Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Why Training Too Much Is Killing Your Muscle Gains (Natural Bodybuilder Jeff Alberts) | Ep 244

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Why Training Too Much Is Killing Your Muscle Gains (Natural Bodybuilder Jeff Alberts) | Ep 244 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If you've been killing yourself in the gym, pushing every set to failure and feeling perpetually sore and exhausted, yet your gains have stalled, or you're constantly fighting injuries, fatigue and burnout, this episode is for you.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: Today, I'm sitting down with Jeff Alberts, known as the godfather of natural bodybuilding, to reveal why training smarter and efficiently, and not always more, might be the key to finally breaking through those strength and muscle plateaus.
• 0:28
  Philip Pape: You'll discover how to build muscles sustainably without the constant grind that leaves you dreading your workouts.
• 0:34
  Philip Pape: Whether you're a serious, experienced lifter or just getting started, this episode will give you a new perspective on training intensity and help you create a sustainable, long-term approach in the gym that doesn't burn you out.
• 0:47
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.
• 1:00
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're discussing the art and science of sustainable muscle building with none other than WMBF Pro natural bodybuilder, jeff Alberts.
• 1:10
  Philip Pape: Jeff is widely known as the godfather of natural bodybuilding.
• 1:14
  Philip Pape: With over 30 years of experience competing and coaching, he's helped hundreds of natural athletes achieve their goals through his company 3D Muscle Journey, aka 3DMJ, and for anyone who's been following him for a while you probably can appreciate his thoughtful, measured and, of course, evidence-based approach to training and nutrition, today you'll learn why constantly pushing yourself to the max might be slowing your progress, how to increase efficiency in your training and practical ways to build muscle while staying fresh both mentally and physically.
• 1:45
  Philip Pape: You'll discover how to manage fatigue intelligently and how to create longevity with your training.
• 1:50
  Philip Pape: Jeff, it's an honor to have you on the show.
• 1:52
  Jeff Alberts: I appreciate you having me and yeah, after that introduction, hopefully I can deliver.
• 1:58
  Philip Pape: You'll definitely deliver, my man.
• 1:59
  Philip Pape: So I mean just for the listeners.
• 2:01
  Philip Pape: Jeff's a really cool guy.
• 2:02
  Philip Pape: When I reach out to him to schedule this podcast, I usually send out some topics and things and he actually wrote back with thoughts on each idea and I was really impressed by that.
• 2:11
  Philip Pape: It tells me what kind of coach he is as well.
• 2:13
  Philip Pape: But, having heard him on many other podcasts, I wanted to bring him on because you as a listener appreciate that data and evidence-based approach and many of us we're in our 40s I turn 44 tomorrow after we recorded this episode and I'm always reflecting on how do I get the most out of my lifting without getting too much pain, without having to have surgery or have something hold me up along the way.
• 2:38
  Philip Pape: And, jeff, a lot of lifters feel like they have to push harder and they have to train with a ton of volume and they crash and burn.
• 2:47
  Philip Pape: Then they switch up their program, they stop making progress even though in the short term they might.
• 2:51
  Philip Pape: And so, for those who've been grinding at the gym, they go, you know, multiple days a week, multiple years, and they're not seeing the results they expect, or maybe it's slowed down.
• 3:00
  Philip Pape: What is the biggest impact on their long-term growth at that point?
• 3:06
  Jeff Alberts: I got to say happy birthday first.
• 3:07
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks, man you still got a ways to go.
• 3:10
  Jeff Alberts: Yeah, yeah, you got a ways to go.
• 3:12
  Philip Pape: I do man, it's all good.
• 3:14
  Jeff Alberts: That's a long-winded question.
• 3:16
  Jeff Alberts: That's pretty deep there.
• 3:17
  Jeff Alberts: We're talking about longevity, right?
• 3:20
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I know, man, I totally.
• 3:22
  Philip Pape: You know these opening questions.
• 3:23
  Philip Pape: I'm like how simple or complex should they be?
• 3:25
  Philip Pape: It's really like people wonder there are a lot of training variables and there's a lot of things you could change, and I think people change too much at one time of programming and the training variables.
• 3:46
  Philip Pape: But they've gotten the tendinitis, they've had the hip, you know, the labral tear, whatever it is.
• 3:48
  Philip Pape: You know they've kind of gone up or down and it felt flatlined, maybe for a while.
• 3:51
  Philip Pape: What's the thing that they need to change or think about first?
• 3:56
  Jeff Alberts: Understand pace, Because I mean, think about what are we trying to accomplish here?
• 4:01
  Jeff Alberts: You know, if we're talking about natural bodybuilding, it's a long man's game.
• 4:05
  Jeff Alberts: You're not playing nine holes of golf, You're trying to play 18.
• 4:09
  Jeff Alberts: So you got to learn about pace and it's like, yeah, we can look at all these shiny new toys that are out there and, like you know, we're gung-ho as far as trying to implement all these new things and, you know, trying to be really scientific, what it comes down to is what's practical and what is sustainable.
• 4:28
  Jeff Alberts: And for myself personally, you know, I always think about, like, what my current context is.
• 4:33
  Jeff Alberts: You know I'm talking about life context.
• 4:35
  Jeff Alberts: Same thing with my athletes that I coach like what does their actually daily life look like?
• 4:44
  Jeff Alberts: And then from there it's like, okay, what can we do?
• 4:45
  Jeff Alberts: What can we do that's going to be productive, but yet it's time, efficient and you're able to recover from it.
• 4:51
  Jeff Alberts: And then from there, of course, you can kind of build things out, but I think it just comes down to pace.
• 4:57
  Jeff Alberts: Like the reason I'm still doing it this long, it's kind of just understanding that I have to pace myself.
• 5:01
  Jeff Alberts: And you know I took myself back to my 20s, 30s, Like, obviously you can get away with a lot more things because your body is a little more pliable.
• 5:10
  Jeff Alberts: So you know, there's some things I was doing that I'm sure I could have gone back and say, hey, let me improve upon the approach, and it would have been more of a conservative approach.
• 5:19
  Jeff Alberts: I probably would have seen better progress because of it.
• 5:22
  Jeff Alberts: But now it's like I really have to pay attention to my body.
• 5:26
  Jeff Alberts: You got to pay attention to what life's throwing at me and in a sense, like I keep saying, just controlling that pace is just so important and you know it is.
• 5:34
  Jeff Alberts: We always want to get further ahead, a lot faster.
• 5:36
  Jeff Alberts: So that's the problem, Like sometimes we just get in our own way, in a sense.
• 5:41
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I've heard people joke, especially the older lifters, that no matter how much you hear this message on a podcast, it's like until you experience it you know you don't truly learn the lesson, and hopefully we can help people not have to experience more than they need to.
• 5:57
  Philip Pape: But uh, you have kids, right, do you have kids?
• 6:00
  Jeff Alberts: Yeah, I have kids, I mean, yeah, you tell your kids you're blue, your blooming face, don't do that.
• 6:03
  Jeff Alberts: Don't do that because you know it's going to happen.
• 6:06
  Jeff Alberts: But they don't listen.
• 6:08
  Jeff Alberts: And then they experience it and they're like oh okay, now I know what you're talking about.
• 6:11
  Jeff Alberts: So it's like I mean Sticking that fork in the light socket.
• 6:15
  Jeff Alberts: It's good to you, know, throw out some seeds, but I mean, you got to have them watered too.
• 6:19
  Jeff Alberts: I just got to let people experience things as well.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: So I think that idea of pace and it strikes up in me the idea of, when we talk about efficiency, finding that minimum to make progress without going past that point Right.
• 6:33
  Philip Pape: And there's a lot of discussion about overtraining, overreaching, building up fatigue and so on.
• 6:39
  Philip Pape: I guess, when it comes to efficiency, what's the prevailing angle of attack here for efficiency?
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: Is it minimum effective dose?
• 6:47
  Philip Pape: Is it like let's strip everything back and start from a very basic low volume approach?
• 6:52
  Jeff Alberts: What's minimum effective dose.
• 6:54
  Philip Pape: Okay, yeah, you tell me, what is that.
• 6:56
  Philip Pape: What is that?
• 6:57
  Jeff Alberts: I have no idea.
• 6:57
  Jeff Alberts: Like I know what it is for me because I got enough experience, I've tried on air.
• 7:01
  Jeff Alberts: It's so much to kind of know where that sweet spot is for me.
• 7:04
  Jeff Alberts: But if I have someone that I'm working with for the first time, I have no idea what they can handle, how they respond to it.
• 7:12
  Jeff Alberts: It's a lot of trial and error.
• 7:14
  Jeff Alberts: So it's like okay where science comes into play.
• 7:16
  Jeff Alberts: It's like okay that 10 to 20 sets you know general guideline Okay, if I'm working from that, if I have someone who's new to lifting, like 20 sets probably not going to go over too well because they don't have the skill level yet with things.
• 7:28
  Jeff Alberts: So it's like maybe 10 sets is too much.
