Natural Bodybuilding with Brandon Kempter | ETP#124

[Aaron Straker]: 0:28

What's up guys, happy Tuesday. Welcome back to another episode of Eat, Train, Prosper. Today, Brian and I are joined by Brandon Kempter. Brandon is a natural bodybuilding athlete and coach, and we're going to get into both sides of this. Brandon, can you give our guests, or our listeners, I should say, a little bit of an introduction on yourself, please?

[BK]: 0:50

Absolutely. As a start, thank you very much guys for having me on. Never pass up the opportunity to talk all things exercise, nutrition, science, specifically on the bodybuilding side. But as a bit of background, I am, well, these days I would say I'm first coach, second athlete, but obviously if we look at things from a historical perspective, I was first athlete, then coach. And, you know, my background started within drug. drug-free bodybuilding at 19 years of age. When I first donned the tan, stepped under the stage lights, changed my life forever. And then since then I've had the opportunity to change a whole lot of others. Life on the bodybuilding front over the past decade. It's crazy to say that. It's been a decade in the industry, over a decade in fact, at this time.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:40

Cool, so we're obviously going to unpack this, or unpack all that, but before we jump into the bulk of the episode, as always, Brian, what updates do you have for us this week?

[Bryan]: 1:50

Yeah, I just have some quick ones. I don't want to take our guest time here, but I am very aware of Brandon. I actually listened to a couple of podcasts with Brandon when I first was getting into call it the evidence-based space or whatever you want to call it, maybe like six years ago. And I remember one popping up and it was like this new phenom, this young guy out of Australia. And I don't remember what the avenue was, but I remember listening to it. And it's cool that it's all now, you know, six years later kind of come in full circle and having you on. So, I'm excited for this conversation too. But first, I was traveling this last... End of last week, I left Thursday morning pretty early, so I didn't actually get to train at all Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. I was hoping. that during my travels I'd at least get some cardio in, like borrow my brother's bike or hit a session with Anders or something like that. But literally nothing. I don't think my heart rate got above like 110 for four straight days, which is very abnormal for me and the way that I tend to work out one or two times a day depending on combining cardio and training and things like that. But it actually felt good. I didn't have a ton of anxiety that I thought about, you know, like, oh no, I'm not training. This is gonna be awful. I didn't have a lot of mental lethargy, which I also thought also thought would come from time off

[BK]: 3:13

Hmm.

[Bryan]: 3:13

just really felt good and awesome to connect with my brother meet his kid and Anders and meet his kids and Then came back and got a really solid lift and bike in yesterday and both went really well So I guess it just goes to show you that there really is, you know benefit to time off. So That's really all I got on my updates and okay over to you, Straker. We'll have more to talk about next week, I'm sure.

[Aaron Straker]: 3:39

Yeah, I'll keep mine short as well. So the biggest one that people are probably interested in, both of the kittens are home from their like two week vacation. That's a shitty joke, it was not vacation, at the hospital. And today was the first day that we swapped to an oral medication instead of the injections that they had been receiving. And a really quick aside, when we knew that there would be a kind of a little bit of a cover

[BK]: 4:06

Thanks for watching!

[Aaron Straker]: 4:06

period where we would have to do the injections, at home and we were like, oh, well, you know, we'll do them sort of thing. We'll figure it out. And after watching the vet do it yesterday, I was like, there's no fucking way I was going to be able to do that. Like, I like that I had confidence. But after watching it, I was like, there's absolutely no way I could have done that to someone else. So oral medication, not quite out of the woods. They will still need to be on this oral medication for literally like 75 more days. But both are doing better.

[BK]: 4:36

Cheers.

[Aaron Straker]: 4:38

So hopefully in like three months we'll have normal healthy kittens. But

[Bryan]: 4:42

Good

[Aaron Straker]: 4:42

TBD

[Bryan]: 4:42

news.

[Aaron Straker]: 4:43

on that one.

[Bryan]: 4:44

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 4:45

And then the other

[BK]: 4:45

Well,

[Aaron Straker]: 4:45

one.

[BK]: 4:45

the crown, sorry.

[Aaron Straker]: 4:48

Now

[BK]: 4:48

I'll just

[Aaron Straker]: 4:48

go

[BK]: 4:48

say

[Aaron Straker]: 4:48

ahead.

[BK]: 4:48

the crown for the most interesting week certainly goes to you, Aaron. It's been quite eventful for you. Ha ha ha.

[Aaron Straker]: 4:55

It really, really has, yeah. And then Fat Loss Camp is progressing nicely. I will say, oddly enough, the sauna is probably the most difficult part of it. 15 minutes in the sauna has like... I don't know why it's like really like the last like four or five minutes I'm like I want to get out so bad and it's really challenging But I keep telling myself like I'm gonna reach that like adaptation point very soon, but it hasn't quite happened yet

[Bryan]: 5:25

You'll be up to 30 to 40 minutes in no time, bro. Hey,

[Aaron Straker]: 5:29

No way.

[Bryan]: 5:31

Peter Attia

[BK]: 5:31

And I believe...

[Bryan]: 5:31

talks about it like at night before bed. He and his wife do like a 30 to 40 minute sauna as a way to like heat up and then let the body kind of like naturally cool itself before sleeping. And he like attests to it super hard.

[Aaron Straker]: 5:44

I think it has to be relative to the temperature because every gym here has one and some of them are like, oh, you get a little sweaty, but the one at Body Factory, it's disgustingly hot. And

[BK]: 5:56

this.

[Aaron Straker]: 5:56

there is a gauge in there. I should actually look and see what it's at, but it is challenging for 15 minutes for sure.

[BK]: 6:03

There's also a difference between the Finnish sauna and infrared. So if

[Bryan]: 6:06

Mm-hmm.

[BK]: 6:06

you go to Obsidian, where Aaron has trained in the past as well, that's the infrared, which is rough, but definitely not as challenging as the Finnish sauna. With that steam, the air density gets so much lower. It's just so much more challenging to breathe. I've been to the exact one that Aaron's referring to, and I'd be lucky to get five minutes. I just am so unacclimated to that sort of temperature. It's just not giving out of here. Let's go.

[Aaron Straker]: 6:31

Yeah. Before we jump in, Brandon, any updates from you on the past seven days or so? What's new with you?

[BK]: 6:38

Well, I wouldn't say much is new in that my life really evolves around training and coaching, my two biggest sort of joys in life. But I suppose on a personal front, I have recently moved into our new house in Bali which has been quite the adventure in that it was completely empty. So I've been sourcing, well, our desks, et cetera. And that's probably the biggest personal update. Outside of that, training's been going quite well. Recently come off a short four-day static deload. which is quite abnormal for me in that I don't often implement a static deload, i.e. doing nothing. I struggle to do nothing to be fair. I have an addiction to the suck as you guys can relate, but it has proved wildly effective in mitigating accumulated fatigue and it's allowed for a very productive commencement to this mezzocycle. So all is well on that front also.

[Aaron Straker]: 7:31

And I think this is a really, really good kind of aside into the first question that we have. And kind of like we briefly alluded to, we're going to cover kind of the athlete side of Brandon kind of first. And I'm sure there will be some kind of coaching banter that naturally progresses from that. And then we'll wrap the episode up with some coaching questions. So the first question I have is with, just to kind of, I guess, give some information for the listeners, you're currently in off season. And

[BK]: 7:58

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 7:59

I'll back up a little bit. I was most interested to talk with you about is also a little bit more backstory. Brandon and I have met in IRL and one thing that was immediately obvious to me is Brandon is an absolute unit, right? And it's not often that you see a physique like Brandon's, especially naturally, just the sheer size of him, right? And I'm, I mean, fortunate, unfortunate, whatever you want to say. Like, I'm a when I trained with Brandon I was like, Brandon is noticeably larger than me and it was quite wild. So I was very interested to have like this conversation around it because I the opportunity to speak to guys like you I think who really are very well spoken have obviously very tremendous amount of experience in the game coaching but then also walk that walk themselves and

[BK]: 8:57

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 8:57

are at like a peak physique themselves the opportunity or of people that are doing that just isn't that great. So obviously the opportunity for us is very ripe and we're grateful for that. But now getting into the question.

[Bryan]: 9:11

Hold on, wait, can we tell the listeners how big Brandon actually is?

