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- [00:01]
A
Hey, everyone. This is Jeff Alberts, Brian Miner, Alberto Nunez, Brad Loomis, and Eric Helms. And this is the 3D Muscle Journey podcast where we bring you world class
- [00:11]
B
coaching and evidence based education for the natural bodybuilding community.
- [00:24]
A
What's going on? Three DMJers welcome back to another episode of the Team3DMJ podcast. This is I, Eric Helms, your chief science officer and occasional guest alongside our coaches. And I am privileged, honored, and it is a pleasure to be joining head coaches Alberto Nunez as well as Brad Loomis on this Q and A episode. This is episode 310 and we have gone through a variety of locations where you lovely people have asked us questions. So we've got 10, count it, 10 questions that we want to get through today where we are going to take them and we're going to assess them and we're going to give you helpful and useful information. Bert, Brad, you all ready to jump in?
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C
Ready. Let's do it.
- [01:12]
A
All right, let's go. Question number one. I'm currently in a gaining phase and struggling to hit my daily protein goals without feeling incredibly bloated. I'm eating mostly whole foods like chicken and lean beef, but by meal four, I'm stuffed. Should I rely more on liquid protein like shakes to hit my numbers or is the digestive stress a sign I should just lower my protein target slightly and increase carbs instead? Who wants to tackle this one first?
- [01:40]
D
I'd like to hear it over to Brett, since you've got that, since Eric's got all the protein background.
- [01:47]
A
Okay, yeah, I can jump in on this one. Yeah. I think the first thing I would do would establish what are your daily protein goals. And obviously there's a lot of discussion around this, but I think the probably most useful place to start is knowing what's like a reasonable goal. And I think a quote unquote reasonable goal should first begin with where are you currently now with the audience. We have at 3D muscle journey. Most people are already eating a high protein diet, but you do occasionally run into someone who is maybe on the lower protein end. We're talking like maybe 0, 5.6 grams per pound or in the range of like 1.4, 1.5 grams per kilogram or lower. And if that's the case, I normally just look to go, okay, let's, let's make a small incremental step towards something that's a little higher, trying to get you nudged up to kind of the lower end of what is probably in kind of that plateauing range. Where you're getting the vast lion's share amount of benefits from protein, I'd say like 0 6.7 grams per pound, or around 1.516 grams per kilogram. And that would, in my opinion be like a great place for someone in this situation to start from. Now the question was at the end, or should I just lower my protein target slightly? This could be someone who is trying to get that a plus plus plus plus. And they are at the high end of the upper end range of what could even plausibly provide a very, very small beneficial, you know, benefit. A beneficial benefit, folks. That's, that's what, that's what you get from lots of school redundancy to the redundancy, department of redundancy. But yeah, so I, you could make an argument that perhaps you may be getting more out of like a gram per pound or right around 2 to 2.2 grams per kilogram in the off season in a surplus. But I think it's just important to remember that even if there is a slight benefit, it's very, very, very tiny in the grand scheme of things and probably not worth like losing a rep on leg press because your belt is uncomfortable or being distended all the time and uncomfortable. I think it's probably useful, it's probably useful to look at it as a range like in the off season of say 1.6 or higher grams per kilogram or 0.7 grams per pound or higher and then shift yourself down if you are way above that. Now if you're like, well, I really do want to try to get everything out of this. You could go to 2 to 2.2 grams per kilogram and feel pretty confident that you are, and then just go with a little bit of liquid, liquid protein. I, I, I see nothing wrong with that. Um, so yeah, I, I, I, I don't think there's a wrong way to go here. But just having an idea of where the, the lower protein kind of appropriate range is will probably be a good place to start. Anything else you guys want to add?
- [04:53]
D
I was gonna jump in kind of more so application if that's good with you guys. Cause a lot of times what I see people struggling to hit their protein intakes. There are larger humans, right? 110, you know, 230, 240 pounds. 110. 110 kilos. I should say 230, 240 pounds. They're the ones that have trouble hitting that kind of protein intake, especially if they, you know, don't have a voracious appetite like I do. So, yeah, with the application of it,
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C
it's.
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D
It's difficult, in my opinion, to hit those kind of protein requirements that you just mentioned, Eric, in those larger humans from strictly whole foods, strictly meat, strictly. And then I add on top of it, there's a lot of people that are lactose intolerant. And so. And then now we've crossed out any kind of dairy, yogurt, Greek yogurt, you know, milk, things like that. That makes it even tougher. So as far as application goes and
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C
actual
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D
assistance in hitting those kind of numbers, you do a lot of times have to rely on some sort of a protein supplement. Me, myself, I don't have a lot of digestive issues with like, protein shakes and things like that. I can easily drink my protein and not have gassy stomach or anything like that, like some people do. But at the same time, I don't like drinking my food. And so I will take my protein supplement, whether it's a vegetable, you know, protein, pea protein, whey protein, whatever, and I'll simply mix it, you know, with things to get my protein intake up. Mix it with my oatmeal, mix it with canned pumpkin, mix it with Greek yogurt, since I'm not lactose intolerant. That's a lot of times how I'll advise people to kind of get their, their protein intake up when, you know, things are sometimes a little bit limited, you know, and likewise, you know, we have a lot of vegan, pescatarian, etc. Lifters as well. That makes it even a little bit tougher when you can't get chicken and beef and things like that. But people all the time seem to forget about other seafood sources like shrimp. Shrimp is like all protein. And people all the time will say, oh, yeah, shrimp. I didn't even think about that. You know, I eat a shrimp salad every. Every Friday and, you know, I can. I can easily shoot down my. My daily protein target of about 150 to 170 grams just in the shrimp salad. So hopefully, you know, that kind of helps out people that are looking to, you know, for actual tangible ways that they can hit their protein intake without necessarily having to drink their calories or, you know, getting just. Just solely from meat or solely from dairy or, you know, kind of whatever. What do you got, Bert?
