158: Eric Helms: The MACHIAVELLIAN Approach (Part 5)

Hey everyone, I just want to thank all of you who purchased a t-shirt, a limited edition t-shirt. We recently launched Longevity Muscle Store for those of you who are new here. may not know we have a new collection coming soon if you want to be the first to get notified so you don't miss out head on over to longevitymuscle.store sign up to the email list and you'll be the first to get notified for when the next collection drops

Once again, that's longevitymuscle.store. Also, Longevity Muscle Magazine. We have over 100 articles now. We have exclusive interviews being featured inside the magazine. Interviews that are not even on the podcast or the YouTube channel. We cover topics on training, nutrition, mindset, competing, all the good stuff with the world's top natural bodybuilders. You already know. If you're not on a subscription, check it out.

Once again, that's Longevity Muscle Magazine. Link is in the show notes. All right, that's it. Let's get right into it. Enjoy the show. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Longevity Muscle Podcast. I'm Kenny, your host, and today we are back for a part five with the man himself, Eric Helms of Team 3D Muscle Journey. Eric is a WMBF.

natural pro bodybuilder he is the chief science officer with 3d muscle journey along with a whole bunch of other incredible things that he does for the industry and for natural bodybuilding If you want to learn more about Eric today, we dive into some incredibly insightful topics. As always, Eric doesn't disappoint. And this is a big episode I'm excited to share with you all. So let's get right into it. Enjoy. When was the last time I spoke to you? Last year at some point.

You're in the middle of contest prep? Yeah. I'm competing October 4th and 5th will be the first show. And then I've got November. I've got one more show two weeks before Worlds and then Worlds. You must be stoked for Worlds again. Yeah, it's the proper pro debut. So that'll be cool. I'm going to take a couple shots at seeing if I can turn pro in the new WBF Classic division. So that'll be fun. So I'll do some amateur crossing over.

That's pretty cool. So is that the Classic Division, that's going to be a new thing? I thought they always had that in the WMBF, but not at Worlds, I guess. No, they've never had it in the WMBF. It just started this year. So that's only the PMBA that's running the Classic Physique, I guess. No, it's in a lot of federations. It is, right? That's what I thought. So just the WNBF never had it. The WNBF did not have it, no. They had the position that it was not, like natural bodily didn't really.

need it but now they just did it because everyone knows so what's your thoughts on that like because i know you have pretty strong opinions that natural bodybuilding itself is Classic, right? Yeah, so I like the way that WMDF is doing it because they are emphasizing symmetry and posing. I think there are ways to do classic physique right.

And there's ways to do it that are kind of dumb, in my opinion. So when classic physique is introduced in natural bodybuilding as don't be as big or don't be as lean, it makes it really ambiguous. I think when classic physique first came over to natural bodybuilding... It was kind of just the game of copycat from the tested feds and like, oh, let's see if we can jump on this because it's popular with folks like Chris Bumstead, which there's something to be said for.

You know, like there's nothing wrong with doing what is popular and what athletes are demanding and asking for. I think you just have to think about how you implement it. And for example, what is softer? Like ambiguous judging criteria have been like kind of the bane of bodybuilding's existence forever. So one thing that I do like is when the criteria are much clearer. So as the WMBFs criteria are evolving, and I have a little bit of insight on this, it's...

explicitly stated like you're not meant to be smaller or less lean than the bodybuilding division. It's just that muscularity is not as heavily weighted as symmetry and posing. What that means from a judge's perspective is if you kind of look at like a Venn diagram, in the bodybuilding division, there is an equal split between what falls under symmetry and muscularity.

And obviously some things cross over, like if you are so out of shape in terms of conditioning that you don't have a good X frame because your waist isn't small because you're carrying body fat, right? Then your symmetry is going to be harmed. And if symmetry also encapsulates balance between muscle groups.

but you're not lean enough to even show separation between muscle groups, that can hurt your symmetry. So symmetry is primarily your silhouette, but also balance between and across muscles, right? So you kind of got to be lean enough to do well in symmetry. And then muscularity is... directly impacted by not only size but also how visible and how hard and how freaky your muscles look which is conditioning so in

Bodybuilding, like I said, it's 50-50 split between symmetry and muscularity. And posing is what I would describe as indirectly judged. What that means is that if your posing enhances muscularity or symmetry, then you will be placed better. score higher. But in classic, they even have guidance in the WNBF for the judges. They show a Venn diagram and it's 50% symmetry and then 25% muscularity and 25% posing. So posing is actually on the Venn diagram because it's directly judged.

So not only does your ability as a poser to enhance the way your physique looks, making you more muscular or more symmetrical help you, but the actual transitions between poses, the actual ability to hold them in a statuesque manner and your actual quote unquote posing.

skill is itself judged and that weighting takes away not from symmetry but from muscularity so you can't technically be too big or too lean for classic it's just that if you're diced and huge but you're a bad poser and you don't have good symmetry

You can only get so far because you're kind of doing poorly on 75% of your score. So what we're seeing in the first initial shows, I always had the pleasure of being a judge at... WMF Australia season A show in Brisbane just last month and in the shows in the States is that you are seeing different physiques being rewarded, but it's not this kind of ambiguous six weeks out and don't get too big.

but you're still a bodybuilder division, which gets even more muddied down and unclear when you have other men's divisions like men's physique, which is also supposed to be not quite as big as bodybuilding, but maybe for the delts and chest it is and the arms. So I think... If we want to really professionalize, especially natural bodybuilding, but bodybuilding generally, being a subjective sport already and...

some of the critiques of it being, quote unquote, all about politics. A lot of that is due to this ambiguity, and it needs to be something that is much more directly addressed with more objective criteria. At least, even though it's applied subjectively, it needs to be a lot.

clearer and that's something i really like about the way that wmbf is doing it okay do you feel like you have a better shot at like placing higher in the classic physique is that also why you're doing it by the way yes i won't lie i think um

So one of the things I do like about Classic is its height classes. In the pro ranks especially, I tend to be like the tallest in the middleweights or the light heavies. And there's not always a light heavyweight division. And you're often just kind of broken down into like...

short and tall. So like I put on more size. I do think I'll be a little bit heavier on stage this year, which is great. It's very important. And of course I identify as a bodybuilder, but I do think when I saw the classic was going to be more about the posing. I love that.

And I think that actually is historically accurate to what is classic about. There was a time period where posing and the artistry of bodybuilding was much more heavily weighted. And I think it's nice to give a throwback to that. So as someone who is probably...

stronger in the symmetry and posing than I am in the muscularity, at least the raw muscle size and having a bit of a smaller frame, being a bit taller, not being quite as wide. I think, you know, obviously the width is important in classic.

just as, if not as much as bodybuilding, I probably can make up some ground. And the poses that you show, there's basically fewer shots that I look bad in. I kind of wish it was like a... front lat spread rather than a front wall bicep that's the only thing that would help me a little bit more you know but um like the Back double bicep, side chest, side tricep. Those are all pretty strong shots for me out of my collection of shots. And it'll be interesting to see. I think.

People have described me as someone who would do well in the classic division. And I would be up against people who are more comparable in terms of height. So we'll see. If I don't turn pro, then I'm... Not that that tells you everything. There's plenty of amateurs who can beat pros. There are weak pro shows. There are really strong amateur shows. So it's not a clear delineation. But I think...

Being a kind of bottom tier pro makes me pretty equivalent to being a top tier amateur. And if I'm unable to get even close to.

turning pro even though i'm doing some pretty highly competitive shows then you know that tells me maybe i'm better in the bodybuilding division but we shall see okay so that's interesting yeah you have to re-qualify basically in order to compete at worlds you have to turn pro in that division now yeah yeah so i mean i i can compete at worlds if i do an amateur show prior and place high enough as an amateur and then i have another chance at worlds

Yeah, so it's only IMBF in the States, and they're actually moving more towards being just WNBF USA. Oh, because before it was called the IMBF Worlds, right? Or is that wrong? Do I have that completely wrong? You have that wrong. It's always been dubbing WMBF Worlds. But it's not like you're wrong for ignorance. It's confusing. So outside of... And it's also... The INBF stands for the International Natural Body Belief.

Federation. But ironically, that was all of the US-based shows had the INBF moniker for the longest time. But outside of the US, despite it being international, it was WNBF. So if anyone outside of the US competes in the WNBF, it's... like WNBF UK, WNBF Germany, WNBF blank. And that branding is becoming more and more homogenous. I think this has to do with just the fact that I think the INBF and WNBF are two separate registered

organizations. And I'm not 100% sure on the structure. I think one might be nonprofit, one might be business, and the ownership has changed over time. So I think there is just some organizational structure that has been kind of holdovers. But if you see these days... Today's INBF, that is a WNBF show that is probably in the U.S. And if you see WNBF, it is either a...

pro show or it's an amateur show or pro show that is somewhere else. But I suspect what we're going to see moving forward is just the WNBF branding becoming more and more and more prominent. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And fair enough, because I don't know why I thought the IMBF was just the amateurs. But then again, it stands for international.

