 Question is from Ryan Megdans. How do you ensure you don't lose too much muscle when cutting? I'm very attached to the gains and don't want to see them go. Well, there's research out that talks about this in regards to protein intake. This is probably when it's most important that you are hitting those upper limits of your protein intake, at least in my opinion. Now, when you were competing, Adam, did you measure your lean body mass before you started your cut and then after to see so what would it look like and what would you do? What did you find that helped? So, I mean, here's, there's two things that I did that not a lot of my peers I felt did a really good job. This is also, I think, one of the advantages that I had. Many competitors would go into their cut and as soon as they're six or eight or some of them 10 or 12 week cut started, reduction of calories like crazy, intense cardio every single day and then that just got more and more intense and longer and longer as time went on. Now, what I knew about that, one thing that all bodybuilders did really well is protein. I mean, that's like been the magical macronutrient forever. We all know that it's what builds and hangs onto muscle. So most bodybuilders got that part right. So I've always did, I did that well. All of them did that well of keeping my protein at least to a one-to-one ratio. Maybe I'd even push 1.5 as I'm cutting grams per pound. But one thing that I was careful not to do is knowing that I'm in a calorie deficit is I didn't wanna do a lot of cardio. In fact, I didn't do any high intensity or long duration or bouts of cardio until the final two weeks. Everything up into that point was lists or walking. So it was all diet and exercise, regular exercise? Yes, all of it was, I managed it through, and when you do that, the theory is I'm not, to like to the last question we just talked about right now is I'm not sending a signal to my body to become efficient at running and cardio. Because if I'm doing that like a lot of competitors are, I don't care how much protein you intake, the body eventually will start to pare down that muscle because it's not advantageous for it to have it while it's running on a treadmill for two hours a day every single day. So I didn't wanna send that signal to my body when I'm already in a caloric deficit. So I would keep protein in and take up high. I would avoid high intensity cardio while I'm also in a caloric deficit. To me, that's like a recipe for disaster when it comes to hanging onto muscle. And for the most part, I did really, really good as far as keeping all the muscle that I built in the off season or when I was bulking. It's inevitable when you go to that extreme of a cut like I would get to or getting down to 3% body fat on stage. I would always lose like a couple pounds, but that it would always come off in the very last couple of weeks when I was like just, I began pushing extreme. As soon as I get to that final, when I would say like everything, everything goes the final two weeks. When I come into the last two weeks, then it's like I'm doing as much cardio as I can. I'm cutting as hard as I can health and as in a healthy way as I can because it's my final two weeks and I just wanna shred everything off. And my body would respond because I hadn't done any intense cardio up in that point. But if I lost eight or 10 pounds in those final two weeks, it would probably be almost a 50-50 ratio. 10 pounds come off. I'd probably lose five pounds of muscle and five pounds of body fat, doing it, but that's what it would take to get all the way down to 3% body fat. But keeping it on, the two things that I'd coach clients on and then how I would manage my own diet is high protein intake of, and when I'm on a calorie restricted diet, I'm actually avoiding doing high intensity cardio. I think that's the mistake that a lot of people make when they're trying to shred down is they think that that's gonna get to their results faster and they will see the scale move faster by doing that, but you risk paring down muscle just as fast by doing that. Now, Justin, you have zero experience bodybuilding and dieting like that, but you have a lot of athletic experience and working with athletes. And I know in football, you typically don't have to try to drop weight. Maybe some positions, but for the most part, it's not really. Yeah, for the most part, it's gaining weight. But what about other sports where people are trying to reduce? Wrestling. Yeah, because you're looking at, look, for wanting to keep muscle, I mean, athletes would wanna do that too. If you're trying to lose weight and perform, you don't wanna lose muscle because that's what helps you perform. Were there any strategies that you're aware of with athletes or was it similar to what kind of what Adam was talking about? Pretty similar to Adam. I mean, for the most part, it was really concentrating on heavy weightlifting and that was still part of the protocol, but it was