Monohydrate, right? I mean, that's the good standard. That's the one that has been studied the most. And there are other forms that have shown to be about as effective as monohydrate, but you're just paying more money for nothing. Like, oh, creatine malate, creatine citrate, why? And then there are forms like S-leather that are probably inferior actually. So you might be paying more for something fancy that's actually less effective than just monohydrate. I do like micronized monohydrate. It mixes better with water. It's, which also means it tends to be easier to digest. That's not generally a problem, but some people do have that issue. Creatine will upset their stomach. Micronized can help with that. And that's, I mean, I wish as somebody who has a sports nutrition company, I wish I could say otherwise. I wish there were some breakthrough form that can live up to some of these claims that are made to sell some of these more designer kind of creatines, but it's... Now, considering you are biased because you are a supplement pusher, is there... Is there actually, because we actually, when we wrote this list, we actually didn't ask your opinion on that one. And I'm curious that is there something else that you would push on this particular client or do you think protein powders slash bars, which had fallen in the same category and creatine really is the bulk of what you would recommend? Yeah, that's really the 20% that's gonna give you 80%, right? Yeah. If somebody... Unless you're lacking like a key nutrient. Sure. Yeah. And so I guess you could say, eat plenty of nutritious foods, add in a high quality multivitamin supplement, but that's not really for the purposes of muscle building per se. I would say that's just kind of smart living. And if somebody had the budget and the inclination, you probably can make an argument for adding something like beta alanine, adding BTE, adding citrulline, but now we're into that 80% that can only give you that remaining 20%. Yeah, very well said. All right, what about carbs? Carbs... A lot. Yeah, so what role do carbs play in muscle building? Obviously carbs will help you hit that caloric surplus. Carbs are the least satiety-producing macronutrient. So when you get to that point where you feel like... I would say fat, actually, if you look... Interesting. So tell me about this. Calorie per calorie. As an individual macronutrient, I've gone through some of this research just in my writings and in my podcast. Protein is at the top. My understanding of the research, protein at the top, followed by carbohydrate, followed by dietary fat, when they are separated. So if you are having a pure protein, which you can basically do with protein powder, like my protein powder has zero grams of fat per serving, maybe one gram of carb, it's basically just protein, right? Or if you looked at just kind of a pure carbohydrate food or something that is basically pure fat, and that pure fat is going to be the least filling. So think of like olive oil, if you just drink a couple hundred calories of olive oil. Now, okay, so now maybe this is why fat... We start to mix it, though. There you go. This is why I think fat in the past was considered to be the second most satiety-producing macronutrient, because rarely you eat fat by itself. Who the hell... And research. Besides me, because I'm Italian, who the hell drinks olive oil by the end of the glass? I mean, people will eat avocado by itself. It's avocado toast, you know? So there's some fiber in that. There's some, you know, it's not just fat. It's primarily, though, you know, I don't know the macros is off my head, but there's probably... Avocados got a decent amount of carbs in it, so. Yeah, it does. So then debunked myself. Yeah, yeah. Not a lot, but it's definitely not just a pure fat. Butter will be a better example of that. Yeah, good example of that, yeah. Research definitely shows that adding fat to a meal increases satiety. Yeah, there you go. That makes a lot of sense, because fat by itself, pure fat, maybe we think it's satiety, because it sounds gross. No, let's just... Like we just said butter, and I'm like, ugh, I don't know if people do that. Yeah, let's talk about some strategies, though, with carbs in particular, because one of the things I remember in being in this situation, trying to build as much as possible is you want to eat a ton of carbs. I think we all agree on that. But what I have to be careful of is that I don't fill up on that first before I get my protein. So I still have like this order of operation there. The hierarchy. I go, when I look at a meal, I go, okay, let me get my protein in. It doesn't mean I don't enjoy a little bit of my carbs with it, but I gotta accomplish that. And then I wanna pile on my carbohydrates kind of after that. Do you guys feel the same way? Or like how's your... And supplementation helps with that too, to your point where like, all right, I wouldn't recommend somebody, my general recommendation about you guys, but is don't get more than 50% of your daily protein from powder. Like make sure you're eating food. But let's say you're gonna do that, right? So that becomes easier, especially with whey protein, because it's not very filling. But as far as like sitting down for a proper meal, yeah, exactly the point. So we're going to your point. But then you have to engineer those meals too, to this point of satiety and how fat affects things. And even in general, I'd be curious to hear your guys' thoughts after we wrap up on carbs. I would say ideally we would keep our fat not low, but we would keep it, certainly not over 100 grams of fat per day, probably in the range of, depending on the size of the person, if it's a smaller woman, it might be 50 or 60. If it's a medium-sized dude, it might be 80-ish, but trying to go high protein, very high carb, moderately maybe a little bit lower fat. We'll get to that, but I do want to make a comment around that. If you're trying to gain, and you're getting a lot of your protein from whole natural foods, tip, it's easier to get fats because they tend to follow along the protein. I actually don't spend a lot of time focusing on it, to be honest with you. Because I feel like they kind of, if you're doing a good job of getting your protein source from whole foods, animal protein, unless you're eating like just fried chicken breast. And you're eating carbohydrates, like rice's and sweet potatoes and quinoa, and pasta thing, that if you're eating them like that, then fat's kind of... Yeah, especially if you're trying to make food that you like to eat because fat gives flavor, and so any recipe of anything worth anything has some oil in it. Right, and I feel like that, between that and some avocado here and there, I feel like it kind of naturally falls into... Let's talk about the carb protein with olive oil. Yeah, let's go back to the carbs. You mentioned a few, Adam, what have you found, Mike, to be some of the best sources of carbohydrates through the people that you've worked with and even your own experience in this context? So now, how many carbs though? Maybe we should just, I don't think we've given them that yet. Oh yeah, so what are we talking about here? I think we're all in agreement that a high carb approach is good, but how high is high carb? Something that I get asked about and why, like why am I eating? Why, like my recommendation, and I'd be curious to hear your guys' thoughts, is it needs to be at least two grams of carbohydrate per pound of body weight per day, and you might even want to go as high as four grams depending on how active you are and personal circumstances. I would agree. Now, there's always an individual variance depending on how they make them person feel and digestion and I'm one of those people where too many carbohydrates affect my digestion negatively so I can't necessarily push them too high, but generally speaking, I agree with you. I think the more carbs, part of the value of that is they provide the energy and the strength that you want when you work out and you're gonna be fueling some heavy, hard workouts and I'm stronger when I eat more carbs and I'm not the only one. You have your best workouts on calorie surplus and high carb, good