But then, like you said, they had the WMBF Germany, WMBF UK. So, yeah, that is confusing. Well, it is the amateur. So it was the amateur US. Gotcha. Because you can't be an IMBF pro. You're a WMBF pro. It's actually similar to the way the IFBB was. There's IFBB Pro League, and then there's the NPC, which is kind of like the way the INBF was. But then outside of the States, people would compete in IFBB Amateur. Okay, gotcha.

All right. Interesting. And so how do you feel right now? You're in the middle of this contest prep, pretty much in the middle, right? Yeah. So October is when you're doing your first show. So yeah. How are you feeling? Hey everyone, hope you're enjoying the episode real quick. If you're someone who enjoys reading articles and you love the longevity muscle podcast, I know you're going to love longevity muscle magazine. That's where we're publishing.

written articles with the top natural bodybuilders in the world that's written articles on training nutrition mindset lifestyle and even competing we have over 60 articles tons of photos are included in the articles

Not to mention, we also do subscriber Q&As. You will be the first to know who our guests are. And if you have questions for them, that's where you'll be able to ask them. A very special thank you to those of you who are on a membership subscription. Without you, the reality is this wouldn't be possible. So thank you so much. Make sure to share and tag us on all the social media accounts. Let us know your love in the magazine. We'll reshare.

Link is in the show notes. I'm good. This is early days because I started in second week of April. and i started pretty far ahead of the game so this is the leanest i've ever started a prep and i don't think i'm going to need to get as light so i kind of started like

somewhere between 15 to 20 pounds over. And now I'm about nine to 10 pounds over somewhere in there. So I'm in a good place. I really liked the way my physique is looking. I think all the work I've done has, at least now it looks like. Things are going better. And it's hard for me to visualize the amount of body mass I am over my prior stage weight and getting down to that level, unless I'm just getting like wicked peeled more than I ever have before.

it's not like I don't bring good conditioning. So I, I think I'm in a good spot. I think I'm probably eight, nine pounds over stage weight and we got all of July, August and September. Yeah. Do you think that, um, Well, let me, because we're going to dive into like the training and whatnot. Do you think that staying around 20 pounds away from stage weight at this point in your career makes more sense than, you know, doing the 30, 40 pounds above? Yeah, I don't know that being 30 or 40 pounds.

ever made sense for me. Okay. And I don't think it makes a lot of sense for most people unless they're pretty big. I think maybe a better way to frame it is say 10% over stage weight. because people listening can apply that to their situation. You know, not everyone's a six foot light heavyweight competitor. So that said, I'm also someone who only took a one year off season.

And every other year, a competition scheduled, 2023 to 2025. When I have taken much longer off seasons, like when I competed from 2019 to 2023, my body weight got higher than that. I was more like 15% at a peak. And there's also a difference between... staying 10% over stage weight or starting your prep 10% over stage weight. And I think there's nothing wrong with, in your effort to spend most of your collective off-season in a surplus, getting as high as 15% over stage weight if you have

more than one year between seasons, especially, and if you're earlier in your career. So yeah, essentially, there's two factors, Kenny. There's one, it's not getting heavy that helps you build muscle. It's making sure that you're not too lean and that you spend enough time in a surplus. And an appropriate... sized surplus for how quickly you can expect to grow so if you are

an early stage bodybuilder, you might see your stage weight still have another five to 10 pounds if you started competing early and before you built all your muscle. So yeah, you could absolutely get 15% over stage weight because that might actually only end up being 12% over stage weight.

You put in a really good, effective three, four, five-year offseason after, say, competing as a junior. But that's not realistically going to happen later in your career in most cases. I think I kind of like have a best-case scenario of being...

four pounds heavier on stage, something like that, five pounds heavier, which is awesome. But when you think about that over the time course of a 15 month off season, it's still like less, it's a quarter of a pound a month, you know? So how much of a surplus do I need? It's less than 100 calories a day, right? So that shouldn't put me in a position where I'm getting that heavy. These are averages too. Like some people, they have higher or lower natural kind of body fat levels.

that they are fully functional at. And you don't want to be trying to stay so lean that you feel like you're in a constantly restrained state in the off season. You can't sleep well. You don't have... fully functional immune and hormonal systems. And for me, that's fine. I feel 100% totally normal when I'm, you know, say 15 pounds over stage weight or above. But that's not true for everyone. I can tell you that as a coach.

Okay, there's individual factors at play with this. Obviously, we've discussed this before. My question is that do you think because there's a lot of or at least at some point it was circulating on social media will say about how you don't have to be in a surplus to build muscle i don't know if that's maximally or what the how should i put this how it was being

referenced or promoted. That's maybe a better way to put it. Did you come across this, by the way? Well, I mean, it was largely based upon the study I did in 2023. Oh, that was her study. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's Helms and colleagues. So yeah, I'm familiar with that, Kenny. Okay. That's funny. Yeah, no, I did an interview with Milo and Mike Gisertel talking about this. I think the one with Mike Gisertel probably had like 2 million views or something.

like oh my gosh okay i missed that but uh i don't know that you did because like you're you're i think you're talking about that then i didn't miss it and i'm just like i'm not maybe i'm just uh yeah yeah i had a long interview with uh jeffrey verity schofield we talked about it as well okay um So what we specifically found was we did a study.

It took a long time to publish it because it got interfered with by COVID. We had 17 individuals, pretty highly trained sample, mixture of men and women, mostly men. And we assigned them to either a very small surplus, a modest surplus, or to try to eat around maintenance. human research is messy that ended up being

A lot of different size surpluses from maintenance to modest, and including some very small ones. And we saw the strongest relationship by far over this eight-week study was between increasing subcutaneous fat and body weight. So those two things were strongest and most reliable.

and there did not seem to be relationship between increases in 1RM bench squat tricep muscle thickness or quadricep muscle thickness and the amount of weight gained and there's only a very very small relationship between biceps hypertrophy and weight gain and the unique thing

about the biceps is they were trained with the highest volume and the most sets to failure. So the highest stimulus was there, but it was still a much lower change and much lower quality of evidence that we can make an inference on compared to just...

Okay, what's the most likely thing to happen if you gain a lot of weight? You're going to see your skin fold thicknesses go up, and you might see some additional bicep growth that's enhanced by the amount of weight you gain. So again, eight-week study, and this is well-trained people doing...

three days per week. So, you know, the typical well-trained person, they're probably training more than that. But in the one muscle group that did get, you know, a fairly modest amount of attention, there was some hint. So it kind of tells us that the amount of... muscle mass you gain is largely driven by your training. And then your nutritional environment just needs to be permissive to that growth.

An eight-week study doesn't tell us everything about what you should do with your nutrition long-term by any means. So I think when you look at the collective data, there's a study by Rosnick and colleagues on newbies. There's one by Garth and colleagues from back in the day on well-trained athletes. And there's a few others.

what you essentially see is that the more well-trained the population, the less likely they're to benefit from a surplus in a short-term period, and the more likely they are to gain body fat, which kind of goes right back to the point of you can only gain muscle so quickly.

We're now at a pretty cool spot in research where we have a lot of data on hypertrophy and we have it across various training ages. And what we see is that there's this longer rhythmic decrease in the rates of muscle growth over time, which we already knew.

Right. That the more muscle you gain, the slower the muscle gain comes. And there's not a whole lot you can do to get around that. You're going to have plateaus and spurts. But when you take a step back and you look at, say, a 10 year career of someone who successfully gains muscle mass over that 10 year career.

It's not linear by any means, but it's going to be slower and slower and slower and slower and slower. So you can't force feed your way out of that scenario. You need to have a really, really effective training. And then best case scenario, you're gaining at a slower rate and you can only support that so much. I think where people struggle, Kenny, is that

They're not sure, they don't really understand what body recomposition is, what its limits are, and what the role of a surplus is. And from a mechanistic perspective, when we look at the body, I think it's really helpful for us to just think about, we're essentially... farmers or bakers you know we're trying to create the perfect environment so we can grow muscle right we want the right soil composition sunlight etc and one thing that is pretty clear is that energy deficits

interfere with that to some degree. And that could be offset to some degree by having higher levels of adipose tissue, more body fat, because we can make up for that. But if your body fat is quite low, then we start to see a greater reliance on endogenous or... our own bodies, stores of proteins and for energy. So it's kind of like we're seeing changes in the...

process of building muscle depending upon your body fat and energy status. So if you're someone who is in a deficit, but you're reasonably high in body fat, so long as you're training and you're taking in protein around your workout, you can probably still build muscle. No problem. you're reasonably well-trained, but only at the rate that reasonably well-trained people can gain muscle. However, if you're at the lower end of your lower intervention point, like, you know, you're 10...

