Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Why Generic Fitness Programs Don't Work (Do THIS Instead)

Transcript

Why Generic Fitness Programs Don't Work (Do THIS Instead) · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: Hey, this is Philip.
• 0:01
  Philip Pape: And on this bonus episode, I'm sharing my conversation with Jen Trepik on her podcast, Salad with a Side of Fries.
• 0:08
  Philip Pape: Jen is a health coach who takes a similar evidence-based approach to nutrition and fitness.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: And we actually appeared on each other's shows recently.
• 0:16
  Philip Pape: So, of course, if you caught Friday's episode here on Wits and Weights, you already heard her appearance on my show.
• 0:23
  Philip Pape: In this conversation, I walk through my adapt framework, assess, do, analyze, pivot, test, and how to actually personalize your training instead of just following generic templates.
• 0:36
  Philip Pape: We also get into walking and neat, training around injuries, building a home gym, and why measuring energy and performance matters more than the scale.
• 0:45
  Philip Pape: Enjoy the conversation.
• 0:46
  Jenn Trepeck: Will you share your experience and what you learned that really changed everything?
• 0:51
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 0:51
  Philip Pape: You mentioned, you mentioned, uh, you mentioned physique engineer, right?
• 0:54
  Philip Pape: And I'm a real engineer too, which is where I got that name.
• 0:57
  Philip Pape: And I love it.
• 0:57
  Philip Pape: Real engineers tend to be a little bit sedentary, sitting in front of computers for years and years and years.
• 1:03
  Philip Pape: And so, you know, I didn't grow up in athletics.
• 1:06
  Philip Pape: I didn't grow up playing sports.
• 1:07
  Philip Pape: I didn't grow up with very good dieting habits, like many of us in the 80s.
• 1:11
  Philip Pape: I don't know how old the listeners are, but you know, the clean your plate club, but also the very picky and only eat like five foods club.
• 1:18
  Philip Pape: And so when I got to college, gained a bunch of weight, very sedentary, didn't understand anything about lifting weights.
• 1:25
  Philip Pape: And for the next 20 years, like my 20s and 30s, I sort of flailed around in the world trying to figure out what to do with my body, with my health.
• 1:34
  Philip Pape: I didn't even understand the differences between weight loss and fat loss.
• 1:39
  Philip Pape: I didn't understand, you know, the macros and why one was important versus another.
• 1:43
  Philip Pape: And I definitely didn't know how to lift weights.
• 1:45
  Philip Pape: So all of that was kind of lost on me, but I definitely tried a lot of things.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: I tried Slim Fast, Atkins, Keto, right?
• 1:52
  Philip Pape: We do diets.
• 1:53
  Philip Pape: I did paleo for like eight years while I was in CrossFit for about eight years.
• 1:58
  Philip Pape: And we we can go there, like the pros and cons.
• 2:01
  Philip Pape: You know, I touched a barbell, pro, lots and lots of cons.
• 2:04
  Philip Pape: Anyway, and then it wasn't until just before and leading into the pandemic that I don't know what it was, I don't know what the catalyst was, but I all of a sudden it could have been time on my hands.
• 2:14
  Philip Pape: The catalyst was, but I really started to dive into a certain niche or world of evidence-based training and nutrition that's out there that you and I now are just in love with and trying to get out to the world that I think we're a part of now.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: And that is hey, how do we take what years of anecdote and science and coaching practice and experience have shown us that work psychologically and behaviorally, not just nuts and bolts.
• 2:41
  Philip Pape: You know, we know if we cut calories, we're gonna lose weight, but that's not necessarily the optimal way to get there for the long term.
• 2:47
  Philip Pape: So it was like during the pandemic that I started reading the muscle and strength pyramids and nutrition pyramids by Dr.
• 2:54
  Philip Pape: Eric Helms and Flexible Dieting, Alan Aragon.
• 2:57
  Philip Pape: I started to look at starting strength and some of the big, you know, basic powerlifting programs.
• 3:02
  Philip Pape: And it really got into that world and started to lift and eat and focus on energy and performance.
• 3:08
  Philip Pape: And really, just to kind of long story short over the next two years, a lot of self-experimentation, which I think we're gonna talk about some of that today for you, the listener, led to I need to create a podcast and tell people that this is possible, that you can yo-yo diet and gain weight and lose weight for years and feel like you're broken and you're not.
• 3:27
  Philip Pape: You just have to figure out the thing that is optimal for you.
• 3:30
  Philip Pape: And it's not found in a template, it's not found in what works for your best friend.
• 3:34
  Philip Pape: There's something special about that.
• 3:35
  Philip Pape: So that led me to the podcast.
• 3:37
  Philip Pape: That led me to coaching, and that led me to where I am today.
• 3:40
  Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, I love it.
• 3:41
  Jenn Trepeck: And one of the things that stands out, as you just shared that, is you started to measure energy and performance.
• 3:48
  Jenn Trepeck: And so I think that even right from the jump gives us a different framework for thinking about this fitness component, you know, less about the scale and much more about how we feel in our own body.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I just literally before this call did a check-in with a client, and she has gone through this journey of I need to lose weight, I need to lose weight, I need to lose weight, to I'm still having trouble losing weight, but I'm starting to feel stronger and my energy is better.
• 4:17
  Philip Pape: To wow, now I realize the power of sleep and doing what makes sense for me and measuring everything but the scale, performance, energy, and so on.
• 4:26
  Philip Pape: And it's just this psychological change that happens over time with your identity and the way that you approach it.
• 4:32
  Philip Pape: And now you can do this for the long haul.
• 4:33
  Philip Pape: So yeah, it's super important.
• 4:35
  Jenn Trepeck: Thousand percent.
• 4:36
  Jenn Trepeck: So, all right, with our focus today on personalizing fitness, I think beyond just the idea of, you know, maybe our strength or injuries require that we have to maybe do something differently.
• 4:52
  Jenn Trepeck: Why is personalizing our exercise and activity so important?
• 4:57
  Philip Pape: And I'm glad you mentioned those examples because I think the marketing in this industry suggests that everything is personalized.
• 5:03
  Philip Pape: You know, it suggests that it's like you come in, you do an intake, and we personalize the program to you.
• 5:08
  Philip Pape: And then when you go behind the curtain, you see, okay, we're gonna get your demographic data, we're gonna get some basic history, and we're gonna give you a template that just happens to fit that data and then go with it.
• 5:18
  Philip Pape: You're done.
• 5:18
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 5:19
  Philip Pape: So why I think it's so important is very little people are testing and experimenting and measuring what they need to measure to close the feedback loop, which ultimately is what motivates us to move forward.
• 5:32
  Philip Pape: Because you and I had a conversation on my podcast about consistency versus intensity and like taking that action to build momentum.
• 5:38
  Philip Pape: Well, people don't know what to do.
• 5:40
  Philip Pape: And then when they do something, they don't know what to measure.
• 5:43
  Philip Pape: And then even when they measure it, they don't know how to change.
• 5:45
  Philip Pape: So I want to talk about kind of that whole process of personalization so that people can do it the right way.
• 5:51
  Jenn Trepeck: Excellent.
• 5:51
  Jenn Trepeck: I think I have one more question before we do that process.
• 5:54
  Jenn Trepeck: Because to your point, everything is marketed to us as personalized, or maybe we should, as you say, you know, adapted to you-ish, right?
• 6:05
  Jenn Trepeck: So let's just set the stage a second before the framework of how to do it.
• 6:10
  Jenn Trepeck: What are the drawbacks of, you know, maybe some of the YouTube workouts or the resources that a lot of people are using or exploring, you know, you mentioned also, right, not knowing what to measure, how to adapt, but are there sort of bigger pieces that maybe give people a stronger why for approaching this a different way?
• 6:33
  Philip Pape: Sure.
• 6:33
  Philip Pape: So we all have unique constraints and we all have unique goals.
