#17 - Training During a Cut, Cheat Meals, Fasted Cardio, and More!

Welcome to the Baker Barbell Podcast. I'm your host Andy Baker, owner of Baker Personal Training in Kingwood, Texas, and co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training with Mark Ripeto, as well as the Barbell Prescription, training for Life After 40 with Dr. Jonathan Sullivan. My co-host today is Coach Dan Flannick, owner of Scan Strength in Upstate New York. Thanks for listening today, and let's get started.

Welcome back everybody to the Baker Barbell Podcast. This is episode 17, and we are going to continue our discussion today on the topic of fat loss, slash cardio, slash conditioning with strength training. So as I talked about last time, it's a very, very popular topic. It's a very, very frequently, maybe the most frequently asked question that I get in regards to some of the programs that I offer is, how do I do this and cut body fat, or how do I do this and lose weight, or how do I do this and incorporate conditioning?

It's a relevant thing because it's something that people want to do, and it's something that a lot of people need to do, is learn how to incorporate a proper strength training routine with a cardio slash conditioning routine as part of a well-rounded overall fitness plan.

We talked last time about kind of, I'm going to just kind of do a very brief overview of some of the stuff that we talked about last time. If you haven't listened to the previous podcast, the previous episode might be a good idea to go back and listen to that before this one.

I talked about when you're thinking about how to set up a conditioning slash fat loss routine is to think about your reasons for doing so. I generally see people come to me with that fall into three different categories of why they would want to be adding these activities to their plan.

One is for fat loss. That's probably the most common, is that they want to drop some body fat. Second is for health. They just want to add in a little bit of cardio or conditioning just for their general overall health, cardiovascular health, heart health, insulin sensitivity, all kinds of things where we know that some low level of aerobic slash anaerobic conditioning is likely very good for our systems.

Third category would be conditioning for activity XYZ or conditioning for a sport. All three of those are slightly different. There's a lot of overlap between the fat loss and the health side of things.

But there are some some important distinctions to make there, but the conditioning one is a bit different. So in by conditioning, I mean, you know, preparing your body for a given activity, whether it be a sport or some sort of hobby that you enjoy or whatever it is, you're engaging in some sort of conditioning slash cardiovascular activity to prepare you for that event.

The most I think the most important element of that is specificity. We know that conditioning is more of a specific adaptation than strength. At least I think that it is, you know, for instance, if you're going to, if you want to, you know, get involved in swimming, the really the only legitimate way to condition for that is to swim.

You know, really cross train that much for it, you know, lift and swim, you know, get strong and play your sport. I think for most people, if you're, if your sport is a conditioning event like, you know, longer distance swimming, cycling, running any any kind of endurance based event. If that's what you're preparing for, then probably your best formula is just to continue to lift and continue to try to improve your strength to degree that it's possible.

And then play and practice your sport. Just do that thing, you know, go go swim, go ride the bike, go run, whatever distances that you need to do. If you're doing something, you know, recreationally pursuing a sport that's very demanding like, let's say, jujitsu, you know, the only way you're going to get in shape to roll and do jujitsu if you've ever done it is to roll.

I mean, there's other things you can do that may help, but you're never going to be in good good shape to do jujitsu unless you practice that particular that particular discipline. So, you know, things like, let's say basketball, you want to get involved in recreational basketball league, probably the best.

Best thing to do is start playing basketball regularly, you know, go to practice, play the games. The time when we add in the extra work is perhaps when there's not enough practice or play of the actual sport. So, you know, if you're in a wreck league and you're going to play basketball game just on Saturday.

Well, you and you're not in shape to play yet, you probably want to add in some actual conditioning sessions, you know, in between those and not, not just do your your your games on Saturday. That's probably not the most efficient way to do it. So you're going to add in some conditioning sessions.

But again, make them specific to that event. You know, don't don't ride the stationary bike in order to try to get in condition to play basketball. Do something, you know, go to the court, you know, go go to the track. Something and, you know, what is basketball? It's kind of, you know,

mid, mid-level effort sprints up and down the court. Lots of changing direct, you know, do something that mimics that we used to call them suicides or whatever, you know, you get it one into the court and just basically run back and forth for several minutes at a time, you know, just that change of direction. That sort of thing needs to be incorporated into there. So just, you know, you kind of do conditioning that it's specific to the sport.

The intensity, the duration, the modality, all of that needs to match, you know, whatever activity you're trying to do. So as far as the volume of it and how much conditioning. That depends on the sport and how, how, you know, how seriously you're wanting to take it, you know, or you are you looking to just go take a couple of classes, a couple times a week in Jiu-Jitsu or you wanted to compete in Jiu-Jitsu tournaments.

You know, that it very much depends on the level of athlete we're talking about. Are they seriously competitive or is it recreational? You know, if is there a season for the sport? Is it something that's only played for a small portion of the year? And if that's the case, then the amount of conditioning you'll do will vary depending on the time of year that you're in.

So the further away you are from, say, the season, then perhaps the less conditioning that you'll do and the more you might focus on, say, strength and muscle building to the degree that that's helpful for your sport. And then as you get closer to the competition, the competitive season, the amount of focus and energy that you put on the strength training may start to go down a little bit and the amount of attention and focus and energy that you put into conditioning goes up.

So it's not necessarily uniform. I'm not going to get into the specifics of every sport, you know, that is kind of that general principle of the closer you get to the season, the more you need to worry about the condition.

We talked about that a lot with football, right? One of our other episodes, you know, the big mistake that a lot of coaches make is trying to keep football players condition year round when the season really only lasts, say, you know, practices maybe start mid August and the season runs through November.

You know, there's no reason December, January, February, March that kids need to be in peak condition, you know, a little bit of maintenance conditioning to not completely drop it off the radar is fine. But most of that time needs to be spent getting stronger and building muscle. And then as you get closer to the season, you know, May, May, June, July, August, you start to maybe back off the weights a little bit to a degree and start to ramp up the conditioning.

That's kind of the way to think about it. And you can apply that principle to basically, you know, any sport or activity. Yeah, it's just like going general to the specific basically. And then yep, so I've worked with a bunch of wrestlers, something that's kind of fun to do is like look at the sport and the demands of it like wrestling is like very like a little like you're, you know, you're in two minutes on 30 seconds if that 30 seconds rest.

So I think like with them doing stuff complimentary, so like strength training, they very rarely are like going really hard for like 10 or 15 seconds or less like they have to sustain efforts for minutes at a time. So that helps like improve their ceiling, for example, like they can keep being strong later into the match because their strength ceiling is higher.

Right. And I'm as much drop off. Yeah. And then also like a robeck, like if they're, they do a lot of wrestlers are doing tons and tons of aerobic type stuff. And I can help them recover between between rounds and stuff like that. So you might not even like in season or you might do stuff that's not that's like almost opposite or complimentary of the sport that they're doing to just something I think about a lot, especially with wrestlers.

Yeah, I think that I think that's definitely good. But there's a lot of elements to conditioning, like conditioning is not only the ability to do the thing, but it's also the ability to recover from the thing. You know what I mean? So like when we talk about like conditioning for the weight room, one of the things that I talk about with with my lifters is like one way to think about conditioning is your ability to get through the workout.

Like you can how how efficient are you at getting through the workout? If you're more highly conditioned, you can probably do sustain. Let's say you're, let's say you're going to be in the gym for one hour. You can probably get more work done in an hour at a heavier workload if you're in better condition. Part of the reason is that you'll recover better between sets.

Like so that's that's one reason to kind of we talked about that in some of the other episodes of like having that weight room GPP of you don't necessarily have you don't need to be in condition for an MMA fight. But having that baseline of conditioning for a lifter will help you to recover faster between sets. So let's say your volume work doesn't take as long to get to because you can recover say in maybe two to four minutes versus five minutes in between your sets.

And those little savers of time they add up. You can either just have shorter workouts, which can be good or you have extra time in there to do more stuff, which can also be good. So instead of your squat workout taking the entire hour, maybe it takes 40 minutes. And now you've got 20 minutes extra to do reverse hypers, glute ham raises abs and whatever else that you want to do.

And in that being able to get a higher workload in during that session because you're in better condition over time that's going to add up. You know the athlete that's doing the same amount of say squat volume let's say let's say both athletes have a one hour workout. One is in condition and one's not. And the one workout can do a 40 minute squat workout and then 20 minutes of high quality assistance work. And the other one can only do the squat workout.

Well, I would put my money on the guy that's doing the squats and the accessory work, you know, provided it's all, you know, all things being equal. The conditioning is going to allow him to do more workload and over time that's going to that's going to manifest itself that's going to add up.

The other part of that is the so it's not just like the performance capacity within the session. It's also conditioning is also like you said it's having that that base and that that base allows you to recover better between sessions. You know, I think that it does. So, you know, if you're one of those guys like if you're like real sore and achy and stuff like all the time.

And it's like guys that have this know what I'm talking about. It's not like it's not like the deep muscle soreness like the doms like everybody gets that like if you're, you know, if you do something new or like you're really pushing things hard like you get that you get that like intense like, you know, muscle belly soreness. But I'm talking more of just kind of that general achy joints feel creaky.