• 7:30
  Jeff Alberts: Like I just want to focus on getting this person learning, teaching them how to move from A to B effectively, not so much worrying about the progress or the progressions with their lifts, more so like teaching them a skill.
• 7:42
  Jeff Alberts: So it could be maybe it's six sets a week and let's just really make those six sets Like, once you learn how to move, okay.
• 7:49
  Jeff Alberts: Now it's like let's focus on trying to move heavy things with that type of skill and improving the load, improving the reps over time.
• 7:58
  Jeff Alberts: And how are we responding now?
• 7:59
  Jeff Alberts: Is your physique improving from that?
• 8:01
  Jeff Alberts: If it is great, we may not have to do anything for a while, like we may not have to increase the volume.
• 8:10
  Jeff Alberts: Eventually, you might get to a point where they're plateauing out.
• 8:11
  Jeff Alberts: You don't see as much progress, strength kind of plateauing out.
• 8:13
  Jeff Alberts: Then the question becomes okay, are you handling this?
• 8:15
  Jeff Alberts: Are you low energy or high energy?
• 8:18
  Jeff Alberts: And if you're handling things really well, it's like okay, now I feel more comfortable giving you more work because you have the supply to keep it going.
• 8:26
  Jeff Alberts: But if it's because of fatigue, last thing I want to do is add more volume or more workload.
• 8:31
  Philip Pape: Yeah, that's a good starting point.
• 8:33
  Philip Pape: Then, if you mentioned evaluating the progress and then going from there, how does so?
• 8:39
  Philip Pape: I know I mentioned more experienced lifters early on, but there is kind of the different categories Somebody who's brand new to this versus somebody who's experienced.
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: Somebody brand new is probably going to be very responsive to almost anything.
• 8:49
  Philip Pape: So let's jump ahead a little bit and say they've been lifting six months, maybe 12 months at least, and they're looking for that point.
• 8:57
  Philip Pape: Are you looking for them to report out on RPE?
• 9:01
  Philip Pape: How are you collecting that data of the response session to session?
• 9:05
  Philip Pape: And then, when you say physique development, are you just measuring and you know, using body measurements or what's your gauge for that?
• 9:11
  Jeff Alberts: I think you use all the above.
• 9:12
  Jeff Alberts: So if we're talking from a performance perspective, it's like, okay, are the numbers moving?
• 9:17
  Jeff Alberts: But are the numbers moving with skill?
• 9:19
  Jeff Alberts: Because you can see numbers in a spreadsheet and go, okay, yeah, it looks like eight reps, nine reps, 10 reps, whatever.
• 9:25
  Jeff Alberts: It's like, okay, it looks like it's moving up, but then you watch the form, see how they're moving, that skill isn't there and it's like, okay, that's not being efficient, that's probably not being effective.
• 9:36
  Jeff Alberts: So, like you might need to clean form up.
• 9:38
  Jeff Alberts: Maybe you need to take a step back and go, okay, bring your loads down or whatever.
• 9:42
  Jeff Alberts: And let's again hone in on the skill and what I've been doing lately, even for myself, because I've obviously I've been lifting for a very long time and I take pride in my skill level and form and all that.
• 9:52
  Jeff Alberts: Like, whenever I get to a high end of a rep range with a certain load, I won't immediately go up to a new load.
• 9:58
  Jeff Alberts: I'll probably roll with it one to three more sessions just to really ensure I'm very competent with it, like I've mastered it, because I know when I do increase the load from that point I'm probably going to have the same type of skill with the new load.
• 10:14
  Jeff Alberts: You've probably experienced this, where you touch a load for the first time, you might get the reps a little shaky.
• 10:18
  Jeff Alberts: You're like, okay, I completed it.
• 10:20
  Jeff Alberts: Then you go to the next load.
• 10:21
  Jeff Alberts: You know, the following week it's like oh, it's just all over the place.
• 10:26
  Jeff Alberts: So from a skill component, I'm always thinking like okay, let's master what we're doing first, before even thinking about taking a step forward.
• 10:32
  Philip Pape: That's important, what you just said, because you're talking about load specific skill.
• 10:35
  Philip Pape: I think a lot of people think it's like one and done.
• 10:38
  Philip Pape: Like okay, I've been progressing, I've gotten better with my form, Now I'm good right.
• 10:49
  Philip Pape: Like no, like you said, the center of gravity shifts.
• 10:50
  Philip Pape: You know the balance, everything about it just slightly shifts the heavier it gets, and the bar path and all that could change if you don't change something.
• 10:54
  Philip Pape: So that's a powerful concept, jeff, seriously, that people need to think about.
• 10:58
  Jeff Alberts: What you think about is like it doesn't mean you can't continue to make progress with that same load, like you should be hitting the appropriate proximity to failure, even if it's the same load, so you're still getting a stimulus.
• 11:08
  Jeff Alberts: Your muscle doesn't know numbers.
• 11:10
  Jeff Alberts: Your brain does, but your muscle doesn't.
• 11:13
  Jeff Alberts: Your muscle knows effort and that's something like right now.
• 11:16
  Jeff Alberts: I feel like, because I am advanced, I can have no spreadsheet whatsoever, not even count or track anything, but I know I'll get a stimulus every workout and because of the skill, getting to the appropriate proximity to failure.
• 11:28
  Philip Pape: And is this generally?
• 11:29
  Philip Pape: We're talking generally week to week progress in a typical program, like a four or five day split where you're talking your your squat variant on Monday to your next Monday.
• 11:38
  Philip Pape: Is that generally what we're talking?
• 11:40
  Jeff Alberts: about.
• 11:40
  Jeff Alberts: I mean yeah, but I mean that's only going to last so long.
• 11:43
  Jeff Alberts: I I mean yeah, but I mean that's only going to last so long.
• 11:45
  Jeff Alberts: I mean eventually you're going to run out of like runway, like you're not going to be able to progress weekly, like the more advanced you are, you're like you might be able to get 10 pounds over six months.
• 11:53
  Philip Pape: In which case are you?
• 11:54
  Philip Pape: Is that even more biased toward rep progression?
• 11:58
  Jeff Alberts: Depending on the lift.
• 11:59
  Jeff Alberts: Yeah, yeah, okay, I mean, yeah, I think about you try to increase your loads every week.
• 12:03
  Jeff Alberts: At that point it's like, yeah, you're going to end up being buried.
• 12:07
  Philip Pape: I think a lot of folks are curious about that, because people get frustrated when they get stronger and they're not progressing.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: They know they've heard time and again okay, I'm intermediate or I'm advanced, my lifts aren't going to go up as quickly.
• 12:18
  Philip Pape: How do you get the sense of progress session to session?
• 12:25
  Jeff Alberts: Okay.
• 12:25
  Jeff Alberts: So let's look at I've been going to my son's karate classes.
• 12:26
  Jeff Alberts: Right, he started out as a white belt and now he's red black.
• 12:29
  Jeff Alberts: He's maybe a year away from black belt and like when I go to his classes, you know the expectations of a white belt, a yellow belt, blue belt, like it's all different.
• 12:39
  Jeff Alberts: So sometimes we expect to go from white belt to black belt, you know, and maybe the pace early on is faster, but as you get closer to black, like then there's first degree, second degree and it takes longer.
• 12:51
  Jeff Alberts: I'm assuming it does.
• 12:53
  Jeff Alberts: People are probably listening to Marshall, I just got a jet.
• 12:55
  Jeff Alberts: That's not true, but I'm assuming like going from first degree to second degree it's going to take quite a while.
• 13:01
  Jeff Alberts: Second to third takes even longer.
• 13:03
  Jeff Alberts: Like my son's master is a fifth degree black belt.
• 13:06
  Jeff Alberts: So like I can only imagine like when he first got his black belt, the fifth degree, it probably took quite a while.
• 13:12
  Jeff Alberts: Or look at olympic sprinters to get like a temp faster.
• 13:18
  Jeff Alberts: They're training like four years to make that happen.
• 13:21
  Jeff Alberts: Olymp to Olympics.
• 13:22
  Jeff Alberts: So I think the expectation is like the more advanced we get, we just have to come to the realization that things are just going to move a little slower.
• 13:31
  Jeff Alberts: And the thing is right now.
• 13:34
  Jeff Alberts: Because I've been training for so long, I appreciate where I'm at right now a lot, because I know how hard it's taken me to get to this point and I know how hard it is to maintain it.
• 13:46
  Jeff Alberts: So there's a level of appreciation for just what I'm capable of doing right now, even if it means I'm not putting on any more muscle.
• 13:53
  Jeff Alberts: And I think that's where some people fall short.
• 13:56
  Jeff Alberts: They're always like wanting to go, move ahead, move ahead, move ahead, take a step, take a step, take a step but they're not slowing down and appreciating what they're actually accomplished.
• 14:04
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and that's kind of the topic we're getting at today is, and that's why I think it's more relevant to more intermediate to advanced lifters is they want to see the progress they used to have and may not in the same way.