sleep. You'll have your best workouts. Yeah, you get the best pumps, you get the best fluid in your muscles, which we talked about earlier, that's part of your lean body mass, but besides that, when you can drive more fluid in your muscles, that also sends somewhat of a muscle building signal. The cellular swelling effect. Yeah, and try getting a good pump even on a calorie surplus on a low carb diet. It sucks. You just don't. Higher carbs just seem to work better for most people. So I completely agree with you. So I mean, I like this conversation because I couldn't even tell you what my actual grams were when I'm in a bulk. When I'm in a bulk, it's basically protein and calories and then I allow myself to split carbohydrates and fats. How my day feels really. And yes, I take into consideration, I've got a big workout coming in a couple of hours so I wanna eat a few hours, normally two meals is what I like to have before that workout, but I would allow myself to basically go back and forth on days on maybe one day I'm a, you know, more 40, 30, you know, 30% got more fat that day. The next day it's down to 10. And you know, so I kind of let it ebb and flow like that. So long as my calories, and that's what I'm really focused on in my total calories and my protein intake when I'm trying to gain, I allow that flexibility to happen. I really get into carb manipulation in the cut more than I do in the bulk. Just personally, I just, I've found more success. And I've actually found, I've also found more success with that with my clients because they don't have like this number they have to hit. It's just, listen, hit your protein intake, hit your calories, and then, you know, balance. Let the carbs and fat fall where they may. Now I'll say though, for speaking to somebody who is trying to gain that 10 pounds or gain as many pounds of muscles they can in 90 days, I would still recommend that they pay a little bit more attention to their carbohydrate intake than that simply because if we are on a deadline and we do know that high carb is better for building muscle, I mean, this has been shown in research and this is, there's tons of anecdotal evidence to support this as well. A lot of people who have been successful at this stuff will tell you more carbs is better when you're trying to gain muscle. So in that case, would you, would you, because then I'm always trying to think what's the simplest way for my clients to just, is would you give them like a bottom threshold basically? Like make sure. Yeah, I think ranges are always so the two to two grams per pound of target body weight as high as that which is four. Yeah, probably that'd be a bare minimum and I would like to see them closer to four than to two. There's a few theories as to why by the way, when the calories are controlled, why higher carbs tends to build more muscle. One of them is the energy that you get for your workouts. So the workout you're able to train with higher volume in terms of weight and reps. Another one is just the fluid that flows into muscle glycogen. You store more of it. You tend to hold more water. That sends muscle building signal. There's some theories that revolve around insulin. Insulin is, believe it or not, the most anabolic hormone that exists in the body, even more anabolic than testosterone. It literally drives tissue growth, including fat, but also muscle. So there's a few theories as to why, but anecdotally, I mean weight lifters, bodybuilders, strength athletes have known this. They've known this for a long time. It's always been kind of what they've seen that they just build more. And I'll attest to this. I mean, when I eat more carbs, I'm just stronger and I build more muscle. But I do tend to, as a lifestyle, do what you do, Adam. If I'm trying to cut, that's when it becomes more important. But if I'm on a deadline and we're all in here and we put money on the table, let's see if you can build the most muscle in 90 days, then I'm gonna do what you're saying. Yeah, I think what mine looks like is it's still, I just give myself a bare minimum. Like I know that, like I've learned that kind of, you know, total grams for the day where that needs to be, like in order to hit like, so for me, let's say it's like 150 grams minimum, I need to feel that way when I work out. It feels like my body's building. So I still allow the cards to fall, however, however I keep in mind that this is my bottom threshold. As I would do with fat too, like fat, I don't want to be under 20 grams of fat for a total for the day, like you get in the unhealthy territory. So I have this like, okay, minimum grams of fat, minimum grams of carbs, let the cards fall wherever. You know, that's kind of how I, like I find that as a, and as long as I'm pushing those calories and that protein intake. That's generally my advice too, because usually I'm not in a situation where I'm like 90 days maximize muscle growth. Well, even in that, I mean, so that's, I mean, I like that Mike's bringing that up because it's an interesting point because you're right. Like if we are trying to maximize every day, that does make a little more sense to be, at least have like bare minimums. Cause if not, then we potentially are slowing down this process. So as far as carb sources, I've always because carbohydrates make up the bulk of the food that you're going to eat, just volume wise, digestibility for me is number one. Plays a bigger role, I would say. Like, okay, what source of carbs? Volume too, because remember volume is where it drives satiety and that's great when you're cutting and you're thinking, okay, I'm going to have a big salad every day and you know, I'm going to have- I'm going to get all my carbs for broccoli. Yeah, or I'm going to, you know, I'll recommend people make some vegetable soup. Zucchini seems to work particularly well for this, right? When you're cutting, it's a lot of volume, not a lot of calories, it fills you up and you can use, you know, drink plenty of water. There's some research to show that carbonated water might even be better for inducing satiety. Now we're going to have the opposite problem though with what we're talking about that if somebody, if they try to eat quote unquote really clean, let's say it's a guy and he needs to eat and I've been here myself, 4,000 calories a day. That's where you're at at this point to continue gaining weight, continue gaining muscle and strength and you try to eat nothing but relatively unprocessed, highly nutritious food, all 4,000 calories every day, you can do it but it is not enjoyable. It sucks. Yeah, I've done it, it is not nice. So you might want to swap that whole wheat bread for white bread or you might want to swap that whole wheat pasta for white pasta. Yes. I wouldn't recommend deleting vegetables and fruit from your diet but you might not want to have that three servings of fruit and six servings of vegetables every day. You might want to go down to one or two servings of fruit and maybe two to three servings of vegetables. Here's some of my favorite sources of carbohydrates coming from somebody who has sensitive digestive issues when it comes to carbohydrates. I found white rice. Now I find that for most people to be one of the easier digesting sources of carbohydrates, very dense, very starchy. So I like white rice, buckwheat and I like buckwheat cereals, what I mean by that's hot cereals. Grits, really easy to get. Lots of starchy carbohydrates. Potatoes can be good, but believe it or not. Yes, you push the potatoes and you're like stuffed and a lot of people don't realize. White potatoes, sweet potatoes, not so much for me. I don't feel as much like. Easier to digest. Yes, yeah, sweet potatoes I feel like I can eat a lot of them. Isn't that funny because they say we tend to think it's the opposite. I agree with you. Sweet potatoes I can digest more than I can with white potatoes. Oatmeal has worked well for me. I can eat a lot of oatmeal. Oatmeal, rice, sweet potato, quinoa, yams, and then when I'm on the bulk, I do allow bread, even though it's like sourdough bread, it becomes like a staple for me in the morning with my breakfast. See, actually, you can supplement, so to speak, a meal. You can add 50 grams of carbs pretty easily with bread and not feel all that much fuller than without the bread. Yeah, now unless you're someone like me, right, where gluten-containing carbohydrates bloat the shit out of me. So if I threw bread in, I'm gonna ruin the next couple meals. GF, bro. I know, I know. I'm legit, I legit will have issues. I'm not saying do the gluten-containing. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sourdough doesn't affect you that way. Real sourdough. Yeah, real sourdough, I feel a major difference in like freaking Wonder Bread, something like that. Yeah, absolutely. And it's easy to add to breakfast or lunch. You're right, absolutely. All right, so let's talk about fats. Let's go back to fats. I like to tell people with fats to not be afraid of them, basically. So not necessarily aim for like all these fats, although it's easy to add calories and fats from like things like butter and especially olive oil. Like when you eat your vegetables, if you're having trouble hitting your calories, like one tablespoon of olive oil, which is nothing, is a hundred calories. You can throw four tablespoons on there, no problem. It's great fat, it's healthy fat. Very healthy fat, easy to digest, great for the body. So I tell people, don't be afraid of fats in this case. You're trying to build the most amount of muscle. Don't worry about limiting your fats. I'm not necessarily saying aim for super high fat targets, but don't stay away from them. So when I'm hitting my protein targets, like we said earlier, instead of telling people, oh, lean sources of protein, it's like, look, we're trying to bulk. Instead of going for chicken breast, go chicken thigh, right? Instead of the 90, 10, get the 80, 20. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the main thing that I like to say with fats. How about you, Mike? Don't be fat phobic, Mike. Oh, that's what they meant by fat phobic. I have phobias, but fat is not one of them. One thing though I would say to challenge that a little bit, because what I have seen, I've experienced this myself and with clients that can get out of control really quick. And for some weird reason, we justify it as like this health food, and we also think it's a protein when really it's a fat, and that's nuts and seeds. Can get out of control really quick. Peanut butter is a horrible source of protein. Unfollow anyone who says otherwise. That's a diet hack, right? No, you're right. And even something that is a better choice, like almonds, I mean, if you've ever seen how much you need, I mean, all you need is like one snacking all day. Oh, yeah, you could easily crush, you know, four or 500 calories on that of mostly fat. Oh my god, five minutes. Yes, really, really quick. So that would be my one. It's a few handfuls. I mean, you're 100%. Yeah, I mean, I remember when I first figured this out, like what I was having this problem, I'm like, why am I just getting so fat? Like, I'm putting on way too much body fat for muscle. And I was, I used to keep this jar of peanuts and that was like my way of, and that was my excuse was, oh, it's a healthy fat and has some protein. And so to help keep my calories up. 800 calories later. Oh yeah. I can all vividly remember the disappointment of the moment when we realized how little a tablespoon of of a peanut butter actually is, you know what I mean? Because it's so good. Yeah, yeah, whatever. It weighs whatever, like 18 to 20 grams, right? And then our tablespoon previously was like 50 grams. Yeah. And you're like, shit, that's like three tablespoons. Yeah, actually. All right, so let's talk about something a little more controversial. This is something that I communicate. One thing with fat? Yes. Though I think we should at least mention is saturated fat. I do recommend, this is the standard recommendation to not let your saturated fat exceed 10% of your total daily calories, especially when your calories are quite high and the body of the evidence. Boy, thank you for saying that because it doesn't make as big of a difference when your calories are low. Hard health. Yeah, when your calories are low, this doesn't make that big of a difference. When you're in a surplus, the types of fats that you eat and sugars, for example, actually make a difference. Your calories are under what your maintenance is if you're losing weight, it doesn't make that big of a difference. Now I will- Especially if you're a small person already. Yes, now I will say this. There's a pretty wide genetic variance with this. Like for example, me, I'll go on a bulk. I mean, I eat shit. I eat 10 eggs a day. I only eat, that's beef is my number one sort. It's rare that I eat anything other than beef. I eat butter and stuff like that. My cholesterol, my blood lipids are like, every time I get them done, the doctor's like, this doesn't make sense based off what you're telling me, this is incredible. So there is a bit of a genetic variance, but generally speaking, the data's clear. The key is you're getting blood work done and you know that. If you don't know that, it's a bell curve. So whatever that is in the middle of the distribution, that 60 to 70% of people are not going to respond like that with their saturated fat intake going up, up, up LDL cholesterol goes up, up, up. Risk of heart disease goes up, up, up. So for most people, they just can't get away with that. That's right. Now things like grass fed meat, not free range eggs, but what do they call pasture raised eggs? Actually makes, when you're eating a lot of calories, makes a bit of a difference. If you look at the fat, the types of fats that they have, you see that grass fed meat has a little bit of a better fat profile and pasture raised eggs, a little bit better of a fat profile. And then you know, fish, fish is great. You want to eat a nice protein, good fatty calorie source. Get some of the mega threes in. Yeah, and you can throw that in there. All right, now let's get to something controversial. I was gonna say, which is, this is when I recommend that, you know, people can throw in the occasional quote unquote, I hate to say this, junk food. Okay, here's why. Treat meal, that's what I call it now. Here's a sort of cheat meal. Now here's why. It's hard eating in a consistent surplus, day in, day out. And we're doing this for 90 days. This gets really hard. This is where the bad part of junk food, the fact that it's so, that it overrides satiety, that they've designed. There's so many calories backed into so little food. Yeah, they've done such a good job of engineering this food to make us ovary. This is why obesity is my number one reason, this is why I think number one reason why we have obesity in modern societies. Well, now we can use that as- That's not the patriarchy. No, I'm pretty sure it's not that, thanks, Phil. I was like, can we do a whole episode without Mike's help? We almost made it. Impossible. You always like the unbehaving, you know, you've seen super troopers, right? Before, or you like insert like that. So I was like, oh, I'm gonna get it in there. I'm gonna get it in there. I'm gonna get it in this mind pump episode for sure. I was directing this, I'm gonna keep on waiting. No, so this is where I think the dangers of ultra-processed foods, you can utilize to your benefit a little bit. If you're struggling on some days to eat extra calories, well, you know, the ultra-processed, whatever, so long as you're hitting your proteins and your calories are good, well, now it's easier to hit your, like you were doing 4,000 calories a day. I don't think people realize how hard that is to do on a day-in-day basis. Do you have any favorites? Before I would go there personally, I would drink calories. Like I would, and I was doing that. I was drinking a few cups of milk every day, for example. Earths, this is like 120 calories per cup, whole milk. And ultimate hack, drink of glass and milk. And so I would prefer that over fruit juice, but I think fruit juice is also, when I was like 16. Mom! Hug, hug, literally. Yeah. Think about what was that? Cartman in one of the Southpaw. I just made it a rule, I just made it a rule that I had to hit my protein and take first before I would indulge in something like that. So that was like, what I didn't wanna do, which I