You feel like you have no mobility. I mean, a lot of lifters know what I'm talking about. Like, you know, we can get down at the bottom of a squat but then like two days later when we go to tie our shoes. It's like an event, right? Like like like you're just kind of like you don't feel super mobile and just kind of that general sore achiness all the time.

And the best things that you can do is doing some light cardio in between sessions. The circulation, the circulation, I think is just getting the blood moving around the entire body, getting it moving through the muscle tissue, getting it moving through the joints. I don't mean hard cardio, but just you know, something easy like walking on a on an inclined treadmill is one of my favorites or or like light sled dragging things like that can be really, really good for improving your recovery.

And you'll be surprised how doing that your whole body will just feel a little bit better. You know, so like over the weekend, you're not like feeling stiff and sore and achy and stuff from like the week of training. Like if you're regularly adding that stuff in, you'll be surprised at like how much better you feel. And I think it's basically your body's just like more lubricated.

Yeah. You know, is one way to think about it. I was kind of, you know, I don't know if this is entirely accurate, but it's I think it's a good analogy to think about it. Like you can think about like the muscles like a dry kitchen sponge, you know, like a sponge in your kitchen, like if it hasn't been wet in a while, it's like it's like kind of dry and brittle or whatever.

Whereas like saturing the muscle with blood and say through cardio, like you get in the blood, it's almost like wetting that sponge and like think how much more like pliable and everything that is. And that's that's kind of how that's kind of like again, I don't know that's totally accurate like physiologically, but that's kind of the way to think that that's like kind of the effect that kind of some of that blood flow work or whatever you want to call it in between sessions can have.

And it just makes everything feel better. And plus just getting getting the movement through the joints and getting that synovial fluid through the joints with low stress, non muscle damaging movement. I think it's very, very good. So that's kind of an aside there, but that's that's one way to think about conditioning as well for for a lifter, which is a lot of the people listening to this.

I want to get on to the kind of recapping the fat loss in the health part. The health part, that's that's an easy one to be honest. That's the easiest one because what you what you do doesn't really matter. If you're just trying to do some cardio because you want to you want to be you know you want to be healthy. You want to make sure that your hearts and good shape your lungs are in good shape. You have good insulin sensitivity, you know all those sorts of things.

They're the you know you can basically do anything and get that if you just need to elevate the heart rate for sustained period of time.

You know I usually tell people two to four days a week is good to daily you could do daily, especially if the activity is fairly low stress like walking. There's no reason you can't walk 30 to 60 minutes a day. If you do that, you're pretty much going to cover your bases. I think in terms of just like the health benefits so it can be very, very simple. It does not need to be complex.

You don't need a pro a conditioning program to do cardio for your health. You just need to do it. It doesn't it's not programmed. It's just done. And so I'd say two to four week two to four times a week at a minimum 20 to 40 minutes. So that's like average about a half hour.

You could do a little more again if it's low intensity stuff like a walk and you want to do a little more that's fine. But it can be very, very simple like a 30 minute walk every day is fine. It can be it can be the low intensity stuff. It can be hit again. I usually tell people again we talked on this last time like for your health.

What what matters is not the specifics of what you do today like the it matters. Did you do it consistently over the last decade or are you going to do it consistently for the next decade when you talk about health. That's what matters is consistent consistently good habits over long periods of time.

You're not really going to change your health that much in the next two weeks or whatever. But guys will get like really wrapped up in the details of something where the details don't matter that much. And so the main thing is make it sustainable. If you like doing the hit stuff you like doing intervals on the rower or the airdine bike like that's cool like that that's going to give you all of the health benefits that you need.

For a lot of people that's going to be a less sustainable approach like are you going to go do those hard intervals on the rower or the airdine. You know two to three times a week every week for the next decade or is that going to be something that you do for a while and then you don't do it for the next few months.

So that's like and I say that because I see that all the time like except for like neurotic crossfitters who just love to like punish themselves a lot of people don't really like doing cardio. And if you already don't like it like I don't like it then why would you make it harder than it needs to be because that's it's not really giving you if you're just again if you're doing it for help benefits.

It doesn't need to be that hard like you don't need to torture yourself doing hard intervals on the rower or the airdine now if you if you want to and you like that kind of stuff and like I mean occasionally I do like to do that kind of stuff.

I like to go out and run sprints and like really really challenge myself on that kind of that anaerobic level but I probably it's not something that I write down is like okay I'm going to do this two to three days a week for the next decade because I know I'm not going to do it like I'm going to do it when the mood strikes me. But what I will do is like do my 30 minute walk every day like that's because it's just it's so easy that it's automatic.

It's easy to do automatically doesn't really you're not going to find excuses really not to do it so do whatever the thing is it's going to make you the most consistent and that's going to that's going to have the biggest.

Impact on your health again it can be it can be simple as an outdoor walk it can be just the cardio machines at your gym I actually really like those I know they get a bad wrap from people especially like oh yeah you're going to be on the elliptical with the housewives or like whatever like it gets your heart rate up and it doesn't beat your body up.

So in the main thing is like it's especially if you lived in a commercial gym like you just did your weight workout right like you're already there you just did your workout like you're already like hot and sweaty entire like just hop on the bike or the elliptical for like 15 or 20 minutes and knock something out like don't program don't don't plan it so like I'm going to work out now and then I'm going to come back in a few hours and do my cardio because you're not going to like knock it all out at one time do again what's convenient has the least barrier.

The least amount of obstacles for you is to just do it when it's convenient or already right there so you can use any of those cardio machines ellipticals treadmills bikes whatever they still step mill things are good like whatever you want to do we talked about this last time.

Another good way to do it like is if you depending on how your strength routine is set up like this is a way I do it for a lot of my personal training clients which are just kind of the general fitness crowd is circuit training with like kind of like assistance type work so like it's you know a session might be you know it might be one main lift like a like a squatter whatever and we do like a heavy three by five or five by five or like whatever going to do that day we do like one heavy main lift to kind of hit the strength thing and then like the road.

And then like the rest of the workout might be more of a circuit type thing which has a muscle building elements to it but it also has like a really good conditioning element to it's anywhere from like two to four exercises done like in circuit fashion and so the person is just going from one exercise to the next to the next to the next to the next you know I don't usually time it and I'll push people to like do it really really hard like like crossfitters or whatever like you can do that again you can go hard if you want to we talked about that whole escalating density concept last time which is a good thing.

It's a cool way to do it but you don't have to do that you can you can make it kind of simple and easy that's how most of the time I do it with my clients were not like pushing the pace I just tell him you know go as as fast as you can without like sacrificing your strength or your form too much you know because you still want like quality movement but it could be just for instance obviously there's something off the top of my head like a body weight only circuit like let's say you have somebody do heavy squats and then you do okay we're going to do a circuit and we're going to do we're going to do body weight only like a

reverse lunges rose on the TRX 45 degree back extensions and push ups like you're going to do those four movements and you're going to do like whatever 15 reps a piece for four rounds and you're going to go through that you know you're going to do go through that four times as fast as you can or you're going to go through that for the next 20 minutes and get as many rounds as you can't like however you want to do it it doesn't matter but stuff like that can be a really really good conditioning tool while also getting in some of like your

strength in your muscle building work and again I don't really do that with like squats and presses and bench presses and like like the like the big boy movements I don't do that but like on for your general fitness clients or for you know if you're a coach or for you guys if you're out there listening to this and you're not really a power lifter you're just kind of a

strength enthusiast but that also has an eye on just your health and fitness to really really really effective and efficient way to get in both the strength and the conditioning work it's very time efficient and it can be fun too if you like that type of training.

I really agree with the like the chip in a way sort of aspect like you were saying with the cardio like something you could do regularly because like it's not today matters only if it's surrounded by a thousand today's when it comes to training but okay so I'll get clients though who come in and like

so do you have and not necessarily like a crazy rapid like several weeks like I think Kim Kardashian I just saw like drop like 16 pounds and like three weeks or something to get into a dress I'm not talking about that but like what if somebody comes in is like very frequently someone will be like I'm getting married or I have a wedding to go to or I'm going on vacation it's you know three months from now will you do like what do you have you approach those types of people where it's not unreasonably short time like it's a reasonable time frame you know where you are.