• 14:15
  Philip Pape: It's progress that has to be measured differently, and the question for some of them is how do I shift my perspective and what I measure to properly gauge that and not feel like I'm just plateauing?
• 14:26
  Philip Pape: Right, that's part of it.
• 14:28
  Philip Pape: And then also, I don't just hop to another program, like, okay, it's not working for me.
• 14:31
  Philip Pape: I'm going to go to Westside now, and now I'm going to go to the six-day hypertrophy program over here, considering that my audience is probably a normal curve but shifted slightly more toward less experience.
• 14:42
  Philip Pape: But not you know, what would you say to those people and I'm thinking a lot of guys my age who basically, like they started with starting strength or something like that, five by fives, and they shifted over to some sort of split intermediate programming and they're expecting, you know load to keep going up and, like you said, it's not going to happen.
• 14:59
  Philip Pape: So what do they switch to?
• 15:01
  Philip Pape: And I'm asking you what sounds like dumb questions.
• 15:03
  Philip Pape: I hope I know some of these answers, but for the audience, yeah.
• 15:06
  Jeff Alberts: No, they're good.
• 15:06
  Jeff Alberts: They're good questions and, like I consider myself someone who uses intermediate programming.
• 15:13
  Jeff Alberts: But I've mastered it because I know with intermediate programming the principles are in place and that's what it comes down to is understanding principles of training.
• 15:21
  Jeff Alberts: Once you know principles then you get a lot more comfortable with programming because you know there's nothing magical about an upper-lower split, a push-pull leg split, full bodies like all that stuff.
• 15:32
  Jeff Alberts: As you know, it's just ways to organize your frequency, your intensity and the volume.
• 15:39
  Jeff Alberts: So when you think from that perspective, it's like this week I can run an upper-lower split, next week I can do push-pull legs.
• 15:44
  Jeff Alberts: The following perspective it's like this week I can run an upper lower split.
• 15:50
  Jeff Alberts: Next week I can do push pull legs.
• 15:51
  Jeff Alberts: The following week I can do a full body split.
• 15:52
  Jeff Alberts: And as long as I'm, you know, hitting my baseline volumes, that what I need.
• 15:53
  Jeff Alberts: I'm able to perform it really well.
• 15:54
  Jeff Alberts: I get to the appropriate proximity to failure with skill, I'm getting plenty of recovery, I'm well fueled.
• 15:59
  Jeff Alberts: You know, chances are, across those three weeks it's probably going to be the same result at the end of the day.
• 16:05
  Jeff Alberts: Maybe some very tiny maybe differences one way or another, but we're talking like splitting hairs and that's why I wore a hat today, so I don't have to show my bald head.
• 16:14
  Philip Pape: I understand.
• 16:14
  Philip Pape: No, no, all good All good.
• 16:16
  Jeff Alberts: Oh, that's a joke.
• 16:16
  Philip Pape: All good.
• 16:17
  Jeff Alberts: Yeah, but I think that's just as an intermediate.
• 16:30
  Jeff Alberts: It's just like because you're not, because, in a sense, when you're a beginner intermediate, you're not where you want to be yet, so there's going to be a sense of urgency.
• 16:32
  Jeff Alberts: It's a double-edged sword, though.
• 16:33
  Jeff Alberts: If you're like pushing yourself too much or you're trying to flip-flop training programs because you're trying to look for this shiny object to get you there faster, but at the other side of the sword it's like because you're changing maybe things up too frequently, then you kind of lose sight of, like, what's actually working and what's not, because you're changing things out too much.
• 16:51
  Jeff Alberts: That's why I'm an intermediate programmer for myself, because it's just straightforward, it's very consistent.
• 16:58
  Jeff Alberts: It's easier for me to assess what's working, what isn't working.
• 17:01
  Jeff Alberts: Things that work, you keep it in there.
• 17:03
  Jeff Alberts: Things that don't work, you're like let me explore.
• 17:05
  Jeff Alberts: But it's not changing out the entire programming.
• 17:07
  Jeff Alberts: I might say, well, okay, this certain exercise, you know it's not really grooving right now, and then you find a different movement that's going to hit the same body part.
• 17:15
  Jeff Alberts: Let's change it out and see how this one works.
• 17:17
  Jeff Alberts: So I'm only changing one, maybe two variables at most.
• 17:19
  Jeff Alberts: Okay, now I know.
• 17:21
  Jeff Alberts: Like I ran this for two months Now I know exactly what happened with this.
• 17:25
  Jeff Alberts: One change was either positive or negative, and again, it's a positive, keep it.
• 17:29
  Jeff Alberts: It's a negative, find something else and eventually you keep evolving.
• 17:33
  Jeff Alberts: You keep evolving over time and that's how you get experience.
• 17:36
  Jeff Alberts: That's how you get more comfortable with keeping an intermediate program.
• 17:41
  Jeff Alberts: In a sense, keep it an intermediate program.
• 17:43
  Philip Pape: in a sense I like that you're almost qualifying the word intermediate as if it could be taken as an insult, right for an advanced person.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: I like how you frame that.
• 17:50
  Jeff Alberts: I can take starting strength and probably make it advanced running it, because there's a difference in skill level versus me now, versus me in year one.
• 17:58
  Jeff Alberts: I can almost guarantee you I probably make well.
• 18:02
  Jeff Alberts: I'm getting older, now it's harder to make gains, but you know what I'm saying.
• 18:04
  Jeff Alberts: Guarantee you I probably make well.
• 18:05
  Jeff Alberts: I'm getting older, now it's harder to make gains, but you know what I'm saying.
• 18:07
  Jeff Alberts: I can probably perform exceptionally well using that and recover well because of the skill level yeah, I mean, you're the poster child for those listening who don't know, jeff already white belt, black belt.
• 18:15
  Philip Pape: Right, there's a yeah yeah, look up, jeff, though I mean again, age is not a factor on this, he demonstrates that.
• 18:21
  Philip Pape: But you talked principles, and that's like the magic word.
• 18:24
  Philip Pape: I did want to come back to that because everybody has their like.
• 18:28
  Philip Pape: Here's my five pillars of lifting, or my three principles, and you'll talk about progressive loading or overload.
• 18:33
  Philip Pape: You'll talk about mechanical tension and talk about volume, frequency, intensity, like, can you simplify that for us?
• 18:38
  Philip Pape: Like, in your mind, what are those principles?
• 18:41
  Jeff Alberts: I think when we think about okay, so if you talk about, we're talking about programming, right, yeah, programming, I mean we could look at the science, right, Okay, we got to hate body parts two or three times per week, maybe four, but I think four is a stretch for most everyday people.
• 18:55
  Jeff Alberts: Even three can be a stretch.
• 18:57
  Jeff Alberts: Even once per week can elicit some progress.
• 19:00
  Jeff Alberts: So I mean sweet spots, maybe two or three times a week.
• 19:04
  Jeff Alberts: So you look at that volume.
• 19:05
  Jeff Alberts: We know the 10 to 20 sets thing.
• 19:07
  Jeff Alberts: But again, I lean more towards on the lower end.
• 19:09
  Jeff Alberts: When I'm starting somebody out, it's skill development first and then after a while you're like okay, maybe we can start gravitating higher.
• 19:16
  Jeff Alberts: But I think of that.
• 19:18
  Jeff Alberts: Okay, we're 10 to 20, somewhere in that ballpark.
• 19:20
  Jeff Alberts: Proximity to failure based on a rep range.
• 19:23
  Jeff Alberts: So we know through the science, anywhere between five to 30 reps creates hypertrophy.
• 19:27
  Jeff Alberts: So it's more about proximity to failure in relation to the rep range.
• 19:32
  Jeff Alberts: You're using Lower reps, you can be further away from failure.
• 19:35
  Jeff Alberts: I mean celestity within reason, and then the higher the reps are, you got to get close to it or very like a rap failure to ensure you are getting enough muscle fiber you know, while you're doing the lift.
• 19:49
  Jeff Alberts: So when you look at those principles, it's like okay.
• 19:52
  Jeff Alberts: So then from there, I'm like okay, based on someone's context, the question I'll ask somebody is how many days per week can you train where it doesn't interrupt your life schedule?
• 20:03
  Jeff Alberts: Because when you're in the gym, the last thing you want to be worrying about is I got to take my kids to school or my wife's upset at me, because I'm in the gym for three hours, or I'm there six days a week.
• 20:15
  Jeff Alberts: I'm not spending time with the family.
• 20:16
  Jeff Alberts: So when you're in the gym, you just want to be stress-free.
• 20:19
  Jeff Alberts: So that way, when you are lifting, it's just all about you and that's where you're going to get probably your best performance.
• 20:26
  Jeff Alberts: So once I know how many days per week they can train, then it's like okay, can I get the frequency two to three times, or does it have to be used to be once?
• 20:34
  Jeff Alberts: Because that's going to be practical.
• 20:37
  Jeff Alberts: It may not be optimal according to science, but it's optimal according to that person, based on their constraints.
• 20:44
  Jeff Alberts: So they're going to maximize themselves far better because they're doing something that's going to be lower stress.
