[Aaron Straker]: 0:30

Fuck, I forgot how I start the podcast. Happy Tuesday, guys. Welcome back to another episode of Eat, Train, Prosper. Today we have on the podcast, Jeffrey Verity Schofield, and we are very, very excited to have a conversation with him. We tried to get him on the podcast last week, but I botched aligning time zones because Jeff is in, or Jeffrey is in China, I am in Indonesia, Brian is in Colorado in the US, so just a little bit more tricky to align things than normal, So apologies on the delay, but I'm sure this episode is going to be very insightful. Jeffrey, can you give us our listeners a little bit of a brief introduction to yourself?

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:11

Sure, yeah. So first of all, thank you for having me on. I've watched a bunch of episodes and they're always very insightful. So I am a coach, I am a YouTuber, a content creator, whatever you want to call it, writer. So I sort of wear a lot of different hats and it's generally fitness focused with sort of a special emphasis on hypertrophy style training overall.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:41

Wonderful. And we're obviously going to dig into all of that. As always, before we get into the day's topic, Brian, can you kick us off with some updates, please?

[Bryan]: 1:51

Yeah, so I have a ton as you guys probably assume given that we haven't talked for the last three weeks And I do like to talk so i'm gonna save them for next week and Only cover two today. So we are heading to wisconsin for our annual trip tomorrow Uh, we're gonna be there through the fourth and then a few days beyond that and so uh Things will be a little bit off schedule. Probably won't hit all of my regimented, scheduled like lifting and cardio sessions and all that stuff, but we'll do my best. I know I just saw a video of Mr. Jeffrey over there doing some interval sprints outside running and... I don't know how much biking I'm going to be able to get in while I'm there, so I may have to actually use my legs for running, which I'm not the most excited about, but you know, you got to train the system and you do what you do. So Wisconsin's coming up, we're doing 10 days there. And um... the only other really big pressing announcement here is that paragon is starting a new cycle on July 10th and It's gonna be a strength focus cycle. So a lot of you know that one to six rep range type stuff big compound movements Due to popular demand, last cycle I actually had to write an entire separate hypertrophy cycle to go along with our strength cycle because 30% of people didn't want to do strength. And this time I'm actually combining the strength cycle and the hypertrophy cycle into one where there'll be two paths you can take. So when it says like part A it'll be like low bar back squat and then it'll have a strength rep scheme and then it'll be like hypertrophy options and it'll have like hack squat, leg press, all the other kind of more quad dominant squats and you can do those for a more hypertrophy based rep range. So it's kind of like a pick your own adventure type thing. First time we've done this at Paragon and if this code is not active right now it should be by the time this episode drops. So if you use a ETP full gym that'll give you 20% off of your first month of your new Paragon strength cycle in July. So then that is all I have on those topics. Next week for updates we're gonna discuss the glute study that just came out, my blood work that just came back, some VO2 max testing that I have scheduled, as well as some kind of theories of different cardio models, the polarized cardio model, and then kind of how I've been periodizing it. So those are some topics I'd like to discuss next week. For right now, let's kick it over to Jeffrey maybe. You got any cool updates going on in your last seven days?

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 4:34

Oh man, well the last sort of month I finished the diet and I'm glad to be feeling normal again. For a while I was just destroyed from the diet. Like the last four, five, six weeks where you're really getting down there in body fat percentage, you just don't have the motivation or willpower to do anything. It's just working out and then work sort of takes a backseat. just because you don't have any, you just have this brain fog all the time where you just can't force yourself to work, to edit videos or to film videos or anything. You're just destroyed all the time. So I'm feeling a lot better now. I've added some body fat back on the frame and I got pretty damn lean. I had a vein in the side of my glute to just toss that out there. Um,

[Bryan]: 5:31

So are

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 5:31

so.

[Bryan]: 5:32

you, do you think you were around like 6% or so? Is that, would it be like a decent estimate?

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 5:35

Uh, I self-assessed at about 8%, but I'm always pretty conservative. Realistically, somewhere between, I would say 7 and 9%. 6%, I'm not, I'm not sure. Um, there was a

[Bryan]: 5:50

You

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 5:50

bit

[Bryan]: 5:50

had

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 5:50

of

[Bryan]: 5:50

striations

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 5:50

that.

[Bryan]: 5:51

all through your, uh, your quads and stuff too, though. I mean, he was feathered, like, like you were, you were lean, dude.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 5:57

I mean, there was a little bit of fat on like the glute ham tie in, but like not much. I mean, I don't, you know, usually when someone says they get shredded, they probably had 10 or 15 pounds left to lose, right? I don't know where that 10 or 15 pounds would have been because it was just,

[Bryan]: 6:15

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 6:15

it was, I mean, everywhere was, I've heard on the back of your knuckle where you pinch it, you're supposed to feel like that just about everywhere. And yeah, there

[Bryan]: 6:25

Hahaha

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 6:25

weren't many. There weren't many places where I could actually pinch, like

[Bryan]: 6:30

That's wild.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 6:31

glued ham tie in a bit, but I mean, I couldn't even sit down for the last two weeks. I couldn't sit in a chair for more than a few minutes. Like

[Bryan]: 6:42

That's

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 6:42

scrumming

[Bryan]: 6:42

insane. Did

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 6:43

around,

[Bryan]: 6:43

the...

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 6:44

trying

[Bryan]: 6:44

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 6:45

to like not put my hip bones on the chair just because there

[Bryan]: 6:48

Did

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 6:48

was...

[Bryan]: 6:48

the bottom of your feet hurt at all?

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 6:50

Yeah,

[Bryan]: 6:51

Yeah, that's

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 6:52

yeah. It actually

[Bryan]: 6:52

nuts. I

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 6:53

hurt.

[Bryan]: 6:53

mean, you-

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 6:54

Yeah, they hurt when I first started dieting, because I was 225 pounds walking 10 K plus steps. And then they got fine. And then the last couple of weeks, they started hurting again. And I heard

[Bryan]: 7:05

Hehehe

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 7:05

during the incident that the fat pads on the bottom of your feet wear down. I don't know how much truth there is to that, but that's what it felt like. Could have been systemic inflammation, but yeah, I just felt, I was just so destroyed by the end of it. I mean, it was... Yeah, I'm probably not gonna do that again. Or at least not for a few years.

[Bryan]: 7:28

Yeah, I mean, you were basically stage ready. Like, I mean, you could have stepped on stage and like, even if you wouldn't have necessarily been as lean as Alberto would want you to be, I think that you would have put up a really solid showing for sure.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 7:41

Yeah, the thing is like when you have a specific date, it makes it a little bit easier because you can just push to that date and you know you're finished. Right, like when you're running a race, you know, you think you're tired, you can't go any further, but then you see the finish line and you can sprint. Right, and then when you hit the finish line, you know you're done, you can recover. It's the same thing with a show, I'm assuming. But I didn't have a show, I didn't have a photo shoot, I didn't have any specific date. So eventually I gave myself to the end of May. And I just said, okay, I'm gonna push really hard. And I probably pushed too hard the last couple of weeks. Cause that last couple of weeks, you're supposed to sort of, I mean, that's when you're the most vulnerable. That's when you're supposed to actually kind of coast in. It's like a plane landing, right? When you're starting your descent, you're at high altitude, you can lose altitude very quickly. You can lose body fat very quickly when you have a lot of body fat to lose. When you have very little to lose, I mean, just mathematically, you have to go more slowly. Otherwise you're gonna lose. at a minimum fullness, but you know, potentially lean body mass. I mean, I think I might've actually lost some muscle. And usually when people say that it's probably not actually true, but in terms of like performance, absolutely tanking in terms of how long it took performance to get back, I mean, when I started eating, I started putting on body fat. Performance didn't go up. Usually you hear all you get this quick rebound and strength. Strength was still crap. Two weeks later, it's sort of just coming back now and I'm feeling feeling

[Bryan]: 9:09

Mm-hmm.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 9:09

better, but you know, I think I dug so deep of a hole that, you know, I mean, my sleep was awful. I was probably averaging about three or four hours a night, which for me is like, I mean, usually in the in the sort of bulk state, I'm like an eight to 10 hour kind of guy.

[Bryan]: 9:27

Wow.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 9:28

And if I if I lose an hour of sleep, I can feel it. I was losing like most of my sleep.