frame, you know, where you can do it in a healthy way. But like do you tend to go like what sort of how aggressive are you and like what kind of protocols, I guess generally speaking, would you would you utilize with something like that? Well, like, like step one is like look at the look at the time the distance, the distance

we are away from the event. So let's just like say if it's 12 weeks away and then look at like how much weight do we potentially want to lose and then like divide that by the weeks like are we is this a five pounds per week for the next 12 weeks? Like that's probably not sustained. It depends on the person too. Like you got to think about that. Are you

like somebody that's like totally unfamiliar with exercise and diet? Because if you are like you're not you don't have the mental ability to do what is going to what I'm going to ask you to do. Because you've never done like you know what I mean? You like that just like your strength has to be trained like your mental capacity has to be trained to sustain a very very rigid aggressive diet and cardio program for like over a long period of time

is it can be a massive mind fuck. And if they have not cultivated those habits and skills and that mindset over a long period of time, then the likelihood of success is low. So you don't want to you don't want to set them up for failure by giving them like an aggressive

plan that they are likely not going to follow. Now if it's somebody like somebody that has a history of like highly competitive hard sports or like they've been involved in like the bodybuilding slash fitness figure world or whatever they know what it takes. Like they know what a long sustained diet takes. And so they're more likely to go through

with it. But the so you first look at that and you say okay, then you you back up and set a goal like like a weekly goal like okay, two to three pounds per week is what we need to average. Let's say for this hypothetical person, it breaks down and we need to lose two to three pounds per week over 12 weeks to hit our goal. You know, that's super that's

for somebody that didn't have a very time sensitive goal. I'd say that's too much. Like I'd say, you know, about a pound a week is better because that's going to maintain more of your muscle mass. But for somebody that needs to lose a lot of weight quickly, then you can accelerate the process. You know, the you start with diet because the chloric deficit is needs to be it's easier to get with diet. So you have to you have

to get the chloric deficit going hard with the diet first. And then as far as the cardio for somebody like that, I'd probably put them on daily cardio and it would be it would be fasted in the morning, fasted lower into low intensity cardio 30 to 60 minutes on a daily basis and get them going there. And then you can actually pull it back a little bit if they are getting closer to their goal and they're they're they get their early or

you can tell that like they're they're going to make it with plenty of time. You can dial back the cardio a little bit and maybe even up the calories a little bit. And that has the effect of they'll actually look better going to whatever because they're like their muscle bellies will be a little bit more full, like not quite as depleted. So they may actually look better. You know, there's a lot of like really good nutritionists in the

strength world and bodybuilding world that have figured out how to do that. Like get you to your target weight early and then increase your calories and decrease your cardio going into the show so that you're still really lean but that you're your performance and stuff is actually like increasing. So you can kind of do the same thing with a person like that where you can you can kind of get them there early. But yeah, I might my go to

like again, this is why I like the people with the fasted cardio they like debate. It's like when the money's on the line, you know what I mean? Like what what's your go to

approach? Like that's where the rubber meets. So that'll tell you what you really believe then, you know, and I've done it both ways with myself and with clients like the like 30 minutes a day, if you're going to do 30 minutes a day of cardio fasted versus, you know, at some other time during the day, I'll I'll put my money on the fasted cardio any day

of the week. And so that's what I have my what my clients do is wake up early and hit your low intensity cardio early in the morning on an empty stomach in terms of the the deficit. You know, you're going to drop overall calories. You're going to keep protein high and then you're you're going to you're going to have generally you wind up having to drop both fat and carbohydrates pretty low in order to get the deficit on most people. How low do

you drop one versus the other? A lot of that is based on preference of the person. You know, I know with me, I've done it both ways and it's far easier for me to follow a steep caloric deficit where the carbs are really low, but the fat and the protein are higher. It just satiates me better. And again, that leads to better consistency and less rebounding. I don't do good with carbs and moderation because it's kind of like it's kind of like with

alcohol. Like if you're trying to get somebody to stop consuming alcohol, you go, well, a little bit of alcohol and moderation is okay. Not for an alcoholic. Like not for you know what I mean? Like it's either all or nothing. And so people get very are very against all or nothing approaches. However, sometimes all or nothing is better than moderation. It

again, it kind of depends on the person. Like a lot of most people can handle a few drinks per week and alcoholic can't, you know, somebody that tends to like massively overeat all the time, especially on carbohydrates, actually can do better on a diet where the carbohydrates are by and large eliminated versus given in small amounts. I'm I'm of that vein because when I have a little bit of carbs, all it does is make me want more. It does not satiate

me. And it's the same way with like junk. Like you can yeah, if you follow the like if it fits your macros approach, I'm not saying that doesn't work from a physiological standpoint. I think it does. But what I'm saying is that from a psychological standpoint, a lot of people are not going to do good with that. It may be easier for them to not have any chocolate chip cookies than to just have one. I mean, that's and that's again, you just

that's just knowing yourself and or knowing your client. What approach are you going to do better with kind of from a psychological standpoint so that you can sustain this goal over the next say 12 weeks or so. Now, if you do that or they likely going to have a

big rebound after the event and gain a bunch of weight back. Yeah, it's definitely possible because when you restrict somebody's carbs for a long period of time and then you reintroduce them, say like out of wedding or some event or like a vacation or whatever they and then they they go off the rails and they gain a ton of weight back. So again, like you just that's up to the person. Like you you got to be honest with a coat like as a coach and

tell them this is what is likely to happen or what could potentially happen. So and they may be okay with that or you know, at least they're aware of it so they can kind of guard against it. So they don't have those like massive rebound because that happens a lot like after people follow a real strict diet for a long period of time and then they get off

of that. It's just like a drug addict, right? I mean, you've been off of drugs for a long time and you know, you do it's like there's no such thing as like I just did a little bit of heroin. It's like you hear about that all the time. Like you know what I mean? Yeah, they overdose after yeah, because they're do they're used to doing what they were doing and then they overdose because they're doing it. Yeah, it happens with it happens with

smokers. It happens with with alcohol. It happens with drugs. It happens with food. Food has many and many of the same qualities as drugs and alcohol do on the body. You know, I don't think food has as much of a dopamine release as cocaine, but there it is. And so you have to you you have to kind of treat it the same. And I do believe that people have individual responses to that. You know, in terms of what some people's response to

carbohydrates is different than in other persons. And for a lot of people, you know, eating a single chocolate chip cookie after dinner satisfies their sweet craving. And for them, that's a better approach than absolute deprivation of sweets. But for a lot of people eating a single chocolate chip cookie after dinner is more often than not just going to lead to

eating the whole bag. You know, and some of that psychology that people just need to work on like like, you know, because a lot of people will do that, especially deep in a diet, if you've never done a long sustained weight loss diet, you don't know how fucked your head can get during that. But there is a lot of like head like trash that goes on during that. And like, oh, well, I broke the routine on a eight one cookie. So I might as well

eat the whole bag like no, that's not true. But a lot of people, even people that no better do that because it can be it can be powerful. Like when you've deprived yourself of some of these things like for a long period of time and then you have them, like your body rationalizes weird things, like even if you know not to do it, you still wind up doing it. You know, it's just like, it's like drugs. Like does a drug addict do a lot of

drug addicts that I've known. I mean, I've known several that were highly intelligent people. It's not like they didn't know the drug was bad for them. Yeah. It's it's it's not it. It's not they go, oh, the key to the key to stopping addiction is education. That's such bullshit. People know it's bad for you. They do it anyway because the the the want to is more than the, you know, it's like nobody makes that choice because they don't know

any better. Everybody knows heroin is a dead and road. But you you're a mo the emotional part of it overrides the intellect and the same thing, the same exact thing happens with food. So again, in a situation like this where somebody wants to lose a lot of weight quickly, I I'm not I'm not against those approaches. I'll do it if somebody wants to do it. But it's again, you just have to kind of be honest with the client that you're working with

and let them know what the what the possibilities are. But and then you know, in terms of the weight training side of it. Yeah. So going from heroin addiction to back to the weight training, well, I think it's really good that you like made that comparison because I think like you'll see all over the internet. People like might write something on a group or

whatever. And then people will just kind of dish out this advice and that's something I've learned working like I'm for example, like with kids, I've talked about this before. Like I'll have them send me meals on Snapchat. I'll give them examples of what you know, what a nutritious meal looks like through like the US Olympic Committee. They have really good examples of like different training days and how much of what to eat. But like I

literally never comment on like that's good. That's bad. I'm just like thanks for sending it man. Like because they're really vulnerable. And you know, some people it's alcohol, some people it's other drugs and then some people it's food. And so I think it's really good that you hit on that that whole psychological aspect. Yeah. And kids are kids are kids are

different to like kids are different to you know with with kids. I try not to do stuff that is like you know, wait, wait or body image related or whatever, especially with girls. It's just you try to keep it about performance. Yep. But with you know with adults, it's their choice. If you want to if you know the risks of what what may or may not happen, you know, you want to drop a weight real quickly. There's ways to do it. And sometimes even

you go, well, that's just a short-term approach. Well, not really like a lot of times. I mean, I if somebody has like say a hundred pounds to lose like I don't want to take the slow and steady approach right off the bat because I want to get them some headway because they feel like, oh my God, I got to lose a hundred pounds or 80 pounds or whatever like that. They look they're like feel like they're standing at the base of the mountain and they're

looking up. And they had such a huge hill to climb. But what if you can knock out a third of that like right off the bat like really fast? That has a lot of really powerful psychological components to it. It gives them a lot of like mental momentum. And it will help. So it's like, yeah, maybe the techniques or the tactics that you use are not sustainable for the long term. But the fact that you got a lot of weight off of this person quickly, one, it gave them

a lot of buy into the process. It gave them a lot of buy into you. It showed them that it's possible. So like all sorts of positive things can come out of making a lot of progress really, really, really fast. And then at a certain point, you get to where slow and steady becomes the default. Anyway, it's just like with muscle building, we talked about that. Like people always say like, oh, well, you know, I take the slow and steady approach to