• 20:50
  Jeff Alberts: And then from there you get into the weeds.
• 20:52
  Jeff Alberts: Like okay, let's talk about exercise selection, like, okay, this guy on this podcast said this is the most optimal thing.
• 21:01
  Jeff Alberts: I look at it as like does the exercise hit the muscle I'm trying to target?
• 21:10
  Jeff Alberts: Is it safe and comfortable for me?
• 21:11
  Jeff Alberts: Do I have good stability while doing it and do I enjoy doing it?
• 21:13
  Jeff Alberts: Because if those things check out, then it's a good exercise, regardless of what anybody else says.
• 21:18
  Philip Pape: Yeah, those are solid principles.
• 21:19
  Philip Pape: I like how you said this is optimal for the person, right?
• 21:21
  Philip Pape: Because at the end of the day, it ties back to what you mentioned earlier about pace and what's practical, sustainable and what is your life context.
• 21:32
  Philip Pape: I laugh when you talk about days per week, because for me personally and I've seen it with a lot of my clients that often is the thing, that's the main constraint, and if you're hung up on that or you get fixated on the other principles and so you pick this program and you just can't stick with it because of your life, like, forget about it.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: I also think of sleep in that regard, right?
• 21:47
  Philip Pape: Or fat loss, where you've got all this extra stress, you might want that extra day just to sleep an extra hour, and that can make all the difference in the whole week.
• 21:55
  Jeff Alberts: So people try to you know, I want to train six days a week because they think more is better, or the insecurity they think they're not going to make gains if they're not there.
• 22:04
  Jeff Alberts: Or some people just love to train to a fault.
• 22:06
  Jeff Alberts: Yeah, I would love to be in the gym seven days a week because obviously I love to train, but I also know that's not realistic to my life schedule.
• 22:15
  Jeff Alberts: It's also not realistic to my recovery and I've said this on other podcasts.
• 22:21
  Jeff Alberts: But I don't look at bodybuilders that much anymore.
• 22:24
  Jeff Alberts: To learn about bodybuilding, I look at other sports because they do a far better job at managing their performance and their recovery, because sports is all performance-based.
• 22:34
  Jeff Alberts: So you look at football, baseball, basketball, baseball is a good example of starting pitchers.
• 22:41
  Jeff Alberts: There's a reason the managers keep track of the pitch count and the number of days they're pitching in a week because they know if this pitcher is getting fatigued they're not going to have the velocity and the control on their pitches.
• 22:52
  Jeff Alberts: But as body lawyers we're like, hey, let's just throw 150 pitches.
• 22:56
  Jeff Alberts: To me it just doesn't make sense the way people think about bodybuilding sometimes.
• 23:01
  Jeff Alberts: So I'm like let me use these principles from other sports and apply it to my bodybuilding, apply it to my athletes and usually you get a nice balance, nice harmony with performance, recovery plus real life stuff.
• 23:15
  Philip Pape: Yeah, that's a great point because I'm big into sports documentaries now the ones like on Netflix.
• 23:19
  Philip Pape: There's one that just came out called the Comeback about the Red Sox Yankees 2004.
• 23:25
  Philip Pape: It's funny you mention that because both Pedro and also Curt Schilling they talk about both of them Pedro being pushed to well beyond his limit in the series that they lost in 2003, and then the manager was fired for it.
• 23:38
  Philip Pape: And then Curt Schilling, he had a tendon issue and he just could not pitch.
• 23:42
  Philip Pape: It was like the first game of the series in 2004.
• 23:45
  Philip Pape: And then when he came back the next time, they talked about how a surgeon like did this wonky, you know, stapling his tendon to his bone or something on his ankle to stabilize it.
• 23:53
  Jeff Alberts: Yeah, I remember the bloody sock Remember.
• 23:56
  Philip Pape: Yeah, the bloody sock, exactly.
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: So I'm like that is such a great example of taking what the heck do athletes do Tom Brady, getting 11 hours of sleep you know that'd be great to see what they do to manage this fatigue.
• 24:07
  Philip Pape: So I want to play off one of those principles.
• 24:09
  Philip Pape: Then that comes to mind is the proximity to failure.
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: I think there's a lot of misunderstanding there as well.
• 24:15
  Philip Pape: You kind of you reiterated the understanding that there's a wide rep range to choose from.
• 24:20
  Philip Pape: So let's get out of the old school, like strength versus hypertrophy regime or whatever.
• 24:28
  Philip Pape: But a lot of people do think they have to train like really right up to failure.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: And you know, I know Dr Israel Till and others have always thrown out the two to three rep range.
• 24:32
  Philip Pape: And then even more recent research, I think that Mike Zordos, the big main analysis that came out recently, talked about like six reps from failure even being effective so what is that?
• 24:43
  Jeff Alberts: what is that, though, like?
• 24:44
  Philip Pape: what do you?
• 24:44
  Jeff Alberts: mean like if I have like someone who's new or even an intermediate, yeah, what's six reps in the tank, like I don't even know what.
• 24:52
  Jeff Alberts: Six reps in the tank so far, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah it's even hard to gauge what four in the tank is for me oh, you're right, like rpe gets criticized for that yeah one to two reps in the tank, that that's pretty easy.
• 25:02
  Jeff Alberts: It's like hey, I can tell you like I need you to, like when you think you just can't do anymore.
• 25:07
  Jeff Alberts: Just when you mentally think you can't, you probably do two reps, you're probably really close to where we need you to be and without having to get like overly analytical on things.
• 25:17
  Jeff Alberts: And then failure is like I mean to teach failures like they'll just have someone do a tricep, press down or a lateral and say hey, I want you to go until you just cannot move anymore.
• 25:27
  Jeff Alberts: Then you get a better gauge?
• 25:30
  Philip Pape: Yeah, so what do you think of programs that are so?
• 25:32
  Philip Pape: We mentioned starting strength earlier and there's many examples of that that are sets across like get all the reps and then progress, the load type programs.
• 25:40
  Philip Pape: Again, maybe this is going more toward newer lifters.
• 25:48
  Philip Pape: They're not thinking of proximity to failure, they're just thinking get all the reps and increase the weight next time.
• 25:50
  Philip Pape: Right, not a bad idea to pay attention to, like take notes.
• 25:52
  Jeff Alberts: Hey, I hit 10 reps, I got the top end, but how many more could you have done?
• 25:56
  Jeff Alberts: Was that like if you barely squeak that out, or it?
• 26:00
  Philip Pape: was kind of easy.
• 26:01
  Philip Pape: And then that informs the jump for next time perhaps.
• 26:04
  Jeff Alberts: Yeah.
• 26:04
  Jeff Alberts: So it's not just, instead of just analyzing the numbers, analyze actually how it felt to move those numbers.
• 26:09
  Jeff Alberts: And it kind of goes back to what I said earlier, like even though I hit that top end and I hit all my reps across the board and first time I'm not going to, okay, jump to the next load, I'm like let me practice this.
• 26:21
  Jeff Alberts: Going back to sports, right, like people get better at sports by practice.
• 26:25
  Jeff Alberts: Let's practice that.
• 26:27
  Jeff Alberts: 100 pounds I hit for 10 reps.
• 26:28
  Jeff Alberts: Let's practice that one, two, three more times to get more competent with it, to master it.
• 26:40
  Philip Pape: I think that's undervalued.
• 26:41
  Philip Pape: Yeah for sure.
• 26:41
  Philip Pape: I think that's why people should stick with certain lifts for more than a couple of weeks, you know, at least early on, just for the practice alone, let alone the progress and neuromuscular adaptation and all that.
• 26:48
  Philip Pape: You mentioned, the getting the data and letting that inform your jumps.
• 26:52
  Philip Pape: I had a client text me and she said something like so my plan is to jump by this many pounds and then when I get to this load I'm going to drop it.
• 26:59
  Philip Pape: I said no, no, that's the kind of backward.
• 27:00
  Philip Pape: Get to this load, I'm going to drop it.
• 27:02
  Philip Pape: I said no, no, that's kind of backward.
• 27:03
  Philip Pape: Don't assume anything.
• 27:03
  Philip Pape: Three, four weeks down the road.
• 27:04
  Philip Pape: Let's judge session by session.
• 27:05
  Philip Pape: You may be able to go up higher.
• 27:06
  Philip Pape: I don't want to even put limits on yourself until you get there, or maybe less right, so that's good, all right, so you're a natural athlete.
• 27:14
  Philip Pape: There's a big distinction for natural athletes specifically and the life of their training and the expectations.
• 27:21
  Philip Pape: I think some people skew what they think they can get maybe out of bodybuilding or physique sports in general.
• 27:26
  Philip Pape: What are your thoughts on realistic expectations for natural athletes?
• 27:32
  Philip Pape: And I'm thinking muscle growth, but I really mean the longevity stuff we're talking about here.
• 27:37
  Jeff Alberts: I mean, everything comes to an end right, and that's with anything in life.
