What is going on? Ladies and gents Robert Sykes? Kilo Savage.com. And today I've got Bronson dant back in the house. Last podcast is all about what is Fitness. This podcast is all about, why Fitness less than I was about the. We talked about all kinds of things. Especially he and I both in a building phase right now. As we talk about how to optimally build muscle and a ketogenic carnivore diet. We dive into that. We talk about calorie manipulation.
We talk about calories versus hormones, you talk about high fat versus high protein. We talked about Kinds of juicy details that are very controversial within the keto low carb space good stuff. Anyways, I thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Bronson is a bright individual. I've got no doubt that you will learn something, I certainly did. So without further Ado, sit back relax, get your notepad out, take some notes and enjoy the conversation with Bronson. And we are live.
Bronson. How are you man? Doing? Great, man. Great night sleep coffee this morning. We're going to go shoot him in the futon worked. Alright for. Yeah, it's good. It's good. Good, good. So we recorded quite a bit yesterday and balance Fitness and you wanted to make sure we transition from, you know, what is Fitness to why Fitness? Yeah, so I think about that. Let's dive into it man. Yeah.
Think about that last night we talked about really You know, in-depth yesterday about you know, what is Fitness. What are the components? What is Fitness look like in someone's life? What are the things that you need to focus on as you're working on your Fitness and the piece to that? I started think about like well, why does it even matter? We tell them, we're telling
people you need to be fit. You need to consider all these things when you're looking at a program, when you're looking at implementing, some type of Fitness routine in your life. Why? And got me thinking about the I don't, if you've heard of the, the the welt the sickness, As Wellness Continuum I've heard of it, but I couldn't I couldn't draw it on a piece of paper if yeah, so and actually it might be something we can put in a link to it in the show notes or
something. So people can have a visual. But basically, if you think about all of the aspects of things that we look at when someone sick or when someone's, well, right, they all are measures of the same thing, just on different spectrums and fitness is kind of what ties that together, right? If you if you look at people that are sick or well, right? We're looking. Things that the measures that were looking at were looking at,
you know, cholesterol level. We're looking at blood pressure, looking at body fat, percentage lean mass percentage. We're looking at inflammation, looking at all of these factors and when those factors are negative, someone sick, when those factors are good. Someone's healthy or we consider them to be well. And fitness is one of those things besides nutrition that can bring those things together.
Make that change. So, when someone is doing things to improve those 10 aspects of N components of fitness, right strength, power speed, agility coordination, all that kind of stuff. There are physiological changes in their body, that happened to elicit, a an increase in an adaptation to allow their body to perform better. And in order for your body to perform better. Those markers have to change. If your body is performing. Well and efficiently your blood, your cholesterol is going to be
better. Your blood pressure is going to be better. You're going to have more lean mass. You're going to have less body fat. You're going to have less inflammation. So if you're doing all of those things, Fitness isn't about being able to work out. It's not about having a six-pack. It's not about having big muscles. It's not about even just being lean. It's about improving your health.
And that is the why, you know, we talk about nutrition all the time and I think in our space we're in the keto carnivore space. So that's kind of the foundation of what everybody thinks about. Like. If you're eating, you know, high fat, low carbs, you know, moderate protein or whatever. Configuration of macro. Someone's going to be in. That is all often the focus of the conversation, and we forget, sometimes that There's a big piece that Fitness plays a big role that Fitness plays in the
whole picture. Well, you often hear like these success stories of you know, my Nancy lost 50 pounds. She never went to the gym once, you know, absolutely here all these and it's like, okay, that's that's cool. It's like bragging, right? So to speak, but I don't think that should be bragging rights at all. It should be the exact opposite. People should be compelled and motivated to you know address that aspect of their overall health as well. Absolutely.
Because it's about quality of life. Yeah, and the ability, you know, my focus is On freedom and you know, freedom is a choice, is kind of my tagline, but at the same thing at the same point, it's your physical ability, right? Is how you express your freedom. Yeah. It doesn't matter how much Freedom you have if you can't take advantage of it and actually do things with it. So the point of losing your
point of view know so-and-so lost. 50 pounds is still as an example of the mindset, people have of, we're just wait, Indicator of Health. Yeah, right. That person lost fifty pound. That's great. They're still probably under have a low lean mass. We don't know what there, any of their other markers are. Right? Probably lower lean. Mass means inflammation is higher than it needs to be because body fat. Adipose tissue is an organ of inflammation. So even though you lost a bunch
of weight, how much lean mass. Did you lose? How much body fat? Did you lose? There's no way to tell. Yeah, because you're focusing on the wrong thing, right? We talked about weight loss, a lot when we shouldn't be weight loss is in In my estimation. My opinion is a red herring when it comes to health. Yeah, because I mean fat loss is a much better metric muscle gain. I mean composition matters so
much more so than wait. That's why I like the number on the scale and tracking that on a daily basis can be very useful. Like I don't sway from that. I do that myself, but people get so fixated on the number on the scale exclusively, right? They don't pay any mind to, you know, their lifts going up in the gym or they getting stronger as their composition proof. That's why I like taking measurements and pictures are so
incredibly important. And but it's like pulling teeth to get anybody to do it, you know. Yeah, and it's hard to get people to understand because it's been drilled into them for so long. Right? Wait. It's it's the, The Establishment, right? It's it's work. More eat less and your weight is the key. Yeah, and that's so that's such a high level on the surface way of looking.
It's such a simplistic view of looking at it, that it, misses all the things like we talked about last night off care off, camera recording, you know, about the calories. Hmm. Talked about, you know. No is calories in, calories out of thing. Doesn't matter. How much do hormones play into this whole thing and all in. All I can say is we can segue into that conversation. If you want. Since we were kind of a man's real precise. We had, we had, we got calories on the table.
We're going to dive into that and I'd love to I feel like you and I have very different opinions on like macronutrient ratio breakdown. Sure. So we can dive into that, too. So yeah, man, let's just, let's just start. What's your thoughts on calories? You were saying that you think calories are and I think it all matters.
Alright, so like we You know, coming what we're talking about last night is people that have come from a fitness backgrounds and they've just been brought up in the collect the calorie manipulation program calories in calories out. Its energy balance, you know, for that demographic to look at the other side of spectrum and here people put so much emphasis on hormones and all being about hormones and calories. Not mattering is it's very, it's a very tough bridge to cross.
You know, I've always taken the approach. Ouch of it all matters. It's all it's all holistic in nature. Everything had like I don't like dealing in absolutes. So people that say it's all hormones. I don't agree with people, say, it's all calories. I don't agree with one represent. It's all holistic in nature. So, there needs to be an emphasis about calories.
Now, whether you use the word calorie itself, I feel like the word calorie has a negative connotation to it to so many people, just some that in, for energy, like the fuel, you're consuming. The amount of fuel you consume is going to have an impact, you can have a surplus of You'll you can have a deficit a few, right? Like that, that freaking Majesty but it says it doesn't is just ignorance. Now. I will say this, the context of
the fuel in your system. I mean hormones are our major, you know, mechanism within your system. That's going to determine how efficiently you use that fuel Absol. So so that matters, I mean, it's all people like to think of bodies human bodies. They use like the the vehicle analogy. It's just a car, but that's a closed loop system, and humans are not closed. Loop systems, right?
So you can't deal in absolutes. Like anybody that tries to say it's all episodes is is just missing the beat. Now. I will say there, there's areas that probably deserve more high-level focus. And then once you refined that level then you can move to the next tier and focus on that same thing with like nutrition.