getting stronger. Well, yeah, because everybody does because that's the only way other than when you're in office, right? There is no other path forward than slow. Like that's just the way that it is. You know, and so it's the same thing with weight loss after a period of time. Like you can, but like it's the same thing with strength. Like why go slower than you need to go at the beginning? If you can get the kids squat up from 95 to 225 really

quick, why not do that versus go slow? Like there's not really, you know, other than like, you know, maybe not teaching them the right form. But I mean, that's none of that stuff really is the issue. It's why go, why go slow when fast is available. And the same thing with weight loss, it's going to get that person excited about the process and then we'll

help them maybe finish the goal. Whereas if they're, they got to lose 100 pounds. And after the first few weeks, they're only down a few pounds because you're overfeeding them. You're not asking them to do a lot of cardio. Like you're asking them to make a very minimal commitment to it. It's not enough. They got it. They, you need to ask them to make a bigger step to that because the pro, the progress that they will see will be more significant

in the average person. Somebody that's really, really, really overweight, you know, they may drop 10 or 15 pounds in the first week. And it, yeah, so what? It's all water weight. Well, who cares? Like they still got to get that 100 pounds off. So I don't care what the, if it's fat or water at first, yes, it's going to be all water weight. But what does that matter? Like when that person is, you know, 380 pounds and they step on the

scale and they see 360 pounds after, you know, we can have for two weeks. They, wow, okay, this is working. Like I haven't been down here in a long time. You know, like that's, you need to do that. So, you know, for, for the person that wants to lose a quickly, though, fast, fasted cardio early in the morning, frequent, I start out with frequent and then peel it back versus starting out with somebody that's got a longer term approach.

And I might start with less and then add more. But somebody that, but I'm going to start out with like a lot at the beginning to try to get the weight off fast and then, and then maybe stabilize in prior to that thing. But I, if somebody's in a, somebody's in a deep caloric deficit, I don't like, I think I talked about this last time. I don't like hit cardio because I don't like things that are highly glycolytic because your carbs are

generally going to be low. And I want the carbs there to fuel the weight training sessions because we're doing everything we can to preserve the muscle mass. And the muscle mass is going to be preserved by trying to keep your performance in the gym as elevated as possible. Now, it, it, if you do the diet long enough and hard enough, it's likely you're going

to lose some strength. So, let's say your squats 405 at five, like it's likely that you're not going to be able to maintain that if you do a long, a prolonged, aggressive diet. But if we can get it to not drop, if we can get it to drop to 385 instead of 365, well, that's good. Like that's going to be more muscle that we preserved. And so you're going

to want to orient your nutrition, your cardio and your weight training. You want to make sure that all those three things are kind of in alignment so that you get the most out of your weight training possible, which means that for whatever carbs that you're going to get, you want those available for the weight training sessions. You don't want to be burning them up with prowler sprints. In my opinion, that's, you want to keep, you, because

that's that type of activity is highly glycolytic. And so if you're on, now if you're in a surplus or, or like in a maintenance mode, you're not in an aggressive weight loss phase, but you just want to maybe recomp a little bit to the degree that that's possible. But maybe you don't really, you're not really looking to lose 50 pounds or 25 pounds. You're, you're looking to lose 5 or 10 or just kind of tighten up or or shed some of the, you know, a little

bit of belly fat or whatever. Like in that case, but you don't really want to cut your calories that much because you're, you're still focused primarily on your strength and muscle building. In that case, I think hit is a really, really good option because it doesn't matter. You've, you've got an excess anyways, probably of carbohydrates. So burning,

burning that off with the, with the hit is okay. And I think it had, I think hit has some advantages in terms of like improving your insulin sensitivity so that you're getting better utilization out of the food that you're eating anyway. At the end, it's mostly just calorie burning, but there are some, there are some, and you could, you could argue that hit, you know, burns more calories. That all depends on the modality and the duration

and the specifics of it, like what burns more. But it's all just calorie burning at the end of the day. But to a degree, the fuel source that you're using for the activity does matter. It matters more. Again, it matters when you're in a steep deficit. That's when the hit verse, the low intensity matters. That's why you don't see bodybuilders doing hit

cardio. Yeah. You just don't. They're doing, they're all doing low intensity, walking on the treadmill, cycling, heartbeat, you know, 120 beats per minute, something like that. Like it's, they're not, they're not doing the, the really hard stuff. And that's because they're in a, so, and these guys, the thing is people go, oh, drugs, genetic bubble. Okay. This is to me, I always flip that around on people. Like, okay, these guys,

yeah, they're on a lot of drugs. And yeah, they have great genetics. You don't. And why do you think you can get away with it? Like, you know, I'm like with nutrition. Like, you look at the way bodybuilders eat, like, you know, six or seven times a day, high protein, like quality food, all that kind of stuff. And people will go, look at bodybuilders and

go, well, they are all on drugs and have great genetics. Well, you don't. So why would, why would you think you could get away with less, but look at the way they eat, even with the genetics and the drugs. Why do you think without the drugs and the genetics, you can get away with a shittier eating plan? You know what I mean? Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So if, if, if the only thing that mattered was drugs and genetics, they wouldn't

all eat six or seven meals a day. Yeah. Because it, but they do. And I think that matters. You know, I think the, the food is just as anabolic as the drugs to a degree. And so, but a lot, a lot of people are like, you know, oh, yeah, drugs and genetics, but they don't, they're nutritionist shitty or they're, they're not doing their cardio or they're doing it

all wrong. And so I think that the, the, the, the, again, going back to just the cardio part of it, like the, when you're in a steep deficit, I think the type of, of, of cardio that you're doing matters, if you're trying to maximize both fat loss and the retention of muscle mass. Because again, that's, and that's what I think most people listen to this is what we're trying to do. If you can shed as much fat as possible, but keep as much muscle

as possible, then there are ways to do it that are better than others. So, you know, I don't think the occasional hit workout is necessarily going to completely shed you of all your body fat, but given the choice between the two, that's, that's the way that I would do it.

Yeah. That, that makes really good sense. Like the, because, I mean, like, energy systems, like the aerobic long, long, like, slow duration, one, it's primarily skewed toward, like, they're all, every, every type of training you do, I think you use all types of energies,

like fat, carbs and protein, but it's just more skewed, like, heavily one way or the other and like the long, slow walking is like going to be much more, you know, utilizing fat versus the carbs that makes a lot of sense in terms of what you're talking about.

Yeah. Well, we know that the highly glycolytic stuff does not metabolize fat. It's like, it like in the, in the moment, you know, it does, it burns up, it burns up glycogen, really, really fast, but we don't, that's, if we're in a deficit and we have limited amounts of muscle glycogen already, we don't want to burn all that up with highly glycolytic activity.

So even if, even if you disc, you go, oh, well, the long, slow distance, like that, that whole thing about it, preferentially burns body fat first, like, that's all bullshit. Okay, fine. Let's say we can see that. Well, you still say the highly glycolytic hit stuff does, does preferentially burn muscle glycogen more. And so let's not deplete that if we agree that we want to keep that for our, you know, for, for our strength training

sessions. Yeah. So, and that we want to be as optimally fueled as possible for those because again, we're making the assumption that somebody that's in a steep caloric deficit is on, even if they're not no carb or low carb, they're going to be on less carb. And so they're not going to have, it's just, it's just a, it's just a default position of a steep caloric deficit is that when the protein has to stay up, both the carbs and the fat

generally have to fall some. So you're, you're generally never, especially if you're trying to get really lean, your, your carbs are never going to be really in a, like a surplus. You're not, you're going to have a limited amount. If you want to keep fueling your workouts,

keep those available. Don't burn them up with, with cardio. So, so with the strength side of things to like people, they're probably listening to this, the like kind of want to keep their strength up and, and drop body fat and, and retain muscle mass as best they can. I'm going through this right now. It's really interesting is, is like I'm, I'm losing weight, but my strength's actually going up. And I, I'd like you to dive a little deeper

into that. I think something that keeps popping out in my mind is like, yes, strength is the, you know, the foundational quality that everything else can kind of benefit from as you improve that, but actually think underneath all of that, health is the foundation of, of everything else. Like, like, health is the foundation of any performance of anything else. So like, I think what's happening for me is like the, like healthier tissue tends

to just like work better too. And I know that at certain points, going to drop off if I'm in too much of a deficit or whatever, but, but can you dive into that? I don't, exactly understand why that's happening, but it is for me. I think a big part of that. I do, like, health, let's say, like, you know, let's say like when you're healthier, your body composition

is in a better place. Like, I think there's, you know, a lot of the people that study, like, testosterone and that, and that sort of thing will say, you know, that like, without, like, excessive adipose tissue and testosterone, like, is it chicken and egg is like having too much body fat? Does that, you know, does that contribute to a lower testosterone level? Or is it the lower testosterone level that contributes to excess adipose tissue? It

could be, you know, chicken and egg. But I mean, I've heard a lot of smart people argue for getting your body fat down can help to optimize testosterone. So that could be one factor. I doubt it's the only one. I doubt it's significant enough to like, jack up your test levels, like you're on deball or whatever, but like, it's still, it still probably has role. I think the bigger role and, and I'd loved, at some point I'm going to get my buddy,

