Coach's Corner With Justin and Ethan
Welcome to "Coach's Corner with Justin and Ethan," where your health and fitness journey gets a simplified makeover! Join Justin and Ethan, two seasoned coaches with a combined 30 years of experience, as they navigate the labyrinth of health and fitness, unraveling myths from facts to guide you towards success.
In each episode, we dive headfirst into the vast world of well-being, shedding light on weight loss, dissecting diet fads, exploring diverse workout styles, and fine-tuning the often overlooked aspect of mindset. Our mission is to demystify the complexities surrounding health, making your journey not only effective but enjoyable.
Get ready for a lively and informative conversation that feels like a chat with your favorite fitness buddies. Justin and Ethan draw upon their extensive experience, sharing real-life stories from working with thousands of clients. No stone is left unturned as they break down what really works and what's just another fitness fad.
Whether you're a fitness enthusiast or a beginner taking the first steps toward a healthier lifestyle, "Coache's Corner" is your go-to source for practical insights, debunking myths, and embracing the joy of the journey. Tune in for a fun and engaging exploration of the truth behind health and fitness, and let Justin and Ethan be your trusted guides to a healthier, happier you!
Coach's Corner With Justin and Ethan
Body Recomposition: Balancing Muscle Gain and Fat Loss
Can you really turn fat directly into muscle? Nope, and we’re here to bust that myth wide open. Join us on this episode of Coach's Corner as we unravel the complexities of body recomposition. We'll dive into the real meaning behind recomposition—shifting your body's balance of muscle and fat. Expect to gain practical insights on building muscle while shedding fat, all without necessarily changing the number on the scale. Through structured training, progressive overload, and a high-protein diet, learn how to walk the fine line between muscle gain and fat loss.
Balancing cutting and bulking phases? We've got you covered. Discover the nuances of protein intake and calorie consumption and how to maintain that all-important high protein-to-calorie ratio during a calorie deficit. We’ll explore the timing of transitioning between fitness phases to ensure metabolic health and safety, all while working towards your aesthetic goals. Whether you're new to fitness or an experienced lifter, our discussion emphasizes the importance of consistency and a well-matched nutrition protocol to achieve long-term success.
We also delve into the world of aesthetic versus performance-based goals. From the impact of genetics on your physique to the science behind muscle gain and fat loss, we cover it all. Learn how high-intensity training, progressive overload, and meticulous tracking can help you reach new heights in your fitness journey. By maintaining consistency and motivation, ensure that every phase of your training sets a new benchmark. Tune in for a masterclass on body recomposition, and set yourself on the path to achieving the physique you desire.
It's episode 21 of Coach's Corner with Justin and Ethan. I am Coach Justin and I'm Coach Ethan, and today we're gonna be talking about recompositioning Recomping meaning, you know, I turn fat into muscle, right, of course, that's how it works.
Speaker 2:You just train and the fat cells just directly amalgamize right onto the muscle tissue.
Speaker 1:This is just one of those topics where I have to remind myself that just because we understand something, it's because it's so like a no-brainer when you're in the profession of something that you forget that there's still so many people who believe that you can actually just like turn fat into muscle, right into muscle. So we're just gonna go for it today and like break it down. What is recomping? You know what's the process your body goes through to build muscle versus burn fat, how one should approach it as far as like a phasing or periodization, and then you know maybe some anecdotes on how we do with ourselves. But yeah, so that's what I, um, that's how I see it going. How about you?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean I would say that I used to have a prescription it was actually from a client but to both men's health and the other one that is equivalent men's fitness or yeah, muscle and fitness, yeah, whatever, yeah and I think the words burn fat and build muscle appeared on the cover on either one or the other every single month.
Speaker 2:It was like this ongoing joke. I had a stack and it would just be like burn fat, build muscle, burn fat, build muscle. And it's not saying that that's implying that fat turns muscle, but it's just very funny because I think it is like the cliche and we're all chasing it. But it was very funny.
Speaker 1:I would probably be much richer if I could just be that and those guys are out there, there's no shortage they would, to my mind, would be a charlatan of some sort. You know, maybe not. Maybe it's to them that, the idea being that whatever it takes to get someone to click the ad or to watch the video and buy the product, then maybe they can then lure them in with the idea of oh, it's this like build four inches around your chest, but then, once you're in, it's like no dude, you got to go to a cali, so we'll give the benefit of the doubt, but I could. It's so hard to go there with marketing because it's like I just I'm this misinformation.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know, it's just such classic catchwords that everybody wants to hear. Yeah, there would be even no context. They would literally just be the words like burn fat and build muscle. And you're just like okay, what does that mean? What are we talking about here? I don't not want to burn fat and build muscle.
Speaker 1:Who here wants to burn muscle and build fat?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's really what I'm after yeah, so the path less trodden.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's probably a market for it, but all right. So recomposition Like okay. So composition is just the composition wherever your body's at right now, like how much muscle and how much fat do you have on you at any one time? Like so. And this is an interesting angle, I think, because when we think of someone who's just has high body fat percentage, we might immediately think that they're, that they're a big person. But actually, let's just say two people each have a 10-inch arm, and person A has a 10-inch arm, but maybe seven of that inches is bone and muscle, and person B maybe only four inches of that is bone and muscle. So the arm is still 10 inches, but the composition of the arm is much more muscular or much fatter, depending on the person's lifestyle or whatever. So recompositioning could imply maybe I'm the same size that I am now. I'm wearing the same clothes that I currently wear, but I have 10 pounds less body fat but 10 pounds more muscle on my frame.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely I'm still 200 pounds, but shifted around, yes, which is great, which is, I think, what most people probably want, which is why I think re-comping gets so much traction and attention, because most people, a lot of folks, don't want to get huge with muscle they also don't want to get too frail either.