• 6:37
  Philip Pape: And if you told me, hey, my knee hurts and I've got hormone issues, what drug should I take?
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: You think I'm gonna give you an answer to that question?
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: But but if someone says what workout should I do, they're like, Yeah, here you go.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: Here's the post-40 menopausal woman with knee issue workout, right?
• 6:52
  Philip Pape: So, I mean, there's definitely a chance of injury and actually not making progress and in fact stepping back from where you are.
• 7:00
  Philip Pape: That's one thing.
• 7:01
  Philip Pape: I think more psychologically is the frustration that I'm gonna do another thing, I'm gonna do another program, another diet, another point system.
• 7:08
  Philip Pape: All my friends are doing it, everybody's on Ozempic, whatever.
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna do it, and then it doesn't work for you, right?
• 7:16
  Philip Pape: And you beat your head over the wall and say, I'm broken, my metabolism is broken.
• 7:20
  Philip Pape: It's something like that.
• 7:21
  Philip Pape: So, whatever works for your best friend, like I said, could be terrible for you in multiple ways.
• 7:25
  Philip Pape: I don't know if where you're trying to leave me with that, Jen, because I'm with you.
• 7:29
  Jenn Trepeck: No, that's exactly because I do think even if you're not physically injured, the mental component of feeling like something's wrong with you or feeling like you failed is so much bigger than I think people realize, and has a much bigger impact on true wellness in every facet.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: I think it's everything.
• 7:53
  Philip Pape: I really do.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: Behavior and the feedback loop and the reinforcing of I'm a hard worker and I put in the effort and I track the thing, I'm smart and I listen to podcasts, and it doesn't work.
• 8:08
  Philip Pape: And it's like, how deflating is that?
• 8:10
  Philip Pape: Right, for sure.
• 8:12
  Jenn Trepeck: All right, so you're gonna give us the other way to approach this, right?
• 8:16
  Jenn Trepeck: Walk us through it.
• 8:17
  Philip Pape: Stay tuned for the next episode where no, I'm just kidding.
• 8:19
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 8:19
  Philip Pape: So I love frameworks, I love acronyms, especially as an engineer.
• 8:23
  Philip Pape: I just think that way.
• 8:24
  Philip Pape: And so I like the word adapt because at the end of the day, we're trying to adapt a principle to a specific method and to a person.
• 8:32
  Philip Pape: I use those words deliberately because principles are universal.
• 8:35
  Philip Pape: Principles are the things that, like the law of gravity, they will always work.
• 8:39
  Philip Pape: The idea that you need some tension on your muscles so that they get bigger works for every human being, right?
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: Unless you want to take a myostatin blocker and that's the future of medicine, you can sit down and get jacked on drugs.
• 8:49
  Philip Pape: Fine.
• 8:50
  Philip Pape: But that's the principle.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: Okay, so if we take the adapt method and we start with the A, I'm gonna give you one for each.
• 8:56
  Philip Pape: The first thing you have to do is assess.
• 8:58
  Philip Pape: And assess is almost everything.
• 9:00
  Philip Pape: We talked about how generic templates are personalized to you and they usually have some sort of intake.
• 9:06
  Philip Pape: Well, you do need to have that, right?
• 9:08
  Philip Pape: But you also have to understand what is your target, what is your goal, what is your lifestyle look like, what's your schedule, right?
• 9:15
  Philip Pape: Can you actually get eight hours of sleep?
• 9:17
  Philip Pape: Or are you a busy mom with three kids and taking care of the family?
• 9:20
  Philip Pape: And so practically, you know, six and a half hours of sleep is going to be the case for the next few years.
• 9:26
  Philip Pape: You know, what are your food preferences?
• 9:27
  Philip Pape: Maybe your culture is such, you know, I have a client from Israel who's Jewish and she's like, you know, every Friday it's a specific food culture that is what it is for her religion, right?
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: You mentioned injury history, your training background.
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: It's not just the history itself, but how has that history changed your body and even your mind that we now have to unravel and work with?
• 9:49
  Philip Pape: So understanding your starting point is really important.
• 9:52
  Philip Pape: And I think that's gonna lead to some of the other steps.
• 9:54
  Philip Pape: But what that means is collecting data coming in and then spending some time collecting more data.
• 9:59
  Philip Pape: And so, for example, Jen, if you don't know what how much protein you eat, and I tell you, like, protein's really important.
• 10:04
  Philip Pape: We want to increase that protein.
• 10:05
  Philip Pape: Well, you need to know the starting point, you need to track protein for some amount of time.
• 10:08
  Philip Pape: You know, somebody says you don't have enough energy, you need to track calories from some amount of time.
• 10:12
  Philip Pape: So that's the first step.
• 10:14
  Jenn Trepeck: Yeah.
• 10:14
  Jenn Trepeck: And when it comes to assessing our capacity for activity, how do we do that for ourselves?
• 10:22
  Jenn Trepeck: Like going to a trainer, going to someone and doing that intake.
• 10:24
  Jenn Trepeck: But is there a way I think now more than ever, people are, even still since the pandemic, I mean, at home doing these things and even trying to figure out for themselves where to start with some of that?
• 10:36
  Jenn Trepeck: Like, what are some things that you recommend for assessing our capacity to understand?
• 10:41
  Jenn Trepeck: And maybe I'm jumping ahead in this, right?
• 10:44
  Jenn Trepeck: But what we're capable of doing versus what it looks like to really push ourselves.
• 10:50
  Philip Pape: We're talking about training in this case.
• 10:52
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 10:52
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I have this conversation a lot because I'm a huge fan of barbell training when somebody has access to that.
• 10:58
  Philip Pape: But I also have a lot of clients and talk to people who don't have access or they have dumbbells or bands or they've never lifted before.
• 11:04
  Philip Pape: They can't even do a push-up, they can't do a pull-up.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: You know, a lot of women are like, I want to get my first chin up, but I don't even know how to hold the bar properly, right?
• 11:11
  Philip Pape: And so you're saying, like, where do you start?
• 11:12
  Philip Pape: I think there's some basic principles about movement, movement patterns, the way that humans move through the world that I think take some basic education, right?
• 11:19
  Philip Pape: And you can listen to your podcast, my podcast, and understand that.
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: But, you know, bending down to pick things up, right?
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: Hip hinge, pulling things off the ground, squatting, pulling, and pushing.
• 11:29
  Philip Pape: Those basic movement patterns, if assuming you don't have any massive limitation, there are videos, there are basic guidelines.
• 11:36
  Philip Pape: You can get a book like Starting Strength, which my opinion is like the Bible on biomechanics for the lifts, and just do things without any weight or equipment or implements whatsoever in your living room.
• 11:47
  Philip Pape: You know, there's uh Megan Dalman, she's been on my show a bunch of times.
• 11:50
  Philip Pape: She's awesome, right?
• 11:50
  Philip Pape: I know you're awesome too, Jen.
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: We're all like reach out to coaches and experts and figure it out that way.
• 11:55
  Philip Pape: If you can get into a squat, if you can pick things up, if you can push things, you're capable.
• 12:00
  Philip Pape: And if you have a limitation or you're paralyzed from the waist down, I know a gentleman, uh his name is Kevin McShann, who can't walk.
• 12:06
  Philip Pape: And so he does a lot of upper body work, but he still finds a way, right?
• 12:10
  Jenn Trepeck: So I don't know if that answers the question, but it's like well, but it gives people a place to assess their movement and you know what they're capable of, what maybe needs more attention.
• 12:21
  Jenn Trepeck: Okay, so A, the first A of adapt was assess.
• 12:24
  Jenn Trepeck: What's next?
• 12:25
  Philip Pape: You're gonna love this one.
• 12:26
  Philip Pape: It's due.
• 12:26
  Philip Pape: It's due.
• 12:27
  Philip Pape: It's take the action because I don't want to wait, I don't want to do 10 steps before you take that action.