Like when you first get in the keto diet, you don't necessary need to work about worried about you know, how one specific type of nut may not be the best over another specific type of nut for you. Like kind of work on the big picture first, get that dialed in. Then move to the next tier and the same is true with regard to body re comp. No calories. Equation versus hormone equation, right? Yeah. I totally agree. I think particularly when you have someone who's just getting
started. I think we get hung up and following influencers on you know, Instagram, social media and you know, so-and-so talk about, you know, red light here, cold therapy here. This thing has this, you know, anti-nutrient or phytonutrient whatever. And let me start thinking all these things when we still have 40 pounds 40 pounds of fat to lose. Yeah, right. Just get the basics done, guys.
As before you start, looking at all these other little things and how this may affect you this much when just stopping drinking that Coke every day is going to affect you this much. Yeah, you know going back to what you're saying about energy. I think that's a huge key in the misconception of calories. Yeah, calories, you know, I get I get to use all the time saying that calories don't matter. That's absolutely incorrect.
I think calories do matter. They do play a role the where my distinction is is I think there is a difference in the utilization of what we eat. Yeah, like you said, people use the analogy of us being a car. I like to say, people think of us as just an oven or something. We're just burning things all the time. Yeah, and they forget that macronutrients have specific uses hormones respond to each
macronutrient differently. And you know, it's a combination of fuel utilization and hormone response. So the way that I look at it. I do use a car analogy when I talked about macro nutrients because I look at it. But the way that I look at, it isn't as everything's going the gas tank. Yeah, right. I look at it as protein is oil, fat is gas, and carbs are octane booster. Right? So there's three different uses. There's three different effects. They go to different places in the body.
You, you need protein. It's the building block. It keeps everything going, right? All, you know, you need oil in the car. Yes. Does oil burn off some? A little bit sure, but it's a much lower percentage in gas. Yeah, right. So we, anybody driven a car, you got to replace your oil every once awhile, right? Because it does burn off, but it's not its use in, its primary focus isn't to provide energy for the car.
Right? It keeps the car running gasoline is the primary fat, is the primary fuel that your body works off best. We know that there is no argument. I don't know anybody in this day and age can still say that carbs are better for burning fuel. Cool, your body uses less energy. It gets more energy out of it. It causes less inflammation. Less oxidative stress. Like it's just your body mitochondria reproduce in our and little longer when fat is
the primary fuel source. Like, there's just so many things about fat, that your body loves carbs are octane. Booster. If you want to use them and in some cases, people do get benefit, particularly high level athletes to can see a boost in energy because you're popping something in that, your body can burn hot fast. In quick, see now, right? That, maybe what we differ a little bit because if we're going to use the car analogy, I would say your carbs, like the little sludge that gets tough.
Well, so and I get your engine block. Yeah, I agree. I agree to that it to and I agreed. I agree with that too. A bit in that you wouldn't want to run your car off of octane. Booster. Yeah, right there. There there have been some there have And again, this is where I think, you're right. We disagree a little bit in that. Where's the information line? What's actually out there? Because you've seen it, you know, there's some studies that show throw in some carbs right
before an event. Yeah, you might see a boost I've experienced both and I feel like I don't see much of a difference between the two, but for those people that, you know, live by, I need carbs to do X, Y or Z. The idea is that carbs or that little quick burst of energy, but you don't want to be the base. Yeah, because our body has Storage for it on purpose because it's not supposed to be something that we use all the time.
Right? If you just look at that it, evolutionarily, we can store an almost unlimited amount of fat on her body. Yeah, we can't store an unlimited amount of fat, if unlimited amount of carbs in our body because it's not supposed to be primary. Yeah, right. So, you know, it burns fast. It burns. Hot. It creates way more inflammation. Way more oxidative stress. It makes in order to do things with it or body has to to do extra work to use it, right? The steps of breaking it down or extra.
So it's just, that's how I kind of look at it, where that plays into the overall calories in, calories out model. I hesitate to give a hard number or percentage, but for the most part, I don't count protein as part of my, my caloric burn in a day, right? Because most of it. Let's just, I hesitate to say percent. Let's just say 80%. Of all the protein that I eat, the cart of the calories aren't used for fuel. The calories are used to build muscle, rip and repair, right?
It's keeping my body running. I'm not actually burning it to create ATP to move my muscles. So I don't count this Gallery. So we talked about our macros and you know what we do and everything. I'm a higher protein, moderate fat, kind of protocol that I use because I'm not looking at most of my calories in a day coming from protein. Most of my burnable calories for Energy come from the fact that I eat in the fat on my body, and that's kind of where my focus is. Seems I don't think it might
toad. I don't look at my total overall, caloric intake that way. See, I'm similar, but different in that, I'm higher fat, moderate protein, very low to minimal carbohydrate or low to no carbohydrate. And I look at we're in the same page and that we've, you fat, as being our primary fuel source. That's our energy protein is not a very good substrate for energy. So you you're consuming, almost 300 grams. Today, yeah. Between 250 and 300. Depends on Canadian 300.
So do you, do you ever notice any adverse effect from like just overcoming protein? Like, is there a point at which you have any kind of GI distress or any other? No, not at all. Not at all. See I I can keep that fat very high. And since my calories are very high, especially not being in a building phase. My protein intake is pretty pretty solemn and I weigh 175 hundred seventy eight pounds and I'm consuming between 175 and about 225 grams of protein a
day. Which is more than enough to build lean tissue, that's that's an optimal range for sure. I can go much lower than that, when I'm in a deficit and totally sustain the muscle that have built those for. But in a building phase, that's perfect window for that. Sure. I don't notice any positive in, you know, impact from increasing protein beyond that. I do notice some gastric distress Grand, don't feel as good mentally or physically, not as mentally, sharp.
Yeah, when my protein is, is just in excess, you know, I don't know. There's a lot of Bio individuality in that in that equation, you know, the rate at which Is broken down. You're also doing much leaner sources of protein, right? Whereas I'm doing a lot of, you know, fattier cuts of protein, right? So a lot of it probably is too is just what you're doing for an extended period of time that your body adjust to being able
to process efficiently, right? So, you know, like if you were to switch to, you know, fatty ribbons to the sirloins for x amount of time. Your gastric system would probably change and if I would do the exact opposite and go to more sirloins, mine would change. So there's so much nuance and all this, but I think it's cool because we're coming at it from the side. Different background but you're excelling in yours. I'm excelling in mind. Both are working very, very
well. Yeah, and it's very possible that you know, it's I haven't gone through because the way that I've developed the, you know, my method, I just it's become what it is. I haven't thinking about, you know, do I need 250 grams of protein a day to build muscle? Probably not, I could probably do it. I mean, my lean mass is 165 ish, so I could probably do a one to Ratio my protein look to grams and still build. Hmm. Do I want to take that chance to while Anna? And I've always been more
comfortable. Just saying. Look, if I'm going to be working out as hard as I work out every day, then it makes sense to have more. Yeah, so just, you know, and so I go to one and a half to two and that's kind of where I am. Yeah. I think a lot of people we talked about this little bit off there too is that they get so hung up on, you know, protein being negative. That the under consume protein and I never had advocate for under constraint programming.
So many people chase the ketones and, you know, if you have a very, very high protein, you will by definition have little ketones, right? But just simply because you have higher protein and lower ketones. That doesn't necessarily mean that you are not fat adapted not key to adapted. I mean, you're pretty much Corner, we're not even car behind. Yeah. I mean, I probably am never over 10 grams of carbs a day. Yeah, so it's not like you're
getting your energy from carbs. So you are totally fat adapted. Totally key to adapting. But your ketones probably aren't as high as mine because you have a much higher protein relative to your overall caloric intake than I do but you're functioning fine. I'm functioning fine. Yeah. So a lot of people they just get so hung up on the the Biometrics that they're tracking. Whether that be, you know, the Ketone numbers, the glucose numbers, which I put a lot of emphasis in that.