Speaker 2:They want to kind of their same size, a lot of folks, but just change the composition of their body that's it, yeah, and I think fundamentally, like almost everybody on a weight loss mission unless they have an excessive amount of fat that it always is a composition goal, not just a fat loss goal. Right, almost everybody is going to want to increase the lean mass, even if it's just for health and performance reasons or even if it's just to help them lose more body fat and it's not actually like wanting to get bigger. I think the goal is almost always there of at least maintaining or adding some type of lean mass as well as losing body fat. So it's really always composition.
Speaker 1:I think it's just that, like, fat loss is a very easy way to think about it if the scales are kind of tipped on one side in terms of the composition, if the scales are kind of tipped on one side in terms of the composition, and rightfully so, because even if you are considered obese, by simply pulling off some body fat and adding some muscle like it's going to demonstrably improve your health.
Speaker 1:So I think that, no matter what the goals are, whether it's just aesthetics or just health, like quote unquote, recomping in theory is a great pursuit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and even if you're just losing fat, you're still changing your composition or the ratio of fat to lean mass. So even if there is no resistance training and you're just losing excess body fat, technically it's a compositional change, no matter how you look at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So here's where I think it goes wrong is that people think that these two things well, let me put it this way yeah, the further down the rabbit hole and you go in any profession, the answer always tends to kind of be well, it depends if you give any sort of like definitive yes and no, you're just naive because there, because there are gray areas, there are gray areas and then, as you get into certain parameters, the things become more defined.
Speaker 2:I think yeah.
Speaker 1:But I think that people in general you can. Technically can you build muscle and burn fat at the same time?
Speaker 2:Right and burn fat at the same time Right, which I think, just to be clear, when we're using the word recomposition, that's kind of like the tag word for that exact process or idea of simultaneously putting on more lean mass, not just maintaining and losing body fat. So if you look up recomposition or you're in a magazine and you see it, they're specifically talking about both things happening simultaneously.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think the average person assumes when I say, hey, yeah, like, okay, what's your age, height and weight? Blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm six feet, I'm 190 pounds. You know, I don't want to like get any bigger or any smaller, I just want to like re-comp, you know. So that's what I hear a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so when we think of like, okay, what the average person thinks of re-comping technically, can someone burn fat and build muscle?
Speaker 2:I think technically to some degree yes, absolutely yes, it's 100% possible, totally, but just within a certain lane, within a lane.
Speaker 1:But noticeably, is a different thing than technically. In other words, let's say you take a guy and he's maybe an intermediate level lifter but his diet's kind of all over the place and he's got a significant amount of body fat, but he does train. It may be just not the hardest or it's not the best training, but he does train, his body's acclimated enough to to weights. Okay, this person, guy or girl, in that scenario, if I put you in a calorie deficit and we, we really tighten up your training and all of a sudden you're eating the right amount of protein, right, and you're consistent, and it's, but it's, but it is structured weight lifting, you could technically, you, you, that person would technically probably build a little bit of muscle, even in a calorie deficit 100%?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, but it wouldn't be noticeable amounts of muscle. It wouldn't be just like 5, 10, 15 pounds of just pure lean muscle.
Speaker 2:It might be like a pound or two. No, you're not going to be a slabbin' on bodybuilder status.
Speaker 1:No because the objective is fat loss, right. So in this person, if we had them in a calorie deficit, we would be in a calorie deficit, which means that we're eating less than our body burns, which means we're probably not going to create a ton of matter from nowhere. There might be like an acclimation adaptation process because of the more structured and higher quality training and higher protein levels, where that might be just like a quick pound or two of muscle adaptation over a 12 or 16 week phase. But the focus in that scenario would absolutely be weight loss and that's where you would see the most noticeable change, would be fat loss percentage and then a technical change I think would be a slight uptick in muscle but might not be a huge noticeable change because the intention was fat loss. That's what I feel.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that's all true, but I think it's one of those things that it's all like going to be a gradient, in the way I see it, and that, like in that example, that would be true but there is going to be a gradient to where like. So, for example, like I'm working with a brand new athlete not athlete, but a brand new client who was once obese, had lost a good amount of weight, has since lost probably 35 pounds. Great, you know, since the new year he's super strict on his numbers and has started training four times a week. So he's just doing a solid split, train him hard, simple, consistent lifts. And you know we're using the in-body machine and obviously the in-body machine and obviously the in-body machine is not going to be completely accurate. And the jump in lean mass it said immediately it's now leveled off quite a bit, but it said it's he's put on about seven pounds since the new year of lean mass and before the new year how he had done.
Speaker 2:No, weight resistance training yes and so I think the thing to talk about to like almost and the reason I'm starting there is like the beginning of the gradient of where recomposition is possible is novelty of resistance training 100 agree, and so and and I think that's going to be the first thing is that if they're following a legit progressive overload because that's, I think, the other thing if you're going to classes or you're doing some type of training that has some form of resistance training in it, like pushups or some kettlebell swings, technically some form of resistance training, but I think it's got to really be a classic progressive overload program where you're really making sure you're either increasing your volume or increasing your weight, and if that's novel to your system, then that's going to have some type of an effect, even if in a caloric deficit, again, depending on another variable of what the caloric deficit is 100 agree with everything you just said.