- [07:57]
C
I don't know. I think Eric asked the, the right question, like, how much are you eating? Like, this is hardly the case anymore. But there was a time where a lot of the overachievers were trying to get in 2 grams per pound. Right. So, right. If he's on the higher end, it's like, well, you can just. This is still really effective. You're. You're still getting the most bang from your buck, like, in this range. So with that out the way, I. I think quite often, like, when people are vigorously pursuing optimal, sometimes it doesn't give you the wiggle room. You need to maneuver based off, like, your own body's feedback and experience. Like, see this with, like, exercise selection a lot these days where it's like. But that is, like, the best, like, squat pattern I have access to. And it's like, yo. But you keep getting hurt, like, on the fourth week for some reason. Let's go to the silver medal one and. And. And, like, have months of consistent training. So it's kind of the same deal here. I remember when I was first getting into this, for some reason, casein protein, cottage cheese specifically was recommended pre training. Right. So it could, like, be with you the whole day. That was not a freaking good time. So that didn't last very long. Like, right away I was like, no, I. I can't, because like Eric said, it's just like, I felt like I was gonna vomit, like, before even getting to my, like, working set. So. So yeah, I think that's. That's something we try to teach our athletes over time, especially once you kind of learn to decipher, like, what's. What's noise, what isn't is, like, your own body's feedback. Last thing I would say is probably when you want to see what's doing what, like, there needs to be a process of elimination. So what if it's not the protein? What if it's something else that they're eating? Right. So I'd say try to solve this problem, like, one item at a time. It might be, I don't know, the raw broccoli he's having for meal two or something like that. So it might not even be the protein at all. But. But yeah, when it comes to protein, man, there's so much more wiggle room there than people think. Bigger stones to move, for sure.
- [10:09]
A
Great stuff, guys. Yeah. And I think the. The one thing that I would add, just as a final caveat, because you mentioned bigger humans, Brad, is if someone is pretty high in body fat and they're listening to this, don't go with grams per pound or grams per kilogram, go with grams per pound or grams per kilogram of estimated lean mass. And then you can just Basically bump up the grams per pound value by.02 or the grams per kilogram value by 0.5 and then you've got something that will probably produce a smaller number that's a little more manageable if you are, you know, currently in a pretty, you know, large, large body and trying to reduce your fat mass.
- [10:45]
C
Or.
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A
Or not. But it's going to give you a value that's more specific to the tissue you're trying to make adapt. Alrighty.
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C
Well, last thing. Estimation's a key thing because sometimes people are going to dwell on the fact that like. But am I like 15% body fat in my 20? It's hardly going to matter when you're trying to solve this problem. So just, Just putting that out there.
- [11:06]
A
Yes. This is, this is a place where there's wiggle room regardless.
- [11:10]
D
Yeah.
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A
Alrighty. As a female lifter with a very specific build in mind, I'm terrified my legs are getting too bulky. When I try to glow my glutes. Is it actually possible to isolate the glutes without growing the quads and hamstrings significantly? Every time I squat or lunge, I feel it mostly in my legs. Should I stick strictly to thrusts and abductions or am I overthinking the bulky look and should trust that my glutes will catch up? You guys want me to give a little bit of is it possible answer kind of from the. The data side and our understanding of anatomy and then shift to you guys for some coaching application? How does that sound?
- [11:48]
C
Yeah, let's get it.
- [11:49]
D
Well, I actually. Just to back up a little bit. She's actually terrified of her legs getting too bulky. I don't think that she is saying that her legs are already bulky. She just says she's terrified of her legs getting too bulky. So with that being said, J. Yeah, I think that's the perfect place to start is what is.
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A
Okay. Yeah, I actually. That's what I thought. I. Cool. That's what I thought I said. But, but thank you. If I.
- [12:14]
C
Why you gaslighting him, dude?
- [12:19]
D
No, maybe I just heard let's just
- [12:20]
C
mess with Eric this whole podcast because he's. He's running this caffeine free.
- [12:27]
A
Eric, I really don't appreciate that racist comment you made. I'm like, wait, what? You know. All right, so to clarify this, exactly as Brad said, the question of is it actually possible to isolate the glutes without growing the quads and hamstrings significantly? And we do have some good data on this, there was a great study that compared Squats to hip thrusts. And the hip thrust basically only grew the glutes with a very, very small amount of growth in the quads. But I do mean a small amount and that's why I highlighted that significantly component. But a lot less than these squats would grow them. Also, squats are pretty effective for growing the adductor as well. So you absolutely can do, quote unquote, glute isolation work. Any type of hip hinge pattern that has a bent knee is going to limit the hamstrings application because it's shortened. And if there is some quad involvement that's kind of just par for the course to some degree. But you can do various hip thrusts or you could do single leg isolation, doing abduction or extension. I think the question of, should you. Is it something to worry about? There's a bit of good self awareness here. Am I overthinking the bulky look and should I trust my glutes will catch up? This sounds like this person feels their glutes are kind of behind the rest of their limbs. So. So, Berto, let's start with you this time. What do you think as where would you approach this type of question as a coach?
- [13:56]
C
You know, eventually I know where this is going to lead most of the time, not, not always. But I know that when I first started training, it was just like, let me just hit up those things that are in the mirror. And it was a lot of chest, a lot of biceps. And I think very quickly, a few months in, I was like, yo, you know what would go well with some chest, some shoulders. And then my shoulders just kind of looked like they were sloping forward and there was not much going on the back. I'm like, you know what, let's hit the back. And then it wasn't until like year three that I started training legs consistently because I'm like, you know, what would go well with everything else? Some legs. So eventually that might be the case where it's like, hey, you know, what would go well with some glutes, some. Some hamstrings, right? I. I think sometimes, and this is, this is the issue I've seen with the wellness division being a new thing, is that especially a lot of shorter stature, not very long, women kind of identify with that class because again, the limb proportions, but also because on average, women tend to be a little bit more lower body fat dominant. So we end up dieting and guess what? A lot of what they thought was muscle was actually adipose tissue. And if anything, the legs weren't as muscular as they, they thought they were before. These are women who are vigorously trying to maximize quad and, and hamstring growth. It's kind of like, you know, with guys in their arms, like, don't measure your arms, like when you're trying to get really lean. It's just going to disappoint you at a certain point. Right. So yeah, I'd say again, your goals are your goals, but there's, you might be able to get away with just some other movements. Because what if she doesn't like a bridge or a thrust, right? Like, and you can totally do things to like bias even like your leg pressing or your hip hinging so that it's a little bit more glute bias. So on leg press you would just have, if your seat has the option to bring it up so that the glutes are a little bit more pre stretched, you would do that and you'd have your feet a little bit higher on, on the platform and somewhere around shoulder width apart. And if you're hinging, like say an rdl, you could do it with a little bit more of a, of a bent knee. So there's ways to, you know, bia bias these movements so that you do get a little bit more, more glute. So just know you have options outside of, of, of those two movements which, which are fine, but for some people, they, they really just don't. That don't mesh well. And, and, and yeah, like, give it some time because you might see eventually that you're like, man, some quads would go really well with this. And my quads aren't as muscular as, as I thought. But yeah, you can absolutely isolate the crap out of just about any muscle if you want to. That is what you want to prioritize. It's something that, honestly, with a lot of our more advanced athletes, like, you know, it gets to the point where you train long enough, you're like, man, it's like I have eight different people roaming across my body because not every muscle group responds the same. But, but yeah, you absolutely can. Absolutely can.