I feel like that's great information have depending on what you're trying to do with it. But some people obsess about that and they don't learn to listen to their body and that's really in trouble. Yeah. The information that we have particularly now, there's so much information that we can get about ourselves. Right? You know, see GMS ketones, all the body composition information we can get from being bodies and things like that. It can be overwhelming and people can get off base.
Yeah, right. So that's where having a coach having someone that can kind of say. Look, this is what you need to focus on right now. Don't worry about this or that, or the other thing. We're trying to move you in this direction, these all you need to worry about. For me, most of the time, most of the people I work with and for me personally, I really don't care about my ketones. I don't care about my blood sugar because the way that I eat.
By definition is like geometry. Yeah, it's you know, if then equals right, so if I'm not eating a bunch of carbs, if I'm only eating 10 grams of carbs a day. Why am I checking my ketones? Yeah. Why am I checking? My blood sugar? Yeah. It just doesn't make sense to waste of time. I'm not eating any of the things that should mess that stuff up. So, why does it matter? Yeah, I'm 100% on the same page. They're the reason I would
change or track rather. The the ketones in the glucose is typically what I'm in a competition prepped for my clients. Competition prep and we're starting the matter caloric intake and then tapering down on that caloric intake and initially we're increasing
protein and decreasing fans. So all figure out what their protein threshold is sure at which point they start to see adverse effects from that, protein ratio, increasing exponentially, and then bye-bye tracking ketones and using that data in tandem with the feedback to give me but like how they're feeling mentally how their GI system is like that is useful, but I'm not checking it to see if they're adhering to you know key do not Sneaking carbs, right? Right. I'm diving much deeper than
that. Now, if I've got clients that are sneaking carved and they're doing a competition prepped and that's a bigger issue. But but yeah, I think there's Nuance to the the debt and special like the or ring. Like I went ordering. I love the or ring. You've got the Samsung watch watch you. So many people look at HRV and the Readiness score and I think
that's great information. Sure. But so many people look at that, and they'll totally rewrite the script on what they're planning on doing that day. Just because It says they should rest a little bit more and that to me is a slippery slope for sure because so much of that data is based off of Prior Trends.
So if you're trying to do a progressive overload principle and you're trying to increase intensity, there's going to be a lag effect and it's going to show what you've done in the past and say, oh you've overdone it, you know, you gotta you gotta take a step back and it's like no, no, let me let me just take you off for the day and show you what I can do. And that's a slippery slope to I mean, there's always a dichotomy. Yeah, and it's challenging
because again, there's so much. Much information and people want to make changes quick. Yeah, we talked about this early in the first episode of the first chapter of this whatever. And you know, people want things to happen quickly. So they get frustrated and want to make change. You've got to stick with what's going on with what you're doing. Yeah, you got to give it time to work, it may you know, it may you may get on your in body scale.
You may look at some keto numbers and they may be high. They may be low, don't change what you're doing that day just because it happened one time. Yeah, if you see a trend and that's a huge. People need to understand, it's Trends, you're looking at things over time and then trying to determine what does that mean? Once you figure out what that means then you can figure out OK. What are the things that may be affecting this and make some
adjustments as needed. Don't don't do it after a day or even two days, you know, the trend aspect is why it's so important to track on a very consistent basis. That's like like a daily basis. For instance, like people people will jump on the scale and then three weeks later jump on the scan, there could be a man. Massive fluctuation or no fluctuation, but they have no idea what's happening that window. They have no idea what the trend is, and that gets people in trouble.
So like, right, track daily, but don't let one day finite, piece of number dictate, any of your decision, correct? But yeah, that that me, I mean, you're in, you have an engineering background. So, do you that must make like, just common sense? Yeah, for me. I'm all about beta, I'm all about data. So I'm always I'm always for me personally, I track everything. Yeah, it is but it but you said like you said, it's a dichotomy because not everybody can function that way.
Yeah, so working with clients. Now, most of your clients are bodybuilding. I would assume, you know, there they've got physique specific goals and tracking just comes with that territory. Yeah. I was talking to Joe from to Crazy Cheetos and, you know, he was asking the question. Should I track everything, Rob tracks. Everything? Should I not? You know, dr. Barry says, just eat till you're full. Yeah, where's the balance between that?
And and you know, and you know, and I told him I said bodybuilders are one of the few Sports may be. The only sport where your sport is your lifestyle. Yeah, it's not. Baseball basketball football, where you do? Go to the thing, you know, you play your game and you come back, you practice, but you can still kind of have a normal life and do whatever you want with bodybuilding. Everything you do particularly when you're in prep. Yeah, affects your performance
in your sport, hundred percent. And so tracking is just, I mean, if you're not okay with tracking, you're not going to be, you don't be a bodybuilder. Yeah. I mean, that's a harsh reality. A lot of people do want to face that, but it's the truth man. I mean, because you're pushing your body. And what is a physiological or psychological you know normal threshold like it is not normal
to have a human in the wild. No, such 5% 5% body fat, right, you know, so like you have to, you have to try because if you were to just let your let your cell phone to your own devices, like you would never restrict your caloric intake and enough to get down that low because your body. I mean, your hormones, like, evolutionarily, you're just not supposed to do that. Here's a question.
What do you think? So, for me, when I'm I just put a little basis in this one for when I'm not tracking and just kind of doing eating till I'm full, kind of eating what I feel like eating. I usually end up around 14 or 15 percent body fat and I can maintain that pretty easily. Yeah, for me to get to a 10 percent 9 percent.
I have to track and kind of make sure I'm getting what I want to get which is what I'm doing now, but when I'm just kind of live in my life, I'm using a fourteen fifteen percent. What do you think that what's your experience been with people that are On a coming in or at you worked with and like, hey, I'm not tracking right now. Here's where I'm at. What kind of what kind of range you think is.
Next is is is there a general range of body fat percentage or lean mass for people who aren't tracking? But our Carnival work, you do? Yeah. I mean, if they've come from a healthy background of training resistance training, their conscious of their nutrition, then yeah, for males, you know, between 12 and 15, 16, even 17 percent body fat. Depends How They Carried, how much muscle they have. Like, that's a healthy range. You know, like that's like I'm at about 14 15 percent right now
myself, I can maintain this. I still have visible ABS Cuts in my quads, you know, I use that I use the mirror kind of as a marker for wearing red Trend things. But but that's totally sustainable. I can do that, and I've got a very broad range. So that's my homeostatic set points. My body wants to be. If I'm just living comfortably. Yep, but when I'm trying to get down like 3%, body fat, like I
am on stage, you know day. It's I mean, it's not something that you would want to maintain for any length of time. Like it's a very finite period of time that you're doing that and it's not healthy like its hormonal not healthy its metabolic in our healthy like it is not healthy. However, I gained more from that, you know, mentally that my overall life improves as a result of that, you know in its totality that it's totally worth it for me, right?
I would venture to say that maybe it's not worth it for everybody to make a, it's definitely not worth every to make a lifestyle out of It but to be able to push themselves that for for a finite period of time at least once in their life. Sure is absolutely going to be advantageous. Yeah, and I think it's for some people that level of effort maybe to get them to 15 or get that attend right or get them to 20 likes.
