What is going on guys? Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. Today is Brian and myself. This is episode 202 and it is our October 2025 Instagram Q &A. So Brian was able to source all of these questions from his Instagram directly. So I've not put out anything on mine. So apologies if you had been wanting to wait. If that were the case, just DM me your question on Instagram and I will answer it for you myself. But before we dive into today's episode per usual, Brian, What's the latest with you? Yeah, two quick updates. Well, one quick one and one maybe not as quick one. Strength cycles are starting at Paragon on November 3rd. Strength cycles are always an awesome time. Everyone likes getting strong, setting new PRs, all that good stuff. uh As always, we offer a hypertrophy option for those that don't actually want to train with low reps and do strength work. for like the repeating movements each day, think like back squat, deadlift, front squat, strict pull ups, bench press, overhead press. that type of thing. There'll be two options in the app. One that's you're like kind of one to five rep strength training protocol. And uh then a hypertrophy option that obviously trains you more in that like six to 12 rep range. So something for everybody starting November 3rd. Something else I've been kind of playing with myself that I'm really interested in and I don't feel like in this moment, I'm ready to write like a full program for you guys on it. But I wanted to just kind of tease something that I've been doing in my own training. And uh it's been working quite well. So ah basically, what I took was the normal progression model that I would use, which would be one or two sets of each movement basically to failure or pretty damn close, depending on the exercise, and simply trying to progress by one rep or, you know, one or two pounds. every week for as long as possible and then deload or restart rinse, wash, repeat that whole thing. The last call it eight to 10 weeks, I have been playing with an idea of using an alternating week structure where one of the weeks focuses on that same exact progression I was saying one to two sets close to failure, trying to progress week to week, et cetera, et cetera. The in between week. essentially takes 85 to 90 % of the weight that was used on the like intense week and does multiple sets at that weight. So think I'm doing a cable chest press one week, I'm hitting a six RM at 140 pounds. The next week I come in and I do five sets of six or six sets of six at 125 pounds. So basically, you know, 85 to 90 % of that prior week's weight. um Hit those sets, all of them are shy of failure. The last one gets tough because there's so much volume, you're accumulating fatigue, all that stuff. But essentially the goal of that week is to refine motor patterns, um become more coordinated in the movement that you're doing, get some volume to stimulate some pathways that maybe are not being stimulated through simply just going to failure on one or two sets. But mostly it's practicing the movement and just getting comfortable with that movement for that number of reps, you know, working on your breathing and your bracing and all of that stuff. And then, you know, the week after the higher volume, you go back to the one or two sets close to failure. And at this point, it's usually much easier to actually increase that one rep or that one or two pounds or whatever it is. And then, you know, the following week, obviously go back to the 85 to 90 % number. And as your top set week to week increases, as does kind of the five or six sets of back off work that you do in the in between weeks. And so I've actually, started using this simply on the deadlift because that's the one that most, the most practical one that you see actually similar programming to this in the strength community where it's like, Hey, you can't deadlift heavy to failure every week. You're just not going to survive it. So using this protocol was a great way for me to back off the effort, both mentally and physically and kind of just practice the movement, get better at refining technique, and then push forward and progress. Since I did that and enjoyed it so much in the first couple weeks of my deadlifting a couple months ago, a few months ago, I started implementing it on my other exercises. And so this has kind of been the protocol I've been using for this cycle for the most part. If you're following my story, you've probably noticed that there are some weeks where I'm like one or two sets and just crushing it then other weeks like for example, yesterday on the pendulum squat, I did six sets of three. And the progress has been awesome. So just kind of something I'm playing with. And maybe in the future, there'll be a program that kind of reflects that. So I'll just throw it out there. Really quickly, one thing I think you maybe didn't cover is how you choose the rep number on the volume week. So on the chest press it was six reps. however many reps you achieve on the previous week. Yeah, exactly. It's the same exact number of reps that you did on your peak set. So I did six reps on my chest press or seven. I think it was seven. ah So then I would do sets of seven in the volume week, but at that lower weight. So yeah, it's the same rep number. It basically prepares you to, uh, to exceed your performance on the like important testing week, if you want to call it that, or like the failure week. by simply doing the exact same number of reps on the volume week as well so that everything is ingrained consistently. Got it. Got it. What's going on with you? Um, so I guess the most excite, I mean, it's exciting for me. I don't know how much the fucking listeners care about it, but, uh, I've started my fertility protocol. So TBD on that it's, uh, exciting for anyone who is maybe interested a little bit deeper. I have decided to steer the ship myself on it, as opposed to reaching out. like a doctor or anything like that, which is potentially like a really dumb idea. Yeah tell. um But I just I spent so much time reading the research and stuff like that. And I know, you know, what's available, what you can get compounded. actually got the two things compounded when I was still in the States uh prescription for that. So I'm excited. I feel like it's this big. I love the like personal projects experiments. And that's like literally what I think it is. So I did my first fertility test on Thursday. So like almost a week ago. And it did not look good, right? uh Very, bad, actually. So that's kind of what I thought what things would look like. So now I get to really test the protocol because like not everyone loses their fertility on like TRT and gear usage and stuff. um So I got lucky with the rapid progression genetics of, you know, growing muscle and becoming good at bodybuilding. I did not get the genetics of maintaining fertility while using it. Beggars can't be choosers. yeah, I mean, that's a bummer, I guess, in one way, but it's also kind of cool and exciting that you're doing it yourself. And that totally doesn't surprise me because I think that's pretty much par for the course. Yeah, I just, I... I feel I'm very hesitant to say this, but there's certain things where I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm sure there's like absolutely brilliant doctors out there who, you know, are so, good at this. the odds of me like finding one of them, getting access to them and you know, and thing with like how I travel back and forth, I think the likelihood of me doing it myself based on all the published research is probably damn near par of like a run of the mill doctor that I could get access to anyway. So. that's right. Okay, so that's the first one. Second, I am really enjoying my low volume program. The one problem I need I'm running into is I need to refine my solution for warming up because it's getting long. It's getting almost as long as like a traditional training session because I'm doing like one back exercise, then one chest exercise, then going back to a back exercise. So it's like for those that first back exercise for that first chest exercise, you need to warm up well. perform and I'm finding I've been doing like three warm-up sets and it's just getting too long but I want to feel like really primed to perform for my top set because it's everything right it's like hey I need to I need to progress here because I'm only getting this one set um so I need to figure out a little bit better solution to cut down on like the warm-ups but I think the first exercises of the day for chest and back or like for quads and hamstrings, I need three warm up sets. Subsequent ones after that, I think once my confidence and I'm like a little bit like ingrained into the groove, I can probably back down to like two. And then maybe for like my final exercises only like one, once I feel really confident with like, you know, this weight is appropriate because I'm still blasting past some of my rep ranges and stuff. But it's it is almost as long as like a true to my tradition, like push pull legs in terms of a session duration right now, which I Yeah, that's interesting. Because I reflected on the last episode how you and I were essentially doing the same number of exercises in our in our day, which was seven. So you have like two back to chest, uh one by one try and in one dealt exercise. So yeah, seven total exercises, which means you're