[Bryan]: 9:33

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 9:34

I'd be waking up at 3 a.m. just completely, just no way to go back to sleep. Hungry, you're hungry all the time. Some people might say, oh, well, when you're asleep, you're not hungry. No, when you're asleep, you're still hungry. Your body is still hungry. You have dreams about food. It's the first thing you think about when you wake up. When you're going to bed, you feel hungry. It's all the time. When you're training, you feel hungry. And not hungry isn't like, let's get it, bro. hungry as in I would rather go eat something right now

[Bryan]: 10:05

Hehehehe...

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 10:05

than be in the middle of the workout, right? And so

[Bryan]: 10:08

Yeah...

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 10:09

I can see why most people would need to count calories to hold themselves accountable to get that lean. And so a lot of people are actually surprised that I didn't count. I didn't track, I didn't have a food log, didn't have a food plan, no meal plan or anything. But I think in that last few weeks that might actually be a good idea. just

[Bryan]: 10:30

Thanks for watching!

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 10:30

to have things be a little bit more regimented and regulated and have things under control. Because I was sort of just going by instinct the whole way, which is fine when you're going from 20% down to 10%. When you're going from 10% towards 5%, I think that's where your instincts can really lie to you because your instincts are just gonna be, eat food you stupid fuck. Right? Like that's going

[Bryan]: 10:59

Right.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 10:59

to be the only thing that you can hear. So if I had to do it over again, I would probably have like a little bit more structure for the last maybe month or so.

[Bryan]: 11:13

Mm-hmm. Had you considered at all eating up into the last three or four weeks of it? I know you didn't have a photo shoot or a show or anything, but it would be really interesting to see that comparison instead of just completely depleting yourself to then take three or four weeks and eat up, but don't actually like gain weight per se.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 11:30

That was actually the plan, because Berto has talked about it, and I know the 3DMJ guys, they really are proponents of eating up into a show, or multiple shows. And that was actually the plan. But as soon as May was done, oh man, I

[Bryan]: 11:45

You were just done. Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 11:46

was eating way up, like to the point where it was just sort of a big rebound. I got these protein bars, and I should have checked the macros, because I wasn't counting macros, but I should have checked. These are the worst protein bars in the world. There are two

[Bryan]: 12:01

Hehehe

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 12:01

grams of protein, eight grams of fat, and I had a whole box, like, it was

[Bryan]: 12:06

Oh

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 12:06

May

[Bryan]: 12:06

no.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 12:06

28th or something. I was like, okay, well, that's a hell of a refeed. I guess I'm

[Bryan]: 12:11

Hehehehehehe

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 12:11

done. And then it kind of just snowballed a little bit from there. For reference, I got down to 86.8 kilos, or around 190 pounds, and that was my lowest. I think my lowest weekly moving average was like 87, actually, actually I can check. I think it was like 87. Yeah. 87.6. So like one 92 ish probably. Um, and then now I'm, I'm about 92 kilos. So I'm up

[Bryan]: 12:47

Mm-hmm.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 12:47

to like maybe two or five or so.

[Bryan]: 12:49

Yeah,

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 12:50

Um,

[Bryan]: 12:50

that's a nice jump.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 12:51

yeah. Over the course of like a month, which.

[Bryan]: 12:54

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 12:55

Considering how lean I was, it would have been nice to sort of maintain that leaner look and to get lots of pictures and videos and have a more controlled, because it is a very appealing strategy, right? Where you're slowly building in calories. It's almost like a reverse diet in some ways. But I had dieted for six months. I think at that point I was just done. I was just, like that was the plan, but I was just done.

[Bryan]: 13:24

I've been

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 13:24

It's

[Bryan]: 13:24

there

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 13:24

so hard

[Bryan]: 13:24

too. I

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 13:24

to

[Bryan]: 13:24

did

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 13:24

make.

[Bryan]: 13:24

a five month diet. Same deal at the end. I was just like, that was my plan too. And you just

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 13:29

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 13:29

get there and

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 13:30

No.

[Bryan]: 13:30

you just don't want any part of it. So

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 13:32

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 13:32

now I feel that, um, well, I'm sure we're going to dig a lot more into this as we go, but Straker, let's hit some, uh, some updates from you real quick and then we'll get into the bulk of things.

[Aaron Straker]: 13:41

Yeah, I only have two. Uh, uh, my mo- my- What my body weight average was to 13.2 this past week. So that is a nice peak for this gaining phase. And I am with hopefully within the final weeks. However, I'm fearful that coach will say, ah, we're not quite fat enough at 215. It's time that we got to keep going,

[Bryan]: 14:05

Hehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 14:05

which I'll be honest, like the food is going down easier now, but I'm just like, I'm just sick of eating. I'm so sick of eating. All of my shorts are like maxed out. You guys saw the that RDL video like those are a size large shorts in there fucking

[Bryan]: 14:21

Mm-hmm

[Aaron Straker]: 14:21

maxed out And I don't want to buy new clothes So I'm kind of ready, but it was it is I'm committed to that at 215 average at least although it might end up being a little bit higher

[Bryan]: 14:36

Cool.

[Aaron Straker]: 14:37

And then I trained two sessions of push and a pull with Jackson last week, who's my coach Jackson Piaz and then one of his friends and athletes, Jordan. and it was really, it was fun. Like the note I wrote here is like swinging up, both of them significantly larger than I am, significantly stronger. And it was really fun to just like show up and kind of like see what I could do, you know, per se, or like how I could hang. And then I was really interested to see like, if I was going to be demolished afterwards, because there was, I wouldn't say like, not like a forced reps, but like a final rep would be like, you know, a spot to assist, you know, sort of thing or pushed to an additional one. We had some like rest pause style things with like assisted reps and I was like am I going to be in shambles you know from this? Not really.

[Bryan]: 15:32

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 15:32

Barely you know a little bit more. I generally don't have any kind of soreness from my pull sessions. I had a little bit. Most of my forearms were crushed from like a really

[Bryan]: 15:42

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 15:42

long rest pause set on a pull down that my grip was just destroyed from. But I was quite surprised there. And it was a fun session and it kind of opened my eyes around, I've been training by myself since like 2015 now, so going on like, you know, almost eight, seven and a half, almost eight years. And it's kind of made me rethink things a little bit around potentially trying to link up with someone like once or twice per week,

[Bryan]: 16:08

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 16:09

just to bring in some bro sort of thing.

[Bryan]: 16:14

Did you feel like the four streps and stuff had like a significant increase in stimulus? Did you feel

[Aaron Straker]: 16:21

Oh

[Bryan]: 16:21

like

[Aaron Straker]: 16:21

yeah.

[Bryan]: 16:21

it taught you a different sense of failure? Or like, yeah, what were your sentiments around

[Aaron Straker]: 16:25

Because

[Bryan]: 16:25

those?

[Aaron Straker]: 16:25

your failure is, or I would say my failure is determined by the spotter, right? If like the final rep moved too fast, they're like one more, you got one more. And then they would essentially control that pace. So the stimulus was definitely significantly increased because, and we talked about it a little bit, like when you're, like for example, we did like a chest supported bilateral pull down. When the weight stops, like when you're by yourself, like there's nothing you can do, the weight stops sort of thing. But when someone's there giving you like just enough, you know, assistance to keep that rep moving, that's all, you know, like stimulus that you would otherwise not be able to achieve because when you don't have assistance, like you give it all you got, that's all you got. But if you get an extra 3% and now you can get another. you know, 75% of a full rep, you extrapolate that to over, you know, 10, 11 sets in a session, and then over weeks. I think the stimulus could be eventually significant enough over a long enough time horizon.

[Bryan]: 17:34

You're pretty much doing the lengthened portion of the movement on your own though, and then they're just helping you get short

[Aaron Straker]: 17:41

in that particular movement, yes,

[Bryan]: 17:43

Yeah

[Aaron Straker]: 17:43

but some of them, I mean, most movements, right? I can't really think of one where the

[Bryan]: 17:49

Like a

[Aaron Straker]: 17:50

length

[Bryan]: 17:50

chest press

[Aaron Straker]: 17:50

would...

[Bryan]: 17:50

would be an example of like coming out of the length and position and then having someone help you finish the rep. But

[Aaron Straker]: 17:55

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 17:56

yeah, I think in most cases, when you're getting an assist, you're still doing the hardest part of the movement on your own.