It. May the mental Hill that someone has to climb to go from a 35 percent body fat to a 10% or 15% body fat could be just as much for. Yeah, it's alright to go from 10 to 3. Yeah, because I mean we've also been doing This for a while, right? You may write bodybuilding for how long 12 years now. Yeah, right. So and I've been in Fitness for about eight eight. Almost nine years. Yeah. So we've gotten, we've kind of built into where we are. Yeah, cool. I think.
Yeah. I just the, the aspect of calories, the aspect of hormones, we talk about protein. The, the when we talk about hormones and protein. I think that's another thing, that a lot of people still don't realize is when we talk about, Using protein to build muscle using protein, as well, not using protein as a fuel, and using it to help manage your body composition. Because when you do take more protein, right, your thermogenesis goes up. Protein does have an insulin
response. Hmm, right? So it's and it's designed to help push in BCAAs. Not not glycogen, right? So, you know the whole idea of protein Having an insulin response. So you don't want to eat it because insulin is the problem with being fat. Yeah. Okay, that doesn't quite hold water. When you look at insulin from carbs, is there. It's pushing unused energy into your fat cells. Yeah, there's insulin from protein, is pushing the help
your muscles grow. There's a lot of nuance there for sure to like the thermogenic effect of protein, for instance, being being one. It's definitely higher than what you're going to get from carbs more fat. However, it, I mean, it's not an astronomical increase in writin. Caloric expenditure getting from the thermal thermic effect of
food in protein. So, like, for me being, you know, high-fat predominantly the energy gained from having that higher fat is going to yield more overall, caloric expenditure than that's, you know, increase in protein would
offset right? If that make sense, kind of tricky to explain but like the energy that I'm going to gain by having the higher, you know, fat ratio is going to cause Me to have more neat activity more exercise activity that's going to yield a net higher outcome of caloric expenditure than I would just simply from the thermic effect proved in in protein. So, there's a lot of nuance there to a lot of. It depends, truly on how you structure your body.
So like I'm the strict, you know, I've strict keto and I'm high fat and I've been that way for six years. So my body is incredibly efficient. Yeah, at using fat as the primary fuel source, as an energy source like you were talking earlier. About how Carbs are octane boosters for me. It's like I don't even have carbs in the equation. For me. The different types of fat can be leveraged. So, like an MC t. Almost like a shorter chain carbon fat molecule.
I can leverage that like other people use carbs. Yeah, and I think that's a result of me being strict Ki toh. Hai fat as long as I have him. It's not that it's necessarily the right way. It's certainly the right way for me, and I've experienced with a lot of different ways. And this has been the most effective, but it takes a while to get to that level of fat. Meditation. Where fat is the key? Yeah, how can you be a bodybuilder and be a fat fueled athlete? And it doesn't make any sense.
I'm an anomaly, man. I didn't think it was possible to work in the ATP and glycolytic Pathways without carbs explain that to me. I don't understand. Yeah, so that's a tricky one man. And it's frustrating, you know, you and I both kind of going about this. We're both doing a building Series right now so we can dive into that too. But you know, I was I was watching a video that I send me, send me a video in it. Graham.
And it was a video of a couple doctors talking with these Fitness athletes about how with the ketogenic diet. You're just bound to term to lose muscle like you. It's just going to happen. Yeah, you know, and I'm listening to this stuff and I'm just like getting pissed off and let's take just the more they talk the more ignorant they become right and it's like no. No, that's just not the way it works. I'm setting out on a crusade to prove. Otherwise, that's exactly the
similar. That's why I started doing this thing. Yeah, I got it. It's like we got to just put it out there. I mean we could talk all day long, but but you got to put it out there. Document it, which I thought I had done, but I guess I hadn't done well enough. But yeah, so like, you know, like we talked about in the first episode. You've got the ATP creatine, phosphate. You've got the glycolytic, you
know, 8 to 15 rep range. You got beyond that for the endurance aerobic, you know, Sports and whatnot, endurance like training Marathon, stuff of that nature and the concept or the idea that as a ketogenic athlete. You cannot perform at that 8 to 12 rep range, blows. My, that's the only rep range. I'm really using. Like, that's where that's my sweet spot, right? Yeah. It's the typical. Able to have purchased a rep range.
That's where I live and I'll do that and I'll train with people that are hardcore carb, you know, Centric individuals and I'll run circles around absolutely. And I don't get fatigued. I don't Bonk out. I don't hit this, you know, lactic acid, while they do. So the people that are saying that they just have not been adapted long enough. You can't do keto for a month and then try it and not be able to perform at that rep range and say that it doesn't work. Yeah.
How long do you normally see for people? For me? It's 8 to L've sometimes 14 weeks before. People start from an athletic perspective, right? So the day-to-day and, and, you know, I kind of say there's two levels. There's the day-to-day adaptation, where you're just doing normal stuff and you kind of go through the keto flu and then you feel better after a week or two.
Yeah, but from an athletic perspective, it took me about 12 weeks, like everything just dipped off for a while and then all of a sudden it was like, hey, wait a second, these workouts on his heart. So, coming from across the background, right? I'm doing high intensity interval training, you know, anywhere from five minutes to 30 minutes at a time. And you know, it sucked for a while. Mmm. And then all of a sudden was like, Hey, this isn't as bad.
Hey, wait, you know, I'm lifting more, you know, my deadlift went up my back. So I went off my bench went up. I started recovering from injuries. I had to torn, labrum, 's, right. So, coming back from that. After going carnivore, like it was faster than any other injury. I've had all the aches and pains that I used to have just kind of just disappeared. Yeah, the inflammation was down my recovery. So I'm 48 years old. I used to You work out 3 days a week and feel like crap the rest
of the week. Yeah, you know, and now I can work out six days a week, seven days a week and I'm ready to go every single day. Yeah, right. So I've improved number one, not just from my metabolism being more efficient, but I can I doubled my volume in a week, you know. Going from 3 to 6 days a week. That's a lot of progress. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's you know, progression. It's a continual thing. It just keeps getting better and
better. ER I mean, yeah, when you when you first go from a car dependent lifestyle to Quito fat adapted carnivore, you know, you're going to have that couple week period, where like you just don't feel good in normal day-to-day life, you know, I'm able to focus as well as the office, etc. Etc.
Then you'll be able to get through that after a month or so. And then after that from a performance standpoint, you'll start to notice that you can do things like the those first, you know, 1 to 6 reps, going to be pretty, pretty easy. It's going to be pretty much not a not not much of a change that 8 to 12 rep range. They That may suffer for a month or two, but then after that, it just keeps getting better and better. After I would say after six months.
You should probably be where you were previously with carbs. And then after that, it just compounds. And what what's what's unique is that you will recover time like you're saying it significantly improves your able to train at a higher frequency. Yep. So if you're able to train the higher frequency with less issues from a injury standpoint, then by definition, you're going to have more volume. Yep, and you're going to grow and you're going to have better better.
Recovery better strength, better stamina better, everything. So I look at now is looking at some videos that pump them a phone from, like, 2018 and I was doing like heavy deadlifts and like the 5 rep range. Right now. I'm doing those same deadlifts in the 10 to 15 rep range.
And that's that rep range that you say you can't do, you know what that little sport you can't do it, but it's like I wasn't even able to do these at that rep scheme with that efficiency when I was eating carbs and it's like it blows my mind that there's An argument out there that you can't build muscle or sustain muscle and a fat adapted diet. Yeah, but the more of us out there, putting out content to the contrary. I mean, that's what we need. We just need to document otherwise.