10 pounds over stage weight or something like that. You're limping along. Your body wishes you were a little fatter, but you're keeping it lean for the gram. And you're like, oh, I just want to recomp because of that study. It's like, well, recomping, when you gain muscle and don't...

gain any fat. Yes, you're in a surplus, but most of the time what's happening is you're in a very slight deficit and you're actually putting on a little bit of muscle mass while losing a little bit of body fat. And because there's five times the energy...

in body fat compared to muscle you can actually see your scale weight go up a little bit and be in a deficit you look great but you can only do that to a limited degree when you're lean and then it kind of stops because you get to this point where you're just too lean and you don't have the environment to support it so

Body recomposition is actually a really common thing when you just look at research on people who are in controlled feeding studies and doing resistance training for the first time.

It's a great study. I love this one by Rosnick and colleagues. They take untrained university males. They put them in three groups. One group, they go, I want you to follow your habitual diet. They have them track it. Another group, they go, I want you to follow your habitual diet. They track it and have this weight gainer. calorie weight gain or every day that they have that has multidextrin in it then another group

does that except it's a split between maltodextrin and whey protein. So both of the two groups that got the weight gainer, they put on roughly three kilos of body weight and lean body mass with no change in body fat over eight weeks. So they're gaining almost a pound a week of lean body mass for eight weeks.

That's the power of being untrained, right? And the crazy thing is that the control group gains a kilo and a half of lean body mass. So they're gaining a little less than a half a pound a week, which is awesome. And they lose a kilo of fat mass. So... some people would go, oh, I'd prefer to take that. But they're literally gaining half the amount of muscle. And when you think about it, you go, they must have been in a small surplus. They were not.

Even though the net change in body weight was they gained about a pound or two, they lost a kilo of body fat. And that itself is just a huge amount of energy relative to fat-free mass, right? So like I said, there's about five times the energy in a kilogram. or any unit of

fat mass compared to fat-free mass. So if you see your scale weight go up, but you look a little leaner and you've gained a little bit of size, which often happens as newbies, it's recorded in most studies, I would say, on your typical person doing training for the first time, especially if they're younger.

you're going to see this slight drop in body fat, especially if you control nutrition. So they're not going into kind of a natural surplus to feed that new activity level. And they're going to recomp. That's kind of the natural initial state. But as you can gain proportionally less and less, less muscle over time.

as you become more advanced it's just harder to see that amount to anything and it's not that you need to be in a bigger surplus to offset that i think that's the logical mistake a lot of people make they think oh well i need to have every chip stacked in my corner as an advanced lifter so i need to be in a big surplus to offset the fact that I can't recomp anymore. It's like, no, no, no, you can still recomp.

just at a much slower rate because you can only gain muscle so much at any given time. So if you try to overfeed that, you won't recomp and you will gain body fat and you will have already maxed out your muscle mass. So it just makes sense to be in a smaller surplus that matches more closely what you're... predicted rates of muscle growth could be in a best case scenario, which is unfortunately slower and slower and slower for time. Hey everyone, super important announcement for you all.

We recently rolled out our longevity muscle YouTube membership. This is really exciting stuff because if you're one of the people who's reached out about wanting to watch full length podcast episodes on YouTube, now you can. As a member, you will get... exclusive access and early release to brand new episodes on YouTube. The episodes will be 100% ad free, which means you can watch the episode straight through without any interruptions. Once again, that's our longevity muscle YouTube membership.

Link will be in the show notes. Right, right. This is interesting, actually, because it got me thinking. And I don't know if you've had clients like athletes that you've coached or through Team 3DMJ. through some of the coaches, I've thought about this where it's like, okay, let's say I normally hover around 180.

Pounds and I lost 10 pounds, but I got noticeably leaner and then I think to myself Okay, I'm gonna put myself in a slight surplus from this point. I don't really see the scale weight going up what is the potential that it's like okay i'm hovering around 170 now but i'm actually putting on new muscle like i'm actually growing muscle yet i'm 10 pounds lighter than where i would normally

sit to put on muscle or where i think i need to be to put on muscle because sometimes as well i would say people who are trying to build muscle they think oh i have to be heavier or be at where i think my heaviest should be but what's your initial thoughts on this and if i'm framing this question in a way that makes sense. No, it does make sense. And one thing you will frequently see is after a reasonable cut where you're not getting shredded or even sometimes when you get quite lean.

But the challenge is people really struggle to go into a controlled feeding period after that is you generally see what looks like recomp after that. You know, you do your mini cut and you're like, oh, the initial month or two after this mini cut seems like it's really effective. And that kind of...

has supported the anecdote of all you need to cut first before you bulk so you can make lean gains. Kind of the P-ratio idea, which I actually think is a bit of an illusion. It's not a bad thing, but it is a bit of an illusion. so what is happening is that as you diet let's say you drop from 180 to 170 and let's say you would be diced on stage at 160 or 155 somewhere in there so you're 10 to 15 pounds over stage weight which is very lean for your typical person that

process of losing those 10 pounds of fat may result in a very small amount of muscle mass, but it will result in substantial flatness. So you'll have depleted muscle glycogen and even intramuscular triglyceride levels. You're probably going to be on, you know, a diet that includes higher fiber. Your body's going to look a little weird. You won't get as much of a pump.

And then when you shift to this very slight surplus that might even be maintenance, there's a period of replenishing glycogen, replenishing intramuscular triglycerides, regaining potential lost muscle if it was there, which will happen at a more rapid pace. No change in fat mass. So you're looking a lot better, you're feeling better, and also your training quality will probably go up.

So there's this initial honeymoon phase post-cut where you feel like you got a good two months, especially if you were relatively tight, where the change in body fat is negligible. maybe even goes down a little bit where if you went into like, maybe you're only in like a 50 calorie deficit from being in a 600 calorie deficit, right? You're going to feel a whole lot more energy and you're going to look better. And that can last for a bit when that doesn't seem to work.

Is when you do it post-comp. And that's kind of when people just spin their wheels. You know, they need to recover. And that's not going to happen when they're kind of doing the old school super meticulous, basically. body image issue driven eating disorder. Like I stayed in a deficit after dieting down to stride glutes. The reverse diet. Oh, I stayed reasonably lean and ate a lot of food. Did you build any muscle? Absolutely not. You know, have you...

actually gotten back to non-hypogonatal levels of testosterone? Absolutely not. But I feel less terrible and I am able to hold on to being shredded, which is not conducive to anything except getting on stage. Are you getting on stage? No. Why are you doing this? Well, I have a clinical eating disorder at this stage. That's essentially what you're seeing.

People get really, really attached to being shredded. But anyway, to answer your question, there's this honeymoon phase I think people see after a reasonable cut. And I think it's just important to remember that that's not necessary.

for you to put on muscle and another really important factor is that when you're leaner it's easier to see when you gain muscle it's much less motivating when you're 20 body fat to put on five pounds of muscle than it is to put on two pounds of muscle in your 10 body fat because the latter doesn't shift your look that much, or the former doesn't shift your look that much while the latter does.

so if we're going to take like the ideal scenario here like for that example that i gave you relative to myself right like i mean when i think about it i'm like okay well then ideally you just want your 180 to look leaner right than you did before the mini cut. If you drop 10 pounds, I mean, that's what we're talking about with this bodybuilding, building muscle, off-season, quote-unquote, off-season mode, right? When it's really not that, it's...

I mean, depends if you're competing, obviously. But yeah, you know where I'm coming from with this, the improvement part of this, right? From a muscle growth standpoint, that's what it would look like, right? Ideally. Yeah. Yeah, I think for most people what makes sense is you kind of, you have a range.

that is based on your comfort with your physique that is hopefully minimally influenced by social media and false perceptions of what a muscular physique looks like, which is so hard when we see all the enhanced physiques out there, filters, Instagram, and the...

This is the selection process of the most genetically gifted people, even if they are drug-free and not using filters on social media that skews our perception of what is attainable and normal. There was a recent study where they took something like... I want to say 5,000 to 10,000 people from the NIH database. And Trexler was looking at this data. And these are all men, by the way. And out of all of the men, there was one guy who was 12% body fat or lower out of this random sample.

So the idea we throw around, like, oh, you know, 10% body fat is pretty sustainable. You could grab 10,000 people out of the U.S. There's a decent possibility that none of them will be 10% body fat. Literally not a single male.

So I think people don't understand how exceedingly rare that is. Now, obviously, that's not a sample of people who are dedicated to lifting. That would change. But... I think it's probably a better perspective to realize that anything under 20% body fat, it's totally healthy and looks pretty normal. And if you have a fair amount of muscle mass, it will even look good, you know? So...

Some type of range between whether it's 15% to 20%, 12% to 18%. If you have really low natural body fat set point, 10% to 15%, something like that. And those are arbitrary numbers. We don't really know what your body fat percentage is unless you're getting tested. but essentially a healthy range where you're not food focused you can sleep through the night you can train effectively you don't feel constantly restrained and you kind of aim to make that whole range look better

And once you get kind of the top end of it, like let's say it's 170 to 180 for you. Like you cut down to 170. Damn, I look more shredded than last time. And actually getting to 170 was harder. That's a good sign. Because it probably means you're trying to get, it's leaner than it was last time. You might have been 170 at 12%. This time you're 170 at 10%, right?