doing basically like seven total work sets. And so I'll just reflect on the way that I warm up mine. And similarly to you, my first exercise gets three. Um, but I don't think that it's necessary that you're spending a lot of time on each of those individual sets, which I know, you know, but like, you don't need to be doing 12 to 15 reps on your warmup sets, right? Like maybe the very first one, when you walk in the door, you're like, like for me, say I'm doing a pull down and a chest press, say my pull down weight is 200 and my chest press is 150. like I'll jump in and my first set is 50 % of my working weight. And then I'll do a second one at, you know, 70 ish 75 % of my working weight. And those reps are all in the like, you know, six to 10 rep range. So pretty low. And then the final warmup set, if I do one, which I usually do, you know, 90 % of working weight for two reps, maybe three reps, something like that. So none of those warmups that are taking a huge amount of time. I'm also alternating between the chest and the back exercise. So I don't know if you do that, but like I'll do a warmup for back than a warmup for chest and a warmup for back warmup for chest. And I'm finding that I don't really need to rest between those warmups because they're not exhausting at all. This is kind of like quick back and forth warmup stuff. ah So I'm usually into my first work set for each of those exercises by the 10 minute mark or less, something like that. ah And then going into the second exercise for each, like you said, it's around two warmup sets, like a 70, 70 % and like maybe a 90 % for a couple reps. And then yeah, for the arms and delts, it's one warmup set and then jump into the work set. So as the workout goes on, the warmup sets become uh less critical, but obviously still important to grease the groove. But for me, the alternating structure is huge. Alternating between the chest and the back during warmups saves a lot of time. And then I usually do my arm and delt stuff as a circuit as well. So I'll warm up bicep, warm up tricep, warm up delt, and then just do a circuit through where there's a work set of each. Yeah, fortunately, unfortunately, undefeated is getting busy, so I can't like hog machines like I used to. So it's like a gift and a curse. Yeah. Yeah, easier at home, Jim. Yeah, yeah. And then the last one that is just a cool update. Jenny and I will start our honeymoon in three weeks and we are going to Japan, which I'm very excited about. Although I have to admit I am like on Sunday. We were like, all right, listen, it's we're literally like 20 days out. We need to start planning this and it just feels like exhausting. I'm just like so over. it with the wedding. eh and I don't want to look up like the best areas to stay and like I just Fuck dude, but at the end of them, I can't just wing it Can't just like book a hotel and like show up and hope for the best because you're gonna have a terrible trip But I just like don't want another non revenue generating project right now Yeah, I feel that. Well, I mean, that should be super exciting. You got to make sure that you do all the Pokemon things because my my son Bryson, his golden birthday, he'll turn ninth on the ninth in September next year. And he wants us to take him to Japan so that he can go explore all the Pokemon. And I'm not sure if he realizes that Japan is like a full country. That's not just like a place that's filled with Pokemon everywhere you go, because he like legitimately thinks that he's just going to walk out and there's going to be like Pokemon everywhere and like stores for Pokemon everywhere and people trading Pokemon cards and like You know gotta explain the reality to him, but uh but yeah, that should be an awesome trip for you guys Yeah, I'm very, very much looking forward to it. Okay, let's dive in. So this first one I think is obviously much more directed towards you because it's a conversation you guys had on the podcast with Jordan Lipps. So I will read that for you. Do you think someone can still get jacked following the health and longevity plan that you and Jordan laid out? Part two of this question, what would the lifting portion look like as an example? Yeah. So I talked about this specific podcast that I did with Jordan in detail in our last episode, but essentially the idea is that you have 30 to 60 minutes of time per day, uh, six days a week. So you take Sundays off to basically commit to all aspects of your health and longevity journey, that as far as it contributes to your physical fitness. So we're talking like mobility, sprinting, uh, lifting weights, endurance, cardiovascular work, walking. Although we ended up extracting walking out because it was too time consuming and um plyometric imbalance or like strength function balance stuff like that. So how do you fit all of that into 30 to 60 minutes across six days? And the question is, can you still get jacked following that? And I do I actually think you can I think you would probably need to gravitate slightly more of that period to the lifting portion. of your journey and maybe take a little bit away from the cardiovascular and the mobility and maybe like the plyometric balance component. But even in the example that I put out with Jordan, that was the like health and longevity plan, we still found that the majority of things that contribute to health and longevity are lifting and cardiovascular exercise. ah So if you had say 60 minutes, six days a week, 45 minutes of those 60 each day are either lifting or cardio. So this question is essentially asking like, hey, can I get jacked lifting weights for 45 minutes, three days a week at a minimum? And you could potentially, you know, allocate more of that time to lifting, but at a minimum, it would be three times 45 minutes. And I absolutely think you can get jacked. I think your training program needs to... be designed in a manner that gets you the most bang for your buck during those 45 minutes. So I probably wouldn't put you on a program like Aaron, where you're doing one set of seven different exercises and uh having to warm up in such a precise manner that every set is a home run, so to speak. What I would probably do is have somebody shorten their rest periods and get more density into their training. So maybe it's like, yeah. So maybe it's alternating five sets of this with five sets of that, but you're resting only 45 seconds between sets. Things are within two to three reps of failure, but you're kind of pulling the density and the volume nozzle a little bit more than the intensity nozzle, uh which is crazy to think that you're in an abbreviated plan where you only have 45 minutes, three days a week, but just trying to get as much in there as you can. So I think, you you do have to focus more on compound movements like the big hitters, the ones that are going to get the most bang for your buck, but also design it in a manner that you're not, you don't want to be alternating back squats and RDLs with 45 seconds of rest in between. So there needs to be some nuance into the way that you program, say like isolation, upper body work versus compound lower body work and the rest periods that you take. uh And then I also think, like I was saying, you can, you can allocate more of that volume to different places. Maybe your plan only has you doing cardio twice a week and then that allows you to fit a fourth 45 minute lifting session in, which is totally a sacrifice that I could see myself or someone else making in that situation if your goal is to look the part, but you only have this limited amount of time. Those all seem to be kind of reasonable approaches. And I think that overall that plan with Jordan where you have 60 minutes, six days a week, I mean, that is six hours a week of training time. And I don't often see the need for somebody to have more than three or four hours at most of training time to get jacked, as the person said. Yeah, it's really well said and I think it was interesting that we both kind of were thinking along the same lines. What I was kind of picturing in my head is kind of like basic like garage dad kind of style workouts where you're doing like rack, know, rack chins and bent over rows and like you're doing like kind of old school crossfit type stuff where, you know, it's a lot of like super setting things, short rest times, know, high heart rate. um And you're really just pulling the volume lever and kind of dumbing down your training a little bit to just get in Work really hard and you know eat sufficiently and stuff Like I think it could be done in that in that capacity kind of playing devil's advocate there though, I would I Think scope creep would happen. Like if you're in your garage training hard like that trying to get jacked I unless you had unless time was literally limited. I feel like that person would want to spend more time training if you're going to be training in that style of like high volume short rest intervals like really high heart rate style stuff. um But I do think it could be done. You if we were to stay true to the question in that capacity. This next one will kick over to you as well. Can you elaborate on the Beardsley and Jake theory on training each muscle at least two times per week or else it will atrophy within two to three days? For example, you must train the iliac, lumbar, lumbar and thoracic lat each within the three day, two to three day period. Yeah, so