[Aaron Straker]: 18:02

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan]: 18:02

And then you're just getting help through like what would be considered the less stimulative range of the motion or whatever So

[Aaron Straker]: 18:08

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 18:08

anyway, I just I think that's interesting that like you can kind of accomplish the same thing by doing length and partials If you're on your own, maybe not to like exactly the same degree, but it's kind of like a similar idea

[Aaron Straker]: 18:19

Definitely and the thing I think the real beauty is in Removing volition right volitional failure like someone else saying like no you have another one No, you have one more like that's the I think the real Kind of silver lining is in that as opposed to like me deciding like fuck. This is awful. Everything hurts I'm gonna let go to someone saying like no you have two more sort of thing

[Bryan]: 18:43

Yeah, yeah, I feel that. Cool, well that sounds dope.

[Aaron Straker]: 18:47

That was fun.

[Bryan]: 18:47

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 18:50

Cool. So, what I wanted to kick this off with is for the listeners that do not know, Jeff lives in a house. Jeffrey lives in China, right, which I know I alluded to very, very briefly in the opening. But for me, find this fascinating, right, because like I live in Asia, but I feel like it's a very different gap. You know, I've spent some time in Hong Kong, which I know is like, it's what attached to the to the south, but like not quite the same sort of thing. So just tell us a little bit about how you ended up there, how long it's been. And I'm most curious in how well integrated you are. Can you communicate in these sorts of things, which that's what I would say I'm definitely most interested in finding out.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 19:37

Yeah, so it's been a long time. I've been here about 12 years. It'll be 12 years in September. So it's been a long time. It's been, I mean, most of my adult life. I'm 34. I came here when I was what, 21, 22. So yeah, it's been a long time. Initially I came here as an English teacher, which, you know, I kinda just wanted to spend a year. A year.

[Bryan]: 20:05

Thanks for watching!

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 20:06

in a foreign country in a different place just to, I guess, see the world. And, you know, teaching English was, was fun. It was enjoyable. It was easy, you know, basically a 10 hour work week or so. And so back then things were quite unregulated. I mean, my job interview was like, Oh, you want to go teach English in China? I was like, yep. Okay. Like that. It was a fun interview. It was, you know, a matter of seconds, basically. And so back then there was very little, I guess, regulation in terms of, you know, qualifications that you needed to have as, to be a teacher. So my university degree was economics. Nothing to do with what I do now, pretty

[Bryan]: 20:50

Hehehe

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 20:50

much. Nothing to do with teaching English, pretty much. And so I enjoyed it and it was easy. I liked it, but I didn't love it. So it was kind of a little bit of a trap because you know, if you finished the first year, yeah, let's go back for a second. It's easy, enjoyable, lots of friends. You know, back then things were a lot more, I guess, free and open. You know, I remember we first went to Beijing for teacher training and you know, I live in, I used to live in Connecticut, that's where I was raised, and you couldn't drink outside in Connecticut. whereas in China, you know, someone who had been to China before, you know, we grabbed some beers, we're just drinking outside. And, you know, that's legal. That's normal. I was like, I thought this was supposed to be super strict. No, but,

[Bryan]: 21:45

Hehehe.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 21:45

you know, some things are stricter here. Some things are not strict at all. Some things are, you would talk about in the US, but you can't talk about here, but also vice versa. You know, there's stuff that are discussed way more freely like I remember I was walking around my first year and some old guy asked me what my salary was. And that's just like a normal thing. It's

[Bryan]: 22:08

Hehehehehehe

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 22:09

just, it's like asking the time of day, you know, or asking anything,

[Bryan]: 22:12

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 22:12

just a basic question. And whereas in the U.S., you know, that kind of stuff, you don't really, I mean, even if you're friends

[Bryan]: 22:19

It's

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 22:19

with

[Bryan]: 22:19

a faux

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 22:19

somebody,

[Bryan]: 22:19

pas,

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 22:19

you might not

[Bryan]: 22:19

yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 22:19

have asked that. Yeah, totally different. And, you know, so I came back for a second year, which turned into sort of a third year and a fourth year and a fifth year. and a sixth year. And by those last few years, I was kind of on autopilot, just sort of going through the motions. I had all my lessons planned. It was a very, very easy job. And easy is fine in the beginning, but eventually easy just starts to kill you. It just starts to wear at you, because there's no growth, right? It's too easy. You learn something your first year doing something. Maybe you're second, you get diminishing returns, just like training, but you're 30 or fourth or fifth year doing the same exact thing. You're just on autopilot. And I think that can be tempting because it's easy, but it can also, you know, and I knew that I had, I had to change. And so, um, you know, eventually got into training into, you know, I've started lifting eight years ago. So all my lifting experience has been in China pretty much. and you know people started asking me for advice they saw I was getting good results and so I wrote up my first book and I started selling it in WeChat the Chinese social media just like person to person because at this point I had left the stable job and I was trying to do my own thing and so you know at the beginning you're just sort of struggling to make ends meet you know I was newly married at this time and so I started running on Quora.com, just sort of answering questions and helping people for free. I started writing training plans also for free, just word of mouth. I wrote my first hundred training plans for free because I had a lot of time and a lot of passion, but not much money. But I wanted to get experience before I asked for money. I remember one guy was like, I'm getting really good results. This should not be free. Like this feels really messed up that you're just coaching me for free. And so, you know, I would sometimes go to people's gyms here in Shenzhen and in China, which is right across from Hong Kong actually. And they would sneak me into their gym. And I would have to pretend that I was just checking out the gym and I wasn't actually training anyone. And they would sort of like pay me under the table. It's like basically just scraping by. Um, in early 2020, one guy that read my stuff on Quora, he actually traveled to Shenzhen and he paid me to go and train him in his hotel gym. And, you know, that covered Chinese new year travel expenses. And then COVID hit right around there. And then I started coaching online and, um, man, I was flying pretty close to the trees financially. for a while, like a long time. And my wife was like, probably thinking, what the hell is this guy doing?

[Bryan]: 25:29

Hehehehe

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 25:29

Like, what have I gotten myself into? But you know, it's all worked out pretty well. And to answer your question about communication, actually my Chinese has gotten worse because all my work is in English. Like I used to work in Chinese schools, so it was all around me. And so I could communicate pretty proficiently. Um, not completely fluently, but certainly enough for daily conversations. Um, you know, I had friends who didn't speak a word of English. And sometimes people will befriend you just to get free English lessons, but sometimes people, you know, you know, it's nice when someone has no interest in learning English, because you're an English teacher, you do that all the time. And so sometimes you just want to, you know, get away from that and just speak Chinese. And so I went. pretty hard on the Chinese for a while. That's kind of just my personality. Like when I dig my teeth into something, everything else is just, it's just gone. Like I'll spend

[Bryan]: 26:30

Mm-hmm.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 26:30

15 hours a day doing one thing. It's just, it's just my personal, like I'll, I won't forget to eat, but I'll forget to do everything else. And so, you know, whether it's distance running when I was younger, whether it's learning Chinese, whether it is, you know, YouTube, or whether it's lifting or something else. gaming, like you have to direct that energy really, really attentively. Because if you direct it into the wrong place, it could really become, you know, unproductive. And so actually

[Bryan]: 27:01

Mm-hmm.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 27:01

during my cut, you lose that willpower to direct that focus. And so I'm just spending a lot of time. Gaming, just wasting time, just, you know, cause, cause you don't have the energy to like force that focus in the right direction. So you just end up sort of. going the easy route basically. Hopefully

[Bryan]: 27:23

Makes

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 27:23

that answers some of your questions.

[Bryan]: 27:26

sense. Yeah, how did you meet your wife or how did that whole process happen?

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 27:29

So we were working in the same area after I stopped teaching English. And yeah, we just hit it off. We got married very quickly. We met in June 2018, and nine months later we were married. So yeah, it

[Bryan]: 27:53

She

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 27:53

was quick.

[Bryan]: 27:53

speak English?

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 27:54

Yeah, yeah.

[Bryan]: 27:55

Cool.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 27:57

Our communication is kind of weird, like, she'll speak Chinese, I'll speak English. So I can still understand Chinese, even though I don't speak it that much anymore. And plus if it's your wife, you can just understand her because you know it really well, right? So my Chinese kind of sucks overall right now, which is a really crappy feeling because you try to remember words and they slip away or someone's speaking a little bit too quickly and you lose it, but you know that

[Bryan]: 28:23

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 28:24

a few years ago you could have understood no problem. someone will say something and you'll be like, oh, could you say it again? A little bit like, nah, don't worry. Like you don't speak Chinese like, oh, no, this is, and so it's kind of a bad feeling. But to me, Chinese, you know, I can get it back quickly if I really need to. Like if I have an hour long deep conversation, it's back. It's back

[Bryan]: 28:48

Hmm.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 28:49

pretty quickly. But like, I just don't speak to that many people on a day to day basis. And so it's kind of just dormant.