• 12:32
  Philip Pape: Literally, listening to this podcast, guys, you're listening to Jen's show today, you can do a basic assessment and take action today with something.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: Whether that's I'm gonna track my meal, I'm going to increase you know my protein, I'm going to find the gym that I'm gonna check out or do something at home or whatever.
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: So, you know, when we talk about science and evidence, I don't want people to get confused with massive research papers and studies having to guide what you do.
• 12:59
  Philip Pape: To me, the hierarchy of evidence is yes, science in principle, but also coaching practice, anecdote, and personal experience, the ultimate being you, n equals one, right?
• 13:09
  Philip Pape: Sample size of one, you are the one that's gonna be the outlier for yourself.
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: And so you're not gonna be able to collect data until you do the thing.
• 13:17
  Philip Pape: And so do the thing might be, okay, I'm going to do a basic full body program twice this week or even once.
• 13:23
  Philip Pape: Okay, I'm gonna start tracking my food.
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: Okay, I'm going to whatever.
• 13:27
  Philip Pape: There's a bunch of things that we can track.
• 13:29
  Philip Pape: Okay, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna follow what's in weights.
• 13:31
  Philip Pape: And I'm gonna start listening to this weirdo talking about fat loss and why I shouldn't care as much about the scale.
• 13:38
  Philip Pape: So that's the second step, is just to do it.
• 13:41
  Jenn Trepeck: I love it.
• 13:42
  Jenn Trepeck: Take the action.
• 13:42
  Jenn Trepeck: Take the action.
• 13:43
  Jenn Trepeck: So assess, do, analyze next, analyze.
• 13:47
  Philip Pape: Analyze.
• 13:48
  Philip Pape: You got it.
• 13:49
  Philip Pape: So this is where a lot of people go wrong in that.
• 13:52
  Philip Pape: A lot of people are doing things, okay?
• 13:54
  Philip Pape: Maybe they know where they're from, maybe they know they want to lose fat or get stronger, whatever the goal is.
• 13:59
  Philip Pape: They want to be healthier for their kids, they want to reduce their APOB and their A1C, whatever.
• 14:03
  Philip Pape: And they they know that they have to do something, but then they don't track the progress against that something.
• 14:08
  Philip Pape: And that could be as simple as people aren't tracking their workouts.
• 14:11
  Philip Pape: I see this all the time.
• 14:12
  Philip Pape: People will do the YouTube workout or follow a decent workout in an app, but then they're not tracking the load, the sets, the reps, so that I know Monday I squatted 95 pounds.
• 14:23
  Philip Pape: This time I'm gonna swat 100.
• 14:25
  Philip Pape: And that simple switch for progressive overload with training is missing from a lot of a lot of people.
• 14:31
  Philip Pape: I'm surprised to this day how many people don't realize they have to do that, and then when they do, it's a game changer.
• 14:36
  Philip Pape: So logging that is huge.
• 14:38
  Philip Pape: Analyzing your nutrition data, that that can get very complicated because people come from the diet world of cutting and restricting.
• 14:45
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna suggest that you can eat quite flexibly with some constraints and some controls, some structure, but in a way that works for what you like, what you need, you know, what you want, your schedule, et cetera.
• 14:58
  Philip Pape: So I like logging my food.
• 15:00
  Philip Pape: I'm sorry to say it.
• 15:01
  Philip Pape: It's actually not that hard to log a meals, especially with modern technology.
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: It is not that hard to do.
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: I had my community give me screenshots of their screen time for Macro Factor, the app that we use, and it averaged about three minutes a day.
• 15:13
  Philip Pape: Three minutes a day, right?
• 15:15
  Philip Pape: Because each meal is like 30 seconds, 45 seconds.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: So that's the second piece.
• 15:19
  Philip Pape: Then analyzing your biofeedback is huge.
• 15:21
  Philip Pape: We talked about energy and performance.
• 15:23
  Philip Pape: For some people, that's everything.
• 15:24
  Philip Pape: Like I've got a stressful job.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: I have a client who works for ABC.
• 15:28
  Philip Pape: Her job is so stressful right now because of the news cycle.
• 15:31
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 15:32
  Philip Pape: And mood, sleep, digestion.
• 15:35
  Philip Pape: Another person I remember, she was having digestive issues.
• 15:38
  Philip Pape: We were adding fiber to her diet.
• 15:39
  Philip Pape: That was making it worse.
• 15:40
  Philip Pape: It turns out she had reactions to supplements for fiber, right?
• 15:44
  Philip Pape: But because she was tracking it, she knew that was the peach.
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: She was analyzing the variables.
• 15:49
  Philip Pape: There's a bunch of other things we can track, like your body composition, the scale weight.
• 15:53
  Philip Pape: You put it all together at the end of the day, I want to be able to answer the question when someone says, Why am I not making progress anymore?
• 15:59
  Philip Pape: I want to be able to have the data to answer that question.
• 16:03
  Jenn Trepeck: A thousand percent.
• 16:03
  Jenn Trepeck: I'm so with you.
• 16:04
  Jenn Trepeck: And I think part of what you're highlighting with the analysis and all of the things that we're keeping track of is that, as I often say, we're not focusing on any one measurement in isolation or any one data point.
• 16:19
  Jenn Trepeck: It's about the collective and patterns.
• 16:24
  Jenn Trepeck: You know, each time we have this reaction.
• 16:26
  Jenn Trepeck: Right, exactly.
• 16:27
  Jenn Trepeck: Like each time we have this reaction, what did we eat that day, the day before, and the day before that, so that we can identify what's creating the issue.
• 16:35
  Jenn Trepeck: And so it's so interesting because people say all the time, oh, I have it in my head.
• 16:38
  Jenn Trepeck: And I'm like, I promise you.
• 16:41
  Philip Pape: I promise you.
• 16:42
  Philip Pape: No, there's a lot.
• 16:44
  Philip Pape: And it could get overwhelming.
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: And I know people that go the other direction.
• 16:47
  Philip Pape: Like, I have the aura ring, I have the you know, the glucose monitor, I take hormone panels once a month, and I have all the data you're telling me to track.
• 16:55
  Philip Pape: I mean, I think it's cool to have the data if it doesn't like stress you out to actually collect the data, but there's always a trade-off, a middle ground, you know, in between.
• 17:03
  Philip Pape: I like to be efficient, I like things to be easy.
• 17:05
  Philip Pape: To me, it takes stress off my future self this week when I have data that tells me what's going on, like you mentioned.
• 17:11
  Philip Pape: And then also there's education behind that.
• 17:13
  Philip Pape: Like the scale's gonna jump up and down.
• 17:15
  Philip Pape: If you take it daily, you get to see that that it goes up two pounds, down two pounds.
• 17:19
  Philip Pape: And there are reasons that have nothing to do with fat, gain or loss for that.
• 17:23
  Philip Pape: And then you can start to reconcile psychologically with the actions you're taking so you don't program hop and you don't quickly change your strategy.
• 17:30
  Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, for sure.
• 17:31
  Jenn Trepeck: Okay.
• 17:32
  Jenn Trepeck: Assess, do, analyze.
• 17:35
  Philip Pape: And then pivot, pivot.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: And notice pivot is like a subtle word, right?
• 17:39
  Jenn Trepeck: It's like except that all I can hear is the Friends episode where Ross is like, pivot.
• 17:44
  Philip Pape: Don't get me stuck.
• 17:45
  Philip Pape: Oh my god, my sister-in-law has watched Friends about 20 times all the way through.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: Yeah, so pivot is just now you're taking the information you've gathered and been gathering while you're doing and taking action and saying that there's something that I can tweak and pivot with.
• 18:00
  Philip Pape: Not, I'm not gonna program hop, I'm not gonna change five things.
• 18:03
  Philip Pape: I'm just going to either I'm getting a poor outcome and something has to change, or I'm getting a good outcome and I need to lean in to something and continue to get better, right?