That's what happened, actually. So that's funny how it makes sense. That's a good sign, Kenny. Yeah, that means you've done something right. You put on some muscle. So basically what you want is your walk-around weight. to look better over time. You know, that's the progress for the recreational bodybuilder. For us competitors, especially if we've been in the game a while, we don't really know for sure if we've made progress unless we're reasonably lean.

because the changes are small so like that's why i'm increasingly confident the further i go through contest prep like okay i've definitely done something you know the way i look at 84 is kind of like the way i looked at 82 last time like this is good

kind of something like that yeah and that that's how it happened with you so far like are you noticing that absolutely yeah yeah i think my i think my stage weight is going to be you know somewhere between two to four pounds heavier if i had to guess

That's amazing. And we were talking about this last time. It's like, okay, you know, people think like it has to be pounds and pounds of muscle, but like we were talking about this with the delts and like how it's like 80 grams and what that can do, like to the appearance of your delts you were using as like an oversimplified example, but.

It got me thinking and I'm sure it got many people thinking who watched that clip that went out. I think I turned it into a YouTube short too. We think in pounds, but it could be in grams and that can make all the difference on stage. For what you were referring to, like when you're really shredded, you could see that difference, the trained eye at least too, right?

hey everyone hope you're enjoying the show real quick i just want to let you all know that after months of hard work and planning behind the scenes longevity muscle store is finally live that means our limited edition logo t-shirts are available right now for sale there's only 90 shirts and once they're gone they're gone for good this design will never be restocked which means it's truly a collectible

This is your chance right now to own a piece of longevity muscle history. I have my shirts and I'm excited for you to grab yours. So head on over to longevitymuscle.store. Once again, that's longevitymuscle.store. Yeah, targeted hypertrophy is absolutely a thing. If you think about your buddy who never trained legs, he might see a pretty big increase in stage weight or just body weight, even if he's not a competitor.

because he finally stopped benching four times a week and maybe started doing legs twice a week, right? And whoa, he actually has quads and hamstrings and glutes now. And those are like the biggest muscles in your body. So yeah, you could absolutely gain some weight. But if you've got someone who is... like done a lot of work on their arms i mean

if you think about circumference of your thigh versus your arm it's a lot smaller so you can put on you can really get some massive arms and like if you never trained them before and like that that's actually what i've noticed the most in my physique is that like my delts and arms have come up but what should i expect you know out of that in terms of like actual stage stage weight gains you know i think my legs have come up a little bit but they were already pretty good

So they haven't made the same kind of strides that some of my muscle groups in my upper body have. So it really depends upon like what is kind of the hole in your physique and how will that impact kind of your overall physique presentation. Some muscle groups stand out more, you know, like. In close, if you're getting bigger arms, that'll make a noticeable difference. On stage, things that enhance your X-frame, like quad sweep, lat.

hang kind of like that upper lat terrace major underneath your armpit and of course medial belts and like chest those things they're going to grow but uh they'll have a disproportionate effect on how you look this is what's uh where i would like to take this now we were uh transitioning into some of this training stuff that uh obviously that's always an interesting topic for listeners and of course myself but

how is that right now? Like in the midst, in the middle of contest, what's that looking like? And how has it transitioned from off season? Is it the same? Maybe you can talk a little bit about that. If there's anything valuable there for the listeners as well, obviously, that's always good. Yeah, well, as a brief recap, I was pushing pretty damn hard in the offseason. I was doing...

Closer to what I thought the most I could potentially benefit from rather than what I, quote unquote, needed to grow or even what might have been sustainable or advised. Right. We talked about that. Yeah. Yeah. So I was in the I was doing roughly around like. 20 sets per muscle group in the lower body and closer to like 30 in my upper body. And...

Mostly very challenging exercises from a local perspective. So I was avoiding things that had like axial loading and like very heavy loads. For the most part, I stepped away from powerlifting and bodybuilding hybrid training. I've competed in both forever, fully committed to bodybuilding, but I wasn't pulling from the floor. I wasn't doing barbell squats. I had like feet forward, controlled tempo, Smith machine squats, leg press, RDLs, and still benching, but typically like a less of an art.

arched back, narrower grip. And everything else was cables, dumbbells, and machines. And we're on those movements that I mentioned that kind of the quote unquote big movements, they were maybe 20% of my volume at most. So, but still a lot and mostly to failure.

So, you know, starting most compound sets at like a two RIR and working towards a zero RIR and then most isolation movements, either starting at the most I can do or actually hitting failure. And then, you know, for time-saving techniques, doing things like rest, pause, drop set. sets, antagonist paired sets. So I was unsurprised based upon a mini cut I ran in my pre-prep positioning phase.

I mentioned earlier how like getting over 15% over stage weight is fine, but you don't want to start there. I didn't get that high, but I hit a peak off-season weight of like 91.5 kilos, and I started prep close to like 88.

So during that mini cut from the low 90s into the high 80s, where I just lost about five pounds just to get in a good position and then ate a maintenance and then started prep, I saw that... man, I can't sustain this level of work with the same intensity effort and without feeling fatigued and without seeing more drops off in performance and without feeling like I was needing to do something proactively more frequently, either a deload or changing an exercise into something that felt easier.

but I'm trading like a poor resistance profile out, like changing out an RDL for a back extension or something like that. And I thought, okay, so we need a different plan for prep. And realistically, is this even a good idea?

Or am I going to benefit from it during prep where I'm already doing more than I think is sufficient to grow muscle? I'm trying to gain as much as I can because I'm competing against the best in the world this next season. Okay, well, let's dial things back. So now I am closer to like the...

Instead of like 20 to 30, even slightly higher than 30 sets per week now, I'm closer to like 15 to 25 for everything. And I've changed my split setup. So I'm training every day, but they're shorter sessions, which I think is great for the energy levels I have during prep. And I'm essentially alternating on day one through six or Monday through Saturday between a full body push, a full body pull.

a full body push i might come in and do like leg press leg extension calf raise and then i'll do two pressing movements and like a lateral raise and triceps and then a full body pull i'll come in and i'll do something like a hinge like an rdl string curl.

And then I train calves every day because I'm trying to bring these stubborn bad boys up and my body's very acclimated to it. So I'll do calves. And I also train middle delts every day because I'm trying to bring those bad boys up. So we can just say that every day for Eric Helms is calf and middle delts day. side of that. I'll do like a vertical pull, a horizontal pull, and a bicep exercise, and then a hinge and a hamstring exercise. And I'll just alternate those.

and then earlier in the week i'll probably do my heavier harder compounds like an rdl middle of the week i'll do things that i can recover from like a back extension maybe more leg extension sets or sissy squats instead of a leg press or a smith machine squat and then later in the week i might do something like

like a deadlift from the floor if I feel like I'm chasing that little side quest or something like another leg press or a hack squat or whatever. And then on my seventh day, it's kind of like my recovery day. I'll come in and I'll do forearms. calves and middle delts because that's every day a little bit of extra back work because that's kind of a weak point in my physique and then typically

maybe an extra like bicep exercise or something, just depending upon what feels recovered. But that session typically takes 40 minutes. It's only five exercises. It's not that crazy, but it's mostly a weak point slash recovery and forearms day. And then I start.

over again so that's been great you know if you think about it i'm getting like six to seven sets every other day on each muscle group which It's a lot when you add it up over the week, but each individual session is not that challenging and I can maintain that same intensity.

And then if I'm just intelligent in my distribution of harder and easier exercises, when I do and don't go all the way to true momentary failure and where I kind of pick my spots, it's been far more sustainable while I'm in a calorie deficit and while I'm getting really, really lean. So that's the main thing. It's, you know.

maybe a 20% reduction in volume, and then a distribution that's changed a bit. And it's been working really well. And I think it's a great compromise from me doing everything I possibly could in a fed state at a higher body fat to what's the closest approximation. that i can do while i'm dieting okay and as far as like you kind of touched on it but

To go a little bit deeper on this, like the connective tissue stress and just obviously you're training upper body every day, right? So what's that like? Are you feeling pretty good joint-wise, connective tissue-wise, that type of thing? Yeah, I feel better because it's easier than it was. Okay. Yeah, I think there's really something to be said for going from push to pull. This is one of those splits that I think is just kind of a hidden gem that people...

don't think about like they're on upper lower legs push pull but being able to do full body push then full body pull unless you're like i could see people not liking it if they're a total pump chaser because you don't get quite as many sets on one muscle group but if you come in there and you are training

with focus and intensity and high quality and a reasonable rep range, I find even in prep when I'm dieting, I get a pretty good experiential feel of the training and like one or two sets in. So I really like it. You know, I can come in and get a very good concentrated effort.

and know that I can push the intensity very high and I'll be fine. Like there's only so much like I recover well. Like if I do three sets of incline dumbbells and it drops it on the last one and take that completely to like length and partial failure. And then do flies after that with each set to failure. I might get a little bit sore the next day, maybe. But then two days later, I'm ready to go again. So...