[Bryan]: 28:57

Yeah, I feel similarly with Spanish. I go there and it's just they're talking too fast. I'm like, hey He's

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 29:02

Oh, French is super fast too. And

[Bryan]: 29:04

so fast.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 29:05

then she was like,

[Bryan]: 29:05

Yeah

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 29:06

fastest.

[Bryan]: 29:08

Um cool. Well, that's awesome. Aaron what we got next, baby

[Aaron Straker]: 29:11

Yeah, so that was fascinating. Thank you. I just, as like. someone who lives, right? I live in Indonesia, although Bali's like different, right? Because it's a hot spot right now. A lot of people are relocating, that sort of thing. But like if you were to dump me in the like deep into Bali, you know, in like a village, like I would be screwed, absolutely screwed. I can say like, you know, hi, thank you, good morning. And I'm doing fine. And that's about pretty much it. Cool, so what I wanted to talk into next is like, what kind of, You got into the fitness space and you're starting helping people writing programs, you're writing answers on Quora, which I've seen some of your answers before when I've like Googled something and I'm like, oh, holy shit, that's funny. What does, like what, I'm always kind of curious with people with YouTube, because I feel like it's a, the learning curve is a lot steeper. Like I put out some, you know, pretty decent Instagram content, but it's like, it's small. It's short form, it's easier. What led you to like the YouTube channel? And if I'm not mistaken, that's where you have your like largest following, correct, is YouTube.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 30:19

Yeah, yeah, so I don't focus too much on Instagram. I probably should, but yeah, I focus mostly on YouTube. I don't know, I guess I just like long form content a little bit more, just because it allows me a little bit more time to, I guess, explain something. I really like your videos, by the way. Like they're very, like you fit a lot of information into a pretty short time. So I think you can get somewhat in depth on Instagram. I think you can go more than a minute now, which, you know, could be good. But for me, I don't know. I guess I picked Quora and then... I haven't really thought things through all that much. I guess sometimes people assume I have some big plan or something.

[Bryan]: 31:05

Hehehehe

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 31:05

I don't know what I'm doing.

[Aaron Straker]: 31:10

Okay, understood that. And then would you say like, are the, do you think the like Instagram versus YouTube, like the cultures are a little bit different? Like I probably spend literally 20X the time on like Instagram than I do on YouTube. Like sometimes people comment on the podcast and stuff and like, I miss it. And then I'm like, oh, holy shit, I'm that dickhead that's not even giving, responding to people and stuff. But I just like, it kind of just gets lost in some things. So do you find they're just different or like maybe a different age group or demographic? there.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 31:40

Yeah, Instagram seems a little bit younger maybe. But yeah, I don't know. I find it's easier to respond to comments on YouTube actually because maybe it's just like my app or something. But for me on Instagram, sometimes it'll not allow me to respond or something, or it'll only show a certain number of notifications.

[Bryan]: 32:04

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 32:04

And so I'll scroll back eight hours and it'll just be like, nope, no more. You know, you missed, you missed whatever happened before. Or someone will be like, I tagged you on Instagram and you didn't respond. I just, I didn't see or I didn't check. So I tend to spend more time checking YouTube comments. But man, I get, I actually get overloaded on DMs on Instagram. It's like, it is out of control. I'll be talking to one person and I'll just see. typing, six people messaging me once. You know, I'll probably get 50 to 100 DMs a day.

[Aaron Straker]: 32:47

a day. So this is thing I have this thing in my mind that like I want my Instagram to grow but then I have like this conversation and some friends who have like larger followings and I'm like be careful what you wish for because

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 32:59

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 32:59

that would just like crush me if I was getting 50 dms a day. Like I just wouldn't be able to handle it and then I would feel absolutely horribly guilty about not responding to people.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 33:09

That's it. Yeah,

[Bryan]: 33:10

You

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 33:10

that's

[Bryan]: 33:10

just

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 33:10

it.

[Bryan]: 33:10

respond shorter. You just don't give as in-depth responses to

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 33:13

You just

[Bryan]: 33:13

people.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 33:14

hard their comments. Yeah, you just hard their comments. And, you know, I'm a big fan of whooping out the, it depends, right? That gets tossed up there a lot. Or I'll just link my book or it's like, I mean, if they say they've gotten my book and they're wondering about something, you know, fair enough, fair play. But if someone's just like, bro, how many sets should I do for chest? You know,

[Bryan]: 33:38

Yeah,

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 33:38

or

[Bryan]: 33:38

it

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 33:38

like,

[Bryan]: 33:38

depends.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 33:38

help, I can't lose fat. What should I do? Please help. I mean, a lot of

[Aaron Straker]: 33:43

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 33:43

these things turn into mini consultations. One guy had cancer, he's asking me what to do. I'm like, come on, like really? This is not what you should

[Bryan]: 33:51

Oh

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 33:51

be

[Bryan]: 33:51

man.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 33:51

doing. So often it's like, I just say, see a specialist or, because usually it's not as simple. It's not a one word answer, even a one sentence answer. Like it really, it's death by a thousand cuts because it really does. Each one takes a little bit out of you. And yeah, in the same way, I feel bad if I don't respond, but. I actually heard Greg Knuckles the same thing. He probably spent, I think he spent like eight years responding to everything. And then he was just like, eventually he just caught up to him. And he just, you know, he just, he stopped. Cause it's just, yeah, it catches up eventually.

[Aaron Straker]: 34:31

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 34:31

The one that gets me is people sending me form check videos that aren't even part of my programs. Like, hey, how's this row? Or like, how's these lunges? Or something like that. And I'm like, awesome. They look great. You know, like, what do you want me to do? Like analyze videos all day long?

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 34:45

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 34:47

That's like that.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 34:47

Or I just think try it out. You know, people will,

[Bryan]: 34:49

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 34:50

Oh, how's this program? Have you tried it? Or how's, should I do a seated press or standing barbell press? Like, am I going to write an essay comparing them or just tell them to go and lift? Right? Like that's, I feel like a little bit of a dick, but like, that is the best advice a lot of the time, you know, unless it's something dangerous, but You know, even if it's something dangerous, usually it's like, you get a minor injury and then you learn from it and you don't do that again. Like how many injuries are really, you know, career impacting? Not many. So yeah, I mean, I'm not telling people to go and, you know, hurt themselves, but a lot of the stuff in the gym, you can just trial an error and the error is not that bad. Like the error is, is I didn't grow as much as before or something, right? And you have to learn those powers of observation anyway. So it's not like my answer is really gonna help you. Everyone has to find their answer at some point.

[Bryan]: 35:56

The margins are so small anyways. It's like if I'm choosing a strict barbell overhead press instead of a dumbbell press, like they're both good. Like you're

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 36:04

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 36:04

gonna grow from both of them. So don't

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 36:06

It's

[Bryan]: 36:06

worry

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 36:06

like

[Bryan]: 36:06

about

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 36:06

a matter

[Bryan]: 36:06

it, just work

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 36:07

of grams

[Bryan]: 36:07

hard.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 36:08

of how much

[Bryan]: 36:08

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 36:08

muscle difference there might be.