Speaker 1:I think that if you take a lift who is maybe like under a year of experience, yeah, you can absolutely do the recomp thing where, like in your in the case of your client, like there's no doubt in my mind you can pull 30 40 pounds of fat off and put on five or ten pounds a month like for sure, because it was like such fertile ground exactly any stimulus created an adaptational response right but if you but, but now, like you said it's, it's plateaued, it is yes, so it would have to be okay.
Speaker 2:Well, it's plateaued to some degree. It's still happening.
Speaker 2:He's still right the both graphs are are creating a nice, amazing, nice v. It's wild, but I think it's just because he's also training four times a week, which is pretty high for a new lifter, you know, and it allows for a pretty serious split, even if we're keeping it simple. But it's like also, like there you know I was, I did there is research that shows again, like even old athletes that take like two years off. Yes, again, if the novelty is reintroduced, they can have a period of that. And one of the things I also because I was looking into it a little bit is that there is, regardless of if it's a year or three months, there will be a point where it's impossible, the recomposition right, and so it might even be a year where you have some form of lean mass gain, depending on your caloric deficit. But it will, like the laws of the body will eventually kick in, where it will be impossible, if in a deficit, to continue to put on lean mass. Well, it's almost like.
Speaker 1:it's almost like we look at our bodies and ecosystem and like once the ecosystem has adapted to the environment, the stimulus needs to be significantly changed for that adaptation to continue. So you know, if I've never touched a weight and I've atrophied a lot of muscle, or it's been years since I've lifted, and all of a sudden I'm like you know, push, pull legs, push pull legs and everything's getting hit and I'm just constantly sore, then yeah, there's gonna be just like a adaptation and to that new homeostasis that you're in, yep, and then once it's there, it's like now we have to. Then, kind of and that that's what I said Once one achieves intermediacy after a year of lifting or whatever, six months of lifting, now you have to look at it like, okay, we have to pick a direction, or else we're just going to be in this sort of like no man's land forever.
Speaker 2:It's purgatory forever. You know Cause? I think it's one of the things too is that there's the hormonal play, because resistance training is going to kind of tickle the hormones that are involved with muscle protein synthesis or just increasing lean mass, right? So your growth hormone, your testosterone, all that stuff, and so even in I think there's a component of that even if there is a caloric deficit and you don't have these surplus of calories for your body to be like, oh, let's build another wing on the house. For your body to be like, oh, let's build another wing on the house, the hormonal component is going to be there, which is going to have some type of an anabolic effect that will be novel. So I think that's one of the reasons why the new lifters can have that, even though there is the deficit, is that you have that little extra nitrous of your hormones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because like okay and like play that hormone scenario out, but like maybe we're, we're, you know, on roids or something like that. You can eat, you could eat just whatever, but you're on roids, so you put on. You probably put on 20 pounds of muscle, yeah, just because you're on roids, so it's like.
Speaker 1:But when you're a new lifter, there's such like that hormonal response and all of a sudden, growth hormone, testosterone, like whatever it takes to like acclimate to this new stimulus that you're. You can, we can create mass from that, but in the short term. In the long term, though, if you want to continue getting leaner and getting stronger, then you really do have to break that up into phases yeah, it's interesting because I feel like I'm fairly consistent for the most part with my training, sometimes more than others.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I'm consistent twice a week, sometimes I'll be five times a week with a solid split and just you know, not going crazy, but just I mean I work in a gym, I own a studio, so I'm just there all the time.
Speaker 2:But my nutrition will fluctuate in its consistency much more in terms of like really just hitting my macros on paper, in the app always and sometimes what I find is that even if I go into a caloric deficit, just by introducing consistency in my protein and consistency in my carbohydrate, or just my macros, but I think more so my protein and really making sure I'm hitting my high number, my gram per pound, let's say that I will almost always have a period of time, even for how many years I've been lifting weights, where at least on the in-body machine it will say my body fat's going down and my lean mass goes up. And I think that one of the things is just the consistency of, even though I'm in a deficit, the consistency of adequate protein that comes from actually measuring to the T versus if things are all over the place, even if there's a slight surplus or not.
Speaker 2:I think is one of the other potential contributors where somebody that, even if they're in that intermediary phase, can get that three months of recomposition out, because if they all of a sudden really start paying attention to their diet, they might have more protein than they did before, even if they're in a deficit.
Speaker 1:Right, you know what I mean totally yeah, and it's easy to significantly under eat on protein, especially like you have. It takes a very concerted effort. Yeah, like, I look at it as like a um I want, I want 10 percent like if I have, I want 10 grams of protein to calorie ratio. So in other words, if it's a 500 calorie meal, I want 50 grams of protein in it. Especially in a fat loss phase. If you're in a building phase, you actually don't even need to eat even one gram of protein per pound of body weight. You can go a little bit lower. If you're like in a surplus, because there's just such an abundance of calories, your body's satiated and fed and you're there's not gonna do that catabolic effect.
Speaker 2:You don't need the thermogenic you don't need, yeah, but when you're in a deficit like I am now.
