Latest / SOTA Personal Training Podcast / Get Stronger 101: 3 Keys, Stronger Than Austin Program

Transcript

Get Stronger 101: 3 Keys, Stronger Than Austin Program · SOTA Personal Training Podcast

0:01
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SODA Personal Training
0:04
Podcast. We help busy adults get strong
0:07
and fit and stay that way for a really long time.
0:10
I'm Coach Sean and I'm by myself in this one.
0:13
No fill today. He was busy in this episode.
0:16
I'm going to give you a one O 1 class on how to get stronger.
0:20
This is get stronger one O 1. OK, So get out your notebooks
0:25
and your pencils. Ladies and gentlemen, let's go.
0:27
Let's get stronger. Let's make 2026 your strongest
0:30
year ever. OK, Now for a lot of you guys,
0:34
this is going to be I just want to be stronger in my daily life.
0:37
I want to feel functionally stronger, right?
0:40
I'm going to talk to you a little bit about, you know, what
0:42
functional fitness is and what functional exercises are.
0:45
I'm also going to tell some interesting stories about me and
0:48
my own my own journey because right now I am I am going hard
0:53
on the get stronger journey. OK, a lot of you guys know been
0:57
joking about this recently, but I'm on the stronger than Austin
1:00
program right now. Austin from BAM next door.
1:03
Shout out to Austin. Talk a little bit about that and
1:06
I'm going to give you 3 big keys, OK?
1:08
There are three keys, three really key things you need to
1:11
understand that we're going to talk through and then kind of
1:14
some other accessory stuff that's not quite as big as the
1:17
three keys. OK, now can you guess, can any
1:20
of you guess in your head what the three keys are probably
1:22
going to be? I want you to just think about
1:24
it for yourself. What do you think the three keys
1:26
to getting stronger are going to be?
1:28
OK, kind of make your guess in your head and you see how how
1:31
accurate or not accurate you are as I go through this.
1:34
OK, because we all have slightly, you know, slightly
1:37
different goals. Getting stronger to you might
1:39
mean, OK, I want to be able to carry my kids all day long out
1:43
on the playground or whatever without having low back pain,
1:46
right? That functional strength, right?
1:48
For me, it might just be I want to be able to press some
1:50
dumbbells up over my head and do it with a heavier weight and for
1:53
more reps than Austin next door does.
1:54
OK, we all got different reasons for this stuff, but we all want
1:57
to get strong in general. Like ask anybody who comes
2:00
through this door here at SODA. Everybody's in a different
2:03
situation, you know, different level of fitness, whatever.
2:06
But like an overlying, underlying, whatever.
2:09
The word is gold. And almost everybody has is I
2:11
want to get stronger for one reason or another.
2:14
OK, You are going to learn how to do that in this episode.
2:18
OK, so the first key thing, and I bet you couldn't have guessed
2:23
this one, is the exercise itself.
2:26
It's the way you train. It's strength training with
2:30
progressive overload. OK, and you hear us talk about
2:32
this all the time, but we're talking about, for the most
2:35
part, picking compound exercises, right?
2:38
So compound exercises are exercises that involve typically
2:42
multiple joints moving and multiple large major muscle
2:45
groups. OK, So what are compound
2:47
exercises? Compound exercises for the lower
2:49
body are things like squats, deadlifts, lunges fall under
2:53
this category. I know so many of you hate
2:55
lunges, you hate lunges, but they're so good for you, right?
3:00
Things like bench presses, shoulder presses, overhead
3:03
press, things like lat pull downs, rows for the upper body
3:08
and a close. Of course, we could include some
3:09
core moves as well. OK, but a big part of this is
3:12
just selecting the right exercises, the key compound
3:16
exercises because these are the exercises that are going to give
3:18
you the biggest bang for your buck.
3:21
OK, so exercise selection is a big, big key part of this right
3:26
now. If you train here at SODA, you
3:27
don't even really have to worry about that.
3:28
We're going to tell you which exercises you're going to do,
3:31
OK? You're going to walk in and
3:32
coach Blake or coach Rowan or Coach Ben or whoever the heck
3:35
else is coaching you is going to be like, hey, do this, this and
3:38
this right now. Boom, you're done. 30 minutes,
3:40
bye. That's it.
3:40
We take the thinking out of it for you.
3:42
And yes, that was a shameless plug.
3:44
But like, to be honest, I don't know of anybody outside of just
3:47
the SODA member base listens to these podcasts anyway, so who
3:49
cares? You know, you guys are already
3:50
members here. OK, so exercise selection and
3:54
picking exercises that you get the best bang for your buck on.
3:58
This is a big key. Now I could go on and on and on
4:01
about just the the exercise portion itself.
4:05
This is the first big key. OK, so let's like without taking
4:08
an hour to do just this portion, let me go over like a few of the
4:13
key things that we should talk about when it comes to just the
4:15
exercise piece, the training piece, right?