[Aaron Straker]: 36:15

So one thing that I wanted to touch on is, kind of alluded to, you do things a little bit like unconventionally, right? And, or from, I would say unconventionally from, I would say the world that Brian and I find ourselves in most. So how do you think you found the like self-confidence to kind of walk your own path? And judging from what I see on like your stories and stuff, like lots of sets to failure beyond failure, like everything is, you know, very, very high intensity alluded to briefly like the unconventional dieting approach okay I'm not gonna track anything I'm just going to like bet on my intuition and what was the word you used instinct to get this done and I just want to kind of dig into like where do you think you found that like self-confidence be like I know everyone's saying X I'm gonna do Y and see what happens sort of thing

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 37:09

A lot of that is from already trying X, right? Like I did count, I should be very transparent about that. I did count calories strictly for probably three or four years or so, probably about three years. And so I have experience with X and I think having that experience with X allows you to try Y. I don't think you should go right for the unconventional. because usually the conventional, I mean, it's conventional for a reason. And so when it comes to dieting, I did count before. When it comes to training, you know, I've done three sets of 10 on the basic movements. You know, I've done, you know, sort of the starting point and I saw results. I saw results, but at a certain point, it's not that those things necessarily stopped working. It's just that I tried something else and it seemed to work better. Right, it's not like I couldn't have gotten results from counting calories. Like I absolutely could have. I just preferred to diet that way. It was just more, maybe not sustainable, but it was more enjoyable for sure. It was actually flexible. It was often flexible dieting was like, here are your macros, eat flexibly. That doesn't sound. all that flexible to me. Like to me, flexibility is basically you can do whatever you want while also still getting to your goals, right? Like it's having those guardrails as wide as needed, as wide as possible. And some people need narrower guardrails than others, for sure. It's not like I have every client just not kept calories because as a coach, that's very useful. Right. I don't know how you would do it without. I don't think I would have most people do it instinctively because there's, there's most people don't really have that ability, right? Maybe they can get it eventually, but I think that comes after counting. Same thing with training, the ability to do these unconventional training strategies and tactics. You can't start there because you can't go back once you, I guess you can go back, but You really should start at the starting point. So I'll get messages from people who are like, oh, should I try this? And usually my answer is no, right? Because they're not in a position where the basics wouldn't work. So there's no point really skipping over that because your results are not gonna be better and they very well might be worse. Like there's a toll to training like I train. Like I'm well aware of that. Wear and tear. It's not, I mean, it's one of those things where it's not as popular to say anymore, because your body is not a car, right? It doesn't just constantly degrade, it can heal and improve. But doing a lot of volume, close to failure, beyond failure, it can be tough to recover from. Now something I experienced during the diet, because you just have less energy and you're in a more fragile state and so... It actually taught me a lot about managing fatigue and being more, I guess, strategic with my efforts because yeah, you can take every set to failure, you know, do every set like it's your last, but it's not, it's,

[Bryan]: 40:46

Mm-hmm.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 40:46

it's not your last set, hopefully. And so I think, um, going forward, I'll probably be a little bit more strategic. It'll still be very hard training. Um, but. Looking at a lot of lifters, I think you probably have a certain amount of time where you can train ridiculously hard because guys who have been in the game like 15 years, 20 years, often they've picked up aches and pains and niggles and injuries that they have to work around. That's something I see very, very often. And I'm not so blind that I think I'm immune to these issues, right? I'm human. And so I... Ideally would avoid these issues. And often that comes through exercise selection. You know, I don't really want to spend most of my time. Brian, you talked about being just strapped onto a barbell or a pull-up bar or something just locked in place. That, that catches up to you. Right. So incorporating rings or something is a little bit more joint friendly. Uh, I think is a good idea. More exercise variation is also a good idea. Kind of a motor unit moron. So I need a lot of time with a movement to really drive that progression. But at the same time, you know, if you're Smith machine hack squats are progressing well, and it's been three or four months, but your knees are kind of talking to you. I think you're better off swapping it out. Um, and so

[Bryan]: 42:20

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 42:20

sometimes good movements, they just have expiration dates. And, you know, if you push those too hard for too long, eventually a lot of these movements do catch up to you. And so a

[Bryan]: 42:32

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 42:32

lot of it is, it is instinctual. Like training is an art just as much as a science. No matter how much people try to, you know, cite, stice and stuff, you still have to go in there and kind of go by feel. And so I still keep up with the literature, excuse me. And you know, I subscribed to Mass and you know, so a nerd at heart so I do keep up with that. But I try to marry it with the bro side as well.

[Bryan]: 43:05

How did your intensity and volume change when you were dieting? Because you said that you were dealing with some fatigue issues and you learned a lot through that process. So what did change in the stages of the dieting and your training?

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 43:18

So initially nothing changed at all. Going from wherever I was at the start, 22, 23, 21% body fat, down to like 12, I felt fantastic. I felt great. Strength was actually going up, especially on movements like RDLs that I was reintroducing. So I didn't have to decrease volume at all. If anything, my work capacity went up very slightly, just because... I mean, how it is like you have less body to move and you're just generally better shape because I was doing more cardio, et cetera. But below somewhere around that 10 to 12 mark, it kind of flips. And then your recovery capacity is what gets impacted first. So I could keep doing the work, I just couldn't recover. So maybe on an incline press one week, I would do 9876. I'm like, great, awesome. And I come back three days later and the first set I would get eight reps. I'd be like, what the hell? That, you know, that was the second. So that doesn't even make sense. Cause when you're bulking, you're headed in the opposite direction. So you come back three days later. So you get 10 reps or something, you know, so you're kind of, you have momentum in the wrong direction. And it's, this is where I think, you know, you notice, okay, well, Four sets was too many. If I did three, then I could at least maintain performance. Cause that's really what you're hoping to do when you're going below 10 or 12% body fat, at least for me. I mean, a victory is when you repeated the same performance as the last week, essentially. And then eventually you're not even doing that. You know, you're seeing your reps go down, the weights go down, and there's really not much you can do. And... It's like you're kind of caught between two places. Because if you do too many sets, your performance goes down even more. But if you don't do enough sets, well then it's less stimulus. And so

[Bryan]: 45:21

Hmm.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 45:21

it's like you have, you don't wanna have too much fatigue, but you also need a little bit of stimulus to at least try to maintain. Like if I go from four sets in the off season, off season, to one set, I mean, one set of failure, maybe I'm like an RDL, it could work. maybe, but on like a rear delt raise or something, one set,

[Bryan]: 45:44

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 45:45

especially for me, it's just not enough. Like it's just, it's just not enough. But then you also can't do your normal amount of work. So

[Bryan]: 45:54

Mm-hmm.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 45:54

I guess your MRV is really low and your MEV might actually have to be high because you're in that dieted state. retain muscle, your minimum effective volume, might actually be higher

[Bryan]: 46:15

And

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 46:15

than what you can do.

[Bryan]: 46:17

it's definitely higher than what it would be if you were bulking just because you have less nutrition coming in to support it.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 46:23

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 46:23

So yeah, I would agree with that. I definitely don't think that MEV climbs a whole ton. And I think that I tend to rely on the literature about maintenance volume being much lower than then gaining volume, but then of course you have to account for the fact that you're in a deficit and so the whole thing gets super

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 46:41

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 46:41

complicated. But I do think in some ways this kind of goes into the separation of short and length and movements how you reference that like you know RDLs you could maybe get away with one set but rear delt raises like man you do one set of those like nothing actually feels like it's happening right. Aaron can we get into the length and stuff real quick is that cool?

[Aaron Straker]: 47:01

Yeah, I think that's next, let's do it.

[Bryan]: 47:03

All right, cool. So as I'm sure you know, Jeff, there are the two. dichotomous approaches to the way that people tend to implement lengthened partials. And so you and I have been implementing it in a way of going past failure, would be the way that that's described in the research. So we take something like a row or a pull down to the point where we just can't get full reps anymore. And then we just continue accumulating range of motion as we go. And those would be, you know, lengthen partials after failure. And then the, I guess you would call it the evidence-based way of doing it. them and I have an issue with that only because I feel like it's evidence-based only because that's the only way it's been studied. Our way might be evidence-based if they just studied it that way, but that's neither here nor there. So the other way of doing lengthened partials is to... pre-establish a range of motion where you're like this is 50% or 60% of the range of motion and I'm just gonna use this like kind of somewhat arbitrary stopping point for all my sets and then in doing so I can now use RIR I can if I so desire I know you're not a big RIR guy but I could use RIR if I wanted to with this like pre-established range of motion instead of going to failure and then continuing to accumulate reps. So what are your thoughts on those two different models? And have you used the evidence-based way, or do you primarily stick with the past failure approach?

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 48:34

So I think the evidence-based way is probably just easier to study because you're locked into that range of motion. And I mean, realistically, yeah, I don't see how people would do it, I guess, our way. And it's just there's a lot of moving pieces and it's not as exact. I mean, during a set, what do you get out your protractor and like measure the joint? I just it's not as practical for sure. Um, and so I think that, and I, I've been pretty hard on exercise science for sure. Uh, in some videos, maybe excessively so, but I think a lot of these protocols, they're not real exercises that people would do. They're, they're just purely trying to compare two parts of the range of motion. Um, so sometimes I'll get sent a study and someone will be like, should I do this plan? It's not a plan. Like it's not, you know what I mean? It's not, it's just something that they're trying to, they're trying to isolate all the variables except for what they're trying to study. And so I haven't even thought about restricting myself to a fixed range of motion because- I want to get as much range of motion as I can, because that's where the effort comes from. And the effort is what activates the motor units, which trains them, which grows them. And so I think sometimes proximity to failure, it's only because proximity to failure is difficult. And it's difficult, so it requires a lot of effort, which activates a lot of motor units. And so sometimes I see people fail, but I know they didn't train the muscle. You see people fail. It's like, it's technical failure or volitional failure. And their volition was, well, they failed very easily. Like it looked, it was very graceful fail that way. And so sometimes people hit failure, but they didn't actually, I can tell, I can just tell that they did not get very much out of that set. This is where I think a lot of the volume literature You see like super high volumes, 45 sets per week on quads. I don't know about you guys. I'm a high volume guy, but 45 sets per week on quads.