we've covered this actually a lot over the last month or two, I'd say. Like we've really nailed it down, addressed it, and kind of given all of our thoughts across the last few episodes. I'll specifically note uh episode 197, which was our August Q &A. And we had a question that was, it was at the 25 minute mark, I believe. Where did I find this? Timestamps. Yeah, so at the 25 minute mark, the question was, If I want to construct a program that has different movements for the same muscle group across three different sessions, how can I know I'm training the same muscle fibers with these varied movements and not cause atrophy? And that was another question that was basically in line with the Chris Beardsley and Jake D kind of theory that this guy is asking about. And so like, I'll just really quickly kind of give you my thoughts here, but I would encourage you to go back on the last few episodes, check the timestamps and see which ones seem relevant to this question, but. Ultimately, my thought is that it might be true. I mechanistically, it makes sense that if you're not training a muscle fiber, it can't grow. um So like if we were as binary as saying this exercise only trains the iliac and this one only trains the lumbar and this one only trains the thoracic. And there's no like crossover, right? Like, this iliac pulldown doesn't train the lumbar at all. And this lumbar one doesn't train the thoracic at all, which just isn't true. uh So I think if you're operating on the theory that it is that binary, then yes, in a sense, if you want to absolutely maximize the muscle that you have, and if you are under the impression that it will in fact begin to atrophy after two to three days, which all of this is kind of mechanistic data, like none of this is really proven in in RCTs across, you know, research studies at this point. Chris and Jake do tend to use a lot of mechanistic data, can be convincing. makes sense when you're like, well, mechanistically, this is how it should be. um But in reality, what do we see? We see people that are fucking jacked training in all sorts of different ways from like single muscle group, bro splits, where you're literally doing just chest one day a week and just back one day a week. And people are still growing. um And so I struggle anecdotally to believe that, you know, the fear mongering that comes through this type of prescription is actually something that we really need to concern ourselves with. And then I'll add just the additional caveat that enjoyment plays a role. if so, even if this was real and you actually had to train in this way that Jake's talking about, where maybe you had to do 24 sets three days a week because you have to make sure you're hitting every single muscle group with one set every other day or something along those lines. Like if that type of training just either bores you to death or you dread going in and doing it ah or it just doesn't like spark you the way that you would want training to do. Like we're talking about a journey here that's 10, 15, 20, 30 years long. And it's not a sprint to the finish of how much muscle can I gain in my first year of training? um It's a journey. And that requires that not only you enjoy your training so that you can show up and be consistent, but that you also do it in a manner that uh is safe and effective and doesn't put you at risk for various injuries. And uh from my experience training myself and clients, if you do the same movements every other day for eternity, there's going to be some joint wear and tear. part of the beauty of changing things up cycle to cycle, is simply that you give your joints a break so that you can continue training. Yeah, the only thing I will add there is in addition to your wear and tear, there's also likely to be neglect in certain muscles that aren't getting trained. And then, or trained sufficiently relative to the other muscles that are getting trained. And then you end up with like, uh, imbalances that lead to joint issues and stuff anyway, cause there's no way you're training everything two to three times per week, right? Like that, that's where the, these things start to break down is analysis paralysis, uh, and opportunity cost on time and realistically how much time you can dedicate to training. Want to dedicate to training, you know, and all sorts of things that once you going down that rabbit hole. kick this one over to you since I feel like you'll have some thoughts on this. Which region of the traps do you think is the most responsible for a more muscular look? And do you think it needs to be trained directly or will indirect work such as rows suffice? So the region of the traps Brian so I don't speak uh Improperly we we have the like is it really is it broken down as like lower trapezius and upper trapezius or is that like the bro term for them? trapezius too. Yeah. So lower trapezius you'll see in like the mid part of the back almost inserting into where the lumbar lat meets. So like it's just a little bit medial, like a little bit more toward the center of the body than the lumbar lat. And then the medial, the middle traps are the ones that ah really, you know, I think you pop out and squeeze the most when you're doing like a wide pronated row and you're trying to squeeze that pencil between your shoulder blades. That's going to be more of that, mid trap. And then the upper trap is obviously the ones that like kind of stick out of your neck a little bit. Okay, thank you for that. The mid trap, think, is the region that would be most responsible for a more muscular look. That is my opinion. Do I think it needs to be trained directly or will indirect work such as Rose suffice? This depends on how you perform your Rose, right? um As someone who's trained a very long time and then got to the point where my mid back is one of my worst body parts. It's very obvious if you look at any of my stage photos. It's not like I haven't done Rose numerous times over the years. It just so happens that I perform Rose or have inherently learned to perform Rose in a way that does not stimulate that muscle group sufficiently for it to grow relative to the rest of the body parts around it. So I do think that there is a performance aspect. along with it. Right. If you do a lot of rows or not even a lot a baseline amount of rows and your mid traps are like just as developed relative to your like lats you know spinal erectors and other parts of your back then like rows are probably sufficient. If you're someone like me that that's a different answer. um Now to kind of finish that off I do think the best way to train that would be like a Kelso shrug or some exercise where you are purposefully trying to retract the scapula like as much as you can to really get flexion and extension through those tissues. Yeah, that was gonna be, I'm glad you mentioned the Kelso Shrug, because I was gonna say, if we are gonna base this on the argument that you do need isolated work for that region, what are we doing? Because in my mind, the row does, the function of the row, especially done in a pronated manner with elbows going slightly out and focusing on that, uh I always call it pinching the pencil between the shoulder blades at the top, and then obviously getting full stretch and scapula. depression, I guess depression, different word I'm looking, no depression would be down. um Protraction, protraction, yeah, yeah, that's the one. uh Getting full protraction at the extended position. Then I think that the rows likely will do the majority of the job. A Kelso shrug is essentially just a row that doesn't have as much arm pull. So it's really focusing more on that extension and retraction piece or flexion and extension piece um without actually bending the arms as much. So it is in fact the same movement as the row. It's almost what would be considered like a lengthened partial for the row almost. um And so yeah, like I think mid traps, I agree are probably the one at least from behind that is gonna make your back look the most muscular. There is an argument that the upper traps are probably the one that's gonna make you look the most muscular from the front. And I think that it's because it gives you that kind of bull look where like, you know, the traps pop out of the neck and then jagged down and like this big slant down into the shoulders. And then that sort of makes the lateral delt pop a little bit more because you have that variation between the two muscles. uh So at least I know during the CrossFit days that when we would see people with those like bull traps on the neck, like man, that was an impressive look. And so I think there is something to be said for that. But overall, I think I do agree that the mid traps are probably the ones you want to focus on. Okay, if I wanted to optimize muscle building, how much running or cycling is too much and may interfere with lower body hypertrophy? I think it's a complicated question because my initial thought is that it's probably like a lot, like you can probably do a lot of running or cycling as long as you're eating enough food for it to not have a uh detraction or compromise on your muscle building hypertrophy. I think the part that complicates this a little bit is the interference with lower body hypertrophy. So if it was simply just, how much running or cycling can I do? It's like, shit, you can do endless amounts of it. As long as you're eating enough that you're still