Speaker 1:It is so easy to finish the day like 60, 70 grams short and you're just like, well damn, I'm not gonna eat an eight ounce chicken breast at midnight you know, I mean you could, but yeah most people won't, so it really takes a concerted effort.
Speaker 1:so, yeah, so I could see that, like when you, if you've kind of drifted a little bit and you just dial it back in, I mean that could be potentially 50 or 60 more grams a day of protein for you, which would make a huge difference in anyone's composition over the course of months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I think that's something I've noticed of why I think it's happened for me, even though I would be more consistent with my training. And it does end eventually. But it is interesting because it'll even like even at like 2400 calories, which is a pretty strong deficit based on my activity level. I'm always like, oh interesting.
Speaker 1:Like. Those are not the numbers I would expect before it starts to taper off, but it definitely is just from the consistency, for sure, for sure. Okay, so when? When should we know when it's time to? Okay? So let's say, we get out of the first six months or year of training and we've lost the 30, 40 pounds. We put on the five or ten pounds of muscle and we've noticed that we've kind of plateaued a little bit. We got to kind of make a decision now okay, so we can't, we can't just make better food choices and and move anymore, like that was going from zero to one and it gets a result. But now we're more intermediate, now we have to pull one layer back. What? How do we know for a man or a woman when it's time to either go into a build phase or go into a cut phase?
Speaker 2:That's a good. I mean. I think for me it would be kind of looking at like health parameters first. I mean it's pretty clear that most people do some form of exercise for aesthetics. I think that's just Not me.
Speaker 1:it's pure health, it's just pure health.
Speaker 2:I don't even have a mirror, pure performance. Except these ones, except these ones, except these ones. But I only look at my face and above Exactly Just little face mirrors at eye level. I just wear a full black orthodox suit. But I think that's the first place I would think about. It is that there's. I was just reading about how I think it's 22% to 25% body fat for men, which is a little higher, I think, than people than I would assume is where you start to get into a safe zone, like metabolically.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, that makes sense then I thought you meant like what would be Not aesthetically metabolic, just like you're kind of out of the Danger zone.
Speaker 2:Danger zone for diseases and things like that. So I think that would be the first thing to look at. It. Is just getting some type of measurement happening? Is a person kind of out of the clear for their actual health and longevity? And then I think from there it's just like a personal choice of how lean do you want to look before anything else happens? Because which I think I would agree on the lean almost everybody in the industry who knows what they're talking about will always say generally that you should get to a body fat percentage or how lean you want to be before you even think about putting on a concerted effort of muscle.
Speaker 1:You know, I get people that get hung up on this because they're like well, I want to lose fat, but I also want to build muscle too, and I'm like I get it and who doesn't? But we have to pick a direction because you know, if you try to ride two horses with one ass, you're gonna fail, you're gonna get nowhere. Right, you have to pick a direction and go, and so I. So I I think that, like assuming that you want to maybe not be like listen, everyone's like I don't want to be a bodybuilder. It's like that would want to be fucking. Even bodybuilders that want to be bodybuilders like yeah, it's a miserable, horrible life. No one would ever want that. But we also all let's be honest want to look good we want to look good.
Speaker 1:We don't need to have like veins in our neck and chest and everything, but we want to like feel really good.
Speaker 1:Tapered v-shape from shoulder to waist and for men probably around 13 to 14 when you start really seeing some abs popping, and for women that's probably gonna be like 18 19. You know body fat, so I think that's like a good place and obviously depends a lot on like your body type. I'm a really tall kind of lanky person so I have to actually get leaner because my muscles aren't as like pronounced necessarily as someone who's more mesomorphic in their body shape, but they're a little bit stockier, rounder, wrestler, football player type body build so that person, that archetype, might be able to hit 15 body fat and look shredded because they, their muscles, are very developed.
Speaker 1:They're pushing out through the yeah, where me that might be like 11 12 to have the same leanness look. So it is subjective to the person, but I would say, like, when you look in the mirror, can you see visible abs? And if the answer is no, and you can reach down and grab a couple handfuls, you probably need to go into a little bit of a cut. I would say you would just be better off to lean out another few percentage of body fat before you went into a build, because when you go into a build you're going to build muscle but you're also going to build fat too. It's inevitable. It's inevitable Unless you do a lean bulk. Yeah Well, unless you're on steroids, you can do a lean bulk and that mitigates it. But at the end of the day, fundamentally, when you're anabolic, you're anabolic right?
Speaker 2:No, and I you're. When you're anabolic, you're anabolic, right no? And I think, and you know, lean bulk's kind of like the opposite of recomposition. It's the simultaneous process language, and I think when I've looked into lean bulk, it's basically that you're like one to three hundred calories in a surplus so that you don't just barely just barely so that your body fat never really increases that much. But you can super slowly add to your lean mass, which I think and I've done that.
Speaker 1:So, like I actually did that and I was looking at some progress photos a couple years ago when I did it and like I did, I went from like at my lowest I hit 179 in just the deepest tranche of a fat loss no fun zone. I hit 179. I'm 6'4", 6'3 and a half, so I mean that was very thin, very lean, and then I lean bulked, literally sometimes 50 calorie increments at a time, yeah, which would be like okay, 12 or 15 more carbohydrates like an almond three quarters of a slice of bread.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, most people don't have, most people won't do that, no, and that's okay. Um, in that case it might be easier to just take broader strokes and just kind of jump up to maintenance a little bit faster. But if you have the patience for it, I found personally that I stayed very lean. It took six months of incremental building, but I went from 2,200, 2,300 calories a day to 3,100 calories a day over the course of like six months.