• 27:41
  Jeff Alberts: So I think here for me, like I thought about this the last few years, because I haven't really seen too much muscle size, like realistically I don't think I'm probably going to get any bigger, because I can tell my joints are kind of preventing me from lifting, probably you know, heavier loads and that type of thing, but also just age.
• 27:59
  Jeff Alberts: So it's accepting that like come to the conclusion like, okay, things are slower, especially with natural bodybuilding.
• 28:05
  Jeff Alberts: It's slower.
• 28:06
  Jeff Alberts: I think we just have to come to terms and embrace that.
• 28:09
  Jeff Alberts: But it doesn't mean you can't have a long shelf life with progress.
• 28:13
  Jeff Alberts: You've probably heard the five-year.
• 28:15
  Jeff Alberts: You know shelf right.
• 28:17
  Philip Pape: It's like Genetic potential in five years.
• 28:19
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 28:19
  Jeff Alberts: Yeah, five years, like I mean, that's assuming you're a perfect robot.
• 28:23
  Jeff Alberts: Okay, yeah, maybe you get all that in five years.
• 28:25
  Jeff Alberts: How many perfect robots are there?
• 28:27
  Jeff Alberts: First year, you're learning how to lift.
• 28:29
  Jeff Alberts: Still Second year you're like, okay, now I'm learning how to progress.
• 28:32
  Jeff Alberts: Well, so you're probably, yeah, you're making, you're starting to really move.
• 28:35
  Jeff Alberts: You're going from white to get into the brown belt, you get into the red and the black belts and things do start to slow.
• 28:44
  Jeff Alberts: But who's to say that it's over in five years?
• 28:48
  Jeff Alberts: You might see a little more growth from years five through 10.
• 28:51
  Jeff Alberts: Look at Eric.
• 28:52
  Jeff Alberts: Helms is a good example 41 years old and he's still making some pretty decent gains.
• 28:56
  Jeff Alberts: They're not as fast as when he first started lifting, but for an advanced lifter they're kind of fast.
• 29:02
  Jeff Alberts: It's like kind of seeing some nice changes and he's learning more about himself, though that's the thing.
• 29:09
  Jeff Alberts: He's learning how his body still ticks.
• 29:12
  Jeff Alberts: Even myself, as you evolve, you learn yourself.
• 29:14
  Jeff Alberts: Like years one through five, you might've done certain things.
• 29:18
  Jeff Alberts: Years five through 10, you started changing, you're evolving.
• 29:21
  Jeff Alberts: Years five through 10, you started changing, you're evolving.
• 29:25
  Jeff Alberts: And then years 15 to 20, same thing.
• 29:29
  Jeff Alberts: But progress is more than just putting tissue on, because if you're a competitive natural body or there's a skill component of learning how to diet, learning the pace of the diet, retaining muscle mass.
• 29:36
  Jeff Alberts: That's something that I learned in when I was 38 years old.
• 29:39
  Jeff Alberts: I got in our pro cards A little late in life, but I was 160 pounds.
• 29:43
  Jeff Alberts: Two years later I competed as a pro.
• 29:46
  Jeff Alberts: I was 170 pounds.
• 29:47
  Jeff Alberts: It was a 10 pound difference.
• 29:48
  Jeff Alberts: Everybody was blown away.
• 29:50
  Jeff Alberts: They're like there's no way this guy's natural.
• 29:53
  Jeff Alberts: He didn't gain 10 pounds of muscle in two years at 40 years old.
• 29:55
  Jeff Alberts: No, I just learned how to diet better.
• 29:58
  Jeff Alberts: I learned how to retain muscle better.
• 30:00
  Jeff Alberts: So there's different levels and there's different ways to create progress outside of just like I've got bigger muscles.
• 30:07
  Philip Pape: When did you actually start seriously training?
• 30:10
  Philip Pape: How old were you?
• 30:11
  Jeff Alberts: Well, I started lifting at 14.
• 30:13
  Jeff Alberts: I've always been.
• 30:14
  Jeff Alberts: I didn't know what I was doing, but I can go back to when I was a teenager.
• 30:18
  Jeff Alberts: I was lifting hella hard.
• 30:19
  Jeff Alberts: Like all I knew was lift hard and go to failure.
• 30:22
  Jeff Alberts: Early on I had really fast development from 14 to 17.
• 30:26
  Jeff Alberts: I packed on a decent amount of muscle and by the time I got to high school I was benching 330 at 165.
• 30:32
  Jeff Alberts: So I had some pretty fast gains.
• 30:35
  Jeff Alberts: And then since then it's kind of been like up and down, up and down, and that's just because of my knowledge level.
• 30:41
  Jeff Alberts: Like back then there was no internet, so I was like kind of just doing things on my own, trying to figure stuff out.
• 30:45
  Jeff Alberts: So there was a lot of ups and downs.
• 30:48
  Philip Pape: And when.
• 30:48
  Philip Pape: The reason I ask so selfishly?
• 30:49
  Philip Pape: But also again, I know a lot of guys like me who didn't start until, in my case, late thirties.
• 30:55
  Philip Pape: I mean, I did CrossFit for like eight years up and down, but that was not lifting.
• 30:58
  Philip Pape: And so I'm in my first one to five years, at the age of 44.
• 31:06
  Philip Pape: And I don't even know if I've taken full advantage of that.
• 31:08
  Philip Pape: But there's probably a lot of people wondering maybe, what's the potential for a 40-year-old?
• 31:10
  Philip Pape: What's the potential for a 60-year-old?
• 31:12
  Jeff Alberts: Okay, let me ask you a question, as you brought up for yourself.
• 31:14
  Jeff Alberts: So you've been hypertrophy lifting for five years, six years.
• 31:20
  Philip Pape: Since 2020.
• 31:25
  Jeff Alberts: 2020.
• 31:25
  Jeff Alberts: Out of the last four years.
• 31:26
  Philip Pape: How much of that time have you spent in a?
• 31:28
  Jeff Alberts: deficit Probably a year, so three years.
• 31:29
  Jeff Alberts: Are those three years like well-structured training?
• 31:32
  Jeff Alberts: I think so, yes.
• 31:34
  Philip Pape: I believe so.
• 31:35
  Tony: Nutrition's been on point.
• 31:37
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I mean, I'm a nutrition coach, I hope so yeah, there you go.
• 31:40
  Jeff Alberts: So you still, I mean, you've got three years of like really dedicated hypertrophy lifting.
• 31:45
  Philip Pape: Right, so there's a lot of potential.
• 31:46
  Jeff Alberts: Exactly, you're only 44.
• 31:48
  Jeff Alberts: So you still have, like, probably a good decade ahead of you where you can probably continue to maximize yourself.
• 31:53
  Jeff Alberts: Whether that's 1%, 10%, 50%, who knows, but the thought is is like I'm going to try.
• 32:07
  Philip Pape: I'm going to try.
• 32:08
  Philip Pape: I'm going to put that effort in, I'm going to make sure all the big rocks are in place and let's see what happens.
• 32:10
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I was going to ask a different twist on that.
• 32:11
  Philip Pape: The question was going to be well then, somebody who's older, what are they never able to accomplish because they started late?
• 32:15
  Philip Pape: And I think that's a terrible question because it doesn't matter it is right.
• 32:18
  Philip Pape: You know right Like, but people are thinking that you know right like, but people are thinking that you know people beat themselves up, like I wish.
• 32:23
  Jeff Alberts: I said when I was 20.
• 32:24
  Jeff Alberts: What's the worst that could happen?
• 32:25
  Jeff Alberts: If you don't try exactly, then you can get massively there.
• 32:28
  Philip Pape: That's where you're gonna fail is you're not trying yeah, that's good stuff, man, I have to say, for folks watching or listening like jeff peers deep into your soul and again, he's probably a really good coach for that reason I try to make the podcast as real as possible, like everyone.
• 32:43
  Philip Pape: It's good.
• 32:44
  Philip Pape: It's good.
• 32:44
  Jeff Alberts: You know how many sets should I be doing?
• 32:46
  Jeff Alberts: That's what I was thinking.
• 32:47
  Jeff Alberts: Let's be real.
• 32:47
  Jeff Alberts: Let's talk like practical Yep.
• 32:49
  Philip Pape: I agree.
• 32:50
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I've spent a lot of time talking about tactics and I agree it's more fun to get into philosophy and approach.
• 33:07
  Philip Pape: Or they can reach out to guys like you and me and say, okay, now how do I personalize that for myself?
• 33:09
  Philip Pape: But okay, so what was the next thing I wanted to cover here?
• 33:11
  Philip Pape: Fatigue management is kind of another corollary and specifically what I'm thinking is you mentioned yourself joint health and a lot of guys or women I hear about their back, their low back fatigue.
• 33:19
  Philip Pape: Everybody has back issues.
• 33:20
  Philip Pape: We know that quote unquote of some kind as they get older.
• 33:23
  Philip Pape: But lifters especially, who might be dead lifting a lot or doing some other movement, how do we manage all that?