• 18:12
  Philip Pape: So that could be your training volume, your exercise exercise selection.
• 18:15
  Philip Pape: It could be your nutrition timing, you know, it could be the macros.
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: And okay, I realize that carbs are really helpful for me.
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: So I'm gonna continue to shift that, or vice versa.
• 18:25
  Philip Pape: So this is like the golden part of it where you look at anything in life where you're trying to improve and get it get better, like public speaking.
• 18:33
  Philip Pape: I used to be such an introvert, so scared of speaking in public for 10 years into my career.
• 18:38
  Philip Pape: And then I joined Toastmasters where I had to speak, and people told me to my face what they were hearing.
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: And that alone was the catalyst to say, oh, okay, my awareness is jacked up.
• 18:49
  Philip Pape: Now I can tweak that.
• 18:50
  Philip Pape: So by you analyzing the things you're doing, having the data, now you can apply it to pivot with in and make informed choices.
• 18:59
  Jenn Trepeck: Great.
• 18:59
  Jenn Trepeck: And I feel like I have a whole slew of follow-up questions, so we'll come back to that.
• 19:03
  Jenn Trepeck: Give us the T of a depth.
• 19:05
  Philip Pape: Okay, the T is to test.
• 19:06
  Philip Pape: And it's an interesting one, right?
• 19:08
  Philip Pape: Because you would think, okay, I've applied feedback.
• 19:10
  Philip Pape: Don't I go back to the beginning and just do?
• 19:12
  Philip Pape: But I think there's a each of these is a little experiment.
• 19:15
  Philip Pape: And sometimes you don't necessarily want to go all in and change something for the long haul.
• 19:20
  Philip Pape: And this is where I love, especially when you're working with a coach.
• 19:22
  Philip Pape: I know my clients, they kind of have me to lean on for that emotional stress of all the uncertainties, where it's like, you know what?
• 19:28
  Philip Pape: We're gonna change as one thing, and it's gonna sound a little crazy, but we're gonna do it because we know that it might affect these things you've been analyzing.
• 19:36
  Philip Pape: Like I mentioned, the carbs.
• 19:37
  Philip Pape: We're not just gonna go up by 20 grams, we're gonna go up by 100 grams this week and test it.
• 19:41
  Philip Pape: I'm not saying you have to do it that way, but that can be an efficient way to quickly jolt the system and see what's happening if you're able to measure it on the appropriate timescale.
• 19:51
  Jenn Trepeck: I like the idea of test because it reinforces what we often talk about, which is approaching it with curiosity.
• 19:59
  Jenn Trepeck: What happens?
• 19:59
  Jenn Trepeck: Happens because frankly, going back to your point of principles and evidence-based, we know theory, what that ends up looking like in your body, we don't know.
• 20:12
  Jenn Trepeck: No one can guarantee anything.
• 20:16
  Jenn Trepeck: Yeah.
• 20:16
  Jenn Trepeck: And so this approach of test, I think, really reinforces that.
• 20:20
  Philip Pape: It's awesome.
• 20:20
  Philip Pape: And then you now you're back to the beginning.
• 20:22
  Philip Pape: Now you're back to the beginning where you now you reassess your new situation.
• 20:25
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like people, people always think in terms of before and after in this industry, which is that very short-term mindset.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: I refuse.
• 20:31
  Philip Pape: You know, I I like to think of it as before, before, before.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: Like there's always there's always a new milestone and a baseline that you can improve from, and you're never gonna stop improving.
• 20:41
  Philip Pape: That's the beauty of it.
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: And if you are executing a process that is not fun, that is miserable, that is always extremes, and I tell you you're gonna have to do this the rest of your life, how does that make you feel?
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 20:52
  Philip Pape: That doesn't feel right, does it?
• 20:53
  Philip Pape: You don't have to do it that way.
• 20:54
  Philip Pape: There, there's definitely pushing.
• 20:56
  Philip Pape: There's elements of, I'll call it discipline if you're going for extremes, but the day-to-day can be quite enjoyable when the process is designed around you.
• 21:05
  Jenn Trepeck: For sure.
• 21:06
  Jenn Trepeck: Love that.
• 21:06
  Jenn Trepeck: All right.
• 21:07
  Jenn Trepeck: I want to dig more into some of those pivots and help people with some direction in terms of how they might want to pivot or things that they might want to consider testing.
• 21:17
  Jenn Trepeck: Okay, Philip, working with your adapt framework and this idea of doing something, assessing what's happening, making adjustments, testing different, you know, things for lack of a better word.
• 21:33
  Jenn Trepeck: One of the big buzzwords in fitness, even in terms of like you have an episode about strength versus hypertrophy.
• 21:40
  Jenn Trepeck: And how do we even know and assess like our progression and level up, right?
• 21:49
  Jenn Trepeck: Pivot as we get stronger, or knowing how much do we move up and when do we do that?
• 21:56
  Jenn Trepeck: Does that make sense?
• 21:58
  Philip Pape: Yeah, no, it does.
• 21:59
  Philip Pape: That's where we get like one level down, two levels down to the education.
• 22:02
  Philip Pape: When we're talking about progression, my own wife just started running a program I just wrote for her because she has a wonky knee that needs a little work for her.
• 22:12
  Philip Pape: So she said, What do I start with for week one?
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: And by the way, you shouldn't coach your spouse.
• 22:16
  Philip Pape: So I don't coach her.
• 22:18
  Philip Pape: She knows I she just asks me a question, I answer it, and then move on.
• 22:21
  Philip Pape: And if you need me, honey, I'm here for you, right?
• 22:24
  Philip Pape: So that's a good thing, right?
• 22:25
  Philip Pape: Good approach, Jen.
• 22:26
  Philip Pape: I like it.
• 22:27
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 22:28
  Philip Pape: So how do you know where to start, right?
• 22:30
  Philip Pape: So when you first start, we mentioned the movement patterns and assessing just basic skill.
• 22:34
  Philip Pape: That's a good first start.
• 22:35
  Philip Pape: Then when you start to have some load through a dumbbell or barbell or whatever, you're gonna start light.
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: You know, the goal is not to injure yourself and go hog wild and ego lift on day one.
• 22:44
  Philip Pape: Just feel it out.
• 22:46
  Philip Pape: And once you feel it out, you kind of know, okay, the program said I should try to get 10 reps.
• 22:50
  Philip Pape: I got to 10, it felt easier like I could do 10 more.
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: Okay, that's a great bit of feedback that you just assessed that says I can go quite a bit heavier next time, right?
• 22:58
  Philip Pape: Or I was struggling to get five, I was grinding.
• 23:00
  Philip Pape: Okay, it was way too light.
• 23:01
  Philip Pape: That kind of lets you calibrate.
• 23:03
  Philip Pape: Anytime you're starting a new program, that's a great way to calibrate.
• 23:05
  Philip Pape: Then from that point, progression, I see a lot of mistakes or misunderstandings with how to do that.
• 23:11
  Philip Pape: It is very subjective, but also you have to have the tools.
• 23:14
  Philip Pape: And what I mean by that is micro plates, for example, right?
• 23:17
  Philip Pape: Microplates, a lot of women use dumbbells that I work with and they're like, how do I go from 10 to 15?
• 23:23
  Philip Pape: That's a huge jump.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: It's 50%.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: So there's things called microplates, right?
• 23:26
  Philip Pape: Like little hacks like that that people don't understand.
• 23:29
  Philip Pape: But if we get back to principles, I would say there's a few key principles.
• 23:32
  Philip Pape: One is are you jumping up the correct amount that's not overreaching and stressing you out and creating fatigue, but is enough to push you?
• 23:40
  Philip Pape: I would say if you're able to go up at all and it's not like a half pound or something, it's probably gonna be fine to progress.
• 23:46
  Philip Pape: Secondly, do you have enough rest and recovery?