There's no reason not to train again in my mind. And with back, it's even less likely to make me sore. You know, I can come in and train almost all sets to failure, do some kind of horizontal pull, vertical pull. Two days later, I'm at it again and do one really effortful.

exercise for biceps. And then when you add all that up, it accumulates to a lot, but each individual session is not that hard, but allows you to be very intentional and very purposeful and have a very high quality of training. So I really like it. I think In the last couple of years, I've really refined the distribution and the organization of training and the exercise selection in such a way that...

enables me to keep a really, really high quality and then look at turning the volume dial up without necessarily hampering the quality, which I am becoming increasingly convinced. Many of the anecdotes of people who do far better with low volume training have to do with the fact that when they try to go higher volume, they can't sustain the level of intensity. So they kind of get like just no trade off for more work and more time invested. And the data actually bears that.

out if you look at it with a a practical lens if you understand what's going on in the real world versus the lab can you elaborate on that a little bit like i want to understand that a little bit better sure so let's start with just understanding what does the data say That's pretty clear now. We have, you know, a meta regression on over a thousand people going back over a few decades of research studies lasting anywhere from.

you know, six to 24 weeks in most cases with most of them clustering between eight to 16 average study length around 10 weeks, right? Mixture of trained and untrained participants. These aren't bodybuilders, but I think it's still very useful to illustrate a point. And the general thing that it shows is that you do grow more. as you do more volume, but the diminishing returns are substantial. And they are such that if you were to go from five to 10 sets, that's doubling your volume.

that's adding five sets, you will have a very noticeable increase in hypertrophy. However, if you were to go from 20 sets to 25 sets, it's the same five set increase. That may not be noticeable at all. for you. So that same increase in volume becomes progressively less helpful. And it is essentially climbing up an ever steepening hill. And remembering that these studies only last, like I said, a couple months at most. And in many cases, they aren't...

using ecologically valid training programs, meaning what I described earlier or your typical upper-lower. They might be, not in all cases, but in many, a substantial portion of these studies, just looking at a single muscle group. So this meta-aggression is more of not...

telling you what to do in the gym. It's helping you understand the theoretical relationship between volume and hypertrophy. But that doesn't mean that just because we see this relationship and the data that that's therefore what you should do because you're not training just your biceps you're training your whole body and you're not just training for eight weeks you're going to be training for the rest of your life and you have to think about not

how do I make this muscle grow the most I possibly can over an eight-week period? But what's the best holistic program that works for my life and is sustainable? And, you know, the likelihood of us seeing injury or burnout in an eight-week or 12-week study is low. But if you're doing something that feels unsustainable, even if maybe you could adapt to it, the likelihood is quite high that you'll burn out over eight years, right? And here's the other thing, is that there's a...

There's a lab effect. You know, it's ironic that in many cases people describe research participants as maybe not training hard or that research studies do easy training. But in the reality is that if you talk to people who go into training studies, especially that are ran properly.

and they're on high volume or high intensity or failure, it is quite literally the hardest they've ever trained in their entire lives. That's because they have a room full of students and professors who lift weights and study lifting weights who are trying to control the environment.

And we want to manipulate one variable, not multiple variables. So if we have a group that is doing 10 sets, a group that's doing 20 sets, and a group that's doing 30 sets, we want them to all use the same exercises, rep ranges, loads, proximities to failure.

and intent so you're going to be getting yelled at on each one of these sets go go go you got this push it as hard as you can to whatever rir or more typically because about 80 of the studies in this meta regression were studies to failure you know it's not like what you see in the real world where higher volume

are typically coupled with being further from failure, while lower volumes are going to failure. And higher frequencies are typically higher volumes, and lower frequencies are typically lower volumes. We have very few pure programs where you're only manipulating one of either volume intensity. or frequency in the real world, but they're quite common in research because we're trying to isolate the effect of a variable. So...

In a study we get this sanitized comparison of what is 10 versus 20 sets to failure for a muscle group for 12 weeks. We rarely get that in the real world. And when we look at observational research, where we're seeing what people do and how they respond with a little less control over some of these variables, there's some interesting things that come out.

So when we look at how many reps do people lose set to set to set when they do higher versus lower volume training, it's interesting that they seem to not lose as many reps. when they go set to set, with higher volumes going to failure versus lower volumes. It should be the opposite. And what's probably happening there, it's not substantial, we're talking a rep or two, but that means that there's probably a subconscious pacing.

that occurs this is the same thing that happens when you have someone try to run you tell them you're going to run 10 miles versus three miles they're going to be slower

Because they're trying to predict, how do I run the 10 miles as fast as possible? And that's going to be a slower average pace so that they don't, you know, bonk. Because you can't sprint 10 miles, right? You can only sprint up to like 400 meters. So it's the same thing in training. I think either psychologically or... even physically maybe they're thinking about what is the most I can do.

on each set if i need to get through x number of sets so in controlled research we can have that lab effect that maintains the intensity but i think in the real world what often happens is someone will try to increase their volume and they typically do it too quickly

And they don't give it enough time to adapt. They don't experience the repeated bout effect. They go, oh, shit, let me try this new program. I just finished this low volume one. Let me give this high volume one a shot. It blows them out of the water. They end up doubling their volume. They don't actually think about the actual changes in number of sets or the exercises. they burn out and that's it, you know, and they never really give it a chance and they don't adapt. So ultimately,

I think we need to understand that there's a time and a place where it makes more sense to focus on proximity to failure or intensity and more sense to focus on volume. So if we know that if you're currently at, say, six to eight sets per muscle group, that going up to, say... 12 to 15, that's, again, almost doubling your volume, is going to have a far greater effect than if you went from 12 to 15 up to, say, 20.

even though both are increasing by eight sets because you're getting these diminishing returns what makes really makes more sense like let's say you're plateaued and you're already doing 12 to 15 sets i would go you know what let's try to make each one of those sets higher quality but if someone's doing six to eight sets

And they're plateaued. And their intensity is really high already. And we know they're going to have those initial sets count for more. I'm going to go, let's try to add a couple sets.

And that's not the typical conversation you get when you get people who are very ideological in terms of their volume and their intensity. They kind of buy into a certain philosophy or ideology or person, if I'm frankly honest. Yeah. Yeah. And what it really comes down to is...

what is the most likely variable that's going to benefit you the most. And if you're already on a high volume program, you're more likely to be pacing, meaning that you're not as close to failure to think you are. You're choosing lower stress exercises. You're pushing the recovery capacity that you might be able. to have i don't want to audit

and see, all right, are you actually training as hard as you think you are? And if the answer is no, then the answer is not more volume. It may even be a slight reduction if we can increase your intensity. So when someone comes to me and they're doing, say, 15 plus sets per muscle group, the first thing...

i'm interested in is is to ask them is hey can you send me your videos if someone is coming to me and they're doing five to ten sets the first question i have is do you have any more time to train are you actually that do you do you need to be doing only five to ten sets how much time are you resting

How much time are you socializing? Because a motivated person doing five to 10 sets, even to momentary failure per week, per muscle group, that should take them like two hours. And maybe that's all they have. Then awesome. Fantastic. right? Let's work on exercise selection. We'll work on nutrition. But if someone is busting their ass and they're getting all their workout done in two hours and they're plateaued, let's get another day. I mean, it's very low time investment to get to something.

something like eight to 15 sets, in my opinion, for most people, unless they're incredibly busy. And you were saying five to 10 sets per workout. Is that what you were referring to there? Per muscle group per week. Per muscle group per week. And the two hours, like, oh.

A workout. A week. A week. Okay. That's what I thought. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Everything I said in context of that other research is sets per week per muscle group and using what's described as a fractional counting method. So bench. One set would be one set for chest and half a set for triceps because it's an indirect. Yeah. Right. Right. That's an interesting, these are interesting conversations, especially with the ideology and of course people latching on to what.

They have a guru, right? They are, they've fallen in love, right? That's literally what it's become, right? And it can cloud judgment. It can cloud your ability to learn and grow. And actually... improve right over time because you gave a great example about the six to eight sets uh example and you take a you know someone who's really focused on hit or high intensity training and they'll think i have to do less and then sometimes you know

I'm sure you've come across this, Eric, where you have people who preach high intensity training. They talk about all the amazing gains that they've gotten. But, you know, sometimes a lot of these people who are talking, maybe that's true, but it's like there's no profile. There's no and they're usually the ones attacking. people who are doing higher volume just gotten kind of out of hand actually on social media just in general and that's why this conversation tends to pop up a lot because

How could it not when it's constantly coming into the comment section of even like longevity muscle, right? Like with the YouTube videos. And I think, okay, this is, we're talking about an individual who's offering perspective on what they've done to build their physique. And in a lot of cases to become a world champion.

and who is natural, right? So I don't know if you have any initial thoughts there you want to chime in or we can move on. It's up to you. I think people are really doing themselves a disservice if they're not aware of history, the history of bodybuilding. I think when you get...

exposed to silos of information it really makes you not be aware of the limits of what have been done and also it the beauty beautiful thing of the history of bodybuilding and it'd be great for you to get conor heffernan on some time to talk about this is that

It wasn't the history of just bodybuilding. If you go back far enough, it was the history of weightlifting, powerlifting and physical culture and the norms of what was done. And no one thought about it. No one questioned it. It wasn't weird and it was easy to do. If we go back to the vaudeville era, we're talking.

and like eugen sandow like these are people who are on the road doing strength exposes and hand balancing and gymnastics every day to make money to live they're performing strength feats daily sometimes and then When we talk about the era in the early 1900s up to like the 1940s, where weightlifting, strength sport, and bodybuilding were all one and the same, people competed in both, the common training methods were either alternating upper-lower splits or full-body training.

four, five, six times a week, you know? And it wasn't until like Nautilus came out and the marketing of Arthur Jones that the concept of high intensity training came in. And this is also right around the time that anabolic steroids hit the shelves, you know, and that's not me saying that, oh, hit only works.