[Aaron Straker]: 9:15

Oh yeah, of course, like let's do it.

[BK]: 9:17

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 9:17

So.

[Bryan]: 9:19

Because

[Aaron Straker]: 9:19

Go ahead,

[Bryan]: 9:20

if he's

[Aaron Straker]: 9:20

Brandon.

[Bryan]: 9:20

like seven

[Aaron Straker]: 9:20

Ha ha

[Bryan]: 9:20

foot four and like 300,

[Aaron Straker]: 9:21

ha.

[Bryan]: 9:22

we need to know these things, you know?

[BK]: 9:24

May I just say this? You are welcome to stroke my ego anytime, Aaron and co. For I live in this body and I look at it and go, yeah, okay, it's as big as it is. But as a natural athlete, obviously, you know, I'm here ringing out the sponge year after year for an extra few hundred grams of muscle mass. But for the sake of contextualization, for those of whom are modern in their use of the metric system, sorry, gentlemen. I'm 180 centimeters tall, which works, I think that's about six foot thereabouts. Currently sitting at around 100 kilograms, so 220-ish pounds in the off season. It's not the heaviest I've been, but it's close-ish. In fact, Aaron and I were talking about this. Probably not the absolute biggest I've been, but I'm pretty close to it. And contest weight is generally around the low 80s. In fact, I've often door-knocked into the sub 80 kilogram mark. to make a weight cut off here and there. So that has me walking around it. Well, realistically 15 plus kilograms over stage weight at this time, which is quite considerable.

[Bryan]: 10:27

Yeah, so he's a hundred kilograms is 220 pounds. That's easy math. The 80 is 176 pounds So that would be like around, you know, the low point that he dips to I guess in contest prep And then probably steps on stage closer to what 82 kilos with loading up and stuff like that

[BK]: 10:46

Yeah, somewhere around that mark. And I mean, it's been a few years since I've competed, since 2019, I'd like to

[Bryan]: 10:54

Say it's more than that,

[BK]: 10:55

beat

[Bryan]: 10:55

yeah.

[BK]: 10:55

a position,

[Bryan]: 10:55

Hehehehe.

[BK]: 10:56

to beat a position where there's a few extra kilos of muscle mass, realistically, we're probably looking around two kilos up on stage weight at this time for next season.

[Bryan]: 11:04

Cool. And then only last question for context here before Aaron jumps in. Aaron mentioned that he's strong. So how much stronger is he than you, Aaron? When you guys train together, what's the, do you guys share weights? Is he able to, do you see you have to like add an extra pin in there when you guys are doing pull downs?

[Aaron Straker]: 11:22

We trained

[BK]: 11:23

Aaron

[Aaron Straker]: 11:23

legs.

[BK]: 11:23

gets after it man.

[Aaron Straker]: 11:25

We trained legs, but there was like, I think we were on like a leverage squat. I had, and I wanna say Brandon had like, I had like two and a half plates on and he had like three and a half. So it wasn't like an extra, you know, five kilos or

[Bryan]: 11:38

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 11:38

something like that.

[Bryan]: 11:38

yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Good context.

[Aaron Straker]: 11:42

Yeah.

[BK]: 11:42

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 11:44

So with that, right, really good frame. So thank you, Brian, for that aside there. When you're periodizing your training year, especially like when we're far away from contest prep in the off season, do any of the kind of OG strength staples make it back into your program? I'm talking like the deadlift, overhead press, barbell squat, and really the question there is like, something that I find very, very interesting is the kind of... attachment potentially it's like a male ego sort of thing of a to those

[BK]: 12:17

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 12:18

kind of major lifts because let's say like 85% of males who find themselves actually committed to the gym regimes or regimen sort of thing, people want physique, right? But

[BK]: 12:31

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 12:32

oftentimes, very, very often, we have a very hard time detaching from the traditional male lifts sort of thing. So we just wanted to ask, as someone with a great physique, with a good amount of muscle mass, do you ever rotate these back in?

[BK]: 12:49

Look, I will say this, in my early years, I was definitely what you would consider a power builder, a body lifter, if you will, in that a good portion of my training did evolve around the squat dead bench, OHP, chin up, barbell row, these sort of big foundation movement selections. And I'll be the first to put my hand up and say that I most certainly had an emotional attachment to these movements. It was part of the culture of which I grew up in. But obviously, hypertrophy, we acknowledge that hypertrophy is a flexible adaptation, in which case... you know, movement is our vehicle for taking training stress to the target tissues, therefore they're not totally essential. With that said, I think for some individuals, they can be beneficial in that, you know, if your structural anthropometry suits the squat in that you have short femurs, beautiful, you can squat till the cows come home, the movement fits you well, you're gonna get a lot of quad stimulation. If you're like me, perhaps a little bit taller and you're... you have a long femurs therefore, okay, maybe the back squat's not gonna be an ideal movement. But I think that, again, for some individuals, these movements can be great. And I dare say I do have a bias towards incorporating some of these bigger movements along the way. And whilst from a purely hypertrophy-centric perspective, you might say, well, that's not super efficient. There are other movements that are less systemically taxing with potentially less implications for central fatigue accumulation. I would say, you know what? If the movement fits you well, you can load the target tissues. then I believe that it should be a part of your training. With that said, there is, you know, we do consider dose. You know, we're not coming in here with this very systemically taxing movement that is the deadlift that is partial in every joint structure which it influences and doing six sets of 20 repetitions. That's just ridiculous. You know, it might be okay. We're gonna do one working set, a proper working set. And now I know, you know, I'm talking about a proper working set. Or maybe we do two sets a week or we rotate it in every second week. But for the right individual, an individual who fits those lifts, I believe that it's a tool in the tool bag that we have and one of which is worth exploring. And in specific to me, yes, I do incorporate the deadlift in the off-season. I have not squatted with a barbell for a very long time, but I always incorporate a squat-based variation of some sort, for example, the machine-based derivative of which we did within our training session.

[Bryan]: 15:06

When you deadlift, are you, like you said, top one set? That's great. That's kind of the approach I would take with clients as well, if I was incorporating that. Is that in a hypertrophy rep range, or are you doing that more on the lower side, like that four to four, three to five type thing?

[BK]: 15:23

Look, I've definitely been known to do some high rep work. And obviously in the context of a deadlift, a high rep set is anything above eight. Whereas I'm talking about a leg extension, it might be above 15 or 20. I have been known to incorporate sets like that. Obviously it is inherently problematic from a cardiovascular perspective. That can be the bottleneck. And obviously from a technical perspective as well, it's possible you reach the point of technical failure early in the piece and sort of grind through some stuff that you shouldn't. But I am known to do some high rep work on that. particular movement most certainly. It is. Ha ha.

[Bryan]: 15:57

Hehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 16:01

And then with kind of continuing the conversation on exercise selection and that sort of thing, with the goal of hypertrophy, right? And maybe let's again, talking in the context of yourself here with your kind of programming preference towards like a lengthened overload or shortened overload, do you generally kind of take any percentage based biases to that? Or is it I'm going to fill my program with my more compound lengthens first, sprinkle in the shortened overload? What's your kind of philosophy? there.