• 23:49
  Philip Pape: That's huge, right?
• 23:50
  Philip Pape: We can get into a whole topic about are you sleeping enough?
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: Are you eating enough?
• 23:53
  Philip Pape: If you are in a fat loss phase, if you're in a deficit, that creates a whole extra level of allostatic load on your body that's gonna change your ability to progress.
• 24:02
  Philip Pape: And the more advanced you are, the more you're not even going to be able to quote unquote progress necessarily.
• 24:06
  Philip Pape: And you have to look at other variables of intensity in your workout.
• 24:10
  Philip Pape: And then the third thing is the rest periods.
• 24:13
  Philip Pape: Let me tell you, a lot of people make this mistake.
• 24:15
  Philip Pape: They come from YouTube world, circuit world, quad world, and they're like, 30 seconds is enough rest, right?
• 24:21
  Philip Pape: No, no, no.
• 24:21
  Philip Pape: Two, three, four, five minutes rest between most exercises, depending on how heavy it is and whether it's a compound lift or isolation.
• 24:28
  Philip Pape: I'm getting a little bit of the weeds, but the principle being you have to rest enough between sets to actually get all the reps that you want.
• 24:34
  Philip Pape: So I think that answers the question about progressing, right?
• 24:37
  Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, well, and it gives people, in the way that you answered that, I think it gives people different things to consider as they're looking at their movement.
• 24:47
  Jenn Trepeck: And one of the things in terms of what you just mentioned, where depending on the goal, right?
• 24:52
  Jenn Trepeck: Are we in a fat loss phase?
• 24:54
  Jenn Trepeck: So even personalizing the movement to the goal, right?
• 25:00
  Jenn Trepeck: Like it might be fat removal, it might be building muscle, it might be building bone density, right?
• 25:04
  Jenn Trepeck: So I think, especially going back to people using YouTube or some of the other resources or different apps or things like that.
• 25:14
  Jenn Trepeck: How can we even to the first A of Adapt?
• 25:17
  Jenn Trepeck: How do we assess whether the plan or program that seems interesting is a match for our goals?
• 25:27
  Philip Pape: It's not a simple answer.
• 25:29
  Philip Pape: This is where I really think coaches can be helpful, even if it's like a one-time consultation.
• 25:35
  Philip Pape: I squatted for like two years thinking I was doing everything right until I met a coach for one hour and he fixed 20 things going on with my form.
• 25:43
  Philip Pape: You mentioned the strength versus hypertrophy episode.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: You know, in there and another one I did recently called the 12 rules of volume, it seems like there's a lot of things to think about.
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: I would say if you're a beginner, and that's a question almost geared toward beginners.
• 25:57
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 25:57
  Philip Pape: If you're a beginner, stripping it down to three major movement patterns, right?
• 26:02
  Philip Pape: A squat, a hinge or deadlift, and a press, and just doing that each workout three times a week is enough to kind of let you assess the progress that you're making, what your recoverability is, what the frequency should be, and what the load set rep schemes should be.
• 26:19
  Philip Pape: Now, again, we can go always one or two levels deeper.
• 26:22
  Philip Pape: What should the set rep scheme be?
• 26:23
  Philip Pape: This and that.
• 26:24
  Philip Pape: We can get into all that.
• 26:25
  Philip Pape: I like basic barbell programs, for an example, like starting strength.
• 26:28
  Philip Pape: But if you're doing a dumbbell workout, there are really good apps today where you could filter on I'm a beginner, I have three days a week, and here's my equipment to kind of get a starting point.
• 26:38
  Philip Pape: I'm actually not too hung up on the training program being that crazy personalized early on until you get more advanced.
• 26:46
  Jenn Trepeck: But I think even thinking about it that way helps people get over the hump of taking the action.
• 26:53
  Philip Pape: 100%.
• 26:55
  Jenn Trepeck: Yeah.
• 26:55
  Jenn Trepeck: These days there's a lot of talk about walking or walking with a weighted vest or intervals, walking, jogging, you know.
• 27:05
  Jenn Trepeck: How might you recommend personalizing our walking?
• 27:12
  Philip Pape: I love walking because one of the biggest things we have control over with our metabolism is our need, right?
• 27:17
  Philip Pape: Our non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
• 27:19
  Philip Pape: Probably the biggest lever.
• 27:20
  Philip Pape: There's a famous landmark study that compared sedentary people to shop clerks, to construction workers, and they found a variance of 2,000 calories a day between those who pretty much sat all day and those who moved all day.
• 27:34
  Philip Pape: And not saying you're going to increase it by that much, but it's a huge lever in fat loss and how much you can eat and so on.
• 27:40
  Philip Pape: So when we look at the evidence, what does it say for basic health and mortality?
• 27:45
  Philip Pape: We see 7 to 9,000 steps a day is a good target to shoot for.
• 27:49
  Philip Pape: And I will tell you, it makes a massive difference.
• 27:51
  Philip Pape: So if you're going to do the adapt framework, what do you need to assess?
• 27:54
  Philip Pape: Not just your steps, because that's kind of the outcome.
• 27:56
  Philip Pape: You want to assess what those steps are getting you.
• 27:58
  Philip Pape: Well, they're probably getting you a higher metabolism, they're getting you a lower resting heart rate, right?
• 28:03
  Philip Pape: They're getting you maybe better digestion, better blood sugar management.
• 28:07
  Philip Pape: There's a lot of things that walking gives us.
• 28:09
  Philip Pape: And it's, I would put it second to strength training in terms of all the benefits for your health and your metabolism.
• 28:16
  Philip Pape: So it's as, I'll say as simple as assessing where you are today.
• 28:19
  Philip Pape: If you get 3,000 steps a day because you sit all day, what is a reasonable jump?
• 28:23
  Philip Pape: It's probably not 10,000, but it might be an extra 1000 steps a day by going for a 10-minute walk after your lunch.
• 28:29
  Philip Pape: It might be like an episode I recently did talking about walking snacks, it might be every half hour, walk for two minutes.
• 28:35
  Philip Pape: And that not only does that give you the steps, it actually improves your blood flow, improves your inflammation, improves your insulin sensitivity.
• 28:43
  Philip Pape: It's insane.
• 28:44
  Philip Pape: It's just not sitting is insane in how beneficial it is.
• 28:47
  Philip Pape: So I would start where you're at, I would slowly chip away and increase it.
• 28:51
  Philip Pape: I'll give you a quick client case study.
• 28:53
  Philip Pape: Gentleman I worked with had lifted for 20 years, lots of muscle.
• 28:56
  Philip Pape: If you saw him, you'd be like, I don't want to get in a fight with that guy, you know, beard, big guy, lawyer.
• 29:01
  Philip Pape: And he had no problem with his lifting.
• 29:02
  Philip Pape: That wasn't the concern.
• 29:04
  Philip Pape: He wanted to lose a little bit of fat and he wanted to improve his health.
• 29:07
  Philip Pape: Well, we started that, but before we even got into a fat loss phase, we said, you know what, you don't walk very much.
• 29:12
  Philip Pape: You walk 3,000 steps a day.
• 29:14
  Philip Pape: Let's increase that to like six.
• 29:15
  Philip Pape: His resting heart rate went from like 75 to about 50 in a few weeks.
• 29:20
  Philip Pape: I mean, that's how impactful and powerful walking is.
• 29:23
  Philip Pape: So that's the starting point.
• 29:25
  Philip Pape: When you mentioned the weighted vest, I'll say if you're comparing it to strength training, it gets blown out of the water.
• 29:30
  Philip Pape: There's no comparison.
• 29:32
  Philip Pape: A weighted vest is a nice tool to make walking a little harder.
• 29:35
  Philip Pape: And if you're worried about bone health, you got to lift weights.
• 29:38
  Philip Pape: But if you're worried about like not dying of being sedentary, a weighted vest can help.