Speaker 2:I mean so strict, so strict Went from 179 to 186.
Speaker 1:And at 186, I was still very lean. So, basically maintained my same body fat levels but put on seven arguably pure pounds of muscle, probably put on like a pound or two of fat, maybe five pounds of muscle, but it was a pound or two of fat, maybe five pounds of muscle, but it was much more noticeable in the muscle. So I I think people don't like lean bulking. I think that it does actually work. Um, yeah, but I think the compliance.
Speaker 2:It's the compliance because it's much easier to take two steps forward, one step back. Totally put on a bunch of muscle, put on some fat, take a little bit of the fat off, put on a bunch of muscle, and just easy to see there's an argument for that, yeah 100%.
Speaker 2:It's just you know, especially if adherence is going to get you there. But it is interesting because even that same newer client that I'm working with you know it's like he. One of the reasons he's being so successful is he's made this his new hobby. I've mentioned a couple of times he's obsessed. It's so he's put it in the center campfire of his life so that the eating is centered around it. He still goes out. It's not like he shuts himself at home, but he's making sure that doing all this and now that momentum started and he's had so much success, he looks like a different person as well. He's wearing tank tops to the gym.
Speaker 2:I mean it's only me and him in there, but never before. But it's so funny because now he's also like watching tiktoks and other things that are health and fitness related and so he's learning about progressive overload. And at first there's this information, but just the just earlier this week he comes in. He's just like okay, cool, so I've already lost this many pounds, I've got a goal of this much weight, which is, you know, at least another 30, 40 pounds. But he's like when do you think I should start bulking? When should I? You know, when can I start to like increase my calories and start bulking? And I'm just like dude, you're, you're clocking in at 35 body fat still, yeah, like that. That is far and ages away, unfortunately, and I get that. It's been such a grinding consistency of caloric deficit. You've done so well. You haven't deviated at all. I understand the games you have to play with you.
Speaker 1:Don't want to start, but yeah, it's just not that time but that little itch gets in there right where you're just like I want to be bigger.
Speaker 1:I'm already starting to see some size in my arms, like oh yeah, yeah and and so I love this and I think that, like, this is a really interesting um conversation to have, because when we go into an initial fat loss, so like let's say it's either this is your first time or it's been one year plus and you've been off the game and you've put on 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds of fat and we need to pull it off. Yeah, so do we just stay in a fat loss phase indefinitely until you pull 50 pounds off? Maybe you could.
Speaker 1:Depends on the person I've done it One of my guys here similar situation we pulled off 55 pounds of fat in one straight shot down, in fact, counterintuitively, instead of like going into a fat loss phase, rebuilding him for a little while and then going on. We went into a fat loss phase. He lost like 40 pounds and all of a sudden his weight was plateauing and I pulled him down even further. Right, because he's a smaller person now, he's burning less, his maintenance was lower, and so we had to meet that and so we went. You know, his first week with us, he was eating like 3,000 on average a day, 3,000 or 4,000. Pulling down at just 25, he lost like 25 pounds, right.
Speaker 1:And then all of a sudden it kind of plateaued and then we had to go down to like 22, and then we've the bottom.
Speaker 1:Deepest part of it was 2000 calories a day, yeah, but pulled off 55 pounds of body fat, all the while still lifting weights and eating one gram of protein per pound. So now he's a different animal he looks. I mean, you wouldn't even recognize him. It's crazy. But we've lean bulk. So now we went from 2,000, 2150, 23, and now we just hit 2550. Because even at 23, he still lost like another five pounds of body fat, right. So now we just made a little bit more of an aggressive jump 2550.
Speaker 1:And now we're probably approaching within 10% of his maintenance. And so I would imagine the next month or so we're going to be clicking over into that 80-bitty surplus. Because the reason why you'd want to do it that way is you've just spent the last six months or more pulling off a significant amount of body fat. You don't want to just go into a bulk and put on a bunch of fat. So the lean bulk is nice because it's like yes, it's tedious, but it keeps you lean and so you can still see all the fruits of your labor.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I think, aesthetically, most people just want to be lean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think even if you were to just take who they are right now and just make them substantially leaner, that they'd be like that's the direction I want to look at, you know, go to in terms of how I look, and no doubt filling out a little bit more would be beneficial.
Speaker 2:But if you fill it out and you're not all cut up, I think that would be less visually appealing to most people's aesthetic goals than just being more cut. Fundamentally. Yeah, and it's also like you can take gradual steps for your bulking. Because they might say, oh, you need to increase 800 calories or 1,000 calories from where you're at in your deficit to get to a bulking amount of calories. But even if you do that, like you did with your client, like three jumps rather than like 50 calories a week, you do a 200 calorie jump a week or every two weeks, yep, so that you know you might gain a little bit of fat. But you're still kind of giving your metabolism a little chance kind of to play in the incremental game versus like all right, I'm at 2000, my maintenance is to go to 3,000 for my bulk and just slap 1,000 on there.
Speaker 1:And I think that, like if you're experienced, that's actually not a bad strategy.
