 Alright our first caller is Christine from Idaho. Hey Christine how can we help you? Hey guys, thank you so much for taking my call. Yeah no problem. So I'm 30 years old and I work full-time as a paramedic and also part-time as a reserve firefighter. My goal is to work full-time for a local fire department but I'm really concerned that my strength is not where it needs to be to be successful. I'm 5 foot 6 and about 145 pounds. When I use the in-body scale at my local gym it puts me at about 27% body fat. While I think my upper body strength is adequate I really struggle with my lower body strength and I think a lot of this has to do with the past injury. Ten years ago I was hit by a car. The car's bumper hit the back of my leg just below my knee and it tore my calf open. After the initial surgery they weren't sure if they were going to have to amputate the leg but thankfully I was able to keep the leg but I have some pretty severe deficits from that injury. My ankle mobility is extremely limited. I have posterior tibial tendon dysfunction, a collapsed arch and some pretty significant nerve damage. I can't push off with my toes or pull my foot inward. I wear an orthotic in my shoe to help with the arch support but otherwise there's not much else that can be done to help with the nerve damage or the shortened Achilles. I do see a physical therapist regularly from my leg and he's working with me to try to increase my mobility and my strength was my ankle in my foot. I've been trying for this job for upwards of five years now. I've made some pretty good accomplishments physically considering my injury. I passed the mile and a half run that you have to do in 11 minutes and 30 seconds. I've done the pack test which is the wildland test which includes a 45 pound weight vest and a three mile hike. I've done the CPAT which is the national test for entry-level firefighter and I also participated in a fire academy this past year and earned my firefighter one certification. The problem is I feel like I've nearly had to kill myself to do these things. I don't give up easily on my goals but I feel really pushed to the limit physically to achieve these things. Every time I go on shift at the local fire department here I just feel really apprehensive. I won't be able to perform adequately during a structure fire call. As I said I've been trying for this goal for several years but I just feel like I've really reached a ceiling on my physical strength and ability. I tracked my calories and I'm eating about 3,000 calories a day with 280 grams of that being protein. I do full body workouts three to four times a week with phased rep ranges, progressive overload, and deload weeks. I commute on my bike and usually total anywhere from three and at the most 10 miles a day. Of course my sleep is affected by my professions. I work 24-hour shifts usually two to four 24-hour shifts a week so the sleep is a little more challenging for me for that reason. I just feel like I'm constantly pushing myself to be better physically and I'm just not seeing the results. It's really frustrating to see other girls even locally in these local departments that seem to perform a lot better than me and are a lot stronger than me and I'm not quite sure what I'm missing here. I even follow athletes on Instagram that have one leg amputated and wear a prosthetic and they're able to squat with one leg more than I can squat with two. I understand this is a really loaded question with the added complexity of the past injury but I was just hoping with the information I provided you might be able to advise me on my nutrition or workouts or possible exercise variations to just help me progress and achieve my goals. Wow, wow, because that's a lot right there. We need a little more backstory. Please. I gotta figure this out. First of all you're a bad ass and I appreciate what you do. That's great. Real quick, I want a little clarification. You're eating 280 grams approaching today. Did you say that? Yeah, I eat a ton of meat. I eat grass-fed beef, chicken, eggs. Why so much? Yeah, that's why so much. That's excessive amount. That's excessive for me. Why so much? Yeah, answer that. I guess it's just kind of the way my eating habits have developed. I eat a ton of fruit and vegetables and then for my fats mostly like nuts. I don't eat a ton of processed grains so I guess to just kind of try to keep my calories high and ends up being more protein but I can try to adjust that if you think. Yeah, so a couple things I'm going to recommend. One and this one's iffy but I think you'll probably respond better doing it this way. I would cut your protein down. It's way too much protein. Not that it's necessarily bad but you're probably noticing reductions in performance because a good chunk of that protein is just getting turned into glycogen. You're not utilizing all those amino acids. It's just way too much for someone your size. Not to mention the amount of time it takes for that to convert over into that and then you're doing stuff that's probably glycolytic. Yeah, lots of glycolytic stuff so I would take that protein and bring it down to 160 grams at the most and then I would