[Bryan]: 51:04

Heh heh heh.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 51:06

Too

[Bryan]: 51:06

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 51:06

failure, cause these studies are too failure. 45 sets per week for quads, too failure. I'm not growing from that.

[Bryan]: 51:16

No, you're just crippling. You're just gonna walk

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 51:17

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 51:17

around with like crutches all day.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 51:20

Diet or no diet, no matter how much food or sleep or whatever. And this is where I think science has been misapplied. These people see a study and they're like, oh, volume. And I was on that camp. Back in like 2019, I was chasing volume, but I was also losing all the other variables. So I was losing my effort per set. I was losing my technique. I was losing my proximity to failure. I was just chasing that number in the log book. And a lot of people fell into this trap. because they didn't really understand what the study was. They didn't really understand, you know, how, what the study was trying to do. And so, you know, I've fallen into that trap before. And so sometimes when I see a study now, I don't actually directly apply the findings. I sort of think about it and then apply it to what I'm already doing. and make small tweaks and changes. Because I think it's just too easy to see a study and be like, boom, this is what I should do. Whereas I think it's maybe a little bit better to take what you have. And this is, I guess, this is where it's, where our way, the length and partial beyond failure, you're using the mechanism that the study finds, but you're also doing it in a reasonable way. I would never do a row where. I am only doing that length of part, even if I could get more range of motion, because that more range of motion is where all the effort is. Just

[Bryan]: 52:54

Mmm.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 52:54

chilling in that length and position with no effort, I don't really see that being really productive for advanced lifters. Maybe beginners.

[Bryan]: 53:03

Well, eventually you would fail to get that range of motion, right? Like if

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 53:06

Eventually

[Bryan]: 53:06

you just

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 53:06

you would

[Bryan]: 53:06

stayed

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 53:06

fail.

[Bryan]: 53:06

in that range of motion, you could fail that specific range of motion.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 53:10

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 53:11

So I in theory, like you would get to the same place, maybe. But it is interesting, because I feel like the new meta regression that just came out from Zach Robinson and the data driven guys, in some ways, like, without directly validating the way that we've been performing partials, I think in some ways it does justify it as, hey, look, there's this curve that shows that as you get to failure and beyond failure, stimulus continues to increase. And I think that prior to that coming out, there was this whole sect of like, the evidence-based admirals that were like, well, if

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 53:47

to

[Bryan]: 53:47

you

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 53:48

reference.

[Bryan]: 53:48

use RIR, it's just as good as going to failure. So why would you? go past failure, right? There's too much fatigue, blah, blah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 53:55

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 53:56

Now we have this meta-aggression seems to shine light on this idea that going past failure is potentially even more stimulative exponentially, non-linearly. So anyway, I think that that's interesting and kind of new evidence into it. And you're right that no one's really gonna study them the way that we do them because of just the objectivity of it. But yeah, I mean, that's an interesting response. And like I tend to agree, especially on these short overload movements, it just makes more sense to go to failure and then just keep accruing range of motion. So then in theory, you're also training at all the different muscle lengths. So if you just stop range of motion at 50 or 60%, then that is your muscle length versus like going down to 70%, 60%, 40%, 30%, 20%, 10%. You're getting all the different ranges of the motion.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 54:41

Yeah, 100%. And I actually think that there is value in the shortened position. I think sometimes people go too far with the lengthened stuff where it's only lengthened. And I do think you're missing something. Like there's still value in the contracted position and with contraction, quote unquote, focused exercises. I was doing a spider curl the other day. So you're lying, just for viewers, you're lying with your chest on a bench. and you're curling up and it's most difficult in the contracted position by far. Or it's almost like the opposite of a preacher girl in some ways. And someone messaged me and they're like, why are you doing that? It's like, what do you mean why am I doing that? Well, it's not lengthened bias. I'm like, yeah, well, it's still training the biceps. Like it's still

[Bryan]: 55:30

It's

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 55:30

useful.

[Bryan]: 55:30

still a great movement, yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 55:31

Yeah, and I think you want to be able to. have synergy within your training for various movements. So I have some movements that are length and biased, some that are short biased. I tend to be able to do more volume, as you said before, on shortened biased movements, probably less muscle damage, you know, on something like a hamstring curl. I can do way more volume than an RDO. I mean, I don't know an exact number, but it's probably like three or four times the volume,

[Bryan]: 56:01

I agree,

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 56:02

maybe even

[Bryan]: 56:02

yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 56:02

more. And so I do think maybe you know, now you're getting into, are you triggering muscle growth through different pathways or mechanisms? Could one be more sarcoplasmic? Is one more from metabolic fatigue? You know, the jury's kind of still out on those to a certain extent. Um, but I do think that the body can adapt to length and partials for sure. Um, but the body can adapt to a lot. And I think having multiple exercises and, you know, different rep ranges You know, some rep ranges are going to be more suitable for lengthen. Some are going to be more suitable for shortened, et cetera. And so, you know, this is where the programming can get, it can get dense. It can get complicated for sure. You know, with powerlifting training, it's complicated over time. So your progression is where the complexity is. But for hypertrophy, it's more just you have so many different muscle groups and areas to train, especially if you're trying to maximize muscle across your entire body. neck, your forearms, your calves, your abs, like all these little areas. You know, some people train their hip flexors now, that kind of stuff. If you're your doctors, all these little areas, you have to fit these into your program, if they're just sort of sprinkle them in, and then you have to think about, okay, well, if I have an RDL here, that's going to take some time to recover from. And so you have to have all these moving parts kind of just fitting together. And that's where

[Bryan]: 57:29

Mm-hmm.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 57:30

it's, it is an interesting puzzle. to try to put together.

[Bryan]: 57:34

Do you try to sequence it all by going short and then lengthen? Like you would do spider curls and then face away curls or incline curls or something along those lines? Or does that not really go into your programming philosophy?

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 57:49

I tend to look at things in a more risk averse manner than I used to. I actually tore my QL back in February, 2022. So

[Bryan]: 58:00

We talked about this on DM, I

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 58:02

yeah,

[Bryan]: 58:02

think, yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 58:03

that was rough. It took like almost a year to really get back into things back, no pun intended. But it's, you know, so nowadays I tend to look at like almost like the John Meadows way of like pre-exhausting. So, you know, you do hamstring curls before squats. It just makes sense. It just feels good. It feels

[Bryan]: 58:25

Mm-hmm.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 58:25

really, really good. And so sometimes I'll do shortened bias stuff before lengthened, just because shortened bias tends to be better for blood flow, I found. And it's just

[Bryan]: 58:35

It

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 58:35

a

[Bryan]: 58:35

warms

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 58:35

better

[Bryan]: 58:35

it

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 58:35

warmup.

[Bryan]: 58:35

up. Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 58:36

Yeah, exactly. It just gets everything moving well. You're not gonna tear your biceps on a spider curl, even if you try it. It's just, I don't see how, if you do, congratulations.

[Bryan]: 58:47

No tension at length, yeah exactly, like how you gonna do

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 58:49

Uh,

[Bryan]: 58:49

that?

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 58:49

you know, yeah, like maybe if you're like slamming issues, yeah. Um, whereas a preacher curl, I mean, I think that's one of those movements where it's like maybe higher reps are a good idea. Don't max out on preacher curls. Maybe you guys have seen that video of the guy who he had this homemade preacher and it was not even like a normal preacher bench. It was like very horizontal.

