 First question is from Damian Leverett Fitness. You talk a lot about the muscle-building signal Can you explain this more and how to know if your workout is adequately creating this work without working? To working to all-out failure or going beast mode all the time. You gotta have you gotta have good Wi-Fi Yeah, you gotta have good Wi-Fi to get that signal. Yeah. No, so Dang is a good point. That was a dad joke. That was not bad. Good try So so alright, so it has some boosters this was a big You know big moment for me as a trainer I remember when I finally made the connection that the workouts all my workouts did was send a Signal to my body so that my body could adapt. That's really all it was. It wasn't about Beating myself up. It wasn't about getting sore. It wasn't about lifting the most weight Those are all components of the workout potentially, but really the workout was about sending the right signal So once I understood that and I really I really got that then my workouts got much more effective because then when I would go in I would think to myself am I sending the right signal am I living in a way that's going to cause more adaptation So your muscles first of all don't necessarily don't really maintain in the sense that they don't just stay the same They're constantly building or reducing the way you build muscle is the building process is stronger or outweighs the breaking down process or the the Atrophy process and by the way the atrophy process can be very powerful if you Put your arm in a cast for a week and then took it off just a week You would see significant weakness and atrophy of your arm in that short period of time So this it's like this constant battle that's going on But the way you approach your workouts should be is this workout producing the desired result which is or which can be getting stronger Maybe building muscle getting leaner improving my mobility. Is that what's happening? Or am I just going to the gym and satisfying my ego by lifting More weight than the guy next to me or by beating myself up So now my ego satisfied because I had this crazy hard workout now what determines Whether or not it's the right signal for you is super Individual yeah, this is the thing now. It's very individual the right workout in the right dose for you is the best dose And it may not be the right dose for the person next to you There's a couple things you could watch one of them is Soreness in the past I thought getting really sore was a great sign Later on I realized a little bit of soreness is okay But a lot of soreness means I overdid it and I need to back off a little bit That one's one signal I like to watch. Well, it's this really came full circle for me when I when I finally grasp the difference between adaptation and recovery For most even my training career. I explained this wrong to many many clients. So I feel bad about this Because I was still under the impression that we and we go to the gym We tear and we break down like that was like how explain we tear and we break down these muscle fibers The body then signals it to you know, oh my god, we've teared these down We got to recover them and we got to make them stronger And so that was the adaptation process where where I was missing the link here was that it's not just this Recovery process of recovering from the damage. It's also this adaptation process And I think Sal you explain it really well and you've done this on the podcast several times where you use the analogy of the suntan Right and bur like you could go out like if I if I haven't been in the sun in a long time And I go out and I lay out for like three hours I will burn my skin now I definitely will get a little tanner there see but also burn it like and it'll like it'll hurt and I'll be peeling And I'll get a little bit of color from that But then you lose it right and then I lose it and I don't want to go out in the sun anymore because I'm burned already And so I think of it like that because if I go out in the sun for ten minutes at a time though every single day Over the course of like two weeks I'll also see that I got as tan if not more tan But I didn't have to lay out there and for three hours and go through the whole burning process and the healing process, right? So I think of it the same way now with like training is I'm looking for that sweet spot Like I want to train hard enough to where the body adapts and it starts to build muscle because it Recognizes the signal that I'm sitting to it But I don't want to damage it so hard that my body is just trying to recover all the time from the sun or from the Workout so you're looking for that sweet spot of getting the benefits of both of the adaptation process and the recovery process And you don't want that Constant like hammering it so hard that all the body is thinking about is trying to recover You're not allowing it also to adapt. I think a major adjustment I had to make a once start to understand this this whole principle You know a bit a bit more in-depth Was to you know really evaluate where like if I were to like approach my workout and try and find that like optimal dose Like it was a lot easier for me to exceed it So in terms of like intensity or like overdoing it was very easy For myself to go beyond that versus you know approach it from less and then kind of build my way up To try and find and hone in what that you know that particular dose was for me And so I started to adjust the way I train people because I was always under the impression I need to ramp up their intensity to get them to get more work out of it Which then would produce you know a better result to get them more muscle But it was actually the opposite I found where when I started reducing the intensity and then building it back up slowly And not like trying not to overdo it. They had better results I think there's a real simple way to give people advice listening right now because I really think that there's it There's two groups here if I'm talking to a client who is a complete beginner Lifting weights really really unaware like they they need a little more intensity in their life. They're less likely to Hammer themselves every time they go in the gym. They're more intimidated scared They ease themselves in and so getting that person to learn to kind of push and stretch themselves a little more I find myself having that conversation if you're the person who likes to go to the gym You've been lifting weights for years. You're more of an advanced lifter You're more likely to fall in the category like I think all three of us in this room Which is I'm more likely to Overreach than I am to go into a gym and train and not do enough Because I've chased that sore feeling and I and I've learned to like that feeling So I tend to go work out and go like oh I need to feel that crazy burn I gotta feel that sore the next day to feel like I got a great workout and that's not true And so I'm always I mean I just did this the other day with Doug I worked out with Doug up in Tahoe and I was joking about how like roasted my back was because I hadn't deadlifted in a long time I'd hurt my foot this and I've been out from like squatting and deadlifting for a while was my first time deadlifting back I told Doug I'd just lift what he's lifting and I didn't realize he was gonna go heavy that day and That was like for So I was I was lifting with Doug and you know my ego was like, okay, I'm not gonna go peel weight off I'm lifting with Doug. I'm supposed to be the trainer so be stronger than him So I lift it right with him and I was fried for the next three days like absolutely fried from it And that's just I still even all these years even after giving advice on this podcast Still have a tendency to overreach and that's not the goal for maximum results You want to just stretch yourself although I do have to bring up the point so the the beginner I think a lot of times like they don't understand what that line is and so even you know What may seem to be like a normal workout may be way too much for them True. So, you know like that they have to find that balance before they can even they have to be able to ramp it up Very slowly. I still go with the slow approach with them. Yeah, the muscle building signal understanding that is what allowed me To initially create maps anabolic because I sat to my I sat down. I said Okay, it's all about sending a signal And I know lifting weights sends that signal What other things could potentially send a muscle building signal one of them is a hormonal signal, right? You could give anabolic steroids to someone the hormonal signal builds muscle Could I send other muscle building signals that are natural that don't include beating the crap out of myself? This is the the trigger session concept and I'll say this for most people you'll get better results with Uh more frequent less loud signals than you will with less frequent super loud signals In other words, you're better off doing easier workouts five days a week Then you are doing one super hard massively intense workout a week. This is true for most people It's still true for myself. Even today. I'm incorporating some trigger sessions here and there and the goal the results I get every time I do this consistently blow me away And it's a low intensity muscle building signal that that just it just compounds on top of the Normal signals I send which are with my normal workout. So this is why frequency is so important because Frequent lower level intensity workouts. They don't send a loud signal But they send a signal and they don't create a lot of damage And so what they do is they just compound on top of your normal workouts So if you're not incorporating things like trigger sessions or focus sessions, give them a give them a shot