What's up guys? Happy Tuesday. Welcome back to eat, train, prosper. Today is episode 154. We are calling this episode our current goals in training. So it's been some time since Brian and I just kind of checked in and shared what some of our goals are in those sorts of things. And, and we know that from messages that we receive from some of the listeners and those sorts of things that there's a, at least a moderate interest in what we have personally going on with our own training and nutrition. So this is a little bit of maybe a quarter. roundup sort of thing of what we're up to. As always, Brian, can you kick us off with some of the updates for this episode, please? So I actually think we should just push updates into the episode because the updates are a large part of kind of what's going on with me and my goals and my training and all that sort of stuff. So I guess the only proper update I have would just be that that Paragon strength cycle that I mentioned last week is starting on May 27th. So as I said last week, we... always have two options during strength cycles now because about 30 % of our members prefer not to do strength cycles. So we have a strength cycle option and then we have a hypertrophy option that uses some kind of more strength based movements. So it's one of the things I really think is important in training, at least to keep things novel for people who find that important. And there's certainly a type of person that needs. a bit of novelty in their training every now and then and to not always kind of be doing the same type of movements over and over is when you do a strength cycle, you inherently get different movements. You end up doing a little bit more barbell work. You end up doing kind of more of that like kind of low rep stuff where some of the machines in hypertrophy training are not conducive to doing strength type work on them. Some of them are, some of them are not. And so one of the things we like to do with our strength cycles is even if people want to do hypertrophy, they sure, they can go ahead and use the hack squats and the leg press and stuff like that. Or you can do hypertrophy rep ranges but use more strength -based movements. And so in our programming, that's one of the things we try to encourage. It's not necessary, we provide options. But if you're doing a strength cycle, that's novelty in itself. If you're doing a hypertrophy cycle with some different movements, there's also some novelty. So yeah, we just try to create a strength cycle that caters to as many people as possible to get the best results that we can in. what is a six or seven week strength cycle. So it's not a huge part of our year, but when they come around, it's always fun. People get to post their PRs and stuff like that and show that, hey, high birth rate training actually does translate to strength. And so that's one of the things I see all the time is people are like, well, how am I supposed to get stronger at deadlifts so I don't deadlift? And like, just trust the process, keep doing your RDLs and then voila, we get to the strength cycle and people are PRing their deadlift. So. Hypertrophy is great for strength. Strength has some benefits for hypertrophy. And I think that if you were to embark on our strength cycle here at Paragon starting May 27th, you can experience kind of some of the ways that I program that and some of the things that you might get out of it. Beyond that, really most of my updates here are gonna be encapsulated in my training and my goals right now. So do you have any updates before we kind of jump into your situation as well, Aaron? I do actually, and we always make this joke about how we're very poor at marketing on this podcast that we put out. And like once every other month, you know, we kind of remember we have been I know I've talked about this on the podcast before a project that I have with Jackson Piaz called the online coaching upgrade. We've been making some revisions and things in the background to to make it a just much more conducive model for for the coaches who are interested. So we've we've. Evergreen, the course and platform, and you can join it at any time, which just works out a lot better for people who may not be able to join in how we had previously set it up, like we launch it four times per year. So that's open, you can join any time. We actually also significantly reduced the cost. There is no better value to cost. course on the market that provides what we do. And we are very, very confident in that statement. So if you are a coach out there who is looking to turn your kind of burgeoning nutrition coaching business into a professional operation, I would like to learn from two people who do it professionally at a high level scale with high integrity that consistently deliver quality results. Have a look at the online coaching upgrade. If you have any questions, you can ask me on Instagram or email the. email, sorry, not the email, onlinecoachingupgrade .gmail .com or just visit the website, onlinecoachingupgrade.com and everything that is in the course is explicitly laid out on that website for you. Very cool, that's awesome, man. Yeah, it's been it's been a fun project, especially now that it's like built. We built it pretty much over the last like, I mean, almost two years at this point, which is kind of wild to say. But we put a very, very solid amount of coaches through it last year, made some improvements, released a training program builder for it this year, which was like a massive, massive improvement to it. I'm very, very stoked about what we have together there. Again, at the price point and the coaches that have come through and the feedback we've gotten. It's just a very good, like, feel good business that we have. Yeah, I've heard nothing but positive comments from people about it and I can't believe that it's been two years. That's wild. I mean, just to think that time goes that quickly. years, I think it was July that we kind of hatched the idea and then started building it in the background, but about a year and a half since we launched. Very cool. And then when is the plan still for the gym in Bali to go active in the summer of 25? I mean, fucking hell, will I be upset if that's when it goes live? It's it We're just at the mercy of the construction and you just don't know, you know, they give you an estimate but it's never accurate and it's just different how things are done and Things are progressing. We just have a cool mile. So I'm like the the walls are going in now on the second floor, which is like really really cool. I but I just have no idea, right? We're hoping by the end of the year, but potentially that could be like March or something like that. I just really can't say a date until we're actually significantly closer. But what I'm selfishly very, very excited for is once the floor is in on the upper floor, on the upper level, because the gym is on the second story, once the floor is in and abound, I think July -ish we'll start getting some of our equipment shipments. So once we can have a private