Yeah, and I mean I've done it. It's crazy because you know, before covid I think I had put on about five pounds of muscle over a period of several months and, you know, post covid. I'd then I would didn't have access to a gym for six months didn't have access to lifting heavy. You know, that kind of stuff, so went back down again. So again, I saw something I think I saw somebody.
Oh, somebody responded to one of my posts because there is study that that was put out that talked about CrossFit and ketogenic diets, and I posted it and, you know, the response that I got. I was crazy. Like, you know, there's problems. You can't do that. It's like, okay. Look, I just you know, I'm going to do it again. Yeah, I've already died. Like you said, I've already done this already talked about it, but let's do it again.
And this time I'm you know every day I'm putting out my workout is what I'm eating, right? Some days. Like, while I'm here, we talked about this morning and I'm in Rome. So I'm going to be like the Romans and do more fat. Yeah, right? Because I'm not worried about, I'm really not worried about the fat and the protein ratio as much as I'm just want to show that you can be done without carbs. Yeah, so, you know, whatever. It's it's amazing.
How much better I feel now. Just in general, like them energy. No, aches and pains and just being able to go and have the energy all day long. Mmm, right. Because I've got an endless story, we talked about it. I've got an endless store of energy that my body can use. I never barked out, you know, and when Tons of bulking the main reason I got in car number two reasons. I got in carnivore one major stomach bowel digestive issues for years, right?
And that was one thing. Hey, maybe if we try this, I will fix that. And the second one is I got tired of gets get fat to get strong. Yeah. And get week to get skinny. Yeah, I got tired of that. Cycle is like there's got to be a better way. I don't want to get I don't want to get fluffy. Yeah, every time I bulk so let's try this. And the first time I did it, it took me three to four months, but I really, you know, I look back. I'm like, hey, look, I've lost
10% body fat. I went from 25 to 15 percent body fat, and gained 5 pounds of muscle at the same time. And that was it for me. I'm done. I'm never going back. Yeah, you know, yeah, I mean I did the whole fluffy thing man. I was turning 30 pounds. Yeah, 57. I mean as fluffy as it gets, you know, and I mean that that that big to get big belief, is just still rampant in the fitness Community. Like, You Gotta Get huge and you see people that do it
successfully, right? You see people that go off on a tangent and everything inside. Sure, woke up like crazy, then
are able to get super shredded. Now, they don't advertise the other supplements there on so that definitely The equation as well, but for me, it's like I don't want my lifestyle, you know, enjoyment to just have to shift on such a strong, such a drastic, you know, Continuum. I'd rather just enjoy life every day and be comfortable in my skin like how I look, you know, look damn good year-round and then have periods where I'm a little thicker and a little bit more shredded but that whole
that that range is a much healthier range, so I don't have to literally get an entire new wardrobe. Robe each time. I'm going from a building phase to a cutting phase. Yeah, so I save money in that department to and my overall. I'm in my distress on my organs is much less. I mean everything's just better. And like when you when you look at how much mass how much actual lean tissue you build at the end of it. It's not your building that much power by.
I'm the crazy building things. Like you feel like you can walk through a wall because you've got a lot more weight. And when you have a lot more weight, you have different leverage point. So you can possibly move more, more more weight in the gym, but when you lean down, You lose a lot of that and you wind up losing more muscle. Yep. So it's like you have to just kind of pick and choose your battles. I mean, same is true with like the whole car versus keto.
Like they're going to have a little bit more, you know, water retention. I going to gain more weight in the offseason and I typically am. But when they lean down, they're going to lose a lot more stew. And when I look at how I look at the in the day, like, I've built just as much, if not more lean mass and they have, and I felt and looked a whole lot better in the process and you're not messing up your hormones. You have your relationship with
food. There's all kinds of, there's All kinds of other side things that go into that hundred percent. Yeah, and and, and there's you mentioned metabolism earlier. So metabolism is something that I've been preaching from the rooftops since day one as well. I don't know how this would be proven.
But I believe that when you're following a ketogenic, a carnivore diet and the vast majority of cars coming from fat and protein specialist, specifically high-quality sources of fat protein, your metabolic window, grows. Exponentially. It really illustrates that it's not just about the cat. That point, even if you take a healthy individual, so, for instance, I've got a client right now and his metabolism wasn't, as high, as it should
been hit. He was consuming like 2,000 calories or eight, actually 1800 calories on. Average. I've got him up to 2,600 calories now, and he's still losing weight. But he, if he had done that same 2600 calories coming, mostly from carbs. Oh, yeah, he would have gained a whole of a hell of a lot more fat in that same time frame. Yep. So that's from like a metabolic standpoint in like a building phase ORD, ramping up. Metabolism in general, your Healthy window.
Healthy range is going to be much much broader. Following a keto, a carnivore style approach, right? Because your body is more efficient. It's going to use it way better. It's not me like hey, what am I doing? This? I'm not supposed to to have all this, exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. I think I've shown that as well, right, you know, I'm eating more than I've ever eaten before but I'm losing weight. I think he even wrote an article on my page like how to lose weight anymore. Yeah, right.
Because it's about your metabolism and people often going back to the car analogy. Oven or whatever you want to call it. People often think of their metabolism as how do we burn fuel? Hmm, that is part of it. The other part of it is, how do you use nutrients? How does your body use the things that we're doing? Because your metabolism is literally every function of your body, right from burning fuel, creating ATP to growing hair to, you know, replacing replacing
skin cells. To, it's literally everything that your body does. All of the things that Your body does is your metabolism. So all of the things that we do to our body, the food that we put in the hormones that we stimulate, the vitamins that we take in the micronutrients and the minerals, like, all that stuff affects. Our effects. It the things that our environment. How much sleep we get, right?
Red light vitamin D, exercise. Like, all of these things have effects that affect our metabolism. It's not just the food that we put in our mouths. Yeah, and the absorption of the food that we do put in our mouth
is so key to that. That's where I've really kind of. Taking more of an interest in, you know, the meditation, the cooldown phases really activating that parasympathetic State prior to consuming nutrients through your body is able to tap into an absorb, those nutrients better and especially if you're like a building phase. So there's both sides are important. So if I'm in a deficit that I want to make sure that my body is absorbing everything.
I'm consuming because I'm already not eating enough and I'm hungry as it is. Yeah, so I want to perform because my body needs to be absorbing that stuff when I'm in a building phase and I'm consuming a surplus of calories, you know, if your eating foods that your body just does not assimilate very prompt very well, very efficiently. Then you're going to have a bunch of gastric distress. You're not going to be able to really build that much muscle, especially, you know, effectively.
So being able to focus on foods that, you know, your body can assimilate absorb and use. Right, efficiently is absolutely key and that takes some trial at are like like for instance, last night. We had a steak prior to that stake, you know, I'd been eating a just just ground beef and eggs, ground beef, and eggs is easier for my body to break down and use, then a steak. Now, my body, Break down. Each state pretty good, I better so then like, you know, Big
Burrito or something. Yeah, but but ground beef and eggs is better for just a simple, you know assimilation standpoint and I feel like taking that nuance and acting on it is so incredibly important. A lot of people don't take the time to time that deep but it makes a difference. Yeah, and it's the three things when it comes to overall health, right? Particularly with nutrition. We're looking at bioavailability looking at satiety and looking
at nutrient density. So we want to make sure that you know, we can we can Eat the most nutritious Foods ever, but everybody can assimilate it because it's not by available for us. Then doesn't matter. Yep, right. And if we're also not eating things that keep us full that we're going to keep eating and then we're going to overeat. So the three of those combined and if you look at the for anybody, that's wondering, if you look at any of those three things independently, right?