[BK]: 16:33

You know, this is actually a really fascinating piece. And there's obviously a huge amount of conversation within the quote unquote Evans face community on the topic of, you know, biasing the length and range, you know, maybe doing some length and parcels, et cetera. And it truly fascinates me because this hypothesis that training the length and position is possibly more potent for its contribution to hypertrophy than the shortened position. It's not new, it's not a theorem that is new. It's been around for a long time. As long as I can remember, we would say, yeah, train the length and position. We used to hypothesize that, you know, perhaps it's more inducing a muscle damage and that might be the mechanism by which it facilitates hypertrophy these days. We say probably not. In fact, the mechanism is still yet to be elucidated, but it's interesting because in our industry, I do find, and I'll circle back, this makes sense in a moment, but I find it's very trend-based. And once we get this hint of research, we have a lot of individuals without scientific training who are going to sort of. try and distill complex topics into short form media. And then a lot of things get lost in the messages and messaging rather. And because of that, we then have people that go, you know what, I'm only gonna train in the length and position, the more length and the better, let's just rock and roll. And I would say, well, that's also limiting. So the way I operate is this, I do want a portion of my train that biases the length and position, absolutely. But I also want some work in the mid range. And I also want some work in the shortened position. And in general, speaking from purely an anecdotal perspective. For individuals for whom have a lagging body part, I often place the exercise sequences in a manner that we have shortened position first, followed by lengthen. The reason being is if you load the shortened position, you have more in the way of neural awareness, more tension awareness, if you will. Flex the bicep in the shortened position versus the lengthened position, you're gonna feel it more in the shortened position. So for someone with lagging biceps, I might go, okay, let's train the shortened position first, then we'll train the lengthened. Maybe same with glutes, hip thrust first. Like we did, for example, you and I, which you and I are obviously quite dissimilar individuals and that you mentioned your glutes just love getting to work on everything. And I would say, yeah, mine not so. So we did hip thrusts in my program first, and then we went into some length and stuff after that. So in general, I don't sit here and map a percentage out per se, but I will most certainly incorporate a variety of angles with, I suppose you could say, some general moderate biases without being super extreme towards that length and position. And then obviously you and I did some partial lengthens, well, a partial lengthened movement of sorts with our one and a quarter rep squats, which was quite nasty and fun and quite soul destroying on your behalf.

[Bryan]: 19:12

Yeah, there's so many ways that you can bias lengthened, whether it's simply just pausing more in the lengthened position, like a three second pause down there or something, or the one and a quarter reps. I think Cass calls those integrated partials now, which I think is a great term as well. Integrated partial, because then it doesn't define a quarter rep or a half rep. It's just like, hey, pulse a little bit down there, and then do your full rep. So I kind of like that, and I've been incorporating a lot of that as well. And then, man, where was I going with that? I feel like I had a really good question. Oh, you mentioned exercise ordering and how when someone's struggling with something, you tend to go short then lengthened. I find that interesting because when would be the circumstance then where you would go lengthened then short? So if somebody's not struggling with a body part, then you may are more likely to go lengthened first and finish with short.

[BK]: 20:03

That's a wonderful question. And I would say this, that going short and first, then lengthen is just something that I have personally found effective for those of whom have a lagging body part. So to say wouldn't do that with someone who didn't have a lagging body part, it just maybe wouldn't be a specific consideration. And I'm sure you can sort of relate where, if you see someone who has certain areas in their physique that are well developed, don't get me wrong, if you spend some time watching them train, usually it leaves clues. The guy with the massive quads and poor hamstrings, he's like, yeah, okay, you watch him squat, and he squats with this tiny close stance with these heaps of anterior translation of the tibia, and he does a hamstring curl, and he can't get his hip positioning for the life of him. So it often leaves clues, but obviously structural anthropometry comes into play as well. I've worked with some guys who have these amazing full pecs that I just dream of and then horrible back. And I'm like, well, when you do a press, do you get good tension awareness, metabolite production, and cell swelling? And they go, yeah, I just look at a weight and my pecs are pumped. Do you get the same with your back? Like, no, I do not. I just cannot feel my back at all. It's okay. We need to do some work on scapula thoracic positioning and maybe do some work in the shortened position with the lats first, get some tension awareness, some level of metabolite production, which may yield more in the way of general awareness of contraction, and then get into the more sort of potent stuff, potentially at least, in the lengthened position. So. I wouldn't be opposed to doing that with someone who has great development in the given tissue, but to be fair for someone like Aaron who has great glute development and recruitment, I would say probably wouldn't do hip thrust at all. We'd just focus

[Bryan]: 21:39

Yeah.

[BK]: 21:39

on the straight on the length position and move on to other tissues that need more attention.

[Bryan]: 21:43

Yeah, regarding the back specifically, you mentioned, you know, kind of the activation piece and then going into something more lengthened. What are some of the tools you use with the back specifically since it's so hard to get lengthened anyways? I'm always curious to pick people's brains on that.

[BK]: 21:59

Yeah, I mean, I think training backs interesting because if we look at the back, if we look specifically at the lats, for example, we've got this shoulder girdle, which is essentially this sort of floating series of, well basically composed the scap, clavicle, et cetera. And really the only thing that attaches the shoulder girdle to the rest of the skeleton is the sternoclav joint. And you've got these massive lats that come up from. you know, the TL fascia, et cetera, and bind onto the anterior lip or the bicipital groove. And if you don't stabilize the scap, then you're just not going to be able to produce much in the way of extension force of the humerus. So I think the back is one of those things that is, I mean, look, the skill of bodybuilding specific training is finding positions that allow you to target the tissues you want, staying there, and training close proximity to Fay. It's a skill. But the back is arguably, particularly the lats, a segment of tissue that requires the most skill. The most thought, because your scapula positioning influences your ability to recruit the lats, as does the positioning of your ribs and thoracic structures. But I mean, the shortened position, I'd be looking at something like a pullover variation on the cable where you're standing quite upright and biasing that shortened position. You've got to get some good squeeze through that tissue. It wouldn't get a mild pump without getting in sort of crazy close proximity to failure. Then we've got a strategy that's going to allow us to. move on to the other movements in the more sort of mid, maybe lengthened position, it's very hard to lengthen it, but more sort of mid range with potentially more efficacy.

[Bryan]: 23:32

What do you think about the idea of the lats using the rib cage to kind of wrap around and this idea of, you know, a deduction to be able to get a little bit more length out of the lats?

[BK]: 23:45

I mean, I've experimented with it and can you stretch, can you lengthen the lateral bit? Yes. But obviously you're getting more bias in a lengthened position, but you just can't really shorten those tissues much. It'd be almost nice to be able to go from this position and then as you move through the concentric, sort of rotate, wouldn't that be nice to have something like this? We would have a beautiful large range of movement and we'd have almost a constant force curve. to be great. So it's a variable you can play with. I always look at it like, you got these tools in your toolbox. We're never dogmatic with the manner of which we apply our training. So I'd say, yeah, I'd play with it. And I have played with it. And I do on occasion recommend it to our athletes. But if I'm doing say an Iliac row, I'm realistically trying to bias the shortened position more than anything. So it's a tool in the tool bag, but I

[Bryan]: 24:41

Yeah.

[BK]: 24:41

don't think it's the B and N end all.

[Bryan]: 24:43

Last question, and then I'll kick it back over to Aaron here. Have you had the chance

[BK]: 24:46

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 24:46

to mess around with any of the prime back machines that allow you to load length in short or mid?

[BK]: 24:53

Very limited exposure. Simply because in Australia, considering we're down here on the ass of the world, there's just not much available. And if you're in Bali, there's even less availability. I have mucked around with a couple of bits and pieces. I keep seeing the wonderful, chest supported row machine with the three pins. And I'm like, man, this thing looks like pure sex. I'd love to try this thing, but I've never

[Bryan]: 25:20

Yeah,

[BK]: 25:21

used it. Yeah,

[Bryan]: 25:22

yeah, it's

[BK]: 25:22

right.

[Bryan]: 25:22

amazing. Yeah, yeah. Cool, well, when you come to the US, we'll have to get you on one of those.

[BK]: 25:29

I would love that. I don't see love that.

[Aaron Straker]: 25:32

Yeah, that row is, it's damn good. It really, really is damn good. It's quite nice. So kind of changing subjects like slightly. So one thing, and I know Brian and I have kind of spoke about the podcast and have our own kind of biases here, which I don't want to influence you in asking this question, but there's a very, very recent paper came out from Eric Helms as I believe the lead author on it, titled, The Effect of Small and Large on strength, muscle, and skin full thicknesses. I'm sure you're probably familiar with it Brandon. Is that a yes?

[BK]: 26:10

Yeah, I actually have not read the paper, to be honest.

[Aaron Straker]: 26:15

Okay, and I don't think, I would agree with the majority of things in the paper. However, there is a statement Milo Wolff had a post out and he's basically made the statement that you can make the most of your gains maintaining. And what I know, you know, obviously, like I said, my opinion on a statement like that, and we just wanted to get your opinion, like, what are your, what is your opinion, Brandon, on what it takes to cover like a large gap in, you know, the proverbial like getting big. So let's say as a 17

[BK]: 26:56

Mm.