[Bryan]: 59:11

Vertical

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 59:12

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 59:13

or oh,

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 59:13

Or,

[Bryan]: 59:13

okay.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 59:14

or horizontal. Yeah. And so it was, you know, if you have a fairly vertical bench, I think it's a decent movement. But if it, the more horizontal it is, just

[Bryan]: 59:27

more

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 59:27

the

[Bryan]: 59:27

pressures

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 59:27

more

[Bryan]: 59:28

on there.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 59:28

like super, super lengthened to the point

[Aaron Straker]: 59:31

Longer

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 59:31

where I think

[Aaron Straker]: 59:31

that

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 59:31

at

[Aaron Straker]: 59:31

moment

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 59:31

that point,

[Aaron Straker]: 59:32

arm gets.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 59:33

yeah, yeah. And so I probably wouldn't even do that movement at all, to be honest. But if I have a more lengthened bias movement, especially one that locks you into that position because with like an incline dumbbell curl, your shoulders can move.

[Bryan]: 59:48

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 59:49

And so I don't really see that being a risk for the, for the elbow, for the biceps, um, but with a preacher curl, good movement, like the risks are still relatively low, right? I'm not trying to fear monger, but if I'm programming, I would probably have a very good warmup and have it be higher reps, you know, and maybe even coach someone to not fully, fully extend. at the very, very bottom. Cause I don't even know how much you're getting out of that. It doesn't even feel like biceps. It feels like, I don't know, just all tendon and

[Bryan]: 1:00:23

yeah

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:00:24

soul

[Bryan]: 1:00:24

ligamenty

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:00:24

and just

[Bryan]: 1:00:24

yeah

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:00:24

awful. Yeah.

[Bryan]: 1:00:27

no i agree completely with that yeah cool good stuff where we going straker

[Aaron Straker]: 1:00:32

All right, cool, so I know this is something you kind of don't like to talk about, but I do think that there's value in it. So I know

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:00:41

I'm gonna

[Aaron Straker]: 1:00:41

you

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:00:41

go.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:00:42

are very caught up, not of any of your own doing, I mean, I guess technically, in the like, natty or not crowd, right? People are coming after you like hard about it. And I kind of just wanted to speak about it from a larger kind of standpoint. I know you and I have kind of had some jokes in the DM about you shared one. that some dude was like, if you put a gun to my head right now and asked if you know, GVS was Natty, I'd say, you know, no, you're not Natty. And I was like, this is mind blowing because you would

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:01:11

die.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:12

be dead. You literally would be dead. And the thing is funny is like when you are a little bit, I would say more integrated into like the larger bodybuilding kind of scene at large, like many can never be 100% accurate. Like many of them, there's very science right Jeff can you share how tall you are with us please

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:01:37

So six feet, 1.8

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:38

six foot okay

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:01:39

meters.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:40

great if you were like five foot seven in your in your you know lean phase you're at like you know 192 I'd start questioning things a little

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:01:51

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:51

bit I don't know that's starting to get outside of you know the realms of

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:01:55

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:56

things if and what I have found is that once you start really pushing into the like 200s and being lean like things start getting a little bit questionable. There are people out there like a there's a guy Sam Sam.

[Bryan]: 1:02:14

Okunola.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:02:15

Yes.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:02:15

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:02:16

But he was like a heavyweight. He won like heavyweight natural worlds in like 2017 2018 or something like he was on stage at like 196 pounds or something. Like there's gonna be your outliers. But I think like. What I really wanted to talk about this, especially if there's any listeners out there, where do you think people get these limited mindsets from that people that have, like the three of us, right? Attainable physiques, not in two years, three years. I mean, Jeff, you've done, or Jeffrey, you've done it great in eight, Brian and I are at 20 plus. But it's still attainable. But where do you think that some of these people, their limiting beliefs set in decent physique is automatically gear use.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:03:04

Yeah, I think a lot of it is just echo chambers. Like Reddit is, I mean, that's renowned

[Aaron Straker]: 1:03:10

Bad.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:03:11

for, yeah, like you'll get someone who's been lifting for like a couple years. I actually posted a video, this guy sent me this thread where people were accusing him of taking drugs. And to be fair, he had really, really good dealt genetics. Like just that capped look, just the wide clavicles. Right. Just like, I don't really have them, but some people, they're just, they're just built for it. Right. Um, and so you can kind of have an eye for it. Sometimes you can say, okay, well, this guy's big, but it's cause it's frame. Right. Like they've, they've filled out their frame really, really well. Um, and so, you know, I, I thought he was natural. His results were good, but they weren't mind blowing. And there were so many comments on Reddit where it's like, There's no way this is natural possible naturally. Why are you lying to us? And it's such a weird feeling getting an accusation because it's a compliment in some ways. They're complimenting your physique but they're insulting your character, right? So they're saying you're a lying sack of shit but you look really good, you know? And so it's a mixed feeling. And so it kind of depends on who it is. If it's some random person on the internet I don't actually care. what they think. And so it's like more flattering than anything. But if someone who I respected, you know, another content creator in the industry, if they came out and said, oh, I don't think Jeffrey Verdi's skillful, just natural, that would be more of like, oh, well, that kind of sucks. Like that would be more that feeling. And then also it's kind of sad because people do have these limiting beliefs. I think a lot of the natty or nots, the people who make them, often they just assume that the bar is really low. And I would say the most negative comments I've gotten are from gear users who couldn't actually get impressive results. So guys who started taking drugs, usually pretty early, and they kind of still look like shit. You guys have probably seen them before. Guys who maybe their diet is not in order. They didn't actually learn about training because they didn't need to because they hopped on drugs really early. And they're like, their idea of what is possible naturally is super low because they're caught up in this drug culture and it is a culture. Right. Like, you know, you go to the forums, you watch these videos. People say like a day natty is a day wasted. Really? Like that's, that's sort of the drug culture, right? Where they think pharma does everything. Like training is sort of an afterthought. It's just something you do after you take the drugs. There are people like this who are just like, You ask them about training, they have no clue, but man, they hammer off a bunch of the drugs that they're taking, you know, they're popping insulin and all bunch of growth hormone and everything, liver kicking it up. And, you know, they've put drugs on a pedestal. And so when they see someone who looks better than them, well, they can't accept that that's possible naturally, because

[Bryan]: 1:06:24

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:06:25

that's a tougher pill to swallow than the actual steroids that they took. you know so it's um and it's hard to change people's mind because once they think you're juicing it up there's not much you can say to i mean this happened a few times where someone's like oh actually i look through your progression and it looks actually possible i'm sorry i'm like wow that that's happened once that's happened once bless me um that's happened once so it's usually it's like people just assume you're guilty you know, flexing in the good lighting, et cetera, and they don't actually know what is possible naturally. And, you know, going back to what you said, there are outliers, but they're not way out there. It's not like you go to WNBF and it's like, 190, 195, 190, 185, 195, 250, like there's one guy out there fucking Roddy Kofi, and I was like, ah, fuck you all, I'm doing a while, it's just, no, like that does, I mean, just. You see outliers, but it's like they're five pounds heavier. Maybe.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:07:35

That's,

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:07:36

Might be free

[Aaron Straker]: 1:07:36

that's.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:07:36

pop. You know.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:07:37

That's such a such a good way. And I think a really good way we can kind of like bow this one up, because I know Brian, you're five foot 10, correct? All right, I'm five foot 11. So here we go, five foot 10, five foot 11, six foot. At a lean body, you know, composition, let's say 10%, right? Because we know we're not gonna ever be like super, super spot on 10%, maybe nine, something like that. You're gonna be probably high 180s, mid 180s to lower end of the 190s, right? That is... most people are probably going to find themselves in that grouping with like a pretty decent well-developed physique over you know probably a decade plus. Some of the best in the world you know who are on those natural pro stages they probably can get maybe another 10 pounds heavier something like that but past but that is like the outlier probably right past that are you going to see someone you know six foot and under shredded on stage at 215. Probably not. You know,

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:08:38

Oh,

[Aaron Straker]: 1:08:38

never

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:08:38

Ronnie,

[Aaron Straker]: 1:08:38

say never.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:08:39

that's the thing.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:08:40

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:08:40

Like the Ronnie example, this is where, you know, you think about outliers and Ronnie is, I mean, he's the goat, he's the enhanced goat. And so you think about what would he be naturally? Right. He was, what was he on stage enhanced? Like 300, 290, something ridiculous. Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:08:57

Something stupid.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:08:59

And so I think he was like 215 at 511, I want to say on stage. And. that sounds ridiculous. And if you see him, your first thought is, well, of course that's enhanced. Like if it wasn't Ronnie, if it was just someone else's face, stapled to Ronnie's body, kind of a morbid example, you'd be like, oh, that's enhanced. Like, oh, he's enhanced and he's genetically gifted, right? In terms of his proportions, muscles, everything. But yeah, there might be people out there who are just like six standard deviations out there.