training gym, that's what I'm excited for, admittedly selfishly, but can go there and train and just have it private gym style with friends that we invite or whatever. That's what I'm most excited for. Yeah. on the first floor? First floor is two locker rooms, obviously like a chill kind of hangout area with like a little bit of a cafe. And then the recovery center in the back, which is going to have massive sauna, hot tub, steam room, cold plunge, all in the back there. Yeah. And then a pool on the, on the, on the behind that. Yeah. Sweet, love that. Yep. Yeah, that's it for personal kind of stuff before we dive into the meat and potatoes. Yeah, so the episode is our goals and our training. And the notion of goals is one that I think expands beyond training itself. And so, the first thing I wanna talk about, and this probably could have gone into updates as well, but it is a goal of mine too, is I started a new Instagram page. And it's called a lifter's life story. about as simple and obvious as you could go. But I have long been considering writing a book of sorts, an autobiography. I don't want it to sound egotistical as if I feel like I have so much to say and teach people, because I'm sure that that's going to grow over time. I always feel like there's a point later in life where you have a lot more to disseminate. in your message than you do earlier in life. And I feel like I'm at that kind of middle stage. Like it always kind of, it's always kind of weird to me when you get a guy who's like in their late twenties that writes an autobiography or something like that. And I'm like, yeah, I feel like there's probably a lot more to learn that you're going to look back on it and feel like, you know, you could have included in there. And so I feel like at 40, I'm at this point where I definitely have a lot of information to disseminate. And I think it would be helpful to people, but I also don't want to come across egotistical in that I think that. you know, this is some personal growth page that's really going to change people's lives. It's more about me wanting to tell my story. And so given the current state of my life where I feel like I just, with two kids and businesses to run and all these things, plus my current athletic goals, I didn't want to commit to writing a book. It seemed overwhelming to me, but this idea of I could... put out daily 2200 characters on Instagram in a chronological manner really was appealing to me. And so I knew all I had to really do was just sit down and write 2200 characters to start the project. And that's what I did last week. So the idea is that I want to take everybody through my entire journey of starting. training when I was 15 years old and eventually all the way up through the current time and Kind of weave in all of the lessons that I've learned both about training and nutrition and things like that but also the way that I've grown personally as a result of my experiences with training and nutrition and Just general age, right? and so the first four posts are up there as of Right now, I'll be doing a fifth one this morning. So far, in the first four posts, I've only covered my first year and a half or two of training. How I got my start in training through, like I have a whole post covering my first summer where I got inspired to begin training, but I hadn't actually started training yet. I have a post about this fight that I was in in ninth grade that really was the ultimate catalyst for... getting me into training, along with trying to get bigger for basketball and stuff like that. Then I have a post about what my first training routine was actually like. The group of people that I found online, you know, back in 1998 -ish when I was a year into training, the internet was just getting started and I stumbled across a really helpful and productive forum online called Hard Gainer. which I'll touch on in a second, because I think the fact that it's called hard gainer is interesting given the current state of research on hard gainers. And then I have a new post planned for today that I'm going to write about when, about a year after I stuck to the hard gainer routine. And then I started program hopping and kind of some of the lessons of program hopping and how detrimental it can be, but also. that novelty piece, man, especially when you're young and the idea of the shiny object and you're a year into training and you don't really know what works, but you see all these different things and all these proclamations of what's successful. And so I'm actually really excited about this project. It seems that some people are interested as well, a decent amount of comments and response on Instagram. So yeah, I'm just excited to continue doing that. And yeah, go ahead, Aaron. I'm very surprised, I would say in a very positive way, that you can remember in like specifics about these things. And this is something I don't remember if I've ever said it to you before, but as you're talking about this, I'm like looking back on my life of training, which is, I don't know, like five or six years shorter than yours, and I just can't remember. I remember like, kind of times and events, but nowhere near to the specifics. Like if I had to write stuff about my first like three years training, you know, through high school, I just don't remember enough really. And that's, so I'm really impressed, I would say more than anything, you can remember the specifics of it so well. Yeah, thank you. It was, it was quite transformative for me. I think a lot of people, like, I don't know, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think for you, it was mostly started as part of sports teams. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. So for me, it was different. Like I did eventually realize that training was going to be super beneficial for me in, in basketball, especially being like a short white kid. But a lot of my motivation to begin was, I mean, covered in the posts if you guys want to check them out. But basically, you know, meeting this guy at the beach who had started training and watching the way that the girls responded to him after one year of training, that he was 14 or 15 years old. And just watching him from the prior year when he was like this pudgy, prepubescent kid to a year later seeing him at the beach. And he's like this transformed dude with all this confidence and you know. girls around him all the time. And as a 14 or 15 year old kid, that's obviously enticing. And then to come back to school and really want to begin training, but being so busy with sports and then having this one moment where I got in a fight with this kid in my class and we're like on the ground wrestling, literally in the middle of science class because of a comment he made about how I'm holding baby fat. He called me the Pillsbury doughboy or he was comment like, I think the comment exactly was, you think you're an athlete, but you're more like the Pillsbury doughboy. And at that point, you know, I turned around, I push him, we're on the floor, we're whatever, doing the