[Aaron Straker]: 26:57

year old, something like that, you're, you know, damn near your terminal height and you're, you know, not 220 pounds, 100 kilos. 160 pounds, 155. I know like when I was 16, I was already five foot 11, but I was like 145 fucking pounds.

[BK]: 27:18

right.

[Aaron Straker]: 27:20

What is your kind of take of on, you know, what it takes to cover that massive 35, 40, 50 pound gap of like going to like a peak physique sort of thing? Is that something that you think you can do at a maintenance level of calories and just lifting?

[BK]: 27:37

I think it's an almost irrefutable statement to say that the hypertrophy adaptation is best supported in an energy surplus by virtue of optimizing feeling and best supporting the energetically costly process of muscle protein synthesis. I think that's almost irrefutable. It's not to say that you can't make progression around energy maintenance, but I suppose one of the things to consider here is that Your energy expenditure is dynamic in nature, and fortunately there's some practical implications when it comes to tracking that with great accuracy. You know, ideally we would have this risk-based wearable that tells us exactly what our energy expenditure is, and we would carefully titrate our intake to manage a surplus conducive to progress on any given day. And that would allow us to really optimize our P ratio in a gaining phase. But that's just not possible. You know, if we look at it like this from the perspective of say muscle gain, there is approximately 26 kilocalories you know, per kilogram of muscle mass, it's very marginal. If you sort of divide that across a 30 day period off the top of my dome, it's about 80 calories per day. Now it's impossible to have exactly an 80 calorie surplus per day, that's gonna be fluctuating on a day to day basis. So generally speaking, we put in place a surplus that we know is going to have us in a positive energy balance across that duration, and by virtue of that, we're gonna have some days where the deficit, sorry, the surplus rather is a bit. bigger and conversely a little bit smaller. And that's just part of what we do. And there's going to be quite possibly for the natural athletes and quote unquote follow through in terms of fat accrual. And that's where mini cuts and the like come into play. Obviously things are very different with the in-ube athlete who are naive to resistance based stress and very hyper adaptable and can manage a larger surplus by virtue of having increased nutrient partitioning for protein. But I mean, I think it's irrefutable. You're going to want to be in a surplus, but there is definitely a time to be energy maintenance. There is times for that, and there's periods where there is some recomposition. And research will indicate that you can have some level of recomposition as defined as an increase in muscle mass, simultaneous decrease in muscle mass and fat mass. But I wouldn't be banking on it. You know, I don't go into a, with an athlete and say, okay, we're gonna recomp for life, man. And I'm like,

[Bryan]: 29:45

Thank you.

[BK]: 29:45

no. I mean. Shit, I'd love to say yes, but it just doesn't, I just cannot see how this is going to be overly effective. Just before you jump in, one thing I'll say is this. Let's say for example, you are at energy maintenance. So this gentleman said, hey, you make all your gains at maintenance. Are you really at maintenance on any given day? This happens in real time. surplus and deficit. So what if I'm at maintenance across the week, but I had four days where I was in an 80 cal surplus. 80 cal is not a big surplus. That's me walking to the fridge 10 times less per day. It's nothing. So maybe I was in a surplus then, and then I might've been a small deficit at the end of the week, and then

[Bryan]: 30:26

Mm-hmm.

[BK]: 30:26

across the week I'm at maintenance. But I had three days where I was, quote unquote, in an optimal position to facilitate adaptation, and three days where I wasn't. Were you at maintenance every single day? No, it's going to change, no matter how consistent your day is. So I

[Bryan]: 30:39

Yeah.

[BK]: 30:40

suppose point to ponder. Ahem.

[Bryan]: 30:44

I feel like if there was a way that you could be 100% sure that you were in like a 50 or 100 calorie surplus every single day, like there was some way you could possibly know that, that just like mechanistically in theory you could say like, yes that would be probably be sufficient for you to gain, but because you just don't know and it's so variable day to day and like maybe you walking the fridge 10 times actually burns more calories than you consuming those 50 calories. I mean it's like now suddenly you're in a deficit so yeah I agree I think you know part of the reason of bulking or gaining or whatever confidently is just to be sure that you are in a surplus and that you're not dipping into that deficit.

[BK]: 31:27

Yeah, I mean, maybe we should all just, in fact, I would love to have an experiment like that. And gosh, it would be methodologically taxing if we just had, okay, for six months, we're going to sit someone in a metabolic chamber and it's a full gym and you're just gonna train in that place, live in that joint. And then we can really accurately evaluate your energy expenditure. Oh my gosh, that'd be fantastic. It's just not

[Bryan]: 31:53

It

[BK]: 31:53

gonna

[Bryan]: 31:53

would

[BK]: 31:53

happen.

[Bryan]: 31:54

be amazing. Yeah, exactly. Oh, it is true. 50 calorie surplus is all you need.

[BK]: 31:58

Yeah!

[Aaron Straker]: 32:01

And we do feel rather confident with that, that many, many times the dreamer bulk, right, it's a facade, right? It's something that's completely superfluous. You're

[BK]: 32:14

BAM

[Aaron Straker]: 32:14

just going to obviously accrue body fat at a much faster rate. And that is what

[BK]: 32:18

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 32:18

a good portion of that paper suggests. And to kind of wrap up this point, I just, I was reading that and I kind of just felt, and unfortunately, Brian, I don't know if you saw it either, Dave McHoney jumped in Wait a minute here. It's like, I feel like this information is going to kind of fall in the wrong ears, you know? So I was, I was fortunate to feel that, like, Dave felt pretty much the same way I did. But the people who are following, like, those pages and stuff like that, they're the us's of... Well, Brandon's a little bit younger than us. So like, you know, 10, 15 and 20 years ago, who are guys who are probably, you know, 160 pounds, maybe, you know, 70, 72 kilos, whatever, and wanna get to 200 in the 90 kilos sort of thing. And I feel like while that information is objectively correct based off of the results of the study, it's unhelpful to the population that it's being presented to. So

[BK]: 33:20

Possibly.

[Aaron Straker]: 33:20

again, just looking to get someone who I respect's opinion kind of on that approach of covering, hey, I'm 20 and I want to be as big as I can be naturally, what is it going to take sort of thing?

[BK]: 33:35

Yeah. I mean, look, in practice, I will say this, there's a time for maintenance. There is, but I mean, from a purely, because I'm a pragmatist, right? I mean, you know, I participated in the science, but I'm certainly a pragmatist rather than a scientist. And from a pragmatic perspective, from a coaching perspective, I want body weight to be relatively dynamic in that each phase has function and I want to capitalize on the function. every phase has a trade off in the context of bodybuilder and likely any other sport. I wanna capitalize on the function. I wanna attenuate the side effect. Gain, gaining phases, maximize muscle gain and performance actually contributes to that, right? Attenuate fat gain, vice versa in a condense preparation. Maximize fat loss, attenuate muscle loss. So, but in pursuit of both those goals, I want a, it's going to have to be dynamic. You know, you wanna put on 20 pounds of muscle mass. I mean like. Do you have nine pounds of fat mass to lose over time and recomp, I'm like, no, it's gonna come up. So yeah, I'm very dynamic with shifting body weight through each individual phase.

[Aaron Straker]: 34:44

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 34:45

Are you guys training together like every day, some days? What's the, what's the schedule with one, one day out of the 12 day is a 12 day micro cycle.

[Aaron Straker]: 34:54

No, we trained together one time.

[Bryan]: 34:56

Well, you've trained together one time. Okay. But you're training with

[BK]: 34:58

That's

[Bryan]: 34:58

Jackson

[BK]: 34:58

because

[Bryan]: 34:59

more

[BK]: 34:59

Aaron

[Bryan]: 34:59

often.

[BK]: 34:59

died. I'm joking, I'm joking.

[Aaron Straker]: 35:01

Yeah,

[BK]: 35:01

Oh.

[Aaron Straker]: 35:01

no,

[BK]: 35:01

Ha

[Aaron Straker]: 35:01

I

[BK]: 35:01

ha

[Aaron Straker]: 35:01

did, I did, I

[BK]: 35:02

ha.

[Aaron Straker]: 35:02

did literally. I, for what it's worth, I was, it was that, we talked about it. Remember,

[BK]: 35:08

Okay.