- [17:11]
D
Yeah, I'm gonna piggyback what you said, Alberto, because that's happened on more than one occasion where people are like, I've got plenty of quads, I don't need more quads. You know, and then we diet down and then we find out, oh, well, you know what? I don't have the quads that I thought I did. You know, in fact, if anything, you know, they're even a little bit of a deficiency compared to the up body musculature, you know, but again, you know, being a application guy, I have had a fair amount of success, you know, kind of running, dare I say, a glute specific body part specialization because you don't have to rely solely on, on, you know, abduction and, and, and hip thrusts and things like that. Like you said, Berto, with a slightly bent knee, hyperextensions, back extensions work marvelous. You know, unfortunately they're not real prevalent, but reverse hypers work really well and they are. That particular device is getting more and more prevalent, you know, in gyms as people are trying to grow the booty. And so, yeah, I've put together programs where we're training glutes two and three times a week and one day's an RDL and the other day is a hyper extension. And then we've got a reverse hyper on another one with a little bit of, you know, other stuff. Like Eric mentioned kickbacks and extensions, you know, and things like that kind of mixed in. And dare I say I didn't mention hip thrust once, did I? So just a little more application there.
- [18:45]
A
Great stuff. Yeah, I fully agree with you guys. Yeah. In fact, nothing to add. We'll go to the question three, get back into a bit of a nutrition slash body composition question. I think this is a good one. Six months into a steady surplus and I've definitely put on some size, but I'm also starting to feel soft in the midsection. My performance in the gym is still great, but my confidence is taking a hit. At what point do you decide to pull the plug on a bulk? Is it based upon a specific body fat percentage or do you wait until the gym performance actually starts to stall out? This is a tough one because I think many physique competitors, and I would say it's becoming less and less a gender specific thing. In the modern era with social media, I think there's pressure for most people to look a certain way and certainly it might still be stronger on women. I'm not claiming it's not. It's just something that I think almost everyone can relate to, at least to some degree. These days you feel like you have three people in your head. You know, there's the part of you that is noticing that when you put on weight you feel better, you might perform better, it's easier to hit PRs and you know, you need to do that. You know, you want to build muscle, but there's a part of you in your head that is maybe not wanting to look that way and not liking the way you look. And then maybe it's another part of you that's thinking about health or something else like that, depending upon your specific goals. And it's tough because there's mixed messages out there as far as what is objectively true about how body fat can influence things. And there's also a tremendous amount of goals that maybe aren't in sync with reality. A lot of people have expectations that they can walk around at a certain level of leanness and that that's sustainable and based upon what they see on the Internet. So I think what I can do to start is to help give people maybe a non social media contaminated perspective on health, normative body fat ranges and whether or not you actually need to put on body fat for, you know, putting on muscle and to what degree. And then we can kick it over to you guys to discuss a bit of how you actually coach people through this process. So the first thing to know is that adipose tissue in and of itself is not necessarily unhealthy. But having a large degree of excess adipose tissue is associated with, you know, some health risks, especially when you start to see it accumulate to the degree where you have visceral fat and intramuscular fat, which can interfere with metabolism and, you know, does seem to be a much higher risk factor for metabolic disease and dysfunction once you get up to on average, and this is a bmi, not a body fat percentage. So your mileage may vary a little bit, might be slightly higher in our population, people with more skeletal muscle mass. Once you're over a 30 BMI, if you look at population level data, there's a very, very low probability, I'm like in the 1 to 3% range, that you don't have probably worse metabolic health than you would have when you're lower. Now, if we talk body fat percentages, I think this is where the Internet really gets it wrong. It's super common for we'll use men as an example to be told that 8 to 12 body fat percentage, it's very sustainable, totally normal. You know, 12% is a great place to just walk around kind of beach lean. But the reality is that Even into the mid-20s, most people are metabolically healthy. And that's even more so true if you're listening to this podcast because you're active, you lift weights and you're creating a lot of other things that are a positive tick in your corner for metabolic health. That's a lot different than the Internet telling you, like, don't ever get any higher than 15% body fat. And then from the sustainability side of it, obviously this, what I'm about to quote as far as useful data, doesn't perfectly represent all of you lifters out there listening, but there's a data set that I, that I pulled from the NHANES data set, which is a big normative pool of people that have been looked at over the years and it's one of the more recent ones. And if you look at this data set of nearly like 5,000 men, specifically from one of the last times that did DEXA scans, there was literally not a single person below 12% body fat. And there was one male out of 5,000. It was like 12.1, if I remember correctly, percent body fat. Now again, this is not a population of people lifting, but this is just goes to show you, the modern western environment that we live in does not create a very easy situation to just kind of hang out and live lean. Also though, like a legit 12% body fat on DEXA is pretty damn lean. You know, like if, if you use the, the same DEXA model that was used in the, in that data set and you are on stage as a competitive bodybuilder, you're probably somewhere between 6 to 8% body fat in most cases with really, really, really lean people probably being closer to 5. So 12% is, is no joke. Many quote unquote, like, you know, cover models are probably 12%. So that's kind of the perspective on health. The final thing I would say is that you absolutely can gain muscle even if you're not in a surplus. And this will maybe slowly even be able to occur at maintenance or even in a slight deficit. But there is a point where your body fat is so low that you're not functioning well enough for that to happen. If you just think about like you take a bodybuilder post season, you know why we have a recovery diet is specifically because we're not sleeping. Our hormonal systems are in the toilet, our metabolic systems aren't working well. Everything looks haywire on our blood work. And it's not until that resolves that we can put on a substantial amount of muscle because we don't have the physiological environment to support that. And that is typically not just a thing of calories, but also of time and then finally of getting to what is probably our low end of the range that we can kind of hang out in our low end intervention point for body fat. And you know, that varies for, for people, but it's typically at least, you know, five or six Pounds and I mean at least, and this is kind of on the rarer side, you know, five or six pounds, two or three kilos over stage weight, but for most people it's about twice that. And then whether you can actually hang out there is very, very behavioral and habitual. And how long have you been in the quote unquote lifestyle? So being too lean is just gonna make that, that, that process not really, really work. And even if you're trying to hang out at the leanest place you can be and put on muscle, as you put on a little bit of muscle and maybe you're in a very, very small surplus and maybe your body fat percentage is basically staying the same or going down, you're