see people do when you give a client, or you give someone this option, is they now build in. This goes to the first thing. Yeah, or they build it in. It's like, oh, I need 50 more grams of protein. Oh, I'm gonna go get myself that double bacon cheeseburger from Five Guys with the french fries and the milkshake and all that stuff like that. And it's like, no, I want to try and hit my protein and take my healthy fats. I wanna get that in a good amount of cars, like the minimum we were talking about. I wanna get that from all my whole foods, foods I've prepared for myself. And then once I hit there, okay, go ahead and... Yeah, this is like where I'll use my little cheat code where I'll get a client that's like struggling. Man, it's how I can eat 3,000 calories day in and day out. Some days it's almost impossible. Then I'll say, okay, what's a food that is irresistible to you, something that is really hyper palatable to you? And then we'll see if we can use that as a strategy to hit those caloric targets. For me, it's a burger. I can almost always eat a burger. French fries is up there as well. Now they're obviously not great, the best foods, but if I'm really struggling hitting my calories, I can almost always eat a burger and fries and I'll be able to eat them no matter how full I feel. Do you have any favorites for yourself? Burgers, pizza, pasta. I really like a good pasta. Man, after my heritage, that's good. Especially if you make it the way you like it. But even that, that was my second dinner that I mentioned previously when I was last lean bulking was pasta that I normally love. And after though, even a month or so of doing that every day, my second dinner of pasta, I was forcing it down. So maybe a better strategy would have been to rotate through some of these other foods as opposed to just sticking to one that I normally really like and then just kind of beating the joy out of it. You know? No, how about things that you guys would actually, like avoid? Like so something I did when I was younger that I wouldn't do now is I would in the past justify a box of Mike and I candy where I would want something that at least that like a burger and fries is great because there's some serious nutritional value in there. Yes, actually if you, I mean, I don't know if we're talking about the drive-through or I actually prefer. Makers. As far as the burger goes. I think you can make a better hamburger at home than you can get at a drive-through. Yeah, great point. Make a homemade, incredible grass-fed beef burger that you got avocado and bacon and everything on it. And you're getting some really solid nutritional value versus drinking a thousand calories of alcohol or soda or candy, pop cards or something like that. So yeah, so that was kind of my. Breakfast cereal. Right, that was kind of my rule. It was like it needs to have some. What a great point you're making, man. Some good nutritional value but I can also enjoy myself. I go about burger and fries is amazing. Here's one of mine that, you know, I don't know if you would consider this junk or not but you don't necessarily think of this as like, you know, quote-unquote healthy food but like homemade tacos. I could eat that crap at a taco. I think that's right in line with homemade hamburgers. Yeah, you got your ground beef, your rice. You can even make a bowl. This is a nice bulking meal. Rice, ground beef, you know, some salsa, some avocado. And it's like 800 calories over that too. Yeah, and you got like 800 calories right there. Good amount of protein. So I like to use those types of hyper palatable meals when you're struggling, when you're struggling to hit those calories, not every day or not as just though this is how I'm gonna hit my calories brother. Oh, I'm having a challenge. Now we'll throw those in. Well, I actually will never actually do any breakfast foods like that because it's in the beginning of the day and I haven't proven to myself I'm gonna have a good day if hitting all my targets. So that my quote-unquote cheat or whatever meal we wanna call this comes at the end always. Yeah, like you did with your pasta. Yeah, it's the last meal a day that I'm getting to enjoy this. And it's- That's what I, it was my last thousand calories. That's right. And it's my reward for being on top of things really on it. Like if you give some of the green light to go have these somewhere in their day and they start their day off of that like the likelihood that they're gonna execute is just not there. Very good point. So it's always late now. All right, let's talk about sleep. This is something that I wish I knew in my 20s because when you're in your 20s you can make some gains and you could I guess live your life in spite of having terrible sleep but you have no idea how much you're missing out when you finally do get good sleep. Sleep is such a big factor when it comes to muscle and fat, muscle gain, fat loss that it's as important as diet and training. And dare I say, it can definitely be more detrimental with how shitty people's sleep are. So this, and this is something that it took me a while to figure out. Once I got older and I had to figure it out then I was like, oh man, I wish I knew this when I was younger. Any strategies for you? I know this is something you struggle with as well with sleep. You and I have talked about this. Yep, yep. I mean, just to comment on that, I mean, research shows that sleep deprivation, sleep insufficiency directly reduces protein synthesis. So I mean, coming back to that, it'll kill your muscles. Your muscle building machinery metaphor, the machinery simply does not work nearly as well. And I'm thinking of one study. It only took four or five days of not enough sleep. It was not much in the study. I think they limited them to four to five hours per night. But many people only sleep six, six and a half hours per night. So we're getting close to that. And they do it for long periods of time. Exactly. Not just four days. Exactly. And so there are other implications related to recovery and performance and other things that are problematic when you're not getting enough sleep. But then there is the direct effect of what you are getting out of that work that you're doing in the kitchen and gym. You're getting a fraction of the gains simply because you are not sleeping enough. I know that we didn't order these in any sort of priority, but this is one that I did not really understand in my 20s that if I could go back and tell my younger self, this needs to be towards the top of your list because... Sleeping enough is like a life hack. I mean, if you want to see what you're really capable of, start sleeping eight hours per night. Yeah, really. That sounds silly, but it's 100% true. You know what I mean? And it sounds... And I remember, it's not that I didn't hear that back then. I remember hearing that. So it's not like this is like new science. Oh, by the way, we've known this for a long time. It's just when you're that age, you're so stubborn and you think, oh, that's an old man. You're also kind of invincible. You are. Because you don't think you're that affected. You bounce back. Yeah, you don't think you're that affected by it. By the way, you think you're invincible, you're not, because it is impacting. By the way, you mentioned a study with four nights of sleep on protein synthesis. One night of terrible sleep dramatically affects testosterone. They'll show you one night of sleep, you'll lower your testosterone by a quarter or more the next day. Because men's testosterone levels react on a day-by-day basis, or you can even say on a schedule of an hour by hour basis. One night of sleep, guys, in your 20s, you have one shitty night of sleep. Add some alcohol? Oh, well, now you're really screwed, right? Alcohol's got negative impacts on that as well. So any strategies for you to help with your sleep that you found out? Yeah, so we've talked about my sleep journey. When I was, let's say 10 years or I'm 38 now, so 10 years ago-ish, I had a good run. I mean, I was very busy. I'm still busy now, but I was even busier then and so I was getting up probably about 6.30, go to the gym, work out, work all day, go home. I was doing cardio, usually around 7 p.m. I would