Nathan Peyton on here, if I can ever pin him down. But I think the bigger factor from a hormonal level is probably your insulin sensitivity. When your diet gets better and or your conditioning levels go up, your insulin sensitivity improves. So it's not like what Nathan always tells me. And for you guys, I don't know Nathan. He's probably the, I think he's the best nutrition guy in the strength world. I mean, his clients, I think four of the world, four, he's got

like four, four to six world strongest man titles. And I mean, like competitors, I mean, like one of them, Martin, what's it? Martin Lysis, Brian Shaw, Travis Fortmeyer, all these guys are all his clients. You know, he's got a lot of very, very high level clients. And they're all super lean, jacked, you know, whatever. So he, and his, his big thing is that like, he always, and he's a friend of mine. He likes to live here in Kingwood. And his big thing

with, with diet, it's not how much you eat. It's how much you use. And that's where like his whole thing is like where most people go wrong, like when they're trying to put on muscle or, and like with the whole caloric surplus, he's his example that he always uses is like, it's like a glass of water, like imagine a glass of water sitting on the pavement and you're trying to fill it up. You can, can you fill that up like with a fire hose? Like

you can, right? You could put a fire hose in that thing and it would fill the glass up all the way. How much, how much is getting spilled out on the outside? Like how much is wasted and not utilized versus like what if you use a garden hose or a pot or, you know, just imagine a better tool to pour, pour water out in a more controlled manner. And you poured the water out and you've got it right up to the top of the glass and then you turned

it off. And you let the, you let the water level go down. And then you turn the water hose back on and you fill the glass up and then you turn it off, right? When it hit the top. Imagine that process. That's kind of, that's kind of, and that's kind of your body. That's the analogy there is your body utilizing what you're feeding it versus you just blasting

it with this massive caloric surplus where half of it's going to waste anyways. You know, and I think that's like, that's the difference between the state like when you talk about things like calorie partitioning with like meal frequency and things like that. You know, I don't, I don't, I can't be convinced that 5,000 calories a day into, in the, in the 2, 2500 calorie servings is the same as 5, 1000 calorie servings spread out evenly throughout

the day. I can't be can because I just don't think the body is going to utilize all of that fuel as efficiently when it's all like a like and that's how a lot of people gain weight and muscle. A lot of lifters do that. They overeat at sessions are, you know, at each meal. So they get sufficient. It's like the water. It's like the fire hose analogy. They're getting the glasses getting filled up. But there's a lot of spill over is that there's a lot

that doesn't get utilized. And that's where, you know, body composition is not good. Energy levels aren't good. All that shit that's not getting utilized necessarily has a negative impact. Okay. So that's sort of what he means by the fire hose like by the fire hose. Like there's so much going to spill over that like your like you might your body composition won't go the like the same amount of calories in a given day. Well, I think in the most, yeah, in the most,

the most, the one that matters the most is your insulin sensitivity. When you overeat all the time and not just overeat on carbohydrates, but when you overeat on calories, your insulin sensitivity insulin sensitivity becomes very poor. And so that reduces your ability to utilize a higher level of calories. If you have really, really, really good insulin sensitivity, you eat more. But less of it

is converted to body fat. You know, that's that's one of the things that he does with his athletes is like right off the bat is he fixes their insulin sensitivity because a lot of these guys and I was one of them had really shitty insulin sensitivity, which means in order to get weight off of them, you had to diet them down really low in calories, which you know, that's what some guys you look at, you can't believe how much they're eating and still losing weight. It's like, well, how's this guy

in a court deficit at like 3500 calories a day? Well, he's got, I mean, yes, you're like the overall amount of like muscle size that you like your how big you are matters, obviously. Like Travis Ort-Mire versus like us is different. Like, you know what I mean? Like just from the sheer size of him, but when you're talking about gaining, you know, gaining size or losing size, your insulin sensitivity matters a lot because it has to do with the utilization of those calories.

It's a lot less going to waste. So you're able to, so like when you're trying to lose weight, you can eat more and still be in a deficit, whether, whereas when your insulin sensitivity is poor, you know, that's where you, you know, you might have to put a guy on 1800 calories a day to get it to get the weight off of him because he's so resistant to it. Whereas, you know, a guy with really, really good insulin sensitivity, he can lose the weight eating 2600 calories a day.

Well, he's going to retain more muscle and perform better. Well, the guy that can lose eating more. You know, and so that's that's kind of the, I think that's why in, and when you start dieting and also start doing harder conditioning, insulin sensitivity improves. And so I think that that, in a lot of ways is why some people see an increase in performance even when they start dieting. And a lot of times it can be, it can be that it can also just be, you're just paying when somebody

starts dieting, they just start paying more attention to the food that they eat. And so they're getting a better quality of food across the board. Oftentimes, their protein intake is a lot higher. You know, you can gain weight on a pretty low protein intake. You can even build muscle on a low protein intake if you're fat and carbs are through the roof because so much, so many amino acids are being spared for other purposes. You actually, most people actually generally need less protein when

they're trying to bulk than when they're trying to cut. So I just want to like make sure I understand the analogy because I'm sure people listening will be like, I don't know, for me at least. If I, if it's some, I want to clarify, I'm sure other people want to as well. So just, I'm going to summarize what I, what I think he means. And then you could tell me if I, if I'm mixing it up. So the fire hose example, basically, you know, is analogous to eating a ton of calories at a given

meal. And so you'll use the calories and fill your cup up. But a lot of those calories will kind of spill over like might be, might be stored as fat or you're just not. It might say non, non, non anabolic purposes. Okay. And then regard, and they some of them may be bad. Some of them may be completely benign. Yeah. But let's just say they're not. Yeah. So we're not necessarily saying it's all bad, but it's, let's say it's not being. So what you could say is, okay, the fire hose,

let's say that rep, you did 5,000 calories came out of the fire hose. And 5,000 calories came out of the garden hose. But none of them got wasted with the garden hose approach, right? Because you, you filled a little bit up, you turned it off, you filled it up, you turned it off. So all 5,000 calories went into that cup. Whereas with the garden hose, 3,000 calories went into the cup,

and 2,000 got left all over the driveway. It almost reminds me a little, and maybe it's almost like that is potentially how like accumulating like lots of meals like that where you're like the fire hose could maybe even lead to like type 2 diabetes kind of thing. If it's like, yes, that's that's why people do that. That's why I get frustrated with the people that bash like bro science or bro nutrition or whatever you want to call it because those protocols exist for

a reason. Like when a guy needs to eat that many calories to get like, it's they exist that way for a reason because they're better. You know, there's less waste going on when you divvy up those calories like that. That's to me. That's the best way to think about it. You know, if you're going to again, it's 5,000 calories came out of the fire hose. 5,000 calories came out of the garden hose. But half is left all over the driveway and one analogy and the on the other ones. And that's,

that's you can see how it goes. You put a little bit in and then you pull it back and then you weigh a few hours and then you put a little bit more in and then you pull it back. But at no one sitting, are you overfeeding yourself? And so I mean, it's useful to think in extremes that way. Yeah. The guy's eating, if it's, if the guy's, let's say he needs 5,000 calories a day to reach his goals or strength or whatever, 5,000 probably a little excessive for most people. But it's just the

number that I've been thrown out. So whatever, you could apply to any number. Let's say he needs 5,000 calories. You can't, I cannot be convinced that 5,000 calories in a, I could do 5,000 in a sitting on a, I know if most people can, but let's just say to make it more practical, 2,500 calories at 9 AM and 2,500 calories at 5 PM. Okay, two meals a day. You eat a like breakfast and lunch or breakfast and dinner and they're both 2,500 calories. Okay. I can't be convinced that that's the same as 5

or sit like, let's say 6. What would that be? No, 800 something. Let's say 820. 6, 820 calorie meals. Spread evenly every three to four hours. I can't be convinced that the latter approach is not more anabolic. That's really interesting. And even just from the protein intake, what if, what if you're 250 pounds, 220, you want to get 250 grams of protein? You're going to eat 125 grams of protein twice. You think that's better than, you know, six, six, 40 grams serving spread evenly

throughout the day. Yeah. I can't be convinced that it all just evens out. People will say shit like that. It doesn't matter if you eat six meals a day or two meals a day. Yeah, it does. It does. If you're trying to optimize body composition and performance, it does. Especially when you're talking about larger amounts of food, you eating 250 grams of protein broken up into six, 40 grams servings versus 225 grams servings is not the same thing. I don't think so. Yeah. I don't think so.

That's interesting. And again, you're talking about, you're talking about maybe what's optimal. You know, can you still get stronger eating, you know, 5,000 calories into two servings? Yeah, you can. Is it optimal? It's probably a long way from optimal. The other way I think is a lot better. That's why these protocols exist is because people noticed a long, long time ago they worked better. Yeah. So, you know, it's, to me, that's, I think it's, it's super. That's why I don't like.

