TMGP Ep 47 with world-leading health and fitness expert, influencer, writer, Lift Free and Diet Hard podcast host, and elite trainer Andrew Coates

Oh, another white boy with a podcast. Pronouns Jim Bro. Another white boy with a podcast. You want to see the video? It went viral. >> Hi gains gurus and welcome to TMGP, the muscle growth podcast, episode 47. I am your host Rosco and today I have the absolute privilege of welcoming one of my favorite fitness influencers to the show, Andrew Coats. It's truly an honor to have him here and I'm excited for all of you to hear from someone who has made such a significant impact in the fitness world. Andrew Coats is a seasoned fitness professional, writer, speaker, and personal trainer with over a decade of experience in the fitness industry. He is the founder of Andrew Coats Fitness. Andrew is known for his dedication to sustainable nutrition and evidence-based fitness practices, avoiding fads and extremes. He hosts the LiftFree and Diet Hard podcast featuring conversations with leaders across the fitness industry. Andrew is also a prolific fitness writer contributing to renowned publications such as T- Nation, Muscle and Fitness, Men's Health, On It, and more. As a sought-after speaker, he has shared his expertise at numerous fitness conferences, including Olympia, NCAA clinics, and the Canford Pro Global Conference. Andrew mentors fitness professionals worldwide, helping them build impactful careers based on integrity and knowledge. With a deep passion for education and coaching, he continues to influence the fitness world, both online and in person. From frustrated to fit, the Muscle Growth podcast delivers evidencebacked strategies from expert guests, our gains gurus, to help you build muscle, gain strength, perform at your best, and stay healthy for life. And with that, let's dive into today's topics. Andrew's original story, shortened, starting working in a gym, then at 32, hired off the gym floor. Worked at a gym for six years. Became a podcaster. Live free and diet hard. Seven years ongoing. Writer for Teen Nation and Men's Health. World leading writer. Podcast host and personal trainer. In person versus virtual coaching. Importance of staying grounded. Navigating the noise and fitness. Competing for attention versus real value. Old school tra versus new school training. The false dichotomy. Low versus high volume. Example, optimal versus effective training. Self- selection. Why certain athletes, i.e. basketball players, typically are tall and excel. Rep ranges and how to train effectively. Fatigue as part of the process. The basics of training. The truth about IFBB pros and Hollywood physiques. Gym intimidation. Making the gym less scary. Gym inflation. Recognizing superficial tactics verse what works. Exposing kids to training early. Batman verse Joker analogy for social media perspective matters. Ompic the benefits verse the weak moral arguments against it. Trusted sources for example Derek from more plates more dates Dr. Peter Atia verse experts on specific things like Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. and Neil deGrasse Tyson talking out of their expert fields. The benefits of building muscle, including bone density, health span, and longevity. How to tell good advice from bad advice online. The amazing car driving analogy, expecting grace but not giving it. Changes with age, the importance of introspection to keep improving or slow decline, and so much more. Get ready for a truly informative episode. Quick shameless self-plug. I'm uploading consistently on Reps with Rosco on various social media channels, including YouTube and Instagram. So check that out for some epic fitness enterainment content. A little disclaimer, this show does not contain medical advice. The views and opinions expressed by guests on the Muscle Growth Podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect my beliefs or the stance of the podcast. While we aim to provide valuable insights and information, it's important to approach all topics with critical thinking. I encourage you to do your own research, consider multiple perspectives, and form your own conclusions. Healthy discussion is always welcome, and I'm happy to engage with listeners in the YouTube comment section to continue the conversation. Lastly, don't forget to follow us on all major social media platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, and X. Find us at the muscle growth podcast and myself at reps with Rosco. Please welcome to the muscle growth podcast, Andrew Coats. Welcome Andrew Coats to the muscle growth podcast where we explore subjects related to muscle science and hypertrophy. I'm thrilled to have you join us for today's conversation. Can you briefly introduce yourself and your journey into the world of fitness writing as well as being a personal trainer and a podcast host among other things? >> Thanks. Thanks Rosco. Okay. Uh I'll try to keep this succinct because you just asked for a long story. So I we don't have time for a long story. I have been a personal trainer for the last oh god almost 15 years. I'm in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Western Canada. Um it's the I think the largest northerly most city in North America. So, kind of little ways away. Certainly far far far from uh Joeberg, right? Johannesburg. If anybody's picking up on the accent, uh you know, Rosco, yeah, South African accent, which I love. I love those accents. Okay. So, I've always been involved in sports. Uh lifted, you know, basement weight set when I was young. Wasn't super consistent, but always played around with it. Got really consistent with weights in my early 20s. Uh but at the same time, I graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree, worked in various business jobs. uh worked in and owned a nightclub back in my mid to late 20s. Moved across the country to kind of just get away from that world. Worked in a casino for a while, but the gym was always pretty much a a steady thing. There were gaps in there, but I got back into it kind of during my casino days. And then I got hired off the gym floor at 32. So, I was, you know, not your 20-year-old passionate trainer starting out in the industry. uh got busy very fast and that led to being um one of the top top session performers in the entire company that I worked for. Realized, hey, I really love this. I started diving into fitness podcasts. That was a big influence on me and then reading publications like T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, you know, etc., etc. Uh got to listen to and follow a lot of the people that were industry leaders uh through those podcasts and and reading their articles. And I don't know, it was just like the love of this work took hold. The love of diving into the educational side took hold. And then after leaving the commercial gym I worked at for six years, a friend wanted to start a podcast. So I've been doing what's now called the Lift Free and Diet Hard podcast ever since. It's over seven years of that. But I also started writing for my website. And then through my travels and the podcast connections, I got an invitation to write for Teen Nation, which again is one of the big OG, you know, strength and conditioning websites where a lot of trainers certainly that era and enthusiasts were reading the articles to learn. Right now, now obviously social media is kind of where people go. You get a lot of quick hit, quick clip type stuff, but back then it was more article-based stuff and podcast based stuff. And so that led to invitations to write for Generation Iron and then Muscle and Fitness magazine and then Men's Health and a series of other very notable publications. So it kind of entrenched an identity as a writer. But the entire time I've been a full-time inerson trainer, yes, I do online based stuff, but uh in an industry where I think there's almost like this big push to for everybody to be online, I've kind of bucked that trend a little bit and just had the stability and the certainly very grounded in everyday experience, which allows for translation into the various forms of media of actually working with real clients. And unfortunately, far too often, I think coaches tend to jump into the online space too fast. They want to go exclusively there. It's a bit of a false promise. So for the the enthusiast who's, you know, watching a lot of, you know, fitness-based media, one of the pitfalls is you can see a lot of stuff online that sounds great in theory, but experienced coaches kind of know, wait a second, that doesn't work very well in practice, or that's excessively creative and not practical or useful for the end user. And when you