[Aaron Straker]: 35:08

Brian, you convinced me to deload, and I was like,

[Bryan]: 35:10

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 35:11

I'm gonna deload next week. I have this training session with Brandon, and that training session just like, fucking, like, sky

[Bryan]: 35:18

Got it.

[Aaron Straker]: 35:18

hockey sticked me, and I was like, something's wrong, something's really wrong.

[Bryan]: 35:23

Got it. Okay. So I don't know. So you see you're training with Jackson more often training with Brandon one time. Do and are you guys in like the same area of Bali? Like, is it easy to train

[BK]: 35:33

Yeah,

[Bryan]: 35:33

together? Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 35:35

Yeah,

[BK]: 35:35

yeah, easy.

[Aaron Straker]: 35:36

yeah, yeah. I mean, within a 10 minute drive, something like that.

[Bryan]: 35:39

Cool.

[Aaron Straker]: 35:40

It's like a small town. The infrastructure, the lack of infrastructure makes it difficult with traffic to get like two roads over,

[Bryan]: 35:50

Got it.

[Aaron Straker]: 35:50

if that makes

[BK]: 35:51

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 35:51

sense.

[Bryan]: 35:51

So

[BK]: 35:51

yeah.

[Bryan]: 35:52

just because I know the most common question everyone wants to know and probably the most irrelevant question to progress, but everyone wants to know people's splits. So that's the reason I framed that question and was curious. So Brandon, are you, what is your split now? Do you work on a calendar week or are you like, I know Aaron mentioned he's on like a 12 day micro cycle now, which

[BK]: 36:13

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 36:13

he hates going off the calendar week. So this is kind of a new thing for him. Whereas I love being off the calendar week. I hate the structure of the seven day week. What's

[BK]: 36:22

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 36:22

your split and how do you feel about that?

[BK]: 36:24

Yeah, I mean, look, I will say that over my training career, there's probably two or three micro cycles of which I would generally employ, depending on, predominantly depending on which area I need to emphasize in terms of my volume. What area in the physique needs a little bit more lovin', so to speak. And at this current time, I'm running a push-pull, so one session, lower, rest, and then I separate a push day, a pull day, sorry, push-pull, lower, rest, push. pull and a lower. So it's a five day split. At the moment I'm pushing my volumes quite high. As Aaron experienced, my volumes were at the end of that block were quite insane for lack of a better term. And I will say that I do personally work somewhat outside of the parameters of sort of conventional evidence based recommendations on that front. And to be fair, I have been known to over train as indicated by the sort of connective tissue stress accumulation. But I respond well to some pretty, pretty lofty volumes. Now, within that particular training block that I refer to, there's a lot in the way of what I would define as sort of central volume, as in volume to the sort of central structures through predominantly big compound movements. And there is also another micro cycle that I often run, which has a bit more in the way of peripheral volume, say more sort of. biceps and sort of lateral delts, et cetera, which is something that I do work in from time to time, depending on the developmental sort of progression of my physique. But at the moment, that's the micro cycle design. And it does adhere to a conventional arbitrary volume of time that is a seven day week,

[Bryan]: 38:01

Yeah,

[BK]: 38:01

simple.

[Bryan]: 38:02

got it. When you're pushing these volumes like this, does that then assume that you're doing most of your work a little bit further from failure than you would if it was like a little bit lower volume?

[BK]: 38:12

Not necessarily, I mean, my prerequisite, so give you an idea. So I, you know, I was talking about before, what's interesting in our industry is that we sort of have this pendulum swing where we always overcorrect in our industry, because no one can think logically, I shouldn't say no one, that's a vast assumption, but there's not a lot of individuals who are scientifically sort of literal, I suppose. And what I've seen with intensity is, you know, when I came up in the industry, the prerequisite is, you will get in the gym and you will die for your set. And you know, when you can no longer hold onto the bar, tape yourself to the bar, do some parcels, then maybe the set's finished. Can you do some extra parcels? I don't know, it's just ridiculous. And to be fair, that was a great, that progressed my physique in leaps and bounds earlier in my career. And then we saw the volume error, volume's the primary driver of hypertrophy, and then volume, volume got really high and people just train a long way from failure. And now we're over-correcting a game where it's like, you know, we're really doing one set training, and I'm like, that has its place, sure. and very intense. I'm in the middle here. It's a prerequisite that we're gonna train hard in close proximity to failure. Like we will be within two reps sort of failure and we will challenge concentric failure on movements with a low skill bias and hopefully movements that aren't too systemically taxing in terms of central fatigue. But we're gonna push the envelope. And when the volumes are higher, it really comes down to when I'm in a position where I have the time in my schedule. And B, I'm in a position where my recovery is in goods. in good stead. I'm in angi surplus, my recovery's in check by virtue of my nutritional status. My stress is manageable, my sleep is in check. I've got a green light across the board. I've got six weeks of go, go. Let's rock and roll. And then perhaps we get into the contest season, which for me is just a crazy time. You know, I'm doing, which to be fair, is a show, 15 shows a year, weekends at least. But the bulk of the season, I know my seat's gonna be less. I'm just not gonna be able to manage those volumes. So the volume has to come down a little bit. times. I don't have to ask you a question but yes.

[Bryan]: 40:12

Yeah, yeah, totally. And then, so you're doing multiple top sets, so to speak, of movements. So there'll be like, you know, a warm-up, two to three warm-up sets, and then you have three to four top sets of a movement that are all relatively close to failure, or you kind of warm up as you go, and there's like, you know, a four RIR, a three, a two, a one, and maybe a zero, or something like that type thing.

[BK]: 40:35

Realistically, from a personal perspective, I may have three sets on some movement selections, two of those would be to the absolute wire, if there was three sets. When I accumulate volume by way of sets and I say it's a high volume, it's more gonna be a product of diversity of movement selections versus taking sort of a select group of three movements, for example,

[Bryan]: 40:58

Mmm.

[BK]: 40:58

and then doing five sets per piece. I believe as bodybuilders, or really to optimize bodybuilding specific adaptation that there's benefit to diversity. And also it's somewhat preventative from the perspective of connective tissue stress. And that's the thing with power lifters, they wanna tax exactly the same range. That's conducive to their goals for us. I'm like, well, I don't wanna get an overuse injury and can I work this tissue from a slightly different angle or force curve? Maybe I can ring out a little bit. Yeah.

[Bryan]: 41:35

I love that approach. I think that applies pretty universally to hypertrophy. Just hit it from more angles for sure.

[BK]: 41:42

Obviously within reason, you know, then you get the guys that are like, I'm doing 20 movements. I'm like, okay,

[Bryan]: 41:46

Yeah.

[BK]: 41:46

you know, you know, I like diversity. Let's run this. Run it, run it, run it milk it, you know, bring it out, bring it out, bring it out. We've got stale on it. Okay. Trade out this moon pan for another. Let's go.

[Aaron Straker]: 42:00

All right, great. I'm glad we covered the split, which is you are correct, Brian. Everyone loves answering that question, and I always find people fixate on it. Every once in a

[Bryan]: 42:09

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 42:09

while, I'll stumble across a Reddit post, and someone's like, it's their biggest decision-making, decision fact in their

[BK]: 42:16

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 42:17

life. What split am I gonna write? It's always,

[Bryan]: 42:19

Yeah,

[BK]: 42:19

Okay.

[Bryan]: 42:20

right, right.

[Aaron Straker]: 42:20

it's so funny. So Brandon, something you kind of briefly brought up that I actually had as a question that I really loved is like, what are your thoughts around like the intersection of peak? I don't mean peak as in like peak week, but peak as in like at the top, like the top caliber kind of athlete

[BK]: 42:37

Mm.

[Aaron Straker]: 42:38

of peak natural bodybuilding and health. Like do you, would you feel confident saying that to being, you know, 220 plus, 101, 102

[BK]: 42:55

This is actually interesting. This is a very interesting question. I suppose to answer your question more broadly, I would say, is bodybuilding healthy? And I would say, well, as a whole, the majority of things we do as bodybuilders should be health promoting. Condors preparation is very extreme and anything taken to the extremes has consequences. Like running, oh, it's good for cardiovascular health. I'm gonna do like an ultramarathon. It's gonna be a lot of connective tissue stress and whatnot. So everything has a balancing point. And obviously the bigger you get, even if that... that body mass is muscle mass, there is more cardiovascular strain. I think if you're a natural, there is inherently a ceiling there, and I think it's unlikely that you're gonna have too much issues on that front, but the enhanced guys surely, I mean, these guys have a variety of issues from a cardiovascular perspective. I think it also comes down to... the manner of which you, I suppose, manage your body for lack of a better term. You know, you can be 220 pounds and have absolutely, and be in good shape and have absolutely piss poor nutrient diversity. And I would say, well, you might be functioning now, but you won't be for long. And that's gonna be inherently problematic. But I would say in general, you know, walking around how I am now, my baseline cardiovascular fitness is quite average compared to you gentlemen. But I would say it's... My habits are generally health promoting, I would say.