thing. And then literally like the next day I began training. And so it's just, I have so much memory of how profound this was in my life and. than the rabbit holes that I went down from there as far as finding this website, which I do wanna talk about real quick. So the forum that I found when I went on the internet to begin searching was the Hardgainer Forum. And I was referencing how this is an interesting name for it because if you look at the research right now, there's actually an episode that just came out from Iron Culture that's called... something along the lines of like, do hard gainers need more volume or something along those lines. And if you look at the research right now, if you're considered a hard gainer, they throw more volume at you and then you're no longer a hard gainer. Basically like non -responders in training are just getting too little volume. And if you give them enough volume, they don't, they're not non -responders anymore. If you look at the hard gainer philosophy, their whole motto from the late nineties, was born in this idea that hard gainers need lower volume and need abbreviated training programs because the higher volume programs that work for responders just don't work for hard gainers. They need more food and less training, but more stimulus per session. So their training, you know, is one to three top sets of a few compound movements. The program that I outlined in my very first or in my post about my first training program, it was literally two days a week, full body. And I was like 20 rep squats, bent over rows, bench press on one day. And then the other day was deadlifts, pull-ups, bench press and overhead press. So there's three or four exercises each day. One or two top sets of each, basically everything to failure. And that is the abbreviated hard gainer approach. And it, like, if you look at this group of people online, they are really strong. Maybe not the most aesthetic, if I'm going to be honest. I think the hard gainer approach has done a really good job of creating really strong people. you know, prioritizing compound movements, lifting in the one to eight rep range for the most part, everything to failure. And a lot of these guys are really, really strong, like, you know, benching 365 for reps, deadlifting, shit, one guy on the board deadlifted 405 for 20, with a stop at the bottom each rep, you know, back squatting 405 for 20s with breathing squats, things like that. Like these were really, really strong humans and strong humans. do have a lot of mass, but I think that the goal behind this was less aesthetic driven and more strength driven. So a lot of these guys also tend to hold more body fat because body fat powers strength. And so for me, at least getting started in. training, this was a really, really great approach for me because I was a teenager. I was playing three sports in high school. I had friends. I wanted to go out and be social. Like I didn't want my life to be consumed by training, but I wanted to start training. And so this two times a week abbreviated program, 45 minutes, maybe each session was great. And I made progress on it. And it's just unique. It's different. Most people would never look at that in the current science based community and think of this as even a viable approach. but it's intrigued me kind of going back and reliving these memories. And I've even gone and found the new updated version of the Hardgainer forum, which is now on Facebook. It's off of the board that it was on in the late 90s and it's now a Facebook forum. And so I posted that I'm doing this recollection and it brought back memories and it was nostalgic. and a number of guys have reached out to me now and been like, dude, I remember you from like the late 90s on the board. Which is insane that there's guys 25 years later that are still following the same philosophy that remember me from like the two years I spent on that board in the late 90s. And it's just been really cool. I'm excited to just continue this lifter's story on Instagram, continue racking my brain for the memories that I have and taking you guys through the journey. as I kind of move away from the hard gainer approach into more typical bodybuilding approaches into the latter years of high school, into college, into the years of CrossFit that followed that, and then now to the current state. So I mean, hopefully there's 500 posts that I can make before I even get to anything that's current, you know? Yeah, that's really cool. I have to follow it, which I haven't done. I'm in this thing where, because I'm in Asia now, where Instagram will separate you from your friends. And that's one thing that kind of sucks sometimes. So I have to make sure I find that. real quick. I'm gonna mute you real quick and let you talk for a minute because I have a kid at the door. If I can figure out. Hey brace, I am in the middle of a party. OK, so kind of shifting over to some of my updates and goals. And this is something that we haven't. I believe one episode we very, very briefly kind of touched on, but I think it was a number number of weeks ago. My I'm in a build right now and I guess technically my first offseason I have, I believe I've shared, but potentially I didn't. I don't remember that I. Currently planning on doing some competing in men's physique in the NPC IFBB, depending on which country and the colloquial terms there at the end of the year in November. So that's kind of the big goal. With that goal, as of April 1st, so about five, five and a half weeks ago, my testosterone use has bridged from the TRT range into what we can only call PEDs. Ironically, I feel zero feel no different, which I was really, really surprised by, even though from a milligram dose, it is considerably higher. I feel no different. It's really, really, really wild. I think with with this kind of explorer exploration phase of my life, there's a lot of things that you I don't want to say tell yourself, but think in your formatting these off of, you know, things that you've heard from other people. And that sort of thing, and so much of it has been so different, which has been very, very interesting. And the only thing that I can say there is so much of it is a hugely individual response. And unfortunately, you may never really know until you dip your feet in those waters, should you ever decide to. I'm not saying for, not saying against, but I will share that I was someone I tried to really over -prepare myself and... and learn everything that I possibly could and what I would do in all these things beforehand, because honestly, I was very, very afraid. I'm glad I took that approach, but thus far, things have been very, very uneventful, to say the least. There. So with that, pushing my body weight up, I tied an all -time high this morning of 223.2 for this build. I have to put on approximately another eight to 10 pounds. So about 230, 232, somewhere in that range is what we kind of want to get up to so that I'm big enough to be competitive when I'm, you know, stage lean. Yeah, Brian. What are you hoping to stand on