actually coach real people in person, it tends to help keep you rooted in the fundamentals at work and, you know, real-time conversations with clients about what's really going on. I think online coaches can be really plugged in as well, but there's there's that hidden advantage. >> That's kind of the story. I left a lot of details out, but uh >> No, it's a cool story. So, thank you for sharing. And um yeah, I think what you mentioned there about maybe guys not jumping in too quickly to the online space and having that grounding from actually being there in person. It's very similar to what I talked with um IFBB Pro uh Charlton Jung um and he basically said that science is great everything evidence is great but at the end of the day you need to see what's going to work for your clients, what's going to work for you and then kind of decide after trial and error. You can't just see watch something online and be like that's 100% going to work for absolutely everyone blanket. So, it's great that you're doing both. So, well done on on keeping it grounded. So, let's get into the first uh kind of question I've got. What are the biggest mistakes you see lifters making when chasing hypertrophy, especially intermediate lifters? Uh I think there is a lot a lot of noise a lot of competing for eyeballs and status and that's that's the goal of building brand but it's also the goal of chasing status for a lot of coaches. Um so I think it's good to understand through that lens we are seeing people trying to be the loudest voices and you you see some weird false dichotoies. you see the battle between old school lifters and science-based lifters, which I've always thought was a bit of a false dichotomy because ultimately the things that work are evidence-based generally. Uh, the old school lifters sometimes do a lot of things that work really well, but sometimes get caught up as well and it's dressed up in a bunch of things that probably don't matter very much. The old muscle confusion principle was a good example. Arnold era, those guys, they were great bodybuilders. I mean there's also underpinning all this and and some of the arguments don't talk about this is any anecdotal examples of successful bodybuilders or the ideological camps. Let's say the the a good example is the low volume crowd, right? >> The Mike Manson >> and you have >> Yeah. So, let's do that. So, whenever you hear people advocating low volume trading, which I'm not saying that it's useless, but people only ever name two bodybuilders if they're talking about low volume trading. There's only two people who anyone's ever heard of who actually have ever practiced this, and that's Mike Menser and Dorian Yates. So what's true about Mener and Dorian, which is also true of Arnold and is true of Ronnie Coleman and and so on, is they're genetic elite outliers. I always use the reference of my friend Frank McGrath, who's an iconic bodybuilder. We used to work out, you know, the racks next to each other at the gym in St. John's Newfoundland, where I grew up. We we went to university together, parties together. You know, Frank, Frank looked like a pro bodybuilder in his late teens, early 20s. Okay, we knew this guy was going to go on to be an IFBB pro. uh you know he touched weights, smelled the iron in the air of the gym and it was anabolic for for someone like that. So that's true of guys like Mike and Dorian. Two is the true greats by and large had access to the cuttingedge drugs. Okay, they were probably uh the coaches knew the elite drug protocols. There is probably a good suggestion that Dorian may have been the first or one of the first people to probably take that step where you get things like and I'm not an expert in this stuff at all, but things like growth hormone and insulin protocols were sort of introduced versus say like the way that Arnold looked in his era. So, was it really the training? because there's discussions between Lee Haney who is an iconic IFBB pro uh champion uh and Dorian and how they would each try each other's style. It didn't work for them, right? Of course, that's anecdotal. So, you have one of the greats like the the low volume proponents never mentioned Lee Haney. They never mention Arnold. They never mention anybody else. They just mentioned Menser and and Dorian. And there's also very good suggestion by a lot of, you know, anecdotal whatever. And the mener crowd don't like this, but that Mike had built his physique largely on old school, you know, protocols, right? A lot of his muscle mass and they were going, "No, no, no. He had his real success with low volume." It's there's a very good suggestion that Mike was just ahead of his time on branding and creating this ideology to sell his methods around something that was different than the norm, which was the low volume stuff. So, there's a lot of discussion there. So ultimately, if if a camp ideologically needs to grab on to just cherrypicked examples that seem to be the outliers, not the overwhelming majority of successful bodybuilders over time, that I think your argument is a little weak anyway. And that's not to say that there aren't merits to some of the lower volume stuff. There's something else that sometimes shows up. And we'll occasionally see, you know, experienced, you know, bodybuilders, coaches, etc. who built the muscle on high intensity, higher volume training when they were younger. Uh, steroid use, drug use for sure. I mean, that that factors in. And then later on, you know, we'll make claims that they make better progress on lower volumes of training. Well, maybe, but muscle memory is also playing a factor in there. And we know that if you have once used anabolic drugs that it's easier to maintain or even get back the muscle from that anyway. And we're probably also talking about someone who's genetically fairly good. It's also easier to maintain muscle mass after you've already built it on lower volumes of training anyway. So there there are just a lot of things to consider when blindly saying you know the claim that lower volume trading is better than higher volume trading which I think explicitly as a statement uh is probably false as a onetoone false dichotomy. Then the other side of the spectrum is the I think the long-held evidence-based belief which I think is you know sort of now being let go of was that more volume is always better right there are limits to what we can recover from right that's a thing so I I think the general understanding now is that we can build muscle fairly effectively on lower volume training we can and that's important but I think that the the talking heads the the the hypertrophy coaches who are big on low volume tend to misinterpret this a little bit. They think, well, this is optimal. It's like, no, you can build muscle fairly effectively, which is a good message for the everyday person on lower volumes of training. Sure, absolutely. Evan says that, but more volume is still cumitive. It's just there's diminishing returns and certainly significant. But for the elite bodybuilder type, the person who wants to maximize muscle mass and if they have the time and the recovery capacity, they probably need to increase volume. You could also increase volume as you gain experience over time. So, it's probably the best way to look at it. Uh, but to suggest that like very low amounts of training is somehow optimal for elite bodybuilders, I I don't think holds up very well. If that makes sense. It makes perfect sense and uh I think you actually already covered now one of the next questions which was you often talk about optimal versus effective training and I think you've just perfectly illustrated the difference between effective training i.e. low volume and many other different forms versus maybe optimal and like you said there is a range for it. It's not necessarily 52 sets to um of of quad training like that one study um for volume which is >> yeah that's probably that's probably out of hand. There's another dimension that's worth looking at too. And again anecdote isn't evidence or study but you can start to look at anecdote and piece some things together if you have enough anecdote. >> It's still evidence just low tier evidence >> lower the tier but consider this. We look at gyms and anybody who's been in gyms a really long time, you see a lot of people who are, you know, in their training a little bit and those people don't tend to get very good hypertroy results. Now there's also flaw in that because the people oftent times are not training with enough intensity to probably get to near failure which is a very important component like for the for the low volume stuff you actually have to have pretty good intensity because