[Bryan]: 44:25

Do you include cardio into your off-season and or into your cuts as you're like contest prepping?

[BK]: 44:32

I mean, in the context of an off season, I sort of would adhere to the phrase put forth by Arnold in that my cardio is pumping and humping and that's about it. But generally speaking, I work off the basis of sort of as follows, that as a bodybuilder, you need to have a level of cardiovascular adaptation that is promotional of being able to train well with weights. Above and beyond that, essentially it's bonus. And you know, we've all heard that, okay, there is perhaps an interference effect by way of upregulating cellular pathways associated with endurance adaptation, maybe that attenuates them to walk one. And I think that's to a degree almost irrefutable, but it's been way overcapitalized on. And then we swung the opposite way. The opposite way now where it's the opposite. Oh, that was way overstated. You can do all the cardio you want. I'm like, no, you can't. The laws of specificity apply. But in the context of the off season, if you can't get through a 10 rep set without absolutely dying. for 15 minutes thereafter, go do some cardio. In a condes

[Aaron Straker]: 45:32

I feel

[BK]: 45:32

preparation,

[Aaron Straker]: 45:33

personally attacked.

[Bryan]: 45:35

Hehehehehe

[BK]: 45:35

I'm sorry. And then obviously in prep, I would say, you know what? It's a means of essentially wasting energy to supplement the energy deficit primarily created through nutrition. So we sort of operate from there. So a bit of a midway. Personally, if I was not bodybuilding focused totally for the next season, I'd probably do a bit more cardio just for life. But for me right now, all my focus goes into body.

[Aaron Straker]: 46:04

So I have a couple kind of follow up questions on that. And I know this is something that stems a lot more from the enhanced side of things in terms of overall, like health monitoring and that sort of things. But with some of your, you know, bigger athletes or yourself in the off season, is there anything that, are you ever looking at like lab work, specifically like, you know, fasting insulin, fasting glucose, blood pressure, anything like that, just as your body weight is higher?

[BK]: 46:32

Yeah. So I mean, look, the site, scientist in me says, hey, let's get all these metrics because this could be really interesting. And I would definitely agree with you that from the enhanced side of things, there is incredible benefit to monitoring these biomarkers, including biochemical assessment through blood work. And obviously I don't work with enhanced guys, so it's not my area of expertise. But when you're dealing with superphysiological doses of super supplements, it's going to have... be inherently problematic. That that body is no longer homeostatically controlled. In the context of a natural bodybuilder, most of the things we are doing should be health promoting. So I don't go out of my way to say to my guys, you need to test your blood pressure every day, right? You need to get your blood work done every three months for me. Not really. The primary reason I would get blood work done is more than anything, it's a great way to, for the natural athlete at least, to evaluate. You know, this is by the way, in the absence of a clinical manifestation. It's a great way to evaluate subclinical nutrient deficiencies. Okay, you know, ferricin level is low as a status for iron, but you don't have any symptomology indicative of anemia yet, but let's correct it. Okay, cool. And obviously that's particularly important to those of whom participate in dietary practices which increase their risk of micronutrient deficiency, like that of veganism. no disrespect to them, it's just that, hey, you're gonna have to do some work on this. So to answer your question, I don't recommend, and everyone gets blood work done every six months, that's also quite expensive, particularly for those in the United States. In Australia, it's bulk-built, the healthcare system will cover it for you if you want. But it's considered sort of bonus detail. Blood pressure, occasionally sure, but we're not running into the same issues with, you know, an increase in viscosity of blood that the enhanced guys have. For those guys, you need to check your blood pressure all the time. You need to do your cardio for cardiovascular health or you may indeed die, et cetera. It's inherently more simplistic than actual cytophen.

[Aaron Straker]: 48:37

Yeah, it was just something that I was curious about. I know I just wrapped up mine at kind of gain and it was kind of a concern of mine. I was like, hey. I just, I felt really big, you know, and my girlfriend

[BK]: 48:52

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 48:52

would even be like, you can't wear those shorts anymore sort of thing, like they're maxed the fuck out.

[BK]: 48:58

I'm sorry.

[Aaron Straker]: 48:58

And I had, it did, I have had some like, you know, previously when I, before I really got deep into like nutrition coaching and stuff, had some quite shitty lab work, you know, and

[BK]: 49:10

Okay.

[Aaron Straker]: 49:10

this was, when I was still training, I, you know, I was, sorry, north of 220,

[BK]: 49:17

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 49:18

like like bad blood glucose, you know, lipids quite high. So it was something that I was a little bit concerned about, but I think just with one, I had a very knowledgeable coach in Jackson sort of thing, and we ran a really tight ship of how my bulk was, was handled in terms of

[BK]: 49:35

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 49:35

like nutrients and fiber and that sort of thing. My lab work came back really, really good and blood pressure like fantastic. I was quite surprised because I had, I guess, erroneously correlated the higher body weight with poor

[BK]: 49:48

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 49:48

health. from a previous experience. So I was just curious there.

[BK]: 49:53

Yeah, I will say this when it comes to, I mean, getting blood work is a basic metabolic panel, let's just say, for example, is almost always a good thing, you know, for the sake of just getting some clarity in terms of where you're sitting. You know, a couple things there, obviously, number one is, you know, should you choose to do that, you need to have someone who can interpret those bloods accordingly, noting that we have some different norms as individuals who participate in training and high protein diet. And unless you have a doctor who's savvy on some of the changes with some of the status markers, they're probably gonna absolutely shoot the dead for lack of a better term. And they see, oh my God, your creatine levels are high, your urea levels are high, and maybe even your AST, ALT scores are a little bit higher. Have you trained in 48 hours? Do you take creatine? Do you participate in a high protein diet? Are you of an above average level of muscularity? Like, yes, all of the above. So your norms are gonna be a little bit different. So these are probably considerations there. But one other thing when it comes to blood work is that- You can also use it as an indicator should you have historical norms. You can use it as an indicator for evaluating recovery status coming out of the condus preparation, particularly when it comes to looking at sort of your Andron levels, which are going to be absolutely tanked by virtue of the dispeg and environment of low energy availability for some time. So that could be really handy as well. If you have historical norms pertain to you, then you can sort of evaluate your recovery. And I dare say, Speaking of blood work, you know, by the time it gets to the end of a conus preparation, I don't even need to know you to look at you. And if I see your blood work, I'm like, yeah, this guy's hurting, you know. But it can be good to evaluate your recovery thereafter.

[Aaron Straker]: 51:35

Yeah, really, really good there. I think that one was kind of funny about the, yeah, you don't need to see someone's blood work to know in the contest prep that things are not gonna be good. But to

[BK]: 51:45

It's...

[Aaron Straker]: 51:45

seeing like the historical comparison of am I getting back to my prior baselines, after the four, six, eight months post contest prep season, et cetera, et cetera.

[BK]: 51:57

And I

[Aaron Straker]: 51:57

So.

[BK]: 51:57

did do that last season.

[Aaron Straker]: 51:59

Wonderful. Brian, if you're good, we're gonna kinda change position into asking some coaching questions, if you're good

[Bryan]: 52:04

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 52:04

with that

[Bryan]: 52:04

go

[Aaron Straker]: 52:04

as

[Bryan]: 52:04

for

[Aaron Straker]: 52:04

well,

[Bryan]: 52:04

it.

[Aaron Straker]: 52:04

Brandon. Cool,

[BK]: 52:07

video.

[Aaron Straker]: 52:07

so I'm gonna ask number... I'm going to follow the plan here. So one thing that off air that Brandon and I talked about briefly was the concept of athlete development versus athlete management. And I thought this was really, really cool. As in you were, I think, the only person I've ever really heard talking about this. And I thought it was just a very cool concept to introduce to our podcast listeners.