stage at if you're gonna get up to the 230 mark? 95 sorry 95 kilos would be about Yeah, like 209 yeah Yeah. Interesting. That's gonna be massive. That's about what you see the guys at that are on the Olympia stage right now on men's physique, right? I mean, the classic physique, I think has a 225 cutoff. Maybe I'm wrong on that, something like that. Okay. height. So in the thing that's really wild is how much things change. And it's, obviously in the States, it's based off like inches and stuff and then overseas it's centimeters. But going from like five foot 11, I believe to like six, about six foot or maybe like six foot and a half sort of thing, you get an extra like three and a half kilos. It's like, it's absurd the difference. It's quite substantial, you know, if you're on that like kind of cusp and I don't I've never been measured in centimeters So I don't really know where I'm at. I'll obviously go take the time and figure it out. But that's a pretty considerable kind of Delta So what's the top of the range then? Is that 209, like the top of the range that you think you're allowed to have? It might be slightly higher. Yeah, it might be like a 96 .8 or something. Okay, cool. But that's making a lot of assumptions, right? It's my first year, first off season sort of thing. Who knows? I may end up realistically in the like low 90s, you know? We'll see how things transpire. A lot becomes uncovered once you're in, you know, contest prep sort of thing. Yeah, so are you, when you say you went up to PEDs, is that just increasing the TRT dose or are you taking other substances as well? there's a second compound in now as well. And that is mostly in as a means to control the side effects, which is pretty much high estrogen from testosterone. Like you kind of reach a point where testosterone, we get aromatization into estrogen and then you get, I guess what we could call like five alpha reducing into dihydrotestosterone. If you keep turning the testosterone up, like your estrogen effectively becomes too high, that's where gyno happens, you know, in different side effects of that. There are other compounds that are typically like, you know, Masturon, Primabolin, or Equipois are the most common ones. They aromatize at a reduced rate and can act as a pseudo kind of estrogen control because they're binding to those receptors or sorry. They're binding to the androgen receptors that would compete with the testosterone, so the testosterone cannot cascade into that aromatization. So it's a way that you can push things up, but without having to bring in AIs and different things like that to control it. this is, it was in Manny Ramirez that was, he got in trouble or suspected for PED use, not because they caught him with PEDs, because they caught him with an estrogen blocker that's used by people that use PEDs or something like that. It might be similar, yeah. yeah. So that's been, I guess, like the biggest update in the thing. The thing that's really wild is, you know, I was probably like two 16 ish when I stopped when I was when I was done just with the straight 150 milligrams per week of the of the TRT. And I'm up, you know, eight pounds off of that. But I'm there's a there's a noticeable amount of body fat increase as well. And I haven't strength numbers are not like I would. I mean, maybe statistically significant, but not like 20 extra pounds. It might be like five or something like that. So it's been interesting. Yeah, I think one of the most interesting things about that is that it's a... It's a demonstration of how hypertrophy doesn't always need to be accompanied by these massive strength gains. And this has been kind of a point of contention in the space for a while is that, A, if you're not getting stronger, you're not getting bigger type thing. And I think that we've seen now over the years, over and over, that that's just not the case. And it's even more not the case when it comes to things like PED use or super physiological levels of testosterone, but I think it even expands out to the people that are naturals like myself or Dave McHoney or whatever. Like he and I have discussed how back in college, you know, we used to be benching the 110s for like incline benching the 110s for eight to 10 reps or whatever. And now I can barely even. do the hundreds for six on an incline bench, which is a significant loss. But I think that what goes under the radar is the way that you perform the movement. And so much of that is, it's like when you talk about hypertrophy, it's not just how much weight are you moving from point A to point B, it's what kind of stimulus are you getting to the muscle throughout that rep. And so in your case too, like, you could just be like, you've talked about how you're now getting like more stimulus to the muscle that you're the cramps that you're getting in your legs when you're doing a leg extension or a hack squat are so much more severe than what you were getting before that even if you're not using more weight, it's obvious that you're creating more stimulus to that muscle and that's partially starting to drive that hypertrophy. So yeah, I find that very interesting and something I'm personally very curious about as well. Yeah, it. I wish I wish I could speak more intelligently about it. And I unfortunately, it's one of those things like we're never going to get research on because a lot of the compounds and stuff are not FDA approved and there's, you know, ethics and all that stuff. But so it's really just speculation in people's opinions. But it's like very, very, very rarely would I ever have like a chest cramp or something like that post training before. I'd say it happens 80 % of the time. I'm like in the shower after training, I go to reach for something and like my peck just locks up on me. And it's very unpleasant. I do not like it whatsoever. But it's like my nutrition's the same, my hydration's the same, like a lot of these things. You're just able to, I think like you're just able to dig the hole deeper with training, with equal amounts of like mental effort, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It's like the response on the body is just more profound. How's your soreness in the days that fall out compared to where it was prior? thing that I'd say in my experience, right, one of the greatest lies like when you're on PDs, you recover like crazy. I have never been so fucking sore like collectively sore like post let back day my lats and upper back. It's it's tangibly sore. I get very, very sore. I am currently not this week because I had to move some things around. But typically my first pull session is Monday. My second one is Friday. I am. not 100 % recovered on Friday when I start that session. I've had to move things around and I like warm up, you know, really, really long. I might for my first exercise, I might do like six warm up sets because that's what it takes to kind of get everything to a point where I feel like I can perform. I'm just sore like and. It's I'm doing the same exercises, you know, like I said, I'm training to failure, but