if you're lowish volume and high intensity it's high intensity it's a little bit more recovery demand then you're well within what you can recover from. So that's one of the most important factors there and consistency also matters. Yes, I think a lot of the people who are in the gyms are probably a little inconsistent or probably don't train with enough intensity. However, I think there's plenty that actually do and yes, there's also genetics. Some people just simply don't put on muscle mass as well as other people. But we have a very big cohort of people who do something close to that and don't get great results. So, okay. And then what do we have is the overwhelming majority again as as I understand anecdotally of the people who have put on a lot of muscle mass. They tended to be people who trained more more volume. They train hard. And so I don't think you can ignore that or cherrypick out details. Uh but again that that cohort is usually there's a lot of overlap between great genetics and drug use because the people who have great genetic capacity to build muscle tend to be rewarded by their efforts and then they can continue and do more of it. Whereas the people with poor genetics you know they might actually do a lot of things right you know and go oh this is this is not working for me and kind of get fed up because they don't see great results and then they may self- select out other things. is there's always the argument about you know uh the people who are who perform at the highest levels at various sports. Um you know let's let's say I think a good example is uh gymnasts. I saw a post recently and a guy was who's pretty smart not worried about saying names posted up something about how like effective uh how good gymnastics was for you know bicep development. It's like, okay. I mean, and you even seem to acknowledge it's not optimal, per se, but it was really good. And and I just pointed out it's like, well, who self- selects to elite levels of gymnastics? It's not guys who are 6'4. Okay. The guys and the girls who are doing gymnastics by and large are actually quite short. So, there was the old belief that, well, if I do gymnastics or certain other things, it'll stunt my growth. No, it was a reverse causality. It's the people that tended to excel, you know, with the word anthropometry, which is just kind of like your limb length. Those were the people that stuck around and tended to do really well at things like um like gymnastics. Because if you've got someone doing the is it the iron cross, someone who's 5'2 with an equivalent wingspan is going to find that significantly easier to hold than someone who's 5'9 to 6 feet tall plus. Right? That's just physics and biomechanics. So at the highest levels uh your genetics certainly again I think the argument of basketball players makes yes we've had lots of great you know 5 foot tall or even a few under basketball players over time but by and large the best basketball players are taller right there's just a huge advantage or you got Michael Phelps who is arguably the greatest Olympian certainly won the most medals in Olympic history I think he was in the range of 6'5 with these really long arms with big hands that act like ores and a flexible spine that just moved well in water. The guy was as if he was genetically engineered to be an elite swimmer. You know, yes, all of the people I'm talking about also spent years of dedicated hard practice and probably had the right mindset for everything. They probably were really good with their nutrition, but they were at least to a degree rewarded early on because they had the genetic body and mind to be really good at these things. And then that allowed for a reward to continue to practice and then those things accumulated over time. >> Exactly. You know, you make a great point. Uh I didn't really think about the reverse kind of bias where like for example gym stunts your growth like no one ever thought about or until like you did now more recently maybe. Um, maybe the issue wasn't that gym was stunting people's growth, but maybe bodybuilders, and I know it's definitely easier to pack on more or look like you got more sides when you're shorter than when you're 6'4. It's a not bigger frame to fill. So, some of the elitist of the body balls were kind of actually quite short, especially if you look now it's changing obviously. Um, but like size still definitely matters. >> Sure. Lee Priest is a famous shorter bodybuilder. Phil Heath is relatively short. Um Dorian Yates I actually don't know jumped to my but Franco Columbo Arnold Schwarzenegger's buddy Franco was comparatively tall >> and strong and of course you're you're often strong because strong is measured in you know force across distance but if you have to deadlift or squat or bench press across shorter distances and it's easier to move heavier loads. So therefore, you're built genetically to excel at powerlifting. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and then and then everyone sees these bodybuilders and things being short, just like therefore it's done to growth, but actually these were the guys that took it seriously and it's it's a false like you said, it's a false dichotomy. So it's very >> it's reverse causality. It's reverse reverse causality is what >> that's really cool. So thank you for pointing that out. And then while we're on the volume topic, um I know you've talked a bit about getting out of the 8 to 12 kind of bodybuilding standard rep range. Let's just quickly go on that. I've talked quite a lot about rep ranges, so I don't want to go too long into it, but what are your thoughts on kind of getting a good kind of rep range? Does it should you like kind of see what works for you or what is your kind of recommendations? >> I think there's a bunch of stuff. So, you know, the traditional belief was that, you know, 1 to five reps is strength, which actually still is is fundamentally true. >> You know, the classic bodybuilders seem to do this 8 to 12ish thing or or very close to it. And then, you know, 15 and above was was just uh, you know, muscular endurance. So, it's not that simple. So, some really good research by people like, you know, PhDs are actively involved in research like Dr. Stu Phillips and Dr. Brad Shenfeld, uh, you know, as opposed to talking heads on social media who pretend like they know how to read research, which I find really amusing. Uh, >> well, they can they can read really cool rodent studies. Haven't you seen >> Yeah. Roden studies seem to be a bit of >> and they read the the abstract. >> Yeah. So, but they and and they believe certainly Brad Shenfeld, I had him on my podcast recently and talked about how he believed, you know, these these old hypertude ranges mattered. And what they more or less discovered was that you can build muscle effectively at any rep range as long as you meet a few conditions. Now, you have to be using weight that's heavy enough to actually get near failure. I mean, too light a weight, you just simply can do it forever. You can't get to momentary muscular failure. It's not going to be effective. Um, so it I think that comes in around maybe 30% of one rep max. Once you get above, I believe it was quoted as about 85% of one rep max, you're starting to use loads that are so heavy that, you know, you're not able to get enough, you know, tension on muscle across the sets. But if you were doing sets of, you know, five to six, and now I'm seeing a lot of people saying that like, you know, rep ranges are like what, four to six, six to eight is optimal. I I think that's anybody who talks in pure absolutes like that, I think there's always a flaw there. Um because there's a lot more dimensions to it. But what I know from having lifted for a really long time and training a lot of people beginners to advanced people is one, if you are training, you know, in that four to six rep range to near failure, that's very [ __ ] heavy weight. Okay? It's it's comparatively heavy weight. Uh it is harder on joints. Anybody who says otherwise, uh, I don't know what's going on there. They're just like pretending it's not really a thing. Uh, again, sometimes you get like shorter lifters with shorter limb lengths, they may actually do better with this stuff than someone who's taller. I'm tall, right? So, but yeah, joints just generally don't feel as good. If you are lifting that heavy, you need longer rest between sets to recover to do the next set effectively. Yes, you know, we have some research that, you know, points to I I'm I'm not Brad Shenfeld was again said recently he's doesn't think this is necessarily that big a deal, but we seem to have some research that suggests that we