in like a slight surplus. it probably shouldn't matter so much because it's all about that energy balance. When you talk about it, interfering with lower body training, I think you do have a, a uh important distinction there because we do have to make sure that lower body training is done in kind of the freshest, most optimized state so that you can get the most out of each of those lower body workouts. And so I think it's a little bit less about how much running or cycling am I doing across the week. And it's more about how much running or cycling my doing in close proximity to my lower body days. ah And yes, there is a there is a cumulative fatigue component to this. So like, know, you couldn't be, you know, training for a marathon running 50 miles a week. and also expecting to maximize hypertrophy. So there certainly is a limit, but within the context of what a normal person would do, which might be as much as say an hour or two of cardio. or four days a week. So we might be talking about six hours or so of running or cycling a week on top of lifting. Like I've gotten to that point and I didn't really feel like it personally for me had a compromise as long as I was eating enough and you focusing on where I'm placing those workouts in relation to the lower body work. um So I think those would be the things I would consider and you just kind of got to play it out make sure you're eating enough food and see how your lower body training responds to putting things, you know, two days apart, three days apart, or directly up next to it. Like maybe you can cycle in zone two, the day before a lower body workout, but you couldn't cycle in zone five or run in zone two because of the, you know, the very varying impact it has on your lower body. Yeah, it's really well put. I think the way that I would answer this is because the word optimize is used and I know I'm being kind of pedantic here, but you chose the word optimize. I would build your optimal lower body hypertrophy training program first without any running or cycling in it. Run that. It doesn't need to be long, maybe three weeks, you know, and then start sprinkling in your running and cycling. and see where you start running into like recovery holes and stuff and there you've effectively found your threshold on the running and or. um cycling. Now one little small caveat I will add is because cycling is purely concentric, you can probably get away with a little bit higher bias of cycling compared to running before you run into that interference or not necessarily interference, but recovery capacity issue. So maybe if you want to push a little bit more of your cardio towards cycling, as opposed to running, you can probably handle a little bit higher total volume of cardio. Yeah, I think that's right and that's good context to add to that for sure. All right, let me kick this next one over to you. ah Is a big booty and flat stomach an attainable goal? I mean, I think it is or else we would never see them in the real world, right? I think it. word there is genetics. So right. I mean, yes, some people are it's really body fat distribution. So if you're a female asking this, the likelihood that you store a disproportionate amount of your body weight, sorry, body fat, and, you know, consequently body weight below the waist is likely it's highly likely. So flatter stomach is already in your genetic favorability based on body fat pattern distributions when estrogen is higher. uh How well that is stored in your glutes is largely genetic. But I mean, we've all seen people build some solid glutes. I mean, it's not easy and you have to learn how to train really, really well and train, you know, really hard and those sorts of things, but it is doable. It's just whether you want to dedicate the time to it or not. And you probably have to go through a few cycles of like building and, you know, deficits and those sorts of things. But I would say, yes, it is an attainable goal. Yeah, I tend to agree. I would just, I gravitate back to the word genetics. Like I just think where you naturally inherently are storing your body fat has a huge role in that. And uh I'll also add that it gets way more complicated after pregnancy and birth. And I've seen that across so many women in my life is just that that natural distribution that you had pre-baby sometimes changes a little bit post baby. And even if you do everything right, it's often hard to get back to exactly where you were before that occurred. So yeah, a number of factors kind of going into that. um a really, really good addition. Yeah. Next question is just asking me if I'm updating the evolved blog still. Um, cause it has been probably at least a year since I've updated it. The reason that it has not been updated. And while I continue to put out programming for evolved is that much of my programming philosophy for the general population hasn't shifted enough to the point that it would warrant me writing like a brand new blog being like, check out this new cycle where things are like so different than they were before. It's more just kind of like a rinse wash repeat. And so I have two blogs that kind of represent my programming and training ideology that hasn't shifted much. And so I keep referring training cycles to that blog. I'm like, Hey, read this blog from 2023, where I describe exactly the way that I want things done still to this day. Um, so that's kind of the reason there. I am, uh, at this point, considering adding one or two new programs to evolved one would be. this idea that I talked about in the updates where I have that kind of volume week and then the intensity week and then the volume week and the intensity week where you're kind of working through movements that way. so if I decide to write a program like that, I'll certainly write a blog post about it. Uh, the other one would be this kind of Jordan lips podcast that we did where we have the 30 to 60 minutes, six days a week health and longevity plan. Um, and so if I were to write a program for that, which I may, um, I will write a blog for that too. So anytime there's new stuff in my brain, I certainly will put it out on the blog. But the reason that it's not is simply because my training methodology hasn't changed so much over the last couple of years. Do you think the hip abduction machine is the best way to train that function for hypertrophy? Yeah, so what is that function? You're basically in the good girl, bad girl machine, but you're doing the bad girl one, right? Where you push out. um That one is primarily gonna be like the outer lateral portions of the glute. So, you know, underneath we have like piriformis and TFL. Then we have the glute min and maybe like a little bit of glute mead that's probably happening toward the ladder. parts of the movement as you really extend out and externally rotate, you probably get a little bit of glute med in there as well. And so I think it's a fine way of training that function. uh One piece that's really nice about it is that you have incredible stability in that machine, which is always an advantage when training for hypertrophy. uh One of the downsides is that it forces you to be in a specific line of press where your knee is bent and you're rotating out externally. So you probably could get a little bit more specific and nuanced with your targeting. If you were attaching your ankle to a cable with like, you know, one of those uh foot harnesses or ankle harnesses or whatever, and being able to specifically move it at the angle that you want. So if you know, if you wanted to directly target the glute men, you could go directly out to the side, or if you wanted to do glute mead, you could go partially back and partially to the side. So doing the cable. allows you a little bit more kind of freedom of specificity, but you lose the stability. um So I would say that if glutes are your goal, and specifically outer glutes, that probably a combination of those movements is best. uh However, I do think that the hip AB induction machine is probably a decent choice to at least, you know, get you started on that journey toward growth in those regions. Very, very well put. I will also add that there is some um equipment that trains that hip abduction with a little bit of what would be hip extension, I think, would be. like we have that at the undefeated, it's called a gluteator. um Super old school, you don't see them much anymore, but that trains a little bit of both at the same time. Yep, cool. Okay. Yeah, sure. You can kick at my. Yep. Yep. Do you still believe that in a deficit it is better to just do steps instead of proper cardio? I want to lose weight, but I like running and sometimes in my long runs I get quite hungry. But other than that, not too much different. Is there any reason for not doing proper cardio while in a deficit? Yeah, so I think this question is based on a take that I had from three plus years ago at this point. It's actually potentially from one of my most popular posts that I've ever done on Instagram, where I got close to like, I think 1000 likes, which for me is a lot. So I'll just throw that out there. And it was a post basically saying you don't need to do cardio, just do steps. And the premise was that there's a formula that you can have where essentially you start a diet at just for easy numbers, we'll say 3000 calories and 7,000 steps. And then over the course of the diet, as you stagnate, you can