Speaker 1:I would say like if you're a 10-year veteran, you do this every year and you know that like you've built so much muscle and you've got so much momentum that you could probably have 1,000 calorie swings, and but I think in, I think in the beginning, there is something to say for that, like progressive adding of calories back on. Yeah, even it's a hundred a week, but just to give your body a little bit of a chance and also give you a time to assess visually body fat percentage, what the scale is saying, so you can make an informed decision based off of data on whether or not it's appropriate to add more calories. Because if you just throw a thousand more calories at you all of a sudden you're like, oh shit, you know, like I look smooth, I look like just smoothed over now, yeah, yeah, but anyway.
Speaker 2:So okay, because it is, and I think that you know, because we talked a lot about the people that can re-com, and just in case it's not clear that if you're an experienced weightlifter that's been consistent and going for years and you train appropriately, you know, just half-assed it in the gym, it's going to be nearly impossible for you to put on lean mass without a surplus. So you're going to have to play some type of phasing of the swing in that caloric pendulum. It's just going to be impossible. It's so funny I actually threw in just like a recomp in google, just to like get a quick scan, see if there's anything I didn't already kind of have under the belt, and like one highlighted section, it's like it is totally possible to do recomposition in an individual. And then the next highlighted thing is that there it is not possible in any way to put on lean mass while on a cool-down deficit. That just goes to show you like.
Speaker 1:It's just hilarious, you know. And again, because those are both binaries and the answer is in the middle somewhere. And the answer is well like if you've never touched a weight in your life and we just get your protein up. Even if you're in a calorie deficit and you're lifting three or four days a week, you're going to put on muscle.
Speaker 1:You will calorie deficit and you're lifting three or four days a week, you're gonna put on muscle. You will, for sure, 100 if you are a 10-year veteran and you've been training five days a week. Push, pull, leg split and you gotta split it up, or else it's just you're gonna get no noticeable change in either direction. Yeah, so this is where it goes wrong. Okay, so people try to lift heavy to build muscle but simultaneously eat very little and they get nowhere. So that's way the way it goes wrong. Number one I'm in the gym, I'm lifting, I'm always trying to like max out my squat, but then I don't eat anything. Yeah, a lot of guys do that.
Speaker 2:A little salad chicken breast I want to get bigger.
Speaker 1:I'm like trying to put my bench up but then like they'll skip meals and it's just inconsistent. Yeah, that's where it goes wrong number one. And where it goes wrong number two is they train hard, doing hit, doing cardio, to try to lose body fat, but then they they don't want to pay attention to their diet, so they just overeat and they get nowhere and so this is why it's like you have to pick a direction and then break whatever belief or limiting belief you have around what should or shouldn't be and just understand that people who are smarter than you have already figured this stuff out.
Speaker 1:And it's pick a direction. I need to go fat loss phase, okay. So we gotta, we gotta match your nutrition protocol with the goal of the phase that we're in right which I think is the big missing piece.
Speaker 1:It's like you're either eating too little or eating too much, surprise, surprise, right. So so pick a direction now. What I would say is like, again, if you can reach down and you have a spare tire, you should probably commit to a few months of a fat loss phase until you have some sort of visible abs. That's a great place, that's a great way to just without having to like track body fat or anything like that, like, if you you don't need it, you don't need to rip in six pack. But if you have just like visible got the keg abs yeah, visible keg I would say it's probably okay to initiate some sort of a build phase at that point, right, yeah I feel that, yeah, and I think the other thing is the.
Speaker 2:The other caveat, when I was just thinking about this too, is also just like if there's a performance-based goal where you might not kind of play on the classic, like you know, get to a certain leanness, like if, if you're in the clear of metabolic diseases at whatever body percentage, you are male or female, like maybe you kind of kind of got the classic dad bod but you're a recreational athlete and you're out there playing soccer and hitting the gym once or twice, that might be a time where you're going to start to look at your calorie intake to fulfill your activity and your performance, versus, like, necessarily having either a goal of leaning out or a goal of getting bigger.
Speaker 2:Because I think that might be a situation where if you're eating too little but you're doing an hour or an hour and a half of aerobic activity and then hitting the gym twice, that you're going to start to kind of lose performance in your sport. And so I think in that capacity, like the only other time that you wouldn't necessarily worry maybe about focusing so much on one or the other, but folk using your food and the compass of performance is if you're an athlete of some type would just be the other situation where, instead of kind of having to play like two steps forward, two steps back, but just like, are you in, are you height, you know, weight, proportioned enough and your composition good enough that you're not in any type of disease situation, and then otherwise just eating for performance, which might, you know, fundamentally is also probably going to put you somewhere in your maintenance to maybe a little bit of a surplus and kind of you'll probably, if you're that active, not really be moving the needle in either direction.
Speaker 1:Anyway, yeah, and I think that's like aesthetics is is hard, right, performance is easier. Yeah, aesthetics is hard because it comes way more of a science project now and so people are like, well, I want to, I want to have like a swimmer's body. It's like, well, but they're not swimmers. They're swimmers because they were born with that. They already had the genetic build to be a swimmer. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like yeah, that's you know. It's really interesting that perspective shift of because obviously you can influence your body with your activity totally choice. But it kind of like basketball would be a great example, like if you're not extremely tall, which is just inherent genetics from birth. I mean, obviously you can influence them to some degree, probably by nutrition and if you lifted weights too early or whatever, but fundamentally if you're tall, you're going to be tall. Yeah, you can't. That happened first and that's probably why they got into basketball Totally.