I'm not like trying to flip the script because people are like, oh, high volume only works if you're on drugs. Well, no, high intensity only works if you're on drugs. That's funny because it depends on who you come across and what they're preaching. It's like, yeah, you'll hear both sides of that. Or, oh, you can only recover from...

Hi, anyone who's natural and is doing high volume is not natural. And anyone who's natural and got a great physique doing like twice a week training is not natural. And it's like, okay, nobody's natural. Nobody's training and nobody's got a great physique. That's what we're, that's where we've come down to.

think that that that is it's it's the perennial move of the the the the ideologue is if i can't win this argument i'm just gonna tip over i'll poison the well i'm gonna tip over the table like you know what can i sit at the cool kids table can i make the cool kids table mine no then screw this table let me kick it over tables are bullshit so um yeah as soon as someone resorts to that you

kind of know that they're not open to thinking about this differently or or they just haven't been in the game long enough you know like ideology doesn't survive in the capitalist mindset of a competitor. I'll tell you what, one thing that I really love is that I'm still actively competing.

And that I'm not just a researcher or I'm not just a content creator. Because I think it's easy to fall in love with your theories and hypotheses when you don't have skin in the game, you know? But when I am actually...

hellbent and psychotically focused on trying to be the best version of myself, Kenny, I just don't care. I don't care. I don't care whether high volume works or low volume works. I don't care. If you, if I, if I was convinced by the data and my own experience, experience that a low protein diet would grow muscle better, I'd be on that dear low protein diet.

You know what I'm saying? Because I want results. And that is what my mind is looking at. I look at the limitations of research. I look at the findings. I think about my experiences. I look at what would be true in the world. I look at history. And I look at my hundreds of athletes who I've worked with.

with over the years to try to get to the stage. And I go, what is consistently seem to be working best? And I take meticulous notes on myself and I do not care. I don't care. I don't want to do high volume. I don't want to do low volume. I want to get bigger. Right. So I think that's something that has helped me be more objective. It's helped me be honestly, frankly, just more Machiavellian about this.

I am very happy to let go. Like, I have trained in ways that I look back and I go, that was counterproductive. I lost muscle. Some people, and even myself as a younger person, would not be able to admit that. Like, oh, I bet on the wrong horse. I made an error. I was... doing something stupid. And not that I think it's stupid. I think I was just experimenting and it wasn't working very well. Sure. But so I am just not swayed when I see kind of these.

relatively siloed perspectives and and like in the really really high intensity camp you get people who are who almost treat the body like it's fragile you know like how could someone you can't recover from all that i'm like have you ever even seen a crossfit competition you know like

And then they start to ascribe magical effects of drugs. You know, like they make us a different species. Like all of a sudden now, energy balance doesn't matter. You know, like muscle damage is not a thing. You take drugs, you can do anything. And it's just not true. And they're not even logically consistent.

They're happy to be like, oh, no, you can only do, you know, like, oh, drugs make that possible. By the way, Doreen Yates is awesome. I'm like, okay, hold on. Like, help me out here. Help me out here. Can you hold contradicting statements just to hold on to your biases that well? Then clearly you're not a rational actor and I don't really care what you have to say. That is so, like I've come across real world scenarios like.

in the trenches speaking with people at the gyms at facilities i've worked at and it's funny because you'll say things like oh you know what i did that super slow stuff that didn't work for me like i didn't build any muscle doing that and then the first initial comment will be well You didn't do it right then.

it's like really how do you know like were you there with me doing it regardless of if i did or didn't the fact that you assume that tells me that you're not actually interested in learning about my experience you've made up your mind on what

you think that or not even what you think you've just made up your mind like this is what it is and that's it your your experience is a threat to them not an opportunity to learn they have a worldview that they want to hold on to and for whatever reason they feel less safe or less sure of themselves or less confident or have a sense of a loss of identity when that worldview is threatened. So...

Something that could be interpreted as evidence that I could learn from and learn one new thing is actually a threat to an identity or worldview, and it gets rejected out of hand. There's an immediate search for, okay, how can I know this isn't true? You probably didn't try hard. There's not, you'll get no...

indication of curiosity, which is what you would actually want to see. Really? Why did super slow training work really well for me and not this guy? I got to ask. That would be the response of someone who is curious and is open to learning. that's rarely the response when you get these people and I think one thing so we don't just black pill ourselves on how shitty the internet is is to remember that

Good idea. Good idea, Eric. Thank you. Because I'm bad at that sometimes. Of course, you know, we have a negativity bias as humans. It's how we stay alive. All mammals have this. You need to be very attuned to the potential. proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing that broken twig in in the forest nine out of ten times it's not going to be a tiger but the one time it is and you don't notice it you're dead

And now you don't pass on your genetic lineage and we aren't here talking on Zoom. So we notice the negative comments more. Also, the people with the most loud... controversial opinions who have this kind of dogmatic belief set are more likely to comment. The comment section itself is an unbiased perspective of what's out there. There's going to be, let's say, a thousand views on a video and 30 comments. right there are a thousand people who viewed it and liked it

Or maybe there's, you know, whatever the proportion are, there's a huge silent majority of people who are just going, oh, that's interesting. Let me file that away and think about it. And then there's going to be people who really just have the need. to share their opinion. These are the same people who need to put everything on their bumper sticker, right? Like, you need to know who I voted for 12 years ago. You need to know.

that I am part of this association and that my child was student of the month sometime six months ago. I am my beliefs, I am my identity, and I need you to be victim to my loud screaming. That's a much higher, not everyone in the comments, obviously, but that's a...

much higher proportion of the people who are in the comments while most of the rational actors who are just there to learn and consume educational content are happy to give you a click might send you a private message are going to watch and listen and that's about it so i think we you have to remind yourself of that

You don't want to dismiss everything. It's also a pathway towards dismissal and not learning on the content creator's part. You do want to pay some attention to the feedback you get from the people you're trying to serve, ultimately. But just be aware that... The counterculture crazy narrative of, no, you just need one set to failure every fortnight to grow. It catches the eye because it's counterintuitive. It's different to what the majority of people do and have said works. It's extreme.

And it makes you feel like all almost conspiracy-esque. Yes, it makes you feel like you have the answer and everyone else does not. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a great point, actually. And I'm glad you did bring that up because obviously there's a lot of positives as well. from a content creator side, let's just say, that's being received as well. But also, as you know, of course, but also even from what we were discussing as far as if you do have this way of going about it.

that motivates you and it's an actual you feel like it's actually giving you a positive in your life and you're not about How should I put this? It hasn't become a negative thing. At least you've questioned it. Let's put it that way. You're open to learning. You're not like, my way is better or something like this for everybody in general, right? Well then, so, you know, I think there's a positive to that as well.

is motivating this person. It keeps them on track towards their goals. But as soon as it goes into the direction that we spoke about, then obviously that's a different conversation, right? Yes. Yeah. The last thing I'll say on the specific topic of high-intensity training is that I think many of the people who benefit from it really fell in love with it and that it was a positive thing in their lives. They may not be very good at extrapolating other people's experience.

over their own, which is a common thing. It takes wisdom and life experience and a certain type of personality to put yourself in other people's shoes versus kind of be judgmental and think everyone has the same experience as you. A lot of people

Because you talk to competitive bodybuilders, but a lot of your audience are not competitive bodybuilders. That's it. And that's where these kind of interesting comments, like, I'll tell you what sparked this, by the way, not to cut you off. Well, I did cut you off, but sorry about that. No, no. I'll go next. Yeah, you'll go next. It was literally the fact that someone commented on your YouTube short saying, well,

If he just took everything, if he just reduced his volume and took his sets to a true failure, then he would grow or something like this. It was like on one of your YouTube shorts where you had talked about your volume. And I just thought to myself, I'm like, okay. I don't know why it irritated me, but it did. And that you could understand, I'm sure from my perspective, why that would irritate me. But yeah, anyhow.

I appreciate you. Well, all they would have to do is watch the videos of me training to true failure. Listen to interviews of me where I trained with people who... coached me through hit and how it just didn't work as well you know like it's not about me i think my point about a high intensity training is that many times the people who have a great experience with it, they weren't training as hard as, and this is not true of just people in hit camp. Most people don't train hard enough, period.