take the rest of it and eat it, eat some complex carbohydrates easily digestible. It could be white rice, it could be sweet potato, things that you find that are easily digestible. That should improve structure around your workouts too. Yeah, that should improve your performance and then here's a second and this one's very obvious for me point. You're overdoing everything. You're definitely probably a high achiever. You're doing a lot of exercise, a lot of writing. I keep hearing you saying that you can't push yourself past this point and there's nothing I can do. It sounds like you're hitting... You feel like you're killing yourself going through all this. Yeah, I've trained people like you. And then in addition that you allude to not getting the best sleep either. Yeah, I would take your workouts, I would cut them down. Do resistance training twice a week. So not three or four, two days a week, focus on building strength, don't go to failure, practice the movements that you can do appropriately. So with your particular injury, if you can squat, then I would squat. If that doesn't work, do split stance style exercises. Continue working with the physical therapist and improve your mobility, but cut that stuff down. You're doing a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot way too much stuff and your body is just not able to recover from what have you been able to do exercise wise for your legs? Well, it's just very challenging. So, you know, a few months ago, I was able to be doing squats and creams, deadlifts. Recently, I've had like a hip thing flare up. You know, again, talking about, you know, pushing yourself. It feels like every time I start to like creep up on my max lifts for my lower body, I always end up getting some sort of injury that sets me back again. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, a couple of things. If you're able to do those, so I would also, I would follow maps, anabolic, follow it to a T, two day a week routine, like Sal was saying, I would do for you because of your situation with your calf, I would actually do heel raise squats. So everywhere that there's squats in there, that way you can work on range of motion, right? So the limiting factor probably for your squat depth, I'm imagining is your ankle mobility and the lack of it in that one side. So you were an example of somebody who for this reason, I would allow to put your heels elevated while you squat. Yeah. And I would focus there. And I would suggest even going more unilateral work and split stance for your legs, mainly because of there's still a stability issue. If you say you keep coming up to a certain point and then inevitably hitting, you know, that point where you feel like you're going to get an injury again, there's something that's not being addressed. And to go through that for quite a long time, you're going to still build a lot of strength and support, but you're going to find that your hips and your ankle are going to be challenged more stability wise, which is going to be a good thing overall. Not only that, there's not a lot of benefit for you to be pushing max lifts either. Right. I mean, I don't think I would ever allow you to do at least right, not right now where you're currently at what our goals are, you know, less than four to five reps on anything. So you should be at most working at 80% intensity. So back off the weight. I mean, the things that you're going to have to do as a firefighter, it aren't going to be, you know, a max loaded back squat, you're going to have to do things that require a little bit of grit, stamina, endurance, and some strength. And so your training should model that. So I wouldn't be constantly trying to push the weight, trying to see how much more you could lift, especially if your body keeps telling you otherwise, you keep getting hurt. Yeah, I would look at these the following symptoms. Look for issues with inflammation. So inflammation creeping up in your joints. Look at your hair. Are you noticing that your hair is either getting, you know, dry or more straw like, or if it falls out, notice your skin? Is it dry? Are you noticing, you know, patches of dryness or oiliness in your skin? Of course, sleep issues, libido is your libido erratic. In other words, is it either sometimes really high or non existent? And then look at hot and cold tolerance. Do you find yourself in a room with other people and being like, is it really hot in here? Is it just me? Or is it really cold? Or is it just me? These are all signs that you're, you're just pushing your body too hard, too long, too often. Now there's nothing wrong with the mental toughness that comes from that. You're going to need that. But to me, it's what you're, from what you said, what screams to me is you're overdoing everything. You're just pushing your body too much, not getting enough sleep. And your body is just, you're spinning your tires in the dirt. So back off on some stuff. Allow your body to adapt because it sounds like your body right now is primarily focused with healing. It's trying to just keep up and heal, but not really given a chance to adapt. And I bet I'm probably not the first person