gonna start getting hungry again and you'll kind of have this, this kind of push and pull anyway. So skirting along kind of like the low flying, you know, plane trying to just get under the radar, you might crash. Trying to stay as lean as possible while putting on muscle mass is often folly. And you probably want to give yourself a little bit of a buffer and kind of have like an, an upper end body weight where you decide, you know what we're going to come back down from there and then a lower end body weight. And those should be associated ideally with the body fats that actually serve you physiologically and not be heavily influenced by what you would like to look like. Now of course it's hard for us as competitive bodybuilders to say, hey, you shouldn't want to look a certain way, considering our entire sport is based upon aesthetics. And of course we're part of society too and we like to look muscular. I don't think any of us would say that's, that's not a thing anymore or never has been, even if we have kind of become habituated to it. But I will just say that there is a process that many people need to go through towards changing their expectations around what is appropriate and realistic for them to look like, at least right now, and to try to line that up with what's probably more appropriate physiologically. But that is a multi year process of acceptance and in some cases having a more realistic view of social media. So with that, I'll kick it over to you guys. I don't know if any of you, if either of you would like to
- [27:17]
D
have the first word, you know, in a word, patience. Patience goes a long way here. When do you decide to pull the plug on a bulk like you said, Eric, I've had many, many a client progress quite well in Their training and muscularity just basically eating at maintenance. Dare I say they progress even better when they're at maintenance and they do have a little bit of body fat on. In this particular case right here, this person says, I'm starting to feel soft in the midsection, you know, I mean, yeah, you can, you can pull back and not necessarily pull, you know, pull the plug. I guess you might say so. Yeah, just, just patience. You know, a lot of times when people, people make their goal. I made my goal weight that I'm trying to gain too. Now it's time to cut. It's like, you know what, I hear that a lot. And most of the time I'm trying to talk people into just riding at this body weight and this body fat for a while, a long while. And just as a real world application, my son just got back from college and coaches essentially made him stay 245 to 250 pounds. Kid's six foot tall. He's a big kid, but you know, he, at 6 foot tall, you don't necessarily wear 245 to 250 pounds. Really good. But they made him stay there, you know, cause they needed him there for the field, on the field. That way he trained hard. And now, you know, because he's not playing football anymore, he decided that he's going to cut down. So needless to say, spending two and a half, three years at 245, 250 pounds as a college football player, weight training year round now that he's cut down to like 215. I was walking behind him the other day and his back, I cannot get over how wide his back is. You know, he was not bulking, he was just working hard to maintain 245 to 50 pounds. And he grew a ton of muscle. I can't get over how big his legs are and his, you know, how big his arms are and just like I said, how wide his back is. Patience. Spend time here, really enjoy the, the, the performance that you will get, you know, as long as all of your training variables are, are in place. Because there's been a lot of times when I was like enjoying the performance so well that I was like, you know what, screw it. I don't care about how I look. I'm going to enjoy, you know, adding reps to this and adding pounds to that. It felt so much better. I mean, progress makes us happy, you know, and the progress, the happiness that I was getting from the progress that I was making in the gym far surpassed you Know what it was that I was. I was looking like, you know, so I know that's probably, you know, kind of individual to me. I'm a married guy. I'm 54 years old. Who am I trying to impress?
- [30:31]
A
Right?
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D
But at the same time, it sure did feel good to.
- [30:35]
A
To.
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D
To be healthy in the gym, not have all these aches and pains and strains and things like that. And just the progress was very, very addicting. So, yeah, I think that's all I've got.
- [30:48]
C
Virto, you know, six months. I think he's doing quite well. For a lot of people on. On their first few set of gaining phases, usually the way it goes is like three, four months, and they're like, I had this plan for eight months, but I've already kind of met that quota. So six months. If, you know, if they want to turn around and kind of cash in on this and prove to themselves that this indeed did work, you can absolutely do that. You can also just chill at this body weight to you. And like Eric suggested, I think the recomp thing has been. It's been a. A breath of fresh air because we've all seen it, right? We've all gotten to these body weights in the off season where we don't move it anymore because especially when you're trying to get on stage, it's like, why do I want to get further away? But I still have a lot of off season, so we just kind of chill at a spot and we own that weight more and more over time. And it doesn't seem to impede the rate at which you grow muscle. I do think for. For certain people, just like, for certain people, maybe the recomp strategy is better for some folks, especially intermediate men who just finished their beginner phase and now they're in the intermediate phase. And especially when they're younger, sometimes a more linear bulk just keeps them in the game. Because what would happen to me if I gained 10 pounds over the next four months? Oh, I'm like, be so much stronger on everything, you know? But I'm also in a different place now where I'm so much more patient. And all I can think about is that a lot of that progress is contaminated by the fact that I have physics on my side a little bit more than I did ten pounds ago. So again, the recomp super great option these days, especially for a lot of my women, they're like, oh, no, yeah, take. Take me there. I'd much rather, much rather do that. For those of you out there who maybe don't trust this strategy. I, I think a good cohort study that's going on right now, and it's been going on for many years, is go look at power lifters who are capped at their weight class and if you follow them long enough, you'll see that eventually. The dilemma is it's like I have a hard time making my weight class now. I'm going to have to move up one and all. These folks like the amount of muscle they've put on in many ways, especially in the prime movers absolutely rivals what some of the best bodybuilders on this planet have been able to do. So go look at Taylor Atwell, go look at Russ Ori, go look at like as they've gotten stronger and they have to hover at a weight range, how much more muscular they've gotten over the last few years. So it's there, it's been there this whole time. It works. It absolutely works. But again, they're, they're doing a great job. Whoever this is, you can cash it if you like. You could also just stay there and, you know, own that weight more. You have options.
- [33:50]
A
Yeah, I completely agree. Delaney Wallace, Carlina Tonga, there's Evie Corrigan. There's a ton of examples of people who are just kind of eventually have to go up because they're gaining muscle and each time they have to make weight, they're actually cutting from a slightly leaner place because they are recomping. And yeah, this is honestly, I think once we all in the evidence based community realized it was allowed to say like, okay, this is a thing now based on the data, um, I feel like we're, we're gaslighting ourselves a whole lot less with what we see as coaches. Because I regularly see stuff like this, you know, like in prep, making muscular gains and not seeing the scale weight change, but measurements getting better for the first third or half, not uncommon at all. But Anyway, I digress.