• 29:42
  Philip Pape: I hate to be a little cheeky about it, but that's effectively a weighted vest is like rucking.
• 29:46
  Philip Pape: It's like throwing on a bag and just making it a little harder.
• 29:48
  Philip Pape: That's my opinion.
• 29:49
  Philip Pape: Exactly.
• 29:50
  Philip Pape: I'm with you.
• 29:51
  Jenn Trepeck: And one of the things that I really appreciate about how you just explained all that and all the examples that you gave is that you also touched on, I'm gonna tell everybody, go rewind and listen to this.
• 30:01
  Jenn Trepeck: Because what you talked about was also how to personalize the schedule, how to actually make it happen and get it in.
• 30:10
  Jenn Trepeck: Because so often we're in this space and the information coming at us isn't enough.
• 30:17
  Jenn Trepeck: Is it long enough?
• 30:18
  Jenn Trepeck: Is it hard enough?
• 30:19
  Jenn Trepeck: Is it sweaty enough?
• 30:21
  Jenn Trepeck: And when we start to look at those things versus the examples you just gave, like two minutes of walking each hour, that wouldn't compute in the enough category that comes at us.
• 30:35
  Philip Pape: Oh, yeah, with the stories of like, you know, 12,000 steps a day, look at me, you know, and it's using an influencer that's showing them you their perfect routine, which none of them actually have those routines, let's be honest.
• 30:46
  Philip Pape: But the walking piece, look, if you're not lifting weights and you're getting, say, 6,000 steps a day, I think lifting weights is your low-hanging fruit, right?
• 30:53
  Philip Pape: If you're lifting and eating well, but you're sedentary all day, maybe that's the low-hanging fruit.
• 30:59
  Philip Pape: So it's all part of the system, and that's where you have to assess where you are and kind of pick the best place to start right now to be efficient.
• 31:04
  Philip Pape: That'll give you the biggest improvement in the short term for the least amount of, I hate to say the least amount of effort, because some things are hard, but they get it you most efficiently, which for many of us that means time.
• 31:15
  Philip Pape: Like we want to put it in the world.
• 31:16
  Philip Pape: I was gonna say least amount of upheaval.
• 31:18
  Philip Pape: Yeah, upheaval.
• 31:18
  Philip Pape: There you go, least amount of chaos and friction.
• 31:21
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 31:22
  Jenn Trepeck: All right.
• 31:22
  Jenn Trepeck: I think I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you this question because you have an episode or many where you talk about adapting to injuries and still strength training, still moving even around the injured area.
• 31:42
  Jenn Trepeck: Can you speak to that a little bit?
• 31:43
  Jenn Trepeck: Because I hear it all the time, where the injury, and sometimes rightfully so, makes people fearful and so they back off completely.
• 31:54
  Philip Pape: Well, I mentioned my wife, she has knee osteoarthritis.
• 31:57
  Philip Pape: My 13-year-old just dislocated her knee yesterday because she's growing really fast.
• 32:01
  Philip Pape: She top heavy, grew fast, right?
• 32:03
  Philip Pape: And so she dislocated her knee and I, you know, had a shoulder surgery a couple years ago.
• 32:09
  Philip Pape: I'm not related to lifting, just long-term repetition.
• 32:13
  Philip Pape: And anyway, that's not the point.
• 32:15
  Philip Pape: So we know that use of a muscle is so important for a variety of reasons for its healing and for injury prevention as well.
• 32:23
  Philip Pape: Not just strength.
• 32:25
  Philip Pape: Strength is extremely important when we think of the shoulder girdle, how the shoulder is not even a closed system.
• 32:30
  Philip Pape: It's got like a loose bone, the humerus, and then a socket, and they're separate.
• 32:33
  Philip Pape: It's amazing when you look at the anatomy.
• 32:35
  Philip Pape: And so you lift your arm up and then it kind of sits into that.
• 32:38
  Philip Pape: The muscles are what, and the rotator cuff is what's helping support that, right?
• 32:42
  Philip Pape: So if you're not, even if you have an injury like I did, I kept training around it so that when I had the surgery and could recover afterward, it was easier.
• 32:50
  Philip Pape: Same thing with a back surgery, right?
• 32:52
  Philip Pape: Like people get super fearful, but actually might help to deadlift or whatever.
• 32:56
  Philip Pape: Again, with guidance, this is not medical advice, of course.
• 32:59
  Philip Pape: You gotta, you know.
• 33:00
  Philip Pape: Of course, we are not here to diagnose, treat care, prevent any disease ever.
• 33:03
  Philip Pape: But there are things like blood flow and scar tissue that are huge.
• 33:06
  Philip Pape: Scar tissue alone is probably the root of most people's long-term problems.
• 33:11
  Philip Pape: Even when you do everything right, scar tissue can develop because you keep things immobile, like in a sling or using crutches or not using your knee.
• 33:19
  Philip Pape: Like when you have a knee replacement, they tell you to walk right away, right away.
• 33:22
  Philip Pape: Because scar tissue can develop and just think of that as like really hard, almost like dead tissue in there that's tightening everything together.
• 33:29
  Philip Pape: And unless you break it up later on with like aggressive massage or even another surgery, the best way to prevent it is to actually use it.
• 33:37
  Philip Pape: So, what I've learned from my physical therapists who are also barbell trainers is that, you know, heavy weight is not to be feared and can actually help when it comes to training through it, but you never want to do something that's painful.
• 33:50
  Philip Pape: Like, don't do something that's just sharp pain, acute pain.
• 33:53
  Philip Pape: Like that's a recipe for disaster.
• 33:55
  Philip Pape: But if you can find alternatives, I did a whole, oh, I don't know if I did an episode about it.
• 33:59
  Philip Pape: I might have or might have been in my group.
• 34:01
  Philip Pape: I talked about all the ways you can vary a single lift to experiment and test whether this works for you.
• 34:07
  Philip Pape: Do the assessment, do the test.
• 34:09
  Philip Pape: You could go with a neutral grip.
• 34:11
  Philip Pape: You can go with a narrow grip.
• 34:12
  Philip Pape: You can use a partial range of motion, right?
• 34:15
  Philip Pape: There's like 10 different things you can step through that that are variables that you can change to see if the same exact lift can be done, but just in a slightly different way.
• 34:23
  Philip Pape: So, yeah, there's you should definitely train around and through healing without exacerbating and without causing pain.
• 34:31
  Jenn Trepeck: Awesome.
• 34:32
  Jenn Trepeck: All right.
• 34:33
  Jenn Trepeck: I want to go back to a tab of your story that's really about, you know, during the pandemic, you build a home gym.
• 34:39
  Jenn Trepeck: And you've mentioned barbell and dumbbells and microplates and different kinds of equipment.
• 34:44
  Jenn Trepeck: And, you know, yes, we're out of the pandemic.
• 34:47
  Jenn Trepeck: I do think a lot of people are still working out at home.
• 34:51
  Jenn Trepeck: I am, you know, I go into a studio less often than before the pandemic, even though things are back.
• 34:58
  Jenn Trepeck: So, what do you recommend for people building out their home gym so that they have the tools to personalize, to adapt, and improve?
• 35:09
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I did uh episode eight.
• 35:10
  Philip Pape: Crazy.
• 35:11
  Philip Pape: Episode eight was like years ago.
• 35:13
  Philip Pape: And I actually re-released it not long ago because I listened to it and said, you know what?
• 35:16
  Philip Pape: It kind of holds up.
• 35:18
  Philip Pape: What's the principle and then what's the specific?
• 35:20
  Philip Pape: The principle is that you want to get slowly stronger over time.
• 35:24
  Philip Pape: If that's the principle, and we know we do that through load or resistance training, you need tools that can apply more load over time.
• 35:29
  Philip Pape: Now, I know some people who have really cool niche expertise in like TRX machine, you know, suspension trainers, banded work, calisthenics, and they're like, you know what, you could get stronger for a long time doing that.