have caffeine before the cardio. Sometimes you'll him being if I was cutting as well. And then eat some dinner, get back. This was most weekdays, get back to work, put in a couple more hours, get off the computer at probably 11 or so, get ready for bed. I'm in bed by 11.30, fall asleep in five minutes, black out unconscious for maybe six and a half hours, seven hours, wake up before an alarm, and that was it. That was my life. For five or six years, no effects that I was aware of. And if I look objectively in that period, I mean, I gained plenty of muscle, I was able to get frailine, staleine. I had a period of like I had swallowed the star in Super Mario. I don't know, I just had invincibility for a bit. Then first kid comes, it starts to get a little bit shakier, but still was pretty good. Second kid comes, and I remember it, just it's like a flash bulb memory because it's, I have like PTSD from what I've, of when it changed. And it was after my daughter came and there was a point, I was in Virginia and it was just one night. I woke up several times at night and I was like, I swear it doesn't normally happen to me. And from that point forward, it was never the same. And now I'm a lighter sleeper. I don't sleep through the night, literally ever. I'm always going to wake up at least probably two times. Let's say anywhere from one to three times, average is probably two. Often it was, I'd have to pee. And one thing that has helped with that in particular is I realized that I was drinking more water than I actually needed to drink. It became a habit. I know a sit on my computer and if I'm, it just, my water was always there or something just to sip on, right? And that's not necessarily bad for health, but it does train your body to have to pee. I mean, I had to pee every hour to just because I was drinking a lot of water. And by being a little bit more conscientious with my water intake and not drinking too much water, now I don't have to pee every hour or two, which has helped my sleep. So I'm not like waking up having to pee. But so, you know, for years now, my sleep has gone in and out of being okay, not okay. I mean, there would be some nights where I would wake up every hour, I'd be up, right? And you can stay in bed for eight or nine hours. You still, I wouldn't be a good podcast guest if that was the last night, right? And so I've tried everything, every evidence-based thing you could try. I have not tried sleeping drugs because those can mess you up and I don't wanna do that. But I've tried every supplement you can speak of, every, you know, all the standard things that people talk about. And those things, I think, are definitely the checklist. Like, okay, are you getting off screens at the appropriate time? Are you dimming lights at the appropriate time? Yeah, sunlight during the day. Yeah, are you doing sunlight during the day? Or do you have some sort of pre-bed routine that allows you to relax? And are you trying simple supplements, melatonin? Are you trying valerian? Are you trying, sure, chamomile, glycine, blah, blah, I can go on the latest lavender. And so what I found is, for me, is all of those things, they would help to a degree and then sometimes it was just as bad as it ever was, right? And so really, and I've only really discovered this recently, is for me, it was actually just an imbalance between total stress in my life, including my training and recovery. I was simply going too hard. And where it started, and this is kind of dumb that I didn't think of this before, is in my training. So previously, I would have a certain amount of training volume, and I then increased that training volume, which is fine. I increased it to, let's say, about 15 to 16 hard sets per major muscle group per week, a lot of compound lifts, a lot of deadlifting, squatting, puts a lot of stress on the body. But I also was wanting to stay lean. I also was wanting to keep my six pack. Coming back to what we've been talking about, I was unwilling to eat as much food as was required to recover from all of that training. And this is a separate topic. I won't derail us onto this tangent, but people sometimes might think that they are over-trained or they are excessively over-reaching when they're actually just under-eating. That's actually the only problem. And trying to keep their body fat levels too low, which can have negative implications in various aspects of health and performance. There's a healthy lean, and there's an unhealthy lean. Right, and so, for me, that combination was that's what was causing the problem. It was pushing too hard in the gym, not willing to eat enough food, because if you wanna stay lean, this applies to men and women. If you wanna stay pretty lean, like if you're a dude, you wanna stay between eight and 10% body fat, which is okay, but if you wanna do that, if you're a woman, you wanna stay between 18 to 20% quite lean, really what that means is you are going to be in a slight calorie deficit more often than a slight calorie surplus. Because that's just, you have to err on the side of under-eating, not overeating to stay lean. And that gets in the way of recovery. That calorie deficit alone gets in the way of recovery. And so, I was pushing myself harder than I could recover from in the gym. And then outside of the gym, what happened over the last 10 years is my life has gotten more complicated, quote unquote. I have two kids, I now have businesses and employees and I'm not complaining about any of it, but I actually just wasn't aware of the amount of stress that I was putting on my body because psychologically I felt fine, I could deal with it. And it was more of a physical thing. So, what I did was I cut my training volume down by 25%. So, very simple in my workouts. Instead of doing four sets per exercise, I cut it down to three. And within a week or so of just making that change, I was immediately starting to sleep better. I was feeling more rested in the morning. I had fewer wakeings at night. And I started to restrict my calories simply because I wanted to see how my body now dealt with being in a calorie deficit with this reduced training volume, a little bit less cardio. And some days if I wasn't, I would just go for a walk or two instead of hopping on the bike and doing a higher intensity, not necessarily hit, but higher intensity cardio workout. And so by just bringing down the physical training stress, it immediately improved in my sleep. So, for me, that's what it was, it was too much stress. That's really the second, the next point. So, sleep and stress, which are both connected because historically speaking, if you didn't get good sleep for most of human history, it was very stressful because what does that mean? Well, it means you're probably not getting enough food or you're probably worried about predators. And so your body senses this and what it does is it says, and your body's very good at this. Okay, we're under stress. Historically throughout most of human history that meant we didn't have enough food. That's what we probably stressed about the most. And so what it does is it says store body fat and don't build so much muscle because muscle burns a lot of calories. Body fat is safety, it's money in the bank. And so not having good sleep and being too stressed tips the balance towards fat storage and it moves away from muscle gain. And particularly through increasing appetite and there's research on this. And reducing movement, it'll make you not wanna move as much. And you may think you're moving as much but when they actually follow people around. When they stick them in a lab. Yes, they find that, yeah, you're still doing your hour workout. You actually sit around and don't move as much as you normally would. I wanna add to what he's talking about with the reducing stress in regards to like training volume because, and if you've listened to the show a long time you've heard me talk about this. But that was one of the biggest paradigm shattering moments I had was in my, I think it was around 24, 25. It was the most muscle I ever built over summer. And what it was was simply reducing my training volume and frequency. I was just, I was training seven days a week getting after it. I was playing