Just no Dogma. No preconceptions. Just go look up and do some research on. What is the most success satiating Foods? What is the Most bioavailable Foods. What is the most nutrient-dense Foods? It's not rice cake. It's not rice case, right? You're going to see that it's animal-based, but it's meat of some sort of meat eggs, poultry cheese like that kind of stuff
is what's in there, organ meat. If you want to get into the whole nose, to tail conversation is probably at the top of the list, for all of it, but it's animal-based products. And the, the thing about animal based products is Let's look at eggs, for example. Nature's multivitamin. Yeah, right. They just found out. I just saw a study in from Switzerland.
I think they just found out. There's a second type of vitamin D. That's more bioavailable and more plentiful in egg yolks really new of. It's like triple the amount of vitamin D in a goes and we knew about you ever do like duck eggs. I have their awesome. Yeah. I need to find a good source. I need the I don't get them regularly, but I've had them. They're good. Yeah, so we look at eggs. Like, Nature's multivitamin. They're the perfect macro rightmost, most meat beef steak.
It's the perfect macro. Like it's all there. Just waiting for us like everything we don't have to think about it. Yeah, so, I mean, that's a segue on eat more meat, but that's not true man. I mean, I feel like most of our audience people have seen this probably are on that same page. And yeah. Yeah, but I'm a bear needs Bears. Repeating. You can say they're not right yet. More meat hundred percent.
Yeah. So we talked a lot about your perspective, like, bodybuilding and things like that. The stuff that we're talking about for anybody, listening goes for kind of everybody. This isn't just a bodybuilding discussion. This is a general fitness General Health thing. Yeah, right. Prioritize the things that matter. Don't focus on the things that are going to set you off on tangents, right? Figure out your path and stay in your path. Kind of follow it. Get feedback. I highly recommend.
Everybody. Get a coach. I'm a coach. I have a coach. Yeah, right. I have people that I can go to and say, look am I on track? Am I doing? Right? From a fitness perspective from a nutrition perspective. I think everybody needs something like that. And I think that's a big part of the process. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably have not been trained in Fitness and Nutrition. So you probably need somebody to provide guidance at some point in your journey to make sure
you're on track, right? I've been, I've been trained. I'm certified in all kinds of different things and I still need people to help keep you on track. So it's just something that I think is one of the things that people miss out, the most is asking for help even if like, there's a lot of people at that know, Fitness Nutrition. This as well. There's there's benefit to having an accountability factor or simply just Outsourcing
things in life. So, absolutely anything in my life that I that I know and I can just remove from my decision fatigue process like remove it from the equation altogether so I can focus on other things. All oftentimes, just Outsource that. So like a lot of people like a lot of my clients know, exactly how to admit it. But the nurtures. They know how to manipulate macros count, macros all that stuff. But Simply Having like at a call with my client. See the day. And he's like, look Rob.
And I know how to do this stuff. I've seen a lot of success in working with you. But if I didn't have you as an accountability factor, I would eat more foods that were outside of this, this realm, not necessarily bad foods. I would just eat, I would go out to eat more because I couldn't track the macros, you know, I would just do things that are
not optimal. So I would want to spend more money on going out to eat, then I would on your coaching and it's like that's just simply one area of my life where I can Outsource it. Let some of that knows they're doing handle it and then I can have you know more Energy more bandwidth, more mental, bandwidth to focus, on other areas of my life. Right? Like that reason. Alone is worthwhile in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry.
Hundred percent same thing. I have people that, you know, they know, they know what key do is they know how to do it? Yeah. It was like, you know, I just need someone that I can get with every week. And who's going to say, did you do this? Did you do that? What about this? Here's a suggestion on that and go. Oh, I I'll remember that next time, right? Just have that feedback. That said it's totally going to like a business podcast here. I'm about to totally change
where Do my coaching. I'm probably going to shift to only working with competition prep clients. Okay, that's my wheelhouse. That's what I, that's my, that's my area of expertise. That's what I excel him. And I feel like so many people try and go so Broad and that they never specialize in anything. Yeah, and I feel like, you know, going Ultra Niche and really just doubling down on your strengths is key. So, I'm probably going to shift that.
I don't know when I'm going to have to that but probably sometime early in this year. Yeah, I'll shift to just working with contest bread lines. I think that's awesome. And I think so. Position is key and you can't be everything to everyone. Yeah, that's a whole that we could probably do a podcast on that. Right? Just yeah, making people happy because it's never going to happen and he never going to happen, you know, so yeah. And I'm in a completely
different way house, right? I would never, I would not if someone came to me and said, hey, I want to do a show. I would give it to I'd give them two options one. I would say go talk to Rob or two. I'll do it, but you have to understand, it's not what I do and everything. Thing we do is going to be an experiment. Yeah. Yeah, if you want to take that on that's that's cool. But just so you know, that's not what I do. My focus is on helping people improve their everyday life.
Yeah, right because I'm not looking at, I'm not looking. I'm 48 years old. I am not. I'm competition for me is over. Yeah. My competition right now is trying to be better myself every day so that I can we said before I can get off the toilet when I'm 80 without help. Is there anything that you're doing now? That you like, look at it and you're like, man back. I was in my 30s. This didn't hurt so bad. Not right. Now. There have been there has been
but right now. No, say after you keep getting better, man. No, I mean, well, I happened because I have been, so it's crazy. You know, I was in the Army when I was in the Army. When I got out of basic training as 185 and 7% body fat. Without trying, you know, I was 18, 19 years old. Right? Right now, I am 185 and about 13 percent body fat. So So I my way the same little bit less muscle, but I can do so much more. Yeah, I've gone through prior to carnivore prior to CrossFit.
I have herniated discs in my neck. So I have herniated C4 at the time. I was thirty two at the time when I was diagnosed with herniated C4 degenerative, C5, C6. Since then, you know, I used to get back pain headaches, tingling nerve. Pain down my arm, all kinds of those issues, since starting CrossFit. Most of that. One away. Nice before carnivore. So do it during CrossFit before carnivore. I had pulled a pulled adductor. That was basically, it felt like a hernia.
I was out for like eight months because I just I couldn't get it to heal. Then I had to torn labrum Xin my both shoulders. Hmm. After carnivore, all of that's going away. So I'm at the point now where I can do everything that I could do before and I'm doing it better post carnivore than even when I was just doing CrossFit and I was more paleo at that
time. The only thing I'm 29, the only thing, like, if I look back at my prior years, that I'm like, man, when I was that age, I could do that. A lot better is function at a high level with very little sleep. Like now if I can tell, if I
don't get a good night's sleep. Yeah, whereas It's like I've never even faze me. Yeah, I think not day-to-day, but if I go several days in a row without getting a lot of sleep, then I can feel it. But I've made some changes over the past year that have really improved my sleep too. That's a whole different discussion because I was drinking way too much coffee. Yeah, and it was causing some sleep issues. I was doing like four cups a
day. Yeah. I was not make I was not consistent with myself with my electrolytes and micronutrients. Minerals and that was causing an issue. So now that I'm more consistent with that. That helps a lot. Yeah, about two weeks ago. I started doing red light therapy, but that made me different. Oh my gosh, dude, I sleep like a baby now. He's like the Juve light or well, I just got an infrared light bulb and a little clip light.
I just hang it up. Hang it up on my over my couch and I'll put it on for a half hour, 45 minutes, and watch some TV or something. For I go to bed and makes and it's oh my God. Are you wearing your blue light blocking glass? Do not wear. I do not wear the blue lilac. Glasses. But yeah, so just little stuff like that. My sleep has been amazing. But the thing I think the one thing that to answer your initial question would be running. Yeah, and we ran yesterday.