• 35:41
  Philip Pape: Fine.
• 35:41
  Philip Pape: That is not my expertise.
• 35:43
  Philip Pape: I come from the world of like simple gravity-based resistance that we know for decades and decades, have like the movements have been tested out by bodybuilders and power lifters and you know, physique people.
• 35:55
  Philip Pape: So adjustable dumbbells or dumbbells, if you're talking about saving as much space as possible, that and a bench can get you somewhere.
• 36:01
  Philip Pape: It really can, you know.
• 36:03
  Philip Pape: Adjustable dumbbells don't take up much space, and neither does the bench, and there you go.
• 36:06
  Philip Pape: If you have a little bit of more space, which most people do, like people make excuses, but most people have the room.
• 36:12
  Philip Pape: A power rack that has like a pull-up bar, safety features, you know, spotter arms and whatnot, plus a bench and a bar is gonna take you the next two years, you don't even need to supplement and you can make massive progress.
• 36:25
  Philip Pape: Beyond that, toys, it's toys.
• 36:27
  Philip Pape: Like I work in my home gym.
• 36:29
  Jenn Trepeck: I respect that.
• 36:30
  Jenn Trepeck: I respect that.
• 36:31
  Philip Pape: I do have a lot of specialized equipment, like developers and leg press and all this fun stuff.
• 36:35
  Philip Pape: But for a lot of people, if you can get to a commercial gym like within less than 10-minute commute, that's probably a good place to start just to play around with it and see what works for you.
• 36:44
  Philip Pape: And then you could do the power rack and bar.
• 36:46
  Philip Pape: And the whole investment's probably less than two grand, even in today's inflationary market, to get that set up.
• 36:51
  Jenn Trepeck: Yeah.
• 36:52
  Jenn Trepeck: Awesome.
• 36:52
  Jenn Trepeck: All right.
• 36:53
  Jenn Trepeck: Wrapping this up, we've talked about your adapt framework and personalizing all this movement and our mindset.
• 37:03
  Jenn Trepeck: And, you know, you and I are both big on mindset.
• 37:06
  Jenn Trepeck: You know, your show is wits and weights, right?
• 37:08
  Jenn Trepeck: Also great name.
• 37:10
  Jenn Trepeck: Maybe to wrap this up, what are some of the keys that you want people to know or think about in terms of that mindset piece?
• 37:19
  Philip Pape: Well, why don't we do this for each one?
• 37:21
  Philip Pape: Let me just come up with something real quick.
• 37:22
  Philip Pape: So for assess, it's forget the scale as the thing that you're assessing.
• 37:29
  Philip Pape: Like the scale needs to be assessed, but find the other thing right now in your life that's giving you the most frustration and spell it out, you know, and put it into words.
• 37:38
  Philip Pape: And that might be like an a Y type exercise, a five Y, where, you know, why am I doing this?
• 37:43
  Philip Pape: Okay, I'm doing it because I want to look great.
• 37:44
  Philip Pape: No, no, no.
• 37:45
  Philip Pape: Why are you doing this?
• 37:46
  Philip Pape: Well, because I want to be strong.
• 37:47
  Philip Pape: Why are you doing and go all the way through to the deep thing?
• 37:49
  Philip Pape: I think that helps you know what to assess, right?
• 37:52
  Philip Pape: So that's a little psychology.
• 37:53
  Philip Pape: We get to the do, and I think a lot of us are perfectionists, paralysis by analysis.
• 37:59
  Philip Pape: That's why I say it's got to be an early step and don't wait to assess everything.
• 38:02
  Philip Pape: I almost do those at the same time.
• 38:04
  Philip Pape: It's like start assessing and start doing, and you're going to help the assessment while you do.
• 38:09
  Philip Pape: You know what I mean?
• 38:10
  Philip Pape: You kind of can't feed off each other just right behind a slight lag because you're afraid of picking the wrong plan.
• 38:15
  Philip Pape: Well, you don't know if it's right or wrong until you go through the whole framework.
• 38:18
  Philip Pape: So who cares?
• 38:19
  Philip Pape: Just do it.
• 38:19
  Philip Pape: You got to get the data.
• 38:20
  Philip Pape: When it comes to the analyzing, I think I did mention the lack of inconsistent data collection is the problem, whether it's with lifting or food or whatever.
• 38:30
  Philip Pape: I get people come to me saying, like, I'm frustrated, this is not working.
• 38:33
  Philip Pape: And I say, Well, give me your last month of data.
• 38:35
  Philip Pape: Oh, I wasn't tracking the XLA.
• 38:37
  Philip Pape: Okay, all right.
• 38:38
  Philip Pape: Let's take a step back.
• 38:40
  Philip Pape: And before trying to come up with a solution to a problem we don't know exists or we don't know why it exists, let's go back and assess.
• 38:45
  Philip Pape: So you don't need to be per have perfect data, but just consistent data, right?
• 38:49
  Philip Pape: That's really, really important.
• 38:50
  Philip Pape: If you're gonna go on vacation and not track for a week, cool.
• 38:52
  Philip Pape: I want you to do that.
• 38:53
  Philip Pape: We should have fun.
• 38:54
  Philip Pape: You get back, you get right back on it.
• 38:56
  Philip Pape: For pivot, it's I mentioned this already, but it's worth repeating one thing at a time, guys.
• 39:01
  Philip Pape: One thing at a time.
• 39:03
  Philip Pape: People want to change everything.
• 39:04
  Philip Pape: I had a client who wanted to go on TRT, start taking creatine, start gaining weight, change from low carb to high carb all at once.
• 39:12
  Philip Pape: They said, Well, we can, but I'll tell you what, you're gonna get your result about five months from now when you do it that way.
• 39:17
  Philip Pape: If you change one thing, you're gonna get each result updated a few weeks at a time, right?
• 39:22
  Philip Pape: Like it makes it actually speeds up the process when you don't try to change too much at once.
• 39:26
  Philip Pape: And then my last one is my favorite one for testing impatience.
• 39:31
  Philip Pape: People are impatient, they don't want to wait till the result comes out, and a lot of this comes through scale obsession.
• 39:38
  Philip Pape: But the nice thing about having gone through the ADAP part of the process is you got so much good objective information that you can assuage yourself with usually that sometimes the help of a coach or a community to say, you know what, you're actually doing great.
• 39:52
  Philip Pape: Like you're getting stronger, your numbers are going up, your waist size is holding.
• 39:56
  Philip Pape: Who cares what's happening in the scale?
• 39:57
  Philip Pape: You're feeling better, right?
• 39:58
  Philip Pape: You're sleeping better, all right.
• 39:59
  Philip Pape: And You're able to kind of reframe the wins.
• 40:03
  Jenn Trepeck: Awesome.
• 40:03
  Jenn Trepeck: All right.
• 40:04
  Jenn Trepeck: It's time for a rapid fire off-topic questions.
• 40:06
  Jenn Trepeck: You ready?
• 40:07
  Jenn Trepeck: Sure.
• 40:08
  Jenn Trepeck: All right.
• 40:08
  Jenn Trepeck: What's the best thing you've done for your health this week?
• 40:11
  Jenn Trepeck: What's the naughtyest thing you've done?
• 40:12
  Jenn Trepeck: Not that anything's really naughty.
• 40:14
  Jenn Trepeck: Let's call it like the salad of your week and the fries of your week.
• 40:17
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 40:17
  Philip Pape: The best thing I've done for my health, I started going to physical therapy a few weeks ago.
• 40:21
  Philip Pape: So actually showing up and getting my shoulder capsule massage is absolutely amazing.
• 40:28
  Philip Pape: And it led to one of my answers to the questions today when you asked about injury, talking about scar tissue.
• 40:33
  Philip Pape: Okay, naughty.
• 40:34
  Philip Pape: I don't even know if it's naughty, but I took the family out to hibachi Saturday night.