basketball every single day for like an hour or more. I was wakeboarding, I was snowboarding. Like I was just doing, I was also in my 20s. So I was going out on Friday or Saturday night sometimes. I mean, I was just, and again, thinking that I was so resilient fine but not figuring out why am I not building anymore? Why am I in this hard plateau? I'm putting the work and effort in. And I think that when you talk about this in particular client, sometimes less is more. Sometimes backing off the intensity and or volume or frequency of your training and prioritizing sleep and just limiting or bringing down the stress, total stress is. And total stress is, it's important. Yes, right. Many people for talking fitness, they think of just training stress. And they don't think about the emotional and psychological stress that they're under outside of the gym and that our body can only take so much stress of any variety. That's right. Your body registers it all a stress. Right. It's all in the same. And sometimes this has been the one little thing that has unlocked it for people that have hired me for this exact thing that just cannot figure out. I train hard, I do, it's like, oh, you're doing too much. And you actually just backing off a little bit and then boom, all of a sudden the body responds. By the way, not to get too sideways with this, but there's lots of strategies to reduce stress. One of them is to cut stressful things out of your life. Sometimes that's not possible. You got two little kids at home. You're not gonna be like, well, I'm out of here. I'm not gonna raise these kids anymore. I need bigger biceps. Yeah, so now studies will show this. Studies show that reframing. And I'm gonna be jacked. Reframing how you perceive the stresses of your life, make a profound impact on how your body perceives the stress. What does the data show that is a great strategy for that? Spiritual practice. And spiritual practice, now this is gonna be meditation. It could be prayer. It could be as simple as turning everything off and being quiet in nature. Some people can treat that as a spiritual practice, but that can make the stresses that you already have less stressful on your life. And they find this. They actually find that people who, for example, attend church regularly and are around groups of people and have good relationships with other people who have similar stresses. So like, I got kids, it's so stressful, but I have lots of friends, I have lots of kids. That that same stress now registers as less stress in that person because of how they perceive it and how they frame it. So there's different ways to reduce stress, not just cutting things out of your life. And I wanna say that because I think sometimes people are like, oh, it's my wife. I knew I should have left her or whatever. Well, yeah, good luck thinking that's gonna cut your stress out by, you know, getting divorced. I've done that. That's way more stressful than you think it is. It's a better way to just lose half of your net worth. Yeah, thank you very much. All right, so the next point is. Just to comment on that. And, because, you know, again, just putting in the context of what I shared, I totally agree with you. But, and I'm this guy, and I know there are other people out there who are kind of like the hustler grinder type of people who are like, they, I didn't want to accept that there still is an absolute limit. Absolutely, 100%. No matter how many, and physical stress is pretty black and white. Yes. And I'm glad you said that. You're not gonna pray your way out of that. Especially with, again, going back to this avatar, but this person that we're talking about, they're more likely to be the trying to do more. Yeah, I can do more. I can do more. I can do more. And so I think that that conversation is even more important. I'm referring more to like life stresses that you, when you examine your life and you're like, okay, my life is too stressful. What can I cut out of my life? A lot of times it's chaos, right? You just need to add more disciplines in your life to open up freedoms to create that kind of a de-stress. Such a good point, because again, you may look at your life. Now, training stress is very black and white, in my opinion. I'm working out too much for everything that's going on in my life. Let me cut that down. See what happens. But when you look at your life, you're like, well, I got a job. It's not realistic for me to quit my job. I have kids. It's not realistic for me to not take them to school and take care of them, do that kind of stuff. And I'm in a long-term relationship that can be kind of stressful, like maybe it's probably not a good idea to break that up because that's probably worse. So my point is the other life stressors, there's a couple of ways you can approach it and it's usually a combination of things, cutting some stuff out and then reframing stuff. And the spiritual practice is the data just shows that that 40,000 foot view of your life, that's what spiritual practices do. It gives you perspective. Very good perspective and really make a big difference on how your body perceives stress. So let's start with the training. Next point. Okay, yes, thank you very much. Get strong at compound lifts. They just bang for your buck time spent. Like you'd have to do three exercises to equal the benefit of one of these big gross motor movements in terms of time spent and what you get out of them. And these exercises are multi-joint movements and they tend to be things like squats and deadlifts and presses and rows and that kind of stuff. This is something that I think people need to hear more often because there's so many exercises, so many strength training exercises. You're limited on the total stress you could put on your body, you're limited on time. It's like, yeah, you could do those four leg exercises. Yeah. Leg exercises, or you could squat. I mean, look at the deadlift. I don't know if you guys have seen this, but this is like kind of a talking point these days that the deadlift is, it's not good for hypertrophy. Yeah, that's my biggest pet peeve right now. And if you're not a strength athlete, you have no place deadlifting. The risks are far greater than the potential words. I disagree with all of that. All of it. Look at the deadlift trains every muscle on the backside of your body. Period. Which arguably is one of the most important things that the average person needs to focus on. Because we're so anterior-driven. Especially guys. I've actually tried to make the case that the deadlift is more of the king than the squat is for that reason. If I could do only one exercise, it would be the deadlift. Right. To counter what you're doing. Some days I don't like it, but I'm choosing that not just because of my feelings, but like objectively speaking, I think that it is the probably single best exercise that people can do. And anecdotally, the carryover, I've seen this time and time again, somebody gains strength on a deadlift, they get stronger at rows, they get stronger at pull-ups, they get stronger at curls, they get stronger all the exercises that are bought. Lower body too? Yes, and they're lower body too. So these compound lifts, if you're looking at your workout and you're like, where should I place my focus within my workout, what exercises should I place my focus on? What exercises should I try to get strong at? Making those compound lifts, the isolation movements are great, they can add some volume, they could add some, you know, they can be fun, get a biceps pump. Yes, but like I don't care if my curls go up as much as I care if my squat goes up or my bench press or my barbell row. Exactly. So okay, good, I'm glad to you. And I know I've seen your programs and your workouts and they're very well written and you place a strong emphasis on compound lift. Do you remember when you figured that out, by the way? Yeah, that's also one of those, you know, you have these moments that are epiphanies and like understanding energy balance, that's one that, once you have that epiphany and you understand that body composition, it really actually does come down to calories in and calories out, then you learn about protein, a little bit about macros and that's