accumulate more central nervous system fatigue on higher rep stuff than lower rep. Now, anecdotally, you could take, you know, a set of squats to five to near failure or a set of squats at 20 to near failure. Now, you're going to be using a heavier load with the five than the 20, but it feels significantly worse just in terms of like winding you and just deep in your system to do that set of 20 to near failure where you want to throw up. That that's just not a good experience. So, that stuff is very fatiguing. You can't do a lot of it right now. You've accumulated a fair bit of tension and yes, there's a very strong argument that a lot of the reps leading up to it may have been wasted. You could have done a lower rep range and you know, we start talking about effective reps, yada yada. So, like there's a lot of like neb nuance and argument to this stuff. Well, I I think that there's some practical things. First of all, if you're doing exercise isolations like leg extensions, like uh side laterals, like dumbbell curls, and you're thinking about the stress on a single joint, especially, I don't like getting too into the physics, but if anybody's familiar with the concept of of a moment arm, the the distance that the load is from the fulcrum of the joint that's moving, you have a small muscle with weight that load that is kind of far away from the, you know, the origin of the the fulcrum of the movement. And it doesn't feel very good on joints to do a five rep max for something like a dumbbell curl or a shoulder lateral or or a leg extension. It just doesn't work very well. And I'm not convinced you're producing sufficient tension. I think it's disproportionately uh fatiguing on the joint itself. And in order to practically train at lower rep ranges to equate for volume and tension, right, then you probably have to do more sets. You have to take more rest between sets to recover to do the sets effectively. And it's just not a particularly time effective way to train. Now, I I like sitting in a pendulum squat machine and going heavy to warm it up, warm it up, warm it up, and then heavy to near failure in like a, you know, a six rep range. I like that. It feels really good. But there's also a part of me too is like, hm, am I avoiding training in a more uncomfortable fashion because, you know, there's some narratives that suggest that this is actually pretty good. I'm getting some pretty good results, but then I'll turn around and do sets of 10 to 15 on a leg extension, some single leg leg press or or bilateral, and a bunch of other stuff. So there's also and I'm I'm not good with the depth and the nuance of different muscles having different fiber types but a lot of smart people have suggested and I think there's a good argument here that proportion of fiber types which can vary across people but on average certain muscles have a bit of bias um that if you have muscles and I believe the hamstrings are one of the ones that weights towards more uh fast twitch muscle fiber right? Type two uh power fibers. So those may it may make sense to train those a little bit heavier whereas certain muscles. So for example the calf muscles certainly your solius um those just due to the nature of their use tend to have a bias towards a lot of slow twitch muscle fiber right so for more endurance uh they're harder to fatigue. There may be an argument to suggest a higher rep range, right? Someone can easily tolerate sets of 20 plus standing calf raises, right? That that works better. Whereas like 20 plus sets of of squats near failure just feels terrible. Just threw you. You like you feel sick and then you feel wrecked for hours and it [ __ ] up the rest of your workout. And I'm not talking about avoiding fatigue. And another boogeyman is people talk about fatigue a lot. Fatigue is part of the training process. Fatigue in of itself acutely, if you accumulate fatigue, highly fatiguing things faster than you're producing good training effect, then yes, your training is not going to be particularly effective, right? You're just tiring yourself out. But at the same time, if you're avoiding fatigue at all costs or think, "Oh my god, fatigue is this terrible thing." Well, fatigue is also there's a psychological and a physical tolerance to fatiguing things that helps you build, you know, and for most weightlifting it's going to be anorobic work capacity, right? Like you could simply train more, train harder, and you're just training your your your energy systems. So, we can't shy away from experiencing some fatigue. It just it probably is a good argument when you're looking at, okay, should I be training taking everything to pure absolute failure or should I be leaving one to two reps in the tank? And the research seems to be pretty robust that as long as you're within five reps of failure, you're okay. Most people don't know how close they are to failure. So it may it's probably more practical to buy us to one to two reps shy of failure. Even if you're not quite, you're still probably within that threshold. And I find that it's also wise to know what failure feels like. Certain exercises are much easier to fail on. So for example, you're doing a seated cable row. You could take that [ __ ] to failure. Seated chest press machine. You could take that [ __ ] to failure. Bicep curl, shoulder lateral leg extension, etc. I don't love the idea of someone barbell benching or squatting by themselves to pure failure, right? You drop a bar on, you get pinned on, it sucks. Or like deadlifting, which yes, there's a good argument that conventional deadlifting is not a optimal hypertrophy exercise. Yes, I I think that's fair. It's very fatiguing. It doesn't necessarily train um individual muscles through full range of motion to where there's a lot of tension on It's just a pure strength thing by and large. But you know, if let's say someone likes training deadlifts, okay, cool. Get getting strong as hell. I I I think there's a good hypertrophic response. Just again not an optimal one for someone who's like everything is as much muscle as possible man managing your fatigue at taking a a deadlift to true failure. there's a pretty good chance we're going to see some what I think is unacceptable form breakdown for most people at a certain point before you can no longer lift the bar, right? So, I don't think a conventional deadlift is a good exercise to be taken to absolute failure. But again, I don't think a lot of people who are concerned with hypertrophy are actually doing that. So, point smooth. >> Yeah, that's that's interesting. I I agree. I think a lot of people aren't maybe doing the deadlift because it's not optimal. But again, just because it's not optimal doesn't mean you shouldn't be doing it. If you like your deadlifts, I love my deadlifts. Um, I'm not taking it to failure that much, but I definitely when I go for a PR, sometimes failure is part of it, but also like you said, I'm not completely compromising my form. It's just not coming up or it's coming up and then then it's not. Um, so you just got to kind of autoregulate on that. And like you said, I think the thing that the old school and the the new school, the evidence-based guys, the ones that are at the top, they all have a few things in common. And I think those things are intensity, consistency, and recovery. >> Is there anything else that you would add to that to that list? >> Yeah. Uh they generally are probably good at their nutrition, right? Nutrition is a huge huge driver here. >> Yes. So that would be part of the recovery. Yeah. >> Yeah. Absolutely. Right. So they're they're they're eating enough protein. They're getting enough calories to grow. And we now seem to understand that it's wise just to be in a small calorie defic or sorry calorie surplus to for good hypertrophy. A lot of the old school bodybuilders would do wild bulks. Uh Lee Priest, yeah, was famous for this stuff where he would just get enormous and eat things like fried chicken all the time and then he would have these dramatic transformations for they look really good for the old hydroxy cut ads, >> but that stuff's probably not great for your >> J cutler >> metabolic health, right? Yeah. Jay would get pretty big. So nowadays I think that there our modern understanding of this stuff is that a modest calorie surplus is probably more than adequate. Now I I think I mentioned this before but you also have to factor in that a lot of the names that we're throwing around. I mean anybody who's an elite IFBB pro is anabolic drugs are just in that equation right and some of them just they some of them will talk about it some of them don't discuss it openly. Some comically deny having ever done it. Okay, take that