4:18
You know, we talked about, OK, we got to select the right
4:20
exercises, the ones that you get a good bang for your buck with,
4:24
OK? Now you also need to push
4:28
yourself pretty hard, right? Not necessarily to failure every
4:33
time, K, but pretty hard, right? We talk about failure training,
4:37
and there's a lot of debate in the fitness community.
4:38
Should you train to failure? Should you not train to failure?
4:40
Well, this study over here from Harvard said that you actually
4:43
shouldn't. This one over here from Yale
4:45
said that two reps in reserve is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
4:47
OK, Long story short, if you want to get a good result, if
4:51
you want to get stronger, you need to push yourself pretty
4:54
close to muscular failure on a lot of your sets when you're in
4:59
the gym. OK, we could get really into the
5:02
weeds on what that looks like, but pushing yourself pretty hard
5:05
and picking a heavyweight, OK, I want to reiterate this to a lot
5:09
of you guys, OK? A lot of you guys, you still got
5:12
to get this through your head, OK?
5:14
This is a really important thing that you got to get through your
5:16
head, OK? If like let's say you're
5:17
training in a small group with me and you got your iPad there,
5:20
that's telling you to do this exercise.
5:23
You know, maybe it's a bench press with the dumbbells or
5:25
maybe it's a row with the dumbbell or whatever and it's
5:27
telling you to get 10 reps, right?
5:29
And you're like, OK, I'm doing the 20 LB dumbbell and I just
5:32
did 10 reps OK, I'm done. And then I'm going to come by
5:35
and I'm going to ask you, how many reps do you think you could
5:37
have done with that weight, right?
5:40
If the answer is significantly more than 10, you should be
5:44
increasing your weight, increasing your weight, OK.
5:46
And it doesn't always have to be exactly 10 reps, But the point
5:49
is, I want you to push yourself, OK?
5:51
I don't want you to be finishing each set that you do in the gym
5:54
on any exercise and be like, oh, well, I could have done like
5:57
4-5, six more. Now that's, that's not how we're
6:00
going to get stronger. That's too many reps in reserve.
6:03
We need to push ourselves closer to failure, either by just doing
6:07
more reps or more often than not, just increasing the weight.
6:11
Bump that weight up. Bump that weight up.
6:13
This is the thing that I'm always telling people because
6:16
it's it's something that a lot of people who, especially if you
6:18
don't come from an athletic background, it's hard to get
6:21
through your head. You're a lot stronger than you
6:24
actually think you are. A lot of people are kind of
6:26
afraid to lift some pretty heavy weights, OK?
6:29
But you, you, you trust me, you can do it, OK?
6:32
Having trained enough people, you can lift a little heavier
6:34
than you think you can lift for the most part.
6:37
OK, now people like Austin from Bam next door, he's an exception
6:43
to every one of the rules, right?
6:45
Like Austin can lift the freaking 100 LB dumbbells over
6:48
his head just coming in here cold and being like, hey Blake,
6:50
watch this. Let's make a video and show the
6:52
Internet that I'm stronger than Sean, stronger than Sean right
6:55
now, £100 dumbbells, shoulder press.
6:57
And then on the first Rep he's like, oh fuck, these are heavy.
6:59
But I knew it anyway, it was funny.
7:01
If any of you watched the Instagram video, you'll know
7:03
what I'm talking about. But anyway, so then of course,
7:05
he reps out five of them, just straight up vertical press with
7:09
the 100 LB dumbbells. And I'm watching this with a
7:13
little bit of admiration, quite a bit of jealousy, and just
7:17
thinking to myself, back to the drawing board here.
7:20
But Austin's the rare exception of someone who is not afraid to
7:24
lift heavy weights. And he also has some really,
7:27
really good genetics to be able to lift some heavy weights if
7:29
you've ever met him. And he's also a really, really
7:31
cool guy. And I just like to try to poke
7:33
fun at him a lot and to try to be stronger than him, even as
7:36
impossible as it might seem. But anyway, he's a rare
7:39
exception to that rule. More on that in a minute here.
7:42
OK, so, you know, we're talking about the exercise, you know,
7:46
selection, the intensity. You have to push yourself fairly
7:50
intensely. Now, this doesn't mean that you
7:53
should be working out for hours and hours, nor does it mean that
7:57
you should be lifting every day, especially not if you're going
8:00
to do the same exercises every day, right?
8:04
You know, a lot of people, people who work out here, I
8:06
always say that like even 2, but probably like 3, like let's be
8:10
honest, three times per week is probably the optimal thing for
8:13
most people. Do a full body workout with some
8:16
of these compound exercises three times per week.
8:19
Now if you only got 30 minutes, that's great.
8:21
If you can stay for 45 or up to, you know a full hour, that's
8:24
great too. You get a little extra benefit
8:26
from from that, right? But like 3-1 hour workouts per
8:29
week if you do the right exercises and take a rest day in
8:32
between each, you know, whether this is Monday, Wednesday,
8:35
Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, whatever, like this is
8:38
great. OK, me and my own training over
8:41
the years, I've probably gotten quite oftentimes the best gains
8:45
from just doing that. Just full body workouts 3 days
8:48
per week. That's one great option, OK, And
8:51
that's an option that I push most people to here, OK, just
8:56
three days a week, you know, it's some and even two days a
8:58
week, if you can only make it twice, that's great too, right?