Yeah, kick my ass. So right now it's okay the Run itself kick my ass, which it shouldn't have. But you know when I was 18 19, you know as an army, that's all we did. Yeah, you know, I would I lie. I lifted weights in high school and I came out of basic training way leaner and smaller than, when I was in, you know, my junior senior in high school, but I could run my ass off. Yeah, you know, I think I ran a, like, a six fifteen mile at the time, which I will never run again.
Never was pretty good. I have no desire to ever run that fast again. Pretty quick. Um, you know, so now, you know, I usually average about eight and a half mile and then I'm fine with that. The fact that I can run a mile as that's key. Right? He doesn't need me. Almost 50. I want to run my know so many people that are 30 that can run a mile 25 that can't run a mile. Yeah. And that and that's not where I want to be. I want to be 80 years old and
say, hey, want to go for a run. That's that's honestly why I'm so excited about because like I've talked about having a long game approach towards nutrition business relationship is everything in life. Um, it goes for everything but seeing how, how much I've been able to just improve my overall health and well-being. And in being keto, as long as I have. Yep, makes me incredibly excited about what? I'll be functioning like my time. I'm your age by time.
I'm 75 by time. I'm 93 mean, I'm gonna be stepping up on stage with an 8-pack, 93 years old. Maybe those young punks. Look, that's the key man. Yeah. Well because it's possible to fight the the effects of time. Yeah, because In a weird way, I think a lot of what Society attributes to age is really a compounding effect of bad lifestyle. Yeah, totally man, right, you know, we see it all the time. You know, someone's 80 years old. They're in a walker, or they're in a wheelchair.
They can't get out of bed and all this kind of stuff and it's like, it doesn't have to be that way. Yeah, you've been over the last 80 years. You've been doing things every single day to constantly beat your body down and make it do more. Then it needs to. We are literally as a society, making ourselves older than we are because we are tripling doubling quadrupling the amount of work.
Our body has to do to survive and it's take that one step further so much of a I think a psychological like so many people have like had it they have it in their mind that when they hit 50 years old like it's all downhill from there. Yeah, you know or when they're when they're 75, they should be looking for for a home to go stay in and they've convinced themselves. I was at that years prior so that when that time comes, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy,
right? You know, that's bullshit man. I'm going to be a hundred. Twenty years old, lifting weights and stuff. Yeah, like that's gonna be my self fulfilling prophecy. So people just need to they need to get their mind right first. It's true. It's true and it's hard but you know, that's what we heard for. Hopefully enough. People can see this stuff and go. Wait, that's possible. What do you know and that? Because that's what it's about. That's all we need. That little glimmer of weight.
That's possible. Maybe that's something I can do. Yeah. And just keep saying that and hand and people like when people are old Them and they're looking good and functioning. I mean, it's an incredible inspiration for others like like right now, in the space and the time of this recording, everybody's all googoo gaga about Mark Sisson and how he looks, right. It's like man with me. Nothing no disrespect tomorrow, but I'll make him look bad when I mean, but it's but I mean, he
he's an incredible example. Yeah, for sure of that, right? How old is he now? I don't even know, man. He's got to be almost 60 or 60. Like I'm gonna get a little Google. Yeah, you keep talking keep entertaining. How many? Because I mean, he's been doing it and his progression. I mean that's you talk about compounding. It's just gotten better and better. Yeah, you think I've gotten younger as I've gotten older. I feel like he looks better now than he did 15 years ago.
Yeah. I mean, he looks great. He's healthy. See here. 67 years old. Yeah. Oh gosh, he's way older than I thought. Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, looks great and he's got, he's got abs, he's got bicep, but he's got everything you, I mean, do talk about carnival. Look at dr. Baker, right? I mean, he's since I've started following him three years ago. I think he looks better now.
After having done carnivore for almost four years or four years plus I'm going to need it initially and put a little jab in there too and say that when he got his Lena's he was doing a half at. You know, what he was? He was, that's awesome. That's awesome. He's a cool dude. So I will try, I tried high fat based on our conversations that we've had before and I kind of took the information you gave me and I tried to make it work. I the the two things that happened to me one.
I felt like I was hungry all the time. Yeah. And at that, It could be that change that adaptation, that you talked about, you know, you get used to doing one thing. But I felt like with, I mean, I was almost not really half, but I was significantly reducing the amount of protein that I was used to eating. Yeah, and I just felt like I can't eat enough. Like I always wanted to eat more. Yeah, and then I felt like I didn't lose fat. I feel like a gain fat. All right, so we're both
building right now, right? Yeah. When do you anticipate do another cut 90 days in 90 days? Yeah. I'll be building. Still. Bye. That I won't be doing okay in time soon, but well and put it. So here's the thing, the and this is my one of the points I'm making with what I'm doing is I don't I don't think there needs to be a cut. So actually never right. Because my goal is to cut and build at the same time. Yeah, so I'm at 13% Now. My goal is in 90 days.
I'll be 10, ish 9 to 10, but at the same time have shown an increasingly mess, an increase in counters during that time spent to right. Slightly. But usually it's not much. The last few times I've done. This is only going up a couple hundred calories as far as like a TDE respective. So yeah, so there won't be another. There won't be a cut. This is my bulk and cut at the same time. I've personally always gravitated to have it in to find building phase in a defined cutting phase.
I feel like I'm more effective in reaching that desired goal when I'm doubling down on one, primary goal, Rick, I definitely understand the appeal to what you're doing as well. However, If you ever want to do a cut and you want to try high-fat, I'll coach you, man. Let me let me go Guy for free. I'll do. I'll do. I'll do exactly like I would you a contest prep. Okay, and so you try, you just try to sites to sucker me into doing a show, aren't ya? I mean, what's crazy.
Is you would be, you would be in the Masters division. Yeah, and you would slaughter them. They would slaughter them. Like they would be like, looking at you like this guy is not in the Masters division, but then you pull up your birth certificate or whatever and go. Right was you know, like you would you would be dangerous? I can't even imagine, I can't even imagine him it. Do it do it. After I just told you yesterday.
There's no way in hell I'm ever do it and I know but but you were, were looking at people that had done it, you know, traditional ways, right? And watching people go through a traditional way. I wouldn't want to do anything. Help me that just look miserable. It is miserable. I've done it that way. It's not fun. But if you ever want to do a cut, I'm talking to step out on stage. I do like a high-fat cut with you and I guarantee I can t be shredded. Now the interesting to see, I
And we could document. If you just put the whole thing online and do. Yeah, you might talk me into that. I don't know if I'll get on stage, but maybe I'll go through my yeah, like, if you go through the process and you push yourself that for like, being on stage is just icing on top, like, people, people say it's all for that. I mean, if that's not it at all, I could say it's a mental bad. It's you against you. The journey itself is where it's at.
Yeah, but been able to like, have that homestretch vision and then kind of top it off with being on stage to make it a full circle. Journey is Pretty fulfilling man's pretty. Pretty rewarding. You. Learn a lot about yourself in the process. Yeah. Okay. I'll give it some let that soak in and kind of simmer that Mary never was there. Anything on your list of things that we wanted to make sure to cover that we haven't already. Well, I think we went a whole
bunch of different directions. That means some of the stuff that that I had on my list, we can probably cover in other talks that we do or videos that we do. You mentioned something about Progressive overload and there were some trade. I want to read some Training Concepts. Yeah. So like the the Periodization Anjali. Yeah, periodization Progressive overload, super compensation.