it's just like what what you can you can. I don't I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's you can contract the muscle harder or what, but. I'm able to induce significantly more soreness. And this is with food, the highest it's ever been, you know, in these sorts of things. My sleep is some of the best it's ever been. But I still have this like, you know, pretty profound soreness on most training sessions. So your back, which are the muscles that we've discussed in the past that don't really get sore that much are getting slaughtered as well. Yeah. Yeah. And then, so I do think the traps actually are subject to soreness because they can be trained at longer muscle lengths and more stretched than you can get with the lats and with some of the other muscles of the upper back. But interesting, that is interesting for sure. What about total training volume from pre? TRT to current. It's lower. Yeah, it's. That's interesting, but doesn't surprise me. training volume is significantly lower than when we were in like, you know, Bali camp at the end of last year. I would say maybe about 25 % lower if not more. But that was kind of intentional because I was who what I would consider to be intelligent in, hey, I have this brand new stimulus that's going to help me achieve achieve growth. And I kind of look at, OK, we have. PEDs in a pillar of things to apply stimulus. We have training and we have nutrition. I have this massive new introduction of the PEDs. I'm going to pull down training so that I can use that as a tool when this new stimulus starts to like plateau a little bit. So that was kind of my thought. Let me bring down my training because I know I'm going to grow regardless. And then I can scale that up when I need to. And I haven't I haven't needed to like yet. And things are. I'm up a considerable amount of weight from when I started. for sure. I mean, you look, I can just tell from seeing you on the screen that you put on masks. Like I don't even need to see you, you know, with your shirt off on Instagram or anything like that. So are your sessions, your training sessions with 25 % less volume, are they a similar length or how is that playing out? No, only leg day takes me a little over two hours. Everything else is about an hour and 45 to two hours. One session is about an hour and a half. And the real reason there is I just have the time, you know? And if it's like, if I'm if I'm really being honest with everyone, like if I'm not at the gym, I'm at home working and. I have I have the time to spend, so I was like it I have. In a perfect world, I do one year of bodybuilding and I'm done. That's the goal. I get one year and I'm done. So I'm trying to really put all my marbles into this year. And I don't want to, you know, cap my training earlier or anything like that because of that. So I'm doing more than is potentially necessary to try and grow as much as I can in this year for that reason specifically, because I don't people talk about longevity in bodybuilding. I. There is no year four, year five for Aaron. It's year one, year two, that's it. interesting. And do you have any idea just at a general level how many work sets you're doing in a typical session? I tried to program about eight exercises on most days. Some days it might be like six or seven. And then most things have two sets. Some things have three. So let's call it eight, two, 16. And then maybe two of those exercises have three. So maybe 18 total sets. Yeah. I mean, that's about, I think for me, what I usually find is I can do about 10 to 12 sets per hour productively for work sets, you know, cause you still have warmups, you have rest periods, all that stuff. So yeah, that fits right into that, Hey, hour 30 hour 45 type timeframe. So yeah, it makes sense. And then the last thing that I have that's pretty top of mind is I've reached a point where my body is starting to break down a little bit. And I don't know, my only good theory is that the amount of weight that I've put on in a short period of time, it's just stressful on the connective tissues. But I mean, both. like wrists and hands and stuff. I have trigger finger right now. Are you familiar with that? Like it like locked my, this middle finger, it will like, instead of like it moving smoothly, it will like catch and lock and then like snap. I got that from, I was doing like cable pullovers and I went to visit this new gym here to try it out and they had like shitty attachments. So I was like death gripping an attachment to do like my cable pullovers and then that, and it just like. my hands and then the next morning it's been like that since. So like that's one. My elbows in here, the medial epicondyle, triceps tendons, the forearms on the outside are all like super, super inflamed. I have this rotating back like strain that just keeps popping up in my back. Fortunately my knees, my knees feel great. That's like the only silver lining, which is like the thing that typically blows up for people. My knees feel perfectly fine. Saturday, I was bending over to pick up the cat's food bowls to feed them. And my lower back just fucking locked up. And that was I fortunately yesterday went in and I put this up on my Instagram story. I have like a I have a couple of body workers here. There's like one guy who he's like my big gun. I mean, it's just so unpleasant. It hurts so bad. He's unrelenting just with the elbow. And it was just elbow in the glutes the whole time. And, but I mean, it's, I would say it's like 70 % better. And then I'll go see him again at the end of the week and I should be fine. But things like that are just kind of popping up. And I think like my body's just pretty beat up, but I haven't brought in any of the like ancillaries to help because of some travel and stuff. So once I get back from, My last trip of travel, I'll bring in like the Wolverine, you know, peptide protocol, BPC 157 and TB 500. And I'm hopeful. I'm hoping that that will kind of get them back to into a good spot. I've significantly reduced my bicep and tricep training because that was just. Killing me, it was almost unbearable to train them, so I've effectively stopped. Yeah, and it was one of the things that they blew up. with just training them like a very normal to low amount of volume. So another thing that I guess I'll kind of wrap up with some of my higher level thoughts. I had, this was more of a story I probably told myself that like, hey, once the testosterone's in and stuff, like we're finally gonna get that balanced physique. The quads are gonna blow up. You know what I mean? It's not what happened. Now my strengths and weaknesses are just further exacerbated by more size. Like my arms literally blew up and I don't even care to train them. I was, I literally trained them from like a principal standpoint. My adductors are just eating my fucking shorts, but my, but my VMOs are still pretty much the same size. And then like chest grew significantly. My arms are still bigger than my shoulders, which is like very not common for like, you know, PED use. And that's just