• 33:28
  Philip Pape: How do we manage fatigue management?
• 33:30
  Philip Pape: I?
• 33:31
  Jeff Alberts: guess the question right your rest days, your sleep, your demand is going to be your training itself Could be cardio, could be steps, life stuff, work relationships.
• 33:54
  Jeff Alberts: If you're in a deficit, let's say you're in a deficit, that's a demand.
• 33:56
  Jeff Alberts: So you kind of see where you're at with the supply and demand.
• 33:57
  Jeff Alberts: Obviously, if you're in, let's say, in the dieting phase, cutting phase, your demand is going to be higher than your supply.
• 34:00
  Jeff Alberts: So from that perspective you have to understand, let's say, in the dieting phase, cutting phase, your demand is going to be higher than your supply.
• 34:03
  Jeff Alberts: So from that perspective you have to understand like, okay, how long am I dieting?
• 34:07
  Jeff Alberts: Is this a short-term cut?
• 34:08
  Jeff Alberts: Is it a long-term cut?
• 34:10
  Jeff Alberts: Short-term cut, you might be able to get away with a few more things because it's shorter in nature, no-transcript, and that's what's really key when obviously most people's goals is they want to get bigger or they want to be leaner.
• 34:37
  Jeff Alberts: So in order to do that you have to manage the fatigue.
• 34:40
  Jeff Alberts: So it's pretty important that your performance is elevated as much as possible so you can maintain that muscle mass.
• 34:45
  Jeff Alberts: And then you think about your pace too.
• 34:47
  Jeff Alberts: When you're dieting down half to 1% of your body weight per week, anything more than that.
• 34:51
  Jeff Alberts: It's going to be a grind.
• 34:52
  Jeff Alberts: It's going to be harder to perform, it's going to be hard to recover.
• 34:55
  Jeff Alberts: Life's going to suck.
• 34:57
  Jeff Alberts: Your spouse isn't going to like you too much.
• 34:59
  Jeff Alberts: You're going to be moody, cranky, those types of things.
• 35:01
  Jeff Alberts: So you have to take all that into consideration, I mean.
• 35:03
  Jeff Alberts: But the whole podcast could be about fatigue management.
• 35:06
  Jeff Alberts: Of course I mean you can look at like going back to the sports arena, I was looking up, I was hitting up Google a few years back on NBA basketball.
• 35:14
  Jeff Alberts: I was trying to figure out the winning percentages of teams that played back-to-back games, because usually NBA schedules they'll play two or three games a week more in there.
• 35:25
  Jeff Alberts: So the back-to-backs, the second game, the losing percentage was much lower than the first game.
• 35:31
  Jeff Alberts: Of course you take into consideration some teams are better than others, but in general, like the losing percentage was higher on the second game, which makes sense because they're tired they played the day before.
• 35:42
  Jeff Alberts: So again like sometimes with training, when you're like if you're training, let's say, two, three, four days in a row, that fatigue builds up.
• 35:49
  Jeff Alberts: Naturally it's going to build up if you're well-fed, but imagine if you're dieting Two, three, four, five, six training days in a row, like you start getting beat up towards the end of the week.
• 35:59
  Jeff Alberts: You're feeling it.
• 35:59
  Jeff Alberts: So sometimes it's like, okay, how can we manage that?
• 36:03
  Jeff Alberts: It's like, instead of training two or three days in a row, why don't you go every other day?
• 36:07
  Jeff Alberts: You train hard.
• 36:08
  Jeff Alberts: Like as bodybuilders, we train hard.
• 36:10
  Jeff Alberts: So he's train hard, take a day off, recover.
• 36:14
  Jeff Alberts: He'd be refreshed the next day.
• 36:16
  Jeff Alberts: Then he'd take another day off or he can go two on one off.
• 36:19
  Jeff Alberts: So looking at frequency, that's something you look at Intensity, not training as close to failure.
• 36:25
  Jeff Alberts: Maybe that can help.
• 36:27
  Jeff Alberts: Maybe dropping down some set volume, eating more food, those types of things, more sleep, like I mean.
• 36:32
  Jeff Alberts: Just the list goes on and on.
• 36:34
  Jeff Alberts: But again I think looking at bodybuilders per se is like probably not the area I usually look towards first.
• 36:40
  Jeff Alberts: It's more like those other sports.
• 36:46
  Philip Pape: No, I like that.
• 36:46
  Philip Pape: I took a note because this is a.
• 36:47
  Philip Pape: I want to build off that later on for another episode Because, you know, using other sports as an analogy, I don't think enough people do that.
• 36:52
  Jeff Alberts: And boxing here you know, boxing, boxing, like right Boxer goes out there.
• 36:56
  Jeff Alberts: It's a hard round.
• 36:57
  Jeff Alberts: Like well, I got to go 12 rounds here.
• 37:00
  Jeff Alberts: Like well, I got to go 12 rounds here.
• 37:01
  Jeff Alberts: And if I'm not able to knock this opponent out in the next one or two rounds, I got to pace this.
• 37:04
  Jeff Alberts: Oh, you know, you've heard this.
• 37:06
  Jeff Alberts: Boxers like okay, they took a round off.
• 37:08
  Jeff Alberts: What does that mean?
• 37:08
  Jeff Alberts: They're staying on the outside.
• 37:10
  Jeff Alberts: They're staying.
• 37:11
  Jeff Alberts: They're not trying to get hit, they're just doing enough to get them through the round.
• 37:14
  Jeff Alberts: Now I'm going to go sit, go in there for a day or two and I attack hard like I'm going to pull back.
• 37:26
  Jeff Alberts: I'm going to have a day or two.
• 37:27
  Jeff Alberts: I'm just not trained and recover.
• 37:29
  Jeff Alberts: So every time I'm in there I'm like fresh and getting the most performance out of myself.
• 37:36
  Tony: My name is Tony.
• 37:36
  Tony: I'm a strength lifter in my 40s.
• 37:38
  Tony: Thank you to Phil and his Wits and Weights community for helping me learn more about nutrition and how to implement better ideas into my strength training.
• 37:46
  Tony: Phil has a very, very good understanding of macros and chemical compounds and hormones and all that and he's continuously learning.
• 37:54
  Tony: That's what I like about Phil.
• 37:55
  Tony: He's got a great sense of humor.
• 37:56
  Tony: He's very relaxed, very easy to talk to.
• 37:59
  Tony: One of the greatest things about Phil, in my view, is that he practices what he preaches.
• 38:09
  Tony: He also works out with barbells.
• 38:10
  Tony: He trains heavy not as heavy as me, but he trains heavy.
• 38:11
  Tony: So if you talk with him about getting in better shape, eating better, he's probably going to give you some good advice and I would strongly recommend you talk with him and he'll help you out.
• 38:19
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 38:20
  Philip Pape: So a couple of things come to mind then from this.
• 38:21
  Philip Pape: First is just the general thought for folks who think that there's only one way to solve fatigue and that is to stop doing the movement or to switch movements.
• 38:30
  Philip Pape: And you didn't even go there.
• 38:32
  Philip Pape: You said think about the supply and demand.
• 38:38
  Philip Pape: Oftentimes it's the supply you need more of, or less of the demand, depending on what's possible.
• 38:41
  Philip Pape: You mentioned pacing just being a way to move your training around to help with the fatigue, but you're still getting the same, potentially the same, volume and intensity, even though those are other variables.
• 38:49
  Philip Pape: What are your thoughts, then, on the opposite structure for helping with fatigue?
• 38:55
  Philip Pape: And that is, let's say, you're doing three days a week and you switch to six days a week, but half the sessions.
• 39:02
  Philip Pape: Is that a strategy?
• 39:03
  Jeff Alberts: That's a strategy.
• 39:04
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 39:05
  Jeff Alberts: So if you're doing, let's say just, let's just use whole sets of a workout, let's say you're doing 20 sets and you take it down to 10 and you're spreading it all out, yeah, I mean, it's going to be easier to get through the training session Result theory, of course easier to get through the session than maybe your recovery better.
• 39:20
  Jeff Alberts: So the question then becomes you got to pay attention to is like okay, if you're going from three days.
• 39:25
  Jeff Alberts: I don't know how your organ is three days, If it's, you know, one on one off, one on one off, or it's every other day.
• 39:31
  Jeff Alberts: Now you're going six straight days, so then you have to kind of pay attention to what are things feeling like on day four, day five and day six.
• 39:38
  Jeff Alberts: Even though you've cut the volume in half, you still want to take notes on that, because even though you're doing less work too like think of your connective tissue you're using your connective tissue six days out of the week instead of three, even though it's less work.
• 39:52
  Jeff Alberts: So you still have to just pay attention to all those variables.
• 39:53
  Jeff Alberts: In theory it makes sense, but again you got to pay attention to it and personalize it for you.
• 39:58
  Philip Pape: Yeah, makes sense.
• 39:58
  Philip Pape: So connective tissue again, segue, good segue.
• 40:02
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about that.
• 40:02
  Philip Pape: The joint health, the connective tissue.