9:00
But full body workouts, you know, three days a week is great
9:03
for getting stronger overall progressive overload, right?
9:06
So you might do same workout routine Monday that you do the
9:10
next Monday, right? You know, you might have a
9:11
different one Monday, Wednesday and then Friday, but then the
9:14
next week it repeats, you know, same 1 you did on Monday, same 1
9:17
you did on Wednesday, same 1 you did on Friday for 6 to 12 weeks
9:20
is great. That's great for you to be able
9:21
to see progress and to see gains on all these these exercises.
9:24
Progressive overload, right? And the reason you don't want to
9:28
do like every day typically, or you don't want to sit here in
9:32
the gym for three hours just trying to keep doing more sets
9:35
and reps is number one. You probably got a job and you
9:37
got kids and you got obligations.
9:38
So you can't do that. OK, So you shouldn't.
9:41
And then it's also just you're going to, you're going to go
9:43
backwards. You will go backwards if you try
9:46
to overdo it. And when it comes to getting
9:49
stronger, there is an appropriate dose of exercise and
9:54
the two other big key things that I'm going to talk about in
9:56
a minute here, But there is an appropriate amount of exercise,
9:58
OK, for most people. You should be training
10:02
intensely. Train intensely when you're in
10:04
the gym, OK, but then be done and give yourself a full day of
10:09
rest. Give the muscles a rest.
10:11
You know, on the days off in between, take a walk, move your
10:13
body, whatever. Play some Frisbee with your
10:15
kids, whatever. I don't know, Does anybody play
10:16
Frisbee anymore? Whatever game you play with your
10:18
kids, OK, I don't know. But you know, give your, give
10:22
your big muscles a day off and then come back and hit it hard
10:24
again the day after, right? This is great, OK?
10:27
There is definitely such a thing as overtraining in terms of
10:30
trying to get stronger, especially if you don't do
10:33
enough of tips number two and three, which some of you are
10:36
probably already guessing what those are right now.
10:40
We could get into all the scientific studies about why the
10:42
body doesn't do as well if you over exercise the muscles and
10:45
why it's better to give the muscles a day of rest in between
10:48
each training session and blah blah blah.
10:50
And you know, how does do the muscles actually technically
10:53
breakdown? Are you tearing down muscle
10:54
fibers? Did the scientific study
10:56
actually say that or is that not the accurate way to?
10:58
Who cares? OK, it's too sciency.
11:01
It's too sciency. Even the total bro nerds don't
11:03
even know. OK.
11:04
But the point is what we've realized over time, and you
11:08
know, bodybuilders and powerlifters from the beginning
11:10
of time have realized that in general it's good to rest muscle
11:14
groups one day after another. It's not that great if you just
11:18
keep training the same muscle groups every day as a general
11:20
rule, OK, As a general rule, taking some time for rest and
11:24
recovery, but you know, for each muscle group.
11:27
OK, now me and my own training right now I am doing what's
11:32
called basically an upper lower split.
11:34
OK, so I'm not doing full body workouts.
11:37
Like I said, full body workouts have worked great for me at
11:39
times in the past. Right now what I do is either 4
11:43
or sometimes even up to five or six days a week, typically a 30
11:46
to 40 minute workout and I'm doing upper body one day and
11:50
then lower and core the next and then back to upper body after
11:52
that. OK, so it is I am training
11:55
myself right now more than three days a week.
11:57
OK, and this is an option for some people, like we have, you
12:00
know, rare clients here come to soda 4-5 times a week where
12:04
we'll do like an upper body, lower body split, right?
12:06
Monday, upper body, Tuesday, lower body, Wednesday, upper
12:09
again. Thursday, lower again, even
12:11
though they're sick of doing legs.
12:12
But I'm like, hey, dude, you got to do legs again.
12:14
Even though I know you don't want to.
12:15
You get the point, right? So that upper body, lower body
12:18
split can work if you're the type of person who's like, I
12:21
really want to get after it and I want to be in the gym more
12:23
often, right? You just have to make sure you
12:25
don't totally overly tax yourself 'cause if I do like the
12:29
hardest leg workout in the world on Monday, well then there's no
12:33
way I'm coming back to hit legs again on Wednesday, if that
12:37
makes sense, right? But anyway, all that to say, for
12:41
a lot of people, the three days a week or even two days a week
12:44
full body training is great. If you're gonna go more than
12:46
that, split it up. I don't like to do a crazy
12:48
bodybuilder body part split where it's like chest day
12:51
Monday, back day Tuesday, shoulders Wednesday, maybe legs
12:55
Thursday. Like I don't like to split it up
12:56
like that. OK, up or lower or total body is
12:59
kind of my thing nowadays. Now the reason that I got on
13:03
this, this Stronger than Austin program, which is so much fun
13:07
because I did an in body like 5-6 weeks ago now.
13:10
It was right before Thanksgiving.
13:11
You know, we got the in body scan here.