manipulating carbohydrate intake for the most part and trying to lean out without bringing our protein levels up, bringing our fat levels up and then reducing that down significantly. It wasn't really, you can't really expect an athlete to reduce all their cardio because most of the skills, training and everything is a vital component. So I would actually switch that up just a little bit and I would actually, with the athletes, we would do shorter bouts and so we would work more explosive cardio and yeah, we would do sprints and we'd do with a salt bike and we'd do little bursts as opposed to doing our long-winded endurance component to that. And for me, it was about gaining weight when I was playing football and so that was something where I wanted to gain weight but I didn't wanna gain it all fat. So heavy weightlifting, but for the most part, I was working a lot more on my endurance. Yeah, well the studies that they do on this, and I'm talking about general population now, right? So with general population, they've done studies where they have one group diet, one group diet plus cardio, one group diet plus lift weights and let's see what happens. Believe it or not, the group that loses the most muscle is the group that does cardio and diet. They actually lose more muscle than the group that just diet. Now the group that diets and lift weights either loses the least amount of muscle, loses no muscle, and I've actually seen studies, and this is probably because they had beginners in some of these studies, gain a little bit of muscle, which is a very, very difficult thing to do. I would gain when I was on Antibox. When I'm on Antibox and I was taking like a stack of something while I was going in, I could actually, in a cut, put on muscle while I'm also going in. Well, so this brings me to the most important point that I think is more important than even making sure your protein's super high, lift weights. That's the most important thing. I keep that in the mouth. If you're losing weight and your primary form of exercise is heavy strength training, then the odds that you're gonna lose minimal muscle are highest. That's the most important, because it's sending a signal. Your body is trying to prioritize muscle while simultaneously shedding body fat because you're in a deficit. And that signal has to be effective, appropriate, and loud. And in my experience, unless you're super advanced and you know what you're doing, the best way to lift when you're trying to diet for general pop, low reps, long rest periods, traditional strength training. I also think there's a lot of value in scheduling a majority of your carbs and calories around your workout. So if I'm in a cut and I know I'm only consuming say 2,000 calories, that would be a really dramatic cut for me back then. I would wanna eat like a bulk of those 2,000 calories leading up to the workout and right after the workout. That's just to fuel the workout. Yeah, the theory behind that is if I'm gonna be putting this physical demand, I was training pretty hard towards the end or heading into a show. So I know I'm training intensely. Even lifting weights, I wanna make sure I'm very well-fueled because I want my body to tap into that. And again, not also pare down muscle to fuel me through a workout. So the theory is making sure that my glycogen levels are filled up so I have that resource while I'm lifting and then right afterwards when my body's like a sponge and wanna absorb, I wanna make sure I'm loading it full of nutrients. Then I don't really care if from hours, if I worked out at noon, but from hours five to eight o'clock, 10 o'clock at night, I had very little calories whatsoever because I'm not doing anything. I'm laying around, I'm watching TV, I'm sitting at home, I'm not pushing the body and that pushing the body hard and also being calorically restricted is where people end up losing muscle mass. And it's not that the body burns the muscle because you're doing that, it's just that that's the signal you're sending. You're saying like, we've got no fuel, plus you're trying to push it really hard. So it's going to adapt and get efficient at that. And I don't want to do that. If I'm going to push the body, I want my body to know that it has reserve or calories or something there to utilize so I don't send that signal. Probably one of the most important things you can do when you're losing weight, one of the most important things you can monitor is muscle mass. If you can prevent yourself from losing muscle mass while you're getting leaner, you're probably doing a lot of things right. That's a very important thing. If you just do that, the way I would do it with clients is either through body fat tests or just are you strong? How's your strength? If we're losing weight and you're losing a lot of strength, uh-oh, we're doing something wrong. But if we're maintaining strength or I see your muscle mass not going down and you lost five or 10 pounds, we're doing the right stuff.