- [34:46]
B
Hey three DMJers, this is Coach Alberto Nunez here to remind you that investing in expert GU is one of the all time tested hallmarks of serious athletes across all sports. And for competitive athletes striving for peak performance, working with an experienced coach isn't just a luxury, it's essential. At 3D Muscle Journey, we understand the dedication it takes to reach your physique and strength goals. And we provide the programming and support to get you there effectively and sustainably. But our craft isn't just for the stage or the platform. We create career spanning relationships with our clients to guide you along your lifting journey in a stepwise manner. We don't do quick fixes or rush transformations because those will always only be temporary. We know the art and skill of becoming an advanced lifter takes years and we want to work with athletes who are willing to put in the time. If you want to learn more about all our coaching plans, systems and prices, go to our website@3d musclejourney.com we offer weekly coaching for in season competitors and bi weekly coaching for off season or recreational lifters. There are also three different time frame options for one off video calls that each include a training program and nutrition plan every eight to 16 weeks. Our mission is to create athletic careers for serious lifters and our one on one coaching program is how we do that best. It's more than just workouts and meal plans. We deliver comprehensive support tailored to your individual needs. Don't let another training cycle pass without the expert guidance you deserve. Investing in your athletic future now and sign yourself up for coaching today at 3D musclejourney.com thank you so much for listening and enjoy the rest of the show.
- [36:34]
A
We're going to bounce around a little bit and then we might do some rapid fire just so we can cover as many of these topics as possible, but I think we don't need to do that just yet. Let's cover question number four fully because I know this is one that we all have experience with and thoughts on. I've been experimenting with lengthened partials and drop sets to push past a multi year plateau on my side delts and hamstrings. While the pump is insane, I find it significantly harder to track progressive overload when the form isn't a standardized full range of motion. How do you guys objectively measure progress when the training moves away from the traditional logbook lifting and into more metabolic stress territory? I think the first thing that I want to do is clarify these tools so we know how and what they are used for and what you want to do with them first. I think if you're experimenting with drop sets specifically, it's very important to see this as a time saving technique, not as a metabolic kind of stress technique. And the best way to track progress on a drop set, which I know wasn't the main question is to look at that first set and if you do have an appropriate dose of training over an appropriate time for your training experience, which for you if you're on a multi year plateau, that's anything, right? Then that first set should be slowly ticking up probably on like if we're Talking lateral raises, maybe just a rep here and there. If we're talking hamstrings, depending on upon the movement, there might be some load increments there. You're probably not doing drop sets on, on rdls though. And if you are, respect, I've done that. That's, that, that's, that's not fun. But you got to do it when the time is. Is cramped right now. I think another thing to consider is that lengthened partials are really useful specifically however, on movements where they tend to be really, really hard in the shortened position. And there's not a lot of hamstring movements except for hamstring curls that are built that way. Most of your hinges are kind of built in to have a really favorable resistance profile. So if you think about a rdl, the weight's getting further and further and further away from the hamstrings as you go into the bottom. So it's getting harder and harder and harder as the hamstrings are lengthening. And then there's really no load at the top. You can rest at the top. Right. So a lengthened partial wouldn't be like the ideal vehicle for hinges. You can certainly do them or you can just like just cut off the top a little bit. But if you were to do like just the first third or first half of that, most people struggle with breathing, especially if they're reasonably strong, you know, and they trying to maintain that kind of deep position. So they might do something like a quote unquote integrated partial, which I think we should give credit to Cass. He's probably the first one who said that. Where you do like three lengthened partials and then one full rep, breathe and then do it again or you'll actually lose a bit of volume and the number of lengthened exposures. So I think generally lengthened partials, don't think of them as a metabolic stress tool. Don't really think about metabolic stress in general in my mind. Think about appropriate rep ranges, appropriate proximities to failure, and then appropriate applications of these two tools. Lengthened partials for exercises which are kind of have a crappy resistance profile, they're hard when the muscle is getting shorter. So you can make them give you more exposure in the lengthened position without being fatigued. And then drop sets is simply a way to save time. And you want a decent conversion from drop sets to straight sets equivalents. If you add up your drops plus the. The top set, roughly every four sets is equivalent to three. And you can actually keep your form Pretty consistent, especially on drop sets. And just track the total number of reps that you get across those sets at that load and progressive overload, which is an output to track, not a goal to chase, will show you when you've improved and then you know that your dosage is right, is what I would recommend. And the final thing I'll say is a really kind of almost quote unquote idiot proof way of doing length and partials is to a. Only apply them to those types of movements I described and then literally just do half the range of motion. That is, that's, that's a pretty easy way and it's, it's kind of a visible midpoint for most people. You know, you could let it decay all the way into nothing or use, you know, full range until it, it gets less. But then it does become harder to track. And I think an easy way to do this if you're someone who really does like tracking is just do half reps and then you can find kind of some visual cue and space like for example on a row. Although you're talking about delts, this is just an example like when your elbow becomes parallel to your side rather than like the bar or the implement touching your abdomen is a, like another way to. That's roughly half a rep that you can kind of visually see or feel. But I'll leave it there and I'll kick this one over to you, Berto first. What do you think?
- [41:38]
C
No, I think you covered a lot, man.
- [41:41]
D
Covered a lot.
- [41:42]
C
The only thing I do a lot of, I guess dissolving ROM on a lot of my back movements. And there is, yeah, there's this landmark for full reps. So I just count those as. That's what goes in the logbook. I don't use a logbook. Cause I'm crazy. Like I just remember everything. Uh, that's how obsessed with this I am. Um, but I just remember Cynthia's too when we used to train. Like it was nosy, nosy, nosy. But yeah, and then once I can't make, I get to that specific portion of the range of motion. Everything else I just, I just dance like no one's watching. I just do what I can and that's it. So that's the only thing I'd add. And yeah, drop sets, my rep sets. I think a lot of people do confuse them with the fact that we're doing them for some sort of novel pathway to grow and. No, no, it's just, it's a time saving technique more than more than anything else.