• 40:04
  Philip Pape: Maybe again there's some misconceptions there.
• 40:07
  Philip Pape: Some people oversimplify this stuff like, well, if you lift heavy it's bad for your joints.
• 40:11
  Philip Pape: We know that's not necessarily the case, but what are your thoughts on connected tissue, tendon health and things like that for older folks?
• 40:18
  Philip Pape: Am I an older folk?
• 40:19
  Philip Pape: I guess there's a correlation with age right.
• 40:24
  Philip Pape: You said it yourself with a.
• 40:25
  Philip Pape: I guess there's a correlation with age right you said it yourself.
• 40:32
  Jeff Alberts: It's hard for me to say how other people feel, what they feel.
• 40:34
  Jeff Alberts: Like I know how I feel and I've noticed the last few years like, yeah, I got to pay closer attention to it.
• 40:37
  Jeff Alberts: And, like you said, it's not so much the load, because sometimes I can handle load pretty well and sometimes the opposite.
• 40:42
  Jeff Alberts: You would think like, okay, if the load is heavy hurts, I'm gonna go light low, but then your reps go way up.
• 40:48
  Jeff Alberts: So now you're getting more.
• 40:49
  Jeff Alberts: Like, yeah, now you're doing like 100 reps instead of 20, so that can wear your connective tissue out too.
• 40:55
  Jeff Alberts: So, like, for me, what really helps me is rep speed, like rep cadence.
• 41:01
  Jeff Alberts: Sometimes, like in the moment I'm controlling that, like you know, like when you're driving a car on a road, you feel a bump you're the moment I'm controlling that.
• 41:06
  Jeff Alberts: Like you know, like when you're driving a car on a road, you feel a bump, you're like, okay, I'm gonna avoid that bump and move the steering wheel or the traffic in front of me slowing down, put my foot on the brakes.
• 41:15
  Jeff Alberts: That's kind of like I think, about my rep speed.
• 41:17
  Jeff Alberts: I'm paying attention how things feel.
• 41:19
  Jeff Alberts: So if my shoulder, like my right shoulder, gets pissed off quite a lot, like when I'm pressing, so sometimes like my elbow, I'll have to do this or I'll shift it in, I'll even move my shoulder in a little bit those types of things just to avoid, like you know, aches and pains that's really good actually.
• 41:35
  Jeff Alberts: Rep speed, cadence, grip width, grip angle those are really really good tweaks yeah, like, yeah, like, even like uh on my uh, like I do this movement, it's kind of like a hybrid press, fly, fly.
• 41:46
  Jeff Alberts: But it's more like a press and a fly at the same time.
• 41:49
  Jeff Alberts: So the way I hold the dumbbells in my palm someone asked me about this, like you know, about their shoulders and that movement, like I hold it this way, I didn't really realize I was doing it and the reason why it was more instinctual.
• 42:01
  Jeff Alberts: But I realized is, instead of having that handle like flush and you're gripping it hard the dumbbells, like sitting in my hand and then put the tips of my fingers right in the middle of the handle, the pads of your fingers and thumb over.
• 42:13
  Jeff Alberts: Yeah, like it just eliminates the shoulder discomfort I have.
• 42:17
  Jeff Alberts: I don't know why it just does.
• 42:19
  Jeff Alberts: It's more of an instinctual.
• 42:21
  Jeff Alberts: But those are the types of things that's worth exploring, whether you're young or old.
• 42:26
  Jeff Alberts: Like if you're experiencing any type of discomfort, you play around with grip, spacing the way you're holding things red cadence Because oftentimes we'll look at like, okay, should we be doing like slow eccentrics?
• 42:39
  Jeff Alberts: Should we do a fast, explosive concentrics?
• 42:41
  Jeff Alberts: Because we're looking at science stuff.
• 42:43
  Jeff Alberts: It's like how about you go by what feels actually comfortable for you?
• 42:47
  Philip Pape: Agree, yeah, like for me recently.
• 42:49
  Philip Pape: I had rotator cuff surgery last year and for me, pausing, just pausing, made all the difference.
• 42:55
  Jeff Alberts: That helps.
• 42:56
  Jeff Alberts: Yes, I forgot about those.
• 42:58
  Philip Pape: Even in like bicep curls, you just pause at the bottom and it makes it harder in a different way, even range of motion too.
• 43:04
  Jeff Alberts: Like I'll play around with that, like I'll cut range of motion short sometimes if there's.
• 43:08
  Jeff Alberts: You know if I'm experiencing some pain, whether it's at the top or the bottom.
• 43:12
  Jeff Alberts: Whatever I was doing a couple years back I was doing smith machine bench crosses, but I set the safety arms up to about two-thirds range of the motion.
• 43:21
  Philip Pape: I cut the bottom, like the stretch portion, out so it's a pin a pin, press a pin, press a pin, bench press.
• 43:26
  Jeff Alberts: Yeah, just like slow, eccentric Cause it didn't really bother my shoulders too much.
• 43:30
  Jeff Alberts: Slow on the way down, maybe I don't know close to four seconds.
• 43:33
  Jeff Alberts: Pause it at the bottom kills the momentum and then when I would start the movement.
• 43:37
  Jeff Alberts: So instead of thinking of pushing off the pins with a lot of force, like a race car, for example, more like a diesel truck, like, let me just move it slow with a lot of torque, ease into it, ease into it, and then, as it goes, the bar's traveling up, then I'm pressing faster and that's to avoid the shoulder discomfort.
• 43:53
  Jeff Alberts: Now the question becomes is that more effective than like just the traditional cadence, or more explosive using heavier loads?
• 44:02
  Jeff Alberts: Mate, as long as this is why I see it, I could be wrong, but as long as I'm going to failure or close to it, I'm probably getting a stimulus regardless.
• 44:14
  Philip Pape: And, as you mentioned before, the alternative is you're not going to do it because it hurts.
• 44:16
  Philip Pape: It hurts, yeah, exactly.
• 44:17
  Jeff Alberts: And it's a baseline too, because even though let's say it is suboptimal.
• 44:19
  Jeff Alberts: It's my baseline, it's what I can do comfortably, and the goal is still the same.
• 44:24
  Jeff Alberts: The goal is still to try to increase more load over time and more reps over time.
• 44:27
  Jeff Alberts: So I'm still elevating performance and elevating volume.
• 44:31
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I like that.
• 44:31
  Philip Pape: And there's so many movements, angles, ranges of motion across all the possible exercises that you could complement it with things to kind of fill in the gap, the example of a race or a car engine.
• 44:44
  Philip Pape: I'm thinking like you know physics and power and explosiveness and speed.
• 44:48
  Philip Pape: There's a whole velocity component to it.
• 44:50
  Philip Pape: That is kind of the principle behind all this, almost, if we're to sum it up so that when you're listening to the show, if you want to train next, you know next time you go train, experiment with that, both at the bottom of the rep, like when you yeah, when you start a rep out, they think of it like if you, let's say, you're at a red light and you're in this Porsche, right, it's got some just high end, you know torque.
• 45:13
  Jeff Alberts: light turns green, yeah, you punch it, what's going to happen?
• 45:16
  Jeff Alberts: More than likely the tires are going to spin out.
• 45:18
  Jeff Alberts: You need the back end starting to squirrel anymore.
• 45:27
  Jeff Alberts: It's like there's a lot of torque though, there's a lot of power, but there's more control.
• 45:31
  Jeff Alberts: So that's kind of how I think about when I start some of my exercises out.
• 45:35
  Jeff Alberts: I think more like a diesel truck versus the race car and it's in a sense it kind of keeps the tension where you want it throughout the entirety of the rep.
• 45:44
  Philip Pape: And that mind muscle there.
• 45:45
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I'm imagining wheels spinning on my tendons and like wearing them down with the race car.
• 45:52
  Philip Pape: That's good stuff, yeah.
• 45:58
  Philip Pape: No, this is great being mindful and reflective of every rep, just to make sure, so like if we circle back tendon joint health, you know, rather than making drastic changes, rather than hopping around, tweak the movement you think is the offender, see if it makes a difference.
• 46:10
  Philip Pape: Grip with angle, play with different bars too, like they've got multi-grip bars and you've got camber bars and like all this fun stuff.
• 46:17
  Philip Pape: You could mix it up.
• 46:18
  Philip Pape: Yeah, even like I'm thinking pull-ups and chin-ups.
• 46:20
  Philip Pape: Again, you might find it's a game changer to just widen or shorten up that grip or go neutral.
• 46:25
  Philip Pape: So good stuff, all right.
• 46:28
  Philip Pape: So I'm looking at my questions.
• 46:30
  Philip Pape: We actually covered a lot of what I was going to ask.
• 46:32
  Philip Pape: You even talked about, like you know, cutting and dieting, how the rate of your cut is extremely important and it adds to the stress if you go faster.
• 46:39
  Philip Pape: I think that is really important because, rather than it being a training issue, it could be a resource issue.
• 46:45
  Philip Pape: Right, it could be a food issue.