Some of that kind of stuff. So I don't know if you want to yeah, management which keeps so when we talk about actually implementing Fitness, like how do you know, what are some of the things that you have to consider when you're doing Fitness, activity and Progressive overload, is one of them. Right? Is the basis for a getting better? I do have to do more than you did before in order to improve what you can do. So if you're not doing more, you
never getting better. So you can take it to the extreme. I think some people take it to the extreme. And I do this sometimes where I look at every workout compared to the last workout. I did that was similar. And I try to do something a little bit more, add five pounds, do a couple extra reps at a set, like something a little bit more.
I don't always do it that way, but that's kind of sometimes I look at what I'm doing and I do just a little More in most cases and this is where periodization comes in. Most cases. You want to do that in some kind
of a regular interval. Hmm. So you have maybe two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, six weeks of doing a set of exercises at a certain weight, at a certain rep scheme, maybe, even maybe even it is Progressive. But then in the next cycle, you increase the complexity of the intensity something to make it. A little bit harder, more challenging and bring yourself up to a higher level of work capacity.
Yeah, so that's just an understanding that for those people who have spent the last three years on an elliptical, that it's time to do something else. Yeah. I feel like a lot of people again, kind of going back to the dichotomy of things. Training is a classic example. Some people or just debilitated in their desire to venture away from the elliptical because they don't know the first thing. About Progressive overload or
training, or how to get better. So a lot of times they'll just do the same circuit that they find on some, you know, column my politan cover magazine and they'll never change the rep scheme that ever change the weight. They'll just do that repetitively years and years, and years, and their body will will grow and acclimate to that
point. But then, as soon as it's, that's that new Baseline has been established, and there's no need to grow beyond that because there's no additional stimulus, the the body's not going to change at. All, right, and that's that's another That's the said principle. Yeah the suppose what is it specific adaptation? I think with the first word is adaptation to imposed demand. Yeah, right. So your body will adapt to the things you make it adapt to a
hundred percent. So if you're always doing the same thing, you'll be adapted to that. Which is why the or ring, you know, says that you need to stop and relax a little bit. Yeah, could be dangerous, kind of like you got to push past that threshold, right? You know, so you got it. I mean Progressive overload as a concept, it's very, very simple. Progressive overload, doesn't have to mean more weight necessarily Canaan.
It can just simply mean more time under tension, you know, another intensity realm through a drop set superset, you know, better form like any of that classified. I'm glad you said that because I was think it's specific adaptation to imposed Demand by the way. Got you. The technique and form is an is a category or an aspect of intensity. Yeah. So if I you know, we're going to go just so everybody knows we're doing some videos on Turkish getup. So we're going to teach you how
to do some Turkish getup today. You're gonna make me look bad. I won't feel too bad cuz I spoke to that run. There we go. So but that's a perfect example of intensity. So for someone who's never done Turkish get us before we teach the haftar to have to get up first, right? We teach, you know error someone has a shoulder issue. If someone can't hold the weight like there's modifications and progressions based on someone's ability that we can. That we can progress through the
levels. Yeah. So so, if someone can't do a Turkish, a full Turkish, getup we teach them hashtag. After just get up. If they can't do a half, we teach them how to do an arm bar. We teach them something that's Progressive. So they can improve the intensity complexity performance of the technique as opposed to always just saying it has to be faster or it has to be heavier. Yeah. It doesn't have to be that way. There's more to it a lot more to it. Yeah, I'm going to it.
So what are some like, for me personally, I've been Like an eight-day rotational split. So I do is be kind of hard to explain via audio. But basically I've got I used to do traditional bro. Split in which like chest days Monday, Wednesdays, legs or whatever. Each body part was training once a week and that worked really well until it didn't. And after a certain amount of time you your muscle reach, a level of maturity. You got to have more frequency. So now I hit each muscle group
twice a week. One focus on heavy little bit lower rep scheme. Just more weight in general and one is focused on more of that. Hypertrophy rep scheme. Yep, 8 to 15. Sometimes, 20 reps more of a focus on blood flow specifically and just Form and Function and I'll hit those muscle groups twice a week. I'll do that in the Eighth Day block, instead of a normal seven-day cycle. So it's falling on a different day. Each week. Basically how many days in between sets body parts.
Two three? Yeah, usually two or three I've got into recovery days in that Eighth Day cycle, and that's worked really well, and I'm pretty much I'm mapping all this out. But basically, I'm only really tracking my primary compound movements. I'm not tracking, you know, all the exhibitory stuff. You could probably should, but I just don't want to get too deep into the weeds. I'm only tracking my primary compound movement squats. Deadlifts overhead, press Sumo.
I'll track Sumo deadlifts as well. But as long as I'm increasing either, the the rep count the weight in those and everything else is rising, then I'm happy. You know, I'm going to be increase in calories on a bi-weekly basis, on be increasing. The The resistance or the intensity of with that only by
week the basis. And as long as I'm seeing progress there, I'm building muscle, you know, that's this, that's as difficult air quotes is it needs to be a lot of people try and over think how they grow muscle and because they overthink it, they just don't progress at all. Right, so it doesn't have to be hard. No, it doesn't. And I think understanding what your goal is. Is the key. Yeah, like your goal is very different than mine. Your your and I'm going to guess here.
You're mostly aesthetic and looking for a look. Mmm, right? Because as a bodybuilder, that's what it's all about. Yeah, I'm looking more at function. So I'm looking at more myofibrillar hypertrophy. You're looking at more sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, right? You looking at changing the shape and size of your muscles. I'm looking at more the function of how my muscles work. Yeah, so that is the That that's
a little different. Now, you're doing a good job of balancing both of those out because you're getting some some myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic work, right? So the difference being my fibula is more strength training, right? The working of the heavier, heavier weights lower rep schemes. And then the sarcoplasmic is more, the eye for lack of a better word, fluid building building size in the muscle like about blood flow and making the each muscle fiber bigger.
Hmm. As opposed to increasing the Density and strength of each fiber. So you're getting a little bit of both of those. I know a lot of body builders who Focus mostly on sarcoplasmic and just working in the high rep range. Like they never do anything under 12 reps. Yeah. And your me like I don't know like to me. I love Bonnie Bennett That's My sport. But I don't want any of my bodybuilding training to you know, distract from or hinder My Lifestyle, John Denver's as well.
So that's why I like your strength is good. Yeah, that's why I like your philosophy on how this how this is. Working because you're you're a bodybuilder, who's functional. Yeah. I know a lot of body builders who are not functional. Yeah, totally right. But my you know, my focus is definitely more in the functional side.
So when I'm looking at stuff, I'm looking at the variations in the programming that I do is complex, you know, functional movements, usually in the You know, 1 to 6 range, 6, to 8 range, 1 to 8 range, based on what the primary movements are. And most of the stuff that I do that is higher rep. Ranges more, the accessory work. Yeah, right. So working on stability, music, motions and working on Mobility things that are more High rep stuff.
So, working on developing the scaps, developing the rhomboids developing shoulder, things, core work, you know, glute medius work, adductors things like that. You know, specifically focusing on hamstring stuff cap stuff to kind of support the major complex movements. Yeah, so that's where my mix comes in 11th, man. I'm gonna go do some Turkish getup spanning. Yeah, let's do it and call this go for podcasts. It's round two right here. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh sweet, man.
And again, what can people go to find you a pxt? S.com is the website Bronson dance 72 on Instagram, Facebook and it's just the Apex Training System as much as the brand. Right, man, you better make me look bad. You ready? They're just get up time. Let's do it. I'm brother.