- [42:40]
D
I would add to that that you have an entire program that you can track anything that you want. You know, basically at any time you don't have to track your length and partials at all. If with your hamstrings, say that you are, say that you've got your lengthened partials in there and you're finding it hard to track that, put together a deadlift workout that is very, very difficult to complete. And if you're able to progress on that deadlift workout, you're progressing, your hamstrings are progressing, you're building muscle, right? And so to make this a little bit more tangible, just say for example that you were to do. I know that some people don't like necessarily kind of incorporating deadlifts into their program, but just say that you had a difficult workout, was very hard for you to complete three by six with a particular load on deadlift. And then you've got your, your, your, all of your move, your lengthened partials and your drop sets and things like that in the background. If you start out to where you, you can't really get all sets of six or it's like six, six and five or you're killing yourself to get six, six and six by the end of that block. If you're now dominating that three sets of six with that same load, you've progressed and you don't even have to track your length in parcels. You don't have to worry about if you're progressing there because the proof is kind of in the pudding. And then of course, you can take your measurements that you're taking around your particular landmark in your quad or whatever it is that you're doing. Think of your whole program. If the whole program is progressing. You don't have to kind of look at your, your little, your little exercises that you want to track in a bubble. They are contributing to the progress that you're getting from the entire program. One thing that I like to do because I am a fan of, of length and partials, more so because of the, the time saving technique, but I don't do, I only do one partial on my first set only. So I'll take my first set to failure and I'll track that one only. And if that one is going up from 9 and a half to 10 and a half to 11 and a half slowly over blocks and blocks and blocks of training, I'm not even tracking the other ones sometimes, I'll admit. You know, I mean, I've kind of confessed this before when it really, really burns. I tend to kind of lose my mind, lose my composure, and I'll just kind of give up, you know, or if I'm really losing my focus, I try to, I try to cheat it, to kind of get that burn off there and hurry up and get more repetition. So knowing that is the case in me, I track the one that's the most reliable and then of course, watch the outcome of that one and then the other ones are just kind of icing on the cake. I know that they're kind of doing their work as well.
- [45:44]
A
Brad, actually, the way you answered that question, which I really liked of saying, hey, you can track one benchmark and then just think of, hey, the total dose or stress that's from everything else doesn't necessarily need to be tracked. The goal isn't to track and see progress. The goal is to induce a stimulus that's sufficient to produce an adaptation and that should show up on our benchmark performance. That actually serves as a really good answer to the next two questions. So I'm going to read both questions and then I'm going to talk a bit about, I think the through thread that we can use as kind of like this to kind of continue down this rabbit hole that actually serves both. So the first one hitting the exact same sticking point every week on heavy compounds, and it's incredibly frustrating. I've tried adding more weight and I've tried adding more reps, but I'm just hitting a wall. Should I be looking at weak point isolation exercises to address the specific muscle that's failing? Or is this just a sign that I've milked this exercise for all it's worth and need a new variation. That's question five. And also here's six. I'm finding that my strongest movements, like hacks and pendulums, are now so heavy that the setup and the fear of the set are becoming a mental barrier. I'm moving five or six plates aside and the risk to reward ratio feels like it's shifting. When a client gets too strong for a specific movement, do you swap it for a more humbled variation with a worse leverage, or do you just keep pushing the load regardless because you know they'll grow from it? So I think in both of these cases we have people who are a bit locked into seeing things within a certain paradigm. The first question of not being able to add reps or load on heavy compounds and getting frustrated and thinking basically, oh, do I need to do a different variation, different exercise? I milked it for all it's worth. This is probably a sign that as long as the timeline's reasonable and they're not expecting progress on a weekly basis and they're like an advanced lifter or whatever, that the dose is just not appropriate or the environment is just not appropriate for you to observe progress. And there's many ways to induce a stimulus that will result in progress. And if you are currently looking at your heavy compounds or if you're getting actually having a different problem, I am getting stronger, I am seeing adaptation. And you know, I'm loading five, six plates aside and this is something that I actually directly relate to and I do get musculoskeletal pain from getting too strong, unfortunately. It sounds like a humble brag, but it's not. I've gotten to the point now where I'm loading nine plates aside on leg press and I have to use the top rack or I'm doing five plates a side on hacks and I'm also training these patterns multiple times per week. But here's the thing, a really cool, interesting thing happened and I'll describe what happened first and then I'll tell you why it happened like that because it might surprise people. My quad tendonitis got pretty gnarly for a bit, so I took probably almost six weeks of not loading these movements heavy and doing things like beltless work, then slow tempo work, so three to four second eccentrics and then even some heavy, slow intentional concentrics until the concentric got involuntarily slow pause squats or like pause hack squats, pause leg press in the bottom as well as BFR work. So I mentioned I got up to like nine plates a side on leg press and five plates a side on hack squats. That's for like six to eight reps in both cases. When I'm at my peak strength that I had been at, I was working almost exclusively with five or six plates or lower per side foreples in some cases for leg press and then three plates or less per side for hacks. And then once my quad tendinitis resolved and I started pushing loads again, guess what? I started hitting PRs. Now this shows you that, yeah, strength is specific, movements are specific and obviously you change these tempos, but you are still inducing a stimulus. And if the dose is appropriate for that stimulus, you're going to see the muscles grow. And if the muscles grow, when you come back to that strength work, you'll be able to push those loads up again. But that tells you something, is that you don't have to be married to these heavy loads so you can specifically manipulate these movements to make you weaker. And I know that doesn't necessarily feed the inner ego, but I think that is actually a really good strategy. And if you have enough of a cardiovascular engine on a leg press, you can play in that 15 to 20 range. It's a bit of a moment to see your creator, whichever one you believe in, or just simply feel your human biology. If you do not believe in a creator but have what might be described as a religious experience and you know that's fine, or you can do slow tempo work or pauses or belt list, all those things are still going to be effective. Now if your goal is strength, you got to do what you got to do. But considering we're talking about hack squats and heavy compounds and muscles, I think it's just worth putting out there that really all of these options that we have are essentially ways to ensure that the dose doesn't put us into a state where we can't just get positives or we're getting too many negatives out of the training. But just like Brad you mentioned, I think I'm kind of like stealing your content from a second ago. Like, hey, you can have an anchor point, you can have this benchmark. Like, hey, you know what? I don't do six plates a side very often, but when I do I want to see if. Last time I got seven reps, can I get eight this time? But the way to get there, especially on one of these machine based movements, which doesn't require a tremendous amount of skill, might be doing a whole bunch of different rep ranges and mixtures of different exposures to various loads. And if the dosing is right and the timeframe is appropriate and the environment is allowing recovery and adaptation, you will be able to come back to it and see that progress. So I think that's how I would answer both of those questions. But Brad, given that I kind of piggybacked on what you were saying, are there anything that you would want to add for question 5 or 6?