either cut 100 calories or add 1000 steps. And then when you stagnate, you cut another hundred calories or add 1000 steps or do both if you really want to expedite the process. And so by doing it this way, it my argument was that it would eliminate variables that make it challenging. to properly diagnose your progress. And so I still believe that that's probably right. Like adding in structured cardio does complicate that formula just a little bit. if you really like my best diet ever to put context to it was 2022 when this is basically what I did or 2021 one of the two. And it worked like magic. Like I never did cardio. I just either added steps or cut calories. And eventually I got to a point where I was eating 2400 calories and walking 14,000 steps, I think, and I was super duper lean at 182 pounds, you know, and it it worked magic. However, I don't think that that's a requirement anymore. I don't I do not still believe that. I think that you absolutely can include running and biking and things like that into your weight loss protocol. Like I said, it does slightly complicate the matter. It does slightly increase the amount of cortisol. and decrease anabolism, maybe like a marginal amount. uh Tough to say. It kind of goes back to that question earlier of like how much running and cycling is too much to optimize hypertrophy. It's like, you gotta test it out and see, but like at some level, like there is gonna be a small compromise that occurs somewhere in there. And the same thing applies here. ah But like I said, I really don't think it's a problem. I just think like if you want to get really nuanced about it, you probably need to find some way of assessing or tracking what the cost is of that cardio you're doing. But yeah, curious what you have to say on that as well. I'm gonna answer it a little bit differently. Is there any other reason for not doing proper cardio in a deficit? Let's say you only have like five days to really dedicate to like an exercise. Exercise, right? And you wanna lift five days per week, right? For whatever reason. You may be able to get 10 minutes. four times per day in 10 minute chunks to where we can like do steps. But you can't really, I mean you could go like do sprints but then you're coming back to your desk at work like sweaty as a motherfucker and that's probably not acceptable sort of thing. So there could be like maybe time constraints or something like that or maybe you really hate doing cardio, right? That's a viable reason like we talked about enjoyment factor. Like Brian said his best diet. He didn't do any cardio. I just came off of like I didn't do any real cardio and in my season at all. I did 40 minutes of walking in the morning 40 minutes of walking in the evening. That was my like peak cardio and then I would do some laps in between a lap around the gym in between in between. What are those things called sets? So like I really didn't say you do not need to I do think there is a benefit to it You know zone two or or maybe not hit in a deficit because of recovery capacity and mitigating You know unnecessary increases in cortisol and stuff, but you say you enjoy running to go for those runs I don't think there's any reason that you need to be overly like restrictive into one camp or another uh Yeah, I just want to double tap on one of the things you said, which was about time. And so I actually think that that's an example of where maybe that would be a reason to do cardio because you're somebody that can't just go from 7,000 steps to 14,000 steps over three months because you just don't have double the amount of time available to simply go walk. Um, so in that case, yeah, absolutely. Like the way I would structure it in that case is, okay, we're going to do a 7,000 step base and then you know, when you need to add additional energy expenditure in, it's going to have to be in small bouts of proper cardio because you don't have the time to go walk, right? Like you can burn 100 calories walking 10 minutes or I can at 200 pounds. It's about 100 calories in 10 minutes or so. But you can burn 100 calories jogging in six minutes. So I mean, you're basically at 60 % of the time commitment simply by elevating from a walk. to a slow zone two type stride. just something to keep in mind if time is an issue as well. Yeah, good point. I'll kick this one to you. Should you do unilateral exercises whenever possible if you have time? Any benefit to doing bilo- So I would say no, you should not do unilateral exercises whenever possible if you have time. And one of the benefits, one of the primary benefits to doing bilateral exercises is stability. uh I mean, I think this person probably like thought about this question from like a back standpoint. But if you think about it, like when are we doing a bunch of unilateral like chest exercises or like unilateral? pressing stability component is huge. um I would not like I personally like in a program when I can like if I'm only if I can only pick like. two back exercises or maybe three back exercises in a program for volume considerations or time. I'm probably not gonna put a unilateral one in there, but if I can have a little bit more time to dedicate, I always like to put a unilateral row or pull down in there. But that's aside from... You know, lateral raise. I do often prefer unilateral because it's a simpler movement pattern and it's easier to focus on one as opposed to both. like chest, are we really ever doing any unilateral chest pressing? um and then your appendages, biceps, triceps, I think also have some role, but only if typically I have, if I'm putting like three bicep exercises in, I may do a unilateral one or I will, but if I'm only getting to choose one, it's typically not going to be a unilateral. Just for the sake of being contrarian, I will argue for doing more unilateral exercises if time is not an issue, because I think the number one reason not to do unilateral exercises is time. I think stability is a good secondary one, but I think time is really the main one, and this person is saying if you have time. uh So the benefit of doing unilateral exercises, especially for your appendages, and I'll even include legs in this, is that it does allow you to take a slightly different angle and you get to uh utilize the benefit of the bilateral deficit, which means that you can usually use a little bit more weight and stimulus when doing things unilateral. As far as lining things up better, like the arms are a perfect example of this. Like if you're doing an overhead tricep extension and you want to get in the scapular plane or you're doing a one arm cable lateral raise in the scapular plane or something like that, it's going to be a lot easier to achieve that specific positioning that you want in a unilateral nature because you can kind of manipulate your torso position as well as your arm position. As far as stability, leg training can be done pretty stable unilaterally like you could do a single leg hack squat, single leg pendulum, any of that stuff. Obviously doing a Bulgarian or walking lunge is going to be a little bit less stable so I understand that. against that for sure. To your point about chest press, yeah, I wouldn't often do a lengthened version of a chest press unilateral because I think there's too much bracing and anti-rotation that occurs in your midline. um However, you do see movements like, you know, the press rounds that Cass does where those are specifically done unilateral so that you can achieve a larger uh amount of a deduction across the body. than you would be able to if you were using two arms where you get limited by where the handles meet each other. So I actually do think there's like a really good argument for doing more unilateral stuff if time's not an issue. To Aaron's point, you just need to be kind of selective about the exercises you choose and making sure that there's still plenty of stability. Yeah, I think for a lot of the... What would we call it? Like, um my goodness, what is this word? You're not isometrics, you're isolated thing. So like seated leg extension. Yeah, like you can line your joints up so much better when you only have to line up like one hip versus both. Cause we're all gonna have those little differences. Like I even know myself when I'm sitting on the leg extension, like my right leg and hip just like doesn't line up kind of properly like the other one does. So I think that has a lot of utility. um I just, I can't say that I think that it would be more beneficial to take your bilateral hack squat and replace it with a unilateral hack squat or pendulum or something like that for all volume. um But yeah. I mean, I'll also add that one thing we didn't address was the psychological fatigue that's associated with doing single arm or single leg stuff. the fact that going to failure or close to failure is hard enough on lower body work. And then you're talking about like, okay, usually I would do seven bilateral sets for my lower body. Well, now you have to do 14 sets for your lower body. So have fun with that, you know. Okay, this next one, four versus five days of training per week when weekly volume is equated. What do you think is the sweet spot for experienced lifters with decent strength? don't think there's a big enough difference between four and five days that I would even kind of entertain an argument to say that one's definitively better than the other. uh So many factors