with a grain of salt. Uh, in that world, it's kind of understood. But, you know, you get anybody who's anywhere near Hollywood, like, and I'm not interested in naming names, but there are a fair number of Hollywood actors who, yes, they're not doing that at their age, their level of muscularity and leanness without boatloads of drugs and and other things. But in that regard, it's also important to think of a few things. One is most of the time those actors are they work out a fair bit and everything's devoted to looking that certain way for that certain shirtless scene. There may be a water cut, something like that. So that's not uh indicative of how they look walking around all of the time. And whenever you have that discussion, we also hear images of like, oh, was like Brad Pitt for Fight Club on steroids or was Hugh Jackman on steroids? It's like, okay, they were skinny as [ __ ] with abs. Okay, these are not muscular guys in those contexts. I mean, they've got some muscle, but they're very, very thin dudes with a little bit of muscle and they're lean. So, these are not like it's impressive to say the least. And obviously again they're getting I'm assuming for sure there's some sort of water cut weight management uh for a moment where the shirt was scene but this is not like Chris Hemsworth's Thor and it sure as [ __ ] is an Arnold in Commando or Predator, right? It's not even the same universe. So it's not proof that there was nothing. But it's also eminently doable with lead time, hard training, dialed in nutrition, a little bit of water management, and probably lighting to look like uh again Hugh Jackman did even in the later Wolverines. It's funny when you look at him like the first earliest Wolverines versus the later he progressively gets more shredded. >> But uh >> Jim Flesh. >> Yeah. Right. >> Yeah. So, I I I know some of these things are not clear answers, but it's stuff I'd like people to think about to add nuance to these conversations that usually get left out when people are arguing over, well, this protocol is absolutely right. And you've said a couple times, part of this too is figuring out what seems to work for you. And the tactics, the superficial tactics might create ultimately what you said, which is good intensity, uh, you know, consistency, and they're good at the recovery, right? So, okay, they've done that, and that's probably a a big reason why Dorian Yates was as successful as he was, while Lee Haney was as successful as he was with two superficially different training styles. Now, there's also an argument if you look at Dorian's warm-ups into these allout high-intensity sets, Dorian was probably doing more actual mechanical tension and volume on muscle than some people think he was, right? So again, it's it's a bit more of a a false dichotomy that just sounds good for for sound bites and arguments and status building on social media, which you have to at least and it's not that these photos are nefarious or necessarily even wrong, but you still have to look at what is the incentive of the person talking on social media. And that's all of us. Okay? I just happened to try and podcasts are a better way to do this to to tease out the nuance and look at it from all of the different arguments and perspectives which a social media post does not allow for the time nor does is it usually incentivized to do that. You get more eyeballs on you by either saying something speaking into the tribal ethos that agrees with you but then creates an argument with the tribal ethos that doesn't agree with you and then there's a battle. It becomes this Batman versus Robin sort of symbiotic relationship that keeps you about this. I always laugh because I really enjoy Dr. Lane Norton's media, right? I get there's no person that I follow I think is infallible, bulletproof or or doesn't have their blind spots. But you get Lane arguing with some of the people that he consistently argues with. It's like, why don't you [ __ ] just block each other? No, because it's Batman versus Joker, right? and they >> who who's who in that one >> and and that depends on which perspective which side which side of the argument you're actually on right I mean I think in the case of let's say let's say a Dr. Mark Hyman who is or Gary Brea and those are guys who you know the evidence-based crowd certainly can poke all sorts of holes in all of the things that they say. So >> without a problem >> with from my corner of universe I think they're the Joker >> and and Lane is Batman. But guess what? For for Brea reporters Lane is the Joker, right? So you have to look at it through the other person's and at least try to have some empathy as to why other people see the world the way they do because there are people who are frustrated with the you know that the or metabolic health and the obesity of our society and they're disillusioned with the evidence-based community because they wrong in some cases wrongfully believe that the evidence-based community is making recommendations. It's like when people say like well the the food guidelines the food pyramid or whatever is [ __ ] you know it it got people fat. It's like >> sad. No, no, no. It's like nobody who got fat was eating according to the these guidelines or these food pyramids. Like that's not what caused this [ __ ] right? And I'm not saying they're perfect, but you're looking in the wrong direction if you want to know why we're in the [ __ ] that we're in. >> Sure. Well, it seems like you want to like say what you think it is. >> Well, I mean, that's a very complicated conversation, but >> Yeah, I know. Okay, fair enough. We can we can talk for hours on that. It's it's in a very big way it's the overabundance of you know highly palatable food >> hyper palatable ultrarocessed food now I mean it's it's consuming more calories than you're you know walking off of or or your activity level but there's a fair bit of evidence to suggest that our activity levels haven't changed as I I don't love this argument because I definitely think people are far more sedentary than they used to be but >> for you get into Herman Panzer stuff his book burn and you know about the autoregulation of our caloric output, you know, based on it's one of the arguments that I think there's merit here. We just have to be careful that it's really hard to exercise your way out of eating too many calories. I think that's true fundamentally, but I also think you can't take that and go, "All right, well, there's no point in exercising." There's a lot of other reasons to do cardiovascular activity, including your heart health, uh, you name it, like up and down the chain. There's tons of benefits there. uh definitely ties in with longevity a lot, but our obesity and metabolic health problems certainly are heavily weighted towards our overconumption of calories. And just because we have an obesogenic environment, which is an overabundance of hyper caloric food, really, you know, hyper palatable food that exists in combinations that never occurred in nature. This is not my original thought. You know, most of the stuff I'm saying here, I probably teased up from somewhere else, but you have combinations of sugar, fat, salt that just simply didn't exist in nature. And the stuff is engineered this way. And the marketing and the engineering of these foods to be delicious. It hijacks our hunger. So, we hear more and more about food noise. And then that leads into the conversation about ompic. >> Yeah. >> Uh, which you know is very effective and other GLP1 agonist medication is very effective at dealing with food noise. Uh so therefore when you're using it it's really effective at reducing how much people eat. U and there are people who have their moral arguments against it. I don't think those moral arguments are very have any merit. Um I'm I'm all about like if we can find ways to get our society less obese, improve metabolic health uh you know at scale that's going to be really good for you know dealing with the aging population that's metabolically unhealthy. That is going to put a lot of pressure on the health system. Right? So there's a lot of stuff here and I'm going all over the place, but ultimately yes, our society is and and again then the people rail up profits profit incentive. It's a fundamental part of our society. I'm not interested in like fighting that argument, but you have to recognize it for what it is. And it's probably very unlikely within a short enough cycle that we'll see some sort of collective top-down governmental agreement intervention across all countries to curb the marketing and the engineering of the way these foods are the access to these foods. So therefore, as much as the