13:13
A lot of you who work out here, you should be jumping in here
13:15
and doing an in body like once a month if you're not already, OK?
13:20
But I did an in body scan basically like 6 weeks ago now,
13:23
and it showed that my muscle mass was down like 4, even 5 lbs
13:26
from where it was before. Sad, right?
13:28
Shed some tears in the bathroom for about 20 minutes after that.
13:31
And then it was like, OK, let's get on with life, right?
13:34
And it made sense to me because I hadn't been doing a couple of
13:37
the things on this list adequately over the past, you
13:40
know, 6 to even 12 months, OK? I've been gradually losing a
13:44
little muscle mass over the past year because I hadn't really
13:47
been pushing myself that hard in the gym.
13:49
I also hadn't been eating quite well enough.
13:52
And spoiler alert for #2 right. And so then I'm like, all right,
13:56
well, you know, we got to do something about this.
13:59
I'm a personal trainer with a fragile ego, and I don't like,
14:02
my muscle mass is down and I'm clearly not quite as strong as I
14:05
was a year or two ago. And I need something to motivate
14:09
me to get this up. And then in walked Austin from
14:13
Bam in to do another workout. And I'm like, God, this guy is a
14:17
freaking beast. If anybody's ever worked out
14:19
with Austin in the gym here, he's just just a freaking
14:21
absolute monster. There's just muscle like popping
14:24
out of parts of his upper body that you just didn't even know
14:27
existed. It's like, God, this guy is
14:29
huge. And then I'm like, you know
14:30
what? I'm just going to have to get
14:32
stronger than Austin. That's going to be the name of
14:34
my new program, right? And Austin and I, we've had some
14:38
good bench pressing competitions and stuff like that over the
14:40
last couple years and it's always fun.
14:42
It's all, it's all love. It's all good fun and games with
14:44
a little fragile male ego mixed in there.
14:46
It's all love, it's all fun, right?
14:48
Oh my God, I'm definitely not stronger than him right now, not
14:52
even close. So I got to get stronger than
14:54
Austin, got to get on a new program.
14:56
So I told myself, OK, here's what I'm going to do.
14:58
I got to up the lifting volume and intensity a little bit and I
15:02
got to change thing #2 here a little bit, which of course is
15:06
the nutrition. I'll come back to my own
15:08
situation in a second here. But number two thing #2 key
15:13
number 2 is the way you eat. I know a lot of you just I
15:18
rolled in the audience. You're like, why is it always
15:20
about nutrition, Sean? Why do I always have to eat well
15:24
to get the results I want? Why can't it be I just show up
15:27
to the gym and I lift some weights a little bit and then I
15:29
why do I have to change the way I eat?
15:31
It sucks. I know it sucks, I know it
15:34
sucks. And in the words of
15:36
weightlifting legend CT Fletcher, if it was easy,
15:40
everybody would do it. If this shit was easy, everybody
15:43
would do it. OK, I'm not going to try to
15:44
mimic his accent anymore, but if it was easy, everybody would do
15:47
it. Yes, you have to change the way
15:49
you eat for most fitness related goals, OK.
15:53
And in terms of getting stronger, you know, you'll hear
15:56
us talk a lot about on this podcast about how to
15:57
recomposition the body, which is a little bit of a different
16:00
thing, right? There's some correlation between
16:02
the two, don't get me wrong. Like getting stronger will help
16:04
you have a lot of muscle mass, which is then obviously going to
16:06
make your body look better because of the muscle.
16:08
It's going to probably boost your metabolism a little bit.
16:10
Like training to try to get stronger will pretty much always
16:14
help your body composition, right.
16:15
So they're not mutually exclusive things by any means,
16:18
right. In terms of the way you eat,
16:20
Like, yeah, it can be a little bit different if I if, if my
16:23
main goal with someone is OK, we just want to lose 20 lbs, right?
16:27
All right. Well, the way I tell you, he is
16:28
probably going to be a little bit different than if we're
16:30
trying to get as strong as possible.
16:33
You know, I have a client like I'm just going to do it.
16:36
He I'm not going to mention his name.
16:37
He was literally I was training him earlier today and we were
16:40
joking again because I have mentioned him on the podcast
16:43
before and I'm going to do it again.
16:45
He's like, I know you're going to bring this up on the podcast
16:47
again, man, So why not? Why not do it right?
16:49
Shout out he knows who he is. He's like, I want to be in the
16:52
1000 LB club, which is where you, you know, bench press, dead
16:56
lifting squat a total of 1000 lbs.
16:58
But he's also like, I want to lose 20 lbs of body weight,
17:01
right? I'm like, OK, well, we should
17:02
probably pick one to go for right now rather than both at
17:06
the same time. Because if you try for both the
17:08
same time, you're just going to be kind of like a hamstrung
17:10
wheel. You're running nowhere, you
17:11
know, trying to get stronger in general.
17:13
You're not going to be losing a bunch of weight at the same
17:15
time, right? Because for the most part,
17:18
weight loss requires a calorie deficit.