it. And now you know exactly how to manipulate your body composition in whatever way you want. That's an epiphany, compound lifts, that was an epiphany for my first, probably seven years of lifting. I don't know if I ever, I don't think I did one set of the deadlift for seven or eight years. Oh, me too. I remember squatting now and then if I really felt up to it on the Smith machine, let's not even say squatting, let's say like quarter, maybe half squatting. And so then now I remember, so I'm starting to learn about the importance of barbell movements and dumbbells as well, but compound lifts and training to get strong on those. Not resting one minute in between sets and just doing drop set, burnout sets on barbell rows or something. No, you're training to get strong. It's a little bit different. And so I had been doing these quarter squats on the Smith machine. I think I got up to 405 for quarter squats on the Smith machine. Cool, cool. It's a lot of current admitting that right now. And so I'm learning about, I think I first learned about this from Mark Ripito starting strength and learning how to squat properly. And there are some different methods, but I think his method is tried and tested for sure. And so, okay, this makes sense to me. I'm now over, I'm off the Smith machine. I go over to the Power Rack and I had no understanding of like how difficult a proper squat is compared to a quarter squat on a fucking Smith machine. I load up 405. No, you didn't. I didn't know. Oh my God. I didn't know. You're a different animal. Buried. And I'm gonna do my, this is literally probably my first proper rep of squatting ever. I'm gonna squat. 405. I'm gonna squat to hips, you know. And I'm gonna get my femurs parallel. I'm gonna get those hips a little bit lower. And realized, oh, I fucked up. I get down and there's no way, I mean, you put the gun to my head, you're gonna have to kill me. I cannot stand that weight up, of course, right? And fortunately I was able to bail without hurting myself. And that I think was actually the first time I ever bailed on a squat. So I didn't really know even how to bail on a back squat properly. But I put it over me instead. Oh my God. But I didn't get hurt. I didn't get hurt. Wow. And so that was a moment. And then from there, I went down to 185 pounds on the bar and barely got eight, I think. And so that's how my 405 quarter squat, Smith machine fiasco translated to a proper squat on the barbell. Well, and you also highlight, I think, why a lot of young men in particular, why they don't and we gravitate towards the machines because it's hard. Correct. It's hard. And it's a bit more technical. Yeah, yeah. And so I know that that was the reason why I did it. You could talk people out of them pretty easily. Yeah. Yes. This is also why- Do I feel like doing it? No. All right, not doing it. This is why I can't stand this movement like the one you mentioned with the deadlift and then people trying to push the hack squat and leg press instead of squats. And like, that's such a terrible message for the young man growing up who's trying to build as much muscle as possible because I attached myself to those people back in the days. And that's what kept me from squatting. I was like, oh, I don't need to. I can just leg press or sit machine squat and I'll get all the benefits. And it's not that you can't build muscle on those things it's just you are missing out on so much more by not doing that. Like that's a must for me that if you want to build the most amount of muscle in 90 days. I was fortunate because it's like 15 or 16. I worked out next to a group of power lifters and I was leg pressing and working real hard and admiring these super strong dudes, lifting all this weight. And one of them, you know, say, hey, what are you doing, kid? And I'm like, oh, I'm trying to build big legs. And he's, you know, kind of chuckle. He's like, why don't you come over here and work out with us. And it changed my life. I squatted and dead lifted. And that summer, I remember I'm a kid. I'm, you know, height of testosterone puberty. I'm probably going to grow anyway. But I gained like 16 pounds of lean body mass that summer from squatting and deadlifting. And I remember all my pants got tight. You know, I grew an ass and legs all of a sudden. And I never looked back. So I was lucky. My back benefited a lot from deadlifting too. Oh, I mean, tremendously, right? So do you remember the gains you got after starting to do this? Blew your mind. Yep. I mean, again, that is just one of that epiphany moment. Like, oh, this is the way to do it. And yeah, you can find fringe cases of like, all right, well, what about this advanced natural bodybuilder who is now struggling for his last three pounds of muscle. Here's an example and this guy doesn't deadlift. Well, yeah, for that guy, deadlifting actually might not be the best use of his energy and his effort for what he is trying to do. It might make more sense for him to instead of deadlift, break that up into four different isolation exercises. There are scenarios where I think that the deadlift would be contraindicated. But that's way the exception. Exactly. Definitely not close to the rule. You also avoid it then because like, this kid also wants to build muscle and they normally have specific chest, back, arms, wherever they want to. And when you do the big compound lifts, it's harder to feel in a specific muscle and see the pump the same way I would if I were to go just go pump up my quads on leg extensions. Or pecs, you know, oh, I don't really feel the bench press as much as the peck deck. Right, so that's the other challenge is because you start to connect the, oh, I feel it more in this muscle. Therefore it's working that muscle and I'm getting more benefit. And that was a myth that I think I fell into. Even though I'm weak as shit actually, I just get a pump, nothing really changes other than like I look good for about an hour after I train and then I look like I don't even lift. All right, so the last point, we kind of covered in the beginning, but I don't know if there's anything else you wanna add which was training your whole body. And when I say this, I mean, in terms of frequency of body parts, there's a few different ways to do this. You could do three full body workouts a week or you could train with a split but kind of hitting every muscle group about three days a week is what I've found to be, probably the right amount of frequency for most people for gaining the most amount of muscle. It allows you to practice compound lifts more often. You don't train in this endurance state as much as you would if you're doing it in one session and the studies seem to back it up. Is there anything else you want because I know we covered this quite a bit through the episode. Is there anything else you wanna add to that? Yeah, I would say that before thinking about frequency, we would wanna emphasize progressive overload. There needs to be some type of progression in the program. We have to be continuing, we have to be generating larger amounts of tension in the muscles over time to drive growth. And so you could have frequency set up properly, but if you don't have a good model of progression in the program, then you could actually not see much of a difference at all. So progressive overload, I would say probably be number one. Then volume, research shows that progressive overload is the primary mechanical driver of muscle growth. But a second, number two is probably volume. And you can look at volume in different ways. You can look at it total reps, total poundage. I like the hard sets model, I guess you could say, which is a hard set is simply a set taken close to muscular failure. You don't have to go to failure in every set. Of course, some exercises like on the deadlift, I would not recommend that, but you do gotta push hard in your sets. You do have to get to a point where maybe you could do one or two more good reps on most exercises. If it's your first set of deadlift, maybe it's two or three good reps left, but you are getting close to failure, it is getting very difficult, that's a hard set. And so again, research shows that the total amount of hard sets that you do for a muscle