argument about personal responsibility is sort of unpalatable to one side of the socopolitical ideological spectrum that tends to get really mad when you say these sort of things, each individual person probably absolutely needs to do everything within their power to improve their individual outcome. And I don't think there's a good logical argument against that. It's challenging. It's for sure challenging. But uh you have to take care of yourself. I and I the metaphor is so abused that I hate it, but the auction mask airplane thing. Put your own mask on first. Yeah. Said it. >> Yeah. No, I I totally agree with you there. And I think uh for the listeners, the best best thing they can do is listen to the Live Free and Diet Hard podcast as well as the Muscle Growth podcast and then you're going to be good to go as long as you're getting good information. Um I really love the Natio or Knots by um Derek from All Plates More Date on the Hollywood guys that you were mentioning earlier. So that that's a cool thing for people to check out if they interested. Again, that's just one person's opinion. He's not necessarily right, but he's making assumptions and he's honest about it at least. Um, and he says there's still room for other things, but this is what he thinks and he's been obviously in the fitness space and um, he's got some decent opinions, I think. I don't follow I don't follow Derek closely. I do follow him and I don't dig into the media deeply because it's just so hard to consume at all. From the things that I've seen, he seems to be very evidence-based and reliable and nuanced and very smart about stuff. So, I I think that's probably a good place to go. >> Exactly. Yeah. No, he was on Peter Atier's um podcast as well and he talked all about his Have you read Peter Adia's book um Outlive? >> Outlive is fantastic. Yes, there's a lot of good stuff there. >> I loved it as well. >> I mean, Peter's argument it it aligns with what I just said. It's you know, he talks about type two or is it uh medicine 2.0 0 and medicine 3.0 and medicine 2.0 is the current system that is reactive to as people come in. >> But he strongly advocates it's not even that it's flawed. It's just >> it's dealing with society as it is. And his argument is >> as it was. >> Yeah. And he's arguing that each individual person needs to proactively uh look at what's going on with their health. you know they he's he argues preventative >> preventative proactively looking for certain markers goes into depth about certain warning signs and how even the traditional measures are probably too conservative and people should be more aggressive about the stuff and he does a really good job of breaking out what he calls the four horsemen of uh you know I think it's metabolic on health which is cardiovascular disease lifestyle cancers diabetes and and neurodeenerative disease and a lot of the causals what we understand is the the causal relationships I think it's a good book for the average person who's concerned with their their long-term >> definitely >> quality of life and longevity. >> Yes, it's all about increase in increasing your health span as opposed to your lifespan which is what current medicine does really well. It increases your lifespan. But there are now things we can do to actually increase our health span which means being able to walk, being able to pick up your kid, being able to do those kind of things that were never really pushed for because the quality didn't matter but the quantity did. I think now people are understanding that things like gym training, resistance training are like the fountain of youth. And I know you've talked about getting kids into the gym and showing them the gym environment. That's a really cool topic that I'd like to to touch on briefly. >> Sure. So, I've got a I think the first and and most viral post I ever had and it later turned into an article was just about um I think the quote goes expose kids to gym environments, let them see you train. And it goes on and the emphasis is this started because I've I have clients who have brought their kids because they needed to have their kids with them to be able to make their workout sessions. So the gym that I contract out of allows kids to come along with the parents, right? They're not, you know, training per se. I think we need waiverss for children below a certain age. But, you know, I remember one client, her daughter would come along and sit there and read a book and she was a really sweet girl. uh my one, you know, a couple of my best friends, their kids would come to the gym with us as we'd work out and they would just like make a a fort out of like pile boxes and just have a great time. But what did this do this for the kids? They grow up seeing working out as normal, right? It's a normal thing to them. And that in gym environments are fun, normal places, not scary, intimidating places. So, how many adults have we worked with, coached, who found their way to the gym in their mid20s, mid-30s, mid-4s, mid-50s, etc. who've never worked out, their parents never worked out. Step into a gym and it's a scary, intimidating, foreign place, right? Uh they never got the foothold to learn these skills early on. And it's a scary, scary prospect to walk into that space. Now, as a fitness professional, one of my first goals is, and I'm very, very good at this, is to make people feel safe and welcome in that space. Introduce them to people, diffuse sort of some of the stereotypes, etc., and then off we go. We're good. But a if you get kids to see this stuff as normal, parents working out in their home gyms, etc., then it becomes just like something that people grow up and do. And if it if they learn these skills early, well, they're way ahead. they're going to be way ahead on their building uh muscle, right? They're going to be building and maintaining bone mineral density when it really is really matters. So that way you have greater reserves as you get older, which is a big key to independent living and health span as you described it earlier. Um or even if it doesn't take and the kids just decide this isn't for them, but let's say later on something in life happens. Well, it's like they have positive memories of it with mom and dad and they can step into that world probably a little bit easier. They may know a little bit more but it's it's not a scary intimidating place as much as hey this is a place associated with something positive my folks when I was younger. So I just think it lowers the barrier to it. So I just think there's net good and then you get the occasional person whenever I post this thing like oh I don't want kids in gyms running around. It's like you don't get it right. Like commercial gyms probably never will. So like your commercial gym is probably never going to have kids running loose. Nor would I advocate for just kids running around and getting in the way of like someone lifting, right? That that's stupid irresponsible. But you know, if the kid is there quietly sitting and watching or you decide to teach them like some push-ups, like anytime I'm working with clients and you know, I've got them pushing a slide on the turf or you maybe doing something like a farmer's carry, what what does like the four-year-old want to do? Pick up the object that they could pick up and walk alongside mom, right? Like it happens all the time. And I've got kids who they try to push these big, you know, steel slides that we have at the gym I'm at and they're not strong enough, but maybe one case I think there's a one of one of my clients brings two of her kids and one will be on each side of the slide or they'll be able to push it a little bit, right? But they they they think it's fun and they mimic and so, you know, it's been a fun experience for them. And here's the flip side. It means that mom or dad who otherwise, you know, child care was a bit of a headache, you know, or or cost issue, whatever, can bring the kids into that environment, you know, I'm happy to like make sure they don't like jump off of something and hurt themselves while they're doing their set and they get to get to their workout. So, it may just simply facilitate the parent being able to be consistent with exercise, right? >> No, exactly. We actually, that reminds me so nicely of um we had the world champion bikini masters PCA um women's uh champion Eloise Vier on the podcast and she basically said that her kids are complete copy paste of her and her husband. So like that's exactly what you said. If the kids see you doing something, then they're more likely to follow in your footsteps, which I think is absolutely brilliant if you're giving them a good example like your your clients are doing hopefully. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> And then how can people identify? You mentioned on social media um everyone's giving advice. How can the average person kind of tell >> what what is good advice and what isn't? You mentioned to kind of follow the money as well as to think about people's incentives, but what's another kind of way that you can be like, okay, is this good advice, i.e. not Gary Breer, or is this like um someone that you you like, like Bolain, for example? >> I mean, first of all, I actually think that the rhetoric about follow the money is very dangerous advice because that's usually charlatan narrative uh to try to discredit uh legitimate evidence-based practitioners. you just like, "Oh, you're a shill for big pharma or big food or whatever." And it just becomes this lazy thing that doesn't actually address the evidence um being presented. So, I think when people get caught up in that, they're going to look for the most convenient emotionally comforting narrative to give them give them an oversimplified explanation to a complex problem. And usually grifters, charlatans are good at that kind of language. So I would just say be really careful there about anything that just sounds too good to be true or confirms your biases. So a good practice is to look at things from all sides. I try to practice in all walks of life whenever I experience conflict or some sort of argument is I try to actually understand all right well where's the other person coming from? what is you know there's something called fundamental attribution error where we think that everything we do is virtuous and good or if we somehow make a mistake uh driving is a great example right we we we're in a rush we end up having to kind of squeeze in cut someone off they beep at us and and you're kind of like hey you're thinking you make yourself smaller you're like oh I'm sorry I'm a fundamentally good person you know I just I was in a rush or let's say the rare time where you just didn't see a car sitting in your blind spot you almost turn into a lane and you're like you narrowly avoid hitting the vehicle, whatever. You feel terrible and that person's pissed off right now, but you know, in your heart, you're like, "No, that was just a one-off thing. I I I'm late. I'm just trying to get home. I, you know, I've had a stressful day." But what happens when people do these kind of things to you? Oh, that [ __ ] [ __ ] That person is exploive, exploitative, exploitative. You know, they're a terrible person, right? Or any sort of interaction which becomes negative. You know, fundamentally, that person is is evil to their core. And do do you see the flaw in that? Right? We we expect people to give us grace, but yet, you know, automatically assume the other person is a terrible person. So, why don't we flip it? Why don't we look at it and go, "All right, well, that person who cut me off, hey, maybe they just didn't see me. Maybe it was a little bit carelessness at the moment. They're just trying to get home to their kids as well. They're not a bad >> They're on their phone." >> And and and that could be it too, right? But it's it's assumed charitable intent. >> Sure. >> I like that. So I think if we look at things what that we see online and if a degree disagrees with some sort of like comforting comforting bias that we possess, we could at least try to understand who that person is and where they're coming from. Now maybe it's a liver king and we realize yes this [ __ ] is is you know lying about his drug use which Derek >> it was a horrible documentary >> Derek exposed right you know what over $10,000 worth of drugs a month. I mean, first of all, I just thought the whole thing was ridiculous because you look at the guy and he looks like just a a really age a badly aged >> superhero >> pro- wrestler. Yeah. >> Right. And it's just like you no one wants to look like that. Like if you could ever imagine smelling an image online like I look at the Liver King, the guy like took one bath a week. And yes, this is this is ad hominemim attack and I'm being mean or whatever, but I'm trying to make it funny. It's like, >> yeah, >> but at the same time, >> it it's it's like elite evidence-based fitness professionals being like, "Well, how could you not know? How could you be so stupid to not think this guy's on steroids?" Listen, I grew up thinking pro wrestling was real. >> Really? What? >> And I didn't, you know, as a kid, you're not like, "Oh my god, these guys are gassed up on steroids." >> Yeah. >> Right. I mean, listen, I'm old enough to remember what we didn't know this. Okay. It's like, so remember, I'm dating myself here. Or, you know, you watch baseball. I love baseball with the Buns and and Sosa and and Maguire era and all the big home runs. These guys are they look like pro bodybuilders and and so on and so forth. Or, you know, it's like the action icons of the 80s. And, you know, as kids were like, "Oh, yeah. This is super cool. I got to go hit the gym. I want to go look like that." So, I understand where the average person who doesn't have our curse of knowledge could believe some of these claims and be like, "Hey, you could look like me if you just eat bull testicles and all those poor people and liver and, you know, live this ancestral lifestyle and get out in the sun." So, you have to have empathy for why people are more easily misled. And if you start doing that, then you just stop thinking in terms of rigid absolute I'm right, everybody else is wrong, everybody else is stupid. And if you keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out because then the people on the other side of the spectrum, you know, the ones who tend to be, you know, believe every sort of like crazy conspiracy theorist type thing. They tend to pride themselves on being open-minded, but earth is flat. >> Then they will believe like some obscure YouTube channel will say something ridiculous, but like look, this is evidence. Whereas like all these p all this peer-reviewed research. No, no, no. That's like paid for by big big food. You're you're a shill. It's like, okay, I don't know. And outside of that, again, I think if people are speaking in really strong absolutes, then I think you just have to kind of question just just question. I'm I'm a skeptic. I'm an eternal skeptic. I look for I mean, again, I'm not the person reading the PubMed stuff. Um I'm I do not have the education. And I think the majority of the people on social media talking about studies are not educated in or have no [ __ ] clue how to read read studies. They're just cherrypicking stuff that confirms their bias. And I think that's a very prevalent problem. But there are people if you could identify that there is a group of individuals who have educational credentials or there are some people who are supported and part of communities of people who are very credentialed you know PhD tier master's degree people in their relevant fields there's there's another thought in a second then and that group of people seems to overwhelmingly agree on something and they're discussing with nuance then that's a good sign. Okay. If you have a group of people, the evidence-based community who are all reputable, who are fundamentally disagreeing with a a few operators who don't have the same sort of background, then there's a pretty good bet that the the people with the education are right and the people who are, you know, status chasing are probably not as right about that particular thing. Um, and then this one's a tricky one to identify, but if you have someone who has let's I I like using Neil Degrasse Tyson as the example because he's fairly famous, right? He's the I believe as far as astrophysics goes, he is exceptional, credible authority. Okay, if he's talking about that stuff, I'm down. I have heard him say things about nutrition that are so fundamentally false. But guess what? He doesn't have a PhD in nutrition. And where we get into trouble is people like Neil become science communicators. And I'm a little bit leerary of almost any science communicator who starts talking wildly outside of their area of expertise. Huberman is is definitely a good example of someone who gets who gets into trouble with this stuff. And you know, and it's not to say he's wrong about everything, but often times and and he's been debunked by numerous times, numerous claims by people who are experts in whatever he's talked about because he's a you know, he's PhD at Stanford, but I think his he's a neuroscientist, something to do with like eyes or whatever. I'm not sure. Um, but anyway, but I mean his his podcast routinely ends up talking about things. Now, he may