how things go. So I was wrong. in that assumption for sure. Interesting, I wonder if there's anything you could do with training to emphasize the legs more, like by adding another leg day that's entirely short overloaded or something like that so that maybe it doesn't cause as much soreness in subsequent days or I don't know. I agree with that. And this is a conversation I was having with Jackson just the other day. I have my kind of principles of training, you know, and these are a lot of the things that you and I talk about on the podcast and stuff. However, I've now, you know, effectively entered this sport where I need to train to a, an ideal of a division, right? And the unfortunate reality is legs play a quite a small role in that. And my legs are already big enough and developed enough for men's physique. And it's an opportunity cost on where I could be placing that additional volume on the things that I still need to improve upon. So that's like a that's a hard pill to swallow that I have not enjoyed. But that's the the reality of competing in like a division with specific requirements per se. Well, that leads me to another question, which is that, you know, your legs, if you want to call them a weakness, which I guess if you look at your physique as a whole, your legs are in theory your weakness. If they're big enough for men's physique already, like what the fuck else do you need to bring up? Like your upper body is, you have great proportions. Your waist is small. Your shoulders are broad. Your arms are huge. Your chest is developed. Your back is solid. I mean, if there's anything that you would need to bring up, I guess it would be back. But like, how do you see your physique and your weak points right now? back and anterior and lateral delts. The larger the lateral delt, right, the wider that, a lot of it's that V taper look, right? And getting the, I'm fortunate I have very, very broad shoulders and pretty much like straight across clavicles, but adding that more like lateral delt there. And then there's an always a very common saying that like shows are one from the back. And my back is a weakness. Typically in the like, middle back development, erectors, traps, and those sorts of things. So putting us very, very strong emphasis on, excuse me, training my upper back, my mid back, like doing a lot of rows and stuff that where I can bias like the lower traps and stuff a little bit more in that mid back area. yeah, interesting. Yeah, I guess I could see that the saying, shows are won from the back, I always thought was more related to bodybuilding where it's the hamstrings and the glute tie -ins and stuff like that that people are looking at as being from the back. But I guess that also encapsulates the actual back itself as well. like if you look at the most recent Olympia of last year, and I know it's kind of silly to compare myself anything to the Olympia, which I'm not really trying to. When they turned around, when they did the rear shot in men's physique, it was that's where Ryan Terry was like it was he was ahead of everyone once they turned around like his back was significantly better than almost everyone else is. And that's where it was like, shit like that. That's a differentiator there. Cool. Well, that sounds great, man. I look forward to following along as you continue to go. And when's the show scheduled for, did you say? Right now, the plan is to do shows in November. So that would give me effectively building through May, June. I think I'd have to start prep like the very, very end of July or potentially very early August. Yeah, so that gives you a little less than four months to drop 20 plus pounds or 20-ish pounds. Yeah. and it's a different game. There's all sorts of different, you know, whatever you would call them. taking like, Klen and other things like that to help shred up? I would imagine, but I don't really know. And we'll see how things go. Like, fortunately, losing weight's always been very easy for me. My body just like, for example, this this week I was in Melbourne, I didn't really I don't know if I talked about this, even with me trying to eat a bunch and stuff just from all the extra steps like my I just pissed off body weight day over day when I was there. But we'll see. I have no idea and won't know until we really get into the thick of things. Cool. Sweet. Well, I'm excited to follow along. As far as my training at the moment, y'all know that with it being bike season and everything like that, I have cut back to what was two times a week full body as my programming. And it had a pretty low volume of leg work in there as well because I didn't want to be sore or fatigued for my bike rides. And I did that for like right now we're six weeks into, six or seven weeks into bike season as it started, you know, late March, early April. And I just this week switched my training from the two times a week full body to a three times a week, but two upper body sessions and one lower body session. Because what I found is that the two times a week wasn't giving me, a lot of upper body stimulus and I feel like with all of the leg volume that I was getting through biking, which is significant, I mean, you know, the legs do get, I don't want to say they're sore, but they certainly get fatigued from it and there's a lot of metabolites running through them, like they burn during the bike riding, right? So there's something happening there, even though it's mostly concentric. What I decided to do was, to hit the two upper body days where I can fully focus on upper body and actually raise the rep ranges. Because my upper body, I realized like I was doing everything in the five to eight rep range, but my upper body, I think I'm starting to realize is responding a little bit better to higher reps. Like I haven't been sore in those muscle groups that we've talked about in so long. And so it's hard for me to parse out whether that's because I'm always training in the five to 10 rep range. And so my body is just adapted to that. repeated bout effect and therefore I'm not getting sore. So then I changed my rep range to now I'm doing like a 15, 12, 10, 8 or 12, 10, 8, 6. So it really is not so far different from that 5 to 10 rep range. It's just done in a different manner and I'm shortening rest periods and I'm focusing a little bit more on my muscle connection and less on just like in the 5 to 8 rep range everything is... moving weight from point A to point B. Like even if you try to focus on mind muscle connection at five reps, it's not exactly the same as focusing on mind muscle connection at 12 to 15 reps. And so the last two sessions that I've done for upper body have been this new kind of 15, 12, 10, eight type approach. And I have been getting legitimately sore in. all of the muscle groups in my upper body that haven't been getting sore. I've been getting lat soreness. I've been getting like you described trap soreness from upper, mid and lower traps. Rhomboid soreness, like really deep rhomboid soreness that stays there for a few days. My biceps, as I talk to you