Speaker 1:Some coach was like hey, you're fucking tall, yeah, get over here.
Speaker 1:I want a basketball player's body. Yeah, it's like, well, put on a foot, you put on a height, but um, but you know so. So it's like but okay, whatever that. That was like a big example of like how much genetics doesn't impact one's aesthetics. But let's just say like you're just an average person, but you know you're like I don't have a sport, I just want to lift weights and I want to train and I want to look like I train, look like I lift weights. You have to just accept the fact that if you're chasing aesthetics which I do too- we all do it's all good who doesn't want to look good.
Speaker 1:That doesn't have anything to do with how strong you are. It doesn't have anything to do what your, what your bench press is. It is a science project. Yeah, you can. You can lift very lightweight, but in a way that that produces the stimulus that you need, combined with the right nutrients at the right time, and you can build significant muscle. And the opposite is true too. You can also lose significant body fat and you can truly build a body to the best of your genetic potential. Yeah, um, but I think people don't have that. They don't understand that, like, recomping isn't because another way of saying aesthetics, but it's like you know, if, if it's just about sports, then great, go sign up for a volleyball league or a kickball league and have fun. Right, you'll be healthier from it.
Speaker 2:But if we want to recomp, if you want that aesthetic look If you want to turn some heads, I mean, and if we don't have like the fucking amazing genetics where you can just simply generally exercise and look wonderful.
Speaker 1:But you got to go specific. Yeah, you got to hit your protein targets. Yeah, you got to hit your protein targets. You got to hit your calorie targets. You got to be fucking consistent, which is the hardest thing people to be good at, and you got to have. You got to have the right training and like, counterintuitively, it's not running for 10 miles and it's not doing your boot camp in the morning, like that's not going to get you. You know the, the look you want. It probably is more like bodybuilding type training, which is like, especially for men, right, especially women too.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, I think, I think it's just resistance. Training is really the, the holy grail, just aesthetics. I think, yeah, it didn't, and especially as you get older, you gotta dial it in more but focus resistance training like it's not just like oh, I'm gonna go to like it's swing a kettlebell and do same before
Speaker 1:it's like no, it's got to be okay. I got a push pull, leg split. My push for six weeks is going to be this these six exercises, and I have a column in my spreadsheet where every week I write down how many reps I did at that weight and then I try to add an extra rep each week. So I have this progressive overload or some version of progressive overload, and that sounds like mind-boggling to a lot of people. But once you get to intermediacy, take my word for it, because I this happened to me. Yeah, you will be there forever if you do not take it to the next level. Yeah, and get a little bit more specific. You have to have a program.
Speaker 2:You have to have a program We'll just use a different language and I think you also have to probably train a little harder in intensity than people might realize. I'm not saying that every lift and every session has to be going to war. I just finished a six-week cycle and so it's at the very end, and so this workout I did on Tuesday was like going to war. Like I just finished a six week cycle and so it's at the very end, and so this, this workout I did on Tuesday, was like going to war. It was like me really maxing out the lifts for the six weeks and it was like blasted me to hell. It was great, I mean it was fun, but I mean it took a. It took a giant chomp, that's what you want.
Speaker 1:You want the intensity. So here's how it usually goes right. So most people they'll stop for three months because they're inconsistent. Life happens to them for some reason or the other, and they get motivated and they start at a 10. And then each week they drop until they eventually hit week five or six and then quit. What we're arguing for is the opposite. You start at a three and each week you build up. So instead of going down and quitting by the end of the six weeks and losing all your progress and each week you're actually getting weaker because you're becoming less and less consistent you start out intentionally low and then progress slowly each week. So in that same timeframe now you're maxing out all of your efforts by week six, seven, eight, somewhere around that. So that way, each week you've given your body just another three to five percent more oomph to then adapt to. Because all about adaptation from 100, right, yeah, and so that's the way we want to do it.
Speaker 2:And you do that for six or seven weeks, deload for a week, let your body recover and then you start a fresh one yeah, you just rework everything and reverse everything and change all the movements up and start over again, and I think it's also that one of the things I think that happens as you become more experienced in the weight room or with lifting weights is the ability to be like fucking grittily uncomfortable in that moment, because I think the proper level of intensity that is required with weight training is very uncomfortable in that moment, in the same way that, like, consistency with your calories is very hard the.
Speaker 2:I do think that people don't realize like how fucking uncomfortable a moment can be when you're really hitting weights in a difficult way and it might just be the burn in your bicep, but you kind of have to like leather yourself or callous yourself to the acute experience of a set or doing that fourth set, when your legs are trembling and everything in your body is saying no and you're tired and you're like I gotta be a gritty motherfucker right now and do this shit anyway and and push it a little bit and not just like coast through this moment. And I think that's one of the things that experienced people acquire is that ability to be gritty and deal with that acute, uncomfortable moment Totally. And I think sometimes when you first start you don't realize how gritty it kind of has to be sometimes.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's why strength training is a skill set. Because when you're brand new at strength training is a skill set. Yeah, because when, when you're brand new at strength training, you might have five to six reps in the tank and you're like oh, I gotta stop.
Speaker 2:I've never felt like like I want to put myself in this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's why people like like? Not for effort. You know they push the barbell up and then just throw it back at the rack and miss a pin. It's because they they checked out. Yeah, there's like this unconsciousness that's happening. It's like patience. Yes, I know everything hurts, yes, it burns, but I'm going to stay focused and I'm going to finish this repetition cleanly and then rack it back up.