And they would get a tremendous benefit from actually training close to even, or even all the way to failure. And it is true, the closer you get to failure, the more stimulative that individual set will be. Period. It's also true that if you do more of those sets, it's a higher dose of that same thing, right? And you could say, hey, great, more failure training is good. I could even paint that as a positive for the hit crowd, right? But most people...

Are not trying to grow as much as they possibly can. They're trying to grow as much as they possibly can within the constraints of their lives. Yes. And what is feasible, enjoyable. And you know, the thing about Arthur Jones, you can say. a lot of negative things about him because he there's a lot of negative things about him if you look at the history is that

He marketed it in a really effective but not dishonest way. You can take 20 minutes and get incredible results compared to what you've been doing per week. If you truly give me like... like a handful of all out to failure sets on these machines that allow you to do that safely, that don't require a whole lot of skill. You, right out the box, general person.

who's interested in building muscle in America can build a tremendous amount of muscle and you don't need to be exercising for hours like you see these bodybuilders do. That is true. The claim was not you can become a Mr. Olympia by training 20 minutes a week. There it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And...

And I think what you're getting is you're going to get someone who's talking about how did I build the best, most competitive physique to compete at the world championship level or the pro level or whatever level they can get to or their own history versus someone who the important thing for them was.

focusing on intensity and taking those handful of sets they do per week and actually making them effective. And it was a monumental change. Their physique transformed. Those two experiences can coexist, but you're getting people talking across each other. If I told you from an investment standpoint, you know, what if you did

30 minutes of work, you could get this 100% payoff. But if you did 300 minutes of work, you could get 150% payoff. They'd be like, that's a terrible idea. But if you told that to someone who's trying to maximize everything, they take it every time. Like I said, you tell the competitor...

competitive bodybuilder, I'm going to go from 20 to 25 sets. You might get a very small increase in hypertrophy. They're great. Awesome. You tell someone who only has the time to do 10 sets per week that if they get up to 25 sets, they could make better progress. They go, that's off the table for me. I'm not willing to. To do that, it's not worth it.

There is a huge difference in goal of someone who is trying to maximize a fixed amount of time versus someone who is trying to maximize regardless of the poorer and poorer and poorer return on investment. From an efficiency standpoint, I'm losing big time. Kenny. And if someone wanted to make that argument, I'm happy to do it. They'd be like, dude, I can make 80% of the gains you're making doing half the work. I'm like, yes, you can, but I need to make 100% of the gains that I can make.

because I'm getting on stage naked. If I wasn't, then I'd be on board.

yeah yeah exactly and that's what i was just gonna say this like when you're talking about the average person or i don't even want to phrase it like this when we reference it relative to the people who are commenting in the way that we had talked about that's better when you're watching a video of yourself or oscar mosgat or gary amlinger and they're doing what they're doing it's about understanding where how and if that even applies to you and and what might or

Probably doesn't apply to you in your life circumstances and you don't live their life like I was talking about this with Jeff Alberts We recently spoke we were talking about the fact that like when I went to visit Gary in Thailand like that is his life He moved there

because his goal is to become a world champion. And he wants to dedicate his entire life to that. And in going to Thailand, it's allowed him to live a lifestyle where he could... effectively do that and i i saw it i i saw it we spoke about it so it's like you you don't live that life so of course you're not gonna like understand that you don't live his life right so and you're not even open to hearing his story either when we spoke right like some of these comments

But anyways, I just wanted to throw that in there. And we're going to cut off. One last thing. One last thing. Okay.

With Olympians, we're totally happy to accept that they're doing crazy things to get the results they have. But because everyone lifts, but not everyone's a professional bodybuilder, we struggle with that and we need to have a judgment on it because we think... our experience is more relevant but you're a swimmer who's doing 10 000 you know hours of swimming over a given time period you're like oh cool i love that thank you for that and i hope that resonates with

those of you listening who might have thought differently hopefully that hits home but i wanted to say this because As someone who's making content regularly, doing podcasts and such, do you ever get triggered like here and there by certain comments? Or are you so experienced now you're like, nah, that doesn't bother me at all. So I'll say two things on this. One, yes.

I definitely get triggered. I am human. Two, I'm very lucky that the people who stick around for my content are generally curious people, kind people, and I have an amazing... group of quote unquote followers, if you will. I hesitate to even call them that because they typically are good, critical enough thinkers. They don't treat me like some kind of guru. And the final thing I'll say is that because I do get triggered, I also...

have to have a careful balance between how much do I pay attention to this stuff. So there are some places where I find comments are generally far more crappy than others. I mentioned earlier, like, for example, I did the video with Mike Izzertel on RP and it blew up. Like that, the video on, um, on is bulking dead went viral. I very purposely did not look at the comments on that because if you just think about probability,

If a video is getting millions of views, and they're not my people, I don't even have a million followers on Instagram, right? Like, for one video to get a million views, I mean, like, even if every single person... who regularly pays attention to my content, viewed it, they're going to be less than 10% of the viewers, right? So the likelihood of people who are, I mean, they were overwhelmingly positive comments. Don't get me wrong. Okay. I'll say that.

And I could just see it from the little look, but I'm not going to dive in there. Because I know there's going to be stuff that's going to really set me off. And it doesn't do anything for me. So having a good filter, knowing when and where to look. If we do an Iron Culture podcast episode.

Right. And I look in the comments there. There may be one or two shit posts or trolls, but there's going to be a general vibe that I think probably represents something I can learn from. And it won't be that negative. And if it is, it probably means we triggered someone else. and they called in their army, and it's very apparent, like, all right, listen, I'm not gonna, you know, like recently.

We made an Instagram post about the data on seed oils and ketogenic diets and heart health risk. You know, it's something that is adjacent to the bodybuilding world. But man, the carnivore community is not entirely, but heavily populated by some very... I'll say boisterous personalities you know controversial conspiracy minded very aggressive people who have very strongly held beliefs that they're not open to changing and they generally go on the attack pretty quick so when that

kind of devolved into, you guys are idiots, where did you find your PhDs? Don't you know that all epidemiological research is trash, industry funded, yada, yada, yada. You kind of just roll your eyes because you, it's from a playbook. related to an almost cult-like following. That is different and doesn't trigger me as much as, say, a personal attack that I might get when I'm

trying to help people or share research or my integrity is questioned or something like that. And it's when I'm looking for... for feedback within my community. But that's rare, which is why I'm able to still do what I do. But I think you have to be very, very cautious the larger you grow with protecting your own mental health and sanity and being honest with yourself about how much of that you can handle.

before you just become jaded or cynical. Because I remind myself that ultimately I'm online, not because I want to be famous, not because I want to be, you know, have... praise lauded upon me. I like those things because I'm human, you know, but I'm online because I'm trying to help people. I'm trying to serve a community. I'm trying to give back to something that really, really served me. I have a mission.

The 3D Muscle Journey Mission Statement is at the core of everything I do. It's to help people find a sustainable pathway to engaging in lifting in a way that makes their life better. instead of taking away from it, which is unfortunately a risk if you get involved in manipulating your appearance and training for body composition, even training for strength. So I don't promote anything because I am trying to become this guru. I am famous by...

If I want to communicate science, people have to know who I am. So I put myself out there, but it's not about me. And that helps me cope with it. And it's a tough thing because you need to be aware of the feedback you're getting, but you also need to not get too invested in the opinions of people who don't really know you about you. And my content is...

Not that much about me. You know, like it is actually when I come on podcasts like this, where it's a podcast specifically interested in my personal bodybuilding journey, less so than the meta regression by Pellin and colleagues. I reference that stuff because it does inform my personal. journey as well but

I think this is a fun and rare opportunity where I get to talk about just from the perspective of Eric the athlete, a bit of Eric the coach, and a bit of how Eric the athlete uses research rather than I'm Eric Helms, the science communicator coach guy, right? So I think...

That's a bit different. You know, the funny thing is I'm less interested in looking at the comments on your podcast with me because I don't really care what people have to say about my own personal journey because it's something I am... That's funny. I'm the authority on that, right? Yeah, that's true.

That's perspective. Sorry. I love that. That's perspective. I'm over here getting irritated about what someone said on your. How funny is that? And that's because I got your back and I'm lacking perspective at the same time, I think.