right now, all I did was one bicep exercise yesterday, 15, 12, 10, eight. And... Two of those would be even considered work sets because the 15 and the 12 are more like warmup sets. And so I'm getting two work sets that are even in that rep range, that five to 10 rep range, the 10 and the eight. My biceps right now are legitimately sore. Like I go to straighten my arm and I'm like, ooh, like that right above the elbow kind of feeling, which I haven't had since I was young. And so being able to raise the rep ranges on upper body and feel like training is so much more productive for that area. especially because the upper body doesn't get worked at all in biking. I mean, aside from holding the handlebars, the upper body is useless basically. And so it feels really good and productive for me to actually be training the upper body in what feels like an effective manner. And then kind of alternatively to the way I'm training upper body for my single lower body day, I'm doing the exact opposite. I'm staying in the one to five rep range for pretty much everything on lower body. and I'm making it more strength -based because I feel like I have all of these endurance muscle fibers working with the biking that it seems silly to me to be doing sets of 8 to 12 plus reps on lower body when those similar muscle fibers like obviously biking, you know, I'm doing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of RPMs. So it's a bit of a different stimulus. But I wanted it to be as different as possible. So now I have sets of one to three on like back squats, on pendulum squats. I'm doing sets of five on leg curls, single leg RDLs. Yeah, so yeah, what you got, bud. How has the back squatting been? I saw a couple stories of that. How has that been reintroducing? Yeah, I've only done two back squat sessions since I made this change. And the first one was 315 for doubles, and that felt really heavy on my back. And then I did 325 for doubles the next week, and that also felt really heavy on my back. So it's, you know, what's interesting is it's less strenuous on my legs once I actually like brace and squat. It's like, I know my legs can handle it, but the whole big breath, un -rack the bar, step back, set your feet, that is daunting. Like when 325 comes off the rack, because it's been years since I've experienced what that feels like, 325 felt really heavy on my back. Like I was like, man, like, can I even brace for this? Like it almost felt like I was limited. by my ability to brace in my midline, but once I did brace and I went down to squat it, it was fine. Like I sit down, I stand up, it was pretty explosive. There wasn't like any grinding reps or anything like that. So the back squat is just one of those weird mind fuck ones where I think that ability to brace against heavy loads in your midline is kind of like a learned skill or at least an adapted. It's an adaptation that I think it will begin to feel lighter and lighter, but I was so unprepared for how heavy that was going to feel on my back the first time that I could not believe. Like I went from 225 to 315. I maybe should have done a 275 in the middle. I know, I know, I know. But like 225 didn't feel that heavy. And then I was like, okay, 315, here we go. And I was like. Whoa, what the fuck? The first time I had racked it, I had to re -rack it, because I was like, did I load that wrong? Like, is that 365 or something? You know? I could not believe how heavy 315 felt on my back the first time. So that's been interesting, but doing sets of two has been great, because I guess two reasons, but one is that it's just so unfamiliar to me that I feel like the adaptations are going to happen really quickly. And second is... There is nothing that I do in my training that hits my adductors the way that back squatting does. Jordan Lips and I were talking about this, but like we both split squat or lunge, and there's a certain level of adductor that gets involved and stimulated through single leg movements, but it feels like it's a different adductor, because there's like three or four of them, right? There's like a adductor Magnus, adductor Brevis, whatever. Whatever adductor is being stimulated through back squats is a completely different adductor to what's being stimulated through lunges and split squats. Because the first time I back squatted, they were cramping up so bad between sets that I literally didn't know if I was gonna be able to do another set. I would have to wait like three to five minutes for the cramps in my adductors to alleviate before I could get back under the bar and go again. And then as soon as I did another two reps, it was that same kind of locking up feeling. And then they were sore for like three or four days after that as well. And that's from doing like three sets of two. So that's been cool. The pendulum was interesting. I tested my One Rep Max on the pendulum the other day just to kind of set a baseline of where that would be. And it's funny how that one has such a breaking point. So I put... My pendulum is very heavy, so it's different than like an Atlantis pendulum or whatever, which has a counterweight already built into it. Yeah, yeah, counterbalance. So I didn't use any counterbalancing or reverse banding or anything like that when I did it. And so I did a single at 135 and that moved really fast. And so I was like, gangster, let's go up to 160, which would be adding a 25 onto three 45s. I got buried. Like literally I hit the bottom and I tried to come up and I made it about two inches and I could not move anymore. So I crawl out of the pendulum. I unload it. I get it back up to its starting position. I'm like, okay, well I clearly couldn't do 160. Let's try 145, which would have been. 345 plus a 10 and I barely made it up. So 135 it's like I flew up 160 I got buried and 145 was this sweet spot where I like barely made it up. I got through the sticking point. So I think what I'm gonna probably do is stick to 125 or 135 and do doubles or triples there and try to build back up so that maybe in six weeks if I can retest to one rep max see if I can get that 160 that just buried me. But anyway, it's certainly not a hypertrophic approach to training, but my whole training right now, given the focus on biking is not hypertrophic. It's very much about function and trying to be as fast as I can on the bike without losing everything I've built over the last 25 years. And I think this approach is gonna be pretty effective for that, especially with the stimulus that I'm receiving in the upper body. and then focusing more on strength for lower body. This actually is a way that the cyclists tend to do when they train a lower body is usually in the lower rep ranges because it's going to be significantly less fatiguing and disruptive on the actual muscle fibers themselves. So I'll stick with this for at least another six weeks and then make whatever adjustments I feel like I need to make at that point as the biking continues to go. As far as the biking itself, have realized that days off are crucial. I talked last week in the updates