Speaker 1:And the more you can do that, the more of a skill you create around strength training, which means that you can get from a, you know, 50% of your ability to then 60, then 70, then 80, then 90. And now you're dangerous. Now it's like you can manage stress at 90% threshold of your tolerance, Like that's that leather thing that you're talking about right, and I think that's where you'll really start to see a lot of results.
Speaker 2:Because I think sometimes the reason that people don't get the results they want in the gym, even if their calories are on point, is that they're just being wimps. It's not enough time under tension, they're just being wimps. They're just not willing to go there. Yeah, they just need more reps. Yeah, no, but it is not uncomfortable. I think it's interesting because sometimes I'll work out with a client and one of the things I know about myself, of why I think I have any type of physique that I do or get results from my weight training, is that I have acquired the ability to really push it. So I'm not like super sleep deprived, even if I haven't been training for a while, like once my engine's going I can make myself be uncomfortable. And I think when they see how hard I push myself, they're kind of like oh shit, like I'm fucking Like when you got like that crazy eye.
Speaker 2:You're grunting, You're like I mean there are times especially now it's been warmer where my studio doors are open and the sound's coming out of me because I just don't give a shit anymore. So I am screaming and grunting, bloody murder, Like people are walking by on the street and I see them like looking in, like what the fuck is Like a gawk and a gasp gonna get.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're like what is happening in there. It sounds crazier than sex almost yeah, so I think it's yeah yeah, yeah, no like if you could, if your workouts are like library level appropriate you ain't training hard enough. You want to be getting kicked out of a library yeah, 100 at least um, but yeah, I mean that's a huge part of it. But like, so I think to bring this back full circle, if you've taken a year or two off, you can absolutely re-comp in the idealistic way of building a fat-free muscle.
Speaker 2:If you're a newbie, yeah, which is awesome, yeah, or you haven't trained at all Great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for listening. If you are, even if it's just once or twice a week, but you've been kind of doing that for a year or more, you probably seem to pick a direction. Yeah, most likely it's standardize your movements. So get in there three days a week, push, pull leg at least, and then, if you're more advanced, just double that volume. Cut the calories down. Most people need to lose body fat, like most people are not, and most people over 30 are not like oh I, I'm just too lean all the time I wish.
Speaker 1:Just cut your 15%, 20% of your calories off, lean out for 12 weeks, see visible abs and then maybe three or four jumps up to maintenance 200 calories or so like that, Until you start seeing the scale go up a little bit too fast might let you know. Okay, I may be I'm over maintenance now. I think ideally half pound to a pound a week of of weight gain on average in a push phase is is advisable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's I mean that's great, yeah, if you can, if you can rock that, that's awesome. But don't go too fast, because you're just gonna get fat and you're gonna hate it. Don't think that that scale going up is just lean, I'm just packing on 20 pounds of muscle.
Speaker 1:Case in point, I just completed a six month. I really went for. I did two. No, I did three, like eight weeks, like eight week push cycles. Different um push cycles meaning, like I was, progress overload, progressive overload push cycles. I think I did three eight weeks.
Speaker 1:Uh, eight week cycles anyways yeah but I was eating 3 800 calories a day. Um, for almost six months I put on 20 pounds. I went from 190 to 210 in the morning, dry, yeah, um, it's a lot. So now I'm down to 2300 calories a day and, um, when I put that 20 pounds on, I mean I look like shit when I hit oh, we just lost the camera, shoot. Um, oh well, when I put that 20 pounds on, I mean I looked like shit when I hit oh, we just lost the camera Shoot. Oh well, when I put that 20 pounds on, I looked like fucking shit, like it was not a good look.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:You were big but like I, mean, yeah, my gut, because there's just so much food, so much undigested food. I just felt terrible, my stomach was all distended. My face food. I just felt terrible, my stomach was all distended, my face puffy. So now I'm down to in the morning one, 203. So I've pulled off like seven, eight pounds, feeling better, looking better I would. I would estimate that of the 20 pounds that I put on, maybe eight of it was muscle and 12 was fat yeah sounds about right, and that's what you can expect that would be a success.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think is, and there's always going to be. If you're going for it like that, there's always going to be more fat gain than lean mass. Totally, it's a lot of work for your body to put on lean muscle.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of work and I'm 40 years old almost.
Speaker 2:Low priority on the physiology list. Right, you know Totally, yeah, here and put, put this thing that's gonna burn all these more calories on yeah, but then there you go.
Speaker 1:So cut once, cut deep, get lean, build it up for three to six months and then you can. And then, in a perfect scenario, once you've done the big cut and the big, well then it's just more of like the majority of your year should be at maintenance or in a slight surplus. I think yeah, so the majority. So then you have maybe like four, six to eight week mini cuts throughout the year, but then back to maintenance slight surplus mini cut. Back to maintenance, slight, slight surplus mini cut.
Speaker 1:Yeah if you do it right and you're and you're really keeping track of things. You should be able to never have to go as low again, right, and then every time you reach a new high, every time you go into a push phase, you'll reach a new high and you'll never have to go as low. And always the next high. Yeah, you do it right. You get that little tango.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure, groovy well there you go so that's re-comping 101, episode 21 for re-comp 101. For re-comp 101 with justin and ethan, one, the only ones we'll see. We'll check you all next time. Peace, bye.