go into this, like, you know, the split that you're using, the exercise selection, your individual recovery, you know, sleep stress, all these buckets that we know nothing about. So I would just say like, I know it's kind of a cop out answer, but you need to, to first kind of just decide what exercises you're using and what frequency you want for those exercises, what areas of the body you really want to focus on, and then kind of partition those across either four or five days. I just don't think it really matters. Yeah, I guess I'm technically playing devil's advocate. The only thing that I would say is if you are picking like a higher volume four days per week, your training sessions might push past the length where you just can't. really stay mentally committed to it or you just want to leave. Like I know that's what happens with me past about like an hour and 45 minutes. I just don't want to fucking be there anymore. And if I were to decide, hey, this is my volume and then I'm doing it in four days, I might suffer psychologically with some of those final, you know, sets. Whereas five days would would would solve for that. So but I think that's really volume. mediated more so than four days versus five days. Yeah, I think that's right. I would also just add that the more days that you do in a week, the more back to back days you have, which even if you're training different muscle groups, there is like some kind of central fatigue components that go into that too. Um, so I think, you know, the program design itself needs to be a little bit more nuanced if you're going to be training more days per week as well. Yeah, agreed. Yeah. What is your current favorite exercise or physical activity? The thing you look forward to the most in your week. I mean, physical activity is definitely lifting. I cannot say that I am loving my cardio right now because I'm in the brand new, massive adaptations happening right now, which also means it hurts the most. um I would say probably. I have two upper back exercises. One I put on my stories yesterday. It's the semi pronated um prime rotate handle upper back pull down. And then I'm doing a bent over camber bar row in my program. Those I would say I'm most excited about those. My biggest My biggest physique goal right now is bringing up my upper back, which I spoke about as my glaring weakness in my physique. So those I would say have the most like meaningful attachment as I go into performing those sets. Yeah, I love this question and I actually have thought about it myself a lot in the last few months because man, it's complicated and I'll go through my thought process here. uh The thing I absolutely look forward to with no question asked is zone two biking because it's easy enough that it's not painful. It is cathartic. I can listen to a podcast, I can zone out, can look at the beauty around me, I'm not in my head and, you know, puffing and puffing. It's just easy and it feels good. It's almost like going for a walk but a little bit harder. um However, the things that I feel the most post exercise happiness about, the thing that I'm the most proud of myself for completing are always my like zone four, zone five cardio and my leg days. And those are certainly the ones that I look forward to the least. Like going into those days, I'm not prone to anxiety, but sometimes when I know what I'm supposed to achieve in a given day, whether it's a pendulum squat or an interval set of biking or running or whatever, I just know how much that's going to hurt. And so I don't actually look forward to it. But in retroactive looking back on my day, or even upon immediately being done with it, I bask in the pride that I have for completing it and succeeding at it. um And so I find benefit in all of those. um I do look forward to my upper body training, but not as much as my zone two. And I also don't get as much reward from my upper body training as I do from zone five or from training legs. uh And so that's kind of the complicated nature of this in assessing my favorite physical activity. It's not necessarily the thing I look forward to the most. Sometimes favorite can be the thing that retroactively is the one that gives you the most pride for what you did. Yeah, I believe what you effectively just described there is that the dopaminergic like uh work to reward pathway. yeah, for sure, for sure. All right, let's see. Heels elevated squats, what kind of stance do you use? A narrow slant board cyclist squat or what? Mean that's gonna depend on your anatomy I shouldn't even say unfortunately because it does like some people have It's the shape of your pelvis and then the the angle at which the do you know what that thing is that sticks out from the pelvis that goes into the hip socket Is like a specific terminology for that little like bowl thing that sticks out. I don't know what it is Yeah, but like there's the people whose there's go out pretty wide There's people whose are angled more narrow like it is going to be your bone structure that you know how narrow your knees are, how wide your feet are, it's very very genetically derived. And the mobility of your ankles, for sure. Like hips and ankles and stuff like that. So I would just say that aside from your anatomy, which definitely dictates it, you can also slightly bias various regions. So if you're going a little bit more narrow, like a cyclist squat where you're simply sending the knees forward the entire time, you're going to get a little bit more quad. If you go a little bit more wider with your toes pointed out, you're going to get a little more adductor in there, kind of like inner thigh. Um, so really kind of just depends on what you want to bias there, but, but I do think if you're trying to train the quads specifically and to omit as much from other muscle groups as possible, you want to be as narrow and focused on knee flexion more than anything else as you can be for your anatomy. All right, I'm curious on your response on this one. uh Can I do a trial of TRT just for a few weeks to see if I notice anything positive without ruining my natural production long? You could, yes, if I had to pick a simple answer. I would say. Ruining your natural production long-term is a little bit over overblown I would say let's say you do decide to do a trial the length of your trial it I would say it's probably going to be Equally as long to get your natural production back to baseline So let's say you did it for two weeks and you're like, I don't like pinning myself I don't I don't want to do this in two weeks. You're probably gonna be back to normal if you do it for six weeks You're probably gonna have to at least wait six weeks. If you do it for a year, you may have to wait like a year if you're just gonna stop and do nothing else. um To see if I notice anything positive, you will. It's definitely like dose dependent. So it's hard to say like if I do a trial of TRT, it's not like. it's like test driving a car. You could test drive a car at 20 miles per hour. You could test drive a car at 40 miles per hour. You could test drive a car at 120 miles per hour. Typically the faster you go, the more fun test driving that car is, the higher the risks are of adverse effects as well. So it's a really convoluted question, unfortunately. Yeah, if let's say you do it for six weeks and you're like, you know what? I don't, I don't, this isn't for me. You're not going to be shut down for like two years or permanently ruin yourself. That's, that's just not true. Yeah, my assumption was that it would be a little bit longer than the time that you were on it. So like if you're on it for three to six weeks, it might be like three to six months to return back to normal. I'll have to do some more digging. I don't know why that was in my brain. I feel like somebody told me that ah because I've had this similar question myself, actually. I may have even brought it up on a podcast a few, a few months ago when I was talking about the TRT thing and potentially trying it for a few weeks and then reassessing. So Um, something I'm considering as well. So if I end up doing this, obviously I'll keep everyone updated on the pod and we'll see how goes. All right. Yeah. quickly there are other things you can do to restore your your natural function Faster, you can just like pull and wait that that works. It will be slower um And it's not the fact that it's like slower if you've never had any testosterone like you feel rather fucking crappy and day-to-day life is much less enjoyable um So I would say that there Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I'm going to adjust a few of these questions so that I can do the ones that are relevant to me and then you can finish up, because I think we're gonna run out of time here. ah Okay, so the next question I'll just kick to myself is what would be the minimum effective dose of cardio volume to not go backwards? Never been a big cardio guy, so just trying to be healthy. So I've talked about this as like the minimum three times a week to progress in your cardio. And so I'll just re state that real quick, which is one zone two session. Uh, that's, know, 45 minutes plus or minus, depending on modality that you're using, probably shorter for running longer for biking, uh, one hit interval session where you accumulate around 16 minutes of work time. So that could be the typical four by four or like a 16 by one or something along