[BK]: 52:36

Yeah, I mean, I thought this was relatively fundamental to be fair, but, but yeah, you know, I often say there's, there's multiple coaching styles and, you know, particularly when you're working with individuals of whom are naive to the sport or new to the sport, better said, you do a lot in the way of development. So, you know, for within our coaching, we have a lot of educational resources. We're really big on educating our athletes so they can be somewhat autonomous. And we believe that has positive correlation to the results that we create. But the athlete development is really sort of teaching them the fundamentals, showing them the ropes, this is what hard training is, et cetera. And I often joke that we teach new athletes how to train hard, and we teach advanced athletes when to train hard. These guys are gym rats, they'll die for it. And that's really the more the athlete management. And the athlete management is arguably easier in a way. I get an advanced athlete come to me, they've been training for a decade, they wanna take it to the next level. They know how to train. They understand the nutrition fundamentals. It's not their first rodeo. They wanna refine it. So then it's more about just pulling the right levers, et cetera, and let's rock and roll. Whereas the development side of things, I mean, what's more rewarding? Both equally rewarding. But the athlete development side of things is definitely more time costly. You need to invest more in them. It's just where you tend to sort of work on their mentality. This is normal, this is not normal, et cetera, et cetera. It's more... hands-on and this is where I think coaching, you know, in a lot of ways it has to be a hands-on piece and that's the development side.

[Aaron Straker]: 54:12

Well, with another kind of a follow up on that with kind of your positioning

[BK]: 54:15

Cough cough.

[Aaron Straker]: 54:16

is like when in the natural bodybuilding world, like someone comes to you, they're taking it seriously sort of thing. Do you ever find that you have to be kind of have a firmer or a harder, less forgiving coaching style of is in like, this, you know, is not going to cut it for what you said your goals are sort of things. And in terms of I would imagine the most common one is in like, off protocol, like very, very to call deviations and that sort of thing.

[BK]: 54:45

Yeah, I think here's the thing. If you, I believe if you educate the athlete and they have a good understanding, they're more likely to be accepting of their result if they are not, let's say they're not doing what they need to do. They're able to apply logic. They understand the fundamental principles. And they're like, well, I'm not doing that. And therefore I'm getting this result. I'm like, okay, now we can have a discussion. What are we going to do to correct this? But I mean, to answer your question directly. I think the coaching style, I'm very personal with my coaching style. You know, I have, for example, I've worked with a couple of gentlemen who were arguably the most hardcore mother effers I've worked with. And they literally say to me, hey B, tell me everything that's shit about my physiques. Tell me everything that's horrible, just rip on it, mate. And I'll go hard. Now I don't wanna be coached like that. But if you wanna be coached like that, let me be your person. Okay, I know if I do that to some other clients, they're gonna be like, are you serious right now? Like, I'm gonna cry. Now I don't wanna be coached like that. But again, individualize the experience. I'm very transparent. And I believe that there's a time to push and a time to pull. And you gotta know when, and you gotta know how far you can push and pull with a given individual. So you gotta be realistic. But again, with some people, they just wanna really give it to me raw. And other people, you gotta be a little bit more sort of tacit, kiss, kick, kiss. Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 56:09

Yeah, any kind of follow ups on that one Brian?

[Bryan]: 56:12

No, I agree. I know it's kind of funny because I'm definitely the guy that like I wanna know what's wrong with me. That's literally why I went to see Birdo and Brian Miner up in Fort Collins a couple of years ago. It was like, I need to know what is wrong with me. Tell me everything, you know? And they looked at me and they looked around. They're like, you need to do some hamstring specialization. And I was like, great, that's awesome because if you didn't tell me that, I couldn't have possibly known that. So I just want more information where possible and I have thick skin in that way. So it just goes down to individualizing the feedback to the client.

[BK]: 56:45

And I think most athletes, so I think, look, a champion or someone who of whom aspires to be a champion is going to always ask the question, what can I be doing better? Or what more can I be doing for my result? Even if the results are rolling in, they're going, that's great, but is there anything else? Those are the individuals who are gonna take that information on board 100%. And I suppose I'm somewhat similar to you and I don't like to be told like, you know, verbatim like that tissue is shit. But on the other hand, if someone says to me like, okay, your biceps are in good state, but man, your triceps are just out of proportion. Okay, like I will take that on board 100%. So it's gonna be a bit of a midway, you know? Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 57:31

Yeah. Awesome. So kind of moving into, we have a couple of kind of coaching specific questions. And what I find really interesting and happy to have this conversation is your specialty is getting people from a very, to use a very brand new and not safe for work term that I learned from a friend here is dick skin lean.

[Bryan]: 57:53

Hehehehe

[BK]: 57:55

Yes, sir. Ha ha

[Aaron Straker]: 57:56

It

[BK]: 57:56

ha.

[Aaron Straker]: 57:56

was that was from a girl too when we were talking about her ghost. I'm getting dick skin lean

[Bryan]: 58:02

She knows.

[BK]: 58:04

Yeah. Ha ha ha.

[Aaron Straker]: 58:06

So we want to ask like what are some coaching strategies that you will employ to get let's say maybe The hard one here is because you always work with, you know, this bodybuilding, natural bodybuilding, so everyone's getting super, super lean. But if we were to kind of maybe bring it back to some of your earlier coaching strategies or maybe in earlier, you know, parts of prep with someone, coaching strategies for pushing, let's say sub 12% body fat. Because I would say when you're speaking to like the mass, the mass, like male, right, who wants a physique, sub 12 is like... most people are gonna be pretty stoked about that. So that's like kind of the first part.

[BK]: 58:44

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 58:45

And then if there would be any kind of strategy that you would change for someone to push now like sub 10, which is like, you're getting not stage lean, but sub 10 in IRL is pretty damn lean.

[BK]: 58:59

It's pretty darn late, yeah. I mean, look, I'll preface this by saying, I mean, it's a broad question as a start, but I will say this. I mean, the foundation to our coaching is education. I'm just so big on this in that we have the air educational content and I want, the more the athlete can understand, this is where we're at now, this is where we're going. These are the principles that underlie the journey to achieving your goal. the better, okay. But let's say for example, I have a first time athlete and maybe they're with me for 18 months before their show, which is not uncommon and it's a fantastic position to be in. They've watched a couple of athlete cohorts go through, they've conversed with them in person, probably more likely online, whatever, they've conversed with them, they understand. They've almost got some passive experiential learning from them. They know what they're in for. That is so valuable. Imagine going in blind. I'm gonna get absolutely... as you described, dick skin lean. Do you realize how hard that is? Like it is, it's an abrasive endeavor. Government come and live for a day, easy, easy. Coming to it for six months, it's like running water over stone. You got, it erodes the stone over time, like it's abrasive. But if they've seen others go through it, they come in with a level of understanding. Okay, I think that's just straight up very valuable. And the process of getting semi-lean is pretty easy. The process of getting going from semi-lean to very lean, that is hard. your body is going to maximally upregulate its ability to conserve energy. This is where three things come into play, an increase in appetite, brain fog, and insatiable hunger. There are three things that make preparation hard. For some people it's more one than the other, but you're going to experience all three at some point. And in terms of the management strategies that go into that, I mean one is we have a long conness preparation, so it's long and progressive, not short and aggressive. There's a time for short and aggressive if you want to get semiline, but conness prep's a different game. And that allows us to, well, a couple of things. That allows us to do, as I described, some pushing and pulling. I often describe the process of going from lean to very lean as a very iterative process. We have a structure in place, and I often map out a year or more in terms of our plan of action. But the protocol itself is very iterative. How we feel and how we look and how we're performing. And then we do, as I described, some pushing and pulling. I can't just dig, dig. I'm gonna crash and burn. The athlete will crash and burn. So you gotta sort of... Now we push, now we pull back. We're getting a little bit flat, performances decline a little bit, got a couple of red lights as I described. Let's give back if we can in the timeline, top up, bolster, protect training performance of the period of maintenance and then go again. It's very push and pull, push and pull. The other thing is I'm really big on mentally framing things in a positive light. If you can see, I mean, look, it's a good philosophy for life. Can you turn a negative into a positive? But I think from the perspective of dieting, it's the appetite, like I said, the appetite. Brain fog, lethargy, three things. They're the toughest piece, but from a perspective of appetite, which is inherently uncomfortable because it's intended to be a strong motivator for food seeking behaviors. But if you can frame it logically like this, why am I hungry? I'm hungry because I'm an endeavorsit. Is being an endeavorsit conducive to your goal of getting lean? Yes, hunger is a good thing. If you can mentally frame it like that, then you can accept it and move on. One of the biggest things I find with new athletes is they marinate in how hard it is. I'm hungry. Oh my God, I'm still hungry. and I can't escape the hunger. Do you know how hard you're making your life right? I'm gonna watch some, you know, Gordon Ramsay cook this thing when we were making life really hard. Understand it, accept it, move on. So these things are, I mean, this is just a few pieces, but potential strategies.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:02:44

