 Our first question is from Nicholas Wells. Is there an optimal body fat percentage for building muscle? 11.23% That is the percentage. Kind of an interesting question. It is. You know, I can tell you that I don't think there's gonna be a number specific from person to person but I can say this that being too lean has been shown to inhibit muscle growth and being too over fat can do the same thing. Part of it has to do with the hormonal effects. For example, when men start to get into the single-digit body fat percentages, you tend to see testosterone levels dropping. You tend to see growth hormone levels sometimes having issues. Androgen receptor density starts to go down a little bit. When their body fat percentage is too high, same thing. So, okay, what are those numbers? Personally for me, my best like muscle building body fat percentage tends to be above 10% and below maybe 14%. When I go above 14%, I start to get kind of negative returns where I'm just gaining more body fat than muscle. Under 10% really hard for me to build muscle and maintain that lean body fat percentage unless I'm allowing my body fat percentage to go up. Yeah, that I was gonna say that this depends right on how we're talking about this because the most anabolic I have ever felt is after cutting down to 3% and then going back the other direction. Yeah, but you're letting your body fat climb up with it. Right. So, I mean, but imagine maintaining. Is there an optimal body fat percentage for building muscle? Like, oh yeah, so if I was trying not to be bigger, more body fat than 3%, then yeah, you're right. But if I cut all the way down to 3% and then I reversed into a bulk from there and just say I'm not worried about it going. And honestly, this is how I would do it after a show and I would get down to that kind of 3% range or so. Give or take. I would allow myself to go all the way back up to about 9-10%. And it was like I was on the gain train all the way until I started to see myself reaching that 9% or so. And then I would back off because I would say somewhere in that 9% range. I felt the most primed for for building muscle. Yeah. So, but you know, again, I think there's tremendous value in cutting down and getting lean and then reversing the other guys. Now maybe not as extreme as you did it, right? Because I want to be, I also want to caution the audience for a bunch of dudes. They're like, oh, I got to get down to 3% because that is a whole getting below, I'd say 8% body fat for the average guy. There's a whole different ball game. You get below 5% body fat and you're playing now in a whole another universe in terms of how you feel hormones, how they respond, your sleep. It's not great. So yeah, don't don't cut down to 3% to try to reverse out. Yeah, no, I'm by no means this is not a recommended. Obviously, this is not a overall health type of question. This is, you know, where do I feel that the optimal body fat percentage is? And I don't know. I don't know if there's an exact percentage or it's more about where you are in your training. Yeah, I think more of that. Like I was thinking I'm trying to speculate, even I've had clients that came in way overweight and, you know, just maintaining whatever calorie I'm out there at but now adding in resistance training had a dramatic shift, you know, in terms of like them and their potential for building muscle. But it makes a good point in terms of like being, you know, at your leanest and now introducing maybe you're a little more sensitive to those calories and sort of reprioritizing those calories into muscle building. So I feel like you're primed to be anabolic because your body is wanting to add and then you feed it the way you want. But to your point about, and I think you're probably more right on where this question is coming from, because I get a lot of people who are somewhere between 13 and 20% body fat and their question is, should I cut first or should I bulk? And the answer for me is if you're north of 15%, the, I think you mentioned this, right? That's where your testosterone levels tend to dip after that. Definitely after 20%, you start to notice this. You say after 15. Yeah, 15, you'll see it. Definitely after 20. In women, it's like 30. So in that case, if you're somebody who's just getting started on your teen and you're like, okay, I'm 18, 19% body fat, is it more advantageous for me to try and bulk and build muscle from here? Or is it better for me to lean down a little bit? I would probably suggest leaning out a little. But it depends on their metabolism. Exactly. That's the big thing is that if I get you, say you're at 18 to 20% body fat, but you're, okay, let's say, let's use it of males and say, I think this is a guy who's asking this question. So let's say you're 220 pounds, 19% body fat, and you want to know what you should do here. But you're only eating, okay, there's 220 calories or less. Yeah, 2000 to 2200 calories. I don't want to cut you. I don't want you to lean out right now. I want to build. So even though it might be more advantageous to be 13% body fat trying to build muscle, because your body is in a better position to build more muscle, your metabolism isn't in the most optimal position. And I care about that first before I try and attack the next. Now, all things being equal, because I think what you're, if you're, obviously, if you're watching this, you realize that there's a lot context, there's a lot of context that matters. And it depends on the individual. And I know people hate it when that, when we answer that way, but that's just the way it is whenever you're working with individuals, you have to look at the whole picture. But all things being equal, okay, everything's healthy, they're not a newbie with resistance training necessarily. So forget the stimulus, the workouts, good, good sleep. All things being equal, I think I could say probably for men, maybe nine to 15% is probably a good body fat percentage for building muscle. And for women, it's probably a probably 20 to maybe 27% or something like that. I think for women, when you start to go below 20% and the leaner you get, then you start to see some kind of negative effects on hormones and with men, that can happen after going below 9% and then going above 15%. Remember, fat is also hormone sensitive. And it can increase the way that your body responds to estrogen, it can cause increased cytokines or inflammatory markers. Too much if it's not good, not enough if it's not good. Exactly. So nine to 15, and then now what determines if it's nine or 15? Well, genetics, probably, right? So Adam and I tend to be more on the ectomorph side. Being leaner was easier for me than being heavy. So I'm like you around 10, 11% is probably a good body fat percentage on the high end, maybe 14%. Justin might be a little higher. He's a little bit more on the endomorph side, right? Husky, robust. Yeah. So, but you gains. Come up with a good descriptor. Well, I'll tell you what, think of it this way. If 9% for me, I could build really well. I bet for you, you probably wouldn't feel very good walking around 9% the same way. It feels terrible. It's like death. Right. So there's a bit of a range here, but the key is not too low, not too high, is probably best. So ultimately, what does this mean? Healthy. That's really what it boils down to. Well, and that's why the answer that I gave is that we need to get you in a healthy place metabolism-wise before I'm even concerned about building muscle or burning fat. Right. So regardless of what body fat percentage you're at, in the range you gave, I think is a very fair generic range that I think is true. But just because you're outside of that range doesn't necessarily mean I would want you to cut first depending on what Justin was talking about your calorie intake. If you are a 220-pound man and you're only eating 2,000 calories. Yeah, I don't care what body fat percentage. Exactly. We're going to try and get that to speed up. Yeah, you could be 40% body fat and I don't want technically to cut you right away. I want to address your metabolism first, which would mean we're going to be focused on building strength, building muscle and slowly increasing calories before we decide to get you down into that optimal place that you were talking about.