have a subject matter expert that he brings on uh in that in a relevant field. Okay, that's different. But but back to the Neil deGrasse Tyson thing and there's other realms that where he's made statements that are like so ludicrously unscientific. But here's where we get into trouble. If we recognize that someone a has the education, then we assume that they are smart and have authority and then they speak with confidence about things outside their area of expertise, then they sound authoritative. We take them uh at at face value. But when someone says something that we are highly educated in and we recognize, wait a second, that's what he said was just [ __ ] wrong, then you start to question everything that everybody says outside of their area of expertise. And that gets tough, too. But yeah, I I tend to be a skeptic fundamentally until I feel really confident that a resource that I'm listening to is very trustworthy on this particular topic. And even then, you know, people can make mistakes. They can have their blind spots. They can double down on things that have become part of their identity and they may have a difficult time walking back off of something that the evidence didn't support that they theorized. >> Absolutely. I think you make a great point about being skeptic and the importance of being skeptic and not taking everything at face value. Of course, you can take some things and if you're not an expert, like you should believe what the experts say, especially when they agree on on the things. Um, yeah, and we've had some experts like Dr. Milo Wolf, Dr. Pac, uh, Max Coleman, Daniel Plotkin, just to name a few. Um, and they all seem to agree with you on a lot of things. So, that means that you're probably a good a good source of info as well. Um, so thank you for that. Well, I I I PAC is a friend and we spoke at an event together with Brad Shenfeld and Stu Phillips back in 2022, right? So, you know, I think they're really good resources when it comes to evidence-based muscle hypertrophy, right? If you're asking Dr. Pack on here, you're you're barking up the right shape. >> Good. >> Um I'm glad. And then, um like you said, absolutes. People that are intellectuals typically don't deal in absolutes that much unless it's just in maths. um then it's normally I think this not definitely this without a doubt they question themselves and that's how they approach their topics even that no they have PhDs in the field they're still like I believe this based on the evidence available so I think that's that's really interesting and then um yeah I just want to leave the kind of the listeners with a really cool post that you made people need to think and answer honestly what would happen in 5 to 10 years to your to their health if they continued their current lifestyle. Would it improve, maintain or degrade? Do you have anything to to add to that? I think there's two things here. The first one is it's introspective. It's just to get someone to pause and go, what direction am I going in right now? Here's an important thing. We are all degrading. We are all degenerative past a certain age. Okay? As we get older, certain processes slow down. Our metabolic rate does not slow until we get to about the age of 60 and then it's just a modest decline. So that's there's really good robust research on that. So it's usually lifestyle behavior. >> Brian Johnson will disagree. >> Yeah. Brian Johnson. >> No, not the Liver King one. The other one >> I Yeah, that's funny irony about the name Brian Johnson. Um, >> yeah. >> All I've seen is pictures of Brian, and this is a bit anecdotal, but for a guy who is investing millions of dollars into his health, he sure is looking terrible rapidly. I I don't know what that is. Um, so anyway, whenever I hear someone talk about their biological age, I kind of just groan and roll my eyes and go, "All right, move pass." But we we we have to understand that fundamentally, uh, we recover more slowly past a certain age. we gradually start to lose muscle mass whether it's you know around the age of 30 35 or whatever we lose a little bit um we see hormonal changes uh you know testosterone declines in men we see major hormonal changes in women uh when they get to menopause postmenopause we see decline of bone mineral density we see fairly rapid decline of speed power explosiveness because we often times just don't train those qualities so that's the second part is when Someone is struggling with their metabolic health, their their level of atyposity, their activity level, etc., how they're feeling, and they think, well, I'm in this place right now. Most people think that it's going to stay about the same. No, no, no. If you are not actively working to improve, you are in decline. And that's a bit of a scary thought. So, that poster is really to get someone to be a little introspective, look inward, and go, "All right, am I taking care of myself? Am I making effort to stay healthy? and to remember that the direction that we're all going in, we can slow it down. We can actually make dramatic improvements, but over the long enough time horizon, all we can do is really slow the rate of decline. If you think about there's this line, I would have, you know, have to draw a visual graph below which we lose functional independence, the ability to walk on our own, do daily stuff, what have you. But if you think about a lot of elderly people who have become weak and frail and inactive, they get they're below that line. And for most of most people, most of our lives are well above that line. But guess what? We gradually decline. Again, that's muscle mass, which is our, you know, motor like that. That's our structure that our nervous system powers for everything we do. Okay? So the more muscle you have, the more motor skill you have, which go hand in hand, the more bone mineral density we have, the better our metabolic health, the the higher a reserve we build younger when we can build it. And then even with the rate of decline that happens, which we can slow down fairly dramatically with being as active as possible, then we may be able to get this ties into the idea of health span. We may be able to stay well above that line of like living independently certainly for a lot longer but you know we may stay that there for our entire life but if we don't take those efforts as early as possible to build muscle mass to build motor skill to which is also really relevant to neurodeenerative disease the more motor skill you have it's one of the best things to slow the progression of something like Parkinson's later in life okay that's that's important Right? And so if we can create a great reserve of these things of muscle mass, bone mineral density, etc., then we can we we improve our odds of avoiding years of late life where we do not have functional independence, where we need help getting up off the toilet. And that's a visceral example that I kind of want people to grab on to. So, it's poking pushing buttons to hopefully get someone to think and go, I'm not on a good path right now, and I need to change now and not wait. Because every every once in a while I hear someone talk about like, oh, you know, you need to hit rock bottom before you'll change. Guess what? Rock bottom is a myth. You hit rock bottom, what you think is rock bottom, I promise you, you'll break right through that floor and there's a whole another level of bad underneath there. So don't don't even think that you know it's like the pain of you know you wait until the pain of change uh pain of pain of staying the same is worse than the pain of change. Yes, I get that argument. Absolutely. But guess what? People will continue to live in pain and pain becomes their identity and their narrative and they develop these strong victim narratives about why the world did all this [ __ ] to them. It's like there's a lot of stuff that's beyond our control and not everybody has the same playing field. Different people have different advantages, disadvantages. Yes, I get that. That is not an argument not to do every goddamn thing within your power to improve your life and improve improve your odds later. >> I love that response. So brilliant. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate. Thank you, Andrew. >> Thank you for tuning in to the Muscle Growth Podcast. If you found value in today's episode, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave us a fivestar rating and a quick review. It helps us grow and reach more people just like you. Don't forget to follow us on all major social media platforms including Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, and X. 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