Some of these just generic diet advice or whatever where, oh, as long as you're in a deficit, it doesn't matter. As long as you're in a surplus like that. I just, I think that's not helping people. Yeah. It's essentially, you need, like, you need more concrete. There's more, there is more stuff that matters. Like I get it. Like, there's a lot of minutia in the diet world that probably most

people don't need to worry about. But I don't think that meal frequency is one of them. I don't think like people discount that is like that's just some super weird in the weeds detail that doesn't matter. But I think it does when you're, especially when you're talking about a lot of calories. Yeah. It was almost like, it comes in my like drinking water. It's like, I don't know of the states. You need three gallons of water or whatever, a gallon of water a day. It's like,

you can drink that entire gallon right now. But like later on, like you're still, you're, you're going to be really thirsty later on too. Like, I don't know if that's a good example. Yeah. I mean, is, well, it's, I mean, I don't know. I mean, are you going to die of dehydration in either scenario? No. Yeah. I mean, are you, you know what I mean? But is it optimal to drink a gallon of water in the morning and then not drink anything the rest of the day? Yeah. Exactly.

Versus two half gallon servings or, you know, four quarts spread out. I mean, it, you just start thinking about it like that and it's probably more optimal. Even if it's minor, I think with food, it's not that minor to be honest. I think it has some major effects. So, you know, so anyway, that's the, because I want to get into the nuts and bolts of the weight training part of it in terms of the, how to, how to, how to train on, you know, on a cut or

in a caloric deficit. And some of that is going to be tied in with the diet because really, I think to do it effectively, like, like the three factors kind of need to be coordinated. Like, like the cardio, the diet, the weight training, like to the degree that you can synchronize things. Optimally, I think that if you can, you probably should. So I just have like, I wrote down just like

a couple of like, just kind of hard and fast. Like, I don't say they're rules. I hate using the word rules because rules implies that like, like, there's no violations of these, like, they should not ever be violated or like, there's no, there's no circumstances where these are, like, these are true in every circumstance. And that's not the case. Like, so these are just kind of,

like general principles. And yes, on all of these things, like you could point to exceptions or like your own circumstance where this wasn't true with you or whatever, I'm using this like, in general, for most people, like, I have some kind of like, just some principles that I follow with like, how to integrate the training while you're cutting weight. Like what, what, what are some things to focus on or think about in your strength training routine while you're in a steep caloric deficit

for a period of time? One, and I get this one frustrates me because I deal with it all the time is stop following programs that increase the stress linearly while you're on a cut. And that could be obviously a daily, like a daily linear progression, like to say the starting strength program, like you're literally being asked to go up and wait every day that you train three days a week. You can't do programs like that while you're in it while your body is also like losing weight.

So if your priority is the weight loss, like do something else. And then when you're ready to go back into maintenance or into a surplus or whatever, and you want to do like a basic novice, like the starting strength progression where you're trying to follow with like a hyper aggressive loading weight every day, then you can do that. But don't try that on a cut. But the same is true of intermediate type programs. Like a lot of the programs I have on my site, you know, they don't,

they don't ask you to go up and wait every day. Some of them may or may not ask you to even go up and wait every week. But if you carve out, let's say 12 weeks or nine weeks or something out of that program over the course of that eight, nine, 10, 12 weeks, the stress is continuing to go up and up and up the volume, the volume at certain intensity ranges increases the overall intensity increases,

the overall volume increases, like different programs operate differently. But on almost all of those programs from week one to say week 12, the stress is going to increase and it just kind of steadily goes up, up, up, up, up. And you guys need to stop cutting in the middle of these types of programs. You can't do that. You're cutting the wheels out from underneath you. It in general doesn't work. Where it does work is if you have a lot of weight to lose. Or if you're only trying

to lose maybe a very small amount of weight. But even then, it's not generally if you're going to increase the stress of a program at a minimum you need to be in maintenance calories. But even a slight surplus is better. But so many guys start these programs that ask for the stress to be increased across the week. And then they just midway through. They go, oh, I'm going to cut. And they literally, it's like, it's that meme that you see where the guy is riding the bike and

he puts the stick through his own tire. You know what I mean? Like, it's like that he's laying on the ground. Like what happened? Well, you destroyed your own recovery in the middle of the program. That's what happened. And that makes, well, I think like nutrition is you have to consider that another like it's another variable in the training program too. So like if intensity, I think it's more than a variable. I think like, like if you're on a serious program, I think it's more than a variable.

I think it's like people are like, I think like the training is 100% and like the nutrition is 100%. Like it's, you know what I'm saying? Like it has to be there on a really serious training program. Well, I was just saying like the as the it's almost like the parallel I'm drawing is like if as intensity goes up, volume has to come down. So like is intensity goes up on the the nutritional side of things in terms of the caloric deficit, then volume and the actual training program has to

go down. Is that is that kind of what you're saying? Like as your deficit is there, you can't do as much like your stress can't keep going up to either stay or like maybe even drop because of that. Yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, it's yeah, you can't you you have to you have to match the

programming to the nutritional status. And you can't you can't be linearly, you know, if you're going to follow a diet over the course of say, you know, three to four months, you're going to kind of not necessarily every day or every week, but you're like linearly asking the the the resources that the body has to fuel the workouts and fuel the recovery are going down while the amount of resources needed to fuel the recovery and the training is going up. So it's just you're asking

your body to do your at your demanding more of your body and giving it less. You know, and so it's just it's a dumb way to do things like because you don't have to do it that way. Like you there's better ways to do it. You can still do your chloride deficit and lose your weight, but you need you need to find programming that is not asking the stress to go like like a lot of the programs I sell on my site, like the percentage based programming that I like these templates that are very

popular. The garage gym warrior templates and all that kind of stuff. Like there's a couple of them that probably work better with a diet than others. They're just less aggressive programs. That's all they are. They're not designed necessarily for a diet. They're just not super aggressive. But they're all going up and stress. They all do it a little bit differently, but they all go up

and stress over the over the period of several weeks. Now some of the programs have like they'll have like a nine week kind of like accumulation phase where the volume goes up and the intensity goes up but not by like a ton. And then there's like a peaking phase where the intensity ratchets up quite a bit for like three or four weeks. And so I often tell people like if you're going to follow

one of those percentage based programs, just cut out like don't do the peaking phase. Like if you if you can sustain it, like you can do the like the accumulation phase like like on a repeat type thing. And that'll just give you like some structure to follow. But don't like don't get into that phase where you're trying to like ramp up the intensity at the very end as your calories are

continuing to go down because it's just not going to work. So that's kind of like principle number one is like you need to find programming that either like kind of keeps you at maintenance or I'm going to talk actually a little bit about some some things that I like. But if you're going to follow like a percentage based template or whatever, you need to look at something that kind of holds

holds you at maintenance or has some ability to auto regulate. But just don't don't keep thinking that you can just keep adding volume and keep adding intensity while you're in a deficit because you're setting yourself up for disaster. Well, that makes sense to why it's a common mistake because I think like you would think well I gotta keep doing like more and more so I can burn calories and lose the weight. But so I understand why that why people would fall into that. Right. And that's

actually dovetails into my next point which is don't fall into the trap. Everybody does this when they get on a diet is they all want to increase the volume. It's like they all want to drop the load and increase the volume. And that to me is there's a couple of reasons why I don't like that. One is don't use weight training to burn calories. Weight training is there to build muscle and that's it. Use cardio to burn the calories. Don't try to get your calorie burned from more volume in the weight

room. I don't like that. The other side of that is you're again you're going to be minimally fueled or at least not optimally fueled for the workouts where you cannot really your body is not going to really be primed to handle high volume weight training workouts. So that's there's different ways of generating stress on the muscle tissue and volume is one way intensity is one one way relative intensity is another way like there's like mechanical positioning and I mean there's all kinds of

ways to generate stress on a muscle tissue and volume is just one way to do that. And that's not the way that I like to do it when somebody's in a cut. It for nothing else that they just don't have the fuel to really put in it. And so you wind up having to in order to handle a higher training volume, you have to decrease the intensity so much that it's not really that good of a of a

muscle retention stress. And so that's actually kind of my my next thing is that your goal while you're in a cut and this is really important for people to understand when you're in a cut you're trying to lose body fat you're trying to drop weight. The goal is not it is not capital NOT not to maintain your peak strength. If you're you know your best you know squat is you know 500 pounds or whatever for a top single and you want to lose 25 pounds your goal is not to maintain your 500

pound squat for a top single. Your peak strength is going to drop and you have to accept that. It doesn't mean that it's a permanent drop or that it can't be recouped at a slightly lighter body weight. But while you're in the deficit, the one of the biggest mistakes you can make is trying to maintain your peak strength. You'll absolutely run yourself into the ground doing that and or get injured and or lose muscle mass. Trying to do it because you have a lot of shitty sessions. The

goal is to maintain the muscle mass and that is different. It's similar but the maintenance of muscle mass, the maintenance of tissue is different than the maintenance of peak strength. And it's a little easier to do in my opinion to do that because there's you have lots of things at your disposal other than just load. And so I don't like to see guys for one if when they're in a deficit I don't really like to see them drop into really heavy low rep ranges like heavy singles,

heavy triples, like that kind of like especially when they're like really high effort. I tend to like to keep things in like more of like the five to eight rep range. I also don't like really high rep ranges in a steep deficit because those are super super glycolytic activities. So like for on a cut I really really like a medium rep range. Like I would say most of your work needs to be in like the five to eight rep range. A couple of reasons for that one it does a pretty good job of

maintaining your strength. So it's heavy enough without being super heavy and it's so it's safer. And that's the thing when you're depleted when your carbs are low you don't have as much water in the tissue. You don't have as much water stored. You don't have as much water stored around the joints like you're more dehydrated. Like guys when they're in a cut get injured way more often. You see that all the time when guys get in a cut and they continue they don't they don't

change their training at all. They start tweaking stuff. Hamstrings get tweaked, adductors get tweaked, pecs get tweaked because they're trying to they're depleted themselves and they keep trying to go heavy heavy heavy heavy. So you got to back off the weight a little bit. Keep stuff in the five to eight rep range. Now go hard in the five to eight rep range but that's safer. It's safer to push really really hard for an eight rep max than it is for a three rep max.