group per week is a major component, a major factor of muscle hypertrophy. So what that means is, and I've experienced this myself and I've heard from many people over the years, you can have great programming, you can do everything that we're saying, but if your program does not provide enough volume, if you're just not working hard enough in the gym, you are either going to gain less muscle and strength than you could have, or you're gonna gain, you're not gonna see much of a difference, you're just gonna be stuck. Well, it's a difference between training and exercising. Right. You can go to the gym and exercise and do the same volume, same intensity all the time and you're exercising still, but if we're training for a goal and we're trying to progress, then I like that. I've never tracked that. I've always just added total volume, right? I just found that the easier for me. And I actually only would only pick my big major lifts. Like I'd pick all my big major lifts, track sets, reps, weight, multiply them all together, get this total volume number. And then my goal was just to, I mean, by one to 5%, I don't even have to go that much. As long as I'm increasing by that one to 5% week over week and I would see that nice, consistent. Now, of course, there's always diminishing returns. You can't do that forever, right? At some point, you have to change the stimulus. That's how you get the body to respond. You also, you can't increase volume forever. Like we said, there's a point where you try to do more and you just get hurt. So you have to think about progressing in terms of total reps, adding weight to the bar. Exercise, selection, there's a lot of different ways to progress. Yeah, there's a lot of different ways to slow the tempo down. I mean, you know, where you squeal. I mean, there's a lot of different ways to do this, but generally speaking, it's lifting more, doing more volume type of deal. Getting stronger really is the key. I think we should emphasize that. Absolutely. In these 90 days, our primary goal is to get you stronger because research shows that when you're new in your first year, you can gain a lot of muscle, almost irrespective of how much strength that you gain. There's not as close of a relationship between strength gain and muscle gain as when you are a more experienced weightlifter and research shows that relationship becomes much, much stronger in that it becomes really the primary method of continuing to get bigger is to continue getting stronger. And so this is why we wanna emphasize the compound weightlifting. And we should also probably mention that we wanna emphasize, you need to be lifting heavy weights. That doesn't mean you have to be doing two, three, fours, and fives only, but it wouldn't be appropriate in who wants to do this, but to try to do sets of 20 reps, 30 reps on the squat, for example. I mean, again, who wants to do that? But I think a good general recommendation is probably something between and research shows that heavy weight that is effective for muscle building probably starts around 65% of one rep max. So maybe that's like about 15 reps. And then if you can work in some heavier work, particularly on the compound exercises, which also is, it's more fun. It is more fun to do sets of fours, sixes, or eights on a squat than 12 or 15. And that would add. Well, here's the thing too though. We've set this up as a 90 day kind of a challenge. So I would even make it, I would make simplify it for the listener as one month I'm running a block of, you know. Sure, 10s. Yep, 10s, another time, fives, and then 15s. So I mean, that would be a real easy way to do this. First month, we're doing fives. Second month, we're doing 10s and 15s. And you could order that however you want. I personally recommend ordering it, starting with your higher reps and then progressing into lower reps, simply because my reasoning for that, I'd be curious what you guys think of what your experience is, is that my understanding of research on fatigue, just the amount of fatigue that accumulates in your body is that that's driven more by volume than load. Oh, so they build the endurance, muscle endurance before they go to. So in the beginning of your training block, when you're fresh, you wanna do your high volume, that's your hard training on, that's just hard on your body. And as you get deeper into a training block, you want that volume, you want the reps per set. So let's say you start with your 10s, right? Like, you know, you guys know how hard a true, a good set of 10 on the squat, like taking close to muscle, muscle, that's nasty. That's hard. A good set of 10 on the deadlift is, that's the hardest thing I ever have done. Sets of 10 taken close to failure on the deadlift. I mean, it's cardio by the time you're in your third set or whatever, right? So you would start with your 10s and then maybe progress into your eights or sixes simply because even though it can be counterintuitive because it's like, well, I'm putting more weight on the bar, that can be harder on your joints, but as far as systemic fatigue and systemic stress goes, the high volume training is actually harder on the body. Yeah, and I could make the argument, and I think it's very valid what you said. I could make the argument in the opposite direction in the sense that I tend to build my capacity for volume as I continue on a training block. In other words, when I start with lower reps, my training, my ability to handle more volume starts to improve, and then I add the reps and then I add more reps. But honestly, there's really no wrong answer. To add to that though, I think that you both would agree is what would be the most valuable is to know what that person was currently doing when you got a hold of them. 100%, I was just gonna say that. So, and we would all agree. You can't just double your effective volume that's gonna destroy you. And one of the easiest ways to start them on the path of seeing results would be to move them out of where they currently are. So if I have somebody who's training in this 15. Make it 10 or 20% harder, not 50, 100% harder right away. Yeah, and also when it comes to intensity, I know we're talking about higher intensity, but the more of a beginner you are, the more detrained you are, the less intensity is required to get the body to respond. The harder or the more experienced you are, the more intensity. So if you're a total beginner and you're listening to this and you're hearing, oh, get close to failure, like that's gonna mess you up the first few weeks. Like that's really high, from going from nothing to I'm gonna squat 10 reps that almost to failure. You probably wanna go about like 50%. And you'll gain, you'll gain strength, you'll gain muscle. Almost like an acclimation. 100%, 100% because intensity can be very, very easily overdone on somebody who's untrained. Anyway, it's been a lot of fun. Mike, great, great podcast. Pure fitness, we almost kept it pure fitness. A couple comments. Only a couple. Only a couple. Yeah, no, great time. And then you have a book, right? That's out. What's the title of it? Yeah, Muscle for Life is the title of my newest book. And that's particularly for men and women, 40 plus who are very new to strength training, new to all of this stuff. Whereas my previous books, like Bigger, Leader Stronger, Thinner, Leader Stronger, are meant for a little bit of younger crowd and people who are ready to get in the gym right away, start squatting, start deadlifting. That's appropriate for some people, but it's not appropriate for a 55-year-old woman who is obese and has never done any strength training. You're not gonna tell her to go and deadlift day one. And so that's obviously the biggest group of people, that 40-plus, male, female, brand new. They probably have a lot of weight to lose. They're not very healthy. They've never really done any of this stuff before. There are a lot more of those people who need help than 25-year-old guys who wanna go from fit to jacked so they can get laid more. Yeah. And so that's the newest. Good deal. Well, thanks, man. We always talk about you as being one of the best people in our space. So appreciate you coming on the show, man. Yeah, thanks again for having me.