- [52:18]
D
The only thing that I would really add expanding basically on what you said, they are fearful when they're getting to five and six plates per side. I myself and I program this for a lot, I get to a point to where it's like, I know I can do that, it's scary, but I've done it once, I've done it many times. Just stick to it, you know, you can do that. There is nothing wrong with just using that load that you know is Challenging and then you can kind of start looking at other areas to in to be able to monitor your ability to progress. It. It's funny to me how I don't know if it's just coincidence or if it's the algorithm or what, but I am seeing more and more content that's out there where people are poo pooing, progressive overload. You know what I mean? They're poo pooing. You don't have to keep adding load to the bar all the time. And it's like we've been saying this for years and now all of a sudden it seems like it's getting popular. You should be able to progress from your training if it's the appropriate dose, if you've got the proximity to failure there, the, the intensity is there. It should just be the outcome of your training. If everything is, is, is if all your, your ducks are in a row and all of your, your boxes are being checked off. Um, so yeah, make it if that is if, if, if on both of those cases, you know, if, if, if a challenging workout within. In case number five where he says that I'm stuck at the same. What did he say? The same rep and the same sticking point every week. Back it down a little bit to where it's something, you know, that you can do and then just hammer that every single week. And it would not surprise me if the very, the very thing that you're looking for becomes the outcome of your training. The environment needs to be permissive for you to be able to, to progress. It doesn't have to be something that you are putting pressure on yourself to do.
- [54:29]
C
Yeah. Only thing I really have to add is, you know, sometimes if a movement is getting really grindy, like you just is. It's just punishing you. And this can happen for a number of reasons. Like you've just progressed a lot, but now you're kind of hitting this wall or you've gotten terrifyingly strong over the last few months on that movement. Nothing wrong with taking a break from it, you know, because when you kind of step in already a little defeated, that, that can definitely. Yeah. Just all before you start impact how it's going to go. But the, the tempo thing I think is it's a wonderful thing to play with, especially once you have some mileage on, on those joints. Like you see a lot of, not that they, they all are, but a lot of very intuitive like ifbb pros do this because they know they just started blasting and it's like, yeah, my Incline could definitely go up £80 in the same rep range the next few months. But it doesn't mean I'm going to do that because I know where that's going to go. So. Bodybuilders have been doing this forever. Shoot. I, I remember sometimes you say some really sound things to yourself like when you're first starting off, like based off intuition. And I remember when I, when I first started training, my arm day had to take place at the house and I had limited weight. So to me, I didn't have money to go buy more stuff. So I was like, you know what, weights are expensive. I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna get the most that I can out of this before I graduate on with the loads. So that's literally what I did. It's like before I go buy another set of dumbbells, let me really try to get everything that I can from this. And that's not a bad way to approach your training either. Again, especially as you get really strong and especially as, as you do built up some wear and tear over the years on, on the joints.
- [56:27]
A
Great stuff, guys. Yeah. All right, we're coming up close to the hour mark. So I think, you know, I don't know why I said we get through all 10 of these. We, we never get through all the Q and A questions, but I think number seven is a good one maybe for us to end on. We don't have rapid fire in us. We have this too much nuance and different applications for people. Because it's a nutritional one, I think it'll complement the training we've been talking about a good bit and I think this is something that a lot of people deal with. I know I personally have dealt with it a lot. My work has me traveling a lot and it's impossible to be 100% accurate with my tracking when I'm eating at restaurants with clients. In these scenarios, is it better to under eat to ensure I stay in a deficit slash maintenance or should I just prioritize hitting a certain protein target and let the carbs and fats fall where they may? I feel like I lose a week of progress every time I have a three day business trip. So I'll provide a little bit of my own personal experience here and also just some system changes that I might think will be helpful. So one thing I think is having carb, fat and protein targets I actually don't think is the best way to operate. Even when you, you could hit them on a regular, regular basis. I actually like Having a calorie range. So a calorie target with a reasonable amount of, you know, error around it and then a minimum intake for protein, carbs and fat. That in and of itself, I think A is justified based upon everything that we know and we have seen. Um, and if you, when you are consistent and you live the quote unquote lifestyles, we do recommend you'll fall within a relatively narrow range for carbs, fat and protein anyway, because you eat similar things. And it's a good thing to have a pretty consistent meal pattern. But when you are outside of that environment, it gives you even more flexibility than say, hey, you know, I'll give myself just a protein target in calories, which, you know, I have recommended in the past and we've used. But having minimums and then a calorie range basically just gives you a lot more control over your budget and expenditure. You know, once you've, you know, hit these minimums, then, you know, okay, cool, I've got 800 calories left or whatever it might be. And those minimums, like, we already covered the protein 1. Like let's say it's 0.7 grams per pound or 1.6 grams per kilogram, but fat might be, say 40 to 60 grams. Lower end for a smaller person, higher end for a larger person. And then carbohydrates can be like, you know, a gram per pound, something like that, just as a minimum intake. And then that typically gives most people, unless they're actually in a pretty substantial deficit, a good buffer to play with. And that can help you make different decisions in the restaurant that otherwise might lead you to the. Ah, damn it, this is too hard. Screw it. I'll just get back on the diet after this three day business trip. So that's one thing I would recommend. The second thing I would recommend is that there are almost always some pretty good choices you can make at a restaurant. And so long as you're sitting there and eating like, typically, the clients won't care. Even if you go to a fancy steakhouse or a good place that would give you a complex meal with a lot of calories in it. So what I would generally recommend is that you essentially get a lot of single item ingredients together. So getting a lean protein source with a salad with the dressing on the side and salads can be very fraught in most of these places. So maybe instead you ask for, hey, can I get your steamed seasonal vegetables or steamed, you know, whatever with, you know, a portion of lean protein, right? And then just don't necessarily partake in the appetizer or the dessert fest that might be going on and try to have, you know, a restaurant selection that's not like the communal eating style, because those all require a lot of restraint. If you're going to a tapas bar or a family style thing, those are challenging. Buffets, ironically, are actually a lot easier because it's not at the table. And psychologically, I find you can get up, you can get a piece of fish or get a, you know, some tofu or get some, some chicken breast. You can chicken breast. You can get the elements of the salad you want, not put dressing on it, get a baked potato or whatever and sit back down. Right. And it gives you a little more agency and control. So I think choosing the right restaurant that still works for obviously whatever your job is, and then making selections that even if the chef is cooking more liberally with oil, the amount of error is going to be relatively small. And then do bring protein with you when you travel, like low calorie, easy to travel with protein things, doesn't need to be powder, but if you can get like a, you know, a protein bar, which the first ingredient's not collagen, and there's no more than, say 10 times the protein in grams in calories, it's like a decent, you know, like 200 calories, 20 grams of protein. And the first ingredients, like a milk protein isolate, not collagen or something like that, that's a great way to just kind of supplement your diet. And if it's almost impossible for you to not make that dinner or something that kind of puts you over, then the next day you can make your breakfast and your lunch like a protein bar and then go into your dinner the next time and go, okay, cool, I'm prepared if it gets haywire. And if it doesn't get haywire, cool, then when I go to bed, I'll be in a big deficit, which maybe that's fine, or you can decide to have a little more protein before bed. So kind of having some built in flexibility and variability to the plan, that's what I do so that I can kind of accommodate either across days or across meals to still be within an appropriate range for the, the whole length of the business trip. So that's what I personally do and the way I work with clients. But Berto, what do you think?