[Bryan]: 1:09:34

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:09:35

And then, Like I think that one in a million, one in many, many million type of physique. Yeah. It would probably be about two 15. Cause you know, what does every standard deviation going to be five pounds, 10 pounds of muscle? I don't know. We could probably sort it out, but I think Ronnie was natural. You know, at two 15, it's just that, you know, there's no way to tell a hundred percent for sure, but that's, that's probably where about it would be, you know, just.

[Bryan]: 1:10:07

I think

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:10:07

Stop letting it out.

[Bryan]: 1:10:09

it's also interesting when you look at the fact that there's so many professional athletes out there that are massive jacked people like you look at like a Saquon Barkley or something like a Michael Vick or something like that and these guys didn't choose physique sport as their sport. They chose football. And

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:10:24

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 1:10:24

so like, like imagine if they decided like like Saquon Barkley's like, yeah, I'm done with this. I'm gonna go do natural bodybuilding or something.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:10:32

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 1:10:32

That

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:10:32

Oh

[Bryan]: 1:10:32

dude

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:10:32

yeah.

[Bryan]: 1:10:33

would be well over 200 pounds on stage at five nine or whatever he is.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:10:37

Yeah, Greg Knuckles actually had a Stronger by Science episode where it was super fascinating and Greg estimated that should the NFL all fully dedicate themselves to bodybuilding, enhanced bodybuilding, two-thirds of the Olympia would be football players.

[Bryan]: 1:10:56

Yeah,

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:10:57

Which, I mean,

[Bryan]: 1:10:57

exactly.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:10:58

it makes sense. I mean, there was one guy who was like, yeah, I don't train my arms because my arms get so big that I can't hold a football anymore. someone's like,

[Bryan]: 1:11:07

So

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:11:07

no, that's

[Bryan]: 1:11:07

good.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:11:07

bullshit. And so he started training his arms and he put on like three inches on his arms in a few months, which is, and you know, maybe there's drugs in the NFL as well. So it's a little bit of confounding factor,

[Bryan]: 1:11:18

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:11:18

but yeah, there's no doubt that, I mean, bodybuilding is still a fairly niche sport. And so the pool is just, is not as big. And so, yeah, there are gonna be some guys who are, they have the potential to be just to look enhanced. But that's just our preconception of what is possible naturally. And some people's preconceptions are shifted to the point where it's like an average dedicated physique is clearly enhanced. Or someone who's

[Aaron Straker]: 1:11:52

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:11:52

been lifting two years and did pretty well is obviously enhanced. Like if you have a little bit of abs and a little bit of delts, well now you're juicy. So yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:12:04

Really, really good way to cover that. I have one more thing before we wrap up. If that's

[Bryan]: 1:12:08

Aaron,

[Aaron Straker]: 1:12:08

cool.

[Bryan]: 1:12:09

I gotta go. I gotta bounce if you guys

[Aaron Straker]: 1:12:11

Okay.

[Bryan]: 1:12:11

want to continue this.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:12:12

Yeah,

[Bryan]: 1:12:12

Jeffrey,

[Aaron Straker]: 1:12:12

well.

[Bryan]: 1:12:12

thank you so much for coming on.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:12:14

Yeah, my foot.

[Bryan]: 1:12:15

I'll

[Aaron Straker]: 1:12:16

Later,

[Bryan]: 1:12:16

leave

[Aaron Straker]: 1:12:16

Brian.

[Bryan]: 1:12:16

this up, Aaron.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:12:19

So the last question I have is, and this is something I see from you, Jeffrey, you're. filming a lot of your sets in the gym, you're filming like a lot of like your cardio and different things, what would you say to like people who you know are want to enter the space are interested but just are having that kind of the attention in the gym or a self conscious sort of thing that makes it harder for them and maybe that something you can elaborate on is because you are I would imagine there's not that many other like Americans or lack of a better term like white people in China. You're always like a face in the crowd or sorry, standing out from the crowd sort of thing. So do you think that has potentially made it a little bit easier because probably people are always looking at you anyway?

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:13:03

Yeah, probably. Like I'm sort of naturally more introverted and more shy. Like that's my just natural tendency. But yeah, I've definitely gotten used to getting stared at, getting my picture taken, videoed in public and stuff like that. And lifting is sort of just added to that, I guess.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:13:30

Yeah.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:13:31

Because... there's not that much of a lifting culture here in China. And so I might legitimately be like the biggest person some people have ever seen if I'm just walking around, which sounds weird, but I guess it's possible. And so, yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm just used to getting looked, getting stared at. And I actually didn't even consider it in the gym. Like people might be staring at me. because I am so involved in the set that I don't notice. I legitimately don't notice. Like when someone would message me and they'd say like, oh, what do you do if people stare at you? I don't know. I just, I don't know. They maybe, sometimes I'll notice it after if I filmed it and then I watch it back after I'm like, oh wow. Like that, okay, everyone was, all right. But during the set, I just, I have no idea. It doesn't even go through my mind. Like I don't even, I'm somewhere else. I'm not there. You know, so it's not something that I haven't really had to think about it very much. And I would say, realize that most people don't actually care. They might stare, but they're not, I mean, it's just, it's something around them, right? People stare at walls. People stare at clocks. People, you know, people stare at hot chicks. Like, it's just, you know, you're nearby, you're doing something unusual, and they're looking at you. But. Like that's not gonna stop me from getting to my goals or attacking a set. So yeah, I guess if maybe someone is younger, maybe more self-conscious, but realize that most people don't care. They don't actually, you know, especially if you're just getting into the gym and you're like, oh man, what are people judging you? They're probably not. Like you're not the main character. Like there's probably, they, you know, they don't actually care, right? And if it seems like they care, that's probably in your own head as well. Right. So it's, it's amazing what the mind can kind of conjure up. Right. We're all just, what is this person thinking? Oh, they must think I'm an asshole. They're up. They're not thinking of you. Like, even though they look in your direction, they're probably zoning out or they're tired or, you know, so it's, I think it's, it's helpful to realize that. You know, if you, for example, like one time in the cafeteria when I was in I think it was in high school, I dropped my food on the floor in the cafeteria. It's like, oh my God, it's mortifying, right? Like that's the kind of thing that destroys a young man's future. And, but if that happened now, like when I was dieting, I got kind of clumsy. Like my hand-eye coordination was not quite where it should be. And so I was buying some blueberries and I dropped them on the floor and they scattered everywhere. And you know. 10 years ago that would have set my heart rate up. I just picked them up. I just picked them up, I put them in the thing, I paid for them and then I just threw them away. And I just, I took care of business. And then people looked at me, they're almost looking at how you react. They're not looking at what happened. They're looking at, oh, is this guy like, oh, he's freaking out, that's interesting. But if you just handle your shit, they respect you more. Like, oh wow, this thing happened that would have caused most people to be embarrassed. but he just picked them all up and then he paid for them and then he probably ate them. What a disgusting prick. No, but I think just having that confidence that builds up slowly over time is something that is very helpful. And just realizing that it does take time. Most 20 year olds that seem confident, yeah, they seem confident, right? But they're not actually because they haven't done much. So, you know, just realize that it takes time and you have to actually do a lot of things to have that confidence be real.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:17:38

So, so, so well said. So that's all I have, or that's all we have I should say. I just want to say thank you for joining us here. But before we hop off, can you please plug where people can find more from you? I know you have a couple really well written ebooks. I think one of the ebooks is going to be the title of the episode that we're going to put out because I think it's such a cool title. But just share where people can find more of you, please.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:18:02

Okay, so, uh, Verity Fit would be the books. So I have three books, a book on ring training, uh, and then two books on training and I'll be writing a book on nutrition, um, hopefully by the end of this year, it's going to be a big project. So, um, we'll see that's, that's a big one because I feel like with training, you don't really have to reference stuff all that much, but with nutrition. Yeah. You kind of have to cite your shit. So that'll be a big. big, big project. So yeah, Verity Fit for those, and then just my name, Jeffrey Bidderscofield, on Instagram and YouTubes.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:18:41

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us, having a great conversation with Brian and I. I'm sure Brian and I will continue to converse with you periodically on Instagram. Again, thank you for joining us.

[Geoffrey Schofield]: 1:18:53

And thank you very much.