• 40:38
  Philip Pape: Delish.
• 40:38
  Philip Pape: And just went hog wild.
• 40:40
  Philip Pape: I didn't drink alcohol, but I had like way more than I quote unquote should have, except I loved it.
• 40:45
  Philip Pape: Awesome.
• 40:46
  Jenn Trepeck: All right.
• 40:47
  Jenn Trepeck: If you weren't a physique engineer, what would you do?
• 40:50
  Philip Pape: Oh man.
• 40:51
  Philip Pape: If I wasn't a physique engineer, I would be either a lawyer or an astronomer.
• 40:56
  Philip Pape: Actually.
• 40:56
  Philip Pape: Whoa.
• 40:57
  Philip Pape: I know, weird, right?
• 40:58
  Philip Pape: I love legal thrillers and I've been in a jury.
• 41:01
  Philip Pape: And I remember one when I was in the jury, I said, these lawyers, I could do that.
• 41:04
  Philip Pape: Like they're not even doing that great of a job.
• 41:05
  Philip Pape: Like I could do this job.
• 41:07
  Philip Pape: No, not to sound cocky, but more like it looked like something I would enjoy digging into and trying to figure out.
• 41:12
  Philip Pape: But it then I read books about like the criminal defense system.
• 41:15
  Philip Pape: Like, I don't know.
• 41:15
  Philip Pape: But an astronomer, I've always been into math and science and outer space and looking at the world today.
• 41:20
  Philip Pape: And the Parker solar probe just went into the corona of the sun this week.
• 41:25
  Philip Pape: Fantastic.
• 41:25
  Philip Pape: Amazing stuff.
• 41:26
  Philip Pape: Awesome.
• 41:27
  Jenn Trepeck: All right, your favorite book on any topic other than your area of expertise, or you could give us a fiction book.
• 41:33
  Philip Pape: Oh, I see.
• 41:34
  Philip Pape: I was gonna say fiction.
• 41:35
  Philip Pape: It's funny.
• 41:35
  Philip Pape: Yeah, go for it.
• 41:36
  Philip Pape: Fiction sketch.
• 41:37
  Philip Pape: My favorite fiction book is Pillars of the Earth by Ken Pollett.
• 41:39
  Philip Pape: He's one of the best fiction authors, very intelligent guy, but it's also super accessible, like summer beach kind of thing at the same time.
• 41:45
  Philip Pape: And this was about cathedrals in the Middle Ages.
• 41:48
  Philip Pape: It sounds boring, but the intrigue of all the people's lives across the whole spectrum of wealth is amazing.
• 41:55
  Philip Pape: It's a fiction book.
• 41:55
  Philip Pape: It is, it's awesome.
• 41:57
  Jenn Trepeck: All right.
• 41:58
  Jenn Trepeck: If you could cure one ailment, disease, or sickness, what would it be?
• 42:02
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna say Alzheimer's because my grandmother died of Alzheimer's.
• 42:06
  Philip Pape: I have the both the genes that are supposed to maximize your risk for it.
• 42:11
  Philip Pape: So it's like a little bit of a fear in my head.
• 42:13
  Philip Pape: And I also know there are so many, there's like now 12 or 14 lifestyle measures associated with Alzheimer's that we can do something about.
• 42:21
  Philip Pape: I'm actually gonna do an episode about it because it's so powerful.
• 42:24
  Philip Pape: And it just affects so many people.
• 42:26
  Philip Pape: It's just an awful disease.
• 42:27
  Jenn Trepeck: Yeah.
• 42:27
  Jenn Trepeck: I know we should talk about that one offline because there's so much.
• 42:30
  Jenn Trepeck: Okay.
• 42:31
  Jenn Trepeck: If you were a superhero, what would be your superpower?
• 42:34
  Philip Pape: This is gonna, I don't know, this is gonna sound lame.
• 42:36
  Philip Pape: I was gonna say empathy, but to the level like beta zet beta's always have, like Deanna Troy, if she was not half human, you know, from Star Trek.
• 42:46
  Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:46
  Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:47
  Philip Pape: Where you could like not to the level of Mel Gibson in what women want, because that is scary.
• 42:52
  Philip Pape: Like reading women's thoughts, minds, yeah.
• 42:55
  Philip Pape: But more like the ability to receive emotions.
• 42:58
  Philip Pape: Actually, my wife is very much very good at that.
• 43:00
  Philip Pape: And I've always felt like I'm kind of a cold a-hole sometimes with that stuff in my head.
• 43:05
  Philip Pape: And so, and as a coach, it's maybe better.
• 43:06
  Philip Pape: But honestly, that would be an amazing thing if everyone had that power.
• 43:10
  Philip Pape: I'm with you.
• 43:12
  Philip Pape: What's your biggest pet peeve?
• 43:14
  Philip Pape: I don't have a lot of pet peeves.
• 43:16
  Philip Pape: I'm I'm I'm kind of a nice guy, but the use of the word ask as a noun.
• 43:20
  Philip Pape: Do you know what I mean?
• 43:21
  Philip Pape: When people say, What is the ask?
• 43:23
  Philip Pape: This is the ask, that annoys me.
• 43:25
  Philip Pape: I have a lot of grammar, I have a lot of grammar pet peeves.
• 43:28
  Philip Pape: Let's just put it that way.
• 43:29
  Jenn Trepeck: So do I.
• 43:29
  Jenn Trepeck: Stay off dating apps.
• 43:31
  Jenn Trepeck: Luckily, you're married, but like grammar pet peeves go to a next level on a dating app.
• 43:34
  Jenn Trepeck: All right.
• 43:35
  Jenn Trepeck: I bet.
• 43:36
  Jenn Trepeck: In your opinion, this is the last one.
• 43:38
  Jenn Trepeck: In your opinion, what's the next frontier in wellness?
• 43:42
  Philip Pape: I think the next frontier is it's either genetically customized health or AI, but I think they're gonna converge.
• 43:50
  Philip Pape: Like I think the two are the use of AI for massive data sets that are then personalized to tie it into our episode today.
• 43:56
  Philip Pape: I've talked to people in that industry, like not the founder, but one of the guys at Wild Health, and there's another company as well.
• 44:02
  Philip Pape: And they're doing a little bit of science and a little bit of hocus pocus with like inferring that you're a carb eater or you're a morning person from, you know, I don't quite buy that stuff.
• 44:12
  Philip Pape: I don't think the evidence is there yet.
• 44:14
  Philip Pape: But on, like I said, the Alzheimer's gene, I found out that way, it could inform better inform what you do.
• 44:19
  Philip Pape: So that's just another level of personalization.
• 44:21
  Philip Pape: For sure.
• 44:22
  Jenn Trepeck: Awesome.
• 44:23
  Jenn Trepeck: Well, Philip Hape, thank you so much for being here.
• 44:25
  Jenn Trepeck: Tell everybody how to connect with you, where to find your podcast, wits and weights, all the things.
• 44:30
  Philip Pape: Yeah, just go to witsandweights.com or search for wits and weights in your app.
• 44:33
  Philip Pape: I'm sure we'll have a link in the show notes, and you can get to all my stuff that way.
• 44:36
  Philip Pape: And that was my conversation with Jen Trepik.
• 44:39
  Philip Pape: If you want to check out our show, it's called Salad with a Side of Fries.
• 44:42
  Philip Pape: I'll link it in the show notes.
• 44:43
  Philip Pape: And if you missed Friday's episode where Jen was on Wits and Weights, go back and check that out as well.
• 44:48
  Philip Pape: If you're enjoying these bonus replay episodes, let me know.
• 44:52
  Philip Pape: Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or a rating on Spotify or comment.
• 44:57
  Philip Pape: Reviews help the show reach more people and understand what it's all about.
• 45:00
  Philip Pape: I actually do read them and I give shout outs on the show as well.
• 45:03
  Philip Pape: Thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you next time.