Because I do have your back of course and but it's also at the same time It's like I think I just need to realize that it's like, okay That's just that's humorous in a way, right? Like it's not you shouldn't take that with anything um in a way because it's there's no value in even addressing that like what am i going to say oh he does take his sets to failure like how do you even like what do you know he doesn't yeah it's like where does that go right yeah it's it's easier said than done canning

I remember literally talking to Matt Ogis about this in 2011 because almost 15 years ago, you know, I... kind of got catapulted onto the scene because of his fame and I'm his coach. And all of a sudden I've got people like, why'd you coach smaller than you? Or what's with that earring or the nicest sweatshirt? Or I'm like, and I was like, How dare they? You know, like it hurt my feelings. You know, I felt like I was back in high school getting picked on and it was, I just wasn't.

used to it i didn't have this perspective it was pre-social media and it's not that you necessarily develop a thick skin but it is you develop perspective right so you know that's interesting too because if i go back to that era for a second i didn't even look at like someone who was

looking at it positively because obviously we work together and I saw you from I knew about you before that but then when I saw that you know with that collaboration with Matt August I couldn't even tell you any of the negative comments that that wasn't even something I paid attention to

I just thought, oh, this guy's an awesome coach. I want to work with him. That's all I thought in that moment. So then you think to yourself, okay, the positive, when you're talking about the people who are looking at it in a positive way, they're usually not paying attention. attention to the at least from my experience that that's because I don't remember anything negative back from what you had just referenced so that's interesting actually now that I think about it

Yeah, the negativity bias is also, it's in reference to what you're looking at. Like you didn't have any personal investment in how well that video did. Right. You were someone who like the same thing for me. Like I think of things that I came across content creators or even things outside of bodybuilding. Like, oh, man, that was awesome. I remember that movie when I was a kid. I don't know what critics were saying about some of my favorite movies.

1998 you know I could have found them but I also don't think I would have cared because the the impact on me was what mattered but imagine Even though one of those films, let's say it was like a classic and it became venerated and it was, you know, they won some awards based upon it, but there was some negative reviews. I guarantee you the director and the actors in that movie noticed those negative, you know.

criticisms even though they were the rare and non standard kind of view of the movie and we're like god damn it you know so when you're personally invested in something the negativity bias will rear its head when there's no threat to you you're not the one in the jungle so you know that that that twig snapping it's not going to be anything i'm just thinking oh man this is pretty

awesome why would you pay attention to that it just looks like what it is it's a one random comment or two random comments it's the minority it's weird it's out of touch it's irrelevant to you but when you especially for the first time you are the public figure and you are getting

some comment from someone you've never met who doesn't know you, who acts like they presume to know you and makes a statement about who you are or your personality or judging you. It can be very jarring for the first time and it never goes away.

that still affects you. And some people far less than others. And I think people who are perpetually on the internet and happy to be out there and have been in these scandals repeated times, there's probably a bit of narcissism or even sociopathy there. Which is why so much of public figures seem like crazy people. Because half of them are. But not all of them are.

You know, so there are many public figures who do so from a service perspective, you know, or an achievement perspective, like, oh, this is a really, really high level athlete. So we want to interview them. And we've seen like the vicious comments they get, you know, and.

it's constant man and it happens even outside of our our corner of the world you know like if you think about like simone biles or if you think about anyone who is a public figure who is not trying to be a public figure they become a public figure because they're a nobel prize winner they become a public figure because they're a high level athlete they become a public figure because they're the best coach in the league they become a public figure because of x y and z thing or they are

making themselves a public figure because they're trying to promote a cause or they're trying to be a science communicator or something, but it's not about them. Those people, I think they struggle. And maybe I'm just being, you know, self-centered in this or a martyr. I think they struggle.

with some of these things more because they're not the person who just wants to be seen, wants to be out there, doesn't care about the opinions of other people. And that's why they embroil themselves in these conflicts. But I think if you can get a little bit of that, like if you can figure out without being a bad person. How does someone like Liver King not give a shit?

but in service of putting out good information, then I think you've done yourself a service. And for me, I can't figure out how they do that, but I can limit my exposure to reading comments and thinking about, do I really want to even enter this room?

Probably not. What do I stand to gain and what do I stand to lose? Let me know my own mental health, you know, limitations, weaknesses. And we're social creatures. I would love to only care about the opinions of me from people who I respect rather than random stories.

But frankly, I'm just not that good at that. I do better than I did when I was 20 in my 40s now. But yeah, I'm still that kid in high school doesn't want to be picked on to some degree, you know? I think a lot of people can relate with that. Like, honestly. For better or for worse, I don't have a physique where I get called like a fake natty. And I don't have...

Actually, I've seen the fake nanny comments on you. Yeah, yeah, you've had a few. But they're few and far between. Or they're referencing like 20 years ago, my own open discussion of, hey, you know, before I learned about natural bodybuilding.

I used, you know, poor hormones for weeks. And they go, I used a fake natty. I'm like, well, I mean, this isn't secret. I didn't admit anything. I'd have to be like, like, oh, I got caught. Like, no, only people know this because I told you. And again, it was 20 years ago, right? So that's the closest. I get. And then the other ones I typically get, maybe there's more now, I haven't looked, but they're like cutting drugs.

So I'm always just like, God damn it. Like, give me a better drug. I want to be the guy on trend, not the guy on Clem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I'm lean or whatever, you know? Right, right. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. Well, Eric, listen, I appreciate you as always. This was an incredible chat. We got into some great topics. I'm sure we'll have the listeners thinking, have you guys thinking who are tuning in. And if anybody wants to get in touch with you for coaching, for education.

All that good stuff. The best place they can reach you is... Hey. 3dmusclejourney.com. I have the pleasure and privilege of being the chief science officer, making sure that our coaches are up to date with the best of practice and build upon their existing knowledge and experience that goes all the way back to when we started more than 15 years ago.

d musclejourney.com that is the number three the letter d musclejourney.com and if you're interested in going what was he saying about meta-aggressions what was he saying about these studies i want to know more about that check out massresearchreview.com that's where myself dr eric trexler Lorne Clenzo Semple and Dr. Mike Zerdos every month. And we just hit our 100th issue.

Kenny. We're releasing it on the 1st of July. Subscribers to Mass, members of Mass get access to all 100. That's over 1,000 pieces of content. We have audio summaries, written articles, videos, and bonus content that'll teach you how to read and interpret only the most relevant.

research to lifting and, of course, mass, putting on mass, lifting heavier mass, or trying to reduce your body fat mass, or just being healthier, whatever your goals are. Great resource for coaches and athletes alike. And yeah, that is a monthly research review where we cover the most recent stuff.

and you'll get everything going back all the way when we started in 2017. The final thing I'll say is if you want to hear me on awesome podcasts like this, make sure to follow me at Helms3DMJ where I share all the content I do. And if you want to listen to my own podcast, it's awesome. On my shirt for the YouTubers, Iron Culture, now presented by Mass, I do that every week.

With Dr. Eric Trexler, we either host our own episodes where we do questions from the audience live on YouTube that are also recorded, and then we put it out there, or we have a lot of awesome guests from across the spectrum of culture, science, and the history of lifting. Amazing. And if people want to cop one of those

Epic Iron Culture t-shirts. Where do they get those? That they can't get. This was a limited run that we did through Rascal Apparel. But I will say, if you want to tune into the spirit of lifting, the irreverent humor, but also the deep cuts of art and culture. Do check out Rascal Apparel. I think Omar's clothing brand is one of my favorite in the fitness industry. Amazing. Rascal Apparel, you already know. Links are in the show notes. Also, Team 3DMJ website, show notes.

to the vault all the vault is the educational hub right and uh of course the coaching which is found at team 3dmj as you at spoke about 3dmusclejourney.com right so yeah links are in the show notes check those out eric Best of luck on your, with the rest of your contest prep. We'll probably touch base, I'm sure, after the season's over to get the scoop right. I would be honored. Amazing. Okay. Well, for those tuning in, thank you so much. You already know.

I appreciate you. We appreciate you. And we'll catch you in the next one. Eric, it was an honor. Take care, brother. Thanks for having me on again. Absolutely. That's all for today's episode. Hope you enjoyed it. If you did, leave us that five star review on Spotify or Apple or wherever you're tuning in. Check out our YouTube channel where we are publishing videos.

every single week that's the first place you'll be able to tune into the podcast make sure to subscribe because it helps grow the channel and the show and everything we're trying to do to elevate natural bodybuilding we also recently launched our members site and that is where you can tune into the podcast before everybody else that's the first place

full-length episodes are published and it's the only place you can watch full-length episodes brand new episodes no advertisements no interruptions and i even put in that extra work to include photos tons of photos where applicable of course So once again, that's longevity muscle on YouTube. There's a join button next to subscribe button, subscribe, join the channel, become a member. And we appreciate you. And I appreciate you.

And thank you so much for all the support. For those of you who may not know, we also have longevity muscle magazine. That is where you can read. articles written articles from the top natural bodybuilders in the world we're talking articles on training nutrition mindset competing all the good stuff that's longevity muscle magazine we have over i believe it's over 100 articles now so head on over to longevity muscle magazine links will be in the show notes last but not least

after months and months of hard work and planning behind the scenes longevity muscle store is finally live which means you can head on over to the store the link will be in the show notes all right guys that's it for this one Thank you so much once again for tuning in. Thank you so much, as always, for your support. It's greatly appreciated. And we'll catch you in the next one.

Hey guys, real quick. If you're listening on Spotify or iTunes, leave us that five-star review. We really appreciate it. And it goes a long way for putting the episode in front of more people, which gives more exposure to the show.