about how I had two weeks in a row where I was forced to train really hard for four days and then take three days completely off and then four days really hard and then three days completely off and how amazing it felt coming back onto the bike after those three days off. And I've noticed on a microcosm of that that even taking one day off. improves my performance the next day on the bike. And so I'm trying to be much more cognizant of that. And my initial plan was to build up to a point where I was on the bike six days a week. I think now, I think five is really the sweet spot there because that either allows five on two off or five on with a day off in between a couple of times. So I think that that's probably going to be where I land on that, which I'm actually... excited about that I don't feel like I have to do six days a week because there's this whole allure around cardio training that the more you do the better the adaptations are and I think that you get a little distracted by looking at people that are doing this on a professional level, semi -professional level, whatever, and they're putting 20, 30 miles in per week or 20, 30 hours per week, I mean. but I'm training seven hours a week on the bike or eight or whatever it is. And there's no reason I can't do that over five days. Like I don't have to be on the bike six days a week to hit that amount of volume. So that's been cool. And then I've also been able to maintain my body weight thus far. I'm not surprised it's still early. We're only six or seven weeks in, but I'm still sitting at 194 as of this morning, which is basically where I started my biking journey. I've been eating a lot. I've been having to eat. foods that are more palatable. Last night I went out to dinner with my mom and ate a 12 ounce steak, some fried potatoes, some veggies, had a few cookies for dessert, stuff like that. So I mean, I'm just doing what I need to do to get the calories in. I had a guy Instagram DM me the other day and be like, dude, are you making sure you're eating like pizza and like really unhealthy food, you know, so you don't lose weight? Cause, cause if you're not doing that, like you at least should be doing that. And I was like, yeah, like I am, I'm having pizza like twice a week because I fricking need the calories and I'm trying to get them in. So for anyone wondering, I'm doing everything I possibly can to fit as much food as I can into myself. And I think eventually that still will lead to me losing weight, but I'm going to ameliorate that as much as I can until the time comes that it's just inevitable. So. everything feels good. Biking feels good. Sleep has been good. Heart rate, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, all that stuff really in a good spot right now. And, just kind of continue chugging along and see this thing through. So, aside from that, the only other big update I have is that my misogi is this coming weekend. So, that is what I've talked about on prior episodes, it's basically my 17 mile hike that we're doing untrained, untrained in hiking. Like I've been biking and stuff, so my cardio should be there. But basically it's a 17 mile hike across five of the peaks in Boulder or along the Boulder front range. And so yeah, that's coming this Saturday, May or Sunday, May 19th. And I'm just gonna make sure that I don't train at all. Friday or Saturday, or at least Saturday before the hike. And most importantly, making sure that I have all my nutrition and water and electrolytes and extra pair of socks and moleskin. There's a few other things that I need to make sure that I have with me, but I'm excited for this adventure. It's definitely something outside of my comfort zone. I've never in my life tried to hike 17 miles with 6 ,000 feet of vert or whatever it is. And so. Yeah, going with three other guys and kind of excited to see how that plays out. I have a question about it. I'm very, very excited for next week to ask you questions about this. I think this idea is so cool. So it's you and three other guys, right? How, like, let's say with, what are some of the rules around the completion? Is it a, all four guys or nothing? How does that, tell me about that a little bit. Yeah, I think if anyone needs to opt out, they can just opt out individually would be the way that I think it's going to play out. So we had one guy already back out. So one guy had a meniscus injury a number of years ago and he went running the other day and re aggravated it. And so he, we did have five guys, he opted out and he just knew he wasn't going to make it. And He was probably the weak link of the group anyway. He trains the least of us as far as biking or lifting or anything like that. And so having, he would have been the one that I would have projected may not have made it the whole way anyways. But the other three guys that are doing it are, one of them's a savage biker. He's way better biker than I am. And the other two are guys that I went to Fruta to do the mountain biking trip with a couple of weeks ago. And so they're... They hike, they bike, they run, they do enough cardiovascular work that they should be fine. The thing I'm the most worried about still for me or any of us is the feet. I think I've been really torn on whether I'm gonna wear my no -drop or what do you call them, no -lift, zero -drop shoes. or whether I want to wear hiking boots because the zero drop shoes, the negative is that you're going to feel every single rock that you step on, every root and rock, you're going to feel it on your foot. But they're the shoes that I walk around in and work out in every day. So I know that they fit my foot really well and they feel good. Alternatively, I have the hiking boots, which I don't wear every day. In fact, I never wear them. And I don't know how my feet are going to handle that over the course of we're projecting this to be 10 hours of hiking. So I think what I'm gonna do is start in the hiking boots, but bring the no -drop shoes in my backpack and a number of pairs of socks and stuff like that. So that if I start to feel any sort of rubbing or anything, I can preempt that and just change shoes and socks right then, maybe put a bandaid on something like that and just kind of keep chugging along. So if it's anything, I think it's gonna be feet, but we'll see. Yeah, that was gonna be my recommendation is take both. The extra weight is fine. But I mean, I've foolishly been out on a long hike in the wrong pair of shoes. And I mean, it becomes hell, absolute hell. So cool. I'm so excited for about next week to hear about how that goes. Yeah, and I guess we'll push that the Instagram Q &A that we were going to do this week. We'll push it to next week and make sure that we we get some good questions in from people. Definitely. Anything else on this one, Brian? I think it's about time to go do some dad duties that I can see. Yeah, I see my daughter behind us. Say, Biv, say hi. Hi. Yeah, so we will catch you guys next week and look forward to another awesome episode of some questions and answers. Hi, hi. Hi, hi. All right.