- [62:21]
C
You know, I think you unlocked a lot of things for people with the just tracking your calories and protein. A lot of athletes, when I start them up, they see it as kind of a demotion. They're like, well my goals are really good. Like, I mean my goals are very serious. Like I'm, I'm, I'm all about this. And it's like, well all my most like world class bodybuilders, they're, they're running the system like Dirk won a world championship on this system. He's tracking calories and protein and if anything I think there are some benefits to that outside of it. Just like making social eating a little bit easier. You just, there's, there's a wider array of nutrients coming in when you can kind of flip those things a little bit. Uh, so, so at the end I think it's not only a valid system but I think it's, it's, it's better. Especially like if you're getting contest lean where it is, it is malnutrition when you look at it, right? So we can lessen the blow a little bit by like, hey, you get to have some whole eggs sometimes if you want things like that. Finally like you, it's a skill that you have to practice, right? Like it'd be quite comical if we took a slice of pizza through a busy part of town and just inquired like how many calories in this? Like there would be no consistency. Some people would say 200, some people would say 2000. Whereas like most of our listeners, I, they're not gonna be perfect, but they're probably going to be like within 80%, right? And the longer you do this, the better you get at it. So especially with this person, it seems like they do it quite frequently. You keep hammering away at it like eventually like it's going to be nothing to you, it's going to be just, just another day and you're still hinder goals. It can absolutely be done. Like, like even with my most important goals, like last contest prep, I ate out most of the time during the weekends with, with my family and it's something that I was able to do because I've practiced it a lot over the years. And when it comes to this person they have some very advanced curriculum right there in front of them because they get to do it frequently.
- [64:46]
D
I think first of all I'm going to start out by plug in our, our nutrition course that we have on 3D muscle journey where you're going to learn these exact tools that we're talking about. Not just macros but you know, also doing the things like Aaron Eric talked about and just kind of tracking your calories only and then also kind of using intuitive Skills too, because, yeah, both you guys, you know, hit the nail on the head. I was taken back to the night after the muscle mayhem when we had worlds coming up in what, two weeks, right? And I mean, we all knew what our calories were up until that day because we were peaking and we all kind of knew the amount of calories that we had left. And you know, we, we just, we would just say, you know what, I am fine to just have that 600 calorie. I think Eric wasn't like a tuna salad thingy or something like that. And some of us had double portions of protein and things like that. It's like, you know what? I, I know that I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be in a deficit if I'm at like 1800 calories and I'll be darn if I've eaten 900 a day. That 600 calories right there is still going to lead me in a deficit. In fact, I think I want to say that was the conversation that we had is if we eat all this, we're still going to be in a deficit. And we all showed up shredded, you know, two weeks later at World Championships. And one of the things you guys didn't talk about was that, you know what, there was no stress. We all knew it numerically. And it would not surprise me if this person feels like he loses all this progress simply because he's stressed out that he has lost all his progress, you know what I mean? Or he's stressed out that, that he's, he's, he's way overeaten, you know, and things like that. It's, it's amazing what I see all the time on the scale when people are stressed out. That doesn't necessarily equate to what I'm seeing either a, on their physique in their photos or in their measurements. And I would say just use these tools, you know, maybe go and get the hypertrophy course@3d musclejourney.com and then just relax and, and look at the big picture too. Maybe you're just looking at the two or three days where you get back from the trip and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm up two pounds. Well, guess what? Look at the end of the week too. You know, we always talk about looking at trends and looking at averages and things like that. Maybe you're just not, you're looking at it, you know, kind of through the microscope instead of looking at it from the 10,000 foot view and kind of looking at what the trends are doing and, and things like that. And then lastly, just kind of, I mean, I'm, I'm the, the spreadsheet guy. That's super extroverted. I've learned a lot about my intuitive skills and there was a point in my 2024 prep where my, the scale was not going down. And at a certain point, for the first time ever, I kind of felt like a bit of Alberto Nunez. I didn't even care. I knew that I was in a deficit. I knew by how I was feeling that I was in a deficit. And I was just like, I, at this point right now, I know what I need to eat. I know how much I need to eat. I know what I need to feel like. I'm not even going to track calories anymore and I'm not going to step on the scale anymore. I'm simply going to go by how I'm feeling. And I mean, it wasn't like four or five days later I hit a new low and arguably got on stage in 2024 and like my most shredded ever. And a lot of that was a combination of those things. Just kind of letting go of, of, of micromanaging things and stressing about the scale and stressing about my macros and just, you know, just strictly going by, I know, I can feel it, I know that I am in a deficit just by how I am feeling. And so, yeah, hopefully between all of those things, you know, just looking at just calories or just like a minimum, you know, protein amount and using intuitive skills and things like that will be able to get you through these, these business trips. Because there's been many, many, many a competitive bodybuilder that has gone on many, many, many a business trip and they've still showed up shredded at the, at the bodybuilding stage.
- [68:38]
C
So one last thing, like when I did start this, I would tax the food a little bit more and then gradually over time, like that's just kind of gotten smaller through experience. But if it makes you feel safe, it's like I added 20% to whatever you assumes on that plate.
- [68:55]
A
Yeah, that's great advice from both of you. And I think we did a, a really good coverage, cross training and nutrition in this episode. And hey, you know, seven out of ten, that's a passing grade. C minus is what you can expect from 3D muscle journey. Normally we're all Ds, so we've upgraded. Just, you know, so give us, you know, give it, give us a, you know, a thumbs up on this episode. Give us some likes, share it around because we just, you know, our report card is 3Ds and now we finally got a C minus. So I know that's not an objectively good grade, but please, you know, look at the progress. That's what's important. All right, but in all seriousness, folks, thank you for tuning in to this 310th episode of the 3D Muscle Journey podcast, where we are answering your questions. You ask them, and there's a 7 out of 10 chance that we'll answer it. So until next time, we will see you and take care.