17:20
And for the most part, yes, there's always a little room for
17:24
discussion here. But for the most part, getting
17:26
stronger requires at least eating enough calories to
17:29
maintain your body weight and even a little bit more like
17:32
we're trying to add muscle, we're trying to add lean tissue,
17:35
OK, So not mutually exclusive things, but slightly different,
17:40
right? So if I'm giving someone advice
17:42
on how to eat just to get stronger, OK, Well, the first
17:46
thing, and this is still an important thing, you know, even
17:49
if you're if you are just trying to lose body fat is get enough
17:52
protein. OK, get enough protein.
17:55
This is what I'm going to tell you.
17:56
This is what Phil's going to tell you when he does your
17:58
initial consult or starting point session with you.
18:01
This is what Coach Ben's going to tell you when you guys do
18:03
your focus call, when you start here, like we're all going to
18:05
say get enough protein and we're going to ask you how much
18:08
protein. You you're going to say, I think
18:10
I probably eat enough protein. And we're going to say, no, you
18:12
probably don't eat more protein because like most people, once
18:15
they start tracking it, just don't eat the adequate amount,
18:19
what we would consider optimal for building and maintaining
18:21
muscle mass. OK, so protein, protein,
18:24
protein. If you take nothing else away
18:27
from the nutrition portion of this rant, take away protein.
18:30
Got to get enough protein, right?
18:32
So that's first and foremost. OK, Now in my case, let's just
18:37
talk about my case, even though we probably shouldn't because
18:40
there are so many things that make it different than the
18:43
advice I give for the average listener and the average client.
18:46
But what the heck, we're 18 minutes and 48 seconds and it's
18:49
time to rant a little bit. OK, so like in my case, to try
18:53
to get stronger than Austin, I've steadily, you know, I told
18:57
you I lost 4 to 5 lbs of muscle. So I lost like 7 or 8 lbs of
19:00
body weight. You know, I'll just go over my
19:03
numbers. Heck with it.
19:03
Like, I was 209 lbs was it 7-8 months ago?
19:09
And then I was 202 lbs right at the end of November when I did
19:14
this in body 5-6 weeks ago, Right.
19:17
And when you're trying to get stronger, so like, you know, 4
19:20
to 5 lbs of muscle lost, 2 to 3 lbs of body fat lost over that
19:24
time, whatever, just getting skinnier.
19:26
Long story short, and not necessarily in a good way.
19:28
OK, Now why is that happening? OK, for all of you out there who
19:33
are like getting in your head trying to figure out all the
19:36
complicated stuff about nutrition and whatever, why is
19:40
that happening? Why is my body weight going
19:42
down? Well, it's 'cause I'm not eating
19:45
enough, OK? Who would have thunk right?
19:48
Now, the reason that this is different than the advice I give
19:51
for most people is because it's for most people.
19:53
Most people want to lose weight and therefore, you know, need to
19:57
eat less in general. You got to get enough protein,
19:59
but then you got to get into a calorie deficit, right?
20:01
So it's the opposite problem that most people have.
20:04
OK, Now my situation is just, it's very different just because
20:06
I'm on my feet all day long in here moving dumbbells around and
20:10
stuff like that. So I burn a lot of calories
20:12
throughout the day, right? OK, so I get it.
20:14
It's it's not the same situation as as lots of people, but it's
20:17
still the same situation in that in terms of nutrition, I need to
20:22
make some changes that are inconvenient for me.
20:25
OK, so it's the same thing that most people, most people who
20:27
walk in these doors, if you walk in these doors and you're like,
20:29
I'm, you know, maybe you're female.
20:30
You're like, I'm 180 lbs. I wish I could get back to
20:33
somewhere between 140 and 150. You know, I know I need to
20:36
strength train. I know I need to get on a better
20:37
diet that you know, is going to make me lose some somebody fat,
20:41
right? You got to make some nutritional
20:43
changes that are going to be inconvenient, OK, In your case,
20:47
it's probably going to be, we got to probably got to eat more
20:49
protein and more fiber, proteins, fruits, vegetables,
20:52
Whole Foods, things like that. And we probably got to cut the
20:55
junk and or the alcohol, OK? It's just, it's the way it is,
20:58
OK. We got to just choose more Whole
21:00
Foods and things that have protein and fiber.
21:02
We got to make some inconvenient changes to the way you eat right
21:07
now. For me, in this particular case,
21:09
it's OK, I want to build up some size again.
21:12
I want to put on some muscle mass again.
21:15
I mean, a little bit of body fat could come with it, but
21:16
whatever. Like in my case, I'm like, I
21:18
need to, I need to eat more, OK, I need to eat more.
21:21
And then at the same time, the reason it's very inconvenient is
21:24
because I am not going to just put a bunch of trash into my
21:27
body. OK, So that means this means I
21:29
need to eat more at various intervals throughout the day.
21:33
OK? It can't be like I'm just going
21:34
to slam a protein shake in the morning and then at lunch and
21:37
then have a big dinner with some carbs later.