to tell you that you overdo all the stuff. And it's probably something that's been a part of your personality for a long time. Am I guessing correctly? You are. I think the, the biggest thing that, that is hard for me is feeling this pressure to achieve these physical goals and just always feeling like, like I don't do enough, especially like the comparison trap is a bad one, but it's really hard when I look at other girls and they seem to be training more than me and being very successful. Whatever. Who cares? So don't worry about them because. Not to mention Instagram is a terrible place to, to judge that. Yeah. And you got to do, look, what's your goal? Is your goal to look at other people and copy them? Or is your goal to be the best version of yourself? Maximize yourself. Yeah. So here's a deal. You've got, you sound like, and based on what you do, I would assume you have incredible mental fortitude. I'm going to want you to direct that towards what I'm talking about because here's your challenge. Your challenge is going to be to do less, not more. And that's going to be hard for you. So meet it like a challenge. So when that voice creeps up in your head that says, you're not doing enough, you're not good enough, you should be doing more. Remember that you're mentally tough and that you're not going to allow yourself to sabotage yourself like you've probably been doing for a long time by overdoing everything. So try that. Give it a shot and give it four, at least four weeks, but I say give it even at least eight weeks. And if you start to see your performance improve, I'm right. Then that means I'm right and stay the course. Don't do this. When the performance goes up, don't then say to yourself, oh, cool, I'm in the clear. Now I can start hammering myself again. Don't do that. Do what works. Don't do what your, your insecurities tell you to do. Does that make sense? Trust the process. Yeah. So, so keep the calories right where they are. Make those adjustments to the macros and then just cut back. You might even be able to, you might even be able to cut back a little bit on the calories if, depending on how much volume we reduce in your training. So I'm not sure what the two-day week routine, how much that's going to be a reduction in what you are currently doing. You may be able to scale back to 25 to 2700 calories. You know, I wouldn't even do that yet because if you're in that state of HPA axis dysfunction, you're going to want to feed your body. I wouldn't reduce calories unless you absolutely need to. 27% body fat's fine. You're not in a bad place body fat percentage wise. You can perform phenomenally at that body fat percentage. So I would just keep your calories right around where they're at for now. We can always readjust later on, drop the protein, increase the complex carbohydrates from easily digestible sources, and then back off on the intensity and the volume of your workouts and let your body adapt. Get out of the way and let your body do what it wants to do. Okay. All right. All right. Now, do you have maps on a ball at Christine? I do not. Okay. We're going to send that to you. So at least you'll have that to kind of follow a template. Well, thank you guys. I will do what you suggest and I'll check back in with you and let you know how it goes. Yes, please do check in back with us. Thank you. Okay. Thanks guys. Thanks. Some of the hardest people to work with. She holds the record for the question, for sure. Most detail? Yeah, yeah. We didn't have to ask questions that way though. Yeah. But how hard is it to train people like that? It's like harder to train someone like this than it is to train someone who you have to get, you know, motivate because it's like they're taking it all on. You know, that's just the mentality. I mean, the tough one, the positive of her going on and on and on about everything was it was a dead giveaway that that's how the way she does everything is all out. Okay. Yes. And then this and this. Yeah. Even the way she asked her question was all out. You know, it's like all out on the protein, all out on the workouts, all out on my mobility, all out on the testing, like everything is all out. Like it's okay. You can rest. Yeah. It is pretty good for your body. It is amazing though. I've had clients like this and when I finally convinced them to do what I say and just to trust me, it's like they're blown. Oh my God. I had no idea. It's like, I know. I think it takes a lot of conversation. I think just reducing her protein and potentially calories is going to make a difference. Three, your body, think about doing all that work, lacking in sleep and then also trying to digest and process all that. 260 grams. Yeah. That's a lot of protein. Yeah. That's a lot. And for a, she's not a big girl, you know what I'm saying? So she's that much protein and calories to be digesting while you're lacking in sleep and pushing the body all day long. Her body's just on overtime. That's like, dude, let it rest. Yeah. Her body's literally taking more than half of that protein, turning it into glycogen, which is a much longer process than just eating carbohydrates. It's a total waste. Yeah.