That load is what's going to eat you up. Okay. And so it's also I think it's better it's it will maintain your muscle mass. It will maintain two degree you know some of your strength. It's not to it's not going to maintain your peak strength but it does a better job of maintaining your muscle mass. And so do the bulk of your work needs to be in that five to eight rep range in my opinion.

I like to keep sessions short. To me that's one of the biggest change over the last couple years for me is really looking at the length of each session as like a really important component. When training older people but also training people in a caloric deficit both people have a hard time recovering but I really don't like long sessions. So I'm not a huge fan of like

full body sessions when you're in a deficit. I like short focus sessions. Even like upper lower can run a little long like I like I like more of like a one lift a day or like if you want to do like a like a body building type split which is kind of the same as like a one lift a day. But where you you really just have the focus is on like one big thing that day. So like we're today we're just benching. Now we might do some other stuff. We might do some chins and dips and triceps or

whatever after that. But like the main heavy stimulus for that day we may just be benching that day or just like the next day we're just really squatting like we may squat and then go push the prowler or do you know whatever like a couple of other system things but we're not trying to squat bench and deadlift all in one session on that deficit and do all of them heavy with like you know medium to high volume because you're going to run out of gas on that. And you're just going to

you're going to kind of wipe yourself out. And what that allows you to do when you have a narrower focus each session. I now I only have to be fueled up for the bench. And so like you what you're going to wind up doing is you're going to take like if you have let's say you you have a pretty low amount of carbohydrates that you're on you know during your during your cut you you're going to bias a big chunk of those carbohydrates into those pre workout meals like the two pre workout meals.

I don't like doing them all and I want to get into it on this but like I actually like let's say my workouts at 3 p.m. I would want to do like my biggest carbohydrate meal probably around noon or 11 even like like three to four hours prior to the workout. I would put most of my carbs for the day in that meal. And then a smaller carbohydrate meal at like an hour to 30 minutes before I like probably 30 minutes before I train. Now I don't like to do a huge meal right before I train. I kind of

get the carb coma type thing. Other people might be a little different but that's that's one of those individual things but it doesn't matter you're going to take the bulk of your carbs that you have available for you and you're going to put them in those pre training meals. And remember carbs fuel the workout. Protein and fat fuel the recovery. So bias your carbs prior to the training session. And then you'll have more productive training sessions and the productive training sessions

are what is that's what maintains the muscle. So you're the way that we track it's hard to track muscle growth or muscle loss. The main metric we have to track that is performance. You know if you're numbers are drastically going down down down down down down really fast it's a higher likelihood that you're losing too much muscle mass whereas if you're slowly dropping weight and you're able to maintain your performance better the likelihood that you're dropping muscle mass is very

very low. And so we want to have as high a quality workout as possible even while we're cutting. And the way we do that is by making sure that the bulk of our carbohydrate is available for our training sessions. If you train early in the morning if you're like a 5 a.m. trainee guy then I would have my biggest carbohydrate meal of the day at night before I go to bed like 9 p.m.

and then go to bed and that's carbs will still going to be available to you at 5. Because it's going to be tough to wake up at 4.30 and stuff yourself full of oatmeal or you know cream of rice or whatever it is and then go train like it the the the upload process is a little slower than that

for most people. So that's why I kind of like several hours before to have the big carb meal rather than than right before but either way however you do it that's you want to make sure like that's again I don't really like the if I've got a lower amount of carbs I don't necessarily want them

spread evenly throughout the day. Now on a rest day it doesn't really matter you could spread them out on a but on a training day I'm going to bias more of them in those pre workout meals and that's strictly for and then the rest of the day you cut back to more protein and fat and vegetables and things like that. So yes shorter sessions you know don't focus on maintain peak of peak strength

don't try to don't try to burn calories with tons of volume. I like my own personal favorite and again there's lots of different ways to do this so I'm talking this is kind of my anecdotal thing but I I generally do like a top set and a back offset for a lot of my stuff like two main hard work sets and I use what's called a rotating linear progression. So this is an auto-regulated

way to train really really hard. My problem with a lot of auto-regulation strategies is that they encourage you I don't want to say train like a pussy because that's like because I know that's not what people are trying to do and I feel like insulting people is not necessarily going to get them

to listen what I have to say but they the a lot of auto-regulation strategies are having you focused on not training too hard whereas there's other types of auto-regulation like say like we talked about with the conjugate method or like with these rotating linear progressions where the emphasis

is to train as hard as you can but the way that the whole system is structured it does so in a way that doesn't is not going to over train you so you don't have to be afraid to push really really hard at each session which again I think that a higher relative intensity is better for the

retention of muscle mass like I like training closer to failure with less volume is better for somebody that doesn't have a lot of calories available to them like just go hard but not long you know because you don't have the fuel to go long anyway and if you do go long on a on less fuel it

just means that it's like driving a car like I can make this gas last longer if I drive 40 you know what I mean like you you can yeah you can go long but you got to go slow or you got to go light in this context so that's I don't think that that strategy is better for rotating muscle versus

less volume but much much higher effort and so like a rotating linear progression I'm going to give you an example of what this looks like and I've got this is on my website you can go look at Andy Baker.com it's somewhere buried in my articles I've got stuff about top set and back

offsets and I've got stuff on rotating linear progressions but it's real simple it basically it's a linear progression that isn't necessarily bound by any certain length of time it's kind of bound by performance so let's just say on an incline press you're going to start at 225 and you can do

12 reps so I'm just going to use a single set as an example so you do 225 for set at 12 okay good that's all you could do the next week you go to 230 and you do however many you can and that's going to be probably 10 to 12 and then the next week you do 235 and you do as many as you can

and that's going to be let's say 9 to 11 so you just keep in the next week you go to 240 and you just keep you keep going regardless of what you do as how many you try to get as many reps as you can but every week regardless of what you do you just add five pounds you just add five pounds or

two and a half pounds or whatever it is if you're if you're smaller but you add a small amount of load and then push basically to failure and you keep doing that getting as many reps as you can at each time so again it's kind of auto regulated you just do what you can that day but it's the most

that you can do that day you're not stopping going oh I don't want to exceed eight reps because I'll be at RPE 9 and then I'm going to disintegrate no no you go to RPE 10 every time like you push really really hard every time but you just don't do it very often or very much you just do that

like the one top set and then you have a you have a floor that when you reach that you restart that progression so let's say you keep adding five pounds a week until you started at 225 for 12 reps and you end at 265 for four and that's used that's what I use for my bottom end is like when I drop

below four then I start over so let's say I get 265 for four the next week I go to 270 and I only get three okay I'm done I don't want to drop below four reps so I'm done with that so what I do is I drop the weight and I recycle back up to the top I may not start at 225 again I may actually start

at 235 this time and I do the same thing and I look I say what did I get last time okay last time I did 235 I got 10 I'm going to try for 11 this time and you just you just repeat that and let's say I started a little heavier this time last time I ended at 270 for three this time maybe I get

to 280 before I hit before I hit three so congratulations like I got I ended this when I got 10 pounds heavier on this and so that cycle that that linear progression it might last six weeks it might last 16 weeks it depends it depends on you know lots of things nutritional status and how much weight

you're losing and you and you don't have to just use this in a weight loss thing it's actually works really good in a surplus too but it's auto regulated so how you go up as long as you can in that weekly linear fashion and can you until you can't and then you just back up and do it again what I

usually do is I keep doing that on a given exercise until I fail to until I failed to set PRs so like if I run through that whole progression again and I don't make any progress or especially if I regress then I just do the same thing but on a different movement so I was doing incline bench now I

switched to flat bench or I was doing that on deadlifts and I made you know I got two cycles of making progress and then on the third cycle I didn't make any progress so now I switched to deficit deadlift or stiff leg or something similar so you can do that's kind of how that works but

like a weekly linear or I mean a rotating linear progression like that and a lot of guys may say well how's that different from what you just said you just said don't follow programming that gets more more stressful or the difference is is this is it's auto regulated and that there's no timeline

so if I need to reset in week six then I do if I can keep going until week 12 or 16 then I do and I'm allowing my reps to drop every week as they need even though the weight is going up or as if you're on a more highly structured percentage based program it's telling you what to do every single