21:39
No, it's like the reason you're losing weight is because you're
21:42
not adequately fueling yourself throughout the day and you're
21:44
not getting enough total calories throughout the whole
21:46
day. So we got to reverse that ship,
21:49
right? Same way most people who want to
21:51
burn body fat, who want to lose weight, you got to reverse that
21:54
ship if you've been steadily gaining 2 lbs every month for
21:57
the last year, right? Well, we got to, we got to
21:59
reverse that, OK? So we got to make some
22:01
inconvenient changes that get that scale moving in the
22:04
opposite direction. I don't care how we do it,
22:06
right? In my case, it was the opposite.
22:08
Like, OK, I just lost 7 lbs over the pen, a lot of its muscle
22:10
over the past however many months.
22:12
We got to reverse that ship. We got to inconveniently start
22:15
adding in some more food, even though I'm busy and I don't
22:18
really want to eat these healthy, healthy foods that
22:20
often, and I don't really want to spend an extra 100 to $200 a
22:23
month on groceries that I'm already spending, OK?
22:26
But we got to do it, OK? If I want to be stronger than
22:28
Austin, and I would give up my life savings to get stronger
22:31
than Austin, so we got to do it, OK?
22:33
So in my case, what did I have to do?
22:36
Well, I had to add even a little bit more protein and I had to
22:39
add in some carbs at various intervals throughout the day,
22:41
even though I don't really love eating carbs that much.
22:43
OK, not going to get into all of my exact calories and numbers.
22:47
It's it's, it's, it's too much, it's too hot to handle.
22:50
OK. But the point is you have to
22:53
make some inconvenient changes to the way you eat if you want
22:56
to reverse the current trend that you're on.
22:59
OK, For me, it was losing too much muscle and feeling like a
23:03
weakling. OK, for most people, it's
23:05
because and gaining a little too much body fat and we want to
23:09
start burning somebody fat. Now, the nice thing is, OK?
23:12
The nice thing is that even though like me and you in this
23:15
case, assuming that most listeners are in the I want to
23:17
burn somebody fat situation, we still need to do 2 things.
23:21
Really even three things. I'll talk about the third in a
23:23
second. We need to do 2 things like
23:24
exactly the same, OK, We need to eat high protein, probably a
23:28
multiple meals throughout the day, high protein and we need to
23:31
lift weights, OK. Because if you're trying to burn
23:33
body fat, you still got to lift weights hard.
23:36
That way you can maintain that muscle mass, OK?
23:38
Because when the body is, you know, when you're in a calorie
23:40
deficit, the body, if you're not sending it a signal saying I
23:43
need to keep my muscle, then it might just get rid of your
23:46
muscle and keep your body fat. OK?
23:48
No, that's not the most scientific way to describe it,
23:50
but that is pretty much how it works.
23:51
OK, so we both need to get high protein and we both need to
23:54
exercise. We got to do a little bit of
23:56
inconvenience stuff that we don't want to do, OK.
23:58
But this is just the way life is.
24:00
OK, So point #1 exercise, exercise selection, and then
24:07
point #2 nutrition. Now, one point that I probably
24:10
should have made earlier before I go on to tip #3 right about
24:14
exercise. You know, a lot of people talk
24:16
about like functional exercises, functional fitness, etcetera,
24:19
etcetera. OK?
24:21
I would argue that for most people, the main cut, the same
24:25
ones that I'm trying for the life of me to get stronger than
24:28
Austin on that don't look that functional, so to speak, like
24:32
incline dumbbell bench press, shoulder press, lap pull down
24:36
squats. I mean, squats pretty
24:37
functional. Let's be honest, they might not
24:39
seem like super functional exercises for the things you do
24:43
out in the real world or playing at the playground with your
24:45
kids, but trust me, they are OK. If you walk into this gym right
24:50
now and you go on to the dumbbell bench press, the
24:53
incline bench press, one of our standard exercises here and you
24:56
can lift the 15 LB dumbbells and you're like, oh, I wish I was
24:58
better at carrying my child across the playground.
25:02
And then all of a sudden you train for three months and
25:04
you're now lifting the £30 dumbbells.
25:07
I guarantee you your child's going to feel lighter on the
25:09
playground. Same thing with the lap pull
25:11
down, same thing with, you know, a lot of the core stuff that we
25:14
do definitely falls into the more functional quote UN quote
25:16
category anyway, right? So, you know, you got core
25:20
rotation, things like that with the cables squat.
25:23
I mean, I don't think anybody ever argued that squat wasn't
25:25
functional. But my point is, if you get
25:28
stronger at the same exercises that I'm trying to get stronger
25:32
in just to try to win this fragile ego meathead bro
25:36
competition, I guarantee you, you will be functionally
25:40
stronger at carrying your kid across the playground or at, you
25:44
know, getting up off the ground if you have a fall someday or
25:46
whatever, right? It's all very functional.
25:49
Anything that strengthens your muscles is functional.
25:52
OK? So we're training in almost the
25:54
same way, honestly, OK. We just have different goals for
25:57
it. All right?
25:59
Point #3 OK, key #3 is sleep. OK?
26:05
I bet you couldn't have guessed it right.