• 46:46
  Philip Pape: And unless you have some timeline perhaps which I know bodybuilders do and they have a show if you can plan ahead far enough.
• 46:53
  Philip Pape: It sounds like you know taking the most conservative approach that still gets you the result and doesn't impede too much is a good idea.
• 47:00
  Philip Pape: But what about?
• 47:00
  Philip Pape: What about the psychological toll of it?
• 47:02
  Philip Pape: Taking too long, right Like now we're?
• 47:05
  Tony: getting into dieting here.
• 47:06
  Tony: No, I like it, okay, yeah because, it's a different perspective.
• 47:08
  Philip Pape: Yeah Right, it's like long and slow or really fast or super fast, like I know.
• 47:13
  Jeff Alberts: The answer is it depends, because different people respond differently, but it does depend, but I tend to lean more towards being conservative, because when you're conservative, you, in a sense, you have a bigger playbook.
• 47:27
  Jeff Alberts: If you're giving yourself a short timeline to make something happen, it's almost like you have to be like perfect, here's a good way to think about it.
• 47:33
  Jeff Alberts: Like if I gave you 30 seconds to tie both shoes probably get the job done pretty easily, right, and your shoes are going to look pretty clean, like you know, okay those bows look really good.
• 47:44
  Jeff Alberts: But if I said I'm going to give you 10 seconds or maybe eight seconds to tie those two shoes and I want you to make it look really good, chances are it's not going to look that great and the process itself is going to be super stressful yeah.
• 47:56
  Philip Pape: You're going to fumble through.
• 47:56
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah, right.
• 47:58
  Jeff Alberts: Or or you're piloting an airplane and I give you a mile to get this plane off the ground, but then I gave you a quarter mile.
• 48:06
  Jeff Alberts: What's the experience going to be like in those two different situations?
• 48:09
  Jeff Alberts: What are the passengers going to experience?
• 48:11
  Jeff Alberts: It's going to be a smooth takeoff in a mile.
• 48:14
  Jeff Alberts: We're building speed up.
• 48:15
  Jeff Alberts: We're going to get the plane off the ground.
• 48:17
  Jeff Alberts: We're going to gradually get it to altitude.
• 48:19
  Jeff Alberts: But quarter mile is like man, you better make sure you didn't eat too close to that takeoff, because you're going to lose your lunch.
• 48:26
  Philip Pape: And, Jeff, I'll tell you, on a landing it's even worse.
• 48:27
  Philip Pape: I used to fly planes and when I had to do a short runway landing, this is just small Cessnas but like if I had my wife or a friend in there and there was a crosswind you're talking a weird angle and a steep angle and it's just they all got sick.
• 48:40
  Philip Pape: So you a good example.
• 48:43
  Jeff Alberts: Am I good with the takeoff or do I need to change that up?
• 48:45
  Jeff Alberts: I?
• 48:46
  Philip Pape: like to use that one.
• 48:46
  Philip Pape: No, takeoffs are good too, because you need to crank up the throttle and you need to, but you have to have a minimum regardless, for physics you know to like work, but yeah, yeah, it's good.
• 48:56
  Philip Pape: Okay, that's good to hear, because we do sometimes equivocate on all that and it's like, well, whatever works for you, but, like you said, you get more flexibility and options when it's a longer time frame and you're more conservative.
• 49:07
  Jeff Alberts: When it's short, though, when you're dieting like if it's short in nature and you're trying you know, let's say you're trying to lose 20 pounds in eight weeks, 20 or 10 weeks, even, something like that, that's super fast.
• 49:17
  Jeff Alberts: Like you're going to have to be very aggressive.
• 49:19
  Jeff Alberts: So you may think like, okay, I'm going to get this over with sooner, but you're going to suffer more in that time span, versus like I'm going to double up that timeline because now you're going to have a more conservative pace.
• 49:30
  Jeff Alberts: So what you're actually experiencing is you're not as fatigued, so it's easier to cope in that situation.
• 49:36
  Jeff Alberts: Versus like, oh gosh, and I'm only eating 1500 calories and I got to do like all these cardio sessions just to get this fat loss off.
• 49:43
  Jeff Alberts: And then you're training, training stuff.
• 49:45
  Jeff Alberts: So the end goal is to look the part.
• 49:48
  Jeff Alberts: It's not if I hit a certain number, it's actually, it's more visual than your bodybuilder or even if it's a cosmetic goal, like you want to look the part.
• 49:55
  Jeff Alberts: At the end of it you want to have your muscle intact.
• 49:57
  Jeff Alberts: So I always feel like you're giving yourself more time.
• 49:59
  Jeff Alberts: And then the life factors too.
• 50:01
  Jeff Alberts: You know you think about a short timeline.
• 50:04
  Jeff Alberts: You may not have the luxury of, like, being able to take your wife out for dinner on a Saturday night because, oh, I got up to 1500.
• 50:11
  Jeff Alberts: I can't do it.
• 50:12
  Jeff Alberts: I am on so low calories, but I have doubled the timeline.
• 50:15
  Jeff Alberts: I'm like, well, I'm going to create a buffer, I'm going to take my wife out and I'll have a good time and still make my goals.
• 50:21
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I love.
• 50:22
  Philip Pape: I love that too, because the longer it is and the more you stretch it out, the more resilience you have against all of those things happening.
• 50:29
  Philip Pape: Because life throws unexpected things along the way, including injuries, including sickness, including something with your kid or your wife or whatever.
• 50:37
  Philip Pape: And to be able to, if you're going at a conservative rate, interrupting that has a much less impact as well.
• 50:44
  Philip Pape: Right, because not dieting for a few days when you're already at a very low, a very conservative deficit, isn't a big deal, but if it's a four or six-week mini cut, all of a sudden one day makes a big difference.
• 50:57
  Jeff Alberts: Another thing to think about.
• 50:58
  Jeff Alberts: Let's say you have to do a long-term dieting phase.
• 51:01
  Jeff Alberts: It doesn't mean you have to be downhill the whole way through no-transcript or less, like how you do things when you're not dieting.
• 51:33
  Philip Pape: Right, just scaled a little bit.
• 51:34
  Jeff Alberts: Yeah, exactly.
• 51:35
  Jeff Alberts: So that's again.
• 51:36
  Jeff Alberts: It's going back to practicality and sustainability.
• 51:38
  Jeff Alberts: So sometimes we got to think about okay, how's this going to impact me?
• 51:42
  Jeff Alberts: When it's all said and done?
• 51:51
  Philip Pape: And I don't think that far ahead.
• 51:52
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I'm all for that, that flexibility.
• 51:53
  Philip Pape: I inadvertently went into what I I did a podcast about it a while back called my stair step fat loss approach and it was just literally because of what happened to my shoulder and needing to recover several times over the last few months, I got out of my dieting phase.
• 52:00
  Philip Pape: I'm like you know what.
• 52:01
  Philip Pape: This is much better to just go three weeks on one week off.
• 52:04
  Philip Pape: Three weeks on one week, kind of like a stair, you know staircase, and that relief from that week or two of maintenance can be huge.
• 52:11
  Jeff Alberts: Made a big difference.
• 52:12
  Philip Pape: yeah, the dieting almost doesn't feel like dieting.
• 52:14
  Philip Pape: It's almost this huge sustainable thing, cool man, all right, so, in the interest of time, I just wanted to ask you if there's anything we didn't cover or a question you wish I had asked from here, and what your answer would be.
• 52:23
  Jeff Alberts: No, I thought you did great.
• 52:24
  Jeff Alberts: I recovered a lot.
• 52:27
  Philip Pape: I'm good.
• 52:27
  Philip Pape: I thought you did great too, man, it was fun Now.
• 52:30
  Jeff Alberts: I'm like man.
• 52:30
  Jeff Alberts: I need to learn more about flying now.
• 52:33
  Philip Pape: I could hook you up with some people that know a lot more than I do, but yeah, it was fun.
• 52:36
  Philip Pape: I stopped when it became the gas became too expensive and I had kids.
• 52:39
  Philip Pape: I was like I can see that I do know some pilots being having worked aerospace industry.
• 52:46
  Philip Pape: So anyway, man, where do you want people to learn about you?
• 52:49
  Philip Pape: Jeff, reach out to you 3dmj underscore.
• 52:52
  Jeff Alberts: Godfather, go to youtube in 3d muscle journey cool.
• 52:56
  Philip Pape: I'll put those in the show notes and Jeff's super responsive and, uh, really good content online as well.
• 53:00
  Philip Pape: You wouldn't believe he's he's, whatever age he is.
• 53:03
  Philip Pape: I'm not even going to say a number because you know it doesn't matter, does it?
• 53:07
  Jeff Alberts: 43 plus 10.
• 53:08
  Jeff Alberts: There you go.
• 53:10
  Philip Pape: Yeah, all right, man, it's great to have you on.
• 53:13
  Philip Pape: I really appreciate you coming on the show.
• 53:14
  Jeff Alberts: All right, thanks again.