time you know and you have to go up even if you're not you know you're not able to or whatever so and a lot of those also use a lot lower rep ranges this is going to have you working in a little bit higher rep range and I'll generally do like one top set of like four to eight reps it's going to

be somewhere in that range and then I do a back off set I pull some weight off and I do a back off set of like eight to 12 now both of those sets are like limit sets and then for that particular exercise that's it I only do the the two really hard sets and then I'll go move to a different

movement and so that's that that allows you to train with a much much higher relative intensity then just doing a bunch of sets and reps with like at say RPE 6 or 7 or what I just don't think that that's a super effective way to maintain muscle mass if you do and that works for you then

that's fine I just in my experience it's been that a higher effort level higher relative intensity is is better for the retention of muscle mass than lower relative intensity and you want it you want to the degree possible you do want to try to keep your performance numbers up it's just again

we talked about this in the hypertrophy thing it's what metrics are you using to determine what constitutes performance we're not talking about one rms on the bench squat and deadlift we're talking about five to eight rep maxes on basically any quality movement that you like you know that that

works for your whatever body part you're talking about so you want to chase performance on these hard sets you want to try to keep your numbers up to the degree that it's possible to keep your numbers up but you don't want to be stubborn about it and get hurt I mean if you're if you're

going to follow an aggressive enough diet for long enough and lose you know enough weight eventually your performance is going to decline and so you have to accept some regression in your numbers you just want to fight it as much as possible and try to keep try to keep those numbers up as much

as you can but you know if you if you're stubborn about it and you keep trying to hit the same old numbers for the same amount of reps and it's just not there you got to remember journey to pleated state and your risk for injury is higher and then when you get injured and you know

dieting sucks enough already weight loss programming sucks enough already like getting injured typically kills people's mental motivation so you really want to try to avoid that last thing I'm going to talk about is how to kind of integrate the diet with this

um so a couple of different strategies that I like I'm not going to get into like exact diets or whatever because that's so individual you know you have to be in a chloric deficit protein needs to be high you can cut fat or carbs more based on kind of your preference like we talked about

but generally both of them have to come down a little bit but it's kind of up to you whether you follow more of a higher protein and higher fat with a more moderate to low carb approach or if you like to keep the fats really low and use a little bit more carbs again it kind of just depends on what

you respond to better in terms of energy and satiety level because your ability to stick to this diet for a longer period of time is ultimately what's going to determine your success and so go with whichever one you're you know kind of less likely to have fuck ups with in terms of your diet but

one of the things I want to talk about is the concept of cheat meals and how to use those effectively on a diet you know a cheat meal is basically in you know and kind of a something not something you would think of on a diet is a pizza or fast food or things like that there's

there's good ways and bad ways to do this you can definitely overdo the cheat meals I prefer a cheat meal versus a cheat day I think cheat days tend to put too much weight on people and you spend too much time kind of digging out of that hole whereas one well-time cheat meal that's sufficient enough

in calories can go a long way both at kind of keeping your cravings at bay keeping your sanity in check but also really drastically improving your performance and making sure that you don't waste too much muscle mass one one way to do it is doing like a weekly cheat meal and sometimes you can

get away with more than than one a week some guys can get away with like you know two days a week of the of the cheat but most people I'll start them out with like with like one and that is usually the best way to do it there's two ways to think about a weekly cheat meal is one do it on a day that

works best for your life so like what for most people that's usually like Friday night or Saturday night or the better way to do it is really on a day that coincides with your hardest workout now what most

people do is they put their cheat meal on the day of their hardest workout I don't like that I like to put the cheat meal the day before your hardest workout so let's say you're doing like a one lift a day type thing and Monday is bench day Tuesday is squat day Thursday is overhead press day and

Friday is deadlift day for me that hardest day in there would be the squat day so that for others it might be dead lifts or you could you could you could pair it with whatever lift is struggling the most or whichever lift you care the most about for me my squat would be the one that suffers the

most on a diet or is you know sucks the most to do in a depleted state so I would probably put my cheat meal on Monday nights which is the night before I squat on Tuesday I don't like the feeling I have very low energy if let's say I was going to work out at 4 p.m. I don't want to do a cheat meal

at noon especially if I'm not used to it because it will it won't give me energy it's going to give me lethargy it's going to make me feel fat and bloated and lethargic and unenergetic and all of those extra calories are really not going to be available to me in that 4 p.m workout so for me I

would do it the night before I like to do it the night before for a couple of reasons one again the kind of the energy crash if you're used to eating like smaller lower calorie meals and then you eat a pizza or you know a big mac and fries or Chinese buffet or whatever you want to do to

get all those calories and fat and carbs and sodium and that basically just makes me want to fall asleep so I usually do it at the last meal the day but also it has the benefit of keeping you from turning a cheat meal into a cheat day and that's generally what happens when people do a cheat meal

like at lunch or breakfast is the rest of the day they just go off fuck it I already ate Chinese buffet for lunch so might as well you know just eat pizza for dinner or whatever and again that that just pushes the calories up a little too high it's hard to dig yourself out of so I like to do it at

night both for the physiological and psychological reasons do it at night go to bed wake up the next morning muscle bellies are full vascularities good like you can tell like you had a really good response to that cheat meal and you're gonna be you're gonna be killing it under the bar that day

and that will help to preserve as much strength and muscle as possible and plus it'll give you a little bit of a psychological break now the cheat meal is dependent on you having lost at least a pound that week so I would and that in that situation if Monday night was going to be my cheat meal

I would make sure I generally weigh every day during a diet but I would definitely weigh Monday morning and if I'm not down a pound from the last week I don't get the cheat meal so if I was 210 I need to be at least 209 or I don't get the cheat meal otherwise my weight's gonna be trending up

not not down so you've got to kind of earn it so as long as that weight is down a pound or two each week then you can go ahead and have that cheat meal so you get in it because the scale is gonna go up after that meal let's say you were you weighed in at 209 okay good you get your cheat

meal well when you wake up on Tuesday you're gonna be if you're like me you're gonna be 216 to 17 you're gonna be 7 8 pounds heavier generally after that 1 meal and the rest of the week is basically spent getting that 7 or 8 pounds back off plus peeling off that 1 extra pound so you're still netting

one or two pounds lost every week but you're not spending the entire week down as your lowest bodyweight so that just pushes up your your average calories it makes training a little bit easier the other way

to do it is do what's called a rolling cheat meal which is based in this requires you to weigh yourself every day which is basically every time that you drop an additional pound you have a cheat meal that night so let's say you know Monday you weigh in let's say Monday you weigh in at 210 then then on Thursday you hit 209 so Thursday night you get a cheat meal and now you don't get another cheat meal until you hit 208 so let's say the night by Tuesday of the following week you're down to 208

Tuesday night you get a cheat meal and so basically you get a cheat meal as often as you drop down a pound and for a lot of people that may wind up being more you know more often than once per week and so that's that that can be another way to do it to kind of bump that up so you just have to

watch it and make sure that you're you know you're losing consistently enough and that your cheat meals aren't keeping you from you know having super long plateaus or whatever if that's the case you may need to reduce the frequency and that's a we were talking about insulin since it insulin

sensitivity earlier bad responses to cheat meals is a sign that insulin sensitivity is not good I talked a reference to a minute ago about having a cheat meal that night and waking up the next morning and your muscle belly is feeling full and having good vascularity if that's not happening you're

probably not having a great your insulin sensitivity is still probably not great and you're not having a great response to that cheat meal which means you're not kind of uptaking as many of those calories and bodybuilding they call it spillover which is a good response to a cheat meal you wake up

and you may actually have better abs than you did the night before like everything is really drawn into the water and glycogen really really gets drawn into the muscle cells and so like the look you're have round fuller muscle bellies better vascularity and maybe even a tighter midsection

after the cheat meal whereas if you wake up the next morning and you don't have the full muscle bellies you're carrying a lot of water you're retaining a lot of subcutaneous water poor vascularity that can be a sign that either the food that you're eating is not good for your cheat meal so

typically we don't like like a lot of dairy like ice cream and shit like that is not really a good idea for a cheat meal things like pizza fast food those sorts of things tend to be good for me fried food is not good like fried you know stuff with batter on it like that that tends to be a very

poor glycogen load for me I do really good with like pizza spaghetti fajitas things like that I do really really well with it typically going to be a high carb and high fat and high sodium but so you're going to pay attention a little bit to the look but also your performance you know you'll

notice that some some foods treat you better than others so anyway that gets into some kind of a little bit more advanced stuff but it's something to think about in terms of how to time this stuff how to use cheat meals so they are authorized I like that strategy better than just kind of

everything in moderation and keeping every day the same that doesn't really do it for me you know but it to each his own there's different way like tons of different strategies to lose weight so I'm not necessarily saying that this is the best way or that everybody should do it my way this

is just a way to do it that has worked for me and clients in the past so anyway it's just something to think about I hope you've enjoyed this podcast I don't think we're going to talk anymore about fat loss or conditioning or diet or anything on the next one so we'll have something all new for you next week but as always I really appreciate you guys listening and we will talk to you next time