26:06
But it's still the one that even more than nutrition, most people
26:09
struggle with. Like most people that I talked
26:11
to come into this gym, You know, say you train here for a year,
26:14
Most people do pretty well with the exercise.
26:16
Come and train consistently, 2-3, even 4 times a week
26:19
sometimes. Most people do pretty well with
26:21
that. I'd say 7080% of clients that
26:23
come in here meet that goal. They do that part pretty well
26:26
and even push themselves pretty hard, especially when you got
26:29
Coach Blake blaring in your ear. Come on, you got that, bro.
26:33
Most people do pretty well with that, right?
26:35
The nutrition, we start to fall off a little bit.
26:39
I mean, I see probably half the clients make a concerted effort
26:42
at good nutrition and with sleep.
26:46
Oh, boy. I mean, it might even be less
26:47
than half because it's the hardest one.
26:49
Like, it's the hardest one. OK.
26:51
Like, let's say you're a young person in your 20s, Whatever.
26:53
Well, like all the other cool kids are going over to Barzia.
26:55
That's a bad example. I don't think anybody who works
26:57
out here goes to Barzia. All the other cool kids are
26:59
going to Cowboy Jacks or whatever the cool place in North
27:02
Loop is. I always use Cowboy Jacks.
27:04
Like, I get it, it's Friday night, they're all going there.
27:06
They're going until past midnight.
27:08
I used to do it too, a little bit.
27:10
Not good for your gains, it's not good for your fitness and
27:12
for burning body fat, but that's what you're doing.
27:14
If you're a parent in your 40s, you got kids that are in sports,
27:16
whatever. All of a sudden, why is hockey
27:18
practice until 11:30 PM on a Tuesday night?
27:21
It's school night and then they got to go up and go at 6:00 AM
27:24
tomorrow morning. Like who decided this?
27:26
That's like we're going to get like 5 hours of sleep after they
27:28
come home and scarf down to bowls of cereal.
27:30
Like this doesn't make any sense.
27:32
So no, you're not going to get sleep because society decided
27:34
that you're not going to get that good of sleep.
27:36
OK so you know in a perfect world all of us would be able to
27:41
get like 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night at the same time.
27:46
Go to bed at maybe 10, wake up at 6.
27:48
Yay whoo boring life games, hashtag games with AZ at the
27:52
end. Like this is how it works.
27:57
Just unfortunately this is another unfortunate reality.
27:59
This is how fitness works. This is how getting stronger and
28:04
a lot of times I would even argue how getting shredded, like
28:06
we've talked about before works. This is how strength gains work.
28:10
This is how body composition changes work is you do really,
28:15
really well at the boring stuff and you lead a boring lifestyle
28:19
and then you get a lot of momentum from that.
28:21
OK, so like the last six weeks ish since I started on this
28:26
stronger than Austin program, I mean, I've put on well three to
28:30
4 lbs of muscle back since then, right?
28:32
Over the last month or so, according to the scans anyway,
28:36
and have gotten significantly stronger.
28:38
Like, no, I can't press the 90 LB dumbbells up over my head on
28:42
a vertical press on the shoulder press for 9 reps, 2 sets in a
28:46
row like Austin just did yesterday.
28:49
But I did do the 80 fives last week for six reps, which was
28:52
pretty cool. So I'm not that far behind him.
28:55
But the point is like, I wasn't doing the 80 fives for six reps
28:58
a month and a half ago, OK, I could have maybe done the 70s
29:01
and 70 fives. OK, So I've kind of seen like a
29:04
10% increase in strength across the board just over the last
29:07
month or month and a half. And yes, I've upped the training
29:11
and, and better the nutrition a little bit for it, but I've also
29:14
been really on point with the sleep, like really on point to
29:19
the point that my fiance is like, can we please do
29:21
something? Can we do something fun on like
29:24
a Saturday night? And I'm like, we can have dinner
29:26
at 6:00 somewhere at a restaurant, but I'm getting to
29:28
bed at 9:30 because I'm getting stronger than Austin.
29:32
And then Austin will be like, hey, man, you want to go to the
29:34
Timberwolves game on Sunday? I'm like, I don't care if it's
29:36
Sunday. I'm not staying up past 10:30
29:39
PM. They don't start until 7:30.
29:40
Are you out of your mind? How would I possibly get
29:42
stronger than you if I went to bed at 11 instead of 930?
29:46
You guys get my point here, OK? Like, you build a lot of
29:49
momentum when you get pretty boring with your daily routines,
29:53
OK? Because even me, like, you know,
29:55
a fitness nut like me, I still have plenty of times throughout
29:58
the year where I'm like, you know, staying up till midnight
30:00
for some family gathering or whatever, got six hours of sleep
30:04
instead of eight, you know, didn't really eat that well on
30:06
these couple of days. Definitely didn't get enough
30:08
protein here. Whatever.
30:09
Like you know how it is, it's just life, right?
30:12
But over the last like 5 to 6 weeks in particular, I've been
30:15
like on it with all three aspects of this.
30:18
And when you do that now you're just you're building momentum
30:22
and you can like feel it every day.