Yeah, I really, really like how you map that one of an acceptance, right? And that's one that I find that I often have to, with my own clients, like they're like, I'm hungry. I'm like, you are hungry, right? You're not going to die. We're 15% body fat. There's going to be some hunger there. That generally is indicative that we are moving in the right way. And I think it's, I mean, I do think it's probably a lot of like the general. fitness industry messaging and sort of thing that you're going to be able to not be hungry and still go out and be social on the weekends and not have to restrict and still have pizza with your family like and fat loss you know and like can

[BK]: 1:03:28

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:03:28

it work sometimes in 90% of people probably not right could the three of us do it yeah but would we do it no

[BK]: 1:03:40

But I see, I will say that's going to be very hard for you in that the general population are the hardest people to work with because there's a lot more development, understanding, and they have some pretty, oftentimes at least, speaking in generalities, some pretty lofty limitations in terms of where they draw the line and what they're willing to do. Whereas with an athlete, half the work is done for you. They're going to come to me and they say, I want this result. I kinda know it's involved, or maybe they're very advanced, I know it's involved. I am willing to go there. I know it's gonna be hard, and I'm gonna love it. And I'm like, okay. So that's a different piece. And I will admit, I'm very out of the loop when it comes to Gen Pop. I don't understand how they think. You know, what do you mean you couldn't do that? I'm like, look, I get it, I get it. But on the other hand, I'm like, if you want this result, I'm very logical. One plus one equals two. If you want that result, do X, Y, and Z, let's go. So yeah, it's

[Aaron Straker]: 1:04:36

Mm-hmm.

[BK]: 1:04:36

different. Hahaha

[Aaron Straker]: 1:04:38

Yeah, definitely different.

[Bryan]: 1:04:40

I think the first thing I usually talk to with people that are Gen Pop that want to lose weight is that like you use the word acceptance I use the word embrace But like at some point they like have to be told that they're gonna be hungry and they have to understand that Because the first they're always like, you know, I want to do this diet or this diet Like maybe it's time restricted feeding so I can eat more food or not feel as hungry or whatever Or maybe it's like restricting a macronutrient so that like, you know, if I cut carbs out, then I can eat all the protein and fat I want or whatever, like to some extent. But at the end of the day, it's like reinforcing that message that like, hey, no matter which one of these approaches you take, at some point you're gonna be hungry. So you just have to

[BK]: 1:05:20

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 1:05:20

like accept that, hey, I'm gonna be hungry and it's okay that I'm hungry. And when that happens, it's like, don't push that away and look for food. If first thing, like just understand that this is happening and then embrace it.

[BK]: 1:05:33

Education, yeah, definitely.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:05:36

Brian, that wraps up all the questions that I had down for Brandon. Is there any ones that you wanted to cover while we still have a couple minutes?

[Bryan]: 1:05:44

No, not really. I would just say anecdotally that it does seem for me that it's somewhere just underneath 10% body fat that it really starts to get hard. Like, I can pretty much exist without much issue at 14, 15, 16% and like eat pretty much most of the foods I want and never be hungry. And then you get to 12 and it's like, hey, this is very manageable. 10 is like, okay, it's still pretty manageable. And then there comes a point at like eight, nine, possibly 10% where things just start to get real and like It just

[BK]: 1:06:19

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 1:06:19

starts to suck and all three of those things you mentioned Brandon They all just start happening simultaneously when it almost felt like I was experiencing none of them before so

[BK]: 1:06:28

Yeah. And you probably noticed it in both directions in that. Are you aware of the 2016 paper? Is it Speakman, Spearman? Basically, he proposed a model. And obviously no model is perfect, some are just better than others. But this particular model was in reference to sort of your sort of body fat settling range, whereby he sort of speculated that there was this sort of zone. where the body sort of operates best pertaining to body composition, where there is a lower intervention zone, where you're at risk of basically starvation and that's quite limiting to one's survivability. And that's usually where you go below that lower intervention zone, which is probably bespoke to the individual based on sort of genotypic factors. But you go below that and you start to experience all those three things, increased food motivation, energy conservation, et cetera. And then if you go up, to the point where you get to above your upper intervention zone, you're at risk of predation. That's where appetite goes down. I mean, assuming you're eating minimally processed food selections that don't completely, you know, warp your satiety by feedback signals. And that's usually where you feel a little bit crap. That's probably where Aaron was to be fair at the end of your gaining phase. You're like, I'm feeling a bit lethargic, man. Like, shit, I don't want to eat anymore. You're probably at that upper intervention zone. Your body's saying, hey, slow down. You know, you need to be more mobile to survive. So that to me, I mean, that model makes a whole lot of sense where, you know, there is that upper and lower intervention zone and that's for me personally, from a coaching perspective, if I'm working with athletes in the off season, I often say that we have like a, like a, a body fat, buffer zone that we sit at in the off season. When we run a mini cut, go to the probably the lower end of this sort of the border of a lower intervention zone. We're feeling pretty good, we're a little bit peckish in case time to exit and then we run a gaining phase, you know, we. Maximize muscle gain, attenuate fat gain. But when we get to the top end there where it's like I struggle to eat, I'm getting like sleep apnea because there's so much weight on my chest, feeling lethargic. Okay, now we're gonna run this mini-cut.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:08:29

Yeah, definitely was kind of not all of it, but I know like when I'm outside, when I'm heavier than my body just really doesn't want to be, you know, and that's when if I have like a day or two or I shouldn't say a day or two, if I have like four or five days where I'm not like eating off my plan, like I dump weight

[BK]: 1:08:49

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:08:49

and that's exactly what will happen. Yeah. Cool, so Brandon, can you let the listeners know a little bit more where they can find more of you, especially any of our... Do you work with both male and female, Brandon, in competition prep?

[BK]: 1:09:07

Yeah, I do work with men and women. And I will mention, by the way, you know, BK conditioning is a small conglomerate of coaches. There is myself and Daniel, a senior exercise and nutrition scientist. And we do work with men and women, but we tend to have more males in general. And it's similar because we really focus on bodybuilding. And within the female side of things, there is not a whole lot of women who have the genetic proclivities nor desire. have a level of muscularity that has them competing in figure, which is, because we like to create freaks. With that said, Daniel has much more of a specialization with the myself in general, with sort of bikini and those sort of categories, but we're probably more like 45, 55, something like that.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:09:55

I was having a hard time unmuting myself. Can you just share a little bit more where people can find you, Daniel, website, all that stuff, please?

[BK]: 1:10:02

So yes, of course, you can find us on Instagram at Brandon Kempter or BKconditioning. We also have a website, bkconditioning.com, super simple. Facebook, not so much. TikTok, we're gonna work on that, guys.

[Bryan]: 1:10:18

Hehehehe

[BK]: 1:10:18

We'll be behind the eight ball there, you know? But Instagram is the best place to catch us, absolutely.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:10:24

Wonderful, wonderful. Well, Brandon, thank you for taking time out of your Tuesday evening to join Brian and I in sharing lots of awesome insight on yourself and the inside of natural bodybuilding for us.

[Bryan]: 1:10:37

Yeah, appreciate

[BK]: 1:10:37

Thank

[Bryan]: 1:10:37

it, Brandon.

[BK]: 1:10:37

you again, yeah. Thank you again so much for having me on. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you gentlemen.

[Bryan]: 1:10:45

All right.