those lines with a one to one work to rest ratio. And then one like kind of zone three. steady state session that's maybe 20 to 30, 20 to 40 minutes where you're working harder than zone two, but it's not as long as zone two. That would be my basis, basic recommendation that I give people for improving cardio, doing the hybrid thing, but doing the minimum while still trying to improve. I think in this guy's question, which is what is the bare minimum to like not go backwards. And we're assuming that he's not a big cardio guy to begin with. So it's not like he's starting at the top and he's like, how, now that I'm this like cardio beast, how can I not go backwards from being a cardio beast? He's kind of just like, hey, I'm a no cardio guy. I'm a cardio, cardio, cardio, um but I want to be a cardio guy to at least make sure that like, as I get older, I'm not, you know, compromising my heart and cardiovascular. I kind of think that either one like really hard hit session a week, like literally 12 to 16 minutes of time in zone. So, you know, like I said, you know, 12 sets of one with a minute rest in between or four sets of four with four minutes of rest in between. Something like that would be totally sufficient for you to maintain cardiovascular just one session a week for what is that 15 to 30 minutes of total time. ah If you wanted to go a little extra, you could probably throw like a zone two or a zone three, kind of moderate effort, sustainable session in there where you're not doing intervals. And I think that that would be more than enough. Yeah, I don't have anything to add on top of that one. Cool. um Do you have any experience with the Freak Athlete piece of equipment? Have you seen this thing on the Instagram uh ads or anything like that? I am familiar. I had a client who had one that we had to pro we programmed its use. I can't say I think it's worth spending money on, if I'm being honest. think at the price point and with other options that have entered the home gym market, there are better ways to spend your money. So I think this question is actually, says, do you have any experience or know anyone with experience with the Freak Athlete extension for the quad ham curl? So I think what they might be asking is, do we have experience with this one specific add-on for this machine, not for the machine itself? That was at least when I reread the question, that was how I interpreted it. So I do have experience with people that have this specific piece of equipment, but not necessarily the add-on. Okay. The people that have done that have the equipment actually do seem to like it for what it is. I think it's like $600 and allows you to do like hip extensions, GHD sit ups and like, I don't know a few other things. People do seem to like it for what it does. I honestly can't say whether the quad ham curl add on is is worth anything or not. I don't can't say I know anyone that's used it. My client had the quad ham curl extension on it. So sorry, I misinterpreted the question. Since you already have it, I think it probably would change my answer. It sounds like you already have the free gathlete and we're getting the extension depending on the cost. you know, maybe there's, I don't know. Let's say space is a concern. You don't have the space to buy like a home gym dedicated. leg extension, leg curl, then I would say it would be uh a worthwhile add-on. Yeah, I think that's probably well said and probably accurate. All right, so I think I have two more questions for me and then I'm gonna drop off and let you handle the rest if that's cool. uh So next question is, if you are natural, what would be the highest frequency of legs, glutes that you would do in a week to recover adequately? Do want to start it? It's I mean the answer is two or three. There's there's other there's other there's other things that go into it like you're ah obviously like your volume your intensity how you have your your training split program like Brian and I talked about this. I forget which episode it was a while back but a way to like the pretty much the only really appropriate way that you could train lower body three times in a week with recovery capacity. um I will also say I don't think being natural or not has any impact on the frequency of recovery. I was fortunate that I trained extensively for like eight months as a natural with everyone else who was on gear and our recovery capacity in terms of timing was nearly identical. Cool, yeah, I think that's right. uh My thoughts on this are that I think three times is probably the most. think one of those three days has to be exclusively short overload. So we're talking leg extensions, leg curls, glute bridges, cable kickbacks, uh abduction, adduction. I think that probably encompasses most of kind of the short overload lower body stuff you would be doing. So the way that I tend to organize this when I have clients that want three times a week, lower body training is we actually do it if, if I can get them to agree to it across an eight day week, because I find that if you do lengthened lower body on Monday, and then you short on Wednesday or Thursday, that doing lengthened again on Friday or Saturday doesn't leave you enough recovery time before you then have to do lengthened another time. Um, So I like to do it across an eight or even a nine day cycle where it might be like a Monday, Thursday, Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday type thing where you're not actually getting three a week. You're getting three every nine, eight or nine days. Um, and that seems to be more effective for, for my clients. I, I personally struggle to design a lower body program that would have three legit training days in a week. And maybe that's an issue with my ability to design programming. as I know, like Brett Contreras has put out five day a week lower body programs and stuff like that. maybe it's my deficiency, but that's kind of been my experience with it. And then, uh, all right. Yeah. Um, all right. Last question I think for me before I bounce is how has the alternating lower upper three times a week been working for you? And it's been amazing. briefly entertain the idea on our last pot or two of discussing, Hey, what's my winter training going to look like? Maybe I'll go to like a six times a week bro split just to like mix it up. But the reality is that I just love this lower upper structure. I especially like it in the way that I described in the updates where I'm alternating between the volume week and the kind of intensity week. It's just been such an awesome structure to fit in all my cardio training and all the other things that I want to do in life on this like alternating structure where I lift, then I cardio, then I lift, then I cardio, then I lift, then I cardio. And like if I miss a day, it's not a big deal because you know, training Monday, Wednesday, Friday is great. But if it's Monday, Thursday, Saturday or something also not really a big deal. um It just has worked really well with my recovery and balance with life. I'm a huge, huge fan of it. And probably something that if it doesn't stay for like forever, probably something that I at least you know, come back to pretty regularly over the course of time. There we go. All right. And then there's what five or six more questions for you. So I'm in a bounce. Thanks for hanging everybody. And we'll be back next week. All right, see you, Okay. So this next question actually like is there such a thing as true weight loss resistance if tracking accurately. It's a really good question. I think there is. And what then the reason I say that is pretty much what where the resistance starts to come in is around your thyroid function. Right. And some of this is going to be genetic. Some of this is going to be environmental where you were prior to starting your deficit. But As your thyroid down regulates, right? A very simple way to think about what your thyroid does, is your metabolic regulator. Higher thyroid production by higher, I don't mean TSH, mean uh active T3 in the body. The easier it is for you to lose fat because your thermostat on the metabolism is turned up. As we diet, it's only natural that the body as a stopgap mechanism starts to reduce the temperature of that thyroid thermostat to reduce or make uh make it harder to further continue to lose weight. If you have a really shitty thyroid or maybe you didn't take enough time off in between dieting phases, I was I've literally just speaking with. a very big fitness influencer in the space who's who is natural. He's in his like early, I think early 30s, but I'm talking like giant, you know, in the space. um And he's like, every time I diet now, I have so much problems like trying to get lean. have to go so low calories. I was like, you have blood work and he me his blood work. Yeah, his TSH was like a five or a six. And his thyroid's super down regulated because he's lived the last like eight years of his life at seven percent body fat and his thyroid is now starting to work against him from being so lean for so long. So that is where the weight loss resistance can be. That's probably the most common one you will run into. Now I think where the nature of the question is derived from is from some more recent terminology in the space around some autoimmune sort of things or like overactive immune system or we're getting like really, really high levels of inflammation because