30:24
You can feel your body getting stronger and getting more
30:26
energy, right? And once again, like, your goals
30:28
are going to be different than mine, OK?
30:30
And most of you are like, I don't know who this awesome guy
30:31
is. I don't care about getting
30:32
stronger than him, right? That's cool, right?
30:34
You just want to be stronger in your daily life.
30:35
You want to have more energy. You want to change the way your
30:37
body looks a little bit. And this will all work together
30:40
if you do these three things that I'm talking about, OK?
30:43
Because once again, like this is where I talk about it's just
30:45
like momentum. You can just feel it.
30:47
You're like, OK, I did an intense training, but not too
30:51
much of it. And then I, and then I rested
30:52
these muscle groups for two to three days, right?
30:55
I ate my protein. I was dialed in four or five
30:57
meals a day with enough protein in each one and some extra carbs
30:59
to fuel the gains, right? I got good sleep, couple nights
31:02
in a row, just building momentum, momentum, momentum,
31:05
momentum. And you just come back the next
31:07
time and you're like, heck, yeah, I can do five more pounds
31:09
than I just did on that exercise.
31:10
Let's go. You know?
31:12
And so, yeah, there, there's a lot like when you put those
31:16
three key elements together, right?
31:19
The exercise, the nutrition and the sleep and you do them all
31:22
well for a period of. I mean, most of you are going to
31:25
feel a difference if you do it like for three to four days in a
31:27
row, OK, Then if you go three to four weeks in a row now you're
31:31
crushing it three to four months in a row and you're going to be
31:34
like, OK, I look pretty different in the mirror three to
31:36
four years in a row and you're going to be like, all right, I'm
31:38
giving up my other job. I'm going to be a personal
31:40
trainer now, even though statistically personal trainers
31:42
are probably going to be replaced by AI just like the
31:44
rest of us soon. I'm going to be a personal
31:46
trainer. I look and feel way different
31:48
and everybody's is asking me for advice.
31:50
OK, So momentum in all three of these areas, exercise, nutrition
31:56
and sleep. OK, exercise, nutrition and
32:01
sleep. Now some of those accessory
32:03
things, the little things, right?
32:08
Where should I start? None of them are nearly as
32:09
important as the three big keys, right?
32:11
People are asking about creatine all the time.
32:13
Creatine's great. OK, I take the regular dose, 5g
32:17
per day. I've done it for like 5 years
32:19
now. The Reddit rabbit holes are
32:21
saying maybe I should increase the 10 grams a day.
32:23
I don't know, I don't really care.
32:24
It's working, it's fine, but it's not really a big deal.
32:27
It's like a 2% factor, if even that compared to exercise being
32:32
30%, nutrition being 30% and sleep being 30%.
32:35
OK, other supplements, you know, whatever, like out things that,
32:38
but if you have a nutrient deficiency in something and you
32:40
had your blood tested for it, yeah, go get a supplement for
32:42
that thing, right. Stress management like, yeah,
32:47
it's a big deal. I it's a big deal and it's hard.
32:51
We all got a lot of stress. Do your best with it, I guess.
32:54
I mean, things like other fitness goals sometimes like
32:58
other things can derail you a little bit.
33:00
Like if you're like trying to get stronger, but then you go
33:02
and like play pickleball for like 7 hours the next day
33:04
without eating any food or drinking any water.
33:06
And then like your muscles are just so depleted.
33:08
Like your body's going to come back the next day and be like,
33:10
Oh my God, I'm wrecked. You know, not to say you
33:13
shouldn't play pickleball, OK? Like most people should still do
33:15
some of those other activities, right?
33:17
But like my point with all this is, is like those three things,
33:21
OK, This is get stronger. One O 1 is those three things.
33:26
It's exercise, nutrition and sleep over and over and over,
33:30
OK, Repeat it with me folks. Exercise, nutrition and sleep,
33:36
OK. If you didn't write anything
33:38
down in your hypothetical notebook, I want you to write
33:40
those three things down, exercise, nutrition and sleep,
33:43
OK. And obviously, if you have
33:45
specific questions on how to do any aspect of that better, well,
33:47
that's what we're here for. OK, I think I'm going to leave
33:51
it at that for this one. Shout out.
33:52
Thank you. Thank you to all for listening.
33:54
Shout out to Austin. I'm, I'm going to get stronger
33:57
than you, 2026. I'm after you, OK?
33:59
I'm committed to this bulk because that's what this is.
34:01
This is a bulk, OK? This is a bulk from now until
34:05
end of probably end of April, OK?
34:07
Probably like 4 to 5 months. It's a hard bulk for like 4 to 5
34:11
months. And I'm going to be like 10 lbs
34:14
heavier than I was at the end of November by then, OK?
34:16
I'm going to be throwing up those 100 LB dumbbells way
34:18
higher over my head than you can Austin.
34:20
OK, so, so shout out to Austin. Much love and shout out to
34:24
everyone. Thank you for listening.
34:26
Come say hi if you're in the gym.
34:28
And yeah, have a very happy New Year and we will talk again
34:33
soon.