when we have really high levels of inflammation, the body, we get metabolic dysfunction and with the way that things would normally happen, they are happening differently, you know? So I would say those are much more convoluted and in full transparency, I'm not overly versed in them. It's not uh a coaching population that I plan to do much work at all with, so I won't speak about things that I really don't know much about, but the thyroid down regulating is very, very real. If you stay too long, too lean for too long, it does become problematic if you are someone like I know someone who had thyroid cancer. had to have their thyroid removed. If your doctor is not very well managing your level of thyroxine or uh synthroid, I believe is the other one. medication name and keeping your thyroid levels like artificially now higher or sufficiently high like you can have weight loss resistance because you don't have enough circulating thyroid so I do think there are situations where it is true I would say they are the percentage is much lower than we actually think And if you're curious, just go get your thyroid tested. It's maybe like 80 bucks to get like a very comprehensive thyroid panel done. That's third party paying out of pocket. You can do that through AlgoRx.com. You can do that through Life Extension are two very simple places for you to do that. Next question. What is the bare minimum for daily fat intake while cutting different for lifestyle versus competitor? How long? Kyle Baxter, which is a good friend of mine. We've had him on the podcast has done some wild low fat protocols with interesting and legit justification. I'm always trying to be mindful of bare minimum for hormonal slash adrenal sufficiency. So um very, very many moving pieces to this question. The first and most important thing when answering this question bare men for daily fat intake while cutting. Are we natural or are we not? Simple as that, right? Because as a natural, your steroid hormones are produced from cholesterol, very, very far upstream. our cholesterol. Right. And the body's going to take some of that from a dietary fat intake. The liver can synthesize some of it uh to produce pregnant alone, which is our mother, you know, steroid hormone. And then we get all of our other like steroidal hormones as downstream cascades from that. While it is rare, I have seen in blood work uh someone whose fat intake was super, super low for super long. Like we're talking. a like five foot nine, five foot 10, 180 ish pound male who was on like 30 grams of fat for like 18 months. All of his cholesterol numbers were tanked HDL LDL across the board. Absolute gutter. um That is literal down regulation from from too little of fat intake. So it can happen now in terms of what is the bare minimum. Let's say I will never take females under like 35 males like 45. Now if I had a bikini competitor that we needed to take under 35 for like the last three weeks of a diet or something like that I would. But that's a pretty acute timeline. But then also. goal dependent, which is getting stage lean, which is where in many times you have to bend the rules because of what it takes to be stage lean. So different for lifestyle versus competitor, right? So I just covered the competitor. uh In my lifestyle clients, males, I will take down to 45. It's opportunity cost a little bit and it depends on how lean they are. And then females around that same like 40 sort of thing. So one thing that's important to point out in the context of this is your body fat levels, right? The fatter you are, the safer it is to take the fats lower because you have body fat. Body fat is very protective in and of itself to harsher conditions while dieting, right? That's the reason it's there in the first place from a pure evolutionary standpoint. um Now in terms of backs, so he does he likes to do very very low fat dieting protocols because it's opportunity cost and where those calories could go right so once we cover the absolute bare minimum baseline for like um cell structure and cell uh there's a term like elasticity might might be the term I'm looking for if your actual cells and I know from like what he does and I don't want to speak for him too strongly He takes in like really high Omega 3s. His fats are almost like purely Omega 3s. um Because we cover those bases there and then it's just opportunity cost on well these extra fats can go to carbs which would better uh preserve training performance, et cetera, et cetera. um I would say 35 to 45 is a sweet spot if you need to. I think anything. m like 50 is incredibly safe. um But if you're if you're not natural, you can be much more aggressive with lower fats because one of the primary functions of the dietary fats we are replacing exogenously. Great question. Is there any benefit to finding and staying at the top end of the maintenance range? I'm assuming this means maintenance calories. Yes. Right. And that reason that word is leverage. OK. So if we are holding our body weight leverage assuming that you want to. diet at some point in the future. That is where we would say the leverage is good. The downside could be, I don't know, you spend more money on food because your maintenance calories are higher. That could be a small negative. Let's say we could maintain our body weight at 2000 calories. We could also maintain our body weight at 2500 calories. If we were to diet in the future, we obviously want to start from a higher caloric intake, right? Especially going back to some of those things I spoke about in the thyroid section. There's people who kind of end up like yo-yoing have very inconsistent um intakes and never properly fuel themselves for what they're doing. The likelihood that things are great under the hood in terms of starting a diet. are less likely. I'm not saying they're impossible. They're less likely. The definition of the benefit is literally leverage. If we can start from a more leveraged position that gives us a longer runway, more calories we can work with, or maybe we can get the same job done on higher calories. It's all a net positive. Okay, final question we have here. Stress, sleep and water. How much of a difference do they actually make on body composition? Under the premise that we are lean enough for it to matter. It is massive, right? uh Stress, sleep and water. So for example, I am just coming off of my bodybuilding uh season. Those three factors are everything. in the final like 48 hours. Everything. Right. If your water is off you're either cramping uh going being dehydrated or being watery. If you're super stressed out you're not going to respond to the things the same way like they are very very very important. And if you're super super lean. OK. If we're not as lean let's say. um Let's say we're just trying to be like healthy, right? Healthy, but not fat. Let's call it 12 to 13 % body fat as a male. um Water will impact your ability to get like a pump in the gym, right? So if we're dehydrated, we're not going to get as good of a pump. And that obviously has an effect on appearance. Not truly body composition, but the presentation of the body composition, stress and sleep. These are what I call major indirect impacting factors, right? Does your sleep improve your body composition directly? Technically, yes, it does a little bit, but they are these large indirect impacting factors. So the better we sleep, the better our sleep quality is. The less hungry that we are, the more satiety that is driven through leptin, right? And the easier it is for us to make decisions that are positively correlated with the body composition that we want each day. Very same thing with stress. If we are in a lower stress environment, the likelihood that we are going to make positive decisions that contribute to the body composition that we want are significantly higher. Right? Think about it as you have married couple does not have children yet or sleeping great. Stress is low. They live their healthy lifestyle together. Same married couple now has like four month old newborn sleep is low. Stress is high and that same couple starts ordering take out much more out of convenience. Right? And because they're stressed the fuck out and the The Chinese take out or the pizza take out provides that immediate um dopamine benefit of that, of that, that, that palatability of the food. Right. So those are these ways that they are the indirect impacting factors in that they do not directly manipulate your body composition. They change the likelihood of the decisions that you will make and those decisions then obviously impact your body composition. So hopefully that was helpful. That one is is one is in terms of body composition, we in many in this space, people try to put things in silos, right? But it just doesn't work that way. Like as humans, we are very, very complicated, especially when it comes into like psychology and things like that. Right. So these indirect impacting factors are often massively ah massively. What's the word I want to use here? Like important or massively impactful in things like body composition because of the likelihood that it changes the decisions that we make simple as that. So that puts a wrap on Eat, Train, Prosper episode at 202. Hopefully we provided you guys some solid value here answered questions comprehensively. Brian and I will be back next week with another episode. As always, thank you for listening.